FRIDAY WRAP: Exxon wins, Vivek’s dual class education, bird flu in alpacas, and Helen Toner says we were right

Introduction

IT’S FRIDAYYYYY!!! And we are LIVE, and ALIVE. This is Ari the Data Queen, joined by AnalystHole Matt Moscardi, Jessie the Money Whisperer, and Hazelnut Rallis. On today’s weekly wrap up: Boeing had their FAA meeting, a billionaire makes a billion, and another billionaire donates a billion. 

Story of the Week (DR):

1. Negro Leagues' statistics will be incorporated into Major League Baseball’s historical records on Wednesday MM DR

1. Josh Gibson is MLB’s new all-time career leader in batting average (.372, moving ahead of Ty Cobb), slugging percentage (.718, moving ahead of Ruth), OPS (1.177, ahead of Ruth), and holds the all-time single season records in each of those categories.

2. “When you hear Josh Gibson’s name now, it’s not just that he was the greatest player in the Negro Leagues,’’ Sean Gibson, Gibson’s great grandson, told USA TODAY Sports, “but one of the greatest of all time. These aren’t just Negro League stats. They’re major-league baseball stats.

3. Major League Baseball wasn’t integrated until 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

2. New York governor Kathy Hochul to launch bill banning smartphones in schools

1. “I have seen these addictive algorithms pull in young people, literally capture them and make them prisoners in a space where they are cut off from human connection, social interaction and normal classroom activity …you’re not going to profit off the mental health of children in the state of New York.”

2. The smartphone-ban bill will follow two others Hochul is pushing that outline measures to safeguard children’s privacy online and limit their access to certain features of social networks. The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (Safe) for Kids act addresses algorithmic feeds. It would require social media platforms to provide minors with a default chronological feed composed of accounts they have chosen to follow rather than algorithmically suggested ones.

3. Melinda French Gates says she will donate $1bn over the next 2 years on behalf of women and families

1. Melinda French Gates ‘ has a long history of supporting the women’s movement, but it’s her new eye-popping funding commitments that could finally change women’s groups’ long-running lament that less than 2% of philanthropic giving in the United States directly benefits women and girls.

4. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman created a culture of 'psychological abuse,' former board member says AB

1. Helen Toner, one of four people responsible for firing OpenAI’s CEO, says Altman’s incessant lying created a toxic culture that executives described as “psychological abuse.”

2. She says the Board was not informed in advance when ChatGPT came out in November 2022, and “learned about ChatGPT on Twitter.”

3. Toner also noted that Altman gave inaccurate information about the safety processes at OpenAI.

4. In the weeks before Altman was fired, Toner claims he lied to other board members to try to get her fired after she wrote a research paper that spoke negatively about OpenAI’s safety practices.

5. Lastly, Toner noted that this is not the first company where Altman has run into this problem: the management team at Loopt, Altman’s first startup, went to the company’s board twice and asked them to fire Altman for “deceptive and chaotic behavior.”

6. OpenAI’s board chair Bret Taylor: “We are disappointed that Ms. Toner continues to revisit these issues.”

5. Exxon Mobil Wins Board Vote by Wide Margin

6. Trump has been convicted

Goodliest of the Week (AB):

1. Hello Alice Prevails in Anti-DEI Lawsuit DR AB

1. A DEI Victory this week! Hello Alice, funded by the insurance company Progressive, supports small business owners through an online platform aiming to get those businesses more capital. Their 25k grant program to 10 Black-owned small businesses was the subject of the class-action lawsuit claiming reverse discrimination.

2. Melinda French Gates announces $1 billion donation to support women and families, including reproductive rights MM 

1. Last day at the Gates Foundation is June 7th

3. FAA won’t clear Boeing to increase 737 Max production for several months, agency head says

1. On Thursday, after the FAA met with Boeing executives for a quality improvement plan presentation, the FAA said it will likely be months before Boeing is cleared to increase production of the 737 Max. 

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

1. Data AB

1. 64% - voting power of the founder

2. That is literally the only number you need to understand what an asshole this guy is:

3. Headline: Vivek Ramaswamy pushes for BuzzFeed board seats, says company has lost its way

1. Vivek!  Welcome back!

2. Dumbass, you know you can’t demand or even buy a company where it has untraded B shares that control the voting power, right?  You know that because you were on our show and we talk about it all the time?  

