Category: Money

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meets with Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi (not seen) in Kyiv, Ukraine on August 30, 2022.

Ukrainian Presidency/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

A new law allows the Ukrainian government to block websites that aren’t registered as media.
President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the law on Thursday after Ukraine’s parliament approved it.
Groups representing journalists say that the law undermines press freedom.

A new law signed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could give Ukraine’s government powers to block media outlets.

Zelenskyy signed the law on Thursday after Ukraine’s parliament passed it earlier in December, The New York Times reported. Lawmakers have touted the bill as an effort to bring Ukraine’s media laws closer to European Union standards as the country makes a bid to join the 27-member bloc. They have also argued that it will help counter Russian propaganda as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nears its one-year anniversary.

But organizations representing journalists say the law will erode press freedoms in Ukraine. Under the law, Ukraine’s media regulator could block websites that are not registered with the government as news organizations, The Kyiv Independent reported on Friday. 

The law is at odds with freedoms given to the press in other parts of Europe, the European Federation of Journalists said in a statement on Friday, according to the Times. 

Ukrainian lawmakers have been considering a new law regulating the media since 2019, when Zelenskyy directed parliament to draft it. The version that Zelenskyy signed on Thursday is not as sweeping as a previous draft, which the Federation called “worthy of the worst authoritarian regimes.”

The legislation also drew criticism from the legal department of the Ukrainian parliament, which claimed that lawmakers did not do enough to investigate whether the bill would lead to government censorship.

Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has introduced changes to how the media operates. In March, for instance, Zelenskyy signed off on combining the country’s national television channels into a single platform, Reuters reported at the time.

Zelenskyy himself has expressed frustration with the media at times. In August, he criticized Ukrainian officials for telling the press about Ukraine’s military strategy.

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Sens. Ron Johnson, left, and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.

AP Photo/Harry Hamburg

The new Congress, which begins this week, will have five politically-split Senate delegations.
Maine, Montana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Wisconsin will have one senator from each party.
The small number of split delegations reflects the increased polarization of American politics.

Thirty years ago, it was commonplace for states to send politically-split Senate delegations — composed of both Democrats and Republicans — to the upper chamber.

While many states were firmly in red or blue columns on the presidential level, voters across the country were more willing to back candidates from a different party for other races. So, despite North Dakota’s conservative lean, voters reelected Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad to multiple terms in the 1990s and 2000s, even while backing GOP presidential nominees by large margins.

And as recently as January 2019, Florida — which has become difficult terrain for Democrats in recent years — had one Democratic senator and one Republican senator. (In November 2018, then-GOP Gov. Rick Scott narrowly defeated then-Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who was seeking a fourth term in office.)

But in the new Congress, which begins this week, only five states will have split Senate delegations: Maine, Montana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Such a figure reflects a sharp decline from the 27 split delegations that existed from 1979 to 1980, per the Pew Research Center, during an era where it was not unusual for Democrats to represent rural states and for Republicans to hold Senate seats in states like Illinois and New York.

With Democrats holding a slim 51-49 majority and the country sharply polarized on numerous issues, many of the lawmakers from states with split delegations have some of the most bipartisan records in the upper chamber.

Here are the compositions of the split Senate delegations:

Maine

Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Independent Sen. Angus King

Collins — who has served in the Senate since 1997 — has worked with Democrats on a range of issues over the decades and also voted in support of three Supreme Court justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, nominated by Democratic presidents. Despite Maine’s blue tint, Collins has been able to secure support from many Independents and Democrats each time she’s been up for reelection, including in 2020, when President Joe Biden carried the state overall (while losing the state’s rural 2nd congressional district and thus ceding one electoral vote to then-President Donald Trump).

King defeated Collins in Maine’s 1994 gubernatorial election and served in office from 1995 to 2003 before winning his first term in the Senate in 2012.

Both members have sought to forge bipartisan consensus in the chamber, and strongly supported the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that sailed through the Senate and was signed into law by Biden last year. Collins was among the bipartisan group of 10 senators who helped craft the details of the bill.

Sens. Jon Tester, left, and Steve Daines of Montana appear at a signing ceremony for two conservation agreements intended to protect elk and trout habitat just outside Yellowstone National Park in Jardine, Mont., on August 17, 2017.

