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The mill in Mason County will take two years to build, pending permit and regulatory approvals, Nucor said Wednesday. It will employ about 800 people full time when fully operational.

The prices of cars and trucks continued to soar in December, data released Wednesday showed. The Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index showed that the prices of new cars and trucks jumped higher in December, rising one percent for the month. Compared with 12 months ago, prices are up 11.8 percent. Cars saw larger prices increases. These accelerated 1.5 percent in December, which follows 1.4 percent in November and 1.1 percent in October. Compared with a year ago, the prices of new cars are up 12 percent. Truck prices rose 0.7 percent, down from the one percent gain in November...

San Francisco Mayor London Breed and city officials struck a generally optimistic tone at a Tuesday press conference, announcing a new measure to access testing amid skyrocketing cases and reassuring residents that no new restrictions are coming at this time.

New Orleans, Louisiana, is one of the latest areas of the country to reimplement a mask mandate, nearly two years after the start of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. New Orleans Health Director Dr. Jennifer Avegno made the announcement on Tuesday, giving the city a day’s notice before the coming change.

Record high job openings and extremely low employment have not stopped workers from losing ground due to inflation running at a 39-year high, data from the Labor Department showed Wednesday. Real average hourly earnings–meaning, earnings after inflation–were down 2.4 percent, seasonally adjusted, from December 2020 to December 2021. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with no change in the average workweek resulted in a 2.3-percent decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period. Inflation-adjusted hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory workers fell 1.9 percent from December 2020 to December 2021. Weekly wages fell two percent. December’s year-over-year...

The CEO of America's largest bank has threatened to dismiss about 450 of its New York City-based employees who have not been vaccinated against the coronavirus. JPMorgan chairman and chief executive Jamie Dimon said this week that employees working at the company's Manhattan headquarters cannot come to the office if they have not received their jabs, adding those who remain unvaccinated will not have the option to work remotely indefinitely. 'To go to the office you have to be vaxxed and if you aren't going to get vaxxed you won't be able to work in that office,' Dimon, who has...

Although President Joe Biden’s policies on ending the coronavirus pandemic and fixing supply chain problems are failing, the media are blaming American workers for empty shelves in grocery stores. “Empty shelves have returned at supermarkets as grocery employees call out sick and truckloads of food arrive late,” CNBC said in a report that said nothing about Biden’s policies or Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s responsibilities.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden announced Wednesday it had earmarked some 6 billion kronor ($661 million) for a temporary scheme to help the most affected households across the Scandinavian country to cope with high electricity bills this winter. Home owners in Sweden have already started adopting strategies to lower their consumption — turning down the heating, closing off rooms, using alternative heat sources like wood log burners and wearing thick woolly socks. There have been reports of people taking bank loans to be able to pay their electricity bill. “I understand that people are worried about their finances,” Sweden’s Energy Minister...

Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration this week announced a plan for addressing extreme heat that includes recommendations on how to monitor deaths caused by heat waves and the possible establishment of temperature limits for residential units.The release of the plan follows the publication of a Los Angeles Times investigation that revealed that California has done a poor job tracking the number of people who have died due to extreme heat and has largely failed to provide resources to communities that are most vulnerable to the effects of heat and global warming."Extreme heat threatens public health and safety, economic prosperity and communities...

Elon Musk has attacked a draft plan under consideration in California that critics say disincentivizes the use of rooftop solar panels.The Tesla founder was responding to changes proposed by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to the state's Net Energy Metering (NEM) program.Under the program, the estimated 1.3 million homeowners and businesses in the Golden State who have installed rooftop solar panels can sell back surplus energy to the grid and receive credit on their bills.But last month the CPUC released a proposal calling for a number of changes, one of which is how much customers are paid when they...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation jumped in December at its fastest year-over-year pace in nearly four decades, surging 7% and raising costs for consumers, offsetting recent wage gains and heightening pressure on President Joe Biden and the Federal Reserve to address what is increasingly Americans’ central economic concern. Prices have spiked during the recovery from the pandemic recession as Americans have ramped up spending on goods such as cars, furniture and appliances. Those increased purchases have clogged ports and warehouses and exacerbated supply shortages of semiconductors and other parts. Gas prices, while declining a bit from November to December, have surged...

