background preloader

More & more Economic Theory & Bits...

Facebook Twitter

American Beauty Servers Refuse to Work Following Tip Pooling Dispute. Krispy Kreme Offers Vaccinated Customers Free Ride On Glaze Conveyor Belt. WINSTON-SALEM, NC—As a token of its appreciation to members of the public doing their part to fight Covid-19, leading doughnut purveyor Krispy Kreme announced Wednesday it would begin offering vaccinated customers a free ride on its glaze conveyor belt.

Krispy Kreme Offers Vaccinated Customers Free Ride On Glaze Conveyor Belt

“We know a lot of our customers stayed home this past year and missed visiting their local Krispy Kreme, so the least we can do is offer them a complimentary glazing once they get inoculated,” said CEO Michael J. Tattersfield, explaining that anyone who displays a qualifying Centers for Disease Control Vaccination Record Card would get to hop on the conveyor and receive a full-body coating of sugar, milk, and light corn syrup. “Spraying our patrons head-to-toe in a fresh, piping-hot layer of our trademark icing is our way of saying thank you to those who choose to get vaccinated. Texas utility files for bankruptcy after $2.1 billion power bill - Raw Story - Celebrating 16 Years of Independent Journalism. The largest electricity co-operative in Texas has filed for bankruptcy protection after it received a $2.1 billion bill from the state's grid operator following last month's winter storm that left millions without power.

Texas utility files for bankruptcy after $2.1 billion power bill - Raw Story - Celebrating 16 Years of Independent Journalism

Bitterly cold weather in mid-February left millions without electricity across Texas as the Arctic conditions overwhelmed local utility companies ill-prepared for such weather. Brazos Electric Power Cooperative, which supplies 16 co-op members serving more than 1.5 million Texans, said it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday after receiving "excessively high invoices" from the state grid operator Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). According to court filings, Brazos said it was hit with invoices from ERCOT totaling more than $2.1 billion, with payment required within days. Five Small New York Landlords Who Are Stuck. Photo: ballyscanlon/Getty Images The reality that tens of thousands of New Yorkers haven’t been able to make rent during the pandemic has been one of the biggest stories of the past year.

Five Small New York Landlords Who Are Stuck

Less attention has been paid to the flip side of the housing equation: the thousands of small landlords who have had their finances fractured by a year of eviction moratoria, many of whom are now either cutting their losses and selling or on the verge of foreclosure. As rent debts have mounted for tenants, so too have the credit-card balances, defaulted repair costs, property-tax bills, and new loans for smaller landlords who own a single building or at most a handful of properties. Apartment buildings and houses that once provided a path to the middle class for immigrant New Yorkers have now become a burden that they can barely afford to operate.

And, for many, it seems increasingly unlikely that they will be able to pass them on to the next generation. Redditors’ Class-Action Lawsuit Alleges Robinhood On Some Bitch Shit. Here's Why People Are Leaving California In Droves. Avoid the ‘Great Reset’ in Three Easy Steps. David James There are two things that should be understood about the global financial markets as the world faces what is being called the Great Reset, or Bretton Woods 2.

Avoid the ‘Great Reset’ in Three Easy Steps

The first is that the US dollar rules the world (as distinct from the US nation). The second is that the system is insane. Sure, it may look rational with all those numbers, charts, ratios, algorithms and impressive-sounding technical terms. But collectively the whole thing is mad. Lessons From Wall Street: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world.

Lessons From Wall Street: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

That’s all you’re seeing in efforts to manage information via censorship, algorithm changes, “fact” checking, Russian propaganda panic, etc. Humans are story-driven animals, so if you control the stories you control the humans. Lessons from this whole Wall Street/Reddit ordeal: The stock market is a scam.There is no “free market” and there never will be.Wall Street predators are the most despised people on earth.The public can do more to fight back than it had previously assumed.There’s surely a lot more we can do to fight back that we haven’t thought of yet. You can’t expose how rigged the system really is without pushing against its power structures according to its own rules. Every single hedge fund plutocrat has at some point in their lives thought the words “I can’t believe I’m getting away with this!” World's largest wealth fund withdraws from oil sector.

Bloomberg reports: Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has sold its entire portfolio of companies focused on oil exploration and production, marking a major step away from fossil fuels for the investing giant.The portfolio, worth about $6 billion in 2019, was fully exited by the end of last year, Trond Grande, the fund’s deputy chief executive, said by phone on Thursday.

World's largest wealth fund withdraws from oil sector

‘Buy! No, Sell! No, Buy!’ Scream Dueling Front And Back Faces Of Jim Cramer Trying To Drown Each Other Out. ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NJ—The spinning head of Jim Cramer reportedly began to make rapid 180-degree rotations during Thursday’s taping of Mad Money, with the dueling front and back faces of the show’s host screaming “Buy!

‘Buy! No, Sell! No, Buy!’ Scream Dueling Front And Back Faces Of Jim Cramer Trying To Drown Each Other Out

No, sell! No, buy!” Sustainable Investing: Debunking 5 Common Myths. It began as a niche desire.

