Economists are growing concerned about the $20 trillion commercial real estate (CRE) industry. After decades of thriving growth bolstered by low interest rates and easy credit, commercial real estate has hit a wall. Office and retail property valuations have been falling since the pandemic brought about lower occupancy rates and changes in where people work […]
Category: Business
U.S. TikTok Ban Seems Likely
TikTok CEO Shou Chew received a bruising on Thursday when he appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in Congress, with both Republicans and Democrats fiercely critical of the Chinese-owned social media giant. Chew was interrogated for more than four hours over whether TikTok users’ data could be accessed by the Chinese state, along […]
Will Congress Ban Tik Tok?
On Thursday, TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, will be opening a lion’s mouth and placing his own head into it. He’s giving testimony in the US Congress for the first time, a scary thing to do. And at stake is the future of the phenomenally popular video-sharing app in the US. “I think that there […]
Ford’s Electric Vehicle Unit has lost billions
Ford Motor Co.’s electric vehicle business has lost $3 billion before taxes during the past two years and will lose a similar amount this year as the company invests heavily in the new technology. The figures were released Thursday as Ford rolled out a new way of reporting financial results. The new business structure separates […]
Sports Betting Boom = Addiction, Anxiety, Suicide
The NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Tournament, which just got underway, is the pinnacle of college sports, an annual all-American rah-rah celebration of athletic competition. The Big Dance. The Final Four. March Madness! It is also, increasingly, a chance for a lot of people to bet a lot of money. From the casual fun of […]
The Compact Disc turns 40
The compact disc gave us our first taste of digital music – and we liked it. Upon its arrival in the U.S. in March 1983, the sleek 4.7-inch plastic and aluminum disc – about the size of a drink coaster – promised crisp, clean digital music reproduction without the pops heard on vinyl LPs or […]
Global banking crisis: Not out of the woods yet
After a major, systemically significant bank crumbled over the weekend, the banking crisis left financial institutions and regulators scrambling Monday to prevent its spread. Credit Suisse, hobbled for decades by mismanagement, scandal and bad bets, finally succumbed to the emerging global banking crisis. Its stunning and rapid takeover by rival UBS, orchestrated by Swiss authorities […]
Why are new and used car prices still so high?
It has been nearly three years since auto plants around the world started to shut down because of the pandemic. Yet between the pandemic, an acute shortage of semiconductors and other supply chain snarls, vehicle production has never really returned to normal. And prices? Hoo boy. Both new and used prices have stopped skyrocketing. In […]
Will the Fed’s move this week prove disastrous?
The lightning collapse of three banks and financial industry rescue of a fourth has put a spotlight on the Federal Reserve’s decision next week over whether to continue raising interest rates. Just two weeks after Fed Chair Jerome Powell suggested rates could rise even higher than previously projected in a bid to quash inflation, many […]
Buffalo Wild Wings law suit over fake wings
Can a “boneless chicken wing” truly be called a wing? That’s the question posed by a new class-action lawsuit filed last week in federal court by a Chicago man who purchased a round of boneless wings in January at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Mount Prospect, Ill. Based on the name and description of the […]
Biden to America: Tax the rich but bail them out
Suddenly, no one is all that certain about the financial health of regional banks in the United States. Over the course of the weekend, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank went from a big financial story that might warrant an explainer in this newsletter to a big national story with potentially far-reaching ramifications for the […]
Meet SVB’s ‘Woke’ board of directors
One is a Hillary Clinton mega-donor who went to a Shinto shrine to pray after Donald Trump won the White House. Another worked for President Obama before her own political career spectacularly failed. A third is a prolific contributor to Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi — who owns a Napa Valley vineyard just 15 minutes from […]