Commentary: The Tricky Business of Branding

Patagonia Clothing

Brand development has become a major focus for firms hoping to find or maintain success in advanced markets. According to Steve Forbes, “Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business.” And he certainly is right.

A brand not only serves to identify firms and what they offer, it also conveys a company’s positioning strategy and value proposition. Promotional elements such as logos, names, symbols, and colors, are commonly leveraged for branding purposes but a brand can also be reinforced through pricing and distribution systems. For instance, if a company wants their product to be viewed as the best of the best, then they wouldn’t want it to be found on the shelves at a discount store. This is why Burberry has been known to burn excess inventory and perhaps it is also why premium brands will leverage opportunities to recycle their products.

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Inflationary Woes: More Chain Stores Closed in 2023, Continuing into 2024

Macy's Store

More chain stores closed in 2023 as a result of high inflationary costs, with the trend continuing in 2024 led by the iconic department store, Macy’s.

In 2023, retail stores, pharmaceutical and fast-food chains continued a trend of previous years: declaring bankruptcy and closing their doors or shutting down some locations to cut costs, citing inflation, higher costs, and profit losses.

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Continued Inflation Tops List of Worries for Democrats, Republicans

Grocery Shopping

A new poll shows that Democrats and Republicans are concerned more about inflation than other potential crises, but voters from the two parties don’t see eye to eye on other concerns, including the potential of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil or potential chaos after the 2024 election.

The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll conducted in conjunction with Noble Predictive Insights found that Republicans (45%) were more concerned about inflation than Democrats (32%). Concerns that inflation could continue and further drive up prices were highest for voters with children under 18 (47%) and those 45 to 54 years old (47%).

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Corporate Media in Crisis as Outlets Grapple with Biden’s Economy

Joe Biden

Numerous legacy media outlets are struggling with challenges posed by President Joe Biden’s economy and resorting to drastic measures, Axios reported on Friday.

Close to a dozen of these outlets are firing workers, dealing with employee strikes or looking to sell, according to Axios. The Federal Reserve’s imposition of high interest rates to bring down inflation is hindering their ability to accumulate more debt, complicating their efforts to extend the timeline for resolving their financial difficulties.

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Leadership of Major U.S. Landowner Chock-Full of Chinese Communist Party Members

American Farmland

Top executives at Hong Kong-based WH Group Limited, the world’s largest pork producer that controls vast swaths of U.S. farmland through its American subsidiary, are Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of corporate records and state-run media reports.

Records and reports reviewed by the DCNF identify four top executives and the chairman of the pork giant as CCP members with extensive ties to the Chinese government. WH Group controls nearly 150,000 acres of land across 29 U.S. states through its subsidiary Smithfield Foods, a family-run business established in 1936, which it purchased for $7.1 billion in 2013. While a keyword search on Smithfield’s website returned only two articles mentioning the firm’s relationship with WH Group, neither of the two articles mentioned China. An online map of Smithfield’s global business activities does not list any operations in, or connection to, Asia, despite archived reports from their website suggesting otherwise.

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U.S. Economic Growth Exceeds Expectations with Rate Cuts on the Horizon

Blue Collar

The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 3.3% in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to gross domestic product (GDP) statistics released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on Thursday.

In the third quarter of 2023, real GDP rose 4.9%, down from the second estimate of 5.2%, but in line with initial estimates. Economists expected that GDP growth would be around 2% for the fourth quarter of 2023, in line with typical U.S. growth rates.

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Commentary: Big Labor State Politicians’ ‘Wall of Denial’ Is Starting to Crumble

California Illinois

For decades, cold, hard data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have shown that states like New Jersey, Illinois and California are paying a high price for allowing dues-hungry union bosses to continue getting workers fired for refusal to bankroll their organizations.

Year after year, far more taxpayers have been leaving forced-unionism states than moving into them.  And the average tax filer moving out of a forced-unionism state has reported having an adjusted gross income (AGI) on his or her IRS form that is substantially higher than the average for a tax filer moving into a forced-unionism state.