AP Photo/Matthew Brown

Montana

Democratic Sen. Jon Tester and Republican Sen. Steve Daines

Tester was first elected to the Senate in 2006 and secured reelection in both 2012 and 2018. The farmer and moderate Democratic lawmaker has not yet decided if he will run for reelection and previously said he would make a decision about his political future during the holidays.

While Tester has generally backed the Biden administration on most of their biggest priorities, he is known to show an independent streak. As chair of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, his work on the panel has allowed him to work across the aisle in pushing for reforms.

Daines, who was first elected to the Senate in 2014, will soon assume the mantle as chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, seeking to elect more GOP members in a year where his Democratic home state colleague may run for reelection.

Ohio

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and Republican Sen.-elect JD Vance

Brown has carved out a political brand as a populist Democrat who fights for workers’ rights, a message that has appealed to voters of all stripes in Ohio, which has become less of a bellwether and more Republican in recent cycles. The three-term lawmaker was excited at the prospect of Rep. Tim Ryan joining him in the upper chamber, but the congressman fell short to Republican JD Vance despite running what many said was one of the strongest Senate campaigns this year.

The senator is up for reelection in 2024.

Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author and venture capitalist, will succeed retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman this week.

Sens. Joe Manchin, left, and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia are seen during a Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC, on March 5, 2020.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

West Virginia

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito

Manchin is perhaps the nation’s most recognizable moderate Democrat, having single-handedly scuttled Biden’s Build Back Better agenda in December 2021. From his days as West Virginia’s secretary of state and governor to his tenure in the Senate, Manchin has looked out for his state and been a firm Democrat while also frequently working with Republicans — much to the frustration of many liberals who remain wary of the lawmaker.

But Manchin’s political formula has helped him thrive in deep-red West Virginia. While Trump won the state by 42 points over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, Manchin won reelection by 3 points just two years later.

Manchin has not yet announced if he will run again in 2024.

Capito was first elected to the Senate in 2014 and has worked well with Manchin during her time in the upper chamber — an important plus for one of the nation’s least populous states.

Wisconsin

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin

The Badger State is often home to some of the closest races in the entire country.

Both Trump and Biden won the state by less than 1 point in 2016 and 2020, respectively.

And Johnson was reelected to a third term last November over Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes by exactly 1 point (50.5%-49.5%). 

Baldwin, who previously served in the House for 14 years, has been successful in cracking the state’s partisan divide, winning her first Senate term in 2012 by 5.5% before securing reelection in 2018 by nearly 11 points.

The two are ideological opposites, as Baldwin has a liberal voting record while Johnson is a staunch conservative. But Wisconsin voters seem to prefer the split.

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Business Insider 

Francois Pinault, the billionaire founder of Kering.

Charles Platiau/Reuters

François Pinault is the founder and owner of Kering luxury group, which oversees several iconic fashion houses, including Gucci and Alexander McQueen.
Pinault started out working for his family’s timber company before eventually entering the retail market.
Today, with a net worth of $35 billion, he is the 5th-richest person in France and the 32nd-richest person in the world. 

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Business Insider 

Christian Lawrence

Rise Modular

Christian Lawrence, 29, is one of Business Insider’s Rising Stars of Real Estate for 2022.
In 2 years, he’s built Rise Modular into a company with 150 employees and over 400 units under construction.
Modular construction can make housing more affordable by delivering units at a lower cost, he says.

The process for building affordable multifamily housing in the US is broken, and modular construction might just be the way to fix it, says Christian Lawrence, 29, a CEO of Rise Modular, a construction company in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

Modular construction refers to a process of building a residence at an off-site location and then assembling all of the pieces on-site, almost like LEGO pieces. At Rise, which specializes in multi-story and commercial real estate construction, this can mean building an entire floor of a home or apartment — including kitchens, bathrooms, and appliances — at its 150,000-square-foot warehouse and then transporting it to a job site for installation. 

Building homes off-site can help speed up the time it takes to complete homes in areas of the country that face extreme weather, Lawrence said, as the initial construction process takes place inside and away from the elements. It’s also more efficient in the sense that workers build the homes in an assembly line approach versus starting from scratch at each job site. Economies of scale not only reduce material costs, but they can also reduce waste generated during construction, Lawrence added. 

In just two and a half years, Lawrence has grown Rise Modular into a business that has completed more than 760 housing units as of November 2022. Rise has also grown to 150 employees and has another 400 units currently under construction. 

