Boston Globe (January 10)
“Many investors had expected department stores to enjoy robust sales over the holidays in light of a U.S. economy buoyed by low unemployment, higher wages, strong consumer confidence and cheap gas.” Lackluster results from Macy’s and Kohl’s sent “retail stocks into a tailspin… calling into question whether such mall-based chains can compete in a changing landscape where shoppers are shifting more of their spending online.”
Tags: Consumer confidence, Holiday sales, Investors, Kohl’s, Lackluster, Macy’s, Malls, Online, Retail stocks, Shoppers, Tailspin, U.S., Unemployment, Wages
New York Times (January 9)
President Trump “has been painfully out of his element. Two years in, he remains ill suited to the complicated, thankless, often grinding work of leading the nation.” Clearly there is a crisis, but “the crisis is in the Oval Office. The president has exaggerated threats but ignored the hazards his border policies created.”
Tags: Complicated, Crisis, Exaggerated, Grinding, Ill-suited, Oval Office, Threats, Trump
New York Times (January 9)
“When it comes to the border and the wall, Trump’s willful estrangement from reality is so profound that network executives and newspaper editors spent part of Tuesday in strategy sessions about how to respond to his inevitable barrage of falsehoods. Should there be a crawl of words on the bottom of the television screen to correct him in real time? Could fact checkers work speedily enough to post rebuttals online…? This is where we find ourselves. Other presidents have been untrustworthy, and others have had to be called out on it. But not like this. This is surreal.”
Tags: Border, Fact checkers, Falsehoods, Reality, Rebuttals, Strategy, Surreal, Trump, Untrustworthy, Wall
The Guardian (January 8)
Many of the voters who voted for Brexit “felt abandoned and unheard in an increasingly unequal Britain marked by vast wealth in parts of south-east England and austerity and post-industrial abandonment elsewhere. Income levels in London have risen by a third since the financial crash–but have dropped by 14% in Yorkshire and Humberside.” Their concerns are real, but “all the major parties have, in different ways, let the country down on Brexit,” making a second referendum essential.
Tags: Austerity, Brexit, Financial crash, Income levels, Post-industrial abandonment, Referendum, UK, Unequal, Voters, Wealth
Wall Street Journal (January 7)
“Trump can’t afford to lose.” He has the “biggest incentive” to dig into his position with “more to lose than the Democrats do. This shutdown was neither necessary nor inevitable…. It was the president who delivered the ultimatum: Fund the wall, he demanded, or he’d be “’proud to shut down the government for border security.’” Without an “outright victory,” Trump will lose “a fight that he picked. He’d end the shutdown weaker than he started. And some of his most ardent supporters could well turn on him for selling them out on his signature issue, affecting his re-election in 2020.” Still, “none of this guarantees a Trump victory.”
Institutional Investor (January 7)
“Institutional investors representing more than $7 trillion plan to pull money from public equities amid concerns the bull market is ending, according to a client survey released Monday by BlackRock.”
Washington Post (January 6)
Democrats must consider “the end game.” If their “ultimate objective is impeachment and removal from office, House Democrats will be attempting to perform a political miracle. If the final goal is censure, however, it will be far easier to send a clear message to the American people that progressives stand for the rule of law and good government.”
Tags: Censure, Democrats, Good government, Impeachment, Miracle, Objective, Progressives, Rule of law, U.S.
The Hill (January 5)
“Democrats promised to demand answers on his personal taxes, foreign business dealings, family charity, and other areas beyond the Russia investigation. This reflects a strategy that not only targets Trump but counts on him to be successful. They are relying on his description of himself as a “counterpuncher” to supply the grounds of his removal. Yes, Trump could counterpunch himself into getting impeached.
Tags: Counterpunch, Democrats, Family charity, Foreign business dealings, Impeached, Russia investigation, Taxes, Trump
CNN (January 3)
“Evidence is mounting that the US-China trade war is dealing a blow to the American stock market. Stocks plunged on Thursday after Apple (AAPL) blamed a big sales miss on slowing growth in China and rising trade tensions. China’s massive manufacturing sector… has tumbled into contraction. And trade trouble helped fuel the biggest one-month decline in US factory activity since the Great Recession.”
Tags: Apple, China, Contraction, Decline, Evidence, Great Recession, Growth, Manufacturing, Plunged, Stock market, Tensions, Trade war, U.S.
Businessweek (January 4)
“Just 19 percent of 15- to 17-year-olds had jobs in 2018, compared with almost half in 1968.” Shifts like this are “particularly troublesome for restaurants that have depended on young workers since the days of soda jerks and carhops.” Coupled with a tight employment market and increasing wages, restaurants will be “scrambling for cheap labor in 2019.”
Tags: Cheap labor, Employment, Jobs, Restaurants, Troublesome, Wages, Young workers
