ARMs Are Back
Adjustable rate mortgages (ARM) all but about disappeared post the 2008 financial crisis, but are making a comeback. Higher mortgage rates are causing borrowers to take advantage of lower initial teaser rates while waiting for fixed rates to fall. What’s more, ARMs are less risky than they once were. The 2008 crisis showed the dangers of rates surging after short teaser periods, but regulations since then have meant ARMs now have longer initial fixed periods, providing a bigger buffer before monthly payments jump. What was once a product geared toward subprime borrowers is now more often used by affluent borrowers.
Source: Wall Street Journal
DOJ Clears Allegiant / Sun Country Merger
Earlier this week, the Department of Justice granted antitrust clearance for Allegiant and Sun Country to merge. The next step is to get regulatory approval from the Department of Transportation. Allegiant has said they expect the merger to close in the second or third quarter of this year. Allegiant CEO Greg Anderson said the combination will create a stronger, leisure-focused airline.
Source: Wall Street Journal
AI Brain Fry?
Workers that oversee multiple AI “agents”, autonomous software that’s designed to execute tasks rather than just churn out information like a chatbot, have experienced an acute sensation of “buzzing” — a fog that left workers exhausted and struggling to concentrate. Those observations come from a Boston Consulting Group study that showed AI-associated mental strain carries significant costs in the form of increased employee errors, decision fatigue, and intention to quit. They dubbed the mental impacts as “Brain Fry”.
Source: Boston Consulting Group, Harvard Business Review
Personal Finance In The Classroom
Thirty states now require a personal finance course to graduate from high school. That compares with 22 states that ask students to take economics, according to a forthcoming report by the Council for Economic Education. The student-debt burden that has swelled to $1.7 trillion, weighing on generations of borrowers, has high-schoolers thinking hard about how much to borrow for college.
Source: Wall Street Journal
Remember Shop Classes?
If you are as old as I am, you may remember your high school years when you could take wood shop, metal shop, and even auto mechanics. Related to the study noted above, state education departments are giving priority to the practical over the conceptual, which extends to shop classes, as blue-collar jobs become more popular and white-collar hiring slows.
Source: Wall Street Journal, Council for Economic Education
Trey Is For Sale
A 66-million-year-old triceratops fossil hit the auction block earlier this week, with bids projected to reach as high as $5.5M through the March 31 deadline. Roughly the size of a minivan and nicknamed “Trey,” the fossil is one of the most complete Triceratops skeletons ever unearthed. It was found in Wyoming in an area of low-lying floodplains and rivers at the end of the Cretaceous period, the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (the “Age of the Dinosaurs”). The era ended with the cataclysmic asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs approximately 66 million years ago.
Happy Birthday Las Vegas
On March 19, 1931, while the rest of the United States was struggling through the Great Depression, the Governor of Nevada, Fred Balzar, signed a bill legalizing gambling. At the time, it was a desperate move to boost the state’s economy. This single signature eventually transformed a dusty desert stop into Las Vegas, the entertainment capital of the world.
Source: Nevada Gaming History
