What we’re reading (9/12)
“A ‘Tidal Wave’ Of Covid-Related Workplace Lawsuits Could Be On The Way” (CNN Business). “The nature of the coronavirus-related disputes vary, from allegations of wrongful death as a result of unsafe working conditions to wrongful termination for trying follow governors' orders to accusations that employers are using Covid-19 as a pretext for terminating employees for discriminatory reasons.”
“Goodbye, Open Office. Hello, ‘Dynamic Workplace’” (Wall Street Journal). “Cramming cavernous spaces with as many desks as they could hold might have increased serendipitous interactions, but it almost certainly reduced productivity and helped spread communicable diseases, including coronavirus…[c]ue the ‘dynamic workplace,’ a pivot away from the open plan, built on the idea that with fewer employees coming to work on any given day, offices can offer them more flexibility of layout and management. While open offices and dynamic workplaces share similar components—privacy booths and huddle rooms to escape the hubbub, cafe-like networking spaces, etc.—they’re philosophically distinct. One is intended to be a place where people come (at least) five days a week, and get most of their work done on site. The other is planned for people rotating in and out of the office, on flexible schedules they have more control over than ever.”
“Stocks Appear To Be Experiencing A Textbook Correction As Payback For An August Overshoot Rally” (CNBC). U.S. stocks are definitely down so far in September. But that doesn’t mean the characterization of month-to-date performance as a “correction” is accurate. Information changes constantly and, with it, so too should asset prices. The August gains could have been right then, but wrong now, in light of new information. There’s a huge debate about this in finance academia.
“How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled” (NPR). “[W]hen Leebrick tried to tell people the truth about burying all the other plastic, she says people didn't want to hear it. ‘I remember the first meeting where I actually told a city council that it was costing more to recycle than it was to dispose of the same material as garbage,’ she says, ‘and it was like heresy had been spoken in the room: You're lying. This is gold. We take the time to clean it, take the labels off, separate it and put it here. It's gold. This is valuable.’ But it's not valuable, and it never has been. And what's more, the makers of plastic — the nation's largest oil and gas companies — have known this all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite.”
“Gundlach Says High-Yield Bond Defaults May Almost Double” (Bloomberg). DoubleLine Capital’s Jeffrey Gundlach (the, or one of the, so-called “bond kings”) reportedly thinks “[h]igh-yield bond default rates may double as companies struggle with a protracted economic downturn even as the Federal Reserve props up valuations.” Per Gundlach: “It’s foolhardy to believe that one can have this kind of a shock to an economy and it just gets healed through a one-shot deal [from the Treasury].”
