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Batman's voice is silenced as 'Animated Series' actor Kevin Conroy dies at 66

Kevin Conroy, the prolific voice actor whose gravely delivery on Batman: The Animated Series was for many Batman fans the definitive sound of the Caped Crusader, has died at 66.

Conroy died Thursday after a battle with cancer, series producer Warner Bros. announced Friday.

Conroy was the voice of Batman on the acclaimed animated series that ran from 1992-1996, often acting opposite Mark Hamills Joker. Conroy continued on as the almost exclusive animated voice of Batman, including some 15 films, 400 episodes of television and two dozen videogames, including the Batman: Arkham and Injustice franchises.

In the eight-decade history of Batman, no one played the Dark Knight more.

For several generations, he has been the definitive Batman, Hamill in a statement. It was one of those perfect scenarios where they got the exact right guy for the right part, and the world was better for it.

He will always be my Batman, Hamill said.

Conroys popularity with fans made him a sought-after personality on the comic-con circuit. In the often tumultuous world of DC Comics, Conroy was a mainstay and widely beloved. In a statement, Warner Bros. Animation said Conroys performance will forever stand among the greatest portrayals of the Dark Knight in any medium.

Kevin brought a light with him everywhere, whether in the recording booth giving it his all or feeding first-responders during 9/11 or making sure every fan who ever waited for him had a moment with their Batman, said Paul Dini, producer of the animated show. A hero in every sense of the word.

Born in in Westbury, New York, and raised in Westport, Connecticut, Conroy started out as well-trained theater actor. He attended Juilliard and roomed with Robin Williams. After graduating, he toured with John Housemans acting group, the Acting Company. He performed in A Midsummer Nights Dream at the Public Theater and in Eastern Standard on Broadway. At the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California, he performed in Hamlet.

The 1980s production of Eastern Standard, in which Conroy played a TV producer secretly living with AIDS, had particular meaning to him. Conroy, who was gay, said at the time he was regularly attending funerals for friends who died of AIDS. He poured out his anguish nightly on stage.

In 1980, Conroy moved to Los Angeles, began acting in soap operas and booked appearances on TV series including Cheers, Tour of Duty and Murphy Brown. In 1991, when casting director Andrea Romano was scouting her lead actor for Batman: The Animated Series, she went through hundreds of auditions before Conroy came in. He was there on a friends recommendation and cast immediately.

Conroy began the role without any background in comics and as a novice in voice acting. His Batman was husky, brooding and dark. His Bruce Wayne was light and dashing. His inspiration for the contrasting voices, he said, came from the 1930s film, The Scarlet Pimpernel, about an English aristocrat who leads a double life.

Its so much fun as an actor to sink your teeth into, Conroy told The New York Times in 2016. Calling it animation doesnt do it justice. Its more like mythology.

As Conroys performance evolved over the years, it sometimes connected to his own life. Conroy described his own father as an alcoholic and said his family disintegrated while he was in high school. He channeled those emotions into the 1993 animated film Mast of the Phantasm, which revolved around Bruce Waynes unsettled issues with his parents.

Andrea came in after the recording and grabbed me in a hug, Conroy told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018. Andrea said, I dont know where you went, but it was a beautiful performance. She knew I was drawing on something.

Conroy is survived by his husband, Vaughn C. Williams, sister Trisha Conroy and brother Tom Conroy.

In Finding Batman, released earlier this year, Conroy penned a comic about his unlikely journey with the character and as a gay man in Hollywood.

Ive often marveled as how appropriate it was that I should land this role, he wrote. As a gay boy growing up in the 1950s and 60s in a devoutly Catholic family, Id grown adept at concealing parts of myself.

The voice that emerged from Conroy for Batman, he said, was one he didnt recognize a voice that seemed to roar from 30 years of frustration, confusion, denial, love, yearning.

I felt Batman rising from deep within.

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The historic crypto bubble: Bitcoin is now the fifth biggest wipeout of all time, BofA says

Bitcoin is experiencing one of the biggest crashes in historythats apparent. But Bank of America Researchs Flow Show research note has crunched data and put it in historic terms: Its the fifth-worst collapse of an asset in financial history, nearly as great in scale as the Mississippi & South Sea Co. History buffs would know that episode better as the South Sea Bubble, and it was so long agothe early 1700sthat the United States did not yet exist and the UK was involved in the War of the Spanish Succession.

