Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Remember the Silicon Valley Bank Disaster? A year after the regional bank crisis, Wall Street is still fighting the measures we need to protect the financial system. (Washington Monthly)
• ‘Shortcuts Everywhere’: How Boeing Favored Speed Over Quality. Problems have plagued the manufacturer even after two fatal crashes, and many current and former employees blame its focus on making planes more quickly. (New York Times) see also The last days of the Boeing whistleblower: “They started pressuring us not to document defects, to work outside procedures, to allow defective material to be installed without being corrected. They just wanted to push planes out the door and make the cash register ring.” (Fortune) mirror (Yahoo Finance)
• AI hustlers stole women’s faces to put in ads. The law can’t help them. Artificial intelligence is spurring a new type of identity theft — with ordinary people finding their faces and words twisted to push often offensive products and ideas. (Washington Post)
• The Crime Rings Stealing Everything from Purses to Power Tools: In Los Angeles, a task force of detectives is battling organized retail theft, in which boosted goods often end up for sale online—or commingled on store shelves with legitimate items. (New Yorker)
• Soaring Home Insurance Costs Could Push Homeowners Out of These 10 States: Climate catastrophes are driving insurers and homebuyers out of high-risk areas like Florida, but the American dream of homeownership lives on in less disaster-prone states. https://insurify.com/homeowners-insurance/insights/housing-affordability-by-state/ see also Florida Is Not So Cheap Compared With New York These Days: Surge in Sunbelt real estate prices erodes financial benefits for those attempting to relocate away from Manhattan. (Bloomberg)
• Who’s Behind All the ‘Pussy in Bio’ on X? I clicked all the way through so you don’t have to. (New York Magazine)
• Watch It Burn: Two scammers, a web of betrayal, and Europe’s fraud of the century. A good scammer sees opportunity everywhere, including their own downfall. In 2006, the police showed up at Gustav Daphne’s house in Beverly Hills. They had come once before, when a neighbor complained about his trash. Daphne happened to be swimming in his pool at the time, and because he is French, he came to the front door in a tiny little bathing suit. The police were appalled; they gave him a reprimand about storing his garbage more tidily and scurried away. (Atavist)
• Bias, Skew, and Search Engines Are Sufficient to Explain Online Toxicity: Social media would still be a mess even without engagement algorithms. (Communications of the ACM)
• Donald Trump Is Not the Victim of ‘Lawfare.’ He’s a Crook. Republicans used to be very aware of this. One of the reasons Republicans were so reluctant to accept Donald Trump’s nomination in 2016 is that he was quite obviously a crook. “His business record reflects the often dubious norms of the milieu: using eminent domain to condemn the property of others; buying the good graces of politicians — including many Democrats — with donations,” editorialized National Review. Marco Rubio lambasted him as a “con artist.” The Wall Street Journal editorialized about Trump’s deep ties to the mafia and his fulsome praise of its work. (New York Magazine)
• Clerking For Judge Cannon: A Behind-The-Scenes Look A tale of two clerkships: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. (Original Jurisdiction)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Sir Angus Deaton, 2015 Nobel Laureate “for his analysis of consumption, poverty & welfare.” He was Knighted in 2016, and is a dual citizen of Great Britain and United States. His book “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism” (co-written with his wife Ann Case) was a NYT best-seller. His latest book is “Economics in America: an immigrant economist explores the land of inequality.”
Insurance Rates Are Soaring for US Homeowners in Climate Danger Zones
Source: Wired
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