Photo: Getty Images
Hey guys. I won’t bury the lede: the ‘dumpster fire’ I described at Twitter is based on reported, but largely anonymous, sourcing. That said, even if Twitter has more than the reported TWO principal engineers on hand, the company’s lack of paying its rent (lawsuits in Singapore and SF, for example).
Add the introduction of a paid option for SMS two-factor authentication for Twitter logins, etc, and it screams ‘Hey, we’re running short of revenue … any ideas?!’
Bottom line: I’d bet that if Twitter employees are showing up to work and being all chill, they’re likely on their third interview with another company. Just sayin.
- Main Street Take: Are we going to have a recession, or not?!
- Unemployment / prices / outlook
- The authors note that the U.S. growth outlook continues to improve. Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs Research lowered its odds of a recession in the next 12 months from 35% to 25%, citing persistent strength in the labor market and early signs of improvement in business surveys. If the economy continues to prove resilient, investors will likely update their forecasts and build in expectations that longer-term interest rates will remain higher for longer, resulting in a more modest yield curve inversion.
- More broadly, Briggs and Kodnani conclude that low unemployment and mostly recovered participation rates mean that labor markets in many developed economies are unusually tight — leaving little scope for sharply above-trend job growth without pushing up inflation. However, labor force participation can keep rising in tight labor markets, so it may be possible to eke out further gains in a modestly above-trend job growth environment, say Briggs and Kodnani. As a result, they revised their 2023 forecasts for the U.S. labor force participation rate and unemployment rate to 62.4% and 3.6%, respectively, from 62.3% and 3.9%.
- Remote work may be here to stay. And it’s killing big offices and their ecosystems. The trend is most pronounced in New York, where workers are spending at least $12.4 billion less a year near their offices due to about 30% fewer days in them. For millennials, many in the middle of their professional careers, the extra savings might come in handy.
- OK BOOMER: A report shows that those born from 1981 to 1996 earn 20% less than baby boomers did at their age. Another survey found millennials age 28-38 had a lower net-wealth-to-income ratio than any previous generation.
- China had warned of retaliation over the downing of a balloon earlier this month, but the latest salvo in tension-filled U.S.-Sino relations came over arms sales to Taiwan. Beijing imposed sanctions on Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) and a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies (NYSE:RTX) by adding them to a so-called "unreliable entity list" that aims to punish firms that jeopardize its national security. It comes on top of fines that are based on the contract value of their arms sales to Taiwan, which the Chinese Communist Party considers as part of its sovereign territory. The Pentagon is also reviewing its arms stockpiles after seeing how fast ammunition has been drained during the war in Ukraine. General Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the analysis could result in an increase in the U.S. military's $817B annual budget - especially as concerns grow over the security environment should another war break out in the Taiwan Strait.
- The week that was – and the week that’s coming (and why it matters)
- This is Wall Street stuff as well as policies that may influence things
- Inflation talk can slide here
- A mixed inflation report resulted in a mixed day for the market indices. Following the release of the latest Consumer Price Index report, the Dow and S&P 500 finished the choppy session on Tuesday marginally in the red, while the Nasdaq posted a modest advance. It came as investors debate the direction of the Fed after the upcoming meeting in March and the probability of changes to U.S. monetary policy. On display was a headline CPI figure that inched down to 6.4% Y/Y in January - marking the seventh straight month of easing inflation - though the cooling is moderating, with the CPI rising 0.5% M/M, compared with a previous 0.1% increase in December. Stocks later fell on Thursday following the release of January’s Producer Price Index, with wholesale costs coming in hotter than expected. (331 comments)
- Twitter in a very macro way
- + What to Follow: I've stopped Tweeting, which has been hard since I'm an internet dopamine addict. But I still post on the fast-growing Mastodon network. If you're on that federated platform, you can follow me here. If you're looking for nice user interfaces for Mastodon, I'd recommend Ivory for the iPhone, and Elk for the web. I've also been posting on Post.News, which is a new centralized platform that's a cross between tweeting and blogging.
- Women execs leaving big business – and that’s bad:
- One of the most prominent women in tech, YouTube (GOOG, GOOGL) CEO Susan Wojcicki, also said she'd step down from her position to focus on "family, health, and personal projects." Wojcicki was one of Google's earliest employees, having rented out her garage to co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, and later shepherding YouTube to a premier position in online video. Her departure comes at a time when YouTube is under pressure from falling advertising revenue, as well as intense competition from TikTok (BDNCE), Facebook Reels (META) and streamers like Netflix (NFLX). Wojcicki will be replaced by her longtime lieutenant Neal Mohan, a senior ad and product executive who joined Google in 2008. (32 comments)
- Disney