Here are three of the top financial news stories of the week, gathered from around the web:
The meaning of “historic fall”
It was the worst year for the bond market since 1842, Jason Zweig told The Wall Street Journal. It’s not a typo. Since the trough of a pre-Civil War depression, the broader bond market has not performed worse in a full year than it has so far in 2022.” inflation is like kryptonite for bonds, whose interest payments are fixed and therefore cannot keep up with the rising cost of living.” As a result, bond prices have fallen 10% this year. But many investors “may be too pessimistic. The complex mathematics of bonds means that yields rise as prices fall, and some yields are currently near their highest levels in years. “Over the long term, yield bond’s total depends much more on their income than on price changes.”
Digital nomads, please go home
The idea of ”working from anywhere” remains a pipe dream, said The Economist. When the pandemic closed offices, “digital nomads” hit the road, moving away from their offices or making hotel trips between destinations. Last month, Airbnb told employees they could “move wherever they want without any cost-of-living adjustments”. CEO Brian Chesky himself lives and works “off Airbnb properties” and “believes that’s the future.” Maybe for a lucky few. But beyond the “legal, salary and tax ramifications” and administrative headaches, imagine the resentment among colleagues. If you “dial a Zoom call covered in baby drool” you don’t want to hear “Greg of the lyric product wax about how amazing Chamonix is at this time of year”.
Writers go after Disney for pay
Disney has been accused of misleading writers and artists about their copyrights, Michael Hiltzik told the Los Angeles Times. A task force led by Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America concluded that “Disney may owe hundreds of writers and artists royalties averaging a few thousand dollars each”, with some claims reaching as high as $20,000. Among those who have accused Disney of salary theft is Alan Dean Foster, a writer who “signed a contract with George Lucas to write a novelization of the first star wars movie before it even premiered in 1977.” Royalties for this book and a sequel “mysteriously disappeared in 2012, around the time Disney acquired Lucasfilm.” Disney first told Foster’s agent that he had “acquired the properties but not the obligations”.
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