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    How Wall Street Escaped the Crypto Meltdown

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    Last November, in the midst of an exuberant cryptocurrency market, analysts at BNP Paribas, a French bank with a Wall Street presence, pulled together a list of 50 stocks they thought were overpriced — including many with strong links to digital assets.They nicknamed this collection the “cappuccino basket,” a nod to the frothiness of the stocks. The bank then spun those stocks into a product that essentially gave its biggest clients — pension funds, hedge funds, the managers of multibillion-dollar family fortunes and other sophisticated investors — an opportunity to bet that the assets would eventually crash.In the past month, as the froth around Bitcoin and other digital currencies dissipated, taking down some cryptocurrency companies that had sprung up to aid in their trading, the value of the cappuccino basket shrank by half.Wall Street clients of BNP who bet that would happen are sitting pretty. Those on the other side of the trade — the small investors who loaded up on overpriced crypto assets and stocks during a retail trading boom — are reeling.“The moves in crypto were coincident with retail money flooding into U.S. equities and equity options,” said Greg Boutle, who heads BNP’s U.S. equities and derivatives strategy group, which put together the trade. “There’s a big bifurcation between retail positioning and institutional positioning.” He declined to name the specific stocks that BNP clients got to bet against.In the great cryptocurrency blood bath of 2022, Wall Street is winning.“The moves in crypto were coincident with retail money flooding into U.S. equities and equity options,” said Greg Boutle of BNP Paribas.Benoit Tessier/ReutersIt’s not that financial giants didn’t want to be part of the fun. But Wall Street banks have been forced to sit it out — or, like BNP, approach crypto with ingenuity — partly because of regulatory guardrails put in place after the 2008 financial crisis. At the same time, big money managers applied sophisticated strategies to limit their direct exposure to cryptocurrencies because they recognized the risks. So when the market crashed, they contained their losses.“You hear of the stories of institutional investors dipping their toes, but it’s a very small part of their portfolios,” said Reena Aggarwal, a finance professor at Georgetown University and the director of its Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy.Unlike their fates in the financial crisis, when the souring of subprime mortgages backed by complex securities took down both banks and regular people, leading to a recession, the fortunes of Wall Street and Main Street have diverged more fully this time. (Bailouts eventually saved the banks last time.) Collapsing digital asset prices and struggling crypto start-ups didn’t contribute much to the recent convulsions in financial markets, and the risk of contagion is low.But if the crypto meltdown has been a footnote on Wall Street, it is a bruising event for many individual investors who poured their cash into the cryptocurrency market.“I really do worry about the retail investors who had very little funds to invest,” Ms. Aggarwal said. “They are getting clobbered.”Lured by the promise of quick returns, astronomical wealth and an industry that isn’t controlled by the financial establishment, many retail investors bought newly created digital currencies or stakes in funds that held these assets. Many were first-time traders who, stuck at home during the pandemic, also dived into meme stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment.They were bombarded by ads from cryptocurrency start-ups, like apps that promised investors outsize returns on their crypto holdings or funds that gave them exposure to Bitcoin. Sometimes, these investors made investment decisions that weren’t tied to value, egging on one another using online discussion platforms like Reddit.Spurred partly by the frenzy, the cryptocurrency industry blossomed quickly. At its height, the market for digital assets reached $3 trillion — a large number, although no bigger than JPMorgan Chase’s balance sheet. It sat outside the traditional financial system, an alternative space with little regulation and an anything-goes mentality.The meltdown began in May when TerraUSD, a cryptocurrency that was supposed to be pegged to the dollar, began to sink, dragged down by the collapse of another currency, Luna, to which it was algorithmically linked. The death spiral of the two coins tanked the broader digital asset market.Bitcoin, worth over $47,000 in March, fell to $19,000 on June 18. Five days earlier, a cryptocurrency lender called Celsius Networks that offered high-yield crypto savings accounts, halted withdrawals.Martin Robert has two Bitcoins stuck on Celsius Networks and is afraid he will never see them again. He had planned to cash the coins in to pay down debt.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesThe fortunes of many small investors also began tanking.On the day that Celsius froze withdrawals, Martin Robert, a day trader in Henderson, Nev., was preparing to celebrate his 31st birthday. He had promised his wife that he would take some time off from watching the markets. Then he saw the news.“I couldn’t take my coins out fast enough,” Mr. Robert said. “We’re being held hostage.”Mr. Robert has two Bitcoins stuck on the Celsius network and is afraid he’ll never see them again. Before their price plunged, he intended to cash the Bitcoins out to pay down around $30,000 in credit card debt. He still believes that digital assets are the future, but he said some regulation was necessary to protect investors.