Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist provides insight into how Biden’s Build Back Better plan will impact Americans and international businesses.
Democrats have proposed a minimum tax on income that well-off corporations report to investors in order to help fund President Biden‘s sweeping tax and spending package.
The proposed minimum book tax would impose a 15{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} minimum on corporations based on profits they publicly report on their financial statements to shareholders. The levy would only apply to companies that reported more than $1 billion in income for three straight years.
CBO: BIDEN SPENDING BILL ADDS $367B TO DEFICIT, NOT COUNTING IRS TAX ENFORCEMENT
It would preserve “the value of business credits – including R&D, clean energy, and housing tax credits – and include some flexibilities for companies to carry forward losses, utilize foreign tax credits, and claim a minimum tax credit against regular tax in future years,” according to the three Democrats – Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Angus King of Maine and Ron Wyden of Oregon – who proposed the tax.
President Biden, center, speaks as he announces that he is nominating Jerome Powell, left, for a second four-year term as Federal Reserve chair and Lael Brainard, right, as vice chair, the No. 2 slot at the Federal Reserve, during an event in the Sou ((AP Photo/Susan Walsh))
The Congressional Budget Office determined last week that the book tax would generate about $319 billion over the next decade, which would go toward paying for Biden’s social spending and climate change plan.
But a new analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation shows how the measure would have a disproportionate effect on certain industries.
The coal industry would face the heaviest burden under the book tax minimum, seeing a net tax hike of 7.2{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} of its pre-tax book income. That would be followed by automobile and truck manufacturing, which faces a 5.1{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} tax hike. In dollar terms, the industries that would account for the largest book minimum tax liabilities are utilities ($43.3 billion) and communication ($30.6 billion).
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These industries see a sharper impact because they are at the intersection of the different book tax gaps targeted by Congress. Lawmakers are looking to go after permanent discrepancies between the two measures from firms paying low taxes but the proposal will more severely affect businesses with temporary timing differences between financial and taxable income; deliberate tax incentives created by Congress (such as bonus depreciation); and special items that show up in one income definition but not the other, the Tax Foundation said.
President Biden addresses the 76th Session of the U.N. General Assembly on September 21, 2021 at U.N. headquarters in New York City. ((Photo by Timothy A. Clary-Pool/Getty Images) / Getty Images)
“The book minimum tax affects industries very differently, some of which may be unintended, reflecting a tax proposal that has not been fully vetted,” the Tax Foundation wrote in its analysis. “Before introducing a new tax on book income, and asking the IRS to administer it and taxpayers to comply with it, lawmakers should consider whether these disparate impacts by industry are consistent with their tax policy goals.”
For his part, Mr. Goldberg said he has been thinking about William F. Buckley, the late founder of National Review, who saw as part of his mission “imposing seriousness on conservative arguments” and purging some extreme fringe groups, including the John Birch Society, from the right.
Understand the Claim of Executive Privilege in the Jan. 6. Inquiry
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A key issue yet untested. Donald Trump’s power as former president to keep information from his White House secret has become a central issue in the House’s investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Amid an attempt by Mr. Trump to keep personal records secret and the indictment of Stephen K. Bannon for contempt of Congress, here’s a breakdown of executive privilege:
What is executive privilege? It is a power claimed by presidents under the Constitution to prevent the other two branches of government from gaining access to certain internal executive branch information, especially confidential communications involving the president or among his top aides.
What is Trump’s claim? Former President Trump has filed a lawsuit seeking to block the disclosure of White House files related to his actions and communications surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. He argues that these matters must remain a secret as a matter of executive privilege.
Is Trump’s privilege claim valid? The constitutional line between a president’s secrecy powers and Congress’s investigative authority is hazy. Though a judge rejected Mr. Trump’s bid to keep his papers secret, it is likely that the case will ultimately be resolved by the Supreme Court.
Is executive privilege an absolute power? No. Even a legitimate claim of executive privilege may not always prevail in court. During the Watergate scandal in 1974, the Supreme Court upheld an order requiring President Richard M. Nixon to turn over his Oval Office tapes.
May ex-presidents invoke executive privilege? Yes, but courts may view their claims with less deference than those of current presidents. In 1977, the Supreme Court said Nixon could make a claim of executive privilege even though he was out of office, though the court ultimately ruled against him in the case.
Is Steve Bannon covered by executive privilege? This is unclear. Mr. Bannon’s case could raise the novel legal question of whether or how far a claim of executive privilege may extend to communications between a president and an informal adviser outside of the government.
What is contempt of Congress? It is a sanction imposed on people who defy congressional subpoenas. Congress can refer contempt citations to the Justice Department and ask for criminal charges. Mr. Bannon has been indicted on contempt charges for refusing to comply with a subpoena that seeks documents and testimony.
“Whether it’s ‘Patriot Purge’ or anti-vax stuff, I don’t want it in my name, and I want to call it out and criticize it,” Mr. Goldberg said. “I don’t want to feel like I am betraying a trust that I had by being a Fox News contributor. And I also don’t want to be accused of not really pulling the punches. And then this was just an untenable tension for me.”
Now, their views have put them outside the current Republican mainstream, or at least outside what mainstream right-wing institutions and politicians are willing to say out loud. But while in recent years both appeared occasionally on the evening show “Special Report” and on “Fox News Sunday,” which the network classifies as news, it’s been years since they were welcome on Fox’s prime time, and Mr. Goldberg clashed bitterly with the prime-time host Sean Hannity in 2016. (Mr. Hayes and Mr. Goldberg emailed their readers Sunday to announce their departure.)
Despite the former contributors’ hopes, Fox’s programming has hewed to Mr. Trump’s line, as have its personnel moves. The network, for instance, fired the veteran political editor who accurately projected Mr. Biden’s victory in the key state of Arizona on election night, and has hired the former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
Mr. Hayes and Mr. Goldberg are the first members of Fox’s payroll to resign over “Patriot Purge,” but others have signaled their unhappiness. Geraldo Rivera, a Fox News correspondent since 2001, captured the difficulty of internal dissent at the network when he voiced cautious criticism of Mr. Carlson and “Patriot Purge” to my colleague Michael Grynbaum. “I worry that — and I’m probably going to get in trouble for this — but I’m wondering how much is done to provoke, rather than illuminate,” he said.
On air, two programs with smaller audiences than Mr. Carlson’s scrambled after his special to rebut the false theories presented in “Patriot Purge.” “Special Report” called in a former C.I.A. officer on Oct. 29 to debunk “false flag” theories. And on “Fox News Sunday,” Chris Wallace turned the same question over to one of Mr. Trump’s few foes in the Republican congressional delegation, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Mr. Carlson called Mr. Hayes’s and Mr. Goldberg’s resignations “great news” in a telephone interview on Sunday. “Our viewers will be grateful.”
Jeff Bezos at the National Press Club in Washington in 2019. Since stepping down as chief executive of Amazon in July, Mr. Bezos has significantly raised his profile as a philanthropist.Credit…Emma Howells for The New York Times
Former President Barack Obama’s private foundation announced on Monday that it had been promised a donation of $100 million from the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
The gift, the largest yet for the Obama Foundation, was one in a series of splashy donations by Mr. Bezos, one of the world’s richest men, in recent months. Last week, Mr. Bezos announced $96.2 million in grants to groups working to end family homelessness.
