economy

Imagine the boost to the economy if Trump cut taxes on the lowest two brackets to zero. The Beltway is abuzz about the next step to bring the economy back to life. President Trump apparently supports a second round of the $1,200-per-person stimulus payments. Some administration advisers and congressional figures have called for temporarily suspending the …

The Government Accountability Office revealed in a new report that almost 1.1 million dead people received coronavirus relief checks from the government that totaled nearly $1.4 billion. The GAO explains that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Treasury Department “moved quickly” to send out over 160 million payments to Americans as authorized by the …

The US economy shrank at a 5 percent rate in the first quarter and a vastly worse performance is expected in the current three-month period, when the coronavirus pandemic began to spread across the US. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the decline in the gross domestic product, the total output of goods and services, …

Some 1.48 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week as the labor market’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic began to stall, new data show. Thursday’s figure from the US Department of Labor brought the number of initial jobless claims filed during the crisis to 47.2 million — more than the population of Spain. While …

The coronavirus pandemic could set the stage for a copper boom as the world starts its economic recovery from the crisis, experts argue. The pandemic will likely spur governments to speed up planned investments in green energy and digital technology — industries that rely heavily on copper — as they try to come back from …

With the economy slowly bouncing back from coronavirus quarantines, Wall Street bonus season is shaping up to be less of a nightmare and more of a very bad dream. The latest survey by compensation consultant Johnson Associates predicts that financial services pay will be slashed by 15 percent to 20 percent in 2020 — a …

Gold prices surged to their highest since October 2012 on Tuesday, driven by a weakness in the US dollar and widespread monetary stimulus packages by central banks as a jump in coronavirus cases dents the economic outlook. Spot gold climbed 0.7 percent, to $1,767 per ounce, in the early afternoon, having hit $1,768.96, its highest …

Just five out of the 125 stores in the Bronx looted on June 1 during unrest following George Floyd demonstrations have been approved for city aid so far. After the riots, which saw looters target small Bronx businesses, New York mayor Bill de Blasio said emergency grants would be approved for those affected. The details …

Hundreds of workers at Tyson Foods poultry plant in Arkansas have tested positive for coronavirus, though most of the workers who tested positive are asymptomatic. Out of 3,748 Tyson employees tested in Benton and Washington Counties, 481 were found to have coronavirus, with 455 of those patients reporting no symptoms. The outbreak was centered at …

New jobless claims topped 1 million for the 13th-straight week, the Labor Department revealed Thursday, as 1.5 million additional Americans requested unemployment benefits in the second week of June. The Labor Department also said that while new claims fell by 58,000 from the last release, 20.5 million people continued to receive benefits — a relatively …