The Chinese yuan has slumped sharply against the US dollar this year, and is sliding towards what many analysts deem the psychologically important seven-dollar mark. Although Chinese officials are act...
Tag: Quartz
The US dollar is decimating world currencies — Quartz
Americans traveling outside the US will find that they are about 14% richer than they were at the beginning of the year. That’s because the dollar has risen that much against some of the world’s most ...
The US should cancel a lot more than $10,000 in student debt — Quartz
On paper, US President Joe Biden’s student debt cancellation plan looks pretty good. The government will forgive $10,000 worth of student debt for those making under $125,000. That’s nearly a third of...
Germans are stocking up on firewood as natural gas prices soar — Quartz
Skyrocketing prices for natural gas have Europeans scrambling for alternative energy sources. In Germany, where households face a 480 euro rise in their gas bills, people are resorting to stockpiling ...
Does California have enough electricity to ban gas cars? — Quartz
California will ban the sale of internal combustion engine passenger cars by 2035, officials there said on Aug. 24. The policy, coming on top of new incentives for EV buyers in the Inflation Reduction...
Egypt is rationing gas use to sell more of it overseas — Quartz
Egypt will soon begin to ration electricity used for street lights, sporting venues, and government buildings, and set the air conditioning in shopping malls to a higher temperature, Prime Minister Mo...
Why investors love GameStop’s stock split — Quartz
When a publicly traded company splits its stock, it is mainly an act of prestidigitation. Nothing actually changes; companies simply flip around some numbers. GameStop, the primordial meme stock, is e...
What is the price of oil around the world? — Quartz
“The price of oil” is a phrase that will keep flashing frequently in the news over the next few months, as the world struggles with an energy shortage caused by the Russia-Ukraine war. To people in th...
TSMC’s great quarter is bad news for semiconductor supply chains — Quartz
TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, reported another quarter of record profits, booming sales, and high margins. On a July 14 earnings call, executives predicted the hot streak will ...
Global oil production is already near full capacity — Quartz
With US gasoline prices still above $4.50 per gallon, president Joe Biden is under immense pressure to balance the global oil market. Asking consumers to use less oil is a political dead end. His best...
Shuttering Nord Stream 1 is just the start of Europe’s gas crisis — Quartz
Summer months are, of course, the slow season for natural gas demand in Europe, so when Russia shut down Nord Stream 1, the continent’s biggest gas pipeline, for scheduled maintenance today (July 11),...
Zambia’s first YC-backed startup enables companies to generate virtual cards — Quartz Africa
The rise of e-commerce on the continent, plus greater access to global supply chains, presents enormous upside for both buyers and sellers. But taking advantage of that upside still often requires acc...
Robinhood nearly defaulted during the GameStop short squeeze — Quartz
In the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 28, 2021, the financial trading firm Robinhood faced a $3.7 billion margin call from the clearing house that settles its customers’ trades. For every trade Robinhood faci...
India’s crypto exchanges welcome clarification on new TDS rules — Quartz India
The Indian government has brought in some much-needed clarity—and cheer—in the matter of taxing digital token transactions. The union budget for 2022-23 had declared a 30% tax on income from cryptocur...
VC Eric Li says these firms will define China’s new economy — Quartz
China’s tech crack down has made clear that Beijing wants to shift its economy away from consumer internet firms. But if these big tech firms have fallen out of official favor, what kinds of high-tech...
Why JetBlue is so desperate to buy Spirit — Quartz
JetBlue wants to buy Spirit Airlines—badly. Since April, the company has been locked in a battle with its smaller rival, Frontier Airlines, over its potential Spirit merger. On June 20, JetBlue raised...
Tesla is ceding the market for cheap EVs to traditional carmakers — Quartz
Tesla issued its fourth price hike of the year yesterday (June 15), raising the starting cost of several versions of the Model 3, Y, S, and X about 5% each. Tesla frequently tweaks its prices and rare...
The biggest corporate holder of bitcoin is facing a reckoning — Quartz
MicroStrategy is famous for owning more bitcoin than any other publicly-traded company. As of June 14, the Virginia-based business intelligence company holds 129,218 bitcoins, more than two-and-a-half...
Gas prices are so high they’re making governments suspicious — Quartz
Governments are slashing gasoline levies to bring prices down. So why are customers paying record prices to fuel up? In Germany and the UK, fuel companies are facing new government inquiries to determ...
Three signs the US housing boom is petering out — Quartz
Homebuyers are dropping out of the US housing market as higher interest rates price them out Industry data—as well as anecdotal evidence—point to a sharp slowdown in the housing boom triggered by the ...
Inside Elon Musk’s legal strategy for ditching his Twitter deal — Quartz
Elon Musk has buyer’s remorse. On April 25, the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion, but since then the stock market has tanked. Twitter agreed to sell to Musk at $5...
Top LNG exporter Australia faces natural gas shortage — Quartz
Australia is the world’s top exporter of liquified natural gas (LNG). Right now, it is also facing a domestic gas crisis. Prices of power and gas in the land down under have surged amid what the count...
The cheapest electric car on the market is now the Chevy Bolt — Quartz
Electric cars are expensive—and, for the most part, they’re only getting pricier. With automakers focusing their early electric vehicle (EV) efforts on luxury cars and high-performance SUVs and pickup...
Tesla’s remote-work policy reveals Elon Musk’s big blind spot — Quartz
Elon Musk is calling Tesla executives back to the office—and using factory workers’ demanding schedules to justify his orders. The Tesla CEO sent out an email on May 31 entitled “Remote work is no lon...
Redbox is the dumbest meme stock yet — Quartz
Just outside the doors of my local CVS, along an industrial road in Ann Arbor, Michigan, there’s a Redbox. I only ever notice its red glow on dark Michigan nights when I walk into the convenience stor...
How Russia defended the ruble from Ukraine war sanctions — Quartz
The Russian ruble has emerged as the best-performing currency in 2022, despite wide-ranging sanctions imposed for its invasion of Ukraine. It is nearly 30% higher against the US dollar, as of May 23, ...
The Ukraine war is creating a jobs crisis in Russia — Quartz
As companies flee Russia, their Russian employees are seeing their jobs suddenly vanish. Tens of thousands of such employees will be cut loose into an economy where inflation is at a 20-year-high, and...
The cheapest states in the US to buy an EV — Quartz
If you’re looking to buy an electric vehicle (EV) in the US, you probably won’t find a better deal than New Jersey, The climate policy think tank Energy Innovation compared the monthly cost of buying ...
Jack Dorsey and Kendrick Lamar make Block the ultimate Gen Z bank — Quartz
Block, the company formerly known as Square, has teamed up with rapper Kendrick Lamar and Ticketmaster to offer exclusive early access to tickets for the artist’s The Big Steppers Tour set to kick off...
Elon Musk can’t easily pull out of the Twitter deal — Quartz
Elon Musk is having cold feet about the Twitter deal—or he’s just trolling. On May 13, Musk tweeted that his deal to buy Twitter is “temporarily on hold” until he can get more assurance that the socia...