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Smaller Banks’ Earnings Limp as High Interest Rates, Sector Turmoil Send Customers Fleeing to Megabanks

Bank Teller

Many smaller banks posted dismal fourth quarter earnings as depositors continue to flee to booming megabanks that have been unfazed by interest rate hikes and a crisis that shook the sector early last year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Net income was down substantially at many small and regional banks in the fourth quarter, including KeyCorp, Citizens Financial Group, PNC Financial Services Group, Comerica and Zion Bancorporation, falling 90%, 70%, 40%, 90% and 50%, respectively, according to the WSJ. Despite the poor performance at the small and regional level, America’s megabanks — JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup — saw their earnings increase 11% during 2023 to over $100 billion.

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Stigma of ‘Dirty Fossil Fuels’ Drives Young People Away from Lucrative Careers in Oil and Gas Work

Petroleum Engineers

Petroleum engineering is the highest paying bachelor’s degree in the United States, according to a report by Payscale, but despite an average annual salary of $97,500, oil companies struggle to fill positions.

The industry faces a number of challenges. Employees often face cyclical layoffs whenever commodity prices collapse, and that makes the jobs appear unstable. Young people today are also concerned about working in an industry they’re taught is destroying the planet.

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United Airlines CEO Says They Are Making Plans Without Boeing After Manufacturing Issues

United Boeing

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said Tuesday that the company is making a plan to move forward without Boeing after the manufacturing company grounded its MAX 9 planes, according to CNBC.

Boeing has suffered a series of problems in the last several weeks after multiple planes had major mechanical and structural errors, forcing the company to ground all Max 9 aircraft with door plugs. Kirby told CNBC that the decision to ground the aircraft was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” for United.

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Home Sales in 2023 Were the Lowest in 28 Years as Affordability Crisis Plagued Americans

Home Owners

Sales for existing homes, which make up a majority of the housing market, slumped to the lowest level since 1995 as rising prices and sky-rocketing mortgage rates increased unaffordability, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

Existing home sales sank 1.0% in December compared to the previous month, falling 6.2% annually, with 4.09 million homes being sold for the year, according to a report from the NAR. The slump in sales follows a year of rising prices due to inflation, constrained supply and sky-high mortgage rates, which at one point neared 8%, suppressing demand and Americans’ ability to buy in the housing market.

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Cloud Hangs over Commercial Real Estate as Trillions in Debt Set to Come Due

Commercial Real Estate

Commercial real estate is facing a mountain of debt that many borrowers could have trouble refinancing due to a rapid hike in interest rates and record vacancies, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Around $2.81 trillion in commercial real estate loans are set to expire through 2028, meaning borrowers would either have to pay the amount outright or refinance the debt with higher interest rates, according to data from market research group Trepp. Payments on commercial mortgages are typically only for interest while the loan is active, and when the loan reaches its expiration date, borrowers often refinance at current rates, but doing so would increase payments drastically in a time when commercial developers and property owners are strapped for cash, according to the WSJ.

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Poll Finds Americans Worried About National Debt

Congress Spending

Americans are worried about the national debt, according to the results of a new poll.

Americans have the national debt crisis as one of their top concerns along with war, inflation and crime. Those polled think the overspending has a direct impact on their personal security and also has an impact on the security of the United States, according to a recent study commissioned by Main Street Economics, a nonprofit group designed to educate Americans on the nation’s debt crisis.

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Ford Slashes Production of EV Truck Biden Drove to Promote Green Agenda

EV Ford

Ford is cutting back production of its F-150 Lightning electric vehicle (EV), a model that President Joe Biden took for a test drive to market his administration’s EV agenda.

Ford made the official announcement that it will be reducing its F-150 Lightning output in 2024 amid slower-than-projected growth in EV demand. Biden test drove a F-150 Lightning in Michigan in May 2021 to promote his administration’s EV agenda, which aims for EVs to make up 50% of all new auto sales by 2030.