Since stepping down as chief executive of Amazon in July, Mr. Bezos has significantly raised his profile as a philanthropist, in addition to traveling to space on a ship made by his rocket company, Blue Origin.
In return for the donation, Mr. Bezos asked that a plaza at the Obama Presidential Center be named for the civil rights leader John Lewis, who died last year. The foundation broke ground on the center, which will include Mr. Obama’s presidential library, a museum, an athletic center and more, earlier this year.
“Freedom fighters deserve a special place in the pantheon of heroes, and I can’t think of a more fitting person to honor with this gift than John Lewis, a great American leader and a man of extraordinary decency and courage,” Mr. Bezos said in a statement released by the Obama Foundation. “I’m thrilled to support President and Mrs. Obama and their foundation in its mission to train and inspire tomorrow’s leaders.”
News of the gift was earlier reported by the online news group Puck.
It was neither Mr. Bezos’s biggest gift in recent months nor his first brush with Mr. Obama’s orbit. In September, Mr. Bezos, standing alongside John Kerry, Mr. Obama’s former Secretary of State, pledged $1 billion through his Bezos Earth Fund for conservation.
In another shift, Target has begun offering holiday shopping discounts earlier in October instead of waiting until Black Friday. Credit…Matt Rourke/Associated Press
Target stores will close their doors for Thanksgiving Day, the retailer announced Monday, and will continue the policy every year moving forward.
The retail giant shut its stores on Thanksgiving Day last year, citing safety considerations during the pandemic. It has also started offering discounts for the holiday shopping season earlier in October instead of reserving those deals for Black Friday.
“What started as a temporary measure driven by the pandemic is now our new standard,” Brian Cornell, Target’s chief executive, said in a statement.
Walmart has also said it would close its stores on Thanksgiving Day for a second year. Trader Joe’s and Aldi will also be closed for Thanksgiving.
The trial of Elizabeth Holmes is being held in San Jose, Calif.Credit…Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times
[Follow live news coverage on the trial of Elizabeth Holmes.]
The high-stakes trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the collapsed medical start-up Theranos, is headed toward a dramatic finish. The latest twist came on Friday, when Ms. Holmes unexpectedly took the stand in her own defense, after the prosecution rested its case.
She testified for an hour, and is expected to continue on Monday. Ms. Holmes has been charged with 11 counts of fraud and faces up to 20 years in prison on each count. She has pleaded not guilty.
Whether Ms. Holmes would testify had been one of the biggest questions of the trial. Up until Friday afternoon, many legal experts predicted that she would not. The benefits of doing so, the experts argued, could be offset by the risks of cross-examination.
At first, her testimony raised concerns for her defense. Her lawyers’ strategy has been to paint her as inexperienced, led astray by others like her former boyfriend and business partner Sunny Balwani (who is being tried separately).
But on the stand, Ms. Holmes depicted herself as very much in control. She presented herself as an expert in the technology Theranos was developing and detailed how she used that knowledge to attract investors, whose money would eventually be wiped out.
She also rebutted a key argument by prosecutors. The prosecution sought to establish that Ms. Holmes withheld information, particularly financial reports, from investors.
On the stand, Holmes detailed the “very comprehensive diligence process” of Don Lucas, a venture capitalist who eventually invested in Theranos and became its chairman. The defense presented a 2006 email in which Ms. Holmes sent Mr. Lucas detailed financial information. (However, this may undermine another defense argument: that investors were careless and at least partially to blame.)
The trial is also a referendum on Silicon Valley’s start-up culture. If Ms. Holmes is found guilty, it would put truth-stretching start-up founders on notice. But if she is acquitted, it would bolster the tech industry’s “fake it til you make it” approach.
“A non-guilty verdict will vindicate a Silicon Valley culture of celebrating aggressive innovation at the expense of the complete and whole truth,” said Jeffrey Cohen of Boston College Law School.
Stock prices rose on Monday on news that Jerome H. Powell will be renominated for another four-year term as chair of the Federal Reserve, reflecting investor relief that he would remain at the helm of the central bank, whose monetary policy has been a key driver of the market’s remarkable run over the past two years.
“The announcement of Powell’s renomination ensures continuity in the stance on policy,” wrote Ellen Zentner, the chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley, in a note to clients shortly after the announcement.
The S&P 500 climbed 0.9 percent in the first half-hour of trading on Monday, to what would be a new closing high. The benchmark index is up nearly 26 percent this year.
Mr. Powell’s renomination shifted expectations in the bond market, where investors’ movements showed slightly increased expectations for higher interest rates in the coming years.
Treasury bond prices declined, and yields — which move in the opposite direction — rose. Government bond yields, which essentially act as the foundation for interest rates charged on new car loans, mortgages, multibillion-dollar Wall Street bond offerings and more are heavily influenced by market expectations about what the Federal Reserve will do with monetary policy.
Yields on the two-year Treasury note, which had been hovering around 0.52 percent before the announcement, climbed to 0.56 percent. The yield on the five-year Treasury bill, which captures market expectations for how the Fed’s monetary policy will evolve over the next few years, a topic of considerable debate in the market, rose to 1.29 percent shortly after the announcement.
The rise in bond yields suggests that at least some investors were betting that Lael Brainard, a Fed governor whom Mr. Biden will promote to vice chair, could have been instead chosen to lead the central bank. Many progressive groups had championed her to replace Mr. Powell.
Steve Sosnick, the chief strategist at Interactive Brokers in Greenwich, Conn., said the rise in yields were an indication that some bond investors had thought Ms. Brainard, who is believed to be less aggressive about interest rate increases, had a chance to be Mr. Biden’s pick.
The Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., last December. Disney has urged visitors to exercise caution and wear masks in the park.Credit…Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via Associated Press
The Walt Disney Company has paused a coronavirus vaccine mandate for employees of its Florida theme park after the State Legislature and the governor made it illegal for employers to require all workers get the shots, a company spokesperson confirmed Saturday.
Walt Disney World could have been facing fines under the policy, illustrating how even one of the most well-known tourism brands in the state has to deal with the headwinds of political debate over the pandemic response.
Source: State and local health agencies. Daily cases are the number of new cases reported each day. The seven-day average is the average of a day and the previous six days of data.
Governor DeSantis, also a Republican, has been at the forefront of the political fight to curtail mask and vaccine mandates, saying the push against those restrictions counters overreach from the federal government. “Nobody should lose their job due to heavy-handed Covid mandates, and we had a responsibility to protect the livelihoods of the people of Florida,” the governor said in a statement.
The Biden administration has ordered vaccinations for workers in large companies and members of the federal work force, but the effort has met resistance across the country. Florida is among states that have challenged federal mandates in court.
The new Florida law prohibits employers from enforcing strict vaccine mandates, allowing employees to choose exemptions that include health or religious concerns, pregnancy or anticipated pregnancy, and having had the virus and recovered from it. Unvaccinated workers could instead undergo periodic testing or wear protective equipment, at the employers’ cost. Fines for violation could cost $10,000 a day per employee violation for businesses with fewer than 99 employees or up to $50,000 per employee violation for larger businesses.
