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☆ The US economy is riddled with green flags and is headed for an expansion, not a recession, according to Fundstrat's Tom Lee
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-12 | by ( Jennifer Sor | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The US economy has too many green flags to slip into a recession, according to Fundstrat's Tom Lee. Consumer inflation expectations have plunged over the past few years – another positive indicator for the economy. One-year forward inflation expectations slumped to 3.6% in September, according to the New York Fed, down from the 6.8% recorded in June 2022. Shelter prices are the largest contributor of inflation in the economy, and rent prices have plunged from their 2021 peaks. AdvertisementAdvertisementApartment List's National Rent Index dropped to -1.2% in August, down from a nearly 20% increase in rent prices in late 2021.

Persons: Tom Lee, Lee, Janet Yellen Organizations: Service, BlackRock, Bureau of Labor Statistics, New York Fed Locations: Wall, Silicon

☆ GOP Sen. Mike Lee muses about Burning Man attendees converting to Christianity following disaster: 'God's judgement is real'
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-04 | by ( Bryan Metzger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Sen. Mike Lee suggested that the disaster at Burning Man was caused by divine intervention. "God's judgement is real," he tweeted, highlighting wild sexual activities performed at the festival. He also mused about attendees converting to Christianity after being stranded by a rainstorm. One person has died, and some attendees are fleeing the festival by hiking through the mud as others ration out their food. President Joe Biden was briefed about the situation at Burning Man on Sunday, according to a White House official, while Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada said she was "monitoring the situation at Burning Man closely."

Persons: Sen, Mike Lee, Republican Sen, Mike Lee of, Lee, who's, Lee mused, Paul, Joe Biden, Democratic Sen, Jacky Rosen, Nevada Organizations: Service, Republican, Rock City, Senate, Twitter, White House, Democratic Locations: Wall, Silicon, Mike Lee of Utah, Rock, Nevada, Utah, Damascus, St, Lee's

☆ One of the world’s richest self-made men started as a motel janitor—now he has a net worth of $1.2 billion
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-18 | by ( Megan Sauer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

He now has a net worth of $1.2 billion, which comes from owning nearly a third of Yanolja with his wife and two daughters, according to Forbes . Yanolja founder and chairman Lee Su-jin started his lucrative career in the travel industry as a motel janitor. He saved his money, invested in stocks and even started a salad business, according to Bloomberg. So he decided to rebrand love hotels. "If all the motels relied on love, they'd starve to death," Lee told Bloomberg.

Persons: Lee, Lee Su, Yanolja, Kim Jong, yoon, Kim, SoftBank Organizations: Forbes, Bloomberg, CNBC, SoftBank Vision, Reuters Locations: Korea, Yanolja

SEOUL, July 17 (Reuters) - A year after South Korea vowed to step up readiness for extreme weather driven by climate change, experts say not enough work has been done even as greater volumes of sudden and torrential rains are expected in coming decades. South Korea is mountainous and urban development has left many regions vulnerable to landslides, while readiness to respond to extreme weather has not been up to speed. [1/3]Rescue workers look for victims during a search and rescue operation near an underpass that has been submerged by a flooded river caused by torrential rain in Cheongju, South Korea, July 16, 2023. REUTERS/Kim Hong-jiA 2020 study by the Korea Meteorological Administration found that property damage costs and casualties from extreme weather have tripled compared to the yearly average of the previous decade. "In advanced countries, they allocate 70% for prevention and 30% for recovery, prioritising recovery over prevention."

Persons: Jeong Chang, Jeong, Yoon Suk, Yoon, Kim Hong, Sejong, Jung, Lee Su, Lee, 1,267.1100, Hyun Young Yi, Hyunsu Yim, Jack Kim, Tom Hogue Organizations: Induk University, REUTERS, Korea Meteorological Administration, Korea Environment Institute, University of Seoul, Thomson Locations: SEOUL, Korea, Cheongju, Seoul, Busan, Gangnam, South Korea, North Gyeongsang, Gyeongsang

☆ Planning a solo trip to Seoul? Here are some places that cater to singles in Seoul
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( Monica Pitrelli | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

Source: Morgan AwyongOrders are placed and paid for with tablets. In her videos, she recommends solo travelers try restaurants such as Labap for fine dining, or Gimbap Cheongu and Pomato for their wide variety of Korean food. Earlier this year, South Korea announced a new visa for digital nomads is in the pipeline. Some residential buildings allow short-term lodging, which solo travelers can book. Source: Morgan Awyong

