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☆ 10 Things in Tech: Amazon Web Services salaries, Elon Musk returns to Tesla, and a ‘secret’ ChatGPT prompt library
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

I'm Diamond Naga Siu, and I don't dream of labor (I do occasionally have dreams about writing the newsletter). And hiring managers told my colleague Aki Ito that it's currently incredibly difficult to find and hire enough qualified people. The country that wins the competition over the batteries of the future will not only control the electric vehicle market. Lopez gives us a front-seat look at the landscape of the critical EV battery market. A leaked email revealed that Musk now wants to approve all new hires — including contractors — at Tesla.

☆ DeSantis pledges he would 'clean house' at the FBI as president in response to Durham report
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Kimberly Leonard | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Special counsel John Durham slammed the FBI over its Trump-Russia investigation in a new report. DeSantis said the report showed "I was right," because he'd defended Trump as a US congressman. "What I would do is clean house top to bottom in these agencies," he said of the FBI and others. The report was published Monday and overseen by Special Counsel John Durham — who was appointed by former President Trump's attorney general Bill Barr — and was the conclusion of a four-yearlong investigation into the 2016 election. The FBI opened its investigation in July 2016 and Special Counsel Robert Mueller took over in 2017.

☆ Morning bid: Biden, Republicans set for debt ceiling face-off
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

May 16 (Reuters) - A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets from Samuel Indyk. President Joe Biden and senior Republicans, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, are to sit down on Tuesday in an attempt to thrash out a deal to raise the debt limit and avoid a catastrophic default. That relative calm has been reflected in the latest Bank of America fund manager survey for May. Equity allocations rose to a five-month high, while a vast majority (71%) expect the U.S. to agree on a deal to raise the debt ceiling before the so-called "X-date". Away from the debt ceiling and the Federal Reserve's data dependency will be tested with the latest retail sales and industrial production figures.

WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) - Top U.S. banking regulators plan to tell lawmakers the government will be open to future bank mergers, but are committed to establishing tougher rules after recent turmoil. Barr maintained his commitment to overhauling bank rules to ensure firms do not escape stricter oversight because they are smaller or viewed as less risky. "The prudential regulation and supervision of these institutions merits additional attention, particularly with respect to capital, liquidity, and interest rate risk," he said in prepared testimony. While vowing to draft tougher rules, the agencies have also been criticized for not identifying and preventing weaknesses before the lenders failed. In prepared testimony, he said rapid interest rate increases and social media-fueled rumors drove the "unprecedented" bank run that sank his firm.

☆ US special counsel faults FBI's handling of 2016 Trump-Russia probe
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Sarah N. Lynch | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The FBI lacked “actual evidence” to investigate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and relied too heavily on tips provided by Trump’s political opponents to fuel the probe, U.S. Special Counsel John Durham concluded in a report released on Monday. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at his final campaign event at the Devos Place in Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S. November 8, 2016. That Crossfire Hurricane investigation would later be handed over to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who in March 2019 concluded there was no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. In his new 306-page report, Durham concluded that U.S. intelligence and law enforcement did not possess any “actual evidence” of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia prior to launching Crossfire Hurricane. He also accused the bureau of treating the 2016 Trump probe differently from other politically sensitive investigations, including several involving Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

☆ Stock futures are little changed as traders await Tuesday debt ceiling negotiations: Live updates
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Brian Evans | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading on April 10, 2023 in New York City. Futures tied to the S&P 500 slipped 0.05%, while Nasdaq 100 futures inched lower by 0.08%. Investors are anxiously awaiting progress on a deal to raise the debt ceiling before June 1, which is the earliest date the Treasury Department has said the U.S. could default on its debt obligations. Biden has so far maintained that raising the debt ceiling is non-negotiable. McCarthy, however, has pushed for talks to broker a deal to raise the debt ceiling be tied to spending cuts.