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Commentary: New Biden Labor Dept. Rule Likely to Hurt Millions of Small Businesses, Independent Contractors

Remote Worker

Some 99% of American companies are small businesses, and 100% of businesses started out small, but a recently finalized rule from the Biden administration’s Labor Department will make it harder for small businesses to start, grow and succeed.

As of last May 1, a White House news release pointed out, “Young firms, which often start small with few employees, are a driving force in job creation.” That’s been particularly true since the COVID-19 pandemic, as small businesses with fewer than 50 employees have accounted for a growing share of new jobs.

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Big Pharma Raises Hundreds of Drug Prices Despite Biden Admin Efforts to Keep Costs Down

Pharmacist

Top pharmaceutical companies raised the list price on 775 brand-name drugs in just the first half of January, even as President Joe Biden aims to keep prices low, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The median price hike of the drugs was around 4.5%, with some rising by 10% or more, despite an inflation rate of 3.4% year-over-year in December, according to data from 46brooklyn Research acquired by the WSJ. The price hikes are in contrast to the president’s efforts to tame rising drug prices, taking actions such as imposing automatic rebates to Medicare for drugmakers that raise their prices faster than the price of inflation, which first went into effect in December, affecting 48 drugs covered under Medicare Part B.

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New York Manufacturing Sees Biggest Plunge Since Pandemic Lockdowns

Blue Collar

The index for New York state’s general business conditions fell by 29 points to -43.7 for January, with a negative number indicating a contraction, declining to the lowest point since May 2020 when the state was struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new survey from the Federal Reserve of New York.

Accompanying the decline and contraction in general business conditions, shipments fell 25 index points, the number of unfilled orders remained high at -24.2 index points and the amount of inventory held shrank to -7.4 index points, according to the Empire State Manufacturing Survey conducted between Jan. 3 and 10. Despite poor current conditions, optimism about future activity levels by businesses increased, with the index rising 7 points but still remaining relatively low at 18.8 points, indicating that businesses expect an economic expansion in the coming months.

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BlackRock to Make Massive Infrastructure Move to ‘Decarbonize the World’ and Reap Government Subsidies

BlackRock on Friday reached an agreement to acquire Global Infrastructure Partners for $12.5 billion, a move aimed at advancing the investment giant’s climate objectives and capitalizing on government subsidies, according to statements and reports.

BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager and is a proponent of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investing. Both companies share a commitment to decarbonization and BlackRock sees the deal’s timing as opportune, as governments have offered businesses rare financial incentives to build infrastructure, including for green energy projects, according to a press release.

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Part-Time Jobs Are Booming Under Biden as Americans Look to Make Ends Meet

Uber Driver

More Americans are having to take part-time jobs as consumers struggle with economic factors like high inflation, while full-time employment has sunk in tandem, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Around 133,196,000 workers were employed with full-time jobs in the U.S. in December, which was down from 134,727,000 in November — a drop of more than 1.5 million, according to the BLS. During that same time frame, the number of Americans employed in part-time positions rose by 762,000, while the number of people with multiple jobs increased by 222,000.

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Inflation Rose More than Expected in Latest Data

Grocery Shopping

Consumer costs increased at an elevated level again in December, according to newly released federal economic data, raising new concerns about spiking inflation.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday released the Consumer Price Index, a key marker of inflation, showing the cost of a range of every day goods and services for Americans rose more than expected.

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U.S. Firms Worked Covertly with Chinese Experts to Brainstorm AI Policy: Report

Leading American artificial intelligence (AI) companies have been secretly discussing how to regulate the advanced technology with Chinese experts, The Financial Times reported on Thursday.

