#732: From Morning Brew - Explanation of Market Capitalization

 Click here for an excellent article on what market capitalization means.

#731: Game Stop? Reddit? An Explainer

 This short article from the Today Show website, along with the video from Stephanie Ruhle, provide a good explanation of what is going on with GameStop's stock this week.

Please note this post contains 2 different links - one to an article and one to a video.

#730: From Morning Brew 1/23/21 - US Business on the Importance of Getting Their Employees & The Country Vaccinated

Executives from major US corporations are eagerly raising their hands at the front of class hoping to get called on by President Biden. The problem they think they can answer? How to speed up a vaccine rollout that is wayyyy behind schedule.

• New York State was set to run out of vaccine doses yesterday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. And just 67% of hospital staff (who are in the first priority tier) have received shots. 
• Elsewhere in the country, about half of the 38 million doses distributed to states are stuck in freezers.

A few notable hand-raisers

Walmart, which is already vaccinating healthcare workers in Arkansas and New Mexico, is expanding its vaccine efforts to seven additional states, Chicago, and Puerto Rico. Eventually, the nation’s largest retailer thinks it can dole out 10 million to 13 million doses a month. 

Over in Washington state, Starbucks, Microsoft, and Costco have all been tapped by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to help distribute vaccines. And this week, Amazon implored the Biden administration to call upon its expertise for something a little more pressing than delivering a Ninja food processor in less than 12 hours. 

Private sector  public sector 

Big retailers, working more closely with local governments, could be a missing link in the distribution effort’s 10,000-piece puzzle. “Their core businesses are already geared around serving millions of customers day in and day out. They have locations right across the country and...national distribution and logistics networks,” Neil Saunders, managing director of Global Data Retail, told the Washington Post.

It’s not just the big kids helping out, either. Carbon Health, a healthcare startup that just finished raising a Series C round, now powers the back-end tech for the City of Los Angeles’s entire vaccine program. 

Zoom out: The private sector has every incentive to help out the government. “Our economy will not recover, and we won’t be able to get people back into the office, until we have good penetration of the vaccines,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said.

#729: Fixing Social Security

 Another article from Michelle Singletary of The Washington Post, this time about needed fixes to strengthen Social Security.  This article points to how the pandemic is going to affect long term solvency of the Social Security trust funds.

#728: Tax Season Kicks Off February 12th. Here's What to Expect.

 Click here to read this excellent article by WaPo's Michelle Singletary.  You may be prompted to register for a free account which allows for access to a limited number of articles per month. 

#727: Party Like It's 1925 on Public Domain Day

 Click here to read this interesting article about one type of intangible assets courtesy of WKMS, our local NPR station.

#726: Grocery Trends for 2021

 This article from the Washington Post offers up some interesting comments on manufacturing and supply chain as the grocery industry continues to respond to pandemic conditions. You may be required to register for a free WaPo account which allows for a minimal number of articles to be viewed each month.