BC Flood Infrastructure, the Tamagotchi, and the Luxury Vacation

Tuesday morning news drop

• The Big Soak As floodwaters engulfed Abbotsford’s Sumas Prairie, I went there to gather images and hear from people affected. (Tyee)

• How to build back B.C.’s flood infrastructure better Ninety-six per cent of dikes in the Lower Mainland are not high enough to block extreme floods. Some experts say we have to think beyond concrete. (Narwhal)

• Before-and-after satellite images show flood devastation in B.C.'s Sumas Prairie Historic rainfall flooded farm fields, forced evacuations and killed livestock (CBC)

• The Tamagotchi Was Tiny, but Its Impact Was Huge It’s been 25 years since the little device first hit store shelves, but its simple brilliance lives on in today’s most popular games. (Wired)

• This Is Jerome Powell’s Shot at a Volcker Moment—in Reverse It took courage to lift rates in 1979 to kill inflation. The gutsy move for today may be to stand fast until we have more jobs. (BusinessWeek)

• Two Things That Are Both True: (1) The U.S. consumer is in excellent shape considering we went through the worst quarterly GDP contraction on record last year. Wages are rising, net worth is at all-time highs, credit card debt is down, home equity has skyrocketed and 401k balances are as high as they’ve ever been. (2) Inflation is higher than it’s been in more than 30 years. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• The Great Resignation Is Great for Low-Paid Workers Despite all the talk about burnout and reevaluating priorities, the soaring quits rate has little to do with white-collar jobs. It’s more about lower-income people getting the chance to move up. (Bloomberg)

• How Twitter got research right: While other tech giants hide from their researchers It’s always of note when a tech platform takes one of those unflattering findings and publishes it for the world to see. At the end of October, Twitter did just that. (Verge)

• The New Luxury Vacation: Being Dumped in the Middle of Nowhere The joys—and absurdities—of finding oneself abandoned in a desolate landscape. (New Yorker)

• How the Real Estate Boom Left Black Neighborhoods Behind While homeownership has been an engine of prosperity for white Americans, home values in places like Orange Mound in southeast Memphis have languished. What would it take to catch up? (New York Times)

• Do property assessments have a bias? I recently read an article about the atrocious inequity and potential corruption embedded in property assessments in New York. In short, due to the way property assessments are done there, some luxury condos ended up with very low property taxes while regular homes paid more than their fair share. The Bloomberg news investigation showed that tax assessments systematically favored higher end properties by valuing them lower than their market value. (House Hunt Victoria)

The Great Resignation, Crypto, Enron, Inflation, and the Shipping Crisis

Monday morning news drop

• Why millions of Canadians are planning to choose self-employment, and how to make that transition. We’ve heard a lot about “the great resignation” over the last year: The widespread trend of workers leaving their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. But there’s another trend that appears to be on the horizon: Canadians creating their own jobs. Accounting software company FreshBooks says that 30 per cent of traditionally-employed professionals plan to transition to self-employment over the next two years. (Globe and Mail)

• A Crypto True Believer Makes His Case Dispatches from a weird economy Separating the technology from the culture of crypto is hard. Because some of this is cultural technology. NFTs are as much culture as technology. But I think what people are missing is that crypto is more like the whole internet than it is like one social network. It encompasses many people who are in opposition to each other. Crypto is a whole ecosystem. (The Atlantic)

• In Praise of . . . Enron? Twenty years have passed since the notoriously corrupt energy-trading company collapsed. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that it wasn’t all bad for Texas. Twenty years later, however, Clemmons isn’t alone in waxing nostalgic about Enron. Interviews with nearly a dozen former employees paint a similarly rosy picture. Working there was “an amazing experience,” one said. “An awesome place to be a young person,” said another. Still, their memories contain contradictions. Enron was an invigorating, dynamic workplace (managed by unapologetic criminals). The company fearlessly pioneered several new markets and industries (while looting others). (Texas Monthly)

