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The World
The Fed is set to start shedding up to $95bn of assets a month from its swollen $9tn balance sheet as it steps up efforts to curb soaring inflation in the US. An account of the FOMC’s last meeting in March showed officials finalizing a plan to reduce the central bank’s presence in US government bond markets, a process that will begin as early as next month. Fed officials also signaled they could raise rates by a half-percentage point at their meeting early next month. (Financial Times, Wall Street Journal)
As the world's wealthy democratic powers roll out new sanctions against Russia, it has become clear that the easiest options are now exhausted and stark differences have emerged among allies over next steps. The EU proposed a first stab at curbing Russia's energy sector in response to its invasion of Ukraine launched in February, banning imports of Russian coal. But EU countries remain divided even over this move, much less restricting imports of Russian oil and gas that are more important to their economies. The US and Group of Seven allies announced new sanctions on Russia's largest lender, Sberbank, more state-owned enterprises and more Russian government officials and their family members, cutting them out of the U.S. dollar-based financial system. The US also has banned Americans from new investment in Russia and barred Moscow from paying sovereign debt holders with money in U.S. banks. (Reuters)
Runners from Russia and Belarus will not be allowed to compete in the Boston Marathon this month, the race organizers said. Finland seizes Russian artwork worth $46 million under sanctions. (Boston Globe, Washington Post)
Hackers flood internet with what they say are Russian companies' files. The leaks are part of a larger ecosystem in which amateurs try to help Ukraine’s war efforts with their own keyboards. (NBC News)
A growing number of French voters aren’t ready to give Emmanuel Macron a second term as Président de la République. Ahead of first-round presidential voting on Sunday, new polls are giving the campaign of right-wing populist and political veteran Marine Le Pen a jolt of electricity. For a potential second-round matchup, one poll has Macron with just a six-point lead over Le Pen. Another poll published Monday put Macron’s lead in a potential runoff at just three points. (In 2017, he bested her in the second round by 32 points.) The war in Ukraine has given Macron an opportunity to play the global statesman and to avoid the rough and tumble of a campaign. He even skipped a televised debate. But some voters may want to see him work a bit harder. If Le Pen has a strong showing in Sunday’s first round, expect rising anxiety about what a victory for Le Pen, who has expressed past admiration for Vladimir Putin, might mean for the war. Though she has called Russia’s invasion a violation of international law, she says it has only “partly changed” her view of Putin. (GZERO Media)
The Economist’s French forecast model says the current president is likely to win re-election in April. But his lead over Marine Le Pen has shrunk. (The Economist)
One in three U.S. adults report they have been personally affected by an extreme weather event in the past two years. Most commonly, they report experiencing extreme cold, hurricanes, or snow, ice storms or blizzards. Residents of the South (39%) and West (35%) are significantly more likely than those living in the East (24%) and Midwest (27%) to say they have recently experienced an extreme weather event. (Gallup)
Record heat to bake California as April snowpack nears 70-year low. Much of California will see highs in the 80s and 90s today. (Washington Post)
Torrential rain pummeled Australia's east coast with Sydney receiving nearly a month's rain overnight, submerging the city's roads in flash floods and triggering evacuations as authorities warn of more rain through the day. (Reuters)
The coronavirus is again stalking Washington DC. At least a half-dozen senior officials, including members of President Joe Biden's Cabinet and lawmakers, have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent days, even as caseloads drop across the country. Days after the Gridiron dinner, usually a highlight of the Washington social calendar, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff and Joaquin Castro tested positive. (Reuters)
Shanghai’s daily Covid-19 infections set a record for the sixth straight day, as citywide mass testing identified 19,982 cases in China’s financial and commercial hub. The outbreak in Shanghai is becoming so serious that the Communist Party sent an open letter to rally members to help front-line health workers in their quest to find and snuff out the disease. (South China Morning Post)
The University of Michigan sent an email out to students Friday saying, heads up, we are seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases and you might want to take some precautions. “These cases are almost always linked to indoor social gatherings,” Dr. Preeti Malani, University of Michigan Chief Health Officer said. (WXYZ)
Congressional Republicans now lead in a generic ballot among Child Tax Credit recipients: 46% of voters who received the expired pandemic-era benefit say they’ll back a Republican in the midterms. (Morning Consult)
Economy
