What I'm Reading: November 1

Economy

• https://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-tech-taxes-story.html

  • As taxes have been in the news recently, it's always interesting to look back with the benefit of hindsight to understand the unintended consequences... or, when a simple system attempts to regulate a complex system. For example, the above story of the Alternative Minimum Tax affecting stock option packages and putting people underwater.

• https://www.consumerreports.org/car-financing/many-americans-overpay-for-car-loans-a8076436935

  • A good piece on auto debt and why Americans have so much of it.

Tech

• https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/10/suing-infrastructure-companies-for-copyright-violations.html

  • The original Wired article was shared in the Schneier on Security newsletter - in this case, the platform (Cloudflare) was not liable for the content (copyright infringement) on its platform.

Investing

• https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/content/dam/jpm-wm-aem/global/cwm/en/insights/eye-on-the-market/private-equity-food-fight-jpmwm.pdf

  • Several secondary market platforms have popped up to give individual investors access to private companies (often by directly allowing investors to purchase employees' options or selling interest in an LLC that does it).

• https://github.com/jlevy/og-equity-compensation

  • A good guide to understanding equity compensation, especially in private companies where compensation might not be as straight forward as public shares.

• https://www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc211015/

  • More interesting analysis of current valuations compared with previous historical periods (Hussman has been saying this for a while).