What we’re reading (3/24)
“Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq Futures Jump As Wall Street Hopes For Iran Progress” (Yahoo! Finance). “US stock futures climbed Tuesday evening follow a report from the New York Times saying that the US has sent a 15-point plan to Iran aimed at ending the war…Meanwhile, oil prices sank, continuing a wild ride as investors assess Iran-related developments.”
“When Hyperglobalization Meets Chaos” (Paul Krugman). “[A]re we learning that the Persian Gulf is a uniquely crucial choke point for the world economy? I don’t think so. It’s certainly an important choke point. But it’s not unique…In a classic 2013 paper — updated in 2023 — Subramanian and Kessler noted that world trade had grown much faster than world GDP between the 1980s and the eve of the 2008 financial crisis. In the 80s world trade wasn’t much bigger as a share of world GDP than it had been before World War I; by 2008 it was on a whole other level. But as they documented, this rapid growth in world trade was not simply a matter of countries trading more, but of world production becoming much more complex and interdependent…Over the past 40 years or so we’ve built a world in which national economies are so interdependent that there are potential choke points everywhere you look.”
“OpenAI Scraps Sora Video Platform Months After Launch” (Wall Street Journal). “OpenAI is planning to pull the plug on its Sora video platform, a product it released to great fanfare last year that has since fallen from public view. The move is one of a number of steps OpenAI is taking to refocus on business and coding functions ahead of a potential initial public offering as soon as the fourth quarter of this year. CEO Sam Altman announced the changes to staff on Tuesday, writing that the company would wind down products that use its video models. In addition to the consumer app, OpenAI is also discontinuing a version of Sora for developers and won’t support video functionality inside ChatGPT, either. OpenAI is in the middle of a strategy shift to redirect the company’s computing resources and top talent toward so-called productivity tools that can be used by both enterprises and individual users.”
“Software Stocks Drop On Report Amazon Is Developing AI Tools” (Bloomberg). “Software stocks dropped on Tuesday after a report on new AI tools from Amazon.com Inc. rekindled the disruption fears that have roiled the sector in the past few months.”
“Private Equity Role In Soaring Child Care Prices Under Investigation” (Washington Post). “A Democratic senator launched an investigation Monday into the nation’s two largest for-profit child care providers, as rising child care prices squeeze voters already concerned about the cost of living.”
