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☆ Warren Buffett’s must-read annual letter arrives Saturday. Here’s what to expect from the investing legend
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Yun Li | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Andrew Harnik | APWarren Buffett's loyal following of value investors is about to hear from the legend himself, at a crucial time when interest rates have soared and recession fears are raging. He believed that when interest rates are high, it could be a major "gravitational pull" on values. "We have a roughly 15-year period of abnormally and historically low interest rates. "Interest rates are the main determinant of equity prices, to quote Buffett, so I think I'm looking for and expecting a discussion on interest rates." "Private equity and others who are thinking of making acquisitions would have to go into the market to borrow [at] higher interest rates.

Some estimates have suggested the unemployment rate, currently at more than a five-decade low of 3.4%, may have to approach 7% for inflation to fall on a reasonable timetable. But a series of rapid rate hikes last year, which pushed the Fed's benchmark overnight interest rate from near zero to the current 4.50%-4.75% range, has so far been relatively cost-free. Those projections have inflation dropping to 2.1% by the end of 2025, with the economy growing throughout and the unemployment rate rising only to around 4.6%. By contrast, they said "the cost of lowering inflation to the Fed's 2% target by 2025 will likely be associated with at least a mild recession." Perhaps too reliant on the tame inflation of recent decades, the Fed made a "significant error" by not raising interest rates "preemptively" when inflation began accelerating in 2021, the group concluded.

Only "a few" participants outright favored a larger half-percentage-point increase at the meeting, or said they "could have supported" it. Bond yields rose following the release of the minutes and the U.S. dollar also advanced against a basket of currencies, but U.S. stocks pared gains. The yield on the 2-year Treasury note , the government bond maturity most sensitive to Fed policy expectations, rose about 4 basis points from its level before the release to about 4.69%. Traders of futures tied to the Fed policy rate added to bets on at least three more quarter-percentage-point rate hikes at upcoming meetings, with contract pricing pointing to a top federal funds rate range of 5.25%-5.50%. The central bank has raised its policy rate over eight meetings from a starting point near zero last March to the current 4.50%-4.75% range.

The two-day meeting ended on Feb. 1 with the central bank raising its target interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point, a return to a more standard rate hike size after a year of sequential three-quarter point and half-point increases. The Fed uses the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index in setting its 2% inflation target. Since the meeting, some Fed officials have acknowledged they had pushed to continue with larger half-point rate increases at the last meeting, while investors have boosted their own outlook for where the Fed may end up. Most do not see the Fed returning to larger half-point increases now that they have slowed. While the minutes released today are particularly dated, given the jobs and inflation numbers released since then, policymakers will update their views next month with new economic and interest rate projections issued after the Fed's March 21-22 meeting.

While the Fed settled for a quarter-percentage-point rise, it also said "ongoing increases" would push the policy rate as high as needed. Recent data also showed inflation continuing to slow, though by less than expected. Today's 4.5%-4.75% policy rate is its highest since the eve of the housing crisis in 2007. "I don't see that indicating to me that we're slowing the economy," Fed Governor Michelle Bowman said of recent data, including strong retail sales and job growth. Richmond Fed's Barkin, by contrast, said he took little "signal" from recent data, anticipating inflation would continue falling.

☆ How to Spot Robots in a World of A.I.-Generated Text
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( Keith Collins | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +9 min

A detection tool that knew which words were on the special list would be able to tell the difference between generated text and text written by a person. That would be especially helpful for this generated text, as it includes several factual inaccuracies. By contrast, the detection tool OpenAI released requires a minimum of 1,000 characters. A person could repeatedly edit generated text and check it against a detection tool until the text is identified as human-written — and that process could potentially be automated. By that time, educators and researchers had already been calling for tools to help them identify generated text.

☆ 60,000 miles of US roads could be under water in a few decades. Here's how experts say we can save our critical infrastructure.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Bianca Giacobone | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

"In the Keys, if you redo your house, you have to mitigate it for sea level rise," he told Insider. The islands are particularly exposed to rising sea levels. Across the country, you can expect coastlines to rise an average of 10 to 12 inches over the next 30 years, according NOAA's Sea Level Rise Viewer, which lets you adjust sea level rise and visualize how in trouble your house or your commute might be. Then, he started doing what NOAA recommends, reading about sea level rise and the plans that individual communities are studying to increase their own resiliency. By understanding how to adapt incrementally, and starting to act as soon as possible, the US can learn how to adapt to rising sea levels.

☆ What is a microaggression? 15 things people think are fine to say at work — but are actually racist, sexist, or offensive.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Marguerite Ward | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Microaggressions are indirect or subtle expressions of racism, sexism, ageism, or ableism. A number of Black workers report facing less discrimination and fewer microaggressions working from home than when they're at the office. Some women of color say remote work has helped them in the same way, too. From telling a new female worker that she "looks like a student" to asking a Black colleague about her natural hair, microaggressions can make a workplace feel uncomfortable, unsafe, and toxic. Since microaggressions are subtle, it's often hard to know if you're committing one or if you're on the receiving end.

