Hot air balloons (Photo by Ben Birchall/Getty Images)

Debunking the overhyped story that high interest rates fuel inflation

Higher levels of interest income don’t appear to be enough to move the needle on spending and inflation

7/17/24 2:37PM

The idea that high interest rates are contributing to higher inflation is in vogue nowadays.

The basic line of thinking is that higher interest rates mean more interest income for bondholders, and therefore more spending power, which can fuel price pressures.

That Warren Mosler, the godfather of Modern Monetary Theory (a school of thought that holds that government spending is constrained by real resources rather than any financial limitations) would have a relatively heterodox economic view is unsurprising. But the likes of BlackRock head of fixed income Rick Rieder are singing from a similar hymnal.

Households’ interest income from all sources is running at over $1.8 trillion annualized as of May – a hefty sum, on its face. That compares to about $530 billion in personal interest payments.

“We can both come up with a narrative of what we think the propensity is to consume out of interest income, but we're not going to know until after it happens,” said Mosler on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast. “And I looked at, in prior cycles, the data was telling me that it's not zero, that there's a substantial amount that directly or indirectly does get spent.”

No arguments there, at least directionally. Even though, generally speaking, people who pay interest expense are more likely to spend an extra dollar of income than people who receive interest income.

But the problem is that interest income doesn’t appear to be that potent a channel to warrant headlines when it comes to discussions over what is and isn’t driving US spending and inflation.

Interest payments received account for just 7.6% of personal income. Further, once you adjust that for interest paid by households, the net figure is down to just 5.4% of total income – near the record low of 5.1% from 2021 and well below the long-term average of 9.5%.

“Interest income received as a share of total income is below any point in the low-rate environment after the Global Financial Crisis,” said Mayank Seksaria, head of global macro at Liberty Mutual Investments. “It’s difficult to make the case that higher payouts on money market accounts are having a big impact on spending at the macro level.”

Tasha Matsumoto

Stocks continue to climb as surprise drop in private payrolls solidifies rate cut expectations

Despite a lackluster performance in many megacap tech names, all major US indexes climbed higher Wednesday.

CHICAGO, IL - MARCH 05: Benny, the mascot for the Chicago Bulls entertains during a break between the Bulls and the Boston Celtics at the United Center on March 5, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois.

Matt Phillips6h

Seagate, Western Digital stumble amid reports of customer resistance to AI

Hard disk drive makers Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital slumped Wednesday following a report from The Information that Microsoft is facing pushback from software clients who don’t want to pay more for AI-optimized products.

Microsoft contested the report, issuing a statement saying it hadn’t lowered sales quotas or targets. But the story hit squarely on the core issue facing the market right now: whether AI will ever produce enough revenue to pay for the massive investments hyperscalers are making.

As the tumble for hard disk makers shows, this is a market-wide issue. Share prices of hard disk makers have boomed amid expectations that the soaring demand for data storage related to AI investment will juice sales of these cheap storage devices for the foreseeable future.

Seagate and Western Digital are still the second- and third-best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 this year, with gains of roughly 200% and 250%, respectively.

Luke Kawa6h

Micron announces exit from consumer business to focus on AI demand

With a lot of AI mouths to feed amid a supply crunch for memory chips, Micron has made the decision to exit its consumer chip business (which goes by the brand name “Crucial”).

“The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage. Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments,” said Sumit Sadana, EVP and chief business officer.

Memory chip prices have been surging thanks to demand from the AI boom, with South Korean memory giant SK Hynix saying that it’s already sold out all of next year’s production.

Per the press release, Micron will cease shipments of Crucial-branded items at the end of February 2026.

The product line has been a bit of a misnomer for the memory chip specialist as of late. Sales of Crucial-branded products fall under its mobile and client business unit, and the brand enjoyed a 25% jump in revenues year on year as of its most recent quarter. While impressive growth, that pales in comparison to the more than 200% surge in revenues for its cloud memory business unit, which focuses on high-bandwidth memory chip sales to hyperscalers.

Operating margins in the mobile and client business unit were 29% in its most recent quarter, compared to 48% for the cloud-centric division.

Max Knoblauch7h

Boeing falls as FTC requires it to divest Spirit AeroSystems assets to complete its $8.3 billion merger

The FTC said on Wednesday that the $8.3 billion merger between Boeing and its key supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, cannot proceed unless Boeing significantly divests Spirit assets.

Boeing shares fell more than 2% on the FTC’s proposed order, which said that Boeing should divest Spirit businesses that supply aerostructures (wings, doors, etc.) to rival Airbus. The assets, including personnel, will be divested to Airbus, the FTC statement said.

The moves would resolve antitrust allegations that Boeing’s acquisition of Spirit — which was spun out of Boeing in 2005 — would allow the plane maker to raise costs on Airbus or degrade its access to certain necessary parts. Boeing, the FTC alleged, could also have the ability to see sensitive information about its competitors.

The public now has 30 days to submit comments on the proposed order.

FTC Requires Boeing to Divest Several Spirit Assets to Proceed with Merger

The public now has 30 days to submit comments on the proposed order.

Luke Kawa8h

D-Wave Quantum rises as Evercore ISI initiates with “outperform” rating, calling it a “leading play” in industry

D-Wave Quantum is up big on Wednesday after Evercore ISI initiated coverage on the annealing quantum specialist with an “outperform” rating and price target of $44, implying upside of nearly 96% from where the stock closed on Tuesday.

Analyst Mark Lipacis called it a “leading play as the computing industry sees its next Tectonic Shift to a Quantum Computing Era,” highlighting three key things the firm offers to investors:

First quantum company with commercial revenues;
It’s a full-stack play, with services, software, and hardware;
And the ample cash hoard to develop its technology and potentially pursue M&A opportunities.

After its Q3 earnings report, CEO Dr. Alan Baratz told us that bolstering the firm’s gate model system (as opposed to its annealing system, which is its strength) was a priority.

“With the roughly $830 million in the bank, we have the resources to be able to invest more in that program, both internal investment and through acquisition,” he said. “We have one customer who has said, when you have a gate model system, I want it. So it expands our TAM [total addressable market], and it allows us to further grow our revenue.”

While commercial opportunities for publicly traded quantum computing companies have been relatively limited to date, particularly outside of D-Wave, Evercore’s Lipacis argues it’s not too early to invest in the industry.

“Each successive Tectonic Shift in Computing surprised investors with new workloads, and created stock performance of 100x-to-1,000x for full-stack ecosystem leaders,” he wrote. “To be clear, with over 40 quantum companies competing and no clear-cut leaders, we expect a shakeout, but to capture full-alpha, history shows you need to get in 10-years before the Tectonic Shift actually happens.”

He thinks that D-Wave will capture 12% of a quantum computing market that BCG estimates will be between $15 billion to $30 billion by 2035.