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With a new online personal loan program called “Marcus” and plans to earn a billion or so in new revenue as a consumer lender, Goldman Sachs is chasing traditional banking business by offering individual personal loans to retail customers. Who is the voice of “Marcus” on the line to promote the revamped personal lending products? It’s none other than Lloyd Blankfein himself, offering a customized Goldman personal loan for $3,500 to $30,000 for personal borrowers.
While he spends most of his time on mega-deals and sophisticated trading schemes for his employer and its clients, he recently took the time to record some unique marketing calls in light of a new objective by Goldman.
Goldman Sachs has a new focus on personal loans and lending to qualified individuals. After the financial crisis in 2008, Goldman changed its structure to become a bank holding company in response to stricter financial regulations when federal banking authorities preferred the large banks to focus on traditional banking business: deposits and loans.
Through Marcus Personal loans and other individual loan portfolio growth, Goldman hopes to hit the $2 billion mark within its personal loan book before year-end. Investments in their call center and marketing campaigns with Vevo and American Express will bolster their customer base for now; however, the threat of disruptive fintech startups is an ongoing challenge for Goldman to manage.
Despite rapid growth in fintech startups offering personal loans, Goldman has distinct advantages in the American personal lending market. Upstart technology firms such as Prosper, LendingClub, Avant, and Sofi failed to grow their personal loan portfolio as fast as Goldman this year. The giant of Wall Street maintains an extremely low cost of capital compared to a typical fintech operation. There is no need to invest in a nationwide branch network of physical locations, and Goldman can already deliver its banking services through the web and mobile apps, sharing an advantage with newer online lenders over the traditional banks.
Is This Good for the Average Joe?
Goldman’s recent push into the personal loans business is likely to be good for the average American borrower. Their call center promises to answer “more than 95% of calls” within a 30-second window, far sooner than a typical wait for retail banking customers. Marcus personal loans come with no fees and a simple fixed-rate structure. According to the “Marcus” website, Goldman’s personal loans have term lengths from three to six years, carrying interest rates from 7 percent to 24 percent (APR).
It remains to be seen whether the major retail banks respond in kind to the Goldman push for consumer lending growth. Ideally, the new competition in personal lending business will help borrowers find better service and more affordable rates. Fintech lenders, Goldman, and the traditional banking institutions all see dollar signs in online lending, but easy access to credit for cash-strapped consumers can spell trouble for taxpayers and the American economy in the long run. According to Goldman, “only the most creditworthy applicants qualify for the lowest rates and longest loan terms.”
Author: Andrew Rombach
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Atlanta Office Depot Inc. reported a second-quarter loss on Wednesday as declining spending by smaller businesses and retail customers hurt sales.
The company had a loss of $2 million compared with earnings of $105.6 million a year earlier.
Total second-quarter sales fell 1% to $3.6 billion. North American retail sales fell 6% to $1.4 billion, while sales at U.S. and Canadian stores open for more than a year decreased 10%.
Sales in the business-solutions division fell 5% to $1.1 billion. Office Depot said growth among large, national-account customers was more than offset by a 10% sales decrease with small- and medium-size business customers. The company especially noted weakness in smaller business demand in Florida and California, which account for about 30% of the segment's sales.
International sales rose 13% to $1.1 billion.
Office Depot said it recently received an unsolicited offer from its Mexican joint-venture partner to acquire the capital stock in the joint venture owned by Office Depot for $430 million. It added it has not yet taken part in substantive talks regarding the proposal.

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Penna Powers was honored to be selected by advertising software platform StackAdapt to attend its annual StackDay on January 17th in balmy Toronto. Our team works closely with the platform on native article, video and display placement for a variety of clients spanning multiple industry verticals. On StackDay, we discussed the latest industry buzz, along with new and exciting products StackAdapt plans to launch.
The two-panel discussions featured top brands such as Shopify, Hyundai’s in house agency Innocean and Hello Fresh along with industry titan Google and other publisher partners to get their takes on where the market is going and how agencies and internal brand teams can work more closely.
The first panel discussed their insights about how agencies can better navigate the evolving landscape of programmatic buying.
– Cameron Hourd, Head of Industry at Google
– Chris Quinn, Head of Display Advertising at Kijiji
– Tracy Ball, Director of Programmatic & Ad Operations at Innocean Canada
The most interesting comment from this panel came from Tracy Ball – she said the greatest insights come when you’re able to diversify audiences beyond the normal demographics – they pixel every action taken so they can build rich qualitative audience personas. Then they engage in what she calls “Velocity of Suppression” where they engage in quick “two-week sprints” to test and optimize against these audiences. She also doesn’t hold to just one or two KPIs – it all depends on what kind of campaign you’re running. For example, a viewability metric might be important if you’re running a branding campaign where first impression matters above all else. But for a specific conversion campaign, it may not matter as much if you’re still getting the conversions.
The second panel included leaders from three brands who discussed how they run their marketing departments and how relationships with agencies are evolving.
– Amy Manson, Head of Acquisition at Shopify
– Lauren Wong, VP of Sales & Marketing at HelloFresh Canada
– Claûde Beaupré, Marketing Manager at RBC Ventures
Here are some of the main points they made:
- Make clients prioritize what they need – what is important to them? Without this, you get lost in the weeds
- Getting cultural and local insights are key reasons to hire an agency according to Lauren Wong
- Agencies need to align with their clients’ business objectives. You need to care about the whole health of the organization, not just your little piece of it. Know your client’s growth plan!
- Hiring specialists can be a problem since they only know their piece – don’t see the whole organization holistically. Agencies can think better and broader and bring an unbiased point of view to their business
- Brands need help with technology – agencies can help if they have a consultative view.
Working with StackAdapt over the years has fostered a close partnership with an innovate company in the programmatic space. Penna Powers was excited and honored to accept the 2018 Grand Prix award because of our strategic partnership with StackAdapt. Overall our team had an amazing time being in Toronto and look forward to next year’s StackDay.


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Since the Harvey Weinstein scandal – both movie and fashion industry have been shaken by an unprecedented outcry of victims of sexual harassment, abuse and rape. In the fashion industry like in Hollywood, the victims are often female, although males are also the victims of photographers, stylists, producers and casting directors.
Having said that, we have to understand that not all photographers or stylists are predators. Though, many models endured abuse by photographers and are often test photographers. The most notorious one is Terry Richardson, a super star photographer-bestowed by magazines and fashion houses, has been accused of allegation of multiple sexual assaults.
However, Richardson is not the main problem. It is a well-orchestrated system, dominated by heterosexual and homosexual males who have been setting the tone for the past fifty years. It has become the realm of toxic masculinity and patriarchy within the industry and, somehow, was accepted by female editors and art directors as part of the job.
Famous model Cameron Russell decided to be the spearhead of this issue by campaigning against female abuse in fashion. Russell urged models to speak up anonymously on social media and published their stories unsing #MyJobShouldNotIncludeAbuse. Steven Kolb, chief executive officer of the Council of Fashion Designers of America supported Russell’s action by stating “I think what Cameron is doing is very important. All models deserve the right to feel safe and respected. Unsafe environments should not be tolerated and abusers should be reported.”
In my opinion, for the past five years, the European Union and The United States were struck by unbridled racism, misogynistic behavior and abuse. Donald Trump is the spokesman of these people who agree with these rampant behaviors which include Harvey Weinstein, Terry Richardson and their abuse of power over female. The Weinstein scandal resulted in the raising of female voices who are not willing to accept abuse by male predators whether in fashion or not.
Nonetheless, the world of fashion is slowly changing with the rise of female designers and photographers like Phoebe Philo soon at Burberry, Clare Waight Keller at Givenchy, Angela Luna and Petra Collins who are changing little by little fashion into a female vision.


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Sara Perez of Shoshone has claimed a $1 million prize in the June 3 Powerball game, according to the Idaho Lottery. She plans to pay bills with her winnings.
Perez’s quick pick ticket, which she purchased at The Main Stop in Shoshone, had the first five numbers correct. She checked the ticket Sunday at a retail store.
“The machine started making noises, ‘Beep! Beep! Beep!’ I thought I had broken it!” Perez told Lottery officials. “I am still in shock.”
She is the first player from Shoshone, or anywhere in Lincoln, County, to win $1 million or more.


