Heatwave Apocalypse, the World Economy, Stocks, and Trump

Tuesday morning news drop

• Britain in midst of 'difficult 48 hours' with 1st-ever extreme heat warning Wales sets temperature record, London's Luton Airport has heat-related runway issue (CBC)

• ‘Heat apocalypse’ warning in western France as thousands flee wildfire Nearly 25,000 escape blaze sparked by southern European heatwave that has already killed hundreds of people (Guardian)

• The World Economy Is Imperiled by a Force Hiding in Plain Sight: Well more than 2 years into the worst pandemic in a century, the accompanying economic shock continues to assault global fortunes. (New York Times)

• Stocks For the Long Run: Every strategy and philosophy has its pros and cons. The good strategy you can stick with is far superior to the great strategy you can’t stick with so a lot of this comes down to who you are as an investor. There are a number of factors that determine the type of investor you are. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Elon Musk’s Inner Circle Rocked by Fight Over His $230 Billion Fortune Before the Tesla CEO’s billion-dollar battle over Twitter, another fight broke out over how his charitable giving should be managed. Ex-professional gambler Igor Kurganov became a top Musk adviser on giving his fortune away. Jared Birchall, his wealth manager and key player in financing the bid for Twitter, wanted him out. (Wall Street Journal)

• Why disasters are getting more severe but killing fewer people An important but overlooked piece of good news about climate change. (Vox)

• Finding middle ground on missing middle Missing middle offers real promise—but there's a lot we can do to make it work better for everyone (Capital Daily)

• Trouble for Trump as committee makes case Capitol attack was premeditated Criminal prosecution appears increasingly likely as January 6 committee strengthens case against former president (The Guardian)

• The DOJ Must Prosecute Trump: The January 6 committee has provided overwhelming evidence that the former president was not some bit player along for the ride, but the central driver of a nefarious plot. (The Atlantic)

Concrete Shortages, Bond Markets, Crypto Crash, and Housing Shortages

Monday morning news drop

• Cement shortages are putting pressure on Canada's construction industry Uncertain supply means hard choices for builders, even as the sector enjoys a boom year (CBC)

• The Bond Market Selloff in Historical Perspective: Treasury yields have risen sharply in recent months. The yield on the most recently issued ten-year note, for example, rose from 1.73% on March 4 to 3.48% on June 14, reaching its highest level since April 2011. Increasing yields result in realized or mark-to-market losses for fixed-income investors. We put these losses in historical perspective and investigate whether longer-term yield changes are better explained by expectations of higher short-term rates or by investors demanding greater compensation for holding Treasury securities. (Liberty Street Economics)

• ‘They couldn’t even scream any more. They were just sobbing’: the amateur investors ruined by the crypto crash Fuelled by hype and hysteria, the market in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies went from an obscure niche to a $3tn industry. Then the house of cards collapsed.(The Guardian)

• The Housing Shortage Isn’t Just a Coastal Crisis Anymore An increasingly national problem has consequences for the quality of American family life, the economy and the future of housing politics. (New York Times)

• It’s the best and worst of times for semiconductor supply chains: Chips are in short supply. Chips are over-supplied. Chip manufacturing has expanded too fast and surpassed demand, but also can’t scale up fast enough to meet demand. The chip business is booming. Chip stocks are falling. It’s a confusing time to figure out what’s going on in the semiconductor industry.(Quartz)

• The nonstop scam economy is costing us more than just money Relentless waves of sophisticated phone and online scams are impacting people’s mental health. (Washington Post)

• A massive leak of Chinese government data on hundreds of millions tests a new privacy law Food delivery orders, crime reports and personal details: A historic data breach exposes the inner-workings of China’s surveillance state. (Grid)

• Donald Trump’s tampering, a rioter’s remorse, and other January 6 hearing takeaways The latest hearing teed up what the committee members promise will be “a profound moment of reckoning” for America next week. (Vox)

• How conservatism conquered America — and corrupted itself The past month’s conservative victories were decades in the making. Three books about the right reveal what it cost the movement. (Vox)

Videos of the Week, Inflation, Electric Cars, and the Backstory of Roe v. Wade

Friday morning news drop

• How the Fed ended the last great American inflation — and how much it hurt: Forty years ago, the Fed pushed the economy into a recession to stop inflation. Here’s how it played out. (Vox)

