• How Texas Officials Invited the Rigging of the State Lottery: Texas lottery executives blessed a scheme that ensured one player would win a $95 million jackpot in 2023. The caper has underscored a sense that almost nothing is on the level. (New York Times)
• Zakaria: Destroying 100 years of competitive advantage in 100 days: Cuts to research and attacks on universities are handing global leadership to China. (Washington Post)/ see also Eroding US brand, has made the country 20% poorer, Citadel chief says. Though the president may have identified real problems, his methods to solve them don’t appear to be working, and are unlikely to revive American manufacturing, Griffin told Semafor’s Gina Chon at the World Economy Summit in Washington, DC. (Semafor)
• The Worst Job in America: Who would want to be president of an Ivy League school? (The Atlantic)
• They Stole a Quarter-Billion in Crypto and Got Caught Within a Month: How luxury cars, $500,000 bar tabs and a mysterious kidnapping attempt helped investigators unravel the heist of a lifetime. (New York Times)
• FTC opens the floodgates for tariff profiteering: Have you heard that tariffs are going to drive prices up? Me too. There’s a good reason we’re hearing a lot of talk about tariffs prices: tariffs are a tax that is ultimately paid by consumers. Trump plans to raise $6t in tariffs, making them the largest tax increase in US history: But that $6t is just for starters. If there’s one thing we learned from the pandemic supply-chain shocks, it’s that corporate CEOs never let an emergency go to waste. Bosses, knowing that you’d been warned to expect higher prices, went ahead and jacked up their prices way over inflation, blaming it on covid, on stimulus checks, on Biden, on the phase of the moon. Blaming it on anything – except greed. That’s why we called it “excuseflation” (Pluralistic)
• State-By-State, America is Taking on Big Insurance’s Pharmacy Middlemen: While Congress continues to debate the growing power of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) in the prescription drug supply chain, several state legislatures and attorneys general are no longer waiting. (Health Care un-covered)
• The Trade Adviser Who Hates Trade: Once sidelined, President Trump’s counselor Peter Navarro has returned to Washington and quickly upended the global trading system..(New York Times) see also Navarro vs. BMW trade spat has rattled this South Carolina county: Republican leaders here face an awkward predicament: How do they defend the foreign firms propelling the state’s economic growth against the America First president? (Washington Post)
• 20 verification tools for combating misinformation. Fact-checking sites like Snopes and Google’s Fact Check Explorer, as well as reverse image search engines, identity verification sites, and AI detection tools. While this list is intended for journalists, these resources are useful for anyone who wants to evaluate what they read or find online critically. (Beyond Bylines)
• What’s the Matter with Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi? Tech billionaires and iconoclast journalists suddenly see eye to eye. (New Republic)
• Why Is Everyone Getting Their Tattoos Removed? For decades, Americans were covering their bodies with more and more tattoos. Now, they’re getting them removed as fast as they can. We speak with the patients going under the laser, the tattoo-removal technicians whose business is booming, and the tattoo artists whose work is being erased to understand how something so permanent became so ephemeral. (GQ)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Jeff Becker, Chairman and CEO of Jennison Associates (a division of PGIM).. The firm was founded in 1969. Prior to joining Jennison in 2016 as CEO, Becker was CEO of Voya Investment Management.
Depreciating the Dollar to Grow the Manufacturing Sector?
Source: Apollo
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