U.S. companies OpenAI and Anthropic have partaken in these covert diplomatic discussions centering around addressing concerns regarding the risks of the technology, including so-called misinformation and social cohesion threats, the FT reported. Two meetings transpired in Geneva during July and October of 2023, bringing together scientists and policy experts from U.S. and Canadian AI organizations with counterparts from CCP-backed Tsinghua University as well as other state-supported establishments.

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Banks Are Making Easy Money Off Crisis Government Program Designed to Bail Them Out

Federal Reserve

Banks are leveraging current interest rate projections to make a profit off of a program created last year designed to give access to funds for the sector amid a banking crisis, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Federal Reserve created the bank term funding program in the midst of a banking crisis started by a bank run at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March due to fears that SVB’s collapse would spread to the rest of the industry, according to the WSJ. Struggling banks can take depreciated bonds at face value and exchange those with the Fed for one-year loans in an effort to bolster liquidity, but since the loans are tied to future interest rate expectations and interest rates are increasingly expected to drop in the near future, banks can turn a profit on the difference.

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Biden Admin Releases New Labor Rule Cracking Down on Independent Contractors

Remote Worker

The Department of Labor announced Tuesday the final version of a rule that will force companies to recognize some workers as employees instead of independent contractors.

The new rule goes into effect on March 11 and rescinds a previous rule establishing independent contractors as a separate class of workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act that was put in place in January 2021 under the Trump administration, according to the DOL release. The rule could raise labor costs by up to 30% for employers who utilize independent contractors, such as app-based services like Uber or Lyft, which offer a freelancing model, as employers would have to adhere to minimum wage and overtime laws, according to Reuters.

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House Freedom Caucus Calls Speaker Johnson’s Proposed Spending Deal with Schumer ‘Total Failure’

The conservative House Freedom Caucus slammed House Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposed top-line spending deal with Senate Democrats as a “total failure,” arguing the potential agreement costs about $68 billion more than the Louisiana Republican said it would.

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CCP-Tied EV Manufacturer Dethrones Tesla as Global Industry Leader

BYD

A Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-tied electric vehicle maker dethroned Tesla as the worldwide industry leader in the last quarter of 2023, according to stock exchange filings.

BYD and Tesla both posted record sales for battery electric vehicles in the final quarter, according to the filings. BYD sold 526,409 vehicles in the quarter while Tesla sold 484,507, with the Chinese company achieving its highest-ever car sales in 2023, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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Sporting Associations Start to Crack Down on Men In Women’s Sports

Sporting associations have tightened rules regarding transgender athletes competing in women’s sports in 2023, drawing complaints from LGBT activists.

The issue of men competing in women’s sports has received considerable scrutiny amid instances such as Laurel Hubbard, a biological male, competing against women in the weightlifting events during the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, as well as University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas’s participation in the 2022 NCAA championships, where the biological male won the 500-yard women’s final and placed highly in other events. The international governing bodies for cricket, fishing and track and field barred biological males from competing in women’s events in 2023, following a similar decision by the international governing body for competitive swimming in 2022.

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Retailers Closed Down over 4,600 Stores in 2023, with More to Come in 2024

Major retailers have experienced a wave of store closures in 2023, an 80% surge from the year prior, Coresight Research reports.

The top reasons include bankruptcy of one major chain and some stores just not performing well in certain areas. The continued growth of online shopping is another factor, and other retailers said that theft is a major reason for their decision to close some stores, according to CBS News. 

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Biden Energy Efficiency Crackdown Leaves No Appliance in American Home Untouched

New York City’s effort in the 1990s to regulate toilets and shower heads to cut down water usage ignited consumer outrage, even inspiring a 1996 Seinfeld television episode in which the character Kramer was so fed up with his apartment’s low-flow shower head that he purchased a high-flow head on the black market.

Three decades later, the Biden administration is leaving few appliances in the home untouched in its quest to regulate the amount of water and energy Americans use for their household chores.

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U.S. Public Pensions Invest over $68 Billion in China

NYSE Money

American public pension funds have invested tens of billions into Chinese companies over the last three years, according to a new study.