• Five charts explaining why inflation is at a 40-year high The bumpy economic recovery has had policymakers, economists and Americans households grappling with greater price hikes for gas, groceries, cars, rent and other essentials. (Washington Post)

• Sell Slowly: If you compare withdrawal strategies over various time periods, you will see that Quarterly Withdrawals beat Beginning of Year Withdrawals anywhere from 62% to 100% of the time. (Of Dollars And Data)

• The Way We Work Has Changed. So Should Offices: The office of the future has the capacity to accelerate change and to support a totally new kind of work and workforce. (Citylab)

• US Crosses the Electric-Car Tipping Point for Mass Adoption Once 5% of new-car sales go fully electric, everything changes — according to a Bloomberg analysis of the 19 countries that have made the EV pivot. (Green)

• Where Have People Gone All-Electric? Not the Places You’d Expect Homes free of fossil fuels are most common in Southern red states; natural gas dependence is greatest in big blue states. (Bloomberg)

• A Russian journalist asked his former classmates about the Ukraine war. The answers were disturbing. Stanislav Kucher was a journalist and TV host in Russia before immigrating to the U.S. The war in Ukraine has him fighting with his old friends back home. (Grid)

• Over Truth Also Has a Red State, Blue State Divide Several states run by Democrats are pushing for stiffer rules on the spread of false information, while Republican-run states are pushing for fewer rules. (New York Times)

• Here's the Surprising Backstory of the Downfall of Roe v. Wade Erin Hawley didn’t know that she would help make history when she took a job in February with the conservative legal group, Alliance Defending Freedom. Two months later, the former law professor was on a plane to Mississippi to serve as co-counsel with the state’s attorney general, Lynn Fitch, and its solicitor general, Scott Stewart, to win the most momentous Supreme Court case in half a century – the overturning of Roe v. Wade. (Real Clear Investigations)

• ‘Disaster Land Grabs’ Worldwide and in British Columbia Amidst a crushing pandemic, a pipeline pushed through unceded territory. Experts say this fits a global pattern of power plays. A special report. (Tyee)

Videos of the Week

Interest Rates, Google Maps, and Finding God Through Bitcoin

Thursday morning news drop

• Bank of Canada hikes rate to 2.5%. Here's what it means for you Central bank is aggressively moving up lending rates to fight runaway inflation (CBC)

• How Google Maps is ruining your neighbourhood Google Maps is a common tool for finding the best route, but the platform's recommendations have caused small-road traffic to worsen. (Citimonitor)

• There's a great Dijon mustard crisis and Canada is a big part of the cause The heatwave last year cut the crucial Canadian mustard seed exports by half (National Post)

• How Elon Musk Damaged Twitter and Left It Worse Off Mr. Musk swooped in and exposed Twitter’s lack of business and financial prospects. After criticizing the company’s weaknesses, he now wants to back out of buying it. (New York Times)

• The People Who Are Finding God Through, and in, Bitcoin: As the price of Bitcoin has crashed more than $40,000 in the past year, at times down more than 70% from its peak, some have prophesied the death of crypto. Perhaps there is no better rebuttal to these predictions of cryptocalypse than this sect of Christian Bitcoiners, whose crypto-conviction echoes a more familiar, unshakeable religious faith. (Slate)

• TikTok is full of shady secret advertisements: Influencers are supposed to disclose their ads, but nothing happens when they don’t. (Vox)

• Hyundai Quietly Climbs the EV Sales Charts and Elon Musk Notices The hottest electric cars in the US market aren’t coming from Tesla factories. All eyes are on Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 and the Kia EV6. (Bloomberg)

• NASA’s James Webb telescope captures groundbreaking images of distant galaxies. The universe’s splendor and breadth are on display like never before, thanks to a new batch of images that NASA released from the James Webb Space Telescope on Tuesday. The images from the new telescope are “really gorgeous,” said NASA’s Jane Rigby, the operations project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope. (NPR)

