New numbers show that the U.S. economy “picked up speed last quarter,” expanding 1.6% in the first three months of the year [for an annualized 6.4%], as a mix of stimulus money and falling unemployment helped power consumer spending – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
The Upshot on how the post-Covid economy is showing itself to be different than the pre-Covid one, even as the high-level numbers [see above] suggest we’re nearing a return to “normal.” In short, the economy of 2021 is “profoundly unequal across sectors, unbalanced in ways that have enormous long-term implications for businesses and workers” – NYTimes
Across the pond, however, it’s a different story. The Eurozone economy shrank by .6 percent in Q1 as vaccines have been much slower to roll out – NYTimes and Bloomberg
EU competition regulators have delivered a complaint to Apple over its app payment rules, suggesting that Apple has “abused its power as the key provider of music-streaming apps in its App Stores” by “setting strict rules . . . that disadvantage competing music streaming services” – Bloomberg and NYTimes and WSJ and TechCrunch
So, there’s Big Tech 1st quarter success. And then there’s Amazon Q1 success, which meant a staggering 220% increase in profit [a cool $8.1 billion] from the same period a year ago. Amazon also announced this week that it would increase pay for 500k of its workers and that it’s still looking to hire thousands more – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
President Biden’s falling back on some old-fashioned us vs. them reminiscent of the Cold War days as he works to sell his multi-trillion infrastructure and American Families plans to the country, calling out China and Russia as the competitor and disruptor, respectively, demanding a united American response – NYTimes
China is warning its homegrown large tech firms—from Tencent and ByteDance to JD.com—that they must reform how they “use big data for lending, money-management and similar businesses” due to the dangers they pose to the financial system – WSJ
The Times traces the rise of Iberdrola as a wind and solar giant—the veritable ExxonMobil of the renewable energy industry—thanks largely to a pivot CEO Jose Galan made two decades ago based on his belief that the U.S. had “enormous potential in renewable energy” – NYTimes
Boeing’s most recent 737Max headache—a “factory tweak [that] . . . wound up the root of potential electrical problems” with the model more than two years after its initial grounding—is prompting a new FAA audit – WSJ
