My end of week morning train WFH reads:
• How Many Billionaires Are There, Anyway? Forbes thinks there are 735 of them in America. Another count finds 927. Whatever the answer, the mystery is revealing — and the number is growing rapidly. (New York Times Magazine)
• How Advisers to America’s Ultra-Rich Plan to Win on Taxes, Again Listening in as elite lawyers discuss ways to make the tax code work even harder for the 0.1%. (Bloomberg) see also The gatekeepers who open America to shell companies and secret owners: With scant oversight, registered agents have long been seen as a weak point in the U.S. financial system. (Washington Post)
• Baseball’s Owners Are Winning the Game Behind the Game With the most powerful union in pro sports, why are player salaries falling even as franchise values soar? (Businessweek)
• Millennial Billionaire Ryan Breslow Created Buzz and Enemies, Attacking Stripe And Shopify. He’s Just Getting Started. Bolt’s Ryan Breslow has boosted the value of his fintech to the moon by promising an Amazon-style checkout to millions of online retailers. Now the newly minted billionaire is making a lot of noise—and powerful critics—challenging the tech industry’s culture. With an $11 billion valuation in the face of widespread skepticism, Breslow is determined to prove that Bolt is more than just a flash in the pan, and that he’s more than just a lightning rod. (Forbes)
• It’s Time for a Net Zero Building Boom A mix of high-tech and old-fashioned energy efficiency tactics can deliver carbon-neutral buildings, right now. But the U.S. needs to pick up the pace. (CityLab) see also As Mortgage Rates Rise, Home Sellers Fear Time Is Running Out to Cash In A growing sense of urgency to list properties before the housing market cools (Wall Street Journal)
• Film Credits: The lesson? Our society, for some reason, links credibility with appearance in a video format endorsed by an umbrella brand (i.e., a broadcast network) or millions of views/likes on a platform. (No Mercy / No Malice)
• The Bear Breaks Down: Andrei Soldatov on Russia’s Self-Destruction: “When you have a guy in the Kremlin who is being absolutely delusional about the real situation in Ukraine, you can’t speak in terms of a coherent foreign policy.” (Octavian Report)
• How Hobbies Infiltrated American Life: America has a love affair with “productive leisure.” A hobby was not always something to aspire to. Up until around the 1880s, the word was used to refer to any sort of preoccupation, which could be positive but could also be an obsessive fixation, as in “riding a hobby horse.” The word evolved, and a hobby came to be understood as a wholesome, enriching form of leisure and the most virtuous way for a person to spend their free time. (The Atlantic)
• How sewage can warn us about the next pandemic The ins and outs of wastewater surveillance. (Vox)
• Why We Can’t Quit the Guitar Solo It’s easy to dismiss the guitar solo as an outdated, macho institution. The shredding lead guitar, once ubiquitous in rock music, can now feel like a relic of a bygone time. The musical trope has become less of a fixture in mainstream rock. Indeed, most of the Grammy nominees in the rock song and performance categories* this year did not even include guitar solos. But the emotional power of the form endures. The guitar solo isn’t dead. It has evolved, and it’s showing up in some unexpected genres and places. (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Jonathan Lavine, co-managing partner of Bain Capital, and Bain Capital Credit’s Cheif Investment Officer. He is co-chair of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University.
VIX: 25 Is the New 15
Source: Kriti Gupta via Bloomberg
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