Bank of Canada Keeps Rate at 0.25% and Income Inequality

Wednesday morning news drop

• Bank of Canada maintains policy rate of 0.25%, continues forward guidance and current pace of quantitative easing The Bank of Canada today held its target for the overnight rate at the effective lower bound of ¼ percent, with the Bank Rate at ½ percent and the deposit rate at ¼ percent. The Bank is maintaining its extraordinary forward guidance on the path for the overnight rate. This is reinforced and supplemented by the Bank’s quantitative easing (QE) program, which is being maintained at a target pace of $2 billion per week. (Bank of Canada)

• Inequality, Interest Rates, Aging, and the Role of Central Banks Bad things lead to more bad things. But (some) bad things can be fixed. (The Overshoot)

• What Really Predicts Happiness? One of the longest studies on human happiness started in 1938 and followed the lives of 268 Harvard sophomores. Known as the Harvard Study of Adult Development, it tracked everything about these men over decades. Their health, their careers, their relationships, and much more were recorded for the study. And after analyzing the lifetimes of data, the researchers came to a surprising conclusion. (Of Dollars and Data)

• Life in the heart of B.C.’s brutal summer drought For ranchers, farmers and foresters alike, the extreme dry conditions in the Kettle River watershed have forced a reckoning with the region’s intensive clearcut logging — and what people across the region can do to remedy decades of human impact to sensitive ecosystems (Narwhal)

• Where They Stand: The Parties on Child Care A former daycare worker analyzes pledged changes to daycare, foster care and Indigenous child welfare. (Tyee)

• The Search for America’s Atlantis Did people first come to this continent by land or by sea? (Atlantic)

• The Pro Wrestling Business Is Heating Up To Levels Not Seen In 20 Years. Will It Last? The professional wrestling landscape is really heating up. Over the weekend, World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.'s (NYSE: WWE) SummerSlam was reportedly the highest grossing and most-viewed SummerSlam in the event's 34-year history. On Friday, the return of CM Punk after a seven-year absence from pro wrestling boosted All Elite Wrestling's “Rampage” TV ratings by 52.5%, and Pro Wrestling Tees announced Punk’s new shirt is already the highest selling design in its history. (Yahoo Finance)

• Secret meetings, negotiations and ice cream bars: The inside story of CM Punk's return to wrestling CM PUNK arrived at the United Center in Chicago at about 4:30 p.m. local time on Aug. 20, about 4½ hours before he was scheduled to make his return to professional wrestling after more than seven years away on All Elite Wrestling's "Rampage." (ESPN)

Wage Stagnation, Business Travel, and Beyoncé

Tuesday morning post long weekend news drop

• For many workers, raises today don’t make up for years of wage stagnation Even as retail and hospitality workers see pay hikes, they’re often not enough to offset rising prices and years of low pay. (Fast Company)

• How The Big Short Turned Into The Big Long. It was the biggest recession in a generation. We had two 50% crashes within the span of a decade. This triggers the recency bias (giving greater importance to more recent events) and the availability bias (overestimating an event that had a profound impact on us). Many households and companies were ruined by the financial crisis. Those scars run deep. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• ‘Forever Changed’: CEOs Are Dooming Business Travel — Maybe for Good A Bloomberg survey of 45 large companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia shows that 84% plan to spend less on travel post-pandemic. (Bloomberg)

• The Secret to Happiness at Work Your job doesn’t have to represent the most prestigious use of your potential. It just needs to be rewarding. (The Atlantic)

• Americans Don’t Want to Return to Low Wage Jobs Pre-Covid-19, the U.S. economy was incredibly dependent on an abundance of low-wage, low-hours jobs. It yielded low prices for comfortably middle-class and wealthier customers and low labor costs for bosses, but spectacularly low incomes for tens of millions of others. (New York Times)

• Bitcoin Uses More Electricity Than Many Countries. How Is That Possible? Cryptocurrencies have emerged as one of the most captivating, yet head-scratching, investments in the world. They soar in value. They crash. They’ll change the world, their fans claim, by displacing traditional currencies like the dollar, rupee or ruble. They’re named after dog memes. And in the process of simply existing, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, one of the most popular, use astonishing amounts of electricity. (New York Times)