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European markets mirrored the strong results seen last month in the US, headed by a Ferrari 288 GTO from the Petitjean Collection which established a new auction record for the model at RM Sotheby’s Paris sale, hammered away for €3,464,375 (estimate €2,400,000 – 2,600,000). Joining the collection in 1998, it had covered just 9,559km and required recommissioning having been on static display in recent years.
Other highlights among the 28 road going Ferraris in the collection, all offered without reserve, included the 1966 Paris Salon 275 GTB/4 at €2,367,500 (estimate €1,700,000 – 2,000,000); a 1964 250 GT/L that had been owned by Petitjean since 1986 also sold above top estimate, fetching €1,186,250, while the two-owner 1973 365 GTB/4 Daytona with 56,798km soared above its €340,000 – 425,000 guide, taking €522,500.
Elsewhere, a one-owner 1994 Bugatti EB110 signalled a new high-water mark for the model at €1,805,000 (estimate €1,000,000 – 1,200,000). RM’s 1963 Aston Martin DB4 Convertible was another big-ticket sale at €1,130,000 (estimate €1,250,000 – 1,500,000). Just 21 left-hand drive examples were produced and chassis 1082 it is believed to be one of only seven Series V cars fitted with the ‘SS’ Vantage-spec engine.
RM Sotheby’s reported a sale total close to €25 million with a 91% sell-through rate.
The star attraction at Bonhams’ Paris sale delivered on the day, the 930-km 2014 Ferrari LaFerrari nudging over its top estimate, raising €2,558,750 – a new auction record for a European-spec example.
The other two hypercars on offer also changed hands; the 10,200-km 1996 Bugatti EB110 GT setting a new record, edging out RM’s car sold the previous day, with a winning bid of €1,817,000 (estimate €1,100,000 – 1,300,000), and a 1993 Jaguar XJ220 with a 680bhp Don Law ‘S’-spec upgrade drew €333,500 (estimate €340,000 – 380,000).
A Vanvooren-bodied 1935 Bugatti Type 57 Cabriolet led the pre-war results, the three-owner car which had been restored in 2019 making €770,500 (estimate €700,000 – 800,000), closely followed by a 1904 Pipe Serie E 15CV Four-Cylinder Rear-Entrance Tonneau that smashed its €200,000 – 300,000 estimate at €759,000. Other notable success included the ex-Robert Redford 1964 Porsche 904 Carrera GTS at €1,345,500 (estimate €1,300,000 – 1,500,000) and a 1981 Renault 5 Turbo with 78,000km on the clock that went for €120,750 (estimate €100,000 – 130,000), contributing towards a €19 million total and a sell-through rate of 83%.
Read through the rest of our classic car auction reports for more auction results. Check out our online resource for upcoming classic car auction events and classic car auction results around the world.


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Ken Lewis spent 38 years as the owner of Bellevue, Kentucky liquor retailer The Party Source, building it into a $40-million-a-year business and becoming a Market Watch Leader along the way. But five years ago, Lewis switched careers and became a distiller. After selling The Party Source to his employees in 2014, he launched Newport, Kentucky-based New Riff Distilling.
New Riff rolled out its first products, New Riff Bottled-in-Bond Bourbon ($40 a 750-ml.) and Single Barrel Bourbon ($50), in the fall of 2018, followed by its Bottled-in-Bond rye ($48) in early 2019. The releases have garnered critical acclaim, with the rye recently earning a place on Whisky Advocate’s Top 20 Whiskies of 2019 list, finishing at No. 17.
New Riff focuses exclusively on bottled-in-bond and single barrel whiskies. “That’s our baseline,” says Lewis, adding that his vision is for the company to become one of the great small distilleries of the world. To help achieve that goal, he tapped the consulting services of master distiller Larry Ebersold, whose pedigree includes decades of experience at Seagram’s Lawrenceburg, Indiana distillery (today MGP). He also hired ex-brewer Brian Sprance, formerly of The Boston Beer Co., as head distiller. Jay Erisman, who worked at The Party Source with Lewis, is a co-founder and serves as vice president of strategic development.
While bottled-in-bond is the core focus, New Riff devotes an unusually high degree of attention to its single-barrel program. “For many distillers, single barrels can be a nuisance because they get in the way of production efficiencies—it doesn’t move the needle much to sell a few barrels to someone,” says Lewis. “But we expect to sell over half of our core products in single barrels. We’re also selling quarter- and half-barrels to the on-premise as well as to individuals and groups, so that people can become involved.”
New Riff has shipped hundreds of private single barrels to on- and off-premise accounts across the U.S. Potential buyers can visit the distillery and receive an education on production, aging, and tasting. “We’ll thief [sample] from the barrel for them, and they can taste through every one,” Lewis says. “We’ll do that for the trade, on- and off-premise. We encourage even our most experienced trading partners to send their employees here as a get-to-know New Riff experience.” The distillery is about 100 miles northeast of Louisville, and its location directly across the Ohio River from Cincinnati has been helpful in attracting visitors.
Further down the road, New Riff also plans to release branded expressions that go well beyond bottled-in-bond’s 4-year aging requirement. “We hold back at least a third of our production for further aging,” Lewis says. “Long-term, it will be older products that help establish our reputation, so we’re highly committed to making 8-, 10-, or 12-year-old whiskies.”
New Riff is also a contract distiller, although its own brands are taking a rising share of total output. Branded production this year will account for 5,250 barrels, or about 66% of a total production of 8,000 barrels. “Within about two or three years, around 90% of our production will be for our own brands,” Lewis adds. New Riff sold 23,000 cases in 2019, with an eventual goal of hitting the 65,000-75,000-case mark.
The portfolio is widely available in Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire, with limited distribution in Nashville and a Michigan launch planned for this year. In some other markets, New Riff has been developing relationships with key retailers, including K&L Wine Merchants, Binny’s Beverage Depot, Total Wine & More, Gary’s Wine & Marketplace, and Happy Harry’s. “We’re looking to find first-class retail partners and develop long-term relationships, in terms of their support and brand-building,” says Lewis.


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Nine has today become the first Australian broadcaster to launch real addressable advertising to the Australian market through 9Now, its broadcast video on demand (BVOD) product.
This new offering will give marketers cross-device targeting on video and be available through both direct sales and programmatic, via the Telaria platform.
The initial stage of the launch will see Nine work with partners to offer addressable advertising based on age, sex and location through 9Now’s database of more than 6.5 million user IDs.
“Today has been a long time coming,” said Michael Stephenson (pictured above, left), Nine’s chief sales officer.
“We have long recognised the shift towards identity-based marketing, as part of a broader marketing campaign, and for this reason Nine led the Australian market in requiring consumers to log-in to our broadcast video on demand platform, 9Now.
“Over the past two and half years we have built a powerful data asset containing 6.5 million IDs which has allowed us to be the first media business in Australia to offer addressability at scale in a premium, brand-safe environment.”
Nine’s commercial director of digital sales, Pippa Leary (pictured above, right), said today’s launch was recognition of the appetite in the market for real addressability based on an at-scale database of declared user IDs. She also noted that Nine was one of the only players to have made this leap globally.
“The leap we are making today is a big one not just in Australia but globally,” said Leary. “What we are offering through 9Now is true addressability.”
Today’s announcement is the first stage of Nine’s addressability solution. A further enhanced rollout with deeper and more targeted audience segments will commence in 2019.
“Without declared data you are simply targeting cookies and devices – this is not true addressability,” Leary said.
“Cookies and devices don’t buy goods and services, people do. That is why our solution does not use inferred data, only declared data from real Australians, making it a truly people-based marketing solution.
“The market knows how Nine has led the way in building a powerful video asset through shows like Married at First Sight and Love Island Australia, which both broke BVOD records, and this is now the logical extension of the journey we have been on.”
Stephenson added: “The BVOD market is growing faster than any other media channel and 9Now is the market leader. We were the first to require user log-ins from consumers because we knew they would be central to our future.
“Today’s announcement benefits both consumers and advertisers, offering more targeted advertising to audience segments that will deliver real business growth.”
Patrick Radden Keefe (pictured), author of global bestseller, Empire of Pain, talked to B&T‘s Nancy Hromin at the Samsung Jaipur Literary Festival about reputation laundering, aggressive marketing strategies and the privilege of still being able to practice pure journalism and be paid for it. Keefe’s in-depth reporting in publications such as The New Yorker and […]


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To celebrate the launch of Moose Toys’ latest collectible line Goo Goo Galaxy, we threw an exclusive launch at the renowned New York toy store, FAO Schwarz. The event was hailed a success because the toys sold out ‘within a matter of hours,’ according to reports from the store.
Goo Goo Galaxy is a range of adorable alien baby collectibles called the Goo Drops. They have goo-filled bodies and a special DIY slime activity. These little Goo Drops will be crash landing to Earth this August, for more details about the product, click here.
Helping build excitement for the Goo Drops’ Earth arrival, Moose Toys implemented a massive teaser campaign in partnership with celebrated content creators. The campaign culminated in a big reveal of the collectibles and their crash landing.
The event offered an exclusive early purchase opportunity of the Goo Drops which had kids lining up out the door and around the block. To read more about the event, click here to read the full article.