“Pandora’s box is opened — you can’t close it,” Mr. Robert said.Beth Wheatcraft, a 35-year-old mother of three in Saginaw, Mich., who uses astrology to guide her investing decisions, said trading in crypto required a “stomach of steel.” Her digital assets are mostly in Bitcoin, Ether and Litecoin — as well as some Dogecoins that she can’t recover because they are stored on a computer with a corrupted hard drive.Ms. Wheatcraft stayed away from Celsius and other firms offering similar interest-bearing accounts, saying she saw red flags.Beth Wheatcraft, a mother of three, said trading in crypto required a “stomach of steel.”Sarah Rice for The New York TimesThe Bitcoin Trust, a fund popular with small investors, is also experiencing turmoil. Grayscale, the cryptocurrency investment firm behind the fund, pitched it as a way to invest in crypto without the risks because it alleviated the need for investors to buy Bitcoin themselves.But the fund’s structure doesn’t allow for new shares to be created or eliminated quickly enough to keep up with changes in investor demand. This became a problem when the price of Bitcoin began to sink rapidly. Investors struggling to get out drove the fund’s share price well below the price of Bitcoin.In October, Grayscale asked regulators for permission to transform the fund into an exchange-traded fund, which would make trading easier and thus align its shares more closely with the price of Bitcoin. Last Wednesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission denied the request. Grayscale quickly filed a petition challenging the decision.When the crypto market was rollicking, Wall Street banks sought ways to participate, but regulators wouldn’t allow it. Last year, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which helps set capital requirements for big banks around the world, proposed giving digital tokens like Bitcoin and Ether the highest possible risk weighting. So if banks wanted to put those coins on their balance sheets, they would have to hold at least the equivalent value in cash to offset the risk.U.S. bank regulators have also warned banks to stay away from activities that would land cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets. That meant no loans collateralized by Bitcoin or other digital tokens; no market making services where banks took on the risk of ensuring that a particular market remained liquid enough for trading; and no prime brokerage services, where banks help the trading of hedge funds and other large investors, which also involves taking on risk for every trade.Banks thus ended up offering clients limited products related to crypto, allowing them an entree into this emerging world without running afoul of regulators.Goldman Sachs put Bitcoin prices on its client portals so clients could see the prices move even though they couldn’t use the bank’s services to trade them. Both Goldman and Morgan Stanley began offering some of their wealthiest individual clients the chance to buy shares of funds linked to digital assets rather than giving them ways to buy tokens directly.The headquarters of Goldman Sachs. Only a small subset of the company’s clients qualified to buy investments linked to crypto through the bank.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesOnly a small subset of Goldman’s clients qualified to buy investments linked to crypto through the bank, said Mary Athridge, a Goldman Sachs spokeswoman. Clients had to go through a “live training” session and attest to having received warnings from Goldman about the riskiness of the assets. Only then were they allowed to put money into “third party funds” that the bank had examined first.Morgan Stanley clients couldn’t put more than 2.5 percent of their total net worth into such investments, and investors could invest in only two crypto funds — including the Galaxy Bitcoin Fund — run by outside managers with traditional banking backgrounds.Still, those managers may not have escaped the crypto crash. Mike Novogratz, the chief executive of Galaxy Digital and a former Goldman banker and investor, told New York magazine last month that he had taken on too much risk. Galaxy Digital Asset Management’s total assets under management, which peaked at nearly $3.5 billion in November, fell to around $1.4 billion by the end of May, according to a recent disclosure by the firm. Had Galaxy not sold a major chunk of Luna three months before it collapsed, Mr. Novogratz would have been in worse shape.But while Mr. Novogratz, a billionaire, and the wealthy bank clients can easily survive their losses or were saved by strict regulations, retail investors had no such safeguards.Jacob Willette, a 40-year-old man in Mesa, Ariz. who works as a DoorDash delivery driver, stored his entire life savings in an account with Celsius that promised high returns. At its peak, the stored value was $120,000, Mr. Willette said.He planned to use the money to buy a house. When crypto prices started to slide, Mr. Willette looked for reassurance from Celsius executives that his money was safe. But all he found online were evasive answers from company executives as the platform struggled, eventually freezing more than $8 billion in deposits.Celsius representatives did not respond to requests for comment.“I trusted these people,” Mr. Willette said. “I just don’t see how what they did is not illegal.” More

