Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Realtors Are in Crisis—and Home Buyers Could Be the Winners: A wave of lawsuits over fees paid to agents has put the giant trade association on the defense; ‘it got arrogant’ (Wall Street Journal) see also Powerful Realtor Group Agrees to Slash Commissions to Settle Lawsuits: The National Association of Realtors will pay $418 million in damages and will amend several rules that housing experts say will drive down housing costs. (New York Times)
• A Doomsday Recession Mentality Is Keeping the S&P 500 Strong: Companies are ready for a recession that never seems to come; Earnings surprises are on pace for their best level since 2022 (Bloomberg)
• Private-Market Funds Are Turning to Wealthy Individuals for Growth: Managers of funds investing in private markets have come up with more creative vehicles to expand their investor base from large institutions to include wealthy individuals and families. One reason the private-market sector is shifting to private wealth is institutional appetite for alternative investments has weakened, and major fund managers need new sources of capital. (Barron’s) see also The Big Questions Hanging Over a Blackstone Fund: Wall Street has been debating how the investment giant’s $59 billion real estate fund has managed to outperform virtually all its rivals. (New York Times)
• What DC Police Learned About Luring Package Thieves: A low-cost pilot to deter porch pirates by placing trackable boxes as decoys has produced results — and insights — in several Washington, DC, neighborhoods. (CityLab)
• Toxic Gaslighting: How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe: Decades ago, Kris Hansen showed 3M that its PFAS chemicals were in people’s bodies. Her bosses halted her work. As the EPA now forces the removal of the chemicals from drinking water, she wrestles with the secrets that 3M kept from her and the world. (ProPublica)
• “Everyone is absolutely terrified”: Inside a US ally’s secret war on its American critics. A foreign government is trying to silence US critics of its authoritarian turn — and it’s succeeding. (Vox)
• Justice Breyer, Off the Bench, Sounds an Alarm Over the Supreme Court’s Direction: In an interview in his chambers and in a new book, the justice, who retired in 2022, discussed Dobbs, originalism and the decline of trust in the court. (New York Times)
• The Trumpian Vertigo of American Politics: These are profoundly disorienting times (The Atlantic)
• America’s Monster: How the U.S. Backed Kidnapping, Torture and Murder in Afghanistan (New York Times)
• Coney Island Was Once Full of Dueling, Backstabbing Theme Parks: Come one, come all to the controversial, ugly beginnings of what was once called ‘Sodom by the Sea.’ (Atlas Obscura)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All, and The Persuaders. A former foreign correspondent and columnist for the New York Times, he has also written for the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and Time. He has received the Radcliffe Fellowship, the Porchlight Business Book of the Year Award, Harvard University’s Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award for Humanism in Culture, and the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.
Why Tax Avoidance Works
Source: @gabriel_zucman
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