At Volkswagen, a scandal where executives could pay the price on January 23, 2017At the Detroit Auto Show last week, Volkswagen hoped to escape the present with a nod to the past, introducing a revamped version of its iconic flat-faced, boxy Microbus, the vehicle that shepherded the counterculture across the interstates some five decades ago. The bus’s reincarnation is a battery-propelled, self-driving vehicle called ID Buzz. But nostalgic […]
Elon musk has delivery issues on January 16, 2017Just before President-elect Donald Trump met with leaders from Apple, I.B.M., Amazon, Facebook, and other tech companies in mid-December, the transition team made a somewhat puzzling announcement: Elon Musk, the head of Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity, who would be attending the session in Trump Tower, had been named to the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum, […]
Why Obama is still trying to pass the TPP on September 25, 2016In a speech before the New York Economic Club last week, Donald J. Trump offered up his economic plan for the future. Unsurprisingly, one of the foundations of his plan was ripping up “terrible” trade agreements and, especially, a vow to “keep America out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.” Trump isn’t the only one to object […]
The Volkswagen settlement: how bad management leads to big punishment on July 10, 2016 By many critical measures, the Justice Department’s announcement on Tuesday that Volkswagen had agreed to pay $14.7 billion to resolve claims related to its diesel-emissions scandal was startling. For one thing, it is the largest class-action settlement ever, billions more than the one Enron agreed to in 2008. It also far exceeds Toyota’s $1.1 […]