6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 6:54AM EST · Published Oct 24, 5:04AM EDT

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6 Most Important Things in Business Today — © courtesy of Apple Inc.

According to The Wall Street Journal, 238 cities have bid for a new Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) second “headquarters,” which will trigger the company to build $5 billion in new facilities and add hundreds of jobs.

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) shares have been pounded on worries it will cut its dividend. They fell 5% in one day.

A bitcoin investor believes its value will hit nearly $1 trillion within several years. According to CNBC:

“People need to start taking this seriously because today bitcoin caught up with Goldman Sachs,” Ronnie Moas, founder and director of Standpoint Research, told CNBC’s “Capital Connection.” He added, “Within five years, it’s going to catch Apple which has (a more than) $800 billion market cap.”

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Officials in New York State are investigating sex harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein. According to CNNMoney:

The Weinstein Company’s legal trouble just got worse. The office of New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman is investigating the studio to find out if Harvey Weinstein or other employees broke the law. A subpoena was issued on Monday by the office’s Civil Rights Bureau.

“No New Yorker should be forced to walk into a workplace ruled by sexual intimidation, harassment, or fear. If sexual harassment or discrimination is pervasive at a company, we want to know,” Schneiderman said in a statement.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has stopped the government from reviewing customer emails without disclosing the actions to these customers. In a blog post, Brad Smith, its president and chief legal officer, wrote:

Today marks another important step in ensuring that people’s privacy rights are protected when they store their personal information in the cloud. In response to concerns that Microsoft raised in a lawsuit we brought against the U.S. government in April 2016, and after months advocating for the United States Department of Justice to change its practices, the Department of Justice (DOJ) today established a new policy to address these issues. This new policy limits the overused practice of requiring providers to stay silent when the government accesses personal data stored in the cloud. It helps ensure that secrecy orders are used only when necessary and for defined periods of time. This is an important step for both privacy and free expression. It is an unequivocal win for our customers, and we’re pleased the DOJ has taken these steps to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans.

Until now, the government routinely sought and obtained orders requiring email providers to not tell our customers when the government takes their personal email or records. Sometimes these orders don’t include a fixed end date, effectively prohibiting us forever from telling our customers that the government has obtained their data.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has stopped selling one version of its iPhone. According to Mashable:

There were the major announcements — an iPhone 8 and an iPhone X coming this fall — but the company also revised its iPhone 7 offerings. It no longer sells a 256GB iPhone 7, previously the largest capacity, leaving consumers with three options: 32GB, 128GB, or the 256GB iPhone 8.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.