On Tuesday, Tesla Motors—the eclectic, aggressive electric-car company that is promising to upend the automotive industry—was in the news for two seemingly distinct but in fact related issues.
Read moreMacy’s is Laying off 10,000. Is it Donald Trump’s Fault?
Trump has proven adept at taking credit via tweet for a series of decisions by multinational companies to invest in factories and hiring in the United States, most recently the announcement by Fiat (which is part of Chrysler Motors) to invest $1 billion to modernize two of its auto plants in Michigan and Ohio.
Read moreYes, Wall Street’s Bullish on Trump—Which May or May Not Be Good News
Those who have been hard-hit by the dual forces of globalization and technology flocked to Trump's promise to restore jobs and wages, convinced with good reason that only a radical choice for president had any chance of reversing or at least halting these trends.
Read moreRussia Mess Shouldn’t Stop Trump From Shaking Up Shaky American Foreign Policies
Trump's plans to appoint Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state has been clouded by confirmation from the CIA that Russian security services engineered the release of hacked information designed to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Read moreDon’t Trust the Economic Numbers That Govern Our World
Every week we’re bombarded by numbers about GDP or consumer confidence or some other leading indicator about our economic health and prosperity. Enough, says Zachary Karabell, these numbers don’t accurately reflect our world.
Read moreThe Number: Zachary Karabell
Daniel Gross is joined by Newsweek & The Daily Beast contributor Zachary Karabell to predict what the year 2013 will hold. Karabell says this year will be the year of Mexico and the return of NAFTA.
Read moreThe Number: 2013
Will this be the year of Mexico? Global business editor Daniel Gross is joined by Zachary Karabell to predict what 2013 will hold. (Hint: Get used to the acronym NAFTA.)
Read moreThe Number: 22
That's how many days until we go over the so-called fiscal cliff—but should the public panic? Global business Dan Gross and contributor Zachary Karabell on why Americans shouldn't tear out their hair. Yet.
Read moreStandard & Poor’s and Other Ratings Agencies Must End Their Power Trip
In early December, the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s placed all 15 Eurozone countries under what it calls “negative credit watch.” Typically, that means there is an even possibility that it will downgrade the credit of these countries within 90 days.
Read moreCheers to Ben Bernanke & Central Bankers
The Fed will keep interest rates low for several years and aggressively buy up bonds, Ben Bernanke announced today. When will elected officials catch up to the unsung heroics of central bankers?
Read moreMario Draghi May Become the Man Who Saved Europe—and the World
The decision by the European Central Bank chief to provide almost unlimited funds to troubled governments could lead to the end of the Eurozone crisis, put a stop to financial dominoes falling, and lead to global economic stability.
Read moreThe Number: 2.03%
That's the interest rate that Spain had to pay for selling six-month bonds. Dan Gross and Zachary Karabell on how this could be the beginning of the end of the Euro crisis.
Read moreInside the Ryan Budget
Is Paul Ryan's budget plan a liability for Romney? Or are Dems celebrating too soon? Patricia Murphy, Zachary Karabell, and John Avlon take a closer look at the details.
Read moreRyan Budget Plan Sounds Good But Lacks Substance
The addition of Paul Ryan to the Republican ticket for the 2012 presidential election has been hailed by many as a welcome turn in the campaign away from vacuous mudslinging and toward a more substantive debate about pressing issues. Both Democrats and Republicans appear to welcome that debate, at least now. In that sense, Ryan’s nod for vice president is unequivocally a positive and does in fact inject what has been a curiously hollow campaign with a dose of real substance.
Read moreIs the GDP Report Really Important?
Today’s GDP report is proof of something that many have long suspected. Not, as the first headlines shouted, that the U.S. economy is in trouble, but that we need to stop using these numbers as proxies for how we are faring as a nation.
Read moreWall Street’s Irrational Negative Reaction to Apple’s Earnings Report
A large multinational company announces that its business has grown significantly from a year earlier, that its earnings are up more than 20 percent and its sales up nearly 25 percent. Its products continued to see strong demand around the world, with the only negative being that some people apparently held off buying because they wanted to wait for the newest version.
Read moreYahoo Aims to Achieve Turnaround Dream With Hire of Marissa Mayer
In the past year, several tech companies that once seem inviolable have fractured badly—Research in Motion and Nokia most notably. Yahoo, which yesterday announced a surprising and energetic choice of Marissa Mayer as its new CEO, is not in such dire straits, but only just. Its revenues have been on a multiyear secular decline, occasionally flowing, mostly ebbing; it lost the battle with Google as a search engine; and its content, while stellar, may be unable to support its current structure and identity. Mayer is a bold hire, and visions of another turnaround, that of Apple in the late 1990s, must surely be a dream. The question will be whether that dream has any chance of becoming real.
Read moreDon’t Just Blame Banks for Barclays Interest-Rates Mess
What began with a scandal that brought down the management of the venerable British bank Barclays is rapidly escalating. Barclays traders attempted to manipulate an obscure benchmark for global interest rates known as LIBOR, and it is now evident that Barclays was far from alone in its behavior.
Read moreUnemployment Report: Why Job Growth Is Stalling
Today’s jobs report, released to a sweltering nation, will do nothing to dispel the political heat. According to numbers compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job growth remained stubbornly anemic, with 80,000 new jobs added in June.
Read moreThe Fed’s Forthright Admission About Our Messy Economic Situation
The Federal Reserve concluded its June meeting today with a statement and a Ben Bernanke press conference. A variety of measures were announced, including an extension of an arcane but consequential policy of buying hundreds of billions of dollars of Treasury bonds ($267 billion to be exact) in order to keep interest rates low, on top of the $400 billion the Fed has already purchased since last September.
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