NASA's Latest Artemis 1 Moon Images Are Truly Jaw-Dropping

A photo taken from NASA's Orion spacecraft shows the cratered gray surface of the Moon, with Earth visible as a small crescent of light in the distance.


George Dvorsky
December 7, 2022

Orion’s view of the Moon and crescent Earth moments after completing its second close lunar flyby on December 5.

Orion’s most recent accomplishments include a new distance record, a close flyby of the Moon, and a trajectory correction maneuver that sent the uncrewed capsule on its journey back to Earth. Not surprisingly, these milestone events made for some excellent photo opportunities.

Artemis 1 is nearly over, with the historic 25.5-day mission concluding just four days from now. It’s been a big success, with Orion entering and then exiting its target distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. Many memorable photos have been captured throughout the mission, but a newly released set contains some of the best taken so far.

Orion, Earth, Moon

Photo: NASA

This image, captured on November 28, is unlike any other taken by a crew-rated spacecraft. It was on this day, the 13th of the mission, that Orion reached its maximum distance from Earth: 268,563 miles (432,210 kilometers). No spacecraft built for humans has ever ventured so far from our home planet. For this mission, Orion has no passengers, save for some manikins that are gathering valuable data.

A closer look

Photo: NASA

A zoomed-in view of the same image, showing the Earth and Moon in more detail. It’s not often that you see an image showing our natural satellite in the foreground and our home planet lurking in the background.

Hello, Moon

Photo: NASA

Orion captured this black-and-white view of the Moon on November 30, the 15th day of the mission. The capsule is equipped with 16 cameras, a number of which are located on the tips of its solar arrays.
In thrust we trust

Photo: NASA

On November 30, an Orion camera mounted to the tip of a solar array captured this photo of a neighboring solar array, along with a view of Earth in the background. The detail in this photo is exquisite, showing the solar array and European Service Module. The European Service Module, which powers the capsule and moves it through space, is fitted with 33 engines of three different types, a number of which are visible in this photo.

Four wings for power

Photo: NASA

Each wing measures approximately 6.5 feet (2 meters) wide and 23 feet (7 meters) long, with each wing consisting of three perfectly squared panels. Combined, the four solar array wings provide around 11 kW of electricity, which is enough to power two three-bedroom homes.
220,000 miles from home

Orion captured this video (sped up to 8-times normal speed) on December 2. Artemis 1 is a stage-setting mission for the planned Artemis 2 mission, in which a crew of four astronauts will repeat this journey.

Small toots, big gains

Orion performed its a return trajectory correction burn on December 2, the 17th day of the mission. The video above shows some of Orion’s thrusters at work during the burn. The correction maneuver changed the spacecraft’s velocity by 0.48 feet per second (0.3 miles per hour), moving it toward a trajectory that’s currently taking the capsule back to Earth. Orion broke free from distant retrograde orbit one day earlier.

Crescent Earth

Photo: NASA

A sweet slice of Earth, as seen by Orion on December 4, the 19th day of the Artemis 1 mission.

Lunar approach

Photo: NASA

A portion of the Moon’s far side is visible, in this image taken just prior to Orion’s second close lunar flyby on the 20th day of the Artemis 1 mission.

Up close and personal

Photo: NASA

This photo was taken just moments before Orion flew behind the far side of the Moon. NASA temporarily lost contact with the capsule for 31 minutes, as expected. The flyby burn itself took 3 minutes and 27 seconds, placing Orion on a trajectory that will take it back to Earth. Orion completed its first lunar flyby on November 28, during which time it captured some spectacular views of the Moon’s cratered surface.

After the flyby

Photo: NASA

Orion performed its second close lunar flyby on December 5, coming to within 80 miles (130 km) of the lunar surface. The spacecraft then emerged from the far side of the Moon, providing this remarkable view of the Moon and crescent Earth.

Intimate selfie

Photo: NASA

Orion captured this view of itself on December 5, and it shows Commander Moonikin Campos—a manikin that’s currently gathering data about radiation, acceleration, and vibrations—in the window. The capsule, upon its return to Earth and prior to reentry, will separate from the European Service Module.

More on this story: Orion Will ‘Skip Like a Rock’ Across Earth’s Atmosphere During Upcoming Reentry

Goodbye, Moon

Photo: NASA

Orion is now moving away from the Moon and is expected to return home on Sunday, December 11 at 12:40 p.m. ET. This image was captured on flight day 20, after the flyby burn.

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Interracial marriages to get added protection under new law

A highway marker stands for Richard and Mildred Loving on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022, in Milford, Va. The interracial couple's legal challenge led to a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down state laws banning marriages between people of different races. The Respect for Marriage Act enshrines interracial and same-sex marriages in federal law. (AP Photo/Denise Lavoie)

DENISE LAVOIE
December 7, 2022

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — One day in the 1970s, Paul Fleisher and his wife were walking through a department store parking lot when they noticed a group of people looking at them. Fleisher, who is white, and his wife, who is Black, were used to “the look.” But this time it was more intense.

“There was this white family who was just staring at us, just staring holes in us,” Fleisher recalled.

That fraught moment occurred even though any legal uncertainty about the validity of interracial marriage had ended a decade earlier — in 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state laws banning marriages between people of different races.

In the more than half-century since, interracial marriage has become more common and far more accepted. So Fleisher was surprised that Congress felt the need to include an additional protection in the Respect for Marriage Act, which was given final approval in a House vote Thursday. It ensures that not only same-sex marriages, but also interracial marriages, are enshrined in federal law.

The 74-year-old Fleisher, a retired teacher and children's book author, attended segregated public schools in the 1950s in the then-Jim Crow South, and later saw what he called “token desegregation” in high school, when four Black students were in his senior class of about 400 students.

He and his wife, Debra Sims Fleisher, 73, live outside Richmond, about 50 miles from Caroline County, where Mildred Jeter, a Black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were arrested and charged in 1958 with marrying out of state and returning to Virginia, where interracial marriage was illegal. Their challenge to the law led to Loving v. Virginia, the landmark ruling that ended bans against interracial marriages.

The Respect for Marriage Act, which passed the Senate l ast week, had been picking up steam since June, when the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to an abortion. That ruling included a concurring opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas that suggested the high court should review other precedent-setting rulings, including the 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

While much of the attention has been focused on protections for same-sex marriages, interracial couples say they are glad Congress also included protections for their marriages, even though their right to marry was well-established decades ago.

“It's a little unnerving that these things where we made such obvious progress are now being challenged or that we feel we have to really beef up the bulwark to keep them in place,” said Ana Edwards, a historian who lives in Richmond.

