My mid-week morning train WFH reads:
• The Tech Bubble That Never Burst It is a familiar refrain. For the past decade, such warnings have cropped up repeatedly in start-up land. The industry is in another bubble, investors and commentators caution, conjuring the 1999 dot-com era and the dramatic collapse and recession that followed. Jobs disappeared, fortunes vaporized, and reputations were tarnished. The message since has carried those scars: The boom times are ending. Buckle in for a rough ride. Yet every time, more money has flooded into start-ups. Instead of a collapse, things got bubblier. (New York Times)
• Hot Economy, Rising Inflation: The Fed Has Never Successfully Fixed a Problem Like This Central bank says it is possible, but many factors are out of its control; ‘they are strikingly behind’ (Wall Street Journal) see also Federal LIBOR legislation: five things financial market participants need to know The LIBOR Act provides a much-needed transition path for difficult-to-amend legacy contracts. Federal banking regulators have been clear that they expect market participants to be proactive in addressing their LIBOR exposure. (Reuters)
• Does Wall Street Need New Storytelling? If all you offer is money, all you get are mercenaries. “To win,” he said, “you need to tell a story about cogs. At Google, you’re a cog. Whereas with me, you’re an instrumental piece of this great thing that we’ll build together. Articulate the vision. Don’t even try to pay well. It’s not about cash. It’s about breaking through the wall of cynicism.” (Insecurity Analysis)
• What’s in store for empty downtown office buildings? Business districts have a vacancy problem. The white-collar workers around the US who fled city centers at the start of the pandemic haven’t all come back yet. Even as some large employers like Google and Apple start to roll out back-to-office policies, it’s looking like many of them may never return. (Quartz)
• Jim Farley Tries to Reinvent Ford and Catch Up to Elon Musk and Tesla Ford’s chief executive is about to introduce an electric F-150 pickup truck that could determine whether the automaker can survive and thrive in an industry dominated by Tesla. (New York Times) see also The hydrogen energy dream: Automakers, industries, and governments are betting on hydrogen again. Will it work this time? (Vox)
• The Boneyard Principle: Why the Next Big Thing will Emerge from a Failed Idea Why do some consumer social products finally make it big after a series of misses? Part of the magic often hides within UX details — particularly, those that help people make fewer decisions and take fewer risks. The more opinionated an app is about how it should be used, the easier it is for users to act without fear of rejection. Products benefit from giving people the plausible deniability to say: “I’m not seeking attention, I’m just doing what this app tells me to do!” How subtle UX improvements can make a half-a-trillion dollar difference. (Every)
• Human memory: How we make, remember, and forget memories Human memory happens in many parts of the brain at once, and some types of memories stick around longer than others. (National Geographic)
• Why Koreans could soon become a year younger In South Korea, when a baby is born they are considered a year old. Come New Year’s Day, they gain another year. This means a baby born in December would be considered to be two years old in just a few weeks. But this “Korean age” method may soon change as the country’s president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol is pushing for this centuries-old method of counting to be abolished. (BBC)
• I Commanded U.S. Army Europe. Here’s What I Saw in the Russian and Ukrainian Armies. What can you learn about a military from its band? Usually, not much. But putting on great performance requires some of the same skills as conducting a military operation. It requires recruiting the right people with the right talents (and many militaries, including the American military, use bands as a recruiting tool). It requires equipping those people with the right technology—often highly specialized—so they can do their job. It requires training those people to work together to perform complicated tasks with impeccable timing. It requires developing young leaders, managing logistics, and maintaining high morale. (The Bulwark)
• How Everyone Got So Lonely The recent decline in rates of sexual activity has been attributed variously to sexism, neoliberalism, and women’s increased economic independence. How fair are those claims—and will we be saved by the advent of the sex robot? (New Yorker)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Luana Lopes Lara, co-founder of Kalshi, which has been approved by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as an authorized Designated Contract Market (DCM). Kalshi operates a federally regulated exchange allowing investors to trade directly on the anticipated outcome of future events.
15 up cycles for the 10-Year Treasury Yield
Source: 22V Research via John Roque
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