Category: business news

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Apple Stock Splits and Japanese Pension Funds

What happened last week: 1. Apple announced a stock split. Despite a 16% fall in the sales of iPads and flat revenue, Apple managed to beat analyst expectations by a substantial margin for the first quarter of 2014 (those “in the know” were expecting earnings of $10.08 per share – Apple came in at $11.62 […]

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3D Houses, Tax Fraud and Silvio’s Community Service

What went on last week: 1. Britain’s Unemployment Falls At An Annoyingly Brisk Rate. Britain’s unemployment rate for the 3 months to February fell to 6.9%. And it’s mostly news because 7% was the original benchmark for the Bank of England to declare “crisis averted” and end the looseness of its policies. Only, it abandoned […]

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Heartbleed and the end of the world as we know it

Things that happened last week: 1. The Heartbleed Announcement. It seems that hackers have had full play at our internet passwords for the last two years. A quote from a security expert (probably selected for his dramatic flair): “On the scale of one to 10, this is an 11.” About two thirds of all websites […]

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Mourning Cats and 1 Dollar Salaries for Billionaires

Things that happened last week: 1. Blackberry made another loss. Its 2013 Q4 revenue was down 64% from the same quarter in 2012. Which is, you know, not good. Surprisingly, it only made a $42 million adjusted cash loss – which is certainly less than that embarrassing $4.4 billion loss it reported three months ago. […]

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Chinese bank runs and Oculus death threats

The two (relatively) important things that happened last week: 1. China had some bank runs. In the small town of Yancheng in the Jiangsu province, a rumour spread last week that a small bank had turned down a customer’s request to withdraw 200,000 yuan (about $32,200). This turned into hundreds of customers queuing at the […]

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Privatisation and Bernanke’s Price Tag

What went on last week: 1. Cyprus passed a bill to privatise its utility companies. It was part of the deal required for Cyprus to get the next tranche of her bailout package from the IMF. And I’m pointing it out because it’s definitely a case of neoliberalisation at gunpoint. Does anyone else think that […]

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Mt Gox loses 850,000 bitcoins, and the Freddie Mac dividend spin

I leave internet contact for five days, and I get back to find the Ukraine split down the centre, and the Crimea back under Russian control. It seems that Mr Putin was just waiting for the winter olympics to be over as a small precursor to “let the real games begin”. Anyway, here’s my list […]

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News That Didn’t Involve Facebook and Whatsapp…

Stuff that happened last week: Peugeot is set to receive two capital injections of €800 million each from China’s Dongfeng Motor Group and the French government. Which is totally why you should be wary of buying a Peugeot. Oh alright – Facebook did announce that it was going to buy Whatsapp for $19 billion. Then Whatsapp […]

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Browsing Reuters By Date

I wasn’t really sure what to call this post, because “Keeping It Current” seems outdated, and I’m trying something new. The good news: I finally worked out how to use the Reuters website, which turned out to be remarkably easy. So here is the new(s) and improved summary of last week: Amplats finally hit back […]

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Giraffes and Clerics

What I found interesting last week: 1. The Copenhagen Zoo killed a giraffe and fed him to the lions. This doesn’t really seem to be an economics news item at all; but economics is everywhere, even in the decision to put a bullet through the skull of an 18 month old giraffe called Marius. And […]

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