There’s a major crisis building as baby boomers envision golden years that shine the way their parents’ did. One big problem: They don’t have the financial resources or huge generational cohort behind them to support their retirement dreams.
Shinmei Co. Ltd., one of Japan’s largest rice millers and distributors, today formally announced that it will build a $10 million, 28,000-square-foot U.S. headquarters and production plant on six acres in West Sacramento’s Southport Business Park.
California export trade figures for August, delayed 16 days due to the federal government shutdown, showed a significant late-summer surge.
Bank of America Corp. is slashing 1,200 jobs in its mortgage division as the company’s refinancing business slows amid rising interest rates.
David Cameron has vowed to cut consumer bills by reining back several green energy initiatives in a move that will set him on a collision course with his Liberal Democrat coalition partners. Mr Cameron, who once declared “vote blue, go green,” has found himself on the back foot amid double-digit-percentage rises in household energy bills and a renewed political focus on the “cost of living”.
U.S. employers added far fewer workers than expected in September, suggesting a loss of momentum in the economy that will likely add to the Federal Reserve’s caution in deciding when to trim its monthly bond purchases.
New California foreclosure filings tumbled during the third quarter, as a stronger economy continued to heal the housing market.
Other studies have shown that idle young adults are missing out on a window to build skills they will need later in life or use the knowledge they acquired in college. Without those experiences, they are less likely to command higher salaries and more likely to be an economic drain on their communities.
The biggest rally in five years in California debt has some investors balking on concern that the state’s finances are increasingly vulnerable to swings in the economy and tax revenue.
Welcome to SolarCity, the latest booming green company that has never recorded a profit. The startup’s stock price has soared by 600% since its IPO last December—it closed on Monday at $57 a share—and spiked after the company announced a couple of weeks ago that it expects business to grow by 70% to 90% next year. Yet the company, based in San Mateo, Calif., and specializing in deploying rooftop panels, ended the first six months this year $61 million in the red. Ordinarily, that sort of number might disconcert investors. But SolarCity’s business model is powered by government subsidies, which also fueled the 500% stock run-up and turn to profit this year of the electric-car maker Tesla. Steering both companies is Elon Musk.
Stan Druckenmiller makes an unlikely class warrior. He’s a member of the 1%—make that the 0.001%—one of the most successful money managers of all time, and 60 years old to boot. But lately he has been touring college campuses promoting a message of income redistribution you don’t hear out of Washington. It’s how federal entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are letting Mr. Druckenmiller’s generation rip off all those doting Barack Obama voters in Generation X, Y and Z.
California continued to see strong job growth in August, though the unemployment rate rose for the second straight month. Permits and sales for multi-family units continued to support recovery in the real estate market.
Truckers at the Port of Oakland refused to work Monday to protest what they called unfair labor practices and unsafe working conditions.
In Los Angeles, McDonald’s currently has about 1,600 jobs open in the city, while Kaiser Permanente has about 1,500 positions available. 24 Hour Fitness (1,200), USC (900) and Citigroup (775) round out the top five.
On both sides of the Atlantic, and in advanced Pacific Rim economies like Singapore and Japan, the swift decline of childbirth drives some of the world’s most serious social problems. Virtually all Americans understand at this point that the crises in our public and private pension systems and in old age programs like Medicare are largely a result of the baby bust. Our entitlement programs were based on the assumption that each generation would be larger than the last. As that assumption has been proven untrue, many of our most important social programs are becoming unaffordable.