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PREVIEW VERSION
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Jon Kelly
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Good morning,
Thanks for reading The Backstory, your weekly digest of the
best new work at Puck.
It was another exceptional week: Matt Belloni made the case for Ted Sarandos at Disney; Eriq Gardner pondered Sam Altman’s latest legal challenge; Lauren Sherman laid out the next steps in Prada’s Versace acquisition; Rachel Strugatz broke the news of Glossier’s down round; Sarah Shapiro revealed a ’90s mall brand revival; Dylan Byers
imagined some future CNBC M&A; John Ourand chatted with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman; Julia Alexander explored Major League Baseball’s media rights conundrum; Marion Maneker played art market moneyball; Julie Davich spotlighted Abe Lincoln’s distressed sale; and Bill Cohan warned of a bond market meltdown.
Meanwhile, Leigh Ann
Caldwell surveyed the Liberation Day fallout; Julia Ioffe got the elevator pitch on Loomered Strategies; John Heilemann profiled Trump’s economic brain trust; Peter Hamby analyzed some brutal Trump poll numbers; and Abby Livingston dug into the simmering G.O.P. civil war over spending.
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Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it
all came together.
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A MESSAGE FROM MCKINSEY & COMPANY
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Geopolitical forces continue to reshape global trade, investment flows, and competitive dynamics.
Leading
organizations respond by strengthening three core areas: growth strategy, operational efficiency, and capabilities to navigate disruption.
Create value amidst
turbulence
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FASHION
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Lauren Sherman
previews a Prada succession twist.
and…
Rachel Strugatz reads the Glossier pitch deck.
meanwhile…
Sarah Shapiro
explains Urban Outfitters’ staying power.
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ART MARKET
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Marion Maneker
details the market’s democratization quandary.
and…
Julie Davich reviews the lots of a presidential fire sale.
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HOLLYWOOD
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WALL STREET
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Bill Cohan
deciphers the panic in the bond market.
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SILICON VALLEY
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MEDIA
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Dylan Byers
assesses CNBC’s value to SpinCo.
and…
John Ourand chronicles a sports rights vulture contest.
meanwhile…
Julia Alexander
considers Major League Baseball’s streaming options.
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WASHINGTON
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Leigh Ann Caldwell
relays all the post–Liberation Day agita.
and…
Julia Ioffe checks in with Laura Loomer.
meanwhile…
Peter Hamby
scrutinizes Trump’s deteriorating poll numbers; John Heilemann evaluates the president’s coalition of the willing; and Abby Livingston
monitors the tariff terrors on the Hill.
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PODCASTS
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Dylan and Bill get into the trade war media games on
The Grill Room.
and…
ESPN’s Peter Schrager discusses Roger Goodell’s future with John on The Varsity.
and…
Lauren and Dimepiece founder Brynn Wallner trade notes
on Radhika replacements at VF on Fashion People.
and…
Heilemann chats with cybersecurity expert and Trump antagonist Chris Krebs on Impolitic.
and…
Matt
explores the fan equity model with director Eli Roth on The Town.
and…
Julia Alexander and Peter debate Apple’s tariff vulnerabilities on The Powers That Be.
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inbox. Click here to customize your email settings.
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On Thursday afternoon, I met an investor friend for lunch at The Odeon, Puck’s preferred canteen in our
still-newish habitat south of Canal Street. Walking to the restaurant, I slipped into a fugue state recollecting financial crises of yore. After all, Trump’s mounting, unilateral tariff escapade was giving real 2008 vibes. The sensation grew as I ambled from our headquarters on lower Greenwich Street, past the New York Fed and the once-Occupied Zuccotti Park. To my left, Goldman’s gleaming riverside headquarters; to my right, the nondescript office tower from whence
former AIG C.E.O. Hank Greenberg once promiscuously deployed his legions of credit default swaps. It was a veritable market meltdown hall of fame.
The effects of the turmoil were etched on the faces of nearly everyone I passed: the Alo moms, the Stone Island finance dads, the nepo middle-agers, the municipal workers, and the many other tribes that populate modern Tribeca. Even if Trump had yielded to Scott Bessent’s pleas and announced his 90-day “pause”
a day earlier, no one was looking at their Fidelity account.
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A MESSAGE FROM MCKINSEY & COMPANY
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Geopolitical forces continue to reshape global trade, investment flows, and competitive dynamics.
Leading
organizations respond by strengthening three core areas: growth strategy, operational efficiency, and capabilities to navigate disruption.
Create value amidst
turbulence
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Naturally, my pal and I began by kibitzing about the markets and the tariffs. As he was sermonizing and
hypothesizing about the second- and third-order effects—this was his business, after all—I walked him through a Bill Cohan piece we’d published the previous evening, laying out the shoes that the most important players on Wall Street expect to drop next. The story was titled, When the Bond Market Panics Like This…
Readers of this
Saturday pastoral know of my infinite fondness for Bill, whom I’ve worked with for more than a decade and am honored to call a partner at all times, but especially times like these. Bill has the unfair advantage of having spent a quarter-century in the senior rungs of premier financial institutions, including Lazard and JPMorgan, before deciding to switch careers and become the culture’s most important financial journalist. I’d woken up at dawn on Wednesday to read his first draft on
the White House–induced market collapse, and was stunned by his prescient warning of how easily America’s largest foreign creditors could rattle our economic cages. Bill had foreseen the blinking red lights that prompted Trump himself to get yippy. As I told my lunch companion, Bill’s analysis had anticipated this entire chapter of Trump’s economic misadventure.
You don’t need me to tell you that we’re living in strange and uncertain, if not unexciting, times. And I couldn’t more
strongly recommend that you spend some quiet time this weekend with CNBC on mute as you dig into When the Bond Market Panics Like This…. It’s the most elegant, thoughtful, and cogent explanation of our manufactured semi-recession that you’ll find anywhere. And Bill will have more in Dry Powder, his private email par excellence, tomorrow. (Sign up here to make sure you don’t
miss a beat.)
Meanwhile, if you’re looking to unplug from the financial news this weekend, I’d turn your attention to an absolute gem of a Julia Ioffe joint. Since last Friday, when the MAGA influencer Laura Loomer touched off a firing spree at the N.S.C., the blob and bureaucracy have been wondering what really happened. Surely, there had to be something more afoot than a pot-stirring Millennial firecracker pouring poison in the ear of the
president. But, as Julia explains in Fruit of the Loomer, all hopes of sanity should be dashed. Indeed, the backstory of how the N.S.C. got Loomered (her expression, not mine) is one of the stories of our time, and precisely what you should expect from Puck.
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Have a great weekend,
Jon
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