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The Friday File: Looking only at native speakers, the most spoken language in the world is Chinese with 1.3 billion first-language speakers. A distant second is Spanish with almost 440 million speakers. English is third with 372 million native speakers,…

At the beginning of 2018, one US dollar was worth about 41,000 Iranian rials. By the time President trump pulled the US out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, the exchange rate was 60,000 rials/dollar and now it is 120,000 rials/dollar.…

Last Thursday Facebook lost $119 billion, 19% of its market value, after predicting slowing revenue growth in the remainder of 2018. It was the largest one-day dollar decline for a US company ever, ahead of Intel’s $90 drop in 4/00.…

In 2017, federal government revenues were $3.316 trillion, of which 1%, or $34.6 billion, came from tariffs. While more money will come from tariffs, how much is unknown. Firms may import non-tariffed substitutes, they may buy the product from a…

The US economy grew 4.1% in 18Q2, its fastest pace since 14Q3. Better yet, excluding volatile exports, inventories and government purchases, growth was a stellar 4.3%, and I see Q3 growth coming in at a strong 3%. Longer term, I’m…

The Friday File: With data showing pitcher performance declines considerably when facing opposing batters for a third time, innings pitched by starters is averaging just 5 1/3 innings. This makes relief pitching critical. And, because relievers on average pitch to…

An inverted yield curve, a situation where short-term rates are higher than long-term rates, has preceded each of the past seven recessions by 8 to 23 months. At present, the yield curve is very close to inverting. But, rarely have…

While wages are increasing very slowly in response to the remarkably low unemployment rate, regrettably inflation is also rising and is at a six-year high. Real wage growth, which has been slowing since late 2016, was flat Y-o-Y in May…

China’s economic growth slowed to 6.7% in 18Q2, from 6.8% the previous three quarters. Given government efforts to slow debt growth by reigning in risky lending, along with decelerations in investment growth, industrial output, and retail sales, 6.7%, if true,…

Last week President Trump said he hoped the Fed would stop raising rates. Bad comment. Markets value central bank independence, and Trump’s comment could easily backfire. The Fed may raise rates earlier than planned to assert independence, and if conditions…