• Manuel Alvarez, who previously led the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, will join cryptocurrency exchange Binance.US as its chief administrative officer. Brian Brooks, the former acting comptroller of the currency who is now Binance.US’s chief executive officer, said Alvarez’s hiring “shows not only do we take this seriously, but we’re not going to be defensive about compliance and consumer protection,” and that Binance.US could go public in the next four years. (Bloomberg) 
• Chime, an app that offers banking services, has a high rate of complaints at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau consumer complaint database, according to experts, with 920 complaints filed since April 15, 2020, many related to closed accounts that sometimes left customers unable to access their money. In a statement, Chime framed the account closures as being related to anti-fraud measures, to unemployment insurance and to federal stimulus payments and said its “top focus” is “to take care of our members.” (ProPublica)  
• The White House this week plans to release an executive order intended to increase labor market competition, which people familiar with the order said will include provisions encouraging the Federal Trade Commission to ban or limit noncompete agreements. The order is also expected to urge the FTC to remove “unnecessary” occupational licensing restrictions and recommend that the FTC and Justice Department further crack down on employers that share worker pay data in ways that could be construed as collusion. (The New York Times) 
• The Financial Stability Board released a “roadmap” to addressing climate-related financial risk that looks to smooth over differences among countries and spot gaps in the data needed to assess such risks. Randal Quarles, the Federal Reserve vice chair for supervision and chair of the Financial Stability Board, said that it’s time to “take this to the next level” and take steps to “avoid harmful market fragmentation.” (Reuters) 

Correction: A previous version of this newsletter misstated Brian Brooks’ title; he is CEO of Binance.US, not Binance. He also said Binance.US could go public, not Binance. 

Millennials’ Real Estate FOMO Goes Haywire

Lionel Laurent, Bloomberg

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Trump is long gone, but trade frictions remain for U.S. and Canada

David J. Lynch, The Washington Post

President Biden routinely praises his Canadian counterpart in the warmest manner, as American chief executives — with one recent exception — have done for decades. And U.S. officials go out of their way to stress the shared vision that unites the two trading partners.

Problem Solvers Caucus backs bipartisan infrastructure deal

Naomi Jagoda, The Hill

The Problem Solvers Caucus of House moderates on Tuesday backed the infrastructure framework that President Biden and a bipartisan group of senators announced last month, and urged the House to hold a stand-alone vote on legislation based on the deal. “The bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus strongly supports the Senate infrastructure framework, which is closely aligned with our own ‘Building Bridges’ proposal released last month,” the group said in a statement Tuesday.

US piles pressure on EU to drop digital tax plan

James Politi et al., Financial Times

Brussels pushes ahead with own proposals but Washington argues they clash with OECD and G7 deal.

States and Cities Scramble to Spend $350 Billion Windfall

Glenn Thrush and Alan Rappeport, The New York Times

When Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin, heard the Biden administration planned to give billions of dollars to states and localities in the $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his cut. The remarkable growth of the Texas capital, fueled by a technology boom, has long been shadowed by a rise in homelessness, so local officials had already cobbled together $200 million for a program to help Austin’s 3,200 homeless people.

States faced financial ruin. Now they’re swimming in cash.

Katherine Landergan, Politico

As the coronavirus tore across America last spring, elected leaders and economists feared the worst: the pandemic and resulting financial turmoil would devastate the budgets of states across the nation. Governors pleaded with Washington for a massive bailout. 

Can a global tax deal survive political gridlock in the US?

Aime Williams, Financial Times

Biden needs to secure support in Senate that Democrats control by tiniest of margins.

A rate rise in the U.S. might trigger big problems in the developing world

David J. Lynch, The Washington Post

As the global economy began shutting down in March 2020, investors stampeded out of stock and bond markets in countries such as Kenya, Brazil, India and Thailand. The panicky exodus seemed to be a prelude to a wave of government debt defaults that would punish Wall Street and poorer nations alike.

Fed Minutes of June FOMC Under Scrutiny for Taper-Timing Hints

Catarina Saraiva, Bloomberg

The record of the Federal Reserve’s meeting last month, which surprised investors with a hawkish pivot, will be scrutinized on Wednesday for any hints on when the central bank will pare back its support for the economy. The Fed delivered a double-whammy at the June gathering after its quarterly economic forecasts showed officials expect two rate hikes in 2023 and Chair Jerome Powell announced the central bank was getting the taper debate into gear.

Labor’s Share of the Money Pie Is Bigger Than Economists Thought

Peter Coy, Bloomberg Businessweek

It’s conventional wisdom that labor’s share of the U.S. national income has plummeted. But by carefully accounting for stock-based compensation, three economists have found that the decline is smaller than is commonly assumed. For high-skilled workers, they conclude, there’s barely been any decline at all in the past four decades.

Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to U.S. Economic Challenges

Ben Casselman and Clifford Krauss, The New York Times

As the U.S. economy struggles to emerge from its pandemic-induced hibernation, consumers and businesses have encountered product shortages, hiring difficulties and often conflicting public health guidance, among other challenges. Now the recovery faces a more familiar foe: rising oil and gasoline prices.

