What we’re reading (10/1)
“Supreme Court Lets Lisa Cook Remain As A Federal Reserve Governor For Now” (Associated Press). “The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Lisa Cook to remain as a Federal Reserve governor for now, declining to act on the Trump administration’s effort to immediately remove her from the central bank. In a brief unsigned order, the high court said it would hear arguments in January over Republican President Donald Trump’s effort to force Cook off the Fed board. The court will consider whether to block a lower-court ruling in Cook’s favor while her challenge to her firing by Trump continues.”
“Crypto Stockpiling Craze Cools After Red-Hot Summer” (Wall Street Journal). “The hot crypto-treasury summer is over. More than 200 companies went all-in on stockpiling digital currencies this year. Many investors are already cooling to the idea. Corporate purchases of bitcoin have fallen steadily in recent months, and in September dropped to their lowest pace since April. A quarter of the public companies that adopted a bitcoin treasury strategy are now trading below the total value of their digital-token holdings, according to K33 Research.”
“The Battle To Save Intel: How A Great American Company Ended Up In The Fight Of Its Life” (Fortune). “Craig Barrett, a former Intel CEO, told Fortune recently that this model—customers putting new capital into the company—could save Intel, which desperately needs cash. ‘The only place the cash can come from is the customers,’ he says. ‘They are all cash-rich, and if eight of them were willing to invest $5 billion each, then Intel would have a chance.’ In addition to Nvidia, those companies would likely include Apple, Broadcom, Google, Qualcomm, and a few others that might want a second source of high-value chips that are otherwise available only from TSMC, the Taiwan-based chipmaker that is the world’s largest.”
“As Stock Market Booms, Americans Have More At Stake Than Ever” (Washington Post). “Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis showed that households and nonprofits were investing about 45.4 percent of their assets in corporate equities as of the second quarter of 2025 — the highest exposure to stocks ever. An estimated 62 percent of Americans own stock as of May, matching 2024 and the highest level since 2007, according to the polling firm Gallup. And Federal Reserve data analyzed by the Securities and Exchange Commission shows the median U.S. household had about $52,000 in stock holding as of 2022, compared with nearly $46,000 in 2019.”
“The ‘Stupidity’ Of 300 Investment Bankers Tricked By A 20-Something Founder Is A Lesson In Due Diligence” (Business Insider). “Back in 2021, some 300 in-house diligence officers had vetted JPMorgan's decision to buy the then-28-year-old's startup Frank, a platform that helped students fill out federal financial aid applications. The bank didn't realize until a year after the merger closed that Javice's claimed database of 4 million Frank users — college-ready young adults the bank hoped to pitch for credit cards and checking accounts — was a fiction.”
