Elsewhere on Thursday,
– Your geopolitics sentence du jour: “Mr. Trump, who likes to do business by phone, is acquiring a reputation for pestering Mr. Xi.”
– Meanwhile at the Milken Conf: Super-rich private equity stars rue ‘lousy’ reputation, say they are misunderstood.
– A wrap from from Vice: Fyre Festival organizers blew all their money early on models, planes, and yachts. Including:
McFarland and Frye Media declined to comment for this story, but they’re far from done selling. On Monday festival organizers began circulating a form that offered ticket holders the option to get free tickets to the 2018 Fyre Festival in lieu of the refund they were promised.
– Oh cool, a quadruple-leveraged S&P 500 ETF is here. And its ticker is ‘UP’. Relatedly: These go to four.
– A fun fight:
Morgan Stanley is slamming the door on selling Vanguard Group mutual funds, the latest attempt by a big brokerage firm to retaliate against the low-cost fund giant for refusing to pay for access to its salesforce… Brokers and consultants said that Morgan Stanley is almost certainly retaliating against Vanguard because of the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania-based firm’s longstanding refusal to pay for brokerage firm “shelf space” as part of its crusade to keep expenses for investors low.
– Valeant ponders a name change and we assume they are open to suggestions.
– Herbalife CEO drops hacky “fake news” diss on Bill Ackman.
– Paul Mason: Adults in the Room by Yanis Varoufakis review – one of the greatest political memoirs ever?
– Planet Money chats with Bernanke.
– Buzzfeed longread which starts like this: “It was the winter of 1997 and Alex Jones couldn’t stop getting punched in the face.”
– What is going on at the Heritage Foundation?
– Tbh, I did not see this comparison coming: “If this level of outflow persists, Puerto Rico is facing a population collapse on the scale of Irish post-famine depopulation.”
– How to decode an ancient Roman’s handwriting, particular from tablets discovered a few years ago in London showing “notes of indebtedness, memos to merchants, and a reckoning of an account for beer. ”
– Veep stars respond to Australian MP who knocked himself out laughing at episode.
– Belief and the backfire effect, comic’d.
– I‘m a Tinder guy holding a fish and I will provide for you.
– Further, further reading.
