Daily Archives: April 22, 2022

San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly told Yahoo Finance Live in an exclusive interview on Thursday that she sees the case for interest rates to move expeditiously higher in order to pump the brakes further on surging inflation. And with the Fed growing increasingly hawkish in its endeavor to lower prices, uncertainty remains as to when month-over-month inflation will turn around.

Deutsche Bank (DB) Wealth Management CIO for the Americas Deepak Puri believes that prices are currently at their peak, and inflation will ease as the year moves forward.

I think the narrative seems to be that the March, April numbers that we're going to see, especially on the CPI and PPI side, might be the high-water mark, Puri told Yahoo Finance Live. ... There were some green shoots in the last CPI number. It was the slowest month-over-month over the last five months increase that we saw.

Puri joined Yahoo Finance Live to discuss global market trends, volatility, inflation, and Fed policy. He pointed to the lowering of prices of some physical products such as used cars in the March inflation report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as being a positive sign that a reversal could soon be seen.

Inflation hit another record high at 8.5% for March a level not seen since 1981. Prices rose 1.2% from the previous month following a 0.8% monthly rise in February. Food, shelter, and gasoline were the biggest contributors to the jump in overall prices. The next CPI report covering the month of April is scheduled for May 11.

But although Puri believes the worst of the month-over-month inflation rate increases may soon be past, he acknowledged the risk that the Russia-Ukraine war may have on areas such as agriculture. The conflict has already taken a sizable toll on gas prices throughout the U.S.

It remains to be seen [what impact] growing agricultural prices are going to have, he said. This is really coming from the Russia-Ukraine crisis, which is going to have an impact on agricultural commodities, which in turn would keep the nominal number pretty high.

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And as the Fed appears set to become increasingly aggressive in its campaign of interest rate hikes, investors are concerned that the economy may be cast into a recession amid geopolitical risks. Analysts and experts are sounding the alarm of an impending significant slowdown in growth as runaway inflation is reeled in.

Puri noted that his wealth management clients are becoming hesitant to put new money to work. He says the fixed income market and its investors are experiencing a reckoning of capital destruction in light of the inflationary environment.

That is something the fixed income investors are not used to, he said. So really the big questions and concerns that I'm getting is [whether this is] the inflection point for fixed income, whether we need to make dramatic changes to the fixed income part of their multi-asset portfolio. And I think that's something we've been advocating for quite some time. Really, the big concern is on the plain vanilla bond portfolio that has somewhat of an intermediate or long duration.

Thomas Hum is a writer at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @thomashumTV

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April inflation will be the high-water mark: Deutsche Bank Wealth Management CIO - Yahoo Finance

Jamie Dimon, Chair and CEO of JPMorgan ChaseJ. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post via Getty Images

JPMorgan has asked hybrid employees to come into the office at least 3 days a week.

The bank is tracking ID swipes to monitor staffers' office attendance.

One executive described there being a "fear of God" and "panic" over the attendance quotas.

JPMorgan has started tracking staffers' office attendance, and employees say it's creating an atmosphere of mistrust and panic.

Insider reported Wednesday that the banking giant has taken to monitoring employee ID swipes in order to enforce its return-to-office policies, citing four people with direct knowledge of the program. This data helps generate reports that are then used to enforce in-office quotas.

JPMorgan has asked hybrid employees to work from the office at least three days a week, according to a copy of an internal email viewed by Insider.

In a recent letter to shareholders, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said 50% of the bank's global employees must return to the office five days a week, 40% can follow a hybrid schedule with some days at home and some in the office, and the remaining 10% can work remotely full-time. The bank employs more than 270,000 people.

The tracking and enforcement actions have stoked frustrations about micromanagement.

"At JPMorgan, nobody trusts you," a London-based technology staffer told Insider. "The higher-ups don't trust you to do your job if they're not constantly watching you in the office."

A senior asset-management executive also based in London told Insider the return-to-office measures aren't a hit with managers either, saying some appeared "deathly afraid" of their teams falling short of 100% compliance.

"I don't know whether it's because they themselves are too timid or whether it's because the fear of God has been put into them by a bank manager," the executive said. "But every time there's something that requires participation, you sense the panic."

