What we’re reading (7/4)
“How Businesses Are Getting Billions In Cash Back From Government To Offset Hiring Costs” (CNBC). “That war for talent has been tough on small businesses still in the midst of trying to recover from losses during the coronavirus pandemic. But many are entitled to get money back from the government through a credit against the employment taxes they pay. Small and midsize businesses can get cash directly from the federal government through the Employee Retention Credit (ERC), which offers businesses money back on a percentage of wages paid to their employees.”
“The Future Of Silicon Valley Headquarters” (The Economist). “[T]ech temples had begun to seem anachronistic long before covid-19 washed up on California’s shores. Traffic was making the daily commute an insufferable two-hour ordeal. Most computer programmers came to the office but really worked elsewhere—in the cloud, managing projects with Trello, on Zoom and Slack. Designed to be lively, tech offices were often eerily quiet. Realising this, companies began to open more of them beyond the Valley, and to make more use of the virtual realm. The pandemic then gave the shifting equilibrium a shove, notes Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University. Although it is hard to predict where exactly all the bits will land, the contours of tech hqs of the future are coming into view.”
“Fed's Daly: Appropriate To Consider Tapering Later This Year” (Reuters). “Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Mary Daly said the U.S. central bank may be able to start reducing ‘a little bit’ of its extraordinary support for the U.S. economy by the end of this year. ‘The economy is really shaping up nicely,’ Daly told the Associated Press in an interview, a recording of which was provided to Reuters by the San Francisco Fed.”
“For Some Millennials, A Starter Home Is Hard To Find” (Wall Street Journal). “The shortage of available starter homes feels like yet another hurdle blocking some millennials’ path to traditional money milestones…[t]he first rung on the homeownership ladder has long been an affordable ‘starter home.’ These houses, with their smaller footprints and selling prices, allowed young homeowners to build wealth and upsize as they started their families. But a number of factors are complicating this decadeslong trend. Supply of “entry-level housing”—which Freddie Mac defines as homes under 1,400 square feet—is at a five-decade low.”
“House Prices Are ‘Scary’: Summers” (Bloomberg). “Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, a Wall Street Week contributor, says the rise in home prices is ‘scary.’ He thinks the state of the heating of the housing market makes it difficult to justify the Fed's continued purchases of mortgage-backed securities.”
