Stock Market, Inflation, and TV Finales

Tuesday morning articles

• Large-Cap Stocks Outperform as Investors Seek Stability: The gap between large- and small-cap stocks has widened since the banking crisis, according to FTSE Russell. (Institutional Investor)

• Fed Rate Increases Hit Small Businesses the Hardest: Companies with smaller payrolls and valuations are facing higher funding costs. (Wall Street Journal)

• The Stock Market Usually Goes Up (But Sometimes it Goes Down): There have been just 13 bear markets since World War II (including the current iteration). That’s one out of every 6 years or so, on average. During that same time frame, the stock market has fallen by 30% or worse 4 times. That’s one out of every 13 years on average. A crash of 50% or worse has occurred just 3 times. That’s one out of every 26 years on average. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Office Workers Don’t Hate the Office. They Hate the Commute. Let’s address why folks aren’t coming back — and why they probably won’t unless we fix a big problem with office work that few C.E.O.s seem to mention: Getting to and getting home from the office. Survey after survey bears this out. If we want people to go to the office more often, we have to do something about a ritual of American life that’s time-consuming, emotionally taxing, environmentally toxic and expensive: the daily commute. (NYT)

• How America’s Largest Restaurant Franchisee Decides When to Raise Prices: Flynn Restaurant Group, owner of eateries including Applebee’s, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, is at the vanguard of menu strategy. (Wall Street Journal)

• Once a fringe theory, “greedflation” gets its due: Once dismissed as a fringe theory, the idea that corporate thirst for profits drives up inflation, aka “greedflation,” is now being taken more seriously by economists, policymakers and the business press. (Axios)

• Gen Z just wants a stable job: Young people are suddenly interested in working for the military industrial complex. (Vox)

• Where’s my self-driving car? EVs may seem closer to reality than AVs, but our view of both is distorted by our rigid understanding of transportation. (Fast Company)

• Why most car dealers still don’t have any electric vehicles: A new survey finds two-thirds of car dealers didn’t have a single electric vehicle for sale. (Vox)

• Why Suicide Rates Are Dropping Around the World: Over the past couple of decades, global suicide prevention efforts have reduced deaths by a third—but some countries are falling behind. (Wired)

• Fox News’s ‘vitriolic lies’ present clear threat to US democracy, says woman suing rightwing network: disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz, who is suing over campaign of falsehoods, says ‘if Fox isn’t brought to account, it will not stop.’ (The Guardian)

• Negotiating with post-Trump Republicans is like dealing with a toddler’s tantrum: While one side is happy to defecate on the floor, the other side has no choice but to clean up the mess. (The Guardian)

• The 40 Best TV Finales of the 21st Century, Ranked: It’s hard to say goodbye. But if there’s a silver lining, it’s that we often get a tremendous hour of television. In honor of ‘Succession’ and ‘Barry’ ending this week, we’re ranking the best series wrap-ups since 2000. (The Ringer)

Global Wealth, White Collar Jobs, Tacos, and Dark Money

Thursday morning articles

• Here’s How Much Wealth You Need to Join the Richest 1% Globally: It takes $12.4 million to join Monaco’s wealthiest group The US, by comparison, requires $5.1 million to make the cut. (Bloomberg)

• Brew Another Pot, Robinhood’s 24-Hour Stock Trading Is Here: As the company launches a new nighttime buying and selling feature, one Reddit poster asks: “Why would anyone want this?” (Businessweek)

• The Disappearing White-Collar Job: A once-in-a-generation convergence of technology and pressure to operate more efficiently has corporations saying many lost jobs may never return. (Wall Street Journal)

• Taco John’s trademarked ‘Taco Tuesday’ in 1989. Now Taco Bell is fighting it. It’s a battle between taco chain restaurants. Taco John’s, which has about 400 locations in 23 states, trademarked “Taco Tuesday” back in 1989. Now, Taco Bell argues it should be able to get in on using the popular phrase – with no legal ramifications. It filed a petition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday asking for the trademark to be reversed. Taco John’s trademarked ‘Taco Tuesday’ in 1989. Now Taco Bell is fighting it. It’s a battle between taco chain restaurants. Taco John’s, which has about 400 locations in 23 states, trademarked “Taco Tuesday” back in 1989. Now, Taco Bell argues it should be able to get in on using the popular phrase – with no legal ramifications. It filed a petition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday asking for the trademark to be reversed. (NPR)

