February 16, 2021 A few weeks ago, we saw the first reading of economic growth for the 4th quarter of last year. Though this number is subject to two revisions, the increase of 4.0% is not expected to change all that much. Taken by itself, a rise of 4.0% would be seen as fairly substantial. […]
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February 9, 2021 The January jobs report gives us our first look at the job market as we begin 2021. We entered 2021 knowing that the economy had lost approximately ten million jobs that we have yet to recover. We were making good progress on recovering jobs before the winter COVID spike hit. We now […]
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February 2, 2021 Last week we talked about differences with a change of administrations. We all agree that the challenges facing our nation – the economy, the pandemic, the divisiveness are not going to go away. But there are other areas where there will be no difference and these areas are positive. As a matter […]
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January 26, 2021 Well, we have a new President of the United States. Feel any different? We still have COVID raging, a vaccine-fueled recovery in the works, a bitterly divided electorate and an impeachment trial coming up. While that may not seem vastly different from last week, we might keep our eyes open to look […]
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January 19, 2021 Apologies to Steve Martin. We were hoping that 2021 would not be as wild and crazy as 2020. Yet the first few days of January was anything but calm. We started with spikes of COVID-19 as holiday gatherings and the cold weather provided ideal conditions for spreading the virus. The first trading […]
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January 12, 2021 We did get a strong stimulus bill out of Congress as an initial response to the crisis. But the second bill took excruciatingly long to negotiate. And even after it passed, there were questions about whether the bill would be signed (it was) and whether the amount of the checks sent out […]
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December 29, 2020 By the end of this week, 2020 will have ended. It is hopeful that we will never have to say goodbye to another year like 2020. Indeed, economists around the world are predicting a vastly different year for 2021. And while we may present some of these forecasts, we always caution that […]
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December 22, 2020 It seems like the next step of government stimulus has been debated forever. When you are out of work or your business is hanging on, time moves very slowly. As a matter of fact, we have been considering the next level of stimulus for such an extended period that some are thinking […]
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December 15, 2020 This is the home stretch for 2020 and also, we hope, the home stretch for the COVID nightmare which has afflicted the world in 2020. For us, 2021 cannot come quickly enough. Nor can deliveries of vaccines. We are reminded that even though these vaccines will hopefully mark the end of this […]
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December 8, 2020, Last week’s reading on employment was the last we will see in 2020. We believe that we have had enough bad economic news this year and are looking for a better year in 2021. The gain of 245,000 jobs was seen as disappointing, as the gain in jobs has slowed significantly as […]
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