Wednesday morning news drop
The labour shortage is so bad businesses are eyeing mergers to acquire new talent Close to 116,000 small businesses will be up for sale in the next five years. From being the victims of complete shutdowns, to financing challenges to poor business flows, companies have weathered it all over the past 24 months. And now they are facing labour shortages as a post-pandemic recovery takes hold. (Financial Post)
Alberta posts highest construction levels in years, but supply chain woes impede projects Home-building disruptions trigger higher costs, delays and frustration (CBC)
Charting GE’s Historic Rise and Tortured Downfall General Electric Co. has unraveled. The onetime icon of American industry suffered its biggest annual stock decline of the modern era as it was booted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. (Bloomberg)
Reddit’s Latest Money-Making Obsession Is an Obscure Fed Facility Huge, oft-misunderstood program turns into another avenue for GameStop daydreams (Bloomberg)
Will the Guitar Boom Outlast COVID? Stay at home orders drove record guitar sales, but what happens when the pandemic subsides and life returns to normal? (Music Trades)
The Chip That Could Transform Computing The M1 chips make laptops as powerful as some of the fastest desktops on the market yet so efficient that their battery life beats that of just about any other laptop. The chips portend a future absolutely saturated with computing power — with extremely powerful processors not just in traditional computers and smartphones but also in cars, drones, virtual-reality machines and pretty much everything else that runs on electricity. (New York Times)
We Already Have the Tools We Need to Beat Climate Change The challenge is not identifying the solutions, but rolling them out with great speed. (Slate)