Edwards, 62, who is Black, and her husband, Phil Wilayto, 73, who is white, have been married since 2006. Both have been community activists for years and said they didn't consider interracial marriage a potentially vulnerable institution until the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion.

“That reminds all of us that whatever rights we have in this society are conditional — they can be taken away," said Wilayto. ”The fact that Congress had to take up this issue in 2022 should be a stark reminder of that fact for us."

For younger interracial couples, the thought that their right to marry could ever be threatened is a foreign concept.

“We never in our wildest dreams thought we would need to be protected as an interracial couple,” said Derek Mize, a 42-year-old white attorney who lives in an Atlanta suburb with his husband, Jonathan Gregg, 41, who is Black, and their two children.

As a same-sex couple, they were at the forefront of the long struggle for acceptance and felt the elation that followed the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage across the country.

Still, they see the need for new protections for interracial marriages as well.

“We're really relieved that there is this law," Mize said. "Protections through the courts and protections through the legislation certainly helps us sleep better at night.”

Mize said he remembers studying Loving v. Virginia in law school and thought then that it was “ridiculous” that there had to be litigation over marriages between people of different races. But after he read the Supreme Court's ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, he said: “Who knows where it will stop?”

Gregg, a management consultant, said he sees the Respect for Marriage Act as “an added level of safety” for same-sex and interracial marriages — a federal law and Supreme Court rulings supporting their right to marry.

“You've got two ways to be OK,” he said. “They have to take down both of them in order for your marriage to fall apart.”

Angelo Villagomez, a 44-year-old senior fellow at the think tank Center for American Progress, said it was “unthinkable” that his marriage could become illegal. Villagomez, who is of mixed white and Indigenous Mariana Islands descent, and his wife, Eden Villagomez, 38, who is Filipina, live in Washington, D.C.

But after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, “it feels like some of those things that have just been taken for granted ... are under threat,” said Villagomez, whose parents, also a mixed-race couple, were married in the 1970s, not long after the Loving decision.

Villagomez worries about what could come next. “If we don’t put a stop to some of this backsliding, this country is gonna go to a very dark place,” he said.

“I’m worried about what else is on the chopping block.”

___

Associated Press reporter Claire Savage contributed to this report from Chicago.

___

Savage is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

'Burn everything': Poland chokes on the smog of war

December 8, 2022

By Marek Strzelecki and Kuba Stezycki

OLPINY, Poland (Reuters) - The Tkaczuk family moved from the Polish city of Krakow to the village of Olpiny in the Carpathian foothills in 2018 in search of cleaner country air.

Four years on, as the fallout from the Ukraine war halted Russian gas supplies to Poland, the local authorities postponed a ban on the dirtiest stoves for heating, and air pollution in Olpiny exceeded the norms by four-fold last month.

"I feel completely helpless and abandoned by the state," said Julia Tkaczuk, 38, whose five-year-old son has asthma. "Every sneeze is a warning sign for me."

It's even worse in Krakow, Poland's second-biggest city.

On the night of Nov. 20, as temperatures slipped below zero for the first time this year, the only city in the world with a higher concentration of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) in the air was New Delhi, according to Airly, an organisation based in California that monitors pollution.

While a number of European countries besides Poland, such as Germany and Hungary, are burning more polluting brown coal, or lignite, to keep the lights on, experts say it's the use of the fuel at home that will have the biggest impact on health.

In the municipality where the Tkaczuk's live, coal is the main heating source and 40% of households use outdated furnaces known as "smokers" because of the poisonous fumes they emit.

Piotr Kleczkowski, a professor at Krakow's AGH University specialising in environmental protection, estimates that the suspension of the ban in the Tkaczuk's province will result in up to 1,500 premature deaths this winter.

Lignite contains several times more sulphur and ash, and five times more mercury, than black coal, and provides three times less energy. Burning it at home spews out a deadly combination of sulphur and mercury, raising the risk of asthma, lung cancer, cardiac arrest and strokes.

"It gets worse: with more sulphur in the air, mercury finds it easier to get into our lungs," said Kleczkowski, referring to the way the two elements combine in polluted air.

BURN EVERYTHING

To be sure, Poland has been one of the most polluted countries in Europe for years and governments have tried to clamp down on the burning of dirty fuels in homes.

But after Russian gas was cut off over a payment dispute in April, the Law and Justice (PiS) government dropped a two-year-old ban on residents burning lignite and poor-quality hard coal, which cannot be filtered effectively in home stoves.

It also loosened restrictions on selling coal waste, which can be highly polluting, taking Poland back to the days before 2018, when the rules for coal were tightened to fight smog.

In September, PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski even told residents of Nowy Targ, the town with the lowest air quality in Poland in 2020, to burn pretty much whatever they wanted.

"We should be burning everything, other than tires, or similar things, because this is unfortunately what happens here," he said. "Simply, Poland needs to be heated."

In November, the Lodz region in central Poland also postponed for two years a ban on the dirtiest home furnaces that was due to take effect in 2023.

The government says the lifting of the ban on lignite and the lowest quality coal is linked to the Ukraine war and should be temporary - and its impact on air quality will be evaluated after the winter.

"The central government has no influence on the scope and timelines of the regional anti-smog rules," Poland's climate ministry said in response to Reuters questions.

'ABOVE THE NORM IS OUR NORM'

The policy U-turn, however, is already triggering respiratory problems in the most polluted areas, doctors say.

In Rybnik near the Czech border, child admissions to the Provincial Specialised Hospital soared in November as temperatures fell, according to the paediatric ward's chief Katarzyna Musiol.

On the night of Nov. 20, when the temperature in Rybnik fell to minus 3 Celsius, the average concentration of PM 2.5 particles was six times above the norm, data from Airly, which has five monitoring points in the town, showed.

Particulate matter is considered to be the most dangerous air pollutant and at only 2.5 microns wide or less, PM 2.5 particles can get deep into the lungs and even the bloodstream.

Although it was first the really cold night of the year in Rybnik, the air quality was already the worst since Dec. 13, 2021 when the temperature was minus 6 C.

"As a result, the ward is full of children, of which 90% have conditions triggered by smog: shortness of breath, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), aggravated asthma, bronchitis and pneumonia. Some are babies a few weeks old with breathing problems and RSV," Musiol told Reuters.

"Above the norm is our norm. Smog has been intense over the past days and we have a lot of children in need of intensive treatment," she said.

