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Thursday, June 30, 2022

The Rich Get Richer: Good God, I can’t publish this…

 In terms of dangers, such as viruses, fraud or identity theft, I don't think we were thinking about that at all when we got started. If we had been worried about that, the net might have been better today, but we might not have even got there.



An Iron Curtain descends on Europe and the USA Gilbert Doctorow

We repeat . . . 

An Iron Curtain descends on Europe and the USA Gilbert Doctorow


The Rich Get Richer Jed S. Rakoff, New York Review of Books 


Good God, I can’t publish this… The Critic


ProPublica: Ten Ways Billionaires Avoid Taxes On An Epic Scale


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Despite All This Year's Stock Market Woes, Wall St's "Fear Index" is Holding


Tessa Davis (South Carolina), Taxing Choices, 16 Fla. Int'l U. L. Rev. __ (2022):

Tax has a choice problem. At all stages of the making of tax, choice plays a role. Lawmakers consider how tax will impact the range and appeal of choices available to an individual. Scholars critique how tax may drive an individual toward or away from a given choice. Courts craft stories of how an individual had either free or deeply constrained choice, using their perception of the facts to guide their interpretation of tax law. And yet for all the seeming relevance of choice to tax, we have no clear definition of what we mean when we talk about choice or agreement on whether and when it matters. 


Heaven knows we’ve been through enough acronyms in this market cycle. 

FOMO — the Fear Of Missing Out, drove lots of investors, professional and amateur, in to spicy asset classes. No one wanted to be the last person to get in to the next big thing while excess money was sloshing around the global financial system. 

TINA — There Is No Alternative — went a little further. It encapsulated the notion that fund managers had no choice but to buy risky stocks because boring old bonds were yielding so little, or indeed were costing money to hold even before you take inflation in to account. It’s “the market made me buy this rubbish”, but with a slightly sassier name.

But it seems we have not yet reached peak acronym. With bond yields now much higher, TINA is no more (RIP), and the market mood has turned. “We went from Fear of Missing Out to Fear Of Holding On,” as Peter Tchir, head of macro strategy at Academy Securities, put it this week. 

For my sins, I read a lot of research from banks and investors. But “from FOMO to FOHO” is a new one on me.

 Tchir is referring here to the dreaded bitcoin — an “asset” for want of a better word that is maturing like a fine glass of full-fat milk on a summer’s day.


The Wall St. Billionaire and GOP Mega-Donor Gaming the Tax System ProPublica


Tesla sued by former employees over ‘mass layoff’ Reuters 



Vietnam Imprisons Leading Environmentalist on Tax Evasion Charges The Diplomat 


There is a solution to public sector pay disputes if the government wants to find one

I posted this thread on public sector pay rises on Twitter this morning: A Treasury minister said yesterday that ‘We are taking a responsible stance
Read the full article…

Britain is £3bn fraud capital of the world: Probe reveals 40m Britons have been targeted by scammers this year... but just 2% of our police are investigating the crime plague


A scammer can make nearly £1 million a day through fraudulent online adverts


Very interesting Edward Nevraumont review of *Talent*

The review makes many points, here is one excerpt:

 Everywhere I have worked, the organization’s hiring processes were tilted in favor of experience over intelligence. Interviews include behavioral questions or assessments of specific skills. Rarely is anyone on the hiring loop running problem-solving sessions that require the candidate to demonstrate how they might deal with the real-world challenges they will encounter in the workplace.

And:

Most of the time you can win candidates by getting the basics right:

  1. Reach out to people, don’t wait for them to come to you.
  2. Build relationships before you need them.
  3. Develop followership (so people that work with you once will want to work with you again).
  4. Get candidates excited for the job before you start screening them.
  5. Make your workplace a good place to work for smart and talented people (which is NOT the same as making it a “good place to work” generally, or anything from the HR/PR lists.)
  6. Be the type of manager that top talent will want to work for.
  7. Ensure that you have someone selling the candidate once you know you want to make an offer and start the selling process before the offer is made.
  8. Be polite.
  9. Be fast.

Interesting throughout, though I feel the author significantly overestimates the extent to which we think the current talent assessment market is efficient


Chinese security official calls for crackdown on gangs following Tangshan attack South China Morning Post


EU champion Airbus has deep links to Chinese military industrial complex, report says Politico