• Will Real Estate Ever Be Normal Again? After a decade of too little development, the pandemic made the low inventory lower. Construction stopped. Sellers, afraid of inviting the virus into their homes or reluctant to move in uncertain times, didn’t list, and inventory declined by nearly a third from February 2020 to February 2021, falling to the lowest level relative to demand since the National Association of Realtors began record-keeping almost 40 years ago. (New York Times)

• I’m A Twenty Year Truck Driver, I Will Tell You Why America’s “Shipping Crisis” Will Not End This slowdown is warehouse management related: very few warehouses are open 24 hours, and even if they are, many are so short staffed it doesn’t make much difference, they are so far behind schedule. It means that as a freight driver, I cannot pick up as much freight in a day as I used to, and since I can’t get as much freight on my truck, the whole supply chain is backed up. Freight simply isn’t moving. (Medium)

• Inside Amazon’s Failures to Protect Your Data: Internal Voyeurs, Bribery Scandals and Backdoor Schemes For years, the retail giant has been keeping something from you: It’s handled your information much less carefully than it handles your packages. (Reveal)

• Why thieves love to steal catalytic converters In the past few years, this little car part has sparked a massive crime wave. It has a lot to do with the booming market for precious metals. (The Hustle)

• To Catch a Turtle Thief: Blowing the Lid Off an International Smuggling Operation The terrapin black market resembles a sinister web, connecting the overlooked marshes fringing America’s coastal vacation lands with buyers around the world. Just because nobody around here eats them doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for them.”(The Walrus)

• Inflation Is Suddenly on Everyone’s Mind. How Bad Will It Be? People hate it when prices rise. But this may be the cost we bear for heading off a Covid depression. (Businessweek)

• The Fed’s left-face decision on Jerome Powell reign In 2019, he allowed himself to be bullied by President Donald Trump, backing off necessary Fed rate increases amid a booming economy that would have given the central bank extra juice when it needed it during the height of the pandemic-fueled recession. (New York Post)

• No More Side Quests What do you actually care about? Do more of that. Simple but not easy. But now you’re ready for the Less is More mentality. Now you can live it, not just nod along to the phrase when you hear it spoken or see it printed. You can embody it. It takes everyone a different length of time to arrive here, and a different pathway, different challenges and obstacles along the way. Not everyone reaches Less is More. Some get there too late. (Reformed Broker)

Videos of the week, Activision Allegations, ESG, and the Atmospheric River

Friday morning news drop

• Activision CEO Bobby Kotick Knew for Years About Sexual-Misconduct Allegations at Videogame Giant Top executive didn’t inform board of some reports, including alleged rapes; company faces multiple regulatory investigations (Wall Street Journal)

• Make the most of your child's RESP with this year-end planning checklist Jamie Golombek: Consider these planning tips before Dec. 31 to make sure you’re taking full advantage of the RESP (Financial Post)

• Inflation Tarnation! Inside the Supply-Chain Snafu That Could Wreck Your Holiday Plans How the wild details of the most memed shipping crisis perfectly illustrate our global trade dilemma. (Vanity Fair)

• How post-pandemic inflation ended last time Your great great grandparents weren’t reading articles about the CPI every day because the CPI didn’t even exist until the early 20’s. And if it was published anywhere, it was for government officials and economists, not Fox News hosts. And then, in 1920-1921, there was an 18 month recession that popped the bubble in rising prices and restored inflation to a more moderate pace. This moderation would set the table for one of the most important decades of innovation and economic progress ever. (Reformed Broker)

• What’s Wrong With ESG Investing as Explained Through the Medium of Ohio No matter how much you or I might abhor companies that pollute the planet, gouge the sick with criminally high pharmaceutical prices, produce dangerous weapons for public purchase, or poison our democracy with dangerous conspiracy theories, we can’t make the shares of those companies disappear; someone will own them. (Bloomberg)

• The science behind the ‘atmospheric river’ that drenched British Columbia Floods and mudslides followed the extreme weather event that dumped record amounts of rainfall on the Fraser Valley (Narwhal)

• Mapping the Flood in Abbotsford From the long-gone Sumas Lake, to our worst-case flooding scenario. A disaster visualized. (Tyee)

