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☆ These Cowboys Build a New Juneteenth Tradition at a Rodeo in Portland
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-19 | by ( Brent Lewis | Eduardo Medina | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Ivan McClellan, a photographer, was captivated the first time he came across Black cowboy culture at a rodeo in Oklahoma years ago. He saw Black people donning cowboy hats and saddling horses, images that inspired him to fully document that community in his work. This year, though, he wanted to go a step further. Mr. McClellan and Vince Jones-Dixon, a city councilor in Gresham, Ore., sought to host a Juneteenth rodeo in Portland, one that would bring together the Black cowboy and cowgirl communities across the Pacific Northwest.

Persons: Ivan McClellan, McClellan, Vince Jones, Dixon Locations: Oklahoma, Gresham , Ore, Portland, Pacific Northwest

☆ Online College Classes Are Making the Student Debt Crisis Worse
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-05 | by ( Ayelet Sheffey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +18 min

She applied and was accepted to the online program in 2020. In exchange for expanding course offerings and recruiting students, OPMs receive a big chunk of the tuition revenue from the online programs, which usually cost the same as in-person schooling. While it's not always the case, many experts and grads told me that OPMs were offering online students a worse education for a sky-high price. A third-party provider to those schools, 2U signs a contract to offer services such as recruiting and technology to boost online enrollment. OPMs have helped fuel the student debt crisis, saddling may students with tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt and an uncertain future.

Persons: Iola Favell, Favell, Rossier, Zavareei, USC Rossier, OPMs, it's, grads, Eric Rothschild, John Katzman, Katzman, Clare McCann, McCann, —, Aaron Ament, Barack Obama, That's, STEFANI REYNOLDS, Helen Drinan, Cabrini University —, Drinan, Democratic Sens, Elizabeth Warren, Tina Smith, Sherrod Brown, Pearson, Rosa DeLauro, Virginia Foxx, Ament Organizations: University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education, USC, Student Defense, Zavareei LLP, US, Education Department upended, Education Department, Arnold Ventures, OPM, Office, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street, Canyon University, Grand Canyon, Century Foundation, Getty, Cabrini University, Simmons University, Democratic, GAO, Republican, GOP, Universities, Protection, Consumer Financial, Bureau Locations: California, Georgetown, —, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts

☆ Putin’s war on Ukraine is only costing a tiny sliver of Russia’s GDP
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-02 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Direct war spending, according to the report, is estimated to be about 3% of Russia's GDP, or about $67 billion a year. The US put about 50% of its GDP toward war near the same time. That makes it hard to justify spending a lofty percentage of GDP on what is not a war, in their view. All this isn't to say Russia's economy hasn't been hamstrung. Are you surprised by the relatively low fiscal cost of Russia's war?

Persons: Phil Rosen, Patrick Harker, Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Metzel, Vladimir Putin's, hasn't, that's, Mark Wilson, Goldman Sachs, it's, Realtor.com, Read, Jonathan Miller, Max Adams, Nathan Rennolds Organizations: Federal Reserve, Philly Fed, Economist, Technology, American Locations: Manhattan, Washington, Ukraine, Russia, Moscow, Soviet Union, India, Saudi Arabia, New York, London

☆ Online College Class Providers Screwing Over Students, Adding to Debt Crisis
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-01 | by ( Ayelet Sheffey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +18 min

She applied and was accepted to the online program in 2020. In exchange for expanding course offerings and recruiting students, OPMs receive a big chunk of the tuition revenue from the online programs, which usually cost the same as in-person schooling. While it's not always the case, many experts and grads told me that OPMs were offering online students a worse education for a sky-high price. A third-party provider to those schools, 2U signs a contract to offer services such as recruiting and technology to boost online enrollment. But beyond scandals, the everyday business of OPMs is leaving many online students with exorbitant bills, despite how cheap it is to administer the courses.