As reported by Axios, the study from the trade advocacy group Future Union shows that a total of $68 billion has been invested in various private Chinese entities in the last three years as of June 30th. There has been at least one public pension fund with investments in China in 42 different states.

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Market Share for Green Bonds Slumped for Another Year Following Backlash

New York Stock Exchange

Bonds that consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors for their investors made up just 2% of all bond issuance in the U.S., the lowest point in terms of market share since 2020 after also declining in 2022, according to Bloomberg.

ESG bond issuance as a percentage of the market reached an all-time high in 2021 and is not expected by analysts to reach that same high in 2024 as interest rates make the bond market pricier and backlash to the ESG label inhibits sales, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. ESG has come under fire by conservatives who see it as a left-wing initiative infecting the financial world, most recently leading Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, to send subpoenas to financial firms Vanguard, Arjuna Capital, BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors over alleged ESG collusion, arguing it violates antitrust law.

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Bidenomics: Unemployment Insurance Claims Leap as over 1.8 Million Americans Receive Benefits

State unemployment insurance claims rose last week by 12,000 while the number of people who are receiving benefits reached 1.875 million for the week ending Dec. 16, according to seasonally adjusted data released Thursday by the Labor Department. 

Seasonally adjusted initial claims hit 218,000 for the week ending Dec. 23 after rising by 12,000, according to the latest data. 

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Commentary: The Anti-Capitalist Attack on Therapy

Therapy session

There is a common criticism that therapy has become too mainstream and commercialized, feeding into snowflake culture. From influencers receiving sponsorships to promote mental health apps to the prominence of online therapy advertisements on social media, it seems like there’s a movement to push therapy on young people who arguably might not need it.

As the substack writer Freya India writes on the matter: “Maybe you’re struggling because [therapy] companies are taking your human need for connection, your normal feelings of stress and sadness, and using all this to sell solutions that leave you more anxious and alone. Because again: what could be more profitable?”

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U.S. Consumers Face Higher Prices for Goods as Houthis Continue Attacks Against Commercial Vessels

Couple Shopping

The Houthi attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea are threatening to disrupt U.S. and global markets with delayed shipping times and increased good prices, The Washington Post reported.

The Yemen-based Houthis have launched several attacks since Oct. 7 against vessels in the Red Sea as part of retaliation efforts against Israel and its allies. In an effort to avoid the Houthis, commercial vessels are now taking longer routes to reach their destinations, resulting in delays and higher shipping costs, and ultimately increased prices for consumer goods in the U.S. and across the world, according to the Post.

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China’s Funding of U.S. Climate Initiatives Mirrors the Russian Funding of Anti-Fracking Groups

Windmills

A nonprofit with operations in Beijing reportedly funded a number of nonprofits in the United States fighting climate change and pushing for sustainable or “green” energy.

Tax filings obtained by Fox News showed funding from the Energy Foundation China, which is headquartered in San Francisco and has a majority of its operations in China. The group, which refers to itself in tax filings as “Energy Foundation China” contributed $3.8 million to initiatives to phase out coal use and expand the use of electric vehicles, according to Fox News.

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Biden Looks to Tariffs to Bolster Struggling Electric Vehicle Market

Tesla Charging

The Biden administration is considering increasing tariffs on some Chinese products related to his green agenda, like electric vehicles (EV), in an effort to boost poor market demand and protect domestic industries, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Officials are considering setting higher rates on the already existing tariffs originally placed under the Trump administration, covering around $300 billion in Chinese goods, with Chinese EVs already having a 25% import tax, according to the WSJ. New tariffs could help domestic EV manufacturing, which has struggled with stagnant market demand, only rising from 3% in January to 4% in September of total vehicles sold in the U.S., while the share of EVs produced out of all vehicles has risen from 3% to 6% in that same time frame.

