Back at it. Hope all had a great Memorial Day break. Despite our first week of gains on the Street in a good long while, pessimism is the name of the game for most in the U.S. economy at the moment. Front and center: the...more
Inflation slowed from a month earlier but still topped 8% in the U.S., according to latest CPI figures, an “uncomfortably rapid pace.” Though overall inflation was down, core inflation—“which excludes costs for groceries and...more
Jobs Report Friday again, and general consensus is that with the Omicron surge hitting smack dab in the middle of January hiring, these numbers are going to be weird. Very weird...more
Markets pulled themselves back from the brink of a truly devastating Monday of trading to end the day, but their one-day fall of 3-4% yesterday suggests that the volatility that’s marked the first three weeks of 2022 may be...more
A week after SCOTUS scuttled the Biden Administration’s “effort to enlist large employers in its vaccination campaign,” Starbucks has “become one of the first major retailers to backtrack on vaccine plans” for its employees....more
Next up for Activision Blizzard, which we noted yesterday was in the midst of a 6-month process of shedding employees associated with a harassment scandal rocking its ranks: a new corporate owner. Microsoft announced its...more
Unilever kicked off the hostile takeover season on Monday by confirming that it remained interested buying out the joint venture of GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer—GSK Consumer Health—despite GSK’s rejection of three previous...more
Consumer Price Index numbers out on Wednesday hit economists’ expectations, an increase of 7% as compared to a year earlier. Though the figure was expected, it was also the first time CPI rose that much since 1982, as strong...more
The latest from Fed Chair Powell’s first day of confirmation hearings, including the expected news that the central bank is prepared to raise interest rates to tame inflation, tying that goal to the Fed’s other mandate by...more
Jobs Report Friday! Here’s what we’re looking for in the numbers, including a possible rebound from November’s lower-than-expected figures. Note that the report also likely doesn’t account for the recent Omicron surge, which...more
1/7/2022
/ Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Privacy ,
Facebook ,
Financial Markets ,
Google ,
International Trade Commission (ITC) ,
Public Policy ,
Starbucks ,
Subscription Services ,
Supply Chain
4.5 million Americans—a new record—voluntarily left their jobs in November, continuing a trend that marked much of 2021 thanks to “strong employer demand” that’s allowing some workers to “pursue better opportunities.” While...more
1/7/2022
/ AT&T ,
Bitcoin ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Economic Downturn ,
Financial Markets ,
FinTech ,
General Motors ,
Goldman Sachs ,
Hospitality Industry ,
Retail Market ,
Telecommunications ,
Toyota ,
Verizon ,
Wells Fargo
As we’ve been expecting thanks to some heavy foreshadowing from Chair Powell and others, the Federal Reserve wrapped its December Open Markets Committee meeting with the news that it would “cut back on [its] stimulus more...more
Instacart President Carolyn Everson is heading out the door at the end of the year after just 4 months at the food-delivery company—the “second high-profile departure in recent months ahead of a possible public offering”...more
Samsung surprised the business world today by replacing the “heads of its three major business units and merg[ing] the company’s mobile and consumer electronics businesses into a single unit.” The moves mean the South Korean...more
12/8/2021
/ Bitcoin ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Financial Institutions ,
Financial Markets ,
Mergers ,
Publicly-Traded Companies ,
Samsung ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) ,
Tesla
Jobs Report Friday, again. Here’s what we’re looking for in the numbers and why economists are generally optimistic about these pre-Omicron figures - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch Count Thursday as a...more
The European Union has fined four banks nearly $400 million over their alleged roles in “a cartel in the foreign-exchange spot trading market.” Bankers at Barclays, RBS, HSBC, and Credit Suisse (along with UBS, which avoided...more
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is stepping down, effectively immediately, from the site he co-founded in 2006. He was replaced by company CTO Parag Agrawal, “who has recently been working on technologies associated with...more
Uncertainty surrounding the emergence of the Omicron Variant in South Africa (and elsewhere since) drove markets to a dismal Black Friday performance, as hastily issued travel bans and fears of new lockdowns overwhelmed Wall...more
11/29/2021
/ Commercial Truck Drivers ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Cybersecurity ,
Electric Vehicles ,
Financial Markets ,
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ,
Hertz ,
Nissan ,
Robinhood Financial ,
Supply Chain ,
Travel Ban
It was a slog, to be sure, but Congress finally made President Biden’s infrastructure plan a reality late Friday, guaranteeing nearly “$600 billion in new federal aid to improve highways, bridges, dams, public transit, rail,...more
Jobs Report Friday again! And this one should be a doozy, as we look for what a wave of recent strikes, increased competition for workers, and millions of workers reconsidering career paths will mean for the numbers...more
11/5/2021
/ AT&T ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Facebook ,
Financial Markets ,
Initial Public Offering (IPO) ,
Instagram ,
Jeff Bezos ,
NASA ,
Oil Prices ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Theranos ,
Uber ,
Verizon
All the details from the Fed’s long-awaited tapering announcement on Wednesday, in the central bank laid out a plan for slowing its Covid-era asset-buying program. During comments after the Fed’s release, Chair Powell...more
E-truck maker Rivian Automotive, the Amazon- and Ford-backed startup that’s “received roughly $10.5 billion since the start of 2019” as a private company, is seeking a valuation of “just above $60 billion in its initial...more
11/2/2021
/ Amazon ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Financial Markets ,
Initial Public Offering (IPO) ,
Institutional Investors ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Stablecoins ,
Startups ,
U.S. Treasury ,
Zillow
Facebook has issued a broad legal hold to employees instructing them to “preserve internal documents and communications since 2016” about its business following “intense media, legal and regulatory scrutiny over the social...more
The SEC was out Monday with a long-awaited report on the meme-stock frenzy that helped propel GameStop and a handful of other “little-regarded” companies to meteoric rises in the depths of our first Covid winter. The report,...more
10/20/2021
/ Amazon ,
American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 ,
Apple ,
China ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Cybersecurity ,
Financial Markets ,
Internet Memes ,
Investors ,
Publicly-Traded Companies ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Starbucks ,
Stocks ,
Zillow
Hollywood’s behind-the-scenes “version of blue-collar workers—camera operators, makeup artists, prop makers, set dressers,” and their ilk—reached a “tentative agreement for a new three-year contact with film and television...more
10/18/2021
/ CFTC ,
China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) ,
Competition ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Digital Currency ,
Entertainment Industry ,
Facebook ,
Financial Markets ,
Goldman Sachs ,
Instagram ,
Labor Relations ,
Social Media ,
Stablecoins ,
Strike ,
Unions