The town of 130,000 people in Silesia province has kept its anti-smog rules in place so stoves more than 10 years old are banned, but coal is widely used.

Magdalena Kolarczyk Guz from Rybnik's municipal police patrols the town during the day, searching for homes spewing smoke into the air to find people breaking the rules.

"The words of the politicians, even the most important ones, don't change the law," she told Reuters as she patrolled a district with detached houses.

She finds one belching dirty smoke into the sky. But when she rings the door bell, nobody answers, and she doesn't have the power to force entry.

COAL RUSH

About 80% of the coal used by European Union citizens to heat homes is burned in Poland. It started running out soon after Warsaw became the first EU member to stop buying Russian coal in April, imports typically used by residential customers.

Prices jumped four-fold and state-owned sellers started rationing. Desperate for supplies for the winter, Poles started driving to the Czech Republic during the summer to buy lignite from wholesalers there.

"The interest from Polish customers is enormous," said Dan Bernat, a Czech coal merchant in Libun, 35 km (22 miles) from the Polish border. "Sometimes they demand absurd volumes, full truckloads, or 10, 15 tonnes, which we cannot handle."

In Poland, three tonnes of black coal, the amount usually needed to heat a home through winter, can cost as much as 10,000-12,000 zloty ($2,240-$2,690), compared with an average monthly wage of just under 5,000 after tax.

But lignite costs about a 10th of price of hard coal and 21,000 tonnes were sold in the first four weeks after it became available to residential users in October, Polish power and mining company PGE said.

"I can't afford hard coal," said Kazimierz Kujawski, a farmer, outside the vast Belchatow lignite mine in central Poland as he came to collect six tonnes, the maximum an individual customer can buy.

With coal out of reach for some, residents are also resorting to burning garbage, which produces more carcinogenic toxins than lignite according to professor Kleczkowski, and local authorities are struggling to stop it.

In October, a homeowner in Wejherowo in northern Poland, refused to accept a fine from local police for burning furniture waste, arguing that PiS leader Kaczynski had said he could burn anything. The court case is pending.

"We are pumping substances into the atmosphere which are much more harmful than what we have seen in the last 12 months," Kleczkowski said.

"If sub-zero temperatures return, we will see very high levels of pollution: the levels at which acute effects may occur, including strokes."

($1 = 4.4664 zlotys)

(Reporting by Marek Strzelecki and Kuba Stezycki; Additional reporting by Krisztina Than in Budapest, Robert Muller in Prague, Vera Eckert in Frankfurt and Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; Editing by David Clarke)

1,000 salaried Ford workers retire after pension warning from automaker

Phoebe Wall Howard and Susan Tompor, Detroit Free Press
Mon, December 12, 2022 


DETROIT – Retirement-eligible salaried employees at Ford were warned and advised about retiring this year to maximize a lump sum pension payment.

The company confirmed Wednesday that approximately 1,000 employees elected to retire by the Dec. 1 deadline.

"If you are considering retiring and choosing the lump sum option, it is important to understand the impact of higher interest rates on your individual lump sum amount, should you retire after Dec. 1, 2022," read the Ford memo, which also included a brief survey to help the company plan for employee retirements.

The warning – sent to employees in an email in September with the subject line "Important Information Regarding Your Pension" – specifically pointed out that anyone who is considering retiring and opting for a lump sum payment needs to look at the numbers.

Rising interest rates in 2022 will trigger a significant drop in the potential payout for those who choose the lump sum pension option next year.
How much will pension payments drop in 2023?

The lump sum for 2023, according to the Ford memo, would decrease by an estimated 20% to 25% relative to the lump sum values that Ford employees would get if they took it in 2022.

For example, if someone is looking at a $500,000 lump sum payout in 2022, the loss in 2023 could be in the range of $100,000 to $125,000.

Retirees who opt for the traditional monthly pension wouldn't see a change based on higher interest rates or inflation. Many pensions don't include cost of living adjustments that would boost a monthly pension check based on inflation, like Social Security does.

Choosing a lump sum payout is an option, not a requirement.

Will Ford cut jobs next year?

These retirements are independent of recent actions by the company, which have included job reductions in parts of the company that focus on traditional internal combustion engine vehicles. While CEO Jim Farley divided the company into Ford Model e (electric) and Ford Blue (non-electric) units, it is Ford Blue trucks that generate the revenue needed to transform the Dearborn automaker.

Farley has indicated, however, that additional job cuts may be on the horizon in an attempt to be more competitive on costs of operating the company.

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Ford employs about 176,000 employees globally. The latest retirements will take down the total of salaried workers to 28,000 in the U.S., Ford spokeswoman Marisa Bradley told the Detroit Free Press, part of USA Today Network.

There is no one department affected by the retirements, she said. The company does not disclose specific details related to retirees, including how many take lump sum buyouts.
Financial analyst weighs in

Sam Huszczo, a chartered financial analyst in Southfield, Mich., said Wednesday that his firm had a lot of discussions with Ford clients about retiring in 2022 and taking the lump sum option.

"The main group of people who decided to take the lump sum offer were planning to retire in 2023 or 2024 anyway," he said. "And this was enough to push them over the edge to pull the trigger on retiring."

More: Biden to announce federal bailout for troubled union pension fund

In some cases, he said, people felt anxious that they were making a major life decision that would impact the next 30 years of their lives but had just two months to decide what to do – all while having to work at the same time.

Many times, he said, Ford clients who were within three to five years of retiring decided not to retire after all, knowing that they'd be giving up their paychecks much sooner than expected. Often, Huszczo said, those clients who decided to stay expressed more faith in Ford's direction in the long run.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 1,000 Ford workers retire amid interest hikes and pension loss warning

Tesla's Troubles Are Piling Up While Elon Musk Is Distracted With Twitter

Sean O'Kane

December 8, 2022

(Bloomberg) — While Elon Musk is busy overhauling newly acquired Twitter Inc., Tesla Inc. is facing increasingly urgent issues and testing the faith of some of its chief executive’s biggest fans.

Weakening demand in China is forcing the electric-vehicle maker to slow production and delay hiring at its Shanghai factory. Its top executive for that market has been called in to help out at its newest plant, in Texas, which isn’t ramping up as planned. And Tesla’s stock, which has lost more than $500 billion in market value this year, is under renewed pressure as Musk’s advisers weigh using the billionaire’s shares as collateral for new loans to replace Twitter debt.

The revelations just from the past few days have raised concerns with shareholders already worried about Musk’s priorities since he took the helm of yet another company.

