The Week Unpeeled
The destruction and rescue efforts in the Philippines following typhoon Haiyan dominated the news with coverage focusing on the 3 million now homeless and the difficulty in getting aid to the islands, which President Aquino has now declared a “state of national calamity.”
Elsewhere:
- Fed chairman nominee Janet Yellen faced Congress last week and appeared more dovish than hawkish, suggesting she would not push for any big changes anytime soon (i.e., no tapering just yet);
- Outgoing Fed Chairman Tim Geithner is headed to Warburg Pincus;
- The White House reversed earlier stance and said insurers can continue coverage next year on those who would have been cancelled under Obamacare in a bid to taper intense criticism for botched program;
- All the books fit to scan! The courts dismissed a lawsuit that would have prevented Google from digitally scanning millions of books, claiming the project on Google Books advances the progress of arts and science; some 20 million books have already been available online;
- JPMorgan showed us through the #AskJPM experiment that it had a dim understanding of Twitter, how the world views US banks and that 140 characters can speak volumes;
- Forget Cyber Monday, China celebrated its biggest online shopping day last week called Singles’ Day, selling nearly $6 billion of goods, or more than four times as much by some estimates, illustrating that China is the biggest e-commerce market around;
- And probably the biggest sports star on the planet right now retired last week when cricket’s Sachin Tendulkar finished his last test match against West Indies with an estimated more than 1 billion worldwide; and
- The 20-something founders of Snapchat turned down an offer worth billions of dollars last week amid hopes for bigger things ahead, probably hoping the future fortune does not vanish like the photos on their product.
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