What we’re reading (9/22)
“‘The Party Is Over’: How Meta And Google Are Using Recession Fears To Clean House” (Vox). “As Google’s parent company Alphabet and Meta have grown into corporate giants worth $1 trillion and $385 billion, respectively, they’ve swelled their staffing to over 150,000 and 80,000. Now, economic circumstances are giving management an opportunity to reset expectations, pressure staff to start working harder with smaller budgets, and show some workers the door.”
“Treasury Yields Surge As Global Central Banks Scramble To Respond To Fed, Inflation” (Wall Street Journal). “U.S. government bond yields surged Thursday, after foreign governments and central banks rushed to raise interest rates or otherwise support local currencies pressured by the dollar’s strongest rally in a generation.”
“In The Dollar We Trust” (Jeffrey Frankel, The Financial Express). “In a sense, the dollar’s recent rally may seem puzzling. After all, surging inflation and the ongoing economic slowdown should have hurt demand for dollars. But the greenback’s current strength can be explained by the relative resiliency of the US economy and the Federal Reserve’s ongoing commitment to raising interest rates.”
“Bad News From the Fed? We’ve Been Here Before.” (New York Times). “The outlook is gloomy, but it has been worse before. The last time severe inflation tested the mettle of the Federal Reserve was the era of Paul A. Volcker, who became Fed chair in August 1979, when inflation was already 11 percent and still rising. He managed to bring it below 4 percent by 1983, but at the cost of two recessions, sky-high unemployment and horrendous volatility in financial markets.”
“Quiet Quitting Is A Fake Trend” (The Atlantic). “What people are now calling “quiet quitting” was, in previous decades, simply known as ‘having a job.’”
