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, 3 tweets, 1 min read
With its latest infusion, Softbank will have invested $10+ billion and loaned $5 billion to WeWork—a firm it now values under $8 billion.

Now I'm not a professional investor like the folks at Softbank. But that seems... terrible.

wsj.com/articles/softb…
With access to all the same information that public investors saw in the S-1, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs bankers valued WeWork at $80-100 billion.

Months later, the company's latest valuation is under $8 billion.

What a disaster.
This isn't just financial rubbernecking. It's a disaster.

Thousands of people could lose their jobs because of this disastrous misallocation of capital.

People who moved cities, moved families, diverted and uprooted their lives to participate in this crazy house of cards.
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Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
I wrote about something I think would surprise and confuse a lot of casual economic news readers:

1. Wages are rising fastest at the low end.

2. Wage growth in low-pay sectors is outpacing high-pay sectors by the widest margin in at least 20 years. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
It's a politically inconvenient fact, for both parties.

D's often ignore the stat—bc it feels like giving Trump credit for a thing.

The corporatist GOP ignores the cause—bc it would mean praising minimum wage laws and demand-side benefits of targeting low unemployment.
I also think media makers can suffer from something like Narrative Loss Aversion.

The wage inequality narrative is powerful, memorable, and has historical merit.

But this makes it hard to *see* new data that suggests a new wrinkle in the story.
Read 5 tweets
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Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
This Sean Wilentz essay in @nybooks is a fabulous history of Trump as the culmination of 70 years of Republican politics, rather than some wild departure from the party’s trajectory.

nybooks.com/articles/2019/…
@nybooks 1. He’s good on the familiar history, from the New Right of the late 1950s—which combined a distrust of the liberal international order with strong support for southern segregationists—to Pat Buchanan.

But he’s very VERY strong on the quietly Trumpy legacy of the GWB admin.
@nybooks 2. GWB might be a loud critic of Trump today. But let’s not forget that his administration pioneered, or accelerated, a style of anti-science, anti-expertise, anti-diplomacy politics and topped it off w/ a helping of old-fashioned bigotry.

Also, the constant, constant lying.
Read 5 tweets
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Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
For the past century, Americans prayed far more than every other large rich country.

But in 1990, religious non-affiliation in the U.S. took a sudden turn, which has re-shaped American politics, marriage, and identity.

I wrote about what happened.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
There are three big-picture historical causes:

1) The rise of the Christian Right in the 1970s and 80s, which accelerated Evangelical sorting into the GOP but turned off young liberals.

2) The end of the Cold War, which severed the association btw godlessness and "Evil Empire"
3) As the rise of radical Islam gave New Atheists grist to argue for religion's inherent violence, young liberals also continued to reject the church as a proxy for the illiberal politics, and the perceived theocratic overreach, of GWB administration
Read 4 tweets

Related threads

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Xinqi Su
@XinqiSu
#NOW in Tsim Sha Tsui, umbrella-holding protesters have occupied Salisbury Rd and walked into Nathan Road. Not a huge crowd but many are waiting along roads from TST pier.
Cantonese is difficult but not too difficult
@ Nathan Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui
Hold it tight when storm looms - protesting couples in #AntiMaskBan march in Tsim Sha Tsui.
Chan Ka-ming, a pro-democracy district council candidate, is chanting slogan at a TST station exit on Nathan Rd.
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Xinqi Su
@XinqiSu
#NOW in Causeway Bay, a small crowd, including members of the yellow-vest Guard The Children group, are standing in shade outside Sogo. Quite a number of reporters waiting nearby, for a march that's uncertain whether will take place.
While #CarrieLam televised her vid speech, protesters filled East Point Rd in Causeway Bay, many defying #MaskBan
#NOW protesters took to westbound lanes of Hennessy Rd in Causeway Bay
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Scott Galloway
@profgalloway
You haven’t even begun to see the anger that will be unleashed on Adam Neumann. He has 15,000 people right now who are stuck cleaning up. They feel like circus clowns shovelling the shit. He has taken $750M & left a toxic waste cleanup.

interview @nymag
nymag.com/intelligencer/…
Adam Neumann came in, smoked his own supply, and walked out with three-quarters of a billion dollars about the time that people in hazmat suits showed up.
SoftBank is the only firm in the world that will put money into this thing right now. They either have to go back to their limiteds and say, “We’re probably putting good money after bad,” and create an argument for why there’s still value there, or they have to go bankrupt.
Read 9 tweets
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Xinqi Su
@XinqiSu
#NOW in Tsim Sha Tsui , people are forming human chain that is set to extend along Nathan Road towards Jordan
Hold hands with @pepe , the spirit animal of #HongKongProtests , is the theme of tonight's human chain from Tsim Sha Tsui to Prince Edward Station.
Pepe in human chain : one with a broken but still illuminating heart, black bloc pepe, big pepe, hand drawn pepe.
Read 8 tweets
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Downtown Josh Brown
@ReformedBroker
This is the part I never want you to forget.

Wall Street was THISCLOSE to selling you #WeWork at $50 billion.

Stop quacking like a duck and they’ll stop throwing breadcrumbs at you.
One last thing - if $UBER were at 70 now instead of 30, $WE IPO would’ve been fine and Adam would’ve had complete control. No one is ever in complete control of their own destiny.
For more of this sort of thing, subscribe to The Compound

youtube.com/thecompoundrwm…
Read 3 tweets
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Mujtaba Rahman
@Mij_Europe
Latest piece. With short #Brexit thread
Mood in Brussels is bleak. Many senior EU officials now put odds of no-deal at 60% or higher—their central scenario. Discussions are starting on how to cushion the EU’s economy from any macroeconomic blow that may arise from no-deal Brexit 1/
Senior EU officials think May’s deal is sunk. They’re sceptical the Commons can coalesce around an alternative plan 2/
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