Jonathan Wright Reveals Pop Star He’d Type

Renowned hair guru and Bad Boys star Jonathan Wright linked up with host Thembi for the latest installment of The Shade Room‘s Keep It 100! series, where stars spill tea while trying to put together a fire ‘fit for $100 (or less)!

While cuttin’ up and surfin’ the clothing racks at MOIST on Melrose Ave., Jonathan dished on some top-tier actors who have inspired him and how he does his best to stay out of difficult client situations.

He Aspires To Play Madea’s “Long-Lost Son” In A Tyler Perry Film

While shopping, Jonathan reflected on how he started doing hair after stepping in to help out a fashion client ahead of the BET Awards.

However, Jonathan Wright didn’t always have his sights set on being one of the BADDEST hair stylists in the game. In fact, he spoke on how some high-profile Black actors inspired him to consider following in their footsteps.

“I wanted to be kind of like an actor. Like, Tyler Perry. Tyler Perry inspired me. I always wanted to be in one of the Madea films.”

Aside from Tyler Perry, Wright was sure also to give Martin Lawrence and Jamie Foxx a shoutout. However, he was dead set on wanting a role in a Madea production, and he had the perfect premise for his character!

“Tyler, I’m telling you — I’m Madea’s long-lost son. From when she was stripping back in the day, I’m the one that she had.”

Wright Talks Which Pop Star’s Hair He’d Love To Style

Being a hair connoisseur, Jonathan spoke about whose hair he’d style! When Thembi threw Britney Spears in the mix, he agreed with enthusiasm!

“Oh, I really do want to do Britney Spears. Her personality and her personality and my personality…,” Jonathan said, interlocking his hands.

And after the hair slay, Jonathan playfully said he wants to dance battle the pop star.

Jonathan Wright Speaks On Cutting Ties With Kelsey Harris & Ridin’ With Megan Thee Stallion

Aside from speaking on some of his aspirations, Jonathan Wright acknowledged how he has to navigate disagreements between many clients.

He believes that this approach is one of the reasons why his “career is where it’s at.”

“I’m so much [more] focused on leveling up myself [and] advancing my career. And that’s why my career is where it’s at.”

After being cool with Kelsey Harris and Megan Thee Stallion following the Tory Lanez assault, Wright discontinued his ties with Harris after her court testimony.

RELATED: BREAKING: Tory Lanez Sentenced To 10 Years In State Prison In Megan Thee Stallion Assault Case

“I was being cool with the situation because I know both of them. Because I know the type of person that Kelsey is — she’s a cool person. But after the court stuff and all that, I cut ties with her. Because of the simple fact… girl, don’t go on that bench and do that. Like, keep it all the way real.”

After acknowledging that he’s ridin’ with Megan, Jonathan said he and Kelsey are “not cool” because he doesn’t “have respect for one of the situations on the bench.”

“We not cool. [But] Megan my girl.”

Peep the full episode of Keep It 100! featuring Jonathan Wright down below.

RELATED: Jonathan Wright Assists Chrisean Rock Following Her Release From Jail (Video)

China shopper costs fall first time in 2 years, deflation fears develop

Customers at a fresh food market in Shanghai, China, on Monday, Aug. 7, 2023.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

BEIJING — China reported inflation data for July that pointed to a modest improvement from June.

The consumer price index fell by 0.3% in July from a year ago, but was up by 0.2% when compared with June, according to the National Bureau of Statistics Wednesday.

The year-on-year CPI print for July was slightly better than expectations for a 0.4% decline, according to analysts polled by Reuters. It was still the first year-on-year decline since early 2021, according to official data accessed via Wind Information.

The producer price index fell by 4.4% in July from a year ago, better than the 5.4% decline in June, the data showed.

However, the year-on-year PPI read was worse than the 4.1% forecast by a Reuters poll.

“Both CPI and PPI are in deflation territory,” said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist of Pinpoint Asset Management, in a note following the data release. “The economic momentum continues to weaken due to lacklustre domestic demand.”

“The CPI deflation may put more pressure on the government to consider additional fiscal stimulus to mitigate the challenge,” he added.

