🍋 Covid Baby Bump

Good Morning and Happy Friday! If you thought Kim K’s 72-day marriage was a comically short tenure, wait till you hear about Liz Truss’ run as prime minister. Liz lasted 4.1 Scaramuccis, tanked Britain’s stock market, and dipped - after just 44 days. Her economic plan that sent markets plummeting was reversed earlier this week.

Lionel Messi also has a new side-gig running a venture capital firm. Messi is worth over $600 million, but even the rich are joining the side-hustle economy.

As if managing $10 trillion in assets wasn’t enough, BlackRock is also a close confidant to many governments and megabanks. A new report found the firm has personally advised the Ukrainian president, the Fed, Catholic Church, and more.

1. Story of the Day: Covid Baby Bump

I guess we found out what everyone was really up to during Covid lockdowns and the work-from-home boom. Last year, the US birth rate spiked up 6.2% from its pre-pandemic levels.

The baby bump initially puzzled most economists. Birth rates usually fall during rocky times, be it recessions, wars, or previous pandemics. Some economists even predicted 500,000 fewer U.S. births in the year following Covid-19.

But economic theories don’t always translate to real life. Experts focused on money as the key factor impacting birth rates. In doing so, they overlooked arguably an even more valuable resource: time.

Flexible work provides more time to deal with the demands of pregnancy and raising newborns. Some workers may have felt they weren’t ready to make that time commitment to starting a family before Covid.

Before the rise in work-from-home, some thought they had to choose between climbing the corporate ladder or starting a family. As work-from-home ushers in more family time, Americans are finding they can balance responsibilities as workers and parents better than ever. The quick economic recovery from Covid didn’t hurt the baby boom, either.

Takeaway: Turns out Elon Musk wasn't the only one trying to solve the population crisis - everyone has been doing their part. Birth rates increased in 2021, as flexible work allowed parents to both balance career and family responsibilities. Remote work may dwindle over the coming years, but younger professionals may get the chance to experience a better work-life balance than previous generations.

2. Markets Rundown

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Stocks closed lower for the second day as inflation worries outweighted earnings.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) AT&T ($T) +8% after positive earnings, adding over 700,000 new subscribers.

• (+) IBM ($IBM) +5% after beating earnings, growing software business.

• (–) Tesla ($TSLA) -7% after missing revenue expectations.

Private Dealmaking

• Prime Medicine, a gene editing company, IPO’d for $175 million

• Holidu, a vacation rental startup, raised $102 million

• Stability, a digital media firm, raised $101 million

• Prenuvo, a radiation-free MRI producer, raised $70 million

• Orbex, a British spaceflight company, raised $46 million 

• Meilisearch, a search engine startup, raised $15 million

Top Reads

• Even the uber-rich are on edge about the economy now (CNN)

• Blackstone’s warnings sink, private equity portfolio takes hit (Reuters)

• Time to ditch the 9-to-5 workday? (Axios)

• How an antitrust battle over GIFs could be a wake-up call for Silicon Valley (CNN)

• The business titans sounding the alarm over the economy (Fox)

• 65% of Goldman workers now in-office 5 days a week (Fortune)

• Why mortgage rates are soaring (Axios)

• America’s nuclear power industry has a Russia problem (Reuters)

• BMW will invest $1.7 billion to produce electric vehicles in the U.S. (CNBC)

• Deutsche cuts investment banking jobs as M&A deals dry up (Reuters)

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4. Book of the Day: Megathreats

Renowned economist Nouriel Roubini was nicknamed “Dr. Doom,” until his prediction of the 2008 housing crisis and Great Recession came true--when it was too late. Now he is back with a much scarier prediction, one that we ignore at our peril. There are no fewer than ten overlapping, interconnected threats that are so serious, he calls them Megathreats.

From the worst debt crisis the world has ever seen, to governments pumping out too much money, to borders that are blocked to workers and to many shipments of goods, to the rise of a new superpower competition between China and the U.S., to climate change that strikes directly at our most populated cities, we are facing not one, not two, but ten causes of disaster.

There is a slight chance we can avoid them, if we come to our senses—but we must act now.

“We are heading toward the worst economic catastrophe of our lifetimes, unless we can defend against ten terrifying threats.”

Medium of the Day: TheFutureParty Newsletter

Want to receive the latest in business, entertainment, and internet culture right to your inbox every single morning? Not just the stuff everyone else is covering -- these are the stories that drive the future, all in a quick and witty package.

That’s what TheFutureParty newsletter is all about.

With every email you open, every story you read, you’re going to have the jump on the rest of the crowd.

Join over 170,000 driven professionals who read the newsletter every day.

5. Short Squeez Picks

• LEX allows you to build your own portfolio of single-asset commercial real estate investments. Sign up for free here

• 5 social traits the wealthy have in common

• 10 persuasion books that will help you level up

• Emotional intelligence might make you more resilient, but there’s a catch

• Learn these 9 soft skills to maximize your potential

• The power of work friends

6. Daily Visual: Price Changes in Mortgage REITs & S&P500

Source: Axios

7. Daily Acumen: Speed of Change

“Moore’s law talks about the fact that computer chips get faster and cheaper over time.

It turns out that the biggest shift to our culture isn’t the changing speed of a computer chip, it’s what happens when we network humans together.

Adding more people to the internet has accelerated science, politics and every element of culture. The echos happen faster, the learning is exponential, and connected communities heat up and morph ever faster.

Science used to be a solo endeavor. A monk with some pea plants could figure out genetics. Today, there are millions of people advancing the work of millions of people, with new updates coming all day long. The problems are dramatically more difficult, but the solutions are possible because we’ve multiplied the speed of change.

Thinking of problems as things for individuals to solve is hopelessly out of date.”

Source: Seth's Blog

8. Crypto Corner

• Blockchain makes its case beyond crypto assets

• Four states order metaverse casino to halt sales of NFTs

• Grayscale CEO says SEC lawsuit isn’t about Bitcoin

• Crypto regulation’s global challenge

• Billionaire Bankman-Fried tries to fix crypto’s hacking problem

• Messaging the metaverse 

9. Memes of the Day

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