☆ ‘Beef’ Stars Call Actor’s Story About Sexual Assault ‘Undeniably Hurtful’
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Marc Tracy | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The creator and two stars of the new Netflix series “Beef” addressed a brewing controversy on Friday about another actor on the show who said on a podcast in 2014 that he had sexually assaulted a masseuse, comments now recirculating on social media. David Choe, an actor and artist, has long said that he made up the incident he recounted on his podcast, an assertion that the show’s creator, Lee Sung Jin, and its lead actors, Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, backed up in a statement. “The story David Choe fabricated nine years ago is undeniably hurtful and extremely disturbing,” said Lee, Yeun and Wong, who are also executive producers on “Beef.” “We do not condone this story in any way, and we understand why this has been so upsetting and triggering.”They added, “We’re aware David has apologized in the past for making up this horrific story, and we’ve seen him put in the work to get the mental health support he needed over the last decade to better himself and learn from his mistakes.”

☆ ‘Beef’ Review: Ali Wong and Steven Yeun’s Road-Rage Spiral
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-07 | by ( John Anderson | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

With irrational anger so in vogue, the time seems ripe for “Beef”—as in gripe, or grievance, though neither does justice to the reckless ferocity of the antics in this nerve-jangling, black-edged comedy. Comedy may be overstating things, actually: The series, created by Lee Sung Jin (“Dave,” “Silicon Valley”), makes the venting of spleen look ridiculous. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous. (Or, lest one forget, even get into a road-rage incident.) What’s both amusing and cautionary isn’t just the fact that two volatile people in an unhappy place happen to cross paths at precisely the wrong moment.

☆ Explainer: How Kakao won a takeover battle against HYBE for K-pop pioneer SM Entertainment
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-12 | by ( Hyunsu Yim | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

For more than two decades, the K-pop industry was dominated by the trio until BTS rose to global fame in recent years, making its agency HYBE the largest music label in the country. It is the second-largest entertainment group in South Korea by market value at $2.8 billion, trailing HYBE, which is worth $5.5 billion. Lee filed an injunction request to block the deal that was approved by a court, and sold a 15% stake in SM to rival agency HYBE, setting up a takeover battle. Kakao, the most popular social media platform in South Korea, is expanding aggressively into the entertainment industry where it already owns a smaller K-pop agency, Starship Entertainment. In January, Kakao Entertainment announced a 1.2 trillion won ($966.27 million) investment from Singapore's GIC and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, giving it more firepower for the SM bid.

☆ Technology Chiefs Seek Help Wrangling Cloud Costs
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Belle Lin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

Some chief information officers have turned to cloud management tools and established internal teams to oversee their cloud spending. Mr. Nimboorkar said the company has since built a dedicated team to manage its Amazon Web Services spending and invested in a third-party cloud spending management tool. Executives from all three cloud giants have said customers are optimizing or reining in their cloud spending, citing economic factors. Many of the best practices in cloud spending management have been codified by the nonprofit FinOps Foundation, which promotes cloud financial literacy and accountability, she said. That model allows Mr. Kanchi to wholly manage cloud spending, he said, but was only possible after UST figured out how to tag cloud usage by its various business units.

It’s a sunny day in early January, and Steven Yeun is happy to be out of the house. He’s wearing trail sneakers, brown pants, a shaggy mohair cardigan and sunglasses. With some actors, sunglasses serve as armor when they’re out in public, but Yeun, 39, shows no such guardedness. It’s a sunny day in early January, and Steven Yeun is happy to be out of the house. He’s wearing trail sneakers, brown pants, a shaggy mohair cardigan and sunglasses.

Worldwide boy-band sensation BTS may be on hiatus, but refreshing new financial acts threaten to upend the world of K-pop, and perhaps South Korea. The battle over 28-year-old SM Entertainment, the $2.3 billion force behind Girls' Generation and EXO, is at heart a family feud. It helps, too, that K-pop has turned into one of South Korea’s strongest exports, thanks largely to “Butter” and “Dynamite” singers BTS. "We oppose all aggressive outside mergers and acquisitions, including Hybe," SM said in a statement, according to Reuters. Separately, internet conglomerate Kakao said on Feb. 7 it would acquire a 9.05% stake in SM via 112 billion won of new shares and 105 billion won of convertible bonds.

