🐤 Bet your bottom dollar

🏦 Markets: Wednesday was another losing day for the Dow Jones and S&P 500, but the Nasdaq finished higher by nearly half a percent.

Positive earnings data from Google’s parent company Alphabet wasn’t enough to secure a winning day. Its stock value was down about 0.1% at the closing bell after trading significantly higher at various points earlier in the day.

Microsoft, on the other hand, was able to translate its impressive quarterly earnings report into a big day, ushering in a 7% increase to reach its highest stock value in more than a year.

🐭 Disney vs. DeSantis: The ongoing dispute between Walt Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hit a new level this week when the entertainment giant filed a lawsuit against the Republican governor over his efforts to punish Disney for its political views. In its suit, the company asserted that DeSantis’ efforts to stymie a development deal “was patently retaliatory, patently anti-business, and patently unconstitutional.”

💼 No deal: Microsoft has been pursuing an acquisition of video gaming company Activision Blizzard that was valued at $69 billion, but U.K. authorities derailed the deal in a ruling this week. The Competition and Markets Authority asserted that Microsoft “failed to effectively address the concerns in the cloud gaming sector” when attempting to prove that the merger wouldn’t negatively impact competitors.

☎️ China is calling: As Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been cozying up to Russian leader Vladimir Putin in recent months, other nations have pressured him to leverage that relationship in an effort to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that he had a “long and meaningful” conversation with Xi as the two men discussed a path toward achieving “a sustainable peace for Ukraine.”

📉 Netflix dip: Password sharing has long cut into the profits of Netflix and other streaming platforms, but efforts to address the issue have also proved costly. Netflix rolled out a new program in some regions that forced users to pay a fee for sharing their accounts and used technology to track where people were using passwords. In just the first quarter of this year, the company lost 1 million subscribers in Spain alone.

For the better part of a century, governments and entities in all corners of the world used the U.S. dollar as their reserve currency. This put America in an advantageous position for a number of reasons — but the era of the dollar’s dominance appears to be coming to a close.

Several major countries, including Russia, China, and Brazil, are pursuing so-called “de-dollarization” plans that would either replace it entirely with another currency or ensure that it is just one of several reserve options available.

What it all means

The U.S. dollar has enjoyed its status since the end of the World War II. As a result of an international agreement at that time, it became the primary currency in central banks and in calculating the price of crucial commodities such as oil.

Among the other benefits of this arrangement is the ability to unilaterally impose sanctions on other countries, as the U.S. did last year to freeze the assets of Russian oligarchs and financial institutions.

Mounting evidence

There have been several direct and indirect moves in recent years that signal a rise in de-dollarization efforts, including:

• China’s push to replace the dollar with the its yuan for the purpose of oil trade.
• Russia’s executive order mandating that “unfriendly” nations only use its ruble in natural gas contracts.
• Statistics showing that the dollar’s reserve status has dropped from 71% to 60% since 2000.

Potential ramifications

As U.S. relations with Russia and China deteriorate, it’s clear that those nations are trying to exert their power to strengthen their respective economies while undermining the dollar. Russian and Chinese officials are working together to introduce an altogether new reserve currency.

It won’t happen overnight, but such a scenario would reduce the purchasing power of individual Americans and the nation’s government.

As I handed my dad his 50th birthday card, he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said: “You know, one would have been enough.”

Tourists flock to Hawaii in large part because of its unparalleled landscape. But if you’re planning a trip and hope to explore nature on a public trail, you might be disappointed.

Tragedy on Sacred Falls

Back in 1999, eight hikers were killed and dozens more were injured in a landslide on one of the state’s most popular and picturesque trails. In response, victims and their survivors sued Hawaii — and won.

The state was ordered to pay a total of $8 million in damages, which was quite an anomaly. Generally speaking, people assume some level of risk when in the Great Outdoors and have trouble seeking damages for injuries that results.

In this case, however, a court determined that Hawaii didn’t do enough to warn hikers of the danger. This result — along with a similar judgment reached seven years later after two hikers fell off a cliff — set a precedent that Hawaiian officials took seriously.

Not only is Sacred Falls still closed, but almost all of the other trails across the state have signs and gates warning people to stay away.

Hawaii shifts responsibility

By shutting down once-public trails, the state is essentially eliminating its liability. After all, if someone disregards signs or gates and is injured as a result, he or she would be a trespasser and ineligible for damages.

But that hasn’t stopped thrill-seekers from taking illegal hikes, including on Sacred Falls, as evidenced by Instagram posts showing people posing from such locations.

It’s become common knowledge that trespassers are unlikely to receive a citation, so there’s not much risk involved from that standpoint. However, it’s inherently more dangerous since there’s no regular maintenance and no park rangers on duty.

The risks are real, but plenty of tourists are ready and willing to take their chances.

The American workplace has changed considerably over the past several years. COVID-19 ushered in a work-from-home revolution and helped shift some of the power away from bosses.

This gave employees more freedom to request higher pay and better benefits from their current employers since they could probably find a job somewhere else that would meet their requirements.

But that doesn’t mean everything is great for those in the U.S. workforce … and a new Pew Research poll surveyed just under 6,000 workers to determine how they feel about various aspects of the current work environment.

The good, bad, and ugly

On a general level, just over half of those surveyed (51%) say they are satisfied with their job. When broken down into specifics, however, it’s obvious that some areas of work are more satisfying than others.

At the top of the list, more than two-thirds of respondents expressed satisfaction in their relationships with colleagues. On the other end of the spectrum, only one-third said they were satisfied with their opportunities for promotion.

Here are some other key takeaways:

• 59% of respondents who travel to work were satisfied with their commute.
• Just 34% said their pay rate is satisfactory.
• Employer benefits and feedback each received approval from 49% of respondents.
• 62% of workers approved of their relationship with their supervisors.

The demographic impact

While the poll offered an overview of the workforce, it’s important to recognize differences in results based on factors like age and income.

For example, older workers were significantly more likely than their younger counterparts to express high levels of satisfaction with their jobs.

Additionally, those who bring home higher incomes were much more satisfied with their jobs (specifically benefits, promotion opportunities, and belief that their input is valued) than those in middle- and lower-income categories.