☆ Factbox: Some potential successors to Brainard at the Fed
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

Meanwhile, analysts and Fed observers are already swapping notes on potential replacements for Brainard at the Fed from a bench of economists aligned with Biden's Democrats, who control the U.S. Senate. MARY DALYDaly is president of the San Francisco Fed, ascending to that position in 2018 after 22 years at the regional Fed bank, including a stint as its director of research. Furman has been a prominent, Twitter-savvy commentator on macroeconomic and Fed policy. He has a PhD from the University of Virginia and served as a Fed economist for a little over a year in the mid-1990s. With a PhD from Stanford University, he's held staff positions at the Fed board and the San Francisco Fed, where he also served as president before moving to the New York Fed role in 2018.

2 role vacant just as the central bank approaches a decision about when to stop raising interest rates. Brainard's arguments may not have been relevant to the decisions the Fed faces in the next few weeks. Heidi Shierholz, president of the labor-affiliated Economic Policy Institute, said it was "unbelievably important" that Biden find someone to fill Brainard's role. Administration officials gave no immediate sense of how soon Biden may name a new Fed vice chair, though outside analysts and commentators were already putting names in circulation from what's considered a deep bench of economists affiliated with Biden's Democratic party. The vice chair plays a particularly important role, typically reserved for somebody with a PhD in economics who can speak with technical authority about Fed policy and decisions.

Reuters GraphicsThe U.S. Labor Department is due to release its Consumer Price Index report for January at 8:30 a.m. EST (1330 GMT). For the purpose of calculating inflation, "housing" is considered a service. Reuters Graphics Reuters GraphicsEven outside of housing, the general pace of services inflation has been falling somewhat. Carpenter said he felt that one of Powell's top stated concerns, of low unemployment driving wages higher for workers in the services sector and keeping inflation elevated, may be overstated. "The link from wages to inflation is there, but small, and both services wage and price inflation are trending down," he said, noting a recent White House study indicating wage growth across key services businesses was declining.

☆ Here's what we know about Hamilton 68, the Russian online influence tracker called into question by the 'Twitter Files'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Sonam Sheth | Michelle Mark | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

A recent "Twitter Files" drop revealed deep concerns among Twitter executives about a database that claimed to track Russian propaganda in "near real time." The now defunct database, Hamilton 68, was widely cited by media outlets, including Insider, before it was shut down in 2018. He wrote that based on his analysis, Hamilton 68 "falsely accuses a bunch of legitimate, right-leaning accounts of being Russian bots." Berger and ASD did not respond to a request to provide Insider with the list of accounts Hamilton 68 tracked. Roth also claimed, after reverse-engineering the list of accounts that Hamilton 68 tracked, that they were "neither strongly Russian nor strongly bots."

☆ The Koch Network Dumps Trump
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( William A. Galston | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

William A. Galston writes the weekly Politics & Ideas column in the Wall Street Journal. He holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program, where he serves as a senior fellow. A participant in six presidential campaigns, he served from 1993 to 1995 as Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy. Mr. Galston is the author of 10 books and more than 100 articles in the fields of political theory, public policy, and American politics. A winner of the American Political Science Association’s Hubert H. Humphrey Award, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.

But the year-over-year price drops for goods have been helping pull overall inflation measures lower, the data compiled by the U.S. software company showed. "Current demand levels are driving retailers to hold prices down and continue to clear out excess inventory," Brown said. New CPI data is scheduled to be released next week, with economists expecting it to show another slowdown. The CEA study tried to isolate the pace of wage growth only in the sectors referred to by Powell, and concluded that it is slowing fast. Wage growth for production workers and supervisors "have both eased substantially."

☆ Exclusive: The FBI's McGonigal labyrinth
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Mattathias Schwartz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +28 min

She never saw McGonigal pay. "The notion that Mr. Deripaska is some proxy for the Russian state is a blatant lie," Ruben Bunyatyan, a spokesperson for Deripaska, told Insider by email. McGonigal was not charged with espionage, and although there is currently no evidence that McGonigal committed espionage, an FBI source told Insider that the investigation is ongoing. At the FBI, McGonigal racked up a string of big cases and promotions. "He said he needed to make more money," Guerriero told Insider.

"But I'm not seeing signals of ... quick decline in the economic data, and I am prepared for a longer fight," Waller said. Though wage growth has slowed, the decline is "not enough," Waller said. Waller did not say in his prepared remarks how much higher the Fed may need to raise its benchmark overnight interest rate to reach a level adequate to return inflation to the Fed's 2% target. As of December, the Fed's preferred measure of inflation was increasing at a 5% annual rate. "Though we have made progress reducing inflation, I want to be clear today that the job is not done," Waller said.

