META announces second wave of layoffs: 10,000 Jobs to cut off.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp, has announced an additional 10,000 layoffs. Meta has already fired off 11,000 workers in the first round of layoffs, which occurred in November of last year. According to Mark Zuckerberg, these layoffs are a part of a "year of efficiency," and in addition to the 10,000 jobs being slashed, 5,000 additional vacant positions will also be eliminated.

Since their earnings were 4% lower than the previous year, Mark said it was solely the result of the revenue's sharp slowdown. He also cited an increase in interest rates in the United States, global geopolitical risk, and increased regulation as factors slowing meta's growth and revenue. He further stated that layoffs like these could occur in the future.

Managing the Banking Crisis and Cooling the Economy

 We know that the FED's biggest concern lately has been stubborn and high inflation rates. In the past few days, they've had to take on another obstacle, a trio of bank failures. The central bank announced the Bank Term Funding Program earlier this week, which provides one-year loans to banks and other financial institutions that offer up collateral like US Treasuries. This would allow banks with unrealized losses to swap out typically safe investments for a loan of up to one year worth the original value of the assets they're putting up as collateral.

This program is a form of monetary easing designed for emergency use when the Fed needs to prevent the next SBV from failing. There are risks, but the Fed believes the benefits outweigh these. This is also a clear example of the Fed acting as a lender of last resort. 

The Fed is still of course working on managing inflation, and they believe that the program will only cause a "very minor delay" in getting back to the target inflation rate of 2%. The central bank is expected to continue increasing interest rates. However, the Fed's rate hikes actually factored into the SVB collapse. The higher cost of borrowing hurt the sector's profits and ability to raise funds which in turn forced tech companies to draw down on their bank deposits so they could fund operations. Although, this was not the leading cause of the collapse. It is important that this crisis is managed first before the Fed gets back to handling inflation rates.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/15/economy/fed-priority-cooling-economy-financial-stability/index.html