The White House is planning to investigate China for unfair trade practices — specifically over intellectual property, or IP. U.S. companies that want to do business in China often have to turn over their IP in order to do so — plans, blueprints and technical specifications. The longstanding allegation is that Chinese companies then steal […]

As chaos in Venezuela continues, the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on President Nicolás Maduro and is threatening an embargo on Venezuelan oil. But that could backfire: if Washington pushes hard enough, Venezuela could go belly up on its debt, and that debt is owned in large part by Russia and China. The U.S. doesn’t want […]

The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 22,000 for the first time today, thanks in part to strong corporate profits. But while all eyes are on the Dow, less attention is being paid to another measure of the U.S. economy: the strength of the dollar. The greenback has dropped 10 percent since January. Why? And what […]

First, there was a scandal over millions of fake Wells Fargo accounts that broke last year. Then, accusations of changes to mortgages without notifying customers. Now, Wells Fargo faces a class-action lawsuit over selling car insurance policies to hundreds of thousands of customers who did not need it from 2012 to 2017. All this could […]

There’s something of a disconnect happening between what’s known as the private market — what companies are worth before they go public — and what those companies are worth once they have their initial public offering. Examples A and B today are the meal kit delivery service Blue Apron and Spap of Snapchat fame. The companies’ stocks haven’t […]

July sales are down across the board for the Detroit Three automakers, 15.5 percent for GM, 10 percent for Chrysler and 7.5 percent for Ford. That makes seven straight months of declines for the U.S. auto industry at large. Now, considering the last two years basically broke every kind of sales record in the books, […]

Alan Greenspan is warning in an interview with Bloomberg that we are in a bubble, a bond market bubble. The former Fed Chairman is concerned that inflation might surprise us and bond prices might fall sharply at some point in the near future. Here’s why that would be a disruptive thing. Click the audio player […]