Been a little busy lately, back on the weekly news drops. Here is a big one!
Bloomberg Says It Is Using Machine Learning to Deliver Near Real-Time Bond Prices: “You can trust this price as a reference price for that bond at that point in time,” says Tony McManus, global head of enterprise data at Bloomberg. (Institutional Investor)
The Worst Bond Bear Market in History: The bond bear market of the 1950s through the early-1980s was more of a death-by-a-thousand cuts. And the source of those cuts was inflation. Sure, annual nominal returns were positive at a little more than 2% per year but inflation was in the 4-5% range over that period. (A Wealth of Common Sense)
The 5% Bond Market Means Pain Is Heading Everyone’s Way: The impact will be felt in everything from shoppers’ pockets to company balance sheets. (Bloomberg)
Why Are Interest Rates Spiking? The bond market continues to be even crazier than the stock market. We’ve witnessed a massive move in long-term bond yields these past couple of weeks and months. Yields on the 10, 20 and 30 year Treasury were all up in the neighborhood of 60 basis points over the past 16 trading sessions. Yields are up 1% or more on each of these bond maturities since the end of June. (A Wealth of Common Sense)
Americans Are Still Spending Like There’s No Tomorrow: Concerts, trips and designer handbags are taking priority over saving for a home or rainy day. (Wall Street Journal)
American Work-From-Home Rates Drop to Lowest Since the Pandemic: Fewer than 26% of households now have someone working remotely Just seven states have maintained rate above 33% post-pandemic (Bloomberg)
Does Sam Altman Know What He’s Creating? The OpenAI CEO’s ambitious, ingenious, terrifying quest to create a new form of intelligence (The Atlantic)
Vaccine Scientist Warns Antiscience Conspiracies Have Become a Deadly, Organized Movement: Vaccinologist Peter Hotez explains how the movement to oppose science and scientists has gained power. (Scientific American)
Millennials and boomers are competing for homes. Guess who’s winning? Rising prices, high rates and demographics are reversing millennial gains. (Financial Times)
Home Insurance Is So High in This Florida Town, Residents Are Leaving: In West Palm Beach’s Flamingo Park neighborhood, some homeowners are dropping insurance, and others who can’t are selling. (Wall Street Journal)
These houses are at risk of falling into the sea. The U.S. government bought them. ‘It will be a safer beach,’ says the National Park Service official who pushed for the buyouts and has seen other homes collapse and scatter debris for miles. (Washington Post)
The insider: how Michael Lewis got a backstage pass for the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried: As author of The Big Short and Moneyball, Michael Lewis is perhaps the most celebrated journalist of his generation. Now he delivers an astonishing portrait of the fallen crypto billionaire. But did he get too close? (The Guardian)
Something Is Golden in the State of Denmark: Can Novo Nordisk’s success really be a problem for the Danish economy? (The Atlantic)
America’s High EV Costs Are Driving Buyers to Hybrids: Concerns about high sticker prices and limited charging infrastructure for electric cars are driving renewed interest in the gasoline-electric vehicles. (Businessweek)
Elon Musk now faces an investigation into disinformation about the Israel-Hamas war: Europe’s probe into harmful content on X about the Israel-Hamas war tests a new law that could reshape the internet. (Vox)
What was Elon Musk’s strategy for Twitter? A year after the world’s richest man acquired the social media platform, a game plan published by a fired Trump White House staffer provides a clue. (NBC News)
Rupert Murdoch is sliding into retirement. His malign influence isn’t going anywhere: “For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change.” He promised to be “reaching out to you with thoughts, ideas, and advice.” As for his designated successor, his elder son Lachlan, Rupert assured the employees that Lachlan is “absolutely committed to the cause” of fighting “most of the media,” which is “peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth.” (Los Angeles Times)
Iran, Israel, and War in the Middle East: Iran’s threat to Israel is clear: It has encircled Israel with heavily armed militants. Those groups — e.g., Hamas, Hizballah, and Palestine Islamic Jihad — share Iran’s commitment to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and are dependent on Tehran’s largess to maintain their domestic power and military strength. Israel has countered such provocations by conducting assassinations and sabotage attacks inside Iran aimed at retarding its nuclear, drone, and missile programs. (War on the Rocks)
Parents told to delete social media apps to prevent kids from seeing Hamas atrocities: Facebook, X, TikTok and other social media services have been filled with graphic imagery out of Israel and Gaza since the weekend’s terror attack. (NBC News)
Teens Are Developing ‘Severe Gambling Problems’ as Online Betting Surges. An increasing amount of evidence suggests that young adults and even minors are easily able to bet online despite a variety of industry safeguards. (Vice)
Disney Goes All In On Sports Betting: After years of internal debate, the entertainment giant did a deal with a gambling company and will launch an ESPN betting app next month. Can it draw a bigger sports crowd without alienating Mickey’s fans? (Wall Street Journal)
Dave Portnoy Bought Barstool Back. Can Erika Ayers Badan Keep His Pirate Ship on Course? As Penn pivots from Portnoy’s brand of bro-ish excess to family-friendly ESPN, Barstool is free to be itself. (Vanity Fair)
Inside the delicate art of maintaining America’s aging nuclear weapons: The U.S. will spend more than $750 billion over the next 10 years replacing almost every component of its nuclear defenses, including new stealth bombers, submarines and ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles in the country’s most ambitious nuclear weapons effort since the Manhattan Project. (AP News)
‘People are happier in a walkable neighborhood’: the US town that banned cars: For the first piece in our new series the alternatives we visit a community without cars in the desert of Tempe, Arizona. (The Guardian)
Scotiabank Arena reimagining the fan experience MLSE reveals first part of $350 million renovation to home of the Toronto Raptors and Maple Leafs ahead of venue’s 25th anniversary. Now if someone can only fix the Leafs corporate fans who don’t know how to cheer and are killing the arena… (On-Site)
Taylor Swift Re-Recorded Albums Into Hits. Can It Be Done Again? Swift began to execute a plan to regain control and in the process created a radical new blueprint for artists and music ownership. The same month she published her initial letter, she announced she would re-record the albums included in that deal. (Bloomberg)
What Madonna Knows: The artist is always one step ahead—and has a unique power to scandalize each generation anew. (The Atlantic)
The Drake Lyrics Taxonomy: From Emo Drake to Horny Drake and everything in between, come with us on a journey as we sort through the rapper’s most famous lines and personalities. (The Ringer)
One Great Rock Movie Can Change the World: An Oral History of ‘School of Rock’ Twenty years later, the filmmakers and cast remember making the hilarious music movie with a heart of gold. (Rolling Stone)
Vintage Nirvana: Thirty years after the release of ‘In Utero,’ T-shirts commemorating the album can go for four figures. The most iconic band of the 1990s—one that openly rejected the commodification of rock—is now one of the biggest brands in the vintage industry. (The Ringer)