Senators questioned Judy Shelton, a former Trump campaign adviser who's been nominated for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, on her views on monetary issues and Fed independence at a hearing on Thursday.
Why it matters: There was some bipartisan concern about Shelton, which could complicate her path to confirmation — or eliminate chances of confirmation altogether, if the worries hold. President Trump's previous picks to fill the remaining vacant Fed slots — Nellie Liang, Marvin Goodfriend, Stephen Moore and Herman Cain — have failed to make it through.
President Trump hasn't given up on his dream of politicizing the Fed. After failing to get Herman Cain and Stephen Moore onto the Fed's board of governors, his latest candidate is one of his former campaign advisers, Judy Shelton, who testified in front of the Senate Banking Committee today.
Why it matters: Shelton is no more qualified to sit on the Fed board than Cain or Moore. But she's already further along in the process than either of them ever managed.
McClatchy announced Thursday that it voluntarily filed for bankruptcy to allow the company to restructure its debt and pension obligations.
Why it matters: The bankruptcy ends family control of one of the largest newspaper publishers in the country. It will also hand the company to creditors, who "have expressed support for independent journalism," McClatchy DC writes.
The Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report showed the lowest number of openings in two years, but the rest of the report revealed some other negative facts about the labor market.
Details: November and December saw the largest two-month drop in job openings on record, dating back to 2001, notes Lou Brien, rates strategist at DRW Trading.
An overwhelming majority of the world's asset managers think stocks are overvalued and expect a recession this year or in 2021, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Boston Consulting Group.
Many say "the current bull market is running on borrowed time."
Why it matters: The survey of more than 250 asset managers and analysts who oversee $300 billion at firms that collectively manage over $10 trillion shows the continued apprehension of investors from around the globe.
The tightening labor market is opening up new opportunities for an overlooked cohort of American workers: those over age 50.
Why it matters: Ageism has long persisted within American companies, and studies have shown that workers over 50 often get turned away from jobs even if they've got the right qualifications. But the tide may be turning.
Last year was a "breakthrough year" for hard seltzers like White Claw and Truly, per research from Bank of America, and sales should bubble over in 2020 — judging from beverage chatter on Insta.
Why it matters: Boozy soft drinks are taking market share from traditional beer, fueled by health and wellness trends (low-cal, low-carb) and the fact that they fall somewhere between wine, spirits and beer, the bank says.
Spotify disclosed in an SEC filing Wednesday that it is paying up to $196 million for The Ringer, a sports media company founded by former ESPN personality Bill Simmons.
Why it matters: It's a solid payout for The Ringer, which was created just four years ago. The Ringer's podcast revenues surpassed $15 million in 2018, and the company says it's profitable.
President Trump's picks to fill the Federal Reserve board, Christopher Waller and Judy Shelton, will publicly air views on the Fed's political independence in a Senate hearing on Thursday, according to released drafts of testimony.
Why it matters: Trump's nominees, particularly Shelton, an economist who has been critical of the Fed and previously served as an adviser to Trump's campaign, will face questions about their commitment to the Fed's nonpolitical economic decisions.
The California lawmaker behind the controversial law making it harder to classify workers as contractors has proposed a new bill to prevent food delivery companies from offering drop-offs from restaurants that have not signed up and requires they share customer data with restaurants that do sign up.
Why it matters: State governments are turning up the heat on gig economy companies.
Cities are driving electric scooters out, either by explicitly ordering them off the streets or regulating them into extinction.
Why it matters: The rise of dockless electric bikes and scooters has brought on a slew of issues for cities, from crowded curbs to deadly accidents. But they offer a clean, convenient way to get around, and eliminating them entirely isn't the right solution, experts say.
Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein tweeted late Tuesday that Bernie Sanders should garner the support of Russia in the 2020 presidential election if it wants "to best screw up the U.S."
"If Dems go on to nominate Sanders, the Russians will have to reconsider who to work for to best screw up the US. Sanders is just as polarizing as Trump AND he’ll ruin our economy and doesn’t care about our military. If I’m Russian, I go with Sanders this time around."
The Federal Trade Commission announced Tuesday it will review the past decade of takeovers by tech giants Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. Not only the large ones, but also the hundreds of smaller ones that didn't trigger automatic antitrust reviews.
Why it matters: Apparently the FTC thinks it has a technique for getting toothpaste back into the tube. And that's before one considers the knotty logistics of unwinding something like Facebook/Instagram or some random Google acqui-hire from 2015.
Skydance Media, a Hollywood film studio whose franchises include Mission Impossible and Terminator, raised $275 million in new equity funding at around a $2.3 billion valuation. RedBird Capital Partners led, and was joined by South Korea's CJ Entertainment and return backer Tencent.
Why it matters: This comes just days after CJ Entertainment's Parasite became the first foreign-language film to win the Academy Award for best picture, and could help Skydance access a deep library of IP that hasn't yet been introduced to U.S. audiences.
Meditation app maker Headspace has raised $53 million in new equity funding and another $40 million in debt.
Bottom line: Headpsace will use some of the proceeds to differentiate itself from rivals, via the development of a new product that will focus on mental health tools for patients with certain chronic diseases.
Household debt increased by more than $600 billion last year, topping $14 trillion for the first time and marking the largest one-year jump since 2007, new data from the New York Fed show.
Why now? The growth was driven mainly by a large increase in mortgage debt balances, which rose by $433 billion.
After pouring record inflows into bond funds last year, investors are doing so at an even faster pace in 2020 — pushing 10 times more money into bonds than stocks.
By the numbers: More than $65 billion has flowed into bond funds this year, according to Lipper Refinitiv data provided to Axios, outpacing inflows through 2019's record pace when bond funds took in $316 billion.
The number of job openings in the U.S. declined consistently throughout 2019 and took a nosedive in the last two months of the year, the government's December Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) showed.
The state of play: Job openings declined by 364,000 in December after a decline of 561,000 in November.
The week of President Trump's impeachment acquittal was Fox News' fifth most-watched week and its highest since the weeks surrounding the 2016 election and the president's inauguration, AP reports.
Why it matters: Fox News averaged 4.27 million viewers in prime time last week. The basic cable network was bested only by major networks ABC, which televised the Academy Awards, and CBS.
