Free Republic

Commercial bankruptcy filings increased 31% in May 2023 from May 2022, according to a report from a company that tracks bankruptcy filings. There were 2,324 commercial filings in May 2023 compared to 1,771 registered in May 2022, according to Epiq Bankruptcy. Total bankruptcy filings were 38,669 in May 2023, a 9% increase from April 2023 and a 23% increase from May 2022. Commercial Chapter 11 filings had the biggest increase, according to Epiq's news release. Those type of bankruptcies increased from 332 in May 2022 to 680 in May 2023.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration took steps in several recent disputes involving lucrative upstate gambling rights that were in line with the interests of Delaware North, where hubby Bill Hochul works, a new report says. Just last month, the governor agreed to a last-minute tweak to the state budget to restructure the public-private board overseeing western New York’s Batavia Downs hotel and casino, a competitor of the multibillion-dollar firm where Bill Hochul is senior counsel, the New York Times said. While Delaware North says it is no longer interested in acquiring Batavia, the restructuring could presumably make such a move easier,...

Is Biden targeting white republicans' small businesses the same way Stalin targeted the Kulaks during the holodomor? Biden is not only targeting small business truckers, he is also targeting family farms By Ezequiel Doiny On April 17, 2023 Madeline Coggins wrote in Fox Business "The trucking industry is sounding the alarm on consequential ripple effects of the Biden administration's latest move in the electric vehicle push. While critics have voiced concerns about the EPA's recent emissions regulations, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA), a trade organization that represents small business truckers, warns the restrictions are dangerous and threaten small businesses...

Americans turned into DIY fanatics during the pandemic, beautifying their apartments, homes and condos while they were stuck inside and tired of looking at the same drab interior every day. But the Covid emergency is over, prices are (much) higher, consumers are growing fearful of a recession and people are spending less at Lowe’s and Home Depot. Lowe’s on Tuesday lowered its profit and sales outlook for the year, saying consumers were spending less on home improvement. It comes on the heels of rival Home Depot also posting disappointing sales and a somber forecast last week. “We are updating our...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reaffirmed June 1 as the hard deadline to raise the debt ceiling on Monday, saying she expects the United States will be unable to pay all of its bills in a little over a week. If an agreement isn’t reached to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt, the country could descend into economic disarray, affecting millions of Americans from investors to Social Security beneficiaries. Nevertheless, consumers can take steps to safeguard their finances from some of the effects of the crisis. There isn’t much precedent on what to do in case of a...

Exit, Lori Lightfoot; enter, Brandon Johnson — and the song remains the same. Or does it?It’s hard to imagine conditions in Chicago getting more desperate than under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, but new Mayor Brandon Johnson — in office less than a week, as I write — is already doing his damnedest to make everyday life and business survival in one of the country’s most iconic cities even worse.But imagine, we must.As reported by The New York Post, the iconic Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) opened in 1898, only 27 years after the infamous Great Chicago Fire. Proud Chicagoans heralded the...

I used the link above but I mostly want to see if others are slow at work. We sell processing equipment to the food, pharma and plastic industries. We're dead---slower than 2016 and it's getting worse. Our shop is going to 4 day work weeks with no overtime allowed and most likely we will have layoffs in the office. I have been here for 35 years and have never seen it this slow. Heck, this company started during the great depression---if this keeps up it will be closed in a matter of 6 months. Our competitors and customers are saying...

In the real-world, the costs are all we know for sure and profits remain elusive and contingent.No one knows how the flood of AI products will play out, but we do know it's unleashed a corporate frenzy to "get our own AI up and running." Corporate fads are one of the least discussed but most obvious dynamics in the economy. Corporations follow fads as avidly as any other heedless consumer, rushing headlong into whatever everyone else is doing.Globalization is a recent example. Back in the early 2000s, I sat next to corporate employees on flights to China and other Asian...

U.S. corporate bankruptcies have reached their highest level since 2010. Many American companies have been stumbling in the wake of the pandemic due to increasing interest rates, supply-chain issues, and rising costs. Several of the firms have filed for bankruptcy after access to low interest loans and access to easy money began to wane. “For 2009, there were 118 bankruptcies through April. In COVID-impacted 2020, there were 71 bankruptcies. In 2023, there have been 70. This is the third worst start to the year since 2000,” said Mike Shedlock, an economist. The Federal Reserve is predicting a mild recession by...

During the House Oversight Committee press conference on the Biden international business enterprise, Rep. Byron Donalds cut to the heart of the matter: **SNIP** I had the ability with Chairman Comer and other members of this committee to go over to the Treasury building and review documents. Having read those documents, one thing became pretty clear: there were many people who had serious questions about the transactions and about the velocity of these transactions, and they either went very deep into concealment, hiding money, shifting money, and for the purpose, we don't know. One thing the American people and the...

