What we’re reading (10/10)
“How Citadel CEO Ken Griffin Built a $1 Billion Private Property Portfolio” (Wall Street Journal). “In the early 1900s, the country’s wealthiest businessmen including William Randolph Hearst and John D. Rockefeller built sprawling, gilded estates. Living at that kind of boundless scale fell out of favor with subsequent generations, however, and these kinds of estates were either subdivided or turned over to the state or to preservationists. Now, hedge-fund multibillionaire Ken Griffin appears to be mounting a single-handed campaign to bring that level of extravagance back into vogue. Over the past five years or so, Mr. Griffin, an ambitious 51-year-old businessman who started his initial trading business from his Harvard University dorm room as a freshman, has developed a reputation among real-estate insiders as the luxury market’s whale, racking up a string of purchases that tally up to over $1 billion.”
“How Big Tech Became Such A Big Target On Capitol Hill” (CNBC). “After a 16-month investigation into competitive practices at the largest U.S. tech companies, Democratic congressional staffers laid out their findings this week in a 449-page report. They concluded that Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google enjoy monopoly power that needs to be reined in, whether that means breaking the companies up, blocking future acquisitions or forcing them to open their platforms.”
“Airline Miles Programs Sure Are Profitable. Are You The Loser?” (New York Times). “[A]s carriers have made their case to legislators in recent months, some have also been pitching banks — using their customers’ faith in free travel as a kind of collateral…[T]hey and their lenders think they have customers, over 100 million of us in each program, right where they want us. Take it from a Delta securities filing from last month, which called the foundational aspect of frequent-flier programs ‘the fundamental aspiration of earning a free flight.’ Because of our desire for freebies, Delta added, it can ‘manage costs by modifying inventory levels and value.’ In other words, the airline can raise the prices of trips and upgrades, in miles, at any time. And it believes it can do so with relative impunity from a passenger revolt or from intense protest by American Express cardholders.”
“The New Black Friday: Amazon, Target, Best Buy And Others Kicking Off Holiday Sales” (Washington Post). “Some of the nation’s largest retailers will begin rolling out Black Friday sales this weekend — earlier than ever and the latest sign of how the pandemic is reshaping the biggest shopping season of the year.”
“A Columnist Makes Sense Of Wall Street Like None Other (See Footnote)” (New York Times). “In financial news — a medium not known for cultivating eccentric or literary voices — there’s no other writer quite like Mr. Levine, a former Goldman Sachs banker whose deadpan style mixes technical elucidation and wit.”
