Money Stuff – Mumbo-Jumbo

From June 16:

Banks take deposits (short-term loans from investors) and use them to fund long-term loans to companies, so everyone gets what they want; there is a whole apparatus of capital and prudential regulation to make sure that it mostly works out, and there are decades of theorizing about how it works and how it could work better and so forth. And there are various forms of shadow banking that also do this sort of “maturity transformation”: Investors make short-term investments, companies get long-term financing, and some mumbo-jumbo occurs in the middle to make everyone feel better about it.

Find Matt Levine at Bloomberg.

Twitter blocked in Nigeria after deleting a tweet by its president

From The Verge:

In April, Twitter opened its first office in Africa in Ghana, which some in Nigeria considered a snub. In its announcement, Twitter cited Ghana’s support of free speech, online freedom and the Open Internet as the reasons for its decision. Nigeria’s information minister said at the time that Twitter’s decision not to locate its Africa offices in Nigeria was due to misrepresentation of the country by the media.

Nothing like proving Twitter’s call as absolutely correct.

Money Stuff – Comes with Popcorn

From June 2:

“Beginning today, shareholders can sign up to receive special offers and investor updates by registering at amctheatres.com/stockholders. Investors who sign up starting today and in the coming weeks will be awarded with an initial free large popcorn usable this summer when attending a movie at an AMC theatre in the United States. The offer will be made available in their AMC Stubs rewards account.”

Yeah. I have no notes, that’s perfect. “If you buy AMC stock it comes with popcorn” is the greatest capital-markets innovation of the century so far. I used to work in investment banking, building equity derivatives and equity-linked securities to help companies raise money and optimize their capital structures, and in hindsight we were idiots. “What if we used the contingent payment debt instrument regulations to increase the tax deductibility of non-cash interest paid on a 30-year-non-call-5 convertible bond,” we thought, like fools, when the actual way to optimize equity capital raising is by throwing in a large popcorn.

Find Matt Levine at Bloomberg.

Teslas made in Texas will likely have to leave the state before Texans can buy them

From The Verge:

Because of state laws banning car companies from selling directly to consumers, Tesla could end up shipping the cars from its Austin factory to other states, before they’re sent back to their Texan buyers. The state’s lawmakers were debating legislation that would have prevented the situation, but they’ve now missed their chance to pass it before they have to go on break until 2023 — the factory is expected to be completed by the end of 2021.

Laws preventing automakers from selling their vehicles directly to consumers aren’t unique to Texas, nor are they targeted at Tesla: they were originally put in place in many states to keep manufacturers from undercutting their franchised dealers, and putting them out of business. Tesla doesn’t have franchised dealers to protect, but that doesn’t matter to Texas law as it’s currently written.

But. But… freedom!

iPadOS limits iPad Pro power: apps only able to use up to 5 GB RAM each

From 9To5Mac:

It turns out that the operating system on the new iPad Pro limits all third-party apps to a maximum of ~5 GB RAM each.

Such an odd limit, and perhaps one that will be removed at WWDC in under two week’s time.

The iPad is primarily intended as a single app workspace, considering how complicated and undiscoverable the multitasking features are. Why restrict that single app you have open from consuming more than 5GB of RAM?

Unless there’s some surprise multitask features in the cards for WWDC?

Money Stuff – Bitcoin’s Legitimacy

From May 25:

Fine, yes, in 2021 the main fact about Bitcoin is that Elon Musk decides whether its price goes up or down. Does that “take away the legitimacy of the asset class”? Man, look around; “legitimacy” is a weird thing to be worried about. I would say that it’s interesting to have a trillion-dollar asset class that is like “one guy will think of a number and your asset will be worth that number.” That really is a novel experiment in finance! I feel like we should give it some more time and see how it goes.

Find Matt Levine at Bloomberg.

The world is a terrible place right now, and that’s largely because it is what we make it

From Wil Wheaton back in 2018:

I see this in the online space all the time now: mobs of people, acting in bad faith, can make people they don’t know and will likely never meet miserable, or even try to ruin their lives and careers (look at what they did to James Gunn). And those mobs’ bad behaviors are continually rewarded, because it’s honestly easier to just give them what they want. We are ceding the social space to bad people, because they have the most time, the least morals and ethics, and are skilled at relentlessly attacking and harassing their targets. It only takes few seconds for one person to type “fuck off” and hit send. That person probably doesn’t care and doesn’t think about how their one grain of sand quickly becomes a dune, with another person buried beneath it.