Why We Should Like Facebook’s Cryptocurrency

The ambition is grand: “Reinvent money. Transform the global economy. So people everywhere can live better lives.” So said Facebook last month in unveiling Libra, its new digital payment service. The company heralded it as “a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people.” If fully launched, Libra would allow Facebook users to buy and sell goods and services around the world and across borders using a digital cryptocurrency…

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If China Really Wants to Retaliate, It Will Target Apple

Apple has a Huawei problem. Of the myriad issues raised by the evolving and intensifying US-China trade Cold War, the knock-on effects on Apple have been perhaps least appreciated. And not just Apple, of course, but a slew of American companies that have both shifted production to China over the past two decades and, more vitally, tapped into Chinese middle-class consumers as a source of growth and profits.

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The Risks of Demonizing Silicon Valley

For years, the ascent of tech has broadly been viewed as positive, heralding an era of increased productivity and greater communication. But recently, the litany of corporate missteps and a general sense of power accreting to a few extraordinarily rich and powerful companies and the men–yes, largely men–who lead them has triggered a wave of criticisms of the once-Teflon culture of the Valley.

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A Laptop Ban Leaves Everyone Scared and No One Safer

After this weekend’s attacks in London, President Trump became embroiled in a spat with the city’s mayor, where the president criticized British authorities for not taking the threat of terrorism seriously enough. In its crude way, that confrontation underscored a deeper divide between the United States and much of the rest of the world over what taking terrorism seriously means.

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The Real Problem With Productivity is Measuring It

When it comes to productivity, only two things are undebatable: that the official rate of U.S. productivity growth has stalled since at least 2007, having started to slow before then, and that there is no consensus about why or what to do about it. There is, additionally, some broad consensus that without stronger productivity growth going forward

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Even if Apple Breaks $1 Trillion, It Won’t Stay on Top Forever

APPLE JUST BECAME the first US company to surpass $800 billion in market capitalization. Speculation quickly followed that Apple would soon become the first $1 trillion company, with a rumored $1,000 iPhone 8 coming at year’s end. The company’s share price has been on a tear since the beginning of the year, and sales of the iPhone 7

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