This is really good from @matt_levine on tokenization.

If we're totally cool with people trading equity in "private" companies, because it's on-chain, then eventually it seems possible that in the future we don't have IPOs or even standardized disclosure for any company at all. Especially since for so many companies, the IPO is not so much a capital raising event, but rather a liquidity event. Why bother?

NEW ODD LOTS

The Booming Crypto Use Case That's Happening Right Now

@tracyalloway and I talked to @CampbellJAustin, prof at Columbia biz school and financial markets veteran, about the rise of stablecoins, and the genuine breakthrough that they represent bloomberg.com/news/articles/… I'd say if there's ever been an episode that came close to convincing me and @tracyalloway that there's a genuine, non-speculative use for open blockchains (e.g. Ethereum, Solana etc.), this is it.

SIX THOUGHTS ON THE AFTERMATH OF MONDAY'S BIG PLUNGE

In today's @markets newsletter, I wrote about where things stand now.

1) At least so far, things are much calmer than yesterday. Huge rally in Japan. The US rebound is fairly feeble. Meanwhile, "good news is good news" 2) We know the labor market is softening. But the question remains, can the Fed still get ahead of it?

10 THOUGHTS ON TODAY'S BIG MARKET SELOFF

In today's 5 Things newsletter, I jotted down a bunch of random stuff about this moment in stocks, crypto, FX, and macro.

Here they are

1) It was clear instantly on Wednesday that Powell was going to be offsides this market: 2) To some extent, I think the way Powell was talking about "normalization" of the labor market didn't make any sense, almost regardless of what's going on with the economy right now.

BREAKING:

BIG MISS ON UNEMPLOYMENT. UNEMPLOYMENT RISES TO 4.3%

JUST 114K NEW JOBS

Economists had expected 175K jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.1%.

bloomberg.com/news/live-blog… S&P 500 futures now down 1.6%

TRANSCRIPT: The full text of me and @tracyalloway's chat with @dsquareddigest about how the world lost its mind.

The concept of Accountability Sinks is so powerful, once you start noticing them.

Here's an example that lead to the murder of 400 squirrels bloomberg.com/news/articles/…






This is also extremely interesting how as organizations become more complex, it's almost inevitable that top management will have to rely more on financial information to understand what's going on, which is partly how you get situations like Boeing

NEW ODD LOTS:

How Corporations Learned The Maximum Amount They Can Charge For A Product

@tracyalloway and spoke with @ddayen and @owenslindsay1, who have published a special new edition of @TheProspect entirely about the new world of pricing strategies bloomberg.com/news/articles/… - How companies got better at tailoring prices to you individually
- Price fixing by algorithm
- How every industry got airline-ified
- The booming world of ancillary revenue, and the consultants that teach companies how to max them out
- Trading data for lower prices

++

NEW ODD LOTS:

How we got the modern electricity grid. And how nuclear got squeezed out.

@tracyalloway and I talked to @fredstaffordcs and @Matthuber78 about power market structure, and how "small is beautiful"-liberalism set back decarbonization bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Among the things we talked about:

- The history of utilities in this country, going from public utilities to private, for-profit players.
- Market impediments to nuclear
- The left's renewable energy fetish
- Lessons from the TVA

+ more

AMERICA HAS AN ELECTRICAL COMPONENTS CRISIS

@tracyalloway and I talked to @NNNIncome about the ongoing scarcity of switchgears and transformers, and how you have virtually complete buildings going empty because they can't get one critical missing part.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… As @NNNIncome explained there are basically five companies that make this gear. And thanks to booming demand (chips, AI, electrification etc.) they're still absolutely slammed.

He ordered a switchgear a year ago, and was just told it'd be another year's wait.

BREAKING:

BOOOOOM. 303K new jobs created. Unemployment rate falls to 3.8%. Prior months revised higher by 22K.

Economists were expecting 214K jobs and a 3.8% unemployment rate.

bloomberg.com/news/live-blog… 2-year yields move higher

BREAKING:

IT'S A BEAT. 199K JOBS. UNEMPLOYMENT RATE FALLS TO 3.7%. LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION RATE RISES.

Economists had been looking for 185K job gains, and an unemployment rate of 3.9%

bloomberg.com/news/live-blog… 10-year yields are spiking

👁️ 👁️ 👁️

NEW ODD LOTS: It's the most sci-fi episode we've ever done.

