FRIDAY WRAP: Greedflation works! Tesla blockades! COP28 attendees flew a looong way! Taco Bell's "stain resistant sheets"! Plus, Bill Ackman, STFU!

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: Ahole of the millenia, parenting Apple, and a BILLION dollar way to be anti-social: 

Story of the Week (DR):

1. Head of Climate Conference Who Happens to Be an Oil CEO Says Actually Fossil Fuels Are Fine

1. Abu Dhabi National Oil Company CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber backtracks on comments that 'there is no science' around fossil fuels at UN climate summit

1. "I have said over and over that the phase down and phase out of fossil fuels is inevitable," Al Jaber told reporters at COP28 on Monday. "This transition is essential. It needs to be orderly, fair, just, responsible, and well-managed. I am quite surprised at the constant and repeated attempts to undermine this message."

2. Pfizer CEO slams Harvard, MIT, and UPenn's presidents: 'One of the most despicable moments in the history of US academia'

1. Albert Bourla

3. Greedflation: corporate profiteering ‘significantly’ boosted global prices, study shows JS AB MM

1. Multinationals in particular hiked prices far above rise in costs to deliver an outsize impact on cost of living crisis, report concludes

2. The report finds that company profits increased at a much faster rate than costs did, in a process often dubbed “greedflation.”

3. CEOs appear to have used the panic of rising costs to pump up their balance sheet.

1. CEOs’ realized compensation jumped 30.3% between 2019 and 2021

4. Among the companies that increased their profits most from the pre-pandemic average were

1. Oil and Gas

1. ExxonMobil: profits of £15bn increased to £53bn

2. Shell: £16bn up to £44bn

2. Food

1. Archer-Daniels-Midland: £1.4bn up to £3.16bn

2. Kraft Heinz: £265m up to £1.8bn

4. Meta is child abuse 'breeding ground', lawsuit claims

1. Facebook and Instagram have become a "breeding ground" for child predators, the New Mexico attorney general has claimed in a lawsuit.

2. In response, Meta said it worked hard to root out predators.

1. Mark Zuckerberg cashed in about $190 million of Meta stock in November, marking his first sales in 2 years

5. Elon Musk says Disney CEO Bob Iger should be 'fired immediately'

Goodliest of the Week (AB):

1. Microsoft Signs One of the Largest-Ever Nature-Based Deals to Remove 1.5 Million Tons of Carbon MM

1. Mombak is a carbon removal startup that is starting their large-scale projects with “native, biodiverse reforestation in the Brazilian Amazon” 

2. This particular deal will allow the company to reestablish 25 forests, containing at least 30 million trees and more than 100 native Brazilian species

2. Danish union joins strike action against Tesla by Swedish workers and Norway union joins Tesla blockade in support for Swedish workers DR AB

1. ICYMI: Swedish trade union IF Metall have been on strike for SIX weeks, being supported by postal workers, electricians, painters, and dock workers ALL OF WHOM HAVE LAUNCHED SYMPATHY ACTION against Tesla

1. The postal service is not delivering license plates for new cars

2. There was speculation that Tesla would avoid the Swedish dock worker strikes by delivering their cars to Danish ports and transporting them by truck to Sweden BUT on Tuesday the Danish union, 3F Transport, has joined in the strike and squashed that potential plan

3. Then ON WEDNESDAY “Norway's largest private sector labour union said it would start blocking transit shipments of Tesla cars meant for the Swedish market” later this month

4. Jan Filladsen, Chair of 3F said “Even if you are one of the richest in the world, you can’t just make your own rules. We have some labour market agreements in the Nordic region, and you have to comply with them if you want to run a business here.”

