Thursday morning news drop
The Commodities Boom Is Luring Criminals to Make Bigger and Bolder Scores The pandemic, soaring prices, and economic pain have combined to create perfect conditions for thieves and fraudsters. (Businessweek)
Meme Stocks Aren’t New, But Their Biggest Fans Are The difference from the Nifty Fifty or dot-com mania is that now anyone with a dollar and a smartphone has the power to move markets. (Bloomberg)
GameStop. Dogecoin. Now AMC. Do meme traders need to be protected from themselves? “If you’re trading like it’s a game, you’re probably going to lose.” (Vox)
Everyone’s a Rising Star When Debt Is Cheap Rock-bottom financing has led to a wave of credit upgrades, but how will those ratings hold up when borrowing costs increase? (Bloomberg)
Bill Ackman Sent a Text to the CEO of Mastercard. What Happened Next Is a Parable for ESG. A yearlong campaign to hold major companies accountable for online sexual abuse met with little success — until a New York Times article got a hedge fund manager involved. (Institutional Investor)
Meager Rewards for Workers, Exceptionally Rich Pay for C.E.O.s The gap between workers and C.E.O.s widened during the pandemic as public companies granted top executives some of the richest pay packages ever. (New York Times)
Silicon Valley Thought India Was Its Future. Now Everything Has Changed. It once made obvious business sense for Big Tech to focus on India. When digital companies expanded to international audiences throughout the globalizing 2000s, they found a perfect receptor in the Asian subcontinent: an increasingly online, billion-strong, newly capitalist nation ready to welcome foreign business. But this quickly disintegrated, and the bargain tech execs drove in embracing an already-notorious figure like Modi became much harder. (Slate)
‘The Silicon Valley of turf’: how the UK’s pursuit of the perfect pitch changed football They used to look like quagmires, ice rinks or dustbowls, depending on the time of year. But as big money entered football, pristine pitches became crucial to the sport’s image – and groundskeepers became stars (The Guardian)