Peter Coy

How to Understand the Problems at Silicon Valley Bank

If you’re wondering why Silicon Valley Bank, one of the biggest lenders to tech start-ups, had to be taken over Friday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, one good place to look is the Federal Reserve. The Fed has raised interest rates extremely rapidly over the past year to squelch…

The Not-So-Great News About Lower Inflation

The news that consumer prices fell in December from November — yes, monthly inflation was negative — was not as wonderful for the Federal Reserve as you might expect. Fed officials are trying to persuade the financial markets and the public that the fight against high inflation is far from over,…

How the Coachella of Economics Can Survive Covid

Attendance at the world’s biggest conference of economists was down by half this year, and that had some attendees worrying that the annual conclave was at risk of unraveling like a knitted sweater. People who were disappointed not to see their friends at this year’s Allied Social Science…

A Strong Signal That Recession Is Looming

The clearest signal that the US economy is likely to fall into a recession in the next year is coming from interest rates. One of the first people to establish the signaling value of interest rates was Arturo Estrella, then an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. I interviewed him…

The Battle Royale Over Apple’s App Store

Apple is the world’s most valuable company. Is it also a monopolist? To answer that question to your own satisfaction, I suggest that you watch a gripping reality show on YouTube. It’s an hour-and-a-quarter courtroom hearing from Nov. 14 in the case of Epic Games v. Apple. It features brilliant…

We Can’t Keep Spending Like This

Updated with data released on Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a chart shows that the US personal saving rate dropped in October to 2.3 percent. How low is that? Since 1959 there has been only one month when the saving rate was that low or lower. (That was July 2005, when the housing…

The Economist Who Foresaw Our Global Economic Order

There are well over 100 currencies, from the Angolan kwanza and the Bhutan ngultrum to the Uzbekistan sum and the Vanuatu vatu. Is that the right number for the global economy? Not really. A multiplicity of unpredictably fluctuating currencies discourages trade and investment by injecting…

For Elon Musk, Lessons From Friendster

For Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, the demise of Friendster is a cautionary tale. Friendster, a social network founded in 2002, gained millions of users soon after it started but lost them almost as quickly, later metamorphosing into an online gaming site based in Malaysia before closing down…

In the Face of Inflation, Let’s Give Everyone a Lift

Inflation too hot for you? How about a nice, refreshing COLA? This time, not just for Social Security recipients, who found out about their 2023 cost-of-living adjustments on Thursday. We’ve come to expect that certain people will be protected from inflation by cost-of-living adjustments and…

In Retirement, You May Not Need to Spend So Much

If the recent rout in the stock market has you drastically cutting back your retirement spending plans, it probably means that you were counting too much on ever-rising asset prices. But a new research paper suggests that spending less at advanced ages is not necessarily a sign of failure to plan…