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☆ After strong e-commerce sales during Black Friday, Jim Cramer explains how new technology enables success of smaller businesses
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-27 | by ( Julie Coleman | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

CNBC's Jim Cramer on Monday lauded the success of e-commerce merchants during Black Friday, suggesting that new technology and online services has helped small and medium-sized businesses turn profits. Cramer cited data from Shopify President Harley Finkelstein, who said the e-commerce platform saw $4.1 billion in sales on Black Friday, up 22% from last year. Shopify helps merchants build online stores, offering a variety of services, including shipping and inventory management, for around $39 per month. Owners are are empowered by new, fairly accessible tools that help them succeed despite an economy burdened by the Federal Reserve's rate hikes, Cramer said. There are a number of companies that allow small businesses compete with larger ones by offering services at reasonable prices, such as website designer Wix.com , Cramer said.

Persons: CNBC's Jim Cramer, Cramer, Harley Finkelstein, Wix.com, Twilio Organizations: Federal, Intuit, Social Locations: Black

☆ I Tried Meta’s Ad-Free Instagram Subscription. This Is What It Was Like.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-19 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Earlier this year, I visited a washable rug’s website and decided it wasn’t for me. Then its relentless pursuit of me began—especially on Instagram. So when an option popped up to get rid of all ads on the social network, I jumped at the chance to try it. I paid a fee, about $14 in the app, eager to see a feed unencumbered by lurking rugs and other junk ads.

☆ I Paid $14 for a Month of Ad-Free Instagram—Was It Worth It?
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-19 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ Astra defaults on debt agreement, warns it may not be able to raise needed cash
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-03 | by ( Michael Sheetz | In Michaeljsheetz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Struggling space company Astra disclosed in a securities filing late Friday that it defaulted on a recent debt agreement and may not be able to raise needed cash as funds dwindle. Astra twice last month failed to meet minimum cash reserve requirements associated with a $12.5 million note issuance to New Jersey investment group High Trail Capital. The debt raise first required that Astra have "at least $15.0 million of cash and cash equivalents" on hand. That liquidity requirement was adjusted after Astra failed to prove compliance a first time, to require "at least $10.5 million of unrestricted, unencumbered cash and cash equivalents." The company performed a 1-for-15 reverse stock split in September to avoid a Nasdaq delisting, which temporarily brought Astra stock above $1 a share.

Organizations: NASA, Astra, High Locations: Florida's Cape Canaveral, New Jersey

☆ Opinion: Matthew Perry wanted to escape being Chandler Bing
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-02 | by ( Jane Carr | Opinion Holly Thomas | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Commentators have paid tribute to Perry and to Chandler in equal measure. As Perry made clear in his 2022 autobiography, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” it did not. Chandler, Perry insisted, was a front. Three weeks before his audition for “Friends,” Perry said he fell to his knees and prayed “God, you can do whatever you want to me. Though Perry wanted to escape Chandler, he kept him around, because heaven forbid anyone saw what he was hiding.

Persons: Holly Thomas, Katie Couric, Matthew Perry, Chandler Bing, Holly Thomas Holly Thomas, Perry, Chandler, they’d, ”, he’d, , ” Perry, “, Perry’s, unencumbered, Monica, Jennifer Aniston, George Clooney, Michael J, ’, couldn’t, Roger Organizations: Katie Couric Media, CNN, “, Fox Locations: London, Los Angeles, New York, Canada

☆ Opinion | A Tech Billionaire’s Case for Why Tech Billionaires Should Rule the World
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-28 | by ( Elizabeth Spiers | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

It takes a certain kind of person to write grandiose manifestoes for public consumption, unafflicted by self-doubt or denuded of self-interest. In this vision, wealthy technologists are not just leaders of their business but keepers of the social order, unencumbered by what Mr. Andreessen labels “enemies”: social responsibility, trust and safety, tech ethics, to name a few. But the real problem with Mr. Andreessen’s manifesto may be not that it’s too outlandish, but that it’s too on-the-nose. In the case of ordinary individuals, however, debt is regarded as not just a financial failure but a moral one. (If you are successful and have paid your student loans off, taking them out in the first place was a good decision.

