Category: Economy

Struggling Bank Gets Bailed Out with Help from Former Trump Admin Treasury Secretary

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New York Community Bank

New York Community Bancorp (NYCB) announced on Thursday that it would be getting more than $1 billion from investors to help stabilize the bank, including from a firm run by a former Trump administration Treasury secretary.

The bank will receive $450 million from Mnuchin Liberty Strategic Capital, headed by former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, as well as a $250 million and $200 million investment from Hudson Bay Capital and Reverence Capital, according to an announcement from the bank. NYCB posted a $252 million loss in the fourth quarter of 2023, sending its stock to the lowest level since 1997 and worrying investors about another potential crisis in the banking sector, accordingto CNN.

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Hobbs Announces Up to $30 Million in Taxpayer Dollars Aimed at Tackling Medical Debt

The Center Square
Katie Hobbs

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs launched a program on Monday aimed at “buying back” medical debt with taxpayer dollars distributed by the federal government.

The program is called “Affordable Arizona: Tackling Medical Debt for Working Families” and it is a public-private partnership between the state of Arizona and RIP Medical Debt, a national nonprofit.

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Local Restaurants Can’t Keep Up with Minimum Wage Hikes, Inflation

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local restaurant

Minimum wage hikes in many states around the country and sky-high inflation are crushing independent restaurants that don’t want to raise prices on their customers, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In January, 22 states raised their minimum wage for hourly workers, according to the WSJ. Around 59 percent of small business owners said that higher labor costs were the biggest source of inflation in January, requiring price hikes to maintain current revenue levels.

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Electric Vehicle Parts Maker Gets Tax Break to Open New Plant in Ohio

The Center Square
Electric Car

Ohio plans to give a 15-year tax credit to a company planning a new manufacturing facility to build parts for electric vehicles.

Schaeffler, owner of two plants in the state, plans a third in Dover that is expected to employ 650 people after a $230 million investment. The tax credits are tied to job creation.

The new jobs are expected to be split between the company’s plant in Wooster and the new Dover plant. The company employs more than 1,600 people.

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Greater Phoenix Area Receives $46.5 Million in Federal Funds for Homeless as Arizona Spending Reportedly Nears $1 Billion

Tom Pappert
homelessness in Arizona

The Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) announced last week the federal government awarded over $40 million to supplement programs supporting the homeless. The federal money was announced as state spending on homelessness reportedly nears $1 billion per year.

MAG announced in a press release that “more than $46.5 million in federal funding” will be provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to “help fund dozens of local homelessness programs.” The figure is also $10 million higher than the previous year’s federal commitment, MAG explained.

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Green: Taxpayers’ $3 Billion Supplying Clean Ports Program

The Center Square
NC Port

The Biden administration’s choice for zero-emissions operations in America’s ports was boosted Wednesday with the opening of applications for $3 billion from taxpayers in the Clean Ports Program.

Equipment and infrastructure needs can be met that “reduce mobile source emissions at U.S. ports,” a release from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says. EPA Administrator Michael Regan was in Wilmington, N.C., alongside Gov. Roy Cooper, whose administration he previously worked in, to make the announcement.

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Average Long-Term Mortgage Rises to 6.94 Percent in Fourth Consecutive Weekly Increase

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Financial Meeting

On Thursday, the average long-term mortgage rate in the United States rose for the fourth week in a row, in a setback for Americans looking to potentially buy a home in the traditional homebuying season of spring.

According to ABC News, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac announced that the average rate on a 30-year mortgage rose from 6.90% to 6.94%. Although this is slightly less than the recent high of 6.95% in December, it is still higher than what it was at the same time one year ago, when the average rate was 6.65%.

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Poll Claiming Nashville Wants Public Transit Admits Oversampling Black, Hispanic Citizens for ‘Greater Insight’

Tom Pappert
Nashville Buses

A poll touted by Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell on Wednesday, which claims the majority of the city’s residents want greater investments into public transits, admittedly over sampled black and Hispanic citizens in a bid to achieve “greater insight” into city’s mood.

The Imagine Nashville survey claimed that 74 percent of Nashville residents strongly agree with the city spending additional money on public transportation. The pollsters further claimed that 33 percent of respondents cited a lack of public transportation as an issue where the city needs to improve.

