Labour Shortages, Global Economy, and China Invading Taiwan

Thursday morning articles

• The best way to solve a labor shortage is with labor: In July we added a 1/2 million jobs on net, wages rose briskly and the unemployment rate fell to its 50-year low. That’s a sign of progress. (Stay-At-Home Macro)

• The Market’s Peak Inflation Story Fights the Fed: There’s no sign the Fed will change its mind and agree that rates should come down again next year (Wall Street Journal)

• The Fed Might Just Break the Global Economy: The real stress is in the energy-supply system to certain parts of the world, notably Europe. The U.S. real economy is not in crisis mode. There are some signs of a downturn in the real-estate market, but the real economy is not slowing as fast as the Fed would like. (Intelligencer)

• Florida’s insurance market was already in crisis. Then came Hurricane Ian. Will taxpayers end up on the hook? Experts expect insurers will have to cover up to $40 billion in damages. (Grid)

• There’s more upside than downside for long-term investors For long-term investors, time in the market matters more than timing the market. “It pays to remain invested and balanced precisely when it is most difficult to do so.” (TKer)

• Is the Efficient Market Hypothesis True? A widespread assumption about the stock market is that it’s efficient. But is that strictly true? (U.S. News)

• What Does an Office Mean? Two Architects Discuss: Technology has transformed the contours of our workspaces. The authors of a new book spanning 50 years of design history explain how. (CityLab)

• An Epidemic of Delusions: When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People: Something is seriously wrong. An alarming number of citizens, in America and around the world, are embracing crazy, even dangerous ideas.” (Commonweal)

• The Secret Microscope That Sparked a Scientific Revolution: How a Dutch fabric seller made the most powerful magnifying lens of his time—and of the next 150 years—and became the first person ever to see a microorganism. (Wired)

• How We Would Know When China Is Preparing to Invade Taiwan: If war is Beijing’s plan, there would be reliable indications that it is coming. (Carnegie Endowment For International Peace)

• Steve Cohen’s New Edge Is Hedge Fund Moneyball at Playoff-Bound Mets The billionaire investor has turned from high-stakes trading to professional baseball and is pressing his advantage by spending big to win. (Bloomberg)

Low Interest Rates, Bonds, Market Bottom, and EV Classic Cars

Wednesday morning articles

• Is the Era of Low Interest Rates Over? There were fundamental reasons interest rates were so low three years ago. Those fundamentals haven’t changed; if anything, they’ve gotten stronger. So it’s hard to understand why, once the dust from the fight against inflation has settled, we won’t go back to a very-low-rate world. (New York Times)

• What to Buy? Bonds. When? Now. My short and simple answer to the question, “What to buy and when?” is: buy bonds today. There are still developments that need to play out further before we can get clarity on stocks and the labor market, which calls for patience, but I believe bonds are attractive now. (Van Eck) see also Farewell, TINA: For years, we have heard that “there is no alternative” – TINA – to equities, and that thanks to the Fed, “Cash is trash.” No longer. The Federal Reserve, in its belated attempt to fight inflation, has cranked up rates to the point where today, there is an alternative to stocks: Bonds. (The Big Picture)

• Was that the Bottom? Stocks got washed out in the third quarter. Whether you were looking at prices or people’s reactions to said prices, it was hard to find anything positive to say other than things are so bad they’re actually good. (Irrelevant Investor)

• Oh Elon Well! That was stupid. Elon’s Back Though he still has a few days to change his mind again. (Bloomberg)

• The Climate Crisis Spells Big Business for Carbon Capture: At a recent expo in Houston, innovators claimed they can spare us a global catastrophe—and make billions in the process. (Texas Monthly)

• Working From Home Is Not an Urban Escape Hatch: Contrary to popular perception, the nation’s WFH hotbeds are big-city neighborhoods and expensive suburbs, not mountain retreats and beach cottages. (Bloomberg)

• Working From Home Is Sticking in US as Office Occupancy Stalls: New York City’s results hurt by last week’s religious holidays; RTO mandates at some big employers delayed by worker pushback. (Bloomberg)

