News From the Control Tower - 10/13/2021
News from the Control Tower: Our weekly curated list of news stories affecting you and your finances.
This week’s reads include:
1. Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands, documents show
A trove of internal Amazon documents reveals how the e-commerce giant ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoff goods and manipulating search results to boost its own product lines in India - practices it has denied engaging in. And at least two top Amazon executives reviewed the strategy.
2. September jobs report hints at unemployment benefits' muted role in pandemic labor market
The data offers the first snapshot of the U.S. labor market since enhanced federal unemployment benefits ended on Labor Day. The September report suggests many workers didn't find new jobs or jump off the sidelines to look for work, despite the expiration of those benefits.
3. USPS Begins Postal Banking Pilot Program
The test allows customers to cash business or payroll checks at the post office and place them onto a gift card.
A single-family home from the 1950s is now a rental complex and a vision of California’s future.
5. Fed’s Brainard signals that climate change guidance may be coming for big banks.
Ms. Brainard said the Fed was developing climate-related scenarios for use in banks’ safety checkups, which are often called stress tests.
Bonus: Drone Photo Award winners capture a dizzyingly fantastic view of the world