Crypto News: Albanese’s COP campaign

Good morning, it's Ainsley here and this is what you need to know to start your day.

Today's must-reads:
• Australia wants to host COP31
• Inflation eases, bolstering rate pause case
• Australians set to sue for stolen pensions

Charm offensive. Australia is trying to showcase its new zeal for emissions reduction and to win backing to host a key UN summit. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's Labor government wants global support for a plan for the 31st United Nations Conference of the Parties — better known as COP31 — to take place in Australia and Pacific nations in 2026.

Easing prices. Australian inflation slowed more than expected in February, driven by an easing in housing construction costs, bolstering the case for the Reserve Bank to stand pat at next week's policy meeting. The monthly consumer price indicator came in at an annual 6.8% from 7.4% in January.

Stolen pensions. More Australian workers will be able to sue their employers to recover billions of dollars in pension savings that have been stolen or withheld from them. The government will introduce new legislation this week to make it easier to pursue underpayments after workers lost about A$3.4 billion to the problem in 2019-20.

Greenwashing: New Zealand's markets regulator has issued a formal warning to Vanguard's Australian business for missing a deadline to disclose greenwashing fines by two months.

Risk-on rally. US stocks advanced as risk appetite continued to recover from turmoil in the banking sector, led by gains in technology and financial shares. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 entered a bull market, rising 20% from a December low. The S&P 500 powered back above 4,000, with 92% of components ending higher.

Pay up. The US Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., facing almost $23 billion in costs from recent bank failures, is considering steering a larger-than-usual portion of that burden to the nation's biggest banks, people familiar said.

AI whisperers. A red-hot jobs market is mushrooming around ChatGPT with newly created roles paying upward of $335,000 a year. Degrees are optional for "prompt engineers" who coax the AI toward better results. But beware: Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak joined more than 1,100 tech leaders calling for a six-month break on training AI, to develop shared safety protocols.

Risk-free assets? Look deeper into the latest US banking crisis, and the cause may come as a surprise to anyone still thinking in terms of the crash of 2008. It wasn't dodgy loans to impecunious homebuyers that sank Silicon Valley Bank. It was a stash of what are thought to be the safest securities on Earth: US Treasuries. Read more in our Big Take.

All times Sydney

11:00: New Zealand March ANZ Business Confidence
11:30: Australia Feb. job vacancies

Eternally expensive. An extremely rare diamond called the Eternal Pink is expected to fetch more than $35 million at Sotheby's, potentially breaking price-per-carat records. The 10.57 carat rock goes on show in Hong Kong, Dubai, Singapore, Shanghai, Taiwan and Geneva before hitting the auction block June 8 in New York.