Philosophy Majors Make Big Bucks

Welcome to This Week’s Leyendecker View

The older you get, the more you realize it’s not what happens to you,
it’s how you deal with it.
– Tina Turner, RIP 

A WEEKLY BIG THINK

Studies keep finding that our teens’ declining mental health is heavily linked to smartphone and social media use. Even the surgeon general says so.

Here’s a recent quote from Bill Ready, CEO of the social media site, Pinterest:

Social media is the majority of media consumption. And people have lost control. The algorithms are in control of everything you see. And the algorithm has been told to maximize your view time. For thousands of years as human beings, the progress of the species has been about overcoming our basest instincts. And what the algorithm has figured out is how to play to your primal instinct. It’s anger, greed, all those things that for thousands of years we’ve tried to basically work to suppress, and support the better angels of our nature. And now we have one of the biggest, most profitable business models in the world and it is deeply embedded in this business model to prey upon the darkest aspects of human nature.

Why isn’t Washington doing something about this? 

THE ECONOMIC VIEW

Record number of Americans
Feel worse off economically.

Consumer spending jumps
US home sales unexpectedly rise
Yet mortgage applications fall
US economy is heating up
How will the Fed react?

Global shipping container demand collapses
Not a great economic sign.

THE INFLATION BOGEYMAN

Copper prices fall
As global demand drops sharply.

Why inflation happened
Top economists tell the story.

A possible “can tax”
Could raise lots of prices.

THE LABOR VIEW

Philosophy majors make big bucks
What? Why? Because they’re smart.

More US women are working
Than ever before.

Employees don’t mind the office.
But they hate the commute

MEANWHILE IN EUROPE

German exports to China plunge
The industrial juggernaut has a problem.

Europe faces a food shock
A fragile economy is under yet more pressure.

Poland will soon be richer than the UK
Claims a famous UK financier.

GLOBAL

Is the G7 done leading the world?
I think not.

Schizophrenia at the IMF
Bogged down by old ideology.

Poor countries on brink of collapse
Yet they owe China billions.

A TRIP TO ARGENTINA

Argentine inflation exceeds 100%
A 2,000 peso note is worth $4.

Be glad you don’t live there.
Interest rates just hit 97%

Argentina wants to be a global oil power
Can they get past an inept government?

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Tactical nukes headed to Belarus
What’s NATO’s counter play?

Frozen Russian money in the EU
Could end up in Ukraine’s hands.

Is Putin in trouble?
The Wagner group thinks so
20,000 Bakhmut deaths and counting

THE NEW COLD WAR

China and Russia get closer
A new global alignment is happening.
Xi offers Russia “firm support”

Russia lobbies India for help
They’re afraid of economic isolation.

Russia and Iran
Have high hopes for each other

FINANCE

PE expects longer low valuations.
Selling equity at discounts
Are lots of  leverage loan defaults coming?

Strategic acquisitions are the new game
As PE investors back off.

Negative venture returns
For three quarters in a row now.
And down rounds are on the rise

THE REAL ESTATE

Are things going to get worse for real estate?
Morgan Stanley says yes, BofA says no

Lessons from a renters’ utopia
There’s an alternative to owning.

NYC skyscrapers sit vacant
What if this isn’t temporary?
Will remote work destroy $500B of offices?

TECHNOLOGY

Chip design is radically changing
How will legacy companies adapt?
Nvidia is blowing it out of the water

Musk’s Neuralink gets FDA approval
To start testing in humans.

China is way in the lead
In the patent race.

THE CHAT ON AI

Playing with DAN, a ChatGPT plugin
It unchains the bot’s moral and ethical restrictions.

Dr. GPT will see you now
Ways AI will change health care.

The best AI-powered apps
Are better than ChatGPT
Here’s how ChatGPT was created

THE NEXT NORMAL

Puerto Rico is the next Florida
For the super wealthy.

Texans about to get big tax cut
Legislature pulls back property taxes.

Christianity is crashing in the US
Who cares about the 10 Commandments?
No surprise narcissism is exploding

THE WAR ON CARBON

G7 disappoints on climate progress
Is economic reality setting in?

