Week InReview
Friday | May 20, 2022
Security threat.
The virtual Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) meeting on March 12. Photo: Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg
Canada has joined its closest intelligence allies in banning Huawei and ZTE gear from fifth-generation wireless networks, citing a threat to national security. Firms that already have the Chinese equipment installed will have to remove it by the end of 2027. The ban will almost certainly stoke tensions between the two countries. Meanwhile, China’s top diplomat has again warned the U.S. over its support for Taiwan, saying that if the White House goes “further and further down the wrong road, it will certainly lead to a dangerous situation.” And “the Quad” — an informal group that brings together the U.S., Japan, India and Australia in an effort to counter China’s growing power — is gaining momentum in another blow to Beijing.
let's recap...
Delinquencies on subprime car loans and leases hit a record in February, based on Equifax’s tracking that goes back to 2007. Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Consumers with low credit scores are falling behind on payments for car loans, personal loans and credit cards, a sign that the healthiest consumer lending environment on record in the U.S. is coming to an end. (The Wall Street Journal | May 19)

Among the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, historians will list an important technological shift. Just as the growth of the factory changed where and how people lived, the rise of remote working is an enormous shock. It will affect not just corporate life and how businesses arrange themselves, but macroeconomics and geography. (Financial Times - opinion | May 18)

The U.S. is forcing Wall Street banks to embark on a systematic search through more than 100 personal mobile phones carried by top traders and dealmakers in the largest-ever probe into clandestine messaging on platforms such as WhatsApp. (Bloomberg Businessweek Finance | May 18)

Wall Street bond traders are getting another warning that they might soon have less time to report their transactions to regulators. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler repeated his call to slash the amount of time that traders have to report many bond transactions as part of a bid to increase visibility into fixed-income markets. Speaking at an event on Monday, Gensler said that he thought the current 15-minute limit was too long. (Bloomberg Markets | May 16)

Bankers, lawyers, and sponsors all said, “It’s different this time.” But it wasn’t. When law professors Michael Ohlrogge and Michael Klausner first started studying special purpose acquisition companies four years ago, they were stunned by what they found. Looking at companies that had merged with SPACs in 2017 and 2018, the valuations were so terrible that the professors wondered why anyone would resort to going public via a SPAC. But the professors were quickly disabused of their study’s conclusions. (Institutional Investor | May 16)
the cyber cafe
Broker-dealers likely to get their own cyber rules: SEC chair
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler says the agency is working on a specific set of rules for the protection of broker-dealers against cybercrime. Gensler said at a conference that the rules are likely to closely resemble similar rules on cyberrisk management that were proposed for registered investment advisers earlier this year.

U.S. narrows approach to anti-hacking law to shield ‘good-faith’ research
The Justice Department urged prosecutors to narrow their enforcement of the nation’s main anti-hacking law in a bid to protect legitimate researchers who probe technology for security flaws.

Recovering from a cybersecurity earthquake: The lessons organizations must learn
It’s been over a year since the SolarWinds supply chain hack sent shockwaves through thousands of organizations worldwide, but this cybersecurity earthquake is by no means over. More recently we’ve seen aftershocks fueled by the Log4Shell and Spring4Shell vulnerabilities, which impacted organizations using the Log4j library and the Spring Core framework.
binge reading disorder
Molly White. Photo: Webb Chappell
Cautionary tales from Cryptoland
Web3 is off to a rocky start. Optimists may rattle on about progress on the horizon, but at present the space is rife with fraud, hacks, and collapses. In this Q&A with Web3 critic Molly White, creator of the website Web3 Is Going Just Great, White argues that as this technology becomes more mainstream, its ability to do harm — financial, emotional, and reputational — will grow, and fast.

This hacktivist site lets you prank call Russian officials
On Wednesday, a group of international hacktivists launched a website, WasteRussianTime.today, designed to combine prank calling and robocalling into an automated weapon of telephonic annoyance targeted at the Russian state. Visit the site, click a button, and it will cycle through a leaked list of Russian government, military, and intelligence phone numbers to connect two random Russian officials—and allow the site's visitor to silently listen in as those officials waste their time trying to figure out why they're speaking to each other and who initiated the call.
— Wired

Gen Z, millennials seek change, balance: Deloitte survey
Deloitte has released its annual survey of Gen Z and millennials, which found participants worried about geopolitical issues and striving to reconcile a desire for change with the demands of daily life. The survey reveals Gen Z and millennial workers are feeling burnt out, struggling financially, and seeking more flexible and purposeful work while pushing employers to confront climate change and mental health.
— Deloitte
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