Bitcoin, which makes up 41% of the crypto market, hit lows unseen seen since the depths of the pandemic two years ago. And although it rallied after Mays crypto winter, a market downturn is back in full force with FTXs implosion thats led the crypto exchange to file for bankruptcy, and founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to resigna far cry from a few months ago when he was likened to JP Morgan for his attempted rescue missions of distressed firms.

BofAs research, based on Bloomberg data, finds that Bitcoins fall is the fifth largest on recordand by far the biggest crash since the 1970s.

Courtesy of Bank of America

Bitcoin has seen a 77% decline from its peak trading at $70,000 in November of last year in the aftermath of FTXs fall. Meanwhile, the crypto market cap has plummeted from $3 trillion to $900 billion.

Its reminiscent of the dotcom bust from two decades ago, which BofA estimates at a decline of 76% (just 1% lower than Bitcoins fall) from its peak in March 2000. The dotcom bubble was fueled by investments in online companies from the day when the internet was new, during a bull market in the 1990s. The Nasdaq index grew rapidly, but in 2000 the bubble burst when companies that had raised a lot of cash but didnt have much in the way of a business plan essentially just ran out of money. Nasdaqs five-fold growth fell with the crash, and billions of dollars were lost. Crypto critics argue the similarities are obvious.

Another great bubble that just beats out Bitcoin is the end of the roaring 20s and Black Monday, the stock market crash that precipitated the Great Depression.

The economic events of 100 years ago also share similarities with today. Following the first world war, the U.S. government was spending more than it was earning back in tax revenue, and high inflation ensued. American industrial power, though, created a flood of jobs as the country emerged as a major international player.

Historians such as Liaquat Ahamed (who won a Pulitzer for his depiction of Great Depression-era central bankers, Lords of Finance) argue that the imbalance of global trade caused by the use of the gold standard, on the one hand, and America actually having most of the worlds gold, confused central bankers response to the crash and worsened the recession into a depression; again, thats not unlike todays extraordinarily strong dollar as the worlds reserve currency. The Dow Jones Industrial Average index plummeted 89%, BofA calculates, putting even Bitcoins fall to shame.

In more recent years, we saw the stocks of U.S. homebuilders crash, declining 83% from its peak in 2005, based on BofAs calculations. After its peak and era of rapid growth, it came to an end over the course of three years and the financial crisis of 2008 followed.

Bitcoin has dropped roughly 3% in the last 24 hours and 19% in the last weekits currently being traded at around $16,800.

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Think inflation is bad in the US? Try 100% in Argentina

Inflation in Argentina heading toward 100% is supercharging the governments woes as real wages lag, increasing social distress and leading to a record level of protests so far this year.

Government data released Thursday showed overall paychecks in September rose 78% from a year ago, lagging behind 83% annual inflation. The growing gap between salaries and inflation is leading to routine marches across the country. On Friday, the government relaunched a program that freezes prices on over 1,500 products.

The worsening social outlook challenges Argentinas ability to comply with its $44 billion agreement with the International Monetary Fund. Unpopular spending cuts required through the deal collide with the governments aim to sway voters to keep the ruling coalition in power in next years presidential vote, with inflation and loss of purchasing power a top concern.

Politically, tension is building within the governing bloc amid a frail patchwork of inflation policies. President Alberto Fernandez has lost seven ministers since June, including most of his economic team, as powerful Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has pushed for changes in personnel and policies.

Here are five charts that show the impact in Argentinas real economy of high inflation, policy uncertainty and political infighting.

Protests Rising

Protests that interrupt public transit through the first eight months of the year are at the highest levels since Argentine consulting firm Diagnostico Politico started tracking data in 2009. Unrest is especially brewing among the poorest in the population, which typically vote for the ruling leftist coalition.

Growing Poverty

In some of her recent statements, Kirchner has pointed to the recent uptick of extreme poverty as a justification for implementing stricter price controls. Its unclear if she supports the new controls coming out Friday.

Powerful Unions

Argentinas powerful labor unions are securing future wage hikes at or above current inflation levels, elevating inflation expectations even further. Recent wins include truckers, who will receive a salary increase of 107% through August, and oilseed crushers who will see 98% in raises.

Inflation Versus All-Cash Jobs

Informal jobs dont have labor unions to negotiate pay increases, yet these all-cash jobs have grown to record levels following the coronavirus pandemic, making up half the labor market by some estimates. Millions of these workers are losing significant buying power in 2022, adding to years of steep declines.

Inflation Versus Payroll Jobs

Traditional salaried jobs have rebounded above pre-pandemic levels too, but since the job market bottomed out in June 2020, over 80% of the gains are in sectors where wages are often losing against inflation, such as construction, retail, hotels, restaurants and real estate.