Persons: Iola Favell, Favell, Rossier, USC Rossier, OPMs, it's, grads, Eric Rothschild, John Katzman, Katzman, Clare McCann, McCann, —, Aaron Ament, Barack Obama, That's, STEFANI REYNOLDS, Helen Drinan, Cabrini University —, Drinan, Democratic Sens, Elizabeth Warren, Tina Smith, Sherrod Brown, Pearson, Rosa DeLauro, Virginia Foxx, Ament Organizations: University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education, USC, Student Defense, US, Education Department upended, Education Department, Arnold Ventures, OPM, Office, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street, Canyon University, Grand Canyon, Century Foundation, Getty, Cabrini University, Simmons University, Democratic, GAO, Republican, GOP, Universities, Protection, Consumer Financial, Bureau Locations: California, Georgetown, —, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts

XIAN, China, May 17 - China will for the first time host an in-person summit of central Asian leaders this week, seeking to cement ties in a region seen as Russia's backyard as its relations with the West sour. "Beijing wants to promote a new alternative to the global order, and try to persuade the Central Asian region that this new global order is better for them too," said Adina Masalbekova, a research fellow at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. For the first in-person summit, Xian is a symbolic nod to the importance of economic ties as the city was pivotal in the ancient Silk Road trade route that spans Central Asia. "One of the biggest trump cards that we expect to see at this summit is a serious opening for Central Asian products to enter the Chinese market. But with the region's main backer Russia caught up in a grinding war with Ukraine and subject to international sanctions, analysts say the Central Asian states will welcome Beijing's overtures.

☆ Dianne Feinstein's ongoing absence allowed Senate Republicans and Joe Manchin to overturn a Biden rule reducing pollution from large trucks
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Eliza Relman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Senate Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin voted to roll back an EPA regulation on truck pollution. Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna argued it wouldn't have passed had Sen. Dianne Feinstein been present. Senate Republicans and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin took advantage of Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's ongoing medical leave to roll back a significant environmental regulation on Wednesday. Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna argued in a tweet on Thursday that Feinstein's prolonged absence from the Senate has repeatedly blocked Democrats' ability to succeed in crucial votes, including the EPA rule vote. Supporters of the EPA rule say it's a reasonable and cost-efficient change that's well-worth the lives it's expected to improve and save.

☆ The Labor Department is suing a healthcare staffing agency, saying it made some workers sign contracts forcing them to repay part of their wages if they quit within 3 years
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

A company told workers they'd have to pay high fees if they quit within three years, the Labor Department said. In a lawsuit against the agency, the DOL said one nurse was asked to pay $24,000 in future profits. Lawyers for the agency, ACS, said the DOL's suit is "unsupported by either the facts or the law." The DOL likened employees' wages to a loan that they may have to repay to the company alongside interest and fees. "To be clear, ACS has never demanded – and no nurse has ever repaid – their earned wages to ACS. "

☆ Office Doom Loop: Landlords Face a Reckoning As Companies Move to Fancy Offices
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +14 min

The Gas Company Tower in downtown Los Angeles has a sterling pedigree, but even that can't save it from the doom loop facing many older office towers. A huge swath of America's office market is vulnerable to these twin threats of being under-equipped with amenities and underwater financially. This behavioral shift has deeply cut into demand for office space. The amount of sublease space nationally more than doubled from 118.5 million square feet at the end of 2019 to 242.8 million square feet at the end of 2022, Colliers stated. Lenders are often reluctant, he said, to seize office buildings because of the costs and expertise required to operate the properties.

☆ US lawmakers press Wall St regulator over coming climate rule
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Douglas Gillison | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

March 29 (Reuters) - Republican lawmakers on Wednesday prodded Wall Street's top regulator to justify his agency's efforts to regulate companies' climate disclosures and criticized the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for what they said was hasty rulemaking. Conservative lawmakers and commentators have cast Gensler as an interventionist regulator saddling markets with left-leaning social policies unrelated to making money. Republican lawmakers also repeatedly disputed the securities regulator's legal authority to mandate climate disclosures. Gensler said investors by and large now demanded and many companies were providing climate disclosures. The SEC routinely tells lawmakers its budget is "deficit neutral" since its spending is offset by transaction fees assessed from the markets.

☆ Wall St regulator seeks budget boost, cites market growth, misconduct risk
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Douglas Gillison | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

March 29 (Reuters) - Wall Street's top regulator on Wednesday asked lawmakers to approve a 12% boost to his agency's budget, citing burgeoning growth in financial markets and the rising risk of wrongdoing. At current levels, his agency's staffing is only 3% larger than it had been before Trump took office, he noted. However, the budget request may bear little relation to the final outcome, which will be determined by a narrowly divided Congress deadlocked over raising the federal government's borrowing limits. The SEC routinely tells lawmakers that its budget is "deficit neutral" since its spending is offset by transaction fees assessed from the market. Republican lawmakers, lobbyists and conservative activists have cast Gensler as an interventionist regulator saddling markets with left-leaning social policies unrelated to making money.

