Category: zerohedge

The Biden administration is expected to propose giving the IRS $80 billion and granting the agency more power to track down tax evasion by high-income individuals and corporations, according to the New York Times, citing ‘two people familiar with the plan.’ The proposed funding would be an increase of two-thirds over the agency’s entire budget for for past decade.

The 10-year proposal would also include new disclosure requirements for small business owners not organized as corporations, as well as other wealthy people who could be hiding income from the IRS. Those using so-called pass-through corporations (such as the one the Bidens used to funnel $13 million through tax loopholes), as well as people holding wealth in ‘opaque structures,’ would be subject to new reporting requirements.

The additional money and enforcement power will accompany new disclosure requirements for people who own businesses that are not organized as corporations and for other wealthy people who could be hiding income from the government.

The Biden administration will portray those efforts — coupled with new taxes it is proposing on corporations and the rich — as a way to level the tax playing field between typical American workers and very high-earners who employ sophisticated efforts to minimize or avoid taxation. –New York Times

According to the report, some $700 billion in tax revenues recovered over 10 years by the beefed-up IRS will help pay for Biden’s next stimulus injection – dubbed the “American Families Plan” – which is expected to cost at least $1.5 trillion. It will follow Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure package, which follows some $5.3 trillion already passed for pandemic relief (Ethereum hit all-time highs today, coincidentally).

The new plan would include universal prekindergrten, a paid federal leave program, and childcare affordability measures – as well as free community college for all.

Biden also plans to pay for his printing bonanza by raising the top marginal income tax rate for wealthy Americans to 39.6% from 37%, and wants to raise capital gains tax rates for those earning over $1 million per year – including income received through stock dividends.

The Biden administration is likely to portray the $780 billion recovered over 10-years as a conservative estimates – as it only includes money directly collected through enhanced tax audits and additional reporting requirements – and doesn’t count people or businesses who choose to pay more taxes after previously avoiding them. 

Previous administrations have long talked about trying to close the so-called tax gap — the amount of money that taxpayers owe but that is not collected each year. This month, the head of the I.R.S., Charles Rettig, told a Senate committee that the agency lacked the resources to catch tax cheats, costing the government as much as $1 trillion a year. The agency’s funding has failed to keep pace with inflation in recent years, amid budget tightening efforts, and its audits of rich taxpayers have declined.

Mr. Biden aims to change that. His economic team includes a University of Pennsylvania economist, Natasha Sarin, whose research with the Harvard University economist Lawrence H. Summers suggests that the United States could raise as much as $1.1 trillion over a decade via increased tax enforcement.

Mr. Summers praised Mr. Biden’s expected plan in an email late Monday. “This is the broadly right approach,” he said. “Deterioration in I.R.S. enforcement effort and information gathering is scandalous. The Biden plan would make the American tax system fairer, more efficient and, I’m confident, raise more revenue than official scorekeepers now forecast — likely a trillion over 10 years.” –New York Times

The Biden admin’s $80 billion plan would also provide the IRS with a dedicated funding stream, allowing the agency to ‘steadily ramp up their enforcement practices without fear of budget cuts, and to signal to potential tax evaders that the agency’s efforts will not be soon diminished.”

Former IRS commissioner under President George H.W. Bush, Fred T. Goldberg Jr., called the new plan “transformative” for integrating several approaches.

“Information reporting, coupled with restoring enforcement efforts, is key to improve in compliance,” Goldberg told the Times in an email. “Audits alone will never do the trick.”

“None of this happens overnight. A decade of stable funding is necessary to recruit and train talent and build on the necessary technology — not only for compliance purposes but to meet the quality of services that the vast majority complaint taxpayers expect and deserve.”

Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,

If you haven’t taken two minutes to listen to the hot mic audio first published by West Cook News, do so.

It’s a candid display of how pleased ideologues are about how they have captured the education establishment.

The two on the audio are Ralph Martire and Gina Harris, both professors at Roosevelt University in Chicago, and both on the Oak Park and River Forest High School board where the recording was made.

