Receiving Wide Coverage ...
Strike two: Federal Judge Timothy J. Kelly denied for a second time Leandra English’s attempt to become acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. English was appointed by former Director Richard Cordray when he resigned the day after Thanksgiving, but the judge nullified that move, siding with President Trump, who named Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, as the agency’s interim chief.
“The Court finds that English is not likely to succeed on the merits of her claims, nor is she likely to suffer irreparable harm absent the injunctive relief sought,” the judge said. “Moreover, the balance of the equities and the public interest also weigh against granting the relief.”
Bitcoin bans: China is moving to close the country’s bitcoin “mining” industry due to concerns about excessive electricity usage and financial risk. The move follows the government’s shutdown of local bitcoin exchanges and a ban on initial coin offerings.
In South Korea, the country’s justice minister said the government is planning to ban the trading of cryptocurrencies on exchanges, a few days after it began on-site inspections at the country’s six largest banks. The prices of cryptocurrencies fell in response.
Wall Street Journal
Transforming the CRA: The Trump administration is expected to unveil a “major” revision to the Community Reinvestment Act. The changes “could potentially transform the way banks make billions of dollars in loans, investments and donations to poorer customers,” the paper says. “In all, they could make it
Financial Times
Who's next?: The promotions to vice president of possible Warren Buffett successors Gregory Abel and Ajit Jain at Berkshire Hathaway is “not just a big deal for shareholders in Berkshire,” the paper states. “Questions of succession are
Big potatoes: A recent string of relatively small problems at Citigroup “calls into question the bank’s ability to get
Beware disruption: Bitcoin and blockchain are likely to be major topics of discussions at Davos later this month. “But there will be a far deeper deliberation about the wider
New York Times
No respect: The lack of women economists has suddenly “jolted a profession that prides itself on cool rationality,” the paper reports from the American Economic Association’s annual convention in Philadelphia. One panel was “stocked with women, each of whom presented new research that revealed a systemic bias in economics and presaged a move by the field’s leaders to promise to address some of those issues. Paper after paper showed
Quotable
“In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say almost with certainty that they