• A brief guide to the weird and revolutionary world of quantum computers. This year’s physics Nobel Prize went to pioneers in quantum tech. Here’s how their work could change the world. (Vox)

• Everyone Has the Wrong Idea About EV-Converted Classic Cars: People keep asking me about converting their troublesome old sports cars into low-maintenance EVs. It’s a mistake — they’re looking at the wrong genre of vehicle. (Road & Track)

Elon Musk and Twitter, Real Estate, Housing Prices, and Paul McCartney

Tuesday morning articles

• Elon Musk’s Twitter Will Be a Wild Ride His deal to buy the company is back on. Here are six predictions about Twitter under Musk’s control, if it happens. (New York Times)

• Retail Real Estate Is Enjoying Its Biggest Revival in Years: U.S. retail real-estate vacancies are down, rents are up and more stores are opening than closing. (Wall Street Journal)

• Vanguard Closes In on BlackRock ETF Crown: With $45 Billion Haul Bogle-founded firm led ETF flows last quarter amid volatility Vanguard will surpass BlackRock in ETF assets in 2025, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. (Bloomberg)

• House Prices: 7 Years in Purgatory: 10%+ Nominal Price Declines Now Seem Likely. (Calculated Risk)

• Guys, it looks like Truth Social might not work out: Trump startup investors demand: “Give us a better deal or we’ll walk.” Ultimately, if Digital World is able to coax the investors to stay in, the company will still need SEC approval before it can close the Trump Media transaction. (Politico)

• Is Having Too Many Choices (Versus Too Few) Really the Greater Problem for Consumers? Choice deprivation—a feeling of not having enough to choose from—not choice overload is the most common consumer experience. And choice deprivation isn’t just more common—it’s also more harmful to choice satisfaction than overload. (Behavioral Scientist)

• The Onion has filed an amicus brief in Novak v. Parma, and its the best amicus brief I’ve ever read: Novak challenges the 6th Circuit use of Qualified Immunity to deny Free Speech protections to a parodist. (Pjaicomo) see also Novak-Parma – Onion Amicus Brief (Document Cloud)

• Bad Losers: Election deniers are a threat to democracy. The midterms could be the last chance to stop them. (The Atlantic)

• What NASA’s Crash Into an Asteroid Looks Like Astronomers on Earth — and a shoebox-size Italian spacecraft called LICIACube — captured the DART mission’s successful strike on Dimorphos. (New York Times)

• Paul McCartney’s freakish memory: And what it tells us about his creativity. (The Ruffian)

Stock Market, Bond Market, Peak Oil, Chess Cheating, and Aaron Judge

Monday morning articles

• Washout: If the leaders are falling, you know the rest of the bunch already got washed out. Indeed, only 8% of the Nasdaq-100 is above the 200-day moving average. (Irrelevant Investor)

• Getting Long-Term Bullish: My general investment philosophy is the more bearish things feel in the short run the more bullish I should be over the long run. If I’m taking my own advice right now I should be getting much more long run bullish.  (Wealth of Common Sense)

• Wall Street’s 2022 LOL Outlook for Stocks: A roundup of 14 forecasts for 2022 of the S&P 500, including highlights from the strategists’ commentary. The targets range from 4,400 to 5,300.(S&P closed 2021 at 4,766) which implies returns between flat and +22%: (TKer)

• The bond market massacre of September 2022: We are reaching the point in the monetary tightening cycle in which things begin to break. Truss and Kwarteng are clearly counting on the Bank of England to offset the shock to markets by raising rates. And yields have certainly surged as UK bonds have sold off. (Adam Tooze) 

• Office Markets Are the Real Estate Crash We Need to Worry About While a soft landing is still possible for housing and labor, it’s going to get ugly for city business districts. (Bloomberg)

• How the U.S. Is Making a Bottom-Up Recovery Households with the lowest incomes are bouncing back better from the Covid-19 crisis than more-affluent ones. (Wall Street Journal)

• Peak Oil Has Finally Arrived. No, Really: Those who have called a top in oil may finally be proven right as sharp global rate hikes hurt consumption. (Bloomberg)