• Pop psychology has killed the villain: Profit is more important than the menace of evil We are all shaped by our experiences, good and bad, but rarely in a clear or simple way. Psychotherapists don’t identify one essential turning point in a client’s life (“Hmm, Dalmatians, you say?”) and then close the case. Sometimes, one can know every factor and still encounter a terrifying, unilluminable void at the heart of a personality. In real life, not everybody who does appalling things is misunderstood. (UnHerd)

Videos of the Week

GOTTA SEE IT: Connor McDavid Dances Through Jets Before Roofing Puck On Connor Hellebuyck

Top 10 Goals from Week 5 of the 2021-22 NHL Season

Vans Surf Presents: Cadavre Exquis | Surf | VANS Exquisite Corpse, from the original French term "Cadavre Exquis" is a method in which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed. During 2020 in the midst of a global pandemic, while most of us were in lockdown, we felt the urge to come together somehow. This film was made by women of the Vans Surf team & friends in an attempt to reach across the seas, and create a piece that deeply connected us.

ZERO CHILL follows Reid, Jill, and friends on two trips to the Midwest last winter while riding the new Ride Zero. A snowboard designed to be ridden by anyone, anywhere, any time, with Zero Judgements.

Dillon Butcher on Vancouver Island - Style Speaks Louder Than Words Dillon Butcher flies under the radar. He's quiet, humble and hardworking. But speaking of Dillon and flying, there are few who do it with more style.

The Final Slopestyle Battle of 2021! TOP 3 Runs at Crankworx Rotorua 2021 It all came down to this! Emil Johansson managed to pull off the impossible with now 6 consecutive wins at Crankworx. Johansson took the event win, the Crankworx FMBA Slopestyle World Championship and the coveted Triple Crown. Never in mountain bike history have they all been claimed by one rider in a season. With his win in the Maxxis Slopestyle in Memory of McGazza, Emil Johansson carves his mark even deeper into mountain bike history.

Mark Suciu "Spitfire" Part Mark strikes a scorched-earth campaign on NYC's rails and iconic spots. It’s that time of year again...

Martino Cattaneo's "Madness" Part The Swiss Scrambler sees new potential on slanted spots across Europe, transferring from bowls to trees and hitting two rails with one slide. Now you know why we got him in the van.

Element Skateboards' "Nature Calls" Video Jaakko, Madars and more escape the cities to shred the scenic fields, hills and frozen lakes in this visually-stunning journey. Answer the call.

Brandon Semenuk Drops his First Raw 100 Rally Edition

Toronto Basketball, the Warriors, Rodman, Giannis, and the Secret Covid Outbreak

Thursday morning news drop

• Toronto Is Canada’s Basketball Centre, but You Can’t Always See That in Its Courts Thanks to the Raptors, basketball has never been so popular. But the lack of high-quality facilities tells a troubling story (Walrus)

• The Warriors Got Back on Top by Evolving Their Title-Winning Template Teams across the NBA emulated Golden State’s style after its five-Finals run. After taking two seasons to reload, the Warriors now look like an even better version of their original blueprint. (Ringer)

• Dennis Rodman, Bad Boy for Life He’s had a Hall of Fame career in the NBA, where he pushed buttons and fashioned himself into a gender-exploding rock star. (And collected five rings, too.) But when you peel away the attitude, and the hair, and the piercings and tattoos, who is Dennis Rodman underneath it all? (GQ)

• Why Giannis Antetokounmpo Chose the Path of Most Resistance His fairy-tale rise made him a sensation. But now, after turning the once-dismal Bucks into champions, he’s becoming something more like a legend. Inside the whirlwind next chapter for the NBA’s most dazzling global star—who’s deciding what he intends to conquer next. (GQ)’

• The Secret Covid Outbreak That Shot Fear Through the NBA Finals 17 sources describe to Rolling Stone a coronavirus crisis pushing pro basketball to the brink: Upwards of a dozen people associated with the Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns tested positive — and a superstar “dodged a bullet” (Rolling Stone)

• How Americans’ Appetite for Leather in Luxury SUVs Worsens Amazon Deforestation An examination of Brazil’s immense tannery industry shows how hides from illegally deforested ranches can easily reach the global marketplace. In the United States, much of the demand for Brazilian leather comes from automakers. (New York Times)

