What we’re reading (12/21)
“Wall Street Had A Red-Hot Year, But Can It Last?” (Wall Street Journal). “[A]nalysts are unconvinced that the banks’ heady pace of deal-making can continue. Goldman and Morgan Stanley have minted big trading revenue during the wild pandemic markets, but analysts are still trying to figure out what the new normal in trading looks like.”
“The New Get-Rich-Faster Job In Silicon Valley: Crypto Start-Ups” (New York Times). “[A] growing contingent of the tech industry’s best and brightest sees a transformational moment that comes along once every few decades and rewards those who spot the seismic shift before the rest of the world. With crypto, they see historical parallels to how the personal computer and the internet were once ridiculed, only to upend the status quo and mint a new generation of billionaires. Investors, too, have flooded in.”
“SEC Cracks Down On SPAC Claims As Electric Truck Maker Nikola Agrees To Pay $125 Million To Settle Fraud Charges” (CNBC). “Electric truck maker Nikola has agreed to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission $125 million to settle charges it defrauded investors by misleading them about its products, technical capacity and business prospects. SEC officials said they hoped the penalty would serve as a warning to all companies aiming to enter public markets via a merger deal with a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Specifically, officials said statements from companies hoping to tap public capital markets need to be true.”
“Turkey’s President Launches A Plan To Shore Up His Plummeting Currency” (The Economist). “When Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks, the Turkish lira generally listens, shudders, and falls off a cliff. For once, something different happened. Facing a crisis of his own making, Turkey’s leader took a dramatic step to save the lira on December 20th, moments after the currency had plummeted to a new record low. The government, he announced, would guarantee bank deposits in lira, protecting them from swings in the exchange rate. The lira rebounded spectacularly on the news, moving from 18.36 to as low as 11.11 against the dollar, its biggest rally for nearly four decades.”
“American Workers Are Burned Out, And Bosses Are Struggling To Respond” (Wall Street Journal). “Over the past two decades, the length of the average American workday has increased by 1.4 hours, according to polling by Gallup Inc. For millions of Americans, as commutes disappeared and schedules grew more irregular, the pandemic lengthened days still further. In a survey this year, 16% of U.S. workers said they put in more than 60 hours a week, up from 12% in 2011.”
