Mortgage Stress Test, Big Tobacco and Fake News, Fairy Creek, and Supply Chain Attacks

Wednesday morning news drop

  • Tougher mortgage stress test shaves up to 5% off some homebuyers' purchasing power

    New rule could reduce the mortgage you qualify for by between $14,000 and $47,000 (Financial Post)

  • How Big Tobacco Set the Stage for Fake News A coordinated program of public deception that spanned four decades has become a template for modern disinformation (Walrus)

  • Worsening opioid crisis taking outsized toll on Ontario’s construction workforce An “increasingly volatile” unregulated drug supply is among the reasons cited for the significant increase in opioid-related deaths in Ontario during the pandemic. (On-Site)

  • The Covid Trauma Has Changed Economics—Maybe Forever Policymakers learned the lessons of 2008 and deployed a wider set of tools to help repair the damage from Covid. They know how to create a recovery, but can they manage the boom? (Bloomberg)

  • Americans Don’t Want to Return to Lousy Low Wage Jobs The majority of the jobs that aren’t back to prepandemic work force levels are very low-income jobs; they are what the U.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index, which I cocreated, calls low-quality jobs. (New York Times)

  • Hacking: What Is a Supply Chain Attack? From NotPetya to SolarWinds, it’s a problem that’s not going away any time soon. (Wired)

  • How Electric Car Designers Are Reimagining Iconic Grilles With their electric vehicles, BMW, GM and Ford are re-inventing the grille in ways both familiar and strange. (Bloomberg)

  • Three Days in the Theatre of Fairy Creek The drama playing out today was set in motion 150 years ago. One person can change the ending. (Tyee)

  • The World’s Northernmost Town Is Changing Dramatically Climate change is bringing tourism and tension to Longyearbyen on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard (Scientific American)