My morning train reads:
• Turning Empty Offices Into Apartments Is Getting Even Harder: Only 3,575 apartment units were converted from office space last year. The already fraught process now faces even more challenges. (Wall Street Journal)
• The problem isn’t inflation. It’s prices. What goes up may not come down. Like, ever. (Vox) see also Right Now Is a Bad Time to Spend Money: With prices and interest rates high, this is a moment to focus on saving. (Wall Street Journal)
• How to Become a Millionaire: American households have never been wealthier but that wealth is not evenly distributed. The top 10% controls more than 70% of the total wealth in this country as of year-end 2022. (A Wealth of Common Sense)
• A 5-step guide to processing ambiguous news in the markets and the economy: It’s no secret that TKer has been embracing the more positive view with most metrics. To be clear, this isn’t about being optimistic for the sake of being optimistic. There is a process. (TKer)
• How Farmers Are Teaching Old Tractors to Think for Themselves: Deere, Agco, CNH offer cheaper retrofits to ease transition to more automation. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Best Inventions of 2023: 200 innovations changing how we live (Time)
• Think You’re Messaging an OnlyFans Star? You’re Talking to These Guys: Meet the “Chatters”: anonymous workers hired to ghostwrite messages and build intimate relationships with none-the-wiser fans. (Vice)
• Amazon Execs Intentionally Made Site Shittier to Rake in More Profit, Quotes from FTC Lawsuit Show: Former CEO Jeff Bezos instructed executives to “accept more defects,” an internal term for irrelevant ads. (Vice) see also The Enshittification of Amazon Continues: There are 4 broad categories of problematic issues: The Shopping Experience, Overnight (LOL) Deliveries, Returns/Product Credit, and Unreturnable Items. (The Big Picture)
• ‘Louie Louie’: The story behind the song everyone knows but no one understands: (NPR)
• ‘I didn’t get into movies to become a meme’: Nicolas Cage on dreams, fame and his two-headed snake: The actor who spawned a thousand internet mashups talks turning to his subconscious for help, his very public mistakes and the greatest piece of direction he has ever received. (The Guardian)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Linda Gibson, CEO of PGIM‘s Quantitative Solutions, which manages $119 billion via quantitative and multi-asset solutions. PGIM is one of the world’s largest asset managers, running $1.27 trillion in client assets.
US Debt Interest Bill Rockets Past a Cool $1 Trillion a Year
Source: Bloomberg see also The Greatest Missed Opportunity of Our Lifetimes
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