Wall Street Journal (March 13)
“Regulators are pressuring Wall Street to do away with the London interbank offered rate by year-end. Companies are still making the switch.” The Federal Reserve is pushing the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) as a replacement, but “the U.S. is running behind the U.K. and Europe, where investment firms and companies have been faster to transition to alternative rates,” including the Sterling Overnight Index Average (Sonia).
Tags: Europe, Fed, Investment firms, LIBOR, Regulators, Replacement, SOFR, Transition, U.K., U.S., Wall Street
Bloomberg (July 16)
“South Korea is headed for a demographic crash,” with a fertility rate roughly half the replacement rate of 2.1. In 2018, it “fell to a record low of 0.98—much lower even than in countries such as Japan, whose rate is above 1.4.” By 2080, South Korea’s current “population of 51 million could fall by a third.”
Wall Street Journal (August 13)
Some Internet connections have been disrupted this week and more bumps are expected. “The situation echoes—if faintly—the hubbub over the feared Y2K computer glitch in the late 1990s, when experts warned that systems could fail because their dating functions hadn’t been designed to handle the turn of the century.” The total number of Internet paths through the global web has grown to approximately 500,000, exceeding the number some old network routers can accommodate. “More websites and broadband firms are likely to feel the pinch in coming days as they hit the seemingly arbitrary limit,” necessitating the upgrade or replacement of older routers.
Tags: Broadband, Connections, Disrupt, Internet, Paths, Replacement, Routers, Upgrade, Websites, Y2K
New York Times (July 30)
President Obama will need to appoint a replacement later this year to replace Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke when his term expires in January 2014. The incoming Chairman will be challenged to delicately wind down the Fed’s massive quantitative easing measures. Camps of support are already arising around the two front runners Lawrence Summers and Janet Yellen. The New York Times comes down firmly in the former’s support, writing “no one else can match Janet Yellen’s combination of academic credentials and policy-making experience. And no one ever confirmed to the job has come to it with as deep a grounding in both the theory and practice of monetary and regulatory policy as Ms. Yellen would bring.” Should she be confirmed, she would also become the first woman to head the Fed.President Obama will need to appoint a replacement later this year to replace Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke when his term expires in January 2014. The incoming Chairman will be challenged to delicately wind down the Fed’s massive quantitative easing measures. Camps of support are already arising around the two front runners Lawrence Summers and Janet Yellen. The New York Times comes down firmly in the former’s support, writing “no one else can match Janet Yellen’s combination of academic credentials and policy-making experience. And no one ever confirmed to the job has come to it with as deep a grounding in both the theory and practice of monetary and regulatory policy as Ms. Yellen would bring.” Should she be confirmed, she would also become the first woman to head the Fed.
Tags: Appointment, Ben Bernanke, Chairman, Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, Lawrence Summers, Obama, Quantitative easing, Replacement, U.S.
