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double talk
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Uncalculated risk
It’s official: Unhappy employees = corruption and fraud
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A visual explanation of the factory safety plan in Bangladesh
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Here’s why McDonald’s needs to slim down its menu
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Women in Greece aren’t giving up on childbirth—they’re just waiting till 40
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Soros and other top hedgies now love Google more than Apple
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High liquidity
American LNG exports get the go-ahead
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Europe’s Repsol shareholders jump into epic battle over Argentina’s shale riches
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The great debt ceiling countdown begins anew at midnight
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Turkey’s economy comes of age with a prized investment-grade rating
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crude reality
A state-run monopoly is killing Mexico’s chances of oil independence
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Judge dismisses Wal-Mart’s bid to block Mexico bribe documents—because they’re already public
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Happy Birthday
Charts show how Facebook destroyed $40 billion in value during its first year as a public company
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The biggest mistake 60-year-old men make about the economy
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Is it time to stop worrying about a global bird flu pandemic?
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Tableau’s listing on NYSE today heightens the intense race for tech IPOS with Nasdaq
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Growing pains
Black-hat bitcoin’s days are numbered
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The price India pays to produce male heirs
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P&L
There’s little money in moving goods, so Maersk focuses on oil
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The world’s tallest building will be in the middle of an empty field in China
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code wars
Indians are hacking into Pakistani computers with promises of defense secrets
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The BRIC countries are becoming the world’s new global navy
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The City of London’s future as a global financial center is safe…for now
FedEx workers unload one of the company's cargo planes last year; this year, the firm's fortunes were bolstered by Apple's newest iPhone. AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
The iPhone 5′s launch was so massive that it boosted the air cargo industry
“Air cargo companies saw an increase in cargo volume tied to the launch of various smartphones and computer tablets, which favor shipment by air over other modalities.”
That’s from the US Federal Reserve’s quarterly Beige Book, a collection of anecdotal economic observations from the Fed’s branches around the country.
Overall, expectations are cautiously optimistic, with mostly activity flat or expanding modestly. However, the idea that the iPhone 5 launch (and that’s really what we’re talking about here, although other tech toys contributed) could boost air shippers like FedEx and UPS is fairly notable: It shows how Apple, the world’s biggest company, affects the global economy.
Before the iPhone 5′s launch, JP Morgan economists even predicted that the company’s newest phone would give a 0.25 to 0.5 percentage-point bump to US GDP in the fourth quarter. FedEx restricted employee vacation and training to prepare for a surge in volume when the new iPhone came out. After all, if you sell more than 5 million units in three days, the only way to get them over from Asia is to fly them.
