Bloomberg Opinion

Opendoor Technologies, a purveyor of residential real estate, has skyrocketed in July with little news to justify the surge. Investors left the company for dead a few years ago when the housing market froze up, and Wall Street was starting to forget that it even existed. Then a few weeks ago, the stock started to perk up, and an Opendoor bull named Eric Jackson started attracting attention on social media. Now, it has a market cap of $2.3 billion, and people are asking themselves if it’s indicative of froth in the broader US equity market. So, is this meme frenzy the next GameStop? Jonathan Levin doesn’t think so. Read his piece: https://lnkd.in/eDMSs_gK

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GM's stock got hammered Tuesday despite beating the earnings consensus. That reaction looks overdone, given that GM maintained guidance for the year. The problem is that Trump's trade war has plunged US autos into a twilight zone and investors are about ready for some clarity. GM couldn't provide it and expects the hit to profits in Q3 to actually be bigger than in the one just gone. GM is, however, managing the whiplash pretty well. While that isn't the most compelling 'buy' argument, it is probably the best that can be hoped for until policy stabilizes. Meanwhile, GM is well-positioned for Trump's other whiplash on tailpipe standards and EVs. The company can toggle between ICE and EV models as demand resets. That's unlike a certain US electric vehicle maker that also reports earnings this week and got a shout out on GM's call. Read about it here at Bloomberg Opinion https://lnkd.in/eRneSmwY

With Coldplaygate on track to become one of the most viral moments of the year, you would think this is the first time in history that a CEO has gotten busted for having what certainly seems to be an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate. Well, let me tell you — this is far from the truth. As someone who covers corporate America, CEOs doing inappropriate things with inappropriate people has turned into its own mini-beat. In some ways, the Andy Byron/Astronomer fiasco is a textbook case. But it also reveals the way our hyper-online world has transformed how CEOs — and company boards — need to think about the line between bosses’ public and private lives. 🔗 Read my Bloomberg Opinion column on bosses behaving badly. https://lnkd.in/ecfdADYP 📽 Or watch the tl;dr video version:

RFK Jr.’s slashing of funds for medical research are a setback for American science, and jeopardize the White House’s stated goal of improving public health. Read today’s editorial: https://lnkd.in/exz4JfSf

Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s new essay in the Economist updates the old tropes of climate denialism to something new: Fatalism. By his reading, carbon emissions and rising temperatures are not the makings of a crisis but an acceptable price to pay for modernity. He asserts this rather than justifying it, instead making the simplistic obeservation that emissions have risen alongside life-expectancy. Indeed they have. But so have those of any other industrial pollutant you care to mention. But when we recognize those, we do something about them. The essay is further let down by a bizarre attack on electricity and several errors that could have been corrected by simply looking at his own department’s website. Read about it here at Bloomberg Opinion https://lnkd.in/eaPb2kHE

I always feel a little out of place posting about crime here on LinkedIn, but people seem interested, plus this is about crime on the *subway*, which is how I and many of you get to work most days. There was a tiff last week in Washington between Security of Transportation Sean Duffy and my Congressman, Jerry Nadler, in which Nadler said major crime was down on the subway, Duffy said assaults were up, then they called each other liars. Both were in fact telling the truth, and I have a new column (with a gift link that should work for the rest of the week) exploring the not entirely reassuring numbers on subway crime in New York. https://lnkd.in/eVs2C6_t Still, it's important to put the risks faced by subway riders in context, so I also compared the chances of being murdered in the subway if you rode it 500 times last year with the odds of dying from some other causes in other places. The results are striking. (Sawyer County, Wisconsin, is where Duffy grew up, and its average annual mortality rate from traffic accidents over the past seven years is actually on the low side for rural America).

Trump finds himself on the downward, slippery slope of a conspiracy theory he helped set in motion with no obvious barriers emerging to soften his slide. It’s always been thus when scandal and Washington intersect, but this moment is vividly Trumpy and full of karma. On the lessons of mudslinging: https://lnkd.in/eqNepjS5

In just a few months, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has helped bring a pox upon the country — and until Republicans get serious about holding him accountable, more Americans will die, and the president’s legacy on health and safety will be badly tarnished. https://bit.ly/4kLCWBD

In no small part because of the doubt RFK Jr. has been sowing about the safety of vaccines, the US is in the midst of what is shaping up to be the worst measles outbreak since the early 1990s. GOP lawmakers will pay dearly — in lives and votes — for not reining in a peddler of junk science and anti-vax conspiracies. Making America healthy again starts with bringing RFK Jr. to heel — or sending him packing, says Mike Bloomberg. Read the full column: https://lnkd.in/et26FquV