3. Also, you know buying Buzzfeed to be like Elon Musk is like buying Hydrox because you like Krispy Creme?  You aren’t buying Twitter, you’re burning money on a company that built its brand on Top Ten Celebrity Side Boob lists

2. Data: DR

1. VP of Structured Credit

2. Co-Head of Credit Derivatives Marketing

3. Microfinance Securitization

4. Cross Asset Structuring

5. Head of ESG Impact Investing

6. Group Sustainability Officer

7. ESG Whistleblower

8. Quote, The purpose of the corporation is to optimize financial returns for shareholders while playing by the rules - not to use shareholder money to go on an environmental crusade.

9. There is no headline, this is just Desiree Fixler

1. Our panel was about fostering next generation sustainability leadership until it pivoted to political economics. A couple of audience members called for corporations to urgently and socialistically fight climate change - that's the nice, clean version of the hysterical f-bombing rant in our session.

2. I viscerally responded by defending free enterprise capitalism and Milton Friedman's principles. The purpose of the corporation is to optimize financial returns for shareholders while playing by the rules - not to use shareholder money to go on an environmental crusade. That's not to say that corporations won't transition. But it is up to elected officials to set industrial policy to decarbonize or not. And lobby group work on both sides. 

3. But the socialistic, alarmist "the earth is dying" rants got the applause. Have ESG folks abandoned capitalism? Or are they afraid or embarrassed to defend the system that pays them and the system that has successfully made the world healthier and wealthier than ever before? 

3. Data

1. Total Assets of $377bn, of which $33bn is cash vs. total assets under management of $352m

2. Total market capitalization who agrees with spending some of the $33bn in cash to crush the $352m aum: $490.9bn, bring the David vs. Goliath ratio to .0004 to 1

3. Headline: Exxon Shareholders Vote With Board on All Proxy Proposals - Bloomberg

1. Average director FOR vote: 95%, including Hooley, the ex-investor who hates investors, and the anti-woke Darren Woods who loathes shareholders who aren’t “real” shareholders

2. This confirms that shareholders clearly have Stockholm Syndrome - they have been held hostage by management who have more information, hate being challenged, and choose their own boards, so much that they should just quit the fucking vote.  

3. Here’s what Stockholm Syndrome looks like:

1. Investor does legal thing

2. Company sues investor

3. Other investors back company even though the ONLY director on the board who hits better than 500 on EBITDA is the guy who was put there by a DIFFERENT activist the company hated (Karsner, .701), only FOUR of the 13 directors bat over 500 for TSR, and the CEO himself bats 493 on TSR and 0.000 - yes, ZERO - for controversies

4. This is the definition of an underperforming board by the data, but investors back them anyway even as they get sued by them

Headline-iest (ALL):

1. Matt:

1. Inside the Rockefeller Clan’s Intensifying Feud With Exxon

1. DADDY NO LIKEY - Exxon’s founding company was… Standard Oil, founded by John D Rockefeller in 1882!

2. Alpacas in Idaho test positive for H5N1 bird flu in another world first

1. On the back of this: Bird Flu Has Infected a Third U.S. Farmworker.  “Officials are monitoring about 350 people who may have been exposed, about 220 of them in Michigan alone. So far relatively few farmworkers, about 40, have consented to testing.”

3. South Korean men can get $730 to reverse their vasectomies, an extreme attempt to increase the birth rate

1. Average lifetime cost of raising a child is estimated at $252,571 in South Korea.  I say they’ve just about covered it.

2. DR: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Nelson Peltz met for breakfast, where they criticized Joe Biden and brought along their sons Barron, X, and Diesel

Who Won the Week?

1. DR: Free Float (re: former OpenAI board members)

2. AB: Nelson Pelz - lost the proxy fight and yet made $1B

3. MM: Helen Toner

Predictions

1. DR: Helen Toner does not join the board of Free Float

2. AB: Vivek will sell stake in Buzzfeed and buy Free Float

3. MM: I ask Helen Toner to join the board of Free Float