Sustainable Investing: Debunking 5 Common Myths

Originally, sustainable investing was confined to a subset of investors who wanted their investments to match their values. In recent years, the strategy has grown dramatically: sustainable assets totaled $12 trillion in 2018. This represents a 38% increase over 2016, with many investors now considering environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors alongside traditional financial analysis. Despite the strategy’s growth, lingering misconceptions remain. Hotel Restaurants Are Using Empty Rooms as Private Dining Suites. ThereThere are few restaurants Hector Tamez frequents more than Uni, the izakaya located in Boston’s boutique Eliot Hotel.

Hotel Restaurants Are Using Empty Rooms as Private Dining Suites

Consider the presentation, he says, or how the staff feels like family. Then, of course, there’s the Chiang Mai duck carnitas. “I would take it over several highly ranked Michelin-starred restaurants that I’ve been to any day,” Tamez says. Regulators concerned that the Reddit day trader army made money in GameStop trading instead of the hedge fund elite. Reuter's reports that "regulators may scrutinize GameStop's Reddit-driven retail stock surge.

Regulators concerned that the Reddit day trader army made money in GameStop trading instead of the hedge fund elite

" In other words, the wrong people made money. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said in a statement on Wednesday the agency was "actively monitoring" market volatility without offering specifics. The Southern District of New York, which could have jurisdiction over a criminal case, declined to comment.Wild swings in GameStop's shares led the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to halt trading in the company several times this week. 'WE OWN YOU NOW!' Redditors triumphantly taunt hedge funds after spoiling effort to short GameStop stock - Raw Story - Celebrating 16 Years of Independent Journalism. The big story in the financial world on Wednesday has been the stunning rise in the share price of video game retailer GameStop, which had been the target of a short-selling campaign by big hedge funds.

Did COVID-19 Shutdowns Destroy Economies and Save Lives? Data Shows… A man wearing PPE makes a delivery to the Royal London Hospital during England’s third national lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus. Picture date: Tuesday January 19, 2021. Yui Mok/PA Images via Getty Images. Super rich party it up during COVID-19, the 'poor person’s virus'

While the rest of us hunker down, forgo our vacations and family reunions, and suffer from maskne (the acne that comes with wearing a mask) — in the world of the uber-rich, it’s very, very different. Despite the coronavirus still killing 1,000 people a day in America and unemployment is at an all-time high, billionaires are throwing parties, traveling on private jets, luxuriating on yachts around the world, buying citizenship in “safe” countries and having fun on $12,000 motorized surfboards. “Coronavirus is a poor person’s virus,” one wealthy Silicon Valley denizen told Vanity Fair. And while the majority of the country is tightening their belts, the rich have become richer with billionaires becoming 10% wealthier during the COVID-19 crisis — and they’re starting to live in a parallel universe than the rest of us.

“All these rich people can’t stop themselves,” a person who is close to a number of wealthy tech CEOs and venture capitalists told the magazine. The pandemic windfall. Large companies and the very rich made a killing last year, while the U.S. wealth gap became wider than ever. Here's everything you need to know: Who has benefited?

Tech giants, many major corporations, and Wall Street investors have had eye-popping gains during the pandemic, even as the COVID-19 recession has devastated major sectors of the economy. Apple's total stock value climbed to $2.29 trillion, up 133 percent since March. Amazon's share price increased by 70 percent. Freedom Agenda 21 – Agorism in the New Year. 'We have no market, but lots of lobsters': a Maine lobsterwoman fights for her livelihood. Can a Worker-Owned App Pull Drivers From Uber and Lyft? Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images. The economics of the human hair trade. Desperate AMC Touts Theaters As Nice Dark Places For Teens To Rub Each Other’s Genitals.

LEAWOOD, KS—In an attempt to boost ticket sales by reminding young patrons of the unique benefits offered by cinema, the increasingly desperate movie chain AMC Theaters rolled out a new marketing campaign Thursday that touted its venues as nice dark places for teens to rub each other’s genitals. Study of 50 years of tax cuts for rich confirms ‘trickle down’ theory is an absolute sham. Neoliberal gospel says that cutting taxes on the wealthy will eventually benefit everyone by boosting economic growth and reducing unemployment, but a new analysis of fiscal policies in 18 countries over the last 50 years reveals that progressive critics of “trickle down” theory have been right all along: supply-side economics fuels inequality, and the real beneficiaries of the right-wing approach to taxation are the super-rich.

“Cutting taxes on the rich increases top income shares, but has little effect on economic performance.” Tom Colicchio On The Future Of The Restaurant Industry: 'We’re Looking At An Extinction Event' Rising Coronavirus Cases Force Chicago To Set Up Temporary Bars In Hospitals. CHICAGO—As the city grappled with measures that would adequately address the infectious disease’s unchecked spread, rising coronavirus cases forced Chicago this week to set up temporary bars in hospitals. “With more Chicagoans testing positive and requiring medical care, we have no choice but to fight this thing by adding more bars and restaurants to the city’s medical facilities, including emergency tents for crowded eateries and transforming wards normally used for surgery patients into makeshift taverns,” said Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, adding that if the number of hospital admissions continued to rise, the city would be forced to put nurses who had tested positive for coronavirus but were asymptomatic back to work taking drink orders.

