Wharton finance professor sounds the alarm on soaring U.S. debt - YouTubeAdding $1t every 100 days.
Interest on the U.S. debt is really driving the growth at this point, says Maya MacGuineas - YouTubeSteady march upward relative to the economy. Slows economic growth. Two parties can't compromise or work on the things they should be working on. Both say 'Not our problem at the moment.' Difficult to see how it connects to anyone's daily life.
US public debt will be 100% of GDP in 2024?
Worse because we wait to fix them. The changes are more difficult than if they had been done earlier.
Where could the US cut spending? Defense? ‘Investing’? Health Care and Retirement (no candidate wants to talk about cutting Social Security)?
Soon tax cuts will expire. Both parties want some amount of tax cuts extended, which will make the numbers even larger.
Conversation might start the day after the election.
Taxes will have to go up.
The winner-take-all economics of the 21st Century. Every business we look at, you're gonna see one or two companies dominating. Advertising 20 or 30 years ago, 2 or 3% was a big share of the market. Today, 2 companies have most of the 60% of advertising which is done online. Aswath Damodaran
At this moment, Jensen Huang is considered CEO of the greatest business ever.
Apple In Talks to Build Google's AI Into iPhones - YouTube10 years of duopoly, why allow things to change? They made their search agreement in 2000. Google needed Apple more than vice versa since then, but now with an AI agreement Apple will need Google.
Apple will leverage Google's Gemeni. Google's AI has looked bad, but not as unstable and unpredictable and new as OpenAI.
This might mean Apple isn't as far along with its own AI as some thought. Why does it need Google?
If Apple went with Microsoft or another company rather than Google, that would put them at odds with Google. Apple is more afraid of Google. Google does more things that can compete with Apple, and can take marketshare if they want to.
Users don't care if Apple was first to anything. They care if the product works well.
Apple needs AI tech, some say.
This will be the biggest AI contract maybe, so Google will be ‘winning AI.’
Homebuilder sentiment turns positive for the first time since July - YouTubePeople starting to get used to this 7% rate, if they can afford it.
Apple is out of the low-margin, high competition industry of EVs.
Indian as an EM has more transparency in the data than others. Combination of transparency in reporting and of fundamentals.
5% Fed funds rate 'not restrictive' at this point, says Richard Bernstein's Michael Contopoulos - YouTubeHome prices are going back up.
Starting to talk about a hike.
How Nintendo Avoided Massive Layoffs - YouTubeHe argues against ‘corporate America’ (different from capitalism). CEO took a 50% paycut. Sometimes the owner of small businesses take no income because they had to make payroll, that's a normal thing in small business. If you lay off people to keep making profits every period, no one wants to work for you, because you're not a leader.
Bitcoin. Today asset class (crypto) is $2.5t, but if 3% of all assets end up in crypto, it will be $6t asset class.
The tokenization of a lot of commercial assets. Storing digital assets or property. Tokenized economy could be $20t by 2030, which would be 10% of all the tradfi assets today.
Halving probably priced in. Most of current move is the credibility lent by institutions and the allocation.
‘Bitcoin is the gold of the crypto market, Eth is the oil’.
‘Most of capital markets will be tokenized. Most of the record keeping, settlement payment, reconciliaiton, will be on blockchain, and the oft talked about instantaneous transfer of ownership will be instantaneous.’ Civil asset forfeiture, anyone? Freezing of bank accounts of labelled-by-government-‘terrorism’-supporting citizens/ 2-years-later proven-in-court law-abiding protesters', anyone?
#humanrights
Ali will probably be profitable for a while but will eventually be out-competed.
Analyzing Economies: USA, China, Japan, Russia, India, Korea, & More - YouTubeChina, many places will block its stuff (like EVs) (not just through tariffs but actually just block). The countries (India) who want cheap Chinese stuff don't have a lot of money.
China graduation level currently low.
Japan's low fertility rate (bottomed out about same as Europe) is higher than anywhere else in eastern Asia.
Japan permitting is relatively easy for making chips and other things. It took only 1.5 years to get up and running.
