Nike says it’s time to stand up for equality in a new ad campaign.

The company on Sunday launched a star-studded short film titled “Equality” to mark Black History Month.

The ad features Nike-sponsored athletes LeBron James, Serena Williams, Kevin Durant, Gabby Douglas, among others, “amplifying their voices in an effort to uplift, open eyes and bring the positive values that sport can represent into wider focus,” the company said.

Actor Michael B. Jordan voices the film, and singer Alicia Keys performs a rendition of Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come.”

“Is this the land history promised?” Jordan says. “Here, within these lines, on this concrete court, this patch of turf, here, you’re defined by your actions — not your looks or beliefs.”

Nike will feature ads from the campaign on social media, billboards and posters throughout cities in the United States and Canada. It will also sell “Equality” branded T-shirts and shoes as part of its annual Black History Month collection.

Apparel from the campaign will be worn by Nike athletes during NBA All-Star weekend.

Nike said it is donating $5 million this year to organizations like MENTOR and PeacePlayers, which it says “advance equality in communities” across the country.

Related: Pro-Trump boycott calls follow Super Bowl ads

Nike’s new campaign comes one week after numerous companies launched ads about inclusion and acceptance during the Super Bowl.

Budweiser, 84 Lumber, Coca-Cola (COKE), Airbnb, Kia and Tiffany (TIF) were among the brands that features messages about immigration, equality and environmentalism.

— CNNMoney’s Ahiza Garcia contributed to this story.

CNNMoney (New York) First published February 12, 2017: 12:51 PM ET

Editor’s Note: This story originally published on September 14, 2018.

New York
CNN Business
 — 

Legendary investment bank Lehman Brothers was on fire — and no one was coming to put it out.

Bank of America refused to rescue the 158-year-old Wall Street firm without support from Uncle Sam. The British government wouldn’t let Barclays (BCS) buy Lehman Brothers and its toxic balance sheet. And Washington decided against another politically unpopular bailout.

So Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail. At 1:45 a.m. on Monday, September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

What ensued was the largest and most complex bankruptcy in American history. But that doesn’t do justice to the damage Lehman’s demise caused the financial system. The implosion of Lehman Brothers — and the mayhem it unleashed — was the most terrifying moment for business and the US economy since the Great Depression.

“It was the moment when the financial crisis fully burst upon us, when panic seized the markets,” Phil Angelides, who led the official bipartisan inquiry into the 2008 meltdown, told CNN.

Lehman’s failure shook Wall Street to its core. The Dow plummeted 504 points, the equivalent of 1,300 points today. Some $700 billion vanished from retirement plans and other investment funds. The panic that followed plunged the American economy into a severe downturn, now known as the Great Recession.

Today, Lehman Brothers and its CEO Dick Fuld are the poster children for the reckless risk-taking that wrecked the economy.

Lehman’s final days were marked by frantic last-minute negotiations over its fate.

Right up until the end, everyone thought someone would rescue Lehman Brothers: Surely the firm wouldn’t be allowed to fail. Bear Stearns, a smaller investment bank, had been saved just six months earlier by Washington and JPMorgan Chase.

On Wednesday, September 10, South Korea’s Korean Development Bank dropped out of the running to be Lehman Brothers’ white knight. The news — combined with Lehman’s announcement of a record $3.9 billion quarterly loss — sent the bank’s shares cratering 45%.

With South Korea out, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson called Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis to ask him to find a creative way to buy Lehman Brothers. Put on your “imagination hat,” Paulson urged Lewis.

But by Friday, September 12, Bank of America said it was bowing out unless the government was willing to help. Lehman was simply stuck with too many “illiquid” mortgage assets, and it couldn’t sell them quickly enough to meet other obligations. Bank of America decided instead to buy the next investment bank in line to fail: Merrill Lynch.

“You just didn’t know what was going to happen when you got into work on Monday,” said Brady Kim, who worked as an analyst on Lehman’s trading desk. “Were you going to be working for Barclays? Some Korean conglomerate?”

The one option few saw coming was bankruptcy. “They’re not just going to let the bank go under,” Kim said.

That Friday evening, Paulson ordered the heads of the big Wall Street firms to meet at the New York Fed’s headquarters. They were told to come up with a private-sector solution to save Lehman.

American officials had little appetite for another bailout. They had just seized control of teetering mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the weekend before. Fed officials said Paulson made it clear there would be no government help this time, “not a penny.”

