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Facebook’s cryptocurrency already faces blowback

The dust hadn’t even settled on Facebook’s announcement about its new cryptocurrency, named Libra, before lawmakers around the world made it clear that they were skeptical.

“Facebook is already too big and too powerful, and it has used that power to exploit users’ data without protecting their privacy,” Representative Maxine Waters, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, said in a statement. “We cannot allow Facebook to run a risky new cryptocurrency out of a Swiss bank account without oversight.” She asked Facebook for a moratorium on the project until Congress and regulators weigh in.

There were plenty of other critics. Senator Sherrod Brown, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee; Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat on the same committee; and Representative Patrick McHenry, the senior Republican on Ms. Waters’s panel, all expressed concern about Libra.

And it will be studied closely from the get-go. The FT reports that a panel formed by the Group of 7 nations, along with central banks and the International Monetary Fund, will investigate so-called stablecoins like Libra, which are cryptocurrencies whose value is tied to government-issued money. While the G7 statement didn’t specifically mention Facebook’s token — instead saying it would study the broad effects of stablecoins on issues like financial stability and money-laundering — the timing was striking.

Facebook knows the importance of the politics here. “The success of this venture depends on its trusted and safe integration with the existing financial system,” it wrote in documents describing Libra. “The world’s governments, specifically regulatory and law-enforcement authorities, are essential partners in this endeavor.”

More: Here are some of the big things we still don’t know about Libra.

Trump reportedly wanted to demote Jay Powell

As the Fed concludes its latest policy meeting this afternoon, its chairman, Jay Powell, has even more to worry about: President Trump reportedly wanted to remove him from the post, according to Saleha Mohsin and Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News, and apparently hasn’t ruled out the idea.

Mr. Trump asked White House lawyers about how to demote Mr. Powell in February, Ms. Mohsin and Ms. Jacobs write, citing unnamed sources. The president has openly complained about Mr. Powell, whom he picked to lead the Fed in 2017, and has repeatedly demanded that the central bank lower interest rates.

Lawyers said Mr. Powell couldn’t be fired without cause, but could be replaced with another Fed governor, according to Ms. Mohsin and Ms. Jacobs. If Mr. Powell were to be demoted, he could challenge the move in court.

Mr. Trump didn’t deny the report. When asked about it yesterday, the president said, “Let’s see what he does” when the Fed makes its announcements later today. Mr. Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said, “It’s not happening today, so therefore I have nothing to say on it.”

Crunchtime is 2 p.m. Eastern, when the Fed announces the results of its policy meeting. Economists and investors don’t expect rate cuts today, but anticipate that happening later this year. What that may mean for Mr. Powell, we’ll have to wait and see.

More: Has the Fed already become politicized?

Trump says Europe bolsters its economy at America’s expense

President Trump accused the European Central Bank yesterday of trying to prop up Europe’s economy and weaken its currency to gain a competitive edge over the U.S., Jeanna Smialek and Jack Ewing of the NYT report.

The E.C.B. is trying to stimulate the continent’s economy. Mario Draghi, the central bank’s president, said yesterday that “additional stimulus will be required” to help Europe withstand economic challenges. Those comments caused European financial markets to rally and the euro to decline sharply against the dollar.

Mr. Trump harshly criticized that move on Twitter, accusing Mr. Draghi of deliberately pushing down the value of the euro “making it unfairly easier for them to compete against the USA.” He added, “They have been getting away with this for years, along with China and others.”

The president sees the economy as a zero-sum game: If another country is winning, the U.S. must be losing. “Mr. Trump is viewing international economic policies through an increasingly narrow lens, observing only how decisions will affect the United States and seeing other countries’ attempts to help their economies as working against America’s interests,” Ms. Smialek and Mr. Ewing write.

But he may be overlooking America’s impact on the global economy. “President Trump’s trade war is chilling business investment, confidence and trade flows across the world, a development that foreign leaders and business executives say is worsening a global economic slowdown that was already underway,” Ms. Smialek, Mr. Ewing and Jim Tankersley write in another NYT article.

Does Adidas have a diversity problem?

The German sportswear brand revived its fortunes over the past decade by partnering with black superstars like Beyoncé, Kanye West and Pharrell Williams. But black employees in its North American arm say they routinely face discrimination and marginalization, Julie Creswell and Kevin Draper of the NYT report.

• “Of the nearly 1,700 Adidas employees at the Portland campus, fewer than 4.5 percent identify as black, according to internal employment figures from last summer that were shared with The New York Times.”

• “Only three people, or about 1 percent, of Adidas’s roughly 340 worldwide vice presidents last year were black, according to two people with knowledge of the figures.”

• “Several current and former Adidas employees said they were frequently the only black person in meetings and often felt their input was not valued when decisions were being made.”