A 26% year-on-year drop in pork prices, a staple food in China, contributed to the overall decline in the CPI in July. Tourism prices rose by 13.1% from a year ago.

Core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose by 0.8% from a year ago — the highest since January, according to official data accessed via Wind Information.

Producer prices will likely turn higher on a year-on-year basis before the consumer price index does, said Bruce Pang, chief economist and head of research for Greater China at JLL.

He expects consumer prices will still be dragged down in the coming months by falling pork prices and a high base effect, while core CPI may gradually rise.

Sluggish consumer demand

Read more about China from CNBC Pro

Oxford Economics expects China’s consumer price index to grow by 0.5% this year and the producer price index to fall by 3.5%.

“China’s weak demand follow-through in Q2 can be attributed to its relatively contained demand-side stimulus during Covid, years of regulatory tightening, and an ongoing housing correction,” Louise Loo, lead economist at Oxford Economics, said in a note Tuesday.

It’s a “positive development” that authorities are choosing targeted easing, rather than large-scale stimulus, Loo said.

China reported trade data Tuesday that showed a sharp plunge in both overseas and domestic demand.

Lack of confidence, not stimulus is the real problem facing the Chinese economy: Analyst

Exports fell by 14.5% in July from a year ago, while imports dropped by 12.4% in U.S. dollar terms — both worse than analysts had expected.

The sharp decline in the imports figure was partly due to commodity price declines, but Loo’s estimates indicate imports declined in real volume terms by around 0.4%.

China is set on Aug. 15 to release retail sales, industrial production and other data for July.

Correction: This article has been updated to accurately reflect that Oxford Economics expects China’s producer price index to fall 3.5% this year. An earlier version of the story misstated it.

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon bets on asset administration

David Solomon, Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs, participates in a panel discussion during the annual Milken Institute Global Conference at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on April 29, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California.

Michael Kovac | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Goldman Sachs is known as Wall Street’s top brand, a juggernaut employing some of the world’s best traders and investment bankers.

But it’s facing an inflection point: Those high-profile businesses have fallen out of favor with investors since the 2008 financial crisis. Instead, it’s been steady, fee-generating areas like wealth and asset management that are valued far more than boom-or-bust activities like trading or advising on mergers.

Goldman shares have been stuck at a relatively low price-to-tangible-book value, a key industry metric that measures how the market sizes up a firm compared to the value of its hard assets. Goldman trades for just above one times price to TBV, while rivals including JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley are valued at roughly double that.

Which is why Goldman CEO David Solomon has hitched his fortunes to asset and wealth management. His latest move positions Goldman to take advantage of two big trends in finance: The rise of alternative assets including private equity and growth in the fortunes of the ultrarich.

Still, concerns surfaced recently after former asset management co-head Julian Salisbury departed Goldman for a smaller rival. Salisbury, who was most recently chief investment officer for AWM, is joining San Francisco-based private equity firm Sixth Street. His former co-head, Luke Sarsfield, also left earlier this year, helping fuel worries about a brain drain at the firm.

Goldman, which put former trading co-head Marc Nachmann in charge of AWM in October, says the company has a deep bench and that the average tenure of partners is its longest in a decade.

What is asset management, exactly?

Simply put, Goldman portfolio managers make bets across the universe of financial instruments, either on behalf of clients or using the bank’s own funds.

That runs the gamut from the least risky, plain-vanilla holdings like money market funds, to fixed-income products like corporate bonds funds, stock ETFs and mutual funds, and finally to alternative assets including private equity, private credit (i.e. loans to corporations), real estate and hedge funds.

Compared to rivals JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley, which are big players in traditional assets like stock funds, Goldman is more weighted to the esoteric world of alternative investments, which is why it’s sometimes said that Goldman wants to build a “mini-Blackstone” within the bank.

Goldman gets paid through management and incentive fees, which swell as funds attract more assets. Altogether, Goldman has $2.71 trillion in assets under supervision as of June 30, which includes wealth management assets.  

What about wealth management?

