Is the world’s most important asset market broken? | How One City Tried to Solve Gridlock for Us All | 'Work less and work better, this is the principle': Lamborghini makes history by agreeing to a 4-day workweek for its production workers | David Bowie’s Formative Reading List of 75 Favorite Books

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Is the world’s most important asset market broken? - The Economist

In 1790 America’s finances were precarious: debt-servicing costs were higher than revenues and government bonds traded at 20 cents on the dollar. Alexander Hamilton, the country’s first treasury secretary, wanted a deep and liquid market for safe government debt. He understood the importance of investor confidence, so proposed honouring all debts, including those of states, and offering to swap old debt, at par, for new bonds with a lower interest rate. This was controversial. Shouldn’t speculators who picked up cheap debt in secondary markets be paid less? Yet Hamilton could not be swayed: “When the credit of a country is in any degree questionable, it never fails to give an extravagant premium, in one shape or another, upon all the loans it has occasion to make.”

More than two centuries later American politicians are busy undermining Hamilton’s principles. Debt-ceiling brinkmanship has pushed America towards a technical default. Rising interest rates and incontinent spending have seen debt balloon: the country’s total stock now amounts to $26.6trn (96% of gdp), up from $12.2trn (71% of gdp) in 2013. Servicing costs come to a fifth of government spending. As the Federal Reserve reduces its holdings of Treasuries under quantitative tightening and issuance grows, investors must swallow ever-greater quantities of the bonds.

All this is straining a market that has malfunctioned frighteningly in the past. American government bonds are the bedrock of global finance: their yields are the “risk free” rates upon which all asset pricing is based. Yet such yields have become volatile, and market liquidity looks thin. Against this backdrop, regulators worry about the increasing activity in the Treasury market carried out by leveraged hedge funds, rather than less risky players like foreign central banks. A “flash crash” in 2014 and a spike in rates in the “repo” market, where Treasuries can be swapped for cash, in 2019 raised alarms. The Treasury market was then overwhelmed by fire sales in 2020, as long-term holders dashed for cash, before the Fed stepped in. In November a cyberattack on a Chinese bank disrupted settlement in Treasuries for days.

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How One City Tried to Solve Gridlock for Us All -

Millions are now living on the outskirts and working in city centers.

In Bogotá, a transit experiment inspired imitators worldwide. But that wasn’t the end of the story.

By Michael Kimmelman Photographs by Felipe Romero Beltrán

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'Work less and work better, this is the principle': Lamborghini makes history by agreeing to a 4-day workweek for its production workers - Fortune Europe

Lamborghini’s stylish sports cars have earned it fame the world over, with the likes of Beyoncé and Cristiano Ronaldo among its fans. It could end up one day becoming famous for a different reason: The Italian company just became Europe’s first carmaker to offer a four-day workweek (although only for some of its workers).

On Tuesday, Lamborghini reached an agreement with its unions to roll out a shorter week for its production workers without slashing pay, the labor associations and company.

“Work less and work better, this is the principle that guided this negotiation, and which is part of a comprehensive reasoning,” the FIOM and FIM-CSL unions that struck a deal with Lamborghini said in a statement, Reuters reported from Italy.

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David Bowie’s Formative Reading List of 75 Favorite Books - The Marginalian

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