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☆ In swing state Arizona, an $8.5 billion CHIPS grant spells ‘jobs’ more than geopolitics
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-21 | by ( Christine Romans | Emily Pandise | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

US President Joe Biden gives a speech at Intel Ocotillo Campus on March 20, 2024 in Chandler, Arizona. Biden announced $8.5 billion in federal funding from the CHIPS Act for Intel Corp. to manufacture semiconductors in Arizona. "The CHIPS and Science Act is a huge jobs creator," National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard told NBC News, adding that the impact would go beyond Intel's own workforce. "The CHIPS and Science Act is a huge jobs creator," National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard told NBC News, adding that the impact would go beyond Intel's own workforce. "That also leads to all kinds of nearby restaurants' having business, nearby service small businesses' starting up and hiring workers of their own."

Persons: Joe Biden, Biden, CHANDLER, Ariz, Alfred Garza, Garza, It's, Chandler, Lael Brainard, Pat Gelsinger Organizations: Intel Ocotillo, Intel Corp, China, Intel, Chandler, Economic, NBC News Locations: Chandler , Arizona, Arizona, —, Phoenix, Washington, Chandler, Ohio, New Mexico, Oregon, America, Asia, U.S

☆ The pause on student loans is ending. That could be a storm cloud for the economy
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-30 | by ( Analysis Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: 1 min

New York (CNN) Millions of Americans are about to get a rude awakening in their monthly budget: Federal student loan payments are back. Borrowers have had a break from their obligations for three years due to the pandemic. That has allowed them to use the money for rent, car payments, paying down other debt, building up savings or spending it. But starting in September, interest begins accruing again on outstanding balances. That means 44 million Americans will have to fork out a monthly payment averaging from $210 to $314, according to Wells Fargo.

Organizations: CNN, Read Locations: York, Wells Fargo

☆ Debt ceiling threat: Time to take this political football off the field
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

In theory, the debt ceiling should act as a fiscal restraint during the budgeting process. Deciding later not to pay the bills by not raising the debt ceiling is not sound fiscal policy. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, a Republican, has said the debt ceiling is counterproductive. And the CEO of the nation’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon turns visibly frustrated at the subject of the debt ceiling. KPMG Chief Economist Diane Swonk says the politicization of the debt ceiling has weakened America.

☆ Premarket stocks: Wall Street is strangely calm about the debt ceiling. That could change this month
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

New York CNN —Dire warnings about the economic chaos and catastrophe that will ensue if the US debt ceiling isn’t lifted soon abound. The debt ceiling crisis of 2011 caused Standard and Poor’s to downgrade US debt for the first time in history. Schwenkler says to expect “a lot more volatility” if debt ceiling issues don’t appear resolved by the last week of the month. By contrast, recovery from a debt-default crisis would likely start the day Congress, belatedly, suspended the debt ceiling,” he added. “A misstep over the debt ceiling would subject businesses and consumers to an economic shockwave,” he added.

☆ Analysis: How to characterize the American economy — from broken to just bizarre
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN —The US economy is going from broken to bizarre. Covid crashed the American economy three years ago with no playbook for the wild recovery that would follow. And yet, the US economy today is growing, the job market is strong, and the consumer is still spending. The economy has added an astonishing 1.2 million jobs this year and the jobless rate matches the lowest since 1969. Goldman Sachs pegs recession odds at 35% and Fed Chair Jerome Powell last week said the economy could still skirt a recession.

☆ Analysis: Bank failures and looming debt default test American confidence in the economy
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Zachary B. Wolf | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

CNN —Two converging crises are testing American confidence in their financial well-being. And there’s a debt crisis, which is becoming more urgent as the US approaches the “X-date” – when it would default – and on which opposing lawmakers aren’t currently talking to each other. First Republic Bank was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on Monday, and most of its assets were sold to JPMorgan Chase. Maintaining confidenceNone of that means this is a golden chapter for the American financial system. Now, the debt crisis and the X-dateIf only American lawmakers could take a cue from the First Republic saga and get into a room to solve the debt crisis.

☆ Analysis: American living standards are on the line in the debt ceiling drama
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

New York CNN —Inside the Beltway, jockeying over raising the debt ceiling has become a partisan ritual to gain political points. But marching toward a debt ceiling default puts American living standards on the line. For most of that time, the debt ceiling was raised with little fuss, until 2011 brought the debt ceiling into a new dangerous realm of political brinksmanship. Deciding later not to pay the bills by not raising the debt ceiling is not sound fiscal policy. Roger Ferguson, economist and former vice chair of the Fed, said the debt ceiling is out of date.

