Tuesday Night Links

• Enormous resource rents plus a tiny population plus having sovereignty guaranteed by the United States is an enviable position to be in. With merely adequate government, Canada could easily have the highest standard of living in the world, an Anglo-French North American Norway or Qatar. But instead of leaning into this, the grand strategy of the Canadian state has, like Britain, been to specialize in low-skill labor-intensive services, real estate, and degree mills while legally penalizing resource extraction. [Arctotherium]
• According to Activision founder Bobby Kotick, Berkshire Hathaway's Charlie Munger was at one point in time interested in buying Nintendo, or at least interested in exploring the idea of buying Nintendo. Kotick said on the Grit podcast that Munger was not a fan of video games, but saw an opportunity to potentially make a bid for Nintendo. Munger is said to have floated the idea of spending some of Berkshire's immense holdings on making moves in the video game space. One of Munger's ideas, apparently, was to buy Nintendo. "He goes, 'You know, I was looking at a couple other companies in your sector. I think if we bought yours, we should buy that company Nintendo, too,'" Kotick recalled. "He said, 'Have you guys looked at it? I was like, 'Yeah.' It was trading [at the time] at like 13 billion, with 7 billion in cash. He goes, 'You know, I don't think anything is gonna go really bad before I'm dead, and then if it goes bad after I'm dead, they'll just chalk it up to the folly of an 82-year-old, so you don't have to be so concerned about disappointing me." [link]
• I think people started talking about the paperless workplace in the late 90s. From my experience, it took about 20 years for most workplaces to actually go (mostly) paperless. New technology takes a while to implement for several reasons. First, most decision-makers in most workplaces are on the older side and are inherently conservative. They don't really understand new technology and what it is capable of and don't feel the urgency of change. They won't change until all of the companies they watch and get their ideas from change first. [Marginal Revolution]
• To protect the savings of United States investors and channel them into American growth and prosperity, my Administration will also: (i) determine if adequate financial auditing standards are upheld for companies covered by the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act; (ii) review the variable interest entity and subsidiary structures used by foreign-adversary companies to trade on United States exchanges, which limit the ownership rights and protections for United States investors, as well as allegations of fraudulent behavior by these companies; and (iii) restore the highest fiduciary standards as required by the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974, seeking to ensure that foreign adversary companies are ineligible for pension plan contributions. [The White House]
• In the quarter, depreciation and amortization expense increased $164.9 million growing over 230%. This was primarily due to a revision in the cost estimate included in calculation of the company's asset retirement obligations, ARO. ARO accounts for Lamar's obligation to dismantle and remove over 71,000 billboard structures on leased land and restore the sites to original condition. We test our ARO estimate annually, and the cost to retire these assets has risen substantially, which led to an increase in our depreciation and amortization expense during the quarter. However, the expense is a non-cash item and does not impact the company's adjusted Ebert or AFFfo. [Lamar Advertising Co.]
• In Gas Distribution, we completed the $19 billion, once-in-a-generation, acquisition of three leading U.S. gas distribution companies. This transaction positions Enbridge as the owner of North America's largest natural gas utility franchise and complements our existing low-risk business model, and each of the utilities is well-positioned to serve growing natural gas demand in North America. [Enbridge Inc.]
• A spike in rents during the early years of the pandemic sparked a historic apartment construction boom in 2023 and 2024. That crush of new inventory, especially in hot Sunbelt markets like Austin and Phoenix, led to oversupply and caused rents to fall in much of the country. But more people now are renting longer, as mortgage rates stay high and the costs of homeownership remain unaffordable for many Americans. Landlords say that the new construction pipeline should be mostly drained by year-end, setting the stage for rents to rise nationwide later this year. “The relationship is going to very quickly flip from a renter-friendly environment to a landlord-friendly environment,” said Lee Everett, the head of research and strategy at multifamily giant Cortland. [WSJ]
• Over the coming weeks, all eligible Robinhood customers in the U.S. will have access to futures products across five major asset classes, including the four leading U.S. equity indices  – S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, Russell 2000 and Dow Jones Industrial Average – as well as bitcoin and ether, major FX currency pairs, key metals including gold, silver and copper, and additional commodities such as crude oil and natural gas. [CME Group]