My back-to-work morning train WFH reads:
• Breakup of Google’s Ad Business Would Reshape $500 Billion Sector: If government prevails, an asset spinoff is thought to be more likely than a sale. (Wall Street Journal)
• China’s Big Comeback Is Just Getting Started: The country’s stocks are up 50% since officials rolled back Covid-19 restrictions. Alibaba, Yum China, and other names stand to gain. (Barron’s) but see Entrepreneurs Flee China’s Heavy Hand: ‘You Don’t Have to Stay There.’ Weary of crackdowns and lockdowns, businesspeople are moving out of China and taking their wealth with them. Many have found a new home in Singapore. (New York Times)
• Institutional Failure: A Future of Finance Worldview: Institutional Failure: A Future of Finance Worldview (ETF Trends)
• Meet the Latest Housing-Crisis Scapegoat: Blaming the housing crisis on hedge funds and private equity may be easy, but it’s dead wrong. (The Atlantic)
• What it would take for Apple to disentangle itself from China: The tech giant increasingly finds itself beholden to America’s biggest geopolitical rival. But is diversification even possible? (Financial Times)
• How Cash-Needy Private Companies Are Avoiding Dreaded Down Rounds: Few rules govern private markets, but some companies’ confidential maneuvers to bypass a valuation hit could raise eyebrows. (Businessweek)
• The Billions-Dollar VR/AR Headset Question: The appeal and utility of all-day AR glasses is obvious. But we are obviously very far away from such devices being possible, at any price. (Daring Fireball)
• There’s No Quick Fix for Social Media: Ignore the simplistic slogans. Separating what’s invaluable about services like Twitter and Facebook from what’s noxious will require years of experimentation. (Wall Street Journal)
• Gun owners favor requiring parents to lock up weapons. It’s lawmakers who don’t. After a 6-year-old shot a teacher in Virginia, there will be another push for safe gun storage laws across the country. Most will likely fail. (Washington Post)
• Arms and the Man: How not to write an action movie: And Arnold! So easy, then as now, to laugh at as a cultural figure, but he can’t be laughed at retrospectively. He’s calm, not wooden; fierce, not foolish; intelligent, not doltish. One hadn’t noticed. One can’t not notice. (Harper’s Magazine)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Neil Dutta, head of economic research at Renaissance Macro Research. He joined RenMac after spending seven years at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, where he was a Sr. economist covering US + Canada. Prior to that, he was a research analyst at Barron’s.
U.S. GDP Rose 2.9% in the Fourth Quarter After a Year of High Inflation
Source: Wall Street Journal
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