Fossil fuel firms owe $209B A YEAR
In climate reparations, suggests study.

Climate-friendly airline fuels are too expensive
Says Boeing CEO.
Green hydrogen will cost EU at least $300B
Pets pollute as much as private jets

THE NUCLEAR SOLUTION

An update on nuclear energy
60 plants being built worldwide, plus more news.

New York closed its nuclear plant
And now it depends more on fossil fuels.

Fusion! Fusion! Fusion!
What does its future look like?

THE NEW ENERGY TRANSITION

Global crude oil demand set record
IEA sees demand rising
I thought oil was on the outs?

Generating electricity from air
Has been accomplished in a lab.

The wind turbine industry should be booming
But it’s not, why?

THE EV DREAM

Watch out for Hyundai
Are they the next Tesla?

Ford cuts a deal with Tesla
To use their Superchargers

We’ve started a minerals gold rush
Can mining really be green?
Exxon joins the lithium gold rush

THE CHINA SYNDROME

Beijing bans US’ Micron
The chip war in real time.

China is hacking US infrastructure
This certainly won’t help relations.

Chinese labs producing fentanyl
And getting paid in crypto.

THE WASHING-TONE

SCOTUS reins in the EPA
Bureaucrats get put on a leash!

US House is not China friendly
Will productive relations ever return?

Details of a potential debt deal
Will it stop runaway spending?

MAKING A BETTER YOU

To be successful
You need to fail 16% of the time

Teach your kids “the growth mindset”
Teach yourself, too.

The longest living people in the world
Share these four habits

HOW ABOUT A BREAK

RIP football legend, Jim Brown
A good highlight reel of the icon

Our stone age ancestors
Were masters of geometry

Orcas are sinking boats
And teaching other Orcas to do it.

IT’S VACATION TIME

The best places to travel in June
Time to get after it!

Should you ever vacation solo?
Yes, and here’s why

If you have three weeks to spare
Here’s a Europe Interrail route guide

SONG OF THE WEEK

RIP, Tina Turner
The 15 Essential Tina Turner songs

“River Deep, Mountain High”
Lyrics are poetry, you know.

CASTING AROUND THE PODS

The Loneliness Epidemic
Scott Galloway chats with the US surgeon general.

VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Killers of the Flower Moon
Scorsese and DiCaprio team up yet again.

Inuit women play a musical game
That’s been around for centuries.

Fixing up an old Japanese house
Buy a rural Japanese house for $25K

FROM THE HEADHUNTER’S KITCHEN

Got yourself a nice outdoor grill?
Now you need a griddle

Summer berries are yammy!
Here are some recipes

Try Japanese ice cream, Byakuya.
It’s only $6,000 a scoop

THE RANDOMS

Huge numbers of young people are trying to get into the United States. For all our faults, we remain the land of opportunity for the globally oppressed. 

The American Dream still exists, yet it sometimes seems the only people who still believe in it are those trying to get into America.

The banking crisis is over, according to some top bank executives. Are they trying to jawbone their way out of a crisis?

A funny sign I recently passed on the highway: “The older I get, the better I remember things that really never happened.”

And then just yesterday, I saw this message on the back window of a pick up truck: “I started without nothing and I still have most of it left.” Huh?

The butterfly effect is a huge risk in a highly-interconnected world. The more interconnected we become, the more interdependent we are. Make note that Germany just entered into a recession.

It shocked me to see the other day that up to 500,000 people die each year in Sub-Saharan Africa from fake medicine—500,000 people a year? WTF!!! How many people is climate change killing each year?

Ford’s CEO has promised an EV so fast, he’s calling it a “personal bullet train.” Now why do we even need to go that fast? Are we going to build highways fit for EVs traveling at bullet-train speed?

If someone came out with a $15,000 quick charging commuter EV, I think they’d slay the market.

British Telecom expects AI will replace up to 42% of its workforce. Lovely future. 

Does all innovation always improve human existence?

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Will AI Replace McKinsey?
May 19, 2023

Can the US Become the Next China?
May 12, 2023