Receiving Wide Coverage ...
Cracks in the facade
“Cryptocurrency holders are taking on central banks at their peril,” the Financial Times says. “If and when central banks and regulators do assume control, it will probably bite a chunk out of the value of cryptocurrencies and leave some holders with substantial losses. But anyone left out of pocket will not be able to complain that they were not warned.”
Meanwhile, “Elon Musk has become bitcoin’s biggest influencer, like it or not,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “Many investors were happy to dismiss Mr. Musk’s tweets as harmless noise on the way up. Some investors, particularly newer entrants to the market, even celebrated the fact that Mr. Musk was voicing his support for bitcoin. Now that prices are falling, they are less amused.”
Wall Street Journal
Easing up
“The U.S. housing market was a bright spot in an otherwise sputtering economy for much of past year. Housing was one of the few sectors that responded positively to the changing lifestyle dynamics brought on by the pandemic. Now, as the broader economy looks stronger, the housing market is showing its first real signs of slower growth.”
“The forces driving home sales haven’t gone away. Low mortgage rates and the rise of remote work, which sent buyers scrambling to find larger living spaces, are still spurring demand. But a deficit of homes for sale relative to intense demand and vertiginous housing prices have started easing the pace of sales.”
Out in the cold
Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch Wealth Management unit “is banning trainee brokers from making cold calls, a vestige of an era when the industry pushed hot stocks on anyone who would pick up the phone. Merrill plans to roll out a revamped adviser-training program on Monday that prohibits participants from cold calling. The bank will instead direct them to use internal referrals or LinkedIn messages to land clients. The decision comes after the program’s 3,000 trainees were told to stop outbound recruiting efforts to find new customers last year after problematic phone calls.”
Financial Times
Tall task
Deutsche Bank “will have to appoint women to about 50% of vacant senior management positions to meet its new 2025 gender target, a Financial Times calculation shows. Germany’s largest lender last week promised to raise the share of women among its roughly 600 most senior executives to at least 30% by 2025, up from 24% now. Only a limited number of these positions become vacant per year, however, so this target can only be met if the lender chooses female candidates in at least every other senior hire and promotion, according to the FT’s figures.”
“The self-imposed quota is more stringent than the requirements under German law. Since 2016, 30% of supervisory board seats must be held by women — a rule that Deutsche complies with. Earlier this year, new legal requirements that listed companies have at least one female management board member also came into force.”
Going straight?
Tom Hayes, “the former UBS and Citigroup trader convicted of a conspiracy to rig the Libor benchmark, has joined a corporate intelligence agency, providing intelligence services focused on white collar and financial wrongdoing. Hayes was released from prison in January and is battling to overturn his conviction.”
“The trader said he had learned new skills in prison while working on his appeal. Hayes said he needed a job that would enable him to continue working on his case, and that corporate spying matched his skillset.”
Washington Post
Vanishing act
Is “life without revolving credit card debt a new normal for a lot of people? The New York Fed reported that total credit card balances declined by $49 billion” in the first quarter of this year. “It was the second-largest quarterly decline in the history of the data series, which originated in 1999. Total credit card balances fell from $927 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019 to $770 billion in the first quarter of this year, a 17% decline. To put the data in context, all other household debt increased.”
Elsewhere
Book 'em
Police in the New York City suburb of New Rochelle “say they arrested a local librarian after she allegedly walked into a bank located one block away from the library and robbed it,” NBC News reported. “Mary Thompson, 56, was arrested Friday morning and charged with first-degree robbery after she allegedly handed a teller at a Chase Bank a note that said, ‘Give me $100,000 I have a gun.’ ”
“Thompson allegedly made away with $7,000, police said.” She was arrested outside the bank “without further incident.”