Jeremy Grantham has a fresh warning about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: oil-price spikes of this magnitude have always triggered recessions, and the global economy is at risk of much bigger challenges in the coming decades as finite commodities become scarce. “It seems nearly certain that the trend in resource prices will continue to rise,” Grantham, the co-founder of Boston asset manager GMO, wrote. That threatens not only slower growth but also a disruption of political systems, as “most ancient civilizations were brought down by overuse of their resources.” (Bloomberg)
Banks are debating a plan to bring Zelle to the checkout at big retailers. The money-transfer service boomed during the pandemic, when people avoided ATMs and replaced cash and checks with digital money transfers. Zelle recorded some 1.8 billion transactions in 2021 totaling $490 billion, both more than double their prepandemic levels. That growth has opened up new possibilities for Zelle and sparked a disagreement among the banks that own it. At the center of the debate is whether it is in the banks’ best interest to promote a payment option that competes with card networks Visa and Mastercard. (Wall Street Journal)
The one-two punch of rapid home price increases and a sharp rise in mortgage rates is beginning to push some prospective home buyers out of the market, according to new research by Redfin real estate brokerage. A decrease in mortgage applications, fewer online searches and fewer home tours are all signs that some buyers are waiting on the sidelines this spring. Mortgage applications for a purchase rather than a refinance fell 10 percent during the week ending March 25 compared with that same week in 2021, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, which Redfin says is the second week in a row of a double-digit decline in purchase applications. (Washington Post)
Canada will ban most foreigners from buying homes for two years and provide billions of dollars to spur construction activity in an attempt to cool off a surging real-estate market. The measures will be contained in Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s budget today, as Canada’s housing supply Benchmark price is up more than 50% over past two years. (Bloomberg)
Office workers are spending more than half of their day doing busy work instead of the job they were actually hired for, according to a new survey of more than 10,600 global workers from Asana, a work management platform. The annual work index, conducted in October 2021, found that people spent 58% of their day doing “work about work,” including communicating about work, searching for information, switching between apps, managing shifting priorities and chasing status updates. Employees say they waste more than five hours a week, or a total of six working weeks each year, because of some of this busy work, including duplicate tasks and pointless meetings. (CNBC)
Technology
Meta has drawn up plans to introduce virtual coins, tokens and lending services to its apps, as Facebook’s parent company pursues its finance ambitions despite the collapse of a project to launch a cryptocurrency. The company is seeking alternative revenue streams and new features that can attract and retain users, as popularity falls for its main social networking products such as Facebook and Instagram — a trend that threatens its $118bn-a-year ad-based business model. Facebook’s financial arm, Meta Financial Technologies, has been exploring the creation of a virtual currency for the metaverse, which employees internally have dubbed “Zuck Bucks.” (Financial Times)
Google yanked dozens of apps from its Google Play store after determining that they include a software element that surreptitiously harvests data. The Panamanian company that wrote the code, Measurement Systems S. de R.L., is linked through corporate records and web registrations to a Virginia defense contractor that does cyberintelligence, network-defense and intelligence-intercept work for U.S. national-security agencies. (Wall Street Journal)
Does this artificial intelligence think like a human? In machine learning, understanding why a model makes certain decisions is often just as important as whether those decisions are correct. While tools exist to help experts make sense of a model’s reasoning, often these methods only provide insights on one decision at a time, and each must be manually evaluated. Now, researchers at MIT and IBM Research have created a method that enables a user to aggregate, sort, and rank these individual explanations to rapidly analyze a machine-learning model’s behavior. Their technique, called Shared Interest, incorporates quantifiable metrics that compare how well a model’s reasoning matches that of a human. (MIT News)
Google Docs is getting support for emoji reactions, allowing you to respond to text with a simple symbol rather than a fully written comment. In an announcement post, the company says the feature supports all the emoji available in the latest release, which includes gender-neutral options and sillier symbols like melting face and biting lip. A gif released by Google shows how the emoji reaction feature will appear as a third option alongside “Add Comment” and “Suggest Edits” when you highlight text. You can also type to search the emoji catalog. Google says these responses provide “a less formal alternative to comments.” (The Verge)
Smart Links
Global trade falls 2.8% as Russia’s war in Ukraine hits container traffic. (Financial Times)
North American startup investment fell 11% in 1Q22. (Crunchbase)
A Russian debt default looks almost inevitable; investors will struggle to get much money back. (The Economist)
Sport improves concentration and quality of life. (Technical University of Munich)
How tech companies plan to return to work. (The Information)