Persons: Marc Andreessen, Andreessen Horowitz, ” Organizations: Netscape

☆ Opinion: Why GOP’s impeachment impulse will backfire with independents
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-13 | by ( John | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

With a five-vote margin in the House — and 18 House GOP members representing districts President Joe Biden won — the math just doesn’t work. The impeachment of President Andrew Johnson during Reconstruction and the impeachment inquiry into President Richard Nixon for Watergate were separated by more than a century. The impeachment of President Bill Clinton and the double impeachment of President Donald Trump were separated by a little more than 20 years. The only silver lining in this dark cloud over the Biden White House comes from independents’ take on the alternative. As our colleague Harry Enten points out, just 33% of independents think Biden did something illegal, according to a recent Fox News poll.

Persons: John Avlon, “, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kevin McCarthy, McCarthy, Joe Biden, Trump, Biden, Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Hunter, Biden’s, “ Trump, ”, Harry Enten, Nikki Haley, Haley, Cornel West, lionize Organizations: CNN, GOP, Republicans, Reconstruction, Biden, ’, Trump, ” Independent, Fox, Twitter, Green, Party Locations: “ Lincoln, America, CNN’s

☆ This health-care stock is set to complete another spin-off. Here's what it means for our position in the stock
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-08 | by ( Kevin Stankiewicz | In Kevinstankiewicz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

Veralto will consist of two primary divisions – water quality and product quality & innovation – which generated nearly $5 billion in combined sales in 2022 under the Danaher roof. The water quality unit contributed about 60% of that figure. Bottom line We expect to stay invested in both Danaher and Veralto once the spin-off is completed and the tax-free share distribution occurs on Sept. 30. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade.

Persons: we're, Jennifer Honeycutt, Melissa Aquino, –, Sameer Ralhan, Ralhan, Danaher, Veralto, they're, Jim Cramer's, Jim Cramer, Jim, Joe Raedle Organizations: Wall Street, Veralto's, CNBC, Miami, Getty Locations: Danaher, Veralto, New York, U.S, . New York City

Overall U.S. banks' cash assets were $3.26 trillion as of Aug. 23, up 5.4% from the end of 2022. The SVB failure triggered a sudden dash for cash at banks, which within two weeks had bulked up cash assets to $3.49 trillion, the highest level since April 2022. It has $420 billion in cash and $990 billionof what it calls high quality liquidity assets and other unencumbered securities, it said. "The good news is for some of these banks re-investing cash is that we have pretty high short-term rates," said Mac Sykes, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds. "It's definitely opportunistic and advantageous to be investing short-term securities."

Persons: Carlo Allegri, David Fanger, Moody's, Brendan Browne, Manan Gosalia, Morgan Stanley, Peter Marshall, Mac Sykes, Saeed Azhar, Ann Saphir, Niket, Megan Davies, Nick Zieminski, Richard Chang Organizations: Bank of America, REUTERS, FRANCISCO, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, Federal, Graphics, Reuters, JPMorgan, Federal Reserve, Regulators, FDIC, Gabelli, Thomson Locations: Manhattan, New York City , New York, U.S, Silicon

☆ Opinion | The Georgia Indictment Speaks to History
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-16 | by ( David Firestone | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

No one knows whether these charges will lead to convicting Mr. Trump and the other conspirators or in keeping him from power. But even if it doesn’t, the indictment, and the evidence supporting it, and the trial that ideally will follow it, will have a lasting value. Unlike the other three cases against Mr. Trump, this one is an indictment for history, for the generations to come who will want to know precisely how the men and women in Mr. Trump’s orbit tried to subvert the Constitution and undermine American democracy, and why they failed. History needs a story line to be fully understood. But in Georgia, Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, was unencumbered by the narrower confines of federal law and was able to use the more expansive state RICO statute to draw the clearest, most detailed picture yet of Mr. Trump’s plot.

Persons: Donald Trump, Trump, Jack Smith, Mike Pence, Fani Willis Locations: Georgia, American, Fulton County

☆ How ‘Soul Train’ immortalized an exuberant era of Black style, movement and culture
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-30 | by ( Brooklyn White-Grier | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

This was “Soul Train,” the music television series that served as Blackness’ binoculars. In the middle of the Black Power era and feeding from the civil rights movement, “Soul Train” provided a fresh opportunity for Black people to see and celebrate themselves. “We wouldn’t have a house party or at a club where we weren’t doing the ‘Soul Train’ line,” she said. “Those were the fits and the looks and the moves where I think ‘Soul Train’ probably had its biggest influence.”Still, Cochrane, a Gen X-er, says that her era of the “Soul Train” — and the “Soul Train” line — moved with the times. “But it was on ‘Soul Train’ that we got to see our favorite artist, hear our beloved songs, get our style trends and language.

