“I don’t think ultimately that the Europeans will let the Euro unravel, but they are going to have to take some decisive steps,” US President Barack Obama said in a fundraiser event Monday night held in a New York high end hotel. Only four months before the U.S. election, Euro worries are inevitably playing a major role on this side of the Atlantic. Any worsening in the Euro zone situation…
NEW YORK | It is a battle that started about two years ago. Samsung and Apple’s endless dispute over intellectual property arrives to court this Monday in California. Together the two companies account for more than 50 percent of all the world’s smartphone sales. A jury will have to determine if any of them has infringed copyright laws against the other. On one side of the ring, Apple, that filed…
Economist Ricardo R. Reis expects “better policymaking from the European authorities now.” Originally from Portugal, Reis teaches at Columbia University, he is a former graduate from the London School of Economics and Harvard Ph.D and has worked extensively on inflation dynamics and monetary and fiscal policy, including evaluation of fiscal stimulus programs. He gives his take on the current economic turmoil for our readers in the first of a summer…
The pregnancy of Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s new chief executive seems to be relevant for some American media. Besides the hot buzz on her next challenge –Yahoo has a troubled history with its CEOs and Mayer, a former Google star with two degrees in Computer science, arrives to the company in a moment of deep restructuring-, many have taken the occasion to underline the fact that she is the 20th CEO…
NEW YORK | Times are tough for pensions. Retirement plans are not golden anymore. After the crisis, U.S. companies started to get rid of many pension funds or are allocating less money for them. And while the market has substantially recovered from the 2009 low, pension funds portfolios as well as supplemental savings and retirement accounts for individuals remain significantly smaller than they were at their peak. Last year, Standard…
NEW YORK | Federal Reserve’s chairman Ben Bernanke attended his semi-annual monetary policy report to Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday, insisting that the Fed remains in close contact with European authorities but the alarms of spillover are still on. “I don’t think they [Europe leaders] are close to having a long-term solution that will solve the problem and until they find those long-term solutions, we’re going to continue to see…
NEW YORK | By Ana Fuentes | Can games change business? Many analysts insist that they can motivate employees, bring a sense of enjoyment into a company and make it more attractive to its customers. Games are powerful because they are fun. Former expert advisor for the FCC and Associate professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at The Wharton School, Kevin Werbach is a leading expert on the social implications of emerging Internet and communication technologies. He is also founder of technology analysis firm Supernova Group. In a context of crisis, he says, European companies should think of gamification as a tool to reduce their fear of failure and help to promote a culture of needed innovation. He talked to us at Wharton University campus in San Francisco.
NEW YORK | Have Libor scandal shock waves reached this side of the Atlantic yet? There is no doubt they will. It may impact American consumers and the U.S. financial system: Barclays is the only bank confessing malpractices so far, although Wall Street has almost surely been involved in the same dynamics. So far we've only seen the tip of the iceberg but it sends a warning signal to the…
NEW YORK | Last week 15 major banks, including the nation’s three largest institutions, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup, which together have more than $6.4 trillion in assets, suffered credit ratings cuts by Moody’s. No matter their efforts to strengthen their operations since they received a warning in February, their core businesses still present structural weaknesses, the ratings agency said. Bank of America, which owns Merrill Lynch, and Citigroup,…
NEW YORK | Without Latinos the access to the White House in November is not guaranteed. They are 55 million Hispanic citizens in the U.S, according to the census, but they are more likely than other minorities to stay home on Election Day. Five months before the polls, both Republicans and Democrats are desperately struggling to seduce them. Despite the millions spent in TV and radio advertisement in Spanish, it…