• Recession Calls Keep Getting Pushed Back, Giving Soft Landing Believers Hope: Defying sharp rate hikes, unemployment stays low and consumers resilient. (Businessweek)

• Have all the beers gone woke? An investigation. Conservatives are mad about a Miller Lite video from March now. I don’t know. (Vox)

• ‘You can’t say that!’: how to argue, better. A good debate isn’t about one person declaring victory, it’s about both people making a discovery, says psychologist Adam Grant (The Guardian)

• Who Is Leonard Leo’s Mysterious Dark Money King? America needs to know who Barre Seid is, what kind of country he wants, and just how massive an impact his $1.6 billion gift can have on our political discourse. (New Republic)

• We’re All Bored of Culture: Anglo-Calvinist moralism has turned the American arts into something strenuously polite and deadly dull. (Tablet)

FTX, Office Space, and Financial Literacy

Wednesday morning articles

• The Rise of FTX, and Sam Bankman-Fried, Was a Great Story. Its Implosion Is Even Better. About a year after the author Michael Lewis began to shadow Bankman-Fried, the founder of the crypto exchange FTX, Bankman-Fried was arrested. As the story evolved, Lewis has had a front-row seat to the drama. (New York Times)

• The Return to the Office Has Stalled: Offices remain half empty as companies settle into hybrid work plans. (Wall Street Journal)

• Paper Bears: If everything is so bad why are most people happy? I’m fine but everything else is terrible seems to be the default assumption for most people these days. The pandemic has obviously had an impact on how people generally feel about the state of the world and not in a good way. But it is weird that most people seem satisfied with their life in general but assume everyone else must be miserable. (Wealth of Common Sense)

• How Close is Tokenization for Mainstream Investors? Several money managers now offer tokenized funds to investors, while other firms are exploring ways to utilize tokenization for clients. (CIO)

• The Billion-Dollar Ponzi Scheme That Hooked Warren Buffett and the U.S. Treasury: How a small-town auto mechanic peddling a green-energy breakthrough pulled off a massive scam (The Atlantic)

• The case for financial literacy education: The damage wrought by a lack of financial literacy extends beyond the individual — to companies and even to the economy. “Influential policymakers and central bankers, including former Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, have spoken to the critical importance of financial literacy.” If only… (NPR)

• How Tokyo Became an Anti-Car Paradise: The world’s biggest, most functional city might also be the most pedestrian-friendly. That’s not a coincidence. (Heatmap)

• These Next-Generation Vaccines Could Upend Cancer Treatment As We Know It: Some of the tech used to make Covid-19 shots could help treat cancer and heart disease. (Inverse)

• The Era of Warriors Inevitability Is Over, But a New One Starts: Now Golden State’s dynastic run came to an end with a Game 6 loss to the Lakers, but don’t count out a rebound. (Sports Illustrated)

• What Little Richard Deserved: The new documentary “I Am Everything” explores the gulf between what Richard accomplished and what he got for it, and between who Richard was and who he let himself be. (New Yorker)

Crypto, Credit Suisse, and Electric Vehicles

Tuesday morning articles

• Miami’s Love Affair With Crypto Is Souring as Bitcoin Faithful Flock to the City: On the eve of the annual bitcoin conference, the city and its mayor have mostly moved on from crypto. (Wall Street Journal)

• Crypto’s Most Influential Companies Often Follow Their Own Rules — Even After FTX’s Collapse: A review of practices at 60 of the sector’s most influential companies found many lack basic guardrails. (Bloomberg)

• The audacious plan to trigger Credit Suisse’s CDS: Can a bond that no longer exists trigger a default? This is the quasi-metaphysical question facing the panel of experts who have to determine whether Credit Suisse’s credit-default swap contracts will pay out. Call it Schrödinger’s swap. (Financial Times)