Government entities and school districts are also restricted by the Covid mandate ban.
Disney World previously struck a deal with employees to require theme park workers to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus to keep their jobs, and the company defended that rule in a statement Saturday. “We believe that our approach to mandatory vaccines has been the right one as we’ve continued to focus on the safety and well-being of our cast members and guests,” the statement said.
More than 90 percent of active cast members in Florida have verified they are vaccinated, the company said, before it sent a memo to employees halting the mandate.
Walt Disney’s website tells visitors it has been “very intentional and gradual” in operating safely, recommending guests exercise caution: wearing face coverings, checking for symptoms and getting the shots. “We encourage people to get vaccinated,” it says.
Todd Gregory contributed to this report.
Jerome Powell in September. The White House is expected to provide an update on President Biden’s choice for the chair of the Federal Reserve.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
Tuesday
Retailer earnings: Another week of quarterly financial reports from big retailers will give investors more clues on whether supply chain disruptions are hampering businesses ahead of the holiday season. Best Buy and Dollar Tree are set to publish their reports on Tuesday for the three months ending October. Gap, Nordstrom, American Eagle Outfitters and Abercrombie & Fitch will also report on Tuesday.
Wednesday
Fed minutes: The Federal Reserve will publish minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee meeting that was held this month. Investors will get a clearer picture of any disagreements among Fed officials about whether they expect that inflationary pressures will persist.
Consumer sentiment: The University of Michigan will publish the final numbers of its survey of consumer sentiment for November. The survey measures how optimistic consumers feel about the overall economy. The index fell to its lowest level in a decade in early November.
Thursday
Markets closed: The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, as will bond markets.
Friday
Black Friday: The traditional start of the holiday shopping season kicks off. Many shoppers have started early, concerned over whether product shortages and supply chain disruptions will make it harder to find the gifts they want.
A family scheduled for eviction waiting outside their home, owned by Cerberus, in Piera, near Barcelona, Spain, this month. A court eventually delayed the eviction by a month. Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York Times
By Nicholas Casey and Roser Toll Piraffé
BARCELONA, Spain — Protesters in Barcelona are pushing back against foreign investment firms that have bought up thousands of homes over the past decade and are forcing out residents who can’t pay the rent.
The beach in Barcelona last month. Giant foreign investment firms snapped up properties in Spain at bargain prices following the global financial crisis that began in 2008.Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesAna María Banegas at the apartment in Barcelona where she is squatting.Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York Times
Giant investment firms like Cerberus Capital Management, Blackstone and Lone Star have been snapping up properties across Spain at bargain prices since the global financial crisis that began in 2008. The firms then put them up for rent at a time when the country’s economy was on a stronger footing.
But the pandemic pushed the Spanish unemployment rate up to 15 percent and evictions nationwide spiked in the first half of 2021. The investment firm landlords sent out a slew of eviction notices to tenants across the country or canceled leases for those who fell behind on the rent, residents said.
In the streets of Barcelona, a group called War Against Cerberus decided to fight back.
When lawyers of private equity firms come with police officers to force residents from their homes, members of the group — some of them longtime housing activists — surround the building to block their entry. As residents are pushed out of apartments, the group sends squatters to occupy properties owned by the firms elsewhere in the city — sometimes breaking in to gain entry.
The activists even took over the offices of a Cerberus real estate servicer in Barcelona for a time last year.
Activists with the War Against Cerberus group met in Barcelona in October. Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesThe center of Barcelona has become a hotspot for foreign investment by private equity firms like Cerberus.Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York Times
According to War Against Cerberus, dozens of families have occupied buildings owned by private equity firms in Barcelona, which has long been a target of outside investors. That can translate into years of courtroom hearings and millions of dollars in legal fees to remove the squatters.
“This property belongs to Cerberus,” said Ana María Banegas, a resident who, along with a dozen other families, has occupied a building in central Barcelona since April and now refuses to leave. “And from this home, we aim to pressure them.”
Miquel Hernández, a spokesman for War Against Cerberus who helped Ms. Banegas find the home where she is squatting, accused the private equity firms of profiting from the economic distress caused by the pandemic.
“They’re treating them like any other asset,” he said, referring to the homes owned by the firms.
The problem has caught the attention of Spain’s national government, led by a left-wing coalition. It has proposed the imposition of rent controls on investment funds and other large landlords.
The proposed legislation, supported by Barcelona’s mayor, Ada Colau, would allow for rent caps for owners with more than 10 properties in areas where rent increases have outpaced inflation.
A public housing project being built by the Barcelona municipality. “We have to civilize a market that has gotten out of control,” said the city’s mayor, Ada Colau.Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesMayor Colau is a former housing activist who rose to prominence with an organization that fought foreclosures.Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York Times
“We have to civilize a market that has gotten out of control,” said Ms. Colau, a former housing activist who rose to power with an organization that fought against foreclosures. “A problem that was bad before the pandemic has suddenly gotten worse.”
Spain imposed a partial moratorium on evictions for much of the pandemic, but only for those in “vulnerable situations,” such as single parents. In cases that went to the courts, the judiciary was seen as siding largely with the landlords.
In the first quarter of 2021, evictions of renters in Spain rose by 14 percent compared with the same period the previous year, according to the government. By the second quarter of this year, they surged to eight times as many as in the same period in 2020.
Samuel Aranda contributed reporting from Barcelona.
A Christmas market in Salzburg, Austria, was closed on Monday after the country entered a national lockdown.Credit…Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times
By Melissa Eddy and Christopher F. Schuetze
VIENNA — As Europe experiences a menacing fourth wave of the coronavirus, Austria entered a nationwide lockdown on Monday and the possibility of a vaccine mandate in Germany was under discussion as the only way to sustainably overcome the pandemic.
“Probably by the end of this winter, as is sometimes cynically said,” the German health minister, Jens Spahn, said on Monday, “pretty much everyone in Germany will be vaccinated, recovered or dead.”
Mr. Spahn has spoken out against a universal vaccine mandate in Germany.
The lockdown in Austria, in which people are allowed to leave their homes only to go to work or to procure groceries or medicines, will last at least 10 days and as many as 20 and comes after months of struggling attempts to halt the contagion through widespread testing and partial restrictions.
While Austria may be the first European country to respond with a lockdown, it may not be the last. That prospect, along with increasingly stringent vaccine mandates, has set off a backlash in Austria and elsewhere, with mass demonstrations in Vienna, Brussels and the Dutch city of Rotterdam over the weekend, sometimes punctuated with violent outbreaks.
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transcript
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Austrians Protest Lockdown and Vaccine Mandate
Thousands in Vienna over the weekend demonstrated against the measures, which include a nationwide lockdown.
[drums] [chanting] [drums] [whistles] [drums]
Thousands in Vienna over the weekend demonstrated against the measures, which include a nationwide lockdown.CreditCredit…Lisa Leutner/Associated Press
The new Covid wave is being driven by widespread resistance to vaccines and to the growing prevalence of vaccine and mask mandates. Austrian officials have said they will enforce a nationwide vaccine mandate in February, the first European nation to do so.
