Market Indicators, Crypto, Downtown Living, and Russian Sanctions

Wednesday morning news drop

• Is this chart going up or down? You’d be amazed at how many financial advisors, insurance brokers acting as financial advisors, financial planners, wirehouse wealth managers, financial consultants and other assorted intermediaries in this business could not for the life of them look at this chart and give you a straight answer. (Reformed Broker)

• Crypto’s Real Value Was Never $3 Trillion: The true value of the crypto market isn’t what its believers suggest, but it’s nothing to sneer at, either. (Businessweek)

• Why Downtown Won’t Die: As the office recedes in importance, central business districts are transforming into spaces to live and socialize, not just work. It’s a process that began before Covid-19. (CityLab)

• You Want an Electric Car With a 300-Mile Range? When Was the Last Time You Drove 300 Miles? “The average American motorist drives about 40 miles per day and 95 percent of our car trips are 30 miles or shorter… We haven’t so much overcome this psychological hurdle as thrown big batteries at it.” (New York Times)

• Six months in, how are sanctions impacting Russia’s economy? Fuel embargoes and private sector divestment are further isolating Russia. (Vox)

• “Danger Zone” Getting through the next 10 years of U.S.-China relations: The authors don’t spend a lot of time convincing you that China’s leaders are bent on conflict — that task was already carried out by earlier authors, such as Rush Doshi’s The Long Game. It’s no longer really a question of whether China intends to displace the U.S. as the world’s leading power — it does — but rather a question of how the U.S. and its allies can resist this attempt. That’s what Brands and Beckley try to answer. (Noahpinion)

• How Long Droughts Make Flooding Worse: Parched ground is less likely to absorb water and increases the risk of dangerous flash floods. But there are ways to mitigate these conditions. (Wired)

• In America’s fastest-growing metro, a rising fear water will run out: “This seems to be some level of insanity to me that you continue to allow unabated growth at the same time you’re dealing with this unprecedented drought. Rather than trying to find all these sources of water, we ought to be controlling the growth.” (Washington Post)

• 15 Under-the-Radar TV Shows That Deserve Your Attention: A lot of great television slips through the cracks these days. (The Atlantic)

Inflation, Rare Earth Elements, the American Mall, and Lewis Hamilton

Tuesday morning news drop

• ‘Inflation Fever’ Is Finally Breaking — But Central Banks Won’t Stop Hiking Rates: Slowdowns on key commodity markets signal some relief is in store after worst price shock in decades. (Bloomberg)

• The Office’s Last Stand: It’s either the end of the era of flexibility around where work takes place or the beginning of outright rebellion. (New York Times)

• We need rare earth elements for a greener future, but there's a catch A group of 17 minerals has potential to be a major economic driver for Canada (CBC)

• GOP Fury Over ESG Triggers Backlash With US Pensions at Risk: Politicians from Florida and Texas go on the attack against investment firms that weigh risks tied to climate change and other societal issues. (Bloomberg)

• The Donald J. Trump Guide to Getting Away With Anything: The former president has a knack for avoiding consequences for his misbehavior. (The Atlantic)

• My escape from Afghanistan I smuggled my laptop past the Taliban so I could write this story (The Atlantic)

• The False Comfort of the ’80s Suburban Lawn Mowing the lawn is a frivolous act. My teenage self never understood why anyone would spend hours pushing a machine the size of a shopping cart over giant swaths of grass that after a week or two would look the same as they did before. Along with cleaning my room, mowing the lawn was one of the many unwinnable wars my parents pawned off as character-building exercises. (Catapult)

• Men have fewer friends than ever, and it’s harming their health The “male friendship recession” is having dire consequences. (Vox)

• Can the American Mall Survive? On loving and loathing some of America’s most common public spaces. (The New Republic)

• Lewis Hamilton: The F1 Superstar on Racism, His Future, and the Shocker That Cost Him a Championship The maverick driver can handle anything. But spiders. And traffic. (Vanity Fair)