• All the arguments against EVs are wrong EVs are just going to win. Some on the political right are still suspicious that EVs are a government-subsidized scheme to reduce their standard of living, while some on the left worry that EVs will cause exploitation and environmental destruction and suburban sprawl. And pretty much everyone is asking whether the world has enough minerals to complete the transition. (Noahpinion)

• The New EV Gold-Rush: Automakers Scramble to Get Into Mining. A scarcity of EV battery materials pushes car companies and miners to work closer together; for both, there is a learning curve (Wall Street Journal)

• Coastal Cities Priced Out Low-Wage Workers. Now College Graduates Are Leaving, Too. Major coastal metros have been hubs of the kind of educated workers coveted most by high-powered employers and economic development officials. Economists have lamented the growing coastal concentration of their wealth. A politics of resentment in America has fed on it, too. These urban centers have become a class of their own — “superstar cities” — with outsized impact on the American economy fueled by the clustering of workers with degrees. (New York Times)

• Why Google is reinventing the internet search: Generative AI is here. Let’s hope we’re ready. (Vox)

• Do You Still Believe These 19 Ridiculous Tech Myths? Fact and fiction frequently collide when it comes to the technology we use in our daily lives. We set the record straight. (PC Magazine)

• This New Airline Is Raising the Bar, From First Class to Economy: Starlux has officially begun flying in the US. Here’s a look inside its fancy cabins (Bloomberg)

• • The Art of the Doomer on worldviews and cognitive models: I’m really fascinated by doomerism – how loud and confidently people will talk about what presumably is the end of their world. I am not sure why there tends to be an undercurrent of “if things collapse, I will be okay because I have gold bars” because if things do end up falling apart, they tend to exist within a state of rubble rather than a state of utility, but alas. (Kyla)  

• A California journalist documents the far-right takeover of her town: ‘We’re a test case’. Doni Chamberlain’s been a journalist in Shasta county for nearly 30 years. Now she’s targeted by the extremists who are looking to reshape the region (The Guardian)

• ‘We Just Want Someone Sane’: What Happens When a Small Town Goes MAGA. Washington County, Pennsylvania, was never known as Crazytown. Then election deniers decided to run for local office. (Bloomberg)

• How modern singing was invented: Modern singing – whether on the charts or Eurovision – is radically different to the kind familiar to our ancestors. (BBC)

Stock Market Past Performance, Debt Ceiling, and Seinfeld

Monday morning articles

• Ken Griffin’s Hand-Picked Math Prodigy Runs Market-Making Empire: Citadel Securities CEO Peng Zhao left for college at age 14, caught Griffin’s eye early in his career and built systems now mopping up market share. (Businessweek)

• The sobering stats behind ‘past performance is no guarantee of future results’: Most top performing managers fail to stay on top, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. It’s incredibly difficult to construct a portfolio of stocks in a way that beats the competition. Even if you are able to generate industry leading returns in a given year, history says it’s an almost insurmountable task to stay on top consistently in subsequent years. (TKer)

• The Debt Ceiling Dispute Raises the Risks for ‘Risk-Free’ U.S. Bonds: Short-term costs for insuring U.S. bonds are skyrocketing, and the long-term effects of repeated flirtations with debt default are already a burden, our columnist says. (New York Times)

• These companies cynically used global crises to juice profits — and brought us inflation: Throughout all the debate in the last year over what has caused higher prices and how to remedy them, one term hasn’t received the attention it deserves, given how well it explains the trend: “Greedflation.” (Los Angeles Times)

• Artificial Intelligence Is Not Going to Kill Us All: Yes, the fast-growing technology could be dangerous—but A.I. doomers are focused on the wrong threat. (Slate)

• Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey? As it’s currently imagined, the technology promises to concentrate wealth and disempower workers. Is an alternative possible? (New Yorker)

• The Most Important Machine That Was Never Built: When he invented Turing machines in 1936, Alan Turing also invented modern computing. (Quanta Magazine)

