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Category Archives: Economy

Who Benefits from Income and Wealth Growth in the United States?

Who Benefits from Income and Wealth Growth in the United States? Thomas Blanchet, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman, Department of Economics | University of California, Berkeley “Realtime Inequality provides the first timely statistics on how economic growth is distributed across groups. When new growth numbers come out each quarter, we show how each income and wealth group benefits.… Continue Reading

Addressing the risks in crypto: laying out the options

BIS Bulletin | No 66 | 12 January 2023 by Matteo Aquilina, Jon Frost and Andreas Schrimpf PDF full text  The recent high-profile failures of FTX and other crypto firms have re-ignited the debate on the appropriate policy response to address the risks in crypto, including through regulation. The “shadow financial” functions enabled by crypto markets share… Continue Reading

The Financialization of Recession Response

The Financialization of Recession Response, Yale Program on Financial Stability, December 22, 2022, Aaron Klein: “This paper analyzes economic policy responses to the COVID-19-induced recession, focusing on the American policy response. Despite widespread political distrust between the two parties sharing control of the government and the timing of the upcoming presidential election, America’s political system… Continue Reading

Fed announces pilot climate scenario analysis

ClimateWire: “The Federal Reserve is requiring the largest American banks to assess how a major hurricane in the northeastern United States would affect their real estate portfolios as part of a broader regulatory exercise to measure the financial threats of climate change. The Fed released new details Tuesday about its anticipated “pilot climate scenario analysis,”… Continue Reading

The Carbon Con

SourceMaterial: “The world’s biggest companies, from Netflix to Ben & Jerry’s, are pouring billions into an offsetting industry whose climate claims appear increasingly at odds with reality…Our analysis of nearly 100 million carbon credits found that only a fraction of them resulted in real emissions reductions. It raises questions for the organisations that many of… Continue Reading

Little-Known Surveillance Program Captures Money Transfers Between U.S. and More Than 20 Countries

WSJ: “Hundreds of federal, state and local U.S. law-enforcement agencies have access without court oversight to a database of more than 150 million money transfers between people in the U.S. and in more than 20 countries, according to internal program documents and an investigation by Sen. Ron Wyden. The database, housed at a little-known nonprofit… Continue Reading

BankThink ChatGPT will break financial services, but then it might save it

American Banker – Dev Patnaik: “I recently spent the best part of a weekend playing with ChatGPT, the AI-powered natural language tool that answers questions and responds to prompts in an unerringly human way. My conclusion? It signals the end of the financial services industry as we know it. That claim will be laughed off… Continue Reading

Global Risks Report 2023

World Economic Forum: Cost of living dominates global risks in the next two years while climate action failure dominates the next decade. “As 2023 begins, the world is facing a set of risks that feel both wholly new and eerily familiar. We have seen a return of “older” risks – inflation, cost-of-living crises, trade wars,… Continue Reading

Visualizing Congressional Productivity

Center for Data Innovation: The Economist has created a visualization tracking productivity in the U.S. Congress. The visualization shows the number of major bills passed in every session of Congress from 1947 to 2023 as well as the party that held control over the House, Senate, and presidency during each session. In the visualization, bills… Continue Reading

USITC Launches New Investigations Database System

“The United States International Trade Commission (USITC) today deployed the Investigations Database System (IDS), an innovative new data management tool that captures, manages, and displays USITC investigation-related information. Users are encouraged to visit the USITC website at https://ids.usitc.gov to explore this new tool. A major new feature is the ability to conduct quick searches and… Continue Reading

How Policymakers Can Thwart the Rise of Fake Reviews

Center for Data Innovation: As businesses compete for customers in the digital economy, some use deceptive tactics to manipulate consumer reviews about their goods or services, or those of their competitors, including by posting fake reviews. These fake reviews can damage honest companies’ reputation and deceive consumers into purchasing goods or services of substandard quality.… Continue Reading