“California’s economy is the envy of the world,” Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) boasted Monday, proclaiming May “Small Business Month” in the California – but, a new national survey of CEOs ranks the Golden State the worst state for business in 2023. In his statement, Gov. Newsom said California has more small businesses of any other state and touted new DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives, but failed to mention that companies are fleeing to other states that are more business-friendly. According to Chief Executive magazine’s 2023 “Best and Worst States for Business” survey, California ranks dead last: “The Golden State’s...

I hate to say this, I really do, but Bud Light parent company AB Inbev is going to be just fine, even after this whole fake woman fiasco. I also hate saying that even the Conservative side has #fakenews, and the constant pounding of Bud Light by Conservative media outlets is kind of outrageous, and only serves to further rile us up. Here's the truth: I've been watching the AB Inbev stock since this whole thing started. As of March 31, the stock was sitting at $66, slightly under the 52 week high, $20 above the 52 week low. Since...

If the latest employment trends continue and economists' forecasts prove true, Friday's jobs report could bring back that pre-pandemic feeling. Economists expect the US economy to have added 180,000 jobs in April, according to consensus estimates on Refinitiv. Excluding the losses during the first year of the pandemic, that would be the smallest monthly gain since December 2019. It could also hammer home the fact that the US labor market has indeed cooled down from its red-hot recovery over the past two years. Earlier this week, the latest labor turnover report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the Job...

The federal government has announced the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency will end May 11. In Wisconsin, case numbers, hospitalizations, and deaths from COVID-19 are significantly lower than they were during the surge in late 2021 and early 2022, and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) has been making plans to move away from an emergency response to the virus. The federal public health emergency has been in place since early 2020, and it gave federal and state governments flexibility to waive or modify certain requirements in a variety of areas. Associated legislation provided funding and additional flexibilities to help...

Regulators seized troubled First Republic Bank early Monday, making it the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history, and promptly sold all of its deposits and most of its assets to JPMorgan Chase Bank in a bid to head off further banking turmoil. San Francisco-based First Republic is the third midsize bank to fail in two months. The only larger bank failure was Washington Mutual, which collapsed at the height of the 2008 financial crisis and was also taken over by JPMorgan. First Republic has struggled since the March collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and investors and depositors...

(NEXSTAR) – A massive $725 million settlement involving Facebook’s parent company Meta was tentatively approved by a judge last month, paving the way for users of the social media platform to apply for a chunk of the payout. Meta has agreed to the payment to settle a lawsuit claiming Facebook allowed users’ personal data to be shared with third parties, the most famous being Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm that supported Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The firm harvested the data of as many as 87 million Facebook users, the Associated Press reported. Final approval of the settlement isn’t expected...

MADISON, Wis. -- Experts say a crisis looms in healthcare as hundreds of thousands of nurses plan to exit the workforce within the next few years. We're used to hearing about staffing shortages since the beginning of the pandemic, but a report by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing puts it into stark perspective. Roughly 800,000 registered nurses reported an intent to leave the nursing profession by 2027. 188,962 of them are under the age of 40. "A lot of nurses quit in the first year of starting," but John Friberg said he's not one of them. "I...

When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the "social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system," I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. The businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned "merely" with profit but also with promoting desirable "social" ends; that business has a "social conscience" and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers....

Goldman Sachs posted first-quarter profit on Tuesday that missed analysts' expectations for revenue after taking a $470 million hit tied to the sale of consumer loans. Here's what the company reported: Earnings: $8.79 a share vs. $8.10 estimate from Refinitiv Revenue: $12.22 billion vs. $12.79 billion The bank said profit fell 18% to $3.23 billion, or $8.79 a share, topping the estimate of analysts surveyed by Refinitiv. Revenue fell 5% to $12.22 billion, below the estimate on the consumer loan hit and weaker-than-expected bond trading results. Related news: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/18/bank-of-america-bac-earnings-q1-2023.html "Bank of America shares gain after first-quarter results top expectations on...

Former President Donald Trump has filed a personal financial disclosure report, which shows the former president’s vast business empire—valued at around $1.2 billion—expanding since his return to private life.The 101-page report (pdf) was filed with the Federal Election Commission as he campaigns to secure the Republican nomination for president in 2024.Trump’s business acumen, which he campaigned on ahead of the 2016 election and has repeatedly highlighted since then, appears in sharp focus in the filings.Since leaving office in January 2021, Trump has approximately doubled his number of business holdings, with a total estimated value of at least $1.2 billion.In terms...