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Army Cutting Thousands of Jobs in Preparation for Possible Future War

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Army Members

The United States Army is reducing its size by about 5%, cutting roughly 24,000 jobs, as part of a restructuring plan that is ostensibly meant to better prepare for a possible war in the future.

As ABC News reports, the cuts will mostly affect posts that are already empty, such as counterinsurgency jobs that were previously needed in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan but no longer needed today, as well as about 3,000 jobs in the Army special operations forces.

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Youngkin Administration Cites ‘Serious Concerns’ over Skill Games Bills amid Calls to Veto

Tom Pappert
Slot machines

A spokesman for Governor Glenn Youngkin expressed “serious concerns” about both bills passed by the Virginia General Assembly to allow skill games in convenience stores and bars throughout the commonwealth, citing a series of potential issues with the legislation in a statement provided to The Virginia Star.

The administration’s concern about skill games comes amid calls to veto the legislation, and as The Star publisher John Fredericks warns that inaction by the governor could be a “presidential killer” should Youngkin run for the White House in 2028.

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Tennessee Bill Would Prohibit Financial De-Banking for Political, Religious Beliefs

Tom Pappert
Jason Zachary Jack Johnson

Tennessee State Representative Jason Zachary (R-Knoxville) and Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) have proposed legislation that would prohibit America’s largest financial institutions from discriminating against customers based on their religious or political beliefs.

Their bills, HB 2100 and SB 2148, would specifically prohibit banks, insurers and other financial institutions from “denying or canceling services to a person, or otherwise discriminating against a person, based upon the use of a social credit score or other factors.”

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Virginia Considers Bill Spending Millions on Build Electric Car Infrastructure in ‘Distressed’ Rural Areas

Tom Pappert
EV Factory

The Virginia General Assembly is considering a bill that would see taxpayers spend millions to help companies build infrastructure for electric vehicles (EVs) in “distressed” parts of the commonwealth.

HB 107 by Delegate Rip Sullivan Jr. (D-Arlington) passed in the House of Delegates with 71 votes in favor on February 8, and most recently advanced through the Senate Committee on Commerce and Labor on February 19.

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Home Prices in America’s Top 10 Biggest Cities Rose in 2023

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Home for Sale

Home prices for the 10 largest cities in the U.S. rose by 7.0% year-over-year in December, up from 6.3% in the previous month, according to Standard and Poor’s Case-Shiller home price index report.

The top 20 cities had a slightly less pronounced increase, with prices rising 6.1% year-over-year as of December, up from 5.4% in November, according to the index. The increase in costs is coupled with a rise in the average for a 30-year mortgage rate, which ticked up to 6.90% the week of Feb. 22 after declining slightly from the recent peak of 7.80% that was seen in October, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

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Phoenix Approves Over $1 Million for Homeless Shelter amid Concern ‘The Zone’ Could Reemerge

Tom Pappert

The City of Phoenix last Wednesday approved just over $1 million to Central Arizona Shelter Services (CASS), which operates the city’s largest homeless shelter.

Phoenix made the payment using leftover federal funds originally earmarked for COVID-19 recovery, but CASS warned the organization still has a shortfall of around $500,000 that could threaten its ability to provide shelter services, explaining that it filed three state grant requests that were denied by Arizona.

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Commercial Foreclosures Increase 97 Percent from Last Year to Near Decade-High

Just the News
Commercial Shopping Space for Lease

Commercial real estate foreclosures increased 97 percent in January 2024 compared to last year, reaching a high that has not been seen in nearly a decade, according to new data.

With 635 commercial foreclosures in January 2024, foreclosures increased 17 percent from December 2023 and 97 percent from January 2023, according to a report last week from property data analyst ATTOM.

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New Drug Prices Spiked in 2023 as Biden Admin Seeks to Keep Costs Down

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Joe Biden Drug Costs

Pharmaceutical companies set median starting list prices 35% higher in 2023 than the previous year, despite the Biden administration’s ongoing efforts to tamp down on surging costs, Reuters reported Friday.