@tracyalloway and I talk to @worldcoin CEO @alexblania about the plan to use eyeball scanning orbs to let us prove our humanhood and collect UBI in a world where AI changes everything.
bloomberg.com/news/videos/20… @tracyalloway @worldcoin @alexblania I've been fascinated by the Worldcoin orb ever since it its inception.

The company was cofounded by @sama, whose work at OpenAI is contributing to the environment where we might feel the need to get their eyeballs scanned, in order to biometrically prove that they're not a bot.

I've been kind of following markets in one way or another for 25 years now, and I still don't know that much. But one thing that's true that I've observed is that every time the animal spirits get going, people start buying $PLUG

Wrote about it in yesterday's newsletter. This has got to be one of my favorite charts ever.

$PLUG share price (white) vs. $PLUG market cap (yellow)

TRANSCRIPT:

Full text of our chat with @pahlkadot and @allafarce is out.

If you're interested in State Capacity and "can governments build things" and all that stuff, there's so much in here that's eye opening and insightful on these questions. bloomberg.com/news/articles/… @pahlkadot @allafarce I don't even know where to begin with the various fascinating parts of this conversation, because there were so many.

One darkly hilarious nugget is that during the UI emergency in 2020, California hired people like crazy, and the effect was to slow claims processing down.

NEW ODD LOTS:

What really happens when governments build software?

UI systems, the Obamacare website, Treasury Direct, Tax filing pages

@tracyalloway and I had an incredible conversation with @pahlkadot and @allafarce about why it often goes so bad.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… @tracyalloway @pahlkadot @allafarce So many interesting lessons and insights between the two guests about state capacity, complexity, management, politics, budgeting constraints, institutional capture etc. And why up until recently Treasury Direct made you use a virtual on-screen keyboard

https://twitter.com/dbkahn/status/1664329368016158720

WHAT PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT THE 14TH AMENDMENT

In the newsletter, I wrote about the two supposedly "serious" options in the event of no deal, the big legal misunderstandings behind them. Based on our chat with @ArnabDatta321 and @IrvingSwisher

Sub here

bloomberg.com/account/newsle… @ArnabDatta321 @IrvingSwisher One other thing I've been thinking a lot about since yesterday is what a failure it is not to have started on the consol abilities sooner. One advantage it has over the coin is that they could have been issuing them easily this whole time with the infrastructure in place.

*SPECIAL BONUS ODD LOTS*

The White House is doing what it said it wouldn't do.

@tracyalloway and I talked to @IrvingSwisher and @ArnabDatta321 about how Biden said they wouldn't negotiate on the debt ceiling.
And now they're doing exactly that.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… The failure of the strategy goes back basically 6 months.

By not prepping any sort of contingency when the Republicans won the house -- The White House was left without any kind of offramp or credibility in its insistence on a clean hike.

TRANSCRIPT:

Here's CME CEO Terry Duffy's exact words on the latest Odd Lots about how his company is in a strong position to leave Chicago anytime it wants in response to tax hikes or other policies it doesn't like.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Another comment that I thought was interesting from Duffy was on the debt ceiling.

Duffy is a registered Republican, but seemed to take it for granted that the McCarthy bill from a few weeks ago was a non starter.

"The VFX team at Electric Theatre Collective and creative agency Blitzworks used a mix of live action shots, digital effects and AI to create the commercial and its complex transitions." creativebloq.com/news/coca-cola…

https://twitter.com/heyBarsee/status/1658015653071052803

I'd love to know more concrete details about the degree to which "AI" was used in this vs. what was called CGI, and how much money was saved and/or new capabilities introduced.

BIG NEW ODD LOTS:

Last week @tracyalloway and I sat down for an exclusive interview with CME CEO Terry Duffy.

He says his firm is prepared to leave Chicago "if we had to", as new progressive mayor Brandon Johnson enters office.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… According to Duffy, the CME owns zero real estate anymore in the city of Chicago, and that all of its office leases have language that allow the firm to break them under certain political conditions

BREAKING: BOOOOOOM

IT"S ANOTHER HUGE BEAT. 253K NEW JOBS, UNEMPLOYMENT RATE FALLS TO 3.4%

Economists had predicted 185K new jobs and for the unemployment rate to rise to 3.6%.

bloomberg.com/news/live-blog… futures slip modestly