“Tesla board is missing in action,” Leo KoGuan, one of Tesla’s largest individual shareholders, tweeted Wednesday as he suggested a stock buyback. He and another outspoken Tesla investor, Ross Gerber, are calling for the board to add a director who would represent retail shareholders.

Musk himself has said he has “too much work” on his plate, and is handling it by sometimes sleeping in the office. Whereas in the past he slumbered at Tesla facilities, lately he’s hibernated at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.

”I continue to oversee both Tesla & SpaceX, but the teams there are so good that often little is needed from me,” Musk tweeted Thursday. “Tesla Team has done incredibly well, despite extremely difficult times,” he said earlier in the day, citing the European energy crisis, real estate downturn in China, and US interest rates as macroeconomic challenges.

The volatile recent stretch muddies the close of a year in which Tesla is still expected to achieve record sales and retain its crown as the world’s largest EV maker. It hasn’t been immune, however, from the slowdown in China’s car market and recessionary conditions in Europe. In October, Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn said the company expects to come up just short of the 50% growth in vehicle deliveries that the company has repeatedly said it’s expecting over several years.

Tesla’s plant in Austin, Texas, is scaling slower than expected, with a new form of lithium-ion battery cells not yet ready for volume production. Against that backdrop, the company tapped Tom Zhu, a key executive in China who oversaw construction of the Shanghai factory, to oversee operations in Austin, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

In Shanghai, Tesla is shortening production shifts and delaying start dates for some newly hired employees, Bloomberg reported Thursday, the latest signs that demand for Tesla EVs in China isn’t meeting expectations. That came after Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Tesla planned to cut production on the Model Y and Model 3 production lines in Shanghai by about 20%.

Tesla will have a lot on its plate in 2023. The company recently started delivering its long-awaited Semi truck several years late and plans to finally start producing its first pickup, the Cybertruck.

The buyback some investors have been asking for may also be in the cards. Musk said during the company’s last earnings call that the board generally thought a buyback made sense, and that something on the order of $5 billion to $10 billion was possible. Last month, he tweeted that the decision will be up to Tesla’s directors.

Musk and Tesla didn’t respond to requests Thursday for comment. A representative for the company said earlier that Bloomberg’s report of plans to cut output in Shanghai was “untrue,” without elaborating.

Tesla shares slipped less than 1% at the close in New York, trading lower for a fourth consecutive day. The stock has plunged 51% this year.

—With assistance from Chunying Zhang.

Post-pandemic, consumers want things to return to normal. Employees? Not so much

Published: Dec. 11, 2022 
Associated Press

Shoppers are seen in a Kroger supermarket on October 14, 2022, in Atlanta, Georgia. ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

NEW YORK (AP) — Before the pandemic, Cheryl Woodard used to take her daughter and her friends to eat at a local IHOP DIN, -2.03% in Laurel, Maryland after their dance practice. But now they hardly go there anymore because it closes too early.

“It is a little frustrating because it’s not as convenient as it used to be,” said Woodard, 54, who also does most of her shopping online these days instead of in person because of stores limiting their hours.

Before the pandemic, consumers had gotten accustomed to instant gratification: packages and groceries delivered to their doorstep in less than an hour, stores that stayed open around the clock to serve their every need.

But more than two and a half years later in a world yearning for normalcy, many workers are fed up and don’t want to go back to the way things were. They are demanding better schedules, and sometimes even quitting their jobs altogether.

As a consequence, many businesses still haven’t been able to resume the same hours of operations or services as they continue to grapple with labor shortages. Others have made changes in the name of efficiency. For instance, Walmart WMT, -1.80%, the nation’s largest retailer and private employer, announced this past summer it doesn’t have any plans for its supercenters to return to its pre-pandemic 24-hour daily operations.

IHOP says a vast majority of its locations have returned to their pre-pandemic hours and some have even expanded them. But others, like the Laurel location that Woodward used to frequent, have indeed cut back.

The changes are creating a disconnect between customers who want to shop and dine like they used to during pre-pandemic times and exhausted employees who no longer want to work those long hours — a push-pull that is only being heightened during the busy holiday shopping season.

“Nobody is winning,” said Sadie Cherney, a franchise owner with three resale Clothes Mentor boutiques in South Carolina. “It is so demoralizing to see that you are falling short on both ends.”

Across all industries, the average number of hours worked per week per worker totaled 34.4 hours in November, unchanged from February 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But for the retail industry, it slipped 1.6% to 30.2 hours per week during the same period. Hours worked at restaurants were down by similar amount in October, according to the most recent data.

Meanwhile, the National Restaurant Association’s most recent monthly survey of 4,200 restaurant operators conducted in early August found that 60% of restaurants reduced hours of operation on the days they were open, while 38% closed on the days they would normally be open compared to right before the pandemic. And a report published by food and beverage research firm Dataessential showed the average U.S. restaurant as of October was open around six fewer hours per week than in 2019 — a 7.5% decline.

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Cherney noted her stores returned to pre-pandemic hours last year but with the worsening labor shortages and higher labor costs, she has struggled to keep those same hours this year.

Her store in Columbia is open one hour later, but she had to offer wage increases to her workers. For her two other locations in Greenville and Spartanburg, hours have been reduced for personal shopping appointments throughout the week, and no longer accept second-hand clothing from shoppers on Sundays.

Cherney noted customers often complain about long waits to process their second-hand offerings, while her staff is overextended because they’re working 20% more than what they would like. The end result: Cash flow and profitability have both taken a hit.

Mani Bhushan, owner of Taco Ocho, a taco restaurant with four locations in the Dallas area, still struggles to hire cooks at his McKinney location, which opened in July 2021. He said many workers can’t afford to live in this upscale suburb and have to travel from elsewhere. Several times a week he’s had to close the location early — something he has never had to do in the 40 years he has worked in the business.

Even when Bhushan is able to keep his normal hours of operation, he still has to cut off online orders earlier in the day and the service is not up to par with his other locations.

“I am a perfectionist,” he said. “I am not happy. But I can’t fix it right now.”

The worker shortages should remain acute into next year even as several big tech companies have reduced staff or have frozen corporate hiring. The economy added 263,000 jobs while the unemployment rate remained at 3.7% in November, still near a 53-year low, according to the Labor Department. And while U.S. job openings dropped in October from September, the number ticked up 3% in retail.

For mall operator Taubman Centers, which manages or leases 24 premier centers in the U.S. and Asia, many stores are opening later than its centers to save on employee costs, according to Bill Taubman, president and chief operating officer. However, he said that causes frustration among customers who go to the mall thinking the store where they want to shop will be open.

