A quarter that began with retail investors declaring from their breakfast nooks the demise of Wall Street as we know it ended with big banks reaffirming their primacy via cold hard cash. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan kicked off bank earnings season by revealing massive windfalls from trading and dealmaking, defying warnings from within the industry (and without) that recent good times for markets couldn’t last. Goldman earned more from trading in the first three months of the year than it had in any quarter in the past decade, while JPMorgan saw such revenue climb 25%. The big driver of this massive payday for masters of the universe? To an extent, it was optimism fueled by the very same day-traders who tried to stage a revolution. —David E. Rovella 

Bloomberg is tracking the progress of coronavirus vaccines while mapping the pandemic globally and across America. 

Here are today’s top stories   

A new poll shows a majority of Americans support President Joe Biden’s $2.25 trillion infrastructure and spending plan, as long as it’s funded by higher taxes on corporations.  

Nik Lim runs an internet service called VanwaTech in Vancouver, Washington, just across the state line from left-leaning Portland, Oregon. The 23-year-old’s business has been raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars as he keeps neo-Nazis and other violent white supremacists online.

Nik Lim

Denmark has become the first country in the European Union to drop AstraZeneca’s vaccine from its Covid-19 inoculation program amid concerns over serious but extremely rare side effects. The move follows a pause in the U.S. for use of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, for similar reasons. Meanwhile, infections and deaths are accelerating as new waves expand all over the globe. Here is the latest on the pandemic.

Bernie Madoff is dead. The man who outdid Charles Ponzi by perpetrating a $19 billion fraud that demolished the life savings of many clients while giving another black eye to the financial industry was serving a 150 year-sentence. Madoff, who suffered from end-stage kidney disease, was 82. 

Bernard Madoff in Manhattan federal court on March 12, 2009.

Artist: Christine Cornell via Bloomberg News

Hundreds of U.S. corporations and executives signed on to a new statement calling for a defense of Americans’ voting rights, the latest united backlash against Republican-led state efforts that threaten access to the polls—largely at the expense of Black Americans, critics warn. Voting is the “most basic and fundamental right,” the signatories wrote in a double-page ad that ran Wednesday in the New York Times. Among them were some of the biggest names in technology and finance, such as Amazon, BlackRock, Facebook and Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett. Now, as the GOP threatens corporate interests (usually their key constituents) with retaliation, there’s the question of whether these companies and executives will do more than talk.

The future of batteries, the foundation upon which a fossil fuel-free future will be built is quite possibly a slender sheet of ceramic material you can bend between two fingers. But no one outside of a Silicon Valley startup is allowed to know what it’s made of. 

Audi’s new Q4 e-tron will go head-to-head with Elon Musk’s Tesla in the fast-growing market for compact crossover SUVs. The carmaker hopes to help its parent company, Volkswagen, narrow the electric-car sales gap.

Audi Q4 e-tron

Source: sagmeister_photography/Audi AG

What you’ll need to know tomorrow 

• Want to bet on a cratering Bitcoin? Well now there’s an ETF for you.
• Coinbase opened at $381 a share. But should you buy this stock?
• Trudeau’s C$100 billion stimulus slams into a recovering economy. 
• White Minnesota cop who killed unarmed Black man faces arrest.
• Supreme Court justices on opposite ends of spectrum give warning.
• Kroger is amassing a robot army to battle Walmart and Amazon.
• A London penthouse is on sale for $241 million by this entrepreneur.

Paid Post   Get back in the game. How do we make employees, visitors and residents feel more comfortable? Go behind the scenes to find out. Learn More Honeywell

What you’ll want to read tonight

“The Shrink Next Door” Is a Shrink No More

The psychiatrist who was the focus of Bloomberg’s podcast “The Shrink Next Door” was ordered to surrender his license to practice in New York after violating professional standards in dealings with several patients. Isaac “Ike” Herschkopf was found guilty of gross negligence, incompetence, exercising undue influence, fraudulent practice and moral unfitness.

Isaac “Ike” Herschkopf (left) with Marty Markowitz

Photographer: William Mebane

(The name of Rusten Sheskey, the Kenosha, Wisconsin, police employee who shot and paralyzed Jacob Blake, was misspelled in the April 13 edition of the Evening Briefing.)

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