Rachael McKelvey

• Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty
• Interest Rates remain uninteresting
• Collins Dictionary word of the year
• It’s been a week for AI
• Will 2024 yield recession & a new government?

Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty
Oh it’s been a week in the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried with the jury taking just over 4 hours (which included a break for dinner) on Thursday early evening to find 31-year-old Bank-Fried guilty on 7 counts of fraud and conspiracy.  Nearly a year after FTX was declared bankrupt means  Bankman-Fried could rack up a sentence of up to 110 years.

After a monthlong trial prosecutors successfully argued he acted simply through greed which caused the biggest financial fraud in US history, one to many speculative investments, generous donations all while using customers money to prop up his hedge fund. Bankman-Fried himself, rather unconventionally, took to the witness stand assuming he could no doubt talk his way out of things, but neither the prosecutors or the judge were impressed with his inability to answer a simple question.

Closing statements from the defence claimed the immortal line “poor risk management is not a crime” shortly followed by “bad business judgements are not a crime”. Prosecutor Danielle Sassoon was flawless throughout but her closing argument was a little bit of a chefs kiss urging the jury to reject Bankman-Frieds assertion that his former colleagues were implicating him in return for lesser sentences stating “He was the one with the plan, the motive and the greed to raid FTX customer deposits – billions and billions of dollars – to give himself money, power, influence,” Sassoon said. “He thought the rules did not apply to him. He thought that he could get away with it.”. All eyes now turned to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan who will determine his sentence at a later date.

Interest Rates remain uninteresting
Interest Rates remained unchanged by the Bank of England Thursday which saw the London Stock Exchange jump. The Bank of England held interest rates at the 15-year peak of 5.25% mirrors the policy decision taken by the US Federal Reserve the day before and European Central Bank the week before, which once again the majority of the Monetary Policy Committee voting in favour of holding the rate.

They were expected to be held in all honesty simply because its too soon to think about rate cutes and anyone who thought they would do anything different is dreaming, I’m looking at you Iain Duncan Smith. The economy is moving at a snails pace, but its moving and the job market is starting to cool but this does mean that householders will be facing higher mortgage rates for longer, with economists warning a rate cut is unlikely within the next 12 months.

Despite this, the rate hold seems to please the markets, with sterling holding firm against a softening dollar, 10 year bonds rising and on track to have their best day in the last month and rate sensitive sectors such as real estate and homebuilding also seeing share prices rise quite considerably with most sectoral indexes actually ending up higher and leading with some really positive corporate earnings, looking at you BT group with your second quarter earnings ahead of forecast.

Collins word of the year
I don’t think it will come as any surprise that this week Collins Dictionary named “AI” word of the year, it’s strangled hold on 2023 has been quite firm, usage of the world has quadrupled this year. Managing Director of Collins Alex Beecroft (great name) said “we know that AI has been a big focus this year in the way that it has developed and has quickly become as ubiquitous and embedded in our lives as email, streaming or any other once futuristic, now everyday technology.” 

Words of the year often seem to reflect the fixation of the time, last years winner was permacrisis following the rather interesting revolving door of prime ministers and general crisis in UK politics, the years before was NFT and unsurprisingly the year before that’s winner was lockdown. 

I think the contenders who missed out also help acknowledge the current zeitgeist, the rejects included “canon event”, “debanking”, “deinfluencing”,”nepo baby”, “greedflation” and “ultraprocessed” which I think might say it all about the current state of affairs. 

It’s been a week for AI
It has been quite a week for AI with Rishi Sunak hosting the UK’s AI safety summit at Bletchley Park on Wednesday with 100 world leaders, tech bosses, academics, researchers and Elon Musk. The aim of the summit was to discuss how best to maximise the benefits of AI while also manging the risk (but just remember “poor risk management is not a crime”) Musk warned AI poses “one of the biggest threats” to humanity stating it as an “existential risk: because humans for the first time were faced with something that is going to be far more intelligent than us”. 

No great surprise this was held in the UK as according to the latest Artificial Intelligence Index from the Standford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence scepticism about the benefits of AI is highest in predominantly western countries such as the UK, Germany, France and even the US.

The other AI news of the week is that this week saw the Beatles release “Now and Then”, their final song after they used AI to recover just John Lennon’s vocals from an old noisy cassette recording after 45 years, all four Beatles appear on the track and it has been released as a double A-side single with their debut track from 1962 Love Me Do.

Will 2024 yield recession & a new government?
Busy week for The Bank of England voting on interest rates and warning that Britain may risk falling into recession next year after a “bleak assessment” that resulting in “slashed forecasts for UK growth to zero”, forecasting no growth doesn’t seem too wild, the economy is moving incredibly slowly, and the job market has cooled. And while I understand the concerns at rate stagnation and a possibility of “potential recession” I’m a millennial who basically doesn’t know how to live without trying to hum louder than some sort of economic crisis going on in the background.

What a backdrop for a general election and a US presidential election hey? The current chancellor Jeremy Hunt, ever the optimist, stating “the best way to deliver prosperity is through sustainable growth” it will be interesting to see what, if anything, they can deliver to entice the electorate to vote in their favour again. The middle of the year recession prediction either means they optimistically head into a spring election just as it begins to bite or they really roll the dice and aim for later in the year where the possibility that things really will be stinging the electorate.

Current watch:  Pain Hustlers – I’d like it noted that I made it through a film, maybe it was the concussion, maybe it was the company but I would like it noted that I made it through a 2+hour film and it was a corker.

The premise is broke single mother stumbles across and amazing opportunity in pharmaceutical sales but she has to bend the truth to get there and bend it even further to stay there. Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Andy Garcia and the ever amazing Catherine O’Hara are just so well cast.

While entirely fictional, the film is based on real factors in the Opiod crisis and there was a fentanyl-based drug company that did race similar real-life consequences for the types of schemes the film portrays it is actually based on a novel by Eva Hughes. It’s a darkly comical in places and wildly illuminating in others, I would recommend.

Current read: Do Less: Be More – How to slow down and make space for what really matters by Susan Pearse and Martina Sheehan – If anything recently everything has been screaming at me to slow down a lot, don’t fill every minute with ‘doing something’, being busy is not a bad of honour but actually detrimental to my health and doing more doesn’t ever actually meaning achieving more. This book explores how to do less and achieve more with 21 very practical exercises that will help you reduce the amount of hours you work but remain just as productive, how to take things off your to-do list and why its important to be bored as a way of making space to spend your time doing the things you love instead. The tagline for this book is “If you’re someone who says: ‘I’ll wait until I have nothing to do until I do nothing,’ then this book is for you!” and it really is.

Most Impactful Listen: Unhedged: Sam Bankman-Fried takes the stand – This podcast was recorded just hours after closing arguments in the fraud trial of Sam Bankman-Fried where the former founder of FTX crypto exchange had testified in this own trial. Reporter Joshua Oliver joins the team to talk about the trial, why and how Bankman-Fried took to the stand, how hard it is to find a smoking gun in white-collar criminal trials these, the excellence of prosecutor Danielle Sassoon and just what it’s like to hear your own name in testimony. For a short record it packed a punch.