My end-of-week morning train WFH reads:
• The bad vibes economy Is the economy actually bad, or does everyone just feel like it is? This sense of dread is so pervasive that it might surprise you to hear that many aspects of the US economy are generally in good shape right now. The unemployment rate is low, and the labor market is strong. Job openings are at near-record levels, and many workers who want to find something better are doing so. (Vox)
• What Bosses Lost in the Fight Against Empty Offices: Leverage Employer plans have played out like a game of chicken. Now workers are rebelling outright, and executives are trying everything to make the office worth it. (New York Times) see also More People Are Moving to Manhattan Than Before the Pandemic: After the US was frozen by Covid, the city started to see more movement than the rest of the country, much of it in one direction: out. Now, that migration out of many NYC neighborhoods has reversed. In fact, even as the city’s population is still decreasing, more households are moving into Manhattan now than were moving in before the pandemic in 2019 (Citylab)
• How’s the American Consumer? That depends on who you ask and what they’re looking at. (Irrelevant Investor)
• Three signs the US housing boom is petering out Mortgage applications are dropping, Demand for home tours is down, and Houses are staying longer in the market (Quartz)
• Get In, We’re Going to Save the Mall: Ground cleared and buildings constructed for one kind of community benefit — shopping — could be reduced, reused and recycled to serve a broader and greener community purpose, with pedestrian open space as part of a mix of public uses. While the mall was designed to showcase products intended for obsolescence, in the best-case scenario it is also a building designed to change. (New York Times)
• How to Fix Twitter and Facebook: Social media has become too important to entrust to anyone. Are there ways to entrust it to everyone? (The Atlantic)
• Once In A Lifetime: Sometimes it feels like terrible luck, or that bad news has new momentum. More often it’s just raw math at work. A zillion different things can go wrong, so at least one of them is likely to be causing havoc in any given moment. (Collaborative Fund)
• I’m 60. Here’s what I’ve learned about growing old so far Without regular external reminders, it’s very hard to think of yourself as old, and it still sometimes comes as a shock. A few years ago when I was shopping I became aware of a stooped, wizened man following me around the mall. Then I realised there were just mirrors everywhere. (The Guardian)
• What Growing Up in Rural Germany Taught Me about Guns In the Bavarian village where I was raised, guns are a part of life. Mass shootings are not. (Reasons To Be Cheerful)
• Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie: ‘Cocaine and champagne made me perform better’ As she releases a compilation of her solo work, the writer and singer of some of Fleetwood Mac’s biggest hits answers your questions on excess, infighting and Joe Cocker joining her wedding night Thu 9 Jun 2022 09.30 EDT 248 The UK blues and rock scene of the late 1960s was a very male-focused, testosterone-heavy environment. Did you ever consider yourself a groundbreaker for moving into that world? (The Guardian)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Mark Mobius of Mobius Capital. Known as the “The Godfather of Emerging Markets,” he was tapped by Sir John Templeton in 1987 to run Templeton Emerging Markets, one of the first EM funds in the world. Over the next 30 years, he visited 112 countries, invested in 5,000+ companies, and traveled 1,000,000+ miles. This helped to grow the Templeton Emerging Markets Group from $100 million in six markets to over $40 billion in 70 countries.
Different Eras in Mortgage Rates
Source: @lenkiefer
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