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    New F.T.C. Majority Gives Lina Khan a Chance to Push an Aggressive Agenda

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    The confirmation of a third Democrat creates an opportunity for Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission’s chair, to advance efforts to rein in corporate power.WASHINGTON — The confirmation of a third Democrat to the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday broke a partisan deadlock at the agency. That’s good news for Lina Khan, the agency’s chair and a Democrat.It is also a test.With the F.T.C.’s new Democratic majority — which came with the confirmation of Alvaro Bedoya, who becomes the fifth commissioner, in a slot that had been vacant since October — Ms. Khan’s allies and critics are watching to see if she pushes forward plans to address corporate power. That could include filing an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, setting online privacy rules and tapping little-used agency powers to clip the wings of companies like Meta, Apple and Google.As Congress remains gridlocked and the midterm elections near, agencies like the F.T.C. and the Department of Justice are likely the best remaining hope for activists and policymakers who want the government to restrain corporate power. President Biden, who has promised to crack down, last year ordered the F.T.C. and other federal agencies to take steps to limit concentration.Under Ms. Khan, 33, who became the chair in June, the F.T.C. has already tried tamping down mergers by threatening to challenge deals after they close. The commission has said it will punish companies that make it hard for users to repair their products. And it settled a case with the company once known as Weight Watchers over a diet app that collected data from young children.But Ms. Khan’s new Democratic majority is essential for a broader “realization of her vision,” said William E. Kovacic, a former chair of the F.T.C. “And the clock’s ticking.”In a statement, Ms. Khan said she was “excited” to work with Mr. Bedoya and the other commissioners. She did not address how the F.T.C.’s new majority would affect her plans.The F.T.C.’s previous split between two Republicans and two Democrats led to impasses. In February, the commission couldn’t reach an agreement to move forward with a study of the practices of pharmacy benefit managers.Sarah Miller, the executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, a progressive group that wants more antitrust enforcement, described the F.T.C.’s two Republicans, Noah Phillips and Christine Wilson, as “libertarian holdouts” who have “kind of thrown the brakes” on Ms. Khan’s ability to advance her agenda.Mr. Phillips said in an email that he supported the commission’s “long tradition of bipartisan work to advance the interests of American consumers.” But he will not support Ms. Khan’s agenda when it “exceeds our legal authority,” raises prices for consumers or harms innovation, he said.Ms. Wilson pointed to three speeches she gave over the last year criticizing Ms. Khan’s philosophy. In one speech last month, Ms. Wilson said Ms. Khan and her allies were drawing on tenets from Marxism.Alvaro Bedoya, a Democrat, was confirmed on Wednesday as the fifth member of the F.T.C.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader, said Wednesday’s vote confirming Mr. Bedoya was “pivotal to unshackling the F.T.C.”Now Ms. Khan may gain the ability to pursue a legal case against Amazon. She wrote a student law review article in 2017 criticizing the company’s dominance. The F.T.C. began investigating the retail giant under the Trump administration; some state attorneys general have also conducted inquiries into the company.Ms. Khan could file a lawsuit to challenge Amazon’s recent purchase of the movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. When the $8.5 billion transaction closed in March, an F.T.C. spokeswoman noted that the agency “may challenge a deal at any time if it determines that it violates the law.”Ms. Khan may put her stamp on other deals. The agency is examining Microsoft’s $70 billion purchase of the video game publisher Activision Blizzard and sent a request to the companies this year for additional information.An executive order from Mr. Biden last year encouraging more aggressive antitrust policy pushed the F.T.C. and the Justice Department to update the guidelines they use to approve deals, which could lead to stricter scrutiny. Ms. Khan is likely to need the support of the commission’s two other Democrats, Mr. Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, to approve aggressive new guidelines or to challenge major mergers.Ms. Khan has also said she wants to bulk up the agency’s powers by considering regulations governing privacy and how algorithms make decisions. She has said that the F.T.C. underutilized its role as a rules-making body and that regulations would enhance its mandate to protect consumers.“Given that our economy will only continue to further digitize, marketwide rules could help provide clear notice and render enforcement more impactful and efficient,” she said last month at a privacy conference.The F.T.C. could also act on requests from progressive activist groups that want the agency to ban data-driven advertising business models and forbid noncompete agreements that stop workers from taking a job with a competitor of their current employer.But former F.T.C. officials said Ms. Khan faced challenges, even with the Democratic majority. The creation of privacy regulations could take years, said Daniel Kaufman, a former deputy head of the agency’s consumer protection bureau. Businesses are likely to challenge rules in court that don’t fit into the F.T.C.’s mandate to protect consumers from deceptive and unfair practices.“The F.T.C.’s rule-making abilities are not designed to tackle behavioral advertising so I’ve been telling my clients the agency could kick something off with a lot of press but it’s unclear where it will go,” Mr. Kaufman, a partner at the law firm BakerHostetler, said.Ms. Khan’s efforts are also sure to continue facing opposition from Mr. Phillips and Ms. Wilson. Mr. Phillips has said he has reservations about the agency’s becoming a more muscular regulator. In January, he said Congress, not the F.T.C., should be the one to make new privacy rules.Ms. Wilson recently posted screenshots of an internal survey showing that satisfaction among the F.T.C.’s career staff has fallen. “New leadership has marginalized and disrespected staff, resulting in a brain drain that will take a generation to fix,” she said.To overcome their opposition, Ms. Khan will have to keep her majority intact. That gives leverage to Mr. Bedoya, a privacy expert who has focused on the civil rights dangers of new technologies, and Ms. Slaughter, a former top member of Senator Schumer’s staff.Ms. Slaughter said in a statement that Mr. Bedoya’s privacy expertise would serve the F.T.C. well. She did not comment on the agency’s Democratic majority.Mr. Bedoya was tight-lipped about his own plans, saying only that he was “excited” to work with his new F.T.C. colleagues. More

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    Biden to Nominate Michael Barr as Fed Vice Chair for Supervision

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    The Biden administration said on Friday that it intended to nominate Michael S. Barr, a law professor and a former Obama administration official, to be the Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision.The position — one of America’s top financial regulatory spots — has proved to be a particularly thorny one to fill.The administration’s initial nominee, Sarah Bloom Raskin, failed to win Senate confirmation after Republicans took issue with her writing on climate-related financial oversight and seized on her limited answers about her private-sector work. Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, joined Republicans in deciding not to support her, ending her chances.Mr. Barr, the dean of the University of Michigan’s public policy school, could also face challenges in securing widespread support. He was a leading contender to be nominated as comptroller of the currency but ran into opposition from progressive Democrats.Some of the complaints centered on his work in government: As a Treasury Department official during the Obama administration, Mr. Barr played a major role in putting together the Dodd-Frank Act, which revamped financial regulation after the 2008 financial crisis. But some said he opposed some especially stringent measures for big banks.Other opponents when his name was floated for that post focused on his private-sector work with the financial technology and cryptocurrency industry.But President Biden described Mr. Barr as a qualified candidate who would bring years of experience to the job.“Barr has strong support from across the political spectrum,” the president said in a statement announcing the decision. He noted that Mr. Barr had been confirmed to his Treasury post “on a bipartisan basis.”Senator Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement, “I will support this key nominee, and I strongly urge my Republican colleagues to abandon their old playbook of personal attacks and demagoguery.”Ian Katz, managing director at the research and advisory firm Capital Alpha, put Mr. Barr’s chance of confirmation at 60 percent. “Barr is seen by many as more moderate than Sarah Bloom Raskin,” Mr. Katz wrote in a note ahead of the announcement but after speculation that Mr. Barr might be chosen.Mr. Barr completes Mr. Biden’s slate of candidates for the central bank’s five open positions.The other picks — Jerome H. Powell for another term as Fed chair, Lael Brainard for vice chair, and Lisa D. Cook and Philip N. Jefferson for seats on the Board of Governors — await confirmation. Those nominations have gotten past the Senate Banking Committee, the first step toward confirmation, and a vote before the full Senate is expected in the coming weeks.Mr. Biden said he would work with the committee to get Mr. Barr through his first vote quickly, and he called for swift confirmation of the others. More