• The Conservative Justices’ Reasoning in the Texas Abortion Case Is Legal Mansplaining It’s almost impossible to not go one further and declare that the court opted to end virtually all abortion rights in Texas, in the full knowledge that they were blessing an unconstitutional and brutal piece of lawless vigilantism, because it’s only about women. (Slate)

• The Surfside Condo Was Flawed and Failing. Here’s a Look Inside. How faulty design and construction could have contributed to the collapse of the building in South Florida. (New York Times)

• All the Biggest Environmental Risks Facing the World’s Biggest Cities From landslides and extreme heat to insect infestations and airborne diseases, these are the most worrying hazards in urban areas with more than 1 million people. (BusinessWeek)

• Why Facebook Won’t Stop Pushing Propaganda Vaccine disinformation. The Big Lie. The hate poisoning your community. It all goes back to Mark Zuckerberg’s business model. (Mother Jones)

• The Joe Rogan COVID Experience Is Following Its Deranged, Destined Course: Just asking questions, never learning a single thing. He has surfaced illiterate observations on how otherwise healthy young people might not need to take the COVID-19 vaccines. There’s a whiff of inevitability to be found in Rogan’s admission that he contracted COVID-19 after performing a bunch of stand-up shows in Florida last month— one of the literal worst times to perform comedy shows in Florida. (Slate)

• The Million-Dollar Nose: With his stubborn disregard for the hierarchy of wines, Robert Parker, the straight-talking American wine critic, is revolutionizing the industry — and teaching the French wine establishment some lessons it would rather not learn. (The Atlantic)

• Beyoncé’s Evolution After more than two decades in the spotlight, Beyoncé has become much more than a pop icon. She’s a cultural force who has routinely defied expectations and transformed the way we understand the power of art to change how we see ourselves and each other. But at 40, she feels like she’s just scratched the surface. (Harper’s Bazaar)

Videos of the Week and Climate Change Reality in the Worlds Biggest Cities

Friday morning news drop

• All the Biggest Environmental Risks Facing the World’s Biggest Cities From landslides and extreme heat to insect infestations and airborne diseases, these are the most worrying hazards in urban areas with more than 1 million people. (BusinessWeek)

• Overlapping Disasters Expose Harsh Climate Reality: The U.S. Is Not Ready The deadly flooding in the Northeast, on the heels of destruction from Louisiana to California, shows the limits of adapting to climate change. Experts say it will only get worse. (New York Times)

• Norwegian company plans large new salmon farm for B.C.’s coast as others phased out First Nations who successfully fought to remove open-net pen salmon farms are speaking out against a proposal by Grieg Seafood and the Tlowitsis First Nation, saying they have not been consulted and fear wild salmon stocks will suffer if a new farm is approved (Narwhal)

• Inflation is cooling some, but not all the reasons are good ones. While inflation stepped down, it’s too soon to say whether the higher pace this year will remain or be temporary. It’s the underlying causes not the topline numbers that deserve more scrutiny now. (Stay-At-Home Macro)

• Amazon’s favorite electric vehicle company is going public at a very tricky time 12-year-old electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian filed for an initial public offering. Backed by Amazon and considered one of the biggest threats to Tesla, it is seeking a valuation as high as $80 billion. That would make Rivian one of the world’s most valuable automakers, worth billions more than Ford or GM — and its trucks aren’t even on the road yet. (Vox)

• Documenting the Last Pay Phones In America A photographer in Rochester, N.Y., tries to capture an obsolete technology before it disappears (Businessweek)

Videos of the Week

The Hill Bombing Skateboarders of San Francisco | The New Yorker Skateboarding the steep hills in San Francisco is undoubtedly dangerous, but for these skaters, it offers a sacred place to find stillness.

The Raw Rundown - BEST TRICKS OF Audi Nines MTB'21 After a week of non-stop action and mountain bike insanity, silence has returned to the Quarry of Dreams.

BEST LINES SLOPESTYLE - Audi Nines MTB'21

Myriam Nicole - Autumnal colours in Morzine After a short rest, Myriam Nicole (Pompon) has returned to training, amidst the beautiful Autumnal colours of Morzine!