Persons: — You’ve, you’d, ”, Chicago’s, Jackson, Dyana Williams, “, Williams, ” Williams, George E, Johnson, Ultra Sheen, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Sly Stone, Sly, Nelson George’s, Todd Oldham, ” Oldham, It’s, Don Cornelius, Kenneth Gamble, Gamble, Huff, Naima Cochrane, Cochrane, Michael Ochs, Rosie Perez, Patrice Rushen, Fred Berry, Vivica, Cheryl Song, Nobody, ” Cochrane, ” “, ’ ” Williams, Black Television ” Organizations: CNN, TRL, Ultra, Black Power, Michael Ochs Archives, Fox, Black Television Locations: Afro Sheen, America, Washington ,, Philadelphia, Shalamar, American

☆ Quadruplets With Schizophrenia? Researchers Were Confounded.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-19 | by ( Jonathan Rosen | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The Quadruplets Research Committee that Rosenthal oversaw included psychologists, psychoanalysts, social workers, sociologists and a geneticist. Gathering up the committee’s disparate findings, Rosenthal published “The Genain Quadruplets: A Case Study and Theoretical Analysis of Heredity and Environment in Schizophrenia” in 1963, when psychiatry itself was at a crossroads, and President Kennedy had called for the replacement of state hospitals with community care. The violence and dysfunction Farley describes is gothically sordid, painful to read about and entirely believable. But as the fairy-tale title suggests, “Girls and Their Monsters” is more concerned with the mythic and metaphorical than the medical. Farley’s subtitle replaces schizophrenia, heredity and environment with “the Making of Modern Madness,” evoking Thomas Szasz’ “The Manufacture of Madness,” which likened psychiatry to the Spanish Inquisition, and Michel Foucault’s theory of mental illness as a socially constructed tool of state power.

Persons: Rosenthal, Kennedy, Carl, Farley, —, Thomas Szasz ’, Michel Foucault’s Organizations: Research, Schizophrenia, N.I.M.H, “, Spanish

☆ A Royal Soldier Fainted in the Heat. It Holds a Lesson for All of Us.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-12 | by ( Jon Mooallem | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

On Mean Earth, all kinds of previously durable infrastructure can be undermined or undone. Consequently, the predicament of that trombonist in his woolen clothes feels increasingly familiar. All of us may find ourselves clinging to habits that, here on Mean Earth, are losing their usefulness and power. But imagine what it would feel like: the weight of the bearskin lifting, the heat beginning to vent freely from the dome of the head. It would still be hot — abominably hot — but at least you’d be standing unencumbered in this world, as it is.

Persons: we’ve, Prince William, ”

☆ Pandemic Divisiveness in the U.S. Wasn’t What It Seemed - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-28 | by ( David Wallace-Wells | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

I’d like to tell you a story about the pandemic, one that may sound so gauzily hopeful, it would qualify today as a public health fairy tale. Instead, political leaders could have moved forward more or less in unison, navigating epidemiological uncertainties unencumbered by the weight of the culture war. But at the state and local levels, for many months, red and blue authorities moved in quite close parallel. For the most part, red and blue people did, too. Over the next few weeks, inspired by this book and a few other efforts at pandemic autopsy, I’ll examine the experience of 2020 and how it is already distorted in our memory.

Persons: Covid Organizations: PublicAffairs Locations: United States

☆ Morning Bid: China gets weary of a weakening yuan
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-27 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

China, unencumbered as it is by global pacts and commitments on market rates, has reacted swiftly this week. State banks have sold dollars to slow the yuan's decline, and the mid-point for daily trade has also been adjusted. Likewise, when it's around the 145-150 levels, the yen tips the cost-benefit balance for Japan too. Japan's yen has weakened against the dollar so far this year significantly more than its regional counterparts. The yuan has slid more than 4% against the dollar so far this year.

