FRIDAY WRAP: Kevin McCarthy gets Musk backing, Walgreens sells abortion pills, FTC proposes a non compete ban, Southwest's apology tour, and Chevron's modest return

Introduction

LIVE from Damion’s lost luggage on his way to Europe for the holidays, it’s a Friday Business Pants round up featuring Ari the data queen and Jessie the money whisperer!  I’m full of BS! On today’s show: Story of the Week, Goodliest of the Week, Assholiest of the Week, and Exhaustingest of the Week!  

Story of the Week (DR):

1. WE HAVE NO GOVERNMENT AB JS

1. Here’s what’s on hold in McCarthy’s house:

1. Closing the border!  No wall, but just closed!

2. Death penalty for drug traffickers bringing fentanyl in the country

3. Roll back IRS funding

4. Remove “radical liberals” from committees

5. Roll back climate and health care parts of infrastructure bill

6. Investigate Hunter Biden

7. Federal ban of abortion

8. China stuff

2. Blowhard reactions:

1. Elon Musk tweets support for the embattled Kevin McCarthy in his quest to be House speaker

2. Biggest PAC donors: Comcast, Altria, ConocoPhillipos, Apollo, Wells Fargo, Rock Holdings (Rocket loans), Amgen

3. Biggest state donors: Altria, Duke Energy, AT&T, Farmers Insurance

2. Climate change is absolutely fucking you up right now

1. California braces for powerful atmospheric river storm

2. Scientists Report a Dramatic Drop in the Extent of Antarctic Sea Ice - InsideClimate News

3. The Southwest Apology Tour

1. Southwest Airlines' CEO described Monday's operational meltdown ... - msnNOW

2. Southwest Airlines CEO on flights chaos: ‘No way to almost apologize enough’ - The Guardian

3. Southwest Airlines Revises Financial Forecast, CEO Apologizes Again - TravelPulse

4. Southwest Airlines’ holiday week from hell may cost the company up to $700 million. Here’s what boards can learn from the fiasco - Fortune

Goodliest of the Week (AB):

Walgreens Becomes First U.S. Pharmacy Chain to Say It Will Sell Abortion Pill

 A fire at a Wisconsin dairy factory melted butter and clogged up a canal

Patagonia Tests Solar Windows

Greta Thunberg’s Twitter Takedown Inadvertently Leads to Andrew Tate’s Arrest for Human Trafficking

1. Walgreens Becomes First U.S. Pharmacy Chain to Say It Will Sell Abortion Pill MM 

1. CVS followed

2. The FDA dropped long-standing restrictions this week that prevented retail pharmacies from offering mifepristone. rule that required patients to obtain the abortion pill in-person at clinics, hospitals and other certified health-care providers.

3. the two largest drug store chains in the U.S. will significantly expand access to mifepristone in states where abortion is legal. The companies cannot offer the pill in states that have completely banned abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. 

2. Patagonia Tests Solar Windows JS

1. manufacturer of the new solar windows is the California company NEXT Energy Technologies.

2. The Energy Department included NEXT in its pool of “Technology to Market 3” awardees five years ago, on the basis of the company’s prospects for bringing see-through solar glass to market.

3. The difference is new organic thin film technology, which can be sprayed or panted onto different surfaces. A nano-thin coating can enable windows to pass daylight through while converting solar energy to electricity

3. .The FTC proposes banning noncompete agreements AB

1. The Federal Trade Commission proposed yesterday banning employers from requiring employees to sign noncompete agreements, which prevent workers from taking positions at competitors for a period of time after they leave a job.

2. This would be a big change in the business world, where the agreements are widely used. The FTC estimates that 30 million people, or one in five workers, would be impacted, and the rule could increase wages by nearly $300 billion a year.