Vicky Thai, a 27-year-old studying to be a physician’s assistant in West Hartford, Connecticut, said she’s often frustrated over the waits to get served at restaurants and stores. She recalled a recent restaurant experience where it took a long time just to get some water; at a local clothing store, she spent 30 minutes in line to buy an item because of staffing shortages.

But for every frustrated customer, there is a frustrated worker. Artavia Milliam, 39, of Brooklyn, New York, is a visual merchandiser at H&M in Times Square. She said she spends more of her time helping out on the sales floor than updating the mannequins because of the shortage of staff.

“It can get overwhelming,” she said. “Everyday, I encounter someone who is rude.”

India is trying to become the new factory of the world, but it could take more than a global pandemic to unseat China from its 40-year reign


Huileng Tan
Sun, December 11, 2022 

India's vying for a piece of China's pie in higher end manufacturing.Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images

China's zero-COVID policies are pushing companies to diversify supply chains away from the country.


They were already moving out due to geopolitical tensions and tariffs from the Trump era.


But it isn't easy to fully replace China's supply chain ecosystem in any country — even one as vast as India.

China's zero-COVID policy may just be doing what Donald Trump didn't manage to fully achieve during his term as president — shifting global supply chains away from China for the first time in 40 years.

In 2018 and 2019, Trump levied stiff tariffs against China to counter what he called unfair trade deals with the US, spurring retaliation from Beijing and kicking off a trade war.

And while many companies started discussing moving supply chains out of China as a way to distance themselves from geopolitical risks, it was really the pandemic — and China's zero-COVID policy — that drove home the importance of not depending on one country for its supply chain.

"The geopolitical tensions in themselves may not have resulted into this level of realignment of supply chains, but COVID certainly provided that extra vision extra fillip, the extra fuel to the fire," Ashutosh Sharma, a research director at market researcher Forrester, told Insider.

Tech giant Apple provides the latest example of being burned by an overreliance on Chinese production lines, with iPhone output hit by China's relentless zero-COVID pursuit. Apple is now speeding up its push to shift its production out of China to other Asian countries. But where to go?

Major Apple supplier Foxconn's top pick is India, and so is that of other chipmakers, after the Biden administration in October imposed export controls on shipping equipment to Chinese-owned factories making advanced logic chips.

"India has a large labor pool, a long history of manufacturing, and government support for boosting industry and exports. Because of this, many are exploring whether Indian manufacturing is a viable alternative to China," Julie Gerdeman, the CEO of supply chain risk management platform Everstream, told Insider.

But the move is easier said than done.
India is the world's largest democracy, and that makes decision-making a lot more complicated

As a large economy with a young population, India has the potential to be a manufacturing powerhouse. But the South Asian country is also infamous for its bureaucracy and hindering red tape.

"It's far from a place where businesses can simply come in and open a shop without having too many company compliances," said Sharma, who is based in India. "I'm sure China has those issues too, but its ability to move fast on those compliance requirements is much higher than in India, because India is much more democratic and there are just too many stakeholders to satisfy here."

India came in at the 63rd position in a World Bank list of 190 countries ranked based on their ease of doing business in 2019. While this was an improvement from its position in the 142th position in 2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office — it still lagged behind China, which was in the 31st position in 2019 — the last year the index was compiled before the World Bank discontinued it after a data rigging scandal. Data irregularities improved China's position in 2018, according to a World Bank audit published in December 2020.

India also has a history of protectionism, which makes it less competitive in terms of attracting large investments.

"China manufactures at scale, while most factories in India are small and midsize due to federal regulations and protections designed specifically for SMEs," said Gerdeman.
China has built a manufacturing ecosystem over 4 decades

India's Prime Minister Modi has been working on attracting foreign direct investments, or FDI, since he took office in 2014, sending FDI to a record $83.6 billion in the last fiscal year, according to government data.

"India certainly has advantages in terms of demographics, in terms of geography, in terms of the infrastructure that exist, much of which has been built in the last few years," said Sharma. "It can obviously increase the scale, but what it does not have is all the pieces of the puzzle."

What he means is that China has managed to build up a value chain so extensive that almost everything required to make a product can be sourced and acquired in the country, which allows for low-cost manufacturing on a large scale. In contrast, India doesn't have this capability yet, which takes years to build up.

That's because manufacturers always start factory operations with the assembly line before starting to develop local supply lines for the finished products in a "backward integration" of processes, said Sharma.

"That supply chain takes time for it to build because even when you are sourcing it internally, the quality is not that good initially, your scale is not that high, and you run into those issues. So yes, it can be done, but it takes time," he told Insider.
Once burned, twice shy companies aren't going all in on India this time

In any case, companies are unlikely to flock en masse to India like they did to China because it's just been proven too risky, the experts said.

And it's not just Foxconn and Apple that have gone all in on China and are now suffering for it: US sportswear giant Nike, Japanese carmaker Toyota, and South Korean tech titan Samsung all number among the many companies experiencing prolonged supply-chain issues because of their reliance on the manufacturing giant.

"They are looking to diversify their sourcing," said Sharma. "If you look at Foxconn and Apple, they have already moved a significant part of production to India and I'm sure to other countries like Vietnam, and a few other places. That's precisely because they want to diversify, from having dependency on one country, like China, to a couple of locations."

This means more complex supply chains, but they will be diversified all from raw material stages, he said.

"If they can build two or three dependable places where they can source from, they will still have alternative sources even if something happens to one location in the future," said Sharma.

ALL CAPITALI$M IS STATE CAPITALI$M

U.S. finalizes $2.5 billion loan to GM, LG battery joint venture



Mon, December 12, 2022
By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Department said on Monday it had finalized a $2.5 billion low-cost loan to a joint venture of General Motors Co and LG Energy Solution to help pay for three new lithium-ion battery cell manufacturing facilities.

Reuters first reported in July the planned loan to Ultium Cells LLC from the government's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program.

The loan will help finance construction of new lithium-ion manufacturing facilities in Ohio, Tennessee and Michigan, supporting 6,000 construction jobs and 5,100 operations jobs at the three plants.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm plans to tout the closing of the Ultium loan on a visit to Michigan on Monday with Labor Department Deputy Secretary Julie Su, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, United Auto Workers (UAW) President Ray Curry and other officials, automakers and EV battery companies. They will discuss strategies to recruit and retain a diverse and skilled battery workforce, and the Biden administration's Battery Workforce Initiative.

