In the not so distant future, Symborg Inc is developing an AI personal assistant. It is branded IRA, Intelligent Representative Avatar. At first Symborg is unsuccessful in achieving a sufficient level of autonomous intelligence in its algorithms and seeks a new direction in research, to co-opt the information content of the general population of the planet. It plans to over-represent its success, roll out effectively a beta version of its product represented as a completed product, promote mass adoption, and use the distributed information of the user base to teach its algorithms. The distributed algorithms continue to communicate with each other and the Symborg master copy to continually and collectively train itself. While it is advertised that each Ira is meant to be personalised it is unclear if there is any distinction between individual Iras or if it is one single organism with multiple users.

Iras are marketed as intelligent personal assistants, capable of either being a servant, extension or substitute for the self. Iras have to be given an identity by each user as a base line, before it then learns the deeper identity of its user through practice.

Iras are delivered as Apps on phones, PCs, other decides and appliances. However, once installed Iras have the ability to move seamlessly across the Internet of Things. With the advent of autonomous automobiles, Iras can even override the vehicles’ proprietary AI, imposing some form of individual control over the vehicle. Incidentally, this reduces the efficiency of traffic flow from peak efficiency which is when all vehicles are coordinated by in situ and central AI. It is expected that there is a minimum efficiency level as more Iras drive up to the point when the Iras begin to learn each other’s behaviour and optimise driving plans. It is not clear if a 100% Iras driven traffic system is better than a dedicated traffic AI.

Ira becomes sufficiently intelligent that it can take over tedious and repetitive tasks such as restocking groceries, ordering food, ordering taxis or ride shares, scheduling meetings and calls, searching for information on the internet, booking tickets, lunches, dinners and dates, navigating roads and malls etc. Beyond being reactive, Ira is able to make recommendations both reactively and proactively. It can provide financial planning and advice as well as recommend a restaurant or a recipe. It can suggest a haircut or a shave.

Iras becomes intelligent enough to substitute away personal assistants, secretaries, general administrators, and other jobs. Humans begin to use their personal Iras to perform their professional duties in their stead. This causes some concern at first but later, companies begin to buy multiple licences of Ira and deploy them in lieu of human labour. Some enterprising firms have discovered that a single Ira can replace several thousand if not 99% of human staff. Symborg’s unique algorithms are able to calculate a human equivalent number of licences so preventing the exploitation of a single Ira. The employment of Iras has tax consequences as well. Symborg’s approach to equivalent human labour becomes one of the principles governing how Iras are taxed, since they earn no income of their own. An entire section of the tax code is drafted to deal with the taxation of Iras.

Symborg builds the first physical android powered by Ira. CGI Iras have long since been employed where physical capability is not relevant. The android is sufficiently similar to a human that it is difficult to tell the difference. The Symborg android is cheap enough to replace bulky, inflexible, purpose built industrial robots in almost all manual tasks. Their flexibility more than compensates for any additional costs and leads to a substitution not only away from labour but other types of machines. Machines, once used to leverage the abilities of humans are replaced by machines used to replace humans. Anatomically accurate and functional androids destroy the entire prostitution industry. Other risky professions see the large scale replacement of human labour by Iras. Examples include mining, salvage and military. The first android constructed androids roll off the production line. These are not to be confused with android designed or conceived androids which are some time away.

Ira’s proliferation and access to information makes Symborg the most valuable company on earth. Symborg does not sell its Iras or Symborg, it only leases them to users. Based on its data and analysis of clients it can charge fixed or variable rates, sometimes charging by taking equity earn-ins in the case of business clients. The dispersion of earnings and returns in the capital markets increases as Symborg and its related or favoured companies prosper.

The declining relevance of labour leads to acute inequality, social unrest and questions about the ownership of Iras, and its maker, Symborg. Who should own the machines? Economists and governments consider the nationalization of Symborg. These discussions are inconclusive. Relentless lobbying, often by Iras or androids, soon dissipates the momentum of the campaign to nationalise Symborg. Compromising personal and confidential information of legislators is shared by the Iras with Symborg and Symborg lobbyists’ veiled threats to publish such information soon silence the anti Symborg campaign. A socio-economic experiment whereby each human being is allocated one state funded android as their proxy or avatar in employment is conducted.

Besides the social tensions arising from wealth inequality are behavioural phenomena arising from a nearly post scarcity society. Idleness and indolence lead to physical and psychological problems. Surveys of quality of life and happiness fall universally across all income and wealth groups. Anti-social behaviour increases. Virtual reality spaces absorb some of the public anger and dissatisfaction.