Persons: Vidya Ranganathan, Masato Kanda, Muralikumar Organizations: Vidya, ECB's, Thomson Locations: U.S, China, Japan, ECB's Sintra

☆ People are impersonating homeowners to take out mortgages and steal the money. Here are the best ways to stop it happening to you.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-14 | by ( Joshua Zitser | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Three industry professionals told Insider that incidents like this also happen in the US, and that homeowners should be taking steps to avoid it happening to them. The frequency of this specific type of fraud is hard to quantify, with most data tending to focus on the prevalence of mortgage fraud as a whole. Industry professionals told Insider in March that real-estate fraud as a whole has surged in the past year. Even in cases where the defrauded individuals successfully contest the loan, Berg said it can still be "costly and, of course, upsetting." The experts agreed that another way to stay safe is by purchasing insurance, such as an owner's title policy.

Persons: —, Jay Allen Macdougall, Macdougall, Josh Migdal, Migdal, Hayden, Arthur Pfizenmayer, Pfizenmayer, Bridget Berg, Berg Organizations: Service, Toronto, FBI, Federal Trade Commission, Industry, United States Sentencing Commission Locations: Canada, Pfizenmeyer, CoreLogic

[1/2] Ukrainian artillery fires towards the frontline during heavy fighting amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, near Bakhmut, Ukraine, April 13, 2023. Following Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's visit to Japan during the Hiroshima G7 leaders summit last month, Kishida agreed to donate jeeps and trucks. Japan is one of dozens of friends and allies that Washington is asking to help arm Ukraine as it wrestles with stretched military supply chains. Reuters contacted 22 explosives makers listed on the Japan Explosives Industry Association's website. The only one that said it made industrial TNT was Chugoku Kayaku, an Hiroshima-based firm that supplies Japan's military.

Persons: Kai Pfaffenbach, Lloyd Austin, Washington, Fumio Kishida, Volodymyr Zelenskiy's, Kishida, Tsuneo Watanabe, Austin, Akihisa Nagashima, Tim Kelly, Nobuhiro Kubo, Yukiko Toyoda, Kaori Kaneko, Idrees Ali, David Crawshaw Organizations: REUTERS, TNT, Russian, Reuters, Panasonic, Defense, U.S, Japan's Ministry of Trade, Industry, Technology, Logistics Agency, U.S . State Department, Ukraine, TNT Washington, Japan Explosives Industry, Liberal Democratic Party, Thomson Locations: Ukraine, Bakhmut, TOKYO, United States, Japan, Washington, U.S, Tokyo, China, Taiwan, East Asia, Kyiv, Hiroshima, Sasakawa, South Korea, Chugoku, Japan's, Russia, Seoul

☆ Ryanair reports bumper profit on 'favorable' fuel hedges, sees major industry consolidation
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( Elliot Smith | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Ryanair reported a bumper full-year profit for 2022/23 on the back of resurgent traffic and favorable oil hedges. Ryanair on Monday posted a full-year net profit of 1.43 billion euros ($1.55 billion), aided by resurgent traffic and fares, along with favorable oil hedging positions. The Irish low-cost carrier reported a 74% increase in full-year traffic to 168.6 million customers, while fares were up 10% on pre-Covid levels. $64bbl) contributed significantly to the final FY23 profit outcome, saving the Group over €1.4bn," CEO Michael O'Leary said in Monday's earnings report. But he said Ryanair is confident it can cover the cost increase and grow profits "modestly" on a year-on-year basis.

☆ Cryptocurrencies rally despite shutdown of crypto friendly Signature Bank, bitcoin breaks through $24,000
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Tanaya Macheel | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Since the January rally in risk assets began to fizzle out, chart analysts have been looking for a meaningful break above $25,000. "Bitcoin is one of the most sensitive assets to market liquidity, since its 'risk' profile is unencumbered by earnings or ratings concerns," she said. Signature Bank was another famously crypto-friendly institution and the next biggest one next to Silvergate, which announced its impending liquidation last week. Wall Street analysts Friday had maintained buy ratings on Signature Bank, even as the bad news around Silvergate and SVB unfolded. The end of the Silvergate-Signature duo leaves crypto with few "on-ramps" that allow fiat money to flow into crypto assets.

