What we’re reading (5/22)
“Fed Officials Saw Longer Wait For Rate Cuts After Inflation Setbacks” (Wall Street Journal). “Federal Reserve officials concluded at their most recent meeting they would need to hold interest rates at their current level for longer than they previously anticipated after a third straight disappointing inflation reading last month.”
“The Second Great Bailout” (The Grumpy Economist). “After 2008, politicians and regulators promised the Dodd-Frank Act would stop bailouts. They failed. We document the massive bailouts of 2020-2023. But this time nobody is even promising to do anything about it. Too big to fail has spread everywhere. The basic architecture of allowing highly leveraged finance but promise that regulators will stop risks has failed. We have now tried everything else, it’s time for equity-financed banking and narrow deposit taking.”
“Tracing OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s Love for Scarlett Johansson’s AI Romance Her” (Vanity Fair). “In September 2003, OpenAI cofounder and CEO Sam Altman was asked to name his favorite movie about artificial intelligence. It was two months before Altman would be pushed out of his company because, according to his board of directors, Altman was ‘not consistently candid in his communications’ with the board….onstage at Dreamforce 2023 in San Francisco, with a fake waterfall backdrop frozen behind him, Altman said that Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her resonated with him more than other sci-fi films about AI.”
“This Man Did Not Invent Bitcoin” (New York Times). “The mystery of Satoshi’s identity has long obsessed crypto experts, who analyze every record of his communications with the reverence of Talmudic scholars. Various candidates have been proposed as possible Satoshis, only for them to deny any role in Bitcoin’s creation. Dr. Wright, by contrast, has gone to extraordinary lengths to prove that he is Satoshi. He has presented himself as Bitcoin’s inventor in interviews and social media posts, laying out evidence for virtually anyone who would listen. In lawsuits tried in three countries, he has testified that he wrote the original white paper. After a small-time crypto personality challenged his claims in 2019, Dr. Wright sued for defamation in England. He followed that up with an aggressive suit against software developers working to improve Bitcoin’s code, accusing them of violating his intellectual property rights.”
“100-Hour Weeks And Heart Palpitations: Inside Wall Street’s Brutal Work Culture” (New York Post). “The tragic death of former Green Beret and Bank of America employee Leo Lukenas III has become a flashpoint of anger over allegedly unrealistic work expectations on Wall Street — partly because some bankers say Lukenas’ experience is so similar to their own. While there is no evidence that job-related stress caused the blood clot that killed 35-year-old Lukenas on May 2, a recent Reuters report that he was talking with a recruiter to find a job with better hours has put a glaring spotlight on the 100-hour work weeks he was said to be juggling before his death.”
