What we’re reading (11/22)
“Dow Closes Nearly 200 Points Higher Wednesday As Markets Head Into Thanksgiving” (CNBC). “More than half of the stocks trading on the New York Stock Exchange were up Wednesday, indicating widening breadth for the market rally. The tech-heavy Nasdaq also saw greater participation, with 62.9% of the stocks in the index rising. Small- and mid-caps outperformed Wednesday, rising 0.7% and 0.6%, respectively.”
“Binance Guilty Plea Shows What Crypto’s Really About” (Wall Street Journal). “So it turns out that of the two largest crypto exchanges, one was a fraud and the other was a money launderer. Whoever could have guessed? Skeptics of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have had their prejudices reinforced. The two main use cases—fraud and crime—have been exposed to the public in dramatic fashion, so now all we have to do is sit back and wait for the inevitable collapse in value.”
“Deutsche Bank, Which Revamped Its Compliance Department 18 Months Ago, Is Revamping Its Compliance Department” (Dealbreaker). “Just over a year-and-a-half ago, Deutsche Bank had a startling revelation: Perhaps, just possibly, the firm’s almost unfathomably awful decade, riddled as it was with fines and failures and regulators complaining about its compliance procedures, had something to do with weakness in, uh, its compliance procedures. Armed with the uncharacteristic bit of self-knowledge, Deutsche proceeded to overhaul those procedures. As the very same compliance department’s busy last 18 months show, said overhaul didn’t exactly work. So the Germans are going to take a page from its many, many regulatory detractors, and simply try the same thing in expectation of a different outcome.”
“The Fallout From Sam Altman’s Return To OpenAI” (Dealbook). “OpenAI’s board will be revamped. Gone are Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner and Ilya Sutskever, three of the four directors who ousted Altman. An “interim” board will take over, led by Bret Taylor, the former Salesforce co-C.E.O., and including Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary, and Adam D’Angelo, the Quora C.E.O. and a holdover from the last board. That board will help select a bigger permanent one, according to The Verge, which may include representation for Microsoft, OpenAI’s biggest investor. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s C.E.O., called the development “a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance.” It’s not clear what other changes are coming.”
“Dollarization For Argentina?” (Scott Sumner, EconLib). “With Javier Milei’s recent election victory, there is speculation that Argentina might drop the peso and dollarize its economy. I won’t speculate on how likely that is to occur, as I don’t know much about the political situation in Argentina. But I do have a few comments on the economics of dollarization: 1. Dollarization would solve the problem of hyperinflation. 2. If Argentina intends to dollarize, now would be a good time to do so. 3. Dollarization is not a panacea. Argentina still needs Chilean-style economic reforms, and there’s no guarantee that dollarization would lead to those reforms. 4. Dollarization is less risky than a currency board, but not completely free of risk.”
