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Thursday, January 02, 2020

News Factoids for Fourth Quarter 2019

ECONOMICS DEPT.

Stock market under Trump posts record highs, but markets under Obama performed far better -- headline at newsweek.com

Manufacturing slump worsens
A key gauge of U.S. factory activity slipped in September to its weakest reading in 10 years as slowing global economic growth and the U.S.-China trade war hurt exports, according to a monthly survey released Tuesday 10-1 by the Institute for Supply Management • "We have now tariffed our way into a manufacturing recession in the U.S. and globally," said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group

Reuters October 1: U.S. manufacturing activity tumbled to a more than 10-year low in September as lingering trade tensions weighed on exports, further heightening financial market fears of a sharp slowdown in economic growth in the third quarter. The economy’s fading fortunes have been attributed to the Trump administration’s 15-month trade war with China, which has sapped business confidence and undermined manufacturing.

The federal deficit rose to $134 billion in October, a 34 percent increase over last October, according to Treasury Department data released Wednesday. The Treasury Department estimated that the full 2020 fiscal year deficit would be greater than $1 trillion for the first time since 2002.

The 26 richest billionaires own as many assets as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of the planet’s population. -- The Guardian, UK 11/2019


JOBS DEPT.

California accounted for nearly three-quarters of US jobs added in February == per cnbc

US business hiring falls to a 7-year low ~~~ per the October jobs report

Trump trade war with China has cost 300,000 U.S. jobs, per Moody's estimates

The $15 minimum wage was supposed to hurt New York City restaurants — but both revenue and employment are up ~~~ per marketwatch.com

"80 percent of hourly retail workers have fluctuating schedules" and
"40 percent of hourly workers don’t get more than a week’s notice about their schedules" ~~ per The Atlantic

Trump Has Created 1.5 Million Fewer Jobs Than Obama - per forbes.com 9-2019

Cummins, the largest maker of truck engines in the US, announces 2,000 layoffs ~~ per Business Insider, 11/2019


HEALTHCARE DEPT.

New from STAT: "An estimated 35,000 Americans die of antibiotic-resistant infections each year -- one every 15 minutes -- according to a stark 11-2019 report from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention that reveals that the problem is substantially greater than previously estimated."

Measles killed 140,000 people in 2018, most of them children, as outbreaks hit all around the world, the World Health Organization said. In all, nearly 10 million people were infected. The figures for 2019 could be even worse. Provisional data in November showed that cases had tripled compared to the same period in 2018.


THE ENVIRONMENT

When bay scallop season opened in November, most of the adult scallops in Peconic Bay, Long Island were dead.

Russia’s warm winter has deprived Moscow of snow in December, caused plants to bloom, and awakened bears from hibernation.


HIGH TECH DEPT.

Amazon controls roughly half of US e-commerce and 5% of all US retail sales. It also holds nearly half of global cloud services through AWS, and is carving out a sizable chunk of search.
•Facebook counts 2.2 billion daily active users across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. That’s 29% of the entire global population.
•Since 2017, the European Commission has fined Google €8.3 billion ($9.1 billion) on competition grounds.
•In the US, 50 state attorneys general are investigating Google and 47 are investigating Facebook.

Luxembourg Becomes First Country to Make All Public Transit Free


POLITICS DEPT.

According to Census demographic trends, in the next couple of decades, half of America’s population will live in just eight states. The half that is whiter, older, more rural, and more conservative, will be spread across the other 42 states. That’s 84 senators for them, and 16 senators for the other half of America.

SCARY NEWS ITEM - Mike Huckabee announced on December 12th that he is in charge of Donald Trump's re-election campaign for 2024.

Copyright 2020 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

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