Saturday brought an apparent breakthrough for Lehman: Barclays agreed to buy Lehman — as long as Wall Street would take some assets off its hands. But the Barclays deal went up in smoke on Sunday when UK regulators balked at blessing the risky deal.

“Imagine if I said yes to a British bank buying a very large American bank which … collapsed the following week,” Alistair Darling, the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer, later told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

‘It was pandemonium up there’

With no buyers left, regulators pressured Lehman Brothers to file for bankruptcy on Sunday night, before trading opened in the morning.

Lehman’s lawyers and executives left the New York Fed to inform the board that no rescue was coming.

“We went back to the headquarters, and it was pandemonium up there,” Harvey Miller, the bankruptcy counselor for Lehman Brothers, later told investigators.

The Fed rejected a last-minute Lehman plea for additional assistance from the central bank, leading to the early-morning bankruptcy.

The collapse shocked employees.

“I never thought the company would go out of business. It was terrible,” said James Chico, who worked as an analyst in the back office at Lehman for more than two decades.

Tom Rogers was on his honeymoon in St. Lucia when the bank, his employer for seven years, went bust.

“I came back, and it was just mass chaos,” said Rogers, who started as an intern at Lehman and moved up to senior analyst in the firm’s reinsurance business.

The turmoil showed just how fragile and interconnected the entire system was. The situation was exacerbated by the near-collapse of AIG, the insurance behemoth. Regulators feared AIG’s demise would bring down the whole system — so AIG was given a $182 billion bailout.

Fear and panic quickly spread through the financial system, causing credit markets to freeze. Even large and iconic industrial companies such as General Motors were unable to receive short-term funding.

“The financial crisis reached cataclysmic proportions with the collapse of Lehman Brothers,” the crisis inquiry commission concluded.

Fuld, who had infamously told shareholders in April 2008 that “the worst is behind us,” emerged as one of the villains of the crisis. He steered Lehman right into the face of an epic storm.

Between 2000 and 2007, Lehman’s assets had more than tripled to $691 billion. And its borrowing ratio, known as leverage, jumped to 40 times its shareholders’ equity in the company. The firm had relatively little capital to protect against trouble.

Madelyn Antoncic, Lehman’s chief risk officer from 2004 to 2007, tried and failed to warn Fuld against taking on more mortgage risk.

“At the senior level, they were trying to push so hard that the wheels started to come off,” Antoncic told the commission.

For his part, Fuld told lawmakers in 2008 that the pain of Lehman’s failure “will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

The former Lehman Brothers boss, who made and lost a $1 billion fortune on Wall Street, has made few public appearances since the crisis. He did speak at a 2015 event where he admitted he would do some things differently.

“I missed the violence of the market and how it spread from one asset class to the next,” Fuld said.

Fuld doesn’t deserve all the blame. The firm’s demise underscored the wild risk-taking that regulators and CEOs had allowed to become rampant across Wall Street.

Consider, for example, the 2000 deregulation of exotic financial instruments known as derivatives. Regulators had little window into how these trades linked banks to one another. When one bank failed, other financial institutions fell in a kind of domino effect.

Even a month before Lehman’s bankruptcy, officials at the Fed were still seeking information on the bank’s 900,000 derivative contracts. And they were clueless about the risk posed by AIG’s enormous book of derivatives.

“The people charged with overseeing our financial system were flying blind as the crisis developed,” Angelides said.

Only in 2010, with the passage of the sweeping Dodd-Frank financial reform law, were derivatives required to be bought and sold on exchanges.

Regulators also failed to get Lehman Brothers to slow its headfirst dive into mortgages. The firm kept buying real estate assets well into the first quarter of 2008.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Thrift Supervision didn’t issue a report warning of Lehman’s “outsized bet” on commercial real estate until two months before its collapse. The OTS was abolished by Dodd-Frank.

Likewise, the SEC declined to call Lehman Brothers out for exceeding risk limits — even though the agency was aware.

“The SEC…knew of the firm’s disregard of risk management,” the commission said.

Lehman Brothers also got away with using accounting gimmicks to mask how much money it borrowed. Bart McDade, Lehman’s president and chief operating officer, wrote in an email at the time that the accounting maneuvers are “another drug we R on.”

Economists will debate for decades whether Washington should have rescued Lehman to prevent the chaos that followed. Former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke maintains that regulators had no authority to lend to a failing Lehman.

