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Friday Jul.01, 2022
💨 SCOTUS vs. the EPA
A coal-fired power plant in West Virginia (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Hey Snackers,
Watch out for those hot-dog prices: the cost of a Fourth of July cookout has jumped 17% to $70 — and that’s without booze. Adding to the inflation hangover: thousands of flight cancellations, wild gas prices, and wilder airfare ($437 for the average domestic round trip). At least the fireworks are free… Oh wait: there’s a fireworks shortage.
The S&P 500 closed out its worst first half of the year since 1970 as rising interest rates and recession fears sparked a major selloff. Meanwhile, consumer spending fell for the first time this year as #flated prices started weighing on wallets.
Coaled
The Supreme Court limited the EPA’s emissions enforcement power — and other agencies could be next
See ya later, regulator… The US Supreme Court just dealt environmental regulators a hefty blow. Yesterday, SCOTUS struck down an EPA plan to require power plants to cut emissions. (FYI: the plan didn’t have traction anyway.) The court said that regulations with sweeping economic consequences were invalid unless OK’d by Congress. That sets a precedent that could reshape relations between companies and regulators.
- Bad news for Biden, whose climate agenda relies on the EPA. With Congress split, the president relies heavily on federal agencies for enforcement.
- Good news for coal companies like Peabody Energy, Glencore, and Arch Resources, who now get an emissions hall pass. Many coal stocks have soared this year on high energy prices.
Light(er) green… The ruling comes as green investment has been losing steam. After outperforming the S&P 500 in last year’s bull market, ESG (aka: environmental, social, and governance) funds have underperformed in this year’s downturn. Meanwhile, climate-ambitious companies like BlackRock and Volkswagen have scaled back their sustainability goals in response to the energy crisis.
- Green pause: Experts expect the ruling to further delay the renewable transition, which could cut into sales for companies like Tesla, JinkoSolar, and ChargePoint.
- Pump pass: Fossil-fuel big shots like Shell, Chevron, and Exxon could benefit from growing demand and shrinking regulation.
An era of deregulation may be dawning… and it goes beyond power plants. The EPA likely won’t be the last federal authority targeted by this emboldened court. Last year, SCOTUS stopped the CDC from halting pandemic evictions and prevented OSHA from mandating corporate vaxxes. With regulators hobbled and Congress stuck, corporations could push for a rollback of other profit-curbing rules.
CAO
Crypto's hyped decentralized decision-making orgs may not be so decentralized after all, calling their purpose into question
When DAOs become CAOs... Imagine if a bunch of ants got together to form a colony without a queen — and ended up managing billions in assets. That’s kind of like DAOs (aka: decentralized autonomous organizations), crypto communities where token holders have decision-making power. But a new report has found that 10 major DAOs sort of have a queen after all: fewer than 1% of token holders control 90% of voting power. This centralization has consequences:
- So long, Solend: The DAO behind a Solana-based lending protocol voted to take over Solend’s largest user’s wallet in mid-June — but 88% of the vote came from a single crypto address.
- Second try: The Solend DAO appeared to realize centralization wasn’t a good look and reversed itself with a second vote. Still, the reputational damage to DAOs was done.
Don’t let me DAO... As crypto winter hits, centralized points of failure are rearing their heads. And it’s not just DAOs. Crypto lender Celsius’ DeFi play imploded, and then it unilaterally froze customer withdrawals (a rather centralized move for the “innovators of decentralized finance”). Meanwhile, some of crypto's main players see consolidation as key to success:
Crypto has a centralization problem... Crypto promoters have long rallied behind the value of decentralization — it's the “D” in “DAO” and “DeFi,” after all. But investigation, combined with a market downturn, reveals increasing centralization. Read: crypto nest eggs are ending up in fewer and fewer baskets. That may need to change for crypto winter to bloom into a decentralized spring.
What else we’re Snackin’
- OPEC: The world’s largest oil-producing countries agreed to boost oil output by 648K barrels/day in August. But recent supply hikes have done little to ease pain at the pump.
- Vax: Walgreens’ quarterly sales and profits fell as demand for Covid tests dried up, while vaccines were down by more than half from the previous quarter. Now Walgreens is focused on post-Covid initiatives.
- Heist: Blockchain experts say North Korea is likely responsible for stealing $100M worth of cryptocurrency from US crypto company Horizon. Last year, NK hackers reportedly stole nearly $400M in digi-assets.
- Tap: Apple is set to roll out a CarPlay app this fall that lets drivers pay for gas through their dashboards. Fuel apps are the Fruit’s latest push to incorporate its #frictionless tap-to-pay options on the go.
- Pill: Pfizer is seeking full FDA approval of its Covid pill so that it can sell the drug commercially. Over 1.6M Paxlovid doses have been given in the US since it was cleared for emergency use in December.
Friday
- Universal Pictures’ “Minions” premieres
- Tour de France begins
Authors of this Snacks own: Solana and shares of Apple, Tesla, Shell, Exxon, and Chevron
ID: 2270157
