Friday's Fast Five: Week of 11.1

The New Normal of Negativity (A Wealth of Common Sense): Some people would have you believe America is falling apart right now. It’s crumbling before our very eyes. Things were far worse in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Yes, there was a spike when inflation went crazy but it’s rolling over again now that wages are outpacing price growth again. The U.S. economy is the envy of the world but it’s far from perfect. Still, we are living through one of the best economic environments of the past 50 years, and so many people are stuck in a doom-loop of negativity. They think this country is falling apart.

How Intel Got Left Behind in the A.I. Chip Boom (The New York Times): Intel was for decades Silicon Valley’s dominant chip company. But missed opportunities and poor execution left it on the sidelines in tech’s latest gold rush.

Ruminating on Asset Allocation (Oaktree): When I travel to see clients and spend entire days discussing investing and the markets, memo ideas often pop up. Last month’s visit with clients in Australia is a case in point. We talked about the “sea change” I believe is taking place in interest rates and about the role of credit in portfolios, and in a few cases, this led to the general topic of asset allocation. The result wasn’t a lot of new ideas on the subject, but rather a new way to combine old ideas into a unified theory.

Will the ‘SmartLess’ Podcast Be the Biggest Role of Their Careers? (The New York Times): Started during the pandemic, this venture is the first step in a media empire being built by the actors Sean Hayes, Will Arnett and Jason Bateman.

The U.S. Soccer Coach Paid for by a Billionaire (The Wall Street Journal): It costs a lot to hire an elite coach. So before U.S. Soccer recruited Mauricio Pochettino, it recruited a bunch of wealthy donors—headlined by Citadel founder Ken Griffin—to help pay for him.