“We essentially had no choice and had to let it fail,” Bernanke told the commission.

But others say Bernanke and Paulson should have realized that allowing Lehman to fail would deepen the crisis.

“Our regulatory system is made of humans — and humans make mistakes,” said James Angel, a business professor at Georgetown University. “The Fed clearly could have done a better job of containing the damage.”

The inconsistent response by Washington — deciding not to rescue Lehman after saving Bear and before helping AIG — “added to uncertainty and panic,” the financial crisis inquiry concluded.

Today’s financial system is safer thanks to the reforms put in place after 2008. Banks have bulked up on vast amounts of capital. Regulators are more vigilant.

But some worry about the risk of another downturn, even if it doesn’t start with banks.

“I’m concerned about now,” said famed Yale professor Robert Schiller, pointing to “highly priced” stocks and rising home values.

“We’re already in for what could be a repeat of 2008,” Shiller said. “It will look different this time, but there could be a decline in home prices and recession coming in.”

Let’s hope the lessons from the last crisis haven’t been forgotten.

A Decade Later: It’s been 10 years since the financial crisis rocked America’s economy. In a special yearlong series, CNN will examine the causes of the crisis, how the country is still feeling its effects, and the lessons we have — and have not — learned.

Apple CEO Tim Cook wants the tech industry to take action against “fake news” stories that are polluting the web.

“There has to be a massive campaign. We have to think through every demographic,” Cook said in a rare interview.

Speaking with The Daily Telegraph newspaper, Cook also said “all of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake news.”

Other leading tech company CEOs, like Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, have spoken about the problem in recent months. But Cook’s comments were much more frank.

According to the Telegraph, he said made-up stories and hoaxes are “killing people’s minds.”

And he called the “fake news” plague “a big problem in a lot of the world.”

The term “fake news” was originally coined to describe online stories that are designed to deceive readers. Often times these stories are shared on Facebook and other social networking sites to generate profits for the creators. Other times the stories are essentially propaganda made up for political purposes.

These kinds of stories received widespread attention before and after the American election. Fictional stories with titles like “Pope Francis shocks world, endorses Donald Trump for president” won millions of clicks.

It can be very difficult for web surfers to tell the difference between legitimate news sources and fakes.

That’s where companies like Apple come in.

In the Telegraph interview — part of a multi-day European trip — Cook said “too many of us are just in the complain category right now and haven’t figured out what to do.”

He urged both technological and intellectual solutions.

“We need the modern version of a public-service announcement campaign. It can be done quickly if there is a will,” Cook told the newspaper.

What he described is music to the ears of media literacy advocates.

“It’s almost as if a new course is required for the modern kid, for the digital kid,” Cook said.

There are scattered efforts in some schools to teach media literacy, with a focus on digital skills, but it is by no means universal.

When asked if Apple would commit to funding a PSA campaign, an Apple spokesman said the company had no further comment on Cook’s interview.

The Apple CEO also suggested that tech companies can help weed out fake stories, though he added, “We must try to squeeze this without stepping on freedom of speech and of the press.”

Apple’s own Apple News app has been credited with being a relatively reliable place to find information.

The company “reviews publishers who join Apple News,” BuzzFeed noted last December.

And the app has a “report-a-concern function where users can flag fake news or hate speech.”

Facebook recently started working with fact-checkers to test “warning labels” that show up when users share made-up stories.

Cook, in the newspaper interview, expressed optimism that the “fake news” plague is a “short-term thing — I don’t believe that people want that at the end of the day.”

CNNMoney (New York) First published February 11, 2017: 8:00 PM ET

1. Trouble in paradise: For the past decade, a river of easy money rushed into emerging markets.

Now that powerful force is reversing. Rising interest rates, along with trade wars, have started a stampede out of some emerging markets. The Turkish lira and Argentine peso have crashed, while China’s stock market is stuck in a bear market.

Problems long masked by extremely low interest rates are now coming into sharp focus.

“The tide … is receding and some countries have been, or will be, caught naked,” Jason Daw, head of emerging markets strategy at Societe Generale, wrote to clients last week.

Developing economies may not get relief anytime soon. The Federal Reserve is expected to keep steadily lifting interest rates off the floor. The rate hikes represent a vote of confidence in the strong American economy, which continues to prop up US stocks.

However, the end of easy money — along with a surge of trade tensions — is causing serious headaches in other parts of the world.

