Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning examine incompetence, corruption and political failures:
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a threat to your health and our democracy: Kennedy’s anti-vaccination, anti-government spiel appeals to entertainment and business figures who like to be seen as iconoclasts. For example, it was embraced by Elon Musk, whose apparent determination to tell it as it is was hampered by his towering ignorance. (Los Angeles Times)
• The world’s empty office buildings have become a ticking time bomb: From San Francisco to Hong Kong, rising interest rates and falling property values are pushing the commercial real estate market into a perilous precipice. (business week)
• The Biotech Advantage: How Well-Connected Executives and Investors Make Perfectly Timed Trades in Healthcare Stocks. Secret IRS files reveal dozens of highly serendipitous biotech and healthcare occupations. An executive bought shares of a partner company just before a sale, and an investor traded options just before a company’s earnings took off, bringing in millions. (ProPublica)
• Arizona lacks cheap water. Investors saw it coming: The state has just taken steps to restrict housing construction around Phoenix, as demand for groundwater exceeds supply. But fast-growing cities are already buying water elsewhere – and investors’ bets are paying off. (Bloomberg)
• He went after crypto companies. Then someone came after him. Kyle Roche was a rising star in the field of cryptocurrency law – until his career imploded. Who orchestrated his downfall? (New York Times)
• Trump’s Fox News interview was a defense attorney’s nightmare: The former president has offered a confusing, and likely damaging, defense to his latest impeachment. (Voice)
• Aggressive Supreme Court reshapes US as position erodes: A conservative supermajority is remaking America’s environmental, health and gun laws, even as public trust wanes and ethical questions grow. (Bloomberg) see also Latest Supreme Court Opinion Means Innocents Must Stay in Jail: The majority opinion of Clarence Thomas assures that innocent people will spend years behind bars. (Voice)
• Inside North Korea: “We’re stuck, waiting to die.” For months, the BBC has been communicating in secret with three North Koreans living in the country. They expose, for the first time, the disaster that has been unfolding there since the government sealed the borders more than three years ago. (BBC)
• Well-funded Christian group behind US efforts to roll back LGBTQ+ rights: Advocacy groups condemn Alliance Defending Freedom as “a danger to all Americans who value their freedoms.” (The Guardian)
• The Mets spent $445 million on MLB’s worst-performing team. Can it spin? The Mets were outscored in the first set of games this year, 54-21. They didn’t perform particularly well in any facet of the game – throwing, lining up or hitting. Without a big identity, it’s hard to see what the Mets could build on to fuel a string of potential hits. (Athleticism)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Peter Borish, founding partner of Tudor Investments, where he was director of research for 10 years, working directly with Paul Tudor Jones. He was also Chairman and CEO of Computer Trading Corp and Chief Strategist for Quad Group Quant Funds. Borish is also a founding director of the Robin Hood Foundationformed with Paul Tudor Jones in 1988.
Bush and Trump tax cuts are mainly responsible for the increase in the debt ratio
Source: Center for American Progress
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