Top Business News from the last decade

This is a continuation of the "Top 10" lists of the decade. The earlier posts are:

• Top Technology Disruptions

Here are the top Business News from the last decade:

1. China is easily the top business news of the last decade. In 2015 China emerged as the world's largest economy - on the basis of purchasing power parity. In the last few years the trade war between the US and China has escalated. 

2. Cryptocurrency. This is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange. It uses strong cryptography to secure financial transactions; control the creation of additional units; and verify the transfer of assets. All this is done using Blockchain technology. Bitcoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. The price of Bitcoin skyrocketed from under $800 in late 2016 to an all-time high of $19,783 in  December 2017. The crypto bubble burst in early 2018, but Bitcoin still finished the decade with a global market cap of more than $140b. 

3. Longest Bull Market run. The decade began with the remnants of the great recession of 2008 and the scariest financial crisis since the 1930s. A slow, but steady economic recovery, coupled with unprecedented aid from the Federal Reserve, catapulted the Dow from 6,500 to the 28,500 today. The S&P is almost at 5x from the low of 666 in 2009.

4. FinTech. The last decade has seen more progress in Finance Technology than the past hundred years. Huge global banks like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and CitiGroup are now big FinTech investors. Artificial Intelligence and advanced high-frequency trading algorithms have become a central part of investment banking. The emergence of trading apps like Robinhood, mobile payment apps like Venmo provide unprecedented banking services from the Smartphone. 

5. Greek Economy. It suffered the longest recession of any advanced capitalist economy to date. The crisis led to the loss of confidence in the Greek economy. The government enacted 12 rounds of tax increases, spending cuts and reforms from 2010 to 2016.

6. Debt Ceiling. In 2011, the Republican-controlled House demanded spending concessions from then President Obama before they would agree to raise the debt ceiling. The credit-rating agency Standard & Poor downgraded its US credit rating for the first time in history, dropping it from AAA to AA+.

7. Oil price collapse. In the previous decade, Oil prices rose significantly - attributed rising oil demand in India and China. In the middle of 2014, Oil prices started declining -  attributed to significant increase in oil production in the US (thanks to fracking), and the declining demand from emerging countries.

8. Merger of AT&T and Time Warner. This $108b merger (completed in 2018) is significant because AT&T owns the infrastructure to deliver content. Time Warner owns content producers, studios, and networks like HBO that create content. The combined company would benefit from being vertically integrated.