America's largest firms employ fewer workers. Three housing crises not one. Less money for science and conscious walking.
Great links, images, and reading from Chartbook Newsletter by Adam Tooze
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Rodrigo Valenzuela, Mask #2, 2018, archival pigment print mounted on Sintra.
Less Labour: How many people were employed by the largest US companies by market capitalization?
US oil production will fall next year for the first time since the Covid-19
US oil production will fall next year for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a government forecast that will cast new doubt on Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda. The Energy Information Administration, a division of the energy department, on Tuesday said US oil production would drop from a record high of 13.5mn barrels a day now to about 13.3mn barrels by the end of next year, as slumping oil prices rattle the sector.
Source: Financial Times
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Shed a tear for endowment managers who have their funds tied up in private equity that isn’t paying out cash any more.
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America’s three types of housing problems. Excellent post this by Nolan Gray
Housing Shortage Crisis: These are the places where there is simply too little housing, of every variety, everywhere in the city. In these places, we urgently need to build more housing, in any form.
Housing Inaccessibility Crisis: These are the places where housing is cheap by national standards, yet still inaccessible due to low local incomes. In these places, the near-term fix is to build subsidized deed-restricted affordable housing and expand access to housing choice vouchers. The long-term fix is to create the conditions for economic revitalization.
Housing Choice Crisis: These are the places where the typical family can afford a home, but they have little choice regarding the type, quality, or location of housing. In these places, we should focus on allowing a range of housing typologies in the most in-demand areas.
Source: Arbitrary Lines
Not so rare earth
Commodity giant Glencore Plc produces lots of cobalt, the metal that goes into batteries. So much that it doesn’t know what to do with it all. So why not create a second-hand market? Enter Cobalt Holdings Plc, a company trying to raise $230 million in an initial public offering in London…
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Rodrigo Valenzuela, Weapons #29, 2022, Silkscreen, acrylic on collage cardboard and canvas
In the first five months of the Trump Presidency, a billion-dollar gap has opened in US science funding.
Source: The New York Times
A truly brilliant passage by Tom Johnson, from an utterly devastating review that is on the face of it about the writing of English medieval history, and the issue of kingship, but ends up being about so much more:
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Conscious walking
My walking companion, John Pepper, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a movement disorder, over two decades ago. He first started getting symptoms nearly 50 years ago. But unless you are a perceptive and well-trained observer you would never know he has the disease. He doesn’t appear to have the classic symptoms of the Parkinson’s patient … His recovery began in 1998. Understand that typical modern walking is a kind of controlled fall forward. What keeps us from falling over is that our feet support our weight first on one side, then the other. But Pepper discovered that when he walked, his weight was never well supported on the ball of his left foot, so he didn’t dare lift his right leg enough, and that he tended to drag his right foot. He observed that his left foot had no spring to it and he was not pushing up and forward on it. His left heel was still touching the ground when his right touched down. His right foot didn’t always clear the ground as it passed his left leg, giving rise to his shuffle. If the right foot did clear the ground, he could never straighten his rigid right knee fast enough, so that his right foot landed heavily because his body wasn’t sufficiently supported by his left foot. These were just the most obvious of the many subtle observations he made as to why he could not experience the controlled fall his walking should have been. It took him three months to get his left foot to support his full body weight. If he concentrated on supporting his body weight on his left foot, he was no longer in an uncontrolled fall and his right knee had time to straighten out before the heel touched the ground. Such attention required an extremely focused, almost meditative concentration, as when a child learns to walk for the first time or when a student does the slow-motion walking of tai-chi, which teaches more perfect movement by slowing things down. His close observation exposed all the other problems of his gait. It took him a year of practice to internalise all these changes. His walking normalised – as long as he paid attention and concentrated on each action. Now that he was walking he could benefit from the fact that walking is “neuroprotective” because it triggers brain growth factors, and some new cells, in the brain.
Source: The Guardian by Norman Doidge
Rodrigo Valenzuela, American-Type Series, 2018; archival pigment print mounted on Dibond with artist frame; 54 x 44 inches; Courtesy of the artist and Klowden Mann Gallery, Culver City.
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