United States of America eSeries: Nerdfest 2021 ⛰️

Nerdfest 2021 ⛰️

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Tonight: OnlyFans does a 180 on its porn ban; Delta will charge workers who refuse to get vaccinated; and all eyes are on our boy J-Money this week. Let's get into it.

By Allison Morrow

👀 WAIT. WHAT?

Remember yesterday, when we talked about how the subscription content site OnlyFans, which is basically a porn site that doesn't call itself a porn site, was planning to get rid of, um, porn?

Yeah, so forget all that. The company reversed its decision Wednesday, citing "assurances" it received from its banking partners that it could continue to "provide a home for all creators."

Confused? Welcome to the club.

My colleagues pressed the company for details. Is this just a delay, or will the policy change take effect at a later date? Did OnlyFans agree to make any changes to appease banks? OnlyFans wouldn't offer any details.

THE UPSHOT

This is great news for the thousands of sex workers and content creators who've amassed huge followings and earn income from their OnlyFans subscribers. When OnlyFans said it was banning sexually explicit content, it was a slap in the face to that community, which essentially built the site.

Not surprisingly, news of the reversal created some whiplash.

"I feel like the right to work has been given back to me even after it was kind of teased to be taken away from me," said one creator, who goes by the name of Maya Morena. "The feeling is just bizarre."

With her OnlyFans income, Morena said she was able to stop doing full-time sex work in person. She wanted to eventually leave the industry, but she needed the money to get through college and pay her bills.

"I would like something more permanent in the future, a guarantee that I can't be put at risk to have my rights taken from me," she said.

MY TWO CENTS

We don't yet know what went on behind the scenes at OnlyFans and its presumably tense discussions with payment processors.

But it's a telling moment when, to paraphrase a colleague who's much smarter than I am, America's actual foundation (capitalism), is peeking out from behind its founding myth of Puritanism.

The fact that OnlyFans is a British startup hardly matters, because the payment companies – Mastercard, Visa, et al – are the American gatekeepers under immense pressure from religious groups and anti-exploitation advocates to keep the illicit parts of the internet in line. (See also: Tumblr, once a thriving site that became a relic of early-aughts internet culture when it was forced to scrub all naughty imagery from its site.)

When OnlyFans went public with its side of the story, putting the blame squarely on banks and touting the site's $300 million in payouts every month, it managed to reframe the narrative as a business conundrum.

✈️ NUMBER OF THE DAY

$200

Delta Air Lines is cracking down on unvaccinated workers. Starting in November, some unvaccinated staff will pay $200 a month more for their company health insurance. The airline is also limiting the number of sick days unvaccinated employees are allowed to take if they contract Covid-19.

🏦 NERDFEST 2021

Before the pandemic, this was a much cooler meeting. Here's Jerome Powell chatting with Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, in 2019. Maybe this year they can put the Rockies in their Zoom background.

This Friday, Wall Street is going to cling to every word spoken at the nerdiest of economic nerdfests: the annual Jackson Hole Symposium.

Historically, this has been an A-list econ gabfest set against the backdrop of the Teton range at a resort in Wyoming. For the second year in a row, thanks to Covid, it's gone fully virtual.

Why it matters: This where the Federal Reserve divulges its thinking about the next several months and years of monetary policy. And analysts are hungry for information right now — When will the central bank taper its monthly buying spree of securities? When will interest rates go up? And for the millionth time, can you explain why Batman and Jerome Powell are never in the same room at the same time?

What we talk about when we talk about 'tapering'

We need to flash back to March 2020 briefly to explain just how important the Fed's role has been.

At that time, Covid-19's spread put the entire financial system and the global economy at risk. The virus landed like a bomb, and while Congress bickered over what to do, the Fed dove on top of it to prevent a total collapse. It did that by buying government-backed debt – lots of it. And it has been keeping that up for the past 18 months, to the tune of about $120 billion a month ($80 billion in Treasuries, and $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities).

It can't keep that up forever, of course. And it can't simply slam the brakes, so it will have to slowly scale back, or taper, those purchases. Goldman Sachs predicts that the taper will begin in November, at a rate of about $15 billion or so a month.

All eyes will be on Nightcap's fiscal hero, the silver fox of the Fed himself, Jay Powell, who'll deliver his economic outlook speech on Friday at 10 am ET.

What will happen when the taper begins? It's impossible to know right now, but it's safe to assume the rally that's kept US markets notching record after record will slow down as investors adjust to their new normal — that is, the pre-pandemic normal, in which the Fed isn't pumping markets with cash. My colleague Anneken Tappe has everything you need to know about the Jackson Hole meeting.

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

💉 Disney World will require vaccinations for many of its employees after the company made a deal with two of its employees' unions.

💰 The SPAC party on Wall Street may be flaming out about as fast as it began, as regulators begin taking a harder look at those companies' accounting practices.

🍩 As if we needed another reason to get vaccinated: Krispy Kreme is doubling down on a sweet promotion — instead of one free doughnut, you can get two free doughnuts every day until September 5 with proof of vax.

🇦🇫 The World Bank is halting financial support to Afghanistan amid worries about the fate of women under Taliban rule — another blow to an economy that relies heavily on foreign aid and is facing the specter of rising food prices.