• Connecting the dots between B.C.’s floods, landslides and the clearcut logging of old forests Deforestation dramatically alters how landscapes are able to cope with extreme weather events like the atmospheric river that surged across southern British Columbia earlier this week (Narwhal)

• A month of inflation does not a crisis make Don’t throw away the best economic opportunity in 20 years for panic and austerity (The Week)

• The Fed Has More Options Than 0% Rates or Recession It’s a scary situation if there’s no middle ground on policy for the world’s most powerful central bank. (Bloomberg)

• The Untold Story of Von Dutch Behind the brand that made trucker hats hot in the early 2000s is a messy corporate origin tale, filled with sabotage and greed. (New York Times)

• Check: Solving the $150 Billion Payroll Problem Check has the potential to become payroll's "platform of platforms." (Generalist)

Highway Closures, BC Climate Extremes, and Basketball's Sharpshooters

Wednesday morning news drop

• Trucking industry working to get around catastrophic B.C. highway closures The 4 highway links between the Lower Mainland and B.C.'s Interior are closed, rattling supply chains. (CBC)

• First fire, now floods: Why B.C. is trapped in a world of climate extremes Extreme weather events are connected: With heat comes wildfires, and with wildfires come changes to the soil that can exacerbate the effects of heavy rainfall (Globe and Mail)

• Chandos Construction vows to be Net Zero by 2040 The Contractor has initiated a massive carbon reduction plan. Chandos president Tim Coldwell says his life philosophy, involving service to others, fits in well with his role with the company, which sees him working as part of a team towards higher goals. “It’s good for Chandos because it leads to differentiation, growth and opportunity for our employee owners,” he says. (Daily Commercial News)

• Why Health-Care Workers Are Quitting in Droves About one in five health-care workers has left medicine since the pandemic started. This is their story—and the story of those left behind. (The Atlantic)

• Investors Know They Own Too Much Tech. This Analysis Shows That It’s Worse Than They Think. An alternative way of looking at market-cap weighted index funds shows that investor exposure to the sector is higher than it was during the tech bubble. (Institutional Investor)

• Investors Hung Their Hats on Peloton and Zoom Last Year. What Now? Some “stay-at-home” stocks that were pandemic-era darlings have experienced brutal sell-offs. (New York Times)

• Singapore’s tech-utopia dream is turning into a surveillance state nightmare In the "smart nation," robot dogs enforce social distancing and an app can claim to neutralize racism. The reality is very different. (Rest of World)

• The Case for Patience on Inflation: A close read of the data so far suggests that the current price pressure is still confined to the same batch of idiosyncratic sectors that have been driving inflation all year. Moreover, measures of actual consumer behavior suggest that Americans are responding to higher prices not by hoarding in anticipation of even more inflation, but by postponing their spending in the expectation that affordability will improve. (The Overshoot)

• Stephen Curry’s Scientific Quest for the Perfect Shot The NBA’s best shooter decided the basket was too big. He used technology to make it smaller. The goal: ‘swishes within swishes.’ (Wall Street Journal)

• Kevin Durant Can Score From Anywhere. Defenses Don’t Know What to Do. The midrange game has largely fallen out of favor in the N.B.A., but not when Durant is on the court. (New York Times)

• Why Skyfall is a masterclass in cinematography. It’s a credit to his photographic and cinematographic skills that it isn’t always about adjusting the image later but getting it correct in camera. Photographers take note, even when shooting James Bond, it comes down to the basics: good lighting, composition, knowledge of ISO, exposures, apertures and colour. (Kat Clay)

The Great Resignation, Real Estate, Crypto, and Amazon’s Spinmasters

Tuesday morning news drop

• The number of U.S. workers quitting their jobs in September was the highest on record. More than 4.4 million workers quit their jobs voluntarily in September, the Labor Department said Friday. That was up from 4.3 million in August and was the most in the two decades the government has been keeping track. Nearly a million quit their jobs in the leisure and hospitality industry alone. (NYT)

• Will Real Estate Ever Be Normal Again? In Austin, Texas, and cities around the country, prices are skyrocketing, forcing regular people to act like speculators. When will it end? (New York Times)

