Check out this week's Business Briefs, an encompassing look at top business news this week from the Associated Press, with a special spotlight on national business and the economy.A diminished US workforce could lead Fed to keep rates highWASHINGTON — America’s employers are posting more job openings than they did before the pandemic struck 2½ years ago. Problem is, there aren’t enough applicants. The labor force is smaller than when the pandemic struck.
“We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time,” Williams said. Bankman-Fried was one of the world’s wealthiest people on paper, with an estimated net worth of $32 billion. He was a prominent personality in Washington, donating millions of dollars toward mostly left-leaning political causes and Democratic political campaigns. FTX grew to become the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it had authorized separate charges related to alleged violations of securities laws and would file them publicly Tuesday. “Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal,” said the email, which was signed “Twitter.”
That came on the same day that three council members announced they were resigning in a public statement posted on Twitter that said that “contrary to claims by Elon Musk, the safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline.” Former Twitter employee Patricia Cartes, whose job it was to form the council in 2016, said Monday its dissolution “means there’s no more checks and balances." Cartes said the company sought to bring a global outlook to the council, with experts from around the world who could relay concerns about how new Twitter policies or products might affect their communities.
Markets have struggled this year thanks to high inflation and the interest rate hikes engineered to combat it. Higher rates slow business activity by design but also risk causing a recession if they go too high, all while dragging down prices of investments. The Fed has hinted it will dial down the size of its rate hikes, leading to expectations for a more modest increase of 0.50 percentage points Wednesday.
Even if inflation is waning, the global economy still faces threats from the rate increases already pushed through. The housing industry and other businesses that rely on low interest rates have shown particular weakness, and worries are rising about the strength of corporate profits broadly. Last week, crude prices scraped their lowest levels of the year on worries about a weakening global economy, which would mean less demand for energy.Shoppers, workers clash over post-pandemic expectations NEW YORK — Before the pandemic, Cheryl Woodard used to take her daughter and her friends to eat at a local IHOP in Laurel, Maryland after their dance practice. But now they hardly go there anymore because it closes too early.
As a consequence, many businesses still haven’t been able to resume the same hours of operations or services as they continue to grapple with labor shortages. Others have made changes in the name of efficiency. For instance, Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer and private employer, announced this past summer it doesn’t have any plans for its supercenters to return to its pre-pandemic 24-hour daily operations.
Across all industries, the average number of hours worked per week per worker totaled 34.4 hours in November, unchanged from February 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But for the retail industry, it slipped 1.6% to 30.2 hours per week during the same period. Hours worked at restaurants were down by similar amount in October, according to the most recent data.
Cherney noted customers often complain about long waits to process their second-hand offerings, while her staff is overextended because they're working 20% more than what they would like. The end result: Cash flow and profitability have both taken a hit. Vicky Thai, a 27-year-old studying to be a physician's assistant in West Hartford, Connecticut, said she's often frustrated over the waits to get served at restaurants and stores. She recalled a recent restaurant experience where it took a long time just to get some water; at a local clothing store, she spent 30 minutes in line to buy an item because of staffing shortages.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. and chairwoman of the financial services committee, said while she understands that Bankman-Fried must be held accountable, she is “disappointed” that the arrest happened before he got to testify. “FTX Group’s collapse appears to stem from the absolute concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals who failed to implement virtually any of the systems or controls that are necessary for a company that is entrusted with other people’s money or assets,” Ray said in his prepared remarks for Tuesday's hearing.
Horizon Therapeutics PLC, based in Dublin, Ireland, develops potential treatments for rare, autoimmune and severe inflammatory diseases. Its best-seller, Tepezza, is only approved in the United States and treats eye bulging and double vision from thyroid eye disease. Horizon also makes Krystexxa for uncontrolled gout. Sales of that treatment grew 39% last year to $565.5 million. Amgen officials said they expect their company's long-standing history of working with rheumatologists will help that treatment's sales grow.
