Business Highlights Roundup of top economy stories
NEW YORK — All 23 of the nation’s biggest banks are healthy enough to withstand a sudden economic catastrophe, the Federal Reserve said Thursday, releasing the results from its latest “stress tests.” It gives the banks the green light to resume paying out dividends to investors and buying back their stock. This year’s harshest test, known as the “severely adverse scenario,” involved a hypothetical global recession lasting from late 2020 to September 2022, causing the U.S. economy to contract 4%. Unemployment would jump to 10.75%, and stock prices would fall 55%. Even under this scenario, all banks would have enough capital to continue to operate with room to spare.
LONDON — Google is delaying by nearly two years the phase out of Chrome web browser technology that tracks users for ad purposes, saying that it needs more time to develop a replacement system. The tech giant on Thursday moved its deadline to remove so-called third-party cookies to late 2023 rather than January 2022 as was initially planned. Third-party cookies are snippets of code that log user info and are used by advertisers to more effectively target their campaigns, thereby helping fund free online content such as newspapers and blogs. However, they’ve also been a longstanding source of privacy concerns because they can be employed to track users across the internet.
NEW YORK — FedEx reported a nearly $2 billion profit in its most recent quarter, after reporting a loss the year before, helped by a surge in online shopping and the growth of its business-to-business shipping services. Package delivery companies like FedEx have been in high demand during the pandemic, as more people stayed home and shopped online. At the same time, FedEx has been delivering COVID-19 vaccines. The Memphis, Tennessee-based company reported net income of $1.87 billion for the three months ending May 31, compared with a $334 million loss in the same period the year before.
NEW YORK — Congress has overturned a set of regulations enacted in the final days of the Trump administration that effectively allowed payday lenders to avoid state laws capping interest rates. The House voted 218-208 to overturn the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s payday lending regulations with one Republican voting with Democrats. Thursday’s vote to overturn the OCC’s “true lender rules” marked the first time Democrats in Congress successfully overturned regulations using the Congressional Review Act. The act was enacted in the mid-1990s and gives Congress the authority to overrule federal agency rules and regulations with a simple majority vote in the House and Senate.
WASHINGTON — Sales of new homes fell for a second month in May, dropping by a larger-than-expected 5.9%.
The May sales decline pushed sales to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 769,000, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.
The median price of a new home sold in May rose to $374,400, up 18.1% from a year ago.