Looking up: Orders for U.S. factory goods that signal business investment plans jumped last month by the most in more than a year, suggesting companies are confident about their business prospects. The Commerce Department reports that orders for so-called core capital goods, which include industrial machinery, construction equipment and computers, rose 6.3% in January from December. More details from the report can be found here.
On the clock: The Supreme Court says the federal government doesn’t get more time to sue for securities fraud. Justices today ruled the Securities and Exchange Commission must file suit within five years of an alleged fraudulent security action, and that the SEC can’t start the clock when it discovers a bad practice. The case involved Gabelli Funds executive Bruce Alpert and former executive Marc Gabelli, who said the SEC missed its chance to sue them for allegedly committing securities fraud by allowing a hedge fund to rapidly trade shares of a mutual fund.
Back to the future: A car that tells your insurance company how you’re driving; a bathroom scale that lets you chart your weight on the Web; a meter that warns your air conditioner when electricity gets more expensive: Welcome to the next phase of the wireless revolution. The first wave of wireless was all about getting people to talk to each other on cell phones. The second will be getting things to talk to each other, with no humans in between. So-called machine-to-machine communication is getting a lot of buzz, and some experts believe these connections will outgrow the traditional phone business in less than a decade. Read the full story here.
