Notes Today: 

• Adjusting for the people that have dropped out of the labor force, by choice or obligation, the unemployment rate is around 9.5%,” estimated lead U.S. economist Lydia Boussour of Oxford Economics. 

• Consumer credit in the United States increased by $9.73 billion in December of 2020 after rising by a downwardly revised $13.93 billion in the previous month, 

• Bloomberg: By the end of last year, more than 30% of U.S. homeowners were considered equity-rich -- meaning their property was worth twice as much as the underlying mortgage, a report showed. 

• Exxon Mobil posted its first annual loss in at least 40 years. 

• South Korea returned to first place in the latest Bloomberg Innovation Index, while the U.S. dropped out of a top 10 that features a cluster of European countries
  
  
  

 

 

• Guardian: The Texas Republican party has endorsed legislation that would allow state residents to vote whether to secede from the United States.

• President Biden is supposedly on pace to save the U.S.  $124m this year by just not golfing.