Week InReview
Friday | Nov 5, 2021
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Illustration: Anders Wenngren/WSJ |
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YOU'RE BACK at the office. How are you supposed to get any work done? There are in-person meetings and intractable video calls clogging your calendar. Your commute has eaten the hour you once used to corral your inbox. And everyone wants to say hi. There’s this slow drip of half-baked conversations. ‘Do you have a minute?' 'Do you have a minute? 'Do you have a minute?’
The problem is when we’re just using our brain it looks like we’re not doing anything. You need a signal that tells your colleagues: 'Really, I’m working.' Close the door if you have one, put on headphones, attach a flag to your cubicle and flip it up when you’re heads-down on a project.
— The Wall Street Journal
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Gary Gensler. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg |
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SEC Chair Gary Gensler warned the financial industry that he won’t shy away from going after big firms pushing the limits in areas that are priorities for the agency, including crypto trading, cyber fraud and SPACs. Bloomberg Markets | Nov 4
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Gensler said he agrees with the Justice Department’s recently revised approach to prosecuting corporate misdeeds. WSJ | Nov 4
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The SEC on Wednesday published new staff guidance that may make it harder for corporations to keep shareholder proposals on matters like workforce diversity or climate from being voted on at annual meetings. Reuters | Nov 3
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Gensler signaled he’s interested in leveling the playing field in the corporate bond market by making key pricing information available to more investors. Bloomberg Markets | Nov 2
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The SEC has rejected a proposed amendment to the plan governing the consolidated audit trail that would have held industry members liable in the event of a data breach. Pensions & Investments | Nov 2
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The Federal Reserve’s announcement on Wednesday that it would begin unwinding its $120bn-a-month stimulus program marked one of the most significant moments in the U.S. central bank’s response to the global pandemic. Yet the milestone barely registered with financial markets. The muted reaction reflected not just the Fed’s painstaking six-month effort to prepare investors for the “taper” of its massive stimulus, but also Chair Jay Powell’s insistence that it is still far too early to think about raising U.S. interest rates despite widespread inflation. (Financial Times | Nov 4)
President Joe Biden said he’ll announce soon his choice of nominees for chair and other vacancies on the Federal Reserve, amid a scandal over stock trades by central bank officials. Biden has started meeting with top White House and Treasury advisers to review candidates to lead the central bank ahead of the expiration of Chair Jerome Powell’s term in February. It remains unclear whether he is leaning toward reappointing Powell, replacing him with liberal Democrats’ preferred candidate, Fed Governor Lael Brainard, or choosing someone else for the job. (Bloomberg Politics | Nov 3)
With the machinery of international trade slowed, business leaders are ditching, at least temporarily, overseas partners and the conventional wisdom of the global economy in favor of reliability, even if it costs more. Some are moving workers and production facilities closer to home and relocating plants closer to suppliers. Others are buying their suppliers or bringing former contract work in-house. (The Wall Street Journal | Nov 1)
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Global standard-setter for sustainable investing launched |
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SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland. Photo: Peter Summers/Getty Images |
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(Nov 3) — The IFRS Foundation formally announced the launch of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), which will establish a set of standards for the evaluation and disclosure of environmental, social and governance-focused products, to be applied globally. While jurisdictions will still have a choice in whether to enforce the ISSB's standards, the group's formation was widely welcomed by officials at the COP26 global climate summit, who say it marks a key first step toward a unified global reporting standard. Read more.
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Cyber security is not enough to combat attacks that grow more sophisticated by the day. Businesses need to develop a wider understanding of cyber resilience. Image: FLY:D for Unsplash |
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Why we need to move from cyber security to cyber resilience
Today, we work from anywhere, on more devices, more networks, facing more risk than ever before. Widespread phishing, malware, ransomware attacks, and other frauds pose a risk not just to individuals or platforms, but to entire economies, governments, and our way of life. Yet the way we think about securing our businesses and our data hasn’t really kept up.
9 key security threats that organizations will face in 2022
For 2021, cybercriminals took advantage of the coronavirus pandemic, the ongoing shift to hybrid work and the vulnerability of organizations to ransomware. For 2022, we can expect more of the same as well as a host of worsening threats to keep us on our toes. A report released Tuesday by cyber threat intelligence provider Check Point looks at some of the security challenges that organizations will likely face next year.
Cyber official warns 'American way of life' at risk from hackers
A top U.S. cybersecurity official offered a dire warning to members of Congress this week, saying the “American way of life” faces serious risks amid the drumbeat of ransomware attacks and physical threats to the nation’s critical infrastructure. Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, told the House Homeland Security Committee that “ransomware has become a scourge on nearly every facet of our lives, and it’s a prime example of the vulnerabilities that are emerging as our digital and our physical infrastructure increasingly converge.”
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This isn’t the first time that researchers have found women to be the better investors. The surprising thing about this phenomenon, however, is that neither women nor men seem to be aware of it. Illustration: Robert Neubecker/NYT |
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Women may be better investors than men. Let me mansplain why.
Heroes or villains, winners or losers, real or imagined, our iconic investors are very, very male. But that’s a mistake — because it turns out that women are often better at investing. Overconfidence is bad, and women are less likely to fall victim to it.
The race is on to develop a vaccine against every coronavirus
Universal vaccines against other recurrent, genetically variable diseases – see, especially, influenza – have been pursued unsuccessfully for years. But researchers think one for coronaviruses might be more achievable, both because this virus is less genetically complex than the one that causes the flu, and also because the threat of another coronavirus pandemic feels uncomfortably real.
Deflating your inflation fears
Inflation. Few words strike more fear into investors’ hearts, and for good reason. By eating away at the purchasing power of your assets, inflation is the nemesis of every investor. Everywhere you turn nowadays, someone is peddling protection: Gold! Bitcoin! Value stocks! Energy stocks! Commodities! Rising prices eat away at the purchasing power of your assets. But taking on more risk to fight inflation can do more harm than good.
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