Free Republic

U.S. multinationals with plants in Venezuela are likely on edge Thursday, after American automaker General Motors (NYSE:GM) pulled the plug on its operations in the poverty-stricken country, following a government takeover of its plant amid large-scale violent protests. “All foreign companies, and especially U.S. firms, should be concerned with the increasingly extreme and aggressive behavior of the Venezuelan regime,” Ian Vasquez, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, told FOX Business. American beverage company Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO), however, indicated to FOX Business Thursday it didn’t have any plans to pull its operations from the distressed South American...

October 6, 2014 James CookIn his first major television interview, the director of the FBI has warned that Chinese hackers have embarked on a widespread campaign of cyberwarfare against the US. Speaking to CBS' "60 Minutes," James Comey had the following to say on Chinese hackers: There are two kinds of big companies in the United States. There are those who've been hacked by the Chinese and those who don't know they've been hacked by the Chinese. When asked whether Chinese hackers were particularly good at gaining access to servers belonging to US companies, Comey said the hackers were not...

U.S. companies face a kind of double taxation--taxing both domestic and foreign earned corporate income--and we are the only major industrial nation to do this to our businesses New Inversion Rules Seek to Punish Businesses, Not Raise Revenue The Department of the Treasury announced last night that it has implemented new rules aimed at making it more difficult for U.S. companies to move their headquarters abroad, which is known as an “inversion”. The rules take immediate effect. Interestingly enough, when Obama began his crusade against inversions earlier this summer, Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew was adamant enough that rules...

Even as Greece desperately tries to avoid defaulting on its debt, American companies are preparing for what was once unthinkable: that Greece could soon be forced to leave the euro zone. Bank of America Merrill Lynch has looked into filling trucks with cash and sending them over the Greek border so clients can continue to pay local employees and suppliers in the event money is unavailable. Ford has configured its computer systems so they will be able to immediately handle a new Greek currency. No one knows just how broad the shock waves from a Greek exit would be, but...

Mixed signals have come out of the latest survey from the National Association of Business Economists. On the one hand, the percentage of companies expecting to hire more workers has hit the highest level in two and a half years. NABE: The percentage of firms increasing payrolls increased to 31%—a dramatic increase versus a year ago when only 6% were seeing hiring gains. The percentage of firms cutting jobs continued to move lower—from 36% a year ago to 14% this July. The share of respondents expecting their firms to add employees over the coming six months rose to 39%, the...

Dems Threaten Congressional Show Trials After US Companies Leak Real Economic Damage of Obamacare Late last week several US corporations leaked how the democrat’s health care bill will kill their businesses. The radicals in Congress were not pleased that these corporations would go public with this devastating information. In response, democrats threatened to call for Congressional show trials to publicly humiliate these corporations. The Wall Street Journal reported: It’s been a banner week for Democrats: ObamaCare passed Congress in its final form on Thursday night, and the returns are already rolling in. Yesterday AT&T announced that it will be forced...

China's giant sovereign wealth fund revealed it has accumulated stakes totalling $US9.6 billion ($A11.1 billion) in major US companies including Coca-Cola, Apple and Goodyear following a buying spree last year. Most of the stakes are small, reflecting China Investment Corp's strategy of avoiding politically sensitive acquisitions. But they highlight its growing presence in global markets as it invests a portion of Beijing's $US2.4 trillion ($A2.78 trillion) in foreign reserves. The holdings were disclosed Friday in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that listed shares traded in the United States. CIC, one of the world's biggest investment funds,...

OK, so you don't care about the trade deficit. Maybe you buy the argument, most recently made by Undersecretary of the Treasury John Taylor, that it's a sign of America's economic strength, of our longstanding ability to grow faster than our trading partners. Maybe you're impressed by the growth of the U.S. economy and its manufacturing sector during the 1990s, when both boomed even as trade deficits skyrocketed. And maybe you think that the dollar's role as anchor of the world economy will let us run ever higher deficits forever. But here's another measure of America's trade performance that should...