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Both London-based employees told Insider they're now looking for work elsewhere as a result.

Read the full Insider story here.

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JPMorgan employees describe the 'fear of God' and 'panic' as the company tracks their office attendance - Yahoo Finance

Weekly unemployment claims held near their lowest levels since the 1960s, with a strong labor market and improving levels of unemployment remaining a bright spot in the U.S. economy.

The Labor Department released its latest weekly jobless claims report Thursday at 8:30 a.m. ET. Here were the main metrics from the print, compared to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg:

Initial jobless claims, week ended April 16: 184,000 vs. 180,000 expected and an upwardly revised 186,000 during prior week

Continuing claims, week ended April 9: 1.417 million vs. 1.459 million expected and an unrevised 1.475 million during prior week

First-time filings for unemployment benefits remained below 200,000 for a ninth consecutive week. As of last week, the four-week moving average for new jobless claims, which smooths out volatility in the weekly data, stood at just 177,250. Throughout 2019 before the pandemic, new claims averaged about 218,000 per week. And last month, jobless claims reached their lowest level since 1968 at 166,000.

Continuing claims, which tally the number of Americans collecting benefits for multiple weeks, have also declined sharply to reach multi-decade lows. These came in below 1.5 million for a back-to-back week to reach their lowest level since 1970.

The weekly jobless claims data have served as an ongoing reminder of the tightness in the current labor market. Job openings have far outpaced new hires a phenomenon many companies this quarterly earnings season have been quick to acknowledge.

"Transportation and labor markets remain tight," Andre Schulten, Procter & Gamble chief financial officer, said during the company's earnings call Wednesday morning. "Labor availability is certainly a stretch, not for P&G directly, but more for our supplier base."

Companies in other industries have also highlighted these concerns. Bank of America CFO Alastair Borthwick said during the firm's earnings calls earlier this week that the bank's clients "are definitely seeing supply chain challenges" that have extended to the workforce.

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"We've also seen inflation, and we're seeing labor and wage pressure," Borthwick said.

And rising labor costs as companies compete for talent could ultimately exert even further pressure on corporate profit margins.

"For companies, labor costs, which account for roughly 70% of total costs, are far more important that materials costs," Rubeela Farooqi, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a note Tuesday. "While wage gains are not keeping up with price increases, building cost pressures are a risk for company bottom lines."

"Before-tax corporate profits rose 25% year-over-year in Q4 2021 after 27% in Q3 and 69% in Q2. But with the Fed moving to dampen demand, how long will businesses be able to pass on increasing cost?" she added. "The silver lining may come from a rebalancing of labor supply and demand, which could provide relief to businesses on wages going forward."

This post is breaking. Check back for updates.

Emily McCormick is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @emily_mcck

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Jobless claims hold near their lowest levels since the 1960s - Yahoo Finance

Inflation has touched nearly every area of the economy, including the hospitality sector.

According to celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, restaurant suppliers have raised prices "tremendously," forcing him to rethink how to avoid passing on the cost to his customers.

"We just have to engineer the menu a little different so not everything is expensive," the restaurateur said on Influencers with Andy Serwer.

Puck has noticed inflation particularly in food items like beef, fish, and vegetables. The price of a pound of beef tenderloin for his restaurants, he noted, rose by nearly 40% from $36 to $52.

"That was really, really hard," Puck said, particularly because gourmet steak is a classic on his menus.

US-Austrian chef Wolfgang Puck speaks during the 92nd Annual Academy Awards Governors Ball press preview in Hollywood on January 31, 2020. (Photo by VALERIE MACON/AFP)

As a result, Puck and his workers have tried to "balance the menu," though he did acknowledge that his restaurants have also raised prices on some items, like steak.

"Not everything is expensive, because soon we're going to come to where a really good steak will cost $95 to $100," he said. "It's getting a little expensive."

The Austrian-born chef has elected to lean in to other menu items and focus on enhancing their quality instead.

"Yes, if you want a really good piece of meat, it's very expensive," he said, "but we also can give you a good meal without having that meat."

