Shares of Arm Holdings (NASDAQ: ARM) popped on Wednesday after the compute platform unveiled an intriguing new artificial intelligence (AI) chip. Image source: Getty Images. Arm has historically licensed its chip designs, instruction set architectures, and other intellectual property to a wide array of chipmakers. Arm's technology, in turn, has been used in hundreds of billions of devices. Continu...
Shares of Arm Holdings (NASDAQ: ARM) popped on Wednesday after the compute platform unveiled an intriguing new artificial intelligence (AI) chip. Image source: Getty Images. Arm has historically licensed its chip designs, instruction set architectures, and other intellectual property to a wide array of chipmakers. Arm's technology, in turn, has been used in hundreds of billions of devices. Continue reading
Darren415/iStock via Getty Images This blog has the distinction of periodically tracking and analyzing the M2 measure of money supply for almost 2 decades. Unlike most other analysts, I focus not just on the supply of money but also on the demand for money. For background, see this post from October 2020 in which I noted rapid growth in M2 but was not alarmed given the huge increase in money deman...
Darren415/iStock via Getty Images This blog has the distinction of periodically tracking and analyzing the M2 measure of money supply for almost 2 decades. Unlike most other analysts, I focus not just on the supply of money but also on the demand for money. For background, see this post from October 2020 in which I noted rapid growth in M2 but was not alarmed given the huge increase in money demand at the time. The key to understanding the relationship between money and inflation is to not lose sight of the demand for money. Milton Friedman famously taught us that inflation happens only when the supply of money exceeds the demand for it. When the M2 money supply accelerated in 2009 and 2020-21, it did not immediately ignite inflation because the demand for money also accelerated - with Covid shutdowns, it was quite difficult to spend money. But when the demand for money began to decline in early 2021, the money that had been stored in bank deposits and under mattresses began to be released into the economy, and this was the fuel for rising inflation in 2021 and into early 2022. By mid-2022, the Fed had responded to rising inflation by raising interest rates and slowing the growth of M2, thus bringing money supply and demand slowly back into balance. This gave me the confidence in the summer of 2022 to predict that the peak of inflation was now past and it would begin to decline. Since then I have continued to believe that inflation would remain low, given that although the demand for money was declining to pre-Covid levels, M2 growth remained very slow. The charts that follow are updated with the latest data. Fortunately, there has been no significant change in monetary conditions, and that is why I continue to see inflation remaining relatively low and stable. Chart #1 Chart #1 shows the level of the M2 money supply. From 1995 to late 2019, it grew by about 6% per year. During that same period, inflation registered about 2% per year. M2 growth then exploded in earl...
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images Two mysterious videos posted to the White House's official X and Instagram accounts on Wednesday night generated buzz online, with the purpose of the short, vertically shot clips unclear. One video was later deleted. The first video, posted around 9:15 pm EST, appeared to be filmed on a smartphone, with the camera pointed at someone's feet. In the four-second-lon...
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images Two mysterious videos posted to the White House's official X and Instagram accounts on Wednesday night generated buzz online, with the purpose of the short, vertically shot clips unclear. One video was later deleted. The first video, posted around 9:15 pm EST, appeared to be filmed on a smartphone, with the camera pointed at someone's feet. In the four-second-long video, a voice can be heard asking, "It's launching soon, right?" A line of text on the screen says "sound on." The video was later removed from the White House's accounts on X and Instagram roughly 90 minutes after it was posted. The second short video, posted at 10 a.m. EST, showed a black, staticky screen with a phone notification sound playing. An American flag was visible in one frame. The post included emojis of a smartphone and sound. There was no indication of the context of the posts, with many online commenters theorizing the accounts could have been hacked or that an official was cryptically teasing something. The White House did not immediately respond to a request to comment. It was not immediately clear whether the videos were posted intentionally. The posts follow earlier instances of the Trump administration White House social media accounts sharing meme-style content. Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.