Plenty of companies are cutting costs to weather the pandemic recession. Few are trying to do so while also spending billions of dollars to satisfy their regulators. These are the tasks facing Wells Fargo WFC 5.17% & Co. Chief Executive Charles Scharf, who is attempting to slash at least $8 billion from the San Francisco bank’s annual budget. The bank’s expenses last year were $57.63 billion. Wells Fargo is simultaneously shelling out money to remake the vast risk-and-control systems that regulators have said were inadequate to catch the fake-account scandal that got it in hot water more than four years ago. Wells is still subject to 10 regulatory penalties known as consent orders. The harshest, from the Federal Reserve, has capped the bank’s growth for three years.
Severe weather conditions hitting much of the U.S. have caused some semiconductor companies to idle production capacity, threatening to exacerbate a chip shortage that has already prompted car makers to curtail output at some plants. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. , one of the world’s biggest chip makers, operates two factories in Austin, Texas, and was asked by local authorities to shut those down on Tuesday, said a company spokeswoman. Samsung expects to resume production as soon as possible and, the spokeswoman said, was waiting for electricity provider Austin Energy to advise when the chip maker’s operations could start up again. Texas has suffered widespread power disruptions that began early Monday amid a severe winter storm. The outages have prompted local officials to ask companies to reduce operations to minimize demand on the region’s power grid. The Austin facilities represent about 28% of Samsung’s overall production capacity, according to Citi analysts. Austin is a manufacturing hub for Samsung, which is considering a $17 billion plan to expand its operations there or in other parts of the U.S.
As more of you flee the cities for the suburbs, exurbs and not-at-all-urbs, here are some things your new neighbors would like you to know. When you marry someone, you marry their whole family. It is the same with buying a house. You buy the whole neighborhood. And the neighbors. Like in-laws, your new neighbors will be watching you. You screw up, they won’t forget. They will be talking about that time your garbage can fell over and dumped dirty diapers on the street until that diapered child is married. My neighbors are still giving me grief about the year we left our Christmas wreath up until March, a shame we wear like a brownish, crumbly Scarlet Letter “O.” The ways you can alienate your new community are endless. Making too much noise, owning aggressive pets, driving too fast down the street, cutting down trees that don’t belong to you, leaving major appliances in your front yard, acting like a total Karen, selling drugs out of your garage, burning crosses on your lawn—these obvious infractions will earn you neighborhood pariah status and, potentially, jail time. But even if you are not a jerk or a criminal, are thoughtful, kind and leave your major appliances in the house where they belong, here’s a secret: There is a whole list of neighborhood crimes you won’t even know you’re committing. Here are some: Gratuitous shoveling: Shovel your driveway, shovel the sidewalk on both sides of your driveway, shovel out the elderly person across the street. Don’t shovel the driveway of your able-bodied next door neighbor. That is virtue signaling and it will not be received well by the able-bodied owners, who have egos that you just bruised. The only time it is acceptable to shovel the driveway of the able-bodied is when they have a boat, pool and/or awesome outdoor entertainment area, in which case someone else probably beat you to it. Failure to wave: You’re walking down the street. Someone you don’t know waves from their porch as you pass. You don’t see it. Or maybe you do and you don’t wave back, or you wave back in an insufficiently enthusiastic way. The talk will have started before you even set foot back in your house. “He’s stuck up.” “Is that the new guy?” “Ya. He’s from New York, right?” “Yes. Of course.” “I knew it.” If a neighbor waves at you, wave back like they are a beloved relative risen from the dead.
The Texas Division of Emergency Management said it had transported 1.7 million bottles of water and assisted in delivering ready-to-eat meals. It said the Texas Military Department had deployed six units in North Texas earlier in the week to assist with rescuing stranded motorists and conducting welfare checks. The division said Friday it had requested water, meals, blankets and generators from FEMA, but didn’t provide details on when it had done so. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office referred questions about the pace of the response to Emergency Management Chief W. Nim Kidd, who said icy roadways had made it impossible to move commodities such as water across the state. Mr. Kidd said ice had kept officials from accessing an emergency warehouse in Fort Worth until Thursday night. “We continue to make tremendous strides to overcome the challenges over the past week,” Mr. Abbott said Friday. “We’re working nonstop with local and federal partners. After a request from Mr. Abbott, Mr. Biden declared a state of emergency on Sunday night for all 254 counties in the state, allowing FEMA to make generators and fuel available to maintain critical infrastructure. The governor then asked the president on Thursday for major disaster assistance, which would allow local communities to seek federal help to pay for damage to infrastructure and state residents to recover payments for property damage. Local governments said they still haven’t received the aid they requested from the federal government via the state. Former Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, who was in office during Hurricane Harvey and numerous other natural disasters, said he hadn’t seen the same level of coordination that is routine for responding to hurricanes. “Nobody saw this coming—OK,” he said. “But once it occurred, why didn’t people start thinking about what’s really needed out there.” As of Friday afternoon, an estimated 14.6 million Texans were without safe drinking water, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. A winter storm had burst pipes across the state, leading to dry faucets and an order from city governments to boil any accessible tap water to make it safe to drink. The water crisis came after days of blackouts across the state in subfreezing temperatures.
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