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The bottom line

More homeowners are staying home. The average house is being lived in for 13 years before hitting the market, five years longer than in 2010. That’s led to a shortage of housing inventory: There are now 12.5 homes for sale per 1,000 households, the lowest number on record in 37 years.The Wall Street Journal

Microsoft tested a four-day workweek in Japan and saw sales per employee rise 40 percent compared with a year earlier. The number of pages printed out fell by 59 percent, electricity consumption dropped 23 percent, and 94 percent of employees were satisfied with the program.The Washington Post

Apple pledged $2.5 billion in loans, grants, and investments to combat California’s housing crisis, joining Facebook and Google, which each recently pledged $1 billion.NPR.org

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has a net income of $52 billion this year, making it the most profitable public company in the world. It’s sitting on a cash pile of $128.2 billion, up from $23 billion a decade ago.Bloomberg.com

Some 31 percent of U.S. credit card holders pay their balance each month, the highest share since the American Bankers Association began keeping track in 2008.Axios.com

UPS estimates it will handle 1 million return packages per day in December, a record pace it expects will continue into the new year. Returns season is predicted to peak on Jan. 2 with 1.9 million packages, a 26 percent increase from the previous year.CNN.com

Facebook wants to be FACEBOOK

With federal regulators on its trail, Facebook announced it will undergo a makeover—of its logo, said Mike Snider in USA Today. The social media giant, facing growing antitrust scrutiny, said this week it is rebranding as FACEBOOK, all caps, to represent the parent company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. “If you want to go deeper into the company’s design choices, Facebook has an entire page devoted to the explanation,” which includes insights into its “rounded corners” and “custom typography” with multicolored letters. The corporate jargon didn’t get many takers. “Moving to all caps is on brand, considering FACEBOOK is now mostly about shouting online,” suggested one critic (naturally, on Twitter). Many others noted that Facebook seems to have lost the plot. The Tonight Show account tweeted: “Because that was everyone’s biggest complaint with Facebook—the logo.” ■

November 8, 2019 THE WEEK
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