Tag: Companies & Industries

Posted inUnscheduled Programming

Twitter buys Tumblr rival Posterous

by Andrew Villeneuve

Pos­ter­ous, a start­up that com­petes with Tum­blr in the microblog­ging space, has agreed to sell itself to Twit­ter for an undis­closed sum, the com­pa­nies joint­ly announced today. Launched in May 2008, Pos­ter­ous’ ser­vice is known for its ease-of-use; it bills its plat­form as the eas­i­est and best way to blog by email. “Today we are welcoming […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Olympus’ entire board of directors resigning to make way for new leadership

by Andrew Villeneuve

Months after the Olym­pus’ ex-CEO-turned-whistle­blow­er began demand­ing their res­ig­na­tions, the entire board of direc­tors of the scan­­dal-rid­­den Japan­ese elec­tron­ics mak­er is final­ly step­ping down, the com­pa­ny said today. “[A]ll the cur­rent direc­tors and cor­po­rate audi­tors express their inten­tions to resign at the end of the extra­or­di­nary gen­er­al share­hold­ers meet­ing and have sub­mit­ted let­ters of res­ig­na­tion to […]

Posted inBreaking News

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion names new chief executive officer and board chair

by Andrew Villeneuve

Big, big news out of Water­loo (Ontario) tonight: Black­Ber­ry mak­er Research in Motion, one of Canada’s largest and most pres­ti­gious com­pa­nies, has announced that its two top exec­u­tives — who have joint­ly led the com­pa­ny as as co-chief exec­u­tive offi­cers and co-chair­­men of the board for many years — are step­ping down from those positions, […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

After Internet outcry, Verizon backtracks, drops plans to charge $2 “convenience fee”

by Andrew Villeneuve

Chalk up anoth­er vic­to­ry for the Inter­net: Ver­i­zon Wire­less has decid­ed it will not insti­tute the fee for online or tele­phone sin­gle pay­ments that was announced ear­li­er this week. The com­pa­ny made the deci­sion in response to cus­tomer feed­back about the plan, which was designed to improve the effi­cien­cy of those trans­ac­tions. The com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

AT&T throws in the towel, abandons scheme to buy T‑Mobile from Deutsche Telekom

by Andrew Villeneuve

For once, fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors have done their job and stood up to Wall Street: AT&T said late on Mon­day after­noon that it had with­drawn its $39 bil­lion takeover bid for T‑Mobile USA, acknowl­edg­ing that it could not over­come oppo­si­tion from the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to cre­at­ing the nation’s biggest cell­phone ser­vice provider. The com­pa­ny said in […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Olympus must rid itself of the crooks/yes men who betrayed its shareholders and customers

by Andrew Villeneuve

Ten years ago, cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca was rocked by a series of account­ing scan­dals that destroyed one of the world’s largest account­ing firms (Arthur Ander­sen) and led to the pas­sage of the Sar­banes-Oxley Act (Sar­box, or some­times sim­ply referred to as SOX). A num­ber of well-known Amer­i­can com­pa­nies — notably Enron, Tyco, Adel­phia, and WorldCom — […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

I‑1183, if implemented, could generate $81 million plus in annual sales for Costco

by Andrew Villeneuve

Ever since Cost­co and its exec­u­tives first start­ed mak­ing noise about dereg­u­lat­ing and pri­va­tiz­ing our state’s liquor con­trol sys­tem, it’s been appar­ent that their dri­ving moti­va­tion for push­ing pri­va­ti­za­tion is because they want our state’s liquor stores’ busi­ness for them­selves — not because they think “get­ting the state out of the liquor busi­ness” (which is […]

Posted inBreaking News, Economic Security, Policy Topics

Boeing, Machinists reach agreement to build next generation 737 in Renton

by Andrew Villeneuve

The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny announced this morn­ing that it has ten­ta­tive­ly reached a labor agree­ment with the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Machin­ists (IAM) that will ensure the next gen­er­a­tion of its 737 nar­row-body jet (known as the MAX) will be built in Ren­ton, Wash­ing­ton, where pro­duc­tion of the cur­rent 737 is based. “The 737 MAX builds upon the […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

A day of action: Progressives across the country use Bank Transfer Day to go bankless

by Andrew Villeneuve

As reg­u­lar read­ers know, we at NPI have been long­time cham­pi­ons of mem­ber-owned cred­it unions, par­tic­u­lar­ly since the eco­nom­ic col­lapse of Sep­tem­ber 2008 and the sub­se­quent bank bailout. NPI’s staff and board belong indi­vid­u­al­ly to dif­fer­ent cred­it unions, and NPI itself is a cred­it union mem­ber. NPI became part of Amer­i­ca’s cred­it union move­ment well […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Banks drop plans to charge debit card fees

by Andrew Villeneuve

Bank of Amer­i­ca, acknowl­edg­ing that its lat­est attempt to shake more mon­ey out of its cus­tomers’ pock­ets was destroy­ing good­will and hurt­ing rev­enue, announced today that it was can­cel­ing its plans to impose a $5 month­ly fee for deb­it card use, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of JPMor­gan Chase, Wells Far­go, Sun­Trust, and Regions, which have […]

Posted inElections, Policy Topics, Public Planning

Microsoft invests $600,000 into NO on 1125

by Andrew Villeneuve

Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling, the coali­tion that is fight­ing Tim Eyman’s I‑1125, has just received a huge finan­cial boost from one of Wash­ing­ton’s largest employ­ers: Microsoft (which, like NPI, is head­quar­tered in Red­mond). The com­pa­ny had pre­vi­ous­ly donat­ed $100,000 to the cause, but last Fri­day, it wrote anoth­er check for six times that amount, bring­ing its […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Netflix finally listens to its members, drops plans to spin off DVDs-by-mail as Qwikster

by Andrew Villeneuve

Net­flix is stay­ing Net­flix. The com­pa­ny announced this morn­ing that it was drop­ping its ill-con­­ceived plans to spin out its DVDs-by-mail into a sep­a­rate web­site called Qwik­ster, after weeks of get­ting irate emails and phone calls from its mem­bers. Dear Mem­ber: It is clear that for many of our mem­bers two web­sites would make things […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Bank of America announces $5 monthly penalty for debit card use

by Andrew Villeneuve

Bank of Amer­i­ca Bank of Greed, one of the largest finan­cial insti­tu­tions in the world, announced today that it will begin charg­ing cus­tomers who use a deb­it card tied to their check­ing account a $5 month­ly penal­ty. (BofA is call­ing it a fee, but of course it’s real­ly a penal­ty). BofA is plan­ning to introduce […]