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Apply Mobile has announced that it has become an independent software vendor (ISV) to Good Technology. Good Technology customers are now able to use iDENtear, Apply Mobile’s contact-less hardware device, to protect their most sensitive information and data, both online and offline.
Craig McDermott, CEO, Apply Mobile said: “One of the biggest concerns for leaders of businesses globally is the need to protect the sensitive information and data that is accessed via company owned devices and employees’ smart phones, tablets and laptops. With an increasing number of companies introducing Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies the need to introduce better security is paramount. Each and every day we see news headlines about hackers, cyber attacks and the loss of data from small and large firms. The problem will only get worse making it vital for firms to employ new approaches to protect their reputation and data.
“iDENtear for Good provides real two-factor authentication – it is based on something the user has (the iDENtear device) and something he knows (a password or PIN). This provides much stronger controls than traditional usernames and passwords. It also prevents access to applications or data if a tablet or smartphone has been compromised or has been stolen. This is something that the popular software tokens cannot guarantee.”
iDENtear for Good is now available on the Apple App store and via the Good Dynamics Marketplace and customers are actively trialing the solution to give a higher level of mobile security to their workforces.
Phil Barnett, vice president, global sales at Good Technology said: “The iDENtear for Good application enables the direct integration of a contact-less, multi-factor, hardware-based authentication device with the industry-leading Good secure container solution. Organisations benefit from high levels of security assurance, while the simple user experience enables protected access to corporate email, the web and the other productivity tools offered by Good.”
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Check out the on-demand sessions from the Low-Code/No-Code Summit to learn how to successfully innovate and achieve efficiency by upskilling and scaling citizen developers. Watch now.
Get ready for customer service via text-messaging. Google is apparently working on an interactive and automated chat app and Facebook announced its Messenger-based customer service initiative last year. Then, just this week, Facebook-owned WhatsApp announced that it was dropping its subscription fee and would instead monetize by letting companies use the messaging service to interact with customers. So while messaging platforms are primarily used today for friend-to-friend communications, we can expect to see that change quickly.
So what do companies need to know and what do they need to do to attract and engage customers in this quickly emerging digital dimension? Here are five things to consider:
Talk is on the decline
Traditional voice calls as a primary contact for customer support are on the decline. According to a Dimension Data report last year, customer support organizations anticipate a 35 percent drop in voice interactions over the next two years. But customer service inquiries across mobile apps, mobile chat, and social networks will increase more than 20% over the next year, according to Salesforce.com’s State of Service report. My call center company, Aspect Software, recently conducted research on this front and found that if all company contact methods were equal in terms of privacy and ease of use, the use of text-based interaction to solve issues would increase over traditional voice calls by 367 percent. For brands, this means listening to customers and engaging them where they want to be engaged. Don’t make them call you if they’d rather text.
(Note: Our research is based on a survey of 1,019 Americans 18-65 years of age, with a 25% over-sample of Millennials. It was conducted in October and has a confidence interval of +/- 3.1. Survey takers were contacted by email or text and were individuals who had signed up through various research services to participate in surveys they qualified for.)
Self-service will be the new designer experience
Driving this move away from voice interaction is the desire for consumers to engage companies the way they engage their friends. Our survey found that over 70 percent of consumers want the ability to solve most issues by themselves, mainly due to the anytime-anywhere capability self-directed problem solving provides. We all regularly use text, chat, Facebook, and Twitter to communicate with each other, and consumers are starting to demand those same digital channels be available for customer support interactions. Text-driven, self-driven interaction on digital channels are where Google and Facebook are heading, because that is where global consumers already are.
In our survey, three fourths of those polled said that current self-service options prevent them from talking to a representative. Companies need to design these solutions from the consumer’s not the company’s perspective.
Messaging is where the money is
Facebook’s purchase of messaging app WhatsApp for $18 billion was eye opening, but then again, HSBC estimated the valuation of China’s WeChat app at over $80 billion. Add in Messenger, Kik, and Snapchat and the total messaging app market evaluation is around half a trillion dollars. But the real value lies in the billions of messaging app users. Six or seven years ago, brands started flocking to social media because that was where consumer conversations where occurring. Today’s customer service has failed to evolve with the times, so Google and Facebook see brand engagement and customer support on messaging platforms following the same path as social.
Organizations looking into messaging-based engagement should remember how brands followed consumers into social. Test the waters and expand interaction as customer interest increases.
Consumers want it
Customer service largely remains a “press 1 for this, press 2 for that” experience, forcing customers to interact in ways they find unnatural, mechanized, and frustrating. Not only does this experience fail to solve a customer’s issues, it weakens their connection to the brand. Our research supports a consumer appetite for non-voice interaction: 38% of those polled like the idea of customer service done through texting and messaging.
Companies, skittish from the consumer backlash of impersonal and imperfect phone tree self-service need to know that newer, smarter, and more intuitive text-based solutions are entering into the market that avoid the voice menu mazes of the past.
People don’t want to be left hanging
Consumers know that, notwithstanding their growing preference for text over talk, there are clearly times they just want to engage a live person — and do so without a lot of effort. Our research found that if consumers start a brand interaction with a text or a message, 75% would still want the ability to talk to a live person when needed. No engagement option should be designed or deployed in isolation.
We aren’t far from when a basic text message becomes the simple and central entry point to the entire customer service universe. Text, social, and mobile offer the ability to deliver intelligent, automated, interactive text conversations that transform today’s frustrating voice-only phone trees into the ultimate in self-service experiences. These channels hold the potential to better connect companies and their customers in the frictionless way Facebook and Google envision, opening the door to potential first mover advantage for those brands ready to opt-in.
Stew Bloom is CEO of Aspect Software.
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Japan's central bank on Thursday held its monetary easing programme unchanged at the current level even as the world's third-largest economy slipped into recession for a second time in as many years, and its exports sagged.
The Bank of Japan on Thursday decided by an 8-1 majority vote to continue to purchase Japanese government bonds (JGBs) so that their amount outstanding will increase at an annual pace of about ¥80 trillion.
With a view to encourage a decline in interest rates across the entire yield curve, the bank will conduct purchases in a flexible manner in accordance with financial market conditions. The average remaining maturity of the bank's JGB purchases will be about 7-10 years.
The bank will purchase exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and Japan real estate investment trusts (J-REITs) so that their amounts outstanding will increase at annual paces of about 3 trillion yen and about 90 billion yen respectively.
As for CP and corporate bonds, the bank will maintain their amounts outstanding at about 2.2 trillion yen and about 3.2 trillion yen, respectively
Some analysts anticipate the BoJ to expand its ¥80 trillion ($665 billion) annual asset-buying scheme, launched more than two years ago to kick-start growth and end deflation - the chronic decline in prices that has sapped growth for years.
BoJ, however, opted to do nothing at the end of its two-day policy meeting, as it did last month - when expectations were even higher it would take action but before news on Monday that growth in gross domestic product (GDP) contracted for a second straight quarter.
BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda defended the policy stance at a news conference saying that the economy was better than the GDP figures suggested.
Consumer spending is "resilient" and exports broadly positive, meaning that "final demand as a whole is rising", he said.
"Japan's economy has continued to recover moderately, although exports and production have been affected by the slowdown in emerging economies," the bank said in a statement Thursday.
"Inflation expectations appear to be rising on the whole from a somewhat longer-term perspective, although some indicators have recently shown relatively weak developments," it said in the dry, carefully phrased language of global central banks.
Finance ministry data released earlier on Thursday showed that Japanese exports declined in October for the first time in more than a year, as economic growth in China slowed.
Overseas shipments by value declined 2.1 per cent, the first fall since August of last year, while the value of exports by Japanese companies to China shrank 3.6 per cent in October, the ministry said.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been trying since late 2012 to revitalise Japan's economy through aggressive monetary easing by the Bank of Japan (BoJ) at its foundation – the so-called "Abenomics" policies.
The BoJ's bond-buying scheme has led to a sharp decline in the yen, seen largely as a positive as it can make Japanese products cheaper overseas.
But a lacklustre global economy, characterised by the slowdown in China and weakness in emerging markets, are posing challenges to Abe's play for a recovery.
Last month, the International Monetary Fund cut its growth forecast for the world economy for this year to 3.1 per cent from the previous 3.3 per cent, warning of increasing risks from the slowdown in China.


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Consumer Price Index-based (CPI-based inflation) or retail inflation rose to 4.91 per cent in November 2021, as per the latest data revealed by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. The latest data implied that inflation continued on the rising trajectory for the second consecutive month.
CPI inflation in October stood at 4.48 per cent.
Separately, the Index for Industrial Production rose 3.2 per cent to 133.7 for October, as per data revealed on December 10.
(This is a breaking story. More details to follow)


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May 1, 2021, marked another milestone for the Port of New York and New Jersey as the seaport welcomed the MSC Virgo to Port Newark Container Terminal (PNCT). Staff from the Port of New York and New Jersey presented the ship’s captain and crew with a commemorative plaque during a ceremony marking its arrival as the largest container ship to call at the terminal.
Built in 2020, the 15,000-TEU capacity MSC Virgo is deployed on MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company’s INDUSA service that was introduced in September 2020 to reinforce its service offering on the Indian subcontinent. The MSC Virgo is the Geneva-based company’s first 15,000-TEU vessel to call on any U.S. East Coast port.
The current average size vessel in the INDUSA service can carry approximately 8,000 TEUs; the 15,000-TEU container ship was the largest ship deployed in the service, the largest to call on the Port of Newark, and the largest vessel operated by MSC at the Port of New York and New Jersey to date.
“The MSC Virgo shows how our great and long-standing collaboration with the port has led us to this point, and we look forward to continuing to collaborate with the port to promote, grow, and expand our presence in this all-important gateway,” the company said.
Sailing under the Portuguese flag, the MSC Virgo stretches 366 meters long (1,200 feet) and 51 meters wide (167 feet), with a draft of 14.4 meters (47 feet). Before the MSC Virgo, the largest container ship to call on Port Newark was the 13,100-TEU capacity MSC Cristina on April 14, 2021.
The arrival of the MSC Virgo showcases the Port of New York and New Jersey’s ability to handle the world’s largest container ships, an outcome of crucial investments by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the past few years. Improvements such as the Bayonne Bridge Navigational Clearance Program, which increased the air draft of the Port Authority bridge to 215 feet, and the Harbor Deepening Program, which created a 50-foot-deep shipping channel, readied the seaport to welcome ultra-large container vessels.


