Thursday, June 25th, 2020
Welcome to the eighth edition of Nuggies, an email newsletter that aggregates articles and commentary on business, economics, startups, and more, in bite-sized nuggets sent right to your email twice a week. Created by and for college students.
Our quote of the week comes from 20th Century Indian spiritualist Osho, “Your whole idea about yourself is borrowed – borrowed from those who have no idea of who they are themselves.”
This Week’s Articles:
Defying Dire Predictions, China Is the Bubble That Never Pops, Bloomberg
Oftentimes macroeconomic and geopolitical discussions of China are longwinded, convoluted, and plain boring. This article, however, is the opposite. Here, the author takes a look at China’s fast recovery from COVID (they are projected positive GDP growth this year) and looks at the factors that made it possible. The overarching theme is the amount of state control that China wields over the economy. While in most cases this control is a bad thing, in the instance of COVID, it may have been the key factor to overcoming it so fast. More broadly, it may be a reason that the Chinese “economic bubble” never seems to pop.
Read it here
TikTok Teens and K-Pop Stans Say They Sank Trump Rally, The New York Times
This article is as hilarious as it is unbelievable. It discusses last weekend’s Trump campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and how teens banded together to artificially inflate attendance expectations. Teens on social networking app TikTok and young fans of K-Pop music encouraged their followers to reserve free tickets to Trump’s June 21st rally without showing up, and it worked. Organizers claimed to have over a million tickets reserved, but those numbers didn’t ultimately materialize as the 19,000-seat arena was not full. This is a great article about the incident, which sheds some light on how kids are participating in the electoral process these days.
Read it here
The Rage Unifying Boomers and Gen Z, The Atlantic
This is a great article that compares today’s protest movements to those of the 1960’s. It draws comparisons between the widespread cultural momentum that both of these movements have created, noting that they were both born of dissatisfaction with an unequal social structure. It also calls attention to a big shortcoming of the 60’s movement: a failure to bring national political change. In moving forward, the big question will be whether our current movement will be able to translate our momentum into real, tangible, political change.
Read it here
Wirecard’s Insolvency Is a Warning to Fintech Investors, The Wall Street Journal
Wirecard, a German digital payments company, began bankruptcy procedures on Thursday after a recent audit found the company was missing $2.1 billion in cash. Wirecard later said the cash likely doesn’t exist and is the result of years of accounting fraud. The result of the audit came after a group of investors began shorting the company due to concerns about its business model. German authorities reacted by actually banning short selling, even though the concerns turned out to be valid. This article does a great job explaining some of the regulatory challenges around fintech around the world and explores what happens if regulators overstep.
Read it here
This Week’s Tweets:
This Week’s Wildcard (an extra, interesting nugget):
Here is Gorbachev in a 2007 Louis Vuitton ad. Consumerism transcends history.
This Week’s Question:
Should a firm’s chief responsibility still be to maximize profits for the shareholders?
What are we listening to this week?:
This week, it’s DAYTONA by Pusha T. At just 21 minutes, is the epitome of quality over quantity—a victory lap for a true rap veteran. Although it never experienced wild, mainstream success, it’s a true classic. Pusha takes it to the next level rapping about luxury, esteem, drug dealing (true to form), combined with masterful production from Kanye West on each song and an $85,000 piece of cover art.
Thank you for reading! Nuggies is created by Thomas Pero and Spencer Koehl, two undergraduate students at the University of Notre Dame.
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