Market Downturns, DOGE, and Global Investment Returns

Articles of the week

• Perspectives on Market Downturns. The market does not care about your opinions. Stop it. Just stop it. Empirical studies on environments like this remind us that we don’t know. Goldman Sachs doesn’t know. Morgan Stanley doesn’t know. UBS doesn’t know. I don’t know. You don’t know. (Fortunes & Frictions)

• How DOGE is making government almost comically inefficient: It’s as though “efficiency” isn’t the actual goal.(Washington Post) See also Trump’s DOGE campaign accelerates 50-year trend of government privatization: Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has aggressively moved to shrink the federal government. His administration has frozen federal grants, issued executive orders aligned with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and, most prominently, created what he calls the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. (TheConversation)

• The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem: Meta pirated millions of books to train its AI. Search through them here. (The Atlantic)

• Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2025 – what 125 years of history tells us about the future: Here is what a 125 years of historical market data looks like. In light of rising market concentration and correlations, this year’s Yearbook includes a special chapter on global and multi-asset diversification. (UBS)

• Zyn and the New Nicotine Gold Rush: White snus pouches were designed to help Swedish women quit cigarettes. They’ve become a staple for American dudes. (New Yorker)

• The 2025 NCAA Men’s Tournament Bracket Breakdown: Which teams can win it all? Which can’t you trust? And what are the Cinderella candidates you should be most aware of? That and more ahead of the start of March Madness. (The Ringer)

• Vroom! Touring Italy’s Supercar Factories: In the country’s “Motor Valley,” racecar enthusiasts can admire, and even drive, Maseratis, Lamborghinis, Ferraris and more. (New York Times)

• ‘Spinal Tap 2’ Sets September Release and Turns the Volume ‘Up to 11’ in First Teaser: “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues,” a sequel to the 1984 music mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap,” will rock and roll into theaters this fall. (Variety)

Crypto, Climate, and 40oz Jeans

News of the week

• How the Biggest Crypto Heist in History Went Down: The cryptocurrency exchange Bybit lost $1.5 billion to North Korean hackers last month — and it all traced back to an account on a free digital storage service. (New York Times)

• The Worst 7 Years in Boeing’s History—and the Man Who Won’t Stop Fighting for Answers: Fatal crashes. A door blowout. Grounded planes. Inside the citizen-led, obsessive campaign to hold Boeing accountable and prevent the next disaster. (Wired)

• The spoiled man-children set out to find waste. Here’s what happened. How Silicon Valley boys came to rule politics. (Washington Post)

• Trump doesn’t seem to know why he launched a giant trade war: The president’s reasons for imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico keep changing (and none make sense). (Vox)

• How to find climate data and science the Trump administration doesn’t want you to see: Groups involved in Public Environmental Data Partners have been archiving climate datasets our community has prioritized, uploading copies to public repositories and cataloging where and how to find them if they go missing from government websites. (The Conversation)

• Why Hasn’t Silicon Valley Fixed the Bay Area’s Problems? Examining the dark side of capitalism’s effect on urban development (Bloomberg)

• A Facebook Insider’s Exposé Alleges Bad Behavior at the Top: “Careless People,” a memoir by a former Facebook executive, portrays feckless company leaders cozying up to authoritarian regimes. (New York Times)

• How a Pro Athlete–Targeting Crime Ring Finally Got Caught: Inside the case against the men who allegedly robbed a trove of luxury goods and jewelry from NFL and NBA athletes while they played on the road. And why the case—with its combustible mix of immigration, conspicuous consumption, and fame—has become a media fixation. (Vanity Fair)

Trump Takes the Dumbest Tariff Plunge

By The Editorial Board of the Wallstreet Journal

He says the 25% levies on Mexico and Canada will begin Tuesday. Stocks fall.

President Trump likes to cite the stock market when it’s rising as a sign of his policy success, so what does he think about Monday’s plunge? The Dow Jones Industrial Average took a 650-point header after he announced that he’ll hit Mexico and Canada on Tuesday with 25% tariffs.

Mr. Trump said at the White House there was “no room left” to negotiate with the two American trade treaty partners. Some of his smarter advisers have been hoping he’d start renegotiating the USMCA and delay the tariffs. But Mr. Trump wants tariffs for their own sake, which he says will usher in a new golden age.

We’ve courted Mr. Trump’s ire by calling the Mexico and Canada levies the “dumbest” in history, and we may have understated the point. Mr. Trump is whacking friends, not adversaries. His taxes will hit every cross-border transaction, and the North American vehicle market is so interconnected that some cars cross a border as many as eight times as they’re assembled.

