What we’re reading (6/19)
“The Economic Gauges Are Going Nuts. Jerome Powell Is Taking a Longer View.” (New York Times). “To Mr. Powell’s mind, these are those lessons [from the 2010s]: American workers are capable of great things. The labor market can run hotter for longer than a lot of economists once assumed, with widely beneficial results. There are many powerful structural forces that will keep inflation in check. And for those reasons, the Fed should move cautiously in raising interest rates, rather than risk choking off a full economic recovery too soon.”
“Why Wall Street Is In Such A Rush To Get Workers Back To The Office” (CNN Business). “Even more than other industries, Wall Street is clearly in a rush to turn the page on this extended era of virtual work. Executives, employees and those who follow the industry point to a range of factors for this…the risk is that banks could be ignoring the concerns of employees who may not be ready (or able) to get back to the office full-time. If Wall Street moves too aggressively, it could lose talent to more nimble yet equally lucrative industries like Silicon Valley.”
“Americans Are Heading Back To Gyms As Interest In At-Home Workouts Wanes, Jefferies Says” (CNBC). “As Covid restrictions ease across the country, vaccines are jabbed into arms and fitness centers revoke mask-wearing policies, more people are heading back to the gym, new research shows. Jefferies has been tracking visits to fitness chains such as Planet Fitness and 24 Hour Fitness and monitoring online searches for gyms and digital fitness programs such as Peloton. While many Americans invested in the latter during the health crisis, aspiring to break a sweat at home, that demand appears to be fading.”
“Why PCs Are Turning Into Giant Phones” (Wall Street Journal). “Your next laptop will be like a smartphone—only bigger, more powerful and more capable. It’s a reversal of almost a decade of trends in mobile computing, a decade that saw our phones get ever faster while our laptops and other PCs felt like they just wheezed along.”
“Crypto-Miners Are Probably To Blame For The Graphics-Chip Shortage” (The Economist). “Since 2015 asking prices for six gpus [graphics processin gunits] tracked by Keepa have moved in lockstep with Ethereum’s value. In late 2017 the currency’s first big rally coincided with a surge in listed gpu prices. Once the crypto bubble burst, gpu costs fell back to earth.”
