Tesla Model X was in autopilot before fatal crash

This is an interesting article on Tesla's Model X which was involved in a fatal crash while it was in auto-pilot mode. Federal Regulators deemed this model to be highest in safety rankings for an SUV. It surprising to note that this incident happens just weeks after the autopilot Uber fatal crash which killed a woman on the highway in Arizona. It would be interesting to note what the future holds for these self-driving cars because already Tesla's stock has crashed 22 percent since the incident and Uber has also temporarily stopped its autopilot cars. Tesla issued a statement that the autopilot feature is not fully autonomous and the car issued several warnings before the crash for him to take the wheel which he didn't. More importantly, I'm more concerned about the future of the company which plans to roll out more models with the autopilot features.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/31/technology/tesla-model-x-crash-autopilot/index.html

U.S., China Quietly Seek Trade Solutions After Days of Loud Threats

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, trade representative Robert Lighthizer and China's top economic adviser Liu He have opened talks on a trade dispute between the two powers, according to sources. Mnuchin and Lighthizer reportedly wrote to Liu late last week with requests for concessions to help ease the strained relationship, and a Treasury spokesman says they have discussed the trade deficit and are "committed to continuing the dialogue to find a mutually agreeable way to reduce it.

I found this extremely relevant due to this topic directly affecting the health of our national stock markets. Trade solutions often positively correlate with market growth.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-china-quietly-seek-trade-solutions-after-days-of-loud-threats-1522018524

Uber Pulls Out of Southeast Asia, Selling Operation to Rival Grab

Amy Peters

Uber Pulls Out of Southeast Asia, Selling Operation to Rival Grab

            Uber has recently decided to back out of doing business in Southeast Asia, both for their ride service as well as for their food delivery in that area. This decision was brought with great skepticism since this one of the fastest growing regions in the world, and the opportunity for Uber growth in the region was tremendous. The company Grab is now acquiring all of Uber’s current operations in this region, in return Uber gets a 28% stake in Grab as well as the Uber CEO will now sit on Grab’s board. This is being seen as a great success for Grab, the Singapore-based company. This is not the first time Uber has pulled out of expanding areas, backing out of China and Russia in the past years. Uber’s rationale for these decisions is that they want to focus on growth and investments in new products and they want to protect the financials of the company from possible losses before their expected IPO in 2019. Did Uber make the right decision by giving up this territory?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/uber-cedes-southeast-asia-to-chief-rival-grab-in-latest-pullout

Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

Uber cars was actually struggling before the crash in Arizona. The robots did not live up to expectations and have trouble driving through construction zones and next to tall vehicle

e and yet it killed a woman in Arizona. “Waymo, formerly the self-driving car project of Google, said that in tests on roads in California last year, its cars went an average of nearly 5,600 miles before the driver had to take control from the computer to steer out of trouble. As of March, Uber was struggling to meet its target of 13 miles per “intervention” in Arizona, according to 100 pages of company documents obtained by The New York Times and two people familiars with the company’s operations in the Phoenix area but not permitted to speak publicly about it”.  I am curious to see what they will do next.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/technology/uber-self-driving-cars-arizona.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Ftechnology&action=click&contentCollection=technology&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

Trump Gets First Major Trade Deal, as South Korea Looks to Avoid Tariffs

This article talks about the first of many deals that Trump's administration is trying to seal relating international trade. It started when he decided to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum, which at first would benefit local producers. Now he has decided to use these tariffs in order to have leverage over other countries while negotiating trade deals. It seems like the planned worked with South Korea, and the US is going to be benefited with the deal because now they will be able to increase exports of cars to South Korea. But this does not mean that every country is going to react the same way because some might not like the fact that the US is trying to take advantage of them, and their answer could be to impose tariffs in US products instead. Only with time, the repercussions of this trade war will be able to be analyzed, and it would be interesting to know if it actually benefits the US. So far it seems like it has but there is a long way to go.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/business/south-korea-us-tariffs.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

For the U.S. and China, a Technology Cold War That’s Freezing Over

In the current state of our economy and political climate, the desire to protect domestic industry is greater than ever. This battle for protection of firms can be seen in the heavily competitive technology sector. China has historically placed heavy burdens on US companies trying to do business in China to support the emerging Chinese industry. Recently, however, the capacity of Chinese factories have begun to approach that of US firms. Because of this, the US government is beginning to take steps to protect our tech firms against the growing Chinese firms.

This is one of the first times in history that we have been at odds with a country that we share so much investment with that is also seen as a political threat. For example, Japan has always competed with us economically but they have also been a military ally and Russia has been an adversary but has never come close to our economic output. China is in a strange position of being able to compete with us in the open market but is also seen as a political adversary.

This article highlights that problems that arise when infant industries begin to compete on the open market with their mature peers. Only time will tell how we begin to solve this problem of approaching equity in the international tech industry.