Austria, where 66 percent of the population is vaccinated, reported more than 14,000 new cases of the virus within 24 hours on Sunday. Over the past week the Netherlands has been averaging more than 20,000, while Germany has seen roughly double that number.
The German health ministry said on Monday that the country was facing a dwindling supply of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, which was partly developed in the country, as it races to provide booster shots.
And while the European Medicines Agency is poised to approve the vaccine for use on children 5 to 11 this week, first doses will not begin until Dec. 20, when shots for children are scheduled to be delivered to European Union countries, Mr. Spahn, the health minister, said.
The opposition to the lockdown and vaccine mandates in Austria is being fueled in part by the far-right Freedom Party, which has used its platform in the Austrian Parliament to spread doubt about the effectiveness of the vaccines and to promote ivermectin, a drug typically used to treat parasitic worms that has repeatedly failed against the coronavirus in clinical trials.
But the fury is not limited to far-right activists, as the throngs that filled Vienna’s streets on Saturday attested. The police estimated the crowd at 40,000, with many families and others far outnumbering the right-wing extremists.
The Facebook Papers, released by a whistle-blower, showed that roughly a third of teenage girls who already felt bad about their bodies said Instagram made them feel worse.Credit…Haven Daley/Associated Press
By Cecilia Kang and Mike Isaac
A bipartisan group of state attorneys general said on Thursday they had opened an investigation into Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, for promoting its social media app Instagram while knowing of mental and emotional harms caused by the service.
At least 11 states are involved in the investigation, including California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia.
Maura Healey, the Massachusetts attorney general and one of the leaders of the investigation, said the states were examining whether the company’s actions violated state consumer protection laws and put the public at risk.
“Facebook, now Meta, has failed to protect young people on its platforms and instead chose to ignore or, in some cases, double down on known manipulations that pose a real threat to physical and mental health — exploiting children in the interest of profit,” Ms. Healey said.
The move comes after a trove of documents from a former employee detailed research inside of the social media company that suggested teenagers suffered body image issues when using Instagram. The documents, called The Facebook Papers, were shared with journalists in October. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the documents and the issues at Instagram with the help of Frances Haugen, the whistle-blower.
Doug Peterson, the Nebraska attorney general and another leader of the investigation, said the states would examine “the techniques utilized by Meta to increase the frequency and duration of engagement by young users and the resulting harms caused by such extended engagement.”
“When social media platforms treat our kids as mere commodities to manipulate for longer screen time engagement & data extraction, it becomes imperative for state attorneys general to engage our investigative authority under our consumer protection laws,” Mr. Peterson said in a tweet.
The states’ investigation adds to building regulatory pressure on Meta and other giants of Silicon Valley.
Ms. Haugen and public interest groups have filed at least nine complaints to the Securities and Exchange Commission claiming Meta mislead investors about its efforts to protect users from disinformation and hate. The Federal Trade Commission and dozens of states have filed antitrust lawsuits to break up Meta, and members of Congress have also vowed to create privacy, speech and antitrust legislation aimed at reining in the power of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.
Spanning tens of thousands of pages and gigabytes of data, the Facebook Papers show a company struggling to deal with many issues that come as a byproduct of its enormous scale and billions of users, spanning topics like misinformation, addiction and manipulation of users around the world. Much of the information came in the form of detailed reports investigating the issues, laid out by the company’s research division.
Meta has said the research efforts are intended to address the issues they pinpoint, with the aim of improving the company’s products and services.
The documents detail that roughly a third of teenage girls in a survey who already felt bad about their bodies said Instagram made them feel worse. “Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves,” the documents said.
Meta has disputed the characterization of the initial reporting on Instagram’s issues, saying that the story lacked context, left out vital information and was a poor interpretation of the data obtained by The Journal. The company argued that on 11 of 12 well-being issues, the surveyed teenage girls said that Instagram made them feel “better and not worse.”
“It is simply not accurate that this research demonstrates Instagram is ‘toxic’ for teen girls,” Pratiti Raychoudhury a vice president and head of research at Facebook, said in a company blog post in September.
In a statement on Thursday, a representative for Meta strongly disputed the claims made by the state attorneys general against Instagram.
“These accusations are false and demonstrate a deep misunderstanding of the facts,” said Liza Crenshaw, a spokeswoman for the company. “While challenges in protecting young people online impact the entire industry, we’ve led the industry in combating bullying and supporting people struggling with suicidal thoughts, self-injury, and eating disorders.”
Sean O’Brien claimed victory in his bid to lead the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.Credit…Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe, via Getty Images
The head of a Boston local who urged a more assertive stand toward employers like the United Parcel Service — and an aggressive drive to organize workers at Amazon — declared victory Thursday in his bid to lead the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
If the result is confirmed, the victory by Sean O’Brien, an international vice president of the Teamsters, would put a new imprint on the nearly 1.4 million-member union after more than two decades of leadership by James P. Hoffa, who did not seek another five-year term.
The outcome appears to reflect frustration over the union’s most recent contract with UPS and a growing dissatisfaction with the tenure of Mr. Hoffa, whose father ran the union from 1957 to 1971.
With about 90 percent of the ballots tallied, Mr. O’Brien had more than two-thirds of the vote in his race against Steve Vairma, a fellow international vice president who had been endorsed by Mr. Hoffa. The election was conducted by mail-in ballots that were due Monday.
Mr. O’Brien, 49, railed against the contract that the union negotiated with UPS — where more than 300,000 Teamsters work — for allowing the company to create a category of employees who work on weekends and top out at a lower wage, among other perceived flaws.
“If we’re negotiating concessionary contracts and we’re negotiating substandard agreements, why would any member, why would any person want to join the Teamsters union?” Mr. O’Brien said at a candidate forum in September in which he frequently tied his opponent to Mr. Hoffa.
Mr. O’Brien has also criticized Mr. Hoffa’s approach to Amazon, which many in the labor movement regard as an existential threat. Although the union approved a resolution at its recent convention pledging to “supply all resources necessary” to unionize Amazon workers and eventually create a division overseeing that organizing, Mr. O’Brien said the efforts were too late.
A group of cryptocurrency fans lost a much-anticipated bid for a rare first printing of the U.S. Constitution at a Sotheby’s auction on Thursday.
The group, ConstitutionDAO, conducted a frenzied, weeklong online crowdfunding campaign to place a bid on the artifact, one of only 13 copies known to exist. It had raised more than $40 million in less than a week for the bid.
The final sale price was $43.2 million, according to a Sotheby’s spokesman. The winner’s identity was not immediately known. Minutes after the gavel, ConstitutionDAO confirmed the loss on Twitter.
“While this wasn’t the outcome we hoped for, we still made history tonight with ConstitutionDAO,” it said, adding that contributors would have their donations refunded, minus fees.
ConstitutionDAO is what’s known as a decentralized autonomous organization, a new type of group that is governed by holders of a cryptocurrency token and enshrines its rules in blockchain-based “smart contracts.” The group was formed last week, and its last-minute effort to raise money for the auction became a cause célèbre among cryptocurrency fans online.
Crypto-collectives have bought high-priced art before, including a Wu-Tang Clan album, “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which was bought by the anonymous investor collective PleasrDAO last month for $4 million. Had it won the auction, ConstitutionDAO would have made the biggest purchase by a DAO, and the first of such a prominent physical artifact.
