Economy
Economy news and analysis from Bear Creek Capital Network, updated daily.
- Fed Chairs Spent More Than 30% of Meeting Time With Staff, Study of 20,000 Calendars Finds
A new working paper maps how Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, and Jerome Powell actually spent their days, drawing on more than 20,000 calendar entries. Powell met with lawmakers far more than his...
- Slow Growth From Automation May Be a Savings Problem, Not a Technology Problem
An economist's model finds that how much households save matters as much as what machines can do. The same technology path that could deliver double-digit annual growth produces a fraction of that...
- Mortgage Rates at 7.37% With Four Conditions Needed to Break Below 7%
Purchase applications are down 16% year over year and mortgage spreads have widened to 2.21%, as the 10-year yield sits above 4.60%. A return below 7% before year-end is possible, according to...
- Hall and Woodford win 2026 Nobel economics prize for macro stabilization work
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2026 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences to Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford. The two economists are recognized for building...
- Lina Khan warns AI self-regulation will repeat Big Tech's social media failures
Former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan is drawing a direct line between Big Tech's failed social media self-regulation and the AI industry's current approach, calling it an "enormous...
- Chinese Demand Drives Cross-Border Surrogacy Market as Domestic Ban Holds
A cross-border surrogacy industry serving Chinese clients has grown substantially, with new research suggesting China is the single largest source of international intended parents using US...
- Harvard nuclear cancer study collapses under its own methodology
A replication exercise found that the same statistical approach used to link nuclear power plants to cancer deaths also implicates Costco in more than 2.2 million deaths. The finding is not about...
- AI Will Reshape Economics Research, But Not Evenly
A researcher's forecast circulated by Marginal Revolution lays out which corners of economics stand to gain from AI and which face displacement. The dividing line is not technical sophistication...
- Federal Home Loan Banks MPF Program targets affordability gaps beyond rate relief
The Federal Home Loan Banks' Mortgage Partnership Finance Program is expanding its toolkit for community lenders, pairing secondary market liquidity with down payment grants, rate subsidies and a...
- Bank of Japan Cuts Balance Sheet by ¥131 Trillion While Rate Hikes Stay Minimal
The Bank of Japan shed another ¥15.5 trillion from its balance sheet in the third quarter, bringing total asset reductions since the Q1 2024 peak to ¥131 trillion. The central bank is leaning on...
- Fed's Cook: Private credit not a systemic threat yet, but data gaps remain
Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook told a New York Fed audience Thursday that private credit has not shown up as a destabilizing force in the central bank's financial stability analysis, but she...
- UVM Surgeon Wins $38M ARPA-H Contract to Build AI Digital Twins for ICU Patients
Gary An, a trauma surgeon at the University of Vermont's Larner College of Medicine, has received a research contract worth up to $38 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health...