Ralph Martire and Gina Harris

Martire is a major figure in Illinois, with frequent media appearances and op-ed publications. He served on Gov. JB Pritzker’s transition Finance Committee and is executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a public union advocacy shop.  He played a major role drafting Illinois’ school funding formula.

Harris is teacher and an Illinois director of the National Education Association – a teachers’ union, and a member of the NEA’s Black Caucus. She’s also Human and Civil Rights Committee Chair at the Illinois Education Association, an NEA affiliate.

On the tape, Martire says he’s glad Harris is teaching at Roosevelt because she fits in so well, to which she says, “I mean, it’s all social justice. All day, every day I get to talk about all the things I love all the time.”

“All day every day,” responds Martire.

“All day at the day care, all day at my night classes, all day when I’m here. I mean, really, I’m living the life over here,” says Harris.

“Yeah,” says Martire. “I always flip out the kids that take my master’s class on fiscal policy and public budgets within the first three or four classes are devoted to philosophy of social justice and how you organize society. We don’t talk about one, you know, budgetary item. They’re like, Oh, man. Professor Martire, this is a really weird way to teach a budget,” [laughter].

Harris: “Now it’s part of everything, right, what a foundation!”

Martire: “If you don’t understand your values, you can’t allocate resources among public priorities that are scarce, but all needed. Right?

Someone: “Just so you guys know, you’re out there, you’re on the mic in the auditorium, OK?”

It’s good to hear that some grad students are “flipped out” by having social justice philosophy the first three or four of their budget classes, but their concerns evidently don’t matter.

Earlier this week we wrote about a poll showing that Illinoisans don’t like political indoctrination in schools, but two-thirds admit to not objecting.

Martire has every reason to laugh at how thoroughly Americans have let schools become instruments of political dogma. That’s no doubt why, at the end of the tape, he said he didn’t care that he was being recorded.

Martire is actually a gracious guy when you meet him. My colleague Ted Dabrowski and I have met him often in various debates and panels. Last time I saw him I said, “You know, Ralph, we are actually on the same side because we are both trying to help the little guy, it’s just that we have different means for how to do it.” I had barely finished before he answered, “Yes, yes, I know.”

I was thinking in terms of government policy when I said that, but it’s more than that. We would never support replacing education with indoctrination of any kind. No viewpoint should be taught as dogma that cannot be questioned, which is common now for social justice and critical race theory, from kindergarten through college.

“What a foundation,” indeed, for those who preach it.

JPMorgan analysts’ year-long sojourn away from the office is finally coming to an end. After months of reassuring the press (and the bank’s commercial real-estate clients) that it sees “collaborative” work in an office as a permanent feature of working at JP Morgan. CEO Jamie Dimon even went so far as to commission a study “proving” that working in an office fosters a level of “creative collaboration” that’s difficult to replicate from home.

And as bankers have trickled back into JPM’s towers in NYC and London over the past few months, their colleagues have just received their final notice. CNBC reports that by May 17, the bank expects to have all its workers back at the office on a part-time basis (as the bank must still contend with building occupancy limits set at 50%).

“We would fully expect that by early July, all U.S.-based employees will be in the office on a consistent rotational schedule, also subject to our current 50% occupancy cap,” the bank said in a memo, reported earlier by Bloomberg News. “With this timeframe in mind you should start making any needed arrangements to help with your successful return.”

On the subject of vaccination, Dimon said last week that the bank can’t require workers to be vaccinated before returning to the office, a policy that’s almost guaranteed to elicit complaints from workers worried about being in an “unsafe environment” by being forced to make contact with the unvaccinated.

CNBC’s Hugh Son shared the internal JPM memo announcing the return to work.

Throughout the pandemic, our buildings and branches in the U.S. have remained open and have safely operated for our essential employees, to whom we remain incredibly grateful. In our previous message, we said that we were looking forward to having more of you back in the office during the spring and summer months. As the U.S. surpasses its goal of more than 200 million COVID-19 vaccinations administered and more cities and states lift restrictions, we will open our U.S. offices to all employees on Monday, May 17 subject to our current 50% occupancy cap.