Higher rates strengthen the US dollar, making it more difficult for countries like Turkey that took out a ton of dollar-denominated debt. Moreover, the rate hikes have lured money that had flocked to far-flung places back to the United States.

But not all emerging markets are feeling the pain equally. Some, like South Korea and Thailand, seem to be weathering the storm relatively well. That’s a huge flip from two decades ago, when an Asian financial crisis began with the implosion of the Thai baht.

Others, like Turkey, have gotten crushed. The Turkish central bank had to resort to a surprisingly strong interest rate hike last week to stem the bleeding in the lira. Argentina’s central bank hiked interest rates to 60%. The central bank of Russia, which has been hammered by sanctions from Washington, surprised investors on Friday with the first interest rate hike since 2014. South Africa’s central bank, which meets on Thursday, could be forced to do the same.

Daw said that countries most susceptible to the emerging market stress have several things in common.

First, they’ve piled on lots of dollar-denominated debt — much of which is due soon. Second, they have relatively high overall levels of debt and low rainy-day funds. And these emerging markets are running trade and budget deficits.

So which countries fit these categories? Daw called out Turkey, South Africa, Malaysia, India and Indonesia as the most vulnerable.

“The misallocation of capital following a decade of cheap money is starting to be exposed,” Daw said.

2. More earnings: It’s a slower week for earnings, but some notable companies will post results, including Oracle, FedEx, General Mills, AutoZone and Olive Garden owner Darden Restaurants. The booming economy and lower tax rates have boosted corporate profits.

3. New Apple products: Apple’s new iPhone models hit store shelves on Friday. The company is also releasing iOS 12, Apple Watch and software updates to its HomePod and tvOS devices. Apple’s (AAPL) stock is up 32% this year.

4. S&P reclassification: The S&P 500 is undergoing some changes on Friday. A number of major tech and telecommunications stocks will move to the communication services unit, including Facebook (FB), Netflix (NFLX) and Alphabet (GOOGL).

5. Coming this week:

Monday — Oracle (ORCL) and FedEx (FDX) earnings; iOS 12 launches

Tuesday — General Mills (GIS) and AutoZone (AZO) earnings; US Treasury foreign bond ownership stats

Thursday — Darden (DRI) Restaurants and Micron Technology (MU) earnings

Friday — S&P reclassification; new iPhones and Apple Watch hit stores

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 16, 2018: 7:21 AM ET

Steven Mnuchin had a pretty good weekend.

First the treasury secretary pick advanced a step closer toward confirmation on Friday.

Then his latest movie claimed the top spot at the box office.

Mnuchin is an executive producer on Warner Bros.’ “The Lego Batman Movie,” which pulled in an estimated $55.6 million from U.S. audiences during its opening weekend.

CNN, like Warner Bros., is owned by Time Warner.

The kid-friendly spinoff of 2014’s “The Lego Movie” handily beat its raunchy competitor, Universal’s “Fifty Shades Darker.”

The sequel to 2015’s “Fifty Shades of Grey,” based on a best-selling series of romance novels, debuted at $46.8 million in the United States.

Related: Possible pick for Treasury secretary makes his film debut

Mnuchin is listed as a producer or executive producer on 34 films in recent years, including last summer’s “Suicide Squad,” which brought in $786 million worldwide.

He also produced “The Lego Ninjago Movie,” another Lego franchise spinoff that will hit screens this fall.

Mnuchin is widely expected to be serving as Treasury secretary by then.

Following a 53-46 vote last Friday to break a Democratic filibuster, Mnuchin is scheduled for a final vote before the full Senate at 7 p.m. Monday.

–CNNMoney’s Frank Pallotta and CNN’s Ashley Killough contributed to this story.

CNNMoney (New York) First published February 12, 2017: 5:39 PM ET

For the first time in a decade, Corporate America is steering more money into stock buybacks than investing in the future.

S&P 500 companies rewarded shareholders with $384 billion worth of buybacks during the first half of 2018, according to a Goldman Sachs report published Friday. That big bonanza for Wall Street is up 48% from last year and reflects spiking profitability thanks to corporate tax cuts and the strong US economy.

But that doesn’t mean companies aren’t spending on job-creating investments, like new equipment, research projects and factories. Business spending is up 19% — it’s just that buybacks are growing much faster.

