Viral Stories of the Week: November 6

Vonetta Logan's recap of the big business, news, markets, political, cultural and viral trending stories featured this week on Daily Dose

What’s up tastynation! Welcome to this week’s edition of Weekly Dose! Each week, I recap the top stories that I covered on Daily Dose. If you missed any eps of Daily Dose you can catch up on them here. 

My body is still very upset with the time change. I have pulled my happy light out from storage, but at this point, I’m thinking about chucking it into the trash and heading for brighter and warmer climates. 

The recap is gonna look a little different this week. We’re trying out some new things. I am sure all five of my readers will be intrigued. 

Let’s get to this week’s recap. 

Generation Z reveals their financial icons: In a new survey, Gen Z weighed in on who they look to as examples of financial success, and the results might shock you. Okay, the results aren’t all that shocking, but it is interesting that most of the people on the list were famous first, then later became entrepreneurs. I embrace the chaos that is Gen Z—who says these stodgy lists must be based purely on whether you’re listed in the S&P? But Bill Gates taking the top spot is just meh for me. Of course, I love that Taylor in her billionaire era made the Top 5. I do, however, take umbrage with the breathless media coverage of all things Gen Z. I get it that they have opinions, but I don’t need minute-to-minute updates on all the Gen Z takes.

At work, Gen Z is saying “no thanks” to promotions: Wait, aren't you guys still corporate zygotes? First, how are so many newly hired Gen Z employees getting promoted already? Whatever. You do you, Gen Z. My elderly millennial ass is just gonna be over here wearing my skinny jeans waiting for you to tell me what to do since you’re now my boss. 

Americans are spending like there's no tomorrow: The American economy is long, strong and down to get the friction on, and that is mostly due to the American consumer. But our predilection for retail-based therapy is coming at a cost. Americans are piling up record credit card balances, and increasingly are falling behind on those payments.

Credit card balances hit a fresh high of $1.08 trillion during the third quarter rising $48 billion from the prior quarter and leaping by a record $154 billion from the year before, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit released Tuesday. Household debt increased 1.3% to $17.29 trillion in the third quarter.

Look it may have seemed like a good idea to purchase those summer Eras Tour tickets and the flight and the hotel and the brunch and, of course, the friendship bracelet-making supplies, but in this high interest rate environment that bill added up quickly.

Americans are yanking cash out of their 401(k)s: The number of participants taking hardship distributions increased by 13% between the second and third quarters, according to an analysis by Bank of America of its clients’ employee benefit programs. I know things are bad, but this is a terrible solution to an even worse situation. But I get it, everything is crazy expensive and even my “planned” expenses like insurance and cell phone bills have gone up tens of dollars a month for no damn good reason. Looking at you Progressive and Verizon. Could these dire stats be blown out of proportion? Of course. But they could also portend some scary financial headwinds in the future.

Here's some good news: The IRS released new tax brackets for 2024, so hopefully there are some new deductions in everyone’s future. I’m still over here trying to get wife’d up so I can finally file jointly. 

People with high-powered jobs are in trouble for getting other types of jobs: Elected officials, tech and pharma executives, military officers, doctors and government contractors with security clearances were among the clients of pricey brothels around Boston and in eastern Virginia, federal prosecutors said. The network of sophisticated high-end brothels provided sex for pay to a wide array of high-powered clientele who were forced to give their real names, email addresses and references (!) before booking “services.”

Oh man, this reads like an episode of the hit show Scandal. While this is salacious in nature, I do honestly think there will be rippling effects in the financial markets. You heard it here first.

But get ready for waves of companies announcing reorgs because C-suite, managerial and other high-powered positions are going to have men saying, “I am stepping down to spend more time with my family.” Excuse me, Sir, you’re stepping down because you told your wife you were at a vendor conference when you were getting spanked like the naughty boy you are. We’ll have to wait to see how this plays out, and if the madame involved is going to publish her little black book.

That’s it for this week! See ya next week! 

Vonetta Logan has more than a decade of markets experience and has been a trader for five years. She is an on-air personality, creative writer and news correspondent at tastylive. Vonetta  appears Monday-Friday on Daily Dose and contributes to Luckbox Magazine. @vonettalogan

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