What We’re Reading

Media:

We don’t have interviews of Thomas Jefferson. There’s no interviews of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington. Why is that? Because the interview format, as we now know it, came about as a form of entertainment education in the 1950s on The Tonight Show, and then other spinoffs on daytime talk shows and so forth.

Risk:

I define risk as uncertainty about lifetime consumption broadly defined. People invest because they want to use their wealth in the future. Some might plan to spend all the money on themselves for things like food, shelter, travel, recreation, and medical care. Others may plan to spend some of their wealth on political contributions, charitable donations, or gifts and bequests to their children. My definition of lifetime consumption includes all these and any other anticipated uses of wealth.

Alcohol:

Among adults younger than 65, alcohol-related deaths actually outnumbered deaths from Covid-19 in 2020; some 74,408 Americans ages 16 to 64 died of alcohol-related causes, while 74,075 individuals under 65 died of Covid. And the rate of increase for alcohol-related deaths in 2020 — 25 percent — outpaced the rate of increase of deaths from all causes, which was 16.6 percent.

Phoenix:

The median home was worth about $285,000 at the beginning of the pandemic; it was valued at $435,000 two years later. It wasn’t unheard of for a seller to receive 50 offers or more, or for a prospective buyer to make offers on a dozen different homes before finally closing a deal.

Investments:

Bill Miller’s net worth is half bitcoin and “close to the other 50% is in Amazon … all of the rest of the investments I have are basically there to support margin debt.”

Baby boom:

Finland’s government has been working arduously to stem the country’s rapid population decline. Since the 2019 elections, a cabinet run by a millennial woman has produced eight offspring, with two more on the way. Regular Finns have joined in the baby making: The number of live births jumped 6.7% last year, the most in nearly five decades.

Other nations on Europe’s northern rim have experienced their own pandemic baby bumps, making the region of 28 million people an outlier among advanced economies, several of which have seen fertility rates drop to historic lows.

Have a good weekend.