• The Disappearing Art Of Maintenance: The noble but undervalued craft of maintenance could help preserve modernity’s finest achievements, from public transit systems to power grids, and serve as a useful framework for addressing climate change and other pressing planetary constraints. (NOEMA)

• The cheating scandal roiling the chess world has a new wrinkle: The cheating controversy gripping the world of elite chess was already enigmatic — but it deepened even more this week, when world champion Magnus Carlsen abruptly resigned after making a single move in his highly anticipated rematch with Hans Niemann. (NPR)

• All of Aaron Judge’s Homers, From 1 to 61: Judge, the slugging outfielder, is having an incredible year. We have been tracking his pursuit of the all-time greats. (New York Times)

Friday Morning Articles

• A Ponzi scheme by any other name: the bursting of China’s property bubble: Only state intervention can save the day, but the pain is likely to fall on ordinary citizens, say observers. (The Guardian)

• The Legacy of Jack Welch’s Managerial Capitalism: Welch did not leave a good legacy for GE or its shareholders: its stock fell 25% during Welch’s final year, and if you held stock in GE from 1984 (three years into Welch’s tenure) until 2020, your total shareholder return was 745% versus 3,385% for the S&P. GE was replaced by Walgreens in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and survived the 2008 subprime mortgage fiasco thanks only to bailouts from Warren Buffett and the federal government. (Law & Liberty)

• They Were Entitled to Free Care. Hospitals Hounded Them Anyway: How a Private Equity Hospital Chain Used a Poor Neighborhood to Turn Huge Profits: Bon Secours Mercy Health, a major nonprofit health system, used the poverty of Richmond Community Hospital’s patients to tap into a lucrative federal drug program. With the help of a consulting firm, the Providence hospital system trained staff to wring money out of patients, even those eligible for free care. (New York Times)

• ‘Putin Is a Fool’: Intercepted Calls Reveal Russian Army in Disarray: Russian soldiers made thousands of calls from the battlefield in Ukraine to relatives at home. Here are their conversations. (New York Times)

• Ukraine Military Breakthrough Threatens Russian Grip: Higher costs seen for gains in southern Kherson offensive Kharkiv region attacks threatening key Russian logistics hub (Bloomberg)

• Ten handy phrases for bluffing your way through the new financial crisis: Those screams you hear are ten thousand self-appointed financial experts howling into the existential abyss. (The Spectator)

• Cash Retakes Its Crown as the Fed Wrestles With Inflation: Investors are piling into products that shield them from losses in a rising rate environment. (Businessweek)

• Bonds May Be Having Their Worst Year Yet This has been the most devastating time for bonds since at least 1926, and maybe in centuries. But, our columnist writes, much of the damage is already behind us. (New York Times)

• Macro Hedge Funds Turn In Banner Year in Volatile Market Biggest interest-rate and currency moves in decades fuel gains after years of subpar returns. (Wall Street Journal)

• Will Anyone Ever Buy or Sell a Home Again? High interest rates! Just what this bonkers housing market needed. (Slate)

• Taller Towers, Fewer Homes: New boutique condo towers, some with fewer apartments than the buildings they replace, are squandering high-density sites in Manhattan, urban planners say. (New York Times)

• Stuck on an Investment Problem? It Might Be Time for a Change. By breaking down silos and pushing investors into new workflows, investment offices can encourage creative problem solving, our columnist writes. (Institutional Investor)

• 20 Predictions for the Music Business in 10 Years: Music Business (The Honest Broker)

• Apple’s Tech Supply Chain Shows Difficulty of Dumping China Covid Zero, deteriorating US-Sino relations pressure US firms Chips are in the crosshairs as Taiwan-China tensions increase (Bloomberg)

• Are You Too Old to Wear That Now? Lockdown wrought a lot of changes—and, for many men, the clothes they wore pre-Covid don’t match who they are now. Two writers of different generations hunt for cool, age-appropriate solutions. (Wall Street Journal)

