03/28/2024

News

US Industrial Output Slid 0.3% in Icy January

Unusually cold weather in January chilled factories’ output and froze up some mining operations but boosted utility consumption as Americans huddled for warmth. Total industrial production fell a seasonally adjusted 0.3% in January, the Federal Reserve said Friday. It was the first decline for the reading since July.

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Calfiornia’s Auto-Emissions Policy Hits a Tesla Pothole

Yet taken together, the federal standards effectively cancel out the California standard. Instead of promoting fuel reduction as intended, the California standard allows for the production of less-efficient vehicles, while facilitating a massive transfer of cash via credit trading. It also forms a de facto industrial policy that sends us down a path toward electric vehicles that may or may not be the best technological or environmental choice for the future.

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The $2.2 Billion Bird-Scorching Solar Project

Experts have estimated that electricity from giant solar projects will cost at least twice as much as electricity from conventional sources. But neither the utilities that have contracted to buy the power nor state regulators have disclosed what the price will be, only that it will be passed on to electricity customers.

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Land Crunch Hits Builders in “Brady Bunch” County

Faced with a dearth of developable land, home builders across Southern California are cramming more houses into less space. Many are dispensing with the single-family homes that have defined the region’s development for half a century (Exhibit A: “The Brady Bunch”). In their place they are building somewhat smaller structures in the form of townhouses or pairs of homes that share one wall.

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GDP Grows 4.1% in Third Quarter, Biggest Gain Since 2011

The U.S. economy grew at a healthy 4.1% annual rate in the third quarter, revised figures showed Friday, boosting hopes that the recovery is shifting into higher gear after years of sluggishness.

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US Economy Begins to Hit Growth Stride

While there is still reason for caution, since a large chunk of the GDP growth was the result of companies piling up goods for inventory, the larger picture is of an economy finally firing on more cylinders.

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Americans Continue to Regain Lost Wealth

The net worth of U.S. households and nonprofit organizations—the values of homes, stocks and other assets minus debts and other liabilities—rose 2.6%, or about $1.9 trillion, in the third quarter of 2013 to $77.3 trillion, the highest on record, according to the Federal Reserve.

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California Presses on with Water Project

A contentious project to divert water supplied to Southern California past an ecologically sensitive river delta moved a step closer to fruition Monday, as state and federal officials unveiled a draft final environmental analysis.

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Employers Gain Confidence to Hire

U.S. employers are gaining confidence heading into year’s end, hiring at the quickest clip since before Washington’s political dysfunction rattled consumers and businesses this fall.

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Job Market Needs to Find Higher Gear

Employers added about 200,000 jobs in each of the past two months. Compared with the summer, when a string of disappointing reports led to fears of a cooling labor market, the recent rebound is encouraging, especially given that it happened despite October’s partial government shutdown. But the overall pace of job growth remains too weak to quickly recoup the losses of the deep 2008-2009 recession. Worse, there is little sign that growth is picking up from its good-but-not-great trend: The economy has added 2.3 million jobs over the past year, a pace that has changed little for the past two years.

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In October Jobs Report, US Hiring Picks Up Strongly

U.S. payrolls advanced by 204,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday, far exceeding economists’ forecast for a gain of 120,000. Readings for the prior two months were revised up by a total of 60,000, putting average job creation over the three-month span above a 200,000 pace, matching the strong gains recorded early in the year.

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US Third-Quarter GDP Rose 2.8%

Stronger economic growth in the third quarter masked weak spending by consumers and businesses, the latest sign of a U.S. economy struggling to gain traction as the recovery entered its fifth year.

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Factories Shurg Off Shutdown

U.S. factories notched their fifth straight month of expansion in October, bucking expectations that the federal government’s 16-day shutdown would chill activity.

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Fast Food, Low Pay–and Sometimes a High Cost

That figure made headlines last month after researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, reported that front-line workers at fast-food restaurants, and their families, receive at least $7 billion a year in public benefits to supplement their wages—typically, under $9 an hour. The authors described the amount as “”the public cost of low-wage jobs in the fast-food industry.

Other researchers dispute that interpretation. They say the cost to the public would be higher without those jobs. And if fast-food restaurants raised their wages, that wouldn’t guarantee a corresponding decline in benefits: Some restaurants might automate functions and cut jobs, and some benefits remain available to workers making higher salaries.

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The Incredible Shrinking Workforce

The great American jobs machine is faltering, and it is time for Washington to pay attention. Participation in the workforce is falling, the pace of job creation is anemic, and long-term unemployment remains stubbornly high. Many newly created jobs pay less than those that disappeared during the Great Recession, so real wages are stagnating, and median household income is no higher than it was a quarter of a century ago.

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