The copy of the Constitution sold by Sotheby’s previously belonged to Dorothy Goldman, the widow of a New York real estate developer who bought it in 1988 for $165,000. Proceeds from the auction will go to the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation, the auction house said.
The auction on Thursday night produced a frenzy of excitement among ConstitutionDAO participants, with thousands watching a livestream to cheer on the group’s bid. At first, it was not clear whether the winning bidder represented ConstitutionDAO or not, and several people affiliated with the group mistakenly claimed victory.
But after the loss became clear, the mood in the group’s Discord chat darkened. As they talked about getting their money back, some participants began making plans for the future.
“Okay so we didn’t get the Constitution,” one user wrote. “What are we going to bid on now?”
Miky Lee, bottom right, at the 2020 Academy Awards ceremony. Ms. Lee, the vice chair of CJ Entertainment, has been nudging the South Korean company to expand its foothold in Hollywood.Credit…Noel West for The New York Times
The South Korean media conglomerate whose entertainment arm produced the winner of the 2019 Oscar for best picture, “Parasite,” has acquired a majority stake in the scripted arm of Endeavor Content, a subsidiary of the entertainment company Endeavor Group.
Upon closure of the $775 million deal, which was announced late Thursday night, the South Korean conglomerate, CJ ENM, will own 80 percent of the business and the Endeavor Group 20 percent. The companies said they expected the deal to close in the first quarter of 2022.
“At the end of the day, CJ ENM strives to become a major global studio that encompasses content that appeals to a global audience — like this deal with Endeavor Content, we will continue to expand our presence in the global market,” Kang Ho-Sung, the conglomerate’s chief executive, said in a statement.
Endeavor is being forced to reduce its ownership stake in its scripted content business as a result of a settlement this year with the Writers Guild of America, whose writers went on strike to protest what they saw as a conflict of interest at agencies that owned both talent representation businesses and production companies.
Endeavor is not required to sell its unscripted assets and will maintain 100 percent ownership of that business.
Endeavor Content was formed in 2017 by Graham Taylor and Chris Rice. Today, it calls itself a global film and television studio, and it has produced such projects as “Nine Perfect Strangers,” a Hulu mini-series starring Nicole Kidman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, “The Lost Daughter.” It owns a minority stake in Bruna Papandrea’s production company, Made Up Stories, in addition to PictureStart and Media Res.
Mr. Taylor and Mr. Rice will remain co-chief executives of the new company.
CJ has been expanding its foothold in Hollywood in recent years. Miky Lee, the vice chair of CJ Entertainment, the Hollywood arm of CJ ENM, rose to the national stage when she accepted the best picture Oscar for “Parasite,” but she was an industry player before then, nudging CJ toward Hollywood in the 1990s with a stake in DreamWorks. Most recently, she invested $100 million in David Ellison’s Skydance Media and was elected vice chair of the board of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
“Having known Miky Lee for more than 25 years, I’m confident that CJ ENM will be excellent stewards of the studio, accelerating and amplifying its projects on a global stage,” Ari Emanuel, the chief executive of Endeavor, said in a statement.
CVS operates more than 9,900 retail stores in the United States.Credit…Nicole Craine for The New York Times
CVS will close about 300 stores a year in the next three years, the company said on Thursday, as the pharmacy chain focuses on offering more health care services and expanding its digital services.
The closures, which will affect about 9 percent of the company’s stores, are part of an effort to realign its retail strategy, CVS said in statement on its website.
The company operates more than 9,900 stores in the United States, according to its website. A CVS spokesman said the company did not expect CVS pharmacies in Target stores to be affected.
“We remain focused on the competitive advantage provided by our presence in thousands of communities across the country, which complements our rapidly expanding digital presence,” said Karen S. Lynch, the president and chief executive of CVS Health.
CVS is aiming to remake many of its stores. Some will offer primary care services, and others will offer broader health care services than standard pharmacies, such as treatment for diabetes. The company will also maintain traditional CVS stores, which provide prescription services and health products.
“Hybrid models really took off during the pandemic, including rapid delivery services, curbside pickup and buy online/pick up in-store,” said Ted Rossman, a senior analyst at Bankrate.com. “Those approaches could be particularly advantageous for CVS.”
CVS said earlier this month that about 70 percent of CVS Pharmacy customers were enrolled in its text messaging program.
“We continue to modernize our operating systems and enhance the integration of pharmacy models, simplifying consumer interactions and driving further engagement with our customers,” Ms. Lynch said during the company’s earnings conference call on Nov. 3.
It’s the latest investment deal for Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon, whose financial backing is valued as a stamp of approval for consumer brands.Credit…John Salangsang/Invision, via Associated Press
Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and the Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd are joining Blackstone in investing in Spanx, the DealBook newsletter was first to report. Blackstone closed its deal to acquire a majority stake in the shapewear brand that values it at $1.2 billion on Thursday.
Founded more than 20 years ago, Spanx has become synonymous with the foundation garments it sells. Ms. Winfrey helped put the brand on the map in its early days when in 2000 she named Spanx her favorite product of the year. (Sara Blakely, Spanx’s founder, said Ms. Winfrey had earlier validated her business idea when the talk show host told the audience one day that she cut the feet off her pantyhose.)
“I’m happy to be part of the evolution,” Ms. Winfrey said about the brand in a statement.
It’s the latest investment deal for Ms. Winfrey and Ms. Witherspoon, whose financial backing is valued as a stamp of approval for consumer brands. The TV and film stars are also familiar partners for Blackstone. Ms. Winfrey invested alongside Blackstone in Oatly, the oat milk brand, which went public this year. Blackstone also recently acquired Ms. Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine production studio, adding her to the board of its parent media company. Ms. Wolfe Herd’s Bumble, a dating app, was acquired by Blackstone in 2019 before going public this year.
Ms. Winfrey, Ms. Witherspoon and Ms. Wolfe Herd are investing in Spanx directly, outside any Blackstone fund. They were also joined by the investment funds G9 Ventures and Able Partners.
Blackstone and Spanx had previously said they intended to create a board comprising only women. Ms. Blakely, who put the company up for sale this year without ever having taken on outside investment, is keeping a significant equity stake in the business.
“In addition to developing a remarkable product and business that literally supports women every day, Sara has become a role model for leveraging your success to elevate other women,” Ms. Witherspoon said in a statement.
Saule Omarova appearing in 2018 before the Senate Banking Committee, which conducted her confirmation hearing on Thursday.Credit…Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Republican senators took turns describing her as a communist, a socialist and a radical on Thursday, but it was the circumspect stance of moderate Democrats that spoke loudest about Saule Omarova’s prospects for becoming one of the country’s top banking regulators.
Ms. Omarova, President Biden’s pick to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, has faced steep opposition from industry groups and Republican lawmakers, with critics at times suggesting that her birthplace — the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan — and her education in Moscow were reason to be suspicious of her.
During Thursday’s hearing to consider her confirmation, she sought to fend off critics on the Senate Banking Committee by declaring her devotion to American capitalism. “I fell in love with this country and its people from Day 1,” she said, praising the United States’ “dynamic and diverse markets.”
