4 Most Important Things in Business Today

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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4 Most Important Things in Business Today

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Two movies helped push October box office numbers to near record levels. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Two new hit movies—“Venom” and “A Star Is Born”—gave Hollywood its best-ever October showing at the box office over the weekend.

“Venom,” a superhero spinoff starring Tom Hardy, collected a robust $80 million in first place, unseating the October opening record set by the $55.8 million debut of “Gravity” in 2013.

Bradley Cooper’s update to the show-business myth “A Star Is Born” followed with $42.6 million in second place, a solid start for a modestly budgeted drama that has drawn rave reviews from critics.

After several relatively quiet weeks at the box office, the arrival of “Venom” and “A Star Is Born” led an industrywide weekend tally of $174.5 million, a record for October.

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China will increase loans to businesses as trade tariffs bite. According to The New York Times:

China is signaling that it is worried about its economy.

Troubled by slowing growth, persistent debt problems and President Trump’s trade war, the Chinese government has taken steps in recent months to shore up its economy. It has pared back a high-profile campaign to tackle debt. It has restarted big infrastructure projects, a traditional economic engine. It has even censored bad economic news.

On Sunday, Beijing went one step further.

The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, pulled a financial lever that will effectively pump $175 billion into the economy. The government is aiming to help small and midsize businesses in particular, which have had trouble obtaining loans and face other rising pressures.

Inflation in the United States may be the biggest wildcard in the future of the world economy. According to CNBC:

U.S. inflation is the world’s most important economic variable.

That proposition is explained by its corollary: Rising inflation is the only problem the U.S. Federal Reserve cannot solve by increasing its money supply.

The Fed can deal with structural problems in credit markets by means of enhanced supervision, regulatory provisions and, all else failing, by open-ended lending in cases of systemic threats to the financial system’s stability.

A hedge fund has compared Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) with Lehman Bros. According to CNNBusiness:

U.S. inflation is the world’s most important economic variable.

That proposition is explained by its corollary: Rising inflation is the only problem the U.S. Federal Reserve cannot solve by increasing its money supply.

The Fed can deal with structural problems in credit markets by means of enhanced supervision, regulatory provisions and, all else failing, by open-ended lending in cases of systemic threats to the financial system’s stability.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

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