We are welcoming more of you back next month so that you can get comfortable with being back in an office environment. Understanding that this may take some time, we would fully expect that by early July, all U.S.-based employees will be in the office on a consistent rotational schedule, also subject to our current 50% occupancy cap. With this timeframe in mind you should start making any needed arrangements to help with your successful return. Each line of business will work with their managers and location leaders to determine an appropriate schedule. Our branches and offices outside of the U.S. will continue to follow their established processes.

As we welcome you back in the coming months, you should be confident that we will continue to:

• Follow all government restrictions and mandates and be prepared to pause or reverse your return if needed.
• Maintain a 50% occupancy cap — at least until the CDC revises its social distancing guidelines.
• Practice our industry-recognized health and safety protocols, including our high standards of cleaning and air filtration, mask wearing and daily health check requirements.
• Provide information and resources to help you get vaccinated because we know that getting vaccinated means less risk of spreading the virus to our families, friends and colleagues. It is also important to note that while we strongly encourage you to get vaccinated, a vaccination is not required in order to return to the office at this time.
• Provide training and resources to help you navigate the new office environment.

More details on returning to the office will be provided in the coming days and weeks to help you prepare. We know that you have questions, and many answers can be found in the links below.

JPM’s target date ranks it among the more aggressive Wall Street firms; Wells Fargo doesn’t expect to have workers back until September.

But JPM wasn’t the only major American corporation to announce plans to recall workers to the office. Exxon is moving its workers in Houston back to the office full time by May 17 as well.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Everything is great, and America is about to enter a golden new era that will be overflowing with peace, prosperity and happiness.  If you believe that, there is a very large bridge that I would like to sell to you.  There is certainly nothing wrong with being optimistic about the future, and personally I am very excited about the next chapters in my life.  But if you think that the United States is heading in the right direction you are not thinking straight.  Evidence of our advanced state of decline is all around us, and yet we continue to embrace our self-destructive ways.

Over the years, I have literally shared thousands of examples that show that our society is coming apart at the seams, and today I would like to share 10 more…

#1 New York City was once one of the most beautiful cities in the entire world, but now giant mountains of trash are piled up everywhere and approximately 2 million rats are rampaging all over the place.  In an attempt to turn the tide, city officials plan to create a “City Cleanup Corps”…

New York City is being forced to deploy an army of 10,000 cleanup workers in response to worsening problems with trash and rats.

A newly created ‘City Cleanup Corps’ will be tasked with fighting the piles of garbage on the streets of the Big Apple, with complaints surging by 150% between March and August last year.

After a $100 million cut to the city’s sanitation budget, filth and rodent infestations have become a common sight, with data revealing that waste tonnage rose 15% by the end of March compared to the early months of the pandemic.

#2 In 2020, homicide rates increased by an average of more than 30 percent in major U.S. cities, and now homicide rates in many of those cities are even higher in 2021…

A Baltimore sanitation worker was fatally shot yesterday evening on his trash truck. The city has 94 homicides in less than four months.

To the south, DC had two more homicides yesterday, bringing its tally to 62, up 41 pct over 2020.

To the north, Philly has 156, up 31 pct.

#3 In cities all over the United States, police officers are leaving the force in record numbers.  For example, just consider what is happening in New York City…

More than 5,300 officers — or roughly 15% of the force — at the New York Police Department either retired or put in their papers to leave in 2020, the New York Post reported after reviewing department data.

In all, 2,600 officers simply left the job, while another 2,746 filed for retirement, bringing the total to a whopping 5,346. That figure marked a 75% increase over the number of officers who left the force during the previous year.

#4 Meanwhile, police departments across the nation are having an exceedingly difficult time recruiting new officers.  In New Jersey, the number of qualified applicants is only a small fraction of what it was a few years ago…

In some years the State Police would field between 15,000 and 20,000 applicants, according to Col. Patrick Callahan, the department’s acting superintendent. But they only had a “historically low” 2,023 qualified applicants as of Thursday, about a week before deadline, Callahan said.