Despite soaring energy prices, the Biden administration on Monday said it would scrap a Trump-era policy that would have opened millions of acres in Alaska to new oil development. The Trump administration had given the green light to expanded leasing and development in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, “one of the most promising onshore oil prospects in the country,” The Washington Post reported at the time. The plan would’ve opened about 82 percent of the reserve to fossil fuel extraction. Former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said it was part of President Trump’s commitment to “expand access to our Nation’s...

Gov. Kathy Hochul said that she’s requesting more federal aid from the Biden administration for New York’s since dried-up rental relief program, ahead of the likely expiration of the state’s eviction moratorium this coming weekend. The eviction ban – in place since March 2020 – is expected to lapse on Saturday, Jan. 15. “What we want to do is let people know that that is concluding very shortly. I’m having conversations with the legislature on what to do on this issue,” Hochul said during a press conference in Manhattan. The moratorium was first signed as an executive order by ex-Gov....

This is like the Samuel Beckett play “Waiting For Godot.” Except we are waiting for Jerome Powell and The Federal Reserve to do something. December’s consumer price index (CPI) is out and its a doozy, though expected. The CPI year-over-year (YoY) rose 7% in December. If we exclude food and energy, CPI rose by 5.5% YoY. Thanks to Biden’s assault on the energy sector, energy prices are up nearly 50% YoY. REAL average hourly earnings YoY? It has crashed to -2.32%. And with 7% inflation, the Taylor Rule model suggests a Fed Funds Target rate of … 17.84%. Bear in...

It's been the "silver bullet" that so many have embraced. But what do we really know about monoclonal antibodies? Are they really better than the vaccines or are they just another experiment that's bound to go awry? ========================================= There’s an odd disconnect among many who are opposed to the Covid-19 “vaccines.” We generally pan the experimental drugs for a wide variety of reasons ranging from the clear health risks and lack of efficacy all the way to many conspiracy theories that the jabs are just tools for depopulation. Some are opposed for religious reasons. Others are opposed out of pure...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the House Democrats are in “good shape” heading into the midterms and predicted the Democrats would remain in the House majority, despite the 26 congressmen who have announced plans to leave after the current term. Despite the 26 Democrats who have announced their plans to exit the House of Representatives after the current term, Pelosi, who has also been rumored to be retiring, told Punchbowl News that she does not believe the 26 are a big deal and her caucus will remain in the majority past the midterm elections later this year.

A suggestion by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that he may seek to limit lawmakers’ ability to trade individual stocks if the GOP takes the majority this November is going over like a 500-point Dow drop among his members. McCarthy told Punchbowl News that he is considering a range of ideas, from restricting members to only holding professionally managed mutual funds to barring lawmakers from owning stocks of companies overseen by their committees. He added that deliberations are still at an early stage and no final decisions have been made.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is reportedly considering altering its masking guidance to recommend individuals wear “highly protective N95 or KN95 masks,” the Washington Post reported on Monday. Citing an official “close to the deliberations who was not authorized to speak publicly,” the Post reported that the federal health agency is considering the recommendation change in the wake of the highly contagious omicron variant, despite the fact that it appears to be a more mild form of the illness.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) delivered Florida’s State of the State address on Tuesday, touting the Sunshine State as an oasis for freedom and “America’s liberty outpost” in a nation of lockdown enthusiasts who seek control through what the governor described as a “biomedical security state that curtails liberty, ruins livelihoods, and divides society.” Addressing a joint session of the legislature in Tallahassee, he emphasized the freedom Floridians enjoy. “Together we have made Florida the freest state in these United States,” DeSantis said as he drew a stark contrast between his state and those whose leaders have “consigned the people’s rights...

The snowball effect of cumulative inflation is going to be on display tomorrow when the BLS inflation data from December is released. We have previously discussed the unavoidable price increases as noted within the November data Here, and within the producer price data Here. While the data being released tomorrow is backward looking, we are in the eye of the inflation storm right now. The consumer prices at end of January and through February are all reflecting new purchase order prices and contract prices to wholesalers, buyers and retailers. As a result, the December reports will be the precursor to...