"Unfortunately the president doesn't think it's important," McCarthy said when asked about how talks on the debt ceiling were going. The government faces a historic default on its debts without legislation to raise the $31.4 trillion debt limit. Biden and leading Democrats in Congress have urged McCarthy to unveil Republicans' plans for cutting spending, saying that additional meetings before that happens would be fruitless. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters on Thursday that Democrats welcome budget talks anytime. Meantime, Republicans want Democrats to signal support for significant spending cuts before providing the votes needed in Congress to increase the Treasury Department's borrowing authority.

The remainder was equity checks by the private equity firms. Typically, debt accounts for between 60% and 80% of the deal consideration, allowing the buyout firms to juice returns. REFINANCING RISKTo be sure, a handful of private equity firms have already been accustomed to this kind of refinancing risk. An upside to the shift toward equity financing, dealmakers say, is that the companies owned by the private equity firms have more cushion to absorb losses if their business deteriorates. Many of the leveraged buyouts that became bankruptcies in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis were the result of private equity firms saddling companies with debt to the hilt.

☆ How Credit Suisse has evolved over 167 years
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

Here is how Credit Suisse has developed over 167 years:1856Politician and business leader Alfred Escher founds Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (SKA) to finance the expansion of the railroad network and promote Swiss industrialisation. 1997A reorganisation turns CS Holding into Credit Suisse Group and drops the SKA name; it also buys insurer Winterthur, a strategic partner. 2002A reorganisation creates two units: Credit Suisse Financial Services and Credit Suisse First Boston; two years later it splits into three units by adding Winterthur. 2005Credit Suisse and CSFB merge and stop using the Credit Suisse First Boston brand name. The Swiss authorities provide assurances that Credit Suisse has met "the capital and liquidity requirements imposed on systemically important banks".

☆ How universities became giant piggy banks for hedge-fund billionaires
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Catherine Liu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +14 min

The move also marked the beginning of a new way to manage endowment funds. The arrangement has been a boon for the hedge-fund managers who received university endowment cash, but the benefits for the schools are trickier to parse. As Eaton put it in his book, universities directed funds to "wherever those allocations would generate the largest further investment returns." Eaton estimated in 2017 that tax breaks for university endowments cost federal coffers up to $19 billion a year. As the influence of billionaires and hedge-fund managers has grown, universities have moved further away from their ultimate goal: educating people.

☆ Private equity firms lend less as demand cools
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Chibuike Oguh | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

The amount of loans disbursed by direct lenders so far in 2023 has not shown any pickup, the Refinitiv data shows. Also weighing on deal volumes is the cost of borrowing from private equity firms. This has dampened demand for loans from private equity firms. For their part, private equity firms have also become more risk-averse when it comes to lending, as the economic slowdown and sticky price inflation erode the credit worthiness of some borrowers. To be sure, major deals using private equity firms as lenders are still getting done as banks have continued their retrenchment from risky debt.

☆ CFPB: What it does and why its future is in question
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Jeanne Sahadi | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

The CFPB’s missionThe agency was created after the 2008 financial meltdown, as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The broad purpose of the CFPB is to protect consumers from financial abuses and to serve as the central agency for consumer financial protection authorities. It is charged with implementing and enforcing consumer protection laws, making rules and issuing guidance for consumer financial institutions. And it is the place consumers can go to lodge complaints about financial products and services. “It has completely changed the consumer financial marketplace.

☆ Adani Stock Slump Deepens After Blockbuster Share Offering
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( Weilun Soon | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A blockbuster share sale by the flagship business of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani did little to stem a market rout in his companies, which plummeted again on Wednesday. Adani Enterprises Ltd. , the crown jewel in Adani Group’s energy and infrastructure empire, lost more than a quarter of its value, saddling the investors that took part in its $2.5 billion follow-on public offering with large paper losses. The six other companies bearing Adani’s name fell between 2% and 20%, in some cases by the maximum amount allowed by India’s stock exchanges.

On Tuesday, the Adani group appeared to have fought back the attack by the New York-based short-seller Hindenburg and rallied investors behind the $2.5 billion share issue of flagship firm Adani Enterprises (ADEL.NS). It was a rare defeat for a man who has seemed unstoppable in recent years. In recent years, the $220 billion Adani Group empire has attracted foreign investment - France's TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA), for example, partnered with Adani last year to develop the world's biggest green hydrogen ecosystem. On Wednesday, Adani said his company felt it wasn't "morally correct" to proceed with the share sale following the volatility in the market. But he said in a statement to the exchange the company was financial stable and that the withdrawal of the share issue will not impact its future plans.

