Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 6, 2021

6/4/21: Edelman Trust Barometer: the Age of Cognitive Dissonance?

Some shocking, genuinely shocking data from the Edelman Global Trust Barometer for 2021. Let's take a look. 

Start with this: 

Welcome to the world where sociopaths like Jeff Bezos are both trusted to be competent and perceived to be ethical. 

Meanwhile, at least w are catching up with what is happening in the tech sector:

And with the Social Media...


But we can't be human without some serious cognitive dissonance... Healthcare is now the second most trusted sector of business in America. Yep, the same private healthcare that had to rely on public / State / Federal money and logistics to distribute vaccines. The same private healthcare that could not organize vaccinations. The same private healthcare that, effectively, bankrupted and overcharged millions of Americans for emergency treatments during the pandemic. 

Back to Social Media:

I am not quite sure what people 'trust' in terms of information delivered via 'search engines', exactly. A search engine provides access to information, but it does not provide  or produce information. So drop this daft category from the analysis and what you have? Traditional Media is barely above the water, when it comes to trust. Owned Media and Social Media are below the waterline. If you control for the partisanship divide in the U.S. political landscape, most likely the vast majority of those trusting Traditional Media are... well, Democrats. The vast majority of those who distrust Social Media are... well, Democrats. Converse holds for the Republicans. One way or the other, massive shares of American population do not have trust in anything relating to quality control or verifiability of information sources.

This year's barometer is a scary reading. In most basic terms, NGOs and Business are the only two sets of institutions that are perceived ethical. Business' perception in this area is dangerously close to being marginal. Perceived incompetency of the Government is vastly greater than perceived competency of Business.  Media is virtually the exact mirror reflection of business. We trust no one in terms of information we receive. And we love those who are making money by not caring for us - American Healthcare. We lap up anything our employers communicate, but we believe they are telling us bullshit when it comes to their social and environmental sustainability efforts or to the risks of us being displaced by them with AI and technology. 

Is there much 'social fabric' left that hasn't been torn up, yet?.. 

Thursday, November 15, 2018

15/11/18: BIS on payments systems and cryptos / blockchain


On November 1, Agustín Carstens, General Manager, Bank for International Settlements delivered a pretty punchy speech on the topic of payments systems evolution in modern age of digital technologies. Punchy, in the sense that much of it is focused on, indirectly, enlisting the evidence as to the lack of the markets for the blockchain and cryptocurrencies deployment in the payments systems at the wholesale and retail levels.

Take the following:  "One of the most significant developments in the evolution of money has been its electronification and, more recently, digitalisation. ...Realtime gross settlement (RTGS) systems for interbank payments, ...emerged in the 1980s. ...RTGS systems allow banks and other financial institutions to send money to each other with immediate and final settlement. They are typically operated by central banks and process critical (read: high-value) payments to allow for the smooth functioning of the economy. Today, the top interbank payment systems in the G20 countries settle more than $17.5 trillion a day, which is over 50 times a working day’s global GDP. ...Given the technology cycle, many central banks are currently looking at next-generation RTGS systems to offer more robust operations and enhanced services."

What does this imply for the world of cryptos? In simple terms, there is no market for cryptos as platforms for interbank payments settlements - the market is already served and the speed of services, cost and security are underpinned by the Central Banks.

Next up: retail payments systems.

Starting with back office: "For retail payment systems, ...in Mexico consumer payments operate at the same speed as interbank payments... The beneficiary of a payment is credited money in near real time. That is, if I were to send you money from my Mexican bank account, you would see the funds in your Mexican bank account in 15 seconds or less. ...Based on a BIS analysis, fast payment systems are likely to become the dominant retail payment system by 2023."

Again, what's the market for blockchain systems to be deployed here? I am not convinced there is one, especially as payments latency and costs are, to-date, more prohibitive under blockchain systems than using traditional payments platforms.

