quote:

Joe Biden will cut short a planned overseas trip and return to Washington on Sunday, after Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy offered the first hint that lawmakers were moving towards a deal to raise the debt ceiling and avert an unprecedented government default.

The US president is set to depart on Wednesday for G7 meetings in Japan. He had originally been scheduled to travel on to Papua New Guinea and Australia, but those plans have been scrapped, the White House said Tuesday.

The change in plans came as Biden met the four top members of Congress — Republicans McCarthy and Mitch McConnell and Democrats Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries — in the Oval Office on Tuesday to try and make progress on a potential deal to raise the debt ceiling and avert default.

All parties were cautiously upbeat after the hour-long meeting.

The White House called the conversation “productive” and “direct”, adding Biden was “optimistic that there is a path to a responsible, bipartisan budget agreement if both sides negotiate in good faith and recognise that neither side will get everything it wants”.

Staffers would continue to meet daily to hash out a deal, the White House said, and Biden would speak to the congressional leaders by phone while he is travelling, before reconvening in person when he is back in Washington.

McCarthy, who has struck a more pessimistic tone in recent days, was more circumspect. He told reporters that while he was not more “optimistic”, the conversations had been “productive”.

The Speaker added it was “possible to get a deal by the end of the week”, but cautioned: “We have got a lot of work to do in a short amount of time.”

RadiRoot posted:

They'll be frantically defibrillating her with vote in hand in a last second attempt to avoid Roman empire level collapse.

Xaris posted:

turns out carvana's strategy of paying +100% kelly bluebook prices for lovely used cars sight-unseen and sticking it in a vending machine and an app for anti-social nerds wasn't a viable business strategy

who could see that coming

Dr. VooDoo posted:

Never even broke even but valued at billions

Dr. VooDoo posted:

Never even broke even but valued at billions

gradenko_2000 posted:

Doomsday Economics + COVID + videogames collision

Blizzard developers say mandatory return-to-office policy has 'cost us some amazing people'

quote:

It's worth noting that the mandatory office attendance doesn't apply to ABK's executives. Recently hired execs like Chief Administrative Officer Brian Bulatao, and Chief Communications Officer Lulu Cheng Meservey, have full-time remote status.

holefoods posted:

I’m on a hybrid schedule right now and they were flexible at first if we had some obligation or wanted to stay home to focus better but now there’s no acceptable excuse other than being sick as if my presence is somehow changing the worth of the lease for our office of like 9 people.

Glumwheels posted:

“Lulu cheng meservey” is that awful woman in PR from substack who is another self proclaimed “free speech absolutist” who somehow got a job at blizzard as CCO.

If execs can’t even show up, why the gently caress should you? Hope it burns to the ground.

Flavahbeast posted:

Dry cat food is way up

anime was right posted:

Rto is just more expensive so any company that doesnt do it is just losing out on cheaper labor and no office costs

quote:

As the sandwich chain eyes a potential US$10 billion sale, a Forbes investigation reveals that late cofounders Peter Buck and Fred DeLuca and their families salted away billions for themselves and their foundations. Meanwhile, some franchisees say they are left with crumbs.

In the early 2000s, a footlong frenzy swept the United States. More than three decades after the first Subway opened in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the sandwich shop started appearing everywhere from strip malls to churches to Walmart Supercenters in all corners of the country. By 2011, Subway’s iconic yellow and green awnings were more ubiquitous than the golden arches of McDonald’s.

But almost as quickly as it arrived, the world’s seemingly insatiable desire for cheap subs began to wane. After the 2015 death of Subway cofounder and longtime CEO Fred DeLuca, which happened to coincide with a colossal public relations crisis for the company when its spokesperson Jared Fogle pleaded guilty to child sex and pornography charges, the restaurant chain saw its sales sputter. The years since have been an undoing of much of Subway’s rapid expansion. Nearly a quarter of the over 27,100 U.S. stores open at the time of DeLuca’s death are now closed.

So it wasn’t a huge surprise when in February, 15 months after its second cofounder, Peter Buck, passed away, the company officially said it’s for sale. According to reports, the price tag could be anywhere from $7 billion to over $10 billion.

New reporting by Forbes in light of that impending deal uncovers new details on just how much money Subway’s billionaire owners pocketed over the years, as well as the moves they’ve taken to both protect and minimize their wealth in the lead up to the sale. Through its ups and downs, one thing has remained constant: Subway has been paying out generously to its owners and their families for years.