☆ Jobs are strong, inflation is cooling — yet recession worries remain
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

In the optimist camp is Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria last week a damaging recession can be averted. “I do think there is a path to bring down inflation while maintaining what I think all of us would regard as a strong labor market.”After months of inflation at close to 40-year highs, prices are cooling. By most measures, the job market is stronger today than it was in February 2020, before the Covid pandemic crashed the global economy. “I think the strong labor market and bringing down inflation are compatible goals,” Yellen said. Another read is that a recession, if there is one, will be mild and brief, without a big spike in the jobless rate.

☆ Interest rate decision: What to expect from the Fed meeting
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

Among the choices, the Fed could continue its aggressive rate-hike campaign to cool inflation that is running at triple the central bank’s target of 2%. Warren — already a critic of the Fed’s inflation fight — leveled further blistering criticism of the Republican Fed chief. In addition to achieving price stability and financial stability, the Fed’s broader mandate includes supervision of individual financial institutions, Leer says, and “that’s where the failure lies. “The Fed needs to secure both price stability and financial stability, something that it has failed to so recently,” he told CNN. And this Fed chief inherited an unprecedented economy.

☆ How First Republic became such a hot mess
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Allison Morrow | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

“It’s the biggest example of a bank that could go down and shouldn’t go down — a first-class bank,” said a source close to the 48-hour deal to infuse First Republic with $30 billion in cash. San Francisco-based First Republic, the 14th-largest bank in the country, received the cash infusion from 11 rivals, including America’s largest lenders. When JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Thursday reached out to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell, “Very quickly the conversation turned to First Republic,” the source told CNN. Its rescuers are also struggling, with JPMorgan Chase (JPM) down 3% and Bank of America (BAC) falling 4%. Investors saw similarities between First Republic and the failed Silicon Valley Bank — another midsize Bay Area-based lender with a deep-pocketed client base.

New York CNN —The banking meltdown over the past week has left us with more questions than answers. Here are five questions that experts answered Wednesday night. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers told CNN that despite scary headlines, now is not the time for consumers to panic. Some context: Those regulations passed in the wake of the Great Recession laid out stricter rules for the banking industry. Of course, others note that the risk of letting the 16th-largest US bank collapse, and potentially letting its tech industry customers also fail, could have far-reaching and potentially devastating consequences.

☆ Today’s good economic news could spell trouble for Americans down the road
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

From the labor market to consumer spending to inflation, key readings on the economy have been running hot. Although that might sound like good news for Main Street, it’s a problem for the Federal Reserve. After a spate of stronger-than-expected economic data, buckle up for an intense few weeks of Fed guessing, especially surrounding the tight labor market. The strong labor market means workers are enjoying the best wage growth in years. The next two weeks will serve as a crucial test on how much more medicine the economy needs.

☆ Inflation has gone supercore
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

The new favorite: supercore inflation. Supercore inflation refers to prices that rise when workers get paid more for their services. “Supercore inflation was a strong 6.4% on a year-over-year basis through December 2022, but it is moderating,” said Mark Zandi, Moody’s chief economist. For the three months through December, supercore inflation is up only 2.4% annualized, and just 0.9% annualized in the month of December. “Supercore inflation is still way too hot, but it has begun to cool off, and all signs point to it and overall inflation getting back to something more comfortable over the coming 12-18 months,” Zandi told CNN.

☆ Is the ‘100 envelope challenge’ a smart money move?
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

It’s called the “100 Envelope Challenge” on TikTok, and it promises to put more than $5,000 in your pocket in just 100 days. Continue this way until day 100, when your final savings deposit of $100 will bring you to a grand total of $5,050. But given how popular the envelope challenge has become, I decided to ask certified financial planner Doug Flynn of Flynn Zito Capital Management for his take. “I’m all for whatever it takes to get people talking about saving money. The envelope challenge videos have a get-rich-quick flair that is certainly viral and entertaining, but obviously the exception, not the rule.

☆ United CEO: Air travel system is ‘stressed to the max’
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( Chris Isidore | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN —If airlines are to avoid repeats of recent service problems, they’ll need to have a lot more back-up in place, according to United CEO Scott Kirby. “You can’t run an airline like it’s 2019, and the reason is because the system is just stressed to the max,” Kirby told CNN’s Christine Romans in an interview this week. The other in December was for at least 100 more 737 Max jets and 100 787 Dreamliners. And to remedy its pilot crunch, United has become the first US airline to open its own pilot training school, the Aviate academy. “Today, at United 19% of our pilots are women or people of color.

☆ Silicon Valley layoffs go from bad to worse
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

At Amazon and other tech companies, the second half of last year was marked by hiring freezes, layoffs and other cost-cutting measures at a number of household names in Silicon Valley. Rising interest rates also dried up the easy money tech companies relied on to fuel big bets on future innovations, and cut into their sky-high valuations. While there have been some layoffs recently in the consumer goods sector and hints of more to come elsewhere, the situation in Silicon Valley remains in stark contrast to the economy as a whole. And despite the robust overall labor market, there are growing concerns that tech layoffs could spread elsewhere. In that sense, at least, Silicon Valley may once again be ahead of the curve, but not in the way it wants.