☆ 9 elements you need to be more influential and persuasive at work and in business
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Dr. Amanda Nimon-Peters | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Today's business professionals have been missing a model for influence at work specifically designed for the 21st century. It is based on more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, revealing nine universal principles for increasing your influence at work. Principle #4: Value-framingIn our day-to-day communication, we often fail to express the value of our work in terms that are inherently valuable. Principle #6: ReasoningStudies show that when people at work attempt to influence others, the most common tactic is rational persuasion, i.e. When it comes to influence at work, you don't have to be the best influencer there ever was.

☆ Tabasco teams with a TikTok star to surprise hot sauce fans
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( Jordan Valinsky | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

“TikTok made us do it,” according to Lee Susen, Tabasco Brand’s chief sales and marketing officer. Tinx, he said, is on a “mission to normalize hot sauce as dressing.”A superfan of the brand, Tinx has been posting her adoration for the hot sauce on her TikTok for the past few years. “There’s a tendency to think about hot sauce as only an agent of heat,” he said. He added that since hot sauce uses are limited compared to other condiments, Tabasco Brand has to innovate to keep growing. “They will hope that their hot sauce dressing provides a new avenue and converts some new customers to the brand.

But add a candidate representing the Bernie Sanders wing of the party, Ro Khanna, and a living legend who got her start with the Black Panthers and would become the only Black woman in the Senate, Barbara Lee — now you're talking about a California Senate race for the ages. Reaching voters isn’t easy in California, with a population approaching 40 million and a land mass bigger than that of many countries. But the race will affect the future of the Democratic Party, both in California and beyond. “An appointment would be a way to make sure that this country has the essential voice of a Black woman,” Allison said. And I don’t see and I don’t understand why it isn’t happening.”Meanwhile, as Lee watches Feinstein, Bernieworld is watching Lee.

☆ Biggest risk for UK stocks right now? There's no recession, strategist says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Elliot Smith | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

An employee views a FTSE share index board in the atrium of the London Stock Exchange Group Plc's offices in London, U.K., on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2020. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesLONDON — The biggest risk to the U.K. stock market is avoiding a widely anticipated recession, according to Roger Lee, head of U.K. equity strategy at Investec. The Bank of England has projected that the U.K. has already entered its longest recession on record. Higher interest rates are negative for growth-oriented stocks as the value of their future earnings is diminished in today's money. Growth stocks contribute a far higher proportion of the U.S. market than in the U.K.watch now

☆ Tech Spending Pressures Fuel Demand for Specialized Industry Clouds
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Angus Loten | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

Newsletter Sign-up WSJ | CIO Journal The Morning Download delivers daily insights and news on business technology from the CIO Journal team. PREVIEWMost industry clouds began to hit the market early last year, in part sparked by demand for better healthcare data systems during the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020. Though Oracle doesn’t break out revenue from industry cloud sales, its industry cloud offerings are a “multibillion-dollar business,” Mr. Sicilia said. Microsoft last year rolled out industry clouds for retail, financial services, manufacturing, sustainability and nonprofit businesses, according to Kees Hertogh, Microsoft’s general manager for global industry product marketing. A Microsoft-developed industry cloud helped Tarrytown, N.Y.-based MVP Health Care implement a system to streamline its healthcare data, according to CIO Michael Della Villa.

☆ Small-business owners can innovate on flexibility and work policies to stand out from major companies competing for talent
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Alexandra York | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

But small-business owners that can offer flexibility have a competitive edge in hiring. She suggested that small-business owners can more precisely tailor things like remote-work opportunities and mental-health benefits based on their employees' needs. Here's how Meghan Lee, Angela Lee, and McGrail suggest small-business owners innovate their policies to compete with big companies for talent. Be creative with remote-work opportunitiesAs more workers require flexibility in their jobs, small-business owners can innovate on remote-work policies to compete with companies that may be requiring a return to the office. Angela Lee suggested small-business owners invest in benefits like mental-health packages or stipends.

☆ Here's one reason to doubt the reliability of data used by the Fed to determine how aggressive it needs to be to tame inflation, according to Fundstrat
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Matthew Fox | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The plunging response rate of various economic surveys could call into question the reliability of Fed forecasts, according to Fundstrat. "How accurate is the surge in 5 million additional job openings, when there are 1/3 fewer respondents?" The CPI response rate is down to 37.7%, the NFP response rate is down to 44.8%, and the JOLTS response rate collapsed from 44% to 31% over the past year. By comparison, the JOLTS survey response rate was 68% in 2012, Lee observed. The current JOLTS data suggests for every unemployed American looking for a job, they have 1.7 job openings to choose from.