Front office: Carstens notes the progress achieved in delivering what he describes as "payments ... made using bank account aliases" in Argentina that are instant in time, and the ongoing trend toward development of the front-end payments interfaces, based on "cashless systems – no cashiers, no lines, no cash, no physical payment devices. Amazon and others envision a future where you walk into a store, take what you want, and are automatically billed for the items using facial recognition and artificial intelligence. Though this approach may seem a bit scary, it is less so than having microchips implanted inside us, which some firms are also piloting! To be frank, though, neither of these options – facial recognition or microchip implants – are particularly appealing to me."

Carstens presents the evidence that shows current Advanced Economies already carrying more than 90 percent of wholesale payments via cheap, lightning fast and highly secure centralized RTGS systems, with 75 percent of payments via the same occurring in the Emerging Markets:


Given this rate of adoption, coupled with the evolving technology curve (that enables similar systems to be deployed in smaller settlements), one has to question the extent to which cryptocurrency solutions can be deployed in the payments systems.

Beyond the not-too-optimistic view of the market niche size, cryptos and blockchain are also facing some serious pressure points from already ongoing innovation in centralized clearance systems. "Although much attention has been focused on cryptocurrencies as the “it” innovation in payments, there’s much unheralded innovation going on" in the Central Banks and elsewhere (read: legacy providers of payments). "Central banks have been pushing the boundaries of what technology can achieve for operational robustness, including switching seamlessly between data centres at short notice and synchronising geographically dispersed data centres."

Carstens notes the potential for the distributed Ledger Tech (aka, blockchain based on private, enterprise-level blockchain) in this space, where innovation is also a domain of the centralized players, as opposed to decentralised crypto markets. "One interesting development in the central banking community is ongoing experimentation with distributed ledger technology (DLT) as a means to enhance operational robustness. People often use DLT and Bitcoin interchangeably, but they are not the same! ...DLT is simply a set of processes and technologies that enable multiple computers to maintain collectively a common database. DLT does not mean mining of coins, public ledgers and open networks. And no central bank that I’m aware of is contemplating these properties in its DLT experimentation."

There are some problems, however, for DLT enthusiasts:
1) "...a Bank of Canada study noting that a DLT-based payment system meeting central bank requirements would be similar to what we have today (ie private ledgers, closed networks and a central operator). The difference is that a network of computers would be used to settle a transaction instead of one computer." In other words, there is a case, yet to be proven, that DLT offers anything new to the payments systems to begin with.
2) "The second is an ECB and Bank of Japan study concluding that processing times would be three times longer using DLT versus current systems." In other words, DLT/blockchain cannot deliver, so far, on its main premise: higher processing efficiency than legacy systems.




Carstens sums it up: "My take is that current versions of DLT are not any better than what we already have today."

In other words: DLT/blockchain solutions appear to be:

  • Not necessary: the technology is attempting to solve the problems that do not exist in the payments systems;
  • Inefficient with respect to its core tenants/promises: the technology is inferior to existent solutions and the pipeline of ongoing improvements to the legacy systems.
Which begs two questions that the DLT/blockchain community needs to answer: What niche can blockchain occupy in payments systems going forward? and Is there a sustainable market within that niche that cannot be captured by alternative technologies?

But there is more. Carstens explains: "Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ether and Tether, do not serve the core functions of money. No cryptocurrency is a true unit of account or a payment instrument, and we have seen this year that they are a poor store of value. This then raises the question: what are they?" The answer should be a wake up call for anyone still long cryptos: "From my perspective, cryptocurrencies are, at best, an asset of some sort. Perhaps an asset comparable to a piece of art for those who appreciate cryptography. Buyers of cryptocurrencies are buying into nothing more than a software algorithm. Some firms are trying to back cryptocurrencies with an underlying asset, such as cash or securities. That sounds nice, but it’s the equivalent of making art from banknotes or stock certificates. The buyer is still buying an idea or a concept or, if you will, an asset that is the equivalent of art hanging on your wall. If people want the underlying asset, they might be better served just buying that."

Carstens previously (February 2018) claimed that the #cryptos are “combination of a bubble, a Ponzi scheme and an environmental disaster.”