☆ 10 Things in Tech: 'I saw a quantum computer,' Gen Zer learns data analytics on YouTube, and Ford's Ranger Raptor
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Google's AI demonstration showed how Big Tech keeps on winning. Lots of startups are throwing their hat into the generative AI race. But it looks like Big Tech has a leg up on the competition. And it makes competitors even more dependent on Big Tech companies. My colleague Hugh Langley highlights how size and reach, not just quality, will win the AI race and breaks down how Big Tech is set to reap most of the spoils.

☆ Special counsel issues report criticizing FBI for launching Trump-Russia investigation
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Ken Dilanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

The special counsel who spent four years investigating the Trump-Russia probe accused the FBI of acting negligently by opening the investigation based on vague and insufficient information in a sweeping 300-page report made public Monday. The FBI responded to the report, indicating that the missteps identified by Durham have already been addressed. Durham's report examines in painstaking detail various aspects of the now infamous FBI investigation code-named "Crossfire Hurricane," which led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Durham's investigation found that at the time, neither the FBI nor CIA had any intelligence suggesting an improper relationship between Trump and Russia. Durham appears to suggest that the intelligence information should have given the FBI pause in its pursuit of allegations involving the Trump campaign.

☆ Singapore's sovereign wealth fund is looking to invest more in the secondary market, as other VC funds look to sell
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund is keen on doing more in the secondary market, where private stakes in startups and VC funds change hands. That means there's pressure on distributions, which is the cash returned to VC and startup investors. GIC has a private-equity team that specializes in the secondary market. There's been a growing number of secondary funds and exchanges that help founders, employees, and even investors and VC funds sell their startup shares. So as some VC funds look to sell in the secondary market now, GIC has more freedom to be a buyer.

☆ DeepMind cofounder says Google should be 'pretty worried' because old school search engines will be gone in a decade. 'That moment is done.'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Alistair Barr | Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman has a chilling warning for Google, his former employer: The internet as we know it will fundamentally change and "old school" Search will be gone in a decade. During his final period at Google, Suleyman worked on LaMDA, a large language model. With or without Google, the search experience will evolve to be conversational and interactive, Suleyman said on the No Priors podcast. There will be business AIs, government AIs, nonprofit AIs, political AIs, influencer AIs, brand AIs. Now, that's going to become much more dynamic, and interactive.

☆ Special counsel John Durham concludes FBI never should have launched full Trump-Russia probe
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Zachary Cohen Devan Cole Tierney Sneed Evan Perez Hannah Rabinowitz Jeremy Herb Marshall Cohen | Zachary Cohen | Devan Cole | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +14 min

“Strzok, at a minimum, had pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump,” Durham wrote, while quoting in a footnote previously known texts between Strzok and Lisa Page, then an FBI attorney. Witness testimony exposed the FBI’s overreliance on the dossier as it sought court approval to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser in 2016. Mixed results over 3+ yearsBarr tapped Durham in 2019 to review the origins of the Russia probe, and the scope of Durham’s work grew over the years. Former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which inherited the initial Russia probe, released a detailed accounting of Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election. Mueller found no evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, but investigators documented numerous contacts between Trump associates and Russians.

☆ Special counsel appointed by Trump's attorney general says FBI had no basis for investigating Trump's links to Russia
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Jacob Shamsian | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Special Counsel John Durham concluded that the FBI didn't have sufficient evidence to open its investigation into Donald Trump's connections with Russia, according to a report published by the Justice Department on Monday. For nearly four years, Durham — appointed by former President Trump's attorney general Bill Barr — investigated the origins of the FBI's investigation into links between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia. In his 300-page report, he found that it had no basis for opening the investigation in the first place. The FBI investigation, with the code name Crossfire Hurricane, was opened in July 2016 to examine Russia's attempts to influence the 2016 election. "After extensive research, Special Counsel John Durham concludes the FBI never should have launched the Trump-Russia Probe!"

