Tuesday morning news drop
The Anxiety of Influencers Educating the TikTok generation (Harpers)
Elon Musk, Chamath Palihapitiya and Cathie Wood Face a Reddit Reckoning Profits beat prophets in today’s stock market. While the broader stock market remains near record levels, the trio’s portfolios and businesses have been pummeled by inflation worries and rising bond yields. (Bloomberg)
Bitcoin is Crashing. This is What it Does This is the noisiest selloff in quite some time, but other than that, this is rather ordinary. Bitcoin routinely falls 30% or more from its all-time highs, as you can see in the charts in this article. (Irrelevant Investor)
As cryptocurrency goes wild, fear grows about who might get hurt “Right now the exchanges trading in these crypto assets do not have a regulatory framework, either at the SEC or our sister agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler told Congress earlier this month in one of his first remarks on cryptocurrency regulation. “Right now there’s not a market regulator around these crypto exchanges. And thus there’s really not protection against fraud or manipulation.” (Washington Post)
The FCC’s big bet on Elon Musk The billionaire’s space internet project could connect millions of remote American homes. If it actually works. (Vox)
The strange deal that created a ghost town: An infamous blue plume of pollution from one of the US’s largest coal-fired plants changed the course of history for one once-thriving town. (BBC)
Bond Market Rejects Inflation Alarmism If investors were really worried about inflation, there is one really obvious thing they would do – buy TIPS, inflation-protected bonds. And yet, with inflation readings providing all kinds of headlines, investors didn’t do that. In fact, on the day of that much higher than expected CPI, investors sold long-term TIPS, the 10-year yield rising by 4 basis points. If inflation fear is driving markets, TIPS investors are curiously brave. (Alhambra)
Most People Are Thinking of Herd Immunity All Wrong A scenario where so few people have a disease that even those who can’t be vaccinated will never get sick, simply because they’ll never have the chance. One of herd immunity’s hallmarks is that cases are so rare that they make news. It’s not a cutoff, it’s not a magic number, and it’s usually not even an ending. (Slate)
Don’t Politicize the Lab-Leak Theory While the Biden administration should defend U.S. scientists against partisan defamation, it has no reason to protect China against the truth, whatever that may be. (Atlantic)
How to fix the housing crisis The housing crisis is complex and multi-faceted. If anyone ever tells you that we only need to do one thing to fix it, you know they have no idea what they’re talking about. So the title of this post is somewhat tongue in cheek as of course I realize there are other actions to take. However I’m increasingly convinced that there’s one major thing we can do to control house prices and improve people’s living situations, and that is to build rentals and tons of them. (House Hunt Victoria)
Covid Vaccines: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)