When Steve Case, the billionaire co-founder of AOL, first met J. D. Vance, author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” the best-selling book about the industrial decline of the Midwest, Mr. Case told him, “I really love the book but there is a part of it I don’t love.” Mr. Vance listened patiently. “It helped frame the problem […]
Read moreWith the price of bitcoin moving toward $12,000, a top economist on Tuesday sent a stark warning to investors: The cryptocurrency is in a “dangerous speculative bubble.” “This is a toxic concept for investors,” said Stephen Roach, Yale University senior fellow and the former Asia chairman and chief economist at investment bank Morgan Stanley. Roach, […]
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Starbucks is making a big impression in Shanghai: a 30,000-square-foot impression. Opening Tuesday in the Chinese city is Starbucks’ second Reserve Roastery, a “megastore” that is more of a mecca for coffee lovers than a traditional cafe. The locations, which feature small-batch roastings of rare and exotic coffees, are under the careful watch of former […]
Read moreIt’s been less than six months since Amazon announced its deal to buy Whole Foods, but for CNBC’s Jim Cramer and many of the country’s supermarket chains, it’s felt like years. “On that fateful day, June 16, the whole supermarket sector got beaten to a pulp, with many of the grocers seeing their stocks fall […]
Read moreCNBC’s Jim Cramer was loathe to accredit the Dow’s record day to the fundamentals. “This is not a rally,” the “Mad Money” host said on Monday. “This is really a redistribution. It’s not a bet on the future, it’s a wager that some earnings estimates are going higher while others just stay the same.” In […]
Read moreSucceeding in software today means testing and tweaking new features with the speed and efficiency of Amazon, Facebook and Google. But most companies don’t have the resources and technical talent to keep up. That’s the opportunity LaunchDarkly is attacking. LaunchDarkly built what it calls a “feature management platform” that any business can use to test, […]
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Every day Google’s homepage prominently displays a special drawing or animation, and on Monday it’s a miniature game that instructs you to guide a bunny around a maze by dragging and dropping directional movements in the proper order. It seems whimsical, but it’s not just a simple game has meaning — in fact it’s meant […]
Read moreThing you knew but should keep thinking about anyway: The big tech companies are very interested in streaming live sports to you. Today’s reminder comes from Facebook, which wants to hire an exec to negotiate sports rights deals. The company has been interviewing candidates for a while, says Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand. More interesting: […]
Read moreCVS Health’s $69 billion acquisition of Aetna will change the pharmacy and health-care industries alike. The deal creates the first health-care triple threat, combining CVS’s pharmacy and pharmacy benefit manager platform with Aetna’s insurance business. The threat to pharmacies — or those that own them — is the way in which the two will leverage […]
Read morePayPal cofounder Max Levchin believes in blockchain technology, but isn’t quite so sure about bitcoin. “It’s a brilliant mathematical idea, fantastic technology, interesting commodity to speculate on,” he told CNBC on the red carpet of the Breakthrough Awards on Sunday. “TBD on whether it’s a currency or just a way to make money fast. I […]
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