Puck's restaurants haven't been the only ones adapting to inflation. In response to rising costs, a slew of major restaurant chains have raised prices in recent months, including McDonald's (MCD), Chipotle (CMG), and Cracker Barrel (CBRL).

Food prices rose 7.9% in February compared to the same month last year, marking the sharpest rise since 1981, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported last month. The trend is unlikely to stop. Food-away-from-home prices are expected to increase between 5.5% and 6.5% this year, the USDA said.

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Suppliers have also been an issue for companies. Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday said recent eye-popping inflation data fails to fully capture the "true magnitude" of rising costs.

He cited suppliers asking for 20% or 30% price increases for some parts between 2021 and 2022, which far exceeds the 8.5% year-over-year rise in consumer prices in March reported by the federal government last week.

Puck, who co-founded three companies that operate more than 50 restaurants worldwide, has noticed a similar issue, particularly due to the ongoing labor shortage in the U.S.

"Truck drivers, they're hard to find," Puck said. "They couldn't deliver the food. The people who had warehouses ... they had to pay them overtime to deliver at midnight because there are so few people who are working."

Another source of mounting costs for restaurants are the rising wages for employees.

Last year, as dining and travel habits returned to some semblance of normal, the high demand for workers in leisure and hospitality made it the only occupation that saw wage increases outpace inflation, as Yahoo Finance's Ben Werschkul reported. Hourly wages for those workers jumped 11.8% in March compared to a year ago.

The challenge of attracting new employees and retaining old ones makes up the "hardest part" of running a restaurant during the pandemic, Puck said.

"A lot of employees in our industry changed their lifestyle," he said. "They said, 'We don't want to work on Mother's Day, on Christmas Eve, or New Year's Eve, Saturday, Sunday.' ... A lot of these people didn't want to come back."

Max is a reporter for Yahoo Finance.

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Heres how Wolfgang Pucks restaurants have responded to inflation - Yahoo Finance

Could two of the most famous athletes in the world soon have a stake in one of the biggest soccer clubs on the planet?

According to multiple media reports, Serena Williams and Lewis Hamilton have pledged money to be a part of a group attempting to buy London's Chelsea FC. The team is for sale under orders from the British government after longtime Russian owner Roman Abramovich was sanctioned as a result of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Reports said that Williams and Hamilton had each pledged just over $13 million. The Daily Mail cited a spokesperson for Hamilton who confirmed his involvement in the bid but refuted the financial figure.

Could Serena Williams soon have a stake in Chelsea? (Photo by Marco Bello/Getty Images)

Williams and Hamilton are part of an owner group led by former Liverpool and British Airways chairman Martin Broughton. His group is one of three remaining bids for control of Chelsea. The team currently sits third in the English Premier League standings.

Sky Sports noted that Hamilton's inclusion in the Chelsea bid was "unexpected" because the seven-time Formula 1 champion is an Arsenal fan. Arsenal and Chelsea are longtime rivals and Arsenal beat Chelsea 4-2 on Wednesday afternoon in a match that could be vital for Arsenal's hopes of Champions League soccer in 2022-23.

Broughton's ownership group would include a significant stake from Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment. HBS&E owns the Philadelphia 76ers and the New Jersey Devils, and currently owns a portion of Premier League club Crystal Palace.

Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam winner, is already a minority owner in NWSL club Angel City FC.

If the bid including Williams and Hamilton is the group that ends up buying Chelsea, the two stars will join LeBron James as minority owners of Premier League teams. James and Maverick Carter bought a 2% stake in Liverpool in April 2011. Liverpool's primary owners are the Fenway Sports Group, the consortium that owns the Boston Red Sox.

Lewis Hamilton is an Arsenal fan but could soon have a stake in Chelsea. (Photo by Clay Cross ATPImages/Getty Images)

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Reports: Serena Williams and Lewis Hamilton join ownership group looking to buy Chelsea - Yahoo Sports

Make no mistake: The drop in Netflixs (NFLX) subscriber count is a major setback for the company, Manhattan Venture Partners Head of Research Santosh Rao told Yahoo Finance (video above).