The industry has coalesced around a model where financial advisors charge fees, often 1% to 2% of a typical client’s assets annually, to manage investments. They also can earn fees for loans or other products geared towards the wealthy.

Goldman does particularly well with the ultra-rich, defined as those with at least $30 million to invest; it has about 8% of that cohort in the U.S., according to a company presentation. In fact, Goldman’s average ultra-high net worth client keeps about $60 million at the bank.

Where Goldman fares less well is serving the merely rich; it has only about 1% of the high-net worth market, or those who have between $1 million and $10 million to invest.

The bank has more than $1 trillion in wealth management client assets. While significant, key rivals are both larger and growing faster: Morgan Stanley had $4.9 trillion in client assets as of June 30.

Why does it matter?

Goldman is still very much tethered to the ups and downs of Wall Street. The bank’s trading and advisory division generated two-thirds of Goldman’s $23.1 billion in revenues so far this year.

A pandemic-era boom in deals and trading in 2020 and 2021 was quickly followed by a bust, and last quarter marked the industry’s lowest investment banking haul in a decade. That’s caused Goldman to report the steepest profit drop this year of the six biggest U.S. banks, making the push for sustainable sources of growth even more urgent.

Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwards

For Solomon, who has battled criticism over his ill-fated retail banking push, leadership style and hobbies, success in AWM would provide a welcome counterpoint to those who say he’s made too many errors.

Has it been smooth sailing?

Not exactly. Solomon has made tough decisions to consolidate the various pockets of investment at the firm, and then to focus on raising outside funds while shrinking wagers made with house money. That’s upset some insiders used to autonomy over decades of operation.

He’s also shuffled the deck several times. In a 2020 reorganization, Solomon pulled apart asset and wealth management and assigned Salisbury and later Sarsfield to co-lead the asset manager, a move he reversed when he reunited the businesses and named Nachmann to lead AWM.

That upheaval has led to the departure of the ex-asset management co-heads, as well as other senior leaders.

How’s the business doing now?

Despite the turbulence, AWM has been making progress against its fee and fundraising goals, supporting the idea that Goldman’s reputation for savvy investing gives it an edge.

The bank is on track to reach its goal of generating at least $10 billion in fee revenue by next year. And its total assets under supervision rose by $42 billion to $2.71 trillion in the second quarter.

While Solomon cautioned that Goldman’s “asset management journey” would take two to three years before meaningfully helping margins, he sounded optimistic.

“I feel very, very good about the strategic decisions that we’re making,” Solomon told investors in July. “We see a clear line of sight, and we’re going to make progress.”

An More and more Frightened Trump Says Mike Pence Has Gone Over To The “Darkish Facet”

Trump is showing how scared he is by claiming that his former vice president Mike Pence is not a good person and has gone over to the ‘dark side.’

Trump posted on Truth Social:

WOW, it’s finally happened! Liddle’ Mike Pence, a man who was about to be ousted as Governor Indiana until I came along and made him V.P., has gone to the Dark Side. I never told a newly emboldened (not based on his 2% poll numbers!) Pence to put me above the Constitution, or that Mike was “too honest.” He’s delusional, and now he wants to show he’s a tough guy. I once read a major magazine article on Mike. It said he was not a very good person. I was surprised, but the article was right. Sad!

There is no evidence that Pence was about to lose his seat as governor of Indiana, but his former vice president speaking out against him has gotten under Trump’s skin. Pence stayed quiet to the country’s detriment for more than two years, but now that he is talking, he is telling all. Pence even shouted at Trump supporters in a parking lot.

Interestingly, Trump views ‘the dark side’ as following the law and speaking the truth.

If Donald Trump is convicted for his attempted coup, it will be because Mike Pence provided valuable evidence against Trump.

Donald Trump claiming that Mike Pence is a bad person is like the former president insulting himself.

If Pence is such a bad person, why did Trump add him to the ticket?

Trump is scared and worried about what Mike Pence could say.

The ex-president is trying to discredit a potential Jack Smith witness, and his comments about Pence could be viewed as witness tampering.

