Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption, and policy failures:
• Not so faux: How the ‘fake’ fur industry is secretly selling you real fur: Faux fur is a staple of the fashion industry. But what’s marketed as fake might actually be all too real. (Grid)
• How Trump’s allies stoked Brazil Congress attack: The scenes in Brasilia looked eerily similar to events at the US Capitol on 6 January two years ago – and there are deeper connections as well. (BBC) see also Two years since the Jan. 6 insurrection, extremist groups are fragmented, but live on: Two years later, these groups are fractured and leaderless. Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, was convicted of seditious conspiracy late last year and faces decades in prison. With his demise, his organization has all but disappeared from public view. (USA Today)
• Why Britain’s (Severely) Underestimating British Collapse: Post-Brexit Britain’s Collapse Is So Extreme, It’s Genuinely Unprecedented. (Eudaimonia)
• Binance Volunteers Work for Swag and Hope for Jobs. It’s Raising Red Flags. Binance has an international network of volunteers known as Binance Angels. The influencers are working for company swag but hoping for jobs. (Barron’s)
• How Walgreens manufactured a media frenzy about shoplifting: In 2019, Walgreens announced it would close 200 stores across the U.S. as part of a larger “cost-reduction” plan. The data shows the “wave of shoplifting” narrative is mostly fabricated, and the company was “using an unsubstantiated narrative of unchecked shoplifting to obscure other possible factors in its decision.” (Popular Information)
• Facebook’s Bridge to Nowhere: The tech giant had already remade the virtual world. For a brief period, it also tried to make it easier for people in the Bay Area to get to work. Then it gave up. (New York Times)
• Slide in measles vaccination rate among kindergartners raises alarm: New data underscores concern that parental resistance to childhood immunizations may fuel a resurgence of the disease in the U.S. (Washington Post)
• A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job. After an outcry over the art history class by Muslim students, Hamline University officials said the incident was Islamophobic. But many scholars say the work is a masterpiece. (New York Times)
• Rightwing group pours millions in ‘dark money’ into US voter suppression bid: Tax filings reveal advocacy arm of Heritage Foundation spent $5m on lobbying in 2021 to block voting rights in battleground states. (The Guardian) see also Group aiming to sabotage Whitmer’s Covid policies funded by dark money: Non-profit affiliated with utility DTE Energy funded effort to repeal Michigan governor’s emergency order powers. (The Guardian)
• The Final Campaign: Inside Donald Trump’s sad, lonely, thirsty, broken, basically pretend run for reelection. (Which isn’t to say he can’t win.) (New York Magazine)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Jennifer Grancio, CEO of Engine No. 1, where she guides the firm’s strategic vision. She previously was a founding member of BlackRock’s iShares business, where she led European, US, and global distribution, driving the growth of iShares and the global ETF industry.
Home Affordability is bad, but a bust is unlikely
Source: FT/Atlanta Fed
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