The median list price for a drug being placed on the market, many of which were for rare diseases, was $300,000 in 2023, which is up from a median price of $222,000 in 2022, according to an analysis by Reuters of 47 drugs. The Biden administration has made it a goal to tame drug prices, announcing steps like imposing automatic rebates to Medicare for drugmakers that raise their prices faster than the rate of inflation, which does not cover the starting list price.

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Commentary: Foreign Cash Could Be the Culprit Turning Our Kids into Terrorist Sympathizers

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Texas A&M

Shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, a Harvard CAPS-Harris X poll found that 48 percent of Americans ages 18-24 supported Hamas over Israel. This is in direct contrast to 95 percent of Americans 65 years of age and older who sided with Israel. This stark difference begs the question: why do half of young Americans support a group that has been designated by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization since October 1997? Our ongoing fight for transparency suggests at least some of the answers lie in Qatar’s pocketbooks.

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Bill to Ban Sale of Lab-Grown Meat Passes Arizona State House

Tom Pappert
medical science laboratory

A bill to ban the sale of lab-grown meat to consumers, even for consumption by animals, narrowly passed the Arizona State House on Thursday.

HB 2121 by Representative David Marshall (R-Snowflake) passed the Arizona House with 31 votes in favor and 28 votes against, with one lawmaker absent. If passed by the Arizona Senate and signed into law by Governor Katie Hobbs, the legislation would ban any “cell-cultured animal product” from being sold to Arizona consumers for “human or animal consumption.”

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Commentary: Illegal Immigration Creates a New Slave Caste

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Farm Workers

Belatedly, the southern border crisis is getting the attention it deserves.

There’s wall-to-wall coverage in the legacy and conservative press, independent documentaries proliferating on the subject, a Tucker Carlson interview with Bret Weinstein attracting over 15 million views on X, and President Joe Biden blaming Trump for a failed bill that involved the border crisis.

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Mercedes-Benz Walks Back on Huge Electric Vehicle Commitment amid Slowing Demand

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MB Evs

Mercedes-Benz on Thursday walked back plans to have an all-electric line-up by 2030 as consumers decline to adopt electric vehicles (EV) at the rate automakers expected.

The company has changed its expectations to have only 50% of its sales be EVs by 2030, announcing that it will be updating its current line-up featuring the internal combustion engine into the next decade, according to Mercedes-Benz in its fourth quarter report. EV sales grew 21% year-over-year in 2023, but total car sales remained relatively the same, bucking hopes that EVs would fuel growth as the automaker pushes electric models.

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Ohio Businesses to Save $67 Million After Worker’s Comp Rate Cut

The Center Square
Office Meeting

Private employers across the state will pay $67 million less in workers’ compensation premiums after the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation board voted Friday morning to lower rates for the sixth straight year.

The 7% rate cut follows a 3.9% reduction for public employers that went into effect Jan. 1. The new private employer rate takes effect July 1.

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Mortgage Applications Fall as Interest Rates Remain High

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Paper Work

Mortgage applications sank last week as high prices and rising mortgage rates have increased unaffordability for average Americans, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The total volume of mortgage loan applications for homes declined 10.6% in the week ending Feb. 16 compared to the previous week when seasonally adjusted, while the purchase index fell 10% in that same time, according to a release from the MBA. The drop in applications follows an increase in the average interest rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage for homes under $766,550 to 7.06% from 6.87% the week prior, intensifying housing unaffordability.

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Tennessee Bill to Allow Cities, Counties to Cut Taxes on Food Comes amid Nationwide Push Fueled by Inflation

Tom Pappert
Family Grocery Shopping

Legislation that would allow Tennessee counties and cities to reduce or eliminate the state sales tax on groceries is advancing through the Tennessee General Assembly as more states look for opportunities to defray the effects of inflation on citizens.

The bill would allow all “counties and municipalities, by resolution or ordinance” set the “tax on the retail sale of food and food ingredients” at any “rate less than” the state’s sales tax rate.

