Dainese Group has announced the grand opening of its latest D-Store flagship retail location in USA at Atlanta, Georgia. Store services include Dainese's Custom Works race suit design programme.
The Motorcycle Action Group (MAG) in the UK has left the Brussels based Federation of European Motorcyclists’ Association (FEMA). MAG claims to have founded the European Riders’ Rights Movement in 1989 and says it has quit FEMA in protest at what it describes as FEMA's "gutless attitude to forced electrification".
The Swiss Hostettler Group has created the role of Chief Commercial Officer, for which it has secured the services of Christophe Miravalls - previously Commercial Director at France’s 2Ride Group. Miravalls will initially be using his expertise to support the Group’s fashion and parts business unit.
U.S. household debt was at an all-time high of $17.3tn entering 2024. The largest increase in any category was credit card debt, which swelled by 16.6% between Q3 2022 and Q3 2023, the most recent term for which federal data is available. That is approx. 67% of annual U.S. GDP(MarketWatch). Meanwhile, the default rate for leveraged corporate loans has increased to 3.4% as of mid-January 2024. This is the second highest level since 2007 (Fitch).
California has the highest number of manufacturing jobs of all U.S. states (around 1.4 million), but among all states, it is Texas that produces the most exports. Meanwhile, California has the most billionaires (186 of them), but it is Wyoming, with six, that has the most billionaires per person - which works out at ten per million people (Economist).
Research suggests that, for the first time, the number of Americans who use marijuana just about every day has surpassed the number who drink that often - "a shift some 40 years in the making as recreational pot use became more mainstream and legal in nearly half of U.S. states". In 2022, an estimated 17.7 million people reported using marijuana daily or near-daily compared to 14.7 million daily or near-daily drinkers. In 1992, when daily pot use hit a low point, less than 1 million people said they used marijuana nearly every day. Alcohol is still more widely used, but 2022 was the first time this intensive level of marijuana use overtook daily and near-daily drinking, said the study's author, Jonathan Caulkins, a cannabis policy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University.
KTM is staging its 19th annual North American Adventure Rider Rally at Deadwood, South Dakota, October 10-13, 2024.
Last year saw renewable sources supply 30% of global electricity for the first time. The rapid growth of solar power led to a record-breaking year for clean energy generation in 2023, and the year is expected to mark the start of a long-term decline in fossil fuels - the rapid growth of solar power in China is being cited as having irrevocably changed the world's electricity mix (New Scientist).
In 1992, America's net debt amounted to 46% of GDP. Today it has reached 96% of GDP. For the past five years, first under Donald Trump and then Joe Biden, the federal deficit has averaged 9% of GDP a year. The IMF says that America's borrowing is so vast that it is endangering global financial stability. S&P and Fitch, two credit-rating agencies, have already downgraded America's debt; a third, Moody's, is threatening to do so (The Economist).