Ms. Omarova, a Cornell Law School professor, worked with banks as a lawyer at the white-shoe firm Davis Polk & Wardwell and was a policy adviser in the Treasury Department during the presidency of George W. Bush. But in her academic career she has explored ideas that would amount to sweeping overhauls to the structure of the financial system, including a plan she sketched out to let the Federal Reserve provide bank accounts to small-time customers using its own digital currency.
Ms. Omarova has also proposed a new infrastructure investment authority that would pair private money with government input to fund projects that companies might not deem profitable on their own, and she has often denounced the way banks and their leaders keep spoils of boom times for themselves, then turn to the public for bailouts when things go wrong.
In her testimony, Ms. Omarova said that her writings were intended to be “part of an ongoing academic debate” and that it was not right for readers of her work to assume she was endorsing every idea she explored. But Republicans on the committee said her writings were proof of her desire to nationalize the banking industry, bankrupt fossil fuel companies and take control of private investment decisions.
Some Democrats were only slightly less critical. Two moderate Democrats, Senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, said they were troubled by Ms. Omarova’s opposition to a 2018 bill they had supported, which loosened some restrictions on banks imposed by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat and the committee’s chairman, asked whether Ms. Omarova had objected to the 2018 bill only because it also created new loopholes for the biggest banks. Ms. Omarova replied, “That was my sole objection.”
The hearing ended with neither Mr. Warner nor Mr. Tester having given a strong sign of support for Ms. Omarova, who needs the committee’s approval before facing a full Senate vote.
Senators spent most of the hearing asking Ms. Omarova about her writings and opinions on legislation, offering only a handful of questions about how she would run the O.C.C. The agency, which has nearly 3,500 employees, oversees nationally chartered banks including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
The office’s next leader will be expected to help carry out Mr. Biden’s stated mission to get the financial industry to help combat economic inequality and climate change. That person will also play a crucial role in offering lenders clarity on how they can participate in cryptocurrency markets and will most likely have to help draft new rules for a decades-old anti-redlining law, the Community Reinvestment Act.
Ms. Omarova’s path to confirmation never looked easy. Soon after her nomination, bank lobbyists began an unusually strident campaign against her, citing in particular her education under Soviet rule.
Mr. Brown, the committee chairman, described such attacks as “McCarthyism.” But some Republicans on the committee, including the party’s highest-ranking member, Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, kept up that line of attack during the hearing.
“My concern with Professor Omarova is her long history of promoting ideas that she herself describes as ‘radical,’” Mr. Toomey said. “I agree that they are radical. But I’d also describe them as socialist.”
Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said to Ms. Omarova: “I don’t know whether to call you ‘professor’ or ‘comrade,’” prompting someone else in the room to whisper: “Oh, my goodness.”
Ms. Omarova repeatedly stressed her allegiance to the United States and American capitalism. In response to questions about why she had said the way to combat climate change was to “starve” the fossil fuel industry of capital, Ms. Omarova called the industry “a very important part of the economy” and added that she had no intention of bankrupting it. She also professed strong support for community banks, which she said could find “no better or stronger ally” than her.
Ms. Omarova also described growing up with a grandmother who had been orphaned when Stalin sent her family to Siberia for refusing to join the Communist Party, and called the government during her childhood an “oppressive state-run system, with no free enterprise and no economic opportunity for people like me.”
Her ultimate dream, she told the committee, became “coming to America — the land of opportunity and freedom.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office found that a 15 percent minimum tax would require companies such as Amazon, FedEx, Google, Facebook, General Motors, T-Mobile and Verizon to pay more to the U.S. government.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
At least 70 of the largest companies in the United States would pay more in taxes under a new minimum tax that Democrats are proposing as a way to pay for the spending bill moving through Congress, according to an analysis released on Thursday by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts.
The report offered a first look at which companies could face higher tax bills under the proposal, which calls for enacting a 15 percent minimum tax on companies that report more than $1 billion in profit to shareholders, even if they have zero federal tax liability. The plan is included as a source of revenue in a $1.85 trillion social policy and climate bill that President Biden is trying to push through Congress.
The new tax would apply to the so-called book income that companies report to their shareholders but not to the Internal Revenue Service. Many profitable companies are able to reduce or eliminate their tax liability through the use of tax credits, deductions and previous losses that can carry over.
The book tax aims to raise money from companies without increasing the 21 percent corporate tax rate. Mr. Biden originally pledged to raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, but moderate Democrats have resisted that proposal.
The report by Ms. Warren found that the tax would require companies such as Amazon, Facebook, FedEx, General Motors, Google, T-Mobile and Verizon to pay more to the U.S. government. A recent report by the Joint Committee on Taxation determined that the proposal would generate $319 billion over 10 years.
“Giant corporations have figured out how to game the system so that the costs of running this country are borne by hardworking families while these big corporations scoop up all of the profits and pay little or nothing in taxes,” Ms. Warren said in an interview. “It’s time to put a stop to that.”
Ms. Warren’s office used data compiled by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy on publicly traded companies in the Fortune 500 and S&P 500. The analysis considered “taxes paid” as a company’s current income tax expense, or how much it paid in U.S. federal taxes and foreign taxes in 2020.
According to Ms. Warren’s analysis, Amazon was able to reduce its tax rate to 11.5 percent rather than 21 percent in 2020. The company would have paid $836 million more in federal and foreign income taxes had the minimum tax been in place, according to her analysis. Amazon declined to comment.
The report also found that FedEx had a 7.2 percent effective tax rate and, if the new tax were in place, would have paid $518 million more in taxes in 2020. FedEx said that the analysis was “premature” and that it paid all of the taxes it owed.
“Until there are clear details on the calculation of this proposed corporate minimum tax, it is premature to assume or estimate how the tax would apply to specific companies,” Chris Allen, a spokesman for FedEx, said in a statement.
Opponents of the new tax have expressed concerns that it would give more control over the U.S. tax base to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, an independent organization that sets accounting rules.
The group also warned that, under the proposal, companies were likely to report smaller profits to their shareholders in order to lower their tax bills. They suggested that the idea of using book income as an alternative tax base was overly complex.
“It would be cleaner and simpler to just fix the tax code if there are perceived problems with the tax system,” they wrote.
The Manhattan flagship store of Macy’s, which said its third-quarter sales were up 37 percent from a year earlier.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
Macy’s, the beleaguered department store chain, reported rosy third-quarter sales on Thursday and raised its sales and earnings forecast for the year, in a positive signal for retailers that struggled during the pandemic.
The company said its sales for the three months that ended on Oct. 30 were $5.4 billion, and it posted a net profit of $239 million. Comparable sales rose 37 percent from the same period last year and about 9 percent from 2019. Macy’s noted that a Friends and Family event fell into the third quarter this year from the fourth quarter in 2019.
Retail sales overall jumped 1.7 percent in October, the third monthly increase, the Commerce Department said Tuesday, a sign of the strength of the U.S. economic recovery from pandemic restrictions. Walmart and Home Depot each reported quarterly earnings this week that topped Wall Street’s expectations.
Retailers like Macy’s, which also owns Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury, are benefiting as customers resume social activities and gear up for a busier holiday season than last year, when the country was in the depths of the pandemic and before vaccines were widely available.