Dave Krone - Are You Mad? A big, warm welcome back to our boy Dave Krone who's healed up and killing the streets of FL again with a brand new part! No one bikes like Dave.

MATTHIAS DANDOIS - VANS 'OFF THE GRID'

Merritt BMX Keep It Moving: Brandon Begin, Billy Perry , Justin Seiller, and George Duran hopped in the van for a week and went from NJ to Detroit and back, hitting spots on the way. Montana Ricky, Anthony Catlow, and Oscar Ruiz made sure to snag some clips in before we took off. Video: Scott McMenamin.

Tom Schaar's "Airborne" Part: From the streets of the Middle East to Sloan’s compound, Schaar completely shuts it down. The padless/grabless stuff is in a league of its own.

Cedric Pabich's "Skyrod" Homies Part Rockin’ the cradle at Washington Street and haulin’ down hills, Cedric goes all in when he steps up to a spot.

Daniel Scales' "Team ICECREAM" Part A ledge virtuoso with a penchant for flipping out, Daniel keeps it cool in the schoolyards and in the streets.

International Sustainability Standards, Materiality, and Low Dividend Yields

Thursday morning news drop

• Canada makes bid to host headquarters of new sustainable accounting standards organization Canada has submitted a bid to host the headquarters of the new International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), a proposed group that would develop rules for how companies report on environmental, social and governance matters. The ISSB is a creation of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) used by Canadian companies that trade on public stock exchanges. The ISSB will create a global set of sustainability standards rather than continue with companies picking from among multiple existing frameworks for disclosing these issues. (Globe and Mail)

• Sustainability reporting: Getting clarity on materiality At its simplest, materiality means information that is likely to influence the assessment process and decisions of stakeholders. (Financial Management)

• The Next Big Investment Hub For Unicorns—And It’s Not China The United States leads the world in unicorns — privately held startups valued at more than $1 billion — with 154 new ones since last October, according to the American research firm CB Insights. China was a longtime favorite of unicorn hunters, but Covid-19, Chinese regulatory actions against its own tech giants and the sudden loss of civil rights in Hong Kong have given investors pause. So they are crowding into India, which is home to 58 unicorns today. For comparison, the United Kingdom has just 20. (Forbes)

• Not All Risk is Rewarded “Higher risk, higher reward.” This is one of the most repeated maxims in investing, and the basis of Modern Portfolio Theory. It’s also intuitive: riskier investments should be compensated with a higher return. But what should happen and what actually happens is not always one in the same… (Compound)

• Can Ancient Indigenous Technology Help Save BC’s Salmon? After an earthquake exposed thousands of mysterious wooden stakes off Vancouver Island, researchers spent over a decade figuring out what they mean (Walrus)

• Fleeing Disaster Is Hard. Climate Change Is Making It Harder Hurricane Ida and California wildfires are two sides of the same coin: On a warmer planet, it’s getting harder to evacuate from extreme events. (Wired)

• Classic songs are strangling new music “A large portion of the people that are streaming, they’ve never owned a CD, they may not listen to the radio, and when they hear David Bowie’s Life On Mars, they’re hearing it for the first time,” he says. “So the source of discovery is the last 70 years of music. It’s all brand new, right now. So you’re competing with every song that has ever come out.” (BBC)

• Seth Rogen Wants to Tell Your Story: The actor–author–ceramicist–weed entrepreneur adds podcaster to his repertoire. (Vulture)

The dividend yield of the S&P500 has spent the past decade (the 2010s) averaging around a ~2% yield. This yield has made it part of a trend towards higher equity exposure as a way to make up for lower bond yields. Making stocks a bond substitute(!?) has had a few direct and interesting results:

1. 60/40: The traditional 60/40 portfolio has become more of a 70/30 or even 75/25 mix of stocks and bonds. This trade-off includes 1) an increase in volatility and drawdowns (though not this year); 2) higher expected returns; 3) an increase in total portfolio risks.