#5 Less police officers will be needed if cities decide to simply stop enforcing the law.  In Manhattan, a decision has been made to no longer prosecute prostitution at all…

Manhattan’s DA has announced he will no longer prosecute prostitutes, and asked a court to dismiss nearly 6,000 related cases as part of a city-wide change in policy.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. said prosecuting these types of crimes does not make the city safer, ‘and too often, achieves the opposite result by further marginalizing vulnerable New Yorkers.’

#6 Earlier this month, Charlie Biello shared some data regarding the explosion in commodity prices that we have seen over the last year…

• Lumber: +265%
• WTI Crude: +210%
• Gasoline: +182%
• Brent Crude +163%
• Heating Oil: +107%
• Corn: +84%
• Copper: +83%
• Soybeans: +72%
• Silver: +65%
• Sugar: +59%
• Cotton: +54%
• Platinum: +52%
• Natural Gas: +43%
• Palladium: +32%
• Wheat: +19%
• Coffee: +13%
• Gold: +3%

But the Federal Reserve insists that inflation is “low” and that we don’t have anything to be concerned about.

#7 The “most Googled sex question in 2020” certainly says a whole lot about where we are as a society today…

Data from the online health clinic From Mars released this week indicates the most Googled sex question in 2020, with more than 2 million searches, was: “What are the symptoms of chlamydia?”

#8 As I detailed earlier this month, cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis have all soared to all-time record highs in the United States.  We want America to be great at a lot of things, but not at spreading sexually-transmitted diseases.

#9 The western half of the country is in the midst of a multi-year “megadrought”, and 2021 is the worst year of that megadrought so far by a very wide margin.

In fact, water levels are dropping so fast in Lake Powell and Lake Mead that authorities are on the verge of declaring “an official shortage” for the first time ever…

The US Bureau of Reclamation released 24-month projections last week forecasting that less Colorado River water will cascade down from the Rocky Mountains through Lake Powell and Lake Mead and into the arid deserts of the Southwest and the Gulf of California.

Water levels in the two lakes are expected to plummet low enough for the agency to declare an official shortage for the first time, threatening the supply of Colorado River water that growing cities and farms rely on.

#10 We have known for a very long time that government agencies endlessly spy on us, but now even the Postal Service is tracking and collecting our social media posts…

The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, including those about planned protests, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News.

The details of the surveillance effort, known as iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program, have not previously been made public. The work involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what the document describes as “inflammatory” postings and then sharing that information across government agencies.

When I visit my local Post Office I will never be able to look at the employees the same way again.

What in the world is happening to us?

Do we really need postal workers monitoring our Facebook accounts?

If they are supposed to be stopping “extremism”, it doesn’t appear to be working because we continue to see regular riots in Portland, Seattle and other major cities across the country.

Sadly, the truth is that our society is coming apart at the seams all around us, and it is only going to get worse in the years ahead.

America has been on the wrong path for decades, and all of the foolish decisions that we have made during those years are catching up with us in a major way.

Of course we could always choose to reverse course and start heading back in the right direction, but we all know that isn’t going to happen any time soon.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

Oil prices rallied today, with WTI back above $63 as the OPEC+ Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee came and went without issue (discussing the desire to gently raise production as demand comes back… as expected). The group confirmed it will not hold a full ministerial meeting on Wednesday as planned, delegates at the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) agreed at their meeting on Tuesday, signaling confidence in the current plans to ease the production cuts While India fears remain, many remain confident in the recovery in the rest of the world…

“You’re seeing incredibly strong demand,” BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Bernard Looney said in a Bloomberg TV interview on Tuesday.

China’s oil demand is above pre-pandemic levels, the U.S. is almost back there and “vaccines are going to kick in now in Europe.”

