My Two-for-Tuesday morning train WFH reads:
• What Wall Street’s Top Recession Gauge Is Saying Now: Signs of economic strength bring new scrutiny to inverted yield curve. (Wall Street Journal) see also China’s Worsening Economy Is Hurting Corporate America: Caterpillar, DuPont are among big companies lowering expectations for a post-Covid-19 boom. (Wall Street Journal)
• Pimco flickers back to life: Bonds Are Really Back And Really Elegant, Lavish, Likeable Assets. (Financial Times)
• No, Small Banks Aren’t Holding the Bag on Half-Empty Towers: Contrary to a widespread figure, local and regional lenders don’t hold 70% of US commercial real estate debt. It’s closer to 32%. (Bloomberg) see also Can San Francisco Save Itself From the Doom Loop? The city is racing to come up with solutions for its downtown, hollowed out by a tech exodus and struggling with homelessness and street crime. (Wall Street Journal)
• America’s cool inflation summer: This year’s hot, hot summer has been met with consistently cooling inflation. And the moderate price gains seen in recent months may stick around this time. (Axios)
• Is David Solomon Too Big a Jerk to Run Goldman Sachs? Inside a banking mutiny. (New York Magazine) but see In defence of David Solomon: Goldman’s board will have to make a call about whether this is too much bad karma and whether there is a better captain for this team. But there isn’t an obvious successor, which complicates any attempted coup. (Financial Times)
• Amazon Wants to Deliver Your Order Without a Box, But Neighbors May See Your Snore Strips: The retail giant is reducing packaging on millions of deliveries. (Wall Street Journal)
• How Climate Change Turned Lush Hawaii Into a Tinderbox: Declining rainfall, rising temperatures and invasive species have left the islands more susceptible to wildfires. (New York Times) see also Hawaii Is a Warning: The world doesn’t need more reminders that climate change is accelerating. But we’re going to keep getting them. (The Atlantic)
• ‘He’s going to be very surprised’: Georgia DA Fani Willis prepares to face off with Trump: Legal watchers say the Fulton county district attorney’s entire career has prepared her for the prosecution of Donald Trump. (The Guardian)
• Taylor Swift’s Viral Era: a Timeline: Fan demand broke Ticketmaster, and that was just the prologue. These are the moments that turned the Eras Tour into a phenomenon. (New York Times) see also How Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Conquered the World: The pop star’s record-breaking, career-spanning show has dominated the summer, commanding attention and whipping up demand at a level thought unachievable in a fragmented age. (New York Times)
• Comedian Jim Gaffigan Starred in 200 Commercials Before Landing on ‘Letterman’ The ‘Linoleum’ star on cereal battles, overcoming anxiety and how copywriting led to stand-up and acting. (Wall Street Journal)
Be sure to check out our latest Masters in Business interview with Ted Seides, founder of Capital Allocators, an advisory platform to managers and allocators. Previously, he worked under David Swensen at the Yale Investments Office, where he invested directly with three of Yale’s managers. We discuss his famous bet with Warren Buffett about whether a selection of hedge funds could beat the S&P 500 over a decade. (Buffett won).
Are You Rich? Vast swaths of America’s “regular rich” don’t feel that way, and it’s keeping everybody down.
Source: Bloomberg
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