The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat at the pool, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• The We That Didn’t Work at WeWork: Adam Neumann and Masayoshi Son pushed WeWork to new heights as they challenged each other to think big and bet billions. When their relationship unraveled, WeWork did too. (Wall Street Journal)
• Channeling Speculation Imagine if all the speculative fervor in 2020 and 2021 could have been channeled into a productive venture or asset that benefitted society as a whole. What if, for example, the Robinhood / Reddit crowds were investing in opportunity zones (or something of that ilk) instead of meme stocks? If there was a way to get these traders excited about investment opportunities benefitting society, imagine what could get funded and accomplished? (Investor Amnesia)
• Don’t worry about inflation: Why fears of the return of 1970s-style inflation are overblown. The story goes like this: President Lyndon B. Johnson spent a lot of money on the war in Vietnam. Wartime spending flooded the economy with money; prices crept up. LBJ’s profligacy — and the Federal Reserve’s willingness to tolerate it — led the whole economy to lose faith in the idea that prices would remain stable. Once everyone expected inflation, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy: because workers expected prices to increase, they demanded higher wages; because businesses expected wages to rise, they raised their prices; and so on, in an ever-escalating “wage-price spiral.” (Vox)
• Scott Jones Got Rich Inventing The Next Big Thing. Can He Reinvent Himself? Indy’s most prolific, flamboyant entrepreneur says he’s burned through his fortune of more than $400 million amid lavish spending, a high-profile business failure, and a nasty divorce. (Indianapolis Monthly)
• A princess raced to escape Dubai’s powerful ruler. Then her phone appeared on the list. In the days before commandos dragged Princess Latifa from her getaway yacht in the Indian Ocean, her number was added to a list that included targets of a powerful spyware, a new investigation shows (Washington Post)
• Insane Superyacht Secrets I Learned When I Became a Deckhand: From cannabis buffets to choppering in caviar, posh charter life can be a rough ride for the crew. (Bloomberg)
• Learning to Love G.M.O.s Overblown fears have turned the public against genetically modified food. But the potential benefits have never been greater. (New York Times)
• Merrick Garland Will Not Deliver Your Catharsis Progressives want a dramatic de-Trumpification of the Justice Department. But the attorney general has a different theory of how to heal America. (Washington Post)
• How Stephen Colbert Survived the Pandemic, Trump and the Loss of Laughter. As happy as he is to settle back into a familiar routine with state-of-the-art production facilities, Colbert wants to harness the ingenuity demonstrated by department leaders during trying times to keep the show unpredictable as it heads into Season 7 in the fall. The late-night series that changed its name to “A Late Show” during the pandemic months — to signify that it was not full-fledged “The Late Show” they’d intended to produce — is on a roll with recognition for its feats of on-air derring-do. (Variety)
• The Fire That Forged Giannis Antetokounmpo Excerpt from ‘Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP,’ Mirin Fader details the trials and tribulations that helped the Bucks star go from a baby-faced rookie to a superstar with a mean streak—and that scowl. (The Ringer)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend Brian Deese, the 13th Director of the National Economic Council, and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. Previously, he was Global Head of Sustainable Investing at Blackrock, and was President Obama’s senior advisor for climate and energy policy. He was newly named as Chairman of The White House Competition Council.
Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
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To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.