Crypto, Summer Stock Rally, Mushrooms, and Fixing a Tesla

Monday morning news drop

• The Crypto World Can’t Wait for ‘the Merge’ A long-awaited upgrade to Ethereum, the most popular crypto platform, may make the technology more environmentally sustainable. But it comes with risks. (New York Times)

• Will This Be the First Country Bankrupted by Crypto? It’s been a year since El Salvador adopted bitcoin as currency — things are not going well (Rolling Stone)

• Hope You Enjoyed the Summer Rally: The easy money has already been made (probably). (Businessweek)

• Someone stole my truck. I got a crash course on the wild black market for stolen cars: Car manufacturers and individual car owners in Europe were just like those in the United States: they lacked much in the way of incentives to do something about the problem. But there was one group that did have strong incentives to fight the problem: insurance companies. (NPR)

• Get Ready for the Magic Mushroom Pill: The medical benefits of psychedelic drugs have gone from Age of Aquarius punchline to solid science, but the startups racing to market might still be getting ahead of themselves. (Businessweek)

• Missing parts, long waits, and a dead mouse: The perils of getting a Tesla fixed: Tesla wants to eliminate the need for service. Recode obtained customer complaints to the FTC that suggest this isn’t happening — yet. (Vox)

• How a Secretive Billionaire Handed His Fortune to the Architect of the Right-Wing Takeover of the Courts: In the largest known political advocacy donation in U.S. history, industrialist Barre Seid funded a new group run by Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo, who guided Trump’s Supreme Court picks and helped end federal abortion rights. (Money is speech? One-person one vote?) (ProPublica)

Videos of the Week, Saudi Battery Bets, Big Oil, and Solar Roads

Friday morning news drop

• Saudi Arabia’s EV Battery Bets Are a Warning Apart from China, no country has managed to achieve manufacturing scale. That may be about to change. (Bloomberg)

• Big Oil’s Message to Investors: You’re Too Pessimistic: Despite the recent rally, crude prices are down for August, and data suggests investors have reduced their involvement in commodity markets. (Wall Street Journal)

• The 30-Year-Old Spending $1 Billion to Save Crypto: Sam Bankman-Fried, owner of an expanding crypto empire, is trying to bail out the industry after a sharp downturn. (Wall Street Journal)

• 1 million square feet of L.A. roads are being covered with solar-reflective paint: The initiative covers roads, playgrounds, and parking lots, and it has already cooled the surface by 10 to 12 degrees. (Fast Company)

• What Happened When Minneapolis Ended Single-Family Zoning: The city’s path-breaking shift has brought a lot of national attention and, so far, fewer than 100 new housing units. Still, it’s a step. (Bloomberg)

Videos of the Week

Remote Work, S&P500 Recovery, Rate Hikes, and Virus Tracking

Thursday morning news drop

• 'Quiet quitting' isn't really quitting, but it is forcing employers to adapt The phrase exploded into the popular lexicon last week, after a TikTok video describing it went viral (CBC)

• The remote work revolution is already reshaping America: The coronavirus pandemic set in motion a shift to remote and hybrid work that is quietly reshaping American economics and demographics. A host of academics have found that remote work has ebbed significantly since the height of pandemic shutdowns in 2020, when almost two-thirds of work was done remotely. But it has since stabilized at an extraordinarily high level. (Washington Post)

• Exceptions to the Rule: S&P 500 recovered half of the bear market losses, which has never seen stocks move back to new lows and is higher a year later every time. But, every inflationary spike has only been alleviated by a recession. Which “always” will win this time? (Wealth of Common Sense)

• The End of Rate Hikes? The signals from central banks that rate hikes, which began last year, may be coming to an end could be welcome news for investors looking ahead to the next 12 months. (Charles Schwab)

• How a Hacked Tractor Added Fuel to the Right-to-Repair Movement: This week, we discuss the latest John Deere tractor hack and its broader implications for repair rights advocates. (Wired)

• Tracking viruses can be tricky. Sewage provides a solution. (All you have to do is flush) Here’s how a scrappy team of scientists, public health experts and plumbers is embracing wastewater surveillance as the future of disease tracking. (New York Times)