This reporting–which is based on hundreds of pages of court documents, charitable filings, historical financial disclosures and interviews with experts and insiders–also pins down for the first time the fortune of DeLuca’s widow, Elisabeth DeLuca, 75, who debuted on the Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list in early April. DeLuca, who has one son, inherited her late husband’s 50% stake in the restaurant giant. With her family, she is estimated to be worth as much as $8 billion, after subtracting disclosed charitable gifts and calculating investment returns on the Subway royalties.

Subway’s other cofounder, Peter Buck, left instructions in his will, a partially redacted copy of which was obtained by Forbes, to leave his half of the company to his family foundation after his November 2021 death, a bequest that might possibly hit $5 billion pending final sale, and ranks as one of the biggest single charitable gifts to a foundation. (It will also help the family avoid a huge tax bill.) Separate from this, Forbes’ reporting reveals that the Buck family bought up forestland in Maine worth up to $1 billion, parts of which the late Subway cofounder passed onto his heirs using a tax-minimizing maneuver that at one point was challenged by the Internal Revenue Service.

Even before the historic donation by Buck, Subway’s owners were giving chunks of their fortune away. Both families have been lauded for their philanthropy. But complicating that legacy is a backlash by some franchisees who accuse the owners of enriching themselves while they struggled amid thousands of store closures. Representatives for the DeLuca and Buck families did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article. Responses from Subway are included below.


...
The Frederick A. DeLuca Foundation—which gave away about $25 million in 2020—predominantly supports organizations in Connecticut and Florida, where Elisabeth lives and owns homes. The DeLuca Foundation is unique because “you can’t just reach out and apply,” said Debra Lee-Thomasset, the CEO and executive director of The Arc at the Glades, a nonprofit that serves adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the Palm Beach-adjacent Glades County.

“The charitable stuff is on the backs of franchisees. They’re out there getting credit for being the nice guy and that’s screwing franchisees.”
Anonymous Subway franchisee

Outside of her Subway stake, Forbes identified two modest homes belonging to Elisabeth DeLuca: a condo in Pompano Beach, and a 2,500 square foot house in Orange, Connecticut. Together, they’re worth about $2 million. Her son Jonathan, who is also a director at the family foundation and at Subway’s parent company, owns two splashier properties: a seven bedroom home in Pompano Beach worth an estimated $3 million and a $4 million Boca Raton pad.

ot everyone is impressed with the Subway founders’ charitable efforts. In April 2021, a group of more than 100 Subway franchisees published an open letter to Elisabeth DeLuca outlining a host of previously reported issues at the chain—including Subway denying their requests for higher quality ingredients and cannibalizing sales by opening up new restaurants next to existing ones. “We were prevented from reducing our hours [during the COVID-19 pandemic] to make ends meet so that the corporate office can generate more royalties,” said the franchisees, specifically highlighting DeLuca’s donations: “We see you presenting charities with large sums of money doing good work. If anything, this shows us that you want to do the right thing in life.”

In the letter, the group of franchisees requested a royalty rebate of 8% of the sale “as a sign of good faith for all the turmoil, and heartache that we have endured through Subway’s 40+ year history.”

“The charitable stuff is on the backs of franchisees,” one long-time franchisee said to Forbes, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “They’re out there getting credit for being the nice guy and that’s screwing franchisees and getting the money on the backs of them because right now large swaths of franchisees aren’t that successful.”

While none of the Bucks nor the DeLucas commented for this article, a Subway spokesperson emphasized how the company has been overhauled since its current CEO John Chidsey joined in 2019. Chidsey, who previously served as Burger King’s CEO, is the first chief executive outside of Subway’s founding families and “took a fresh look at every aspect of our business, including refreshing our relationships with franchisees through improved operations and support,” the spokesperson said. Since taking over, Chidsey has slashed Subway’s corporate staff, initiated an overhaul of Subway’s menu and restructured its contact with franchisees, mainly through diminishing its reliance on controversial business development agents. So far, there’s been no permanent change in the royalties franchisees are required to pay.

In response to the specific concerns raised by franchisees, the Subway spokesperson highlighted that there are 10,000 franchisees in the Subway system with “many points of view.” The spokesperson pointed to the company’s sales, which jumped 6% in 2021 according to data tracker Technomic (Subway declined to comment on its financials), as an indicator that “these improvements are working.”