• Using job postings to quantify remote work: The COVID pandemic initiated a rapid, enduring, and largely unprecedented shift to remote work. But there is little evidence to explain where this shift is taking place at a micro level because the sample sizes are too small. This column develops a large-language model that flags postings offering remote work and applies the model to 250 million job postings in five English-speaking countries. The results show a rise in remote-work offerings since spring 2020, with tremendous heterogeneity in levels and trends between and within cities, industries, occupations, and firms. (Vox EU)

• Mark Zuckerberg Has a Problem Even Bigger Than the Metaverse: It’s hard for Meta employees to build something they believe in if they don’t know who to trust. (Slate)

• MSG Is Finally Getting Its Revenge: The much-maligned seasoning could be the secret to eating less salt. (The Atlantic)

• What’s the Deal With Adulthood? 25 Years Later, ‘Seinfeld’ Feels Revelatory. The show about nothing ended in May 1998. But in an era when priorities are being re-evaluated, the sitcom has taken on new relevance. (New York Times)

The Fed, Work Life Balance, and Stock Diversification

Thursday morning articles

• Is the Fed data-driven or data-ridden? The Federal Reserve constantly reminds us that its decisions are “data-driven” or “data-dependent.” But what does that even mean? And what are the dangers when data loom too large? (Stay at Home Macro)

• Workers Are Happier Than They’ve Been in Decades: Labor shortages and shifting expectations lead to improvement for millions, survey shows. (Wall Street Journal)

• Work-Life Balance Is Their Second Priority. Work Is Their First. Young professionals pledge admiration for peers who carve out personal time, then fail to do the same for themselves. (Wall Street Journal)

• The Case For International Diversification: Basically, international stocks went from relatively expensive (hello Japan) to relatively cheap and U.S. stocks went from relatively cheap to relatively expensive. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• A Tax Loophole Makes EV Leasing a No-Brainer in the US: An exemption in the Inflation Reduction Act is worth $7,500 to drivers who lease. (Businessweek)

• Tweaking Vegetables’ Genes Could Make Them Tastier—And You’ll Get to Try Them Soon: Flavor is a tricky target, but technology and powerful genetic techniques are making it more feasible to improve the taste of vegetables. (Scientific American)

• Where Are the Treatments for Long COVID? We don’t know why the virus can lead to persistent symptoms. We urgently need more research on therapies anyway. (Slate)

• RIP Metaverse: An obituary for the latest fad to join the tech graveyard. (Business Insider) see also Something Awful is racing to save the best and worst of web history: A long-running web community enlisted its goons to stop an Imgur extinction event. (The Verge)

• Here’s Every Single Lie Told by My Congressman, George Santos. The New York Representative was indicted on May 10 on 13 federal charges, including wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and lying to Congress. While this was certainly a dramatic twist in the Santos saga, it wasn’t exactly a shock. Since the New York Times first revealed in December 2022 that Santos was not quite the man he sold himself as to voters, it’s been hard to track down exactly what is true about the congressman’s life story. Is he broke or rich? Is he Jewish or Catholic? Did his family members really die in the Holocaust or September 11? Most often, it’s best to assume what the Republican from Long Island has said about his life is bogus, but in case you need to double-check, here is the guide to everything he has made up about himself… (New York Magazine)

Broke Millennials, Finance, and the top NBA Players

Friday morning articles

• The Myth of the Broke Millennial After a rough start, the generation is thriving. Why doesn’t it feel that way? (Atlantic)

• You’ve Heard About Behavioral Finance. But What About Physical Finance? Research suggests a fascinating link between the physical world and how investors price stocks. (Institutional Investor)

• The real reason Mexico suddenly dominates global beer exports: Today, Mexico ships out more than twice as much beer as any other country and single-handedly accounts for 30 percent of the world’s entire export-beer market, according to Geneva-based trade statistics provider Trade Data Monitor. That puts Mexico far above the Netherlands (14%), Belgium (13%) and even Oktoberfest progenitor Germany (9%). (Washington Post)

