Ford Motors has hired a new senior exec in an effort to further the company’s push into e-vehicles. Doug Field formerly ran Apple’s “secretive car project,” and his “departure could be a blow to Apple’s auto ambitions, which have been a subject of intense speculation,” as well as a shot across the bow of Tesla, where Field previously “led the development of the company’s Model 3 car” - NYTimes and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and TechCrunch

For its part, Toyota has announced a $9 billion investment in electric-car batter plants over the next decade “as it gears up to sell two million electric cars annually” by 2030. Toyota has been “relatively late in joining the global race to produce and sell battery-powered cars,”  having favored hybrid gas-electric vehicles as the preferable option - WSJ

It was far from smooth sailing on day 1 of El Salvador’s grand Bitcoin-as-national-tender launch, a mess that helped drop the crypto to its lowest value in a month - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch

Today’s opening statements in the long-awaited criminal fraud trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes will be a “major spectacle” not just because of the drama and big-name players associated with the ill-fated blood testing company but because of the “reality that criminal prosecutions in Silicon Valley are a rarity” - NYTimes

PayPal has reached a deal to buy “Japanese ‘buy now, pay later’ startup Paidy Inc. for about $2.7 billion,” a move that should “boost its business” in Japan—the world’s #3 e-commerce market - WSJ and MarketWatch and TechCrunch

For all the inflation talk here in the States in recent months, it may be comforting to know that prices are generally higher across “many advanced economies”—and not just as a matter of sympathy. Instead, the “fact that many economies are experiencing a price pop in tandem” (despite using “vastly different policies to cushion the blow of pandemic lockdowns”) tends to reinforce the belief of many policymakers that “today’s rapid inflation will fade” - NYTimes

The expanded federal unemployment benefits “that have kept millions of Americans afloat during the pandemic” expired on Monday without any signals from the White House or Congress that they will act to resurrect them, even as the Delta variant has added uncertainty to the U.S. economic recovery - NYTimes

Indeed, the latest signs (including last week’s disappointing jobs report) point to a slowing economy rather than the “takeoff once hoped for” - WSJ and Bloomberg

Deutsche Telkom AG has announced a complex share-swap deal with Masa Son’s SoftBank Group that will help the German telecomm giant “beef up” its ownership stake in T-Mobile US (in which it currently holds “a roughly 43% stake”) - WSJ

On the unconscious processes in our “lizard brains” that make hackers’ work that much easier - WSJ

Stay safe, and get vaxxed,

MDR