3. Activist Nuns, With Stake in Smith & Wesson, Sue Gun Maker Over AR-15 Rifles JS

1. NUNS AGAINST GUNS is back for more!!! The sisters used their status as shareholders to sue Smith & Wesson this week alleging the gun manufacturer is putting the company at risk by popularizing AR-15 style guns used in mass shootings. The sisters want to “drastically change the way it markets, makes, and sells its popular version of the AR-15 rifle”

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

1. Time Magazine

1. Sam Altman named as Time magazine's CEO of the Year

1. Because the best CEOs try to push out board members for independent research:

1. Altman began approaching other board members, individually, about replacing her. When these members compared notes about the conversations, some felt that Altman had misrepresented them as supporting Toner's removal. "He'd play them off against each other by lying about what other people thought”

2. They also love some good self dealing: OpenAI Agreed to Buy $51 Million of AI Chips From a Startup Backed by CEO Sam Altman

3. And like all good Silicon Valley bros, they’re trying to live forever: Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death

2. Time is owned by Marc Benioff, the Salesforce co-co-co-CEO and founder - also from Salesforce: Bret Taylor, current board chair at OpenAI and ex-Twitter chair

3. THE WHITE BOY FOUNDER FETISH LIVES!

2. COP28 DR MM JS

1. COP28 Host: There’s ‘No Science’ Behind Calls to Eliminate Fossil Fuels - Rolling Stone

2. Al Gore slams COP28 climate summit host UAE, says its emissions soared - Reuters

1. Gore was, of course, there.

3. 97,000 registered attendees, here’s the top 10% of attendees by number

1. 4,400 from UAE, the host

2. 3,000 from Brazil (7,300 miles, 778 kg CO2 per passenger, 14 hours non stop)

3. 1,000 from China (412 kg CO2 per passenger, 9 hours non stop)

4. 1,000 from Nigeria (349 kg CO2, 12 hours)

5. 1,200 from Indonesia (423 kg CO2, 8 hours non stop)

6. 1,000 from Japan (558 kg CO2, 12 hours non stop)

7. 1,000 from Turkey (222 kg CO2, 9 hours)

4. Average transatlantic flight carries 300 people and Google provides carbon emissions per passenger on flights - back of the envelope math, to go to an oil state and plead with them that there IS science behind less fossil fuels, it took:

1. At the average Boeing 777 1k gallons of fuel per hour burn rate, just the top 10% of attendees - which includes 4,400 who took a bus to the event - accounted for:

1. 64,000 gallons of jet fuel

2. 4.4 MILLION kg of CO2

1. This is the equivalent of 201,000 propane cylinders used for home bbqs, or charging 533 million smartphones, or 552 homes’ energy use for a year, or 10,000 barrels of oil

2. It takes 1.2 YEARS of a wind turbine running to offset just the top 10% of delegates, or 166,000 LED lightbulbs replacing incandescent

3. This guy just keeps talking…

1. Billionaire and Harvard grad Bill Ackman suggests Harvard president was a DEI pick

2. Ackman, the CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, wrote on X that "someone with first person knowledge" of Harvard's presidential search had informed him that "the committee would not consider a candidate who did not meet the DEI office's criteria." 

3. "Shrinking the pool of candidates based on required race, gender, and/or sexual orientation criteria is not the right approach to identifying the best leaders for our most prestigious universities," Ackman wrote. "And it is also not good for those awarded the office of president who find themselves in a role that they would likely not have obtained were it not for a fat finger on the scale."

4. He wrote a letter to Gay in which he claims to have loosely surveyed “senior staff and faculty members” who said:

1. A number of the faculty bemoaned that in many cases they cannot hire the substantially more qualified person if he is a white or Asian straight male as the proposed candidate “has to be a woman or BIPOC person.”  I was told that behind closed doors, it is common to hear: “I clearly don’t think this is the strongest candidate, but we can see where the train is headed. I therefore have no choice but to vote for the [lesser-qualified candidate.]”

2. And this gem was all his: The problems at Harvard are clearly not just about Jews and Israel. It is abundantly clear that straight white males are discriminated against in recruitment and advancement at Harvard. That is also apparently true to a somewhat lesser extent for men who are Asians or of Indian origin. The ODEIB is an important culprit in this discrimination on campus as it sees the world in a framework of oppressors and the oppressed, where the oppressor class includes white males, Asians, Jews and other people perceived to be successful and powerful.