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‘Serious Problems’: Global Plague of Recessions Could Infect U.S., Experts Say

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Office Meeting

The recessions currently plaguing several major countries around the world could be what drags the U.S. into an economic downturn of its own, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Germany announced on Monday that it fell into a technical recession in the fourth quarter of 2023, after reporting its second month in a row of negative growth, following several other top nations experiencing economic difficulties. While the U.S. has managed to avoid a recession due to its size and diverse industries, foreign economic malaise may drag the U.S. economy down through changes to trade and global inflation that would lead to a loss for American businesses, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Gov. Youngkin Stands by Northern Virginia Arena Plans Despite Opposition from Unions

Tom Pappert
Glenn Youngkin New Stadium

In a statement released Tuesday, Governor Glenn Youngkin committed to see through his plans to bring the Washington Wizards and Capitals to Alexandria, Virginia with a new sports and entertainment district complete with new facilities for the teams to play.

Youngkin made the declaration after a breakdown of negotiations with two major unions resulted in their opposition to the arena, and after Virginia Senator L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) successfully stalled a Senate bill necessary for the arena project to begin and now controls the fate of the House version of the bill after it landed in the Senate Finance Committee she chairs.

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Arizona House Speaker Wants Voters to Approve Plan to Cut Welfare Benefits for Illegal Immigrants, Strengthen E-Verify

Tom Pappert
Ben Toma

Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma (R-Peoria) announced on Monday an effort to hold a public referendum for Arizona voters to decide whether to eliminate the possibility for illegal immigrants to receive welfare benefits from the state and to strength the E-Verify system used to prevent companies from employing those in the country unlawfully.

In a speech outside the Arizona State Capitol on Monday, Toma called his Protecting Arizona Against Illegal Immigration Act “one of the toughest anti-immigration laws ever written” and declared, “Our message to illegal immigrants is simple: If you want to take advantage of Americans, go somewhere else.”

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New Data Centers Set to Stress U.S. Electric Grid Further

Just the News
Electric Substation

For the past couple of years, assessments of the national electric grid’s ability to deliver power during peak demand periods, such as heat waves and cold snaps, have shown increasing risk for blackouts.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the nation’s grid watchdog, finds the main cause is retirements of coal plants without enough natural gas plants coming online.

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Transit Ridership Slightly Climbing but Still 22 Percent Short of Pre-COVID Levels

The Center Square
Bus Riders

Transit ridership has seen a significant decline across the U.S. since the beginning of COVID-19. Although now rising slowly, transit agencies are still seeing a 22% drop from peak pre-COVID ridership.

Overall weekly ridership went from 196.3 million the week of Jan. 26-Feb. 1, 2020 to 152.7 million the week of Feb. 4-10, 2024. That’s according to reports from the American Public Transportation Association.

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Former CEO: High Interest Rates ‘Killing’ Companies as Layoffs Continue

The Center Square
Bob Nardelli

President Joe Biden is blaming corporations for high prices and “shrinkflation.” Business executives and many economists disagree, arguing the real problem is inflation created by federal deficit spending policies.

Ahead of the Super Bowl, Biden posted a video on X saying, “While you were Super Bowl shopping, did you notice smaller-than-usual products where the price stays the same? Folks are calling it Shrinkflation and it means companies are giving you less for every dollar you spend. I’m calling on the big consumer brands to put a stop to it.”

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Tennessee Bill to Ban Sale of Cold Beer Lands Flat

Tom Pappert
Ron Gant

A bill seeking to ban retail sales of cold beer in Tennessee has reportedly received a lukewarm reception by lawmakers, with even Republicans unsure about the legislation.

State Representative Ron Gant (R-Piperton) filed HB 2845 late last month which would prohibit retail companies who are currently permitted to sell beer under Tennessee law from selling “refrigerated or cold beer to consumers.”
Representative Ron Gant (R-Piperton) filed HB 2845 late last month which would prohibit retail companies who are currently permitted to sell beer under Tennessee law from selling “refrigerated or cold beer to consumers.”

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Rampant Crime Takes Toll on America’s Small Businesses, New Survey Reveals

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Small Business

Nearly one-third of small business employers in January said that crime has raised everyday business costs, according to a Job Creators Network Foundation (JCNF) poll obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Around 31% of small businesses surveyed in January said that neighborhood crime has increased business costs through added expenses associated with extra security or stolen inventory, with employers in the western U.S. being the most likely to say they were affected at 35%, according to the poll. Businesses with $100,000 to $250,000 in revenue in a year were the most likely to say that neighborhood crime has increased business costs, with 53% saying yes, followed by businesses with less than $100,000 in revenue at 47%.

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