• D’Wayne Edwards, a former Nike designer who now runs a footwear design academy, told the NYT, “Some companies have said for years that they want to create a diverse workplace, but if anything, the numbers are getting worse. And they don’t care. It’s a lot of lip service.”

America’s favorite C.E.O.s, according to employees

Which workplace most values its leader? According to a list compiled by Glassdoor, the jobs listing site that lets employees anonymously rate their bosses, that would be the software maker VMware. Its C.E.O., Pat Gelsinger, got a 99 percent approval rating from his staff.

Here are other notable names on the list:

6. Satya Nadella of Microsoft

17. Marc Benioff and Keith Block of Salesforce

36. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase

46. Sundar Pichai of Google

55. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook

67. James Gorman of Morgan Stanley

69. Tim Cook of Apple

Most interesting is Mr. Zuckerberg’s slide. He fell 39 spots, from No. 16 last year, and his approval rating of 94 percent is down two percentage points. That is perhaps unsurprising, given the controversy he and his company have generated over the past year.

Steve Schwarzman’s huge gift to Oxford

The Blackstone co-founder and C.E.O. has given 150 million pounds, or $188 million, to the University of Oxford. It’s the single biggest gift to a British university in modern history, and the latest mega-donation by the billionaire to institutions of higher learning.

The donation will establish a new building for humanities studies, including an institute to study the ethics of artificial intelligence. The FT reports that historians “had been unable to find a larger donation than Mr. Schwarzman’s since the Renaissance.”

The gift follows a $350 million donation to M.I.T. that Mr. Schwarzman made last year to establish the Schwarzman College of Computing.

“It is clear we need to develop a robust discussion on which technologies we can implement, how fast, and when,” Mr. Schwarzman told the FT, explaining his donation. “It has to be done in a very smart and very balanced way.”

The Blackstone chief has given hundreds of millions to universities over the years, including to Tsinghua University in China to establish a scholarship program and to his alma mater, Yale. He also donated $100 million to the New York Public Library, which renamed its main building after him.

Revolving door

Patrick Shanahan will step down as acting defense secretary. He will be replaced by Mark Esper, the secretary of the Army and a former Raytheon executive.

Felicia Mayo has stepped down as Tesla’s vice president of human resources and its head of diversity.

Peter Moyo was fired as C.E.O. of Old Mutual over his involvement in a private equity firm that the South African insurer holds a stake in.

Chris Willcox will retire as the head of JPMorgan Chase’s asset management unit. He will be replaced by George Gatch.

The speed read

Deals

• SoftBank’s C.E.O., Masa Son, said that most investors in the company’s first Vision Fund want to contribute to its forthcoming successor. (Reuters)

• CBS reportedly plans to make an offer for its sister media company, Viacom, in the coming weeks. (WSJ)

• Dish Network is reportedly near a deal to pay $6 billion for assets that T-Mobile plans to sell to win regulatory approval for its proposed takeover of Sprint. (Bloomberg)

• WeWork’s lease obligations are said to have ballooned to $34 billion last year, potentially casting a shadow over its planned I.P.O. (WSJ)

Politics and policy

• Joe Biden told donors at a Manhattan fund-raiser yesterday that he doesn’t want to “demonize” the rich: “I need you very badly.” (Bloomberg)

• President Trump kicked off his 2020 re-election campaign yesterday at a rally that played up his economic accomplishments and attacked his political opponents. (NYT)

• New York lawmakers passed their own version of the Green New Deal for the state, which aims to all but eliminate its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. (NYT)

• House Democrats introduced legislation that would extend dozens of tax breaks that are at risk of expiring soon, including for biodiesel fuel and for medical expenses. (WSJ)

• Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, will reportedly endorse a second public vote on any Brexit deal. (Reuters)

Tech

• Google pledged to invest $1 billion in land and money to help build homes in the Bay Area and ease the region’s housing crisis. (NYT)

• Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, is introducing legislation that would hold tech companies liable for political bias on their platforms. (Hill)

• Amazon is renting more jets to help it expand next-day delivery. (WSJ)

• Tesla reportedly hasn’t met recent Model 3 production goals set by Elon Musk. (Business Insider)

• “Inside Backpage.com’s vicious battle with the Feds.” (Wired)

Best of the rest

• The Renault-Nissan alliance is reportedly crumbling, according to unnamed insiders. (FT)

• The sugar rush of President Trump’s tax cuts is over — and bonuses have fallen again. (WSJ)

• Is China on the brink of its Lehman Brothers moment? (Bloomberg Opinion)

• International Airlines Group, which owns British Airways, will order 200 of Boeing’s still-grounded 737 Max aircraft. (FT)

• A JPMorgan Chase hedge fund, Highbridge, is refocusing on corporate debt investing. (FT)

• There are three people on the planet worth more than $100 billion: Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and, now, the French mogul Bernard Arnault. (Bloomberg)

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