PODCAST: Chipotle, JPMorgan and Europe — hits and misses
The eurozone reported this morning that its growth rate in the first quarter of the year was: 0.0 percent. That’s technically enough to keep the eurozone out of recession for now.
France has its first socialist president since the mid-’90s. Francois Hollande was sworn in today and promptly headed for Berlin to meet German Leader Angeka Merkel for the first time. The two power players in European politics have very different ideas about how to tackle the European financial mess.
The CEO of JPMorgan Chase is in the spotlight for another day. Jamie Dimon is facing shareholders at the bank’s annual meeting in Tampa. It’s a good bet there will be some tough questions about the $2 billion the bank lost on some big bets that turned bad.
The coupon company Groupon came out with a profit for the first time late yesterday. Indications are the stock could go higher when the markets open in the U.S.
To Thiensville, Wisc., where there was an all-you-can-eat fish fry the other day. But it didn’t quite live up to its billing for one 53-year-old man, who was told — after 12 pieces of fish — that the restaurant had run out. He refused to pay his bill until the restaurant gave him eight more pieces of fish to go. He returned a couple days later with a picket sign to protest the restaurant’s business practices, and was arrested for disorderly conduct.
There’s one way to boost the Dow Jones Industrial Average: reengineer the index itself. The Dow is an agglomeration of 30 influential companies but it’s missing one that’s currently all the rage: Apple Computer. The Associated Press asked an expert to do the math if the world most valuable company were added and the Dow would be at about 15360, about 21 percent higher than it is right now. Problem is, Apple is such a big stock that it would distort the index, like adding a bowling ball as a decoration on a Christmas tree.
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