Online home buying platform Opendoor Labs will pay $62 million to the FTC “to settle claims that it used misleading marketing practices to persuade people to sell their homes on the site.” According to the Commission, the...more
Those of us even glancing at the business section each morning shouldn’t be surprised at all, but let’s make it official: the first half of 2022 was the worst for investors in more than 50 years. Crytpo’s fallen off the...more
Auditing giant Ernst & Young will pay $100 million to U.S. authorities as part of a deal to resolve claims that “some of its auditors had cheated on ethics exams—and that the firm had done nothing to stop the practice.” That...more
6/28/2022
/ CRISPR ,
Crypto Exchanges ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Electric Vehicles ,
Financial Institutions ,
Financial Markets ,
Germany ,
Oil & Gas ,
Russia ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Spirit Airlines ,
Volkswagen
Fed officials released the results of the latest round of big-bank stress tests conducted by the central bank, and it found “the largest banks in the United States are well capitalized and could weather a severe economic...more
A fire at a liquid natural gas shipping facility in Texas last week has sent U.S. natural-gas prices freefalling after operator Freeport LNG revealed the disaster “would knock out the facility until late this year, greatly...more
Hardly the start to mid-June that we wanted, with markets around the world taking a beating on Monday. The Nasdaq was down more than 4.5%, the Dow nearly 2.8%, and the S&P 500 dipped into official bear market territory. Last...more
Abbott Laboratories, the maker of Similac baby formula and the company at the heart of America’s current formula shortage, has reportedly “reached an agreement with U.S. health officials to restart production at its largest...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
Peloton’s quarterly earnings report showed that the company’s early-pandemic boom times are now firmly behind it, as the connected fitness bike maker delivered losses of $757 million for the first three months of 2022—“far...more
5/11/2022
/ Apple ,
Biden Administration ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Financial Institutions ,
Financial Markets ,
Imports ,
Pfizer ,
Price Inflation ,
Private Equity ,
Stock Markets ,
Tariffs
Despite Friday’s confirmation of another month of robust job growth, Wall Street couldn’t shake a “relentless decline” that’s going on 6 weeks now and was fueled on Monday “by new data from China that added to concerns about...more
Jobs Report Friday. Let’s see if the numbers give us some reason for cheer after markets whipsawed into the red—hard—a day before. [But best to temper hopes for any market recovery, no matter what jobs are, as early signs...more
The Federal Reserve made good on Wednesday of months of rate-hike foreshadowing, announcing a half-percentage-point increase in interest rates and detailing a plan to shrink the central bank’s “massive bond holdings.” In...more
Tesla delivered $3.3 billion in profits during the first three months of 2022, a massive increase from the sub-$500M figure during the same period a year before. Still, the company also told investors on Wednesday that “it...more
In the reversal heard around the tech world on Monday, Elon Musk announced that he would not be joining Twitter’s Board of Directors after all. The social media company had extended the invite to Musk after news broke that he...more
The man who can move the entire crypto industry in 180 characters or less disclosed on Monday a massive new stake in that medium of choice, Twitter. That move made Elon Musk the single biggest shareholder of the social media...more
4/5/2022
/ Amazon ,
CFTC ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Elon Musk ,
Financial Markets ,
Ford Motor ,
Retail Investors ,
Social Media ,
Starbucks ,
Twitter ,
Unions
A weekend of skyrocketing oil prices prompted by talk of the U.S. cutting off all Russian crude imports pushed markets to their worst performance in over a year to start the week. The Nasdaq is now down more than 20% from its...more
3/9/2022
/ Biden Administration ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Cybersecurity ,
Digital Assets ,
Financial Markets ,
Google ,
Imports ,
Oil & Gas ,
Oil Prices ,
Personal Information ,
Russia ,
Trade Relations ,
Ukraine ,
US Trade Policies
In testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, Fed Chair Powell on Wednesday assured lawmakers that despite the state of geopolitics at the moment, the central bank is still “poised to lift interest rates at its...more
The SEC has opened a probe into the relationship between “the U.S. arm of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and two trading firms with ties to Binance’s founder.” Those firms “act as market makers that...more
Not that far removed from a gangbusters pandemic performance by his company driven by exercise-crazed consumer panic-buying its bikes and treadmills, Peloton founder John Foley has stepped down as company CEO and announced...more
The Fed finally made good on its promise to seriously consider a central bank digital currency with a report released on Thursday that “examines the idea’s potential costs and benefits and open[s] the door for public...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
The release of the Fed’s December meeting minutes (and its discussion of a quickened pace of rate hikes) was all it took to rattle markets, with the S&P 500 dropping nearly 2% on Wednesday—“its biggest drop in weeks.”...more
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
Despite an outwardly polite virtual meeting of FDIC board members this week, a controversy is roiling just beneath the surface, with several board members questioning whether FDIC Chair Jelena McWilliams—a holdover from the...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