Newsweek November 18, 2022

2013 “The forces driving the bidding in these salerooms right now are much bigger than either Christie’s or Sotheby’s—or even the art market,” wrote Newsweek of the competition among major auction houses. “Over the past five years, a huge wave of global wealth has been swelling, transforming markets and industries across the globe.” Since 2013, the number of the world’s billionaires almost doubled from 1,426 to 2,668. In 2021, Sotheby’s and Christie’s sales each amounted to about $7 billion. In May, Christie’s sold Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn for a record $195 million. 1983 “‘The Day After’ has already emerged as the single biggest mobilizing point for the antinuclear movement,” Newsweek said, forcing us “to graphically experience the ground-zero agonies.” Fear of nuclear war still grips the world today. Last month, NATO…

The U.S. won a record-breaking sixth consecutive team title at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships on November 1. Helping them get there was Shilese Jones, the U.S.’ new top all-arounder, whose balance beam performance, pictured on October 29, assisted in seeing them through qualifiers. In addition to Jones, Tokyo Olympic medalists Jade Carey and Jordan Chiles, Leanne Wong and Skye Blakely earned the U.S. 166.564 points to beat out Great Britain and Canada. This win advances the U.S. to the 2024 Paris Olympics.…

General Electric has a storied history and was the ultimate blue-chip stock. Electrical power pioneers Thomas Edison and Charles Coffin merged their enterprises in 1892 to become General Electric. The company grew into a household name, synonymous with everything from household appliances to jet engines to financial services, but 130 years after its rise, the huge conglomerate that was GE is being sold for parts. How and why this happened is the story bestselling author and financial journalist William D. Cohan tells in his new book, power failure: the rise and fall of an american icon (Portfolio). In this exclusive excerpt, Cohan describes his meeting with 20-year GE CEO Jack Welch—and Welch’s stinging rebuke of his successor, whom he blamed for GE’s demise. IT WAS AT THE EXCLUSIVE NANTUCKET GOLF Club…

You worked at GE Capital in the ’80s. How did a company that started out making light bulbs end up with such a high-powered financing arm? At that time, GE Capital was important, but not as important as it became during the following 15 years. It was willing to take chances on companies that few others would, but it expected to get paid for its risk-taking, something I admired. Jack [Welch] saw the arbitrage opportunity between the extremely low-cost at which GE could borrow—given its AAA-credit rating—and what it could charge borrowers. Jack just kept pushing that advantage into all sorts of interesting business lines—from financing leveraged buyouts (which I did) to financing auto inventories and manufactured-home communities—and then to opportunities around the world. Which parts of Jack Welch’s management style should…

THE DEATH OF A YOUNG IRA-nian woman in police custody sparked what activists are now calling an “uprising,” against which Iranian authorities are using methods of abuse perfected over the past four decades to silence dissent. The women of Iran have emerged as the dominant force in the protests and are taking matters into their own hands, bringing together various critical elements of society all insisting on change. Protests broke out in mid-September after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody after her arrest by Iran’s Guidance Patrol, also known as the “Morality Police,” for allegedly defying the Islamic Republic’s conservative laws. In response to the mass anger, the Iranian regime fiercely cracked down on anti-government demonstrations, killing 287 protesters and arresting more than 14,000 people as of October 31, according to…

THE TROUBLE WITH AMERICA’S teenagers began well before the pandemic. In 2019, more than 1 in 3 reported feeling so sad or hopeless at some point over the past year that they had skipped regular activities, a 44 percent rise since 2009, and 1 in 6 had contemplated suicide. Public health measures made all that even worse, as teenagers in communities around the nation grew more isolated than ever. During the pandemic, the number of emergency-room visits for suspected suicide attempts rose by 50 percent for adolescent girls and 4 percent for boys, before settling down in recent months, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The city of Tacoma, Washington, appears to be bucking these trends even though more than half of its residents live below the…