Business

MIDDLETOWN, CT — The coronavirus is having a profound impact on the global economy, and has been particularly damaging to local businesses that depend on foot-traffic and in-person interactions with their customers. Even so, many businesses have found ways to stay open and to offer delivery, pick-up and safe-distance transactions to serve the community. … [Read more...] about Middletown Local Business Guide: What’s Open Or Closed

“I don’t want to use the word panic, I don’t think it’s there yet, but I would say unnerving and unprecedented,” said Deanne Doane, with the Wayne Business Association. “I would say in a community that is supported nearly wholly by locally-owned businesses, this is so unprecedented to have this effect literally every type of business.” … [Read more...] about Coronavirus Pennsylvania: ‘Really No End In Sight’ For Small Businesses As Stay-At-Home Orders Extended

The financial impact will almost certainly be negative, but Parr is most concerned about the health of customers and employees, many of whom are senior citizens and have a higher risk of becoming infected. If someone at the store tested positive or came into close contact with someone who had COVID-19, she would close the store for at least two weeks. … [Read more...] about Hardware store weighs health with decrease in business

The tally, which excludes mortgages and other loans secured by real estate, is expected to show consumer borrowing increased by $15.6 billion, up from a gain of $12 billion the previous month. That gain in January pushed total consumer credit to a record $4.2 trillion. Consumer borrowing is closely followed for clues to the willingness of households to go into debt to support their spending. … [Read more...] about This Week: Debt tally, PriceSmart earns, consumer sentiment

“It seems like volunteers for ISIS are surfing for the sublime,” Atran wrote to me on Sunday. They are escaping “the jaded, tired world of democratic liberalism, especially on the margins where Europe’s immigrants mostly live.” As Atran notes, “many are just ‘vacationers’ for Jihad, going to Syria over school breaks or holidays for the thrill of adventure and a semblance of glory, and returning to tolerably easy but somewhat soulless lives in the West, driving taxis, cooking in fast food joints, going to computer classes, or whatever. But the successes of ISIS are drawing in greater commitments now. The beheadings are doing what the images of the collapsing towers did for al Qaeda, turning terror into a display of triumph…In Burke’s sense, a display of the sublime.” … [Read more...] about ISIS, Hip-Hop Jihadists and the Man Who Killed James Foley