• The Not-So-Silent Friendship of Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith: The two, who have played the characters Jay and Silent Bob for 28 years and counting, reflect on their time as best friends and professional partners. (New York Times)

Thursday Morning Articles

• The Great Bluff: How the Ukrainians Outwitted Putin’s Army: Russia’s army was thought to be vastly superior. But Ukraine has nevertheless managed to secure an almost unbelievable coup, taking back huge swaths of territory in the northeast. Can Ukraine actually win? (Spiegel)

• Boaz Weinstein Reveals the Secret Trade That Helped Make Him Famous: The Saba Capital Management founder talks about the little-known deal that showed him how to take on JPMorgan’s chief investment office, and describes the new opportunities he’s finding in today’s credit market upheaval. (Bloomberg)

• Beware the Illusion of Certainty: We like to think that our lives are ordered, predictable and subject to a great deal of control. The past is finite; we see only one outcome. We attach causality and narrative to it so that it makes sense. We roll our ability to make sense of the past over into the future, which is infinite; there are many outcomes, as yet unknown and unknowable. Randomness, chance, and luck influence us far more than we realize. Certainty is an illusion. Uncertainty is everywhere. (Richard Hughes Jones)

• The Blackstone rebellion: how one country took on the world’s biggest commercial landlord: The giant asset management firm used to target places where people worked and shopped. Then it started buying up people’s homes. In one country, the backlash was ferocious https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/29/blackstone-rebellion-how-one-country-worlds-biggest-commercial-landlord-denmark

• Indistinguishable from Magic. Magical Technology: iPod, Spotify, Figma, AI Art, Arc, web3, and beyond: Last week, I asked people on Twitter for the best essays and blog posts they’ve ever read. They delivered. You should check out the replies. There’s so much gold in there. I think as a result of reading so much great stuff, I had more fun writing this week’s piece than I’ve had writing in a long time. It just flowed, like some of those other authors’ je ne sais quoi rubbed off on me. (Not Boring)

• How one of America’s last piano manufacturers stays alive: Piano-building was once one of the country’s largest industries. Today, only two companies remain in business. (The Hustle)

• The Jetsons, Now 60 Years Old, Is Iconic. That’s a Problem. Science was cool, technology was blossoming, and more and more Americans were dreaming of owning their own homes, replete with the latest gadgets. The Jetsons took that dream and supercharged it, riding the wave of optimism to depict a future where technology catered to our every need, at the touch of a button or at the command of our voice. It was a fantastical vision that deeply appealed to our needs and desires for comfort and convenience. (Slate)

Wednesday Morning Articles

• Hillary Clinton’s campaign was crippled by voters who stayed home (Washington Post) see also Trump needed a huge drop in turnout to win and that’s exactly what happened. (New Republic)

• The Week When Advice Mattered (Reformed Broker)

• One in every five Americans is about to get legally high AF after this election (Quartz) see also Weed is the real winner of the 2016 election (Daily Dot)

• Trump Was Not a Media Fail: The press succeeded in exposing Trump for what he was. Voters just decided they didn’t care (Politico)

• The greatest threat from a Trump presidency may be his toxic brew of unscientific beliefs (Quartz) but see It’s Going to Be Okay (Wait But Why)

• If Your Quiet Quitting Is Going Well, You Might Be Getting ‘Quiet Fired’: Workers who coast risk being written off—and eventually laid off—by bosses with ‘productivity paranoia.’ (Wall Street Journal)

• TikTok: Will posting salaries online close the pay gap? Gen Z is known for sharing everything about their lives – from their outfits to their latest meals – online. Now, they’re sharing their salaries, defying a long-held taboo and ruffling employers’ feathers in the process. (BBC)

• Swimming naked: The tide of liquidity is turning. Faster, perhaps, than many investors anticipate. (Ruffer)

• The mysterious ad slump of 2022: Four theories on why ad sales are plummeting even as the economy is doing fine. (Vox)

• Pound’s Swoon Echoes Declines in British Power, Past and Present: The Bank of England had to step in Wednesday after markets deemed a new government economic plan unwise, but the pound has been on a longer slide. (New York Times)

