Author: starbpo

Washington, D.C. President Joe Biden said on Monday that if Republicans win the White House in November, a Supreme Court decision that gives presidents broad immunity from prosecution would make Trump “more emboldened to do whatever he wants.” Biden, who was under a lot of pressure after losing the debate last week to Trump, told voters to think carefully about their choice and made it clear he wasn’t going to drop out of the race. Biden said that the American people now had to “do what the courts should have been willing to do but will not” because of the…

Shell said on Tuesday that it had temporarily stopped building a large biofuels facility in the Netherlands. This was done to make sure that it could still compete in the market when a lot of sustainable fuels come from the U.S. The London-based company first promised to build the 820,000-tonne-per-year biofuels factory in September 2021. This was in line with its plans, which it first announced in 2020, to become a business with net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. This law promises to help the U.S. biofuel industry by giving it…

Paramount Global’s stock went up 3.9% early Tuesday after it was said that Barry Diller’s IAC is looking into making a bid for the company. This comes after talks between Skydance Media, the parent company of CBS and Nickelodeon, and David Ellison’s company broke down in June. A report in the New York Times said that IAC (IAC, -2.01%) and Shari Redstone’s National Amusements (Paramount’s PARA, -2.41% controlling shareholder) had signed non-disclosure agreements. This is an important step in the deal-making process because it lets both sides share private information. The report used four sources who knew about the situation.…

In June, inflation in the 20-nation eurozone slowly fell to 2.5%, but it stayed above the level that the European Central Bank wants it to be. The ECB is not in a hurry to make any more interest rate cuts after lowering its benchmark rate tentatively last month. The number released on Tuesday was lower than the 2.6% rate seen in May. This is good news because inflation is still going down from its high point of 10.6%, which made people unable to spend money and slowed down the European economy for months. But on Tuesday, signs stayed in place…

The reelection campaign for President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee said they raised a huge $264 million in the second quarter of the year. This may help them calm people down in their own party who were worried about how poorly they did in last week’s debate. The total that was announced on Tuesday includes $127 million that was raised just in June. The campaign says it raised more than $33 million on the day of the debate and in the days after it. Biden also has $240 million in cash on hand, which is more than the…

This year, artificial intelligence has helped the U.S. stock market reach a string of all-time highs. It has also helped companies like Nvidia Corp., Microsoft Corp., and Apple Inc. make huge profits. Neil Shearing is the chief economist at Capital Economics. He thinks that interest in AI could also help the S&P 500 index SPX reach a high point of 7,000 in 2025, even though he also sees similarities with the previous “dot-com bubble.” “The dot-com bubble shows that U.S. stock prices can go up even more,” Shearing wrote in a Monday client note. “And the hope for more multiple…

After the sneaker company gave a gloomy forecast the day before, Nike Inc. shares ended the day with their biggest drop ever. This made Wall Street analysts cut back, and some even called into question the company’s management. On Friday, Nike shares NKE, -19.98% closed 20% lower after being downgraded by several firms, including Stifel, Morgan Stanley, and UBS. The selloff was Nike’s biggest drop in share price in a single day. An analyst at Stifel, Jim Duffy, wrote in a research note on Thursday that Nike was asking investors to trust newer, unproven shoe and clothing styles at a…

With its push into AI, Apple Inc. might be using a strategy that has been used before. The slogan for Apple Intelligence is “AI for the rest of us.” This reminds Oppenheimer analyst Martin Yang of when Apple AAPL, -1.63% advertised the Macintosh as a “computer for the rest of us” almost forty years ago. “Apple Intelligence is a lot like an Apple product from 40 years ago,” Yang told clients in a note. “Apple is setting a new standard for the hardware and software experience in a way that can be hard for the average consumer to understand, fear,…

The U.S. stock market was too hot for the job market at first. It might now cool down too quickly. People who want to be safe have been buying a small group of megacap stocks this year while they wait for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. One idea is that this strong group of companies will still make money even if the economy slows down. Although, a more worrying story has been spreading in the markets about how quickly things could get worse for jobs. Kevin Gordon, senior investment strategist at Schwab, said, “The pickup in unemployment is…

The Chicago Business Barometer, which is also called the Chicago PMI, rose from a post-pandemic low of 35.4 in May to 47.4 in June. Even though the reading is still below zero, it is the highest it has been since November. Readings below 50 mean that activity is contracting. When the Wall Street Journal polled economists, they thought the reading would be 40. The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago and MNI work together to make the index. It comes out three minutes before it does for everyone else, at 9:45 a.m. Eastern time. It is one of the last regional manufacturing…