This is a body blow to the bull case definitely to the Netflix story, the subscriber story, said Rao. Netflix was all about subscribers for so long and it's really taking it on the chin here.

Netflixs stock tanked in response to its latest round of earnings, as shares dropped by more than 35% in after-hours trading on Wednesday. After withdrawing from Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine, Netflix lost about one million subscribers and clocked a net loss of 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022. The Internets abuzz with theories as to what could be behind the decline and what the company should do next, from too much subscriber churn to talk of Netflixs exploration of an ad-supported subscription. But one thing is clear, said Rao that its time for Wall Street to revamp its expectations.

The whole story has to be re-evaluated from a lower base now, he said. The multiples are getting compelling at this point, but we need to see that the growth story is still intact and they have a strategy to tackle the challenges ahead.

Despite the markets reaction to earnings, bright spots for Netflix could be on the horizon as it looks to adjust, given the release of much-awaited content like the latest seasons of Stranger Things, Peaky Blinders, and The Umbrella Academy. Wall Streets also intrigued by the companys newly-announced efforts to offer an ad-supported subscription, as well as its efforts to wrangle password-sharing. Raymond James analyst Andrew Marok especially views the possible ad-supported offering as a significant positive, he wrote in an April 20 note. He also added that the company has solid operating margins.

Netflix recorded 1Q22 operating margins of 25.1% vs. guidance of 22.3%, driven by cost efficiencies, wrote Marok.

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The cast of Netflix's "Bridgerton" at the second season's premiere in March. REUTERS/May James

As Netflix finds its way forward, the companys going to need to expand both its content strategy and geographic reach, said Rao.

They need to get into some other sticky things like more gaming, maybe sports, advertising revenue, of course, he said. There are all these additional levers that they need to pull, because this is not working. The traditional core business may have peaked, especially in their core markets.

There are many ways forward for Netflix, though perhaps the most important of them is international growth. India and Japan are key growth markets for Netflix, and theres room to keep building out the platforms footprint in EMEA, said Rao. Netflix agrees, per its shareholder letter, which delineated the ways the company is setting itself up to thrive internationally.

To support this, weve been building out capabilities like creative development, personalization, and language presentation/localization, the company said in its shareholder letter. Netflix is now producing films and TV in more than 50 countries with a high degree of integration in the local entertainment ecosystem resulting in the creation of blockbusters from every region. In fact, three out of our six most popular TV seasons of all time are non-English language titles: Squid Game, La Casa de Papel Part 4 and All Of Us Are Dead.

Its imperative that Netflix approaches these markets with a more localized strategy and competitive pricing, added Rao.

Allie Garfinkle is a senior tech reporter at Yahoo Finance. Find her on twitter @agarfinks.

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Netflixs subscriber loss is a 'body blow to the bull case' - Yahoo Finance

There's no doubt about it: Soaring mortgage rates are an economic shock to the U.S. housing market. Over the past month alone, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has spiked from 3.11% to 5.11%. It's both pricing out some stretched homebuyers and causing some would-be borrowers to lose their mortgage eligibility.

The swift move up in mortgage rates also has research firms re-gearing their housing forecast models.

Heading into 2022, real estate research firms presumed the Federal Reserve would put upward pressure on ratesbut not like this. On the year, the Mortgage Bankers Association forecasted the average 30-year fixed rate would climb to 4%, while Fannie Mae forecasted a 3.3% mortgage rate by year's end. We blew past those estimates weeks ago.

Now, real estate researchers are dialing down their home price forecasts. On Wednesday, Zillow researchers released a revised forecast, predicting that U.S. home prices would rise 14.9% between March 2022 and March 2023. That's down 2.9 percentage points from last month, when Zillow said home prices would shoot up 17.8% over the coming year.

"Driving the downwardly revised forecast are affordability headwinds that have strengthened faster than expected, largely due to sharp increases in mortgage rates," wrote the Zillow researchers. "Further risks to the outlook as well: Inventory levels remain near record lows, but have the potential to recover faster than anticipated, which could lower future price and sales volume projections."

