February 19, 2024
Good morning!
If you’re reading this and you think it’s George Washington’s birthday, with all due respect, you’re jumping the gun by three days.
In its infinite wisdom, The United States Congress declared this to be George’s birthday — which is not its first mistake.
Make George proud — practice deferred gratification — wait until Thursday of this week to make, bake, and enjoy that cherry pie.
- Take some comfort, Kyle, there is life after losing three super bowls… just ask Hall-of-Famer, Bud Grant… who lost four.
- Here’s an instructive and sobering headline — and a good reminder: “Not everyone can afford a $3,500 purse.” (WSJ)
- The writer was lamenting the recent tepid growth (~10% – ~15%) of luxury goods companies such as Hermes and Louis Vuitton.
- As the upset apple cart from four years of the plague starts to right itself, we have another new vocabulary word: BLeisure.
- As you might have already decoded, it combines business and leisure into one word — and its popularity is growing significantly, along with the four day work week.
- On a trip to nearby Duluth (MN/ U.S.) last week we witnessed some of this happening in real time.
- According to the N.O.A.A., Lake Superior has had the least amount of ice this winter since record keeping started.
- Even the Tooth Fairy is suffering from out-of-control inflation with some researchers reporting $100 Ben Franklins being awarded in exchange for an incisor as de rigueur.
- (Probably involving those same people who are buying the purses.)
- Is the latest troubling oxymoron affordable housing?
- This is a Minnesota-centric plug, but he was first a South Dakotan and then a regional, national, and world leader.
- Even if you didn’t like him, read Traub’s, True Believer. We knew him as the Happy Warrior.
- For the first time in 40 years, super bowl advertisements sold at par relative to inflation.
- They had historically been a trailing average bargain compared to the Consumer Price Index, but not this year.
- The average cost of a during-game 30-seconds commercial was reportedly ~$7.000,000.
- Theories as to why?
- Fifty years ago, according to the United States Department of Agricultu
re, we U.S. citizens were eating 35# of chicken per person per year. - We are now eating ~100# of chicken per person per year while our cow consumption has gone from ~95# to ~58#. (Did those commercials help, maybe?)
- Bacon and pork chop lovers continue on a steady course of about 50# per person per year — and at bargain basement costs due to supplies greater than demand.
- At least one economist is suggesting the macro economy would be stronger if we were to increase our consumption of pork.
- Book: A Woman in the Polar Night, Ritter, 1938
- In just two years (Q1 ’22 – Q1 ’24) we’ve climbed from U.S. real estate distressed assets totaling ~$55 billion to ~$85 billion. (MSCI, 2024)
- “The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.” (Wilde)
- “… the CFO role has changed; it’s not (just) an accounting role anymore.” (McKinsey)
- “In my team, we’re very much involved in all the work that’s being done in R & D, for example, to make sure where we’re investing, and why we’re investing there, gets us the right returns.
- It’s important for us to understand the business so that the advice we give as a company and the journey we are on is in context with what’s happening in the external market.
- The role of the CFO… is to look for strategic and organizational white spaces — to step up and offer to help because we understand operational challenges, we understand the numbers, we understand strategic direction, and we have a very good external perspective about everything…” (Bramley, 2024)