In fact, Goldman Sachs said that buybacks are garnering the largest share of cash spending by S&P 500 firms. It’s a milestone because capital spending had represented the single largest use of cash by corporations in 19 of the past 20 years.

And the trend may not be done yet. Goldman Sachs predicted that share buyback authorizations among all US companies in all of 2018 will surpass $1 trillion for the first time ever.

Apple (AAPL) alone spent a whopping $45 billion on buybacks during the first half of 2018, triple what it did during the same time period last year, the firm said. That included a record-shattering sum during the first quarter.

Amgen (AMGN), Cisco (CSCO), AbbVie (ABBV) and Oracle (ORCL) have also showered investors with big boosts to their buyback programs.

Buybacks are typically cheered by shareholders, at least in the short term. One reason is that buybacks artificially inflate earnings per share by eliminating the number of shares outstanding.

Moreover, companies stepping into the market with giant purchase orders provide persistent demand, lifting share prices.

The impact of buybacks is so profound that some worry about how stocks will hold up without them. Companies generally aren’t allowed to buy back stock during so-called “blackout” periods that begin the month before reporting earnings.

David Kostin, chief US equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, warned that the upcoming blackout period poses a “near-term risk” to the market. He noted that market volatility tends to be higher during buyback blackouts.

The good news is that large companies are investing a sizable chunk of their winnings from the corporate tax overhaul. The Republican tax law, enacted in late 2017, slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. It also gave companies a tax break on foreign profits that are returned to the United States.

Capital spending is on track for the fastest growth in at least 25 years, Goldman Sachs estimates.

“Rumors of the demise of capital spending have been greatly exaggerated,” Kostin wrote.

The growth of business spending, much like buybacks, has been dominated by some of the biggest companies in the United States. Goldman Sachs estimates that 79% of the growth in S&P 500 capital spending came from 10 companies alone.

For example, Google owner Alphabet (GOOGL) alarmed investors in April by disclosing more than $7 billion of capital expenditures in the first quarter. Facebook (FB), under fire for its handling of the 2016 election, is spending heavily on people and technology. Microsoft (MSFT), Intel (INTC) and Micron (MU) are also accelerating their capital spending.

Even though CEOs continue to green light vast buybacks, they have been quietly taking a different approach with their own money. Corporate insiders sold $10.3 billion of shares in August, the most since November 2017, according to research firm TrimTabs.

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 17, 2018: 3:14 PM ET

To tackle Thailand’s mounting trash problem, one company is turning to the country’s plant life.

Universal Biopack makes packaging that it sells to restaurants and manufacturers. But rather than plastic, it uses a mixture of bamboo and cassava, crops that are widely found across the country.

After growing rapidly in recent decades, Thailand has become one of Asia’s biggest economies. But like many other countries in the region, it’s been slow to try to combat the millions of tons of trash produced each year.

“Waste management is a big problem everywhere,” said Universal Biopack’s managing director, Vara-Anong Vichakyothin.

Related: The company turning 4 billion plastic bottles into clothes

The company is using a technology devised at a Bangkok university to make its zero-waste packaging. It hopes it will eventually replace many of the Styrofoam boxes and plastic bags that end up in huge garbage dumps across Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries.

Its eco-friendly formula took five years to develop and is so adaptable it could end up being used to package things like furniture and even phones. The bamboo it uses comes from leftover scraps from the chopstick manufacturing process.

In the cities of Bangkok and Chiang Mai, where takeout drink containers and noodle packets line the sidewalks, the company supplies restaurants, organic farmers and other businesses in the food and drink industry.

But finding new clients can be tricky.

Takeout food vendors in Thailand want to keep costs down in a competitive business with thin margins. Asking them to spend more on packaging for environmental reasons is a tough sell.

“The local economy still does not support [this technology]” said Universal Biopack’s founder, Suthep Vichakyothin.

But that hasn’t stopping other companies from entering the sustainable packaging market in Thailand. Like Universal Biopack, they’re betting on growing environmental awareness eventually leading to an increase in demand.

To become more competitive, Suthep’s company is investing. It’s aiming to ramp up production by building a partially automated assembly line at its factory near Bangkok and doubling its staffing from 50 people to 100.

The goal is to increase monthly capacity from 300,000 units to one million.

Related: A startup that makes pencils that grow into vegetables

A lot of the demand comes from overseas. One of its customers uses the natural packaging for coconut water it exports.

