National

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

Closer

Axios Closer

Consumers are still confused by recycling procedures, but they say that they want to make better purchasing decisions.

Driving the news: 84% of U.S. shoppers say they’re concerned about plastic and packaging waste, according to a Consumer Brands/Ipsos survey (conducted in early July with 1,530 people) shared exclusively with Axios.

47% in the same survey said they would opt for recyclable products as their first choice over compostable, given the choice between the two, while 20% said they would opt first for compostable products.

Yes, but: Even if everyone wanted to do better, there aren't enough of the options they want. Nor are the options exactly what people think they are.

Only 65% of plastic packaging, by weight, has been reported by companies to be reusable, recyclable or compostable, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Global Commitment 2020 study.

Making up that figure, for packaged goods and retail companies, 64% is recyclable, 1.9% reusable and 0.02% compostable (with some both reusable and recyclable).

And when it comes to compostable items, the term often means that the packaging needs to be collected and composted in an industrial composting facility, not in backyards. 

Vast majority of consumers concerned about plastic and packaging waste

But even if everyone wanted to do better, there aren't enough of the options they want.

Illustration of a recycling symbol made of dollar bills.

Environment

Top stories & latest news on the Federal Reserve, real-time data, plus the biggest shifts happening in the U.S. and global economy.

Economy

Macro

Axios Macro

It's been the travel week from hell for Americans across the country.

Driving the news: Low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines was at the forefront of a disastrous few days of flight cancellations.

It was a perfect storm of bad weather, IT outages and not enough people to staff flights — as airlines face a surge of travelers.

By the numbers: Spirit was responsible for 80% of all U.S. flight cancellations on Thursday — when it canceled more than half of its schedule, per data from Flight Aware.

The tally: over 1,700 nixed flights this week, with another 300 canceled as of midday, CNN reports.

What they're saying: "There will still be cancellations over the next few days, but we can start to build back to a full operation," CEO Ted Christie told ABC News.

American Airlines also canceled hundreds of flights this week — fallout from a weekend storm that hit Dallas, its biggest hub.

Flight cancellation chaos

It was a perfect storm of bad weather, IT outages and not enough people to staff flights.

Passengers outside LAX terminal as Spirit Airlines canceled hundreds of flights earlier this week.

Passengers outside LAX terminal as Spirit Airlines canceled hundreds of flights earlier this week. Photo: Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Air travel

Axios AM

This single slide — marked up in the yellow scrawl of SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son — captures this era's euphoria over the hyper-scaling of tech startups, combusting with extremely low interest rates:

The big picture: Cash gushers chase indefensible valuations on delusional growth prospects and paths to profitability, with little regard for the reality of the underlying business and market structure. 

The slide was uncovered by Wall Street Journal reporters Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell as they wrote the delicious new book "The Cult of We," chronicling the wiles and humiliation of Adam Neumann, WeWork's day-drinking co-founder, former CEO, and chief snake-oil salesman. 

"As he pondered a bigger investment in WeWork," the authors write, "Son pushed WeWork's already ambitious financial projections into territory unprecedented in business history. During a meeting with Neumann, he scribbled out a vision for a company worth $10 trillion."

Graphic from "The Cult of We," by kind permission of the authors, Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell

SoftBank made Goldman Sachs look downright restrained in a pitch deck, also obtained by the authors, to take WeWork public.

Goldman bankers included the bar chart shown above ("Your Path to $1 Trillion"), which "played to both Neumann's hunger for a giant valuation and his affinity for simple visuals."

On the book's cover, business journalist Charles Duhigg calls it a portrait "of how grifters came to be called visionaries."

The wild-haired Neumann — a yeller who combined a televangelist's frenzy with tequila and weed, plus quirks that included strolling Manhattan barefoot — eventually drove his baby off a financial cliff:

The rise and fall of WeWork was enabled by a collision of forces: a man characterized by charisma, unbridled optimism, and astute salesmanship met an entire financial system primed to fall under his spell. 

"Had a frothy venture capital sector not been so obsessed with the search for eccentric and visionary founders," the authors continue, "WeWork might still occupy only a smattering of buildings in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan."

The authors told me that COVID shutdown had sunk their reporting travel plans. But it turned out to be easier to talk to key players in the drama when they were stuck at home, rather than trying to meet them and gain their trust in a coffee shop. Maureen Farrell, who's on The Journal's Deals team, told me it's scary how much capital was destroyed during the We Work saga: 

"In this era of so much money chasing the next great idea, it makes people willing to not have the checks and balances."

Eliot Brown, who covered venture capital and now writes about the SPAC frenzy, said Neumann got "smart people to do dumb things": 

"Theranos was a charismatic entrepreneur making up numbers to trick investors. This was a charismatic entrepreneur using real numbers — but getting them to delude themselves."

Read a free excerpt, "Chapter 1: The Hustler."

WeWork book: The $10 trillion mirage

Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell chronicle the fall of WeWork's day-drinking co-founder and chief snake-oil salesman.

Sunday's economy & business stories

Vast majority of consumers concerned about plastic and packaging waste

Flight cancellation chaos

WeWork book: The $10 trillion mirage

Low-waste economy hits its groove