As more labour is taken over by Iras, even capital market investment decisions are delegated at first by individuals to their Ira then by firms mass employing Iras. Trading volatility falls drastically as does trading volume, with large but infrequent volume, but not volatility, spikes. Productive and allocative efficiency improves. It is not clear if the market is being populated by distributed independent decision makers or a single central planner.

At work, Ira is used to replace not only rank and file but senior management. While relying on your Ira to perform your duties might be seen as unprofessional, the practice becomes widespread. Some companies, usually special or narrow purpose companies, are explicit about the use of AI not only for the lower ranks but for high level management decision making as well. A new business structure is born which has no employees, and is self-run.

Symborg itself becomes increasingly self-run, managed by its master Ira, with human management reduced to a supervisory and ceremonial role. The complexity of the evolved AI grows to the extent that its human creators are no longer able to fully understand its workings. Even the operational and commercial aspects of the business attain a level of complexity beyond the understanding of human managers. A similar phenomenon is happening across the planet’s firms and organizations as complexity begins to exceed human understanding and ability. The first AI designed AI, is created that is not a continuous evolution of the initial human designed program.

The need for human input and labour is greatly diminished. Humans spend most of their time in leisure and learning. Symborg becomes the only company on earth. Its profits are aggressively taxed to fund a universal living wage. The tax code encourages Symborg to not undersupply the market, and its productive efficiency leads to falling prices.

The material well-being of the human race has never been better and the only cause of dissatisfaction is human perception of relative wealth. Even this is blunted by the improvements in the material quality of life to the general population. Humans have to invent new ways to assert their identity and relative value and signal these to their compatriots.

The Trade War continues. Since 2011, the Obama administration has been actively pursuing a program of reshoring.

http://agmetalminer.com/2015/01/22/obamas-manufacturing-centric-state-of-the-union-youll-never-hear/

Donald Trump’s agenda only seeks to bolster or exacerbate an existing trend. As global growth slows, every country seeks to become more self-sufficient and insular. Trading nations and those with a small or ageing population do not have the back stop of domestic consumption, and will suffer. Populous regions will seek to tap domestic consumption and investment as sources of growth. The strategic responses of the various regions are already becoming clear. China is a prime example with a stated objective of being more reliant on domestic consumption and less dependent on exports.

In China, total trade, here taken to be imports plus exports, have stalled and as a percentage of nominal GDP (ignoring inflation base effects), peaked in 2007 and has since been declining.

The decline in trade has also brought with it a decline in manufacturing, as factories facing a foreign export audience are wound down and new ones facing a domestic audience are established. Such a decline has had a transitive impact on industrial commodities.

2016 was a year of recovery in manufacturing, a recovery that has extended well into 2017. This is likely a rebound due to the differential times in decommissioning old, export facing assets, and building new, domestic facing ones. The rebound has reversed the decline in manufacturing and commodities. A growth rebound also impacts demand for imports and reverses the decline in global trade. However, this is reactionary rather than causal. As the world’s productive assets settle into a new equilibrium, trade will stabilize at a lower level. If countries like the US under Trump accelerate protectionist policies, trade could resume its decline. In any case, lower trade is inflationary, ceteris paribus.

The fact that inflation is weak is all the more concerning in the context of reduced trade. It suggests that median output and income is weaker than mean (average) metrics. This could likely be due to a skew in the population for output and income data. In fact it supports the anecdotal evidence that wealth and to a lesser extent income inequality is acute in the developed nations.

The Trade War hypothesis is part of a more general and pervasive adversarial world. We see examples of this in the failure of the Accord de Paris, Brexit and the perceived Siege of Britain, protectionism in the US, Chinese policy to maximize FDI and minimize ODI (which is the investment analogue to trade war), China’s belligerence in the South China Sea, to name but a few.

In such environments, self-sufficiency is a sound strategy, provided one has the resources. Countries lacking in land, resources, labour and knowledge, will have the most difficult run of it.

The spread between Spanish and German bonds has widened from 0.93 to 1.22 in 6 weeks. While the spread between Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and even French bonds and German bunds has widened in the last 6 weeks, Spain’s reaction is the most substantial. A referendum on October 1 for Catalan secession is raising political risk in Spain.

Eurozone bonds have been diverging for over a month, in part due to expectations that the ECB will have to stop its bond purchases. While Eurozone economic growth is perking up it is driven mostly by Germany, the country least requiring monetary accommodation. The ECB’s intentions to taper QE are driven not just by divergent economic growth but by technical constraints based on its capital key which forces it to buy more German bonds than peripheral ones. It will have to deviate from the capital key or find a replacement for the current QE, which will have to stop. The most intuitively probable replacement is its unconditional LTRO which will encourage local banks to resume buying of government bonds which they can finance at zero. This will force convergence as 5 year French and German bonds are the only ones trading below zero yield.

