Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• How Twitter lost the celebs: Elon Musk was right that Twitter’s most popular accounts have gone quieter over the years. Hollywood insiders explain what happened — and why Musk’s ownership might only make it worse. (Washington Post)
• Wall Street’s Biggest Secret Could Be Exposed Politicians have cut secret deals funneling retirees’ savings to financial firms — but new legislation would finally let the public see the details. (The Lever) see also The Smash-and-Grab Economy: How Private Equity Looted America: Private equity billionaires are looting the country, leaving everyday Americans to clean up the mess—and fight for the scraps. Inside the industry that has ransacked the US economy—and upended the lives of working people everywhere. (MoJo)
• The Infinite Reach of Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s Man in Washington Can you blame everything wrong in Amereica on one man? If you could, this guy who came to rule political speech on Facebook, command one of the largest lobbies in DC, and guide Zuck through disaster—is at the top of the list. (Wired)
• What’s Happening to America? A Theocratic-Fascist Revolution: When a Fanatical 30% Suddenly Seizes Control of Your Society, It’s Called a Revolution (Eudaimonia)
• The complicity of the CEOs A conversation with journalist David de Jong about the secret Nazi pasts of many of modern Germany’s great fortunes — and his warning for American business leaders. (The Ink)
• Digital blackmail and endless threats: scammy loan apps soar across India Nearly half of the digital lending apps available in India between January and February 2021 were illegal, as per the central bank. (Rest of World)
• How Politics Poisoned the Evangelical Church: The movement spent 40 years at war with secular America. Now it’s at war with itself (The Atlantic)
• The U.S. has had the most covid cases in the world. Why isn’t it doing more to study long covid? Patient advocates are pushing to accelerate the government-funded clinical trial. (Grid) see also Trump officials and meat industry blocked life-saving Covid controls, investigation finds Congressional investigation reveals the lengths meat industry went to downplay risks to workers and lobby receptive Trump officials. (The Guardian)
• Inside the sales machine of the ‘kingpin’ of opioid makers A cache of more than 1.4 million newly released records exposes the inner workings of the nation’s largest opioid manufacturer. (Washington Post)
• ‘I’d like to file lawsuits in all 50 states’: Mike Lindell still pushing Trump’s lie: The MyPillow chief and Trump ally has become a popular figure on the right, spending lavishly on lawsuits to ban voting machines and endorsing candidates. (The Guardian)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Boaz Weinstein of Saba Capital. The hedge fund specializes in Credit Default swaps, Tail Protection & Volatility trading. Saba is one of the 5 largest SPAC investors. Previously, Weinstein was Co-Head of Global Credit Trading at Deutsche Bank and a member of the Global Markets Executive Committee. Weinstein became infamous as the trader on the other side of the London Whale trade against JPM, which lost the bank $2B and netted Saba 100s of millions in gains.
Where the Super Rich Reside
Source: Statista
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