What we’re reading (7/30)

• “Congress Grilled The CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Here Are The Big Takeaways” (CNN Money). I watched the whole thing—some good, on-point questions, and a whole lot of totally off-point posturing completely tangential to the central antri-trust questions, as expected.

• “Index Giant S&P Faces Potential SEC Lawsuit Over Volatility Guages” (Wall Street Journal). S&P received a Wells notice indicating the SEC plans to bring an enforcement action against S&P for “failing to provide sufficient disclosures on certain volatility-linked indexes in 2018.”

• “JetBlue CEO Warns Of ‘Day Of Reckoning’ For Airlines As Coronavirus Continues To Devastate Demand” (CNBC). Continuing coverage the whole airline saga, and coverage that is supportive of our view that the airlines are generally garbage stocks at that. Apparently, the CEO of a major airline actually agrees with us. But note: the issue isn’t just that the “coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage travel demand”—a big part of the issue is that the airlines spent the better part of a decade going on a debt binge and then using said debt to make NPV-negative investments in their own value-destroying stocks.

• “As The Pandemic Forced Layoffs, C.E.O.s Gave Up Little” (Dealbook). “Some corporate bosses offered to cut their pay, but most did not. Those who did gave up less than 10 percent of what they received last year.” Nothing like a nice cushy job where your comp goes way up when things go well, and just simply doesn’t go down when they don’t. More on this from our perspective here.

• “Tech CEOs Testify Before Congress In Antitrust Hearing” (The Onion). “What’s the big deal? We still have four companies to choose from.”