☆ Stocks week ahead: SVB and Signature Bank execs are set to testify next week
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-14 | by ( Krystal Hur | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

The US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs is holding three hearings this coming week centered around the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in March. ET : Greg Becker, former chief executive, Silicon Valley Bank; Scott Shay, former chairman and co-founder, Signature Bank and Eric Howell, former president, Signature Bank. ET : Mark Bialek, inspector general, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Paul Kupiec, senior fellow, American Enterprise Institute and more. Since then, the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have released reports detailing management missteps at SVB and Signature Bank, as well as federal regulators’ own mistakes in properly addressing red flags preceding the banks’ demises. A separate report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Friday shows that American households are becoming increasingly frugal.

☆ 10 Things in Tech: TikTok is transforming comedy, Microsoft’s futuristic doctor visits, and Elon Musk announces a new Twitter CEO
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-12 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

My colleague Lakshmi Varanasi tested a buzzy AI service called Runway that can generate full videos from just a text prompt. She found that using Runway feels similar to using OpenAI's controversial Dall-E 2 or Stable Diffusion — impressive but not perfect. Check out the photos and videos Runway generated for her here. In other news:In a conference presentation, Andrea Barrett, a physician assistant and Nuance consultant, demonstrates products using generative AI. Elon Musk tweeted on Thursday that he's picked a new CEO for Twitter.

☆ New York Is Full of Empty Offices After Covid. Make Way for the Playground City. - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Edward L. Glaeser | Carlo Ratti | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +20 min

We are witnessing the dawn of a new kind of urban area: the Playground City. The transformation toward the Playground City will not happen on its own. To draw people into the Playground City, we need to show, not tell. 6.Engage citizensGovernments should empower citizens to participate directly in making the Playground City. The Playground City sees people as both a means and an end, and it should involve them in the process of its creation.

☆ Voting technology company Smartmatic subpoenas Trump campaign as part of $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox News
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Oliver Darcy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —The voting technology company Smartmatic has subpoenaed Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign for a wide array of documents as part of its $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News over its airing of election lies. Once served, the Trump campaign can fight it in court. CNN reached out to Trump’s 2024 campaign for comment and was directed to the 2020 campaign. It was unclear who, if anyone, was still affiliated with the 2020 campaign. A New York judge in 2022 rejected Fox News’ motion to dismiss Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit, allowing the case to move forward to discovery.

☆ How Singapore's giant sovereign wealth fund is investing in generative AI technology
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

As CEO of GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, he must keep the country's savings growing ahead of inflation. AI retoolingThe 2 investors were most animated when discussing the recent explosion of generative AI technology, including large language models. Chris Emanuel, head of the Technology Investment Group at GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GICThere's already a generative AI startup feeding frenzy among venture capital funds. Secondary market actionFinally, GIC is keen on doing more in the secondary market, where private stakes in startups and VC funds change hands. That means general partners, the people running VC funds, already know GIC and are more comfortable dealing with the organization, Lim explained.

☆ Bill Barr’s Warning on Trump
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-07 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Former Attorney General William Barr Photo: Paul Kitagaki Jr./Zuma PressA common refrain among many Donald Trump supporters is that, while they may dislike his character and what he did on Jan. 6, 2021, they like his policies. Those voters might consider the warning from Mr. Trump’s second Attorney General, William Barr . “If you believe in his policies, what he’s advertising as his policies, he’s the last person who could actually execute them and achieve them,” Mr. Barr told the City Club of Cleveland on Friday.

The blue-chip index (.FTSE) and the mid-cap FTSE 250 index (.FTMC) rose 0.3% each, as of 0830 GMT. Oil and gas sector (.FTNMX601010) jumped 1.7%, with firm crude prices and a weaker dollar supporting gains. The U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank hiked interest rates by 25 basis points (bps) earlier this week. Though the ECB signalled more hikes were to come, the Fed indicated a potential pause in its monetary tightening. "As long as inflation doesn't move higher, it looks like the Fed has done enough in the near term."