Nice perspective. If you are an observer. For a holder of cryptos, this is a serious risk. Playing cards in a casino is fun, but it is not investing. Playing investing in the cryptos world is probably the same.


Note: for an even more 'in your face' assessment of the #Bitcoin and #Cryptos, there is ECB's Executive Board member, Benoit Coeure, who called #BTC the “evil spawn of the [2008] financial crisis, per Bloomberg report of November 15 (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-15/cryptocurrencies-are-evil-spawn-of-the-crisis-for-ecb-s-coeure).

The reality of #cryptos investments is that they are, empirically, a massively overvalued bet on the largely undeveloped and unproven (in real world applications) technologies that have only tangential relation to the coins currently traded in the markets. It is, in a way, a derivative bet on a future contract.

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

31/1/18: What Teachers of Piketty Miss on r vs g


A popular refrain in today’s political and socio-economic analysis has been the need for aggressive Government intervention (via taxation and regulation) to reverse growing wealth inequality. The narrative is supported by the increasing numbers of center and centre-left voters, and is firmly held in the key emerging demographic of the Millennial voters. The same narrative can also be traced to the emergence of some (not all) populist movements and political figures.

Yet, through regulatory restrictions, Governments in the recent past not only attempted to manage risks, but also created a system of superficial scarcity in supply of common goods & services (healthcare, education, housing etc) and skills, as well as access to professional services markets for practitioners. This scarcity de facto redistributes income (& thus, wealth) from the poor to the rich, from those not endowed with assets to those who inherit them or acquire them through other non-productive means, e.g. marriage, corruption, force. Many licensing requirements, touted by the Governments as the means for ensuring consumer protection, delivering social good, addressing markets failures and so on are either too cumbersome (creating a de facto bounds to supply) or outright skewed in favour off the incumbents (e.g. financial services licensing restrictions in trivial areas of sales and marketing). 

The re-distribution takes the form of high rents (paid for basic services that are woefully undersupplied: consider the California ‘water allocations’ and local authorities dumping federal subsidies to military personnel onto private sector renters, or consider the effect of pensions subsidies to police and other public services providers that are paid for by poorer taxpayers who themselves cannot afford a pension). 

This benevolent-malevolent counter-balancing in Government actions has fuelled wealth inequality, not reduced it, and the voters appear to be largely oblivious to this reality.

Crucially, the mechanism of this inequality expansion is not the simple r>g relationship between returns to capital (r) and the growth rate in the economy (g), but a more complex r(k)>r(hh)>r(g)>r(lh) relationship between returns to financial & restricted (r(k)), inc property & water rights in California, etc, high-quality human capital (r(hh)), inc returns to regulated (rationed) professions, the rate of growth in the economy (g), and the returns to low-quality human capital (r(lh)), inc returns to productive productive), but un-rationed professions. 

Why this is crucial? Because the r>g driven inequality, the type that was decried by Mr. Piketty and his supporters is missing a lot of what is happening in the labor markets and in large swathes of organisational structures, from limited partnerships to sole traders. Worse, lazy academia, across a range of second-tier institutions, has adopted Piketty’s narrative unchecked, teaching students the r vs g tale without considering the simple fact that neither r, nor g are well-defined in modern economics and require more nuanced insight. 

Yes, we now know that r>g, and by a fat margin (see https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/wp2017-25.pdf). And, yes, that is a problem. But that is only one half off the problem, because it helps explain, in part, the 1% vs 99% wealth distribution imbalances. But it cannot explain the 10% vs 90% gap. Nor can it explain why we are witnessing the hollowing-out of the middle class, and the upper middle class. A more granular decomposition of r (and a more accurate measurement of g - another topic altogether) can help.

The non-corporate entities and high human capital individual earners can still benefit from the transfers from the poorer and the middle classes, but these benefits are not carried through traditional physical and financial capital returns or corporate rent seeking. (Do not take me wrong: these are also serious problems in the structure of the modern economy). 

