What we’re reading (3/2)
"How Wall Street Pros Are Looking At Fears Over A US Economy Slowdown” (Yahoo! Finance). “‘The fear here among a lot of investors now [has] become that the economy could be slowing down faster than the Fed is willing to react, which is a tough situation,’ Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, told Yahoo Finance an interview on Friday.”
“Why This Spot-On Consumer-Confidence Measure Should Concern Stock-Market Bulls” (MarketWatch). “…[A] far bigger cause for concern is the gap between the Conference Board’s and the University of Michigan’s sentiment measures. Historically, this spread has widened considerably in the months prior to recessions. Not surprisingly, given this historical tendency, the S&P 500 has performed worse in the wake of higher spread levels than lower ones.”
“Big Consulting Bosses Meet With Trump Officials To Save Contracts” (Wall Street Journal). “In recent days, top executives at professional services firms including Ernst & Young and Guidehouse have met with officials including Josh Gruenbaum, the Federal Acquisition Service commissioner within the General Services Administration, according to people familiar with the discussions. A Booz Allen executive has also been in touch with Gruenbaum, who is a former director at the private-equity firm KKR…[i]n the meetings with consultants, Gruenbaum has emphasized to executives that the government sees value in consulting—particularly in rolling out advanced technology and modernizing government agencies.”
“Justice Department, FTC Antitrust Enforcement May Merge” (Dealbreaker). “One factoid that should be in every antitrust outline is that both the FTC and the DOJ can bust up monopolies. The DOJ tends to handle the criminal side of antitrust while the FTC handles civil, but there is some undeniable overlap in the work that they do. So why keep both? Musk can’t seem to find a persuasive enough answer to maintain the apparent redundancy.”
“AI Will Upend A Basic Assumption About How Companies Are Organized” (Bloomberg). “For most of history, hiring a dozen PhDs meant a massive budget and months of lead time. Today, a few keystrokes in a chatbot summon that brainpower in seconds. As intelligence becomes cheaper and faster, the basic assumption underpinning our institutions — that human insight is scarce and expensive — no longer holds. When you can effectively consult a dozen experts anytime you like, it changes how companies organize, how we innovate and how each of us approaches learning and decision-making. The question facing individuals and organizations alike is: What will you do when intelligence itself is suddenly ubiquitous and practically free?”
