Tesla’s new Berlin factory officially kicked off the production process on Tuesday, with ambitious plans to churn out some 500,000 EVs a year. The $7 billion plant, completed in just 2 years, will focus on Model Y SUV...more
Back at it. Let’s dive right in. Fed Chair Powell Jay Powell went on the record to start the week with an attempt to prepare markets for the central bank’s big moves ahead “in its quest to cool off demand and temper...more
With Congress proving unwilling, as yet, to press forward with a comprehensive federal privacy law, states and agencies are filling the void. The latest to do so is the Securities and Exchange Commission, which this week by a...more
A House Judiciary Committee is calling on the DOJ to “investigate Amazon and some of its executives for criminal obstruction of a congressional investigation that included the e-commerce giant.” At issue is the ‘Zon’s alleged...more
Tesla CEO Elon Musk moved this week in SDNY federal court to “scrap a settlement he reached with securities regulators in 2018 that required some of his tweets to be preapproved, a condition that has fomented an ongoing...more
3/9/2022
/ Apple ,
COPPA ,
Elon Musk ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Financial Markets ,
Free Speech ,
Oil Prices ,
Russia ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Tesla ,
Twitter ,
UK
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 is reportedly probing whether recent stock sales by Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal “violated insider-trading rules.” News of the investigation came less than a week after Tesla accused the Commission of...more
Recent news of misinformation out of Russia about alleged troop withdrawals (when, in fact, troops and shelling near the border are up) sent skittish markets down on Thursday. Tech companies were again among “some of the...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
Texas AG Ken Paxton has sued Facebook parent Meta accusing it of violating “a state consumer protection law by repeatedly capturing and commercializing biometric data in photos and videos for more than a decade without the...more
No surprise here—inflation continues to dominate the economic conversation. New CPI numbers showed prices rising some 7.5% in January, topping projections by .3% and “climbing at the fastest pace in 40 years and more quickly...more
California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing has filed a state court action against Tesla that alleges “racial discrimination and harassment at the electric-vehicle maker[‘s]” Fremont factory, the company’s...more
Stronger-than-expected GDP figures for the 4th Quarter and 2021 on the whole was welcome good economic news for the U.S. on Thursday after weeks of volatility and renewed supply-chain issues. Q4 growth clocked in at 1.7%,...more
Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida is heading to the door earlier than planned in what appears to be continuing fallout from 2020 trades he made “as the central bank was poised to rescue financial markets.” Clarida corrected his...more
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
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
A French appeals court cut a 2019 fine by more than half on Monday but still left Swiss bank UBS with a $2 billion penalty “for helping rich clients evade taxes” through what prosecutors called a “long-running scheme” that...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
Workers at a Buffalo, NY-based Starbucks location have voted to unionize, the first ever union to form at one of Sbux’s “nearly 9,000 company-owned stores.” Though but one, the victory “represents a challenge to the labor...more
12/10/2021
/ American Airlines ,
Beatles ,
Boeing ,
Financial Markets ,
Gig Economy ,
Initial Public Offering (IPO) ,
Labor Shortage ,
NBC ,
Price Inflation ,
Robinhood Financial ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) ,
Starbucks ,
Unions
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
The inflation train continued its runaway pace in October, with the CPI rising 6.2%—the “sharpest increase” since 1990. The news is challenging politically for the administration but also for policymakers at the Fed, who are...more
11/11/2021
/ Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Boeing ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Disney ,
Elon Musk ,
Financial Markets ,
Initial Public Offering (IPO) ,
Price Inflation ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Tesla ,
Uber
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
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
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
Apple has officially appealed the September verdict in its years-long battle with Epic Games that was set to “require the tech giant to tweak its strict App Store rules and force it to allow app developers of ways to pay for...more
10/11/2021
/ Apple ,
Banking Sector ,
Biden Administration ,
Climate Change ,
Competition ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Financial Markets ,
Hasbro ,
Oil & Gas ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Startups ,
Stock Markets ,
Tesla