• Hurricane Ian’s rapid intensification is a sign of the world to come: How Hurricane Ian got so powerful — in just two days. (Vox) see also Hurricane season gets weird: Fiona, Ian and climate change’s effects on the strongest storms. It was a quiet hurricane season, until it wasn’t. (Grid)

• How Gaslighting Manipulates Reality: Gaslighting isn’t just between people in a relationship—it involves social power, too. (Scientific American)

• Scientists have calculated how many ants are on Earth. The number is so big it’s ‘unimaginable.’ We conservatively estimate our planet harbours about 20 quadrillion ants. That’s 20 thousand million millions, or in numerical form, 20,000,000,000,000,000 (20 with 15 zeroes) (Washington Post)

• Girls Are Leaving High School Basketball, and Here’s Why: More sports options, single-sport athletes and the physical demands of the game have depressed participation even as the women’s college and pro games grow. (Wall Street Journal)

• The Last, Painful Days of Anthony Bourdain: A new, unauthorized biography reveals intimate, often raw, details of the TV star’s life, including his tumultuous relationship with the Italian actor Asia Argento. And it’s drawing criticism from many of his friends and family. (New York Times)

Tuesday Morning Articles

• ‘Not Chump Change:’ Home Prices in Canada Strain Affluent Budgets Even in cities that were once considered a good bet for house hunters seeking affordability, affluent households find that prices are high. (New York Times)

• The Forbes 400 2022: The Definitive Ranking of The Wealthiest Americans: In 2022 The wealthiest people in the U.S. are poorer than a year ago—and the cutoff to make the list fell for the first time since the Great Recession. (Forbes)

• The Reinvention of Goldman Sachs: what has David Solomon achieved? After almost four years in charge, the CEO’s strategy to diversify the bank has not been as transformative as many had hoped. (Financial Times)

• What happened to giving money to charity? The ultrawealthy are donating more than ever. That doesn’t mean the rest of us are giving less. (Vox)

• John Paulson on Frothy US Housing Market: This Time Is Different Unlike subprime era, financial system is not at risk, he says Real interest rates blamed for lackluster gold price. (Bloomberg)

• How the Bank of England should respond to UK fiscal policy crashing the pound: Given the irresponsible fiscal policy announcement of the UK government and the rout of the pound that followed, the Bank of England has few good options. While there cannot be a currency crisis in the UK — it has a flexible exchange rate and issues public debt in its own currency — a collapsing currency is still a major problem for its inflation and financial stability. (Peterson Institute for International Economics)

• Silicon Valley Slides Back Into ‘Bro’ Culture Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Andreessen show how the tech industry’s insular culture remains largely unchanged. (New York Times)

• Long COVID Has Forced a Reckoning for One of Medicine’s Most Neglected Diseases: Only a couple dozen doctors specialize in chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). Now their knowledge could be crucial to treating millions more patients. (The Atlantic)

• Elizabeth Banks Thinks This Interview Is Dangerous for Her: There are very few female directors in Hollywood. There are even fewer who are actresses who have become directors. I’ve [expletive] worked my tail off to be able to do what I’m doing. I would love for you to interview the studio heads and the corporations and ask them these questions, because I can’t solve it. (New York Times)

Friday Morning Articles

• Treasury 10-Year Yield Rises Above 4% to Highest Since 2008: Treasury 10-year yields climbed above 4% to the highest level since October 2008, as investors were rattled by Federal Reserve hawkishness and concern over potential Japanese sales of US government debt. An index of US sovereign securities extended its worst year since at least the 1970s after St. Louis Fed President James Bullard warned the central bank has to keep raising interest rates to retain its credibility. (Bloomberg)

• The U.S. Is Running Short of Land for Housing: Land-use restrictions and lack of infrastructure have made it harder for developers to find sites to build homes; ‘almost across the board, you’re fighting for land’ (Wall Street Journal)

• Why Is a New York Apartment Still So Hard to Find? The pandemic exodus from the city hasn’t led to an era of cheaper rents.  (Bloomberg)

