Published May 23, 2023 5:09 p.m. ET

Elon Musk departs the Phillip Burton Federal Building and United States Court House in San Francisco on Jan. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Benjamin Fanjoy, File)

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter might not keep its headquarters in San Francisco forever, its owner Elon Musk signalled Tuesday.

Speaking virtually at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London, Musk gave a non-committal answer to an interviewer’s question about whether the company will stay in the California city.

San Francisco officials announced last week they are investigating Twitter after six former employees alleged that Musk’s team broke laws by turning the company’s headquarters into a “Twitter Hotel.” The idea was to create sleeping quarters for workers who were pushed to stay up late working on the social media platform after Musk fired or laid off nearly 80 per cent of Twitter’s employee base.

The San Francisco Department of Building Inspection said it will be conducting an investigation into the new allegations.

The former Twitter employees allege that Musk’s team ordered numerous changes to the company’s headquarters in a 1930s Art Deco building in downtown San Francisco that violated building codes. Those changes included disabling lights and adding locks that wouldn’t open during an emergency, according to the lawsuit.

In 2021, Musk moved the headquarters of Tesla, the electric car and solar panel company he runs, from California to Texas. The move followed a spat with Alameda County, California, health officials over reopening a Tesla factory at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

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ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has appointed a former US bank executive to head the central bank…

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday appointed a former U.S. bank executive to head the central bank, sending the strongest signal yet that the newly re-elected leader may be backing away from his unusual economic policies that many advocate blame the worsening cost of living crisis.

Hafize Gaye Erkan, 41, has a Princeton education and will be the first woman to head Turkey’s central bank. In 2021, she briefly served as co-chief executive officer of First Republic Bank, which became the second-largest US bank to fail last month as its wealthy customers pulled out their money during the broader industry turmoil.

Her nomination follows last week’s appointment of Mehmet Simsek, an internationally renowned former banker, as finance and finance minister. He was a former finance minister and deputy prime minister under Erdogan, returning from politics after a five-year hiatus.

The selection of two key financial positions has raised hopes that Erdogan, who was re-elected to a third term last month, is backing down from his insistence that lower interest rates will combat Turkey’s soaring inflation. The rate peaked at 85% in October and people are struggling to afford food, housing and other necessities.

Critics blame the cost-of-living crisis on Erdogan’s unorthodox approach that runs counter to conventional economic thinking – that raising interest rates would fight inflation. Central banks like the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and others around the world are raising the cost of borrowing to curb consumer price inflation.

Erkan’s appointment “is an important step towards more credible economic policy and encourages President Erdogan to relax his grip on the central bank,” said Liam Peach, chief emerging market economist at Capital Economics.

“Recent political appointments must now be translated into policy action so investors can be confident that this shift towards orthodoxy is the real deal,” he said.

The next steps are crucial as the economy grapples with a plummeting currency and still-high inflation at 39.5%. The central bank will meet later this month to decide on interest rates – a key indicator of the course of Turkey’s economy.

In recent years, Erdogan has sacked three central bank governors for failing to comply with his rate-cutting policy.

“Erkan needs to be given the freedom to raise interest rates a lot,” Peach said. “A sharp rate hike from about 8.5% to about 20% would send a very strong signal that a credible policy shift is at hand.”

It must also show that it is important to keep interest rates high in order to curb inflation. While higher borrowing costs are meant to fight inflation, they can slow economic growth as borrowing becomes more expensive.

This could be another pain point for households and businesses whose food and energy costs have skyrocketed in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and whose currency has hit record lows against the US dollar.

Erkan was CEO of investment banking firm Goldman Sachs and worked at San Francisco-based First Republic Bank, where he served as co-CEO for six months in 2021. JPMorgan Chase took over the failed bank after US regulators seized it in May.

She replaces Sahap Kavcioglu, who has overseen a series of rate cuts since 2021. Kavcioglu will now head the Turkish banking supervisory authority BBDK.

“The appointment of Kavcioglu – a proponent of Erdogan’s ‘new economic model’ – as head of banking supervision is a powerful reminder that Erdonomics can retaliate at any time,” said Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of London-based risk consultancy Teneo.

Erkan will have to rebuild the central bank “after years of mismanagement, purges and demotions,” Piccoli wrote in a note.

“Like most other important institutions, the (central bank) has lost its independence and has been undermined by Erdogan’s drive to centralize power, with key tasks being given to loyalists and cronies,” he said.

Copyright © 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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Source: AdobeStock / Consulting

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, joining the growing ranks of public stakeholders around the world looking to jump on the Central Bank’s digital currency (CBDC) wagon, is seeking an experienced CBDC developer for a job posting titled “ Senior Application Architect – Digital”. Currency”.

The job posting states that those interested in applying for the position at the bank could earn up to $215,400 per year.

“As part of the Federal Reserve’s mission to promote accessible, secure, and efficient systems to facilitate dollar transactions, the Federal Reserve System is seeking a senior technologist to conduct research and development of central bank digital currencies,” the bank said in the ad and added

“Given the important role of the dollar, the Federal Reserve System is seeking to better understand the costs and benefits of potential central bank digital currency (CBDC) technologies and how the system can better understand this burgeoning field.”

The move comes shortly after the San Francisco Fed posted a job posting titled “Senior Application Developer – Digital Currency.” With ongoing efforts to form a CBDC-focused team, more vacancies could be posted soon.

