CNN – Business/Consumer

By Chauncey Alcorn, CNN Business Wayne Encalarde’s utility truck and trailer were parked in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward 16 years ago when Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters ravaged the city and all but completely destroyed the neighborhood. The 68-year-old, a plumber and owner of the local Wayne Jude Encalarde plumbing and public works business, says the deadly

By Julia Horowitz, CNN Business Regulators are worried about all the people plugging cryptocurrencies online. That includes Kim Kardashian, beauty and fashion mogul and influencer extraordinaire. Charles Randell, chair of the UK Financial Conduct Authority, called out Kardashian in a colorful speech Monday. He started out by suggesting that the internet was full of …

By Julia Horowitz, CNN Business George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist, thinks BlackRock has made a huge miscalculation on China. What’s happening: Soros called out the world’s largest asset manager in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal on Monday titled “BlackRock’s China Blunder.” BlackRock recently started offering investment products to individual Chinese

By Kristin Fisher, CNN Russia’s space chief was watching as billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson blasted into space aboard vehicles they helped fund — and wishing Russian oligarchs would follow suit. “Our millionaires prefer to invest more in yachts rather than in spaceships,” Dmitry Rogozin told CNN in his first interview with Western media

By Paul R. La Monica, CNN Business At a time when many investors are content to follow the crowd and buy top techs like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, Cathie Wood is looking for the next big innovators in buzzy fields like robotics, fintech and space exploration. It’s a high-flying, high-risk, high-reward tier of investing. And

By Laura He, CNN Business China’s trade with the rest of the world surged to record highs last month, easing fears that a stubborn coronavirus outbreak and the global shipping crisis were stalling the economy. Exports spiked 25.6% in August from a year ago to $294.3 billion, according to customs statistics published Tuesday. Imports jumped

By Merlin Delcid, CNN Business El Salvador became the first country to adopt bitcoin as a national currency on Tuesday, kicking off a radical monetary experiment that could pose risks to the fragile economy. President Nayib Bukele announced late Monday that his government purchased 200 bitcoins ahead of El Salvador’s formal adoption of the currency.

By Brian Stelter, CNN Business A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. You can sign up for free right here. The end of Labor Day Weekend always has a “Back to School” feel. So this special edition of our media digest is a preview of the week ahead and the

By Alicia Wallace, CNN Business America’s workforce is considerably older and more diverse than it was 40-some years ago. Federal labor economists recently analyzed federal labor data to see just how much the nation’s labor force has changed in recent decades, according to a Sept. 1 blog post on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics

By Hanna Ziady, CNN Business TotalEnergies is investing in oil, gas and solar energy projects worth $27 billion in Iraq, returning to the country where the French company made its first energy discovery nearly a century ago. This time, however, no new exploration is planned despite Iraq’s vast oil reserves, reflecting a shift by some

By Julia Horowitz, CNN Business Aluminum prices have reached their highest level in more than a decade following a coup in Guinea, a major supplier of the main ore used to produce the metal. The price of aluminum futures on the London Metal Exchange rose as much as 1.8% to $2,775.50 per metric ton on

By Anna Stewart, CNN Business CEO Herbert Diess wants electric cars to make up half of the Volkswagen Group’s sales in 2030, and 100% of its sales in major markets should be zero-emission by 2040. To achieve those goals, he has to dramatically shift one of the world’s largest carmakers away from the internal combustion

By Helen Regan and Angela Dewan, CNN Business The Australian government said Monday that the country would keep producing and exporting coal “well beyond 2030,” despite a stark warning from a top UN climate official that failing to scrap the fossil fuel will “wreak havoc” on the economy. The comments, made in a rebuke by

By Chris Isidore, CNN Business The biggest victory for US unions since Labor Day last year wasn’t at the negotiating table, on the picket line or in organizing a vote. It was in the 2020 presidential election. In Joe Biden, organized labor has the most pro-union president since at least Lyndon Johnson, or perhaps ever,

By Michelle Toh, Sasha Chua and Chandler Thornton, CNN Business The media company behind the now-shuttered Hong Kong tabloid Apple Daily is shutting down after its entire board resigned, citing “a climate of fear” over the city’s controversial national security law. Next Digital, which was founded by now-imprisoned tycoon Jimmy Lai, said in a stock