| | | | | | | Presented By BlackRock | | | | Axios AM | | By Mike Allen · Dec 03, 2022 | | Happy Saturday. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,453 words ... 5½ minutes. Edited by Donica Phifer. 🤧 Situational awareness: 44 states report high or very high flu activity, the CDC says. Go deeper. | | | | | | 🗳️ 1 big thing: Surprise winner in Dems' new calendar |  Data: DNC. Map: Kavya Beheraj/Axios If Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) wins his runoff Tuesday, expect rising buzz he could be a promising Democratic presidential candidate in 2024, if President Biden doesn't run, or beyond, Axios' Josh Kraushaar reports. The Warnock camp is downplaying talk of national aspirations. - But if he beats Herschel Walker, Warnock will take the Democrats' Senate majority from 50 seats (with Vice President Harris as the tie-breaker) to a solid 51.
Former President Barack Obama campaigns with Sen. Raphael Warnock in Atlanta on Thursday. Photo: Brynn Anderson/AP Warnock, 53 — senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, once the pulpit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — is a charismatic speaker who has made inroads with white suburban voters. - Plus he could unite the Democratic coalition and reinvigorate Black voters, whose turnout sagged nationally in 2022.
The calendar — with its front-loading of Georgia and neighboring South Carolina — adds to Warnock's appeal. |     | | | | | | 2. Crypto's Enron |  | | | Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios | | | | Sam Bankman-Fried's apology tour isn't going to cut it: - Crypto has an Enron-sized scandal that threatens to erase the trust proposition for its existence.
- It'll be a long time before investors — especially small ones — trust the industry again, Axios' Pete Gannon and Javier E. David write.
Why it matters: Crypto is an untested, interconnected, interdependent ecosystem that's ripe for contagion. Since this fuse was lit, the fire is spreading fast and wide. What happened: SBF's house of cards has drawn a host of parallels — Madoff, Enron, Theranos, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers. - FTX's bankruptcy declaration shows that, like Theranos/Madoff/Lehman, the principal spark for FTX's downfall was the founder's staggering ineptitude and dishonesty — and the failure of anyone around them to notice (or at least care).
🖼️ The big picture: FTX's downfall "will radically transform the crypto ecosystem, further shaking trust and raising doubts around its ongoing prospects," analysts at Moody's wrote last week. - The firm's failure "has left a market share void that will prove difficult to fill without a renewed client interest in crypto assets, a scenario to which we currently assign a very low probability."
Flashback: Crypto was born in the glum aftermath of the 2009 crisis. Its big selling point was its decentralized nature. - The idea was that individuals couldn't trust traditional finance — and granting smaller players more power to make their own decisions.
🔮 What's next: Crypto firms are in damage control. Voluntary audits are suddenly in vogue again, with crypto exchanges scrambling to stem a raft of outflows. The bottom line: Robin Vince, president and CEO of banking giant BNY Mellon, writes in a Financial Times op-ed that the FTX fallout of "co-mingled client assets, poor disclosure and missing internal controls should remind us that while the cast of characters and products may change, the script of financial market disorder remains painfully familiar." | | | | | | | | 3. 🖼️ The most Miami art in Miami |  | | | Photo: MSCHF | | | | Art Basel Miami Beach, which ends tonight, exemplifies the triumph of buzz over connoisseurship, Felix Salmon writes in Axios Markets Weekend. - This year's top talker is a machine (above) that displays your checking account balance for all to see.
Why it matters: The work, by MSCHF, is a critique of vulgar exhibitionism. It's also a prime example of it. How it works: Anybody who has gained access to the art fair can participate in the work: Insert your ATM card, enter your PIN, check your balance. - The artwork displays your balance on a leaderboard — highest balance first, accompanied by a photo of the person who inserted the card.
- At one point, the top total was held by a man in a pink T-shirt boasting a $2.9 million balance.
Between the lines: The hypebeast culture that MSCHF emerged from is driven by self-loathing consumers who buy brands' output despite knowing it has no intrinsic quality — but because they know that it is worth more on the secondary market than they are paying for it. The bottom line: Miami is the spiritual home of people who really want other folks to know how rich they are. MSCHF has now given them a way of doing exactly that — protected only by the thinnest veneer of irony. | | | | | | | | A message from BlackRock | | How BlackRock is helping Americans access retirement investing | | |  | | | | According to AARP, over 57 million Americans don't have access to a workplace retirement savings plan. This access makes you 15 to 20 times more likely to save for retirement. Learn how BlackRock is expanding access to high-quality retirement options here. | | | | | | 4. 📷 Spy plane revealed |  | | | Photo: David Swanson/Reuters | | | | In Palmdale, Calif, Northrop Grumman yesterday rolled out its new B-21 "Raider" jet — the first of a new fleet of long-range stealth nuclear bombers for the United States Air Force, Reuters reports. - Why it matters: The presentation provided the first video and photos of the new bomber. Previously, there were only artist renderings.
