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☆ A key US consumer indicator has dipped to 'crisis levels,' SocGen says
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-25 | by ( Jennifer Sor | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The savings rate slumped below 3% prior to the 2008 financial crisis, SocGen strategist Albert Edwards said in a note to clients on Wednesday. AdvertisementThe low savings rate attests to strong consumer spending, which has propped up the economy so far. That sounds like it should be good news, but the issue is that the savings rate is likely to rise again after plummeting to such low levels. Related storiesThat was what happened leading up to the Great Financial Crisis, when an uptick in the savings rate preceded the recession, Edwards noted. And while households aren't nearly as indebted as they were during the financial crisis, Americans are still showing signs of financial strain.

Persons: —, Société, Albert Edwards, Edwards, " Edwards Organizations: Service, Commerce Department, Business, Primerica, San Francisco, McKinsey & Company, US, New York Fed

☆ Beyoncé approves of cowboycore
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-16 | by ( Leah Dolan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

Completing her look were a pair of aviator-style shades, an embellished head scarf and a stone-colored cowboy hat. In fact, Beyoncé hasn’t been without a cowboy hat in nearly two weeks. On TikTok #cowboycore has 11.4 million views and counting, where users video themselves styling a wide-brimmed rancher cap or, as in one video, pairing vintage leather chaps with a belted trench coat. Cowboy boots, for one, were plucked from their country context and thrust onto the urban streets of metropolitan cities years ago. The embroidered leather boots have been a mainstay of the style set ever since, transcending over the years from a subversive statement piece to something more timeless.

Persons: —, Houston , Texas —, Gaurav, Beyoncé hasn’t, Louis Vuitton, Stetson, There’s, Sunday Beyoncé, James Devaney, Bella Hadid, Tito, Hadid, klaxon, Kim Kardashian, Louis Vuitton’s, Tom Ford, Suzanne Plunkett, They’ve, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, Britney Spears, Kate Moss, Celine, Raf Simons Organizations: CNN, Bushwick, New York, Sunday, Super Bowl, London Fashion, Reuters Locations: New, Houston , Texas, Texas, Weatherford , Texas, Paris

☆ Trump’s incendiary NATO remarks send very real shudders through Europe
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-12 | by ( Nick Paton Walsh | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

NATO gives it a global bedrock of legitimacy, support for the dollar, and the post-Soviet hegemony it thrives upon. Saturday’s misunderstanding considered, Trump’s comments come at a devastatingly bad time for Europe. The more the US bemoans its allies and their miserly neglect of NATO, and withdraw from it, the less powerful it is. Is NATO willing to go to war with Moscow over Russian-speaking parts of the Baltic state of Estonia? He is not simply saying the US won’t help NATO allies who haven’t paid.

Persons: Donald Trump, Trump, doesn’t, –, Vladimir Putin, Putin, Tucker Carlson, Russia’s, ’, Charles Michel, Trump’s, haven’t Organizations: London CNN, Trump, NATO, Republican, GOP, Putin, Fox News, Kremlin, Senior, Britons, European Locations: Russia, Europe, Ukraine, Kyiv, America, Moscow, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Romania, France, Baltic, Estonia, Svalbard, Russian, Finland, Sweden, Western Europe

I saw hundreds of new films with a variety of plots and styles made on every imaginable scale and budget. The movies have ostensibly been at death’s door at least since the shift to sync sound, which isn’t to undersell the industry’s business woes. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” was “cursed,” read one headline; “‘Mission: Impossible 7’ falls short of expectations,” ran another. The moaning in the trades gave way to klaxon horns when much of SAG-AFTRA went on strike on July 14. This year also reminded us that a mass audience will happily get out of the house for movies without superheroes.

Persons: Manohla, Rockwell, Martin Scorsese, shutdowns, Topsy, “, bullish, Indiana Jones, ”, AFTRA, Barry Diller, “ Barbie ”, “ Oppenheimer ” Organizations: Yahoo, Sundance Film, Writers Guild, SAG, Paramount, Marvel Locations: Cannes

U.S. Dollar and Euro banknotes are seen in this illustration taken July 17, 2022. Deutsche Bank's CVIX (.DBCVIX) - the currency market's version of Wall St's "fear index" of stock volatility and a weighted average of implied "vol" in nine major pairings - has basically imploded. By driving short-term dollar cash rates and U.S. bond yields higher over the past 20 months, the Fed basically sucked cash from the wider investment world and supercharged dollar exchange rates everywhere. Now that it looks done, the buck's finally on the back foot - plumbing levels not seen since August. With implied volatility directionally biased, the dollar index and the CVIX are typically well correlated and both peaked in tandem in same month of September last year.

Persons: Dado Ruvic, Deutsche Bank's, Chris Turner, Francesco Pesole, BOJ, BOE, Marcelli, Morgan Stanley, Matthew Hornbach, David Evans Organizations: REUTERS, Deutsche, U.S, ING, Graphics Reuters, Reuters, Bank of Japan, European Central Bank and Bank of England, ECB, UBS Global Wealth, Treasury, Thomson Locations: Ukraine, U.S . Federal, Japan, U.S

☆ ChatGPT Secret Training Data: the Top 50 Books AI Bots Are Reading
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

To figure out what GPT-4 has read, they quizzed it on its knowledge of various books, as if it were a high-school English student. One way to answer the question is to look for information that could have come from only one place. Genre — sci-fi, mystery, romance, horror — is, broadly speaking, more interesting, partially because these books have plots where things actually happen. Bamman's GPT-4 list is a Borgesian library of episodic connections, cliffhangers, third-act complications, and characters taking arms against seas of troubles (and whales). See what a bot makes of Gene Wolfe's "The Book of the New Sun," maybe, or Sheri Tepper's "Grass."

LONDON, Dec 14 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve, investment world and wider economy now have a major sequencing problem. With headline annual CPI ebbing to 7.1% last month, and core rates undershooting forecasts too to just 6.0%, most economists seem confident inflation did indeed peak around midyear. Equivalent public readings from New York Fed surveys are on the wane too. Fed Futures See Lower Rates End-23Reuters Graphics Reuters Graphics"TAIL SCENARIO"Sounding something of a klaxon for most asset markets after the CPI number, the peak or terminal Fed funds rate that futures markets implied by May was dragged firmly back below 5%. Apart from verbal guidance, one important signal markets will watch on Wednesday will be the Fed's economic projections that include policy rate assumptions for the year.

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