Newmark's Door

If it weren't for the fact that when it soon comes public WeWork could well be one of the most "crowded" short trades ever--like Beyond Meat, for which I apparently massively overpaid for a few puts--I would short WeWork. This article quotes the registration statement as follows: “We are a community company committed to maximum global impact. Our mission is to elevate the world’s consciousness.”

Oh yeah, I really want to short elevating the world's consciousness.

This is yet one more example of why government should not try to pick business winners.

. . . the administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo hoped it was catching lightning in a bottle by spending $750 million in taxpayer money to land what then was a fast-growing business in a hot, environmentally friendly industry that promised to bring nearly 1,500 jobs to job-starved Buffalo. . . .

For $750 million, you expect more.

A few weeks back Treasury Secretary Mnuchin made an embarassingly stupid statement. Here's the corrective.

John Tamny:

Why would anyone want to be well below average, and expect to be paid in perpetuity for it? That’s only possible in government . . . 

Fine mini case study in how capitalism induces firms to supply what consumers want.

". . . has vied for (and frequently held) the mantle of busiest McDonald’s in the world." Guess where it is.

I don't know much, but I'm pretty sure that you can't get a paid vacation if your employer goes out of business.

Or take de Blasio’s paid-vacation mandate, which will cost the husband-and-wife owners of One Girl Cookies an extra $57,000 a year, as they described in Crain’s. “The mayor’s argument that business owners can absorb these additional costs and are just pretending that they cannot is outright insulting,” owner Dawn Casale wrote.

I've never been but it sounds interesting. 91 years is impressive.

Interesting story about how PepsiCo is currently doing well with its core products. The key supposedly is doing something that I wouldn't have expected. (And which sounds difficult to sustain for very long.)

Pepsi soda and snacks are booming, in part, because the company is routing more of that stuff to convenience stores and packaging it up in smaller bags and bottles. . . . Packaging, it turns out, can be a great antidote to competition. 

Related: "The Curious Case of PepsiCo's Product Volumes".

I don't know that there's much that's novel here, but I haven't seen the claims so clearly expressed.

Disappointingly little data--just an anecdote or two and some comments from observers--but if this finding held up on closer examination, wouldn't that be . . . unexpected?