• How Interest Rates & Inflation Impact Stock Market Valuations: You would assume, all else equal, that much higher interest rates and price levels would have had a far greater impact on the stock market. Don’t get me wrong — we’ve had a nice little bear market. And this kind of snapshot approach to looking at market indicators can be misleading. But if you were to tell investors two years ago that we were about to enter one of the most aggressive Fed hiking cycles in history combined with inflation reaching 9%, most would have assumed things would be a lot worse. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Don’t Bother Investing in China Unless You’re Chinese: Only a local can properly circumvent the country’s infamous firewall. Even asset managers in Hong Kong no longer have a clear picture of the mainland. (Bloomberg)

• Why was Labor Productivity Growth So High during the COVID-19 Pandemic? The Role of Labor Composition: In the first few weeks of the COVID-19 recession, around 20 million people lost their jobs, with half of those losses occurring in the last two weeks of March 2020. On the tail of these unprecedented job losses, labor productivity grew at an annualized rate of 11.2 percent in 2020q2 and the average hourly wage increased sharply. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

• Is this a soft landing or the start of a recession? If the economy avoids a recession, it will be in spite of the Fed, not because of it. (Vox)

• Megatrends: The Longevity Economy: Global demographics are signaling a gray wave over the next decade that could boost consumer spending in key areas. (U.S. News

• The State of Global Gender Equity: Despite efforts to advance gender equity, women still lag behind men in home ownership, labor force participation, board representation and many more areas. Here’s why. (J.P. Morgan Research)

• My High-Flying Life as a Corporate Spy Who Lied His Way to the Top: I was just looking to make rent when I stumbled into a part-time gig stealing secrets from Wall Street elite. I made millions once I realized how desperate we humans are for someone who will actually listen. (Narratively)

• What Real Meteorologists Wish You Knew About Your Weather App: The realization you are seeing is one possible outcome of a model that gets run every six hours. But weather is more complex. It’s a broader envelope of outcomes, which you’re probably not seeing in your app. (Slate)

• 5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Herbie Hancock We asked musicians and experts, including Thundercat, Patrice Rushen and Nicole Sweeney, which Hancock song they would play for a friend. (NYT)

• • AI Can Write a Song, but It Can’t Beat the Market: Quants have tried for decades with limited success at their biggest challenge (Wall Street Journal)

• ‘Overemployed’ Hustlers Exploit ChatGPT To Take On Even More Full-Time Jobs: “ChatGPT does like 80 percent of my job,” said one worker. Another is holding the line at four robot-performed jobs. “Five would be overkill,” he said. (Vice)

• Pre-rolled Joints and TikTok Feuds: This Is the Diamond District? The demise of Manhattan’s Old World jewelry industry has been predicted for years. But the 47th Street hustle has some life in it yet. (New York Times).

• How the Dutch Mastered Bike Parking at Train Stations: A decade ago, the Netherlands began building a national network of bicycle garages integrated with rail stations. Here’s how that investment has paid off. (CityLab)

• Fire and Ice: The planet’s ice is fundamentally tethered to weather patterns that stretch across the globe. Scientists are finding that as the climate changes, that connection could be helping fuel disasters.  More than 25 million acres have burned in the Western U.S. since 2018. Some fires have been so extreme, they’ve seemed impossible to contain. Weather has been the deciding factor in many of those fires. When hot, arid conditions settle on the Western U.S., the fire danger skyrockets. Far to the north, the season of ice is changing. The Arctic Ocean is normally covered in a vast, frozen blanket for most of the year. But sea ice is shrinking. It’s breaking up earlier in the spring and forming later in the fall. As the climate gets hotter, the Arctic is spending more days as open ocean. These extremes of fire and ice are more than 3,000 miles apart. But now, connections are emerging. (NPR)

• Welcome to The Ringer’s Top 125 Players in the NBA Ranked: a year-round, around-the-clock ranking of the players making the biggest impact on the league right now. Throughout the regular season and into the offseason, our triumvirate of analysts—Rob Mahoney, J. Kyle Mann, and Michael Pina—will update this list based on recent results. Check back regularly for revised rankings, fresh analysis, new features, fan letters from Ringer friends and family, and more. (The Ringer)

