YEAR IN REVIEW: The business stories that dominated 2023

This is the second in a two-part story.

The tide turned against inflation.

Artificial intelligence went mainstream — for good or ill.

Labor unions capitalized on their growing might to win more generous pay and benefits.

Elon Musk renamed and rebranded the social media platform Twitter, removed guardrails against phony or obscene posts and ranted profanely when advertisers fled in droves.

The American housing market, straining under the weight of heavy mortgage rates, took a wallop.

And Taylor Swift’s concert tour scaled such stratospheric heights that she invigorated some regional economies and drew a mention in Federal Reserve proceedings.

A look at another five of the top 10 business stories in 2023:

CRYPTO CHAOS (CONTINUED)

If 2022 was the year that the cryptocurrency industry collapsed, 2023 was the year of the spillover from that fall.

The year’s headlines from crypto were dominated by convictions and legal settlements as Washington regulators adopted a much more aggressive stance toward the industry.

A jury convicted Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of the crypto exchange FTX, of wire fraud and six other charges. Weeks later, the founder of Binance, Chengpeng Zhao, agreed to plead guilty to money laundering charges as part of a settlement between U.S. authorities and the exchange. Among the other crypto heavyweights that met legal trouble were Coinbase, Gemini and Genesis.

Yet speculation that crypto may gain more legitimacy among investors helped more than double the price of bitcoin. After years of delays, regulators are eventually expected to approve a bitcoin exchange-traded fund. Whether that would prove sufficient to sustain bitcoin’s rally over the long run remains to be seen.

BANKING JITTERS

Historically, high interest rates benefit banks; they can charge more for their loans. But in 2023, higher rates ended up poisoning a handful of them.

The industry endured a banking crisis on a scale not seen since 2008. Three midsized banks — Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank — collapsed.

For years, banks had loaded up their balance sheets with high-quality mortgages and Treasurys. In an era of ultra-low rates, those mortgages and bonds paid out puny interest.

Enter the specter of inflation and the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes. As rates jumped, the banks’ bonds tumbled in value because investors could now buy new bonds with much juicier yields. With pressure on the banks mounting, some anxious depositors withdrew their money. After one such bank run, Silicon Valley collapsed. Days later, Signature Bank failed. First Republic was seized and sold to JPMorgan Chase.

Investors remain concerned about midsized institutions with similar business models. Trillions of dollars in commercial real estate loans that remain on these banks’ books could become problematic in 2024.

GLOBAL MARKETS RALLY

From Austria to New Zealand, stock markets rallied through 2023. As inflation eased, stocks climbed despite sluggish global economic growth.

A tumble in crude oil prices helped slow inflation. A barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, dropped 14% through mid-December on expectations that the world has more than enough oil to meet demand.

An index that spans nearly 3,000 stocks from 47 countries returned 18% in U.S. dollar terms as of Dec. 11. Healthy gains for Apple, Nvidia and other U.S. Big Tech stocks powered much of the gains. So did the 45% return for the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, which sells the Wegovy drug to treat obesity and the 33% return for the Dutch semiconductor company ASML.

The bond market endured more turbulence. Bond prices tumbled for much of the year, and their yields rose, over uncertainty about how far central banks would go in raising rates to curb inflation.

The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury briefly topped 5% in October to reach its highest level since 2007. Yields have since eased on the expectation that the Fed is done raising rates.

WORLD ECONOMY’S RESILIENCE

Over the past three years, the global economy has absorbed one hit after another. A devastating pandemic. The disruption of energy and grain markets stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A resurgence of inflation. Punishing interest rates.

And yet economic output kept growing in 2023, if only modestly. Optimism grew about a “soft landing” — a scenario in which high rates tame inflation without causing a recession. The head of the International Monetary Fund praised the global economy for its “remarkable resilience.”

The United States has led the way. Defying predictions that high rates would trigger a U.S. recession, the world’s largest economy has continued to grow. And employers, fueled by solid consumer spending, have kept hiring at healthy rates.

Still, the accumulated shocks are restraining growth. The IMF expects the global economy to expand just 2.9% in 2024 from an expected 3% this year. A major concern is a weakened China, the world’s No. 2 economy. Its growth is hobbled by the collapse of an overbuilt real estate market, sagging consumer confidence and high rates of youth unemployment.

THE U.S. ECONOMY (TAYLOR’S VERSION)

Taylor Swift dominated popular culture, with her record-shattering $1 billion concert tour, her anointment as Time magazine’s Person of the Year and her high-profile romance with Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs football star.

The Swift phenomenon went further yet. It extended into the realm of the national economy. Her name came up at a July news conference by Fed Chair Jerome Powell, when Powell was asked whether Swift’s blockbuster ticket sales revealed anything about the state of the economy. Though Powell avoided a direct reply, Swift’s name came up that same month in a Fed review of regional economies: Her tour was credited with boosting hotel bookings in Philadelphia.

Economist Sarah Wolfe of Morgan Stanley has calculated that Swifties spent an average of $1,500 on airfares, hotel rooms and concert tickets to her shows (though it’s perhaps worth noting that Beyonce fans spent even more — an average $1,800).

AP Business Writers Stan Choe in New York, Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco and Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.