Weekend edition—Deutsche Bank, WhatsApp propaganda, unisex pronouns

How many investment banks is too many investment banks? [Quartz Daily Brief]( Good morning, Quartz readers! How many investment banks is too many investment banks? This week, Deutsche Bank embarked on a major retreat from the business. Germany’s biggest bank is cutting a fifth of its workforce—some 18,000 positions—and curtailing its investment banking and trading units. Its most “[radical]( restructuring yet will see it focus on more staid corporate banking for primarily European customers. The Frankfurt, Germany-based company is getting all the attention now, but it isn’t an outlier. Every big bank has undergone a profound rethink since 2008. That year, multiple top firms in Manhattan were swallowed up by other banks, and Lehman Brothers collapsed. The Royal Bank of Scotland fell from the skies shortly after. Government watchdogs in the US and Europe who yanked the financial system back from the brink then set about constructing a safer, more stable financial industry. They largely succeeded. That means risky things like buying and selling securities aren’t the moneymakers they used to be. Goldman Sachs, known for its trading prowess, has gone into retail banking. Its nemesis Morgan Stanley shifted into wealth management—a move that has [paid off]( (paywall). Switzerland’s UBS and Credit Suisse downsized their investment banks, as did RBS in the UK, and Japan’s Nomura[has stumbled]( outside its home market. The big five US banks, which also include JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citigroup, are at the top of what’s left, but it’s not quite the jolly oligopoly it would seem. Francesc Rodriguez Tous, a finance professor at Cass Business School in London, thinks they still face intense competition, but often from more nimble non-banks. Automated high-frequency trading firms are pushing deeper into their turf, as are specialized, boutique investment banks.[Startups]( are pecking away at their feet, and big tech like[Facebook]( are circling. So, is investment banking endangered? Not quite. There’s still plenty of money to be made in finance, and members of this smaller group of mostly American mega-banks are still too big to fail. But Deutsche Bank’s overhaul is an acknowledgement that the world doesn’t have room for as many big banks as it used to, which is something other firms have acknowledged for years. If the trends of the past decade continue, their class could get smaller still. —John Detrixhe and Jason Karaian Five things on Quartz we especially liked Broken shoes and spicy buns on the car lot. In China, nicknames for Western products and people are common. NBA star Stephen Curry, for instance, [is known as]( the “cute god,” and Longchamp’s Le Pliage bag [is called]( a “piglet.” As Echo Huang reports, high-end automobiles [are no exception](. You’ll hear BMW referred to as “don’t touch me,” the Mercedes-Benz AMG as “love the hen,” and Audi’s RS series as “a gangster in a suit.” A case for cash. Food-delivery startup DoorDash asks customers to tip drivers through its app. But it counts the amount toward the “guaranteed minimum” payment it promises its “dashers” for each order, so usually a tip does not result in added income. As [Alison Griswold explains]( a better way to reward deliverers is to tip in cash. They’ll still get the minimum payment, plus the extra from you. Artful protests. Since last December, a peaceful and well-organized uprising in Sudan has toppled dictator Omar al-Bashir and put the country on the path to a more inclusive—if tenuous—democratic transition. With less suppression, one upshot of the revolution has been a burst of vibrant artwork both in the streets and on Sudanese social media, [reports Abdi Latif Dahir](. Blunting the blow of mass layoffs. When a company abruptly fires a large number of workers, as Deutsche Bank did this week, it takes a significant psychological and even physical toll—but it need not be that way, [writes Sarah Todd](. Shifting the stigma of job loss from ex-employees to executives can help, as can better planning and communication. Propaganda and presidential power. Fake content on WhatsApp—spread by companies buying phone data and using sophisticated targeting—helped propel far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro to Brazil’s presidency last October. Since then, elections in India, Spain, and other countries have been influenced by subversive tactics on the Facebook-owned platform, with no sign of letting up, [as Olivia Goldhill explains]( in an exclusive for Quartz members. Five things elsewhere that made us smarter Come hell and high water. Louisiana’s fishing industry has had a rough 21st century, with Hurricane Katrina in 2005 followed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill five years later. This year, due to record Midwest rains, it faces a flood of Mississippi River water loaded with chemicals and pesticides, a problem likely to be exacerbated by this weekend’s Tropical Storm Barry. For HuffPost, Rocky Kistner [meets the front-line fishermen](. Kim Jong Un doesn’t need Donald Trump. For North Korea, a denuclearization deal with the US could mean an end to sanctions, a peace treaty, and a boom in investment and trade. But as [Ruediger Frank writes at 38 North]( it is not desperate to achieve this outcome. The country is increasingly confident that China has its back should talks with the White House falter. The case for using the singular “they.” The English language is far from perfect, and sometimes a change is in order as society progresses. Why, for instance, are we forced to use either “he” or “she” as a third-person singular pronoun? The gender indication is unnecessary, [argues Farhad Manjoo]( in the New York Times, and it’s time for the unisex “they” to be widely accepted, even by parochial grammarians. Who gets to launch trade wars? Earlier this year Trump threatened to impose a 5% tariff on all goods entering the US from Mexico. The move was too much even for many Republicans, and it raises the question: Why does he have all that power regarding tariffs in the first place? In the Conversation, [William Hauk recalls a time]( when Congress, not the president, decided how the US conducted trade. The town that bet on bitcoin. Rockdale, Texas had been economically stagnant since an Alcoa smelter closed in 2008, but last summer it seemed that better days were ahead, with a Chinese company called Bitmain promising to create up to 600 jobs and invest $500 million in what would be the world’s largest bitcoin-mining facility. But as [Mark Dent writes in Wired]( those plans quickly fell apart as the crytpocurrency’s value plummeted. Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, brand nicknames, and bitcoin-mining proposals to hi@qz.com. Join the next chapter of Quartz by [downloading our app]( and [becoming a member](. Today’s Weekend Brief was edited by Steve Mollman and Holly Ojalvo. Enjoying the Daily Brief? Forward it to a friend! They can [click here to sign up.]( Want to advertise in the Quartz Daily Brief? Send us an email at ads@qz.com. To unsubscribe from the Quartz Daily Brief, [click here](.