THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
Economy & Business
ENERGY
Oil posts decline after
U.S. stockpiles report
Oil declined amid a stronger
dollar and after a U.S.
government report showed a
surprise increase in domestic
crude stockpiles.
Futures in New York fell
3.3 percent on Wednesday, the
biggest drop in a week, as a
rising dollar weighed on
commodities like oil priced in
the currency. In the United
States, domestic crude
inventories increased for a third
straight week to the highest
since August, according to an
Energy Information
Administration report. The
industry-funded American
Petroleum Institute had reported
a supply decline on Tuesday.
Traders are also continuing to
assess the Biden administration’s
plans to quell rising energy
prices. The White House didn’t
announce a strategic petroleum
reserve release on Tuesday and
said it continues to look at all the
tools it has available to limit the
impact of high prices on
consumers.
— Bloomberg News
REGULATORSSEC chief aims for
transparency on feesHedge fund and private-equity
giants overseeing trillions of
dollars are poised to face tougher
regulations from the U.S.
Securities and Exchange
Commission.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler said
that he’s asked the agency’s staff
to consider ways to bolster
transparency into the fees firms
charge investors and fund
performance metrics.
“I think it’s time we take stock
of the rapid growth and changes
in this field,” Gensler said in
remarks prepared for a
Wednesday speech at the
Institutional Limited Partners
Association Summit. He added
that the SEC should look at ways
to “bring more sunshine and
competition to the private funds
space.”
Gensler laid out several areas
for SEC focus tied to competition
and transparency, including
whether rule changes are needed
to ensure that some investors
don’t get preferential access to
information through “side
letters” — which are not sharedwith everyone that has an
interest in a fund — and whether
certain practices should be
prohibited to prevent conflicts of
interest.
— Bloomberg NewsSOCIAL MEDIAYouTube eliminating
view of ‘ dislikes’YouTube will no longer show
the number of “dislikes” on
videos, an attempt to make the
platform more hospitable to
creators.
For years, YouTube has relied
on the tiny thumbs below each
video as a metric for ranking
content. Viewers often used the
thumbs-down button to torment
or harass certain creators — low
engagement metrics can mean
less promotion by the platform’s
algorithm. During tests, YouTube
said it found that hiding the
display count cut down on this
practice.
“We also heard directly from
smaller creators and those just
getting started that they are
unfairly targeted by this
behavior,” the company wrote in
a blog post on Wednesday. The
button itself isn’t going away —only the public view of the count.
— Bloomberg NewsALSO IN BUSINESSUber Technologies is being s ued
by the Biden administration for
charging a “wait-time” fee topassengers with disabilities and
allegedly refusing their refund
requests, making them feel like
“second-class” citizens. Uber’s
failure to “make reasonable
modifications” to its wait-time
fee policy and ensure “equitable
fares” for passengers withdisabilities who need more time
to board vehicles is
discriminatory under the
Americans With Disabilities Act,
according to the complaint filed
Wednesday in a San Francisco
federal court. The Justice
Department is asking the court
to block Uber’s policy and
seeking damages to compensate
passengers, including for
emotional distress, as well as a
civil penalty.
Boeing said it has reached a legal
settlement with families of those
killed in the 2019 Ethiopian
Airlines 737 Max jet crash,
admitting the company’s liability
and agreeing to negotiate
compensation payouts in a
federal court. The aircraft maker,
which was sued by the families,
said that “the measure and
elements of plaintiffs’ damages”
for each of the lawsuits filed in
the Ethiopia Air case will be
determined under Illinois law,
according to the proposed
agreement, which was filed
Wednesday in a Chicago federal
court. The Ethiopia crash killed
157 in March 2019, just months
after another 737 Max jet crashed
in Indonesia that killed 189
aboard a Lion Air flight.
From news reportsDIGESTVALENTYN OGIRENKO/REUTERS
A Bolt Food delivery courier rides a bicycle outside the Heydar
Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan, in J une. Azerbaijan has secured
loans worth $350 million from the Asian Development Bank and the
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to support the country’s fight
against the coronavirus pandemic, the finance ministry said on
Wednesday, according to a Reuters report.BY SAMIRA SADEQUEnew york — Mouhamadou Ali-
yu says he has been born again. It
happened after four consecutive
days of fasting, and seven years
since an eerie feeling settled in
him that something was very
wrong. “Look, someone had my
life and now I got it back,” he said
recently, shaking his head in
disbelief at times. He had just
been relieved of $481,000 in
debt.