IBM, which doesn't even know how to make chips, is making a chip in Japan now.
Japan and Korea are now friends. Papered over historical things, small reparations, no truth and reconciliation. Young people like Japan, like Korea.
Koreans work a lot, have very few kids. Korea reportedly has gender problems. Korea has a lot of debt. Koreans like to consume. Koreans might pump up immigration (Vietnamese).
Taiwan is centered around small businesses, like Germany. Taiwan remains rich and poor. TSMC is not typical, but might be a bellweather.
Vietnam copies China pretty well. Samsung phones are made there. Vietname is cheaper, less regulations sometimes than China (for Chinese companies), less ‘under the watchful eye’. Needs bigger businesses, which the government fears. Needs more college education.
India incredible poverty was ended by rapid growth, massive transfers (to make people not so rural which was the problem). Get people food, get people houses. They got food and water. Now they're doing trains etc. Girls are still not going to school. Factory workers are all women.
Pakistan is a mess. Poor but not fast growing, doesn't invest, consumes whatever it gets, borrows from IMF and defaults. Has nukes and tariffs. Low income. Military coups, power struggles, instable, two main provinces in constant revolt basically. High crime. Fertility high. Nazis. Trying not to be dragged into China alliance and China's conflicts globally. Pakistan started out richer. Focus a lot on competing (militariily) with India.
Philippines leadership less wild. Less corrupt. Because recent leaders left.
Aus is a masterclass in creating a nice society based on mining (bauxite and coal), supplimented by high end services, high minimum wage. Doing better than Canada, has institutions that we could copy, and are copying (Biden copied income based repayment of student loans). But international demand controls their economy, at risk of China reducing purchases.
Russia is on a wartime footing, war economy. Everything shifting to war economy. Germany selling through third countries to Russia. China is buying Russian oil and selling Russia its stuff, but this is a business relationship. If price of oil goes down, China will drive a hard bargain. India buys military parts from Russia. Likes that Russia can protect them militarily from China.
Interest rates and inflation high.
Russia still import dependent.
Russia's reserves running out, will run out this or next year. US no longer backing Ukraine like it was. Europeans are backing Ukraine. France, Poland (4% of GDP for military spending, drones).
Poland is same size as Ukraine, but better tech.
AI. Routine jobs will be out. Decision-making not, maybe.
There will always be full employment because of relative costs. Erik Torenberg. Famous CEO is a good typist but hires a well-paid typist. They'll get paid very well to do these little tasks, because there'll be so much wealth. He thinks people will still be doing tasks even if AI does it better.
AI could be worse. It could be malevolent.
People already prefer AI doctor's bedside manner. AI girlfriends are already popular.
The year of AI efficiency layoffs. Like 90s with internet.
Routing the right task to the right model, which will be smaller than the total everything models used on ChatGPT right now. Small models on the device even.
It's not even ‘liquidity,’ it's juts ‘money printing’, said Lynette Zang
Inflation. It's just not the US dollar going away, it's the entire system, which has to reset into the new system.
The banks are all insolvent right now, she said. All banks, because they're based on debt. Interest rates have pushed down market valuations of all that debt. Derivative bets against those debts. Debt at high levels. Fine unless forced to liquidate.
Mnuchin came in and bought NYBC with private money.
All this means everything, houses, clothes, can be tokenized and put on your phone.
Risk transfer from many to the few, maintaining the system will be too expensive, market will crash.
From Debt to Hyperinflation: More Banks to Collapse As System Implodes, 'They Need a Crisis' – Zang - YouTube2% inflation, people don't notice it. Not that the price stays the same, but that the public doesn't change its behaviour. But if it happens quickly, then they notice and they don't trust.
After 70 years: German national team takes off adidas, puts on Nike | DW News - YouTubeMicrosoft did another aquahire of a whole AI team. Speculation that they have so much difficulty doing anything because of their monopoly they don't bother to buy the asset but rather just hire the people.
Is this a new way to go around antitrust? Just buy a team or licence something.
Large-scale bitcoin miners are competing head on with AI companies for power: Marathon Digital CEO - YouTube