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The Friday File: Viewership of the Oscars peaked in 1998 at 55 million. It then held steady at 40 million through 2015, then collapsed, bottoming at 10 million last year and recovering to 16.6 million last week. But the real…

Among the ten US cities with the highest current office occupancy rates, the average rate through mid-March is 39.50%, equal to what it was before Omicron pushed it down to slightly below 20%. Returning to 100%, where it was pre-Covid-19…

At the peak in 1949, 78.8% of households contained married couples. By 2021, that percentage had declined to 47.3%. Simultaneously, single-person households rose from 3.8% in 1960 to 11.1% in 2021. Relatedly, age at first marriage bottomed in 1956 at…

Recently, the yield on the two-year Treasury rose slightly above the 10-year Treasury rate, a phenomenon known as an inverted yield curve, often a harbinger of recession or at least a slump and bad times. That said, which pairs of…

The Friday File: In an effort to raise money for cash-strapped nations, ICANN, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers for the web, will henceforth allow governments to impose an emoji tax every time one is used. While negotiations…

In the US, Covid-19 is making its way from pandemic to endemic, as resistance to Covid and its increasingly infectious new variants rises. Conversely, in China the problems are worsening. Their zero-tolerance approach worked only as long as Covid-19 was…

Prior to Russia’s Ukraine invasion, Russia exported 5 million bbl/day of oil, 5% of world consumption. The Saudis could boost production by 2 million bbl/day and the UAE by 1 million. However, neither shows any inclination of doing so. US…

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine now entering its second month and the attendant devastation and reconstruction costs growing hourly, the west must hold Russia responsible for humanitarian assistance, reparations, and eventually the rebuilding of Ukraine. The easiest way, tap…

Since 1983, there have only been six quarters in which the yield on the 2-year Treasury has risen by more than one percent including the current quarter! In four of the six cases, the rise barely exceeded one point. Only…