Take for example, two professionals. Astrophysicist employed in a research lab and a general medical practitioner. The two possess asymmetric human capital: astrophysicist has more of it than a general medical doctor. Not only in duration of knowledge acquisition (quantity), but also in the degree of originality of knowledge (quality). But, one’s supply of competitors is rationed by the market (astrophysics high barrier to entry is… er… the need to acquire a lot of hard-to-earn human capital, with opportunity costs sky-high), another is rationed by the licensing and education systems. Guess which one earns more? And guess which one has access to transfers from the lower earners that can be, literally, linked to punitive bankruptcy costs? So how much of the earnings of the physician (especially the premium on astrophysicist’s wage) can be explained by a license to asymmetric information (extracting rents from patients) and by restrictions on entry into profession that go beyond assurance of quality? How much of these earnings are compensation for the absurdity of immense tuition bills collected by the medical schools with their own rent-seeking markets for professional education? And so on.

In a way, thus, the Governments have acted as agents for creating & sustaining wealth inequality, at the same time as they claimed to be the agents for alleviating it. 

Yes, consumer protecting regulation is necessary. No question. Yes, licensing is often necessary too (e.g. in the case of a physician as opposed to a physicist). But, no - transfers under Government regulations are not always linked to the delivery of real and tangible benefits of quality assurance. Take, for example, restrictive development practices and excessively costly planning bureaucracies in cities, like, San Francisco. While some regulation and some bureaucracy are necessary, a lot of it is pure transfer from renters and buyers to bureaucrats as well as investors. So, do a simple arithmetic exercise. Take $100 of income earned by a young professional. Roughly 33% of that goes in various taxes and indirect taxes to the Governments. Another 33% goes to to the landlord protected by these same Governments from paying the full cost of bankruptcy (limited liability) and from competition by restrictive new building and development rules. Another 15% goes to pay for various insurance products, again - regulated and/or required by the Governments - health, cars, renters’ etc. What’s left? Less than 20% of income puts gas into the car or pays for transportation, buys food and clothing. What exactly remains to invest in financial and real assets that earn the r(k) and alleviate wealth inequality? Nada. And if you have to pay for debt incurred in earning your r(hh) or even r(lh), you are… well… insolvent. Personal savings averaged close to 6.5-7% of disposable income in 2010-2014. Since then, these collapsed to 2.4% as of December 2017. Remember - the are percentages of the disposable income, not gross income. Is that enough to start investing in physical and/or financial capital? No. And the numbers quoted are averages, so \median savings are even lower than that.

Meanwhile, regulated auto loans debt is now at $4,340 per capita, regulated credit card debt is at $2,930 per capita, and regulated student loans debt is now at $4,920 per capita. Federal regulations on credit cards debt are know n to behaviourally create barriers to consumers paying this debt down and/or using credit cards prudently. Federal regulations make student loans debt exempt from bankruptcy protection, effectively forcing borrowers who run into financial troubles into perpetual vicious cycle of debt spiralling out of control. Auto loans regulations effectively create and encourage sub-prime markets for lending. So who is responsible for the debt-driven part of wealth inequality? Why, the same Government we are begging to solve the problem it helps create.

Now, add a new dimension, ignored by many followers of Mr. Piketty: today’s social & sustainability narratives risk to deliver more of the same outcome by empowering Governments to create more superficial scarcity. This does not mean that all regulations and all restrictions are intrinsically bad, just as noted before. Nor does it mean that social and environmental risks are not important concepts. Quite the opposite, it means that we need to pay more attention to regulations-induced transfers of wealth and income from the lower 90% to the upper 10% and to companies and non-profits across the entire chain of such transfers. If we want to do something about our social and environmental problems (and, yes, we do want) we need to minimise the costs of other regulations. We need to increase r(hh) and even more so, r(lh). And we need to increase the g too. What we do not need to do is increase the r(k) without raising the other returns. We also need to recognise that on the road paved with good (environmental) intentions, we are transferring vast amounts of income (and wealth) from ordinary Joe and Mary to Elon Musk and his lenders and investors. As well as to a litany of other rent-seeking enterprises and entrepreneurs. The subsidies fuel returns to physical and fixed capital, intellectual property (technological capital), financial capital, and to a lesser extent to higher quality human capital. All at the expense of general human capital.

