It’s August? How the hell did that happen? The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of El Salvador Finca Los Angeles Direct Trade coffee, grab a seat by the pool, and get ready for our longer form weekend reads:
• Wall Street’s Crypto Cold War: Hedge fund legends Paul Tudor Jones and Jim Simons are going one way on cryptocurrencies. The United States government is going another. (Institutional Investor)
• A conflicted question: What is fiduciary advice? Northwestern Mutual’s practices raise difficult questions about the nature of retail advice just as wealth management faces greater scrutiny under new rules. (Financial Planning)
• Climate Change’s New Ally: Big Finance Huge investors like BlackRock are forcing corporations to take action on emissions. But what does their power mean for democracy? (Boston Review)
• Inside The Most Audacious Real Estate Project In The World: Howard Air Force Base was once an imposing military installation alongside the Panama Canal, from which the United States fought guerillas and hunted down dictators. 16 years after the US left, there is a new man in charge: Colombian businessman Jaime Gilinski, who is turning the base into a brand-new city. (Forbes)
• Whose Century? It is hard to escape the impression that we have reached a point of historic rupture (LRB) see also China Is What Orwell Feared: Xi Jinping is using artificial intelligence to enhance his government’s totalitarian control—and exporting this tech to regimes around the globe. (The Atlantic)
• Club Rules: Former presidents used to help each other in times of crisis. Trump has made that impossible. He has not spoken with Obama or Clinton since his inauguration more than three years ago (Vanity Fair)
• ‘We Are Your Family Now’: What It’s Like to Lose a Loved One to QAnon: Millions of Americans are grieving the loss of mothers, fathers, partners and siblings to an extremist conspiracy cult quickly gaining power in media and politics (Mel)
• The worst-case scenario Converging in a tense section of Huntsville: A white police officer fresh from de-escalation training, a troubled black woman with a gun, and a crowd with cellphones ready to record (Washington Post)
• My Midlife Crisis as a Russian Sailor: For a book project about 16th-century polar explorer William Barents, the author needed to reach the remote Arctic island where Barents and his men came to grief. She headed north on a trip marked by unforgettable scenery, unexpected loss, and wild magic that changed her life. (Outside)
• How to Outrun a Dinosaur: If, through some scientific malfunction, you found yourself transported 70 million years into the past, you might be safer from certain hungry reptiles than you think. (Wired)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Simon Hallett, Co-CIO at Harding Loevner, which manages about $70 billion dollars. Hallett is also the owner of Plymouth Argyle Football Club, a League One team based in the city of Plymouth, Devon, England.
Axios Harris Poll 100: Corporate trust soars during the pandemic
Source: @Axios
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