Google Data Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa Source: Google With many technology funds back to break-even and the Nasdaq leading the major equity indices back up after the market rout that began in February, there’s a conventional wisdom about why: Software is so important to modern business that companies will do almost anything to keep buying and using it. But what if that’s not completely true? Software companies were little affected by the 2008 financial crisis. But that confidence, and...

Never at a loss for words, or half-thought-out arguments, titans of the American right from President Donald Trump to Senator Ted Cruz have latched on to a doozy: You have to reopen the economy despite the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, quickly, lest a wave of suicides, domestic battery and the like overwhelm even the death toll from coronavirus. “That’s gonna cost real lives,” Cruz said in an interview. “Our objective should be to save lives, and that means we need to fight this pandemic and get...

In the age of the coronavirus, we can be excused for thinking we elected President Oprah Winfrey after all. “You get a bailout! And you get a bailout!” we cry, riffing on Oprah’s car giveaways to audience members back in the day. Three weeks after I wrote — cynically, I thought — that President Donald Trump’s feckless incompetence in the face of a pandemic would double the federal deficit to $2 trillion, it’s likely the Senate will vote Monday on $2 trillion in new stimulus to keep the...

Workers extracting oil from oil wells in the Permian Basin in Midland, Texas on May 1, 2018. Benjamin Lowy | Getty Images As markets for energy companies’ bonds crater on lower crude oil prices, bond analysts offer one big piece of comforting news amid the chaos: Very few major energy companies have any debt due before next year, when the crisis sparked by the COVID-19 coronavirus is likely to be over. Bond markets have joined stock investors in panic since mid-February, pushing yields on...

Warren Buffett David A. Grogan | CNBC Lost in the hoopla over Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett’s latest annual shareholder letter this past weekend was an implicit warning to the finance executives and managers who run corporate America: Now is the time to be investing profits in the business, while inflation is low. It may not have the glamour of speculating about the Oracle of Omaha’s next big deals, or even his thoughts about adding more diversity to corporate boards, but...