Daily Pulse: No Car, No Problem for Lyft Drivers, Sony Buys Michael Jackson's Beatles Catalog, Pollution Behind One in Four Human Deaths

GM and Lyft are marrying two concepts of the new economy: on-demand rides and the end of car ownership. It's not just Lyft users who are giving up on owning 2 tons of metal that sit idle 95% of the time – Lyft drivers too. With ExpressDrive, the two companies – GM invested $500 million in Lyft recently – are offering short-term rentals to drivers who want to offer their services but don't own a car (or not one clean enough.) The rental could even be free, in certain markets where there is a glut of drivers, if you give enough rides. That could significantly accelerate Lyft's growth rate in its race against Uber. Genius strategy. 

It's possibly the hottest catalog in music. Sony will pay the Michael Jackson estate $750 million to gain full ownership of Sony/ATV, the joint venture it formed with the late singer in 1995. That's $750 million for more than a million copyrights, including the 250 Beatles song Jackson had famously acquired after Paul McCartney told him what a great investment music publishing was. It's a nice revenue stream for Sony, which might be worth even more than it paid: with streaming, the company can continue to earn income from older classics at very little cost. 

It's time for another monthly Fed meeting. Here's what it will and won't do, according to Mohammed el-Erian. It's unlikely the Fed will raise interest rates again just yet, as the US economy fares pretty well but faces global headwinds. Meanwhile, here's what's going on at the European Central Bank. (Yes, that's Mario Draghi as Rambo.) 

It was bound to happen. Nearly 300 institutional investors around the world are suing Volkswagen for failing to properly inform the market of its emissions scandal. The lawsuit in Germany seeks damages of $3.6 billion. The stock dropped 45% year on year and the company is liable for some $20 billion in fines – that was one expensive shortcut. 

So who is this? Anbang, a Chinese insurance company, made a splash on the business news scene yesterday with two big acquisition stories: first $6.5 billion for 16 luxury hotels, marking the biggest real estate deal ever by a Chinese investor in the US, then a $12.8 billion offer for Starwood hotels, threatening an existing deal with Marriott. "There is the question of how Anbang, which didn’t even exist 15 years ago, is paying for all of these deals," writes The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin. It's a "shadow bank," which has raised massive funds through wealth management products, promising investors high returns it must now find outside the slowing Chinese economy. Expect more deals like this one, Sorkin writes, drawing a parallel with the way Japanese firms started buying up Manhattan in the late 1980s. 

Environmental issues kill about a quarter of us. That's 12.6 million deaths in 2012, according to a new WHO report, linked to a polluted environment. Poor air quality is the biggest risk and non-communicable disease (cardiovascular disease, cancers, asthma...) the biggest killer.  (To be precise, deaths attributable to a poor environment are anywhere from 13 to 34% of the total, since it's very hard to pinpoint the cause of a stroke or heart attack.) The point is, a significant portion of premature deaths are preventable through better stewardship of our planet. Chew on that.  

*Data from a different study, similar conclusions. 

Cover Art: People try to cover their faces as dust blankets a busy street in Dhaka, Bangladesh on March 13, 2016. (Photo by Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

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What you may have missed, and really should read:

• Jack Ma: A profile in failure. 
• How the Wounded Warrior Project scandal scars nonprofits.
• Here's what a modern career looks like. 

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