2. Valuations have risen, and U.S. stocks are fully if not richly valued (the nature of bull markets is for valuations to rise, and P/E multiples to expand. This quarter has seen record profits, with about 80% of the SPX reporting

3. Inflows: With a few notable exceptions, capital has continued to flow put of actively managed funds and towards passive indices. This is another driver sending yields dividend lower.

4. Default? For many, the S&P500 has become the default setting for where to sweep new cash and other unallocated capital.

5. Streak: 2021 has seen 7 consecutive monthly gains in the index, the longest such streak since December 2017.

6. Higher Yield: Before the 1990s, the S&P 500 yielded 3% or more and topped 6% at a market low in 1982. This was an era of higher bond yields (Barron’s)

Student Loan Interest, Facebook vs AOL, and Covid Long-Haulers

Wednesday morning news drop

• Where They Stand: The Parties on Housing Prices are soaring. But the major parties are still determined to prop up homeownership. (Tyee)

• Fact check: Is the federal government profiting off student loan interest? NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh's claim is just plain wrong, expert says (CBC)

• Every National Forest In California Is Closing Because Of Wildfire Risk Citing the extraordinary risk of wildfires and forecasts that show the threat will only remain high or even get worse, the U.S. Forest Service is closing every national forest in California. The closures start Tuesday night and run through Sept. 17. (NPR)

• COVID-19 created lots of supply chain problems — and they're nowhere close to being solved Shortage of semiconductors expected to last into 2022 at least (CBC)

• The 5 Worst Investment Tips on TikTok Some of the financial advice on TikTok and other social media is rooted in sound strategy, some not so much. (NerdWallet)

• Facebook is the AOL of 2021 The 1990s had a word for being trapped inside a manipulative notion of human contact: AOL. Facebook and its ilk are the rebirth of that limited vision. (ZD Net)

• Nobody Knows Anything: Wall Street During the Pandemic. “If someone would have told me in March of last year, when Covid was first rearing its ugly head, that 18 months later we would have case counts that are as high—if not higher—than they were on that day, but that the market would have doubled over that 18-month period, I would have laughed at them.” The impossible is now commonplace (Businessweek)

• She’s the Investor Guru for Online Creators Li Jin, 31, began backing creators years ago. She has raised her own fund to invest in influencer-related start-ups. (New York Times)

• Can ‘smart thinking’ books really give you the edge? Trust your gut, boost your memory, de-bias your decision making… can we train our brains to perform better? (The Guardian)

• When Charlie Watts Finally Made It to New York City While his bandmates hit the Apollo, the reserved, jazz-loving drummer for the Stones could be found at Birdland. (New York Times)

• Long-Haulers are Fighting for Their Future Many people with long COVID feel that science is failing them. Neglecting them could make the pandemic even worse. (Atlantic)

Political Parties on Climate Change and High Risk Areas

Tuesday morning news drop

• Where They Stand: The Parties on Climate Change Canada hasn’t hit a single climate action goal yet, but experts say there’s reason to be optimistic. (Tyee)

• More People Are Moving In Than Out of Areas Facing High Risk From Climate Change The U.S. counties with the largest share of homes facing high heat, drought, fire, flood and storm risk saw their populations grow from 2016-2020 due to migration. (Redfin)

• High-Frequency Charts Shows the Economy Softening From Delta The delta variant has muted the progress of the U.S. economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, with consumers putting off some leisure spending and businesses delaying a return to normal operations, according to a number of high-frequency reports that show softness in August. If we do not radically improve our Vaxx rates ASAP, the entire economic recovery and precariously positioned, somewhat expensive market is put at risk of a 20-30% crash. This one will not have the trillion-dollar stimulus and rapid recovery of the 2020 edition, but rather, will be long, slow, and painful. (Bloomberg)

• Private Equity Has Definitively Entered the World of Professional Sports. Here’s What Comes Next. Buying stakes in NBA and MLB teams is just the beginning of the private equity takeover of major league sports. (Institutional Investor)

• Bird Brain: The Worst Managed Tech Company in History Social-networking service Twitter is a truly iconic brand and product that’s the nervous system of the information age… It’s also been an epic disappointment on many levels. It has been a terrible investment… has left tens, if not hundreds, of billions on the table… is run by the worst kind of part-time CEO… and has shown few signs of figuring out what’s wrong. (American Consequences)

