Economics Was A Cause Of The Great Depression

Economics is a proud discipline. It has long seen itself as the premier social science and with the major natural sciences part of the core of the intellectual apparatus of modern society. It understands its methods as sound, serious, and extensive and its contribution to progress notable.

Economics has been particularly proud of its record in explaining the central negative event of economic history since the industrial revolution, the Great Depression of the 1930s. Its inquiries into monetary policy, the gold standard, and “regime uncertainty” (its own term) have explained the event with dedication. READ MORE

FTC is sued by business groups over its ban on noncompete agreements, which may delay enforcement

Less than 24 hours after the Federal Trade Commission issued a final rule this week banning employers from using noncompete agreements in the United States, the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable filed a lawsuit against the agency in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas.

Another lawsuit was filed in federal court in the Northern District of Texas by business tax services firm Ryan. READ MORE

Exclusive-ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say

TikTok owner ByteDance would prefer to shut down its loss-making app rather than sell it if the Chinese company exhausts all legal options to fight legislation to ban the platform from app stores in the U.S., four sources said.

The algorithms TikTok relies on for its operations are deemed core to ByteDance's overall operations, which would make a sale of the app with algorithms highly unlikely, said the sources close to the parent. READ MORE

Job trend 'resenteeism' has employees coasting through workdays and hanging on, rather than quitting

Similar to the viral sensation "quiet quitting" — when employees get the bare minimum done on the job due to burnout and feeling they're underappreciated — the latest career trend, "resenteeism," captures workers' tendency toward low productivity because they're resentful. 

They realize they have to stay at their current job because of financial obligations and responsibilities, but they're not ready to leave the position, for one reason or another. 

This unproductive mentality is affecting both small businesses and large companies across the country.  READ MORE

Masters, IBM enhancing fan experience with Hole Insights to track tournament shots in real time

Whether it’s your 10th time playing or your first, the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club is a daunting task for every golfer.

It’s the only major of the golfing season that’s continuously played at the same course, yet golfers sometimes take weeks off between tournaments just to prepare for it. And that preparation isn’t just dialing in the swing or working on nailing putts. READ MORE

Why Executives Can’t Get Comfortable With AI

Executives need to have an understanding of information technology in order to derive business value from it and to productively interact with IT professionals. Nevertheless, IT experts have long lamented many executives’ limited knowledge of IT’s underlying functionality. In turn, many executives have (often unconsciously) declined to develop such IT literacy, preferring instead to focus their time and attention on domain and business matters. READ MORE

Office redesigns should focus on enabling hybrid work arrangements, AI: study

Employees have positive views about returning to the office but expect it to look and feel differently than it did before the pandemic to accommodate hybrid arrangements as well as facilitating new artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, according to a new study by Cisco.

The Cisco Hybrid Work study – which surveyed 14,050 full-time employees and 3,800 employers from around the world in December 2023 and January 2024 – found that 72% of employees have positive feelings about returning to the office. However, only 47% of employees believe their work environments are equipped for the hybrid work era, pointing to a need for office spaces to be redesigned to better support the ways that employees want to work together. READ MORE

Former Google employee warns of ‘terrifying patterns’ in company’s AI algorithms

A former high-level Google employee said "terrifying patterns" were discovered in Google's core products and hypothesized how bias may have entered the Gemini artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.

Whenever there is a problem inside of a Google product, the company has a reporting system called "Go Bad" that can be utilized to document potentially harmful content, according to the source. READ MORE

‘Shortcuts Everywhere’: How Boeing Favored Speed Over Quality

In February last year, a new Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 Max plane was on one of its first flights when an automated stabilizing system appeared to malfunction, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing soon after they took off.

Less than two months later, an Alaska Airlines 737 Max plane with eight hours of total flight time was briefly grounded until mechanics resolved a problem with a fire detection system. And in November, an engine on a just-delivered United Airlines 737 Max failed at 37,000 feet. READ MORE

Stellantis uses ‘mandatory remote work day’ to cut 400 white-collar jobs

White-collar workers at Chrysler-parent Stellantis have reason to be nervous if they ever receive a company notice telling them it’s mandatory that they work remotely on a particular day.

That’s what happened to 400 or so of their colleagues on Thursday. They were informed via a notice that the next day the carmaker would be “holding important operational meetings that require specific attention and participation." READ MORE

Where the DEI pushback leaves employers

It’s the “D” in DEI that gets all the attention. The “equity and inclusion” goals are very much on the sideline, in part because they don’t bring to mind any particular practice or change; diversity focuses attention on hiring as a means of change.

It is a hot-button issue because of the perception that diversity programs are about giving preference in hiring and promotions to people other than white men. The widespread belief that DEI is another word for hiring preferences is unfortunate, given that—except in very limited situations—any such practice violates the law. Affirmative action is also assumed to be a synonym for preferential hiring, but again, except in very unusual circumstances, it is limited to reducing bias and shaping the applicant pool. READ MORE

Dave Calhoun was hired to fix Boeing. Instead, ‘It’s become an embarrassment’

Hardly a day has gone by in 2024 without a bad headline for Boeing, from life-threatening mid-flight crises up above to entrenched business debacles happening on the ground. So how does CEO Dave Calhoun still have a job?

“It’s become an extreme embarrassment,” Richard Aboulafia, a longtime aviation analyst, told me. “The board seems weirdly absentee, investors seem weirdly complacent, and the government doesn’t seem to have a mechanism for dealing with this.” READ MORE