Mr. Trump also objected when we reported an analysis by the Anderson Economic Group that the 25% tariff will raise the cost of a full-sized SUV assembled in North America by $9,000 and a pickup truck by $8,000. Is this how the new Republican Party plans on helping working-class voters?

Mr. Trump is volatile, and who knows how long he’ll keep the tariffs in place. Retaliation that hits certain states and businesses may also cause him to reconsider sooner than he imagines. Investors are trying to read this uncertainty as they also watch growing evidence of a slowing U.S. economy. Unbridled Tariff Man was always going to be a big economic risk in a second term, and here we are.

Mark Carney - The Daily Show

MARK CARNEY is currently the U.N. Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, and the Co-Chair for the Glasgow Finance Alliance for Net Zero. He is also a Chair of Brookfield Asset Management and Head of Transition Investing, as well as Chair for Bloomberg LP. Mark was previously Governor of the Bank of England (2013-2020), and Governor of the Bank of Canada (2008-2013). Internationally, Mark was Chair of the G20’s Financial Stability Board (2011-2018). He is Chair of the Group of Thirty, and a member of the boards of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Harvard University Overseers, The Rideau Hall Foundation, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and the Hoffman Institute for Global Business and Society at INSEAD. Most recently, Mr. Carney will serve as chair of a new Leader’s Task Force on Economic Growth for the Liberal Party of Canada. He is the author of Value(s): Building a Better World for All (Signal, 2021) and The Hinge: Time to Build an Even Better Canada (McClelland & Stewart, 2025). Born in Fort Smith, NWT, Mark Carney lives in Ottawa.

The end of Gore-Tex?

The end of Gore-Tex? Sweeping bans have affected the iconic brand due to its use of ‘forever chemicals’ Sweeping bans have affected the iconic brand due to its use of ‘forever chemicals’… Sometimes it’s the only option.

The wildlife photographer lying face down in the snow for hours, waiting for that perfect moment. The search-and-rescue team tromping through the forest looking for a missing person in thigh-deep snowdrifts. Or even just the weekend warrior looking to spend a few hours on the slope. All of them need a reliable way to stay warm and dry. 

Some coats can do that, but can they breathe, too? Do they give your perspiration an exit hatch? Because if not, you’ve got a moisture problem on both sides of the material.

That was the brilliance of Gore-Tex from the start. Sure, their rain jackets could block out the cold. But the real marvel was how they allowed sweat vapours to easily escape through its porous structure. This eliminated the clammy skin that results from activities like ice climbing or snowboarding, allowing people to not only be warm but also comfortable. Sometimes that meant the difference between life and death.

But at what cost? (Pique Magazine)

Canadian Infrastructure Council Being Established

Canada’s construction industry welcomes long overdue federal leadership on the National Infrastructure Assessment

Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada announced new Canadian Infrastructure Council four years following its announcement.

Ottawa, ON — [December 3, 2024] — After four years on the shelf, the federal government today announced the council appointed to deliver the National Infrastructure Assessment. This initiative has long been a cornerstone of the Canadian Construction Association’s (CCA) advocacy, with representatives recently raising awareness of the issue on Parliament Hill last month.

The newly appointed Canadian Infrastructure Council will prioritize housing-enabling infrastructure like water, wastewater, public transit, active transportation, and waste management. While this is a promising first step, more action is needed. Infrastructure demands across the country also include transportation and trade-enabling projects, which are vital to strengthening our economy and connecting communities.

“We are thrilled to see the federal government finally take leadership in addressing the need for a long-term plan for Canada’s infrastructure,” says Rodrigue Gilbert, CCA President. “While the scope of the council is incomplete, we do appreciate the government finally listening to the industry responsible for building Canada’s infrastructure.”

While the industry is overall pleased with today’s announcement, the newly formed Canadian Infrastructure Council lacks clear industry and financial representation. CCA has long urged the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities to appoint an independent representative from the construction industry to the council. Failing to consult with those that build the infrastructure Canadians rely on, and those that finance it, will create significant challenges. Without this input, there will be a lack of understanding on key issues, limitations, and opportunities that exist in building a strong and resilient Canada. 

CCA will continue to monitor the development and progress of the Canadian Infrastructure Council and welcome further consultation with industry and the federal government.

