6 Most Important Things About Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 5:41AM EST · Published Dec 7, 5:25AM EST

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6 Most Important Things About Business Today — © Ford Motor Co.

Eurozone gross domestic product rose 0.6% in the third quarter, which was the consensus among economists.

Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) CEO Robert Iger will probably renew his contract again if the entertainment giant buys a large portion of the assets of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. (NYSE: FOX), according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal reports that General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) will spend a large sum of money to upgrade its pickups, including the addition of carbon fiber, as it tries to keep up with industry leader Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F). The Ford F-150 pickup has been the top-selling vehicle in the United States for decades.

Most electric cars need cobalt, and miners are pressing prices higher when they can, according to the Financial Times.

Bitcoin hit $14,000, a rise of 40% this month, according to Bloomberg.

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China’s growth will be sharply curtailed because of the debt load carried by many banks, companies and the government. CNBC reports:

China’s growth rate will be “much, much lower” when Beijing gets a grip on controlling debt, a finance professor at one of China’s top university said Thursday.

“I have absolutely no doubt that once Beijing is able get control of the growth in credit — which they are a long way from doing — growth rates are going to be much, much lower than the current growth rate,” said Michael Pettis, finance professor at Peking University.

In that scenario, equilibrium growth rates will be 2 to 3 percent, Pettis told CNBC on the sidelines of the Fortune Global Forum in Guangzhou, China. The country targeted growth around 6.5 percent this year.

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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.