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Walmart-owned Flipkart has received INR 2838.8 Cr infusion from its Singapore-based entity, Flipkart Private Limited.
According to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs filings accessed by Inc42, the wholesale arm of the company, Flipkart India, issued 8,15,761 equity shares to Singapore entity at a premium of INR 34,799 per share.
Notably, Flipkart India, in 2019, received its third infusion from the parent entity. Before this fund, the company had received INR 1616.12 Cr in September. Earlier, Flipkart India had received INR 1,431 Cr from Flipkart Private Limited in January this year.
Both Flipkart and its competitor Amazon use their wholesale units as distribution channels that source products from brands directly and then supply them to third-party sellers to sell on their marketplace platforms.
While previous infusions have helped Flipkart to stay ahead in the game during the festive season, the recent investment, which was received by Flipkart India, on November 28, comes on the heels of its last sale of the season — Big Shopping Days.
During the recent festive sales, Flipkart led with a 64% share of the combined gross sales. Moreover, in terms of gross units shipped for Flipkart was 56% while Amazon’s was 44%.
Moreover, in December 2018, Flipkart also received INR 2,190 Cr from its parent entity. The entity had also invested INR 3,463 Cr and INR 4,472 Cr in its Indian arm in September and March 2018, respectively.
In addition to pumping funds in its operations, Luxembourg entity FIT Holdings SARL, owned and operated by Walmart. has bought shares worth INR 544 Cr ($76 Mn) from Flipkart’s cofounder Binny Bansal.
Notably, Bansal has offloaded 5,39,312 equity shares for this transaction. From the sale of its shares to FIT Holdings SARL, Bansal’s stake in Flipkart has been reduced from 3.85% to 3.3%.
In September 2019, Bansal had also sold his additional shares worth $14 Mn to another Flipkart shareholder Tiger Global Management. Prior to this, the Flipkart cofounder, in June, had also transferred 5.3 Lakh equity shares to FIT Holdings SARL for $76.4 Mn. The deal had reduced Bansal’s stakes in the company from 3.85% to 3.53%.


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Florida East Coast Railway to be acquired by Grupo Mexico
Big news for the transportation industry, Florida East Coast Railway (FEC), Jacksonville based railroad, is to be acquired by Grupo Mexico Transportes S.A de C.V. (GMXT).
Below is an excerpt from article published by Jeff Berman in ‘Logistics Management’ Magazine on March 28th:
"Earlier today, the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) and GMéxico Transportes S.A. de C.V.(GMXT), the transportation unit of Mexico City, Mexico-based miner Grupo Mexico, announced that they have entered into an agreement in which GMXT will acquire FEC in an all-cash transaction, which is expected to close subject to satisfaction of closing conditions.
Various reports said the sale price was $2.1 billion, with Reuters reporting that Grupo Mexico financed the purchase from FEC owner Fortress Investment Group with $1.75 billion in debt and $350 million in capital, based on a company statement for the Mexican stock exchange.”


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NEC Secures Business with Android Based Cloud
NEC Corporation is securing businesses with two new products “LifeTouchNOTE Business Model” and the “LifeTouch Security Pack Model.”
The launch of two new business-use models of NEC’s Android based “LifeTouch” Cloud Communicator series has begun shipping in Japan from today August 26, 2011.
NEC specializes in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. The company is providing for a range of business needs with an elevated level of security with these new additions to the LifeTouch series.
The newly released terminals leverage a variety of business friendly functions such as remote access that enables creation of email, schedules and company documents in an easy manner.
The flow of information as a result of this capability enables convenient management of retail stores, factories, production lines and inspections.
The new Android based Cloud Communicator Terminals feature the Android operating system, and include NEC’s proprietary security features.
The company notes that in addition to preventing information leaks, its security features prevent fraudulent use and also enable users to remotely and safely access company networks.
Earlier this year, NEC Corporation introduced a tool that enables organizations to directly implement communication-as-a service delivery models as part of their private or hybrid clouds.
The company is offering UNIVERGE Sphericall as a VMware software-based virtual appliance that allows Cloud Service providers to deliver high-availability, scalable communication-as-a-service solutions in the cloud.
The offering also enables Unified communications functions such as VoIP, conferencing, IM, and Presence, to be deployed alongside other virtualized business applications in businesses’ NEC and VMware software-based private or hybrid cloud.
By Anuradha Shukla


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BODYARMOR’S New Ad Campaign Highlights Hard Work and Driven Athletes
In order to out-work the competition, elite athletes need to be refueled for that second push of their workout. Competing at the highest level requires athletes to be hydrated with products that are proven to work. In its latest media campaign, BODYARMOR highlights how elite athletes call for “one more” rep, referencing the desire to always improve.
SOCCER NEWS: BODYARMOR Sports Drink released its One More media campaign that highlights the deep-rooted passion that propels professional athletes, and youth athletes alike, to strive for more. The campaign features eight superstar athlete partners and investors, including James Harden, Naomi Osaka, Mookie Betts, Sabrina Ionescu, Baker Mayfield, Trae Young, Christian McCaffrey and notable Carlos Vela of Los Angeles FC.
What is it like to star in this series? Unlike other advertising campaign’s this one highlights the value of a player’s work rate and focus. This campaign focuses on the hard work, drive and determination that so many athletes put in behind-the-scenes. BODYARMOR specifically stated:
“From star players to backyard athletes, it’s the hunger to be better and out-work the competition that pushes us to be the best, and BODYARMOR Sports Drink is there to hydrate everyone’s efforts.”
“One More is all about pushing yourself to be better than you were yesterday,” said world class tennis player, Naomi Osaka. “BODYARMOR and I share a similar mentality when it comes to striving to be the best—it’s the passion for more that sets us apart from the others.”
The One More campaign consists of television, digital creative, out-of-home, radio and social media segments. The campaign comes at a pivotal time for the brand as BODYARMOR continues to grow and redefine the hydration category. BODYARMOR has generated more than $1 billion in yearly retail sales.
“BODYARMOR’s new campaign highlights the hard work and determination that goes in behind-the-scenes to be your best, whether you’re training to be a pro or practicing in your backyard.” said Michael Fedele, VP of Marketing at BODYARMOR. “Our athlete investors take that to heart – and are not only dedicated to their sport – but are also uniquely committed to making BODYARMOR the #1 sports drink for generations to come.”
Along with the athletes featured in the One More Sports Drink campaign, BODYARMOR has a superstar roster of partners and investors. BODYARMOR is also the Official Sports Drink for UFC and Major League Soccer.
Media Credit: BODYARMOR


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Gas price jump
Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:45:34 GMT — Quincy, IL -
You may have noticed a big jump in gas prices Tuesday, depending on where you live.
For example, in Quincy Tuesday morning, unleaded was at $1.99 a gallon.
By the afternoon, it had jumped to $2.19.
KHQA spoke with Jeremy Dyer with County Market Express in Quincy.
He told us there could be several reason for the jump.
He said last week, Quincy was some of the cheapest gas in the state.
Dyer told us his stores held the line on the price hoping oil prices would fall, but they didn't so that's why gas jumped Tuesday.
We did some other checking of gas prices.
Hannibal was sitting at $1.95.
West Quincy was at $2.09
Keokuk is up from yesterday to $1.82.
Something interesting though, nationwide, gas prices actually dropped a penny.
The national average is now $1.95.
But that may soon change if the government prints more money.
That's because it could cause inflation.
When that happens, people typically buy more commodities like gold and oil.
That could raise the price of oil, and subsequently gas prices.
Another thing that might contribute to the problem, during the month of March, gas suppliers start switching from a winter blend to a summer blend.
Summer blend is usually more expensive.
But to end on a good note, gas prices a year ago were well over $3.00 a gallon.


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Legendary Entertainment, the production and mass media company that has been in bed with Warner Bros. for the last several years, has found a new home at Sony, THR reports today.
THR details, “Under the terms of the deal, Legendary’s movies will be distributed and marketed globally by Sony, excluding China, where Legendary East will handle those duties. Sony will also handle home entertainment and TV distribution for those films. Sony does not have a streaming service, and Legendary will continue to partner with other companies for streaming.”
Important to note, however, “The pact does not include the Dune or Godzilla franchises, which will continue to be released by Warner Bros., Legendary’s previous partner.”
Legendary, you may recall, had moved from Warner Bros. to Universal back in 2014, but the company had already returned to its former home at Warner Bros. by 2019.
“Sony’s commitment to theatrical distribution aligns with our vision of how to best derive the most value for Legendary’s movies,” said Legendary CEO Joshua Grode. “The incredible slate of movies that Mary Parent has amassed are built for the theatrical experience and we are excited about our partnership with Sony for this next phase of Legendary’s growth. We are also grateful to Warner Bros. Pictures who has been a valuable partner to Legendary over many years, and we look forward to continuing our work with the talented executives at Warner/Discovery.”
Sony Pictures Motion Group CEO and Chairman Tom Rothman said in his own statement, “Legendary is, well, legendary and we are excited and fortunate to add Josh and Mary’s strong slate to our ongoing commitment to big movies on the big screen.”
Horror movies produced by Legendary Pictures include Trick ‘r Treat, Pacific Rim, Godzilla, Dracula Untold, Jurassic World, Crimson Peak, Krampus, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.


