My end-of-week, market’s-closed-but-BLS-open Good Friday reads:
• Here’s What Happens at the IRS After You File Your Taxes Refunds can come in five days—or a few months. (Wall Street Journal)
• How Models Get the Economy Wrong: Seemingly complex and sophisticated econometric modeling often fails to take into account common sense and observable reality. (American Prospect) see also Six Ways Existing Economic Models Are Killing the Economy: The alleged science doesn’t match up to the real world. (American Prospect)
• The Age of Average. From film to fashion and architecture to advertising, creative fields have become dominated and defined by convention and cliché. Distinctiveness has died. In every field we look at, we find that everything looks the same. Welcome to the age of average. (Alex Murrell)
• UBS Chairman’s Top-Secret Prep Paid Off in Credit Suisse Moment: Colm Kelleher was ready when a crisis of confidence that started in US regional banking spread to Switzerland. (Bloomberg)
• Want an A in His Class? You Had Better Go Viral. A marketing professor gave his students a challenge: If they made a video that got a million views, the final exam would be canceled. (New York Times)
• Grid-World: An obsession was born. I was intoxicated by graph paper. The emptiness of a totally blank page intimidated me by demanding that I make the first move, but graph paper invited my participation by steering my pencil in the grooves of its strictly regular lines. The grid was like a friend who had already done half the work for me. (alex miller’s garden)
• The Dog-Eat-Dog World of Kosher Pet Food at Passover: Their dogs aren’t Jewish, but observant pet owners still face issues finding kibble that is acceptable for the holiday. ‘We’re strict, but we love our pet.’ (Wall Street Journal)
• What happened in Wisconsin. Protasiewicz beat Kelly by nearly 11 percentage points, an impressive margin that was made possible by a record-breaking turnout. More than 1.7 million people cast ballots in the race this year, besting the 1.6 million that cast ballots in the 2020 race when there was also a presidential primary. (Popular.Info)
• The Finnish Secret to Happiness? Knowing When You Have Enough. The Nordic nation has been ranked the happiest country on earth for six consecutive years. But when you talk to individual Finns, the reality is a bit more complicated. (New York Times) see also How to Want Less: The secret to satisfaction has nothing to do with achievement, money, or stuff. (The Atlantic)
• Could dinosaurs have grown any bigger? Titanosaurs were some of the largest animals to walk the Earth, but if the reign of the dinosaurs hadn’t been cut short by an asteroid, could they have evolved to be even bigger? (BBC)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Aswath Damodaran, Professor of Finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Known as the Dean of Valuation, he teaches Corporate Finance and Valuation to the MBA students at Stern where he has been voted “Professor of the Year” by the graduating M.B.A. class nine times. His textbook “Investment Valuation” is the standard in the field. His next book comes out in December, and is titled The Corporate Lifecycle: Business, Investment, and Management Implications.
A Rising Tide of Global Layoffs Beyond Big Tech
Source: Bloomberg
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