US financier, philanthropist, and think-tank founder Michael Milken made his name creating and profiting spectacularly from the high-yield bond market, an achievement that earned him the nickname “the junk bond king.”
The Milken Institute Global Conference is now underway in Los Angeles. Speakers this year include… deep breath… IMF chair Christine Lagarde, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio, presidential daughter Ivanka Trump, CBS host Gayle King, former basketball player and entrepreneur Earvin “Magic” Johnson, U2 guitarist The Edge, Hollywood bigwig Jeffrey Katzenberg, Sesame Street’s Elmo, and former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett.
The song “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X is the surprise hit of 2019. Using the Atlanta rapper’s musical methodology, we tried to make the next one.
Good news for unimaginative offspring: Amazon’s Mother’s Day Gift Shop went live on the internet last week.
Perhaps you’ve noticed a pattern emerging in your daily or weekly planner. While plenty of projects cycle on and off the to-do list more or less on schedule, a stubborn handful turn over from one day, week, or month to the next without progress—and frustratingly, they are the projects you find most meaningful.
Six years after its release date, the Disney musical Frozen remains the most popular animated film of all time. The teaser trailer for the November sequel, Frozen II, has drawn more than 36 million views since appearing on YouTube last month. There’s no singing in it, but for many viewers the mere sight of Elsa, Anna, Kristof, and the gang is likely to trigger “Let It Go”-induced flashbacks.
The film Office Space turned 20 this year. The movie created a vocabulary that transformed things people loathed at work into things they could laugh at: the “PC load letter” error message; “Did you see the memo?”; the precise pitch of a “yeah” that really means “no.”
Every year, some 2,000 people fill the ballroom of a Los Angeles DoubleTree for the annual meeting of a publishing and technology called the Daily Journal. They come to hear company chairman Charlie Munger, best known for working alongside Warren Buffett for decades at Berkshire Hathaway, hold court for two hours. People ask questions, and if he’s interested Munger answers them, but mostly it’s a chance for a 95-year-old billionaire to talk about whatever he wants to in front of a crowd eager to listen.
There’s been plenty of anecdotal evidence of over-anxious parents filling out job applications for their grown offspring or stalking their hiring managers on social media. Actual data on the prevalence of this kind of helicopter parenting has been hard to find.
The first jars of pureed fruits and vegetables marketed as baby food appeared on US grocery shelves in the late 1920s. Parents rejoiced. By the 1950s, 90% of US babies were slurping up store-bought purees. Marketed as a convenient, modern, healthy way to nourish an infant, prepackaged baby food was an unchallenged staple of the American infant diet for decades.
French dog musher Nicolas Petit started off on Monday (March 11) with a commanding five-hour lead in the Iditarod, the famous 1,000-mile dog sled race across Alaska. Petit placed second in last year’s competition and has finished in the race’s top 10 five times in the last six years. Victory seemed to be his.
Let’s talk about revealed preference. When people say they like family owned businesses, but actually spend their money at @Walmart, that’s a revealed preference. Watching what people do as opposed to what they say is important. Talk is cheap and often false. Action is real.
The Modern Language Association, better known as the MLA, is hiring a copyeditor.
On a sunny day—and it is nearly always sunny in Los Angeles—the Walt Disney Concert Hall shines like a giant silver flame bursting from the pavement of downtown’s Grand Avenue.
I used to be a member of a coworking space in a strip mall next to a bowling alley. As coworking spaces go it was a pretty terrible one: buzzy fluorescent lights, long laminate tables peopled with scowling men on laptops, aggressively awful art.
In the sentencing memo for former national security advisor Michael Flynn, special counsel Robert Mueller recommended little to no jail time, noting that Flynn had offered useful information to the special counsel. Mueller recommended substantial jail time for former Trump associate Michael Cohen, given the serious nature of his crimes, but commented in his memo that Cohen had been a remorseful and cooperative defendant.
One of Berkshire Hathaway’s quirks is that the Omaha-based conglomerate has no company-wide budget (though many of the businesses it owns maintain their own). Berkshire subsidiaries are never required to submit budgets or forecasts to the central office. Chairman Warren Buffett has long practiced a decentralized management style in which the managers of subsidiary businesses are largely left to run their companies as they see fit.
Something is off with Lime scooters.
The last quarter of 2018 was a tough one for investors as US stocks tumbled. When you’re as big as Berkshire Hathaway, there’s an especially long way to fall.
Ask a couple who’s been together for more than a decade how they met, and you’re likely to hear a winding explanation of whose college roommate was friends with the cousin who introduced them at a party.
In the 1940s, most people in a relationship in the US reported meeting their partner in one of three ways: through family, friends, or school.
During its 2002 investigation of the bankruptcy of Enron, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) checked the energy company’s emails: more than 600,000 messages sent from 158 employees, mostly senior management.
Charlie Munger has built a long career and an estimated $1.7 billion net worth through his investing, most famously as Warren Buffett’s right-hand man at Berkshire Hathaway. He practically snorted when an audience member asked in May at Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting if he would ever consider hiring an independent wealth manager to look after his fortune.
At Thursday’s annual meeting of the Daily Journal Corporation, the publishing company’s chairman, Charlie Munger—better known as the business partner of Warren Buffett and vice chairman at Berkshire Hathaway—was asked about an oft-repeated maxim of his about hiring. The rule of thumb, as summarized on his behalf by a shareholder in the audience: A person with a 130 IQ who thinks it’s 120 is often the best hire; one with a 170 IQ who thinks it’s 250 will be a disaster.