Inflation, Stocks, Bluesky, and the LA Lakers

Thursday morning articles

• The US central bank has raised interest rates to the highest level in 16 years as it battles to stabilise prices. The Federal Reserve increased its key interest rate by 0.25 percentage points - its 10th hike in 14 months. (BBC)

• Why Is Inflation So Sticky? It Could Be Corporate Profits: Economists think some companies may have been raising prices faster than their costs have increased, making it harder for inflation to fall (Wall Street Journal)

• The FAAMGs are more than just five stocks: The thought of a few companies accounting for so much of the market is jarring, and it’s the kind of thing that you might consider a market vulnerability. Two quick things: First, there isn’t much evidence that shows a relationship between market concentration and forward market returns; Second, market concentration isn’t unusual. (TKer)

• Bets Offering 2,400% Payout on US Default Lure Growing Crowd: Volumes, spreads on US CDS are rising amid debt-cap showdown; Deeply discounted long bonds could supercharge swap payouts (Bloomberg)

• Why Banks Keep Failing: Three previously solid, medium-size banks suddenly faced annihilation. The blame lies with the system itself. (The Atlantic)

• The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens. Buttons are back! (Slate)

• A Tax Loophole Makes EV Leasing a No-Brainer in the US: An exemption in the Inflation Reduction Act is worth $7,500 to drivers who lease. (Businessweek)

• IKEA Redesigns Its Bestsellers, Starting With the Billy Bookcase: With inflation squeezing consumers and material and shipping prices up, the company took products back to the drawing board (Wall Street Journal)

• The New Social Network That Is Finally Threatening Elon Musk’s Twitter: Bluesky has instant buzz and great vibes. Is that enough? (Slate)

• What is Bluesky, and why is everyone on Twitter talking about it? The invite-only, decentralized new social network, explained. (Vox)

• A massive cavern beneath a West Antarctic glacier is teeming with life: Glaciologists bored 500 meters through the Kamb Ice Stream to access the cavern. (Science News)

• Independents Saw Urgency in Ousting Trump. Will They Feel the Same About Re-electing Biden? In Arizona, where independents are a crucial voting bloc, there might not be the same sense of urgency for a Biden-Trump rematch. And some voters might look elsewhere. (New York Times)

• Frum: The Coming Biden Blowout: Republicans thought about running without Trump in 2024—but lost their nerve. They’re heading for electoral disaster again. (The Atlantic)

• Flipping Air Jordans Is No Longer a Slam Dunk The resale value of limited-edition sneakers defied gravity in 2021. Now they’re crashing back to Earth. (Wall Street Journal)

• It’s Time to Take the Lakers Seriously (Again) Few believed Los Angeles could be a legit contender this season, even after its trade deadline makeover. But after upsetting the Grizzlies in the first round? It’s hard to deny that LeBron James and Co. have a real shot at another title. (The Ringer)

Artificial Intelligence, Building Boom, and Television

Wednesday morning articles

• This company adopted AI. Here’s what happened to its human workers: Economists found AI caused a group of workers to become much more productive. Backed by AI, these workers were able to accomplish much more in less time, with greater customer satisfaction to boot. At the same time, however, the study also shines a spotlight on just how powerful AI is, how disruptive it might be, and suggests that this new, astonishing technology could have economic effects that change the shape of income inequality going forward. (NPR)

• Dark Clouds Over Commercial Real Estate Don’t Frighten Allocators: Prices are down and dire forecasts abound, but asset owners plan to modestly boost their CRE exposure (Chief Investment Officer)

• The Building Boom Is Prolonging Market Pain: Construction employment is higher than ever—undermining bets the Fed will soon pivot. (Wall Street Journal)

• Large, creative AI models will transform lives and labour markets: They bring enormous promise and peril. In the first of three special articles we explain how they work. (Economist)

• Billionaire Steve Cohen Has a Plan to Become the King of Queens: To win a coveted New York casino license, he’s ‘hired the best team that money can buy.’ (Bloomberg)