Universal Biopack says it’s also getting interest in its products from other countries, particularly in Scandinavia.

CNNMoney (Hong Kong) First published February 12, 2017: 9:08 PM ET

Business leaders and officials in China say that Beijing is ready to dig in for a war of attrition with the United States on trade.

The Trump administration launched its biggest barrage of tariffs yet just as top executives and policymakers were gathering for the start of a World Economic Forum event in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin on Tuesday. China said later it would retaliate with more tariffs of its own.

The trade war dominated discussions at the “summer Davos,” as the event is known, and few participants predicted a swift resolution to the conflict.

“China is growing concerned that the US motivation is now trying to keep China down and contain it,” said Timothy Stratford, a managing partner at law firm Covington & Burling in Beijing. “I expect that we’re going to have a deadlock for some time.”

The US government wants China to change practices that it says disadvantage American businesses, accusing Beijing of overseeing the theft of US intellectual property and boosting Chinese companies through aggressive industrial policies. The Chinese government dismisses the criticism as groundless, even though American and European firms operating in China frequently complain about the issues.

Chinese government officials speaking in Tianjin insisted that the country can weather the tariff battle even though it has shaken the country’s financial markets.

“The trade frictions don’t have a huge direct impact on China’s economy, but they may impact people’s expectations,” said Liu Shijin, a Chinese government adviser and member of the monetary policy committee at the People’s Bank of China.

A slump in Chinese stocks and the yuan showed investors had “overreacted” to trade fears, he added.

“This is a test for us and we should stick to our direction and never stop,” Liu said of the trade war.

Fang Xinghai, vice chairman of China’s securities regulator, said that the new US tariffs wouldn’t make Beijing back down. He said he hoped the two governments would soon talk again and strike a deal.

One of China’s most prominent entrepreneurs is doubtful that will happen anytime soon.

The trade war is “going to last long, it’s going to be a mess,” Jack Ma, the founder and executive chairman of top Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba (BABA), said Tuesday at a separate event in the eastern city of Hangzhou. He predicted the conflict could drag on for as long as 20 years.

US companies operating in China say the waves of tariffs are already hurting their business. Casualties also include American chipmaker Qualcomm (QCOM), whose $44 billion deal to buy Dutch rival NXP Semiconductors (NXPI) was blocked by Chinese regulators in July.

Other companies could get caught in the crossfire. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) wants to take advantage of China’s efforts to open up its financial industry and recently applied to launch a brokerage in the country.

Asked if he was worried Beijing could withhold approval for the venture because of the trade war, JPMorgan China CEO Mark Leung said in Tianjin that it’s “not within our control.”

He added that the bank is “working constructively” with regulators.

While China appears to be suffering more pain right now, it may not be in the US government’s interests to leave tariffs in place for too long.

“We’ve seen a heating up of the US economy,” said Helen Zhu, head of China equities at investment manager Blackrock. “If tariffs were to go to 25% later this year on $200 billion of imports, that would work into inflationary pressure and damage the US consumer.”

“There’s an increasing incentive for both sides to work out something in the coming months,” she said.

If they don’t, the fallout will be felt around the world.

“Every time we get into a trade war, it doesn’t end up well,” said Carlos Moedas, the European Union’s commissioner for research, science and innovation.

“Each time we’ve done protectionism, people get worse off,” he added, referring to the global trade slump in the 1930s. “Economically, politicians seem not to have learned their lessons.”

— Jethro Mullen contributed to this report.

CNNMoney (Tianjin, China) First published September 18, 2018: 9:04 AM ET

Verizon (VZ) is bringing back an unlimited data plan.

Starting Monday, Verizon customers can get unlimited data, talk and text for $80.

The company says the new introductory plan also includes up to 10 GB of mobile hotspot usage, as well as calling and texting to Mexico and Canada. It will also allow customers to stream unlimited HD video, thumbing its nose at T-Mobile’s controversial practice of lowering video quality for some of its unlimited data customers.

Although the new Verizon plan promises “fast LTE speeds,” those using a lot of data may suffer. The company said that after a customer uses 22 gb of data on a line during any billing cycle, it “may prioritize usage behind other customers in the event of network congestion.” That has become standard practice on all networks that offer unlimited data plans.

Related: T-Mobile and Sprint offer new ‘unlimited’ data plans — sort of

Verizon first eliminated its version of an unlimited usage plan in 2011, following similar decisions by other major wireless carriers.