Last week, workers at the $2.3 billion Ultium plant in Ohio voted to join the UAW, a win for the union, which is seeking to organize the growing EV supply chain.

GM and LG Energy are considering an Indiana site for a fourth U.S. battery plant. They are building a $2.6 billion plant in Michigan, set to open in 2024. This month, Ultium said it would boost its investment in a $2.3 billion Tennessee plant by another $275 million.

President Joe Biden has set a goal for 50% of U.S. auto production by 2030 to be electric or plug-in electric hybrid vehicles. GM plans to build 1 million EVs in North America by 2025 and to stop selling gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.

The $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) approved in August included another $3 billion for ATVM loan costs and expanded uses to larger vehicles, maritime vessels, aviation, and other transportation modes.

The Energy Department said the $3 billion would provide an estimated $40 billion in additional loan authority for a total estimated available authority under ATVM of about $55.1 billion before the Ultium loan.

The ATVM loan program in July closed on a $102.1 million loan to Syrah Technologies LLC for expansion of a facility producing a key component for batteries. It was the first new loan finalized from the ATVM program since 2011.

The program previously supported Ford Motor, Tesla and Nissan Motor projects. GM applied for ATVM loans totaling $14.4 billion in 2009 but withdrew the application in 2011.

(Reporting by David Shepardson. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

To make cheap EVs work, automakers are replacing decades of know-how with a move from Tesla's playbook

Alexa St. John
Thu, December 15, 2022 

Automakers might need to copy Tesla's playbook for battery sourcing. Here, a battery is installed in the Hummer EV.

Mandel Ngan/Getty Images

Auto companies need EV battery supply more than ever, but the costs are adding up.

Prices and a push to use local materials have carmakers investing in in-house battery supply.

This move copies what Tesla has long been doing for years.

With electric car battery costs on the rise, auto companies are doing everything they can to make their EV offerings more affordable for the masses in the coming years.

Making that happen may require forgetting much of what they've learned about supply chains over a century, and replacing it with a few pages from Tesla's playbook.

Automakers have been trying to evade today's EV woes by exploring different kinds of batteries to slash their dependence on the in-demand materials found in traditional lithium-ion setups. They've also been ramping up battery recycling efforts and working to return lithium, nickel, cobalt and more into the supply chain.

These solutions come with challenges in terms of timing and expense, at least in the near term. That means car companies are seeking an alternative and racing to secure their battery supply in the US.

That means making investments in battery material sourcing, battery production, and more, to reduce the global supply disruptions the industry saw from the pandemic.

"Almost all the major companies are investing in that for that very reason: to vertically integrate more and get more control of their supply chain," said Peter Maithel, auto industry principal analyst at Infor.

Volkswagen is building a battery cell factory at its Salzgitter site for its planned large-scale production of the Group's own battery cells.

Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance via Getty Images

What's the rush?

In the past, car companies have expanded their supply chains across the globe, relying on slews of suppliers for each component of a car. Some of their key parts might come from the US, while others might come from Europe or Asia.

Historically, the breadth of those supply chains has reduced potential bottlenecks. But the pandemic — and other disruptions, like natural disasters — shed a light on just how vulnerable that can also make auto companies. If an auto parts plant across the world sees even a minor disruption, that could bring down a manufacturing line for days or weeks at a time.

The dawn of EVs, and the nuances in sourcing for these cars, brings those concerns and more to the forefront of automaker to-do lists. The US in particular has relied on foreign sources for battery supplies, components, and processing. China, meanwhile, has had a headstart in terms of sitting on the raw materials necessary to power EVs and controlling production of much of the world's battery cells, packs, and more.

But whether it's an unforeseen disruption like COVID-19 or a geopolitical issue, that leaves companies pretty vulnerable — and has encouraged them to bring manufacturing closer to home. There's been a general push to get away from that world-wide supply chain model anyway, driven by this summer's climate law.

"We've just seen an unprecedented amount of announcements, joint development agreements, early supply contracts from the automakers with battery materials providers, with battery manufacturers," said Matt Sculnick, executive director of Nomura GreenTech's advanced transportation team, "in a collaborative way that I don't think we've really seen."

Rivian manufactures its EVs in Illinois. Rivian

Good news for EV adopters — eventually

It's called vertical integration — and it's something Tesla has long been known for.

"Tesla is always the groundbreaker here, going directly to the source, going directly to the mines and negotiating supply contracts with the mines," said Alvarez & Marsal managing director Tony Lynch.

It's given Tesla an advantage in terms of having visibility into production, while GM and Ford and others scramble to get in on US mining deals and manufacturing.

It's complicated and time-consuming, but may ultimately be the best way car companies can get closer to lowering the cost of new EVs. Those sat at about $65,041 in November, according to Kelley Blue Book — when a new gas-powered car averaged $48,681 that same period.

More supply in general, but especially in the US, combined with more EV volumes, will drive that down.

Legacy Automakers Keep Taking Pages From Tesla's Playbook Despite CEO Controversy

Upwallstreet
Thu, December 15, 2022


According to BloombergNEF, battery prices rose for the first time in a decade. However, BloombergNEF experts don’t expect the rising costs for battery ingredients like lithium, cobalt, and nickel to impact vehicle prices anytime soon. Moreover, they expect it to be a temporary bump as BNEF predicts prices will drop in 2024, as more lithium production comes online.

Still, it's not good news for both legacy automakers as well as EV start-ups that desperately need profits from EVs to come as soon as possible to offset intense capital costs.

With rising costs and global pressures, automakers are trying to localize production and secure an in-house battery supply. Therefore, automakers seem to be taking another page from Tesla’s playbook despite the EV pioneer not doing so well in face of its share price dropping 61 percent since the beginning of the year, underperforming Ford and GM.


Forgetting everything they know

Automakers have been trying to evade the electric trend by exploring different kinds of batteries, ramping up battery recycling efforts and working to return lithium, nickel and cobalt into the supply chain. But, the existing knowledge does not help much in this equation as a new electric world comes with a new set of rules that is forcing automakers to vertically integrate and get more control of their supply chain.

Global supply chain is now a weakness

Historically, a global supply chain with a variety of players has reduced the risk pf potential bottlenecks. But natural disasters and most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, revealed that such constitution makes automakers extremely vulnerable as even minor disruptions ended up halting the manufacturing line for days or even weeks.

Bringing manufacturing closer to home

This year, we’ve witnessed an unprecedented amount of joint development agreements, early supply contracts and similar announcements. These kind of agreements are always complex and significant time is needed for them to bear fruits but they seem to be the best way to make EVs more affordable.

