MARKETS
- China: The Chinese government’s been working overtime to boost its manufacturing sector, and it appears to be working. Manufacturing activity in March surprisingly beat expectations.
- U.S. markets: Lyft’s IPO grabbed all the headlines Friday (including ours), but investors know that this week's data deluge will be the true gut check for the economy as we kick off Q2.
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TECH
Zuckerberg: Regulate Me
Facebook CEO/sucker for pain Mark Zuckerberg has penned a WaPo column calling on governments to take a more “active role” in regulating the internet.
He outlined four main areas for regulators to tackle...
1. Harmful content
The problem: Facebook serves as a platform for its billions of regular users to post content. But when that content is more “terrorist propaganda” than “brunch photo,” the company has struggled to determine the right approach to removing it. Zuck said he agrees with lawmakers that Facebook has too much power over what constitutes free speech.
Zuck’s solution: Develop a more standardized approach by setting up an independent body of non-FB employees to enforce rules. Think a Supreme Court.
2. Protecting elections
The problem: Misinformation campaigns (aka “fake news”) on Facebook have interfered with democratic elections around the world. But as the company tries to provide more transparency, it’s having trouble classifying what should or shouldn’t be considered “political.”
Zuck’s solution: Let governments set common standards for verifying political actors. The NYT’s Mike Isaac thinks this could work: “When the next erroneous outburst inevitably occurs, Facebook could point toward the law it was forced to follow.”
3. Privacy
The problem: The Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed that Facebook was playing fast and loose with user data. New privacy regulations, like Europe’s GDPR law, have come into effect...but that’s leading to an increasingly fragmented internet.
Zuck’s solution: A global privacy framework à la GDPR.
4. Data portability
The problem: Should you, as an internet user, be able to freely move your personal info from one service to another?
Zuck’s solution: Yes. (Easier to say when he owns WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger.)
Zoom out: For Zuckerberg and other Big Tech players, “regulation” isn’t a bad word anymore. It’s a set of common rules that’ll allow them to further cement their dominance of the internet.
FASHION
Keeping Up With a Multibillion-Dollar Empire
Yeah, we’re going there. The return of Keeping Up With the Kardashians last night for season 16 (!!) reminds us that a) the devil works hard but Kris Jenner works harder and b) the family has spawned a relentless business empire.
Some of their greatest boardroom hits, via the NYT:
- Kim’s KKW Beauty line sold about $14.4 million in product during the first five minutes it went live in 2017.
- Kendall, who recently became the world’s highest-paid model, pocketed $26.5 million in just 53 paid Instagram posts last year.
- And Kylie is (however hotly debated) Forbes’s youngest self-made billionaire thanks to her 100% ownership stake in her Kylie Cosmetics brand. And don’t forget about the time she toppled $1.3 billion off Snap’s value after tweeting, “Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me … ugh this is so sad.”
We think the NYT puts it best: “The sisters are a media company if it swallowed a makeup conglomerate, mated with a fashion line and birthed athleisure babies.” Will they get alliterative names, too?
ENVIRONMENT
Have a Weekend, Environmental Regulation
Earth Hour, when cities turned off their lights to promote climate change action, was just one slice of a blowout weekend for environmental advocates.
Plastic bag ban
New York will become the second state after California to ban (most) single-use plastic bags starting in March 2020, which means bringing a stylish tote to the grocery store has never been more important.
NYC residents use 71,000 tons of nonbiodegradable plastic bags annually, and according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the bags “have blighted our environment and clogged our waterways.” Small business and retail trade groups criticized the policy.
Drilling ban reinstated
A federal judge in Alaska overturned a President Trump executive order that reversed an Obama-era ban on offshore drilling in the Arctic Ocean and parts of the Atlantic.
That sentence had a triple negative so let’s spell this out. President Obama had banned offshore oil and gas drilling in those areas in an effort to protect rare species, a move President Trump reversed in 2017. And on Friday we got the reversal of the reversal. The American Petroleum Institute criticized the ruling.
COMMODITIES
*Insert Decaf Coffee Joke Here*
As is weekend tradition, we were perusing the pages of the Global Coffee Report yesterday when we read that coffee prices fell to their lowest in more than a decade last month. And in Q1 as a whole, coffee futures slid at least 7.2%.
So what’s going on? Oversupply (plus trade concerns and a weaker Brazilian real). Brazil, the top producer and exporter of arabica coffee beans, harvested a record amount last year—sending global coffee inventories to a 4.5-year high.
About 25 million families produce coffee globally, and per the GCR, “Today, most of them cannot even cover their production costs and many of them cannot make a living for themselves and their families.”
Zoom out: Coffee has missed out on a major rally in commodities since the start of the year. The asset class had its best quarter in nearly three years in Q1, with lean hog futures up 45% and gas and crude oil futures both jumping over 30%.
CALENDAR
The Week Ahead
Like stinky tofu and thrash metal music, economic data is an acquired taste. This is a great week to acquire it.
Monday: Fynance Fest launch; retail sales; PMI manufacturing index
Tuesday: Motor vehicle sales; earnings (Walgreens, GameStop); World Autism Awareness Day
Wednesday: ADP employment report; more U.S.-China trade negotiations
Thursday: India’s Reserve Bank announces rate policy; jobless claims; earnings (Constellation Brands); National Hug a Newsperson Day (we're available)
Friday: Jobs report
WHAT ELSE IS BREWING
- Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO and Page Six staple, hired a security consultant who “concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access” to Bezos’s phone.
- New York City has become the first in the nation to approve congestion pricing.
- Dumbo has E-A-R-S, but not enough T-I-C-K-E-T-S. The Disney remake led the North American box office this weekend, but it fell short of estimates.
- In Ukraine, comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, who has no political experience but played the president on TV, has won the most votes in the country’s first round of presidential elections.
- The Final Four is nearly set in both men's and women's college basketball. Texas Tech, Michigan State, Auburn, and Virginia will battle for the men's title and UConn and Oregon punched their tickets in the women's tournament.
BREAKROOM
Greater Than, Less Than, or Equal to
- Number of Amazon employees globally // Population of Boston,
- Age of Alibaba // Age of Zion Williamson
- Amount U.S. consumers spent on Airbnb in 2018 // Amount U.S. consumers spent on Hilton in 2018
- The number of students Yale admitted last year from an applicant pool of 36,843 // 3,000
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Breakroom Answers
Greater Than, Less Than, or Equal to
1) Less than. Amazon employees globally = 613,300. Boston population = 685,000.
2) Greater than. Alibaba was founded in 1999 and Zion was born in 2000.
3) Greater than. U.S. consumers spent more on Airbnb than on Hilton in 2018.
4) Less than. Yale admitted 2,178 students for an admission rate of 5.91%
