In the fight against inflation, is it the Fed or the Treasury that calls the shots? The answer is, it’s both. The Fed raises interest rates to make loans less attractive and bring inflation down, but The Treasury has its own set of magic tricks to artificially “stimulate” or “tighten” the economy as well. One of them is a Treasury buyback program, something that was just reincarnated for the first time in about two decades. This is where the Treasury repurchases its own outstanding securities from the open market to increase liquidity, stoke demand, and bring down yields.
Artificial Intelligence has already had an incredibly disruptive effect on many industries. It has allowed inexperienced workers the ability to increase their productivity and outpace older workers with less tech-savvy. It has begun to help some companies make efficient decisions that they would have been blinded to if they had only considered their own industry conventions. AI is different from many other tools because it can shift the direction of industry rather than merely being a tool used towards a predetermined end. Because of its ability to make decisions objectively and create unpredictable objectives, AI will throw a great deal of uncertainty into the prices of money, stocks, and bonds.
The US national debt is so out of control that, ironically enough, even the Federal Reserve chair has expressed concern about the problem. And while America is among the top contributors, it isn’t just the US that’s spending money it doesn’t have: after briefly declining in 2023, the global debt-to-GDP ratio is again at an all-time high.