Another aspect of the over-simplified r vs g narrative is that by ignoring the existent tax codes, we are magnifying the difference between various forms of r and the g. Take the differences in tax treatment between physical, financial and human capital. Set aside the issue of tax evasion, but do include the issue of tax avoidance (legal and practiced with greater intensity the higher do your wealth levels reach). I can invest in fixed capital via a corporate structure that allows depreciation tax claws-backs and interest deductions. I can even position my investment in a tax (non-)haven jurisdiction, like, say Michigan or Wisconsin, where - if I am rich and I do invest a lot, I can get local tax breaks. I can even get a citizenship to go along with my investment, as a sweetener. Now, suppose I invest the same amount in technological capital (or, put more cogently, in Intellectual Property). Here, the world is my oyster: I can go to tax advantage nations or stay in the U.S. So my tax on these gains will be even lower than for fixed capital. Investing in financial capital is similar, with tax ranges somewhere between the two other forms of capital. Now, if I decided to invest in my human capital, my investments are not fully tax deductible (I might be able to deduct some tuition, but not living expenses or, in terms of corporate finance, operating expenses and working capital). Nor is there a depreciation claw back. There is not a tax incentive for me to do this. And my returns from this investment will be hit with all income taxes possible - state, and federal. It is almost sure as hell, my tax rate will be higher than for any form of non-human capital investment. Worse: if I borrow to invest in any form of capital other than human capital, and I run into a hard spot, I can clear the slate by declaring bankruptcy. If I did the same to invest in human capital, student loans are not subject to bankruptcy protection.

Not to make a long argument any longer, but to acknowledge the depth of the tax policy problems, take another scenario. I join as a partner a start up and get shares in the company. Until I sell these shares as a co-founder, I face no tax liability. Alternatively, I join the same start up as a key employee, with human capital-related skills that the start up really, really needs to succeed. I get the same shares in the company. Under some jurisdictions rules, I face immediate tax liability, even if I can never sell these shares in the end. Why? Ah, no reason, other than pure stupidity of those writing tax codes. 

The net effect is the same across all of the above points: risk-adjusted after tax returns on investment in human capital are depressed - superficially - by policies. Policies, therefore, are driving wealth inequality. After-tax risk-adjusted returns to human capital are lower than after-tax risk-adjusted returns on physical, financial and technological capital.

Once again, we need to increase returns to human capital without raising returns to other forms of capital. And we need to increase real rates of economic growth (what that means in the real world - as opposed to what it means in the world of Piketty-following academia is a different subject all together). And we need to get Government and regulators out of the business of transferring our income and potential wealth from us to the 1%-ers and the 10%-ers. 

How do we achieve this? A big question that I do not have a perfect answer to, and as far as I am aware, no one does. 

One thing we must consider is systemically reducing rents obtained through inheritance, rent seeking and other unproductive forms of capital acquisition. 

Another thing we must have is more broadly-spread allocation of financial assets linked to the productive economy (equity). In a way, we need to dramatically broaden share holding in real companies’ assets, among the 90%. Incidentally, this will go some ways in addressing the threat to the social fabric poised by automation and robotisation: making people the owners of companies puts robots at work for people. 

Third thing is what we do not need: we do not need is a penal system of taxation that reduces r(hh) and r(lh). Progressive income taxation delivers exactly that outcome. 

Fourth thing: we need to recognize that some assets derive their productivity from externalities. The best example is land, which derives most of its value from socio-economic investments made by others around the site. These externalities-related returns must be taxed as a form of unearned income/wealth. A land value tax or a site value tax can do the job.

As I noted above, I do not claim to hold a solution to the problem. I do claim to hold a blue print for a systemic approach to devising such a solution. Here it is: we need sceptical, independent  & continuous impact analysis of every piece of regulation, of every restriction, of every socially and environmentally impactful (positive or negative) measure. But above all, we need to be sceptical about the role of the Government, just as we have become sceptical about the capacity of the markets. Scepticism is healthy. Cheerleading is cancerous. Stop cheering, start thinking deeper about the key issues around inequality. And stop begging for Government action. Government is not quite the panacea we imagine it to be. Often enough, it is a problem we beg it to solve. 



