The stock market is known for its rapid rises and unpredictable falls, but last week’s brief meltdown was extreme even by those standards. When the markets opened last Monday, numbers were falling and traders were selling off their stocks in panic. Japan’s stock exchange fell more than 12 percent, the biggest plunge in 37 years. The S&P 500 — which tracks the stock performance of 500 of the largest U.S. companies — lost $1.3 trillion in value, or 3 percent, Continue reading
Last month, we wrote about the global technology meltdown that impacted more than 8.5 million computers and caused at least $10 billion in financial damage. Triggered by the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, a faulty software update crashed Microsoft products around the world and in the process revealed how fragile our global technology infrastructure can be. Air transportation was one of the sectors affected most by the outage as airlines were unable to scan boarding passes or track crew members. Carriers canceled Continue reading
For more than 50 years, Southwest Airlines has stood out in the competitive world of air travel for a unique and equalizing perk: open seating. While other airlines required passengers to pick a seat in advance and pay more to upgrade, Southwest chose to do things differently. Instead of a seat assignment, passengers received a boarding position, lined up in order at the gate, and chose any available seat once on the plane. “It’s been a very egalitarian view of Continue reading
Retailers once considered July to be a slow month as regular customers spent their money on travel and other activities rather than shopping at local stores. Then Amazon created Prime Day, a 48-hour sales event that turned the middle of July into a bonanza of consumer cash for the e-commerce giant. This past Prime Day was Amazon’s biggest yet, with the company racking up $14.2 billion in sales over the course of two days last week, an 11 percent increase Continue reading
Over the weekend, businesses around the world scrambled to recover after a faulty software update caused one of the biggest IT outages in history. The Texas-based cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike released a security update last Thursday that was supposed to protect computers from malware and cyber attacks. Instead, the flawed update caused Microsoft Windows to crash and impacted more than 8.5 million computers. The global tech meltdown disrupted nearly every aspect of society, especially healthcare and transportation. Hospitals canceled procedures, and Continue reading
From grocery stores to fast food drive-throughs, today’s consumers pay a lot more for food than they did just a little while ago. In the years following the pandemic, food and beverage companies steadily increased prices to compensate for soaring commodity and labor costs and to please investors looking to boost profit margins. For example, the average price for a bag of potato chips in June 2020 was $5.09. These days, though, that same bag of chips goes for Continue reading
Consumers across the world have different tastes and preferences when it comes to food. For instance, a dish that people think is mild in one place might be considered extremely spicy in another part of the world. As the global economy pushes products across national and cultural lines, many businesses have come to discover the potential difficulties of selling food to customers in unfamiliar markets. In fact, an instant ramen company in South Korea learned this lesson the hard way Continue reading
Over the last few years, the rise of streaming video has created many problems for the old-school movie studios that once dominated Hollywood. Paramount, for instance, enjoyed more than a century of success as it produced huge film franchises like Top Gun and Mission: Impossible while owning major television networks like CBS, Nickelodeon, and MTV. But Paramount struggled as customers shifted away from movie theaters and traditional cable packages and toward streaming services like Netflix and Amazon. The company tried Continue reading