
HBO's Mountainhead Will Make You Laugh as the World Burns
Over Succession 's four seasons, series creator Jesse Armstrong made a name for himself as television's go-to chronicler of the uber-rich. The HBO show depicted the inner workings of a powerful, Murdoch-esque media clan and the way its members lived, traveled, celebrated and humiliated one another. It was a tantalizing look at what it might be like to have wealth so profound that it sets you apart from everyone and gives you the power to influence politics worldwide.
Now, after two years off the air, Armstrong returns to HBO on May 31 with a new movie, Mountainhead, which almost feels like it could be a Succession spinoff. (He says he even contemplated having ATN, Succession 's Fox-like news channel, playing in the background.) The cool color palette is the same; so are the zingers. Nicholas Britell is back to compose the score. Instead of media scions, however, Armstrong has turned his attention to the newest generation of powerful elites—tech bros—and raised the absurdity of the scenario.
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It is hard to disagree with him when he says that for some people stablecoins become functional equivalents of bank deposits—but without the FDIC insurance, relationship ties, or regulatory protections banks provide. As Ron points out, this risk isn't theoretical: Deposit displacement has been happening for years. A new study from Cornerstone Advisors found that $2.15 trillion has already left banks for fintech investment accounts—two-third of it from Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. This is on top of the estimated $10 billion that Americans have sitting in merchant mobile apps like Starbucks' in any given week. So how can banks, who enjoy a great income stream from interchange right now, position themselves for a world of retailer stablecoins and instant payments? The networks have already been active—they are not sitting back and waiting—but on the general assumption that payments margins are on the way down, the banks' strategic response should be to add value around the transactions, not to try and survive off of shrinking interchange in the face of competition from non-card alternatives such as Walmart Pay-By-Bank or an Amazon coin. Those services might, for example, include safety and security, data and decisioning, not only the payments themselves.
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