What we’re reading (7/22)
“Nike Is In Trouble. Can the Olympics Save It?” (Newsweek). “Nike is going for gold this summer as an official supplier for Team USA's competition uniforms for the Paris 2024 Olympic following a string of problems with the company, including poor financial performance, job cuts and criticism over its products. The sportswear brand took a kicking this spring for its Major League Baseball uniforms, with players complaining of color mismatches, see-through pants and fabric that changed after coming into contact with sweat.”
“Paul Singer Thinks There’s More That Sucks About Starbucks Than The Coffee” (Dealbreaker). “He may have been annoyed that the bacon-egg-and-gouda sandwich he’d been craving to go alongside cinnamon dolce latte was out of stock. Perhaps he popped in to one of a recent trip to China and noticed how empty it was compared the growing number of competing roasteries around it. That or, like founder Howard Schultz, he noticed that its stock was down by nearly a quarter this year and decided it was Starbucks itself rather than his own swimming head that required a pick-me-up.”
“The Spectacular Rise And Surprising Staying Power Of The George Foreman Grill” (The Hustle). “This year marks the 30-year anniversary of the grill, officially known as the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine. After a slow start, it became an indelible part of ‘90s consumer culture and the world’s most popular product for cooking hamburgers, hot dogs, salmon, and just about everything else (Oprah Winfrey preferred it for bacon).”
“Global Computer Collapse Is A Chilling Look At What’s To Come” (New York Post). “In recent years, there have been an increasing number of widescale internet outages, whether from Amazon’s cloud platform collapsing, misconfigurations in fundamental network infrastructure, or actual hardware. The CrowdStrike outage was worse than any of these because it didn’t just hit the backbone of the internet, but individual endpoint computers, knocking out crucial services not just from a central failure, but by taking down everything it touches.”
“The 401(k) Rollover Mistake That Costs Retirement Savers Billions” (Wall Street Journal). “Workers miss out on billions in investment gains by pulling retirement savings out of the stock market after switching jobs—often without meaning to. When people roll 401(k) balances from their old company’s plan into an individual retirement account, the money is frequently held as cash until they select new investments. Many never do, according to new research from Vanguard Group. Nearly a third who rolled savings into IRAs at Vanguard in 2015 still had the balance sitting in cash seven years later.”