But companies have been steadily reviving such plans.

Verizon first overhauled its data-usage plans last summer when it introduced a new “Safety Mode” plan. That technically gave customers access to unlimited data, but they were subjected to slow-as-molasses speeds after they went over their allotted data.

AT&T similarly eliminated overage fees for customers in September. Like Verizon, AT&T throttles customers speeds once they reach the data limit on their plans. The company brought back unlimited plans earlier last year, but it is only available for homes with both AT&T’s wireless phone service and either DirecTV or U-Verse TV.

Meanwhile, competitors T-Mobile (TMUS) and Sprint (S) made their own bids to attract customers looking for “unlimited data” plans.

Nearly all NYC subways get cell service

Last August, Sprint began offering a plan to give customers unlimited talk, text and high-speed data for $60 for the first line, $40 for the next, and $30 for each additional up to 10.

The T-Mobile plan, announced the same day as Sprint’s, charged $70 a month for the first line, the second at $50 and additional lines are only $20, up to eight lines.

CNNMoney (New York) First published February 12, 2017: 7:03 PM ET

Wall Street doesn’t seem to care about the escalating trade war between the United States and China.

The Dow jumped 175 points and the Nasdaq climbed 1% on Tuesday despite Washington and Beijing pushing ahead with another round of punishing tariffs. Investors are betting the US economy will continue to power ahead of the rest of the world.

Yet beneath the surface, some are getting worried about the ability of the global economy to withstand the trade war and brewing storms in emerging markets.

One in four professional investors is bracing for global growth to slow over the next year, according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch survey published on Tuesday. That’s the worst outlook in this monthly survey since December 2011 and up from August when just 7% of investors were pessimists.

And nearly half of investors surveyed by Bank of America believe the US economy will decelerate and rejoin the rest of the world.

Just one in three said that in August.

“Investors are holding on to more cash, telling us they are bearish growth,” Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, wrote to clients.

Not surprisingly, the trade war topped the worry list for the fourth straight month. The second-most popular “tail risk” is related: a slowdown in China’s economy.

The survey was conducted September 7-September 13, before President Donald Trump leveled a 10% tariff on $200 billion worth of imports from China AND Beijing said it will retaliate by putting tariffs on $60 billion worth of US imports at a rate of 5% to 10%.

“It certainly does seem that we’re approaching spiral stage,” Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group, wrote to clients on Tuesday.

Anne Van Praagh, a managing director at Moody’s, said that higher tariffs will “hurt the economy by distorting prices,” creating inefficiencies and having a chilling effect on investment decisions.

Wall Street seemed to take the news in stride: the Dow climbed within 400 points of an all-time high, the first since January.

The VIX (VIX) volatility index, a measure of market turbulence, declined 7% to a very quiet level of 13. Recall that the so-called “fear gauge” shot up to 50 in February.

However, a lesser known barometer of investor worry is sending more ominous signals. The CBOE SKEW Index rises when option trades signal that concern about a “black swan” incident — an unexpected event that has a huge impact. The index is trading near the highest level since records began in 1990.

US markets have been bolstered by a strong domestic economy that can hopefully shrug off the trade tensions. The US unemployment rate is sitting at just 3.9%. America’s gross domestic product climbed at an annualized pace of 4.2% in the second quarter.

Despite the trade standoff, growth is on track to accelerate to 4.4% in the third quarter, according to a volatile forecasting model from the Atlanta Federal Reserve.

The impact from proposed tariffs on GDP growth in the United States is likely to be “very modest,” Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius wrote to clients on Tuesday.

Hatzius said that while there is a chance that Washington and Beijing reach a resolution, “further escalation seems likely” and the situation is “highly uncertain.”

Still, some prominent business leaders are starting to sound the alarm.

The Business Roundtable, a powerful lobby led by JPMorgan Chase (JPM) boss Jamie Dimon, issued a statement saying that “unilaterally imposing tariffs is the wrong way to achieve real reforms” and threatens “further harm to US businesses and workers.”

FedEx (FDX) CEO Fred Smith told analysts on Monday that the US-China trade fight is “worrisome to everyone” and may already be causing China’s economy to moderate.

Alibaba (BABA) founder Jack Ma warned the US-China trade war could last for 20 years. “It’s going to last long, it’s going to be a mess,” Ma said on Tuesday.

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 18, 2018: 1:56 PM ET