New estimates from the Congressional Budget Office suggest that the “U.S. economy could take the better part of a decade to fully recover from the coronavirus pandemic and related shutdown” and see as much as a 3% contraction in GDP over that period – WSJ and NYTimes and MarketWatch
Zuck and Co. are facing a rare bit of rare, in-house protest over Facebook’s decision not to do act to remove or flag several high-profile “inflammatory posts” over the past week, with dozens of ‘bookers conducting a “virtual ‘walkout’ of sorts since most Facebook employees are working from home because of the coronavirus pandemic” – NYTimes and Bloomberg and HuffPost
The Journal’s out with a new forerunner for most-damaged financial vehicle of this particular financial crisis: leveraged exchange-traded notes (or ETNs). Banks and brokerages offered the ETNs—“options-based strategies and certificates of deposits whose returns are tied to stocks or currencies”—as “offering payouts both steadier and more lucrative than plain-vanilla investments such as bonds or index-tracking funds,” but as we’ve seen over and over again, there’s just “no such thing as an investment that is both safe and highly profitable” – WSJ
Bloomberg introduces us to a forthcoming version of the yuan that would be entirely digital—a virtual currency that would likely be easily adopted in China, a country already well-versed in Alipay and WeChat Pay, and could in coming years eclipse Bitcoin (and maybe even the dollar) – Bloomberg
SCOTUS ruled on Monday that the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act and the island’s Financial Oversight and Management Board were created pursuant to Congress’s constitutional powers and thus the latter does “not require U.S. Senate approval” of its members – Law360
After a 9th Circuit ruling yesterday finding that states could enforce local pollution laws, troubled German automaker Volkswagen “could face a ‘staggering’ volume of claims from local governments.” VW’s already forked over $20 billion in federal and civil penalties to resolve emissions-cheating-related allegations – NYTimes
Don’t count on another breakdown of negotiations and a resulting flood of oil on the market this time around. A Saudi-led alliance and Russia are in talks again in search of a deal that “would extend their collective production cuts through Sept. 1, as the world emerges from pandemic-induced lockdowns” – WSJ and Bloomberg
RBC and a REIT have reached a settlement on the trust’s lawsuit accusing the bank of “using the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to illegally seize and sell off the trust’s assets at fire-sale prices” – Law360
Class pranks via Zoom? Oh yes. Don’t doubt the, let’s call it, ingenuity of Gen Zers in bringing disruption to this new era of online learning – WSJ
Stay safe.
