Morning Brief: Top Stories Dominating Financial Media On Wednesday, March 9th

CNBC

• Janet Yellen's Leaked Press Release Reveals Details Of Biden's Crypto Executive Order
  • A now-deleted press release from the office of Janet Yellen details how the Treasury would respond to U.S. President Joe Biden's executive order on cryptocurrency.
  • What Happened: "Under the executive order, Treasury will partner with interagency colleagues to produce a report on the future of money and payment systems," the statement read.

• High Possibility Of Recession If Oil Prices Continue To Surge
  • Analysts have cautioned that the U.S. ban on Russian oil could worsen the already-spiking oil and food prices and set off a recession if further escalated, reports CNBC.
  • "If Russia retaliates by refusing to supply Europe with oil, that could "easily" send oil prices up another $20 to $30 per barrel", Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, told CNBC.

Reuters

• US Could Ease Venezuela Sanctions Conditional On Direct Oil Supply
  • The U.S. officials have demanded that Venezuela supply some of the oil exports to the U.S. to ease oil trading sanctions on the OPEC member nation.
  • Venezuela has been under U.S. oil sanctions since 2019 and could reroute crude if those restrictions were lifted. The officials said that any relaxation in U.S. sanctions would be conditional on Venezuela shipping oil directly to the U.S.

• International Energy Agency To Draw Up Plan To Cut Oil Usage As Prices Surge
  • The International Energy Agency (IEA) head says they could plan to release more oil from stocks to ease surging fuel prices and would draw up an action plan to reduce oil usage swiftly.
  • "Next week, as we did for gas, we are coming up with a 10-point action plan how to reduce oil in a hurry," Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, told an energy conference in Paris.

• Rental Car Companies Mull Electrification
  • After a stellar performance boosted by the pandemic, the rental car industry is poised to embrace electrification.
  • Asian automakers could enter the electric transition, dominated by companies in the west, mainly in the U.S. and Europe.

• Chinese Firms That Aid Russia May Be Cut Off From US Equipment: Commerce Secretary
  • Chinese companies that defy U.S. restrictions against exporting to Russia may be cut off from American equipment and software they need to make their products, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told the New York Times.

WSJ

• Gannett Hoodwinked Advertisers For Nine Months
  • Gannett Co Inc GCI, owner of USA Today, misguided advertisers with inaccurate information for nine months, the Wall Street Journal reported.
  • Gannett misguided advertisers saying they were buying an ad on one Gannett site, often in USA Today, but were provided space on another.

• DOJ, SEC Investigate Possible Insider Trading Violation On Microsoft-Activision Deal
  • Federal prosecutors and securities regulators are investigating three men with an unrealized profit of ~$60 million on the options trade, betting on Microsoft Corp's MFST acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc ATVI.
  • The Justice Department investigated for possible violation of insider-trading law by the options trades violated insider-trading laws. The SEC separately conducted a civil insider-trading investigation.

• Tesla Chief Wants To End 2018 Fraud Settlement With SEC
  • Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk requested a federal judge to discard a settlement he reached with SEC regulators in 2018.
  • The settlement sought the preapproval of some of Musk's tweets.
  • Musk's lawyers argued that Twitter Inc's TWTR oversight policy became ineffective, while the SEC has abused the deal, which called for "round after round of demands for voluminous, costly document productions, with no signs of abatement.

Bloomberg

• Taiwan's Latest Power Outage Was Not Due To Hack, Government Investigation Inferred
  • Bloomberg reports that government investigation ascribed Taiwan's recent power outage to defective design and inferior communication ending speculations of possible cyberattack.
  • A maintenance team at Hsinta had removed insulating gas from a circuit breaker at the plant on March 2 and warned operators not to route electricity through the equipment.

• San Francisco's 'New Normal' Is Being in Office 3 Days a Week
  • From the 200 employers surveyed in the San Francisco Bay Area, 71% have either brought non-essential workers back to the office or plan to do so by mid-March, according to a poll released Tuesday by the Bay Area Council, a business advocacy group.
  • "We know we won't return to a five-day in-person work week, but we are eager to start planning our cities and workplaces for a hybrid environment that is good for workers and good for economic development," Gwen Litvak, Bay Area Council senior vice president, public policy, said in a statement.

Financial Times

• Russia-Ukraine Crisis Could Dampen EV Ambitions Of Tesla, Ford, And Others
  • Russia's attack on Ukraine has highlighted concerns about oil dependency and petrol prices, just as EV manufacturers look to deliver a wide range of greener cars.
  • Ukraine is a significant producer of the miles of cables and connectors that power many cars' electrical systems. Russia's importance as the crucial rare earth minerals provider will be a significant headwind.

Photo Courtesy Wikimedia Commons