Subway also put Forbes in contact with two franchisees. Michael Rodriguez, a franchisee who runs 10 Subways in North Carolina, applauded Subway’s owners for their charitable giving. “I think that’s great that they’re giving money to charity, I think that makes sense,” said Rodriguez. “My company is my company, that’s where I earn my living. I’ll do with my money what I think is right and I think everyone else deserves the same leeway.”

Raghu Marwaha, a second generation Subway franchisee whose family owns over 100 restaurants in California, pointed out that the company cut franchisees’ royalty fees in half for a few weeks at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and then offered the option to pay royalties late for a few weeks. Ultimately, Marwaha said he’s personally not spending much time thinking about how much Subway’s owners will get from a sale. “I’m going to worry about my own business … What I’m mostly interested in is do I have a future with this brand?”

Love Stole the Day posted:

Xaris posted:

lmfao wtf

nice steady step-function

Paradoxish posted:

Yeah. It's that plus remote work meaning that you've pretty much got the whole country as your job board, so anyone who really wants it (especially anyone with a decent resume) can basically have it. It's clear that it's really loving with a ton of relatively prestigious companies that were absolutely sure their employees wouldn't abandon them for lower paying, less prestigious remote jobs.

Flavahbeast posted:

Dry cat food is way up

holefoods posted:

what do they mean the desire for cheap subs started to wane the subs stopped being cheap and subway is too garbage to pay $11 for a foot long lol

Vox Nihili posted:

Yeah a $5 footlong was a loving deal in college. Now they want like $15 for the same sandwich. Get the gently caress out of here!

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/arstechnica/status/1658557812136353793

This is gonna wipe out a ton of WoW PvP videos

A modern day library of alexandria, being burned yet again

Flavahbeast posted:

Dry cat food is way up

Xaris posted:

After I made the really long post about Shrinkflation, it got me thinkin' that Amazon prices are all tracked by camelcamelcamel going back decade and that's probably an interesting metric to judge inflation on some random samples of popular items.

I bought this Panasonic toaster oven for like $99 several years ago, it is now around $160: +60% inflation


coffee thingy several years ago from $25 to $40: +60% inflation


dish soap: $12 to $17: +40% inflation


oreos: $4.5 to $6: +33% inflation



ziploc bags: $7 to $11: +50% inflation


electric water kettle: $50 to $100: +100% inflation


boardgame: Codenames Duet: $12 to $25: +200% inflation


e: i tried not to cherrypick that much but my basic observations is electronics priced around $60-$500 haven't moved in 7+ years, mostly. most non-electronic items priced <$30 have gone up. typical retail goods <$20 definitely gone up a lot.

Willa Rogers posted:

gradenko_2000 posted:

Doomsday Economics + COVID + videogames collision

Blizzard developers say mandatory return-to-office policy has 'cost us some amazing people'

webcams for christ posted:

UK needs to get on that hustle and grind mindset.
MANIFEST that colonial wealth that your empire is no longer capable of looting

https://twitter.com/business/status/1658755526581207048

...
As interest rates soar in response to the biggest surge in inflation for a generation, Moody’s, S&P and Fitch have all warned that worsening demographics are already hitting governments’ credit ratings.

They add that downgrades are likely without sweeping reforms, threatening to create a vicious circle of higher fiscal burdens and rising borrowing costs.
...
“While demographics are slow-moving, the problem is becoming more urgent,” said Edward Parker, global head of research for sovereigns and supranationals at Fitch, which downgraded France’s credit rating last month, warning that president Emmanuel Macron’s reform agenda could stall.

“We are well into the adverse effects [of caring for the elderly] in many countries, and they are only growing,” Parker added.
...
S&P said in January that roughly half of the world’s largest economies will have been downgraded to junk by 2060, up from a current level of around a third, if measures are not taken to ease the costs of ageing populations.

It estimated that, in the absence of reforms to ageing-related fiscal policies, the typical government would run a deficit of 9.1 per cent of GDP by 2060, a huge increase from 2.4 per cent in 2025.
...
“The longer governments defer action, then the more painful that action will be,” said Parker of Fitch.
...
they credit Greece for sweeping reforms to its pensions system after its debt crisis. In S&P’s survey of 81 countries, it was the only state in which age-related spending was expected to fall by 2060.

Acelerion posted:

I'm not very hopeful about the future of work from home. The winds are definitely pushing against it now and it seems that there are more and more people applying for less and less openings - also I've noticed a major change with recruiters contacting me for on prem positions almost exclusively now.

I'm afraid it will all be clawed back eventually and we will all reflect on these ~5 years as that cool time we didn't have a commute.