What we’re reading (12/7)
“‘There Is A Slowdown Happening’ – Wells Fargo, BofA CEOs Point To Cooling Consumer Amid Fed Hikes” (CNBC). “After two years of pandemic-fueled, double-digit growth in Bank of America card volume, ‘the rate of growth is slowing,’ CEO Brian Moynihan said Tuesday at a financial conference. While retail payments surged 11% so far this year to nearly $4 trillion, that increase obscures a slowdown that began in recent weeks: November spending rose just 5%, he said.”
“What’s Going On With The Housing Market?” (Wall Street Journal). “Contradictory signals abound. Demand has tumbled, but the supply of homes is still low. Prices have fallen but are well above their pre-pandemic levels. Interest rates are sky-high compared with a year ago, but below where they stood in the decades when many older Americans bought their first homes. ‘When prices are rising, people can’t believe housing will ever go down, and then once prices fall, they can’t believe it will ever go up,’ said Glenn Kelman, chief executive at real-estate brokerage Redfin Corp.”
“An Activist Investor Takes On BlackRock Over E.S.G.” (DealBook). “[Bluebell Capital Partners] said that ‘it is not BlackRock’s role to direct the public debate on climate and energy policies or to impose ideological beliefs on the corporate world.’ The hedge fund said BlackRock’s E.S.G. push had become politicized and a distraction, as several Republican state officials have moved to withdraw funds from BlackRock in protest.”
“If There Is A ‘Male Malaise’ With Work, Could One Answer Be At Sea?” (New York Times). “Though the gender split in the industry is more even for onshore office roles, workers and applicants for jobs on the water are predominantly male. Centerline says it has roughly 220 offshore crew members and about 35 openings. Captains and company managers agree that changing attitudes toward work among young men play a part in the labor shortage. But the strongest consensus opinion is that structural demographic shifts are against them. ‘We’re seeing a gray wave of retirement,’ said Mr. Harvey, who is 38.”
“We Forgot To Fix Unemployment Insurance Yet Again” (Vox). “‘This is literally what always happens every time there is an economic downturn,’ said Michele Evermore, the former deputy director of policy at the Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization at the Department of Labor who is now a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank. ‘At the very start of it, people are pretty sympathetic to people who suddenly became unemployed, so we temporarily add benefits and add temporary fixes, and then as the economic crisis rolls on, everybody gets sick of the unemployed people and starts blaming them.’”
