Elgin Area Chamber Of Commerce: Goldman Sachs Lowers GDP Forecast, Office Use Mostly Flat, Oracle To Buy Medical Records Firm

Elgin IL

22 December, 2021

2:31 AM

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Press release from the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce: December 21, 2021 By Richard Lawson CoStar News   Goldman Sachs Lowers GDP Forecast Goldman Sachs lowered its forecast for U.S. economic growth next year after Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said he couldn't vote in favor of President Biden's proposed Build Back Better legislation. The roughly $2 trillion spending bill would provide a slew of money for social and climate programs. Manchin, a swing vote in an evenly split Senate, has been negotiating with the White House for months, succeeding in scaling back the overall dollar figure. But on Sunday the senator said he was done negotiating, citing the impact that the bill could have on the energy industry and the potential for creating more reliance on foreign supply chains. He's also been opposed to extending the child tax credit without imposing conditions he said would prevent abuse. Goldman Sachs told clients that U.S. economic growth could weaken without the influx of government spending. The investment bank now projects gross domestic product will grow 2% instead of an earlier projection of 3% in the first quarter after the "apparent demise" of the legislation. It lowered its second-quarter protections from 3.5% to 3%, and third-quarter projections from 3% to 2.75%. All may not be lost, despite rancor between Manchin and Democratic leaders. Politico reported Manchin said that Senate Democrats could still get his vote if they redo the bill, take it through the committee process and stop attempting to browbeat him into support. Office Use Mostly Flat Office use was lackluster last week as winter coronavirus worries mounted. Many of the major metropolitan areas tracked by Falls Church, Virginia-based security firm Kastle Systems saw office use decrease in the week that ended Dec. 15, the second consecutive week with small declines. Kastle gathers anonymous employee data from workplaces where it provides access-control technology. While it is only a sampling of buildings by one security company, the data gives a peek into how employees and employers are responding to office use during the pandemic. The Boston and Atlanta areas, however, saw increases for the week. Office use in the Boston area rose 2.2 percentage points to 48.7%, the same level as two weeks ago. Office use in Atlanta increased 2.7 percentage points to 44.9%, higher than two weeks ago. Oracle To Buy Medical Records Company Software giant Oracle Corp. said Monday it struck a deal to buy an electronic medical records company for $28.3 billion. The Austin, Texas-based company said it would pay cash for Cerner in what could be its biggest acquisition ever. It marks another step toward Oracle's push into cloud computing to compete with the likes of Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft. Part of that effort includes building a massive campus in Nashville, Tennessee, that eventually is expected to employ 8,500 technology professionals. Oracle moved its headquarters to an expanding Austin campus from California over the past year. Cerner, based in North Kansas City, Missouri, develops software that doctors and hospitals use to store and analyze medical records. Oracle's acquisition marks a significant push into the healthcare industry with plans to move Cerner's data to the cloud. "With this acquisition, Oracle's corporate mission expands to assume the responsibility to provide our overworked medical professionals with a new generation of easier-to-use digital tools that enable access to information via a hands-free voice interface to secure cloud applications," Larry Ellison, Oracle's chairman and chief technology officer, said in a statement. Source: www.CoStar.com This press release was produced by the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce. The views expressed here are the author's own.