My mid-week morning train reads:
• Has Xi Jinping bankrupted China? It is finally possible to imagine a post-Communist regime. (UnHerd)
• The Pandemic Transformed America’s Biggest Downtowns in Very Different Ways: While transit ridership and downtown dining took a big hit across the board, new commuting patterns and retail spending vary widely across the US. (Citylab)
• Larry Summers’ Comparison of 2013–23 Inflation with 1966–76 Is Uninformed Madness: How incredibly wrong was Larry Summers about inflation? In June 2022, he said “we need 5 years of unemployment above 5% to contain inflation, 2 years of 7.5% unemployment, or 5 years of 6% unemployment, or 1 year of 10% unemployment” just to contain inflation, not reduce it. But the annual rate of CPI inflation was 9.7% then and 2.7% percent now. (Cato Institute)
• The Evolution of Retirement: No one knows precisely how much to save for multiple decades into the future. No one knows what financial market returns or interest rates or inflation will be going forward. No one knows how their spending habits or lifestyle or incomes will change over the course of their career. And no one knows when life will invariably throw them a curve ball. (A Wealth of Common Sense)
• The Last Time Always Happens Now: You always know when you’re doing something for the first time, and you almost never know when you’re doing something for the last time. (Raptitude)
• How Yahoo sparked a renaissance under new owners: Yahoo was all but left dead by Verizon when it was sold to Apollo Global Management in 2021. Under its new owners, the company — founded in January 1994 — is getting a rare chance to reinvent itself. (Axios)
• The A.I. Revolution Is Coming. But Not as Fast as Some People Think. From steam power to the internet, there has always been a lag between technology invention and adoption across industries and the economy. (New York Times)
• Young people feel like they have no future due to climate change; we need to change the narrative: More than half of young people think “humanity is doomed” due to climate change. We need to reframe the narrative from doom and sacrifice, to one of opportunity. (Sustainability In Numbers)
• How the War in Ukraine Turned Tennis Into a Battlefield: For Ukrainian players, as well as those from Russia and its allies, the unceasing conflict at home has bled into the game. Now they face off at the U.S. Open. (New York Times) see also How They Tried to Kill Me: In 2022, n+1 published four reports (1, 2, 3, 4) from the war in Ukraine by the Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko. In the following essay, Kostyuchenko describes—for the first time—why she fled Ukraine and reveals that she was poisoned last fall in Munich. (N+1)
• How Jennifer Aniston Went From Sitcom Star to Hollywood Power Player: The actor, producer and entrepreneur has blazed her own path in Hollywood—from ‘Friends’ to ‘The Morning Show.’ Here’s how. (Wall Street Journal)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Greg Davis, Chief Investment Officer of the Vanguard Group. Davis is responsible for the oversight of approximately $7 trillion managed by Vanguard fixed income, equity index, and quantitative equity groups. He also serves as a member of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee of the US Treasury Department.
91% of U.S. mortgage borrowers have a mortgage rate below 5.01%
Source: @NewsLambert
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