☆ The FTC wants to ban companies from telling their employees they can't work for competitors — and says it'll help workers make $300 billion more a year
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Juliana Kaplan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The FTC wants to ban noncompete agreements, which stop workers from moving to competitors or starting their own similar businesses. Under the FTC's proposed rule, employers wouldn't be able to impose a noncompete, and past ones would be rescinded. FTC Chair Lina Khan said that noncompetes undermine competition and competitive conditions. Under a new proposed rule, the FTC would ban employers from saddling workers with noncompete agreements that prohibit them from working at competitors, or starting similar businesses. In some cases, workers can't start their own businesses similar to the ones they're working in.

☆ Don’t want that item? Returning it could cost you
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

It could cost you to return it online. Shoppers have become accustomed to free shipping and free returns in recent years, but Zara, H&M, J.Crew, Anthropologie, Abercrombie & Fitch and other chains are now slapping on fees of up to $7 to return items online. That’s a strain on retailers: For every $1 billion in sales, the average retailer incurs $165 million in merchandise returns, according to the NRF. Charging customers for online returns is just one of the ways retailers are trying to crack down on the cost of returns and prevent clothes from piling up in warehouses. Others are mulling a “returnless refund” policy, where they hand customers their money back and let them keep or donate items they don’t want.

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☆ Biden says he’ll travel to Africa soon as he announces billions in new commitments
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Kevin Liptak | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

“I’m eager to visit your continent,” Biden said to the nearly 50 leaders attending the conference. “The United States is all in on Africa and all in with Africa,” Biden said Thursday. He said “African voices, African leadership, African innovation” were all necessary to addressing a host of global challenges. It’s not the first time African leaders have heard a similar message from an American president. China has worked to grow trade relations with African nations and has developed major infrastructure projects there.

Credit Suisse has already placed some 1.8 billion francs worth of shares with a group of institutional investors led by Saudi National Bank. "The rights issue is the necessary start to the process, said Jerome Legras of Axiom Alternative Investments. REVAMP AND RECORD LOWSCredit Suisse shares, which have plumbed record lows, were buoyed last week as its leadership sought to reassure markets. After closing above 3 Swiss francs on Monday, they have retreated slightly, finishing Wednesday’s session at 2.851 Swiss francs. Crucially, they have held above the deal subscription price of 2.52 Swiss francs and were at 2.821 Swiss francs, down around 1% in mid-session trade on Thursday.

☆ Crypto exchange Kraken settles U.S. investigation over alleged Iran sanctions violations
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Nov 28 (Reuters) - Crypto exchange Kraken has agreed to pay a fine to settle civil liability related to apparent violations of sanctions on Iran, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control said on Monday. As part of the settlement with OFAC, Kraken will pay about $362,000, and "invest an additional $100,000 in certain sanctions compliance controls." "Even before entering into this resolution, Kraken had taken a series of steps to bolster our compliance measures," Santori added. According to the OFAC statement, Kraken's platform processed 826 transactions for users located in Iran between roughly October 2015 to June 2019. In October, the Treasury Department had also fined crypto exchange Bittrex Inc $29 million in fines for "apparent violations" of sanctions on certain countries and anti-money laundering law.

☆ Here's how to download and store your Twitter archive, as the platform's future is uncertain after Elon Musk said bankruptcy wasn't out of the question
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Samantha Delouya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Twitter's future existence could be threatened after Elon Musk said bankruptcy is possible. A recent report said losing Twitter would likely result in losing troves of records from modern history. Twitter users may want to download and store their own personal data as a backup. The article discusses the important role Twitter has played in collecting historical documents by becoming a "de facto public archive." With the threat of Twitter's failure a looming possibility, many Twitter users may want to download and store their data from Twitter outside of the platform.

☆ The evolution of Credit Suisse over 166 years
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-27 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

1990The group takes a controlling stake in U.S. investment bank CS First Boston and buys Bank Leu, a Swiss private bank. 1997A reorganisation turns CS Holding into Credit Suisse Group and drops the SKA name; it also buys insurer Winterthur, a strategic partner. 2002A reorganisation creates two units: Credit Suisse Financial Services and Credit Suisse First Boston; two years later it splits into three units by adding Winterthur. 2005Credit Suisse and CSFB merge and stop using the Credit Suisse First Boston brand name. In March, U.S. investment fund Archegos implodes, saddling Credit Suisse with a $5.5 billion loss.

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