Link to Article

U.S. gunmaker Remington files for bankruptcy

It is surprising to see this article stating one of the largest firearms makers to file bankruptcy protection at first, but it is somehow indicating how the gun industry will go due to the opposed public pressure.


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-remington-bankruptcy/u-s-gunmaker-remington-files-for-bankruptcy-idUSKBN1H204F 

For U.S. Farmers, China Tariffs’ Timing Is Brutal

Following President Trump's Tariff announcements on China, China has naturally decided to engage in action for their own financial benefit as a country. This attempt to improve the trade policy and relationship between the United States and China is starting to backfire on the U.S. agriculture industry. China's first action of protectionist response was to increase soybean purchases from Brazil, (where the crop is cheaper than in the U.S). Resulting from that shift, China is now buying less American soybeans. When asked about their decision to makes this move, they responded by saying that is in response to the recent steel and aluminum tariffs. This type of rogue protectionist trade policy should be watched closely as the role of globalization in today's markets are more prevalent than ever before. Markets are on edge following this recent Chinese response.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-u-s-farmers-china-tariffs-timing-is-harsh-1521979200

India’s need for growth

India’s former central bank governor, Raghuram Rajan says that India needs to grow faster. As of now, India has the third largest economy in India but continues to add approximately 12 millions workers into the job force every year. Rajan says that the current growth of 7.5 to 8 percent each year is easy and expected, and that India should be striving for the Chinese growth of the early 2000s, at least 10 percent. However, Rajan says that this all depends on the governments ability to speed up the land acquisition process that has stalled so many industrial projects. If this process is depoliticized, India may have a shot at quickly growing into the next industrial power.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/03/19/indias-economy-needs-to-grow-10-percent-former-imf-chief-economist.html

Things could turn bad for India's economy in 2018

This article discusses how India could be the most vulnerable to the rising interest rate in the US. According to the article, high-interest rates would result in capital outflows from emerging economies as investors would prefer high yields. In the past, India had a high rate of sell-offs when the US tightened its monetary policies. The present conditions of the Indian economy are not good and there is a high risk of further deterioration.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/credit-suisse-india-is-vulnerable-when-interest-rates-rise.html

Tariffs hurting GM

President Trump's tariff will have significant costs to the economy. One such company that is going to suffer is GM. With President Trump's tariff the rising price of steel and aluminum will cause the price of cars to go up $200 a car. This will most likely result in a decrease in demand for GM cars. In addition, this will hurt GM's bottom line by raising it's own costs by $300 million. This results in profit margins shrinking resulting a fall in the company's stock which is down over 10 percent in the last month.

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-tariffs-general-motors-stock-price-to-have-a-two-fold-effect-2018-3

Bitcoin will be the single global currency

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/25/bitcoin-will-eventually-be-the-single-global-currency-twitters-jack-dorsey.html

This article is interesting, but I find it hard to agree with. Bitcoin is an interesting and complex, but to me, is rather worthless to law-abiding citizens. For instance, why go through the process of transferring USD into bitcoin in order to buy a cup of coffee, rather than just buy it with USD in the first place?

I believe the underlying technology, the blockchain, is a lot more valuable and useful to society. Overtime, blockchain will be adopted globally. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is just a currency that serves little purpose.

It will be interesting see how global governments react to the adoption of blockchain and other currencies. It will also be interesting to see cryptocurrencies affect the strength of currencies, such as, the US dollar. If more and more people use bitcoin in the United States to transact, than the value of the dollar could drop. This would hurt our economy and the businesses that use the dollar to import goods. Ultimately, using the blockchain to make transactions safe and secure is very important. But, I believe governments will work on using blockchain for US dollar transactions, and not bitcoin transactions. There was recently a G-20 summit about bitcoin and cryptocurrency, and almost all agreed that it an asset rather than a currency.

Im curious what other people think of bitcoin and the future of it as a currency?

The economy looks weak in the first quarter, but better days are coming

This article talks about how the GDP growth will likely be slow in the first quarter, but should accelerate stronger later in the year. The Bank of America indicated that its growth rate would decrease from 2.3% in Q1 but would eventually rise up to 2.9%. The Federal Reserve indicated that the US growth rate would increase from 2.5% to 2.7%. There will be a stronger payback in the second quarter, as mentioned in the article with growth projected to increase from 3.3% to 3.7%, and a 3.3% to 3.6% growth in the third quarter.  An investment strategist in Charles Schwab mentioned that “the economy looks strong and we believe the upcoming earnings season will be solid”. The optimism of a stronger economy arose from good estimates from the manufacturing industry. The only reason to negate that optimism are disappointing auto sales to retail to housing. Durable goods also increased by 3.1%, ahead of the 1.7%. Overall, with low cost of borrowing, high capacity utilization and tax cuts, US economist at Capital Economics Andrew Hunter believes that business investment will continue to expand at a healthy pace in the coming quarters. The Federal Reserve of Atlanta mentioned that the gains in durable goods were offset by a decrease in new home sales. According to the consensus, the market growth rate for the fourth quarter is at 2.5%.