“We need to find a better way to build housing for everyone,” Lawrence told Insider in November. “Everyone acknowledges the challenges we have as it concerns high construction costs, and I think modular construction is one of the most innovative and sustainable solutions we have.”

Rise Modular primarily focuses on developments like student housing, hotels, and apartment buildings, Lawrence said. The company has also been called upon by other developers to help finish projects that wouldn’t otherwise be possible in a more traditional construction setting, Lawrence added. 

For example, Rise helped complete a seven-story, 192-unit apartment building called Alvera Apartments in St. Paul in December 2021, according to the company’s website. Lawrence said other developers on the project approached Rise to help with the project because they couldn’t make the numbers work with a conventional construction company. Rise was able to complete the building with 154 different modular pieces which saved at least five months of construction work, Lawrence added. 

The impact of modular construction can also be seen outside of construction sites, Lawrence said, because it can make housing more affordable for renters at a time when wages are stagnant due to inflation. For instance, rents for studio and one-bedroom apartments at Alvera start at around $940 and $1,375 per month, respectively, according to the building’s website. 

The studio unit shaves off nearly $300 per month compared to the median rent for a studio apartment in Minneapolis while the one-bedroom apartment is about $200 less than the median, according to data from ApartmentList.com. 

“Modular construction has the potential to provide housing at a lower cost and deliver buildings in a more cost-effective way than traditional sticks-and-bricks construction,” Lawrence said. “It can also deliver a higher quality and more environmentally sustainable product.”

These apartments are also hitting the market at a time when real wages in Minneapolis are decreasing because of inflation. According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, wages in construction and professional services have increased by 5% as of November 2022. However, consumer price data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that inflation reached 5.3% in November, meaning that workers saw the spending power of their wages decrease by 0.3% over the last year. 

In the next three to five years, Lawrence said he expects Rise to become a leader in the modular construction space. The process has been used successfully for decades in Europe, but Lawrence said there are very few companies in the US who are up to the challenge, especially in the Midwest where cold winters and snow can grind construction to a halt. 

“We’ve proved that there are real cost and time savings associated with modular construction,” Lawrence said

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Business Insider 

Elon Musk has never been afraid to speak his mind.

Theo Wargo/WireImage

2022 was a very notable year for Elon Musk. 
He became Twitter’s new owner but also lost the title of “world’s richest man.”
Insider looks back at some of his most eyebrow-raising comments from the second half of the year.

Elon Musk had an eventful year in 2022, which he entered as the world’s richest man. But by the end of the year, he had not only lost billions, but also the confidence of many people who invested in his companies. 

The billionaire’s acquisition of Twitter on October 27 left Tesla investors particularly weary. Some feared he was neglecting the EV company in favor of fixing the social-media platform.

Analysts have also noted that Twitter is distracting Musk from Tesla and say his politicized tweets have damaged the EV maker’s brand.

The billionaire, who is the first person to suffer from a $200 billion loss, never shied away from controversies and likes to tweet his opinions on most topics. 

Let’s a look at 20 of the most interesting things Musk said between June and December.

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Business Insider 

Sam Bankman-Fried.

David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to enter a plea of not guilty in his fraud case on Tuesday.
The disgraced FTX founder is accused of defrauding investors and is facing eight criminal charges.
A former federal prosecutor weighs in on why Bankman-Fried won’t just get a slap on the wrist.

Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to plead not guilty on Tuesday, initiating a legal back-and-forth that former federal prosecutors say is unlikely to result in a lenient deal from the Justice Department.

When the FTX founder is arraigned in federal court for fraud charges, he will appear in person to enter his not guilty plea, the Wall Street Journal first reported on Friday. In confirming the news, Bloomberg also pointed out that the move can provide his legal team more insight into prosecutors’ evidence — and more time to potentially negotiate a lighter sentence if he changes his plea to guilty.

Bankman-Fried is facing eight charges after his now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange reportedly lost at least $8 billion of customer money. US prosecutors have alleged he orchestrated a years-long scheme, where he used FTX deposits for various investments and daily expenses at his trading firm Alameda Research.

The Justice Department is in a “good position” when it comes to the fraud case, former federal prosecutor Danya Perry told CNBC, noting that former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX cofounder Gary Wang have pleaded guilty.

Behind the scenes, she believes negotiations have been underway for a possible deal, but prosecutors most likely have other “cooperating witnesses lining up at the door.”