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A lot of people have compared this to Lehman. I would compare it to Enron: Larry Summers has some choice words for Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX

So says former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers about the once-heralded cryptocurrency exchange that today declared bankruptcy and announced the resignation of founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried after a sudden and dramatic collapse this week.

A lot of people have compared this to Lehman. I would compare it to Enron, the Harvard professor said Friday on Bloomberg Televisions Wall Street Week. The smartest guys in the room, he said, name-checking a business-journalism classic that revealed how Enron kept a false set of books before its own spectacular implosion. Not just financial error butcertainly from the reportswhiffs of fraud. Stadium namings very early in a companys history. Vast explosion of wealth that nobody quite understands where it comes from.

Enron, of course, was a Houston-based energy company whose bankruptcy and epic accounting scandal in 2001 also destroyed Arthur Andersen, taking the Big Five accounting firms down to todays Big Four. A 2005 documentary entitled Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room charted the disaster that altered the business landscape and led to stricter rules on financial reporting for public companies.

Lehman Brothers, by contrast, was the Wall Street investment bank whose involvement in the subprime mortgage crisis triggered the bankruptcy that kickstarted the epochal 2007-2008 financial crisis. That scandal is widely blamed on excessive risk-taking and unethical management practices.

FTX was valued at $32 billion earlier this year, but questions about its health arose just days ago, setting off a modern-day variation of a bank run: a race by FTX users to withdraw their assets. According to reporting by CoinDesk then the Wall Street Journal, FTX lent billions of dollars to affiliated trading arm Alameda Research, money that was used to fund risky bets. Venture capital giant Sequoia said this week it will write down its $214 million investment in FTX to zero.

Its still not clear, though, exactly what went wrong: Was it an Enron or a Lehman-style collapse? Summers, for one, believes the lessons to be drawn from FTXs downfall center around accounting.

The regulatory community ought to draw two lessons, said Summers of the FTX fiasco. One, more forensic accountants are needed to help detect issues at both the corporate and national level.

The second lesson is less obvious: For everything that touches finance, he said, people in positions of responsibility should be forced each year to take a week or two off, disconnected from work. Why? If they dont, he argued, executives engaged in financial wrongdoing can constantly monitor their positions to keep problems secret.

Summers said the FTX downfall is likely more about classic financial fraud and less about the complexities of the nuances of the rules of crypto regulation.

Enron showed up in another way on Friday. As part of FTXs bankruptcy proceedings, Bankman-Fried was replaced by John J. Ray III, a restructuring lawyer who has served senior roles in many other bankruptciesincluding Enron.

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Looking for the most helpful gift? It could be hidden in the cloud

Cloud computing has quickly found its way into every corner of our lives.

It can be a tremendous help with both job searches and career advancement. Its the pillar of the work-from-home movement. And those digital nomads who work and play from a variety of locations are always able to access the systems they need.

Its just as valuable to our leisure time as well. The age of physical media is disappearing quickly, with virtually every form of entertainment now being delivered remotely.

So while we admit a cloud computing gift guide might be an unusual name, its likely something youve considered in the past as you looked for the best present for that friend, associate, or loved one. And even better? Most of the items were suggesting make excellent last-minute suggestions.

Here are some cloud-based ideas for the 2022 holiday season.

Buy a single video game at your local GameStop or Walmart, and youll be looking at price tags of up to $80 each. But for just $15 per month, you can get a membership to Microsofts Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which offers hundreds of titles, including new releases from the companys growing list of studios. Within seconds of selecting a title, members are in the gameand they can stop playing on one device (console, PC, smartphone, or tablet, or streamed directly to your smart TV), and pick up the game on another in exactly the same place they hit pause.

While vinyl and cassettes are making a comeback, when it comes to music discovery and listening today, theres no matching the streaming services. A virtually unlimited catalog of music is at your fingertips, making both the workday a bit less mundane and your personal time peppier. Free options are available, but the commercials get intrusive fast. Premium subscriptions generally start around $10 per month. Beyond music, there are also thousands of podcasts and, with Spotify, audiobooks on-demand.

Youve heard the advice time and again: Have a different, hard-to-guess password for every site you log into. Problem is: Keeping up with those is a challengeand coming up with passwords is tricky. 1Password stores your data for various sites in the cloud, letting you have a separate login wherever you go, but you only have to remember your master password. The data is encrypted, so your personal and financial information stays safe.

