Author: Author1

Zero Hedge: Following last month’s dismal unemployment print, which saw the first contraction since April in December payrolls, expectations were high for a solid rebound in January – maybe too solid – and unfortunately while jobs did grow in January, the final number of +49,000 came in well below the 105K consensus estimate, if up solidly from December’s downward revised -227K, with revisions subtracting a total of 159K jobs from the past two months. Read More

Yahoo Finance: In another sign that crypto has become a mainstream investment, private equity veteran Glenn Hutchins, along with his son James Hutchins and partner Travis Scher, have launched a new venture capital crypto fund with a marquee list of investors including hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, Raj and Indra Nooyi (the latter being the former CEO of PepsiCo) and James Todd Smith, better known as LL Cool J.

“Crypto promises not just to revolutionize finance but also to invent a new computing paradigm that will be as transformational as the PC, the internet, mobility and the cloud,” says Glenn Hutchins. “It is the proverbial next big thing.”

There are a number of other crypto venture funds out there currently, so the North Island fund will need to differentiate itself, which it might be able to do given the experience and reputation of the founders and given that North Island already has back office infrastructure in place. The thesis of the fund is that crypto is an enabling technology which offers unprecedented capabilities that entrepreneurs can leverage and combine to create applications that could not previously exist. Read More

Zero Hedge: Reading about how YouTubers and Redditors with screennames liike “RoaringKitty” and “Deep Value” contributed to last week’s financial mania with posts and videos expounding the virtues of GME, AMC, BBY, BBBY, NOK, KOSS and the other “Wall Street Bets” stocks has been a big part of the drama in the aftermath of last week’s trading chaos.

For the last week, a parade of financial analysts, academics, regulators and bankers have warned that the capital markets sickness that sent GME shares to nearly $400 can be blamed on a handful of rogue charlatans hawking an absurd “stick it to the man” narrative on social media (and not the hedge funds trying to short GME into oblivion with naked short positions so large, they amounted to more than 100% of GME’s float before the explosion).

With Janet Yellen and the rest of the top financial markets regulators in the country meeting on Thursday, we learned last night via the New York Times, and via an interview with House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, that a key player in the Feb. 18 House committee hearing/media circus will be Keith Gill, the former MassMutual employee known alternatively on Reddit and YouTube as “DeepF*ckingValue” and “RoaringKitty”.

Of course, small-time traders like Gill aren’t the only ones who profited from the chaos, and while Tenev and other witnesses will be appearing in a professional capacity, Gill is being painted as some kind of financial terrorist, and it’s already becoming clear that – just like regulators did with Nat Sarao after the May 2010 “flash crash” – they will once again find a small-time trader to scapegoat, regardless of whether their actions actually had a major impact on the market volatility in question.

But not only is Gill being dragged in front of the Committee (though Waters couldn’t say whether he was “confirmed”, only that she was trying to “get” him for the hearing), but regulators in Massachusetts are taking aim at him, and it looks like they have found an excuse to punish and scapegoat Gill, due to the fact that, technically, he was still employed by a major insurance firm, and was a registered securities broker, while carrying on his anonymous social media persona and pitching stocks online.

Some might construe that as a conflict, and regulators are reportedly – according to the NYT – putting pressure on both Gill and his former employer, MassMutual, one of the biggest financial services firms in the state of Massachusetts. Read More

We have been warning about the likelihood that immunity passports would soon become ubiquitous on international (and maybe even domestic) flights as air travelers appreciate the allure of simply storing one’s COVID test and/or vaccination status on a smartphone app had become almost too simple to pass up.

China started using smartphones to track individual COVID status almost immediately after the pandemic went transnational, allowing even the residents of Wuhan to “Party like it’s 2019″ for a big chunk of last year.

And now, American Airlines has confirmed on Wednesday that the airline will expand use of the VeriFLY app starting Wednesday at US airports for flights to eight countries in an effort to simplify compliance with government travel requirements, Business Traveler reported.

Here’s some more information about the “mobile health wallet”, which allows customers to upload their COVID test and/or vaccination results to the app for free use on their phone.

American Airlines has announced that it will now accept mobile health wallet Verifly at all of its airports in the US. The requirement that travelers show documents for travel on the airline will apply to direct and connecting flights from the carrier’s US airports to the UK, Canada, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Jamaica.

American Airlines’ “partnership” with Verifly was initially introduced in November 2020, with trials on the carrier’s flights from (or connecting through) Miami International airport to the Jamaican destinations of Montego Bay and Kingston. Recently, the airline introduced the Verifly health passport for international flights to the US.

This news comes after the announcement that joint business and Oneworld partner British Airways will begin to trial Verifly for flights from London to the US from February 4.

Commenting on the expansion, Julie Rath, Vice President of Customer Experience at American Airlines, said “we are constantly looking at ways to make travel easier and simpler for our customers, and navigating testing requirements and validation is a big piece of that. All of our airports will now accept customers’ testing verification via the Verifly app, which is a great expansion of our trial from MIA that began last fall. With more partners like British Airways and others across the industry expanding their acceptance of Verifly, we can further our common goal of preventing the spread of Covid-19 and ensure compliance with local regulations that have been put in place to protect our customers and team members.”

Of course none of this is actually a surprise: Read More