Books
Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Detect Deception — I didn’t get much out of this book. I knew a little bit about the data/science/research in the field, and this didn’t add to my understanding. It’s mostly a (poorly organized) collection of CIA and law-enforcement anecdotes. This third-party summary is probably all you need, if you’re interested.
Quoted
“We worried we’ve hired 10,000 people and we’ve built a smart timer.”
A former senior Amazon employee describing the debacle that Amazon created in Echo and its smart devices business. “[According to internal documents and people familiar with the business…[b]etween 2017 and 2021, Amazon had more than $25 billion in losses from its devices business.” And, as is so often the case, sloppy accounting allowed the problem to linger and metastasize. “[A] metric inside Amazon that helps explain why Echo and other devices could accrue such huge losses for so long with little repercussion. Called ‘downstream impact,’ or DSI, it assigns a financial value to a product or a service based on how customers spend within Amazon’s ecosystem after they buy it. The metric was developed in 2011 by a team of economists including an eventual Nobel Prize winner. In some instances, the model worked clearly. When customers buy Amazon’s Kindle e-reader—one of Amazon’s profitable devices—they are very likely to then buy ebooks to read on that device. In other cases—especially Echo devices—the downstream impact idea broke down, said the people familiar with the devices business. The system also enabled divisions to count the same revenue more than once, according to former executives.”
Facts & Figures
70% — share of total U.S. household wealth controlled by Americans over the age of 55. In 1989, the first year with comparable data, the figure was just 50%. (Source: Federal Reserve.)
3x — The number of ETFs and mutual funds compared with the number of U.S. stocks. The numbers were roughly equal 25 years ago.
2.1 to 2.2 — an estimate of global fertility rates (children born per woman in her lifetime), the first time in human history the figure has fallen below the replacement rate.
53% — the portion of the average U.S. household’s food budget spent away from (i.e., at restaurants) in 2023, a record high and up 10 points from 2003. (Source: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service).
15% — the decline in violent crime in the first quarter of 2024, compared to the same period in 2023. Crime fell in all categories, from property crime to homicide.
Articles
Which U.S. Stocks Generated the Highest Long-Term Returns? — I often tell people that the most important academic paper in finance is Hendrik Bessimbinder’s “Do stocks outperform Treasury bills?” The implications are profound, the research and data are sound, and the writing is clear. The link above is a new paper from him.
The Last 72 Hours of Archegos — Wild details from a crazy story.
Former College President Explains Funding Strategies Behind Universities — A useful look at where the money actually comes from and what matters in the financial sphere of universities.