"We didn't expect it to be this strong," Powell said, but it "shows why we think this will be a process that takes quite a bit of time." It has just confounded all sorts of attempts to predict," Powell said, noting that wage growth has slowed even with continued strong job gains. Officials raised the target interest rate a quarter point to a range between 4.5% and 4.75% at that session, and said in the latest policy statement that "ongoing increases" would be needed. 1 2 3 4 5As of December, the Fed's preferred measure of inflation was increasing at a 5% annual rate, still more than double the Fed's target. While Powell said he expected "significant declines in inflation" this year, the U.S. economy was still "in the beginning of getting that down."

"It tells me that so far, we're not seeing much of an imprint ... on the labor market," Kashkari said. Bond yields have rocketed higher and interest rate futures markets now are squarely priced for a federal funds rate reaching at least 5.1%. LABOR MARKET CONCERNSOn Monday, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic was one of those who said the central bank may need to lift borrowing costs higher than previously anticipated given the job gains. "We've seen no progress so far, virtually no progress in core services ex housing, and that's very tied to the labor market." Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Chizu Nomiyama, Andrea Ricci and Paul SimaoOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

He noted that a process of "disinflation" seemed to be taking hold so far without throwing employment off course - a hoped-for outcome if it can continue but one that might prove unsustainable if job growth doesn't slow. The full impact of the Fed's already-anticipated rate increases still has not been felt on the economy, meaning the current strength in the job market and elsewhere may in fact begin to wane, Kamin said. Though job growth has remained remarkably strong, the economy is by many estimates still perhaps a million or more positions short of what would have been reached given job growth trends before the onset of COVID-19, suggesting more room for growth. "The data overran the Fed last week, and Powell and his colleagues are falling behind the curve again. Reporting by Howard Schneider; Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Dan Burns and Paul SimaoOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

And simmering in the background: A still unresolved Federal Reserve fight to control inflation that may pose the largest outstanding risk to the Biden economy, and over which the White House has little influence. Consumers are "reconciling layoff announcements with record job numbers, inflation that is rolling over yet prices remain elevated. The progress on inflation, meanwhile, has come so far without any corresponding hit to job growth or the unemployment rate. The unemployment rates for Black and Hispanic people are near the lows seen before the pandemic hit the U.S. economy in March of 2020. "On average, American households are in a better position than they were before the pandemic hit," National Economic Council director Brian Deese said on Monday.

☆ The biggest risks in procrastinating on iPhone, Android software updates
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-05 | by ( Kaitlin Balasaygun | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

watch nowNot all software updates offer an array of new features, but when they do it can feel like you are getting a new phone without added cost. Yet, many users still do whatever they can to put off the 30 minutes that a software update can take. Discomfort often stems from the perception that software updates will require users to relearn how to use certain features on their device and threatens their current habits. When 30 days have passed, the system then prompts the user to install the system update. When a major security update comes out, everyone should act relatively fast.

The stronger-than-expected hiring pushed the unemployment rate to 3.4%, the lowest since the spring of 1969. “It will give the Fed absolutely no reassurance that labor market imbalances – which have been adding to wage pressures - are easing," said Brian Coulton, chief economist at Fitch Ratings. "It will reinforce the message that the Fed still has quite a lot of work to do to tame core inflation." U.S. Labor Secretary Martin Walsh said he thought Friday's report showed signs of an economy and labor market steadily returning to normal. Powell pointed out that the years just before the COVID-19 health crisis included simultaneously low unemployment, low inflation, and sustainably modest wage growth, proof that a best-case set of conditions was achievable.

When asked about the matter at a news conference after the end of the U.S. central bank's latest policy meeting on Wednesday, Powell declined to say whether Fed officials had begun planning for a possible default. "If there were pressures pushing the funds rate higher the (Fed market desk) would automatically add reserves to deal with that," William English, a Yale School of Management professor, said in a recent interview. As head of the Fed's monetary affairs division at the time, it was English who briefed officials in 2011 on possible options. The approach "appeared acceptable" to Fed officials previously, and was included in a draft statement the central bank had prepared in the event a debt limit compromise was not reached. But I don't want to say what I would and wouldn't do, if we have to actually deal with a catastrophe."

☆ I make 6 figures as a hospital pharmacist. Here's why it's a great career, and my advice to anyone who wants to pursue it.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Gabrielle Reeder | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Her hospital and pharmacy is open 24/7, and she works 8-hour shifts including Sundays at times. Rummana said the job is always fast-paced, but she's grateful and loves being a hospital pharmacist. I started working at CVS and then transitioned into hospital pharmacy at St. Joseph's Wayne Hospital in Wayne, New Jersey. I started working at Hackensack in January 2021 as a hospital pharmacist, and I make $71.60 an hour. Seeing people leave the hospital and lead happier, healthier lives can be translated into a career as a pharmacist.

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