Anyone who has been following the U.S. monthly economic data lately has noticed that the rate of inflation has been rising over the past year as the unemployment rate has fallen. Here are the numbers:

TREND MILL

Retail has endured one of its most difficult spells to date. The pandemic has ripped through the heart of the retail sector, severely reducing customer footprint and forcing periods of closure for stores not deemed essential. Many never reopened. A record 12,200 stores closed in the U.S. in 2020, and despite the pandemic showing signs of easing, similar numbers are predicted for 2021. Worse, analysts believe the repercussions of the pandemic could linger long after it subsides, estimating that roughly one in every 11 stores will close in the next five years.

If conditions weren’t challenging enough, the continued consumer…

I READ IT SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO

I Read It So You Don’t Have To is a series that gives you the TL;DR on a business book you want to read — but don’t have time to.

What did I read?

The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech by William Deresiewicz.

So who’s this William Deresiewicz?

Deresiewicz is an essayist and critic and a former professor of English at Yale. He’s also the author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life and A Jane Austen Education.

Give me the 30-second sell.

Working artists are in trouble. Now, that’s not what…

“If you want to be successful in business (in life, actually), you have to create more than you consume. Your goal should be to create value for everyone you interact with. Any business that doesn’t create value for those it touches, even if it appears successful on the surface, isn’t long for this world. It’s on the way out.” So wrote Jeff Bezos in his final letter to shareholders, released last week. It’s a great sentiment, one I heartily agree with and wish that more companies embraced. But how well does he practice what he preaches? …

Number Crunch

$400 million per hour: That’s the economic cost caused by a quarter-mile-long container ship that has been stuck in the Suez Canal since Wednesday, blocking passage for other ships on one of the world’s busiest trade routes, based on a rough estimate by Lloyd’s List, as reported by Bloomberg.

Rescue efforts have been ongoing, with the cargo ship Ever Given having been partially refloated but still stuck in the middle of the Suez Canal. The canal accounts for roughly 12% of the world’s seaborne trade, which should give you an idea of how much global trade is at a standstill…

NUMBER CRUNCH

50%: That’s the share of their stimulus checks that half of American 25- to 34-year-olds are planning to spend on stocks, according to survey data cited by Markets Insider. The survey, conducted by Deutsche Bank Research, found that this age group has more aggressive equity plans for any stimulus funds than either older or younger investors — but that significant chunks of every age bracket are eyeing stocks as a place to park at least some of this new cash.

The standout status of that young-adult cohort makes sense, as the survey also found that over the past 12 months…

Number Crunch

370: That’s how many “blank-check companies,” otherwise known as special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), are actively looking for a target company to merge with and take public, according to CNBC.

SPACs are companies that raise funds on public markets for the explicit purpose of merging with a private company and taking them public, thereby allowing the target company to bypass the lengthy and expensive process of a traditional IPO. Last year saw a boom in the number of companies that went public via SPAC, with sports betting platform DraftKings and battery company QuantumScape among them.

And the SPACs just keep on…

I Read It So You Don’t Have To

I Read It So You Don’t Have To is a new series that gives you the TL;DR on a new business book you want to read—but will never have time to.

What did I read?

Tim Harford’s new book The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics (published in the U.K. as How to Make the World Add Up)

So who’s this Tim Harford?

He’s a columnist at the Financial Times, a BBC radio host, and the author of several previous books, the most recent of which is Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy and the most popular of which is probably 2005’s The Undercover…