What we’re reading (6/8)
“Why The Pandemic Probably Started In A Lab, In 5 Key Points” (New York Times). “[A] growing volume of evidence — gleaned from public records released under the Freedom of Information Act, digital sleuthing through online databases, scientific papers analyzing the virus and its spread, and leaks from within the U.S. government — suggests that the pandemic most likely occurred because a virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China. If so, it would be the most costly accident in the history of science.”
“The Unexpected Origins Of A Modern Finance Tool” (MIT News). “Discounting calculations are ubiquitous today — thanks partly to the English clergy who spread them amid turmoil in the 1600s, an MIT scholar shows.”
“Beneath The Calm Market, Stocks Are Going Haywire” (Wall Street Journal). “It is easy to look at the piddling daily moves in the S&P 500 and think the market has been oh-so-boring recently. There hasn’t been a 2% move since February and the VIX gauge of expected volatility is only up a bit from the postpandemic low reached last month. Under the calm surface, however, there is furious paddling. Only once in the past 25 years have stocks swung about like this while the overall market stayed so placid. Traders in the options markets are betting on its continuing: Prices indicate the biggest swings in stocks for at least 10 years relative to the prevailing calm for the S&P 500.”
“Zombies: Ranks Of World’s Most Debt-Hobbled Companies Are Soaring, And Not All Will Survive” (Associated Press). “They are called zombies, companies so laden with debt that they are just stumbling by on the brink of survival, barely able to pay even the interest on their loans and often just a bad business hit away from dying off for good. An Associated Press analysis found their numbers have soared to nearly 7,000 publicly traded companies around the world — 2,000 in the United States alone — whiplashed by years of piling up cheap debt followed by stubborn inflation that has pushed borrowing costs to decade highs. And now many of these mostly small and mid-sized walking wounded could soon be facing their day of reckoning, with due dates looming on hundreds of billions of dollars of loans they may not be able to pay back.”
“Celebrating The Glamorous Heyday Of The Department Store” (Washington Post). “Convinced that top-notch service was key to their success, department stores offered their employees handsome salaries and often provided their staff with in-house health care and even resorts. They could take free courses in interior design and merchandising at New York University. The stores were, Satow posits in several compelling ways, a way for women to get ahead when few professional avenues were available to them.”