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J. Powell, Chairman Federal Reserve, Said the US Federal Reserve was ready to intervene if inflation went out of control, but stressed that he expects inflation to ease later this year.
“Inflation has risen significantly and will continue to rise in the coming months before it is moderated,” Powell told the House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee during a hearing on Wednesday.
He added that the central bank would be “ready to change the position of monetary policy if it sees signs that the path of inflation or long-term inflation expectations are moving materially and stubbornly beyond our targets”.
Powell’s comments came after the data was shown US consumer price index rises 5.4 percent in June compared to a year ago, which renewed concerns that the U.S. economy could heat up.
These figures could put pressure on the US Federal Reserve to begin the process of slowing down the large amount of monetary support provided to the economy during the epidemics, starting with a $ 120 billion cut in monthly asset purchases.
Although Powell Referring to the high inflation figures, he stressed that the central bank was not satisfied with the rising prices, confirming his view that the rise in inflation was mostly temporary, which is shared by many central bank officials.
“Inflation is temporarily boosted by fundamental effects because the last epidemic-related price since last spring has been off the 12-month calculation,” Powell said.
“In addition, production barriers or other supply barriers to strong demand in sectors with limited production have led to rapid price increases for some goods and services that need to be reversed somewhat when the effects of the disruption are eliminated.
“Prices for services that have been severely affected by the epidemic have also increased in recent months as demand for these services has increased as the economy reopens,” he said.
During the hearing, senior Republicans on the panel pressed Powell to explain the central bank’s position Swelling. Republicans criticize White House and Democrats for fueling rising inflation and rising living costs 9 1.9tn Trigger Act Passed in March.
Some have accused the federal government of being complacent in the face of rising prices and the need to quickly remove the cash incentive.
In a clear critique, Ann Wagner of the Missouri Republican House said families and businesses in her district did not feel inflation was “too temporary.” Powell responded that price increases were coming from a “small group” Goods and services The economy has been tied to reopening, but the central bank has been “monitoring the situation very closely”.
The central bank’s brown book report, which provides data on the economy gathered by the central bank’s regional colleagues, underscores the urgency behind the inflation debate.
Businesses described the “broad-based” price pressures, which were “severely” impacted by the hospitality industry “by the limited supply of goods and labor,” according to a report released during the congressional hearing.
“While some contacts feel that price pressures are temporary, the majority expect further increases in input costs and sales prices in the coming months,” the report noted.
However, federal officials are wary of moving too quickly to withdraw their support American economy. The U.S. labor market is much lower than its pre-epidemic employment levels, and the global exit from the corona virus crisis could pose even more risks to the U.S. economy.
During its June meeting, the central bank a Discussion It was about the timing and conditions of arranging its property purchases, but Powell suggested that a decision was not immediate. The Federal Open Market Committee said it should see “significant improvement” compared to its full employment and price stability goals compared to last December.
“Achieving the standard of substantial improvement is just one more way, and participants expect progress to continue,” the Central Chair said in its prepared comments. “We will continue these discussions in the coming meetings. As we said, we will give advance notice before making any decision to make changes to our purchases.”
Powell also suggested it Swelling Now that the Fed’s average is above the 2 percent target, central bankers will have a better picture of the variability by the end of the year to evaluate policy. “The question is, where will this leave us in six months or when inflation will fall as we expect,” he said.
As Powell testified, US government debt extended its rally, with yields on the 10-year Treasury note trade down more than 0.05 percentage points to 1.36 percent. The yield of the longest 30-year bond fell by almost the same amount and remained stable at less than 2 percent.
Short-term treasuries were also available that were more sensitive to policy changes. Yields on the two-year note fell nearly 0.03 points to 0.23 percent. Meanwhile, US stocks traded higher in afternoon trade. The S&P 500 is up 0.1 percent.
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Ubisoft's returning to Steam, starting with Assassin's Creed Valhalla
Ubisoft's Steam games will require Ubisoft Connect accounts
Published: 22nd November 2022 | Source: Steam |
Assassin's Creed Valhalla is coming to Steam on December 6th
Ubisoft has become the latest game publisher to return to Valve's Steam platform, following the footsteps of Microsoft, Activision, and EA. Assassin's Creed Valhalla is now due to release on Steam on December 6th, and other titles like Anno 1800 and Roller Champions are due to come to Steam soon.
In recent years, Ubisoft has focused on its Ubisoft Connect (formerly Uplay) PC platform and has sold its PC games through the Epic Games Store. Now, Ubisoft plans to also sell its games on Steam, the most popular PC gaming storefront.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla is coming to Steam on December 6th, the day that the game's planned "The Last Chapter" update will be released. This free update will be Assassin's Creed Valhalla's final update, offering players new content, new game options, and new bug fixes. On Steam, Assassin's Creed Valhalla will require a Ubisoft Connect account.
According to Kotaku, Ubisoft's games on Steam will require Ubisoft Connect accounts and may require Ubisoft's Connect PC client to be installed. This is similar to how many EA games now function on Steam, requiring EA accounts and either the EA Origin or EA App to function through Steam.
At this time, it is unknown when other recent Ubisoft game releases like Far Cry 6, or Watch Dogs Legion will arrive on Steam.


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Adoro Olive Oils to share portion of sales to the Northeast Cancer Centre throughout March
Adoro will donate a percentage of all sales throughout March to the Northeast Cancer Centre.
In 2013, an estimated 23,900 new cases of colorectal cancer were diagnosed in Canada. The disease is 90 per cent treatable if detected early.
Since 2012, Adoro owner Jodie Gibson has donated $2800 to the Northern Cancer Centre with proceeds from sales and specials held in-store.


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Katie MaddingChief Product Officer“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Katie Madding,… Continue reading » The post SKAN 4 Overview: Everything Advertisers Need To Know appeared first on AdExchanger.
The Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday online shopping bonanza was in full effect this year. But it’s hard to make judgements about whether this season is helping buoy retailers and brands… Continue reading » The post Thanksgiving Shopping Numbers Were Huge – But Did Retailers Benefit? appeared first on AdExchanger.
The Ad Council’s Mental Health Initiative aims to change the conversation about mental health.
Execs from Uber, Wavemaker and Meta discussed the challenges and opportunities of the new privacy landscape at The Female Quotient during Advertising Week.
While soccer’s World Cup in Qatar currently has the attention of the world, marketers aren’t sleeping on Major League Soccer.
Marketers can apply their social channel experiences to digital video on the open web, where interactive video ads now are a necessity.
Forever 21 will begin selling physical replicas of virtual items that were popular in its Roblox store.
In a landscape where CMOs are dealing with reverberations from the pandemic, a looming global recession and widespread geopolitical upheaval, it would be all too easy to let agency performance evaluations slide. However, according to the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), the practice is holding steady. Research from the global organization conducted in partnership with…
Twitter issued its first official communication since Elon Musk’s takeover of the company in late October that didn’t come from the Twitter account of “Chief Twit.” When Musk issued his ultimatum to employees Nov. 15, forcing them to choose between committing to “long hours at high intensity” or leaving the company, he referred to Twitter…
Images are coming to comments on Reddit, but not all over Reddit. The platform said in a blog post Wednesday that subreddits that are safe for work can activate the feature through their moderation tools, adding that more than 1,500 subreddits have done so, thus far. An image icon will appear in the bottom panel…


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While much of the buzz about Black Friday, and its recently fortified companion Black Thursday, has been about deals and savings, there is another unfortunate reality of the shopping extravaganza, according to Colorlines.
The site released an infographic today detailing some of the realities of workers employed at Black Friday shopping destinations like Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, Sears and Kohl’s that this year will be open on Thanksgiving Thursday as well. Among other facts, Colorlines’ research shows that more 2 million workers at these retail establishment live at or near poverty and that more than half of them provide all or at least half of their families’ income. They also found that of the 16 million-plus retail workers in the U.S., women and people of color are significantly overrepresented in lower-paying, front-line jobs and underrepresented in management roles.
And if this year’s holiday advertising and Black Friday (Thursday) mania seems…
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Ease Up, America: New York’s Still Rude With PM-Courtesy Commandments, a list
NEW YORK (AP) _ Despite a new civility campaign that implores, ″C’mon, New York, Ease Up,″ the inhabitants continue to hog pay phones, fight over cabs, curse Jersey drivers and bump, elbow, knee and shove each other.
″Courtesy? You got the wrong town, man,″ said Thomas Abato as he tossed some change in the general direction of a newspaper vendor.
In a city where courtesy often seems limited to the ″It’s Our Pleasure to Serve You″ message on the blue and white cardboard coffee containers, selling people on civility ″is the ultimate marketing challenge,″ says Ron Burkhardt, whose advertising firm is trying to do just that.
The courtesy campaign is directed by a group called New York Pride, which held a news conference Thursday to unveil an advertising campaign.
″The city is in trouble, in crisis; it’s aching now,″ said co-chairman Herb Rickman, sounding as if maybe he should ease up himself. ″Government alone can’t save this city.″
″New York has become a rough, tough place to live in,″ he added, ″largely because of little incidents, little irritations″ in the subway or on the street. Partly as a result, he said, tourism is down and residents and corporations are moving out.
The campaign attracted international attention when it was announced at another news conference 2 1/2 months ago, but until this week little had actually been done to promote civility.
The campaign includes:
-Television spots showing typical New York scenes - women fighting over a taxi cab, men sticking fingers in each others’ chests, a bicyclist brushing past a pedestrian - as the soundtrack plays the song ″Try a Little Tenderness.″ At the end, two men lift a fallen woman from the street.
-Radio spots in which a grumpy bank teller tells a customer to get in line. Asked ″Which line?″ he barks, ″See that short one over there? That’s not it.″
-Print ads featuring a large close up of a cab driver’s snarling face and the message, ″It’s about time we changed the face of New York.″
-Posters and window stickers with the quasi-trapazoidal ″NEW YORK PR 3/8DE″ logo, and the promise ″Courtesy Shown Here.″
-A telephone line, 800-HAPPYNY, for reports of politeness or courtesy. ″You can call up and find out who’s being courteous and who isn’t,″ said Mark Simone of WNEW radio, who is focusing on the topic on his program.
A supermarket chain is giving free merchandise to any customer who is not thanked by a check out cashier, a cab company is training all its drivers in etiquette and Diamond District merchants are displaying the courtesy posters in their store windows.
On Friday, however, New Yorkers were up to their old habits.
They grumbled when they arrived at the Central Park tennis house at 7 a.m. to discover the courts would not open on time because it had rained the night before.
They grumbled at dozens of subway stations along the J and M lines after a shooting on a train halted service during rush hour.
They grumbled at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 60th Street, where pedestrian traffic was halted briefly when a blind man hooked his cane through a woman’s shopping bag, prompting some nasty language by the latter.
″New Yorkers are cynical,″ said Emery Jackson, president of We Care About New York, an agency which coordinates volunteers. ″I don’t blame New York Pride for trying, but I don’t think public service announcements will inspire them to be less curt.″
Spokesmen for public service agencies were asked if the civility campaign in having any effect.
″How could I possibly gauge such a thing?″ asked a harried Al O’Leary, spokesman for the Transit Authority, who had a big meeting Friday morning. ″Get real, babe. I gotta go.″
″People have been in a bad mood because of all the rain,″ said Vito Turso, spokesman for the Sanitation Department. ″Try us next week.″