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Planned Parenthood’s Trans Hormone Business Is Booming, Creating Thousands of New Patients ‘For Life’

The number of transgender services performed at Planned Parenthood clinics exploded over the past few years as the transgender medical industry became increasingly lucrative, according to data published by the organization’s regional branches.

Planned Parenthood first began providing hormone treatments for transgender patients in 2005, and since then 41 out of 49 regional branches have provided transgender services as of 2022. However, in just the last three years, Planned Parenthood has become dramatically more involved in the gender hormone industry.

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Electric Vehicle Start-Ups Are Running Out Funds

Rivian Truck

The trendy electric vehicle (EV) market could be in trouble as at least 18 EV and battery start-ups that went public in the last few years are running out of funds to operate, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.

The trouble in the industry follows rising costs and manufacturing issues as the companies fail to compete with top EV maker Tesla and traditional automakers, with the median stock of the 43 companies reviewed dropping 80% from its peak, losing tens of billions in collective value since the companies relatively recent inception, according to the WSJ. Of those 43 EV start-ups reviewed, five have already gone bankrupt or been acquired, including Lordstown Motors, Proterra and Electric Last Mile Solutions.

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Small Business Owners Pessimistic About the Economy, Poll Shows

Small business owners are pessimistic about the future of the economy, according to a new poll.

The National Federation of Independent Businesses released the polling data Tuesday, which shows that the group’s “Small Businesses Optimism Index” decreased slightly in November to 90.1, its 23rd straight month below the historical average of small business optimism.

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Majority of Small Businesses Not Seeing Holiday Bump as Consumers Run Out of Cash: POLL

In a poll of small business owners, 76 percent said that they had not seen an increase in sales during the holiday season as inflation and other economic conditions constrict consumers’ cash, according to Goldman Sachs.

Of small business owners surveyed, 55 percent said that their profit margins decreased this year, and a further 70 percent said that their own personal spending plans for their families were negatively impacted following their own assessment of the state of the economy, according to a poll by Goldman Sachs conducted from Dec. 1 to Dec. 8 of 337 small retail business owners. Consumer spending previously slowed in October as the Americans’ savings declined to $768.6 billion in the month, down from the over $1 trillion held in May and even further from the all-time high of almost $6 trillion held in April 2020.

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Research Finds COVID mRNA Vaccine Makes ‘Pfrankenstein’ Proteins, but Feds Seem Unfazed

Three years after federal regulators granted emergency use authorization to COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for older teens and adults, mainstream scientific research is confirming suppressed warnings from two years ago that the novel technology has a problem with “translation fidelity.”

Translation: it tends to make a bunch of wacky “off-target” proteins whose effects and severity are unknown.

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Study: More Americans over the Age of 65 are Heading Back to Work

Old People Working

A new study released on Thursday by the Pew Research Center reveals that a rising number of Americans over the age of 65, the normal age for retirement, are heading back to work to earn higher wages.

According to Axios, the number of older Americans returning to the workforce has been consistently rising since the late 1980s, with one major decline during the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic. Some of the reasons for this increasing return to work include changes in Social Security law forcing older Americans to keep working even past 65 in order to receive their full benefits; additionally, there has been a shift away from pension plans that normally would force most Americans to retire by a certain age, in favor of 401(k) plans that allow for ongoing workforce participation.

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Commentary: New IRS Change Will Push Some Entrepreneurs into Corporate Desk Jobs

As the end of the year approaches, the IRS has announced its new late repayment penalty rate. The rate has climbed from around 3% two years ago to 8% today.

Most workers in the US are W-2 employees and have taxes deducted from their paychecks each pay period. However, if those employees claim more exemptions, the taxes deducted from each check decrease.

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Existing Home Sales on Track for Worst Year Since at Least 2008

Existing home sales are on track for a dismal year, likely dropping 18% and on course for the worst year since at least 2008’s Great Recession and possibly the worst since 1995. 

And while prices may soften in 2024, single-family homes will remain out of reach for many Americans, National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said Tuesday in the real estate organization’s annual summit. 

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