The American economy is being buffeted by a fresh round of corporate layoffs, signaling new anxiety about the course of the coronavirus pandemic and uncertainty about further legislative relief.
Companies including Disney , the insurance giant Allstate and two major airlines announced plans to fire or furlough more than 60,000 workers in recent days, and more cuts are expected without a new federal aid package to stimulate the economy.
With the election a month away, an agreement has proved elusive. The White House and congressional Democrats held talks on Thursday before the House narrowly approved a $2.2 trillion proposal without any Republican support. It was little more than a symbolic vote: The measure will not become law without a bipartisan deal.
Quite a lot has been going on:
Consumer Spending Rose in August, but Incomes Pose Hurdle for U.S. Recovery - WSJ
A drop in household income and persistently high layoffs are threatening to further slow the U.S. economic recovery, which already appears to be losing momentum as the pandemic continues.
The pragmatist - Joe Biden would not remake America's economy | Briefing | The Economist
At the same time Mr Biden will head up a party that has indeed shifted more to the left and that has a more radical wing that, while not dominant, is influential and thinks America's economic model is broken and that the answer is a vastly bigger state. Combined with this, the public is bitterly divided and many people are wary of globalisation. Under President Donald Trump, America's standing in the world has slumped.
Because of this chaotic backdrop and Mr Biden's own lack of a fixed economic doctrine, the range of outcomes attributed to a Biden presidency is bewildering and not always benign. To some Republicans on Wall Street and in boardrooms he would enable a hostile takeover by the radical left. "The country is running the risk of structural changes under the guise of social justice which would take the US into a place where it won't know how to function," claims one.
The three pillars - Why, despite the coronavirus pandemic, house prices continue to rise |
D URING THE global recession a decade ago, real house prices fell by an average of 10%, wiping trillions of dollars off the world's largest asset class. Though the housing market has not been the trigger of economic woes this time, investors and homeowners still braced for the worst as it became clear that covid-19 would push the world economy into its deepest downturn since the Depression of the 1930s.
That pessimism now looks misplaced. House prices picked up in most middle- and high-income countries in the second quarter. In the rich world they rose at an annual rate of 5% (see chart 1). Share prices of developers and property-traders fell by a quarter in the early phase of the pandemic, but have recovered much of the fall.
Other things to check out:
Construction Industry Economics Respecting COVID-19 Mixed But Positively Trending | Vandeventer
The Architecture Billings Index (ABI) is a composite index derived from monthly report surveys from American Institute of Architects (AIA) member firms located throughout the United States reporting on construction project activity the AIA refers to as “Work-on-the-Boards” (projects in the planning and design processes).
The data analyzes nonresidential construction activity approximately 9-12 months into the future, considered the typical time frame for a project to mature from design development through to construction. The ABI is viewed as one of the most even-handed barometers of expected construction and economic activity within that forward-looking time frame as the AIA is generally deemed as not having any overt political agenda.
LAUREN RUDD: New book argues popular stories drive economic behavior
If you have not had the opportunity to read "Narrative Economics," the latest book from Nobel laureate Robert Shiller, I would recommend you do so. Shiller's underlying theme is to set forth a variety of arguments favoring the concept that popular stories affect individual and collective economic behavior.
By studying them, Shiller writes, we can improve our ability to predict, prepare for, and lessen the damage of financial crises, recessions and other major economic events.
Sticking plaster - Foreign capital helps ease India's credit drought | Finance & economics |
Reliance, a telecoms and energy giant, is a glitzy example of overseas equity investment made on the premise of growth. But a quieter wave of capital is seeking out different sorts of assets, serving to stabilise local companies while offering foreign investors high returns. As a result, many of the world's largest insurers, private-equity ( PE ) firms and pension and sovereign-wealth funds have become influential.
Banks have followed a roughly similar path. Several large private-sector lenders, including Axis, Kotak Mahindra and ICICI , along with HDFC , a non-bank mortgage lender, have raised capital from foreign investors. Sources of cash include: the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board; two Singaporean funds, Temasek and GIC ; and funds associated with banks such as Morgan Stanley and Société Générale.
Opinion | The Very Strong Case for Joe Biden's Economic Plan - The New York Times
Well, everything we know suggests that Biden was right and Trump wrong. And I'm not the only one saying this. Nonpartisan analysts like Moody's Analytics and the not-exactly-socialist economists at Goldman Sachs are remarkably high on Biden's proposals.
* * *
There's a widespread perception that Republicans are better than Democrats at managing the economy. But that's not at all what the record says.
Yes, Ronald Reagan presided over a long economic expansion; but so did Bill Clinton, and the Clinton boom was both longer and bigger. The economy did in fact add many jobs under Trump before the coronavirus struck, but this simply represented the continuation of an expansion that began under Barack Obama .
Happening on Twitter
BREAKING: 824,452 Americans applied for *new* unemployment aid last week, signaling layoffs are still happening. A… https://t.co/CAJ9E7iw6l byHeatherLong (from Washington, DC) Thu Sep 24 12:33:41 +0000 2020
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