• Stories of Climate Adaptation From a Simmering Subcontinent: Air conditioners in the Himalayas and fans for the cows: How communities in India and Pakistan are coping with extreme heat. (Bloomberg)

• Europe’s Plan to Wean Itself off Russian Gas Just Might Work: Russia has made good on threats to reduce supply—leaving the EU to navigate several tough winters of energy squeezes. (Wired)

• How do we know who’s winning in Ukraine? How experts understand what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine — and what the war looks like six months in. (Vox)

Tight Labour Markets, Land Claims, Inflation, and Big Tech

Wednesday morning news drop

• In a tight labour market, this is where Canadian workers are going 5 charts show what’s behind the shifting landscape — and why the worker shortage will persist (CBC)

• In Vancouver, Indigenous Communities Get Prime Land, and Power After acquiring some of the biggest and most coveted parcels of land in Vancouver, the city’s three First Nations are becoming players in the biggest game in town — real estate. (New York Times)

• Why the Rent Inflation Is So Damn High It’s just the latest chapter in the “everything is weird” economy. (The Atlantic)

• Investing in Flow: The residential real estate world needs to address changing dynamics. And yet virtually no aspect of the modern housing market is ready for these changes. And so, we are excited to partner with Adam Neumann and his colleagues on Flow, which is a direct strike on precisely this problem. (Andreessen Horowitz)

• Inflation Is Up Everywhere, But How Much Depends on Where You Live: The Northeast isn’t feeling the pain as much as the South or Mountain West,. This could have political implications in the 2022 midterms. (Businessweek)

• Investors Are Shunning Vanguard’s Best Funds: The company’s actively managed funds are shedding assets. (Morningstar)

• Google Search Is Quietly Damaging Democracy: A series of incremental changes over the years has transformed the tool from an explorative search function to one that is ripe for deception. (Wired)

• Big Tech braces for “Big Lie” in 2022 midterms: Tech companies were caught flat-footed by the deluge of disinformation aimed at delegitimizing the election process and outcome in 2020. Now, amid intense regulatory scrutiny, they are trying to get ahead of a repeat. (Axios)

• The Age of Instagram Face How social media, FaceTune, and plastic surgery created a single, cyborgian look. (New Yorker)

• An Anatomy of Erasure How a free and open Hong Kong became a police state (Economist)

• The Only Way For Some People To Stay In San Francisco Is To Steal As San Francisco’s wealthy residents panic over property crime, some of the city’s less privileged can’t find ways to make ends meet. (Buzzfeed)

Worker Productivity, Gas Prices, Russian Spies, and Aaron Judge

Tuesday morning news drop

• The Rise of the Worker Productivity Score: Across industries and incomes, more employees are being tracked, recorded and ranked. What is gained, companies say, is efficiency and accountability. What is lost? (New York Times)

• Falling Oil Prices Defy Predictions. But What About the Next Chapter? Oil is under $90 a barrel, and consumers are benefiting. Geopolitics, the economy and unforeseen events will determine whether the relief will last. (New York Times)

• Why gas is actually cheap in America: Gas is at record-high prices in the United States, but it still costs far less than elsewhere in the world. And in the long run, Americans might pay for that privilege. (The Hustle)

• Bill Gates and the Secret Push to Save Biden’s Climate Bill: The billionaire philanthropist was among those lobbying Joe Manchin, starting before Biden took the White House. A look at the influencers who secured a rare climate win. (Bloomberg)

• The Rise And Fall Of Chimerica: For decades, America gave China a vision of future prosperity. But today, America has mostly ceased to offer a model for China or anywhere else, leaving China’s leaders without a guide as they chart a course into a future filled with potential turmoil. (NOEMA)

• The Sleuths Who Protect Crypto From Hackers Are Raking in Money: VC investment in crypto security firms has surged this year ‘We have spent sooooo much money on audits,’ Crypto CEO says. (Bloomberg)

• Behind Enemy Lines, Ukrainians Tell Russians ‘You Are Never Safe’: Clandestine resistance cells are spotting targets, sabotaging rail lines and killing those deemed collaborators as they seek to unnerve Russian forces. (New York Times)

