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Posts published in “Business & Markets”

Spotify and the Fight Against Vaccine Misinformation (A.K.A. The Joe Rogan Problem)

In May 2020, Spotify signed an exclusive podcast deal with Joe Rogan that is now rumored to be valued at $200 million, according to the New York Times. In the week following this announcement, Spotify’s stock went up 17%. The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) is Spotify’s most popular podcast in 93 markets and lays Spotify’s advertising growth in recent years at the foot of podcasts and Joe Rogan’s show in particular.

Concerns have been swirling around Mr. Rogan’s podcast since the beginning. In September 2020, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek addressed employees’ concerns around transphobic content on the podcast. “Others have concerns specifically over a recent episode,” Ek said at that time, according to Vice.…

Tips to Prepare for Tax Season 2022

Believe it or not, tax season is officially here. While it is completely understandable to avoid thinking about taxes until you absolutely have to, taking a few preemptive steps can keep you organized and help reduce stress. Whether you file your taxes using tax software yourself or work with a tax professional, check out the tips below to confidently tackle your taxes this year. 

Step #1: Gather all of your forms & documents 

Prevent last-minute scrambling by organizing all your tax documents. Here’s a summary of the tax documents and the information you’ll need:

  • W-2s (from your workplace)
  • SSA-1099 (summary of Social Security benefits)
  • 1099s  (if you have additional income, interest, gains/ losses) 
  • 1099-Rs (if you receive income from pensions, annuities, and retirement accounts) 
  • 1095-A (if you have government marketplace health coverage) 
  • 1098s (students receive a summary that reports interest and tuition payments) 
  • W-2Gs ( if you have gambling winnings, yes, you also need to report this) 
  • Schedule K-1s ( used for partnership income, trust income, and company ownership) 
  • Letter 6419 – ( if you have children, this reports Advance Child Tax Credit Payments) 
  • Letter 6475 – (if you received any federal stimulus payments, this reports the Economic Impact (stimulus) Payment) 

Step #2:  Schedule out a date to file 

Remember the deadline to submit your taxes is April 18, 2022.

The Federal Reserve’s Role in Controlling Costs

Inflation in the U.S. is at a 30 year high, and many Americans have noticed a cost increase in the items that they purchase every day. Last month, President Biden renominated Jerome Powell to a second term as Federal Reserve chair and combating inflation will be Powell’s top priority entering this term, or at least the priority that people care about the most. There are several levers that the Fed can pull to attempt to combat this inflation. As Powell announced last month, quantitative easing is the lever that they plan to pull right now. Quantitative easing, or QE, is a Fed program that purchases financial assets from the market in order to get more cash into the American economic system.…

Wellness & Busyness Part 2: Interview with Allyson Dhindsa, Career Coach at Stern

This interview is a follow-up to our Wellness & Busyness article from November, in which we received an overwhelming response from students regarding their tactics to balance life, work, and attaining MBAs in a society that tends to glorify “busyness.” Allyson Dhindsa is an associate director in the Office of Career Development at Stern. She coaches full-time MBA students 1:1 as well as in groups, on attaining internships and full-time roles, particularly those with non-traditional backgrounds. She looked over our raw data (anonymous still) from the survey and sat down with me to give her thoughts on busyness in business school, from the perspective of a career coach.…

The Rise of Business Development Companies

Lately, there has been a lot of buzz surrounding business development companies and people’s preference toward them as opposed to investment banks. Business development companies are essentially publicly traded closed-end funds that provide capital appreciation and income. BDCs give smaller companies the capital they need for growth. They are independent and answer to their own board of directors. BDCs are a combination of an investment company and an operating company that provide financing to small- and mid-sized businesses.

Small to mid-sized businesses prefer BDCs to investment banks because investment banks are highly regulated by the Federal Reserve. BDCs represent a transparent portfolio of loans that can be traded publicly with little to no regulation.…

The High Cost of the Holidays during Covid

This year, it looks like there’ll be one uninvited guest at your house for the holidays: inflation. The coming holiday season will be one of the most expensive on record given the rising costs of food (a 5.3% gain since last year) and a higher Consumer Price Index (a 6.2% rise since last year). The CPI reached a 30-year high in October, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Rising inflation might cause the Federal Reserve to continue its policy course. However, according to experts, these bumps are all very normal as the economy gets back up and running. 

Supply chain issues continue to be a problem as well.…

The Boost to the Covid Vax

The air is brisk, the days are shorter, and the temperature is dropping, which can only mean one thing: It’s respiratory virus season. Or at least it’s a notable season for us health care workers, especially those of us who work in pediatrics. Respiratory viruses increase in prevalence during the winter months. This is because viruses can survive longer in colder temperatures and lower humidity and because people spend more time inside during the winter. But I’m not here to remind you of elementary science. I’m here to talk about the science behind the Covid vaccine and some of the uncertainties.…

What Is a Semiconductor and Why Should You Care?

Being in business school, or at least being someone who reads a business school newspaper, you know how important semiconductors are in the modern economy. You know that they are a critical component for everything that uses electronic chips to operate (which is everything) and that the largest nations like the U.S. and China see the semiconductor supply chain as critical to operating their economies and to maintaining national security. It recently occurred to me though that I didn’t know what a semiconductor actually is. Call me a stickler for details, but I think it is important to know what a thing is when that thing affects hundreds of billions of dollars every year and receives a high level of scrutiny from every major government.…

The EV revolution: can Biden take us the last mile?

By Nicolaus Schmandt

113 years after Henry Ford’s first Model T rolled off the assembly line in Michigan, combustion engines remain the dominant means of moving a vehicle. For technology to last more than a century is an impressive run. Compared to phones, computers, and personal electronics, multiple iterations of which are unrecognizable and unusably primitive today, cars have remained surprisingly consistent. 

But, finally, the end seems to be coming with Ford planning to put its last gasoline engine in a car in 2034, after which all vehicles produced by Ford will be electric. That’s around the time several governments, including California and most of Europe, are saying they will ban the sale of gas vehicles.…

Getting our vax on

These past few months, we have seen the U.S. do a “boot and rally” on Covid. After doing a terrible job of early testing and surveillance, vaccine rollout has gone remarkably well. In the past three months, an average of two million vaccines have been administered a day. Our population is currently 35% fully vaccinated and 46% partially vaccinated as of May 12. However, we are now getting to the point where the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine supply is starting to surpass demand, thanks to the “vaccine hesitancy” phenomenon. 

Hesitancy is firmest in Republican white communities in rural areas and is often clouded in misinformation.…

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