• Misinformation Is Bigger Than Facebook, But Let’s Start There Social networks’ addictive algorithms continue to provide safe harbor for anti-vaxxers. They need to change. (Businessweek)

• Virus surge breaks hospital records amid rising toll on kids Kentucky and Texas joined a growing list of states that are seeing record numbers of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in a surge that is overwhelming doctors and nurses and afflicting more children.(AP)

• An immense mystery older than Stonehenge Reshaping previous ideas on the story of civilisation, Gobekli Tepe in Turkey was built by a prehistoric people 6,000 years before Stonehenge. (BBC)

• How The Left Wrist Became The Right Wrist For Watches About 10% of the population is left-handed and it was not unusual, once upon a time, for lefties, once they started school, to be forced to write with the right hand. There are many reasons for this, including cultural bias against lefties, and the fact that many appliances and tools are designed on the default assumption that the right hand is the right hand. (Hodinkee)

• Model, Mogul, Mother Naomi Campbell, at 51, is discovering what comes after global icon. (The Cut)

Florida Condo Collapse, Economic Inequality, and Amazon Grocery Stores

Monday morning news drop

• Behind the Florida Condo Collapse: Rampant Corner-Cutting Inadequate waterproofing, thin columns and faulty concrete emerge as leading possibilities in Champlain Towers South tragedy (Wall Street Journal)

• How to Fix Economic Inequality? An Overview of Policies for the United States and Other High-Income Economies For decades, a gap has been growing between the rich and poor in advanced economies, especially the United States. Then the coronavirus pandemic struck. (Peterson Institute for International Economics)

• What I learned visiting two cutting-edge Amazon grocery stores Grocery stores have reason to worry as Amazon invades their industry. (Full Stack Economics)

• TikTok, Reddit, and Facebook are killing ppeople with Ivermectin misinformation Like other false cures, the drug is highlighting the misinformation problem on social media. (The Verge)

• The quirks and features of YouTube car reviews with Doug DeMuro What’s going to surprise you is how much data from YouTube Doug actually tracks and how he uses that data to make decisions about what videos to make. Doug’s also a product reviewer, so we talked about what reviews are for, who they serve, and how Doug manages to keep himself independent in the face of auto industry glad-handing. Doug was pretty direct that he considers himself a journalist — and direct about how various car companies try to get favorable reviews. (The Verge)

• On the Road, Again: In an uncertain post-vaccine landscape, musicians and other touring professionals are feeling the elation—and anxiety—of getting back to work. (Pitchfork)

• Big D Is a Big Deal Dallas–Fort Worth is becoming the de facto capital of America’s Heartland. Today, Dallas is pulling away economically from the nation’s long-established urban centers because of a distinctive policy orientation: growth-friendly, with lighter-touch business regulation and lower taxes than longtime urban centers in the Northeast, the Midwest, or California. Only four of the 53 U.S. metros with more than 1 million people outperform DFW on an index of economic freedom measuring tax levels, government spending, and labor rules. (City-Journal)

• Jonah Hill Is SuperGood His 20s were wild: a parade of raunchy, era-defining comedies. Then Jonah Hill shifted gears, directing a deeply personal film and taking on the kinds of rich, complex roles he’s always wanted. Here he opens up to director Adam McKay (another funny guy gone serious-ish) about that evolution—and how nice it is when your happiness finally catches up with your success. (GQ)

Videos of the Week, Joe Rogan Loosing Influence, and Big Bank Taxes

Friday morning news drop and videos of the week

• This is how much the Big Six banks would have to pay if Trudeau's tax goes through

  But the big losers could be bank shareholders (Financial Post)

• Price Rules Everything Around Me Prices are what drive narratives around asset classes, not the other way around. It’s not that crypto actually had a revolutionary change in the past month and then prices moved accordingly. Rather, prices went up and now people are attributing that change to some fundamental change in the space. (Of Dollars And Data)

• How Low Can Fund Fees Go? The average expense ratio for investors has fallen by more than half since 2000. (Morningstar)

