Good morning, particularly to any Wordle-obsessed readers who have played every one of the 1,000 games of the puzzle. Today we explore:
Landslide
Vladimir Putin has — somewhat inevitably — secured another 6 years as president of Russia after apparently taking 87% of the vote, according to exit polls from the weekend’s "sham" election. Candidates were reportedly vetted by the Kremlin, campaign financing and fundraising was limited by the state, and voting was enforced by gunpoint in some parts of occupied Ukraine, leading to protests breaking out within Russia and around the world.
Russia’s ruble
Putin’s rule in one form or another has been steady for 25 years now, having served as president or prime minister ever since 1999 — making him the longest-serving leader since Joseph Stalin. But, with Russia increasingly sealed off from the rest of the world, how is the country’s economy faring?
The ruble, Russia's national currency, has seen some extreme fluctuations for an economy of its size since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. From 2020-2021, 100 rubles would typically buy somewhere between $1.25 and $1.60 — an exchange rate that, in the wake of the invasion, reached as low ~$0.72. Since then, the Kremlin has made concerted efforts to prop up its currency, implementing extended capital controls, ordering Russian companies to sell off other countries’ cash, and decreeing that “unfriendly” foreign entities must pay for gas in rubles.
Other measures of Russia’s economic wellbeing are equally distorted, with GDP seemingly holding up well... in part because it measures every new tank, bomb, and weapon produced by the country.
Like so many other questions surrounding modern Russia, the answer to “how is the country’s economy doing” is shrouded in some deliberate, and some unintended, obfuscation.
All-rounder
DICK’S Sporting Goods has knocked it out of the park with its latest quarterly earnings, setting records for sales and propelling the company’s shares up more than 15% on Thursday to reach a new all-time high.
The sports retailer — which originally started life as a fishing shop in 1948 — has grown to become a staple of American retail, counting more than 800 stores across the country at the end of last year, as sales nearly hit $13bn. Since its IPO in 2002, the company has grown at a rapid clip, becoming America’s go-to retailer for everyone investing in a new hobby, upgrading their gear, or making the annual pilgrimage to buy their kids ever-larger equipment.
The company’s model has been to try and be all things to all people, selling everything from golf gear to athleisure apparel and elite stationary bikes to sleeping bags at its sprawling locations. Although not quite in the same category as Zoom, DICK’S was also a pandemic darling for investors, with sales surging 28% in 2021 as demand for stuff-you-can-use-outside soared.
While 2023 brought the company back down to reality, with supply chain costs squeezing margins, it's since returned to meaningful sales growth (8% in its most recent quarter) — not something that many big-box physical retailers can say in the age of e-commerce. Some things people still prefer to physically try before they buy: sports equipment seems to be one of them.
Wedlocked
It seems that more Americans were saying “I do” in 2022… while fewer existing couples called “I don’t” on their unions.
New data released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics found that marriage rates rebounded in 2022 from the record low seen in 2020, with more than 2 million marriages recorded for the first time since 2019 — equivalent to a US-wide rate of 6.2 per 1,000 people, as 32 states reported increases.
Degrees of separation
Divorce rates also decreased slightly to 2.4 per 1,000 in 2022 from 2.5 the year before, continuing a — somewhat surprising — steady downward trend of divorces, which has nearly halved from a rate of 4 per 1,000 at the turn of the millennium.
Indeed, the small increase in marriages comes as some countries attempt to bolster falling populations by incentivizing marriage, with China recently ending a 9-year decline in nuptials off the back of its ‘three-child policy’. And, although US marriages remain far less common than their 1946 peak (~16.4 per 1,000), tying the knot in Vegas is still giving traditional weddings a run for their money: in 2022, Nevada had a statewide marriage rate of 25.9 per 1,000 and a (presumably quickie) divorce rate of 4.2 per 1,000.
• After just over 10 days on the big screen, Dune: Part Two is nearing $500m at the global box office — already surpassing the entire run of the first film in the futuristic franchise.
• Uber has agreed to pay ~$178m to over 8,000 Australian taxi drivers who filed a lawsuit regarding the ride-ordering giant’s “aggressive” move into the country.
• 2023 was the safest year ever for New York City’s pedestrians, with a recorded 101 deaths, down from over 700 in 1990.
• Dark side of the coin: The Millennium Falcon has just landed on a British 50 pence, in the latest collection from the Royal Mint.
• Seeing green: St. Patrick's Day celebrations across the US.
• Visualizing how the age of Congress has shifted since 1789.
