What we’re reading (9/22)
“How Bad Is It?” (DealBook). “On top of Evergrande, a number of other Chinese property developers also appear “highly distressed,” said Jenny Zeng of AllianceBernstein. Goldman Sachs strategists estimate that an Evergrande collapse could cut China’s G.D.P. by $350 billion in the next year. But for now, the global repercussions of Evergrande’s troubles aren’t considered on the same scale as those that followed Lehman’s collapse, even if some of the debt owed by Chinese developers is held by foreign firms, who could get burned if the cash isn’t there.”
“Why Everybody’s Hiring But Nobody’s Getting Hired” (Vox). “The Bureau of Labor Statistics says there are 8.4 million potential workers who are unemployed, but it also says there are a record 10.9 million jobs open. The rate at which unemployed people are getting jobs is lower than it was pre-pandemic, and it’s taking longer to hire people. Meanwhile, job seekers say employers are unresponsive.”
“Debt Ceiling Modest Proposal -- Perpetuities” (John Cochrane, The Grumpy Economist). “The Treasury computes the total amount of debt by its face or principal value, not its market value. If the Treasury issues a bond that pays $1 coupons each year for 10 years and then pays $100 at maturity, the treasury counts this as $100 additional debt. The Treasury ignores the coupon payments, and how much the bond actually sells for, i.e. how much the Treasury actually borrows, when the bond is auctioned. Now you see my answer: Perpetuities have coupons, but no principal…[t]oo clever? Maybe. OK, undoubtedly yes. But if economics lunchroom talk can consider trillion-dollar coins, we can talk about perpetuities. Or maybe a serious attempt to do this would bring US treasury accounting into the 1960s, with cutting-edge concepts like market values not face values, duration not average principal maturity, and interest cost concept that goes beyond coupons, so that the debt limit and treasury accounting is more economically meaningful.”
“Move fast And Bank Things: Crypto-Based ‘DeFi’ Takes On Wall Street” (Fortune). “As a largely unregulated part of the economy, DeFi has exploded in tandem with demand for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Most of the action takes place on Ethereum, the second-biggest crypto network, whose blockchain comes with a built-in programming language, Solidity, that makes it easy to build so-called decentralized apps. For now, the ecosystem is populated primarily by people who range from comfortable with to rabidly passionate about crypto—with all its risk and legal uncertainty. “
“Who Owns Your Life Insurance Policy? It Might Be A Private-Equity Firm” (Wall Street Journal). “Americans own more than 160 million individual life insurance and annuity policies. A big, unexpected change is ahead for many of them. Traditional life insurers are leaving the business in droves. The responsibility for death benefits, which might be a half-century away, or for annuity income streams that run over decades, is increasingly in the hands of a new breed of insurance-company owner.”