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    NLRB Counsel Calls for Ban on Mandatory Anti-Union Meetings

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    The general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board issued a memo on Thursday arguing that the widespread employer practice of requiring workers to attend anti-union meetings is illegal under federal law, even though labor board precedent has allowed it.The general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, who enforces federal labor law by prosecuting violations, said her office would soon file a brief in a case before the labor board, which adjudicates such questions, asking the board to reverse its precedent on the meetings.“This license to coerce is an anomaly in labor law, inconsistent with the act’s protection of employees’ free choice,” Ms. Abruzzo said in a statement, referring to the National Labor Relations Act. “I believe that the N.L.R.B. case precedent, which has tolerated such meetings, is at odds with fundamental labor-law principles, our statutory language and our congressional mandate.”In recent months, high-profile employers like Amazon and Starbucks, which are facing growing union campaigns, have held hundreds of meetings in which they try to persuade workers not to unionize by arguing that unions are a “third party” that would come between management and workers.Amazon officials and consultants have repeatedly told workers in mandatory meetings that they “could end up with more wages and benefits than they had prior to the union, the same amount that they had or potentially could end up with less,” according to testimony from N.L.R.B. hearings about a union election in Alabama last year.The company spent more than $4 million last year on consultants who took part in such meetings and sought out workers on warehouse floors.But many workers and union officials complain that these claims are highly misleading. Unionized employees typically earn more than similar nonunion employees, and it is highly unusual for compensation to fall as a result of a union contract.Wilma B. Liebman, who headed the labor board under President Barack Obama, said it would probably be sympathetic to Ms. Abruzzo’s argument and could reverse its precedent. But Ms. Liebman said it was unclear what practical effect a reversal would have, since many employees may feel compelled to attend anti-union meetings even if they were no longer mandatory.“Those on the fence may be reluctant not to attend for fear of retaliation or being singled out,” she wrote by email.According to a spokeswoman, the board’s regional offices, which Ms. Abruzzo oversees, are also likely to issue complaints against employers over the meetings. One union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, has brought such a case in Bessemer, Ala., where it recently helped organize workers seeking to unionize an Amazon warehouse. A vote count last week showed union supporters narrowly trailing union opponents in that election, but the outcome will hinge on several hundred challenged votes whose status will be determined in the coming weeks.The labor board spokeswoman said the outcome of the board’s “lead” case on the mandatory meetings would bind the other cases. The case is pending but has not been identified. More

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    Why the U.S. Can’t Quickly Wean Europe From Russian Gas

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    The Biden administration’s plan to send more natural gas to Europe will be hampered by the lack of export and import terminals.HOUSTON — President Biden announced Friday that the United States would send more natural gas to Europe to help it break its dependence on Russian energy. But that plan will largely be symbolic, at least in the short run, because the United States doesn’t have enough capacity to export more gas and Europe doesn’t have the capacity to import significantly more.In recent months, American exporters, with President Biden’s encouragement, have already maximized the output of terminals that turn natural gas into a liquid easily shipped on large tankers. And they have diverted shipments originally bound for Asia to Europe.But energy experts said that building enough terminals on both sides of the Atlantic to significantly expand U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G., to Europe could take two to five years. That reality is likely to limit the scope of the natural gas supply announcement that Mr. Biden and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, announced on Friday.“In the near term there are really no good options, other than begging an Asian buyer or two to give up their L.N.G. tanker for Europe,” said Robert McNally, who was an energy adviser to former President George W. Bush. But he added that once sufficient gas terminals were built, the United States could become the “arsenal for energy” that helps Europe break its dependence on Russia. Friday’s agreement, which calls on the United States to help the European Union secure an additional 15 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas this year, could also undermine efforts by Mr. Biden and European officials to combat climate change. Once new export and import terminals are built, they will probably keep operating for several decades, perpetuating the use of a fossil fuel much longer than many environmentalists consider sustainable for the planet’s well-being.For now, however, climate concerns appear to be taking a back seat as U.S. and European leaders seek to punish President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for invading Ukraine by depriving him of billions of dollars in energy sales.The United States has already increased energy exports to Europe substantially. So far this year, nearly three-quarters of U.S. L.N.G. has gone to Europe, up from 34 percent for all of 2021. As prices for natural gas have soared in Europe, American companies have done everything they can to send more gas there. The Biden administration has helped by getting buyers in Asian countries like Japan and South Korea to forgo L.N.G. shipments so they could be sent to Europe.The United States has plenty of natural gas, much of it in shale fields from Pennsylvania to the Southwest. Gas bubbles out of the ground with oil from the Permian Basin, which straddles Texas and New Mexico, and producers there are gradually increasing their output of both oil and gas after greatly reducing production in the first year of the pandemic, when energy prices collapsed.But the big problem with sending Europe more energy is that natural gas, unlike crude oil, cannot easily be put on oceangoing ships. The gas has to first be chilled in an expensive process at export terminals, mostly on the Gulf Coast. The liquid gas is then poured into specialized tankers. When the ships arrive at their destination, the process is run in reverse to convert L.N.G. back into gas.A large export or import terminal can cost more than $1 billion, and planning, obtaining permits and completing construction can take years. There are seven export terminals in the United States and 28 large-scale import terminals in Europe, which also gets L.N.G. from suppliers like Qatar and Egypt.Some European countries, including Germany, have until recently been uninterested in building L.N.G. terminals because it was far cheaper to import gas by pipeline from Russia. Germany is now reviving plans to build its first L.N.G. import terminal on its northern coast.A pier in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, the port where Uniper, a German energy company, wanted to build a liquified natural gas terminal before it was shelved. Now Germany is reviving plans to build it.The New York Times“Europe’s need for gas far exceeds what the system can supply,” said Nikos Tsafos, an energy analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Diplomacy can only do so much.”In the longer term, however, energy experts say the United States could do a lot to help Europe. Along with the European Union, Washington could provide loan guarantees for U.S. export and European import terminals to reduce costs and accelerate construction. Governments could require international lending institutions like the World Bank and the European Investment Bank to make natural gas terminals, pipelines and processing facilities a priority. And they could ease regulations that gas producers, pipeline builders and terminal developers argue have made it more difficult or expensive to build gas infrastructure.Charif Souki, executive chairman of Tellurian, a U.S. gas producer that is planning to build an export terminal in Louisiana, said he hoped the Biden administration would streamline permitting and environmental reviews “to make sure things happen quickly without micromanaging everything.” He added that the government could encourage banks and investors, some of whom have recently avoided oil and gas projects in an effort to burnish their climate credentials, to lend to projects like his.“If all the major banks in the U.S. and major institutions like BlackRock and Blackstone feel comfortable investing in hydrocarbons, and they are not going to be criticized, we will develop $100 billion worth of infrastructure we need,” Mr. Souki said.A handful of export terminals are under construction in the United States and could increase exports by roughly a third by 2026. Roughly a dozen U.S. export terminal projects have been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission but can’t go ahead until they secure financing from investors and lenders.“That’s the bottleneck,” Mr. Tsafos said.Roughly 10 European import terminals are being built or are in the planning stages in Italy, Belgium, Poland, Germany, Cyprus and Greece, but most still don’t have their financing lined up.The Russia-Ukraine War and the Global EconomyCard 1 of 6Rising concerns. More

