Category: Business & Economy

The Fed had to choose between capitulation on inflation or letting the banking crisis mushroom. The twin crashes in the US’s commercial real estate and bond market have collided with $9 trillion uninsured deposits in its banking system, which can vanish in an afternoon in the cyber age.

The second and third biggest bank failures in US history have followed in quick succession. The Treasury and Federal Reserve would like us to believe that they are “idiosyncratic”. That is a dangerous evasion. Almost half of America’s 4,800 banks are already burning through their capital buffers. They may not have to mark all losses to market under US accounting rules but that does not make them solvent. Somebody will take those losses.

“It’s spooky. Thousands of banks are under water,” said Prof Amit Seru, a banking expert at Stanford University. “Let’s not pretend that this is just about Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic. A lot of the US banking system is potentially insolvent.” The full shock of monetary tightening by the Fed has yet to hit. A great edifice of debt faces a refinancing cliff edge over the next six quarters.

Only then will we learn whether the US financial system can safely deflate the excess leverage induced by extreme monetary stimulus during the pandemic. A Hoover Institution report by Prof Seru and a group of experts calculates that more than 2,315 US banks are sitting on assets worth less than their liabilities. The market value of their loan portfolios is $2 trillion (£1.6 trillion) lower than book value.

These lenders include big beasts.

Low-cost carrier Go First has filed for bankruptcy at the National Company Law Tribunal. The airline has also suspended its flight operations for three days – May 3, 4 and 5. It has cited mounting losses for its decision to file for bankruptcy. The airline has attributed the losses to delays in the delivery of Pratt and Whitney engines. It said that delay in delivery of the said engines has resulted in grounding of half its fleet of aircrafts.

Meanwhile, the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) has served a show cause notice to the airline for the sudden cancellation of flights without sharing prior information with it. The DGCA has also asked Go First to submit its plan of action for the resumption of flights. In a statement, the airline said that once the NCLT admitted its plea, the court would appoint an Insolvency resolution professional who would take over Go First’s operations.

Air Moldova has submitted to court a request to enter a pre-insolvency accelerated restructuring procedure. The airline says the move will help it avoid bankruptcy and absorb some $50mn from unnamed investors, according to a company press release.

The company blames its difficult financial situation on the debts inherited on privatisation, the loss of revenues during the COVID-19 crisis and the ban on flights after the invasion of Ukraine. It highlights that the state did not extend any financial support, while foreign airlines were supported during the COVID-19 crisis.

The company suspended all flights and ticket sales starting May 2. The resumption of activity will be possible within three days from a positive court decision, the company said.

“Investors are ready to invest around $50mn in Air Moldova. These investments would settle the company’s financial problems and would allow the company to renew its own fleet. Investments cannot be made outside the accelerated restructuring procedure due to the increased risk of an attack from existing creditors,” says Air Moldova.

The airline said that the accelerated restructuring will allow the company to use the capital injection strictly for the development of the company, so that later, in time, the existing debts will be paid.

Air Moldova was privatised in 2018 but the identity of the investors was never made public.

A report in the Wall Street Journal, published on the newspaper’s front page Monday morning, links important figures in the US business and political elite to financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who died in a federal prison in Manhattan in 2019 under circumstances that strongly suggest he was murdered to keep him quiet.

The Journal reporters wrote that they had gained access to Epstein’s private diary and other documents, “which include thousands of pages of emails and schedules from 2013 to 2017, [that] haven’t been previously reported.” The diary listed meetings with dozens of individuals, though it supplied little information about the content or subject of the meetings. The bulk of these engagements were at Epstein’s palatial townhouse in Manhattan.

Among those prominently mentioned in the Journal report were two high-level officials of Democratic administrations: William Burns, currently CIA director, formerly deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration; and Kathryn Ruemmler, currently general counsel for Goldman Sachs investment bank, who was White House counsel in the Obama administration.

Rioters smashed shop fronts and tried to set fire to police officers in Paris as up to a million people marched across France in May Day protests against President Macron’s reform to the pension age. Young men dressed in black from the anarchist “black block” movement were joined by hardline yellow vest protesters on a rampage at the front of the peaceful union-organised march, which moved through central Paris from the Place de la République to the Place de la Nation. The anarchists broke shop windows and bank frontages and set fire to bins as riot police on motorcycles moved in.