The fact Zillow has cut its forecast shouldn't come as a surprise. After all, this swift move up in rates is creating a serious affordability crunch for homebuyers. At a 3.11% fixed mortgage rate in December, a borrower would owe a principal and interest payment of $2,138 on a $500,000 mortgage. That payment would spike to $2,718 if taken out at a 5.11% rate. Over the course of the 30-year loan, that's an additional $208,800.

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If Zillow is right and home prices do rise another 14.9% over the coming 12 months, it'd mark another historically strong year for home price growth. Over the past 12 months, home prices are up a staggering 19.2%. Each of those figures are outliers compared to average annual U.S. home price growth of 4.6% posted since 1987.

"Even with the downward revision from last month, these figures would represent a remarkably competitive housing market in the coming year," writes the Zillow researchers.

But not everyone is as bullish as Zillow.

Over the coming year, CoreLogic predicts that home prices are set to decelerate to a 5% rate of growth. The Mortgage Bankers Association says home prices are poised to rise 4.8% over the coming 12 months, while Fannie Mae predicts home prices will rise 11.2% this year, and 4.2% in 2023.

Of course, there's a chance they're all wrong. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has already found signs that U.S. home price growth is greater than underlying economic fundamentals would push it up. The title of the Dallas Fed paper is blunt: "Real-time market monitoring finds signs of brewing U.S. housing bubble."

"Our evidence points to abnormal U.S. housing market behavior for the first time since the boom of the early 2000s. Reasons for concern are clear in certain economic indicators...prices appear increasingly out of step with fundamentals," wrote the Dallas Fed researchers.

While CoreLogic says a housing market correction is unlikely over the coming year, the research firm does say most housing markets across the country are overpriced. The firm calculated a market risk assessment for nearly 400 metropolitan statistical areas. The finding? CoreLogic deems 65% of U.S. regional housing markets to be "overvalued."

Both homebuyers and home sellers alike might want to take housing forecasts with a grain of salt. Look no further than the housing forecasts published during the COVID-19 recession. In the spring of 2020, both Zillow and CoreLogic published economic models predicting that U.S. home prices would fall by spring 2021. That price drop never came. Instead, the housing market went on a historic run that continues to today.

Follow @Newslambert on Twitter to see new housing forecasts as they are released.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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What home prices will look like in 2023, according to Zillows revised downward forecast - Yahoo Finance

Kyrie Irving is an easy and most times, deserved punching bag for the media, for the NBA and for anyone with a pair of red gloves.

He was rightfully fined $50,000 by the NBA for his one-fingered salutes to Celtics fans and probably a phrase caught on social media as he walked to the locker room, fighting back against abuse from the scorned lovers.

And you know what?

Good for him.

The league did what it had to do players can't be seen giving obscene gestures multiple times on national TV during a playoff game. As intense as April, May and June can be, theres gotta be some decorum.

But it doesnt mean Irving has to take every morsel of nonsense from the Celtics fans. It was admittedly funny when he mocked the fans, wiping invisible tears from his eyes as he torched the team in green during Game 1 of the highly anticipated first-round series.

The NBA has to protect its product, and Irving can reply to similar energy even when he knows the penalty is coming.

Plenty of times coaches will needle the NBA if not downright criticize it by airing grievances, knowing theyll get the call from the top watchdogs wholl make their next checks a little lighter.

But they get their point across.

Now to be clear, Irving wasnt doing anything strategic to give himself or his team a competitive advantage Sunday one could argue he let the Celtics fans get in his head too much, leading to a dribbling exhibition on the final offensive possession that went nowhere before Jayson Tatums improbable game-winner but he doesnt have to just sit and take the nasty things fans say.

At the heart of this, its all illogical. Passion usually is fans being so invested in something so trivial when you think about it but it fuels everything in the business of sports because people care.

Irving has waved sage around the TD Garden upon one of his returns, apparently trying to cleanse it of negative spirits. And he stomped on the Celtic logo (did anyone know it had a name Lucky?) which drew the ire of all-time great Kevin Garnett and apparent luminary and defender of Celtics tradition, Glen Big Baby Davis.

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Who knew Irving could inspire such non-vaccine anger?

