The Federal Reserve Thursday officially launched its long-awaited instant payment service FedNow, which allows consumers and businesses to send and receive money in seconds. The system lets Americans pay for groceries instantly, businesses pay their suppliers, or people pay each other. It will be available 24 hours a day, every day of the year, with full access to funds immediately.
FedNow isn’t offered directly to individuals and businesses, but it will serve as the basis of infrastructure for instant payments by linking banks. Transactions occur between bank accounts and enable funds to be transferred from a sender’s bank account to a receiver’s bank account immediately.

The limit per customer credit transaction will be $500,000, but the initial setting of the transaction limit will be $100,000. The money can move from consumer to consumer, from consumers to businesses, or from business to business.
"The Federal Reserve built the FedNow Service to help make everyday payments over the coming years faster and more convenient," said Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

"Over time, as more banks choose to use this new tool, the benefits to individuals and businesses will include enabling a person to immediately receive a paycheck, or a company to instantly access funds when an invoice is paid.

The Federal Reserve Thursday officially launched its long-awaited instant payment service FedNow, which allows consumers and businesses to send and receive money in seconds.

The system lets Americans pay for groceries instantly, businesses pay their suppliers, or people pay each other. It will be available 24 hours a day, every day of the year, with full access to funds immediately.
FedNow isn’t offered directly to individuals and businesses, but it will serve as the basis of infrastructure for instant payments by linking banks. Transactions occur between bank accounts and enable funds to be transferred from a sender’s bank account to a receiver’s bank account immediately.

The limit per customer credit transaction will be $500,000, but the initial setting of the transaction limit will be $100,000. The money can move from consumer to consumer, from consumers to businesses, or from business to business.
"The Federal Reserve built the FedNow Service to help make everyday payments over the coming years faster and more convenient," said Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

"Over time, as more banks choose to use this new tool, the benefits to individuals and businesses will include enabling a person to immediately receive a paycheck, or a company to instantly access funds when an invoice is paid."

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)FedNow is different from apps like Venmo, which require holding balances in the app rather than sending and receiving money directly to or from your bank account. And it isn’t instantaneous.
"Consumers might also have the impression that sending money through Venmo is instant, but Venmo doesn’t do real-time settlement," said Rusiru Gunasena, SVP of RTP Product Management and Strategy at The Clearing House. "There’s no money in hand in your wallet. There’s a lot of gymnastics behind the scenes needed to settle the payment, and thus [it's] not true real-time payment."
FedNow is also different from traditional payment rails of check, ACH, and wire services. ACH transfers are electronic bank-to-bank money transfers processed through the Automated Clearing House network.

The service launches with the participation of 35 banks of different sizes, including JPMorgan and Wells Fargo as well as credit unions.
The Fed is focused on increasing the number of institutions that use FedNow for sending and receiving payments. The US isn’t mandating that financial institutions offer the service.

Some banks will need to upgrade older payment infrastructures, accounting procedures, and other back-office processes to accommodate the expanded 24/7 operating hours.

The Fed believes when FedNow is fully available and widely used, individuals will be able to instantly receive their paychecks and use them the same day, and small businesses can more efficiently manage cash flows without processing delays.
The Fed maintains that making funds immediately available will help Americans living paycheck to paycheck or small businesses with cash flow constraints by avoiding late payment fees and freeing up working capital to finance growth. Over the coming years, the Fed says customers of banks and credit unions that sign up for the service should be able to use their bank’s app or website to send instant payments.

"This is the culmination of a dream that has been held by Justice Roberts and especially Clarence Thomas for decades," says Law Professor Justin Hansford.
The Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action didn’t come out of nowhere. 

​For decades, conservatives on the court have pushed for a “colorblind” view of the constitution, implying that acknowledging race is somehow inherently discriminatory. There is arguably no greater champion of that viewpoint than Justice Clarence Thomas.
And on Thursday, Thomas got his ultimate wish. In a decision split entirely on conservative and liberal lines, the Supreme Court declared the use of race in admissions policies (with narrow exceptions) unconstitutional. The ruling landed a mortal blow to efforts to integrate schools in the United States after years of attacks on integration policies in K-12 education.

“This is the culmination of a dream that has been held by Justice Roberts and especially Clarence Thomas for decades,” says Howard Law School Professor and Executive Director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center, Justin Hansford.
From his rulings in significant affirmative action and integration cases such as Grutter v. Bollinger, Fisher v. University of Texas I & II, and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District, Thomas has been nothing if not consistent.
“Clarence Thomas wrote a 58-page concurring opinion that’s pretty extraordinary,” says American University Washington College of Law Professor Stephen Wermiel. “And he read from it from the bench for quite a while, and it is the consummation of Clarence Thomas’s views on race expressed in school desegregation cases expressed in affirmative action cases. I mean, this is the moment he’s been waiting to sort of have his day.”

In his noted concurrent lengthy current opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, Thomas re-iterates his dissent in Grutter. “All forms of discrimination based on race—including so-called affirmative action—are prohibited under the Constitution,” writes Thomas. He goes on to bash Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s argument that our society should work to undue the ills of systemic oppression and slavery, calling obvious signs of inequality such as the wealth gap “irrelevant.” Instead, he says that “the law must disregard all racial distinction.”
It’s an interesting stance from a man who grew up in the Jim Crow South and went on to attend Yale Law School, which had an explicit affirmative action policy at the time he was admitted. Nonetheless, it’s clearly an opinion he’s held for decades.

