Executives at some of Russia’s biggest banks have privately discussed seeking a state-funded bailout if the level of bad loans on their books continues to worsen over the next year. The banks’ assessment of the quality of their loan books is far worse than what official data show, according to current and former officials and documents. The banks have discussed internally how they would raise the prospect of a bailout with the central bank should that become necessary.
Central bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina has downplayed the risk of a systemic crisis, saying Russia’s banking system was “well capitalized” and had capital reserves of 8 trillion rubles. Russia has used bailouts and other mechanisms to recapitalize failing banks in the past. In 2017, the central bank spent at least 1 trillion rubles to rescue three large private banks, Otkritie, Promsvyazbank and B&N Bank, a move it said was necessary to save the financial system.
Amazon is firing people working in its cloud-computing division, making it the latest big tech company to engage in mass terminations of employees, ostensibly to fund artificial intelligence. The dismissals affected various teams at Amazon Web Services.
The move comes weeks after Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy said he expected the company’s workforce to decline in the next few years as the company uses AI to handle more tasks. Earlier this month, Microsoft, which also has been spending lavishly on AI, began firing 9,000 of its workers, its second round of cuts this year.
USAID workers reportedly lobbied for weeks to save emergency food rations meant for distribution to the needy following Trump’s funding cuts, with a US official only agreeing to a deal for the food to be used after a warning of “wasted tax dollars,” Reuters said. While a deal saved more than 600 metric tons of food in June, almost 500 tons is to be destroyed.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has defended Trump’s move to deny funding to aid programs. A recent study warned that Trump’s dismantling of such efforts could result in 14 million deaths by 2030, mostly of children. A model by researchers at Boston University estimated hundreds of thousands of people, also mostly infants and children, have already died as a result of Trump’s shuttering of USAID.
QTS Founder Chad Williams and Blackstone were on a hot streak. Read the Story
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials will get access to Medicaid recipients’ personal data as part of an effort to radically expand Trump’s immigration crackdown, the Associated Press reported. The unprecedented breach of privacy for roughly one quarter of all Americans will include home addresses and ethnicities, allowing ICE employees to target more people for arrest.
Earlier this month, 20 state attorneys general sought to block the administration from sharing personal health data with the Department of Homeland Security for immigration enforcement. The data sharing violates the Medicaid Act, the attorneys general said, which allows sharing of personal information only in narrow circumstances that benefit public health and the integrity of the Medicaid program.
Tokyo’s biggest filmmaker is looking to expand its prehistoric “atomic-breathing” creature into games and attractions around the world. Read the Story
