What we’re reading (3/18)
“Bank Of New York Mellon Invests In Crypto Startup” (Wall Street Journal). “The startup, Fireblocks, builds tools for the secure storage and transfer of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. BNY Mellon plans to use Fireblocks’s technology to underpin a new business that the bank unveiled last month, in which it plans to serve as a custodian for digital assets on behalf of institutional investors.”
“Google To Spend $7 Billion In Data Centers And Office Space In 2021” (CNBC). “Google says it plans to spend more than $7 billion on real estate across the U.S. in 2021 as it resumes spending in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The company said the money will go toward expanding offices and data centers across 19 states, creating what it says will amount to at least 10,000 full-time jobs. $1 billion will go specifically toward California.”
“Jobless Claims Are Still Higher Than During The Great Recession A Year After The Pandemic Started” (CNN Business). “Last week, 770,000 Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Department of Labor reported Thursday. It was an increase from the prior week and 70,000 claims more than economists had expected. It was also nearly 3 times as many claims as in the same week last year, just before the pandemic layoffs made benefit claims skyrocket.”
“Back To The 60s” (The Grumpy Economist). “In the 1960s, macroeconomists thought that recessions were just ‘shortfalls’ of ‘aggregate demand.’ The point of policy was to fill the valleys with aggregate demand, as indicated by the dashed line of the top graph. In the conventional reading, they tried it in the 1970s, and got inflation…How can an economy run ‘too hot?’ Well, if your boss asked you to work 7 days a week 12 hours a day with no vacations to finish a special project, you could. But you would not want to do that forever. The economy as a whole can similarly push above what is long-run sustainable for a little while.”
“‘Big Short’” Investor Michael Burry Says He’ll Stop Tweeting After SEC Regulators Paid Him A Visit” (Business Insider). “Michael Burry's incendiary tweets have piqued the interest of federal regulators, the investor revealed this week. ‘Tweeting and getting in the news lately apparently has caused the SEC to pay us a visit,’ the Scion Asset Management boss said in a now-deleted tweet. ‘Lovely,’ he continued, adding the hashtag ‘#nomoretweets.’”