​Vonoi Magazine

While buyers in more affordable ranges are experiencing massive housing shortages, that’s not the case for the Los Angeles luxury home market.
"We have a good amount of inventory,” Josh Altman, co-founder of the Altman Brothers, a real estate agent firm that focuses on luxury homes, told Yahoo Finance LIVE (video above). "Good houses still are selling."
In Los Angeles, there are 400 available listings for single families over $5 million, representing 18% of the total single-family inventory of around 2,200 homes, according to a filter search on Redfin.com.
But there are a lot fewer buyers in this price range. A $5 million home requires buyers to earn around $850,000 a year, a bracketed range that includes less than 1% of Californians, based on data analyzed by SmartAsset. (Note: The average U.S. income is around $70,000)
"I think the buyer has the upper hand," Altman said.

​Luxury buyers took a breather in April, though, after Los Angeles City imposed a so-called "mansion tax" — officially known as the Measure ULA — to help fund solutions for the city's homeless crisis. The measure tagged on an extra 4% in taxes for properties sold over $5 million and 5.5% on properties sold over $10 million. That was on top of the city's base transfer tax.
This new measure dented demand for houses over that threshold in Los Angeles. Only two properties sold in Los Angeles in April were over the $5 million mark, compared with 126 condo and homes sold in March, one month ahead of the ULA deadline, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"We had an extremely slow April," Altman said.

Sellers, knowing the tax was looming, tried to offload properties before April. One developer promised an Aston Martin, Bentley, or McLaren vehicle to the buyer of its $16.5 million listing, a new construction home in Beverly Hills, as long as the purchase was made before April 1.
The home didn’t sell and remains on the market, even after a price cut of $500,000.
Actor Mark Wahlberg sold his Beverly Hills mansion for $55 million in February only after a $32.5 million price drop.
"Across the board, the buyer mentality is all about a deal these days," Altman said.
With good reason. The ULA rates are not progressive, which means the taxes are levied against the total value of the property and not just the additional amount over the threshold.
For instance, a property transaction of $5,000,001 triggers $222,500 of tax revenue, according to the city's ULA tax calculator. The two luxury homes sold in April — at $5.7 million and $7.5 million — brought in over $500,000 for Measure ULA.
But there are signs that buyers are coming back, Altman said, noting that May was the strongest month with closings and June is "looking like it's going to double that," he said.
"I'm sitting in my car out front of a listing because I got a big showing," he said, "which is always a good sign."
By: Rebecca Chen
​

Lebron hired his friend Rich Paul to be his agent with no experience or degrees in sports related fields. Everyone said it was the worst decision ever. Today, LeBron is worth $1 Billion in contracts and endorsements. His friend Rich Paul is now the #1 agent in the NBA and he's expanding to MLB and the NFL.

After graduating from high school, Paul bought his first house at 19 and was mentored by Distant Replays owner Andy Hyman on selling vintage jerseys. ... In 2002, he met LeBron James at the Akron–Canton Airport, where James was impressed by Paul's authentic Warren Moon throwback jersey.

Paul’s agency, Klutch Sports Group, is a part of United Talent Agency and represents LeBron James, Ben Simmons, John Wall and Anthony Davis, among other NBA players. Rich Paul is known for driving hard bargains for star clients, giving them new power in the N.B.A.

He launched the agency in 2012, with Forbes reporting that Klutch received over $1 billion in contract values and the company’s football division represented two of the first three players who were drafted in 2020.

See what happens when you sometimes give people a chance to prove their worth and put your friends in a position to win!! Uplift each other!
​

Wall Street has amassed a considerable war chest to take advantage of the shifting housing market.
Institutional investors have earmarked up to $110 billion to purchase or build single-family rentals, Insider reported. The estimate comes from Zelman & Associates, which hailed the amount as the most ever accumulated by investors to acquire U.S. homes. Of the $110 billion, $30 billion has already been committed to properties being leased or developed, a Zelman investment banker added.
The money is enough for roughly 400,000 homes. Institutional investors already own about 700,000. That is only 3 percent of the nation’s 20 million single-family rentals, according to Roofstock, but MetLife Investment Management predicts it will grow to 40 percent by 2030.
The players gearing up for a homebuying spree in the $4.4 trillion single-family rental market run the gamut, but include major names. Invitation Homes, Tricon Residential, Blackstone and KKR are among them, as are wealth managers and pension funds such as CalPERS and Invesco.

Investors are looking for a better bet than their traditional property holdings, including office buildings, which are struggling. In addition to single-family rentals, they have been drawn to multifamily buildings and industrial assets.

Institutions pumped $50 billion into the single-family rental market during the first two years of the pandemic, John Burns Real Estate Consulting estimated. But the market has shifted in recent months as rising mortgage rates sidelined not only individuals but institutions.
Single-family rental transaction volume was down 70 percent year-over-year through November, according to an estimate by Adam Stern, the CEO of Strata SFR.

The housing market is presenting an opportunity for investors, though, as many individuals want to live in houses but don’t want to buy at the moment because prices and mortgage rates have jumped — or they expect to move in the near future.
Prices could decline in 2023 as more homes are listed for sale. Investors are also working with builders on built-to-rent communities, allowing investors to score deals and builders to ease inventory crunches.

​Source: The Real Deal

Given how impractical and unusual the footwear is, it’s been a surprise to see how quickly—and how widespread—the fashion world has hopped on them, before they’re even released no less. They’re certainly a commitment to wear: A number of TikTok videos show how much of a workout it is to get them on and off. But if fashion people love one thing, it’s a gimmick, and these boots had everyone talking and noticing them this season. Those who dared to wear them get bonus points for the risk-taking. Though something tells us they’ll be as obsolete as a Nintendo 64 come next season. ​

Source: Vogue