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    NLRB Issues a Complaint Against Starbucks

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    The National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint against Starbucks on Tuesday over accusations that it retaliated against two employees seeking to unionize their store in Phoenix.The workers are part of a campaign that has created unions at six stores in the Buffalo area and Arizona since December, out of roughly 9,000 company-owned stores nationwide. Overall, workers at more than 100 Starbucks locations have filed for union elections during that time.The formal complaint — something a regional office of the labor board issues after investigating and finding merit in accusations against employers or unions — is the first of the current Starbucks campaign. It contends that Starbucks issued a written warning to one employee and suspended her, and rejected the scheduling preferences of a second employee, leading to her termination, because the employees supported the union.In addition, the complaint states that the first employee, Laila Dalton, was suspended and disciplined for raising concerns about wages, hours and insufficient staffing on behalf of co-workers, and that the retaliation was intended to discourage other employees from raising similar concerns, even though it is their legal right to do so.If the regional office is successful in prosecuting the case through an administrative law judge, Starbucks will have to advise employees of their rights to engage in protected activities like complaining about wages and staffing. The company would also have to make the second employee, Alyssa Sanchez, whole for the losses she suffered as a result of her effective termination. The agency could seek other remedies as well. The company could appeal the decision to the full N.L.R.B. in Washington.“Today is the first step in holding Starbucks accountable for its unacceptable behavior during the unionizing efforts in our store and stores around the country,” Bill Whitmire, a barista at the store who is involved in the union campaign, said in a statement. “Laila and Alyssa were traumatized, and their hope is that no other partner EVER has to go through what they have gone through.”Reggie Borges, a company spokesman, reiterated previous denials of accusations of anti-union activity.The union representing Starbucks employees, Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, has brought similar charges on behalf of other workers around the country, including roughly 20 two weeks ago. More

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    Biden Withdraws Sarah Bloom Raskin as Nominee for Fed’s Top Bank Cop

