• High Interest Rates Are Hammering Investors. What Lies Ahead Could Be Worse. Rising rates would be bad news for bondholders and borrowers of all stripes, particularly the U.S. government. They cast a shadow over stocks, too. (Barron’s)
• First-Time Homeownership Became Less Affordable Across Most of the United States in Recent Years: New homeownership became less affordable across much of the United States over the last five years. Swiftly rising house prices and higher borrowing costs have not been fully offset by wage gains, making homeownership less affordable in both metropolitan and rural areas. Although new homeownership is less affordable than in years past, slower housing price gains and steadily rising wages may offer some reprieve for housing affordability in the coming year. (Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City)
• The US’s Worst Fears of Chinese Hacking Are on Display in Guam: Small-scale telecommunications networks and utilities on a remote Pacific island are up against what US intelligence agencies say is an unprecedented Chinese cyberwar plan. (Businessweek)
• Nate Anderson: Why we are disbanding Hindenburg Research, A Personal Note From Our Founder: Nearly 100 individuals have been charged civilly or criminally by regulators at least in part through our work, including billionaires and oligarchs. We shook some empires that we felt needed shaking. (Hindenburg Research)
• Your phone is destroying your social life: Technology and the cost of convenience, explained. There are clearly trade-offs with every technology. The only sensible question we can ever ask is: Are the trade-offs in each case truly worth it? What are they adding to our lives and, more importantly, what are they taking away? (Vox)
• Experts saw Samoa’s plunging vaccination rates as a crisis. RFK Jr. saw an opportunity. New details show how Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then chair of an anti-vaccine group and now Trump’s pick for health secretary, sought to exploit a deadly vaccine accident. Months after Kennedy’s visit, the question of what would happen to Samoa’s unvaccinated babies was answered. A measles outbreak swept the country, sickening thousands and killing 83, mostly small children. (NBC News)
• It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy: All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label — making cars the official worst category of products for privacy that we have ever reviewed. (Privacy Not Included)
• Trump Barely Won the Popular Vote. Why Doesn’t It Feel That Way? (Trump’s Cultural Victory Has Lapped His Political Victory): In 2024, Donald Trump won the popular vote by 1.5 points. This result was treated as an overwhelming repudiation of the left and a broad mandate for the MAGA movement. But by any historical measure, it was a squeaker. You have to go back to the 2000 election to find a margin smaller than Trump’s. (New York Times)
• How 19th Century Scientists Predicted Global Warming: Today’s headlines make climate change seem like a recent discovery. But Eunice Newton Foote and others have been piecing it together for centuries. (JSTOR Daily) see also Climate Whiplash and Fire Come to L.A.: Climate change has brought both fiercer rains and deeper droughts, leaving the city with brush-like kindling—and the phenomenon is on the rise worldwide. (New Yorker)
• Trump’s crypto coin is little more than a whizbang Ponzi scheme: It has become the easiest, most convenient way to curry favor with the president. (Washington Post)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Mike Freno, Chairman and CEO at Barings. The firm is owned by Mass Mutual, and half of its $431 billion in invested assets are from the insurance giant, with the rest coming from institutional investors.
Damning 5 year study of Brexit, quantified
Source: @NicholasTyrone
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