For now, the next clue will come from inventories…

API

• Crude +4.319mm (-200k exp)

• Cushing +742k

• Gasoline -1.288mm

• Distillates -2.417mm (-1.2mm exp)

After the prior week’s surprise crude build (albeit small), analysts expected a small draw last week but were likely shocked when API reported a big surprise 4.319mm crude build…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI hovered around $63.20 ahead of the print and dipped modestly after

Not everyone is excited:“If the grim trend continues, the oil demand loss India will experience could be the single largest reduction in absolute terms that any country has suffered since the beginning of the pandemic,” Rystad Energy said in a note. The firm added that there is some optimism around the plans by OPEC+. “Should OPEC+ turn a blind eye to India though, the gains may quickly evaporate,” Rystad added.

Judging by the just released Q1 blowout earnings from Google, the one thing that companies just can’t do without during the biggest government recession stimmy handout in history, is advertising.

Moments ago, Google parent Alphabet reported Q1 earnings (at the abc.xyz URL) that blew expectations out of the water powered by an increase in digital ad spending by businesses looking to expand during the pandemic reopening:

• EPS $26.29, smashing expectations of $15.64
• Revenue $55.31B, slamming expectations of $51.61B
• Revenue ex-TAC $45.60 billion pounding  theestimate $42.61 billion
  • Google Cloud Rev. $4.05B, est $3.99B
  • Google Services revenue $51.18 billion, -3.2% q/q
  • Other Bets revenue $198 million, estimate $161.9 million
• Oper Income $16.44B, trouncing expectations of $12.02B
• Oper Margin 30%, steamrolling the consensus est. 22.4%

Of note, YouTube ads and Google Cloud, two key growth areas for Google, posted solid gains. YouTube ads rose about 48% from the prior year, and Cloud went up 46%.

Amusingly, Google’s “other bets” category came in at $198 million, up from $135 million in the year-ago quarter.

The revenue breakdown visually:

Some more headlines:

• Accounting Change Reduced 1Q Depreciation by $835M
• Co. Revised Useful Life of Servers, Some Network Equipment
• Accounting Change Added 95c/Shr to 1Q EPS

Now the not so great news: Google Cloud continues to lose money — about $974 million last quarter, after burning $1.7BN a year ago, while Google Bets lost $1.1BN.

Commenting on the quarter, CEO Sundari Picahi said that “over the last year, people have turned to Google Search and many online services to stay informed, connected and entertained. We’ve continued our focus on delivering trusted services to help people around the world. Our Cloud services are helping businesses, big and small, accelerate their digital transformations.”

CFO Ruth Porat chimed in too: “Total revenues of $55.3 billion in the first quarter reflect elevated consumer activity online and broad based growth in advertiser revenue. We’re very pleased with the ongoing momentum in Google Cloud, with revenues of $4.0 billion in the quarter reflecting strength and opportunity in both GCP and Workspace.”

With Google reporting nearly $110BN in marketable securities, investors were delighted to learn that after years of avoiding buybacks, Google finally caved and on April 23, 2021, the Board of Directors of Alphabet authorized the company to repurchase up to an additional $50.0 billion of its Class C capital stock: “The repurchases are expected to be executed from time to time, subject to general business and market conditions and other investment opportunities, through open market purchases or privately negotiated transactions, including through Rule 10b5-1 plans.”

Separately, Bloomberg reminds us that there was some concern about the fate of marketing spending as Apple and Google plan to eliminate ad-tracking cookies. Google’s upcoming plan is called FLoC. But the results removed some of those concerns. Here’s a fresh comment from Tom Johnson, chief digital officer for Mindshare, part of mega ad agency WPP PLC.

“Alphabet is becoming a one-stop-shop for companies in the Platform Age and dependence on that one-stop-shop may increase in a cookieless world as Google attempts to build a privacy first future for the web through its Floc initiative.”

Bottom line: a few blemishes, but overall a blowout result and solid beat of expectations, with Bloomberg’s Nico Grant writing that “Covid-19 restrictions have limited travel and trips to physical stores, two key areas of Google’s search business. However, Alphabet shares are up about 30% this year on optimism vaccinations in the U.S. will revive these activities…. These results are a reminder that the rising number of vaccinated people in the U.S. are fueling a return to regular life, and businesses are eager to compete for their money.”

Predictably, the stock has soared nearly 4% in the after hours.