Listed below are the 5 price-target modifications and Four trades we made throughout this busy earnings week

CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer

Rob Kim | NBCUniversal

In a jam-packed week of earnings, the Club executed multiple trades and elevated price targets for some of our biggest stocks. Many of these moves stemmed from what we saw in quarterly numbers and heard on conference calls. Here’s a day-by-day look at the portfolio action.

Affected person With Botched Tummy Tuck Will get Makeover You Will not Consider

It’s hard to stomach a Botched case as bad as this.

On the season eight premiere of Botched, patient Mikeal shared the devastating story of how a tummy tuck gone wrong nearly left her badly deformed—and nearly killed her.

“My stomach looks like a disaster,” Mikeal explained on the Aug. 3 episode. “It makes me feel damaged, unattractive, like not even a woman.”

After her husband died in 2008, the West Virgina native lost weight and went under the knife to have some extra skin removed.

“I went for a simple tummy tuck, I ended up in the ICU three times,” Mikeal recounted. “I ended up in the O.R. at least eight times. There were four times that I should have died. I didn’t. Now, I’m in this position of I’ll never look normal. It takes the mental toll of you’re alone and if somebody sees that will they ever want you?”

During her consultation with doctors Terry Dubrow and Paul Nassif, Mikeal detailed the nightmare 14-hour procedure that ruined her life. In Terry’s opinion, Mikeal most likely suffered from a post-surgery infection and skin-eating disease, which is very often lethal.

Airbnb (ABNB) Q2 earnings report 2023

Airbnb shares slid as much as 6% in extended trading on Thursday after the short-term home-rental company reported a smaller sum of nights and experience booked in the second quarter than analysts had projected.

Here’s how the company did:

  • Earnings: 98 cents per share, vs. 78 cents per share as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
  • Revenue: $2.48 billion, vs. $2.42 billion as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.

Airbnb’s revenue grew 18% year over year in the quarter, according to a statement. Net income reached $650 million, compared with about $379 million, or 56 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.

The company reported $19.1 billion in gross booking value for the quarter. That was up 12% from the second quarter of last year and above the $18.99 billion consensus among analysts surveyed by StreetAccount.

Airbnb said it had 115.1 million nights and experiences booked during the quarter, up almost 11%, but less than the 117.6 million StreetAccount consensus. Nights and experienced booked increased 19% in the first quarter.

In a letter to shareholders, Airbnb said the nights and experiences booked number was up against a tough comparison.

“We saw an improvement in year-over-year Nights and Experiences Booked growth during the quarter from 10% in April to 15% in June,” the company said. “In particular, we were encouraged by the acceleration in year-over-year nights in North America throughout the quarter, and the recovery in EMEA in June following challenging holiday comparisons in May.”

Gross booking value per night, at $166.01, was up 1% year over year.

With respect to guidance, Airbnb called for $3.3 billion to $3.4 billion in third-quarter revenue, or 14% to 18% growth. Analysts polled by Refinitiv had been looking for $3.22 billion. Management called for a “modest” sequential acceleration in nights and experiences booked.

Airbnb still sees plenty of service opportunities that could add to revenue growth, CEO Brian Chesky told analysts on a conference call. He said there are plenty of services people can buy when they stay in hotels and resorts that Airbnb has yet to make available to its guests.

He said an advertising platform is “obviously” one thing Airbnb could add, and the company could also start matching available hosts with people with homes who lack the time to host.

During the quarter Airbnb introduced Rooms in an effort to play up the appeal of affordable private bedrooms to rent out, at $67 per night on average.

Notwithstanding the after-hours move, Airbnb shares have risen about 64% so far this year, outperforming the S&P 500 stock index, which is up 17% over the same period.

Executives will discus the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 4:30 p.m. ET.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

Trump grand jury in particular counsel election probe leaves court docket

Television news crews setup outside the the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. District Court House on July 25, 2023 in Washington, DC. Former President Donald Trump has said he’s been informed that he is the target of an investigation by a grand jury examining Jan. 6 and efforts to overturn the 2020 election led by special counsel Jack Smith.

Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

LIVE UPDATES: Former president Donald Trump predicts he will be indicted in 2020 election probe

Members of the grand jury hearing evidence in the special counsel probe of possible 2020 election interference by former President Donald Trump and others left a federal courthouse Tuesday afternoon, fueling speculation that an indictment against the former president was imminent.

It has been two weeks since Trump announced he was a target in the federal investigation into the efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. The probe, lead by special counsel Jack Smith, is also focused on the events surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Trump’s receipt of a target letter gave the strongest indication yet that the former president would likely be charged in the election probe.

The grand jurors met last Thursday, but left for the day without any hint that they had voted to return indictments.

On Tuesday morning, they headed up to their area on the third floor of the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in Washington, D.C., according to NBC News reporters in the building.

The grand jury broke for lunch around noon ET, and resumed meeting about an hour later.Members were seen departing from the courthouse around 2 p.m.

Trump has already been indicted twice since he launched his 2024 presidential campaign, his third run for the White House.

In March, Manhattan prosecutors charged him with falsifying business records related to hush money payments made before the 2016 election to women who allege they had extramarital affairs with Trump.

In June, he was charged with 37 criminal counts in a case that was centered on his handling of classified records after leaving the White House in 2021. Smith is leading both of the federal probes into Trump.

A superseding indictment in the classified documents case was filed last week, and hit Trump with additional charges.

Those new charges related to an alleged effort by Trump and his co-defendants to delete surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, the Florida resort where the top secret records had been stored. Carlos de Oliveira, a property manager at the club who has been added to the case as the third defendant, told another Mar-a-Lago employee that “the boss” wanted to delete a server containing the security footage, prosecutors alleged.

Trump declared in an all-caps social media post over the weekend that the tapes were “voluntarily handed over” to Smith’s prosecutors, whom the former president lambasted as “thugs.”

“We did not even go to court to stop them from getting these tapes,” Trump wrote. “I never told anybody to delete them.”

Pfizer (PFE) Q2 earnings report 2023

Pavlo Gonchar | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Pfizer on Tuesday reported second-quarter adjusted earnings that topped Wall Street’s expectations, but posted revenue that fell short of estimates as Covid product sales plunged.

Pfizer reported second-quarter sales of $12.73 billion, down 54% over the same period a year ago.

Excluding sales of the company’s Covid vaccine and Covid antiviral pill Paxlovid, revenue grew 5% operationally. Together, the products raked in $1.6 billion in revenue for the quarter.

Here’s how Pfizer results compared with Wall Street expectations, based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

  • Earnings per share: 67 cents per share adjusted, vs. 57 cents per share expected
  • Revenue: $12.73 billion, vs. $13.27 billion expected

Pfizer booked a net income of $2.33 billion, or 41 cents per share. That fell from $9.91 billion, or $1.73 per share, during the same period a year ago. 

Excluding certain items, the company’s earnings per share were 67 cents per share for the quarter. 

Looking ahead, the New York-based company narrowed its 2023 sales forecast to $67 billion to $70 billion, from a previous forecast of $67 billion to $71 billion. 

Pfizer reiterated its full-year adjusted earnings outlook of $3.25 to $3.45 per share.

Shares of Pfizer have fallen nearly 30% this year, putting the company’s market value at roughly $203 billion.

Pfizer is in a transition period as it navigates its post-pandemic boom.

The company and rival drugmakers like Moderna have seen a steep drop off in Covid-relates sales this year as the world emerges from the pandemic and relies less on blockbuster vaccines and treatments that help protect against the virus.

That decline, which has weighed on Pfizer’s sales during the past two quarters, shows no signs of abating.

But Pfizer is pinning its hopes on mergers and acquisitions and a record pipeline to help the company pivot to new areas of growth. 

Investors are eager for executives to provide updates on Pfizer’s several near-term drug launches, which CEO Albert Bourla said in May will help grow non-Covid revenues “at a faster rate” during the second half of the year.

That includes Pfizer’s vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus and its updated Covid shot – both of which are slated to roll out during the third quarter.

