Business category, Page 97

WASHINGTON — The countdown toward a possible U.S. government default began Thursday with Treasury implementing accounting measures to buy time as frictions between President Joe Biden and House Republicans raise alarms about whether the United States can sidestep a potential economic crisis. The Treasury Department said in a letter to...

WASHINGTON — The number of people seeking unemployment benefits in the U.S. reached a four-month low last week, a sign that employers are holding on to their workers despite the Federal Reserve’s efforts to slow the economy and tamp down inflation. U.S. jobless aid applications for the week ending Jan....

It’s going to be more expensive to send that birthday card, letter or bill in the mail, starting Sunday. The United States Postal Service will raise the price of a first-class Forever stamp from 60 cents to 63 cents in a move announced in October. This will be the third...

NEW YORK — Party City has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after struggling with rising prices and a pullback in customer spending. The company, based in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, said that its franchise stores, subsidiaries outside of the U.S. and its foil balloons Anagram business are not part...

Microsoft is cutting 10,000 workers, almost 5% of its workforce, joining other tech companies that have scaled back their pandemic-era expansions. The company said in a regulatory filing Wednesday that the layoffs were a response to “macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities.” The Redmond, Washington-based software giant said it will...

ZURICH — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met Wednesday with her Chinese counterpart and pledged an effort to manage differences and “prevent competition from becoming anything ever near conflict” as the two nations try to thaw relations. Yellen’s first face-to-face meeting with Vice Premier Liu He in Zurich is the...

WASHINGTON — Wholesale prices in the U.S. rose 6.2% in December from a year earlier, a sixth straight monthly slowdown and a hopeful sign that inflation pressures will continue to cool. The latest year-over-year figure was down from 7.3% in November and from a recent peak of 11.7% in March....

Get ’em while they’re down. Buying stocks on bad news that is real but temporary is a time-honored technique, used in the past by investment masters such as Jonathan Neff and Sir John Templeton. It’s the idea behind my quarterly Casualty List, containing stocks that have been knocked down in...

WASHINGTON — On the brink of hitting the nation’s legal borrowing limit on Thursday, the government is resorting to “extraordinary measures” to avoid a default. Sounds ominous, right? But — take a breath — the phrase technically refers to a bunch of accounting workarounds. Yes, accounting. Because the debt cap...

Bank of New York Mellon is planning to lay off 3% of its workforce, or about 1,500 jobs. The New York-based financial firm that employs thousands in the Pittsburgh region, did not specify where those jobs would be located or what categories would be impacted. “We continue to optimize our...

SAN FRANCISCO — While still grappling with the fallout from a company he did take private, beleaguered billionaire Elon Musk is now facing a trial over a company he didn’t. Long before Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October, he had set his sights on Tesla, the electric automaker...

When inflation rises, child care expenses do, too. If you’re a parent, you may be hoping to get a little financial relief during the upcoming tax season through deductions or credits. But since there have been recent reductions to both of the child tax credits, you may not get as...

After years of being in debt, Rachel Kramer Bussel came to a realization: “If I don’t become proactive about it, I will be in debt for the rest of my life.” For Bussel, a freelance writer near Atlantic City, New Jersey, that meant scaling back spending and putting any available...

Chris Galarza remembers working as a chef in restaurants where the thermometer in his pocket easily would reach 135 degrees. Sometimes, it would get so hot in the kitchen, as the gas burners fired away, that it made the staff nauseous. Gas stoves are not only common but often preferred...

When 2022 began, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) was Wall Street analysts’ favorite stock. Thirty-one analysts said to buy it, with nary a “hold” or “sell” to be heard. The stock fell nearly 50% last year. This is not an anomaly. The other stocks the analytical corps adored when the year began...

Apple CEO Tim Cook will take a more than 40% pay cut this year from a year earlier as the company adjusts how it calculates his compensation partly based on a recommendation from Cook himself. Apple Inc. said in a regulatory filing late Thursday that Cook’s target total compensation is...

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s company was fined $1.6 million Friday for a scheme in which the former president’s top executives dodged personal income taxes on lavish job perks — a symbolic, hardly crippling blow for an enterprise boasting billions of dollars in assets. A fine was the only penalty...

DETROIT — With its sales slowing and its stock price tumbling, Tesla Inc. slashed prices dramatically Friday on several versions of its electric vehicles, making some of its models eligible for a new federal tax credit that could help spur buyer interest. The company dropped prices nearly 20% in the...

An Oakland business incubator closed its initial investment — over $300,000 — in one of its first cohort of companies through its ‘angel investment’ program. Idea Foundry’s program, IF Ventures, said the company that received the infusion was one of five presented to a group of investors in September. Idea...

In perhaps one of the most cynically ironic twists in the field of climate science, new research suggests ExxonMobil may have had keener insight into the impending dangers of global warming than even NASA scientists but still waged a decades-long campaign to discredit research into climate change and its connection...

Health care giant UPMC announced it is raising minimum wage for entry-­level positions to $18 an hour by 2025 for workers in Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Williamsport. Starting wages at UPMC’s other sites in Western Pennsylvania, western Maryland and southwest New York will reach $18 an hour by 2026. “This is...