☆ Park Seo-joon joins cast of 'The Marvels,' among growing list of Korean talent joining Disney projects
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +2 min

Korean actor Park Seo-joon will star in the upcoming superhero movie “The Marvels” to be released in July 2023. He joins a growing roster of Korean talent that is joining Disney-backed content and was one of many Korean names dropped Wednesday at a Disney content showcase in Singapore. Earlier this month, “Squid Games” star Lee Jung-jae was announced as joining Star Wars series “The Acolyte,” for Disney +. So too did Japanese director Miike Takashi, whose Korean-made series “Connect” Disney+ will upload early next month. Disney has announced plans to green-light 50 local shows in the Asia-Pacific region by the end of 2023 and is keen to catch up with Netflix in the scale of its Korean content roster.

☆ Twitch conducts layoffs on its recruiting team and plans to reduce hiring in 2023
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Geoff Weiss | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Twitch has laid off staff on its recruiting team as it plans to reduce hiring in 2023. No additional cuts will be made as a result of the ongoing layoffs at parent company Amazon, a spokesperson said. Twitch has conducted layoffs on its recruiting team, a company spokesperson confirmed to Insider, adding that the decision reflects its plans to reduce hiring in 2023. The Twitch spokesperson noted that only the recruiting team was impacted, and that the cuts were not the result of parent company Amazon's ongoing layoff plans. At least four LinkedIn users who identified themselves as former Twitch employees publicly shared that they'd been laid off.

☆ Cloud Growth Continues Amid Tough Time for Tech
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-27 | by ( Steven Rosenbush | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +3 min

The growth of cloud computing has slowed a bit this year but remains one of the most resilient sectors in a generally tough environment for technology companies. That outpaces overall company sales growth of 15%. Spending on cloud computing “will fluctuate with the broader economic picture,” Mr. Sustar said. People might want to rationalize their cloud spending, but overall cloud growth will continue and be a larger and larger part of the IT budget,” he said. In other words, cloud growth will continue, but it won’t look like a bubble.

☆ Analysis: Cloud Growth Continues Amid Tough Time for Tech
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-27 | by ( Steven Rosenbush | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +3 min

☆ Mike Lee tries to distance himself from Trump in Utah debate
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

OREM, Utah — Fending off attacks from his independent challenger, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah worked to distinguish himself from former President Donald Trump in a contentious debate Monday evening. Lee faces a challenge from Evan McMullin, a former Republican known most for his long-shot bid for president six years ago, when as an independent he won 21.5% of voters in Utah, including Lee. Lee’s attempts to draw a distinction with Trump reflect the peculiar dynamics emerging in Utah this election cycle. What I think he’s trying to do is draw that contrast,’” Utah Republican Party Chair Carson Jorgensen said. Trump failed to win support from a majority of Utah voters in 2016 and Joe Biden performed better with Utah voters in 2020 than any Democrat since 1964.

Monthly debt market data shows foreign investors have been net sellers for seven straight months to August as what had been a lucrative yield premium in China vanished as U.S. interest rates soared. GIMME SHELTERAmid foreign investors' exodus, there are signs of locals following as fast as allowable under capital controls that were tightened after the previous season of heavy outflows in 2016. Moving money is also very difficult as COVID-19 curbs on travel add another layer to capital controls. Data from consultancy Education International Cooperation showed a 41.5% jump in queries about study in Hong Kong between January and July, compared with the same period a year earlier. They expect a rush to Hong Kong products when the border between Hong Kong and the mainland reopens.

☆ GOP Sen. Mike Lee wrote an op-ed in the third person endorsing himself amid an unexpectedly tough re-election race
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Bryan Metzger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The Salt Lake Tribune appears to have asked candidates to write op-eds explaining why they should be elected. GOP Sen. Mike Lee submitted an op-ed written in the third person that was less than 300 words. —The Salt Lake Tribune (@sltrib) October 16, 2022While Lee was initially listed as the author of the op-ed, the senator's byline was later removed. "The Salt Lake Tribune solicited an essay from the campaign for inclusion in their voter guide. "I'm Evan McMullin," wrote McMullin.

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