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Apple to Samsung: WHUPASH!
That’s the sound of a wet towel snapping someone on the leg. And that’s just the kind of sting Samsung must be feeling today as U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh issued a preliminary injunction that stops it from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the U.S., because it infringes on Apple’s intellectual property (read: it looks a heck of a lot like and iPad). The injunction came late Tuesday afternoon. Koh had previously denied the injunction, but a federal appeals court asked her to reconsider.
“Although Samsung has a right to compete, it does not have a right to compete unfairly, by flooding the market with infringing products,” Koh wrote on Tuesday, adding the order should become effective once Apple posts a $2.6 million bond to protect against damages suffered by Samsung if the injunction is later found to have been wrong.
This may not be the Patent Wars’ version of Bull Run or Shiloh, but Apple has definitely scored a victory here. The injunction doesn’t affect Samsung’s newest tablet offering, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 II, which was just introduced last month.
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“Bitcoin Family” opens a bitcoin bar on the beach in Lagos, Portugal.
The “Bitcoin family” has lost over $1 million on their Bitcoin investments as the world’s most popular digital coin peaked at around $69,000 in November. 2021, but Patriarch Didi Taihuttu is more optimistic than ever.
“I buy bitcoins every day,” Taihuttu told CNBC by phone from a beach in Lagos, Portugal. “For me, the lesson I’ve learned in the last two cycles is this: when the whole world goes crazy and when everyone thinks bitcoin is going to crash, I slowly zoom out and buy bitcoins.”
In 2017, Taihuttu, his wife, and three daughters liquidated all of their possessions, trading their 2,500-square-foot home and virtually all of their earthly possessions for bitcoin and life on the road. This was when the price of bitcoin was around $900. Bitcoin is currently trading around $19,200.
Along the way, Taihuttu exited his bitcoin position and then bought back, trading his coins at the right times.
“This is the life of Bitcoin,” he said.
Taihuttu told CNBC that he sold about 15% of the family’s bitcoin holdings when the price dropped to $55,000 in late November.
“$55,000 for me was confirmation that we would go lower,” Taihuttu continued.
Roman and Joly Taihuttu on the beach in Lagos, Portugal.
Extreme volatility is the price of doing business in the digital asset market. Over the past decade, bitcoin has experienced two extended periods of price decline before recovering. In the previous crypto winter of 2018, Bitcoin lost over 80% of its value before recovering, eventually rising to its all-time high last year.
“There is still an aspect to crypto that we are waiting to see if another shoe falls, if another institution collapses, if the credit cascade continues,” Matt Hogan, chief investment officer of Bitwise Asset Management, said in an interview.
“If your time frame is a week, or a month, or even a quarter, I think there is still significant volatility. If you have a time horizon measured in years, then yes, this is a great opportunity to think about entering the market,” continued Hoogan.
Taihuttu – studies price charts in the cryptocurrency market and monitors popular indicators such as Multiple Mayer – thinks bitcoin will bottom somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 in the current price cycle before jumping to $140,000 by 2025.
So far, his investment strategy has worked pretty well. Taihuttu told CNBC that his portfolio has grown more than 2,000% in the past six years.
“Gradually, people will realize that being in bitcoin and HODLing is more profitable than constantly trying to catch this altcoin that will go thousands of times,” Taihuttu said.
Over the past six years, the Dutch family of five has traveled the world. But after visiting 40 countries, they decided to put down roots in Portugal, which is one of the last places in Europe with zero property tax. bitcoin.
Taihuttu’s latest project is to launch a bitcoin bar on one of Lagos’ most popular beaches to “lead by example”. It also plans to spread the Bitcoin gospel by turning all merchants in this stretch of sand into Lightning-friendly retailers. Lightning is a payment platform built on top of the underlying Bitcoin layer that provides near-instantaneous low-fee transactions.
“I think it will take me about six months and this whole beach will accept bitcoins,” he said.
The family’s faith was tested last year. These have been a tough few months for the crypto market as token prices plummeted and some of the most popular companies in the industry go belly up.
The chaos spooked investors, wiping out more than $2 trillion in a matter of months and wiping out the savings of retail traders who were betting big on crypto projects declared to be safe investments. On Thursday, Bitcoin published its worst quarterly loss in over a decade.
The first customers paying with bitcoin at the Taihuttus beach bar in Lagos, Portugal.
To stay “emotionally balanced” in this level of volatility, the Dutch family of five follows what they call the 70/30 rule.
At any given moment, the Taihutu are storing 70% of their bitcoins in cold storage (which is not accessible). physically not going to extract it), and the remaining 30% in a hot wallet, which means that the coins are connected to the Internet, whether through a mobile phone wallet or an online exchange.
Of the 30% of the cryptocurrency stash, some is held in bitcoin and the rest is held in a mix of USD-pegged stablecoins, including tie, USDC, and give. Such hot storage makes it relatively easy for holders to access their tokens so they can access and spend their cryptocurrency. The trade-off for convenience is the potential impact of attackers.
“Every time our capital increases, I make sure 70% is in cold storage so I can’t touch it from there,” Taihuttu explained.
Taihuttu goes out of his way to make accessing his cold wallets particularly difficult.
Most of the family’s crypto wealth is held in secret vaults on four different continents, including two caches in Europe, two more in Asia, one in South America and a sixth in Australia. None of these locations are underground or on a remote island, but the family told CNBC that crypto stashes are hidden in many different ways and in different places, ranging from rented apartments and friends’ houses to self-storage vaults.
Teddy, the Taihutt dog, on the beach in Lagos, Portugal, with Jessa and Roman.
Taihutu also hide seed phrases (that is, a unique group of 12 to 24 words used to access digital assets) on the same continent as their respective hardware wallet, but in different countries. Seed phrases are different from the private keys used to access crypto wallets, but it is imperative that users keep a record of both.
“Cold storage often refers to cryptocurrencies that have been moved to wallets whose private keys — the passwords that allow cryptocurrencies to be moved out of the wallet — are not stored on computers connected to the Internet, so hackers cannot break into the computer and steal the private keys,” Philip said. Gradwell, chief economist at Chainalysis, a blockchain data company.
Aside from the benefits of basic cyber hygiene and protecting his tokens from intruders, Taihuttu has also gone to great lengths to protect his assets from himself.
“I think if I had these hardware wallets with me, I might be more emotionally involved, and maybe when I see bitcoin drop, I would grab a hardware wallet and start selling or buying,” he said.
However, the Dutch father of five says he’s never too far from his ledger or opening phrases.
“I can always fly cheap with RyanAir or AirAsia. I’ll be there in three hours.”
Of the bitcoins that taihuttu have been scattered around the world, almost all of their coins have not passed KYC, which means that they are not subject to the Know Your Customer rules that centralized exchanges require to prevent them from being used for laundering. money or engage in other illegal activities. This means that no one, including governments or friends, knows exactly how much the Bitcoin family holds.
To do this, Taihuttu bought most of his bitcoins without a prescription.
“There are many forums where you can still buy bitcoin with cash,” Taihuttu told CNBC.
“Each country has its own department. There is one in Mexico that makes up to a million dollars a day in cash,” Taihuttu continued, although he noted that you may have to buy at a premium when buying OTC drugs.


text: Dubai | UAE Federal Government employees have five days off for the festival. The holiday was announced by the UAE Ministry of Human Resources. The holiday is from Ramadan 29 to Shawwal 3. The UAE Lunar Visitation Committee will meet on May 1 to confirm the new moon. According to astronomical estimates, this year, Eid al-Fitr will be on May 2. The holiday will be from Saturday, April 30 to Wednesday, May 4.