“They have a mountain of paper evidence, and in fact, admissions by the defendant himself,” added Perry, a former assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York. “So they’re not going to be in any particular rush, and they’re not going to be welcoming of any sweetheart plea deal.”

Other former prosecutors have similarly cast doubt on Bankman-Fried’s ability to secure a deal. Ian McGinley, who also previously served as an assistant US Attorney in the SDNY, told CoinDesk that winning leniency typically requires a defendant to present evidence against someone else.

But it’s unclear if Bankman-Fried can point the finger at others. 

“The issue here that he faces is he is the head of FTX. The buck presumably stopped with him. So it’s hard to see how he could cooperate at all,” McGinley said.

And if the case goes to trial, he has almost no chance of getting acquitted, former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman has said.

Bankman-Fried hasn’t helped his cause either, especially while on a public apology tour after FTX’s liquidity crisis in early November. Instead of laying low and listening to his legal counsel, he spoke with an array of news outlets about the situation.

“I don’t think I’ll be arrested,” Bankman-Fried said during an interview hours before he was detained by Bahamian authorities on December 12. He even tweeted on Friday to deny moving tokens out of Alameda’s crypto wallets shortly after being released on bail.

A not guilty plea would mean the government continues its investigation, but Perry told CNBC that prosecutors are “only going to be digging in deeper. They’ve said they’re really looking under every stone here.”

She added: “That may not be his best move either. He’s in a tough position.”

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Business Insider 

Outgoing Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.

Chip Somodevilla/Pool via AP, File

Outgoing GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger said that he fears for the US if Trump is not prosecuted.
The former member of the January 6 probe said he believes the DOJ will charge Trump.
“If this is not a crime, I don’t know what is,” Kinzinger said of the evidence he had reviewed.

Outgoing GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger has called on the Justice Department to prosecute former President Donald Trump, saying that if his role in the January 6 Capitol riot is not considered criminal, then “I don’t know what is.”

Kinzinger, who announced in late 2021 that he would not seek re-election in his Illinois district in the 2022 midterms, citing extremism and tribalism in the US political system, is one of two Republicans who sat on the House Select Committee to investigate the Capitol riot.

The committee wrapped up its findings in December, with a bombshell recommendation to prosecute the former president.

In a farewell interview with CNN, broadcast on Sunday, Kinzinger said he believed that the Department of Justice would follow through on the committee’s recommendations to charge Trump on four separate counts: conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to make false statements, obstruction of an official proceeding, and inciting an insurrection. 

Kinzinger has long backed criminal charges for Trump, saying in July last year that the committee had “proven” Trump had made unacceptable efforts to remain in power. 

Kinzinger told CNN’s Dana Bash that when he first sat down with the committee he didn’t have the legal expertise to say whether Trump had committed a crime.

But after seeing the wealth of evidence the committee pulled together, he said: “I’m like, ‘yeah, if this is not a crime, I don’t know what is.’

“If a president can incite an insurrection and not be held accountable, then really there’s no limit to what a president can do or can’t do,” he continued.

Kinzinger said he believed that the DOJ will prosecute Trump, and if it didn’t there could be long-term repercussions.

“If he is not guilty of a crime, then I frankly fear for the future of this country,” he said. 

“Because now, every future president can say ‘hey, here’s the bar,’ and the bar is: do everything you can to stay in power,” he added.

Kinzinger also warned that the US cannot be complacent in its political system: “There have to be uncomfortable alliances to defend democracy,” he said, a likely reference to his own stance in joining the January 6 committee, despite his political allegiance.

Asked by CNN if he was sad to be leaving Congress, Kinzinger said: “I’m not going to miss the job.”

But, he added: “It’s been a heck of a ride.”

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Business Insider 

Donald Trump waves to guests during an election night party at Mar-a-Lago, Tuesday, November 8, 2022 in Palm Beach, Florida.

Phelan M. Ebenhack for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Donald Trump blamed poor handling of abortion issues for the GOP’s lackluster 2022 midterms.
Trump said that anti-abortion campaigners disappeared after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The former president also claimed to be “233-20” about candidates he backed in 2022.

In one of his first social-media posts of 2023, former President Donald Trump deflected criticism for Republican Party losses in the 2022 midterm elections pinning the blame on its handling of abortion rights.

“It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “It was the “abortion issue,” poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters.”