American Highways, Private Equity, and Sunk Costs

Articles of the week

• How America Can Break Its Highway Addiction: In the 1980s, an unlikely alliance slowed the construction of nature-destroying dams. We just might be able to pull it off again. (Slate)

• The Business—and Politics—of Storytelling: “Everyone is talking about ‘narratives,’” Crisis of Narration begins. Han offers no specifics about this “everyone,” or about what they may have said in their discussions about narration. He adds merely that everyone’s discourse “betrays a crisis of narration.” Our ability to make sense of our own personal experiences within the framework of an autobiographical life story, and of our collective identity and aspirations within the framework of a political history, he declares, is being degrad­ed—as love, labor, etc., are said to have been degraded in Han’s other texts—by modern technology. (American Affairs Journal)

• Meet the megadonors pumping millions into the 2024 election. The 50 biggest donors this cycle have collectively pumped $1.5 billion into political committees and other groups competing in the election, according to a Washington Post analysis of Federal Election Commission data. (Washington Post)

• Private Equity Is Coming for Youth Sports: Kids’ sports have become an expensive, high-pressure affair. An industry famous for squeezing out value claims it will make the experience better. (Businessweek)

• Sunk cost: The rise and fall of NFTs made and unmade OpenSea — the largest marketplace for the crypto asset. But insider accounts of the company reveal a chaotic work environment, ever-shifting priorities, and troubles with the SEC. (The Verge)

• How To Make Millions As a Professional Whistleblower: A little-known provision in US law permits anyone to blow the whistle on financial fraud — and potentially take home a percentage of the funds collected. One undercover sleuth has made a wild career out of it. (GQ)

• Experiencing Car Week Through The Lens Of Rolex: Car Week, an annual event held in August, sees the automotive world descend upon the Carmel-Monterey area for a series of shows, events, unveilings, and more – all leading up to the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. Rolex, the famed Swiss brand has been a long-time supporter of events, and over four days no small measure of amazing cars, along with an endless stream of timepiece spotting along the way. (Hodinkee)

The rise and fall of Greg Martel - ‘Canada’s version of Bernie Madoff’:

Articles of the week

• ‘Canada’s version of Bernie Madoff’: The rise and fall of Greg Martel - A mortgage broker in Victoria, BC who coached his kid’s hockey team and pledged money to charity. By the time he owed investors $317 million, he was nowhere to be found. (CBC)

• The End of Fabulous Money Market Rates Is Near: You have been able to earn solid returns by parking your money in fairly safe places, our columnist says. But that won’t last much longer. (New York Times)

• How many dynamic companies broke their streaks of engineer-CEOs for the first time in the 2000s? Installing their first MBA/finance CEOs, who then promptly made fundamental strategic errors that nixed the company’s future, that are now becoming obvious. (Thread Reader App)

• Sequoia Capital invested early in Google, Nvidia, and Apple. Can Roelof Botha keep the legendary venture capital firm ahead in the AI future? It helps that the Bay Area-based firm has delivered hit after hit, decade after decade. Sequoia has led investments in tech titans including Apple, Cisco, and Google, plus newer names like Nvidia, Airbnb, DoorDash, and WhatsApp, minting billions in returns along the way. More than 25% of the overall market capitalization of the Nasdaq—more than $7 trillion, as of mid-July—is composed of Sequoia-backed companies. (Fortune)

• Silicon Valley’s Trillion-Dollar Leap of Faith: Tech companies are spending as if AI’s transformative uses are a foregone conclusion. They’re not. (The Atlantic)

• How Costco Hacked the American Shopping Psyche: More than 100 million people visit the retailer for their groceries — and gas and TVs and gold bars and pet coffins — but saving money may not be the only motive. (New York Times)

• “F*** These Trump-Loving Techies”: Hollywood Takes on Silicon Valley in an Epic Presidential Brawl: L.A.’s liberal moguls are coming after Elon Musk and the rest of the Silicon Valley billionaire boys club in a political clash of the titans: “People are putting up a lot of dough just to teach these dudes they can’t buy an election.” (Hollywood Reporter)

• Armed and Underground: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of an American Militia. Militias After Jan. 6: Internal messages reveal how AP3, one of the largest U.S. militias, rose even as prosecutors pursued other paramilitary groups after the assault on the Capitol. Organized Vigilantism: AP3 has already sought to shape American life through armed vigilante operations — at the Texas border, outside ballot boxes and during Black Lives Matter protests. Close Ties With Police: AP3 leaders have forged alliances with law enforcement around the U.S. Internal files reveal their strategies for building these ties and where they’ve claimed success. (ProPublica)

