Rent-to-own nightmare

Here’s what’s on the agenda:

• Wall Street’s recession fears are killing the vibe in the Hamptons.
• Amex is being investigated over a small-business tax pitch. Salespeople say they were made the scapegoats.
• Private equity sold them a dream of homeownership. They got evicted instead.
• The real reason Tesla is letting rival car companies use its EV charging stations.

If this was forwarded to you, sign up here.

Soft-landing in sight

The US added 209,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in June, according to data out Friday. That was down from the prior month and short of expectations. Still, recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a job market that’s running hot.

• The unemployment rate dropped to 3.6% in June.
• The prime-age employment-population ratio, or the share of prime-age workers with a job, hit 80.9% in June, the highest since 2001.
• Average hourly earnings increased 0.4% month on month and are up 4.4% on last year. Pay growth is now likely outpacing inflation.
• Four million people quit their jobs in May, down from the “Great Resignation” peak but still historically high.
• The monthly number of layoffs and discharges, at 1.6 million in May, remains low.

The dream scenario for the economy is to get inflation under control without a sharp spike in unemployment or a recession. So far, the job market has remained robust. We’ll get a better picture on inflation this coming week, when the consumer price index for June is released.

Download our app to get that news — and all of our coverage of the economy — straight to your cell.

RIP WFHamptons 

Earlier in the pandemic, the place was pandemonium as Wall Streeters fled their offices. Now, with soaring interest rates and falling banker fees, the winds have clearly shifted. Lopez went back to the Hamptons to see how the banking class was faring — and the mood right now is grim.

Read on.

Also read:

• Hedge funds had a rough first half of 2023. Here’s how Citadel, Point72, Millennium, and others stack up.

In a legal filing, a former employee claimed that salespeople were pressured to sell a product marketed as a tax-write-off vehicle. Internal sales material, interviews with former employees, and legal claims raise questions about whether senior managers knew the product was being pitched to help avoid taxes — and how high up the corporate ladder the awareness may have gone.

More on the Amex turmoil.

The rent-to-own company Home Partners attracted private-equity investment as far back as 2014. Then Blackstone Group bought the company for $6 billion in 2021 with a promise to make homeownership a reality for those locked out of traditional mortgages.

In a new Insider investigation, tenants said they felt set up to fail.

Read more.

Also read:

• Sundae set out to build a kinder way to buy run-down houses. Employees say it replicated the industry’s problems.

The answer might be staring you in the face, Insider’s senior tech correspondent Adam Rogers writes. By letting Ford and GM plug into its chargers, Tesla might be able to siphon off data from its rivals’ cars.

Why Musk is opening up Tesla’s charging stations.

“It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”

Reddit, mortgage rates, & more

• High mortgage rates haven’t done anything to cool prices. We explored why.
• As Reddit moves toward an IPO, employees describe dysfunction internally. A year of growing pains might hinder the company’s next step.
• Wall Street fearmongers keep warning that a recession and stock-market crash are just around the corner. It’s time to start ignoring them.
• How the writers’ strike is crushing Hollywood’s next generation.
• The journalist Evan Gershkovich has been in captivity in Moscow for 100 days on espionage charges. His friend shares what the world needs to know about him.
• The internet turned everyone into their own travel agent. And now we’re stuck with worse airline travel and more flight delays.
• An Oxford economist argues that older generations have an advantage in the AI boom: people skills and experience that can’t be automated away.