Hello C3 Family!

My Weekly Rant

How often have you heard a Christian/Conservative complain about the entertainment industry, in the last year or so? Probably pretty often, you may be the one doing the complaining. Perhaps you have discontinued all of your streaming subscriptions and refuse to watch any mainstream movies. But, have you helped content creators who have your values actually grow?

This is not a plug for my upcoming book, but if you want to help me edit, print, and ship this thing that I will be giving away for practically free then please do feel free to hit the support button below. What I am talking about is content producers like The Daily Wire and Angel Studios. The Daily Wire just announced its Child content App BentKey and Angel Studios just released the Trailer for Season 4 of the Chosen. Both endeavors combined have and will cost these organizations hundreds of millions of dollars.

In this financial newsletter, I write often about movies and creative content. I do this for a few reasons. 1. Movies and shows are the things that form the culture and the culture is where money exchanges hands. 2. Since movies and shows form culture, they also form the values of people within that culture. The more accurate version of the popular saying 'you are what you eat' is 'you are what you consume.'

Maybe we have some problems with the talking heads over at the Daily Wire, maybe we have some problems with how The Chosen has portrayed some aspects of the Gospels, these problems are inevitable. If we are going to allow someone to be creative, we must allow them to be potentially offensive. The point I want to drive home is that we must support these creators of content and culture if we ever want to change the tides of our materialistic, agnostic, and vain culture. We must support them with our dollars, if we are able, because if we do not, then we will just get more of the same from Hollywood and Washington. 

In brief, put up or shut up!

Top Stories of the Week

• Despite strong earnings results from top tier banks, stocks still faltered last week. This is mostly due to higher-than-expected inflation numbers being released earlier this month and investors thinking another rate hike is inevitable.

• Luxury brands like LVMH (Louis Vuitton) have been struggling as of late because they rely heavily on people in China spending on their products, but the economic recovery in the CCP has been slow to say the least. 

• Tesla is cutting prices once again in hopes it can deliver on its annual target of 1.8 million EVs sold. Right now Musk's golden goose is falling short of projections.

• Netflix will have a moment of truth when it reports its earnings today. The password crackdown has worked in pumping up subscriptions, but its projected ad tier subscriber numbers have not been met. The streaming giant also plans to increase prices once the dust settles from the writers strike. 

• Strikes keep lasting longer in this day and age and experts say it is because employers are too accustomed to the old way of doing things and the resolve of employees has been severely underestimated.

• Adderall, the key ingredient in ADHD medication, is classified as an addictive substance by the Drug Enforcement Agency. You probably knew that, but what you may not know is that the country is experiencing a shortage in Adderall right now, and this has many people in a kind of withdraw. Again, the question must be asked, how many people on the ADHD medication actually have a severe case of ADHD that warrants being medicated?

• Egypt is still not letting residents of the Gaza strip across the border. The US and Israel have been working with Egypt to evacuate the strip, but to no avail. Many think this is because Egypt wants no part of letting people who could be connected with Hamas into its country. 

• LinkedIn just laid off another 700 employees because it is leaning more into AI and hoping to streamline the social media platform since ad revenue is dying out.

• An extra year of college, stagnated pay since 2008, and overall lower salaries than the Tech and Finance industries have made the profession of accounting very unattractive to college students. There has been a recent drop in accounting graduates, and this has led many firms to outsource their work to other countries like Malaysia, China, and India.