Thursday morning news drop
My Time with Kurt Cobain Befriending a rock star isn’t necessarily as cool as you’d think—particularly when tragedy happens. (New Yorker)
Evergrande Debt Crisis Is Financial Stress Test No One Wanted China’s real estate powder keg threatens President Xi’s drive for stability—and may yet force a too-big-to-fail moment with global implications. (Businessweek)
No More Apologies: Inside Facebook’s Push to Defend Its Image Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, has signed off on an effort to show users pro-Facebook stories and to distance himself from scandals. (New York Times)
Banking the Poor: Lending Without Collateral There’s a disconnect that sits at the heart of banking: the people with the highest demand for loans aren’t the ones banks want to lend to. More often than not, it’s because they don’t have collateral – and there’s nothing a bank likes more than collateral. (Net Interest)
The Consequences of a Market Correction The average peak-to-trough drawdown for the S&P 500 in a given calendar year since 1928 is around -16%. There have been 53 double-digit drawdowns overall in this time frame. The average loss for those corrections is -23%, lasting more than 200 days from peak to trough. Over the past 93 years the U.S. stock market has fallen 20% or worse on 21 different occasions. (A Wealth of Common Sense)
A decade of the Tim Cook machine In all the enthusiasms, arguments and panics around tech, Apple is the $2tn elephant in the corner, mostly silent and serenely indifferent to the news cycle. It just ships – and it ships market-leading products, with metronomic precision, at massive scale, on a decade-long strategic roadmap. It also likes lecturing its peers. But is there another Jesusphone? (Benedict Evans)
Endless to-do list? Here’s how not to waste your life Most approaches to time management make things worse. Start by acknowledging your limits (Financial Times)
Global Gas Price Surge Threatens to Dent the Economic Recovery Natural gas prices are undergoing a historic surge, and it’s bad news for everyone from ceramic makers in China to customers of patisseries in Paris. The cost of the fuel is already at record seasonal highs in most major markets and looks likely to rise further, threatening to dent the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. (Bloomberg)