☆ There are limited options to fix the banking crisis, but one is gaining support
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Jeff Cox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Ackman didn't provide specifics on how he thinks a deposit guarantee program would work, but he said one is essential to restore investor confidence in regional banks. That has put pressure on midsize banks, and the S & P Regional Bank ETF has fallen 40% year to date. Short sellers have ganged up on some regional banks on the prospect that even those that are rescued or merged will see stock holders wiped out. "Renewed stress among regional bank stocks after market close may cause [Washington, D.C.] to reconsider priorities," Mayo said in a client note. "Unfortunately, there is a significant disconnect between the renewed pressure on regional banks and DC's posture," Mills said in a note.

☆ JPMorgan could be the banking sector’s biggest hero — or biggest risk
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Krystal Hur | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

And as the bank swells in size, so does the potential risk it poses to the nation’s financial system. Some experts say they’re concerned that JPMorgan’s continued intervention during times of crisis has broader implications for the banking sector, the US financial system and its regulation. And with every failed bank that JPMorgan snaps up, the conundrum becomes clearer: JPMorgan is essentially the biggest risk to the financial system — and every time it expands to uphold the sector’s stability, so does its risk to the financial system. It has “that ability once again, to signal to the world that JPMorgan is a fortress, JPMorgan is the ultimate. But recent failures and the missteps that led to them indicate that deep flaws underline the financial system.

[1/3] Federal Reserve Board Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Martin Gruenberg testify at a House Financial Services Committee hearing on the response to the recent bank failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 29, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueMay 2 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Banking Committee said on Tuesday it would hear from former top officials at the failed Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, as well as top U.S. banking regulators at separate hearings later this month. Gregory Becker, the former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, and Scott Shay and Eric Howell, former senior executives for Signature Bank, will appear on May 16. On Monday, regulators closed a third firm, First Republic, which then was sold to JP Morgan Chase. The panel will also hear from top regulators for the states of New York and California, which helped oversee the two failed firms.

☆ A Timeline of How the Banking Crisis Has Unfolded
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Madeleine Ngo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +9 min

March 9Gregory Becker, the chief executive of Silicon Valley Bank, urged venture capital firms to remain calm on a conference call. March 10In the biggest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed after a run on deposits . Regional bank stocks plunged after the unexpected seizure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank , with shares of First Republic tumbling 60 percent. The Treasury secretary believed the actions by the private sector would help underscore confidence in the stability of the banking system. April 28The Fed released a report faulting itself for failing to “take forceful enough action” ahead of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse.

☆ Pre-market stocks: Chobani CEO says he won't be captive to profit-margin demands
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Chobani was slated to go public in 2022 but withdrew its filing as market conditions deteriorated. In a discussion with CNN, Ulukaya said the company still has plans to go public when market conditions stabilize. Single-serve Chobani® products, including Chobani® Flip®, Probiotic, Complete, Less Sugar, Chobani® with Zero Sugar and Greek Yogurt are seen on the shelf at a local grocery store on August 12, 2021 in New York City. But we are OK to be in the public market. I think people understand what Chobani is all about and they understand that this is tomorrow’s brand and tomorrow’s company.

☆ The Week in Business: High-Profile Media Ousters
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( Marie Solis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

The move came less than a week after the company paid $787.5 million to settle a defamation suit with Dominion Voting Systems. Soon after Mr. Carlson was fired, CNN announced that it had “parted ways” with Don Lemon, a longtime star on the network who most recently was a morning show co-host. First Republic’s troubles are part of a wider banking crisis that began with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in mid-March. (April 30-May 6)A Highly Anticipated Fed MeetingThese days, aren’t all meetings of the Federal Reserve highly anticipated? But the Fed signaled that much uncertainty lay ahead as it sought a narrowing path to a soft landing, made narrower by the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

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