Any time America reports its economy is strong, Wall Street has a freak-out. So why is good news taken as bad news on Wall Street? Wall Street is particularly sensitive to strong jobs numbers. The fear is that the strong jobs market (good for Main Street) will spin off more inflation (bad for companies and Wall Street.) That may not sound like great news to you or me, but Wall Street took that reading as a sign the Fed’s medicine may be beginning to work.

☆ Why America’s economy remains surprisingly strong – but you don’t realize it
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN Business —Each week brings head-scratching contradictory news about the economy. This past week was no different, with a batch of economic reports showing that — despite the recession talk — the US economy shows remarkable resilience. Yes, the economy is strong. “The labor market is incredibly strong again,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in a speech last month. That means the next year will no question be a challenge as all that tightening continues to work its way through the economy.

☆ Why recession fears are back: Americans are losing faith
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

The famous British economist John Maynard Keynes coined the phrase “animal spirits” to describe what drives investors, consumers and business leaders. “At the end of the day, a recession is a loss of faith,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. Yellen explained this week that recession risks permanently exist. “There are always risks of a recession,” Yellen told CBS’s “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired on Sunday. Hopefully we don’t lose faith and run for the bunker and go into recession.”— CNN’s Elizabeth Yang contributed to this report.

☆ Inflation cooling is good economic news. It might not feel like it
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Zachary B. Wolf | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Stocks, which had risen on the “inflation is cooling” news Tuesday, were down Wednesday on the “Fed is not convinced” development. GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is trying to find the votes to become speaker, and adding a spending fight to his plate would get messy quickly. But the spending fight loomsNone of the disagreements over spending are going away. Inflation moved the electionThe difference between 7.1% month-over-month inflation and 7.7% inflation in October may not feel like much on the micro level to Americans who are paying 49% more for eggs this year than they were last year. “In the coming decade, they’re going to be fighting hard to get inflation down.”In the meantime, cooling inflation might be praised by policymakers, but it could rub everyone else the wrong way, especially if an economic slowdown starts to feel like a recession.

☆ What goes up… is starting to come down
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-10 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

Gas prices are back to last year’s levels, after spiking to a record high of just over $5 a gallon this summer. “Falling prices in categories such as toys and electronics accelerated demand in November,” Adobe reported, noting that computers and electronics saw the biggest year-over-year price cuts since 2014. After hitting a record high this summer, chicken prices have dropped sharply. The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the PCE Price Index, rose 6% in October versus a year ago and notched the smallest monthly gain in more than a year. The final Consumer Price Index report of the year comes out on Tuesday, and the Producer Price Index also showed signs of cooling, at 7.4%, down from an 8.1% annual rate in October.

☆ The ‘yes, but’ economy. Yes, we’re worried about recession — but the economy remains resilient
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN Business —Each week brings head-scratching contradictory news about the economy. Tthis past week was no different, with a batch of economic reports showing that — despite the recession talk — the US economy shows remarkable resilience. Yes, the economy is strong. Yes, economists are worried about a recession, but the job market is incredibly tight with more than 10 million open jobs and 1.7 jobs available for anyone who’s searching for one (or looking to job hop). That means the next year will no question be a challenge as all that tightening continues to work its way through the economy.

☆ US consumer confidence falls to lowest level since July
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Alicia Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

Minneapolis CNN Business —US consumer confidence fell in November as inflation and economic uncertainty continued to loom large and potentially dampen holiday shopping plans. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index measured 100.2 for the month, lower than the downwardly revised 102.2 in October. The index is at its lowest level since July, when it fell to 95.7 amid spiking gas prices and worsening inflation. “If we had a combination of higher prices and higher unemployment at the same time, I think we’d be seeing a very different consumer than what we see right now,” he said. While consumer confidence has fallen, it still remains relatively resilient; but it is unlikely to last, said Chris Rupkey, chief economist of FwdBonds LLC, in a note on Tuesday.

☆ Online Black Friday sales set a new record
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( Jordan Valinsky | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

Adobe, which tracks sales on retailer websites, said that this year’s Black Friday online sales were 2.3% higher compared to last year, with electronics, smart home equipment, toys and exercise equipment providing the biggest boost. Online shopping is expected to remain strong through Cyber Monday. The holiday shopping season looks very different now than it once did. Instead of doorbuster deals on Black Friday, many retailers began their holiday sales in early fall. By spreading out their holiday deals online, retailers have reduced the draw of Black Friday.

☆ Buyer Beware. Even if your favorite movie star is selling
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: 1 min

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