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Catherine Baab

Catherine Baab

Quartz

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Flight cuts are causing widespread pain. Here's what you need to know

Even if the government shutdown ends this week, a top official has signaled that disruptions could stretch well into the holiday season

10.11.2025 5

Quartz

Catherine Baab

The FAA is cutting flights at 40 major airports. Here's what it means for travelers

A record-long government shutdown has the agency set to throttle flight volumes by 10% at dozens of airports, with the holiday travel season coming

06.11.2025 2

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Trump's economy is worse than it looks

The headline numbers average out the extremes, but the underlying picture is one of wealthy consumers thriving and everyone else trading down

06.11.2025 20

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Consultants rule the Earth

From the Fortune 500 c-suite to the White House to the Vatican, consultants are everywhere. What do they actually know?

06.11.2025 20

Quartz

Catherine Baab

McDonald's offers a snapshot of a $5 Meal Deal America

The fast food giant’s earnings showed solid global demand. But U.S. momentum was flat as the "bifurcated" economy persists and lower-income diners...

05.11.2025 2

Quartz

Catherine Baab

U.S. adds 42,000 private-sector jobs, but white-collar layoffs mount

ADP’s October report shows modest hiring and flat pay, with white-collar layoffs spreading even as the shutdown dragging on

05.11.2025 10

Quartz

Catherine Baab

The AI boom that built the bull market is starting to wobble

The selloff in Palantir and the Nasdaq highlights a tense dynamic: America’s entire stock market has arguably become a leveraged bet on AI

04.11.2025 3

Quartz

Catherine Baab

They bought homes during the pandemic. Now they're underwater and stuck

A growing number of American homeowners are finding themselves underwater. Here's what that means for the economy

03.11.2025 30

Quartz

Catherine Baab

The restaurant recession could be here

Young Americans are ditching $15 burritos for groceries — worrying CEOs and sending fast-casual stocks plunging as much as 80%

03.11.2025 10

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Is 'learn to craft' the new 'learn to code?'

AI can write code, but it can’t fix an air conditioner. So some white-collar professionals are trading PowerPoints for power tools

02.11.2025 20

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Are Visa and Mastercard the new “hyperscalers”?

As growth in card spending slows, the two giants are now reframing themselves as the AWS and Azure of money movement — but are such claims legit?

30.10.2025 10

Quartz

Catherine Baab

OpenAI is paying former investment bankers $300,000 a year to train its AI models

The company is recruiting banking dropouts to join a secretive effort called Project Mercury. What does it mean for Wall Street's future?

30.10.2025 8

Quartz

Catherine Baab

The Fed is 'flying blind' into a widely expected interest rate cut

It’s a move that Wall Street has already priced in with near certainty, even as the government shutdown has deprived policymakers of data

29.10.2025 4

Quartz

Catherine Baab

The skies are clearing for Boeing. But a $5 billion hit has the stock grounded

CEO Kelly Ortberg said the company is hitting an "important milestone," even as charges related to its 777X tanked the numbers

29.10.2025 4

Quartz

Catherine Baab

UnitedHealth's 'recovery' reveals what's really sick in American healthcare

UnitedHealth’s earnings are a powerful reminder that the country's healthcare math, whether corporate or federal, just does not add up

28.10.2025 20

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Ray Dalio sees a vast American underclass increasingly dependent on the top 1%

The billionaire hedge fund manager says that U.S. economic strength now rests on high-productivity workers, with the bottom 60% “unproductive”

27.10.2025 20

Quartz

Catherine Baab

The Dow plunges 1,000 points and the Nasdaq reels as Trump attacks Powell again

Tesla stock slides and markets go backwards as earnings season meets trade war chaos

23.10.2025 3

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Hedge fund assets just hit a record $5 trillion. Here's why

Hedge funds are seeing their best growth in years, driven by a mix of fresh money, strong returns, and a flight to uncorrelated performance

23.10.2025 3

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Luxury travel is booming as Delta and Hilton thrive on wealthy spenders

The skies may not be friendly for everyone, but for those still flying — and sleeping — at the top end, they remain remarkably cloudless

22.10.2025 4

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Walmart and Target are cutting back for the holidays. That's bad news for Mattel

For toy companies, the quarter preceding the holiday season functions as a preview — with Walmart and Target revealing their holiday sales estimates

22.10.2025 9

Quartz

Catherine Baab

GM shows it can navigate tariffs and EV woes — and the stock soars 10%

GM’s profits still come from a very old-fashioned source — gas-powered pickups and SUVs built in North America

21.10.2025 2

Quartz

Catherine Baab

A hiccup at Amazon Web Services briefly broke half the internet

The widespread failure highlights just how centralized the internet-as-we-know-it has become. It also highlights AWS’s critical role

20.10.2025 2

Quartz

Catherine Baab

China's economic growth slows — even as it wins the trade war

China's factories are booming, but a deepening real estate slump is weighing on the country's economic growth

20.10.2025 10

Quartz

Catherine Baab

The student loan 'default cliff' is coming

Millions of Americans are in trouble with their student loans. But the Department of Education remains largely shuttered during the government...