 

MSFT handily beat bottom-line expectations and modestly beat top-line:

• Earnings: $1.95 per share vs. adjusted $1.78 per share expected

• Revenue: $41.71 billion vs. $41.03 billion expected (up 19% – the biggest quarterly increase since 2018)

The GAAP results included a $620mm tax benefit.

“Over a year into the pandemic, digital adoption curves aren’t slowing down. They’re accelerating, and it’s just the beginning,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft.

“We are building the cloud for the next decade, expanding our addressable market and innovating across every layer of the tech stack to help our customers be resilient and transform.”

Under the hood, the revenue beats were all modest…

• *MICROSOFT 3Q INTELLIGENT CLOUD REV. $15.12B, EST. $14.94B

• *MICROSOFT 3Q PRODUCTIVITY REV $13.55B, EST. $13.51B

• *MICROSOFT 3Q MORE PERSONAL COMPUTING REV. $13.04B, EST. $12.61B

The Intelligent Cloud segment was driven by a 50% increase in revenue for Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform and related services. It follows another 50% growth rate in the December quarter, and a 48% growth rate in the September quarter.

The reaction in the stock was one of disappointment as MSFT dumped 4% after hours…

Microsoft shares are up 17% year to date, compared with a gain of about 11% for the S&P 500 over the same time period, so perhaps the drop is driven by simply not being a big enough beat (and a lack of Azure acceleration).

Crypto was higher on the day (as was the dollar and commodities) but for big-tech stocks, bonds, and bullion it was “sell, Mortimer, sell”…

The cash open sparked chaos in Small Caps and a dump in big-tech stocks. Small Caps were puked after the European close. S&P and the Dow manage to scramble back into the green (dumping into the red in the last 5 seconds), Small Caps were best and Big-Tech Nasdaq 100 the biggest loser…

 

Here’s the chaos at the cash open in Small Caps…

CCC-rated junk bonds plunged to their lowest spread since 2008, below 500bps…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasuries were sold ahead of tomorrow’s FOMC…

Source: Bloomberg

With 10Y back to recent resistance…

Source: Bloomberg

Notably, the 10Y yield has held its 50DMA support for 4 straight days…

Source: Bloomberg

The Dollar managed gains today…

Source: Bloomberg

ETH jumped to a record high today…

Source: Bloomberg

ETH broke out relative to BTC too…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin also rallied, back to $55,000 – before last week’s plunge…

Source: Bloomberg

Commodities were up for the 11th straight day…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold dipped ahead of The Fed…

But, Palladium rose to a new record high…

Source: Bloomberg

Copper continued to surge back near record highs…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI rose back above $63 ahead of tonight’s API report (after the OPEC+/JMMC ‘no change’ report)…

Finally, in case you were thinking of dipping your toe back in the warming waters of monetary exuberance and buying equities, it is worth considering that stock investors stand to receive too little return for the level of risk they take, according to Mike Wilson, chief U.S. equity strategist at Morgan Stanley.

Source: Bloomberg

Wilson drew the conclusion in a report Monday that compared an earnings-based yield on the S&P 500 Index with an inflation gauge: the 10-year breakeven rate, or the gap in yield between fixed-rate and inflation-indexed Treasury notes. The resulting equity risk premium narrowed this month to 2.06 percentage points, the smallest since May 2000, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “There’s low probability that it will” fall further, Wilson wrote.

Days after Apple announced plans to launch its first subscription podcasting platform, Spotify – after making a splash last year when it recruited Joe Rogan, Kim Kardashian and a handful of other big name stars to its podcasting platform – is planning a similar paid platform that will charge creators a much smaller slice of revenues.

Spotify unveiled “Anchor”, its paid podcast platform, in a post on Tuesday where it touted the “massive opportunity” for content creators to monetize their work. “Today, we’re rolling out a paid subscription platform for podcasters that gives them maximized revenue, wide reach, and discoverability. The program begins rolling out in the U.S. today and will expand internationally in the coming months,” the company said in a statement.