• Infiltrating the Far Right: The threat from domestic terrorism is rising, but, with Republicans decrying the “deep state,” the F.B.I. is cautious about investigating far-right groups. Vigilantes are leaping into the fray. (New Yorker)

• Retailers Locked Up Their Products—and Broke Shopping in America: CVS, Target and other chains have barricaded everything from toiletries to cleaning supplies. It’s backfired in almost every way. (Businessweek)

• OnlyFans’ porn juggernaut fueled by a deception. Many top porn stars on OnlyFans hire ‘chatters’ to impersonate them online and entice subscribers into splurging on explicit content. These impostors aren’t formally affiliated with OnlyFans but have brought it riches – and new legal threats. Some subscribers say the deception amounts to fraud. One shares his story of betrayal. (Reuters)

• Climate change deniers make up nearly a quarter of US Congress: Climate denialists – 23 in Senate and 100 in House – are all Republicans and make US an outlier internationally (The Guardian)

• 31% of Republicans say vaccines are more dangerous than diseases they prevent: The partisan divide on vaccine falsehoods threatens the health of children nationwide. (Ars Technica)

• Elon Musk’s misleading election claims have accrued 1.2 billion views on X, new analysis says: The nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate said that Musk’s debunked claims are spreading widely and do not appear to be subject to X’s Community Notes fact-checking system. (NBC News)

American Food, Instagram Shade, and Swiftonomics

Articles of the week

• The Great American Poisoning or, wtf is going on with our food system. We’ve evolved to exist in an ancestral environment where health was the default. Today, as I look around, I see the opposite. Americans have never been fatter. We’ve never been sicker. Our kids have never had more cancer, more obesity, more diabetes, more behavioral disorders. The rampant chronic disease we see should force us to ask: why is everyone suddenly sick? Could it be that our environment is killing us? (The Next)

• The fast-food industry claims the California minimum wage law is costing jobs. Its numbers are fake: Here’s something you might want to know about this claim. It’s baloney, sliced thick. In fact, from September through January, the period covered by the ad, fast-food employment in California has gone up, as tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve. The claim that it has fallen represents a flagrant misrepresentation of government employment figures. Something else the ad doesn’t tell you is that after January, fast-food employment continued to rise. As of April, employment in the limited-service restaurant sector that includes fast-food establishments was higher by nearly 7,000 jobs than it was in April 2023, months before Newsom signed the minimum wage bill. (Los Angeles Times)

• Americans Are Mad About All the Wrong Costs: Don’t complain about the price of a Big Mac. Complain about the price of a house. (The Atlantic)

• The West Coast’s Fanciest Stolen Bikes Are Getting Trafficked by One Mastermind in Jalisco, Mexico: “We have people stealing all over the world.” A digital sleuth named Bryan Hance has spent the past four years obsessively uncovering a bicycle-theft pipeline of astonishing scale. (Wired)

• They Built a $100 Million Watch Empire. Then the Market Tanked. The website Hodinkee reinvented watch culture, giving luxury timepieces the same air as a pair of rare Nikes. Now it faces a market downturn and accusations of mismanagement. (Wall Street Journal)

• A supermarket trip may soon look different, thanks to electronic shelf labels: The ability to easily change prices wasn’t mentioned in Walmart’s announcement that 2,300 stores will have the digitized shelf labels by 2026. Daniela Boscan, who participated in Walmart’s pilot of the labels in Texas, said the label’s key benefits are “increased productivity and reduced walking time,” plus quicker restocking of shelves. (NPR)

• A Big Decision for Boeing’s Next C.E.O.: Is It Time for a New Plane? Some analysts say building a new plane soon would help the company regain ground it has lost to Airbus. But doing so would be difficult and expensive. (Vox)

• What Retail Apocalypse? Shopping Centers Are Making a Comeback. Vacancy is the lowest it has been in two decades, at 5.4 percent, according to a recent report. The properties are thriving even as retailers like Macy’s and Express shutter many stores. (New York Times)

• The world’s on the verge of a carbon storage boom: Hundreds of looming projects will force communities to weigh the climate claims and environmental risks of capturing, moving, and storing carbon dioxide. (MIT Technology Review)

• I was watching basketball in the 1980s. I’ve never seen the NBA be this good. As the NBA Finals tip off, we should all admit that we are living in what is likely the best moment ever to be a basketball fan. (New York Times)