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    President Biden will withdraw his nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin to serve as the Federal Reserve’s top bank regulator on Tuesday, after a Democratic senator said he would join Republicans in voting against her, most likely dooming her chances of confirmation.Ms. Raskin earlier on Tuesday sent a letter to the White House asking to withdraw her name from consideration to be the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, according to two people familiar with the decision. The New Yorker earlier reported the existence of the letter.“Sarah was subject to baseless attacks from industry and conservative interest groups,” Mr. Biden said in a statement released on Tuesday afternoon.While the end of Ms. Raskin’s candidacy will leave the Biden administration without the regulatory voice it was hoping for at the Fed Board, which oversees the nation’s largest banks, it could pave the way toward confirmation for the White House’s other Fed picks. Republicans had been stonewalling Ms. Raskin’s nomination, and in the process they were holding up the White House’s four other Fed nominees, including Jerome H. Powell, who is seeking confirmation to a second term as Fed chair.Besides Mr. Powell, Mr. Biden has nominated Lael Brainard to be the Fed’s vice chair and two academic economists — Philip N. Jefferson and Lisa D. Cook — to serve as governors.“I urge the Senate Banking Committee to move swiftly to confirm the four eminently qualified nominees for the Board of Governors,” Mr. Biden wrote in his statement.Ms. Raskin almost certainly lacked sufficient support to pass the Senate. Republicans opposed her nomination to be vice chair for bank supervision and Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, said on Monday that he would not vote to confirm her.In deciding to withhold support for Ms. Raskin, Mr. Manchin essentially doomed her chances in an evenly divided Senate. Democrats most likely needed all 50 lawmakers who caucus with their party to vote for Ms. Raskin, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to break ties.Republicans had shown little appetite for placing a supporter of tougher bank regulation into a powerful regulatory role at the Fed and had also boycotted her nomination over her work in the private sector. Lawmakers refused to show up to a key committee vote to advance her nomination to the full Senate.They had also seized on Ms. Raskin’s writings, saying her statements showed that she would be too aggressive in policing climate risks within the financial system and would overstep the unelected central bank’s boundaries.“President Biden was literally asking for senators to support a central banker who wanted to usurp the Senate’s policymaking power for herself,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said on Tuesday. He added: “It is past time the White House admit their mistake and send us someone suitable.”Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, cited Ms. Raskin’s past comments on the role that financial regulation should play in fighting climate change for his opposition.Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Manchin, who represents a coal state and has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, cited Ms. Raskin’s climate comments in explaining his opposition.Ms. Raskin had written an opinion piece in September 2021 arguing that “U.S. regulators can — and should — be looking at their existing powers and considering how they might be brought to bear on efforts to mitigate climate risk.”She did not argue that the Fed push beyond its legal boundaries, and the fierce backlash underlined that the issue of climate-related regulation is politically fraught territory in the United States.The White House “may want to take some time, lick their wounds, and make sure they carefully think about who to nominate next,” said Ian Katz, a managing director at Capital Alpha Partners. He noted that he would expect the White House to name a new nominee before the midterm elections in November. “They’re not having success with candidates who do not sit well with moderate Democrats.”Saule Omarova, a Cornell Law School professor whom critics painted as a communist after Mr. Biden picked her to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, withdrew her candidacy late last year.Opponents to Ms. Raskin’s confirmation targeted more than just her climate views. They also took issue with work she did in the private sector — and the way she answered questions about that work.Republicans had specifically cited concerns about Ms. Raskin’s time on the board of directors of a financial technology firm. The company, Reserve Trust, secured a coveted account with the Fed — giving it access to services that it now prominently advertises — after Ms. Raskin reportedly called a central bank official to intervene on its behalf.It is unclear how much Ms. Raskin’s involvement actually helped. But the episode raised questions because she previously worked at the Fed and because she made about $1.5 million from the stock she earned for her Reserve Trust work. Democrats regularly denounce the revolving door between regulators and financial firms.Republicans had demanded that Ms. Raskin provide more details about what happened while she was on the company’s board, but she had largely said she could not remember. Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the committee, led his colleagues in refusing to show up to vote on Ms. Raskin and the other Fed nominees until she provided more answers.Mr. Toomey signaled on Monday that he would favor allowing the other Fed nominees to proceed.Sherrod Brown, Democrat from Ohio and the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday that he would hold a markup for the other nominees, and later told reporters that he might move them as soon as this week.“Sadly, the American people will be denied a thoughtful, experienced public servant who was ready to fight inflation, stand up to Wall Street and corporate special interests, and protect our economy from foreign cyberattacks and climate change,” Mr. Brown said in his statement.Several more progressive Democrats expressed disappointment that Ms. Raskin would not be confirmed.“The lobbyists have power on Capitol Hill, and when they see their power threatened, they fight back hard — Sarah Bloom Raskin is just the latest casualty,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in response to the news.Michael D. 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    Oakland Cannabis Sellers, Once Full of Hope, Face a Harsh Reality

