Numlock News: May 25, 2018
The delinquency rates on store-branded credit cards have hit the highest level seen since 2011, according to Equifax, with 4.65 percentof private-label cards 60 days delinquent. According to the company's analysis, this is partially because some consumers think that when the retailer on the card goes out of business they don't have to pay off the bill, which oh my that is not how it works at all please do not do that.
Paul Davidson, USA Today
Some rail stations in Japan installed calming blue lights at the ends of train platforms in 2009 as a suicide prevention measure, and it actually appears to be working: studies have shown an 84 percent decline in the number of suicide attempts at stations with the blue lights installed and no increase in attempts at neighboring stations without such lights. That's just one of multiple psychological nudges implemented in Tokyo rail stations. I envy that kind of higher-order planning because I live in New York, where the primary psychological nudge is "this rush-hour subway car is empty for an extremely good reason that will become clear immediately upon entering."
Allan Richarz, Citylab
Uber's announcement Wednesday that it will permanently shutter its self-driving car testing in Arizona doesn't mean it's giving up on testing, it's just leaving the state where its car killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg. An internal Uber memo identifies Pittsburgh as the next city it'll conduct driverless testing in, and the mayor is not thrilled! Mayor William Peduto is demanding the company limit testing to 25 miles per hour until a full federal investigation of the Tempe collision concludes, which if that happens would effectively delay full testing 12 to 18 months.
Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica
An estimated 34 percent of New York City home-seekers are tired of this crap, a new Redfin study found. That's not how they actually put it — 34 percent of New York-based users of the real-estate brokerage were searching for a home in other cities — but that's what I'm reading between the lines. Other cities where folks were scoping out potentially greener pastures include San Francisco (21 percent looking elsewhere) and Denver (20 percent). These searches can be a leading indicator for where migration happens: looking in the other direction, homes in cities like Sacramento, Phoenix and Miami were regularly scoped out by out-of-towners.
Noah Buhayar, Bloomberg
Rockwell Medical Inc. is a company that makes products related to dialysis and has a $300 million market cap, but none of that is important right now. What is important is that, in a complete dissolution of corporate norms, it is fundamentally unclear if the CEO of RMTI has been fired or not. An 8-K is an SEC document that informs investors of important events. Two 8-K forms arrived for RMTI in quick succession, one asserting Robert Chionini is still the CEO, and one asserting thatno, he most certainly is not, and each giving a Rashomon-esque retelling of their camp's version of the day's events. Nasdaq hassuspended trading of the stock.
Matt Levine, Bloomberg
Maine is ending its elver (baby eel) fishing season two weeks early amid a scandal wherein some elver dealers in Maine were allegedly illegally selling their catches without using the state swipe-card system, which tracks legal sales of the eels. The baby eels are extremely valuable exports and in March hit a record price of$2,700 to $2,800 per pound. By Wednesday, 9090.6 pounds of the 9,688 pound quota had been legally sold, but the concerns about poaching ended the season.
Beth Brogan, Bangor Daily News