Nick Martell

Very expensive endeavors that he hoped boosted the value of the company.

And the plan, Jack?

In five years, sell Sotheby's for a huge profit.

Jack, recognize that playbook we're talking about right here?

I do, Nick.

This is the playbook of private equity.

It is classic PE.

And do you know what happened, Yetis?

Well, it didn't happen.

The art market shrank 16% between 2022 and 2024.

That shouldn't be a huge problem.

Sotheby's should have made just less revenue, but still been a profitable firm.

But nope, less revenues meant losses because Sotheby's has so much debt, they must make those big interest payments.

We love capitalism.

We think it leads to innovation and competition is great.

But this is a classic case of a time that PE did a business wrong.

Sometimes private equity just saddles a good business with too much debt.

In these instances, it's called crapitalism.

For our third and final story, trend alert, the annoyance economy is here, which costs us consumers 165 billion bucks a year in wasted time.

Another trend, surcharges for everything.