    by

    OAKLAND, Calif. — Across from where the Athletics play baseball sits a two-story concrete building painted bright orange and white. It is home to a cannabis dispensary called Blunts and Moore.A pair of inflatable “tube guys” flap crazily on the roof, beckoning customers with their windblown gyrations. A food truck sells tacos in the parking lot under a bright California sun.But there are signs that all is not well here. Bullet holes etched by an assault rifle dot the entrance. Three security guards, dressed in military fatigues, screen customers as they pass through a metal detector. One of the guards, a former infantryman, wears a camouflage Kevlar vest and mirrored sunglasses. A 9-millimeter pistol and 50 rounds of ammunition are strapped to his waist.“It’s crazy to think we need all this war stuff to protect our business,” said the store’s owner, Alphonso Blunt, who is known as Tucky. “But that’s where we are today.”In May 2020, Blunts and Moore was ransacked by thieves with automatic weapons, incurring losses of nearly $1 million, much of which insurance would not cover. The store, which has the air of a high-end boutique, was robbed again in late November, its shelves cleared and the floor speckled with blood from where the thieves had cut their hands on all the smashed glass. Struggling financially, Mr. Blunt turned to his landlord for a rescue but had to give up some managerial control of the store.This is not what Mr. Blunt, the City of Oakland or the State of California had in mind for an ambitious effort to help grow a cannabis industry and provide financial opportunity to struggling neighborhoods with a large number of Black and Hispanic residents.The city’s social equity initiative is designed to help entrepreneurs like Alphonso Blunt, who was arrested for a nonviolent cannabis offense in 2005. He was granted an equity license in 2018 by the city to run his dispensary, Blunts and Moore. Mr. Blunt is among the entrepreneurs in Oakland, many of whom are Black, who were granted equity licenses to run cannabis businesses after California legalized the substance for recreational use in 2016. Applicants who live in areas that had a high number of drug-related arrests or who have a cannabis-related arrest record are given priority to receive the licenses.Race has often been at the heart of the movement to legalize cannabis. Some states legalized the drug largely to stop the cannabis-related arrests that disproportionately ensnared Black and Hispanic people. But there has also been a push by lawmakers in states like California, Illinois and New Jersey to ensure that those same communities can profit from the legalized industry, which has been largely dominated by white owners, some of whom have made a fortune on cannabis.On Thursday, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York announced that the state planned to give its first cannabis retail licenses to people who had been convicted of a cannabis crime or their relatives.Oakland was one of the first cities to prioritize equity licenses for those like Mr. Blunt, 42, who got teased in high school because his name is a common term for a cannabis cigar. In 2005, he was arrested and accused of possessing several small bags of the drug. The nation’s emerging cannabis industry is being shaped by the broader push for racial justice and the belief that creating business opportunities for Black individuals will help lift communities.But interviews with more than 30 cannabis business owners, investors and regulators in California, an early adopter of equity licenses, show how the hope of fixing historical wrongs is being challenged by the reality of an industry facing troubled business conditions, including issues like high taxes and volatile sales.Billy Martin, left, helping a customer at Blunts and Moore. The store has been robbed at least twice, one of those times by assailants with automatic weapons.Some of the problems are being exacerbated by conflicting state and federal policies. Even as 18 states have legalized the substance for recreational use, the federal government still prohibits it.That means cannabis stores are limited in their access to federally regulated banking services, such as credit cards. Forced to deal largely in cash, the businesses can be a tantalizing target for thieves.The federal prohibition also makes it difficult to obtain bank financing or small-business loans, forcing some Black social equity applicants to enter deals with investors who sometimes end up controlling the business.Another challenge is policing. Some say the police in Oakland, at times, have not switched their mind-set from arresting cannabis dealers to protecting their legal businesses. During a wave of robberies late last year, the police never showed up to some of the crimes, business owners say. The police say a surge in crime during the pandemic has stretched their resources.Insurance companies are also adding to the challenges. Some owners said their claims were denied even though their policies indicated they would be covered. Others said they believe they were treated unfairly during the claims process because they were Black. “You are giving licenses to people who would struggle in any industry, but in cannabis, the deck is further stacked against them,” said John Hudak, deputy director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution. “States need to do a better job adjusting for the structural racism built into the system.”Since the initiative began in 2017, Oakland has granted cannabis licenses to 282 equity applicants and 328 non-equity applicants. But the city does not keep an ongoing tally of how many of those businesses are currently operating.“While not a panacea, this program is a meaningful step toward embedding fairness and justice in all we do to improve conditions for communities of color,” Greg Minor, an assistant to the city administrator, said in an email. Amid the industry’s struggles, Mr. Minor said, the state recently authorized a $5.4 million grant to support Oakland’s equity program and was considering reducing the cannabis taxes.But for Mr. Blunt, legalization has not produced the boon some might expect. Since he opened his licensed store four years ago, Mr. Blunt has yet to generate a profit.“Social equity sounds like peaches and cream,” Mr. Blunt said. “But I did better selling weed on the street than I am doing right now.”Thin margins and, often, lossesKeith Stephenson started his dispensary, Purple Heart Patient Center, in 2006, but financial difficulties and a robbery in 2020 led him to close it. He hopes to reopen.Keith Stephenson, 53, is a former aviation maintenance technician who is originally from South Los Angeles. He suffers from a severe form of arthritis and takes cannabis to relieve his constant pain.“Cannabis saved my life,” he said.Mr. Stephenson opened his dispensary on Fourth Street in downtown Oakland in 2006, 10 years after California legalized cannabis for medical use.His goal has long been to own a publicly traded cannabis company. But his store has been closed to customers for nearly two years, the result of theft, vandalism and an insurance company that he says treated him poorly because of his race.When Mr. Stephenson started his business, there were few of the generous loans or rent subsidies that the city’s equity initiative now provides. He took out a second mortgage on his house and put up $60,000 in cash as collateral for a secured bank loan. He called the store the Purple Heart Patient Center, inspired by a cannabis strain known as the Granddaddy Purple.Business was rough at first. He was losing $130,000 each month, paying to process the raw cannabis, and for security guards at the front door.Broader legalization brought more customers, but not necessarily higher profits. The state and city impose steep taxes — which can total more than 30 percent of each sale. Some dispensaries take in about $3 million in revenue annually, but their taxes and expenses leave little left over.Mr. Stephenson bought a pair of four-ton safes to store his cash and inventory.Yet there has been a perception around Oakland, he said, that cannabis operators are swimming in money.On May 29, 2020, Mr. Stephenson was watching the news about the murder of George Floyd when he looked at footage from his store’s security camera on his phone. A man was trying to break in through the bulletproof front door.Over the next few days, a band of thieves returned and ransacked the store, stealing everything they could. The police told him they were too busy with the broader unrest provoked by Mr. Floyd’s killing to help.The real fight came months later, when his insurance company reviewed his claims. The adjuster, he said, asked him “leading and insulting” questions, like whether he had left the door open or whether Mr. Stephenson personally knew any of the thieves.