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The Dow slides sharply today; Samsung’s de facto leader is let out of South Korean jail.
The Dow Jones takes a tumble
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- The Dow Jones industrial average took a huge tumble today, falling 1,175 points, or 4.6 percent, in a single day. The Dow closed at 24,345.75 today. [WSJ / Akane Otani and Riva Gold]
- The Dow wasn’t the only one to suffer losses; the S&P 500 fell 4.1 percent and the Nasdaq Composite slumped 3.8 percent. Financial, health care, and industrial sectors all took significant hits. [The Guardian]
- So how bad is this? Pretty bad. It’s the biggest-ever point drop for the Dow, and today’s plunge erased the gains of the year. [Financial Times / Mamta Badkar]
- There are a few reasons behind the Dow’s sudden plunge: First of all, there’s new leadership at the Federal Reserve, bringing concerns that the Fed could raise interest rates to combat inflation. The Fed will likely do this slowly, but there are still fears this would raise the cost of mortgages and loans, as well as company loans. [CNN / David Goldman]
- But a slowdown may not be all bad; stocks have been soaring for months now, and a sharp drop could simply be a correction. [CNBC / Thomas Franck]
- The headlines may seem scarier than the actual event because we haven’t seen a drop like this for a long time (but we also haven’t seen so much stock market growth for a long time). [NYT / Neil Irwin]
- The tumble also isn’t great for President Donald Trump, who has been able to point to the stock market’s gains as evidence his business-friendly presidency is working. That might not be the case anymore, and it’s a bad look ahead of the 2018 midterms. [Washington Post / Thomas Heath]
Samsung’s leader uses his “get out of jail free” card
- Samsung’s de facto leader Lee Jae-yong is a free man, after spending about a year in jail on corruption charges. The remainder of his sentence has been suspended. [NYT / Choe Sang-Hun and Raymond Jong]
- Lee was supposed to serve a five-year sentence after being convicted of bribery charges and was taken down in the same corruption scandal that ensnared former South Korean President Park Geun-hye. [Vox / Zeeshan Aleem]
- Lee’s sentencing and jailing was supposed to be the moment South Korea turned a corner in making powerful corporate leaders do time after convictions. Instead, his sentencing suspension is the latest deferential judicial treatment for a member of the country’s elite. [Gizmodo / Melanie Ehrenkranz]
- This trend goes well beyond Samsung — families who run South Korea’s biggest corporations, known as chaebols, have huge power and political sway because they are integral to the country’s booming economy. The leaders of companies such as Hyundai and the Hanwha Group have also been convicted and subsequently pardoned over the years. [Bloomberg / Shelly Banjo]
Miscellaneous
- Newsweek is in shambles. The company fired its editor-in-chief and executive editor, who were looking into the finances of the magazine’s parent company. [CNN Money / Hadas Gold]
- There’s some good news for men with receding hairlines: A chemical found in McDonald’s French fries has been shown to reverse balding in mice. Of mice and men, y’know? [Business Insider / Rosie Fitzmaurice]
- Years after Google tried (and failed) to make smart glasses, Intel is back with some new smart specs that they say are less creepy than Glass. [The Verge / Dieter Bohn]
- Next time your dog tears apart a pair of shoes or your favorite sweater, you’d best get out your frustration on something else. That’s because your pup doesn’t feel guilt, despite that sad look on their face. [The Atlantic / William Brennan]
Verbatim
“Much like Walt Whitman, Kylie Jenner contains multitudes. She did not hold back, unlike her baby’s father, Travis Scott, who simply referred to the newborn as a ‘rager’ in his celebratory tweet.” [The Cut / Mariah Smith]
Watch this: the 2020 Census is in serious trouble
Problems have plagued the US Census Bureau in recent decades. [Carlos Waters / Youtube]
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