Aliyu is one of about 4,000 taxi
drivers who started a new chap-
ter last Wednesday as New York
City reached an agreement after
a years-long fight with the New
York Taxi Workers Alliance (NY-
TWA), the union that had been
fighting to relieve drivers of
thousands of dollars in debt they
owe for medallions, the physical
permits to operate taxis.
The city controls the supply of
medallions, and only a limited
number of people are allowed to
have them. Because of high de-
mand for medallions, their value
and price had risen significantly
before plummeting in 2015 as
people increasingly turned to
ride-sharing companies such as
Uber and Lyft instead of taxis.
Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) laud-
ed NYTWA’s effort and expressed
his satisfaction with the agree-
ment.
“Taxi workers have worked
tirelessly to make New York City
the most vibrant city in the
world, and we refuse to leave
them behind,” he said after the
deal was announced. “I’m proud
to have worked with Senator
[Charles E.] Schumer, NYTWA
and [lender] Marblegate to reach
an equitable, sustainable solu-
tion that builds on the success
we’ve achieved in reducing debt
burdens for the hard-working
drivers who keep our city mov-
ing.”
More than 90 percent of the
taxi drivers in New York City are
immigrants, and many don’t
speak much English, making
them vulnerable to financial
agreements they may not fully
understand.
Most medallion owners in-
vested in the permits thinking
that they were a path to a better
life in the United States, and had
planned for the asset to be part of
their retirement savings. But in
2015, the asset for which drivers
had taken out hundreds and
thousands of dollars in loans
suddenly had little to no value.
As of September, a medallion
was worth about $93,000.
Over the years, the drivers’
income dropped significantly,
but the amount of their loans
didn’t, and they went further
into debt. Bhairavi Desai, presi-
dent of NYTWA, said that by this
year, the drivers had an average
debt of $500,000. The crushing
weight of that financial burden
was blamed for nine suicides of
drivers between late 2017 and
2018.
This fall, NYTWA leaders and
members, alongside local assem-
bly members, had camped out-
side City Hall for 46 days, start-
ing a hunger strike in mid-Octo-
ber that lasted 15 days before the
city reached an agreement with
them. The union had been de-
manding a debt forgiveness that
would allow the drivers to pay a
maximum of $145,000 instead of
the hundreds of thousands of
dollars that many owed.
The final agreement was for
$170,000, which can be paid over
20 years, but drivers such as
Aliyu and his colleagues were
still ecstatic about it.
According to NYTWA, a driv-
er’s average monthly gross in-
come is $8,500. For many driv-
ers, monthly medallion pay-
ments ranged from $1,500 to
$3,000; with the new deal, the
drivers will pay a maximum of
about $1,100.
This reduced debt is the same
for medallion owners regardless
of how much they owe; for those
who cannot repay the loan, their
medallions may be repossessed
and sold, and the city said it will
pay any remaining loan balance.
“Drivers will no longer be
stuck with a debt beyond their
lifetime,” Desai said. “We now
have terms that will be livable for
the members.”
On Sunday, Aliyu, who came to
the United States from the Ivory
Coast almost three decades ago
and had been under the weight
of a $651,0000 loan, was over-
come with emotion amid other
demonstrators.
He had bought his medallionin 2004 so he would no longer
have to rent a cab from garages
where he sometimes would have
to wait as many as 12 hours and
still not be guaranteed a shift. He
considered it an investment.
Like other medallion owners,
he had been hopeful when the
price shot up to $1.3 million in
2014, because it meant the value
was increasing, but when the
price began to plummet in 2015,
the medallion was suddenly
worth only a fraction of its
purchase price.
By 2016, Aliyu’s income had
decreased by 40 percent because
of a drop in taxicab demand. By
2017, it was down by 60 percent.