• Joe Rogan, confined to Spotify, is losing influence A Verge investigation shows how going exclusive stunted Rogan’s power (The Verge)

• Vaccinated Democratic Counties Are Leading the Economic Recovery Data show America’s output is concentrated in counties that Biden won—which are better protected against delta (Businessweek)

• Remember When September Was Going to Be the Return to Normal in the U.S.? The delta variant is jeopardizing the economy’s long-awaited Fall comeback. (Businessweek)

• The ‘Hedonistic Altruism’ of Plant-Based Meat Ethan Brown, the founder and C.E.O. of Beyond Meat, on his moral and environmental priorities. (New York Times)

Videos of the week

QUEEN CITY CINEMA - DIG 'IN THE CUT'

Leatt - Back to the Streets feat. Andrea Maranelli and Szymon Godziek Post pandemic lockdown Leatt riders Andrea Maranelli and Szymon Godziek were eager to get back on the streets. Shot in Warsaw, Poland the two riders spent 3 nights cruising the city, searching for the perfect spots. In their search they discovered the amazing lights and life that Warsaw nighttime offers.

Mason Silva's SOTY Cover Nosepick After his outrageous year, Mason rode into 2021 bruised and a little broken. But when it came time to get a photo for the SOTY issue, he charged at this film-studio spot with a full-commitment nosepick. Never underestimate our guy.

Vans X Norma Ibarra | Skate Photobook | VANS Norma Ibarra is a skateboarder, mountain biker, photographer, gardener, and social media marketer, all rolled into one. Originally from Mexico, she is committed to documenting skaters and shedding light on lesser-known communities around the world. For this project,

Fabiana Delfino's "Spitfire" Part Fabi roams from LA to The Bay and beyond, treating us to some high-speed stoke and yet another surprise hit at Potrero. She brings the heat.

BONES Wheels' "Genetic Diversity" Video Joslin, Decenzo, Gustavo and an all-star cast ignite spots from every corner of the globe before Marek Zaprazny finishes the job in Prague.

JENKEM - The Story Behind Nike's "What If?" Campaign

The Stomping Grounds - Official Trailer For decades, the pursuit of adventure, deep powder and massive spines has taken professional skiers like Mark Abma and Michelle Parker to the far reaches of the globe. As skiers, the desire to seek more and to escape is ingrained in our DNA. But that doesn’t mean our immediate

“Maneuvers” by Sämi Ortlieb Sämi Ortlieb is an accomplished skier, designer, filmmaker, animator, and member of a hardcore punk band. In this week’s Staff Pick Premiere, “Maneuvers,” his many passions collide into a playful ode to the do-it-yourself origins of skiing and its close relationship to nature.

Prolyfyck Run Crew: Through the language of running, Prolyfyck Run Crew is creating a safe space where Black runners can see themselves represented, and all runners are welcome, in Charlottesville, VA.

Canada Election Housing Policies, Corporate Cash, and Charlie Watts

Thursday morning news drop

• Election housing policy: The bad, the ineffective, and the missing The housing market has been on fire not just in Victoria but all around Canada. All the attention has been on the sharp uptick after the pandemic, but the housing market actually started heating up in mid 2019 and the latest performance was simply an acceleration of a previously existing trend. (House Hunt Victoria)

• Wall Street During the Pandemic: The Impossible Is Now Commonplace One lesson from the market’s relentless climb is that sometimes the rules don’t matter. (Businessweek)

• Are We in a Melt-Up? “Of all the things that you should do during a melt-up, the most important is to get invested. Do not sit in cash. Why? Because even if the market does eventually return to its prior levels, sitting in cash will destroy you psychologically.” (Of Dollars And Data)

• Companies Are Hoarding Record Cash Amid Delta Fears Cash and short-term investments on corporate balance sheets rose in the second quarter (Wall Street Journal)

• The new threat to China’s luxury boom: What to know Luxury stocks tumbled last week as the Chinese government announced a crackdown on wealth inequality. Here’s what that means for the industry. (Vogue)

• In This Housing Boom, Mortgages Are for Losers To boost entry-level homeownership for lower-income buyers, the government needs to make the market less appealing to the cash-rich Wall Street investors who have taken over. (Bloomberg)