Even the legendary automakers cannot pull it off alone. GM made a multimillion investment into Australia’s Controlled Thermal Resources (CTR) to extract lithium from California. Back in July, Ford Motor revealed it will buy lithium from Ioneer Ltd's (INR.AX) Rhyolite Ridge mining project in Nevada.

Worksport

Worksport Ltd. (NASDAQ: WKSP) is a company commited to changing the rules of the game both in the energy and automotive industry. With solar powered tonneau covers among its many intellectual properties, its subsidiary Terravis Energy Inc is developing a Non-Parasitic Electric Vehicle (NPEVTM) charging platform. Moreover, to minimize geopolitical risks that are very much in the air these days, the company added a manufacturing facility in the U.S. The 222,000-square-foot facility is expected to be up and running at full capacity soon.

Mercedes Benz

Automakers are also investing heavily into battery development in an effort to reduce their dependence on lithium and other highly prices and demanded battery ingredients.

On Wednesday, Mercedes-Benz unveiled its over $1.06 billion plan to adapt its entire global production network for electric powertrain systems from 2024.

With plants in Germany, Beijing and Romania, the premium automaker has set up its lines to produce both traditional combustion engines and EVs, but assembling batteries and motors on the same line is a more challenging task. The automaker stated that many of its component-making plants will continue making parts for internal combustion cars, as long as there is demand. Therefore, the automaker is striving for all-electric sales by the end of the decade but where the market conditions allow for it.

Tesla’s flamboyant CEO is feared to be distracted

Although no one can argue that Tesla is the company who started all this EV frenzy, concerns are in the air as its CEO, Elon Musk, has sold another round of stock valued at $3.6 billion. What is worrying is that Musk stated in April that there would be “no further TSLA sales” to support his acquisition of Twitter acquisition. Since the takeover, thebillionaire has sold $23 billion of Tesla stock and is found by many to be distracted and even absent. Although Musk tried to address concerns on Tuesday, stating that he will make sure that Tesla shareholders benefit from Twitter long-term, this proclamation was overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the management of the never-boring social network. Tesla did an extraordinary job but as we all know too well, future is promised to no one, and therefore, taking pages from its book in this ever changing climate is not necessarily a good idea.

See more from Benzinga

Semiconductors, The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the End of Globalization

Getting EVs To Go Further Does Not Have To Be Entirely About Changing Battery Technology

Elon Musk's former right-hand man is taking the next big step in his plan to make EVs cheaper by recycling old batteries

Alexa St. John
Wed, December 14, 2022 

Redwood Materials employees taking a battery module apart.

Redwood Materials

The EV battery recycling giant just announced a new plant in South Carolina.

The plant will help carmakers get the materials they need to make EV batteries.

The news is also critical as car companies race to respond to this summer's climate law.

Electric vehicle battery recycling giant Redwood Materials is spending $3.5 billion on a new factory, and its location near the heart of the American "battery belt" is crucial to auto companies for a few reasons.

Run by Elon Musk's former right-hand man at Tesla, JB Straubel, Redwood recycles and refines the many precious materials — like lithium, nickel, and cobalt — found in used lithium-ion batteries from electric cars and consumer electronics, then sends them back into the supply chain.


The company's new plant, its second, will sit near Charleston, South Carolina. Redwood says it will break ground in the first quarter of 2023, have it up-and-running by the end of the year, and soon have it supply 1 million EVs annually.

While Redwood's flagship plant is near its Carson City, Nevada headquarters, this one's in the "battery belt": A stretch across the country, particularly in the Southeast, where car companies, battery makers, and more are setting up new EV development shops.

Redwood recycles and refines the many precious materials — like lithium, nickel, and cobalt — found in used lithium-ion batteries from electric cars and consumer electronics

Redwood Materials

Ford established its BlueOval City campus in Tennessee and two battery plants in Kentucky. GM, through its Ultium Cells joint venture with LG Energy Solution, is also investing in battery-making in Tennessee. Panasonic is building a new battery factory in Kansas. Hyundai is investing in EVs and battery production in Georgia.

Redwood's ramp-up is also crucial as the auto industry races to comply with this summer's massive climate law, which requires that car companies source and build certain percentages of their EVs domestically if they want their vehicles to qualify for tax credits.

But even without federal encouragement, the industry has worked to bring the various parts of the all-new EV battery supply chain to the US in order to drive down materials costs, and cut the sticker price for buyers.

With more and more demand for the materials to make these things, taking advantage of recycling can ease a supply crunch and eventually drive down costs. The more materials the industry can put back into the supply chain, the better.

Redwood takes the work a step further than many recyclers by next, remanufacturing the materials.

"The goal is to make the most sustainable battery materials," said Jackson Switzer, Redwood senior director of business development and one of Insider's 100 People Transforming Business. "To make the most sustainable battery materials, we need to get as much recycled nickel, cobalt, and lithium as we can into the front end of the system. You've got to scale the front end of the system, which is effectively, recycling."

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

Binance CEO Says There's No Way They'll End Up Like FTX in Leaked Letter to Staff

Kyle Barr
Thu, December 15, 2022 

Chenpeng Zhao in front of a desk with a microphone gives a thumbs up to the camera.


Changpeng Zhao has had to repeatedly reassure investors that everything is fine, and they can definitely handle billions of dollars in withdrawals from the Binance exchange.

The crypto exchange Binance, perhaps the last major crypto exchange standing after the FTX debacle, experienced a wave of withdrawals by spooked investors earlier this week to the tune of nearly $3.7 billion, according to blockchain analytics firm Nansen.

The crypto company now needs to reassure both its customers and its workers that everything will work out in the long run, despite the run on the crypto industry as a whole. In a letter to staff published by Business Insider, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who often goes by CZ, wrote that even though the headlines certainly seemed dire, “we are in a strong financial position.” He later added “Binance will survive any crypto winter.”

He further claimed that the company regularly processes more than $1 billion in deposits or withdrawals day-to-day, and that they have enough in reserves to fulfill withdrawal requests. CZ had said they had seen even more withdrawals during the Terra/Luna fiasco back in May, so $3.7 billion in a week is practically nothing, right?



Of course, this wasn’t the only concern analysts had with Binance. An exchange of Binance’s touted “proof-of-reserves” has been largely criticized for how it didn’t reveal much about the exchange’s internal financial controls. On Tuesday, the exchange temporarily suspended withdrawals of the USDC stablecoin. Crypto users are very jittery right now since there have been plenty of cases this year where an exchange told users it was “temporarily” halting withdrawals before finally closing up shop, leaving users bereft of their crypto.

