Your Money

Among the economic news released last week was a monthly jobs report that showed the private sector added 497,000 jobs in June, well above the forecast from economists. This continues to show a resilient U.S. economy. That sounds like good news, but this stretch of solid economic data hardened investors’ expectations of further interest-rate increases. This “good news” fueled a weekly decline for U.S. stocks and government bonds on the dashed hopes that the Federal Reserve would stay on pause and begin easing sooner rather than later.

On the flip side, the yield curve (10-year rates minus 2-year rates) is still deeply inverted (when 10’s minus 2’s is negative.) An inverted yield curve is widely thought to be a harbinger of recession. Despite that, the U.S. stock market has exceeded expectations over the last twelve months since the depths of the “tech wreck.” 

On many minds is the critical question of whether the Fed will have to generate a recession to bring inflation back to its target of 2%. Goldman Sachs recently published a piece thinking a recession is now less likely over the next 12 months than they did earlier in the year. 

Why a U.S. recession has become less likely
source: Goldman Sachs

Your Life

It’s so important to be aware of recalls to protect yourself from dangerous products. That said, it’s hard to believe that consumers respond to product recalls only about 6% of the time. Often that’s because they don’t know about them; other times, they may not take it seriously, in the belief a company is simply legally protecting itself from a problem that’s popped up only a few times. Product recalls can be a matter of life and death. In 2019 alone, there were 51,000 deaths associated with unsafe consumer products, according to the government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). A record amount of items — more than 1 billion — were recalled in the U.S. last year. And they aren’t issued lightly: Many manufacturers fight hard not to have to recall potentially dangerous products. All kinds of products are recalled every day — not just cars and food, which tend to get the most attention, but also toys, furniture, electronics, and kitchen appliances. They can burn, poison, maim, electrocute, start fires, or worse. Most recalls do not make headlines or pop up online. Protect yourself and your family by doing the following: register your product; sign up for email alerts; research secondhand goods; check for auto recalls regularly; respond quickly to notices; report problems, and fix the product or get rid of it.

Protect Yourself From Dangerous Products
by Lisa Lee Freeman

Complexity Simplified

Trivia