Economy

A philosopher once famously said that Hell is other people. What the world has learned from Twitter is that Hell is other people’s opinions. It’s no wonder, then, that when Elon Musk came bounding into Twitter headquarters in late October — after changing his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit” — a popular response, on Twitter and off, was, “welcome to Hell.” When Musk, in an open letter to Twitter advertisers, wrote that he doesn’t want the site to become a “free-for-all hellscape,” he touched a debate concerning a much larger issue — balancing free speech against the need to keep hate, propaganda and manipulation out of public forums, particularly digital ones that can spread malicious content around the world instantly.

For anyone seeking direct proof that woke capitalism is nothing but a scam, look no further than Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of the now bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, who says as much in a direct message exchange with Vox reporter Kelsey Piper. He calls “ethics” a “dumb game we woke Westerners play” — presumably to avoid any scrutiny from journalists, employees, investors and consumers. I’ve worked for and with these people for decades. They want to convince you and the employees in their company that they are in it out of the goodness of their philanthropic hearts. They are just trying to make the world a better place, you see.

Bankrupted crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried is the talk of the town thanks to the implosion of his heavily celebrity- and lawmaker-endorsed digital currency platform, FTX. SBF cleverly disguised his shaky financial schemes behind an awkward personality and philosophy labeled as “Effective Altruism,” meaning giving away massive amounts of wealth in the name of simply doing good. It’s a popular philosophical fad that has caught on among progressive global elites in the philanthropy arena and seems to be quite popular among media elites as well. Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos announced a plan to donate most of his wealth, on the same day that 10,000 jobs were to be eliminated at Amazon.

Things aren’t going well for Tom Brady. His team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has a losing record. He is getting divorced, and FTX, the crypto exchange he was touting a year ago — and in which he was invested — has gone bust. He isn’t the only sports star with egg on his face after the collapse of FTX. Stephen Curry, Shohei Ohtani and Naomi Osaka, to name just three, also got greedy and believed the vision of Sam Bankman-Fried. Overnight, Sam Bankman-Fried has gone from crypto wunderkind to infamous huckster. The celebrities, influencers and traditional media outlets that helped make him a star shouldn’t be allowed to absolve themselves as quickly.

“He’s done.” That was the general consensus when I asked around about Donald Trump’s future in politics this week. And in the search for signs that Trump is in trouble, Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers are a good place to start. In the days since the disappointing midterm results, the New York Post, has already labeled the former president “Trumpty Dumpty” and praised his Republican rival Ron DeSantis as “DeFuture.” Trump's 2024 bid was relegated to page 26 on Tuesday, teased on the cover as "Florida man makes announcement." Things aren’t much better for the former president over at the Wall Street Journal. It has been crammed with anti-Trump op-eds since last Tuesday. One headline summed things up neatly: “Trump is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.

In recent weeks, the world’s richest man and his flailing attempts to figure out what to do with Twitter have dominated the news cycle. However, his unhinged management-by-tweets reality show are nothing compared to an almighty tussle between two crypto-bros. Internet magic money (aka crypto) billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, better known as SBF, is the man behind FTX, a crypto exchange. He seems to have angered fellow magic money billionaire and fremeny, Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ and CEO of the rival exchange Binance. It might have to do with FTX cozying up to regulators to get the regulations beneficial to the FTX but not its rivals.

Inflation continues to be the economic story of the day. While Democrats try to divert attention to the job market, and many Republicans seem more interested in appealing to “gut feelings” on issues like crime, the latest polling shows that rising prices remain top of mind for most voters. To the extent that the Biden administration is talking about inflation, it’s generally been to downplay the latest numbers (at least when not accidentally highlighting it with ill-fated tweets that take credit for historically high Social Security cost-of-living adjustments). But there is another talking point that some Democrats are taking as an alternative: big corporations are to blame, and windfall taxes are the solution.

Weekend host Tiffany Cross has been cut from MSNBC. According to Variety, "MSNBC decided not to renew Cross’s contract after two years... and severed ties with her immediately." The trade paper is rather euphemistic in its description of why Cross was shown the door: Executives at the network [were] growing concerned about the anchor’s willingness to address statements made by cable-news hosts on other networks and indulging in commentary executives felt did not meet the standards of MSNBC or NBC News. Allow Cockburn to translate: Cross was becoming burdensome to the network for her regular rash remarks.

As if getting fired from your job isn’t distressing enough, it’s got to hurt a whole lot more when you miss out on $122 million in payouts. Reuters reported that Elon Musk recently fired Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde. According to research firm Equilar, these folks were set to receive “golden parachute” payout packages worth up to $122 million in severance and unvested stock options. But according to the New York Times, “Mr. Musk… appears unlikely to pay the golden parachutes that the fired top executives of Twitter were set to receive. Under the merger agreement, those executives… had been set to receive compensation of $20 million to $60 million if they were fired. But Mr.

Cockburn has always had some formidable business rivals to contend with. It's not easy competing with the likes of other thinly sourced gossip rags like Page Six and the Washington Post (even if Cockburn is confident he could drink the staff at all those publications under the table). Yet so far as competition goes, it's Elon Musk who has it the worst this week. Last night, Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter, a calm and rational discussion site where people like to post helpful gardening tips and delicious recipes. "The bird is freed," Musk tweeted, though there are at least a few people (outside the expected left-wing freak-out) who won't be quite so pleased.

Cockburn keeps up with the Kardashians, so to him, Kanye West’s recent outbursts are not much of a surprise. But over the last few weeks, anyone that didn't previously know that he was, shall we say, in decline, is now fully aware. Ye's antisemitic comments, such as declaring that he would go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE” and continuously talking about how Jews “own the media,” have resulted in dire financial consequences for him, as the various businesses he works with cancel their contracts and denounce his remarks. The most recent — and arguably the most important — business collab that Ye has watched crumble is his partnership with Adidas. The lucrative multi-year deal to design sneaker brand Yeezy was valued at $1.5 billion.

America’s post-pandemic employment picture is an unsettling paradox. On the one hand, job totals are finally back above pre-pandemic highs — and unemployment rates skirt fifty-year lows. But at the same time, overall work rates are lower than they have been since the 1980s — and millions of workers who dropped out of the labor force during the Covid-19 lockdowns have yet to return. A peacetime labor shortage has erupted, yet vast numbers of men and women are still sitting on the sidelines of the economy. America is renowned for its work ethic — and rightly so. The average worker in the United States clocks more hours each year than those in Canada, Australia, Western Europe and now even Japan. But those are the work patterns of US men and women holding down a job.

The Biden administration’s Department of Labor recently released a new interpretive rule regarding whether workers are classified as employees or independent contractors. The action reverses a Trump-era rule that simplified the classification process, and was dedicated to preserving the gig economy. Employees are much more expensive than independent contractors — possibly by as much as 30 percent. This is, in part, because independent contractors are not subject to federal minimum wage or overtime regulations, among others, and are not protected by the National Labor Relations Act, meaning it is more difficult for them to unionize. This all may seem rather trivial, but the impact on both the consumer and the worker will be significant.