Plus: Paid vacation, olive oil and more. Bloomberg
This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a fairly homogenous group of Bloomberg Opinionâs opinions. [Sign up here](. Todayâs Agenda - JPMorgan [rescued]( First Republic.
- This is your sign to [take a vacation](.
- [Olive oil]( has a heatflation problem.
- There are way [too many chips](. The Banks-as-Manholes Theory This morning at around 1:30, I woke up to two massive booms that rattled me to my core. Was it an earthquake in Manhattan? Or the sound of Jamie Dimon [sticking a fork]( in the regional banking crisis? Neither. It turns out a manhole had exploded right outside my apartment window, and the fire erupting from the earth looked like one of those onion volcanoes at a Hibachi restaurant. Soon firefighters arrived and everything was OK, but the whole episode got me thinking about whether there might be some symmetry between malignant manholes and bank failures. I know, sounds crazy. But hear me out. Since 2012âs Hurricane Sandy, New Yorkâs Con Edison has been â[storm hardening](â the grid to avoid widespread power outages. Similarly, after the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2008, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act, giving US banking regulators more tools to prevent a systemwide disaster. Both of these efforts have worked, to an extent. The grid upgrades have prevented [power failure](. And the biggest Wall Street banks havenât had any meltdowns in more than a decade. But Con Edisonâs main aim was to reduce outages â not to prevent manhole covers from exploding.[1](#footnote-1) And financial regulators were focused on preventing a 2008-style emergency, which meant giving big banks âstress tests,â while pushing small and medium-sized banks to the sidelines. Making matters worse, in 2019, the government [loosened rules]( for midsized banks like Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic, which let them ignore certain losses and liquidity issues. Like the corroded underground cables that rest beneath New Yorkâs busy streets, [capital standards]( âhave [eroded significantly]( in recent years,â Bloombergâs editorial board writes, which is partly why [three of the largest FDIC failures]( this century have occurred in the last two months: Although SVB and First Republic had different journeys to reach their respective solvency crises, the underlying issues that plagued them are the same: They both had âa lot of fixed-income assets held at cost and a high reliance on a fairly homogenous group of uninsured depositors who were highly motivated to watch their money,â Paul J. Davies [writes](. In other words, both banks had [ultra-rich, ultra-connected clients](: Soon after SVB went under, 11 big banks handed its distressed twin flame â First Republic â a [$30 billion loan]( in the form of unsecured term deposits. It was an unusual display of unity that sadly didnât pan out. Paul says that these financial institutions have since watched First Republicâs â[slow motion implosion]( with gritted teeth.â Not even the [brotherhood]( of banks could stop the bleeding: So last night, at precisely manhole oâclock, Jamie Dimon was sprinkling the parmesan cheese on a deal to take over First Republic Bank â which Matt Levine digs into [the financial machinery of here](. But it was [no act of altruism](, Paul notes: âAfter what seemed like an extended game of chickenâ between the FDIC and private-sector banks, the FDIC blinked, resulting in an agreement that Mohamed A. El-Erian calls â[far from perfect](.â He argues that Dimonâs triumph cements a noticeable shift in the status quo: âThe bigger and more diversified banks are now being considered âsaferâ than the narrow banks which have either no or a very limited range of capital market activities that have traditionally been viewed as a source of financial stability risk.â So what happens when a â[too big to fail](â institution â formerly a source of ire â becomes [the savior]( of the day? Mohamed argues that it will lead to further concentration of the banking system, which will only serve to destabilize Americaâs already-rocky financial foundation. Others â [President Joe Biden]( and the [CEO of JPMorgan](, unsurprisingly â arenât as worried. Silvia Killingsworth tweeted that the acquisition should earn Dimon [a float]( in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Letâs just hope that the manholes [behave]( on turkey day. May Day The first of May is a public holiday in a lot of countries, a celebration of workersâ rights (and occasionally [a protest of]( workersâ frustrations). It got me thinking about one of the great achievements of the labor movement: vacation. I donât want to go all woe-is-me on you, so Iâll start with a disclaimer: Iâm lucky enough to be employed by a place that offers generous vacation. But many Americans arenât. Whether itâs because they [donât have a paid vacation policy]( or the hustle-and-grind culture [doesnât allow for it](, the propensity to take time off in this country is ⦠pathetic, in so many words. Erin Lowry feels similarly, arguing that âmillions of Americans failing to take their full amount of vacation days means that billions of dollars in benefits are being left on the table annually.