Aurelia Butler

New York instituted the eviction moratorium in March 2020 when it was the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis in the United States and extended it multiple times, even as a federal eviction ban and moratoriums in other states lapsed.State and city officials expressed concern this week about the impact of ending the moratorium, estimating that 500,000 New Yorkers needed housing aid at a time when the fast-spreading Omicron variant continued to upend social and economic life. “It’s going to be profound in New York,” said Ellen Davidson, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society. “We expect to see case filings explode and housing courts struggling to operate the way they did, pre-COVID.” While many landlords may move immediately to evict tenants, Governor Kathy Hochul said this week that renters could effectively avoid eviction by applying for a rental relief program, even though the program has been depleted.On Thursday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams joined Hochul in calling on the federal government to provide an infusion of funds for the program, arguing that the United States’ most populous city has not received its fair share of federal rent relief.Adams also launched a campaign to inform tenants of their rights. In a recorded video message the mayor stressed that it was illegal for landlords to lock tenants out of their homes and that all New Yorkers could obtain legal assistance for free.Landlords have submitted 81,530 eviction filings in New York City since March 15, 2020, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, which has compiled data on 31 cities.It was unclear how many of those cases would now move forward and how many new cases would emerge.Davidson said New York was particularly vulnerable compared to other states because it has a relatively high percentage of renters, many of whom are in low-income households. And she said the state had been “shortchanged” by the federal relief program, which was based on population rather than percentage of renters. More

WMPsare investment vehicles marketed by issuers including banks and property developers to retail and corporate investors, often paying yields far higher than deposits. They have come to prominence as some of China’s heavily indebted developers have faced a financial crisis.Cao Yu, vice chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commision told a forum in Beijing that non-compliant short-term wealth management products and products with principal guarantees had been eliminated by the end of 2021.The vast majority of banks, particularly small and medium-sized banks, had rectified their stock of WMPs on schedule, he said.Cao said that financial trust products accounted for a steadily decreasing proportion of WMPs, with non-compliant trust products, used by some companies for financing, plunging more than 80%.Chinese regulators imposed sweeping rules on the asset management sector in 2018 to rein in bank wealth management products, part of a broad push to clamp down on large and frequently opaque financial risks. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -AT&T Inc led bidders in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 5G spectrum auction of 3.45 GHz band spectrum, winning $9 billion in bids, the U.S. regulator said on Friday.The auction generated proceeds of $22.5 billion in total, the FCC said. T-Mobile won $2.9 billion while Weminuche LLC won $7.3 billion, which some analysts and FCC documents suggest bid on behalf of Dish. Dish, which did not immediately comment Friday, confirmed in November it had filed to participate in the auction.AT&T (NYSE:T) declined to comment.U.S. Cellular won $580 million in bids.The FCC said over one-third of the top 100 markets have at least four winning bidders, a broader ranger than a prior auction. The broader range and distribution of winning bidders “will increase competition by providing a diversity of wireless carriers with the midband spectrum resources needed to maintain American leadership in 5G,” it said. “Enabling commercial use of this spectrum is important to America’s continuing economic recovery and 5G leadership,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said. More

Biden plans the remarks as his larger economic package, Build Back Better, has stalled in the Senate and his poll numbers have sagged as concerns have mounted over the COVID-19 pandemic and inflation.Along with a major pandemic relief bill, the bipartisan infrastructure bill he signed in November https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-needing-boost-sign-1-trillion-infrastructure-bill-2021-11-15 stands as Biden’s biggest legislative achievement in his first year in office.The administration believes popular infrastructure investments can also ease transportation bottlenecks in the aftermath of the pandemic that have led to supply shortages and rising prices. Surveys of U.S. infrastructure regularly find the country’s major bridges and other thoroughfares in need of repair.Money for bridges will be made available to 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and sovereign tribes over five years, the Department of Transportation said. They estimate approximately 15,000 bridges could be repaired due to the investment. More

Canada on Thursday indicated that it would join Mexico in requesting a dispute settlement panel under the terms of the United States-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade pact.”It’s not an expedited process, we will have results hopefully by the third quarter of this year,” Clouthier told Milenio Television.Mexico and Canada are also unhappy about proposed U.S. tax breaks for American-based manufacturers of electric vehicles. This, they say, could undermine the highly integrated North American auto industry. More