What we’re reading (7/9)
“Powell Inches The Fed Closer To Cutting Rates” (Wall Street Journal). “Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell made a subtle but important shift that moved the central bank closer to lowering interest rates when he suggested Tuesday that a further cooling in the labor market could be undesirable.”
“What Happens When Your Bank Isn’t Really a Bank And Your Money Disappears?” (New York Times). “The promise of bank insurance — a tenet of U.S. consumer protection since the Great Depression — is now being tested by a crisis swirling around online-only lenders with hundreds of millions of dollars of deposits between them. Customer accounts have been frozen, preventing people from cashing out their life savings. Most depositors have little clue where their money has gone, and whether they will get any of it back. The turmoil was set off this spring with the bankruptcy of Synapse Technology, the kind of company you’ve probably never heard of unless you suffered through all the fine print of your account statements. It operated banking software for fast-growing online lenders with names like Juno, Yieldstreet and Yotta.”
“It Suddenly Looks Like There Are Too Many Homes For Sale. Here’s Why That’s Not Quite Right. (CNBC). “The numbers…are deceiving due to the unprecedented dynamics of today’s housing market, which can be traced back two decades to another unprecedented time in housing, the subprime mortgage boom. All of it is precisely why home prices, which usually cool off when supply is high, just continue to rise.”
“A Bank Created Fake Accounts, Forced Clients Into Unnecessary Car Insurance And Repossessed Vehicles When They Didn’t Pay. Now It Has Agreed To $20 Million In Penalties” (CNN Business). “Fifth Third Bank on Tuesday said it agreed to pay $20 million in penalties imposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to settle a CFPB investigation into its auto insurance practices, and a 2020 lawsuit the agency filed pertaining to the bank’s creation of fake customer accounts.”
“The Precipitous Fall Of The Japanese Yen” (The Week). “There are several factors, but it is mainly a ‘product of divergent monetary policy between the Bank of Japan and its developed-market peers — particularly the Federal Reserve,’ said Barron's. This is the result of a wide difference in interest rates between the U.S. and Japan; the Bank of Japan ‘has only just begun to ease off intense monetary stimulus, while the Fed and other central banks are years into tightening cycles.’”