“Are you kidding me?” Mr. Stephenson said in recounting the conversation. “Did I leave the door open? Come on, man. Why is the door beaten in?”At one point, the adjuster falsely suggested that money had been taken from an A.T.M. inside the store. Mr. Stephenson believed the adjuster wanted to see if he could catch him in a lie. “It is my belief he would not have said that if I was a white male,” he said.Christy Thiems, a senior director at American Property Casualty Insurance Association, a trade group, said that she did not know the specifics of Mr. Stephenson’s case, but that the claims process could be difficult. Some questioning, she said, could seem offensive to a business owner because adjusters were acting like investigators. Only a limited number of insurance companies are willing to cover the cannabis industry, she added, because of the federal prohibition, and the few insurers operating in the sector are still trying to understand the “unique risk” that the businesses pose.In the end, Mr. Stephenson’s insurer rejected most of his claims. Mr. Stephenson is still planning to reopen his doors to customers late next month or in May.“There is no Plan B,” he said.‘Where are the police?’Amber Senter in the doorway of a secured area at her cannabis facility, damaged by robbers. The police wouldn’t go to the site when she reported the break-in.Weighing a package of cannabis-infused honey at Ms. Senter’s facility.The honey and other extracts can be used in edible products.In the early hours of Nov. 20, a group of 12 people, many of their faces obscured by sweatshirt hoods, streamed into Amber Senter’s cannabis manufacturing facility in East Oakland.This is where Ms. Senter provides space to help social equity cannabis businesses get off the ground.The robbers broke through the first door easily, security footage showed, then a second door and a third. Most of the cannabis product was locked in a cage, which the thieves couldn’t breach. Ms. Senter estimates that the damage totaled $20,000.But when she called the police, they told her to fill out a report online. “Where are the police?” Ms. Senter said. “Why aren’t they helping us?”Over one 24-hour period in November, the police said, they investigated more than a dozen reported burglaries of cannabis businesses across Oakland, including several in which the thieves were armed and one in which officers were shot at as they responded.That rash of robberies followed burglaries and crimes at other cannabis businesses through the spring and summer of 2020.In a statement, a spokesman for the Oakland Police Department said it “treats the cannabis businesses as it does all businesses in the city of Oakland” and added that the police were engaged in “ongoing meetings with cannabis business owners” over safety issues.Ersie Joyner, a security consultant to the cannabis industry, is a former Oakland police captain. He was shot multiple times during a robbery at this Oakland gas station.Ersie Joyner, a retired captain in the Oakland Police Department, said that after arresting drug dealers for decades, some officers still did not respect the cannabis industry as a legitimate enterprise.Mr. Joyner, who supervised Mr. Blunt’s arrest 17 years ago, understands how ingrained drug prosecution is in law enforcement.“The messaging from the highest level of government was that drugs are bad and destroying the community, and law enforcement should have zero tolerance,” Mr. Joyner said. “Looking back, it was absolutely the wrong way of dealing with this societal issue.”Mr. Joyner, who now works as a security consultant to cannabis businesses, said the police needed to adjust their attitudes. He said it took the Oakland police nearly three hours to dispatch officers to the store of one of his clients, whose cannabis business had been robbed.“If this happened to Bank of America, the police would have a more robust response,” said Mr. Joyner, who was nearly killed in a shootout with robbers at an Oakland gas station in late October. The doctors, he said, found 22 bullet holes in his body.In many instances, private security companies are acting as the unofficial police force of the city’s cannabis industry.A door broken in a robbery awaiting repair at Blunts and Moore.One security firm, Black Anchor Tactical Response, operates a set of sport utility vehicles with a color scheme similar to those of Oakland police cruisers. When a client transports cannabis from a warehouse to a store, the company’s guards, some of whom are veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, block off city streets to prevent ambushes. The firm also guards cannabis operators’ homes.While it is difficult to pinpoint what prompted surging crime during the pandemic, the legacy of mass drug arrests still looms over Oakland.About 71 percent of those arrested on suspicion of cannabis offenses in Oakland between 1995 and 2015 were Black, according to an analysis by the city. During that time, Oakland’s Black population was 30 percent.The robberies and property damage are compounding the cannabis industry’s other challenges, such as high taxes.“Why would I want to transition to the legal market if I know I am going to go broke?” said Chaney Turner, a member of the city’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission.Chaney Turner, a member of the city’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission, said the legal, heavily taxed industry had a hard time competing with the lower prices charged on the street.‘This is not sustainable’When Tucky Blunt was selected for one of Oakland’s first equity cannabis licenses in early 2018, he remembers shouting out his gratitude to the crowd gathered at City Hall.“Praise you all,” Mr. Blunt said.Mr. Blunt, who started selling cannabis to his co-workers at a grocery store when he was 16, also remembers being surrounded that day by representatives from established cannabis companies looking to be his partner. Some wanted to lend him money in exchange for an ownership stake in his store; he wanted to own it outright.But he didn’t have the money needed to start a licensed business. So he agreed to do a deal with a larger cannabis operator, Grizzly Peak, started by a real estate contractor from San Diego named Dave Gash.Grizzly Peak, which focuses on cultivating cannabis, was denied a dispensary license in Oakland and was looking for a partner to open a store.Faced with financial difficulties, Mr. Blunt, left, accepted help from his landlord but ceded more managerial control. He still owns the business.Mr. Blunt was proud of his store’s appearance: glass cases displaying cannabis cigarettes and brightly colored packs of gummies and lots of natural light.But Mr. Blunt also struggled with the rising taxes; the cost of the armed guards, who are each paid about $30 an hour; and the looting in the late spring of 2020.The bigger problem, he said, was that one of his partners, who oversaw the books, stopped paying taxes and vendors. A year ago, Mr. Blunt had to close for several months because the store’s finances were a shambles.Grizzly Peak agreed to bail him out, but Mr. Gash told Mr. Blunt, “We have to do it our way, and we need total control.”Mr. Gash’s company has now taken tighter oversight of the store and will split any profits with Mr. Blunt, who still owns a majority stake in the store but is paid a salary as a consultant.“I am grateful that Grizzly Peak believes in me,” Mr. Blunt said. “I wouldn’t be in business without them.”In late November, business was looking up. The store’s finances had been stabilized. But then, a few days before Thanksgiving, Mr. Blunt’s store was robbed for the second time in 18 months. The thieves cleared out much of the store.“This,” he said, “is not sustainable.”“My guys are seeing things they saw in combat,” said Gerritt Jones, center, who served in the Army and is the founder of Black Anchor Tactical Response, which provides security services to cannabis businesses. More