Officers using teargas and batons arrested several dozen violent protesters in the capital and at similar outbreaks on the edges of marches in Lyons, Toulouse and Nantes, which were staged by unions and left-wing parties as a “show of contempt” for Macron’s reform. About 12,000 police had been deployed for the marches after the interior ministry said it expected trouble from two or three thousand black block “wreckers” and violent followers of the yellow vest movement, whose protests inflicted heavy damage in Paris and other cities in 2018 and 2019.

Protesters from the radical climate movements were also active, spraying paint on shop fronts in the Place Vendôme, the central Paris home to jewellery shops, and also on the façade of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the contemporary art museum financed by LVMH, the luxury brand giant.

Shares in Asia are set to decline after Wall Street fell on renewed concern about the banking sector before a Federal Reserve decision on Wednesday where US policymakers are expected to raise interest rates.

Equity futures in Japan, Australia and Hong Kong all declined, while US contracts edged lower in early Asian trade. The S&P 500 slipped 1.2 per cent on Wednesday, with the financial sector the second-worst performer after energy. 

US regional lenders PacWest Bancorp and Western Alliance Bancorp both slid at least 15 per cent just a day after J.P. Morgan Chase’s acquisition of First Republic Bank seemed to bolster confidence in the sector.

The decline in energy stocks followed a 5.3 per cent drop for the US oil price, the biggest decline since July, in a sign of unease about global growth. The decline stabilised early on Wednesday.

Elon Musk has threatened to reassign NPR’s Twitter account to another company.

In a series of emails sent to this reporter, Musk suggested he would transfer the network’s main account on Twitter, under the @NPR handle, to another organization or person. The idea shocked even longtime observers of Musk’s spur-of-the-moment and erratic leadership style.

Handing over established accounts to third parties poses a serious risk of impersonation and could imperil a company’s reputation, said social media experts.

“If this is a sign of things to come on Twitter, we might soon see even more of a rapid retreat by media organizations and other brands that don’t think it’s worth the risk,” said Emily Bell, a professor at Columbia Journalism School who studies social media. “It’s really an extraordinary threat to make.”

Last month, NPR effectively quit Twitter after Musk applied a label to the news organization’s account that falsely suggested it was state-controlled. Other public media organizations, including PBS and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, followed suit and stopped tweeting following similar labeling.

The U.S. is sending Ukraine about $300 million in additional military aid, including an enormous amount of artillery rounds, howitzers, air-to-ground rockets and ammunition as the launch of a spring offensive against Russian forces approaches, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The new package includes Hydra-70 rockets, which are unguided rockets that are fired from aircraft. It also includes an undisclosed number of rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, mortars, howitzer rounds, missiles and Carl Gustaf anti—tank rifles. The weapons will all be pulled from Pentagon stocks, so they can go quickly to the front lines. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid has not yet been formally announced.

The latest shipment comes as Ukrainian officials say they are readying a counteroffensive — with Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov declaring they are in the “home stretch, when we can say: ‘Yes everything is ready.’” Ukrainian officials have said they are stockpiling ammunition to stow it along potentially long supply lines.

Reznikov said Monday that the key things for the assault’s success would be “the availability of weapons; prepared, trained people; our defenders and defenders who know their plan at their level, as well as providing this offensive with all the necessary things — shells, ammunition, fuel, protection, etc.”

NEW YORK – US stocks ended the trading day lower on Tuesday, with regional bank stocks recording another day of plummeting values ahead of an expected rate hike from the Federal Reserve.

The Fed is widely anticipated to raise its benchmark lending rate for a 10th – and possibly final – time on Wednesday as it looks to tackle high inflation through interest rate hikes.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 1.1 per cent lower, at 33,684.46.

The broad-based S&P 500 fell 1.2 per cent to 4,119.60, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index declined 1.1 per cent to 12,080.51.

Crude oil futures also finished the day down more than five percent on regional banking concerns.

LONDON – Apple Inc urged a London tribunal on Tuesday (May 2) to block a US$2 billion (S$2.7 billion) mass lawsuit accusing it of hiding defective batteries in millions of iPhones by “throttling” them with software updates.

