Holiday weekend greetings from New York City.
We’re still a baseball city, and we’ve been known to gamble here and there. The two are set to become even more intertwined, with money from legalized gambling a greater part of sports teams’ revenues and the fans’ experience. Want to bet on the next batter getting a hit, or even the nature of the next pitch? The odds may be displayed directly on screen. Some fans won’t like it, Adam Minter writes in Bloomberg Opinion, but the alternative would be worse: higher costs for cable, streaming and tickets. Another week, another 600 points in the Nasdaq 100. How does this keep happening? It may be that despite the Federal Reserve’s best efforts to drain the economy of vigor, nothing terrible has actually happened to the corporate earnings engine. The situation can be seen in the seven largest stocks, all technology related, whose giant rallies since January account for almost all the market’s gains.
Joe Biden is formally kicking off his reelection campaign on Saturday at a rally in Philadelphia, where he began his race in 2020. He’s unlikely to go after Donald Trump over his criminal charges, wary it would play into GOP allegations the prosecution is politically motivated. He’ll press his domestic achievements and argue they’ve fueled economic growth.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to China this weekend, becoming the most-senior US official to visit the country in five years as the US looks to ease tensions that have provoked fears of open conflict between the world’s two biggest economies. There’s much to discuss and a little face time doesn’t hurt, but expectations for the trip aren’t high.
Canada’s enormous wildfires and the acrid haze they’ve spread across North America have widened a schism in the country’s politics. While politicians in Alberta and Saskatchewan — Canada’s oil-producing heartland — and Conservatives in Ottawa can no longer deny climate change, they still stand in the way of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ambitions to cut emissions.
A stampede of Northeasterners in search of sunshine and cheaper living sent Florida’s housing market into a frenzy through the pandemic. The manic demand is finally starting to wane. Read how soaring mortgage rates and insurance premiums have eroded one of the Sunshine State’s most alluring attributes: affordability. Too much even for billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who said last month he’d be reluctant to relocate his operations to Florida because of home prices.
Will fraudsters be able to use deepfakes — technology that can replicate our images and our voices — to scam us? Enter: The Orb, an eyeball-scanning device that could provide everyone with a unique personal identifier in the new AI world. Think a global social security number, except you never have to share what it is with anyone. The Odd Lots podcast spoke with Alex Blania, the CEO and co-founder of Tools For Humanity, the developer behind the Orb.
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sat down with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait to discuss his life and career upon turning 100 years old. The conversation ranged from his concerns that China may end up in a military conflict with the US over Taiwan, to the future of President Vladimir Putin after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He talks about how his own worldview was shaped by what he experienced as a Jewish teenager escaping Nazi Germany and by what he saw in the concentration camps as an American soldier.
We’re all-in that three days off are better than just two. Enjoy the long weekend.