The recent announcement states that the selected candidate will be “part of a team at the forefront of technological research and development in the central bank digital currency space” responsible for designing and implementing systems critical to CBDC research meaning are.

A completed bachelor’s degree with a focus on computer science, business informatics or a comparable technical subject or equivalent training and experience is expected. You must also demonstrate a track record of designing and managing digital payments, crypto and/or CBDCs. In addition to hands-on programming experience, the job posting requires candidates to have knowledge and experience in distributed systems design, cryptographic protocols such as zero-knowledge proofs, and consensus algorithms and security.

“The Senior Application Architect works directly with management, other developers on the team, development operations teams, and vendors to ensure the Federal Reserve is well-positioned to design, develop, and implement technology to support a CBDC as it may Board of Governors is required,” the bank said.

In this position, the selected individual will be tasked with creating and overseeing the architectural design of novel systems, as well as directing the efforts of responsible development teams, including internal and external team members, the job posting states.

It is worth noting for those willing to apply for the position that they must be US citizens or hold a green card with the intention of eventually becoming US citizens.

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A clearer picture of post-pandemic life, one that Bay Area health officials increasingly have hinted at since the omicron wave began slowing a couple of weeks ago, is starting to take shape.

Formal public health restrictions like indoor mask requirements and vaccine verification to get into certain indoor spaces will likely ease. Universal contact tracing will be pared back to focus on the highest-risk settings only.

In public remarks Tuesday, local health officials started to spell out some details on what to expect in the coming weeks once omicron infections subside. Omicron now is on the descent, though still at high case levels that are falling more slowly than they rose. Across the Bay Area and state, case rates and test positivity are steadily dropping, and hospitalizations are starting to follow. As of Monday, new daily cases in the nine Bay Area counties fell to a seven-day average of 132 per 100,000 people — half of what it was two weeks ago. It’s too soon to tell what death rates will do because of the lag between new cases and deaths.

“It’s more like getting closer and closer to the new normal, versus closing the book on COVID,” Alameda County Health Officer Dr. Nicholas Moss told the county’s supervisors on Tuesday. “In terms of the things that have been most disruptive to people’s daily lives, those will continue to fall away, hopefully not to return.”

If the omicron downward trajectory holds, and the latest figures Tuesday showed the trend continuing — the region can expect emergency pandemic measures to transition to an endemic response, which means a cautious loosening of official restrictions such as easing vaccination requirements in some settings and — much like San Francisco did Tuesday in dropping indoor mask mandates for vaccinated and boosted stable groups in gyms and offices — beginning to pull back rules on face coverings.

Contra Costa County, for instance, is looking into its health order that requires people to be fully vaccinated to enter restaurants, acting health officer Dr. Ori Tzvieli said Tuesday at a Board of Supervisors meeting.

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If Contra Costa ends up easing that requirement, it would be similar to what San Francisco is doing. As of Tuesday, the city is allowing unvaccinated people to dine indoors as long as they show a negative antigen test result from within the last day or PCR test from the previous two days. Previously, San Francisco required all indoor diners to be fully vaccinated with no option to “test out” of the requirement.

Bay Area counties soon will probably have to decide whether, and under what circumstances, to lift local indoor mask mandates. California officials are expected to drop the statewide indoor mask mandate Feb. 15, Tzvieli said, and Bay Area counties will likely take a county-by-county approach on whether to follow suit locally.

Prior to the omicron wave, Bay Area counties weighed specific criteria for such mask action — if eight weeks or more had passed after vaccines became available to kids 5 to 11, or if a county had reached and remained in the CDC’s “moderate” tier for Transmission and had low and stable hospitalizations. Going forward, the focus will be more on hospital capacity, Tzvieli said.

“Over the next two weeks we’re going to be looking at numbers closely, we’re going to figure out the best way to align our own masking order with the state,” he said. “The most important driver for us right now is less the case numbers and more how the health care systems are doing. We want to make sure everyone in the community, when they go to the hospital, is able to seek high quality care.”

Counties that have more hospital capacity to withstand a potential bump in cases that might follow lifting of restrictions may be more comfortable easing masking than those with less hospital capacity, he said.

“I expect there to be some diversity,” he said. “I suspect most will lift within a month of the state but I’m not sure exactly when. I think it’ll be very county by county.”

Tuesday’s discussions followed Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody’s statements a day earlier that Santa Clara County’s public health department plans to scale back its role in vaccination and testing, ceding those services to people’s regular health care providers. This would mark a return to pre-pandemic expectations, since providers have traditionally handled those services for most residents

Moss, of Alameda County, emphasized that with case rates and hospitalizations still high, it’s too soon to start paring back many restrictions. But with talk of the post-omicron state “in the air,” he wanted to open the discussion.

Despite prospects for dropping mask requirements, residents should still consider ways to protect themselves and the community, he said, echoing recent emphasis from other health officials on the need to rely on people’s individual choices to stay safe, and less on government restrictions.

“Individuals, families and institutions will all need to manage ongoing COVID risk and make the choices that are best for them,” Moss said. “Even if (masks are) not required, they’re going to be a good thing for people to use, particularly if they’re really sick, for the foreseeable future.”

Chronicle staff writer Erin Allday contributed to this report.

Catherine Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Cat_Ho

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