Investing-GameStop Round 2

• Treasury Secretary Yellen and other regulators met to discuss what happened with GameStop and other stocks (NYT), and Cleveland Fed President does not expect any resultant changes to policy. (CNBC)
• Or the leaders could just listen to Andrew Ross Sorkin, who proposed six ways to “fix” the market in his DealBook article this week.
• Gary Gensler has been nominated to head up the SEC, and this will be his issue to deal with. For some perspective on how he might handle things, check out this NYT article.
• Or perhaps you’d be interested in this Businessweek article entitled “Stonks are Bonkers” to review the meaning of the market activity over the last couple of weeks. 
• If you are up for listening to something on this topic, on Monday, NPR’s show “1-A” tackled the topic of the stock market and GameStop (37 minutes).
• Michelle Singletary (WAPO) agrees with Tim Ranzetta (CNBC Op-Ed from last week)….use GameStop as a lesson in Financial Literacy.
• Throw back to this article from A Wealth of Common Sense a year ago, well before the GameStop roller coaster we just witnessed, for a look at the history of market manipulation and rigging, and comparison between the stock market and casinos.

Investing-Bitcoin

• Bitcoin has had to share the spotlight in the media of late, but here is an interesting take on how the Bitcoin market is shaping up (Investment News)

Investing-Earnings

• This past week has seen lots of fourth quarter earnings announcements. Here are a few of the big names. (You’d probably not guess we were in tough economic times.)
  • UPS (Yahoo Finance)
  • Amazon (CNBC)
  • Alphabet (Yahoo Finance)
  • Exxon (one in the red, but beat expectations) (CNBC)
  • Pfizer (the company is more than the vaccine) (Investopedia)

Economics-Employment Data

• New unemployment claims dropped again last week but are still at historically high levels (779,000) (DOL)
• The jobs report came out this morning for January, showing only 49,000 net jobs were created last month. Unemployment ticked down from 6.7% to 6.3%, but this is misleading, as over 4 million people LEFT THE WORKFORCE and are not counted as “unemployed). (NY Times)
• There are approximately 10 million people still unemployed, and long-term unemployed make recovery difficult. (NYT)

Economics-Black History Month

• Here is a brief history of black-owned banks and how they work to eliminate racial economic inequality. (ABC)
• How many black-owned bans are there in the US, and where are they? (Investopedia)
• Here is an interesting article covering advice from black leaders on closing the racial wealth gap. (CNBC)

Economics Resource

Teachers: The St. Louis Fed’s Econ Low Down has a great series of Planet Money podcasts available.

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