What we’re reading (3/22)
“The Fed’s Most Awkward Leadership Transition Is Coming” (Wall Street Journal). “‘He [Warsh] wouldn’t have gotten the job without indicating that he would believe that interest rates should be lower,’ said Eric Rosengren, who served as president of the Boston Fed from 2007 to 2021. ‘But the problem is that the world is changing pretty quickly, and he can’t guarantee the vote.’”
“‘It Feels Like There’s No Jobs’: 12 Gen Z Voters On The U.S. Economy” (New York Times). “‘I graduated college almost two years ago at this point, and things felt really different compared to now,’ one participant said. Another added, ‘An entry-level job is never really an entry-level job anymore.’ Participants described applying to job after job after job, and frustrations with what college didn’t prepare them for. Most had a stronger interest in a secure, imperfect position over a risky dream opportunity.”
“A Whiff Of Stagflation” (Paul Krugman). “[I]nflation has risen — not a lot so far, but it was moving in the wrong direction even before the war with Iran. The latest indicator was the Producer Price Index — basically wholesale prices — released Wednesday morning. This index can give early warning about rising consumer prices. And one of the people I trust to read these tea leaves called it ‘pretty grim.’ Not 1970s grim, but not what you want to see. There’s an uncomfortable parallel here with 1973, the year stagflation is generally considered to have started. I’m not sure how many people are aware that one reason the 1973 oil shock hit so hard was that inflation was already rising fast even before the Yom Kippur War led to the Arab oil embargo, which triggered the first oil crisis[.]”
“Global Growth Expectations Continue to Improve” (Torsten Slok). “There are no signs of a slowdown in corporate earnings expectations[.]”
“Why AI Has Not Yet Upset India’s IT industry” (The Economist). “This year’s edition of the annual jamboree for Indian IT firms, held last month in Mumbai, was a study in contrasts. The president of Nasscom, the industry body, hailed a new sales record: it expects that its members will have enjoyed combined revenue of more than $315bn in the year to March, up by 6% on the year before. Yet delegates tearing their eyes from the stage and glancing at their phones would see share prices plunging. The Nifty IT index dropped by around a fifth following a viral blogpost that imagined new artificial-intelligence coding tools would wipe the industry out altogether[.]”