The company said its downtown stores had yet to recover as tourism remained depressed and many office workers continued to work remotely.
The company, which is trying to accelerate its digital sales, separately said on Thursday that it would introduce an online marketplace next year with third-party merchants.
Alibaba attributed its weak earnings in part to tougher competition for Chinese shoppers.Credit…Aly Song/Reuters
Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce company, reported its slowest sales growth in a year and a half on Thursday, the effect of Beijing’s regulatory clampdown on internet giants and tough competition from rival online retail destinations in China.
On a conference call with analysts, Alibaba’s chief executive, Daniel Zhang, also blamed “economic headwinds” for the weak results. China’s economic growth was slower in the July-to-September period than in the quarter before.
Retail sales growth has been bumpy. Alibaba’s revenue for the latest quarter increased 29 percent from a year earlier. Profit shrank by 81 percent, which the company attributed to increased spending on newer businesses such as its Lazada shopping platform in Southeast Asia.
Other factors depressing Alibaba’s earnings relate to the Chinese government’s campaign to stop internet companies from behaving in ways it considers unfair or anticompetitive. In April, the country’s antitrust regulator fined Alibaba a record $2.8 billion for restricting the merchants on its virtual bazaars from selling on other platforms.
Two days later, Alibaba pledged to go further to help those merchants by lowering the fees it charges them and by spending on new services for them. Income from such fees — Alibaba’s largest source of revenue — grew just 3 percent in the latest quarter, in part because of the initiatives. The company’s increased spending to support vendors also crimped its profit.
As overall economic growth slows in China, Alibaba is having to compete more fiercely for customers against both old foes such as JD.com and Tencent’s WeChat social platform and newer apps like Pinduoduo and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Order volume from Alibaba’s annual Singles Day shopping bonanza, which ended last week, grew 8.5 percent from last year, a slower rate of increase than in years past. JD.com, by contrast, reported 29 percent growth in order volume during this year’s Singles Day event.
Elizabeth Holmes, center, with her partner, Billy Evans, and her mother, last month. Ms. Holmes has pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.Credit…John G Mabanglo/EPA, via Shutterstock
In the first 11 weeks of the trial of Elizabeth Holmes, who founded of the blood-testing start-up Theranos, jurors have heard from only about 25 witnesses in proceedings that have been mired by delays, including a coronavirus scare, a broken water main and technical issues.
Despite the interruptions, the trial has pressed forward. Jurors are being asked to decide whether Ms. Holmes, 37, misled investors by appealing to their egos and withholding crucial information or whether investors simply failed to do their due diligence, ignoring red flags as they poured money into the Silicon Valley start-up.
Ms. Holmes has pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors have said they are likely to rest their case against her this week.
Here are some highlights from the prosecution’s case so far:
Sept. 14: Erika Cheung, a key whistle-blower, testified that she had joined Theranos because she was dazzled by Ms. Holmes’s charisma. “She was very articulate and had a strong sense of conviction about her mission,” Ms. Cheung said of Ms. Holmes.
Ms. Cheung eventually resigned over her misgivings about Theranos’s testing services. “I was uncomfortable processing patient samples,” she said. “I did not think the technology we were using was adequate enough to be engaging in that behavior.”
Sept. 22: James Mattis, the retired four-star Marine Corps general and former defense secretary under President Donald J. Trump, said he was excited by the prospect of the military using Theranos’s blood analyzers. He joined the company’s board but became disillusioned, testifying that Ms. Holmes had not been forthcoming with Theranos’s directors about the problems.
“We were unable to help her on the fundamental issues that she was grappling with if we only saw them in the rearview mirror,” Mr. Mattis said.
Sept. 28: Dr. Adam Rosendorff, a former lab director at Theranos, emerged as a key witness for the prosecution, providing greater detail about the range of problems and patient complaints. He said Ms. Holmes had been aware of his concerns but pressed forward with Theranos’s commercial launch anyway.
In his testimony, he said he became increasingly uncomfortable with the failure rate of Theranos’s blood-testing machines and the volume of physician complaints about inaccurate test results. “The company was more about P.R. and fund-raising than patient care,” he said.
U.S. stocks rose on Thursday, with the S&P 500 rebounding from Wednesday’s losses. The benchmark index edged up 0.3 percent, while the Nasdaq composite gained 0.5 percent.
Retailers have been posting their quarterly financial performance reports this week, signaling strong profits and optimistic forecasts. Several retailers reported grappling with a tight labor market and a snarled supply chain.
Shares of Macy’s jumped more than 21 percent after the company reported in its quarterly earnings report on Thursday that its profit grew to $239 million in the three months ending in October, compared with a $91 million loss during the same period last year. Kohl’s reported that sales grew 15.5 percent during its third quarter.
Alibaba shares fell more than 11 percent after the company reported its slowest sales growth in a year and a half on Thursday, attributing it to Beijing’s regulatory clampdown on internet giants. The Chinese e-commerce giant said in its quarterly earnings report that profit shrank by 81 percent.
Shares of Nvidia rose more than 8 percent after the tech company reported on Wednesday that its revenue climbed 50 percent to $7.1 billion compared with the same period last year.
The Labor Department reported on Thursday that initial claims for state jobless benefits fell to 268,000 last week, down 1,000 from the previous week. “Initial claims should continue to gradually work their way back toward prepandemic levels as employers facing shortages of workers will likely keep layoffs to a minimum,” Nancy Vanden Houten, lead economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a note on Thursday.
European stock indexes dipped, with the Stoxx Europe 600 down 0.5 percent.
Apple has pushed back its return-to-office plans to Feb. 1, according to an internal memo circulated at the company. Apple will begin a “phased approach,” asking small teams to return to the company’s global offices one to two days a week for four weeks before ramping up to three days a week, with the option to work remotely on Thursday and Friday.
The company also said it had doubled its remote work policy to four weeks a year, saying that it would allow employees to travel, see friends or family or “shake up their routines.”
A spokesperson for Dwelling Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., defended the Establish Back Far better package’s vape tax on Friday, arguing that the practice wasn’t an “critical require for working families.”
The reviews arrived amid media reviews that President Biden, in signing the invoice, would be reneging on his promise not to raise taxes on reduced-income Americans.
WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 19: Speaker of the Home Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (R) speaks at a press meeting soon after the Home passed the Build Again Superior Act at the U.S. Capitol on November 19, 2021 in Washington, DC. The vote, which passed 220-213, arrives
Henry Connelly, a spokesperson with Pelosi’s business office, told FOX Small business: “As opposed to the gasoline tax hike Republicans tried out to increase to the infrastructure invoice, vaping is not an vital need to have for functioning people, and there is sizeable proof tobacco organizations are targeting health-harmful vape goods at teens.”
DEMOCRATS’ Spending WILL CRIPPLE THIS $6B Sector, Specialists Warn
“The monthly bill simply just makes sure that the nicotine in traditional tobacco goods and the nicotine in e-cigarettes is taxed at the identical fee,” Connelly included.
The new tax would be $50.33 per 1,180 milligrams of nicotine. That is the similar price tag of modest cigarettes and modest cigars for each thousand.