The Great Resignation, Investing, Housing Market, and Uber

Wednesday morning news drop

• On Bullshit in Investing: The investing industry is ridden with bullshit. The most common and insidious form is over-optimism: offers of tantalizing risk/reward that defy any notion of reality, often based on misinformation or deception. Less common but even more dangerous are outright frauds. (Noahpinion)

• Roaring US Rental Market Shows Early Signs of Slowing Down One-bedroom rents fell month-over-month in formerly hot cities like Miami, San Diego, Fort Lauderdale and Nashville. (Bloomberg)

• Home Sellers Are Slashing Prices in Sudden Halt to Pandemic Boom: The rapid rise in mortgage rates is cooling demand, jolting markets from coast to coast. (Bloomberg)

• Uber broke laws, duped police and secretly lobbied governments, leak reveals Aleaked trove of confidential files has revealed the inside story of how the tech giant Uber flouted laws, duped police, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments during its aggressive global expansion. (Guardian)

• Forget the Apocalypse, Let’s Talk About What Happened to Music: Why Music Doesn’t Sound Like Music Anymore. (Eudaimonia)

• Why Music Has Lost Its Charms: There’s little doubt that corporations have stifled creativity. (Inc)

• ‘You’re looking for a lack of fluff’: Why Wimbledon uses 55,000 tennis balls a year Over the course of two weeks, Wimbledon goes through 55,000 balls, including the 1,700 per day delivered to the practice courts in unopened cans. “We have got a store that is absolutely rammed at the start of the tournament, and now even with a week left, it feels like all of the balls are gone,” said Andy Chevalier, Wimbledon’s ball distribution manager, who begins the storied event with 58,000 balls. (Los Angeles Times)

• The “Great Resignation” in perspective: The rate of job quitting has reached highs not seen since December 2000. Dubbed the “Great Resignation,” the quit rates are too high to be explained solely by labor market tightening. Are workers taking new jobs or leaving the labor force entirely? (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

• Even bosses are joining the Great Resignation: New data shows a growing number of managers are quitting (Vox)

• The Great Resignation is not over: A fifth of workers plan to quit in 2022 The Great Resignation - the record number of people that have left their jobs since the beginning of the pandemic - shows no signs of abating. One in five workers plan to quit their jobs in 2022, according to one of the largest surveys of the global workforce. Although most are seeking higher salaries, over two-thirds say they are seeking more fulfilment in the workplace. (World Economic Forum)

Bear Markets, Recessions, and Climate Change

Tuesday morning news drop

• What Smart Investors Do in Bear Markets: Since you can’t predict the unpredictable, you should control the controllable. (Wall Street Journal)

• How will we know if we’re in a recession? These are the most important indicators economists and forecasters are watching. (Vox)

• Disinformation Has Become Another Untouchable Problem in Washington Numerous federal agencies agree that widely promoted falsehoods threaten the nation’s security. Doing something about them is another matter. (New York Times)

• A Plane of Monkeys, a Pandemic, and a Botched Deal: Inside the Science Crisis You’ve Never Heard Of Experts say there’s a dire shortage of primates for biomedical research—and it’s putting human lives at risk. (Mother Jones)

• Alaska’s devastating wildfire season is the latest climate change-fueled disaster The state is on track to set a new and horrible record. (Grid)

• ‘It smelled like death’: One year after the heat dome killed billions of marine animals, scientists watch for signs of life There are reasons for hope, scientists say—but another heat wave could prove disastrous (Capital Daily)

• Fewer medical students are pursuing family practices, and these doctors are worried Steady decline in students ranking family medicine as their top choice, data shows. For those who've chosen to go into family medicine, some are also hesitant about opening up a new practice, which comes with the additional responsibilities of running a small business. (CBC)

• Film offers inside look at Roger Stone’s ‘Stop the Steal’ efforts before January 6 Footage shows key moments of planning with fellow activist Ali Alexander to overturn election results in Trump’s favor. (The Guardian)

• Would you give up a lot for Kevin Durant? The player is great. The age and contract are trouble. (TrueHoop)

Housing Markets, Electric Cars, Investing, and Sunscreens

Monday morning news drop

• Rogers outage shows need for Plan B when wireless, internet services fail, analysts say Rogers network outage a ‘wake-up call’ after business, essential services disrupted (CBC)