Pandemic leaves 22m people out of work in advanced economies, OECD finds

Delphine Strauss, Financial Times

Skills mismatch between those out of work and available jobs risks long-term unemployment.

More Credit Suisse Senior Bankers Depart in Wake of Archegos Loss

Cara Lombardo and Maureen Farrell, The Wall Street Journal

Credit Suisse Group AG CS -1.73% is continuing to lose senior bankers to competitors in the wake of missteps including a $5.5 billion loss tied to the meltdown of Archegos Capital Management. Several investment bankers in the U.S. gave their notice in the past week, while others are considering leaving, people familiar with the matter said.

Republican senator Marco Rubio lambasts ‘reckless and irresponsible’ Didi listing

James Politi, Financial Times

Hawkish senator’s intervention could point to renewed efforts to turn screws on Chinese IPOs in US.

Women, Minorities Are Queuing Up to Leave Private Equity Firms

Benjamin Robertson, Bloomberg

Private equity firms risk a wave of post-pandemic resignations from women and ethnic minorities. A quarter of all women and a third of Black, Asian and minority ethnic industry professionals surveyed by Investec Plc said they wanted to leave their employer in the next 12 months.

Forbearance loans decrease for 18th straight week

Tim Glaze, HousingWire

For the 18th straight week, servicers’ forbearance portfolio volume fell. It dropped four basis points to 3.87% last week, according to a survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The MBA estimates 1.9 million homeowners are still in some form of a forbearance plan.

Bitcoin Fraud Concerns Draw Scrutiny From Regulators

Dave Michaels and Andrew Ackerman, The Wall Street Journal

Regulators are signaling they want more control over an expanded cryptocurrency universe that has pushed further into Wall Street activities without the investor and consumer protections that apply to traditional securities and financial services. The catch: no single regulator inspects crypto exchanges or brokers, unlike in the securities and derivatives markets.

Central bankers see limited role for crypto in reserve operations

Eva Szalay, Financial Times

Officials expect at least one key central bank to launch its own coin in next 5 years, survey says.

Robinhood’s Debut Is Clouded by SEC Scrutiny of Payment for Order Flow

Alexander Osipovich, The Wall Street Journal

Robinhood Markets Inc. is on a collision course with regulators over a controversial practice that generates most of its revenue, as the online brokerage gears up for a highly anticipated initial public offering. In its IPO filing, released Thursday, Robinhood disclosed that 81% of its first-quarter revenue came from sending its customers’ stock, options and cryptocurrency orders to high-speed trading firms—a practice known as payment for order flow.

Visa says crypto linked card usage tops $1 billion in first half of 2021

Frank Holland, CNBC

Visa said Wednesday that more than $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency was spent by consumers globally on goods and services through their crypto-linked cards in the first six months of the year. By comparison, Visa estimated crypto spending at only a fraction of that amount in the same periods last year and in 2019.

Binance CEO Says Crypto Exchange Hasn’t Got Everything Right

Joanna Ossinger, Bloomberg

The founder of Binance Holdings Ltd., a cryptocurrency exchange at the center of a global crackdown over regulatory breaches, says the firm’s problems are partly a result of its rapid growth. “Binance has grown very quickly and we haven’t always got everything exactly right, but we are learning and improving every day,” Chief Executive Officer Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said in a blog post. 

Fintech Wise’s Direct Listing Signals Strong Investor Appetite

Swetha Gopinath, Bloomberg

The auction that set Wise Plc’s opening stock price showed strong investor demand, boosting the City’s efforts to rival the U.S. for fast-growing technology companies. With bids ranging from 100 pence to 1,000 pence, the money-transfer company born as Transferwise opened at 800 pence in London, giving it a market capitalization just shy of 8 billion pounds ($11 billion).

Washington Must Get Serious About the Digital Economy

Don Tapscott (co-founder and executive chairman of the Blockchain Research Institute, an adjunct professor at INSEAD), Morning Consult

In the first 100 days of the Biden-Harris administration, we saw ambitious steps taken to end the COVID-19 pandemic, a push to get on a stronger footing to compete with China and the announcement of a historic infrastructure plan. Missing from all of this was a much-needed commitment to strengthening the United States’ position in the technological revolution around blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

Biden Needs to Save the Infrastructure Bill

Joe Lieberman, The Wall Street Journal

‘There ain’t gonna be no bipartisan bill unless we’re going to have a reconciliation bill,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said recently. Translation: Democrats won’t reach across party lines to pass infrastructure legislation unless they pass another spending bill with no Republican support. I worked closely with Mrs. Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for decades.

This Is Tax Evasion, Plain and Simple

Gabriel Zucman and Gus Wezerek, The New York Times

In the decades after World War II, close to 50 percent of American companies’ earnings went to state and federal taxes. Economically, it was a golden period. Middle-class incomes grew at roughly the same rate as those of the richest Americans.