What we’re reading (1/18)
“The Disney Executive Who Made $119,505 A Day” (Wall Street Journal). “Even by show-business standards, former Walt Disney Co. executive Geoff Morrell netted a massive payday from his brief time in Hollywood. Mr. Morrell started working at Disney on Jan. 24, 2022, as the company’s chief corporate-affairs officer. He left less than four months later following a public-relations implosion that led to employee protests and pitted the company and then-CEO Bob Chapek against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. For those 70 weekdays, Mr. Morrell made $8,365,403 in total compensation—or about $119,505 a day, according to calculations based on a proxy statement that Disney filed Tuesday.”
“Larry Summers Is Warming Up To The Idea That The Federal Reserve Can Stick A Soft Landing After Previously Warning A Hard Recession Is Imminent” (Insider). “Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is starting to grow more optimistic about the US economy and the Federal Reserve's ability to stick a soft landing, according to a recent interview. He told Bloomberg on Wednesday that it’s a good sign inflation is starting to cool down even as the job market remains resilient. ‘I’m still cautious, but with a little bit more hope than I had before. Soft landings are the triumph of hope over experience, but sometimes hope does triumph over experience,’ Summers said.”
“Will It Be Morning In Joe Biden’s America?” (New York Times). “[W]hile consumer expectations haven’t caught up with financial markets, which appear to believe that inflation will stay low for the foreseeable future, consumer expectations of inflation are back down to their levels of a year and a half ago.”
“ChatGPT Has Investors Drooling, But Can It Bring Home The Bacon?” (Ars Technica). “[James] Cham [of Bloomberg Beta] compares the current situation to the early days of the Internet, when some obscure but evocative demos turned out to precede a sea change in the workings of software, tech companies, and wider society. ‘We’ve had decades of great AI demos, but this is the first one where you give it to someone and they are really excited about the possibilities,’ Cham says of ChatGPT.”
“Comparing Your Client To The Mafia Isn’t The Flex MSG's Lawyer Thinks It Is” (Dealbreaker). “Madison Square Garden already enjoys the sort of public approval you’d expect from an organization that kicks a mom escorting a Girl Scout troop out of a Christmas show. The woman worked at a law firm involved in a suit against a restaurant that MSG owns a stake in, and despite this having nothing to do with Radio City Music Hall, MSG pays for advanced facial recognition software to deliver some bush league bullying upon anyone on a firm website. After the Girl Scout story, most companies would launch a public relations campaign to salvage its reputation, but MSG is not most companies.”