A high expected growth rate is vital to increase the consumer confidence, so that spending is high (MPC increases), businesses are performing well, which further increases the economic growth rate in the long run.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/23/the-economy-looks-weak-in-the-first-quarter-but-better-days-are-coming.html

A List of the Companies Cutting Ties With the N.R.A.

This article is pretty straight forward and talks about several companies that have chosen to cut ties with the NRA after the recent Parkland shooting.  Much talk has arisen about how the economy will be effected as a result, especially gun sales and the NRA.  Another conversation to potentially be having is how the companies that cut ties will be effected. For instance, a strong supporter of the NRA might not want to be a customer of one of the companies that cut ties.  Like Delta airlines, for example, could potentially lose business due to peoples political agendas regarding guns and the NRA.  On the other hand, business could fluctuate in a positive way for companies because of the very same reason.  If someone had a very strong dislike for the NRA, they might intentionally gravitate more towards the companies that cut ties, more than they otherwise would have.  Either way, the economy could be effected by more than just gun sales, but also these companies' decision to cut ties with the NRA.

Tariffs are beginning to have an effect on U.S agriculture.

Much of the agricultural side of our economy is going to be affected by the tariffs that Trump is putting in place. As he puts more tariffs in place china is putting some tariffs of its own into play as well to in reaction to Trump. These tariffs will be on pork fruit and nuts. The U.S is also the second largest importer of these good just under Canada. This will have a huge impact on domestic agriculture and it will definitely not be a positive affect on the U.S economy. However, just how negative these tariffs will affect the U.S is still to be seen.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-u-s-farmers-china-tariffs-timing-is-harsh-1521979200

Remington files for Bankruptcy

Through the past few weeks many things have happened including gun violence.  It seems very fitting during times like these that one of the oldest gun makers files for bankruptcy.  They have been facing loads of debt and law suits over the past couple years and it all seems to have caught up to them.  With everything that is going on in todays world it will be interesting to see what Remington does after this.  Many people are not behind them because of them being gun producers so it will be hard for them to bounce back to where they were once at in the world economy.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/debt-laden-gun-maker-remington-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy-2018-03-25

What if China corners the cobalt market?

Cobalt recently entered in the growing market for batteries for electric vehicles, which each uses about 10kg of cobalt.  It's known that more than half of the world's cobalt reserves and production are in the country the Democratic Republic of Congo.  But what is less known is that four-fifths of the cobalt sulphates and oxides used to make the cathodes for lithium-ion batteries are refined in China.  Few analysts expect the cobalt market to soften soon.  Production in Congo is likely to increase in the next few years, but some investment may be deterred by a recent five-fold leap in royalties on cobalt.  Investment elsewhere is limited because cobalt is nearly always mined alongside copper or nickel.  At current prices the quantities needed are not enough to justify production for cobalt alone.

https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21739161-nickel-could-make-good-substituteprovided-car-batteries-dont-catch-fire-what-if

Spotify Saved Music. Can It Save Itself?

I was surprised when reading this article.  Spotify has 70 million customers that pay for an account, but they make barely any revenue.  The CEO, Daniel Ek hired Barry McCarthy, a "finance whiz", who helped Netflix when they became public, to help him convince investors that Spotify is a good investment although they don't make much money.  Unlike Netflix, Spotify doesn't plan to make its own music and would not benefit from it.  Thus, they are trying to find other ways they can make some money.  Right now, they offer record companies free access to their data that they can utilize to plan album release dates and other logistics.  One thought is to start charging for access to this data.  I am curious to see what else McCarthy and Ek have in mind and if it will be enough to bring in some cash and convince investors. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-23/spotify-saved-music-can-it-save-itself

The economics of a military draft

In Dr. Daniel Sutter's article he discusses the economics that go along with a military draft. The common assumption was that a draft would reduce the cost of the military but this is a misconception . For one the government still has to pay for the individuals that have been enlisted from the draft. There is also a big trade off because many people who could have a big influence on the economy could end up serving. The article goes on to discuss  the cost and feasibility of a volunteer military from research. Personally I feel it is very unlikely for a draft to occur in our lifetime. However, I think to look at the trade-offs between a draft and the economy is very interesting. http://yellowhammernews.com/economics-of-a-military-draft/

New Fed head approves first rate hike of 2018

The FED is going to go through the first round of raising interest rates in 2018, as more after are expected throughout the year.  Wall street investors and bankers are most likely not going to be happy because this is most likely going to put the metaphorical brakes on the economy in a small way.  The FED is most likely worried about the economy being over heated and going too far past the steady state.  Going too far past could cause a recession or correction that would lead to a decrease in economic output and have a severe effect on the labor market.  Trying to tame the business cycle is a goal of the FED because as we have seen in history, the highest economic highs are followed by the lowest economic lows.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/new-fed-head-approves-first-rate-hike-2018-n858726