Trump also criticized those on the right who campaigned for decades to have abortions banned, claiming they failed to show up during the elections after the Supreme Court handed them a historic victory last year.

“The people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the US Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again,” he said.

In June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, gutting a nearly 50-year-old landmark ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

The ruling galvanized pro-choice supporters and was seen as an important factor in the Democratic Party’s stronger-than-expected showing in November’s midterm when they added a seat in the Senate, strengthening its control of the upper house, and only narrowly lost the House of Representatives.

Trump also hit out against Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel, claiming to be “233-20” in relation to the candidates he backed in 2022.

This followed criticism that Trump-backed candidates were instrumental in losing the GOP its shot at retaking the Senate during the 2022 midterms. Those losses included high-profile Trump-backed Senate candidates Herschel Walker in Georgia and celebrity TV doctor Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania.

Trump has repeatedly pushed back against accusations he was to blame.

The former president announced in November that he was running again in 2024.

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TheStreet 

The legendary investor anticipates a dark scenario for the U.S. economy this year.

Consumers and investors are wondering how much the cost of living will rise as inflation remains at a 40-year high.

But the question that frightens everyone — consumers, markets and government — is whether the economy will enter a recession.

The “R” word is the scary word. But for many economists there is no longer any doubt: recession is on the menu for 2023.

A December survey of 38 economists by Bloomberg showed they saw a 70% chance for a recession next year. That’s up from 65% in November. The economists say the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes will cut demand.

They forecast that consumer spending, which makes up two-thirds of GDP, will barely increase in the middle six months of the year.

Median estimates call for GDP growth of only 0.3% in 2023 as a whole. That includes an annualized 0.7% dip in the second quarter and zero growth in the first and third quarters.

“We expect that the Fed will stay in restrictive policy for a while unless the effect on real GDP growth and unemployment becomes particularly severe and inflation has fallen close to target,” said Maria Vassalou, co-chief investment officer of multiasset solutions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

‘The US in Recession By Any Definition’

Many business leaders including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have also already warned of a recession. 

“My advice to people, small business owners is take some risks off the table. If you are going to make a purchase maybe slow down that purchase a little bit,” Bezos said last November. “If you are an individual and you are thinking about buying a new large screen TV maybe slow that down keep that cash, see what happens. Same thing with a refrigerator, a new car whatever, let’s take some risks off the table.”

“If you are a small business maybe delay some capital purchases: do you need that new piece of equipment? Maybe it can wait a little bit, have some cash on hands; just a little bit of risk reduction could make the difference for that small business.”

Michael Burry, the legendary investor who has become the oracle of Wall Street, seems to share this pessimistic diagnosis. He has just given his first predictions for 2023, and these are grim. 

Burry claims that regardless of how the word recession is defined, the U.S. economy will be in recession in 2023.

“Inflation peaked,” Burry wrote on Twitter on January 1. “But it is not the last peak of this cycle. We are likely to see CPI lower, possibly negative in 2H 2023, and the US in recession by any definition.”

He then describes a vicious circle. The Federal Reserve, which has raised interest rates to a level not seen since the 2008 financial crisis, will pivot and cut rates, while the federal government should announce a stimulus package to help households strangled by the deteriorating economy. 

All of this will end with another resurgence of inflation, which is similar to what happened during the covid-19 pandemic. Basically, we are going to see a rehearsal of what happened after March 2020.

“Fed will cut and government will stimulate. And we will have another inflation spike. It’s not hard,” Burry says.

Former Predictions

The 2008 financial crisis, one of the biggest financial debacles in history, made Burry a legend. It made him one of the examples to follow in the defiance of standard practices in financial circles. 

The 2015 film “The Big Short” describes how the investor, who had no particular expertise in finance and real estate, came to understand that the sector had become a sandcastle, with financiers and bankers creating exotic products based on mortgages given to financially fragile households and borrowers with poor credit. 

He, therefore, decided to bet on the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, hence the name “Big Short.” History proved him right. Since then,  Burry, who now runs hedge fund Scion Asset Management, has become something of a Wall Street oracle. 

He embraced this role judging by his Twitter handle which is Cassandra B.C. For traders and risk takers, he is a kind of party spoiler. 

In recent months, Burry warned that the economic situation was going to deteriorate seriously, that massive layoffs of white collar workers were on the horizon; he predicted that the stock market was going to have a moment of truth, after two years of prosperity during the pandemic. 

All of these warnings came true in 2022.

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