5. Claudine Gay background:

1. Stanford (BA, Econ)

2. Harvard (MA, PhD - PoliSci)

3. Stanford professor, 14 years

4. Harvard prof, dean, 7 years

5. Authored 10 books/papers

6. She literally knew everyone who hired her at Harvard, appointment lead by Penny Pritzker

Exhausting-est of the Week (JS):

1. Spotify’s CFO cashed in $9 million worth of stock after mass layoffs DR

1. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek announced that they were letting go of their CFO, Paul Vogel, as they look for a CFO with a “different mix of experiences”

2. You might be thinking, damn that sucks for Paul but why is this exhausting?

3. According to a regulatory filing, he liquidated $9.4 million worth of stock on Tuesday

4. So basically Ek is saying: Sorry Paul, you don’t have what it takes. But here’s $9.4 million dollars anyways

2. The biggest study of ‘greedflation’ yet looked at 1,300 corporations to find many of them were lying to you about inflation

1. I’m sure we don’t need to be reminded but inflation soared above 9% last year

2. Well, a joint study by the think tanks IPPR and Common Wealth found profiteering by some of the world’s biggest companies forced prices up significantly higher than costs during 2022.

3. The report finds that company profits increased at a much faster rate than costs did, in a process often dubbed “greedflation.”

4. The biggest perpetrators were energy companies like Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron, who were able to enjoy massive profits last year as demand moved away from Russian oil and gas. 

5. The findings add to a growing body of research seeking to highlight the role of major businesses in forcing up inflation last year. In fact, a June study by the IMF found that 45% of Eurozone inflation in 2022 could be attributed to domestic profits.

3. Our country’s fast food addiction AB MM

1. McDonald's plans to expand its burger empire by an unprecedented 10,000 new stores over the next 4 years

2. Taco Bell 'pausing' sales on new SOS Kit for college students after 'incredibly high demand'

1. The kit, which was released Tuesday morning, contained an assortment of Taco Bell emergency items including mild and hot flavored taco shells, Taco Bell's iconic sauces in all four heats and two seasoning packets. Buyers who planned on snacking in bed while studying for finals are able to do so without worrying about spills, as the kit included Taco Bell-inspired, stain- and spill-resistant sheets (available in twin through XL sizes)

2. "Our goal is to give fans the opportunity to satisfy their Taco Bell cravings anywhere, anytime, even if there is not a restaurant location nearby — including the students who suffer from the misfortune of a Taco Bell-less campus as they prepare for final exams," Lang stated in the press release announcing the release of the product.

3. YEAH BECAUSE THAT’S THE BEST FUEL FOR STUDYING

3. Krispy Kreme Opens in France, the Latest in a U.S. Fast Food Invasion

1. The arrival of Krispy Kreme in France is just the latest advance in a decades-long invasion by U.S. fast food in the land of Michelin chefs and long leisurely meals.

2. 500 mostly French people stood in line, some overnight, on the grand opening of Krispy Kreme in central Paris

3. “I’ll be late,” said a 25 YO project manager at a medical clinic “But at least I’ll have doughnuts for my colleagues.”

Who Won the Week?

1. DR: The Proxy Countdown

2. AB: Nordic solidarity against a bully

3. MM: Enderson Guimaraes, director at Autozone with 7% influence who joined in 2012, but avoided the Proxy Countdown game time pick to get replaced - Enderson, you can expect that 99% approval from investors this year!

4. JS: YET AGAIN…Taylor Swift for being named Time’s Person of the Year, beating out Barbie and King Charles III

Predictions

1. DR: A pre-Xmas CEO resignation at a Fortune 50 company

2. AB: 

3. MM: Altman won the war of money versus humanity at OpenAI, and now we get to watch billionaire “giving pledge” donors win the war of money versus higher education, as by the end of the year, not one, but TWO major academic institutions will have presidents resign over the donor revolt.  It’s Silicon Valley Bank for academia - groupthink rules!

4. JS: Just months after the grand opening, healthcare visits spike amongst Parisians that regularly visit the new Krispy Kreme