• You’re not good at this. A recession so contrived and man-made that every economist, politician, business owner, college student, CEO, rapper and professional athlete has been able to see it coming in real-time for months and months. (Reformed Broker)

• Asset Managers Aren’t Letting Politics Derail Their Strategies — At Least For Now: For many global firms targeting investors in the U.S. it’s been business as usual. (Institutional Investor)=

• Lumber Prices Fall Back to Around Their Pre-Covid Levels: Rising interest rates have taken an ax to one of the pandemic’s hottest commodities (Wall Street Journal)

• The Crypto World Is on Edge After a String of Hacks: More than $2 billion in digital currency has been stolen in hacks this year, shaking faith in the experimental field of decentralized finance known as DeFi. (New York Times)

• Americans Are Fake and the Dutch Are Rude! Is it true that emotions can look different but, in the end, we all have the same emotions—​that deep inside, everybody is like yourself? It would mean that once you take the time to get to know somebody, you will recognize and comprehend the feelings of people who have different backgrounds, speak different languages, come from other communities or cultures. But are other people angry, happy, and scared, just like you? And are your feelings just like theirs? I do not think so. (Behavioral Scientist)

• Maybe We Won’t End Up Like the Dinosaurs NASA has taken a major step toward protecting Earth from dangerous asteroids. (The Atlantic)

• The universe is a dangerous place. NASA just showed it’s possible to defend Earth against it. Humanity now has the beginnings of a true defense against asteroids. (Vox)

• ‘A Crisis Coming’: The Twin Threats to American Democracy: American democracy is facing two distinct threats, which together represent the most serious challenge to the country’s governing ideals in decades. A growing movement inside one of the country’s two major parties — the Republican Party — refuse to accept defeat in an election. The second is the power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion. (New York Times)

• The Question Behind the Magnus Carlsen-Hans Niemann Drama: How to Cheat at Chess? A cheating scandal has upended chess—and cast a new spotlight on how a player might possibly cheat without being detected. (Wall Street Journal)

Thursday Morning Articles

• How the Worst Market Timer in History Built a Fortune: Over 60 years, he only added new investments at bull market tops: $10,000 each of 13 market tops, from February 1966 to February 2020. (Compound)

• What if You Only Invested at Market Peaks? Meet Bob. Bob is the world’s worst market timer. What follows is Bob’s tale of terrible timing of his stock purchases. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Hedge Funds Piled On Bullish Pound Bets Just Before Crash: Funds added a net 13,488 long pound contracts last week: CFTC Chance of pound touching parity in 2022 has risen to about 60%. (Bloomberg)

• The tyranny of the supertweeter: Twitter shows us a skewed version of the world, but it’s not necessarily because of the algorithm. (Omnibudsman)

• How LinkedIn Became a Place to Overshare: “This isn’t Facebook,” users complain. But others are finding it a valuable place to talk about much more than work. (New York Times)

• The Fedconomy: Their goal is to slow demand. They want to slow demand because that should theoretically slow inflation. The main mechanism for slowing demand is to make it more expensive for people to exist – higher borrowing costs, slowing wages – so people spend less. Poof, inflation dissipates. (Kyla Scanlon)

• Why all Americans should be paying attention to Puerto Rico’s power grid: Hurricane Fiona showed how improvement efforts remain hampered by years of neglect and mismanagement. (Vox)

• There’s No Reason Puerto Rico Had to Go Through This Again: The most tragic aspect of this week’s catastrophe in Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Fiona has wrecked infrastructure and knocked out electricity for millions of residents, may be that solutions for protecting the island and its population from extreme-weather events like this have been known for years—and none of them have been implemented. (Slate)

• Podcasting Is Just Radio Now: It’s been ages since the last blockbuster narrative show. What does that mean for the medium as an art form? (Vulture)

• Nice Democracy You’ve Got Here. Shame If Something Happened to It. Trump’s newest defense strategy is laced with menace. (The Atlantic)

• Pickleball is exploding, and it’s getting messy: With multiple pro tours and new venues everywhere, pickleball’s growth shows no signs of slowing down (Washington Post)