The tech giant is facing a lawsuit worth up to 1.6 billion pounds (S$2.6 billion) plus interest, brought by consumer champion Justin Gutmann on behalf of iPhone users in the United Kingdom.

Gutmann’s lawyers argued in court filings that Apple concealed issues with batteries in certain phone models and “surreptitiously” installed a power management tool which limited performance.

Apple said in written arguments that the lawsuit is “baseless” and strongly denies its iPhones’ batteries were defective, apart from in a small number of iPhone 6s models for which it offered free battery replacements.

Senior managers are discussing plans to eliminate about 3,000 jobs from the global workforce by the end of this quarter, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

That would amount to roughly 5 per cent of staff, excluding financial advisers and personnel supporting them within the wealth management division.

The banking and trading group is expected to shoulder many of the reductions, one of the people said.

A spokesman for Morgan Stanley, which employs about 82,000 people, declined to comment.

The cuts come just months after the firm trimmed about 2 per cent of its workforce.

Wall Street’s biggest banks offered few reasons for cheer while reporting first-quarter results after seeing their fees from helping companies with takeovers and raising capital – a proxy for the economy’s health – slump over the past year.

NEW YORK – Vice, the brash digital media disrupter that charmed giants like Disney and Fox into investing before a stunning crash landing, is preparing to file for bankruptcy, according to two people with knowledge of its operations.

The filing could come in the coming weeks, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorised to discuss the potential bankruptcy on the record.

The company has been looking for a buyer, and still might find one, to avoid declaring bankruptcy.

More than five companies have expressed interest in acquiring Vice, according to a person briefed on the discussions.

Italy’s right-wing government on Monday rolled back anti-poverty subsidies introduced four years ago that helped some four million people last year, as critics denounced a “provocation” on the international May Day labour holiday.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who leads the country’s most far-right coalition since World War II, said the “citizens’ income” benefits would be replaced by a more limited “inclusion cheque” for qualifying households.

The government says the current subsidies cost too much, at around eight billion euros (S$11 billion) last year, and discourage able-bodied people, especially youths, from looking for jobs.

The new inclusion cheques, set to begin in January 2024, would cost around 5.4 billion euros annually, and be available only to households with minors, seniors 60 or older, and handicapped people.

A new law that seeks to give Canadian artists a leg up online has left many influencers and tech giants alike seeing red.

They took out subway ads, they posted TikToks, but in the end, the score was Silicon Valley-0, Ottawa-1.

After many twists and turns, and over two-and-a-half years of review, the Canadian government has passed a new law that makes tech giants like YouTube and TikTok support Canadian cultural content.

The law, dubbed Bill C-11, gives the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) broad authority to regulate these platforms, much like they already do with radio and television.

The government says it is necessary to stop streaming giants from getting a free ride, and to promote local artists.

Although it’s still unclear what those final regulations will look like, the law has raised the ire of everyone from TikTokers to esteemed author Margaret Atwood.

U.S. conservation groups on Monday announced they are suing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for not doing enough to protect the environment from SpaceX’s Starship program.

The move came after the world’s most powerful rocket exploded on its first integrated test flight, just four minutes after launching from Boca Chica, Texas on April 20.

SpaceX video showed a hail of debris being blasted as far as the Gulf of Mexico, over 1,400 feet (425 meters) away, while a cloud of dust floated over a small town several miles (kilometers) away.

The launch site also sits next to a vital habitat for protected species, including Kemp’s ridley sea turtle and the piping plover bird, according to the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which was among the groups that filed the lawsuit.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned lawmakers Monday that the federal government could run short of money to pay its bills as early as June 1 unless the debt ceiling is raised soon.

Yellen acknowledged the date is subject to change and could be weeks later than projected, given that forecasting government cash flows is difficult. But based on April tax receipts and current spending levels, she predicted the government could run short of cash by early June.

“Given the current projections, it is imperative that Congress act as soon as possible to increase or suspend the debt limit in a way that provides longer-term certainty that the government will continue to make its payments,” Yellen wrote in a letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

The warning provides a more urgent timetable for what has been a slow-motion political showdown in Washington.