• Russia’s spies misread Ukraine and misled Kremlin as war loomed In the final days before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s security service began sending cryptic instructions to informants in Kyiv. Pack up and get out of the capital, the Kremlin collaborators were told, but leave behind the keys to your homes. The directions came from senior officers in a unit of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) with a prosaic name — the Department of Operational Information — but an ominous assignment: ensure the decapitation of the Ukrainian government and oversee the installation of a pro-Russian regime. (Washington Post)

• The ‘Real’ Home-Run Record Is 73, Not 61: If you’ve paid any attention to sports discourse over the past 20 years, you will also know that the names Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa no longer stand for home-run power — not anymore. Now they stand for steroids. Which means that to most people, they stand for cheating. That’s why for some, a narrative has begun to coalesce around Judge’s epic season: This is for the real record. Because Bonds’s, McGwire’s, and Sosa’s marks are seen as “tainted,” the notion has arisen that if Judge is able to pass Maris’s team and AL mark, he should be the true, bona fide Home Run King. (New York Magazine)

Recessions, Job Markets, Clean Energy, and the Electric Age of Cars

Monday morning news drop

• In the debate over recession, an obscure curve is having a moment Is the Bank of Canada driving the economy toward a painful recession or steering it toward a “soft landing” in which inflation declines without a surge in unemployment? The answer could come down to a debate about job vacancies that has captivated economists over the past month. (Globe and Mail)

• Holes in the Recession Story. With surging inflation and a new war in Europe, the first half of 2022 was understandably gloomy for economies and financial markets around the world. But recent developments offer some hope that the prevailing pessimism may no longer be as warranted as it was a few months ago. (Project Syndicate)

• How the IRS Was Gutted: An eight-year campaign to slash the agency’s budget has left it understaffed, hamstrung and operating with archaic equipment. The result: billions less to fund the government. That’s good news for corporations and the wealthy. (ProPublica)

• As Right-Wing Rhetoric Escalates, So Do Threats and Violence: Both threats of political violence and actual attacks have become a steady reality of American life. Experts blame dehumanizing and apocalyptic language. (New York Times)

• If the Job Market Is So Good, Why Is Gig Work Thriving? Conventional employment opportunities abound, but online platforms still have appeal — for flexibility or additional income. (New York Times)

• China is beating the U.S. in clean energy. Can America catch up? The race in five charts. China is the world’s biggest polluter — but also the biggest investor in clean energy. (Grid)

• Mercedes and Ferrari’s Edge in the Electric Age: High-End Motors: Axial motors are smaller, lighter, more efficient and open up all sorts of possibilities for future performance cars. They will be crucial to brands like AMG and Ferrari as they race to electrify the high-performance vehicles that earn prestige and bumper profits. (Bloomberg)

• Hundreds of kids witness parents shot to death. This is what it does to them: No one knows how many children in America witness their parents being shot to death. Like almost every aspect of the gun violence epidemic, its effects on child witnesses are seldom researched.. (Washington Post)

• How the luxury fitness bubble popped as the pandemic wore on What will replace it? Affordable gym chains making a comeback, but challenges ahead (CBC)

• McLovin It: An Oral History of ‘Superbad’ 15 years later, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Emma Stone, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Bill Hader, and more remember making their seminal teen comedy. (Vanity Fair)

Videos of the Week, Buyback Tax, Investing, Crypto Crash, and LeBron

Friday morning news drop

• Affordability target demands 570,000 new homes in B.C. Builders face an "insurmoutable challenge" without government support, an industry analysis finds (Western Investor)

• Why the 1 Percent Buyback Tax Doesn’t Scare Investors: Democrats hope the tax will encourage companies to spend more on workers and operations, but strategists think it’s unlikely to deter corporations from repurchasing their stock. (New York Times)

• 4 Common Sense Rules of Investing: Almost 60% of all calendar years have seen gains in excess of 10%. More than one-third of all years have experienced returns of 20% or more. So you’ve been more likely to gain 20% or more than experience a down year in that time. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Five Not-Quite-Impossible Things the Market Believes The two month rally in bonds and stocks—even putting the Nasdaq back into bull market territory—rests on a lot of people being wrong. (Wall Street Journal)