He was still managing to make
loan payments, but when the
coronavirus pandemic hit, he
was unable to work and had to
receive unemployment benefits.
“Something is very, very
wrong here. And this is no fault
of my own,” he had said a few
days before the agreement was
reached, adding that, as an im-
migrant, he understood little
about the financial risk of buying
the medallion — or what it could
lead to.
Said Desai: “This is about thecity, but it’s also about the lend-
ers. Most of the lenders in the
industry bought the loans on the
secondary market.” They bought
them from credit unions, for
example, at much lower rates but
did not pass those savings on to
drivers.
Assemblyman Zohran Mam-
dani, who fasted all 15 days in
solidarity with the workers, said
that most taxi drivers who
bought medallions considered
them a way to achieve the Ameri-
can Dream.
The city “marketed these me-
dallions to drivers across New
York City, at times focusing on
immigrant drivers, telling them
this was their ticket to the mid-
dle class,” he said.
Mamdani said their plight had
remained unaddressed for far
too long.
“This is a struggle that is
known and yet it is not one that
is ever treated with the urgency
that it deserves — a large part of
that is because of who it is that’s
struggling,” he said.
For immigrant drivers —
many of whom came to the
United States to secure a better
future for their children — theA victorious drive for
debt relief in New York
After weeks of protests and a 15-day hunger strike, taxi workers union
reaches deal with city officials to cap payments for operating permitsrepercussions are deeper. Being
so mired in debt meant many
were on the cusp of losing that
opportunity.
Wain Chin, an immigrant
from Myanmar, moved to New
York in 1987 in search of a better
life for his children. In two years,
his eldest daughter is slated to
start college. Three days before
the union victory, Chin said that
his hope had been dimming. He
was worried that the magnitude
of his debt would make it harder
— if not impossible — to take out
student loans.
For many drivers, worry about
deep debt had seeped into their
homes and was affecting their
families. Aliyu constantly wor-
ried that his children would have
to carry his burden on their
shoulders.
Kuber Sancho-Persad, a driver
in the Bronx borough, opted to
inherit his father’s medallion
after his death so that his moth-
er, who is ill, wouldn’t have to
face the financial strain.
Dorji Dolma — whose hus-
band, Chime Gyatso, is a medal-
lion owner — says his concerns
have affected their family as
well.
“He is the head of the family,”
she said. “When he is worried, we
all are worried. Me and my
children were [always] stressed.”
Gyatso, a Tibetan immigrant
from India, has been heavily
involved with the union — often
prioritizing it over other respon-
sibilities, Dolma said. She has
been supportive, showing up to
the recent protests with him
almost every day.
After the deal was announced
last Wednesday, the couple hand-ed out shots of sake to the other
drivers who gathered to cel-
ebrate. Some of them broke out
into spontaneous cheers; others,
like Aliyu, began dancing mid-
sentence, out of joy as well as
disbelief.
For some, grief from the strug-
gle remains. Wain stood somber-
ly in one corner. He lost his
driver friend Kenny Chow to
suicide. Wain is relieved that he
will now be able to pay for his
daughter to attend college, but
he knows that nothing will bring
his friend back.
But the overall spirit of the
moment elevated the drivers
who lined the sidewalk outside
City Hall in Manhattan in the
autumn chill.
Desai, who was easing out of
her hunger strike, said she was
feeling triumphant.
“Now, when we shout, ‘No
more suicides, no more bank-
ruptcies,’ it’s no longer a plea —
it’s a real declaration,” she said.
Aliyu was waiting to go home
and video-call his wife in the
Ivory Coast to share the news.
When asked whether he’s plan-
ning to bring his family to the
United States — a lifelong dream
of his — his eyes broke into a
smile.
“Soon,” he said. “At least to
party. To say thank you to all
these papis, mamis, uncles that
really helped get us out of this
mess.”
As the evening wound down, a
yellow cab drove by. The driver
honked in solidarity as those
along the sidewalk cheered, their
raised fists forming a silhouette
against the sky.
[email protected]SAMIRA SADEQUE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
A New York Taxi Workers Alliance member affixes a red ribbon for taxi driver Mouhamadou Aliyu during a demonstration outside New York City Hall on Oct. 31.○
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