Category: Life

Many have puzzled over the rebound in the stock market during this period of COVID-19 struggles. The blue-chip S&P 500 stock price index is only 6 percent below its mid-February peak, having recovered more than 80 percent of its COVID-related losses. Moreover, the Nasdaq index—a barometer of the tech sector—has soared to new highs. Has … Continue reading Buoying the Market: An Era of Ultra-Low Interest Rates

Perhaps you bought something recently and were told that the merchant could not make change because of a shortage of coins. The merchant may have been told by his or her bank that the bank has imposed a limit on the coins that it will dispense to its business customers because it has been subjected … Continue reading Can You Spare a Dime? Have Coins Gone the Way of Toilet Paper?

Recent disappointing news on the spread of COVID-19 has raised questions about whether the rebound in economic activity has been dealt a serious blow. Ironically, this comes at a time when the blowout 4.8 million increase in employment in June again surpassed forecasts by experts by a country mile. Will these emerging chutes of economic … Continue reading Could the Recovery be Losing its Legs?

Recent data pointed to the willingness of households and businesses to resume spending in May. Personal consumption outlays on goods and services increased 8 percent in May, retracing nearly 40 percent of the plunge over the previous two months. Especially encouraging was the bounce back in purchases of big-ticket durable goods, such as motor vehicles … Continue reading Encouraging Signs

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)—the semiofficial arbiter of business cycles in the United States—has officially determined that the longest postwar expansion came to an end in February. In other words, the COVID-19 recession got going in March. No surprise there. Of more interest now is whether a turnaround has begun and are we … Continue reading Has the Recovery Begun?

Each day, it seems, the stock market moves closer to its February peak. After a late-winter plunge that erased roughly $7 trillion in household wealth, the S&P 500 index has recovered nearly all of those losses. Are investors in the market oblivious to the ongoing damage from COVID-19? What about the upheaval over the death … Continue reading Has the Market Gotten Ahead of Itself?

What do Pier 1 Imports, JC Penney, Gold’s Gym, and Cinemax have in common? All are well-known businesses that have filed for bankruptcy recently—casualties of COVID-19. Not so well known are the family-owned restaurants down the street, the owners of the local gyms, and the Uber drivers. Are these canaries in the coal mine, only … Continue reading Sorting Through the Pain