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Paul L. Perito reaches into his briefcase at the Harvard Club in Manhattan and pulls out a plastic freezer bag filled with brown mints. Beaming, the 63-year-old president of Star Scientific hands over the bag as if it contains gold. Hardly. The mints taste like sugar-coated tobacco. They also pack a punch: They are laced with 2mg of nicotine, a little more than what you'd get from a cigarette. Star Scientific will roll out the mints, tentatively called VLN—it stands for "very low nitrosamines"—in the first half of next year, along with a line of snuff.
The mints and snuff are made with specially cured tobacco that contains fewer tobacco-specific nitrosamines—powerful carcinogens formed from nicotine and other alkaloids during tobacco fermentation—than regular cigarettes. It's the same stuff that's in Advance, a potentially less toxic cigarette that Star Scientific began testing in Richmond, Virginia, and Lexington, Kentucky. Brown & Williamson, the U.S.' third-largest tobacco company, is negotiating plans to distribute all of Star Scientific's newfangled products.
But with the mints and snuff, Perito and Star's CEO, Jonnie R. Williams, 45, are betting that smokers would rather suck than puff. "We've developed a product that delivers nicotine in a tobacco form in the least harmful way possible," says Perito. They are so sure it will succeed that they want to unload their cigarette business, including Advance—hoping thereby to avoid very costly litigation in the future. (Only cigarettes are covered under the $246 billion settlement with U.S. state attorneys general.)
Star Scientific didn't seem to have much of a future until last year. The company, which has far less than 1% of the $45 billion U.S. market for cigarettes, has peddled four discount cigarette brands—Vegas, Mainstreet, G-Smoke and Sport—since 1994. The cheap smokes (average price: $1.70 a pack) languished until Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds started raising the price of premium brands to offset payments to the settlement. Marlboro and Camel now retail for up to $5 a pack in some markets, prompting many smokers to switch to discounted brands.
Talk about getting a lift. Last year Star Scientific netted $11.5 million on $100 million in sales, which were up 400% from 1998. And the company is still on fire: Revenues were up 180% through September.
Getting out of the cigarette business will help Star Scientific avoid having to continue to pay a chunk of annual revenues—$11.6 million this year—into an escrow fund to protect small companies from smokers' litigation. And it may help boost the stock, which has been stuck at about $4 a share. That's partly due to low trading volume—60% of Star's stock is owned by Williams and another board member, Francis J. O'Donnell.
Williams and O'Donnell, 50, are practiced dabblers. Over the past two decades O'Donnell, an ophthalmic surgeon, and Williams, a two-time college dropout, have backed ten companies—with mixed success. One of their better bets: Visx, a $271 million (sales) laser eye-surgery company. One of their flops: Spectra Pharmaceuticals, which was investigated by the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission in the late 1980s for distorting the truth about the benefits of a vitamin-enriched eye lubricant. Williams and O'Donnell settled with the SEC, and the company folded.
In 1990 the pair launched Star Tobacco & Pharmaceuticals as a boutique cigar and cigarette company. They gradually shifted focus to peddling discount cigarettes and developing less toxic tobacco. The company went public as Star Scientific in 1998 in a reverse merger with Eye Technology, a moneylosing optical-lens manufacturer that was sold off in 1999.
Williams, who has no scientific training, insists that the company's patented method for removing 99% of nitrosamines from tobacco was his idea. Star Scientific contracted with a team of seven chemists, engineers and toxicologists and invested $7 million in the process, which involves quickly drying leaves at the early yellowing stage using 1 million Btu of heat generated in special curing barns. The high temperature suppresses the conversion of nitrates into the more toxic nitrites, which ultimately yield tobacco-specific nitrosamines.
Perhaps because of Williams' trouble with Spectra Pharmaceuticals, the company is careful not to pitch Advance and its oral tobacco as safer alternatives to regular cigarettes. They just say that their products are potentially less toxic. But Ron H. Todd, director of tobacco control at the American Cancer Society, has his doubts. "There are over 43 carcinogens in cigarettes. There's no evidence that says if you lower a few of those, you'll have a safer tobacco."
Either way, the company's timing is good. The World Health Organization has called for the development of less harmful cigarettes. And Star Scientific beat the industry giant RJR to market with its own low-nitrosamine tobacco. It's too soon to say if Advance will be a big seller in stores, but it tastes and smolders like a regular cigarette, unlike Eclipse, the unsuccessful low-smoke cigarette that RJR tested for years. At the very least, Brown & Williamson is buying it, snapping up more than 8 million kilos of Star's low-nitrosamine tobacco for $45 million. It may use it in its own brands, including Kool and Lucky Strike.
Advance will add to the value of Star Scientific's discount brands that Perito, a lawyer brought in as front man last year, thinks might fetch up to $250 million. Good money to promote the products it hopes smokers will use when they can't light up at work or in airplanes. Or a good way to line the pockets of the principal investors, whose shares are already worth $131 million.


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3 days ago
Aereo, the startup that offers television stations over the Internet starting at $8 a month, says it will start service in Atlanta on June 17.
8 days ago
MIAMI - It is the middle finger seen 'round the World Wide Web.
10 days ago
Under the bill, states could require out-of-state retailers to collect sales taxes when they sell products over the Internet, in catalogs, and through radio and TV ads.
11 days ago
NORTH RICHLAND HILLS - A 14-year-old girl met a suspected child predator on the Internet and then left with him to Mexico before the two were located by authorities last week, police said Monday.
11 days ago
States must also establish a single entity to receive Internet sales tax revenue, so retailers don't have to send them to individual counties or cities.
15 days ago
Frank Fahrenkopf, head of the casinos' main trade association, says Internet gambling will mark the greatest expansion of legalized gambling in the United States.
69 days ago
A decade ago, when he was a Boston Red Sox scout, Jerry Dipoto used to test the limits of his Internet browser every time he wanted to examine a player.
72 days ago
This is on top of the fine imposed in 2004 and the penalty of 2006 and brings the total to nearly (EURO)1.7 billion.- May 9: Microsoft announces it has appealed the penalty.- Jan. 16, 2009: The...
72 days ago
EU fines Microsoft $733M for breaking browser pact
80 days ago
Other research firms still assert that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used, although all measures show it has been losing market share to Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox and Apple Inc.'s...
81 days ago
The initial ones, expected in mid-2013, will likely be in Chinese and other languages besides English, said Fadi Chehade, CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
82 days ago
European countries including Britain, Sweden and Denmark ask Internet service providers to block child pornography websites, measures that have met with only limited opposition.
85 days ago
North Koreans will be allowed to access certain 3G services, including SMS and MMS messaging, video calls and subscriptions to the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper - but not the global Internet.
99 days ago
LivingSocial Research Shows Online Shopping is Irresistible to Brits
100 days ago
No, if your navigation app requires constant map updates from the Internet, because you need a cellular or Wi-Fi connection for that.
101 days ago
The first Internet Cat Video Film Festival drew a Woodstock-esque crowd of more than 10,000 - people, that is - to a Minneapolis art museum in August.
109 days ago
"RIM is also claiming that the BlackBerry 10's browser will be speedy, even faster than browsers for laptop and desktop computers.
112 days ago
Pope Benedict XVI put church leaders on notice this week, saying social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are a real world that they must engage if they want to spread the faith to the...
113 days ago
REAL, NOT VIRTUAL: Pope Benedict XVI put church leaders on notice Thursday, saying social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter aren't a virtual world they can ignore, but rather a very real...
120 days ago
A three-year Internet nightmare for an Oregon woman is over -- for now.
122 days ago
The terms "Web" and "Internet" (and occasionally "Interwebs") are often used interchangeably, albeit incorrectly, and to a certain extent, that's fine -- well, except for "Interwebs."
123 days ago
Driven by a surge in mobile Web surfing, the country added 51 million new Internet users, a number bigger than the population of Spain, the China Internet Network Information Center reported.
124 days ago
Payne is one of those entrepreneurs hoping to launch her startup dream - an Internet subscription service for musicians who want to collaborate online - on the cheap.
128 days ago
Even if Schmidt wasn't officially representing Google in North Korea, the company stands to benefit if the country's leadership loosens its Internet restrictions.
128 days ago
The Barry Diller-backed Internet company that challenged cable and satellite TV services by offering inexpensive live television online plans to expand beyond New York City this spring.


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Stop the Killer Games has launched a KickStarter for the third title in their catalog of holiday serial killer board games. This one is titled Halloween II: The Game. In this retro tabletop game based on the 1981 cult classic horror movie, Halloween II, players try to stop Michael Myers from killing Laurie Strode. According ….
Rob Zombie – fresh off of his reinvention of the Halloween series – will write, direct and produce a remake of the 1958 horror classic The Blob, the film that launched the career of Steve McQueen, according to Variety. Production is scheduled to start next spring according to the report, from a script that Zombie ….
In anticipation for this weekend’s release of Halloween II, Dimension Films is hosting a Facebook contest. Below are the rules and instructions to get your chance to win: In order to win, go to the downloads section of the Halloween II official website RIGHT HERE and snag yourself a Halloween II profile pic for FACEBOOK. ….
Rob and Sheri Moon Zombie will be making an appearance at the Planet Hollywood in Times Square tomorrow at 12:45pm, to donate Michael Myers’ knife from Halloween II. To celebrate the events, producers of the horror film are running a twitter contest and will be giving away a Rob Zombie signed skull (pictured), that comes ….
Enter Fangoria’s Halloween II mash-up contest by creating your own mash-up clip. You simply start with the assets provided, add your own original content, and then slice and dice away. You’ll get video clips from the movie and audio from Rob Zombie’s remake of the classic Halloween theme. From there, it’s up to you. Slice ….
Halloween II has launched a contest on its Twitter page. The first 50 people to send in a photo of themselves in front of a Halloween II poster or standee at a local theater will win a poster. Simply tweet the picture @H2_TheMovie and name the theater, city and state. Visit www.twitter.com/H2_TheMovie to get in ….
I though the last great trailer I saw for Halloween II was the full-length version. Well apparently not, since Dimension has posted a brand new trailer online to make your flesh creep.