• The Shrinking of the Middle-Class Neighborhood Americans are increasingly living in areas that are either much richer or much poorer than the regional norm. (New York Times)

• What’s Up With the Crazy Housing Market? Rising mortgage rates. Faltering home sales. Skyrocketing rents. Here’s how to make sense of a baffling real estate market. (New York Times)

• The Electric Car Market is About to Get Crazy (and Confusing) Bloomberg Green’s Electric Car Ratings will help you make sense of the chaotic market and find the most climate-friendly EV. (Bloomberg)

• Bond ETFs Attract New Investors With Narrower Offerings The specialization allows investors to find lucrative sectors despite rising rates. But there are risks. (Wall Street Journal)

• Chaos is a Ladder Everyone hates rules and regulations until it’s too late. The fantastyland idea of software protocols and algorithms and communities policing themselves flies in the face of 500 years of financial market history. Digital money is still money and people are insane. That doesn’t change, no matter what kind of investment we’re talking about. Financial markets were born in a time where you could not safely drink water so everyone drank alcohol all day long, out of cups made of lead. This is Europe in the 1500’s. We were crazy then and we are crazy now. (Reformed Broker)

• Why You Should Quit Your Job After 10 Years Labor experts say a radical career shift every decade or two can be good for both workers and employers. (Businessweek)

• You’re Not Allowed to Have the Best Sunscreens in the World: Newer, better UV-blocking agents have been in use in other countries for years. Why can’t we have them here? (The Atlantic)

• ‘London Bridge is down’: the secret plan for the days after the Queen’s death She is venerated around the world. She has outlasted 12 US presidents. She stands for stability and order. But her kingdom is in turmoil, and her subjects are in denial that her reign will ever end. That’s why the palace has a plan. (The Guardian)

• The Women Who Wanted to Fly New corners of the military were as misogynistic as the world of fighter pilots. This is the story of the women Navy officers who overcame that culture to fly the formidable F-14. (Vox)

• Is There Anything That Gen Z Won’t Drink? Alcohol brands are thinking outside the bottle to fuel and gratify a new drinking culture (Bloomberg)

Videos of the Week, Gig Work, Layoffs, and Inflation

Friday morning news drop

• Dehumanization Is a Feature of Gig Work, Not a Bug What does an increase in gig, freelance, and contract work mean for the identities of people doing those jobs? The author, who drove for Postmates, interviewed other drivers, attended in-person and virtual company meetings, and reviewed and contributed to driver forums on Facebook, Reddit, and other websites, examines the narratives gig workers tell themselves about who they are and what they do. (Harvard Business Review)

• Layoffs Are Coming. The Outsourcing Industry Will Benefit. Outsourcing “was basically born out of crisis,” said Amy Lynch, co-founder of FrontLine Compliance. (Institutional Investor)

• Canada's jobs market is setting records. So why are people talking about a recession? Despite some big positives, the economic narrative in Canada is right now dominated by doom and gloom (CBC)

• The fight against inflation starts at sea Biden is cracking down on the ocean shipping industry. (Vox)

• There’s a solution to high gas prices. Americans will hate it. Europe has woven energy conservation into its politics and economics in a way the United States has not. Persistently high prices may change that. (Grid)

• Why Won’t Republicans Act Like Britain’s Tories? Boris Johnson’s party ditched its dysfunctional leader, yet the GOP remains in thrall to the much more dangerous Donald Trump. (Atlantic)

• Defined by lies, Boris Johnson's political career has finally crumbled British PM resigns after scandal involving his handling of sexual assault allegations against Conservative MP (CBC)

• Norway Was a Pandemic Success. Then It Spent Two Years Studying Its Failures. Why one country wrote a playbook for the rest of the world. (Wall Street Journal)

• How Roe v. Wade evolved: A behind-the-scenes visual tour: A review of internal Supreme Court documents reveals that the justices’ thinking on Roe evolved dramatically over the course of eight months of deliberations. If not for several key changes of heart — and strategy — we wouldn’t have ended up with an ironclad right to abortion before a pregnancy is considered viable. (Washington Post)

• How China’s relationship to Hollywood has shaped the movies Big Hollywood movies are being made with Chinese audiences in mind. (Vox)

