Global News Select Tax Proposals Hit Headwinds as Democrats Try to Finalize Social-Spending Deal
WASHINGTON-An 11th-hour push by Democrats to fund their social-spending and climate bill faltered, with a proposed tax on billionaires’ unrealized capital gains and revised bank-reporting requirements both running into opposition from party lawmakers.
Democrats have scrambled for days to find hundreds of billions of dollars of new revenue acceptable to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.), who is opposed to the increases in the top marginal rates on companies, capital gains and personal income that the party planned to rely on to finance the bill. With Republicans opposed to the package, Democrats need unanimous support to pass the legislation in the 50-50 Senate and can afford to lose only a few votes in the House.
Chinese Industrial Companies’ Profits Rebound in September
BEIJING–Chinese industrial companies’ profits rebounded in September, ending a six-month slide in growth, official data showed Wednesday.
The growth was driven by the high-tech manufacturing industry, pharmaceutical enterprises and the steady recovery of profits in the consumer-goods manufacturing industry.
U.N. Finds Nations’ Climate Plans Fall Short of Paris Accord
The world’s emissions-reduction plans would allow far more global warming than targeted in the Paris climate accord, and some of the biggest emitters, including the U.S., aren’t on track to hit their pollution targets, according to a report from the United Nations.
Tuesday’s report adds urgency to the summit set to begin in a few days in Glasgow, Scotland, the first major climate meeting since more than 190 nations signed the Paris agreement in 2015. Countries are searching for ways to reach the agreement’s goals, which call for them to ensure the rise in global temperatures by the end of the century is well under 2 degrees Celsius compared with the preindustrial era, and to strive to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.
Inflation Could Mean Value Stocks’ Time to Shine
Bitcoin, gold, oil, real estate-many assets are finding themselves on investors’ radar screens as concerns about inflation grow. The best refuge might be one that has been out of fashion for a while, though: boring old value stocks.
Value investing had a brief moment of superior performance early this year, only to sink back into second-class status as stocks like Tesla with triple-digit earnings multiples-and many with no earnings at all-surged anew. A broad basket of cheap stocks represented by the Russell 3000 Value Index has appreciated by a respectable 80% in the past five years. Russell’s corresponding basket of growth stocks has done more than 100 percentage points better, however.
The Lowdown on the Third-Quarter Slowdown
Everybody thinks the U.S. economy slowed down in the third quarter. They don’t agree on how much.
The Commerce Department will release its first read on third-quarter gross domestic product on Thursday. For what it is worth, the median estimate among economists polled by The Wall Street Journal is for a 2.8% annual growth rate. That compares with a 6.7% rate in the second quarter.
Swapping GameStop for ETFs, Retail Investors Ride Out Volatile Markets
Record numbers of individual investors flooded the markets during the Covid-19 pandemic. Almost two years in, they’re still hanging around-though their strategy has changed.
The U.S. stock market is emerging from one of its choppiest stretches in the past year, a rapid pullback starting in September that sent the S&P 500 tumbling 5.2%, its steepest fall since October 2020.
Mucinex Owner Reckitt Sees Surge in Demand as Colds, Flu ReturnReckitt Benckiser Group PLC said demand for its cold and the flu products was picking up as social distancing eases, helping the owner of Mucinex medicine report stronger quarterly sales and raise its guidance for the year.The U.K.-based consumer-goods giant said Tuesday that it had seen a “sharp improvement in cold and flu sales trends” in the third quarter. The resurgence comes after demand for Reckitt’s cold and flu medicines like Mucinex and Strepsils was hit last year as Covid-19 restrictions closed schools and offices, suppressing seasonal illness.Novartis Weighs Sale or Spinoff of Generic Drug Unit SandozNovartis AG said it is considering the sale or spinoff of its generic drugs business Sandoz, a move that would focus the once-sprawling healthcare conglomerate solely on innovative prescription drugs.Sandoz, like many generic drugmakers, has struggled with falling prices in the U.S. in recent years. Generic drugs are lower-cost versions of prescription medicines whose patents have expired. While their prices are usually far below those of the branded drugs that they imitate, increased competition has driven those prices even lower in recent years.DraftKings Abandons $22 Billion Bid for EntainDraftKings Inc. is dropping its roughly $22 billion […]
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