Irving spurned the Celtics, planning his escape from Massachusetts Alcatraz within a year of his arrival. And that rejection was a high crime for the sophisticated Celtics fans who arent used to someone not loving them back, refusing to forgive and forget.

Now, Irving manages to douse kerosene on the city every chance he gets. That wound wont heal after he said he would come back only to leave that next July, borderline quitting while still on the clock. He knows how they feel and does this passive-aggressive thing, intimating hes at such a place of peace in Brooklyn which subsequently points to Boston as a place of turmoil.

But Celtics fans have been wearing well-earned labels for decades, many around issues of race. Its something players are generally sensitive to, although most players whove recently played for the Celtics have come to love and appreciate the city and franchise long after departing.

It remains in the air like a fog thin enough to drive through easily but a fog nonetheless, and it cant be ignored. Irving bandies himself as being conscious and has certainly displayed sensitivity, even if it feels misplaced.

Those two ideals intersect and cant be ignored. Sit in TD Garden long enough and youll hear some cringeworthy things which youll hear in virtually any NBA arena, to be fair but some things hit differently because its Boston.

And best believe, a lot of words are spewed because for all the proximity a courtside seat provides relative to the other professional sports, fans know that barrier exists where players wont go but so far to retaliate.

So if Irving wants to troll and inflame this toxic relationship, good for him.

A Boston Celtics fan holds up a sign reading, "Kyrie is the enemy," during Game 1 of the Celtics-Nets NBA playoffs first-round series at TD Garden in Boston on April 17, 2022. (Jim Davis/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

The NBA wont say it aloud, but its good for the league. It builds anticipation and intrigue to an already passionate playoff series and nobody has to say a single word about Irvings nonsense on his vaccination logic.

A little hate never hurt anybody, especially when its manifested in the form of true, high-stakes competition. As much as we can all appreciate the classy, well-behaved athlete, sprinkling some color and some spice makes the league better.

The words of Shaquille ONeal and Charles Barkley lightly chastising Irving for his profane response echoes because of their respective statures: ONeal, no matter what you think of his television persona, took all kinds of physical punishment as a player from opponents who werent as big or strong as him but had to hit as hard as they could.

Other than swinging at Brad Miller one time which wouldve ended Millers life if he connected ONeal was a man of great restraint.

Barkleys history is a little more checkered, but hes as lighthearted as they come as hes settled into the most entertaining person in sports television, so not taking anything seriously is the perspective he leans from.

But with fans being able to reach players in more ways than ever, holding up cellphones to bait and goad at every opportunity, soon enough someone will bark back in kind.

So while Irving knows exactly what hes doing, flipping the double bird behind his head, giving a single one after hitting a clock-beating jumper and earning a five-figure fine. He doesnt just have to take it, especially with social media being more prevalent and mean and fans becoming more and more brazen.

As long as he doesnt dish out any Stephen Jackson-style justice, no complaints from here.

And in the meantime, get your popcorn ready.

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Kyrie Irving's toxic relationship with Boston is good for the NBA - Yahoo Sports

By Timothy Aeppel

(Reuters) - A U.S. judge's ruling this week that the Biden administration's mask mandate for public transportation was unlawful dealt another blow to an industry that built dozens of small U.S. mask factories during the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Just a year ago, 26 of these upstart producers signed a letter to the administration, urging a crackdown on an influx of low-priced Chinese masks that was undermining their new operations, all of which were opened in response to a health crisis that highlighted U.S. dependence on foreign producers of all types of medical safety gear.

Today, just nine of the letter's signers still produce masks.

"The government never really supported mask manufacturing in the U.S.," said Lloyd Armbrust, chief executive of Armbrust American, a mask maker in Pflugerville, Texas. The lifting of the mandate will only hasten the decline of the new industry, he added.

Armbrust, who is also president of the American Mask Manufacturers Association, a group created to fight for the domestic startups, is one of the survivors. But his mask business is a shadow of what it was even a few months ago.

During the record surge of cases from the fast-spreading Omicron variant that started late last year and peaked in January, Armbrust did up to half a million dollars in sales a day, he said. "Now, were like 5% of that."

