Tracking the Fear Index on Wall Street

June 17, 2022
Business

HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING

The Jan. 6 committee hearings focus on all the president’s men. A top lawyer for former vice president Mike Pence said Donald Trump and the lawyer John Eastman were told Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 election was illegal. In another twist, YouTube deleted a portion of the hearing uploaded by the Jan. 6 committee that focused on lies Donald Trump spread, saying the committee was spreading misinformation.

Russia puts the economic squeeze on European leaders in Ukraine. As the heads of state of Germany, France and Italy met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, Russia cut flows to Europe’s most important natural gas pipeline. The decrease in supply is raising prices, and Russia hinted there would be more supply reductions to come.

SpaceX fires employees who helped write and distribute a letter denouncing Elon Musk. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, said in an email to employees that the process of creating and circulating the letter, which called Musk’s behavior a “distraction and embarrassment,” “made employees feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied.”

Regulators investigate the crypto lender Celsius amid its meltdown. The company is facing questions from securities law enforcers in five states while scrambling to remain solvent. Celsius’s previous backers have reportedly told the company, which has frozen withdrawals, that they can’t help. A growing crypto crash has caused heavy losses for individual and professional investors.

Michel David-Weill, the former chairman of Lazard, has died at 89, the firm said. David-Weill was responsible for uniting Lazard in the 1980s, combining three independent partnerships in London, New York and Paris. “Michel’s presence, leadership and vision defined Lazard today,” the bank’s C.E.O. Ken Jacobs told DealBook, calling David-Weill an “excellent skeptic of conventional wisdom.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/business/dealbook/tracking-fear-on-wall-street.html