Executives are also likely to be asked about the company’s $43 billion acquisition of cancer therapy maker Seagen – a deal Pfizer believes could contribute more than $10 billion in risk-adjusted sales by 2030. 

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission asked Pfizer and Seagen for more information on their proposed merger during the second quarter. The move came as the agency cracks down on similar deals in the pharmaceutical industry. 

Executives will also likely to address the tornado that hit Pfizer’s major plant in North Carolina after the company told hospitals last month that more than 30 drugs may see new supply disruptions due to the damage.

Pfizer will hold a conference call at 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday. 

Home lawmakers scrutinize pandemic-era worker retention tax credit score

IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel testifies before a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Feb. 15, 2023.

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

Scrutiny of a pandemic-era tax credit intensified this week as lawmakers, the IRS and tax professionals sought solutions for the wave of small businesses that wrongly claimed the tax break. 

The employee retention credit, or ERC, was enacted in 2020 to support small businesses affected by shutdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic and is worth thousands of dollars per employee. There’s still time for eligible businesses to amend returns and claim credits, which has sparked a cottage industry of firms, known as “ERC mills,” pushing the credit to businesses that may or may not qualify.

“While it was a great opportunity and much-needed lifeline to small businesses, it is fraught with fraud,” said Roger Harris, president of accounting and tax firm Padgett Advisors, speaking at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing Thursday.

More from Personal Finance:
IRS halts most unannounced visits to taxpayers
IRS weighs guidance for employee retention tax credit
How to know if your business qualifies for the employee retention tax credit

“Any time this amount of money is being handed out through the tax system, the bad actors show up, and they have shown up in large numbers,” he said.

As of July 26, the IRS said, it had roughly 506,000 unprocessed Form 941-X amended payroll tax returns.

As the IRS works through its backlog of unprocessed amended returns, it’s unclear how many small businesses may have wrongly claimed the credit. But a future audit “could ruin them,” according to Harris.

The IRS has received more than 2.5 million ERC claims since the beginning of the program, but processing has slowed due to the “complexity of the amended returns,” according to the agency.

“The joy of getting the money could very quickly be replaced with the terrifying reality that because you weren’t eligible, you could be put out of business because of the amount of money you now owe back to the federal government,” Harris said.

The true ERC claim backlog may be significantly higher because of professional employer organizations, or PEOs, which provide payroll benefits and other HR services, according to Pat Cleary, president and CEO of the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations, who also testified at the House hearing. That’s because a single PEO claim can represent many small businesses.

IRS says legitimate ERC claims are declining

The IRS has issued several warnings about “ERC schemes” and added the issue to the top of its “Dirty Dozen” list of tax scams for 2023. This week, the agency said it has “increased audit and criminal investigation work” in this area.

“The further we get from the pandemic, we believe the percentage of legitimate claims coming in is declining,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said at the IRS Nationwide Tax Forum in Atlanta this week. “Instead, we continue to see more and more questionable claims coming in following the onslaught of misleading marketing from promoters pushing businesses to apply.”  

The further we get from the pandemic, we believe the percentage of legitimate claims coming in is declining.

Danny Werfel

IRS Commissioner

Currently, small businesses have until April 15, 2024, to amend returns for 2020 and until April 15, 2025, to amend returns for 2021. “That raises future concerns,” and the agency is weighing an earlier end date, Werfel said.

Tax professionals need a ‘real-world solution’

Meanwhile, questions linger for tax professionals fielding questions from small businesses about ERC claims.

“As practitioners, we need guidance,” Larry Gray, a certified public accountant and partner at AGC CPA, said in written testimony for the House hearing. “We need guidance to be able to show our clients clearly why they do or do not qualify.”

He said ERC specialists help companies amend payroll tax returns, but aren’t amending income tax returns to reflect the change, which sends clients back to him.

What’s more, “claiming the credit and correcting the tax return are likely not done by the same people,” since many tax professionals don’t handle payroll tax returns, Gray said.

Harris stressed the need for a “real-world solution” for small businesses that wrongly claimed the credit because “there’s no way in the world we’re going to audit our way out of this problem.”