• How many homes do we need? It’s surprisingly difficult to answer the question of how much construction is enough. Most people (including past me) naively plot homes constructed next to population growth and conclude they’re a good match. Of course that ignores that these variables are closely linked, and people can’t come if there are no homes for them. From an economics standpoint, it ignores the huge price signal in the form of rapidly rising resale prices and rents which indicate that demand is outpacing supply. (House Hunt Victoria)

• Four Things That Will Keep You Out of the Stock Market If everything in the grocery store was on sale for 30% off you wouldn’t turn around and say “I don’t trust this, I’m going to come back when the prices are much higher.” People would think you’re insane. So why is it ok when it comes to our money? If you truly want to put your dollars to work, employ them when unemployment is high. (Wealth Found Me)

• The Crypto Capital of the World It has to be somewhere. Why not Ukraine? The anything-goes ethos has dogged Ukraine for years, and now the government is hoping to bury it, with an assist from cryptocurrency. In early September, the Parliament here passed a law legalizing and regulating Bitcoin, step one in an ambitious campaign to both mainstream the nation’s thriving trade in crypto and to rebrand the entire country. (New York Times)

• Who Goes Crypto? In the era of financial precarity, betting on meme stocks to save for retirement might not be moral, but it’s certainly rational. (Mother Jones)

• Vizio makes more money spying on people who buy TVs than it does on TVs themselves Time and again, we learn that companies spy on you whenever it suits them even companies that make a lot of noise about how they don’t need to spy on you to make money. If a company has power because of lock-in and if the company can make money by abusing you, it will abuse you. (Pluralistic)

• Amazon’s Spinmasters: Behind the Internet Giant’s Battle With the Press There was a time when Jeff Bezos barely cared about public relations. But after years of increasingly hostile media coverage and growing public scrutiny of Amazon, the company has gone on the offensive against journalists. It even measures its PR team on the corrections they get on stories. (The Information)

• Know How the Beatles Ended? Peter Jackson May Change Your Mind. The director’s three-part documentary “Get Back” explores the most contested period in the band’s history and reveals there’s still plenty to debate. (New York Times)

Victoria's Budget, E-Bikes, Supply Chain Crisis, and Organic Food

Monday morning news drop

• Comment: Victoria's budget for 2022 sets the table for the future Here are some of the requests Victoria council is considering (Times Colonist)

• E-Bike Vigilantes Mount Up With a global boom in electric bikes and a corresponding increase in theft, writing off the losses isn’t the only option. (Bloomberg)

• Business Schools Respond to a Flood of Interest in E.S.G. As the number of jobs focused on environmental, social and governance issues grows, M.B.A. programs are updating their courses to meet demand from students and recruiters. (New York Times)

• Organized crime 'knowingly and actively' exploited federal pandemic benefits: intelligence reports FINTRAC not sure total amount of CERB/CEBA funds may have gone to organized crime (CBC)

• Advisers share the lessons you should be teaching your children about money Take these crucial steps to prepare the next generation for financial responsibility and future wealth (Financial Post)

• Employees and their workplaces set to face surge in payroll taxes in 2022 Payroll taxes are set to surge next year as the pandemic economy’s dynamics amplify the costs for companies and their employees for the Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance. (Globe and Mail)

• Packed ports and empty shelves: Inside the issues behind the U.S. supply chain crisis 60 Minutes follows the U.S.'s struggling supply chain, from choked ports on the West Coast, to packed rail yards in Chicago. Along the way, we found finger-pointing, huge profits, and massive losses. (60 Minutes)

• The Great Organic-Food Fraud There’s no way to confirm that a crop was grown organically. Randy Constant exploited our trust in the labels—and made a fortune. (New Yorker)

• The Power Grid Is Just Another Casino for Energy Traders When GreenHat Energy collapsed after blowing millions speculating on power prices, it became plain: Energy traders are essentially gambling, and ratepayers back every bet. (Businessweek)