Its handy to be able to reach your files wherever and whenever you want, but its sometimes a leap of trust to upload them to a third-party service, regardless of how well-reviewed or acclaimed it might be. One alternative is a personal cloud system. Western Digital, for example, offers four terabytes of storage that hooks up to your computer for roughly $200, with no monthly fees. Its a baby step into the cloud for people that arent ready to trust their files, photos and documents to a company like Amazon, Google, or Apple.

If you share a number of files for work, you likely dont want to do so via personal systems, such as iCloud or Google Drive, where personal information is stored. Dropbox is a favorite alternative for professional users, with over 700 million users. Prices start at $10 a month for two terabytes and advance in price and storage capacity from there.

Not everything cloud related has to be high tech. Sometimes, silliness is just what the holiday calls for. Got an engineer or data scientist on your list and you cant quite find the right thing for them? Etsy, as it so often does, can come to the rescue, with a sarcastic cloud-based T-shirt for less than $20 that will be a conversation starter at work.

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Elon Musk's first weeks at Twitter included staff vomiting into trash cans and crying at the Halloween party

The two weeks since Elon Musks $44 billion Twitter takeover have been eventful, to say the least.

The day before closing the deal, Musk entered Twitters San Francisco headquarters with a smile on his face before holding a friendly meeting with his new staff. At the same time, he also pledged in an open letter to advertisers that he would turn the platform into a common digital town square where users could amicably share ideas across borders and ideologies.

But behind the scenes, Musk was already planning drastic and disruptive changes. On Oct. 28, one day after the Twitter acquisition, Musk gathered several human resource executives at the companys headquarters, telling them to begin drawing up lists of disposable staff in advance of mass layoffs, the New York Times reported on Friday in an exhaustive account of Musks first few weeks in charge.

Musk reportedly wanted layoffs to start immediately, before retention bonuses for employees would kick in on Nov. 1. The potential of hefty legal fines eventually persuaded Musk to delay the layoffs until Nov. 4, when he announced job cuts affecting 50% of Twitters staffaround 3,700 employees.

In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce, read an email to staff announcing the layoffssimply signed Twitter.

But the far-reaching layoffswhich have entirely uprooted some teams and prompted fears about the platforms ability to moderate content and police hate speech and misinformationare only part of the story of Musks first weeks in charge. Employee dissatisfaction, advertiser departures, and warnings from Musk himself about the companys dire financial status have all been hallmarks of the new Twitter CEOs tumultuous term.

Twitters new normal

The transition to Musks leadership has been a difficult adjustment for many of Twitters remaining staff. One manager who was given a list of hundreds of people to fire reportedly vomited into a trash can near his feet, according to the New York Times.

The immediate departures of four top Twitter executivesincluding CEO Parag Agrawal also dealt a blow to company morale, creating a dour mood at a company Halloween party where some employees cried and hugged each other, the Times reported.

In his first weeks as boss, Musk has also imposed his trademark demanding leadership style, honed at his other companies, Tesla and SpaceX. Having previously demanded Tesla workers return to the office, Musk mandated Twitter employees to do the same this weekending the companys long-standing work from home policy.

In an email on Wednesday, Musk told employees that remote work is no longer allowed, warning of difficult times ahead and telling staff that the culture moving forward would be arduous and will require intense work to succeed. Multiple Twitter employees have already been photographed sleeping on the office floor overnight because of long work hours.

Musk also requested an internal audit to weed out any ghost employees at Twitter, the Times reported. The point was to verify that everyone on the payroll was in fact a real human.

In a sign of further chaos, the company reportedly contacted dozens of former employees it had just laid off and offered them their jobs back. Management had belatedly realized they were essential to the running of the company, tech newsletter Platformer reported last weekend.

Cutting back

But Musks most pressing concern might be the companys finances, which he has said arent looking good. On Thursday, Musk warned employees that the companys bankruptcy was entirely possible. He also told staff that perks such as free lunches were being discontinued in a bid to cut costs. Musk had already instructed his team to identify how the company could save $1 billion on infrastructure costs, Reuters reported last week.

In his email sent to staff on Wednesday, Musk reiterated the importance of diversifying Twitters revenue streams from advertising, with subscriptions being his preferred avenue.

Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn, Musk wrote. We need roughly half of our revenue to be subscription.

Twitter has already launched an $8 monthly subscription for users that comes with a number of perks. But the feature has already sparked chaos on the site because it gives subscribers a blue check mark on their profiles that had previously been reserved for verified users to signal that they werent imposters. As a result, a number of accounts have opened that impersonated famous figures including President Joe Biden and large companies. This week, for example, a Twitter account pretending to speak for pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly falsely announced that its trademark insulin product was now available for free, in a post that attracted 11,000 likes before the account was suspended.

