Zoom to announce deal on Zoom; Yellen not impressed with predecessors; cryptoremorse; and more!
Zoom buys Five9 in $14.7 billion deal to prepare for a post-pandemic world [CNN]
Zoom…. said the move will "help enhance Zoom's presence with enterprise customers and allow it to accelerate its long-term growth opportunity…." The company's latest acquisition allows it to push into a whole new sector: customer service centers. Zoom itself said Sunday that it was looking to "build the customer engagement platform of the future," while estimating that it was entering a "$24 billion contact center market."
U.S. senators drop tax enforcement from bipartisan infrastructure bill -Portman [Reuters via Yahoo! News]
The provision, aimed at increasing Internal Revenue Service (IRS) collections, will instead likely be added to a separate budget "reconciliation" bill being pushed by Democrats as a vehicle for passing trillions of dollars more in spending and tax increases…. [Sen. Rob] Portman said that there was Republican "pushback" against the IRS proposal after the party learned that Democrats were also planning to add a bigger IRS enforcement proposal into the separate reconciliation spending bill.
Yellen Says China Trade Deal Has ‘Hurt American Consumers’ [NYT]
“My own personal view is that tariffs were not put in place on China in a way that was very thoughtful with respect to where there are problems and what is the U.S. interest,” she said at the conclusion of a weeklong trip to Europe…. “Tariffs are taxes on consumers. In some cases it seems to me what we did hurt American consumers, and the type of deal that the prior administration negotiated really didn’t address in many ways the fundamental problems we have with China,” she said.
Should You Worry About Inflation? Experts Weigh In. [DealBook]
Austan Goolsbee: Our situation looks more like the situations in the late 1990s, the mid-2000s, and 2017 to 2019, none of which ignited sustained inflation despite unemployment rates well below today’s…. If temporary inflation is a sign that we are headed back to a growing G.D.P. with rising wages and plentiful jobs, what’s the scare in that?
Glenn Hubbard: Thinking about it as a risk management problem, if the central bank doesn’t take its foot off the accelerator gradually now, it may have to slam on the brakes later. And if I were Chair Powell, I would tell people what the Fed really thinks, taper bond purchases and then tell people when the Fed plans to tighten.
My worry is, if the Fed doesn’t do this approach, it risks either a recession or financial instability, because of bubbling-over housing markets or excess risk taking.
Crypto Traders Loved Big Leveraged Bets Until Inexplicable Crash [Bloomberg]
A growing band of disgruntled Binance users are now organizing to pressure -- with a combination of social media and legal threats -- the exchange to compensate their losses. Regulators have also taken notice, with Binance facing increasing scrutiny in Asia, North America and Europe…. “It’s too opaque,” [University of Washington applied mathematics professor Tim Leung] said, commenting generally on a retail product structured this way. “An investor is looking at the historical leverage ratio and thinking it should be 2x, but there’s no guarantee the future leverage ratio is going to be two.”
Dozens of Ghislaine Maxwell documents unsealed in sex-trafficking case [The Independent via Yahoo! News]
The documents unsealed include part of the deposition of Rinaldo Rizzo, who previously served as a private chef for hedgefund manager Glenn Dubin. Mr Rizzo claimed that Epstein and Ms Maxwell brought a confused 15-year-old Swedish girl to Mr Dubin’s home…. He said the girl didn’t know how she had got from the island to Mr Dubin’s home….Mr Dubin and his wife Eva Andersson Dubin, who previously dated the disgraced financier, have said that they weren’t aware of Epstein’s criminal behaviour.