Wednesday, July 26, 2017

27/7/17: Work or Play: Snowflakes or Millennials?


Snowflakes or Millennials? Flaky or serious? Careless or full of determination? Attitudes or aptitudes? Well, here’s an interesting study on the younger generation.

“Younger men, ages 21 to 30, exhibited a larger decline in work hours over the last fifteen years than older men or women.” In other words, average hours of labour supplied have fallen for the younger males more than for the older cohorts of workers. Which can be a matter of labour demand (external to workers’ choice) or supply (internal to workers’ choice).

One recent NBER study (see below) claims that “since 2004, time-use data show that younger men distinctly shifted their leisure to video gaming and other recreational computer activities.”

So we have two facts running simultaneously. What about a connection between the two?

“We propose a framework to answer whether improved leisure technology played a role in reducing younger men's labor supply. The starting point is a leisure demand system that parallels that often estimated for consumption expenditures. We show that total leisure demand is especially sensitive to innovations in leisure luxuries, that is, activities that display a disproportionate response to changes in total leisure time.” Economics mumbo jumbo aside, the authors “estimate that gaming/recreational computer use is distinctly a leisure luxury for younger men. Moreover, we calculate that innovations to gaming/recreational computing since 2004 explain on the order of half the increase in leisure for younger men, and predict a decline in market hours of 1.5 to 3.0 percent, which is 38 and 79 percent of the differential decline relative to older men.”

Some data from the study:


So it looks like this data suggests that attitude beats aptitude, and choices we make about our recreational activities do cramp our decisions how much time to devote to paid work.


Full citation: Aguiar, Mark and Bils, Mark and Charles, Kerwin Kofi and Hurst, Erik, Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men (June 2017). NBER Working Paper No. w23552. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2996308.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

24/4/16: Silicon Valley Blues Go Into a Sax Solo...


In recent weeks, I have been covering growing evidence of pressures in the ICT sector bubble (the Silicon valley blues of shrinking VC valuations and funding). You can track this coverage from here: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2016/04/21416-taking-sugar-from-kids-pantry.html.

Now, with its usual tardiness, the Fortune arrives to the topic too, in a rather good exposition here: http://fortune.com/silicon-valley-tech-ipo-market/.

Good summary graphic from Renaissance Capital:


But, of course, what is more interesting in the sector development is the horror show of earnings reporting that is unfolding across mature segment of the tech sector. These are well-covered here: http://wolfstreet.com/2016/04/24/apple-iphone-revenue-decline-sinks-tech-sector-earnings/, offering the following summary:


So let's see: earnings in mature segment are falling or the 5th quarter in a row (even when you control for Apple performance); earnings of Apple (tech leader) are into their second consecutive quarter of severe pressures. And unicorns (which don't even offer any serious basis for fundamentals-based valuations, including those on the basis of earnings) are rapidly taking on water. You don't really need a CFA to get this one right...

Thursday, April 21, 2016

21/4/16: Taking Sugar From the Kids Pantry: Tech Sector Valuations


In a recent post I covered some data showing the trend toward more sceptical funding environment for the U.S. (and European) tech start ups: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2016/04/15416-tech-sector-finance-gravity-of.html.

Recently, Quartz added some interesting figures to the topic: http://qz.com/664468/investors-are-slashing-startup-valuations-and-not-even-uber-and-airbnb-are-safe/.


Things are not quite getting back to fundamentals, yet... but when they do, tech sector hype will blow up like a soap bubble in a tub. When the entire sector is valued on the basis of some nefarious stats instead of hard corporate finance parameters, you are into a game that is what Russian Roulette is to a Poker table.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

21/8/2014: Consumption of Technology: Revolutions to Evolutions


Neat, although out of date by now, chart showing long-run evolution of consumer utilisation of technology:


Click on image to enlarge...