Last week, Americans dumped about $36 billion into money market funds to take advantage of yields that have shot past 5 percent, a rate of return not seen for more than a decade.
Category: 22 August 2023
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MORTGAGE RATES REACH THEIR HIGHEST IN 21 YEARS. WHAT’S NEXT?
The national average interest rate on the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage in the U.S. reached 7.09 percent last week, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. reported, up from 6.96 percent the week before to reach its highest since April 2002.
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JULY RETAIL SALES BETTER THAN EXPECTED?
In July, U.S. consumers spent 0.7 percent more dollars compared to June and 3.2 percent more than a year earlier, the commerce department reported. Retail sales on items other than energy and food were up 1.0 percent from the month before.
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DEBT BOMB: HIGHER INTEREST RATES LEAVE U.S. GOVERNMENT NO GOOD OPTIONS
During the 14 years that the U.S. Federal Reserve held interest rates low, the U.S. government borrowed freely to haul the economy out of the Great Recession, continue to fight the Afghan war, and bail out businesses and consumers during the COVID War.
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YIELD ON 10-YEAR T-NOTE REACHES 15-YEAR HIGH, RATTLING INVESTORS
On 17 August, the benchmark 10-year treasury note closed at 4.307 percent, which was its highest close since 2007. The 30-year treasury bond was paying 4.411 percent on the same day.
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AI: THE NEW SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGER
Major manufacturers and transport companies including Maersk, Siemens, and Unilever are putting AI to work to advise on contract terms, hunt down suppliers on better shipping routes or with better terms, and spot ethical potholes, such as buying cotton from China’s Xinjiang region, where Uighur Muslims are allegedly enslaved.
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WHY TODAY’S AI FRENZY IS NOT THE DOT-COM BUBBLE 2.0
In the 1990s, any company with “dot-com” attached to its name could issue stock, share prices would soar, and millionaires would be made in the company and in the equity market.
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CHATBOTS OFFER HACKERS AN OPEN DOOR TO A NEW PLAYGROUND
Earlier this month at the annual Defcon computer hackers conference, Anthropic, OpenAI, and other artificial intelligence developers invited the world’s best cyber-invaders to be their most creative in attacking and penetrating current generative AIs.
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GOOGLE WANTS TO LICENSE ARTISTS’ VOICES AND IMAGES FOR AI-GENERATED SONGS
Google is negotiating with Universal Music Group, one of the world’s largest owners of record labels and artists’ contracts, to use artists’ images and voices in recording and videos of songs written by AI.
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AI MAKES JOB SEARCHES EASIER FOR BOSSES, HARDER FOR JOB-SEEKERS
For more than a decade, job-seekers have been frustrated by having to craft resumés and cover letters that will pass an initial screening by a computer program. Some submit scores of attempts, varying the format and content to suit the company offering a position, and never receive a response—not even a polite rejection.