â If you think about vacation in the context of a 401(k) match, youâll get a better understanding of what Erin means. Letâs say your employer offers a 100% contribution match on up to 6% of your paycheck annually. Obviously, itâs a no-brainer: If you can afford it, youâre going to put 6% of your paycheck into retirement so that you donât leave money on the table. The same thing could be said about vacation time: If youâre only taking seven of your allotted 15 days, youâre literally working eight unpaid days a year. Whatâs often seen as a âstrong work ethicâ is actually harming, not helping, workers. And itâs not just the principle of the thing: Vacation has been shown to lower risks of depression, and provides workers with some much-needed Slack-free R&R. Without the benefit of vacation, both employers and workers are setting themselves up for failure. Erin even suggests that we could separate âpersonal daysâ from actual vacation days. Taking a trip to the dentist for your childâs fluoride treatment is not the same as hopping on a plane to the South of France. Read [the whole thing](. Telltale Charts A few months ago on vacation (see, I do take time off!!), I visited a family-owned organic winery on the outskirts of Siena, Italy. For biodiversity reasons, they plant a smattering of olive trees around the edges of the fields. The owner of the vineyard told me when it comes time to harvest those olives, the man thatâs hired to pick them asks to be paid not in money, but in olive oil â the unofficial nectar of the gods â because thatâs how precious it is. Unfortunately, Lara Williams says olive trees in Spain and Italy are [suffering from prolonged heat stress]( and extreme weather. As a result, olive oil prices are surging â and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Texas Instruments might have got a little ahead of itself on the whole chip-shortage thing. After three years of crazy demand, the semiconductor sector is headed for a slowdown. But TI, ever the worrywart, wanted to make sure it had enough product in the bank. Now itâs âsitting on [a record $3.3 billion of inventories]( in the middle of the biggest downturn in a decade,â Tim Culpan writes. Thatâs enough to cover itself for 195 days, or 6.5 months. Youâd think that a [calculator]( [company]( would better at math, but alas. Further Reading Is it just me, or are [Americaâs spies]( losing their edge? â Max Hastings America has [two economies]( â one for consumers and one for companies. â Conor Sen [AI drones]( are the future of farming. â Amanda Little Only [Mitch McConnell]( can save the US from a debt default disaster. â Matthew Yglesias Social science can explain why [King Charles III]( is key to Britain. â Adrian Wooldridge China might have [Covid data]( going all the way back to October 2019. â Faye Flam A Trump-Biden rematch would prove that [democracy is broken](. â Clive Crook ICYMI Thereâs another [mystery balloon](. Trump is doing [a CNN town hall](. What to expect when youâre expecting [a writers strike](. Everything you need to know about [the Met Gala](. Kickers A new [brain coma]( study. A new type of [marshmallow](. (h/t Ellen Kominers) A new way to [shower](. A new kind of [American hero](. Notes: Please send color-changing marshmallows and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. [1] I am NOT an electrician, so don't quote me on this. But my preliminary research says that manhole explosions can happen when salt from the road trickles down into the grates during a rain or snow storm. Salt water happens to be a perfect *chef's kiss* conductor of electricity, so when it smothers the electrical wires â many of which are crusty and gross from old age (or, more likely, rats) â heat can build up around the rubber or lead insulation surrounding the wires, forming gas and smoke as it burns. Eventually, the wires can form a spark that will ignite that gas, which has bubbled up inside the manhole, forming an explosion. Science, people!! It's batsh*t crazy. Follow Us You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Opinion Today newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox.
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