But Zhao reiterated his company’s earlier messaging that the exchange was simply converting its USDC to its native token BUSD “in order to retain large liquidity pools.” He added that the current processes his company uses to convert tokens is “clunky” since they have to go through a New York-based bank using actual U.S. dollars.

In a Twitter Spaces live chat Wednesday, Zhao said they had already seen the money “flowing back” and that the withdrawals was “very normal market behavior.”

“While we expect the next several months to be bumpy, we will get past this challenging period – and we’ll be stronger for having been through it,” he said in his letter to staff.

With the collapse of FTX and the end to Sam Bankman-Fried’s reign in the crypto sphere, there’s only two big exchanges left that are big enough to really matter, that being Coinbase and—still the number 1 biggest exchange by trading volume—Binance.

Binance was in the thick of things when FTX had finally reached the point of no return. Zhao had originally announced a tentative agreement to buy up Bankman-Fried’s beleaguered exchange once it became clear that FTX’s had built its castle on the loose sand of its own native FTT token. After taking a look at Binance’s internal finances, Zhao and co quickly backed out and worked to distance himself and his exchange from his erstwhile friendly rival and FTX. Bankman-Fried has since been arrested and faces federal charges in the U.S. for lying to both investors and customers about how his company allegedly abused users’ funds.

Though there’s no evidence to point to Binance making some of the same mistakes FTX did, the latest filings have revealed just how deeply Bankman-Fried’s company had been hit by the collapse of the Terra stablecoin earlier this year, according to charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. It took until the exchange was underwater before folks got to take a real look under the exchange’s hood, so to speak. Without clear signs everything’s A-okay, investors still seem to trust Binance with their crypto, but for how long?

Changpeng Zhao Won't Rescue Binance by Selling out Crypto Self-Custody




Daniel Kuhn
Thu, December 15, 2022 

In the aftermath of the collapse of FTX, many are justifiably concerned about the solvency of crypto exchanges. Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraudulent bucket shop may have been an outlier – court documents filed earlier this week by U.S. authorities allege that some $8 billion in FTX customer deposits were transferred to and lost by SBF’s “hedge fund” Alameda Research.

But following a decline in crypto prices, a drawdown of debt between highly interconnected firms and several bankruptcy filings that have locked up billions worth of assets in legal proceedings, it’s reasonable to wonder if there is as much money held on centralized, largely unaudited crypto exchanges as there should be.

This article is excerpted from The Node, CoinDesk's daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news. You can subscribe to get the full newsletter here.

This is part of the reason why users are taking possession of their own coins in recent weeks. Binance, the industry leading centralized crypto exchange, in particular has seen a significant drawdown in funds. Some of its largest clients, such as Jump Trading, have taken coins out, and the exchange moved to temporarily halt USDC withdrawals amid the surge (potentially to execute a token swap to its own stablecoin).

See also: And Then There Was One – Changpeng Zhao – CoinDesk's Most Influential 2022

Earlier this week, Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao referred to this trend as “business as usual.” He also reportedly told employees to brace for a few “bumpy” months ahead. The exchange had published a so-called “proof-of-reserves” report conducted by auditing firm Mazars showing, depending on which figures you include, it was either over- or under-collateralized in its bitcoin holdings.

Not to draw an unnecessary comparison to FTX, but CZ’s public comments this week are reminiscent of Bankman-Fried’s attempts to quell fears in early November amid a “run” on the exchange before it filed for bankruptcy protection. On Nov. 7, SBF tweeted that client funds were safe and backed by deposits – a message he deleted after it became clear FTX was deeply in the red. It’s a comparison CZ himself is drawing.

“With Sam Bankman-Fried’s arrest, I think people generalize. So if you get hurt by one bank, you're gonna think all the other banks are bad. If one politician is corrupt, you think all politicians are corrupt,” he wrote. “But the fact is that because one bank is bad doesn't mean all the other banks are bad. And just because one politician is bad doesn't mean all the other politicians are bad.”

This is all well and good – except that crypto exchanges are not, in fact, banks. As my colleague David Z. Morris notes, the term “run on the bank” has been misapplied when talking about recent withdrawals on crypto exchanges. The phenomenon is similar: withdrawals beget withdrawals, fears over insolvency can compound and become self-fulfilling. But unlike banks, users simply have to take it as a matter of faith that exchange operators haven’t misused or lost customer funds.

Centralized crypto exchanges reintroduce an element of trust that trustless protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum remove from finance. Users take on the risks, even if rare, of hacks, frozen withdrawals and other business failures, Casa’s Nick Neuman said recently. And so, amid a period of uncertainty, Zhao’s primary responsibility is to reestablish confidence in his exchange.

Binance has certainly made moves to keep funds on its platform. On Wednesday, crypto critic Bitfinex’ed tweeted a screenshot of a Binance offering to pay 50% APR on staked USDT, seemingly to keep assets on the exchange. Later in the day, Zhao took to Twitter Spaces to criticize self-custodying crypto, alleging that “99% of people … will end up losing” their funds if they have to be responsible for their own keys.

This is no doubt a challenging time for Zhao. On Monday, Reuters reported the U.S. Department of Justice was nearing the end of a multi-year investigation into Binance – one of several ongoing probes into the firm from global law enforcement agencies. Federal prosecutors may ultimately charge CZ and other Binance executives with money-laundering violations, a risk that has accelerated withdrawals.

His comments spreading fears about self-custody are entirely unjustified. Not only is it seemingly in allegiance with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s recent Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act that would put unnecessary guardrails around so-called un-hosted wallets but also contradictory to Zhao’s comments just last month calling self-custody a “fundamental human right.”

See also: Self-Custodial Onboarding Will Be the Norm in Web3's 2023 | Crypto 2023

Rebuilding trust in Binance, stymying outflows, should not come at the expense of crypto’s principle innovation – enabling people to “be their own bank.”

FTX’s collapse was a startling turn of fate for what was once one of the most-trusted crypto companies. Bankman-Fried has gone from being the industry’s J.P. Morgan to its Bernie Madoff. It’s an event that has caused irreparable damage to crypto’s public standing. Binance, too, has an outsized role in the industry – and hopefully it is not another FTX.

But if Zhao has to make low blows to a fundamental attribute of crypto to rescue is own exchange’s reputation, then it deserves to fail. To take an old line from Zhao, “some things are better left unsaid. Recommend no more news like these, for the sake of the people, our industry (and your business)."