Hi, it's Ask a Banker! You should send us questions on email or Twitter, but this particular question, though timely, was made up by me, sorry:
Q. Should banks be required to hold much more capital as a safety net? Or should they be putting that money to productive use by lending it out instead?
Yahoo confirmed early Monday morning that it is buying Tumblr in a deal worth about $1.1 billion. "Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business," Yahoo added.
In its statement announcing the deal, Yahoo says that:
Yahoo is expected to announce Monday that it's acquiring the social media site Tumblr, in a deal The Wall Street Journal and other news outlets are reporting to be worth about $1.1 billion. Some analysts are calling the acquisition an effort by Yahoo to be "cool and relevant" again.
California is about to become the first state to require shore power at its ports. A new law mandates at least half of a shipping line's fleet to shut down their diesel engines and plug into shore-side electric power when they unload their cargo. It's part of a larger effort to cut pollution at the state's busiest ports, but costs have been a sticking point.
Alongside a freeway in Northern California is a billboard which reads: Pivot to Canada. The billboard is urging high-tech immigrants living in the U.S. to pay attention to Canada. Canada wants to attract highly-skilled, foreign-born tech workers who are fed up with the visa process that they must follow to remain in the U.S.
TD Bank volunteers sort donated food into barrels at the Manna Food Center in Gaithersburg in Montgomery County, Md. Poverty in the county just outside Washington, D.C., has grown by two-thirds since 2007.
Credit Pam Fessler/NPR
Elizabeth Kneebone is co-author, with Alan Berube, of Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, a new book from the Brookings Institution.
Credit Gabriella Demczuk / NPR
Fafaneva Phillip Avudufu (left) and his wife, Akouavi Davi, with their grandson Joshua, 4, in their apartment in Gaithersburg, Md.
Poverty has grown everywhere in the U.S. in recent years, but mostly in the suburbs. During the 2000s, it grew twice as fast in suburban areas as in cities, with more than 16 million poor people now living in the nation's suburbs — more than in urban or rural areas.
Elizabeth Kneebone, a fellow with the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, says this shift in poverty can be seen in Montgomery County, Md., right outside the nation's capital.
By all the laws of anything, Winston Chen should not have quit his well-paying, midcareer job at a software company at age 40. But one day he was watching a TED Talk, one of those popular online video presentations, delivered by a New York designer.
"He presented this absolutely irresistible idea," Chen says. "He said, 'Why don't we take five years out of retirement and spread them throughout your working life?' "
"The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for the blogging site Tumblr."
The Journal, the only outlet reporting the approval, is sourcing its story to "people familiar with the matter." Lauren Armstrong, a Yahoo spokeswoman, told us in an email that they "don't comment on rumors or speculation."
One hundred and forty years ago this month, a German immigrant named Levi Strauss patented the first pair of jeans ever made. During the California gold rush, Strauss traveled across the country to set up a West Coast branch of his family's dry goods business. That business changed forever when Strauss got a letter from a tailor named Jacob Davis.
The Tesla Model S, Motor Trend Car of the Year, is introduced at the 2013 North American International Auto Show, in Detroit in January. Tesla's attempts to sell its cars without going through dealerships is meeting resistance.
Tesla Motors, the American maker of luxury electric cars, has been riding a wave of good publicity.
Its Model S sedan (base priced at $62,400, after federal tax credits) was just named Motor Trend Car of the Year. Reviewers at Consumer Reports gave the lithium-ion battery powered vehicle a rave.
And the company, headed by billionaire innovator Elon Musk, 41, posted a profit for the first time in its 10-year history — powered in part by zero-emission environmental credits.
Students fill out applications during a job fair at the University of Illinois Springfield in February. Fed up with working for free, some interns are suing their employers.
Summer is almost here, and with it comes the army of interns marching into countless American workplaces. Yet what was once an opportunity for the inexperienced is becoming a front-line labor issue.
More and more, unpaid and low-paid interns are feeling their labor is being exploited. Some are even willing to push back — with lawsuits.
An Afghan worker helps excavate part of the mountaintop copper works above the ancient city at Mes Aynak in February. Afghanistan is believed to be sitting on massive mineral and metal deposits. But many obstacles have prevented large-scale mining from getting underway.
Credit Musadeq Sadeq / AP
A journalist walks by an exhibit of minerals on the way to a news conference by the Afghan minister of mines, in Kabul in 2010.
For years, reports have suggested that Afghanistan is sitting on massive deposits of copper, gold, iron and rare earth minerals valued up to $3 trillion. This provides hope for a future economy that would not have to rely so heavily on foreign donations.
But with an uncertain political, regulatory and security environment, international investors are hesitant. And it could be many years before Afghanistan begins extracting its mineral wealth.
Flax is the oily seed usually spotted in the nutritional supplement or cereal aisles. It's marketed as a superfood because of its high levels of omega-3 fatty acids and fiber.
Omega-3s may do all kinds of good things for humans — like protect against Alzheimer's, heart disease and even cancer — so it seems reasonable to think they could also protect the health of animals.
This is TELL ME MORE, from NPR News. Michel Martin is away. I'm Celeste Headlee. Coming up, it's National Bike to Work Day, but many millennials prefer two wheels to four. Why more 20-somethings are driving less. That's just ahead.
From teens with drive, we turn now to young people who have no interest in driving. This is National Bike to Work Day, and a substantial number of millennials choose bikes or public transportation or their feet to get around instead of cars. That's according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, or PIRG, which concluded that the 20th century driving boom is over.
Paul Eisenstein has written about this trend. He's the editor of TheDetroitBureau.com, and he joins me now. Welcome.
