Author: starbpo

The publicly traded companies created from the AT&T breakup — the seven so-called Baby Bells — outperformed the U.S. market. It’s possible that splitting Google into several different companies will be good for Alphabet GOOGL 1.03% shareholders in the long run. Investors didn’t react that way when the U.S. Justice Department said it was thinking about doing something like that after the company lost a huge trade case. Alphabet (Google’s parent company) shares fell 2.3% on August 14, the first trading day after the Justice Department’s news. The S&P 500 SPX 0.20%, on the other hand, rose 0.3%. On August…

During a lengthy news conference on Thursday, Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for president, attacked Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, for wanting to stop companies from raising the prices of groceries and other food items. Trump said, “They probably can’t do it legally, and that will make prices go up” when asked if the government should set food prices. The Harris campaign said she will talk about the price-gouging ban on Friday when she gives a speech on economic policy in North Carolina, which is a swing state. However, the campaign hasn’t given many details about the plan…

And vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris is trying to get people to vote for her in the grocery store by saying that she is the only one who can lower food prices for Americans. Harris unveiled her economic plan this week, which includes a call for a government ban on price gouging. This would stop grocery stores, food suppliers, and other businesses from allegedly charging customers more for the same things. In light of the fact that many grocery shops and other stores are lowering their prices, the question is how much of a difference such a ban would really…

It’s been almost 50 years since the first day of trade in U.S. gold futures, and the precious metal is having a great time: so far this year, there have been 28 record-high settlements. And gold may still have room to go because Western buyers and central banks around the world are buying a lot of it. In a commentary released this week, Adrian Ash, head of research at BullionVault, said, “Central banks have bought a lot of gold in the last five years, nearly one out of every ten ounces produced by the mining sector.” ‘Central bank demand gold…

A big problem for many Americans in the upcoming presidential election is the sky-high cost of housing. Vice President Kamala Harris’s new plan to bring them down may appeal to some key voting blocs. Record-high housing prices make it impossible for many renters in the U.S. to ever become landlords. “I know what it means to own a home.” A house is just one part of what’s going on. It’s more than money and more than that. Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, said in a speech in Raleigh, N.C., on Friday, “Owning a home is a sign of the pride…

As prices drop, the cost-of-living change for Social Security in 2025 might be less than the 3.2% increase seen this year. Mary Johnson, a Social Security and Medicare expert who works on her own and used to work for the Senior Citizens League, says that COLA could be 2.6% in 2025. This prediction is different from the one she made in July, which called for a 2.7% rise. Johnson said that the 2.6% rise would be the lowest COLA since 2021 but about the same as it has been over the last 20 years. Alex Moore, senior partner at Blacksmith…

More than 10% less expensive than last year, used cars are mostly due to more new cars on the market and deals on those cars to get them off of lots faster. In July, consumer prices went up a little, mostly because of higher living costs. However, prices for used cars and trucks went down, with 10.9% year-over-year drops. The drop in prices for used cars is closely linked to the market for new cars. There are more new cars on the market, and deals are being used to try to sell them faster. Edmunds.com said Wednesday that prices for…

The amounts: The number of first-time jobless claims dropped by 7,000 to 227,000 in the week ending August 10, the Labor Department said Thursday. The amount hasn’t been this low since early July. The Wall Street Journal asked economists and found that they thought the number of new claims would go up by 3,000 to 235,000. It was originally thought that claims would drop by 17,000 to 233,000 last week, but they actually fell by 16,000 to 234,000. Important facts: The average number of claims over the last four weeks dropped by 4,500 to 236,500. One million people were already…

The numbers: In July, sales at U.S. stores went up the most in fifteen months, but most of the increase was due to a rise in car sales after dealers recovered from a nationwide cyberattack on their computer systems. The government said Thursday that sales went up by 1% last month. A poll of experts by the Wall Street Journal said they thought they would go up 0.3%. Seasonally adjusted numbers showed that retail sales only went up 0.4% last month when cars were taken out of the equation. But sales for June were changed so that they showed a…

If inflation slows down, the head of the St. Louis Federal Reserve said, “the time may be nearing” for the U.S. central bank to cut interest rates. President Alberto Musalem said that new price reports “have bolstered my confidence” that inflation is slowly returning to the Federal Reserve’s goal of a 2% annual rise. Musalem has said in the past that he wanted to see a string of low inflation readings before he would back lowering interest rates. Consumer price reports for the last three months have been on the low side, which means that inflation is slowing down even…