• Exxon Has 40 Billion Reasons to Go Shopping: A gusher of cash and a richly priced stock could steer the supermajor toward a deal (Wall Street Journal)

• Why I deactivated my Facebook page: “I always reported the fake account, reported the comment and blocked the user who placed it – and the fake page they’d created – but my submission of these reports would go absolutely nowhere. Into thin air. No response from Facebook. No attempt to stop more of them from sprouting up. No effort whatsoever and no action. So the very next post I’d put up, one hour later or one week later, an identical comment from an identical impersonator would appear. Also scamming people with some sort of fake offer for crypto currency (of course it’s crypto. Not everyone who is involved in crypto is a thief, but every thief is involved in crypto).” (Reformed Broker)

• The Fight for the American Public Library: Library boards, school boards and legislatures are becoming battlegrounds in a push to censor books. Communities are fighting back. (CityLab)

• Why Are TV Writers So Miserable? On the cusp of a potential strike, writers explain why no one is having much fun making television anymore. (New Yorker)

• TV’s Streaming Bubble Has Burst, a Writers Strike is Here, and “Everybody Is Freaking Out” Billions in losses. Sweeping layoffs. The party’s over, and Hollywood is waking up with a splitting headache. (Vanity Fair)

• The Case for the Total Liberation of Ukraine: Russia must be expelled from all of Ukraine’s territory—including Crimea. (The Atlantic)

Crypto's Anti Establishment, Investments, and Climate Change

Thursday morning articles

• Crypto’s Anti-Establishment Zeal Runs Headfirst Into Bankruptcy Bureaucracy: Angry retail investors are speaking up in complex legal brawls over the remains of Voyager, Celsius and BlockFi. (Businessweek)

• SPACs Delivered Easy Money, but Now Companies Are Running Out: Businesses are burning through cash raised in SPAC deals with few ways to fill the gap. (Wall Street Journal) 

• The Biggest No-Brainer Investment Right Now? It makes sense investors are considering making a swap from a total bond market index fund to some sort of cash equivalent — T-bills, CDs, money market funds, online savings accounts, etc. You can get yields in the 4-5% range in cash-like vehicles and you don’t have to worry about duration or volatility from changes to interest rates. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• How Much Can We Take? I don’t know where the tipping point is, but the apparent answer to this question is a lot more than anyone thought. Things aren’t perfect, but we recovered all the jobs lost during the pandemic, the unemployment rate is still near record lows, and inflation is going in the right direction. (Irrelevant Investor)

• When Will I Retire? How About Never: For many people, the idea of stopping work is a nonstarter—an inevitable path to boredom, ill health and a life devoid of meaning. (Wall Street Journal)

• Musk Bets the House of Tesla on Low Prices and Razor-Thin Margins: The man who upended the auto industry is now offering steep discounts for his electric vehicles. Is this more disruption, or desperation? (Businessweek)

• Someone has to run the fabs: Egalitarianism is important but we neglect STEM education at our peril. (Noahpinion)

• Disney lawsuit shows Ron DeSantis at his bullying, bumbling worst: The 77-page legal complaint, filed in federal court in Gainesville, Fla., aims to stop what it terms “a targeted campaign of government retaliation — orchestrated at every step by Gov. DeSantis as punishment for Disney’s protected speech.” (Los Angeles Times)

• Disney’s had enough — it’s taking Ron DeSantis to court: In a new lawsuit, Disney accuses DeSantis of “a targeted campaign of government retaliation.” (Vox)

• Red States Are Trying To Fight The World On Climate: “You can look at the EPA website and see all of what they’re opposed to … carbon, methane. All these things directly affect … our major industries in our state, our oil industry, our ag[ricultural] industry.” (FiveThirtyEight)

• Molly Ringwald bites back: ‘I was projected as the sweet American girl next door. It wasn’t me’:  Hollywood success in the 80s was so unpleasant that Ringwald moved to France. Since then she has made a jazz album, written a novel and translated a memoir about Last Tango in Paris star Maria Schneider. (The Guardian)