Business

The New York Post reports: The stock market ended a miserable year on a positive note but still closed out 2018 with its worst showing in a decade. After setting a series of records through the late summer and early fall, major US indexes fell sharply after early October, leaving them all in the red for the year on Monday. …

The Wall Street Journal today looks at the growing number of retailers, some of them chain restaurants, that no longer accept cash. Lawmakers are starting to react. Massachusetts is the only state that currently requires retailers to accept cash. Some New Jersey legislators are working to make their state next. New York City Councilman Ritchie Torres of the Bronx recently …

Reuters reports: Sears Holdings Corp Chairman Eddie Lampert has submitted a roughly $4.6 billion takeover bid for the bankrupt U.S. retailer, representing its only chance of escaping liquidation and laying off tens of thousands of workers, people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The offer came after Sears’ existing lenders Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc, as well …

Bloomberg reports: Wells Fargo will pay $575 million to settle claims made by U.S. states that the bank created phony accounts and committed other customer abuses, according to a statement by the Iowa attorney general’s office. Two years ago, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $190 million to settle federal government claims that the bank created phony customer account, and improperly …

CNBC reports: Sears, the 125-year-old icon, has 24 hours to survive. The employer of more than 68,000 filed for bankruptcy in October. Its last shot at survival is a $4.6 billion proposal put forward by its chairman, Eddie Lampert, to buy the company out of bankruptcy through his hedge fund, ESL Investments. ESL is the only party offering to buy …

Bloomberg reports: U.S. stocks staged one of the biggest rallies of the 9 1/2 year bull market after coming withing points of seeing it end, with major indexes surging at least 4.9 percent. Crude jumped almost 10 percent. All but one member of the S&P 500 advanced, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 1,050 points and the Nasdaq …

San Francisco’s NBC affiliate reports: Customers have been lining up and packing into Bay Area cannabis dispensaries to buy holiday gifts including gummies, chocolates, cartridges and flowers. “From the moment we were open at 9 o’clock we had a line,” Magnolia assistant general manager Kysa Butler said. “We’ve been knocking the lines out quickly but they’ve been steady, too.” Pot …

CNN reports: Markets took a wild ride on Monday after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s attempts to calm investors backfired. Stocks had recovered late morning, but then fell to their lowest level for the day after President Donald Trump tweeted mid-morning, “The only problem our economy has is the Fed.” Investors are concerned that Trump may fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome …

CBS News reports: Jennie-O Turkey Store Sales, Inc., is recalling more than 164,000 pounds of raw ground turkey products over possible salmonella, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said Friday. The items that might be contaminated were shipped across the U.S. and produced on two days: October 22 and 23. “The products subject to recall bear …

Yahoo Finance reports: U.S. stocks plunged Friday, extending a crushing week of declines for the major equity indices. The S&P 500 fell 2.06%, or 50.76 points, as of market close and is down 7% this week. This was the worst week for the S&P 500 since August 2011. The Dow slid 1.82%, or 417.11 points. The index fell 6.75% for …

The Street reports: Stocks tumbled on Thursday, Dec. 20, with the Dow diving almost 500 points as concerns grew that the U.S. government would partially shut down over the Christmas holiday season because President Donald Trump won’t sign a stopgap spending bill. Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), said Thursday that Trump wouldn’t be signing the spending bill after …

TechCrunch report: After a long year fighting underage use of its products, Juul Labs has today struck a deal with Altria Group, the owners of Philip Morris USA and makers of Marlboro cigarettes. The deal values Juul at $38 billion, according to Bloomberg, and injects the company with a fresh $12.8 billion in exchange for a 35 percent stake in …

The New York Daily News reports: After being accused of defrauding its internet subscribers, Charter Communications Monday agreed to a whopping $174.2 million settlement with state Attorney General Barbara Underwood, the Daily News has learned. In February 2017, the AG charged in a civil lawsuit that Charter Communication, and its predecessor Time Warner Cable, knowingly delivered since 2012 slower internet …

Reuters reports: U.S. stocks are skidding Monday as another day of big losses takes the market to its lowest level in more than a year. Retailers and technology stocks are sinking, and health insurers and hospitals are falling after a federal judge in Texas ruled that the 2010 Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. Many experts expect the ruling will be …

Talking Points Memo reports: Google today is announcing plans to invest over $1 billion in capital improvements to create a new 1.7-million-square-foot campus in Lower Manhattan, dubbed “Google Hudson Square.” As part of the New York City expansion, Google and Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said in a blog post out this morning that the company “will have the …

CBS News reports: Facebook said Friday that a security glitch may have let third-party apps access the private photos of as many as 6.8 million users, the latest example of the social-media company failing to protect people’s online content. The incident, which took place during a 12-day period in September, included images never fully uploaded to the platform and those …

MarketWatch reports: Stocks ended the week on a down note Friday, falling sharply on worries about global growth after weaker-than-expected Chinese data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -2.02% fell around 496 points, or 2%, to finish near 24,101, according to preliminary figures. The close put the Dow back into correction territory, defined as a pullback of at least 10% …

NPR reports: Apple plans to build a 133-acre campus in Austin, Texas, that will cost $1 billion and employ 5,000 new workers, the company announced Thursday. The company says the move is expected to make it the largest private employer in Austin. Apple already employs more people in Austin, some 6,200 workers, than it does in any other city outside …

Billboard Magazine reports: Verizon Communications has recorded a steep goodwill impairment charge on its Oath media division. The telecom giant said on Tuesday that the creation of Oath after it acquired Yahoo for $4.5 billion and merged it with AOL has led to a charge of around $4.6 billion during the fourth quarter of 2018. “The goodwill balance of the …

USA Today reports: The maker of Jimmy Dean Heat ’n Serve Original Sausage Links is recalling more than 14 tons of its frozen, ready-to-eat sausage links because they may have pieces of metal inside. CTI Foods of Owingsville, Kentucky, is recalling about 29,028 pounds of Jimmy Dean Heat ‘n Serve Original Sausage Links Made with Pork & Turkey after the …