Normally articles about big oil spending tons of money wouldn’t surprise me but this stat jumped off the page:
WSJ: Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Royal Dutch Shell spent more than $120 billion in 2013 to boost their oil and gas output—about the same cost in today’s dollars as putting a man on the moon. (emphasis mine)
Woah.
According to Quartz the market for hot sauce is hot. Quartz cites a number of contributing factors including America’s rising Asian & Latino populations (groups that traditionally enjoy spicy food) and the huge popularity of hot wings.
Kind of surprised to see mayonnaise coming in second.
Source: Quartz
Really cool map from The Economist. The map below matches the value of entire countries’ listed firms to individual western companies.
“Here’s a tricky one that I worry about. Everybody wants to live longer and I don’t know what that means, to live longer. Suppose you could live 10,000 years. Then, what’s your urge to get out of bed the next morning. There’s no time pressure on you to achieve, to accomplish, to love. When you give flowers to a loved one on a special occasion, are they made of plastic so they live forever? No, they are made of flower petals. There’s a pistil, there’s a stamen, there’s a stalk, and that will all die. And it’s the fact that it dies that empowers our emotions to appreciate it that much more. So, the finiteness of life forces me to appreciate every sunrise that I wake up every day. And if I live forever, I don’t know that I would have those emotions or those feelings or the sense that the day awaits my energy.”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson
Found via Business Insider
I don’t really have a strong view about minimum wage – I can sympathize with both sides of the argument and frankly it’s not something I spend much time thinking about. However, I did find this chart to be pretty interesting. It clearly makes the point that minimum wage is much lower in real and relative terms than it used to be.
Source: New York Times
A great chartbook from JPM providing a comprehensive update on major markets and the economy.
Photogenic Thoughts 