Canada Dry Settles Yet Another 'Not Enough Ginger in Ginger Ale' Lawsuit. Is America's Most Famous Bookshop on the Verge of a Mutiny? The hidden economy of schoolyard trades. In ‘90s-era schoolyards, there was a hidden economy at play. What Joe's Stone Crab can teach CEOs about the quest for profit. The economics of vending machines. $20 Billion Melbourne Property 'Black Hole' Has Economists Clutching Their Calculators. An Unprecedented 1,640 CEOs Departed in 2019; Now Execs Are Dumping Stock at Highest Pace Since 2006.

Why the No-Tipping Restaurant Model Failed. The Most Overpaid And Underpaid Movie Stars, Visualized. Trader Joe's Knows That Petitions Aren't Commandments. CEO Who Took $1M Paycut To Give All Employees $70K Minimum Salary In 2015 Explains How It Affected The Company. The Major U.S. Airlines Have All Eliminated Change Fees for Good. Oil companies wonder if it makes economic sense to continue oil exploration - Attention to the Unseen. Which Are the 20 Most and Least Profitable Companies Per Employee? COVID-19 Will Kill Lots of Shopping Malls. The sad end of Brooks Brothers. The secret economics of a VIP party. Why a small town in Washington is printing its own currency during the pandemic. The Great Tulsa Remote Worker Experiment. Sweden’s Restaurants Stayed Open in the Pandemic. This Is What Their Chefs Learned. It Took a Pandemic, but 7-Eleven in Japan Is Letting Stores Take a Break. There Is a Way to Bring Back Most Restaurants.

Brooks Brothers leaving Garland. The Anatomy of the $2 Trillion COVID-19 Stimulus Bill. As Oil Price Plummets, Call to Nationalize Industry Rises. This Is the Only Way to Save the Restaurants You Love. Theoretical Commodities Trader Explodes Into Flash Of Pure Energy While Attempting To Buy Negative-Priced Oil. This Is What Happens When Bitcoin Miners Take Over Your Town. Can cash carry the coronavirus? Russia thinks so. My Rich Clients Keep Trying to Book Me for Pandemic Sex. Strip Club Pivots to Topless Food Delivery During COVID-19. Saudi Arabia just won control of the oil market (opinion) Denmark’s Idea Could Help Avoid a Great Depression.

Amid a pandemic, rideshare drivers choose between health and livlihood. ‘A terrible day’ for NM’s restaurants, bars. Restaurants Become Corner Stores to Stay in Business Throughout the Coronavirus Pandemic. Fine Dining Restaurant Canlis Switched to Take Out Food Service After Coronavirus. Who Will Save Swiss Made? The global economic threat of the coronavirus.

Coronavirus doesn't tell the full story behind Dow's plunge. Blue Apron Was a Really Bad $2 Billion Idea for Silicon Valley. Snakes In Suits: Are Psychopaths Running The World? Economist Robert Reich explains why millennials don’t have any money. Uber made it cheaper to take a helicopter than a car to the airport. Bike share: The decade’s biggest transportation success story. Why some of America’s top CEOs take a $1 salary. YouTuber Uncovers Disturbing Truth About the Jalapeños on Subway Sandwiches. Judge Dismisses $210 Million Lawsuit Against CBC Report That Said Subway Chicken Is Fake. WeWork Should Learn Something from Marriott and Hilton. Do You Tip Your Uber Driver? Five facts about student loans. 20 Years of Ace, The Hotel That Changed Everything. Trump’s Trillion-Dollar Hit to Homeowners. Hospitals are getting into the housing business - Axios.

Glade Introduces New Vanilla Passion Fruit Unmanned Aerial Application Vehicle. American companies have a hiring problem. 18 Kirkland Products You Should Buy at Costco. Panera losing nearly all workers in fast-food turnover crisis. Top CEOs agree that tackling social issues matters as much as wealth creation - Axios. What Are Payroll Taxes and Who Pays Them? Warren Buffett Tells Colleagues About Exciting Investment Opportunity He Recently Discovered Selling Mary Kay Beauty Products. Facebook plans its own currency for 2 billion-plus users. Travel - The unique culture of Japanese convenience stores. The South's Economy Is Falling Behind: 'All of a Sudden the Money Stops Flowing'

Your Grocery Store and Office May Soon Come to You. Boycotts Google, Facebook, Patreon. What Xi Jinping Wants - The Atlantic. Hard times for Whole Foods: 'People say it's for pretentious people. I can see why' Cookies are Not Accepted - New York Times. Ann Taylor Loft to close Uptown store. How the Government Uses Taxes. The retail apocalypse is creating a 'rolling crisis' that is rippling through the US economy. Paid Labor Is the Moral, Competitive Thing to Do.

How Alaska fixed Obamacare. The World’s 50 Best Restaurants Get by With a Lot of Unpaid Labor.