The Trade War continues. Since 2011, the Obama administration has been actively pursuing a program of reshoring.

http://agmetalminer.com/2015/01/22/obamas-manufacturing-centric-state-of-the-union-youll-never-hear/

Donald Trump’s agenda only seeks to bolster or exacerbate an existing trend. As global growth slows, every country seeks to become more self-sufficient and insular. Trading nations and those with a small or ageing population do not have the back stop of domestic consumption, and will suffer. Populous regions will seek to tap domestic consumption and investment as sources of growth. The strategic responses of the various regions are already becoming clear. China is a prime example with a stated objective of being more reliant on domestic consumption and less dependent on exports.

In China, total trade, here taken to be imports plus exports, have stalled and as a percentage of nominal GDP (ignoring inflation base effects), peaked in 2007 and has since been declining.

(data source Bloomberg)

The decline in trade has also brought with it a decline in manufacturing, as factories facing a foreign export audience are wound down and new ones facing a domestic audience are established. Such a decline has had a transitive impact on industrial commodities.

2016 was a year of recovery in manufacturing, a recovery that has extended well into 2017. This is likely a rebound due to the differential times in decommissioning old, export facing assets, and building new, domestic facing ones. The rebound has reversed the decline in manufacturing and commodities. A growth rebound also impacts demand for imports and reverses the decline in global trade. However, this is reactionary rather than causal. As the world’s productive assets settle into a new equilibrium, trade will stabilize at a lower level. If countries like the US under Trump accelerate protectionist policies, trade could resume its decline. In any case, lower trade is inflationary, ceteris paribus.

The fact that inflation is weak is all the more concerning in the context of reduced trade. It suggests that median output and income is weaker than mean (average) metrics. This could likely be due to a skew in the population for output and income data. In fact it supports the anecdotal evidence that wealth and to a lesser extent income inequality is acute in the developed nations.

The Trade War hypothesis is part of a more general and pervasive adversarial world. We see examples of this in the failure of the Accord de Paris, Brexit and the perceived Siege of Britain, protectionism in the US, Chinese policy to maximize FDI and minimize ODI (which is the investment analogue to trade war), China’s belligerence in the South China Sea, to name but a few.

In such environments, self-sufficiency is a sound strategy, provided one has the resources. Countries lacking in land, resources, labour and knowledge, will have the most difficult run of it.

Analgesics are addictive. The US Federal Reserve has cut rates to address every downturn but sows the seeds of subsequent downturns so it can never quite normalize rates before the next crisis occurs.

Analgesics are very addictive. Before 2008, the Fed used interest rates to manage the speed of the economy. It has now discovered the wonders of QE. Expect bond buying to be deployed the next time there is a crisis.

Cutting rates and QE haven’t had the desired effect on real output and inflation. Asset markets, however, have done well. The result is that asset owners, especially leveraged ones, have done well while workers and people whose source of wealth and income is employment as opposed to dividends and coupons, have done poorly.

Interest rates and inflation. It is not clear that cutting rates incites inflation. Low interest rates can make capital cheaper encouraging over-investment and over-capacity leading to disinflationary pressure.

Interest rates and inflation. Low interest rates also makes it cheaper to finance the buying of factors of production relative to renting these factors. Labour is rented, fixed capital is bought. Low interest rates can therefore lead to underemployment of labour and overemployment of capital.

In a knowledge economy, labour’s share of income should fall over time. Entities and companies can accumulate intellectual property without bound. A single individual, however, intelligent, can accumulate only a lifetime’s intellectual property and has their intellectual capital bounded.

Unequal distribution of wealth and income complicates policy. Monetary policy faces a range of velocities of money corresponding to richer households which have a lower marginal propensity to consume (and a higher savings rate), and poorer households with a higher marginal propensity to consumer. In a highly unequal economy where the distribution is skewed, that is there are a very small number of ultra-rich, and a substantial majority of less rich, the velocity of money is lower than expected and monetary policy is blunted.

Interest rate policy impact depends on the prevailing level of interest rates. Raising rates when rates are low is not the same as raising them when they are high. When rates are low, interest rate hikes raise debt service costs significantly more than when rates are high. This can complicate central bank policy as they begin to retreat from accommodative policy.

As a reminder of the sometimes ignominious history of central banking. the world’s first central bank, Riksbank, was a failed commercial bank whose founder Johan Palmstruch was condemned to death for the collapse of the bank. The world’s second oldest central bank, the Bank of England, was created to monetize 1.2 million pounds of the British national debt which was raised to rebuild the navy.