• Some Wall Streeters are fed up with their unvaccinated coworkers As Wall Street scrambles to find safe ways to return its bankers to the office as the Delta variant surges, some financiers have found a scapegoat for the mess: the unvaccinated. Across America, roughly 57 percent of people are vaccinated, but at top Wall Street firms, that number is north of 90 percent. (NY Post)

• How Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are handling the Taliban The world might accept the Taliban as a legitimate government. Will social media companies? (Vox)

• A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps Sixteen years after the launch of Google Talk, Google messaging is still a mess. (Ars Technica)

• The High Priest of Cryptopia Regrets Nothing Ian Freeman could have been a bitcoin billionaire. Instead he could go to prison for the rest of his life. (New York Magazine)

• Charlie Watts, the Unlikely Soul of the Rolling Stones In a band that defined debauched rock ’n’ roll, he was a quiet, dapper jazz fan. But their unusual chemistry defined the rhythm of the Stones, and of rock. (New York Times)

Business Strategy Post Covid and High Performing Employees

Wednesday morning news drop

• In a post-COVID world, CPAs can become an organization’s GPS As trusted advisers, accountants can play a pivotal role in crafting a company’s vision for the future (CPA Canada)

• Let Your Top Performers Move Around the Company As a manager, it’s human nature to want to hang on to the superstars in your group, department, or division. But ultimately, that’s detrimental to the organization and to the individuals involved. Multiple studies on talent mobility show that actively moving employees into different roles is one of the most underutilized, yet most effective, development and cultural enhancement techniques in companies today. In fact, research has shown that high-performance organizations are twice as likely to emphasize talent mobility versus low-performance companies. Building a culture of mobility is a trait of very healthy organizations, and the benefits are clear. Cross-functional collaboration increases, departmental cooperation is enhanced, innovation improves, and companies begin working more as one cohesive team instead of separate fiefdoms. (Harvard Business Review)

• Which Country is the Cheapest for Starting a Business? Starting a new business isn’t as simple as coming up with an idea. In addition to the time investment needed to formulate and create a business, there’s often a hefty capital requirement. A new business usually requires paying different fees for licensing, permits, and approvals, and many governments also have minimum on-hand capital requirements. (Visual Capitalist)

• How Tim Cook has grown the Apple empire in his decade as CEO Ten years into the job, Cook now leads the most valuable company in the world — technology or otherwise — and it remains among the most influential. More than a billion people worldwide use its devices and tens of millions of developers have built businesses on its software platforms. (CNN)

• Hedge Funds Are Hot Again. Good Luck Finding One That’ll Take Your Money A record number of funds are closing to new cash. Investors risk missing out on the top money makers. “The reality is the best performers are dictating terms . . . the easy way of making money by buying two or three multi-manager platforms is closed.” (Bloomberg)

• The Carrot and the Stick Which incentive is more powerful – The Carrot or The Stick? Any parent of a three-year-old can tell you that both are necessary. The trick is to find the right balance between the two. Too much Stick and the child loses confidence. Too much Carrot and the child learns to skirt the rules. (The Belle Curve)

• End of the Line for Uber Uber was never going to be profitable. Never. It lured drivers and riders into cars by subsidizing rides with billions and billions of dollars from the Saudi royal family, keeping up the con-artist’s ever-shifting patter about how all of this would some day stand on its own. Accounting tricks and tech gimmickry don’t matter when the coffers are empty. (Marker)

• The Shadowy Business of International Education Foreign students are lied to and exploited on every front. They’re also propping up higher education as we know it (Walrus)

• From Daniel Craig to Dwayne Johnson, Inside the Biggest Movie Stars’ Salaries The digital revolution may have changed things dramatically, but don’t lose any sleep over the financial statements of your favorite actors. Film stars continue to be paid handsomely for their duties and are often able to earn much more by leaving the big screen behind and diving headfirst into streaming. (Variety)

• Saving Pop Punk? That’s Just Their Warm-Up Act. Meet Me @ the Altar want to be household names — and that’s not a crazy notion. (New York Times)