• The Untold Story of Sushi in America In the beginning, it was a simpler time — 1980, when few Americans knew the meanings of toro and omakase — and there was only the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church, speaking to dozens of his followers in the Grand Ballroom of the New Yorker Hotel. In the beginning, God did not create a sushi company. The sushi came later. So did the unraveling of a controversial religion and the lawsuit for control of its mysterious assets. (New York Times)

• Chevy Chase is 74, sober and ready to work. The problem? Nobody wants to work with him. The 74-year-old comedy star is sober and ready to work. The problem is nobody wants to work with him (Washington Post)

• On Podcasts and Radio, Misleading Covid-19 Talk Goes Unchecked: False statements about vaccines have spread on the “Wild West” of media, even as some hosts die of virus complications. (New York Times)

• Aaron Rodgers Didn’t Just Lie: His lies, his illogical defense, and his hubris damage all professional athletes. The pandemic has revealed several athletes who abuse their position and responsibility, not just to the public, but to other professional athletes’ livelihood (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar)

• What happened to Eric Clapton? The guitar legend has long been inscrutable, but his covid turn has friends and fans puzzled like never before. (Washington Post)

• Half-century old, unseen footage shows Beatles writing and recording in new documentary "Get Back" Hours of unseen footage of the Beatles' writing and recording are being released after 50 years, part of Peter Jackson's new documentary, "Get Back." (60 Minutes)

Videos of the Week, Psychedelics, Military Violence, and Investing Against Inflation

Friday morning news drop

• Will the magic of psychedelics transform psychiatry? Psychedelics have come a long way since their hallucinogenic hippy heyday. Research shows that they could alleviate PTSD, depression and addiction. So will we all soon be treated with magic mushrooms and MDMA? (The Guardian)

• The Billion Dollar Question Why can’t the military fix its violence against women problem? Congress is on the precipice of ushering in the biggest shift in military policy since the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. But would it have saved 21-year-old airman Natasha Aposhian? (Elle)

• Brookfield CEO says private credit is replacing fixed income for investors Brookfield CEO Bruce Flatt says the growing world of private lending is replacing traditional fixed-income investments as the asset category of choice for investors looking for returns in a low-interest-rate world. (Globe and Mail)

• Which Asset Classes Perform Best During Inflation? To start, let’s look at the inflation-adjusted (“real”) annual returns of nine different asset classes from 1976-2019 (the data comes from BullionVault). Note that I capped all real returns at 20% (-20%) so that we could better visualize the performance behavior of these different asset classes: (Of Dollars And Data)

• Hunt for Hottest Tickers Creates a New Gray Market on Wall Street Strong fund names have been shown to boost trading in U.S. stocks, and the day-trader invasion is making them key to new ETF success (Bloomberg)

• Tesla Had 5 Founders. Why Did Only Two Get Really Rich? One is Elon Musk (duh), and the other is JB Straubel. But there were three more—and there’s a cautionary tale in why they aren’t billionaires too. (Forbes)

• Canada's unhinged housing market, captured in one chart Canada’s rate of housing prices increase has given rise to a new economic term to describe the market: ‘shelter inflation' (National Post)

Videos of the Week

Connor McDavid Scores the Goal of the Year 🔥 The greatest hockey player of this generation never ceases to amaze.

Dustbox Dreamcastle With one collective obsession, and the bonds of friendship at our side, we have created a snapshot of the feeling that we hold oh so dear to us, and now offer to you. This crew is the future of snowboarding.

A Basils Video Pt.3 - Liam Baylis A mountain bike video that showcases some of my favourite sessions with my buddies in 2021. Cheers to the homies for filming and for being dope!

Inbound - Brendan Howey x Rupert Walker: Inbound showcases Brendan Howey’s impeccable riding style and Rupert Walker’s intricate cuts and attention to detail.

Markus Eder's The Ultimate Run - The Most Insane Ski Run Ever Imagine Sometimes my mind goes kind of crazy about skiing and I ask myself, what if...?” - Markus Eder What if you could link every powder turn, every rail, every cliff drop, every comp run and every kicker nailed into one ultimate run? Well, Markus Eder did just that in ‘The Ultimate Run’!. This is Markus’ Opus Magnum, a medley of face shots, massive tricks and even bigger drops, which was documented by Innsbruck based production company Legs of Steel over the past two years. Markus has been visualizing the ultimate run since 2015. It may look like a simple undertaking in the final edit, but for arguably the most versatile skier on the planet, it meant taking his skill levels in every form and style of contemporary freeskiing to the next level.