DENVER, CO – Oct 20: Vaping goods on cabinets at Myxed Up Creations, a retail store that sells vaping merchandise and other objects, at 5800 East Colfax Avenue on Oct 20, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. The Denver Metropolis Council is thinking about a ban on all fla (Getty Visuals)
In a assertion to FOX Organization, American Vapor Manufacturers criticized the tax for pushing folks toward cigarettes.
“Speaker Pelosi is completely wrong on the math, mistaken on the science, and evidently has not even go through the government’s own estimates of the public health catastrophe this vape tax will bring about,” said President Amanda Wheeler.
LAS VEGAS, CA – Oct 14: Jake Crandall took a deep pull from his vape and exhaled in the parking large amount at the Desert Moon Motel Oct. 14, 2021 in Las Vegas, CA. A 19-yr-old self-described beatnik in his hole 12 months, who not long ago moved to Las Vegas fro (Getty Photos)
Wheeler also pointed to Nationwide Institutes of Health and fitness-funded analysis, which estimated the tax would outcome in “somewhere around a half million additional teenage people who smoke over-all.”
Wheeler added: “In the final few weeks I have read straight from innumerable persons who have valiantly give up smoking through vaping and are now completely desperate that they will be economically pressured back to cigarettes.”
“Most of them are reduced- and center-money Us residents on fixed budgets. Pelosi promised those people Us residents they would not deal with increased taxes and now she and her colleagues are heartlessly tossing them overboard.”
What is happening: West Texas Intermediate futures, the US benchmark for oil prices, and Brent futures, the world wide benchmark, are now buying and selling at their cheapest amounts in 6 weeks on signals that offer constraints could start out to relieve before long.
In the United States, costs fell sharply Wednesday after oil inventories at a key hub in Cushing, Oklahoma rose for the initial time in weeks.
But Bjornar Tonhaugen, head of oil markets at the consultancy Rystad Strength, explained to me that the biggest element driving selling prices ideal now is the expected release of strategic reserves from the United States and China.
In accordance to the White House, US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the “great importance of using actions to tackle world-wide vitality materials” in the course of their digital summit this 7 days. That sparked chatter about a coordinated transfer initiated by the White Property to place millions of barrels of oil on the market place.
Thursday brought some indications that China is taking motion. Reuters reported that the country’s state reserve bureau mentioned it was doing the job on a launch, even though the exact details keep on being murky.
A spokesperson for China’s Nationwide Food stuff and Strategic Reserves Administration told CNN on Friday that it was “pushing forward with crude oil release-related get the job done at the instant,” but declined to remark on whether it was in response to a US ask for to perform with each other to tackle the offer crunch.
Based mostly on existing cost moves, Tonhaugen stated, investors are anticipating involving 20 million and 30 million barrels to appear on line in the up coming month. That could be from the United States and China with each other, or by way of broader motion coordinated by the Intercontinental Power Agency.
He emphasized, having said that, that the release of strategic reserves would not modify the total photo for prolonged.
“[Releasing] strategic reserves is not the same as getting far more continual creation of oil on the web,” Tonhaugen reported.
But more long lasting aid could be coming. The IEA mentioned in a report this 7 days that it expects global oil materials to increase by 1.5 million barrels per day about November and December as some creation in the United States picks up once again.
“The environment oil current market stays tight by all measures, but a reprieve from the selling price rally could be on the horizon,” the Paris-centered agency mentioned.
OPEC is also steadily ramping up output, but there are thoughts about whether or not provide gains will be plenty of to fulfill a surge in demand for gas.
Check out this place: President Joe Biden, who is taking political heat from the spike in gasoline selling prices, asked the Federal Trade Fee on Wednesday to “quickly” examine regardless of whether unlawful exercise by oil and fuel companies is contributing to the issue.
The American Petroleum Institute slammed the force and renewed its get in touch with for the federal government to inspire domestic oil and gas production even as it attempts to battle the local weather crisis.
“This is a distraction from the elementary shift that is getting area and the unwell-recommended governing administration decisions that are exacerbating this complicated circumstance,” the team stated in a statement.
Warren Buffett-backed Paytm stumbles in buying and selling debut
This just in: Paytm’s stock released in Mumbai on Thursday. Shares of the startup went dwell at $26 apiece, below the present selling price. They finished down much more than 27{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}, providing the organization a industry worth of below $14 billion.
The weak debut demonstrates analysts’ fears about the digital payments business, my CNN Company colleague Diksha Madhok experiences. Despite its excitement, it misplaced hundreds of millions of pounds very last calendar year and would seem considerably from completely ready to flip a gain. It’s also up versus competition from some of the most important technological know-how companies in the world.
Its preliminary community presenting still marks a milestone. The electronic payments corporation raised $2.5 billion in its IPO — the major at any time in the region when measured in regional currency.
With backing from traders these as Warren Buffett, Masayoshi Son and Alibaba, Paytm is a single of India’s most effective funded startups.
The firm took off 5 many years in the past when Primary Minister Narendra Modi banned two of the country’s most important currency notes. The go was hugely disruptive for India’s financial state, but it assisted Paytm mature at an explosive level: The firm signed 10 million new users inside of a thirty day period.
Paytm now has 337 million registered individuals and 22 million retailers. Still the field is obtaining crowded. Facebook and Google also want a piece of the large industry and have introduced their have cell payments programs in the place.
The hottest: Shares of Nvidia(NVDA), the field leader in graphics processors and AI chips, are up 9{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} in premarket investing on Thursday soon after the firm reported file earnings and forecast superior-than-anticipated earnings for its forthcoming quarter.
Nvidia not too long ago announced the formal launch of NVIDIA Omniverse, a system for simulating and planning digital worlds. The enterprise has mentioned it hopes to tap into the 40 million 3D designers in the world wide sector.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg of what is to appear,” explained CEO Jensen Huang.
Chipmaker Qualcomm(QCOM) also needs in on the motion, telling investors it intends to be “the ticket to the metaverse.” Corporations ranging from the proprietor of Playboy to report label Warner Audio Group and media huge Disney all reviewed the metaverse in earnings calls through the past number of weeks, my CNN Company colleague Paul R. La Monica has pointed out.
Then you will find gaming platform Roblox, which allows customers crank out their personal avatars and play online games produced by other players. Shares have soared virtually 160{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} since they debuted on the New York Inventory Trade previously this year.
Epic Game titles CEO Tim Sweeney advised CNN in Seoul that the metaverse is not going to be produced by a person enterprise. “It will be developed by hundreds of thousands of builders every single making out their section of it,” Sweeney claimed.
Action back: Fb built a splash when it modified its company title to Meta Platforms as it pivots its aim to augmented reality and digital worlds. But if its eyesight of the potential pans out, it will not likely be by itself in raking in income.
Up upcoming
Alibaba(BABA), JD.com(JD), Kohl’s(KSS), Macy’s(M) and Petco report outcomes right before US marketplaces open up. Ross Suppliers(ROST) and Williams-Sonoma(WSM) follow right after the near.
Also right now: First US jobless promises for past week article at 8:30 a.m. ET.
Coming tomorrow: Foot Locker(FL) earnings wrap up retail’s major 7 days.