16.10.2025 3

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Bank of America earnings show why the whole banking sector is flying high

A blowout quarter from America's second-largest bank illustrates larger trends in data and the economy

15.10.2025 3

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Bank earnings tell a story of 2 economies

Wall Street's banks posted strong profits on the back of dealmaking and trading activity. But consumer business lines raise the prospect of...

14.10.2025 2

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Trump is threatening more tariffs. But it looks like China is winning the trade war

New data shows China's dependence on American consumers is shrinking, offering an early verdict on Trump's renewed trade wars

14.10.2025 20

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Wall Street's biggest banks are about to report earnings. Washington is paying attention

As bank CEOs take the mic during a government shutdown, their coded messages to policymakers may carry extra weight

13.10.2025 2

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Ray Dalio warns that America's 'deficit-and-debt bomb' is 'like plaque in the arteries'

At the same time, Nassim Nicholas Taleb called the federal debt a “white swan,” or a crisis hiding in plain sight

10.10.2025 2

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Retail investors are snatching up stocks — and that has Wall Street on edge

Is this the bull market's final act? As mom-and-pop investors pile in, Wall Street observers hear echoes of past bubbles

10.10.2025 20

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Delta's latest results signal friendly skies, even amid the shutdown

Delta's Q3 results show the business increasingly looks like an airline-financial services hybrid. Here's why

09.10.2025 4

Quartz

Catherine Baab

The job market is flashing warning signs even as stocks keep climbing

With the government shut down, Wall Street's own data sources are flashing warning signs for job seekers, even as stocks rocket to new highs

08.10.2025 3

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Elon Musk’s xAI raises $20 billion — but won’t call it a raise

The raise uses a special-purpose vehicle to keep debt off Musk's balance sheet and hardware in investors’ hands

08.10.2025 3

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Gold's surge has Wall Street worried. Here's why

Gold keeps shattering records, an extreme move for an asset that typically posts single-digit annual gains. Citadel's Ken Griffin calls it “really...

07.10.2025 40

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Wall Street's rally makes no sense — and perfect sense at the same time

Gold is soaring, Bitcoin is back, and the dollar is sliding — even as jobs vanish and the government shuts down. What gives?

06.10.2025 2

Quartz

Catherine Baab

OpenAI just became the world's most valuable startup

Big-name investors are lining up to buy OpenAI employees' shares, valuing the startup at $500 billion

02.10.2025 3

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Horror is hot right now

From TikTok to the box office, fear is selling better than ever

02.10.2025 10

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Taiwan says Trump’s chip production demand wasn't even discussed in recent talks

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had floated the idea that half of chips for the U.S. market would need to be produced domestically

01.10.2025 10

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Trump's new timber tariffs could drive up housing costs

The tariffs include a 10% duty on lumber and timber, plus a 25% tariff on upholstered wood products such as kitchen cabinets and vanities

30.09.2025 3

Quartz

Catherine Baab

September stock slump? Not this year

A Fed rate cut, tech’s AI surge, and expanding corporate margins have stocks rallying in the month that usually drags them down

30.09.2025 6

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Trump wants Taiwan to move half of its U.S. chip supply to America. Don't count on it

The White House is pressing Taiwan to relocate fabs and suppliers to the U.S. in a bid to counter China. But the numbers strain credulity

29.09.2025 20

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Intel hopes Apple will make a deal

The chipmaker has raised billions from Nvidia, SoftBank, even the government. Now it's courting an old partner

25.09.2025 3

Quartz

Catherine Baab

'My heart sank.' Trump’s $100,000 fee for H-1B visas blindsides workers and companies

The president's proposal to overhaul the H-1B visa program has left companies scrambling and workers reeling

25.09.2025 6

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Micron's monster year puts AI's big potential and persistent risks on full display

The Idaho-based chipmaker records another blowout, but Wall Street hesitates before the bell

24.09.2025 4

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Powell warns tariffs are squeezing jobs and weighs in on frothy stock market

Fed chair Jerome Powell spoke in somewhat stronger terms about the effects of tariffs on the job market

23.09.2025 2

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Tariffs are still coming for the U.S. economy, the OECD warns — and AI won't save us

Firms have absorbed much of the trade war shock by taking hits to their profits and using up existing inventories. But that cushion won't last, the...

23.09.2025 2

Quartz

Catherine Baab

The career ladder is collapsing. Gen Z is feeling it first

Thanks to AI and a sluggish economy, the first rung of the career ladder is disappearing for many young workers

23.09.2025 10

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Amazon Prime is on trial. Here's what to know

The FTC alleges that Amazon used "dark patterns" to encourage Prime signups and discourage cancellations

22.09.2025 3

Quartz

Catherine Baab

You used to work here. Want to do the same job for half? Inside the rise of 'boomerang' job offers

From tech to schools, employers are courting former staffers — but with downgraded titles, no benefits, and a fraction of the salary

21.09.2025 10

Quartz

Catherine Baab

Stocks set to roar to fresh highs following the Fed's rate cut

Stock futures point to fresh records after Powell delivers a cut—and a sober warning on jobs, inflation, and politics

18.09.2025 2

Quartz

Catherine Baab