Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Millions in Cryptocurrency Vanished as Agents Watched Helplessly: Feds locked up a storage device full of ill-gotten tokens. Then someone started stealing the loot. (Bloomberg)
• What happened while Ron DeSantis was fighting the culture wars: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has had a busy year. He has enacted legislation prohibiting teachers from acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ people. He has banned private businesses from conducting trainings about racial bias. And he has flown dozens of migrants from San Antonio, Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, under false pretenses. But while DeSantis was fighting the culture wars and positioning himself for a future presidential run, he has failed to meaningfully address one of the state’s biggest problems: its dysfunctional and collapsing property insurance market. (Popular Information) see also DeSantis, Once a ‘No’ on Storm Aid, Petitions a President He’s Bashed: The Florida governor, who as a congressman opposed aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy, is seeking relief from the Biden administration as Hurricane Ian ravages his own state. (New York Times)
• Wedding planners on their biggest scams: You know what your wedding doesn’t need? Doughnut walls. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry for a reason. (Vox)
• Why Nancy Pelosi Sabotaged Wildly Popular Bipartisan Legislation: Most Americans do not think lawmakers should be able to trade stocks at all, which is why some thought this was going to be the year Congress reined itself in when it came to the stock market. After all, there are multiple bills floating around the Capitol that could ban elected officials from investing in companies directly. “There’s not a whole lot of issues that are talked about on the agenda right now that command such bipartisan support.” (Slate)
• Attacks Expose Vulnerability of European Infrastructure: The search for the perpetrators has begun following Monday’s sabotage attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. Which countries could have been behind it, and how secure is Europe’s critical infrastructure at the bottom of the sea? (Spiegel)
• The teacher shortage problem has been going on for 50 years. Why are so few entering the profession? Since the 1970s, the number of people choosing teaching as a career has tanked. Here a look at the stats. (Grid)
• Has the C.I.A. Done More Harm Than Good? In the agency’s seventy-five years of existence, a lack of accountability has sustained dysfunction, ineptitude, and lawlessness. (New Yorker)
• Authoritarians are not governing effectively: Boots are stamping on faces, but the trains are not running on time. (Noahpinion)
• They Legitimized the Myth of a Stolen Election — and Reaped the Rewards: On the day the Capitol was attacked, 139 Republicans in the House voted to dispute the Electoral College count. This is how they got there. A majority of House Republicans last year voted to challenge the Electoral College and upend the presidential election. That action, signaled ahead of the vote in signed petitions, would change the direction of the party. (New York Times) see also Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interview: In an extraordinarily candid and profane interview with Rolling Stone, Michael Fanone – the former Washington police officer who was seriously hurt at the US Capitol during the January 6 attack – called the Republican House leader, potentially the next speaker, a “fucking weasel bitch.” (The Guardian)
• Confidence Man: Key revelations from new book on Donald Trump: Former US President Donald Trump nearly fired his daughter and routinely flushed documents down the toilet. These explosive details and more are revealed in New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman’s highly-anticipated book Confidence Man, which is released on Tuesday. (BBC)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Michael Levy, Chief Executive Officer of Crow Holdings. The firm is the largest developer of multifamily-homes in the United States. Crow is both a developer and investor in commercial real estate, specializing in multifamily, industrial, and office properties across 21 markets in the United States.
NFT Trading Volumes Collapse 97% From January Peak
Source: Bloomberg
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