In last year's round-up of the top financial stories, I mentioned that I was somewhat embarrassed that THAT list turned out to be as America-centered as it was. Seven of the stories (every one that was NOT about Ukraine) had a US locus. This year, I don't have that problem. This is a VERY international list.
Likewise, the US is still a locus, but only of three of the twelve big stories: April, June, and November. Less than half of last year's. Two of our US based stories this year concern artificial intelligence as a new industry: the other, one of America's periodic games of chicken with a debt ceiling.
China gets and warrants more attention here than any other single country. It is the locus in four of our stories. After the US and China are accounted for, we are left with enough months for three stories from Europe, [including the aforementioned Ukraine item], one from Latin America, and one from the Middle East.
Without further ado....
January: Covid consequences. China. The People's Republic of China finally abandons its draconian zero-Covid policy and re-opens its borders. Investors see this as good news. Relatedly, there is this: China records first population decline in 60 years | CNN Business. That might in other circumstances be regarded as good news, but since it comes as consequence of the devastation of Covid ... no.
February: Social media. China. It was in this month that the realization gradually sunk in, around the world, that TikTok is not just a cute social-media thing that happens to be based in China. It is a tool of China's policy and intelligence operations. As the month ends, ever-polite Canada joins many other nations on this bandwagon, banning TikTok from all Canadian government-issued devices. (BBC News)
March. Pension reform in France. Multiple cities in France see demonstrations, and the country experiences rolling strikes in vital industries as Macron's unpopular plan to reduce the costs of pensions comes to a head. Macron is trying to pass between a rock and a hard place here: between destabilizing France's political system if he presses too hard for this change and doing serious harm to its status among the world's bond buyers if he doesn't. The population of the country is aging. Those over-62 folks become an ever-larger burden for their younger brethren as the years go by. And the bond buyers have figured that out.
April. Artificial intelligence. United States This month marked a break-out into public (and investor) consciousness, particularly in North America, for something called "generative AI," the use of very large collections of human language to generate what seem like original and often quite detailed, marketable, texts. In other words, the robots are coming for my work now. A Forbes story by Konstantine Buhler marks this dawning. Buhler is a partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the great Silicon-Valley venture-capital entities. His essay introduces, for many of us, the new term "generative pretrained transformers" (GPT) for a key category of algorithm in the developing field.
May. Bolivia's Gold Reserves. A new law in Bolivia aims at strengthening that country's gold reserves. Bolivia's currency has long been pegged to the US dollar. But dissatisfaction with that arrangement has led the Bolivians to turn to something shinier. This testifies to the continuing weakness of the US dollar and its possible demise, in coming years, as the world's dominant value metric.
June. U.S. debt limit struggles. As the month begins, the key politicians agree on a plan to suspend the U.S. debt ceiling until Jan 1, 2015. On June 2, the day after the agreement passes the Senate (having already passed the House) Wall Street sees a significant relief rally. With luck, this will prove the beginning of the end of the debt ceiling itself and its availability as a chicken-like negotiating tool. Oddly, the deal itself came together old-style, in a display of leaders-lead-caucuses-follow that looked almost atavistic.
July: War in Ukraine. Russia returns in earnest to the blockading of grain exports as a weapon against Ukraine in a war well into its second year. The Russian Defense Ministry announced this month that ANY vessels en route to Ukrainian ports will be regarded as potentially carrying military cargo and thus as a fair target. This necessitated some scrambling over the remainder of the year. It was a blatant attempt by the Russkies to make even simple outgoing wheat shipments uninsurable and thus by indirection to end Ukraine's exports. In the end, we can say from a half-year distance: it has not worked.
August: Cryptocurrency. China. Although China formally made all cryptocurrency trading illegal two years before, in August 2023 the Wall Street Journal revealed that crypto trading was actually continuing full bore in the PRC and that in midyear it accounted for 20% of Binance trading worldwide, $90 Billion worth of business. The bottom line? Cryptocurrencies are alive and well in the PRC, despite the official denunciation.
September: Opposition party promises. Britain. The Labour Party says that if it takes control of Britain's parliament, it will exhibit "stable public finances and prudent spending.” The Guardian says that Labour has "ruled out a wealth tax, mansion tax, higher capital gains or raising the income tax" in order to head off the usual Tory attacks. Labour has not had control of the government since 2010, and it is going through one of its periodic mirror-gazing re-appraisals.
October: Zombie companies. China. Country Garden, which just a year ago was considered a model property developer by the PRC government, has defaulted on its bonds, in particular by failing to pay a $15.4 million interest payment on an outstanding dollar bond due in October 13. It is not clear where China's property development industry goes from here, but it is poignant that the officially denounced cryptocurrency market mentioned in the August entry looks healthier.
November. Artificial Intelligence II. United States. OpenAI, a California headquartered corporation, made a big impact this year with its AI chatbot, GPT-4. [See April's entry for the meaning of that, and see the image above for OpenAI's corporate HQ.] But in November, OpenAI's board rather mysteriously fired Sam Altman, the CEO. The chairman of the board Greg Brockman, resigned, reportedly unhappy with that decision by the rest of the board. Altman and Brockman immediately shopped their services to Microsoft, and soon returned to OpenAI in triumph. So: what IS going on in the world of for-profit AI research?
December. Israel-Hamas war. The Houthis of Yemen have emphatically sided with Hamas in its war with Israel. The Houthis have expressed their devotion to the cause by a series of attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. They claim to be targeting Israel linked ships, but their munitions have been indiscriminate. This month for example, fired their missiles upon a Norwegian flagged oil tanker destined for Italy. [At least one missile hit the vessel, the MT Strinde, causing an onboard fire, but no casualties were reported. Perhaps that, in a sense akin to the data we discussed in our July entry above, is a tribute to the resilience of 21st century shipping. Both the insurance arrangements and the actual physical ships are resilient!]
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