A year ago, IBM's Watson supercomputer bludgeoned human supernerds Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in Jeopardy. Since then, Watson's been putting its natural language interpretation skills to work for health care organizations, but now it's coming for the money: As of yesterday, Watson works for Citigroup, one of the biggest financial corporations in the world.
Zynga is about to begin trading as a public company on Thursday, but the value of the company is up for debate, based on reports from some well-known Wall Street analysts and other financial experts.
The Occupy movement has been in the news for many previous weeks. If you have been living under a rock, here is a summed-up purpose it holds for the people involved. “This Occupy movement empowers real people to create real change from the bottom up. We want to see a general assembly in every backyard, on every street corner because we don’t need Wall Street and we don’t need politicians to build a better society.” The protests are accumulating more followers while coming up with creative ways to engage the notable 1%.
Disgruntled Verizon Communications and Verizon Wireless workers and members of the labor union Communications Workers of America will be joining the "Occupy Wall Street" protest Friday in protest of "Verizon's corporate greed."
You’ll be forgiven if you’re still wondering what the Occupy Wall Street movement is occupying things for, since they’re none too sure. The movement – which has generalized into a kind of global Occupy Whatever’s Handy protest – takes a certain pleasure in being amorphous, an umbrella group with a “Down With This Sort of Thing” mandate. Are they after income equality? An end to corporate citizenhood? Free tuition? The rich, served on a platter with a nice wine pairing? All of the above?
Earlier this week, we published a chart-essay that illustrates the extreme inequality that has developed in the US economy over the past 30 years.
The charts explain what the Wall Street protesters are angry about. They also explain why the protesters' message is resonating with the country at large.
Seven in 10 Americans have an unfavorable impression of the financial institutions on Wall Street, a point of resonance with the protesters camped out in Lower Manhattan and elsewhere. But while that sentiment is broadly shared, its intensity rests heavily on political partisanship.
Wall Street bank Stifel Nicolaus just downgraded Google from a buy to a hold.
Why?
A few reasons:
Google's search business is maturing. That's true. It's still growing, but basically as fast as the rest of the internet. Also, ad budgets are going to be constrained because of the bad economy.
More than 700 people from the Occupy Wall Street protest movement have been arrested on New York's City's Brooklyn Bridge, police say.
They were part of a larger group crossing the bridge from Manhattan, where they have been camped out near Wall Street for two weeks.
Some entered the bridge's roadway and were met by a large police presence and detained, most for disorderly conduct.
Thousands of protesters plan to take over Wall Street today.
Adbusters and the hacking group known as Anonymous are among the organizers of the protest in Manhattan's Financial District.
Participants are being asked to set up tents, kitchens and peaceful barricades with the intention of staying there for months.
