Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Windsurf was a startup Cinderella story. Now it’s become a cautionary tale. Google’s unusual deal with Windsurf has left some with a bitter taste in Silicon Valley. Some Windsurf investors have also been critical of the deal. More deals like this could be on the horizon, which concerns VCs and founders. (Business Insider)
• Simplify’s Sticky Fingers: “Overnight Success” with SBIL is a crass double dip: The story is simple: Simplify launched a 15bps money-market ETF (T-bills+Repos), SBIL, that seemingly overnight went from nothing to $2.1 billion. It should be the most boring ETF launch in history, except it’s not, because it’s really just a money grab on their own shareholder base. (Nadig.com)
• Wall Street’s Big, Bad Idea for Your 401(k): Recent moves by some alternative funds highlight the flaws of offering private assets to public investors (Wall Street Journal)
• Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain: Google’s AI Overview, which is easy to fool into stating nonsense as fact, is stopping people from finding and supporting small businesses and credible sources. (404)
• Elon’s Edsel: Tesla Cybertruck Is The Auto Industry’s Biggest Flop In Decades: T he list of famous auto industry flops is long and storied, topped by stinkers like Ford’s Edsel and exploding Pinto and General Motors’s unsightly Pontiac Aztek crossover SUV. Even John Delorean’s sleek, stainless steel DMC-12, iconic from its role in the “Back To The Future” films, was a sales dud that drove the company to bankruptcy. Elon Musk’s pet project, the dumpster-driving Tesla Cybertruck, now tops that list. (Forbes)
• This Is the Presidency John Roberts Has Built: The country is witnessing the creation of an all-powerful institution, and one man is responsible. (The Atlantic)
• Freezing Rent Is Easy. Making NYC Housing Affordable Isn’t. Zohran Mamdani’s campaign pledge would be simple to put into effect but wouldn’t do much to solve the underlying problem. (Bloomberg) see also A 450% Rent Hike Hangs Over One of the Last Affordable Buildings on Billionaires’ Row: Monthly costs at Carnegie House in Midtown are set to skyrocket, thanks to the wealthy real-estate investors who now own the land beneath the building. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Man Who Unsolved a Murder: If you’re accused of a crime, will someone investigate your side of the story? In California, there’s no guarantee. (Cal Matters)
• After Pledging to Keep Prices Low, Amazon Hiked Them on Hundreds of Essentials: While Walmart cut prices on low-cost goods, Amazon raised them. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Astronomer CEO’s Coldplay Concert Fiasco Is Emblematic of Our Social Media Surveillance Dystopia. Facial recognition and crowdsourced social media investigations are constantly being used not just on cringe CEOs, but on random people who are simply existing in public. (404)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Sonal Desai, Chief Investment Officer of Franklin Templeton Fixed Incomem, managing $215 billion in AUM in Multi-Sector, Global, Corporate Credit, Securitized Products, Municipal Bonds, Stable Value, and ST Liquid Markets Fixed Income. She has been named to Barron’s annual list of the 100 Most Influential Women each year since 2020.
