The national average cost of a gallon of gas at the pump jumped by 20 cents over the past month, according to AAA.
Currently, Americans are paying about $3.55 per gallon on average, up from about $3.35 a month ago, according to AAA’s data. Goldman Sachs, one of the largest financial institutions in the U.S., has recently cautioned that prices could surge above $4 per gallon by May, according to Yahoo Finance.
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The last few months have been interesting. We have started to see some very public disagreements among the world’s ruling classes. The gathering of elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has long fascinated observers and become a lightning rod for criticism, becoming a bogeyman of the right, as well as the hardcore, anticapitalist left. It is a front-row seat to the thinking and priorities of the world’s most powerful people.
In Davos, the world’s media, academic, political, and financial elites spend a few days in luxurious surroundings, praising themselves and forming a consensus on solutions to what they deem to be the problems of the world. This includes everything from facilitating mass migration, tackling global warming by moving away from fossil fuel energy, and the need for economic redistribution to the poor and the third world, all through the corporatist idea of “stakeholder capitalism.”
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In a poll of small business owners, 76 percent said that they had not seen an increase in sales during the holiday season as inflation and other economic conditions constrict consumers’ cash, according to Goldman Sachs.
Of small business owners surveyed, 55 percent said that their profit margins decreased this year, and a further 70 percent said that their own personal spending plans for their families were negatively impacted following their own assessment of the state of the economy, according to a poll by Goldman Sachs conducted from Dec. 1 to Dec. 8 of 337 small retail business owners. Consumer spending previously slowed in October as the Americans’ savings declined to $768.6 billion in the month, down from the over $1 trillion held in May and even further from the all-time high of almost $6 trillion held in April 2020.
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International investors have pulled billions out of China as the country’s economy continues to stumble and relations with the U.S. fail to ease, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Since August, international investors trading in China’s top exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen have pulled out more than $24 billion through a trading link in Hong Kong, according to the WSJ, the largest net outflow of foreign funds since the link was created in 2014. The MSCI China Index, which serves as a tool for investors to gauge expected returns in the country, has fallen 10% this year as China’s economy reports lackluster growth amid a real estate crisis and relations with the U.S. fail to significantly improve.
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Goldman Sachs quietly scrubbed references to race from its eligibility criteria for a two-day “diversity symposium” after legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation the program could run into problems with federal civil rights laws.
The eligibility criteria for Goldman Sachs’ 2023 MBA Diversity Symposium previously restricted the program to students “that identify as Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Native American, or women,” according to a web archive from Sept. 13. The eligibility requirements no longer include race or gender, the current webpage shows, a change that follows a Saturday DCNF report on race and gender-restricted opportunities for college students offered by top Wall Street investment banking firms.
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U.S. investors are significantly underestimating the risk of a recession, potentially increasing the impact of a recession next year, economists at Goldman Sachs warned in a Monday research note, according to Bloomberg.
Researchers at Goldman estimate a 39 percent chance of a slowdown in U.S. growth, but risk assets only account for an 11 percent chance, Bloomberg reported. By underestimating the chance of a recession, investors are increasing their exposure to the effects of “recession scares” in 2023, the analysts warned.
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Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R) on Wednesday announced he is leading a coalition of 19 states in a probe of six major banks over environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing policies and involvement with the United Nations’ Net-Zero Banking Alliance.
The states are investigating Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo, all of which are Net-Zero Banking Alliance members and are required to set emissions reductions targets to net zero by 2050.
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Even in the best case scenario where the Federal Reserve is able to combat inflation without causing a recession, it is unlikely to cut interest rates, Goldman Sachs analysts warned in a note, according to Business Insider.
The Federal Reserve has raised rates three times in the past four months, with Wednesday’s 0.75% increase bringing primary credit rates to 3.25%, one of the most aggressive increases since the 1980s. However, even in a so-called “soft landing” where a recession and layoffs are avoided, the Fed is unlikely to cut interest rates until “something goes wrong,” according to a Goldman Sachs note reported by Business Insider.
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A Goldman Sachs economist says there is a 30% probability of the U.S. entering a recession within one year and 48% within two years.
Goldman Sachs Chief U.S. economist David Mericle outlined the probability of a recession at an event Tuesday and said that the likelihood of a recession would decrease if the U.S. had not entered one within two years.
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