• The Influencer Is a Young Teenage Girl. The Audience Is 92% Adult Men. A family discovered—and ultimately accepted—the grim reality for young influencers on Instagram: The followers include large numbers of men who take sexual interest in children. (Wall Street Journal)

• Instagram Connects Vast Pedophile Network: The Meta unit’s systems for fostering communities have guided users to child-sex content; company says it is improving internal controls. Your occasional reminder that social media is toxic: (Wall Street Journal)

• The Curious Case Of The Underselling Arena Tours: Welcome to the Summer of the Mysteriously Flopping Arena Tours. Why are so many tours struggling to sell seats? How is this kind of large-scale misjudgment possible with so much data available? Experts say… well, it’s complicated. (Stereogum)

• How ‘Swiftonomics’ is impacting the music industry. Taylor Swift is not just a musical phenomenon, but a business unicorn too. The Eras tour which has arrived in Edinburgh is reckoned to be pushing her wealth well north of $1bn (£785.51m). Forbes, the money magazine, reckons she is worth $600m (£471m) from performance and her back catalogue is worth as much, while she has around $125m (£98.2m) worth of real estate. (BBC)

• Why the most powerful men in America are the worst dressed: Twitter’s menswear guy explains, from Trump Republicans’ shiny red ties to the horror of “dress sneakers.” (Vox)

Costco, Phoenix Arizona, NBA Salaries, and the Olympics

Articles of the week

• Costco is the hero America needs right now: Look, if you’re blaming Costco for inflation, you might have lost the plot. The company has famously low pricing, with among the lowest product markups of any major retailer out there, according to TD Cowen Managing Director Oliver Chen. That’s why the company enjoys an almost cult-like following. The retail giant truly is a miracle of capitalism. (Washington Post)

• No One Wants a New Car Now. Here’s Why. Why are so many Americans forgoing new vehicles? Used cars are not just a better bargain, they retain designs and features more coveted than their high-tech replacements. (Wall Street Journal)

• This Man Did Not Invent Bitcoin: For years, Craig Steven Wright, an Australian cryptocurrency enthusiast, claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin. Then the courts got involved. (New York Times)

• Three Algorithms in a Room: A growing number of industries are using software to fix prices. Law enforcers are beginning to fight back. (American Prospect)

• Fauci faces the House GOP’s clown show about COVID: Under his leadership, NIAID invested billions of dollars in research that resulted in the development of mRNA technology, which in turn resulted in the development of COVID-19 vaccines in record time, saving millions of lives. When COVID struck, he was tapped as a top advisor to then-President Trump — one of seven presidents he has advised during his career, from Reagan through Biden. (Los Angeles Times)

• The Most American City - Searching for the nation’s future in Phoenix, Arizona Four hundred years later, when white settlers reached the territory of southern Arizona, they found the ruins of abandoned canals, cleared them out with shovels, and built crude weirs of trees and rocks across the Salt River to push water back into the desert. Aware of a lost civilization in the Valley, they named the new settlement Phoenix. (Atlantic)

• The Ballad of Birkenstock: How the 250-year-old German orthopedic shoe company with Succession-level family drama transformed itself into a luxury behemoth. (Bloomberg)

• The Age of the Drone Police Is Here: Based on more than 22 million flight coordinates, reveals the complicated truth about the first full-blown police drone program in the US—and why your city could be next. (Wired)

• Silicon Valley’s Fanciest Stolen Bikes Are Getting Trafficked by One Mastermind in Jalisco, Mexico “We have people stealing all over the world.” A digital sleuth named Bryan Hance has spent the past four years obsessively uncovering a bicycle-theft pipeline of astonishing scale. (Wired)

• “MoviePass, MovieCrash”: 5 takeaways from HBO’s doc about the famed movie service that imploded An HBO documentary illuminates the complex story behind MoviePass’ seismic rise and fall. (Salon)

• Get Ready for NBA Players to Make $100 Million a Year: America’s star athletes are on their way to nine-figure salaries. And it might happen sooner than you think. (Wall Street Journal)

• A Surf Legend’s Long Ride: For Jock Sutherland, being hailed as the world’s best surfer was just one phase in an unlikely life. (New Yorker)

• The World’s Richest Family Is About to Remake the Olympics. Here’s How This summer, as athletes and fans descend on the Paris Olympics, LVMH is spending a fortune making sure its brands are enmeshed in the Games. It's the grandest convergence of sports and luxury ever—but what can it tell us about the Arnault family's broader ambitions? (GQ)