Amgen had confirmed discussions were taking place and said that any offer it made for Horizon likely would be in cash. Shares of Amgen Inc., based northwest of Los Angeles in Thousand Oaks, California, fell about 1%, while broader indexes climbed slightly.EPA: US fuel economy flat in 2021, emissions down slightly DETROIT — Fuel economy for 2021 model year vehicles in the U.S. stayed flat with 2020 as people continued to buy less-efficient trucks and SUVs, according to an annual government report published Monday.
In the 2021 model year, cars and station wagons, the most efficient vehicles, fell to 26% of U.S. new vehicle production, well below the 50% market share as recently as 2013, the EPA said. SUVs were a record 45% of new vehicle sales for the 2021 model year, while pickup trucks hit 16%. The EPA said that since the 2004 model year, average fuel economy in the U.S. is up 6.1 miles per gallon , or 32%.
“Automakers won’t slash pollution and improve gas mileage unless strong standards make them do so,” he said in a statement. There are decades more to wait before fusion could one day — maybe — be used to produce electricity in the real world. But the promise of fusion is enticing. If harnessed, it could produce nearly limitless, carbon-free energy to supply humanity’s electricity needs without raising global temperatures and worsening climate change.“So, this is pretty cool,” said Marvin “Marv” Adams, the National Nuclear Security Administration deputy administrator for defense programs.
In the case of the sun, its intense heat — millions of degrees Celsius — and the pressure exerted by its gravity allow atoms that would otherwise repel each other to fuse. And that’s just to prove net energy gain is possible. It’s even harder to produce electricity in a power plant. The social media platform said it would let users buy subscriptions to Twitter Blue to get a blue check mark and access special features starting Monday.
The relaunched service will cost $8 a month for web users and $11 a month for iPhone and iPad users. San Francisco-based Twitter says subscribers will see fewer ads, be able to post longer videos and have their tweets featured more prominently. Twitter's website doesn't say if business accounts must pay extra for the gold label or if it is granted automatically.
All told, the latest figures provided the strongest evidence to date that inflation in the United States is steadily slowing from the price acceleration that first struck about 18 months ago and reached a four-decade high earlier this year. “They’re eating snacks and granola all day long,” Rosa Davila, an unemployed single mother, said of her three teenagers while waiting in line for a package Tuesday. “The food bank really resolves things for us.”
President Joe Biden called the inflation report “welcome news for families across the country” and noted that lower auto and toy prices should benefit holiday shoppers. Still, Biden acknowledged that inflation might not return to “normal levels” until the end of next year. Wall Street welcomed the better-than-expected inflation data as providing further support for the Fed to slow and potentially pause its rate hikes by early next year.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said he is tracking price trends in three separate categories to best understand the likely path of inflation: Goods, excluding volatile food and energy costs; housing, which includes rents and the cost of homeownership; and services excluding housing, such as auto insurance, pet services and education.
Services businesses tend to pass on some of their higher labor costs to their customers by charging more, thereby perpetuating inflation. Higher pay also fuels more consumer spending, which allows companies to raise prices. Overall, a measure that approximates services excluding rent was unchanged in November, after having dipped 0.1% in October. That measure had soared 1.1% in both April and June this year.FTX founder charged in scheme to defraud crypto investors NEW YORK — The U.S.
At a news conference on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in New York called it “one of the biggest frauds in American history,” and said the investigation is ongoing and fast-moving. Sporting shorts and t-shirts to contrast himself with the buttoned-down world of Wall Street, he was the subject of fawning media profiles, a vocal advocate for a type of charitable giving known as “effective altruism,” and garnered millions of Twitter followers.
U.S. authorities said they will try to claw back any of Bankman-Fried’s financial gains from the alleged scheme. Before his arrest, Bankman-Fried had been holed up in his luxury compound in the Bahamas. U.S. authorities are expected to request his extradition to the U.S.