September, 2018

• 17 September

  Musk struggling to get Teslas to customers

  Bloomberg Fixing production at Tesla Inc. is one thing. Now Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk is struggling to get cars to customers. “We’ve gone from production hell to delivery logistics hell,” Musk said in a Tweet. Musk said resolving that problem would be easier than addressing assembly-line issues. Musk narrowed the paint options on new electric vehicles, his latest effort ...

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• 17 September

  US split over whether college endowments should be taxed

  

  Bloomberg Americans are divided over whether US college endowments should have to pay a new federal tax, according to a national survey on higher education. Fifty percent of respondents sided with the wealthy private schools while 43 percent agreed the tax should be levied, and 7 percent were unsure, according to data published on Monday by Boston public media producer ...

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• 17 September

  Trump needs allies for US-China trade divorce

  

  As the trade war between the US and China drags on with new tariffs and no end in sight, we need to ask ourselves: What do they want? A fundamental objective for both is to become less reliant on the other. The trade war should thus be reframed as a conscious uncoupling. Behind the rhetoric from both sides lies a ...

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• 17 September

  This financial system can’t be fixed

  

  Ten years after a crisis that brought the world to the brink of Armageddon, the people overseeing the world’s largest economy insist they’ve reduced the risk of another financial disaster. Just one problem: We need a different financial system, not just better risk management. I had a front-row seat for the watershed event of the 2008 crisis, the failure of ...

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• 17 September

  As you mourn Lehman, spare a thought for crypto

  Everyone remembers where they were a decade ago, right? I’m not talking about the collapse of Lehman Brothers. I mean the Bitcoin white paper of Oct. 31, 2008. It outlined a type of online peer-to-peer electronic cash that would bypass financial institutions — which the author blamed for abusing people’s trust, creating credit bubbles, and charging big fees. Ironically, Bitcoin ...

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• 17 September

  Don’t blame bankers for fintech buyers’ remorse

  It didn’t last long. Fintech darling Adyen NV is no longer bigger than Deutsche Bank AG. Shares of the payments startup have fallen 17 percent since a group of its original backers offloaded some their stock well before the end of a lock-up period set at its initial public offering. The disposals are understandable. Adyen’s still-very-expensive valuation is less so. ...

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• 17 September

  Why Russia should buy back its domestic debt

  

  Russia, according to Deputy Finance Minister Vladimir Kolychev, is ready to buy back its own domestic debt on the open markets if the US sanctions it or if volatility becomes substantially higher than normal. The idea makes sense if one views foreign bondholders as a source of instability — and that’s how a country like President Vladimir Putin’s Russia should ...

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• 17 September

  Snap continues to prove it’s bad at being a company

  

  The minute I saw Snap Inc.’s financial statements last year, I couldn’t understand why the company was going public at such a young stage of its development with so short a track record for its corporate strategy. The initial public offering (IPO) for Snapchat’s parent company went well, showing that investors saw Snap as a promising blank state with all ...

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• 17 September

  New Brexit realism hasn’t erased Brexit divisions

  

  Having dominated UK politics for the last two years, you might think that all of the news about Brexit would have led some Brits to change their minds one way or the other. Indeed polls have shown that something like three-quarters of Brits think that their government is handling the UK’s exit from the EU badly. Yet when it comes ...

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• 17 September

  Credit Suisse scolded for rewarding rogue banker

  

  Bloomberg Credit Suisse Group AG was scolded by Switzerland’s financial regulator for its failure to properly oversee a former star wealth manager convicted of fraud, escaping any real penalties for its compliance shortcomings. Finma identified deficiencies in the bank’s anti-money laundering controls as well as shortcomings in its oversight of the manager, identified as Patrice Lescaudron by people with knowledge ...

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