What we’re reading (4/26)
“Private Equity’s Latest Trade: The Financial Futures Of Millions Of Retirees” (Semafor). “Over the past three years, about $135 billion of corporate pension liabilities have moved from America’s biggest companies to insurers. They are converted from corporate promises, vestiges of an era of generous paternalism, into an annuity, a type of insurance contract that has become the hottest product on Wall Street. In the process, they lose the backing of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a government entity that guarantees workers’ retirement benefits if their pension plans fail. Instead, any insolvency would be resolved by state insurance funds, which operate similarly to the FDIC’s fund for bank depositors and try to make as many people whole as possible from what’s left.”
“Thinking Doesn’t Have To Feel So Hard” (Wall Street Journal). “In a study published in the journal Science in 2020, Westbrook and colleagues found one way to do just that: Pay attention to the benefits of completing the task, instead of the effort required. The researchers gave participants the choice of solving an easy memory puzzle for a small amount of money or a much harder puzzle for more money. The options were displayed on a screen, and participants’ eye movements were tracked as they decided which puzzle to attempt. When people spent more time looking at the reward for the challenging puzzle, they were more likely to choose it. ‘The results suggest that if our mind’s eye, or our attentional focus, is on the benefits of an option, then sure enough, over time we’re more likely to choose to do hard things,’ Westbrook says.”
“‘Nation Of Makers’: Britain Industrialised Over A Century Earlier Than History Books Claim” (University of Cambridge). “Britain was well on its way to an industrialised economy under the reign of the Stuarts in the 17th century – over 100 years before textbooks mark the start of the Industrial Revolution – according to the most detailed occupational history of a nation ever created…According to Shaw-Taylor’s estimates, the share of the British labour force in an occupation involving manufacturing rather than agriculture was three times that of France by 1700.”
“With Inflation This High, Nobody Knows What A Dollar Is Worth” (New York Times). “Using nominal returns in an inflationary era can lead you to the erroneous conclusion that market is generating phenomenal returns.”
“Police Rumble Gang Stealing Antique Books Across Europe” (euronews). “Works by Russian literary greats such as Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol were substituted with valueless counterfeits from European libraries. European authorities say they have rounded up a criminal gang who stole rare antique books worth €2.5 million from libraries across Europe. In a press release, Europol announced they had arrested nine Georgian nationals in Georgia and Lithuania who are thought to have collaborated in the plot, in which at least 170 books were stolen.”