Armbrust said his business can make money producing at a lower level, in part because it has shifted toward also producing air filters for homes. Unlike face masks, which have become a divisive U.S. political issue, home filters are not controversial.

Following the ruling by a federal judge in Florida on Monday, the Biden administration said it would no longer enforce a U.S. mask mandate on public transportation. The move prompted airlines to drop their mask rules and the pullback has spread to other businesses.

Uber Technologies and Lyft Inc both scrapped mask mandates for their U.S. riders and drivers on Tuesday, while Walt Disney Co made masks optional for fully vaccinated visitors to its indoor and outdoor locations and transport facilities.

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Domestic producers say one risk going forward is that they are unlikely to ramp up production again, should a new virus variant emerge or some other crisis that prompts governments and businesses to again rush to buy masks.

"You better believe I won't scale up like that again," said Armbrust. "Why would I?"

Meanwhile, some companies are counting on customers continuing to buy their products, albeit at lower volumes than during the height of the pandemic.

"I think there are people who will still go on wearing masks, regardless of whether the government" requires it, said Clayton Geyer, vice president of Indiana Face Mask, which continues producing masks.

Geyer said his company "has definitely fallen short" of how they thought it would grow during the pandemic. He noted that orders have spiked sharply, for instance during the recent Omicron wave.

After a spurt, however, he sees customers quickly revert to buying cheaper imported masks.

"It's incredibly difficult to build business relationships," he said.

(Reporting by Timothy Aeppel; Editing by Dan Burns and Bill Berkrot)

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America's mask manufacturers take it on the chin - Yahoo Finance

BERKELEY, Calif. In a state where tent cities continue to proliferate underneath freeway overpasses and rows of broken-down RVs provide shelter to a growing number of people, the number of deaths among the homeless has been soaring in recent years.

Its like a wartime death toll in places where there is no war, Maria Raven, an emergency room doctor in San Francisco and the co-author of a study on homelessness deaths during the coronavirus pandemic, told the New York Times.

The study, which focused on the deaths of indigent people living in San Francisco, found that twice as many people died while homeless in the year starting March 17, 2020, compared with any prior year. Between that date and March 16, 2021, 331 deaths among homeless people were recorded.

People walk past homeless encampments on the Venice Beach boardwalk in Los Angeles in April 2021. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

The leading cause of death, however, was not COVID-19, and death by overdose was due primarily to exposure to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency says is 80-100 times stronger than morphine.

In fact, for the year covered in the study, COVID-19 was not listed as the primary cause of any deaths among the citys homeless.

California is home to the largest percentage of an estimated 500,000 homeless Americans, accounting for roughly one-quarter of the total, the Times reported. Yet the number of deaths reported among the homeless is also on the rise in cities like Indianapolis, Nashville, Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas. Still, as the Times noted, based on reporting from officials in 58 California counties that tally the deaths of homeless people, last year the state recorded at least 4,800 such fatalities.

A homeless encampment in Los Angeles. (Hans Gutknecht/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)

Nearly 2,000 of last years deaths of homeless people were recorded in Los Angeles County.

A study of the deaths of homeless people living in Alameda County, which includes Berkeley, from 2018 through 2020 found that 57% of those fatalities took place outside of a medical setting, instead occurring on streets/sidewalks, outdoors, in vehicles, encampments, shelters, others' residences and other locations.

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As with the study conducted in San Francisco, the leading cause of death in the county was from drug overdoses, with 25% of homeless deaths between 2018 and 2020 (190) ... directly due to drug overdose, with the number of overdoses among people experiencing homelessness rising sharply in 2020.

With sky-high housing costs, especially in urban centers like the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, Californians are often stretched to make rent or pay a mortgage. A March poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California found that nearly 55% of state residents said they were concerned about not having enough money to cover their housing costs.

According to data compiled by Zillow, California's median home price rose by more than 20% in 2021, to $793,100. In the coming year it is expected to rise another 5.2%, to $834,400.

As of September 2021, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in California was $1,996, according to Statista.

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Spike in deaths of homeless people not due to COVID, study finds - Yahoo News