Banking

Prof. Gary Gensler joins Tom Keene and Paul Sweeney, hosts of the “Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast” to discuss the impact of AI on the US fiscal market. “The AI trade that our capital market is hovering on top of is an investment boom that’s about twice what the internet was,” says Gensler. AI is “now about 2.5% of our economy—all of the data centers and so forth. [Major AI companies] are spending so much, but will it lead to the revenues to justify that spending?” 

Prof. Gary Gensler joins Bloomberg’s “Open Interest” to discuss the risks AI poses to the financial system,. “We’re spending about 2.5% of our gross domestic product on this AI build,” says Gensler. “When we have these booms, they plateau at some point; firms lose some of their pricing power, some of their growth, and you expose where the debt in the system is. Right now, there’s a lot of risk in this capital market.”  

Forbes reporter Jeff Kauflin spotlights Andres Santos MBA '21, co-founder of Común, as one of the six entrepreneurs making their debut on the Forbes Fintech 50 list. Común is a “digital bank for Hispanic immigrants,” writes Kauflin. “Customers can open checking accounts through an app using a passport or ID from their home country and use it for direct deposit, a debit card and international money transfers.” 

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere explored the effectiveness of climate commitments made by banks to mitigate the effects of climate change, reports Nicole Goodkind for CNN. “Our results cast doubt on the efficacy of voluntary climate commitments for reducing financed emissions, whether through divestment or engagement,” the researchers note.

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that climate pledges made by banks to reduce carbon emissions and finance energy transitions may not be as effective as previously thought, reports Eshe Nelson for The New York Times. “The researchers found that since 2018 the banks had reduced lending 20 percent to sectors they had targeted in their climate goals, such as oil and gas and transport,” explains Nelson. “That seems like progress, but the researchers argued it was not sufficient because the decline was the same for banks that had not made the same commitment.”

A new study by Prof. Joseph Weber and his colleagues “attempts to understand how financial statement auditors detect, resolve, and deal with the aftermath of material misstatements (MMs) in companies’ financial statements,” reports Joseph Brazel for Forbes. 

Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Kristin Forbes delves into her new study examining how quantitative tightening (QT) programs impact markets. “QT programs have, so far, been working as central banks intended,” Forbes writes. “At the same time, they have provided a small degree of support for central banks’ efforts to tighten financial conditions, with minimal impact on market functioning and liquidity. QT has worked in the opposite direction to quantitative easing, but the effects are much, much more muted.”

Prof. David Singer speaks with Bloomberg reporter Max Abelson about banking crises. “The recipe for stability is to have well-capitalized, risk-averse banks,” says Singer. “But banks won’t naturally gravitate toward such behavior. They need thorough and steady regulation that doesn’t ease up when the economy is humming.”

In a letter to the Financial Times, Senior Lecturer Henry Birdseye Weil makes the case that to help fix the banking system it should not be so easy for clients to withdraw large deposits and it should be easier for banks to increase their liquidity. Additionally, Weil adds that “these fixes would not be necessary if bank liabilities and assets were perfectly aligned. But we are far from that nirvana today.”

Prof. Simon Johnson speaks with Boston Globe reporter Kara Miller about the safety of the U.S.  banking system. “Johnson argues that more oversight and regulation are critical to making sure the banking system operates smoothly, even though increased regulations might provoke resistance,” writes Miller.

Prof. Simon Johnson writes for The Los Angeles Times about the impact of government support during a financial crisis. “The immediate banking crisis may have been tempered, but it isn’t over,” writes Johnson. “As concerns about moral hazard rise again in Europe, will European regulators succumb to the temptation to make an example of some bank or other? One thing is certain: What they do will have global consequences, including for the U.S., and we will need to be prepared for them.”

MIT Legatum Center Executive Director Dina Sherif and Pia Sawhney write for CNBC about how the Silicon Valley Bank collapse will impact various companies, communities, and innovation ecosystems. “The immediate banking crisis is over,” writes Sherif. “Now it’s time to rebuild a new system for financing innovation to meet today’s needs.”

MIT researchers have developed a new magnet-based system to monitor muscle movements that could help make prosthetic limbs easier to control, reports Brianna Silva for WHDH.

Educators from the Asia School of Business and MIT have developed a course aimed at teaching central bankers how the market is impacted by bottlenecks and how monetary policy can help, reports Enda Curran for Bloomberg.  “The curriculum covers topics that include crisis prevention, behavioral finance, cybersecurity, digital currencies, and ethics,” writes Curran. 

Quipu Market, co-founded by Mercedes Bidart ’19, Juan Cristobal Constain ’18 and Gonzalo Ortegoa ’19, was named one of Fast Company’s most innovative companies in Latin America, reports Fast Company reporter Adam Bluestein. Quipu Market is “a web-based and mobile platform that allows individuals and small entrepreneurs in low-income communities,” writes Bluestein, “to conduct trade using virtual tokens, helping microbusinesses gain visibility and build creditworthiness even without access to formal banking.”