Twitter currently relies on ads for around 90% of its revenue, although companies have grown cautious about advertising on the platform since Musks takeover, with many of them temporarily pausing their ads on Twitter in recent weeks amid a concerning rise in hate speech and misinformation on the site.

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Interest on high-yield savings accounts may now be higher than your mortgage rate.

For much of 2022, the Federal Reserve has been busy hiking the Federal funds rate in an effort to curb inflation. Its been a painful process for consumers carrying debt, one that has resulted in increased interest rates on credit cards, loans, and home mortgages.

On the flip side, however, the annual percentage yield (APY) on high-yield savings accounts has also been increasing this year. And that has created an environment in which, for the first time in years, rates on high-yield savings accounts may be higher than the rates some consumers are paying on their mortgages.

For those who suddenly find themselves in such a situation, paying down your mortgage aggressively may no longer make sense.

Your APR and APYand the current rate environment

When the Fed raises the federal funds rate, it has a variety of indirect impacts. This includes driving up the cost of borrowing for consumers. As one example, during the past year mortgage interest rates have skyrocketed.

By the end of October 2022, rates were up 3.85 percentage points compared to the previous year, reaching 6.94% for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, according to Freddie Macs Primary Mortgage Market Survey. The survey also pointed out that in the history of the Primary Mortgage Market Survey, which stretches back to April 1971, mortgage rates have only increased faster in 1980 and 1981. As of November rates have increased even further still, to 7.32%, according to Bankrate.

Meanwhile, the APY on high-yield savings accounts has also been driven up by the Feds moves. These rates are now as high as 4% in some cases, which is good news for consumers who have the cash to sock away in these types of accounts.

We have now seen a path of rate hikes never seen before in such a short period of time to combat inflation. This has driven up short-duration interest rates aggressively, said Ben Soccodato, a certified financial planner and investment advisor representative with SKG Team at Barnum Financial Group, which provides investment and wealth advisory services. This now presents a tremendous opportunity for fixed-rate investors.

What this means for mortgage repayment

When the interest on your high-yield savings account is steeper than that of your mortgage, it may be a good idea to rethink how quickly you pay down a home loan.

Colorado resident Sarah Gerber is currently experiencing this reality and has decided to slow down on repayment of mortgage principal and instead direct cash to her high-yield savings accounts.

Gerber and her husband purchased their home in February 2021 with a 2.75% mortgage interest rate. They also have money in high-yield savings accounts with Ally and Marcus that are paying interest equal to or above their mortgage rate.

Its an interesting perspective to see how it has flip-flopped, said Gerber during an interview. Im pretty debt averse. I dont like owing money to people, but it does not make sense for me to pay down my mortgage any faster than I need to at the moment.

Its an approach that experts say makes sense. High-yield savings accounts are a safe investment and when theyre offering a steeper return, it can be more beneficial to take advantage of that opportunity than paying down low interest debt.

If your savings account interest rate is higher, youll earn more in interest than the value of the interest you avoid by paying down the principal on your mortgage, David Edmisten, a CFP, founder and lead advisor for Next Phase Financial Planning, a company that provides financial planning services for those who are approaching retirement or have just retired. Interest rates on high-yield savings accounts have risen to levels not seen in several years.

They can be a great option for earning interest on your emergency funds and any money you dont plan to spend for the next 12 to 24 months.

However, this approach may not be right for everyone. Particularly those who hope to eliminate a mortgage entirely before leaving the workforce. If you have a strong desire to be debt free, or if you are aiming for a specific goalsuch as eliminating your mortgage payment before retirement it can still make sense to aggressively pay down your mortgage said Edmisten.

5 top-paying HYSA accounts

With APY rates on high-yield savings accounts being particularly generous at the moment, it can pay off to shop around a little and make sure youre getting the best rate the market has to offer. Here are the top five high-yield savings accounts, as ranked by the Fortune Recommends editorial team.

Current: 4%
Salem Five Direct: 3.5%
Bask Bank: 3.6%
UFB Direct: 3.16%
Ivy Bank: 3.5%

The rates on these accounts are current as of November 3, 2022.

The takeaway

With interest on high-yield savings accounts matching or exceeding mortgage interest rates, it can pay off to redirect some of your money toward savings rather than repaying principal on a home loan. But depending on your phase in life or debt levels, this move may not make sense for everyone.