What we’re reading (8/31)
“Steven Mnuchin Tried To Save The Economy. Not Even His Family Is Happy” (New York Times). A lot of interesting content in this article, but perhaps most interesting of all is that, as “[t]he stock market continued to crater” in the early days of the covid-19 pandemic, “[i]n an early-morning phone call that week with David Solomon, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Mnuchin discussed the draconian idea of shortening trading hours at major stock exchanges in an effort to ease the sell-off, according to a person briefed on the call. Mr. Solomon said such a move would worsen the panic.”
“Inside Silicon Valley’s Doomed Creative Culture” (New York Post). A look at Saleforce-owned AKTA founder John Roa’s new book A Practical Way To Get Rich …And Die Trying.
“The Fed Finally Realizes That Inflation Isn’t Coming” (Washington Post). “More than Congress or the White House, the Fed has staved off financial collapse during the pandemic and the lockdowns. Its guarantees to buy everything from municipal bonds to stocks and to lend hundreds of billions of dollars to midsize companies halted the spiraling panic in markets in early April. Its assurances alone brought calm, and it has not even had to do much of what it was prepared to do. It has also lent liberally to foreign central banks, which kept the global financial system stable, buoyed equity markets and pacified bond markets.”
“The Woman Leading The Fight Against Putin ‘24/7’ After Poisoning Of Navalny” (The Telegraph). “[W]ith opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a coma in a German hospital after another suspected poisoning, the telegenic lawyer finds herself [32-year-old Lyubov Sobo] at the helm of his anti-Kremlin organisation.”
“Insider Trading Is Rife With No Regulators In Sight” (Bloomberg). “There's no end to the parade of corporate transactions preceded by trading underlying their selective disclosure. And there's no sign regulators see the possibility of insider trading in at least a dozen of them during the past year, including Google's offer for Fitbit, LVMH's plan to buy Tiffany, Avaya's strategic partnership with RingCentral, and Stryker’s taking over Wright Medical. That's too bad because financial markets provide the clearest signals of people profiting from confidential information.”