• They Lost Crypto in the Crash. They’re Trying to Get It Back. In a frenzied effort, investors are trying to recover lost funds from Celsius Network, a crypto firm that imploded this summer. (New York Times)

• Defamation Suit About Election Falsehoods Puts Fox on Its Heels: The suit, filed by Dominion Voting Systems, could be one of the most consequential First Amendment cases in a generation. (New York Times)

• How many Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine? What we know, how we know it and what it really means: The estimates range from 1,351 and 43,000, but this much is clear: Russia has a manpower problem. (Grid)

• The Squeeze on Russia Is Loosening: The latest numbers from the major manufacturing powers suggest that exports to Russia are rising. Exports to Russia from the major manufacturing economies have been rising rapidly since April. If the allies do not act swiftly to tighten the enforcement of sanctions and export controls, the Russian military may be able to replenish its losses of equipment and advanced ammunition—and prolong the war. (The Overshoot)

• Gavin Newsom’s plan to save the Constitution by trolling the Supreme Court: A new California gun law should force the Supreme Court to confront the enormity of its worst decision in decades. (Vox)

• LeBron James extension means the Lakers need to do whatever it takes to win now: The Lakers and LeBron James agreed to a two-year, $97.1 million contract extension, sources told The Athletic’s Shams Charania. The deal keeps James under contract with Los Angeles through at least the 2023-24 season. James has a player option for 2024-25, according to ESPN. His extension is worth up to $111 million over two years based on salary-cap rises. (The Athletic)

Videos of the Week

Recessions, Provincial Recruitment, Silicon Valley, and Climate Change

Thursday morning news drop

• The Fed’s Past Crises Hold Secrets to Tackling Future Recessions: The US central bank has made mistakes before and learned from the experience. Now it must do so again. (Bloomberg)

• Alberta comes calling for British Columbians, but experts expect few will bite Touting more affordable homes and higher wages, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney seeks to reverse tide of interprovincial migration with a new ad campaign. (Vancouver Sun)

• When Data Fails: One of the most common ways data fails is when it only describes a subset of what you are actually trying to analyze. When we only see a part of our data, we can come to the wrong conclusion. One area where this is common is examining the average instead of the distribution. (Of Dollars And Data)

• The Quantify-Everything Economy: Data can make our lives richer, but let’s not forget that people are not machines. (New York Times)

• Work From Office: Offices are where young professionals establish relationships with mentors, colleagues, and mates. In sum: Put on a shirt and get into the office. (No Mercy / No Malice)

• The Boy Bosses of Silicon Valley Are on Their Way Out: They rode their unicorns to fame and fortune. In a rocky market, it got a little less fun. (New York Times)

• Startups That Grew Fast Learn Shrinking Can Be Just as Hard: After years of easy money, companies are downsizing and finding that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. (Businessweek)

• The case for high-skilled immigration reform (and how to make it happen): Immigration is America’s superpower. According to research by William Kerr at Harvard, between 2000 and 2010, America received more migrating inventors than every other country combined. (Noahpinion)

• A Secret to Lululemon’s Success? Men Who Are Obsessed With Its Pants: Not since non-iron dress shirts have men rallied around a clothing item meant to cut corners. Inside Lululemon’s menswear revolution (Wall Street Journal)

• U.S. drought gives an Arizona dam’s critics a new argument for having it demolished When the Glen Canyon Dam flooded an area prized for its natural beauty in the 1960s, environmentalists said it was a mistake. Now, they say the time is right to fix that as climate change transforms the water systems of the Southwest (Globe and Mail)

• How Did Fighting Climate Change Become a Partisan Issue? Twenty years ago, Senator John McCain tried to spearhead an effort. What has happened to Republicans since then? (New Yorker)

• Much of the US Will Be an ‘Extreme Heat Belt’ by the 2050s Heat index temperatures will hit 125°F (52°C) at least once a year in a band stretching from Texas to Wisconsin, researchers say. (Bloomberg)