☆ Resilient stock market finds support at just the right time, preserving uptrend
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-04 | by ( Michael Santoli | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Did the "soft landing" occur six months ago, at least in market terms? The leadership profile speaks, perhaps, to an elongated economic and Fed tightening cycle and suggests where within a notably bifurcated market investors should migrate. For one thing, the stock market surely can be prone to misapprehending the next macro turn and can overshoot reality in the short term. BCA Research here shows the sobering harmony in the current market trajectory and that of the early-2000s post-tech-bubble bear market. We can note, though, that the S & P 500 back then never spent as much as a month above its 200-day moving average as it has this year.

☆ Singapore's digital banks dangle incentives to win new customers — is it sustainable?
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Sheila Chiang | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Singapore's new digital retail banks are offering lower fees, more incentives and waiving minimum account balances to win over customers from traditional banks. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesSINGAPORE — Digital retail banks in Singapore are pulling out all stops to win new customers. Unlike traditional banks — like DBS , OCBC and UOB — which operate physical branches and automated teller machines, digital banks operate entirely online. Singapore's new digital banksThe city-state gave out four digital bank licenses in December 2020. The other two digital wholesale bank licenses were bagged by Ant Group's ANEXT Bank and Green Link Digital Bank, catering to small-and-medium enterprises and other non-retail segments.

☆ Matt Gaetz tried playing kingmaker during the House speaker vote after spending 2 years as a political pariah. Republicans say the grandstanding is unlikely to stop.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Warren Rojas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz was a key player in the House speaker vote fight. "I don't think this guy's looking to be a policymaker," the GOP strategist told Insider. Doug Heye, a former House leadership aide turned GOP strategist, said the jury's still very much out on Gaetz's motivations and his endgame. Or, it could be as easy as believing that guy who donned a gas mask to ridicule a House vote on COVID-19 relief is committed to troublemaking. Not a workaholicA former House GOP leadership aide said Gaetz's reputation precedes him on Capitol HIll.

☆ Biogen's new CEO says Alzheimer's will become a major franchise for the company but that a different drug has the 'biggest undervalued potential'
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Yeji Jesse Lee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

But new CEO Christopher Viehbacher said that he sees Alzheimer's becoming a new franchise. He added that zuranolone, an antidepressant, is the "biggest undervalued potential" of the company. On the heels of the approval of a new Alzheimer's drug, Cambridge-based biotech company Biogen seems focused on expanding its focus to a wider range of illnesses. New Alzheimer's drug lecanemab could signal a new franchiseThe first is lecanemab, a drug for Alzheimer's disease that was granted an accelerated approval by the US Food and Drug Administration last week. "I think zuranolone is the biggest undervalued potential of Biogen," Viehbacher said.

☆ Suni Lee on her decision to leave college and 'prove to myself' that she can win more Olympic medals
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-02 | by ( Meredith Cash | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Read previewSuni Lee is stepping away from collegiate gymnastics to focus her attention on chasing more Olympic medals. "That's a lot of it, I think," Lee said of the prospect of a "normal" Olympics in 2024. Lee competes on the uneven bars at the Tokyo Olympics. Lee wants to try to replicate her performances on the mat, too. AP Photo/Michael Woods"The biggest Auburn saying is 'If you love Auburn, Auburn will love you,'" she added.

Persons: —, Lee, Jerome Miron, it's, Dylan Martinez, couldn't, She's, Simone Biles, Lindsey Wasson, you'll, Michael Woods, that's Organizations: Service, Auburn Tigers —, Business, Auburn, Tokyo, REUTERS, AP Locations: Eastern Alabama, Tokyo, Paris, Auburn

☆ The NBA’s Plan to Stop Runaway Offenses Is a Crackdown on Walking
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( Robert O'Connell | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

With 10 seconds left in a late-November game against the Dallas Mavericks and his Golden State Warriors trailing by two, Stephen Curry faked a 3-pointer. Curry was called for traveling—and the Warriors lost. “I didn’t think it was a travel,” Curry said after the game. But so far this season, the protests of even the NBA’s superstars are going unheeded. After years in which it seemed that players could walk around the court unencumbered by dribbling, NBA referees are blowing the whistle much more often on traveling violations.

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