Mark Suciu's "Curve" Habitat Part Hot on the heels of his Blue Dog part, Mark sets his sights on the Rust Belt's crusty spots and overlooked streets. That ender’s a killer combo.

Inflation, Value Stocks, Vintage Cars, and Dollar Stores

Thursday morning news drop

• The history of the poppy — a symbol of remembrance for 100 years 'It's a living symbol, it grows and it takes on new meaning with each generation of Canadians and also the wars we fight in as Canadians in the search for peace' (National Post)

• Wages Are Heading Up, But They’re Not Pushing Inflation The pay increase is nice, but it will have to be a lot higher before it contributes meaningfully to faster price growth. (Bloomberg)

• Bitcoin and Inflation “There are several plausible explanations for why bitcoin doubled this year. Inflation is probably one of them.” (Irrelevant Investor)

• What Are the Best Value Stocks—and the Ones to Shun? Northern Trust screens for the top of the class, and also to red-flag the less appealing bargain plays. (Chief Investment Officer)

• In the supply chain battle of 2021, small businesses are losing out to Walmart and Amazon Independent retailers are getting squeezed out as suppliers, factories and freight companies prioritize national brands: ‘We’re at the whim of a broken supply chain.’ (Washington Post)

• Vintage cars are chic again Enthusiasm for vintage cars has emerged at a time when microchip shortages have fueled bidding wars for new and used contemporary vehicles. (Axios)

• The Truth About Those Dollar Stores: Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, and others offer low prices but also raise concern in communities that feel choked by them (Consumer Reports)

• Yuval Noah Harari Believes This Simple Story Can Save the Planet Many of the philosophical questions that have bothered humanity for thousands of years are now becoming practical. It’s the primacy of fictions, that to understand the world you need to take stories seriously. The story in which you believe shapes the society that you create. (New York Times)

• Angry about ‘The Last Dance,’ Scottie Pippen keeps taking shots at Michael Jordan Pippen’s unsparing assessments of Jordan may come as a surprise to those who assumed the longtime teammates were on friendly terms. They formed a dominant duo for most of 11 highly successful seasons in Chicago, and their half-dozen championship runs provided endless scenes of them hugging in jubilation. (Washington Post)

Labour Shortages, Supply Chain Issues, and Downfall of General Electric

Wednesday morning news drop

• The labour shortage is so bad businesses are eyeing mergers to acquire new talent Close to 116,000 small businesses will be up for sale in the next five years. From being the victims of complete shutdowns, to financing challenges to poor business flows, companies have weathered it all over the past 24 months. And now they are facing labour shortages as a post-pandemic recovery takes hold. (Financial Post)

• Alberta posts highest construction levels in years, but supply chain woes impede projects Home-building disruptions trigger higher costs, delays and frustration (CBC)

• Charting GE’s Historic Rise and Tortured Downfall General Electric Co. has unraveled. The onetime icon of American industry suffered its biggest annual stock decline of the modern era as it was booted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. (Bloomberg)

• Reddit’s Latest Money-Making Obsession Is an Obscure Fed Facility Huge, oft-misunderstood program turns into another avenue for GameStop daydreams (Bloomberg)

• Will the Guitar Boom Outlast COVID? Stay at home orders drove record guitar sales, but what happens when the pandemic subsides and life returns to normal? (Music Trades)

• The Chip That Could Transform Computing The M1 chips make laptops as powerful as some of the fastest desktops on the market yet so efficient that their battery life beats that of just about any other laptop. The chips portend a future absolutely saturated with computing power — with extremely powerful processors not just in traditional computers and smartphones but also in cars, drones, virtual-reality machines and pretty much everything else that runs on electricity. (New York Times)

• We Already Have the Tools We Need to Beat Climate Change The challenge is not identifying the solutions, but rolling them out with great speed. (Slate)