Videos of the Week

Financial Markets, the Crypto Meltdown, and Mario Andretti

Thursday morning news drop

• The Worst 6 Months Ever For Financial Markets. The period ending June 30, 2022 ranks in the worst 3% of all 6 month returns since 1926. The only 6 month performance numbers that were worse than what we just lived through occurred during the Great Depression, 1937 crash, WWII, 1970s bear market, bursting of the dot-com bubble and 2008 crash. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• How Wall Street Escaped the Crypto Meltdown As cryptocurrency prices plunged and funds failed, strict rules on risky assets helped Wall Street companies sidestep the worst. Retail investors weren’t as lucky. (New York Times)

• Why This Crypto Crash Is Different There can be no return to the highly leveraged, fractionally reserved cryptocurrency system whose illusory riches are now giving way to real losses. (CoinDesk)

• We’re Not Already In a Recession: We believe a recession is coming but the US is clearly not in one yet. In the first five months of the year, manufacturing production is up at a 6.6% annual rate, nonfarm payrolls are up at an average monthly pace of 488,000, and the unemployment rate has dropped to 3.6% from 3.9%. Meanwhile, in April, consumer spending and real personal income were at record highs. If this is a recession, we could use more recessions. (Real Clear Markets)

• The Lost Glamour of the Department-Store Restaurant: Pot pies and fanciful desserts made shopping delicious. (Atlas Obscura)

• Can Dual-Use Solar Panels Provide Power and Share Space With Crops? Companies like BlueWave are betting on it. But the technology has its critics. (New York Times)

• America’s unique, enduring gun problem, explained: The factors that lead to tragedies like those in Highland Park, Tulsa and Uvalde are deeply ingrained in US politics, culture, and law. (Vox)

• Can Mario Andretti Conquer F1… Again? He’s the last American to win the Formula 1 World Championship. That was 44 years ago. Now, as race fans in the U.S. catch the F1 bug for the first time, Mario Andretti and his son Michael are desperately trying to put the family name back on top of the sport. (GQ)

Employee Retention, the Stock Market, and Tadej Pogačar

Wednesday morning news drop

• It’s Time to Reimagine Employee Retention The pace of employee turnover is forecast to be 50–75% higher than companies have experienced previously, and the issue is compounded by it taking 18% longer to fill roles than pre-pandemic. Increasingly squeezed managers are spending time they don’t have searching for new recruits in an expensive and competitive market. Unless efforts are refocused on retention, managers will be unable to drive performance and affect change. Leaders need to take action to enable their managers to keep their talent while still being able to deliver on results. Managers need help with three things. First, they need help shifting the focus of career conversations from promotion to progression and developing in different directions. Second, they need help creating a culture and structure that supports career experiments. Finally, managers need to be rewarded not for retaining people on their teams but retaining people (and their potential) across the entire organization. (Harvard Business Review)

• The Office Tower Has a New Job to Do: As workers opt to stay home, developers are packing commercial buildings with amenities that mix private and public spaces. (Bloomberg)

• If the U.S. Is in a Recession, It’s a Very Strange One Economic output is down but the job market is strong, unlike in previous recessions. (Wall Street Journal)

• What’s Priced Into the Stock Market? The S&P 500 is down around 20% from its all-time highs. It sure feels like the stock market is currently pricing in an imminent recession. But it’s important to remember the stock market doesn’t have a perfect track record of pricing in economic contractions ahead of time. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• The Mushy Middle: This is the hard part. The shock of being in a bear market wears off quickly. Some stuff blows up and the losses are not evenly distributed. Some stuff looks okay – defensive stocks, utilities, etc. Down but not down and out. Some stuff looks horrendous – the drawdowns in the hardest hit sectors (tech, this time) have always been underway for awhile by the time the bear market is truly established for the broader averages. (Reformed Broker)

• Anatomy of a Product Placement: As consumers skip ads and streaming content balloons, brands aim to be everywhere all at once. (New York Times)

• The People v. Donald Trump The evidence for a possible criminal case against the former president is piling up. (The Atlantic)

• He’s the Best Cyclist in the World. He’s Only Getting Better. Tadej Pogačar of Slovenia is 23 and already has won the Tour de France twice. With a three-peat on the line, the all-time legend talk is building. (Wall Street Journal)