In comments to the Verge, Mike Mignano, head of podcaster mission at Spotify, said that the model will “explore ways for creators to connect deeper with their subscribers, so you can anticipate us to be sharing more in the space soon.”

NPR is already planning to use Spotify as its partner for its ad-free subscription podcasts (the network produces some of the most popular podcasts in the US market).

spotify subscriptions land with some real caveats: podcasters have to host through anchor and listeners have to navigate to their anchor landing webpage to actually subscribe https://t.co/OvpkIgbXy9

— Ashley Carman (@ashleyrcarman) April 27, 2021

The platform will compete with content monetization tools like Patreon, which is currently a favorite among podcasters, including the creators of “Chapo Trap House”, the popular political comedy show with a left-wing slant, which is the most lucrative account on Patreon.

Mignano argued that creators will be better off with Spotify, which will take no cut of revenue at first and only a small cut starting in 2023 and that having paid content built into Spotify could help creators grow their paid audience more quickly thanks to the apps powerful recommendation algorithm. If people search for a type of specific show, a subscription podcast could show up and gain a paid follower. Mignano also suggested that Spotify could curate suggestions of shows that people might want to pay to hear. He also says, because this can all go through Anchor, the subscriptions shouldn’t require extra work. “I view this as additive and in no way as an additional, or burdensome, step on behalf of the creator,” he says.

While this is all well and good, we recently explored whether artists who signed exclusivity deals with Spotify (like Joe Rogan) are seeing their relevance fade by depriving users of other platforms of their content. What’s more, despite promises that Spotify wouldn’t act as an editor, the company has been caught removing dozens of episodes of the “Joe Rogan Experience”. Almost all of these removed episodes featured “controversial” conservatives like Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes.

It begs the question: is ceding even more power and control over one of the fastest-growing mediums (podcasting) to a company which has already betrayed some of its biggest creators really a good idea?

After reporting its biggest quarterly loss since 2009 (driven by losses tied to the implosion of Archegos that were greater than the $2 billion the Japanese bank first reported a month ago) Nomura has decided to suspend or shuffle around several senior employees, including its head of risk.

The firings follow a similar string of high-level firings by Credit Suisse, which included Lara Warner, the bank’s risk chief and one of the most-senior female executives at a bulge-bracket investment bank. Though, to be sure, Credit Suisse had bigger exposure to Archegos, and suffered bigger losses, which is perhaps why Nomura is going easier on its employees, refraining from the same mass-firing authorized by Credit Suisse CEO Thomas Gottstein and his board.

More details on the suspensions and firings can be found below courtesy of Bloomberg:

Dougal Brech, global head of the prime-brokerage division that caters to hedge funds, has been suspended along with U.S. prime head Joshua Kurek and co-head of global equities Michael Caperonis, people familiar with the matter said. Douglas Lyons, global head of credit risk, will stay at the Tokyo-based firm but will be replaced by Patrick McGarry, said the people, who requested anonymity as the details aren’t public.

Nomura is among several global banks shaken by transactions with Archegos, an obscure investment firm set up to manage the fortune of trader Bill Hwang. Japan’s biggest brokerage, which lost some $2.9 billion on its dealings with Archegos, has hired external lawyers to conduct a “comprehensive, impartial review,” according to a presentation to investors Tuesday, and appointed a new head of its U.S. subsidiary earlier this week.

The Financial Times reported Brech’s suspension earlier. Aoife Reynolds, a spokeswoman for Nomura in London, declined to comment. Brech also declined to comment. Caperonis, Kurek and Lyons did not respond to requests for comment via LinkedIn.

As we noted earlier, losses disclosed during the earnings reports of UBS and Nomura pushed losses tied to Archegos north of $10 billion, which is at the high end of losses anticipated by a team of JPMorgan analysts shortly after the scandal first broke.

However, as Nomura’s board pushes ahead with the firings, they should be cognizant of the fact that, for CS, executive layoffs simply weren’t enough to placate angry shareholders. Media reports revealed earlier this week that some of the bank’s biggest shareholders are now pushing to oust the director who was in charge of the board’s risk-management subcommittee.