The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Colombia Tolima Los Brasiles Peaberry Organic coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• The Economic Excuse Industry is Booming. While talk of recession is premature, there’s already a palpable sense of disappointment in the Trump economy. The New York Fed’s consumer survey is the latest to find a serious deterioration in consumer confidence; And then there’s that plunging stock market. (Paul Krugman)
• Blackstone vs. BlackRock: The Greatest Wall Street Frenemy Story Ever Told: Stephen Schwarzman and Larry Fink are increasingly all up in each other’s business. Just look at BlackRock’s new Panama Canal deal. (Barron’s)
• A Facebook Insider’s Exposé Alleges Bad Behavior at the Top: “Careless People,” a memoir by a former Facebook executive, portrays feckless company leaders cozying up to authoritarian regimes. (New York Times)
• How a Pro Athlete–Targeting Crime Ring Finally Got Caught: Inside the case against the men who allegedly robbed a trove of luxury goods and jewelry from NFL and NBA athletes while they played on the road. And why the case—with its combustible mix of immigration, conspicuous consumption, and fame—has become a media fixation. (Vanity Fair)
• Firing the refs doesn’t end the game. In our public policy forums, we entrust publicly accountable bureaucrats to hear all the claims of all the experts, sift through them, and then publish a (provisional) official truth. These public servants are procedurally bound to operate in the open, soliciting comments and countercomments to a public docket, holding public hearings, publishing readouts of private meetings with interested parties. Having gathered all the claims and counterclaims, these public servants reason in public, publishing not just a ruling, but the rationale for the ruling – why they chose to believe some experts over others. (Pluralistic)
• Where Jeff Bezos Went Wrong With The Washington Post: The billionaire handled his ownership admirably for more than a decade. But his courage failed him when he needed it most. (The Atlantic)
• Donald Trump Jr. Has Big Plans for Monetizing MAGA: At 1789 Capital, the president’s eldest son is chasing profit in the ‘parallel’ economy of Trump’s America. (Bloomberg)
• How to find climate data and science the Trump administration doesn’t want you to see: Groups involved in Public Environmental Data Partners have been archiving climate datasets our community has prioritized, uploading copies to public repositories and cataloging where and how to find them if they go missing from government websites. (The Conversation)
• She’s One of Florida’s Most Lethal Python Hunters …but the Invasive Creatures Still Have a Hold on Her. (Garden & Gun)
• The secret to a healthy gut is simpler than you think: Turns out, the bacteria in your gut have food preferences of their own. Here’s how a colorful plate feeds the bacteria that help your body thrive. (National Geographic)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Stephanie Kelton, professor of economics and public policy at Stony Brook University and a Senior Fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. Previously, she was Chief Economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, and was named by Politico as one of the 50 people most influencing the policy debate in America, and one of Barron’s top 100 Women in Finance. Her book “The Deficit Myth” became an instant New York Times bestseller.
Alternative Manager stocks are down 14% YTD; PE funds unchanged
Source: Financial Times
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