Caterpillar may have tainted the entire earnings season for industrial companies with one line, according to CNBC’s Jim Cramer, and now the company is trying to walk it back. Caterpillar’s management on Tuesday sought to clarify last month’s now-infamous “high water mark” comment — made by CFO Bradley Halverson on the heavy equipment maker’s first-quarter […]
Read morePayments processor Square said Tuesday it is launching Square for Restaurants, a software platform for restaurant operations designed to bring more small businesses into the Square ecosystem. The software — which Square calls its most sophisticated software yet — ties together in one place all of a restaurant’s operations, from booking tables to managing the […]
Read moreInstagram is unveiling new features to help enterprises run their businesses on the platform. “We’re taking steps to turn Instagram from not just a place of business discovery but really a place where business can get done,” Instagram director of product Vishal Shah told CNBC. The tools, which include messaging options and booking integrations, aim […]
Read moreGary Cohn, the former head of the National Economic Council and key advisor to President Donald Trump, said personal tax cuts need to be made permanent. In his first interview since exiting the White House, Cohn said that is the one piece of unfinished business he left behind. Cohn announced his resignation in March and […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content] IT IS an enormous privilege, and responsibility, to write for The Economist and capture a small sliver of readers’ attention. All told, there have been well over a thousand posts on this blog (the site history runs for 98 pages) as well as 546 print columns (the last will appear […]
Read moreCurrency, United States Finance
Everything will be on the line when Iraqis cast their ballots on Saturday to choose their next prime minister — from rebuilding the economy to the resurgence of sectarian violence and the Islamic State (ISIS). Iraq’s last parliamentary elections were held in 2014. The past four years have seen Iraq lose a third of its […]
Read moreAfter nearly a decade of underperformance, hedge funds are actually faring better than the stock market in 2018. Thanks to higher volatility, the rally in energy prices and some well-placed bets in fixed income, managers in the $3.2 trillion hedge fund industry posted a 0.38 percent gain in April that brings the total return for […]
Read moreTwitter is building a feature into its app that will allow users to send secret messages to one another, according to data spotted by TechCrunch inside the company’s Android application. Here’s why this matters: It shows that Twitter is taking privacy seriously — perhaps more so than Facebook, which still doesn’t offer encrypted chats in […]
Read moreEarly bitcoin investor Tyler Winklevoss tweeted back at Bill Gates to explain how to bet against the cryptocurrency, after the Microsoft co-founder said he would short it if he could. “Dear @BillGates there is an easy way to short bitcoin,” Winklevoss said in a tweet Monday afternoon. “You can short #XBT, the @CBOE Bitcoin (USD) […]
Read moreCurrency, United States Finance
Hezbollah’s recent electoral success could prompt Iran to take a more aggressive approach toward Israel in the ongoing Syrian war, according to one political strategist. Although official results have not been announced, Iran-backed Hezbollah and its allies were seen as the biggest winners in Lebanon’s first parliamentary vote since 2009. The militant Shia group and […]
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