The B-21 — which carries a similar "flying wing" shape to its predecessor, the B-2 — will be able to deliver both conventional and nuclear weapons around the world, using long-range and mid-air refueling capabilities. - The planes were projected to cost $550 million each in 2010 dollars — or $750 million in today's inflation-adjusted dollars.
The Air Force planned to buy at least 100 of the planes to replace B-1 and B-2 bombers. | | | | | | | | 5. 🐦 Musk's Hunter show |  | | | Via Twitter | | | | Elon Musk's Twitter took aim at the firm's previous management last evening with a "TWITTER FILES" thread designed to demonstrate "free speech suppression," Axios' Scott Rosenberg writes from the Bay Area. - Musk's team apparently provided newsletter author Matt Taibbi with access to internal documents surrounding Twitter's controversial decision, three weeks before the 2020 presidential election, to limit access to a New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop.
Taibbi's thread unspooled over nearly two hours of posting: - The posts show debates inside Twitter over whether the decision to block the Post story was the right call.
- Conservative outrage at Twitter's action was loud and public at the time. But Taibbi also reports messages from outside organizations and a Democratic politician over the move.
- A text, apparently from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to a Twitter executive, reads: "Generating huge backlash on hill re speech."
Between the lines: Musk's following greeted the thread as evidence that Twitter had operated with bias. But there was no smoking-gun evidence of a partisan conspiracy to censor. - N.Y. columnist Farhad Manjoo tweeted that "THE TWITTER FILES" amounted to a "half dozen screenshots of content moderation policy executives earnestly debating content moderation policy."
🧵 Read Taibbi's thread ... Share this story. | | | | | | | | 6. 🎵 Genius on a page | | Photo: Šálek Václav/CTK via AP A musical manuscript handwritten by Ludwig van Beethoven is being returned to the heirs of the richest family in pre-World War II Czechoslovakia, whose members had to flee the country to escape the Holocaust, AP reports from Prague. - Beethoven composed the six-movement String Quartet in B-flat Major in 1825-1826 as part of his work on a series of quartets commissioned by Russian Prince Nicholas Galitzin. It premiered in March 1826 at the Musikverein concert hall in Vienna, Austria.
The Moravian Museum in the Czech city of Brno has had the original manuscript for the fourth movement of Beethoven's String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130 in its collection for more than 80 years. | | | | | | | | 7. 👑 ⚜️ State visits | | Photo: Samir Hussein/Pool/WireImage via Getty Images In Boston, President Biden greets Prince William, Prince of Wales, yesterday at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Photo: Ludovic Marin via Getty Images In New Orleans, French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, dance with a member of a brass band upon arriving yesterday at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. | | | | | | | | 8. 🎟️ 1 Swift thing: $30,000+ tickets | | Tickets for Taylor Swift's "The Eras Tour" are going for as much as $30,000 on the resale market, Axios' Troy Smith reports. - Buyers and sellers have flocked to StubHub and Vivid Seats in the two weeks since Ticketmaster canceled its public sale for Swift's 2023 stadium tour.
- Ticketmaster sold more than 2 million tickets during the first day of its presale on Nov. 15 — the most ever sold for an artist in a single day.
The original price range was $49 to $499. - The cheapest seats on resale sites range from around $350 to $700.
- Prices for some seats have topped $30,000 in Vegas; Glendale, Ariz.; Arlington, Texas; and East Rutherford, N.J.
Between the lines: There are other options, but you'll have to do some work. Be smart: No matter where you buy Swift tickets, be wary of scams. Share this story. | | | | | | | | A message from BlackRock | | Invested in the future of communities | | |  | | | | At BlackRock, we are serving the communities that help the country thrive. We are proud to invest in the projects that build our economy, with $20 billion in U.S. roads, bridges and transportation invested on behalf of our clients. Learn more. | | | | 📬 Thanks for starting weekend with us. Please invite your friends to sign up to get their daily essentials — Axios AM, PM and Finish Line. |  | | Are you a fan of this email format? Your essential communications — to staff, clients and other stakeholders — can have the same style. Axios HQ, a powerful platform, will help you do it. | | | |
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