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Visakhapatnam, June 23, 2007
Actress Ileana attends inauguration program
South Indian Film Actress Ileana D'Cruz is in Visakhapatnam for the inauguration of the first floor operations of the Khazana Jewellery in the city. Ileana and MD of the store lit a traditional lamp. Fans of the actress came to the show room in large numbers. Police and private security was provided to her.
Speaking at the first floor operations at the showroom, the Managing Director of the South India's largest Jewellery chain stores, Kishore K Jain said that the Khazana Jewellery is on a massive expansion spree and that the jewellery store is now aiming to make an impact in the North Indian Jewellery Market.
Khazana Jewellery is starting as many 22 new stores spread across the country including one store each in Rajahmundry and Andhra's commercial capital Guntur. Speaking about the turnover targets, Khazana Jewellery is eying to cross the Rs. 1000 crores in turnover mark this year and Rs. 2000 crores for the next year.
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Last week we got our first look at the upcoming vivo Watch and today we have another teaser in the form of a short product video. The wearable which is slated to debut on September 22 appears with a stainless steel body and round AMOLED screen with several watch strap varieties.
According to the latest leaked specs the vivo Watch will come in 42mm and 46mm sizes with sport, calorie and SpO2 tracking as well as a heart rate sensor. It will also do sleep tracking, independent music playback and will support NFC and 5ATM water resistance. Rumors suggest it will last 18 days on a charge and will retail in the CNY 999 ($145/€123) range.
with 18 day battery, WearOS it aint!!!


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Elizabeth Fenner, a food science graduate student at the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, is finishing testing of an experimental ice cream that starts as one flavor then shifts to another before being swallowed.
Food Science ⋅ Page 8
Obesity changes a person’s glucose and fat metabolism, leading to insulin resistance that triggers chronic diseases like Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular illness. James Perfield, assistant professor at the University of Missouri specializing in nutrition and the physiology of metabolic diseases, has identified a plant oil that seems to interrupt the development of obesity-triggered insulin resistance.
The University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources will investigate the economic impacts and best marketing strategies of new soybean seed technologies designed to improve US production.
‘Tis the season for the holiday party with plates of tasty meats, creamy pies and veggies and dips. But be careful says Andrew Clarke. Unless properly handled, these treats can send you home with a case of food poisoning as a holiday gift.
Food scientists at the University of Missouri have developed a faster and more accurate way to test poultry and eggs for live salmonella contamination. The DNA-based process provides results in as little as 2-5 hours versus up to five days for current testing techniques that culture samples in a Petri dish. The technique can allow the poultry industry to test for contamination before product is shipped, thus avoiding costly recalls.
The biggest trend in food in the next 15 years will be something familiar to our grandmothers – made from scratch foods in tune with the seasons to deliver great flavor, said Walter Scheib, White House executive chef from 1994 to 2005.
Wehner, known for purchasing his produce and meats from local farmers in and around the city, says that while his menu items may cost more, they taste better, are nutritionally superior and are environmentally friendly — things that his savvy customers are looking for.
Massey, a regional nutrition and health education specialist for University of Missouri Extension in Columbia, presents about a dozen workshops each year on food preservation around the state. She also teaches health promotion, stress management and healthy lifestyles.
It’s never a good idea to mess with a professor in class. It’s even less of a brainwave to cross Ingolf Gruen, an unfailingly polite and soft-spoken University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources’ associate professor and undergraduate adviser chair. As an aspiring third-degree black belt in Taekwondo, he can deal with any undergrad who causes a…
Fu-Hung Hsieh is finishing a project to create a soy product that looks, feels, pulls apart and, most importantly, chews like real chicken.


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What affect will Facebook have on your job board business?
On February 15th, 2017, Facebook introduced the pilot to allow US and Canadian businesses to post jobs on their Facebook Page with the hope to help businesses find qualified people as “40% of US small businesses report that filling jobs was more difficult than they expected, which is surprising when you consider that these small […]
- On March 6, 2017
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As Bank One Corp. seeks a buyer for Wingspanbank.com, its fledgling Internet bank that has not quite gotten off the ground, it has made one thing clear: Not all suitors are welcome.
Sources close to Bank One told American Banker on Wednesday that at least one bid has come in and been rejected - an offer from Richard W. Vague, former chairman and chief executive officer of Bank One's First USA unit, who had overseen Wingspanbank.com from its inception.
Mr. Vague, who left the company in October, "sent a letter to Bank One expressing interest in buying Wingspan, and they rebuffed him," according to one source. "They said there's no way they're going to do this deal, so then they turned around and hired Morgan Stanley to look for other buyers."
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Bank One has hired Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. to find a company that will take the expensive online venture off its hands. This month American Banker reported that Mr. Vague had considered buying Wingspan as part of his new venture, Dryrock Corp., an Internet payments start-up in Wilmington, Del., that has raised $25 million of venture capital.
Mr. Vague took some of the fall for escalating problems in Bank One's credit card operation. Since the problems came to light, Bank One has had to reduce earnings expectations three times.
"If you're going to blame Dick Vague for all the faults, you don't want to turn around and sell Wingspan Bank to him, which says he can run it and you can't," a source said. "Then blaming Dick won't be an option anymore." Mr. Vague did not return phone calls.
Industry sources said Bank One is going over every asset in its business and weighing the possibility of selling each one. Wingspan is not getting the investment it needs to grow and will "deteriorate over time," one source said.
Wingspan was launched in June with much hoopla and a national advertising campaign, with the hope it would energize Bank One's sagging stock price.
But the online bank did not attract as many customers as Bank One expected.


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There is growing news about the possibility of Samsung’s S8000 “Cubic” potentially sporting Android as the operating system of choice. We already know that the Korean outfit will produce three Android devices this year, but blurry pictures aside, we haven’t really received much information apart from that. Well things may have changed, as we now have some potential gossip on Samsung’s first Android based device.
The mobile version of the Czech Republic website iDNES has reported some juicy bits of information about the Android hopeful, including the 5MP camera with dual LED flash that we (kinda) already knew about. Apparently, it will come with an AMOLED 3.1-inch touchscreen display that boasts 16million colour WVGA resolution. As far as we are concerned, this is completely feasible, since we know how much Samsung are pushing their AMOLED technology.
Aside from this, the phone is reported to be only 12mm thick (or ‘thin’ if you’re an optimist), something that fits with Samsung’s trends. Other specifications include Wi-Fi for when 3G connectivity is out of reach, assisted-GPS, Bluetooth 1.2 and obviously USB connectivity. Combine this with the expandable memory via a microSD slot and real 3.5mm audio jack and we really like the sound of this supercomputer smartphone. The cherry for us comes in the form of DivX and XviD support for the video player. It is highly plausible that this could be the first Android based device to really hit that sweet spot in terms of specifications and form factor.
In case you are wondering, the nick-name “Cubic” comes from the fact that the D-pad navigation is in the shape of a cube from an isometric perspective, possibility hinting at a 3D cube-like interface for the home screen and associated display windows. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen such an idea, with HTC adding similar functionality to their China mobile devices as well.
Trust us, we’ll keep you updated about this one.


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Retail prices for 267 brand-name drugs commonly used by older adults surged by an average of 5.8 percent in 2018, more than twice the general inflation rate of 2.4 percent, according to AARP Public Policy Institute (PPI) data. The annual average of one brand-name drug ballooned to more than $7,200 in 2018, up from nearly $1,900 in 2006.
“There seems to be no end to these relentless brand-name drug price increases,” said Debra Whitman, executive vice president and chief public policy officer at AARP. “To put this into perspective: If gasoline prices had grown at the same rate as these widely used brand-name drugs over the past 12 years, gas would cost $8.34 per gallon at the pump today. Imagine how outraged Americans would be if they were forced to pay those kinds of prices.”
Brand-name drug price increases have consistently and substantially exceeded the general inflation rate of other consumer goods for over a decade, according to the AARP PPI data.
If brand-name drug retail price changes had been limited to the general inflation rate between 2006 and 2018, the average annual of one brand-name drug would be a whopping $5,000 lower today ($2,178 vs. $7,202). The average senior takes four to five medications each month, and the current medication cost translates into an annual cost of more than $32,000, almost 25 percent higher than the median annual income of $26,200 for a Medicare beneficiary.
“While some people will undoubtedly see a slower rate of price increases as a sign of improvement, the reality is that there is absolutely nothing to stop drug companies from reverting back to double-digit percentage price increases every year,” said Leigh Purvis, director of health services research, AARP Public Policy Institute, and co-author of the report. “Americans will remain at the mercy of drug manufacturers’ pricing behavior until Congress takes major legislative action.”
To view the full report, visit www.aarp.org/rxpricewatch.


text: NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stocks rose to intraday highs Friday afternoon, with the financial sector leading the charge, after the Federal Reserve reported borrowing by consumers unexpectedly climbed in January for the first time in a year. Already bolstered by February's job report, stock indexes surged higher after the consumer credit data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.01% added 114.80 points to 10,558.94, with the blue chips poised for a 2.3% weekly gain. The S&P 500 Index SPX, +0.03% rose 14.87 points to 1,137.84, a level that would translate into a 3% rise from last Friday's close. The Nasdaq Composite COMP, +0.08% gained 32.04 points to 2,324.39, leaving it up 3.9% on the not-yet-ended week.