Cashing in on the bailout, BlackRock shares soar, and more

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have become the public faces of the $3 trillion federal coronavirus bailout. Behind the scenes, however, the Treasury’s responsibilities have fallen largely to the 42-year-old deputy secretary, Justin Muzinich.

A major beneficiary of that bailout so far: Muzinich & Co., the asset manager founded by his father where Justin served as president before joining the administration. He reported owning a stake worth at least $60 million when he entered government in 2017.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act was supposed to provide emergency relief from damages wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But buried inside the hastily crafted, $2 trillion rescue package is a gold mine of tax benefits that allow companies and wealthy business owners to use earlier losses unrelated to the pandemic to claim large rebate checks.

The U.S. has sustained more than $1.775 trillion in costs from more than 265 climate-related extreme weather events since 1980, by some measures, and more than $500 billion in economic losses between 2015 and 2019. That means any move forward from COVID-19 and its economic malaise requires a concerted climate-change response from financial markets and their regulators, a new report says.

The call, leveled at major financial market and insurance regulators and with support from a key Democratic Senator, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, was sounded in a report released Monday by sustainable investing advocate Ceres.

Investors in the world’s biggest bond market are starting to see what the other side of America’s worst-ever economic downturn could mean for their portfolios.

With more U.S. regions gradually reopening and investor sentiment picking up, the Treasuries yield curve from 5 to 30 years ended May close to the steepest since the height of the virus-fueled market panic more than two months ago.

It’s off to the races for the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock Inc. (NYSE:BLK). At a time when the majority of Wall Street’s mega banks are just starting to buy into the green investing ethos, BlackRock has quickly established itself as the purveyor of ESG and renewables investing.

BlackRock owns one of the largest global renewable power platforms, with $5.5 billion in equity assets under management (AUM).

Astate regulator estimates that plugging a single oil well in North Dakota will put 27 people to work, an effort that is expected to begin this summer targeting hundreds of abandoned wells and a task on the minds of officials in other oil-rich states.

North Dakota Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms told a panel of congressional Democrats on Monday that many of the workers likely to be involved in the state’s program are either recently unemployed or remain on their employers’ payrolls only because their companies have secured funding through the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which is part of the government’s coronavirus stimulus package.