3. Started with execs - now affects min wage workers

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

1.  Southwest Airlines board of directors AB JS

1. Southwest Airlines cancellations face scrutiny amid winter storm chaos - The Washington Post

1. Gary Kelly - CEO, chair - 17% influence

2. Bill Cunningham, lead “independent” - 14% influence, 22 year tenure, chairs nominating committee

3. Average board age: 71

2.  Vince McMahon OFFICIALLY Back In WWE - Return Confirmed - WhatCulture

1. Boomerang SEXUAL HARASSMENT CEO has to be a new category

2. The people bringing him back:

1. Daughter Stephanie McMahon co-CEO: 39% influence

2. Paul Levesque, Stephanie McMahon’s husband: 32% influence

3. NO ONE ELSE MATTERS

1. Nick Khan, co-CEO

2. JoEllen Lyons Dillon

3. Steve Koonin

4. Ignace Lahoud

5. Michelle McKenna

6. Steve Pamon

7. Man Jit Singh

8. Jeff Speed (Six Flags)

9. Alan Wexler

3. Louisiana

1. Pornhub is requiring viewers in Louisiana to verify their age with a government ID as part of a new state law

2. The law states that “harmful material” includes:

1. Any material that the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find, taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors, is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to, the prurient interest. Any of the following material that exploits, is devoted to, or principally consists of descriptions of actual, simulated, or animated display or depiction of any of the following, in a manner patently offensive with respect to minors:  Pubic hair, anus, vulva, genitals, or nipple of the female breast. Touching, caressing, or fondling of nipples, breasts, buttocks, anuses, or genitals. Sexual intercourse, masturbation, sodomy, bestiality, oral copulation, flagellation, excretory functions, exhibitions, or any other sexual act.  The material taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

2. Applies to a “substantial portion” of the website, which is “33 ⅓% of the total material” on the site

3. They’re using Envoc, a local software developer, app built for Louisiana called LA Wallet, a digital driver’s license

Exhausting-est of the Week (JS):

1.  Chevon CEO Mike Wirth Defends the industry’s highest-ever cash haul MM JS

1. President Joe Biden has said that energy companies are gauging American people

2. Chevron CEO Mike Wirth: We're an industry of price takers, not price makers. These are global commodity markets and prices go up, prices come down. Just two years ago, we were losing billions of dollars as prices plummeted. And so, through the cycle, it's an industry that generates kinda 10%-ish returns on capital employed, which is, I think, by the standards of many other industries, a pretty modest return.

3. Here are some earning stats around energy companies

1. The 10 top-performing stocks in the S&P 500 Index last year were energy companies, with traditional oil and gas producers dominating the list, despite calls for a transition to clean energy.

2. Chevron is on course to report $37 billion in profit for 2022, 40% higher than its previous record set in 2011

3. Their return on capital peaked in 2022 at 16.9%

4. The stock gained 53% last year, compared with a 19% drop in the overall index

1. Wives Listen but Husbands Don’t AB 

1. Over the past 50 years, there has been a progressive shift in economic research to learn how households make economic decisions in the real world. This study is part of that research

2. A representative sample of Germans were asked in a baseline survey to state their beliefs about their household’s rank in the national and global income distribution (and paid them for the accuracy of their answers)... so it was incentivized

3. After we elicited the baseline beliefs, we randomly selected half of the participants to receive accurate information about their household’s income rank. We randomised at the individual level to create variation within households so we could study both how individuals learn from information when they receive it directly, and also whether the information diffuses to other household members.

4. We surveyed the households a year later, which gave the households plenty of time to stew over the information provided in the first survey. All participants were again asked to state their beliefs about their household rank (and were, again, paid for their accuracy).

5. When respondents directly receive information about their true income ranks, both men and women seem to incorporate the information to a similar degree.

6. HOWEVER, we document a sharp gender difference in how men and women react to information discovered by their spouses: the pass-through of information from women to men is substantially lower than from men to women.

1. when a wife receives the information indirectly, through her husband, the effect on her belief about income rank one year later (0.19 percentage points, 𝑝 = 0.01) is at least as strong as if she received the information directly. In contrast, when a man is indirectly informed about the true household income rank through his female partner, he does not adjust his beliefs one year later

7. There is a lesson here for policymakers: if money or information should be directed to households, it matters who in the household it is directly targeted to.

2. Vince McMahon OFFICIALLY Back In WWE - Return Confirmed - WhatCulture

1. The disgraced former CEO resigned from his position in disgrace in July 2022. This came amid reports he had paid tens of millions of dollars in company money to suppress allegations of sexual misconduct

2. Vince retained majority voting power in WWE through his stock ownership

3. McMahon wrote to the board of directors expressing his desire to "spearhead a strategic review process." Vince believes that with WWE's media rights fees set to be renegotiated later this year, there is a narrow window for a potential sale, which he believes should be guided by his hand as executive director.

4. The board's response to Vince's letter was that it would be happy to work with him on said review process, but McMahon returning to the company would not be in the shareholders' best interests. WHAT!??!?!?!?!?!?!? Be happy to work with you?!?!?! So once again, money means more than the lives he destroyed through sexual harrassment. This is the precedent that JUST KEEPS being set

3. Bye-bye glaciers 

1. The world's glaciers are shrinking and disappearing faster than scientists thought, with two-thirds of them projected to melt out of existence by the end of the century

2. In an unlikely worst-case scenario of several degrees of warming, 83% of the world's glaciers would likely disappear by the year 2100

Who Won the Week?

1. AB:. Kevin McC

2. MM: Vince MacMahon - I mean, no one is paying attention right?