Callum Howat

economist

[Ashish Tuli @ashishtuli]

The move to 12-inch masks for High-NA EUV has been building for years. Intel has championed the large-mask format for more than three years, working with ASML and across mask makers, automation, EDA, materials and manufacturers.

High-NA works today with 6-inch masks. Larger masks can remove stitching constraints and improve scanner productivity, but getting there requires the entire ecosystem to move together. With TSMC and Samsung now publicly backing the transition, that broader alignment is taking shape.

[🌿 lithos @lithos_graphein]

Evolution of the projection lens used in semiconductor lithography.
Source: ASML

[Brad Setser @Brad_Setser]

Exorbitant privilege is no more --

The US FDI income balance (US firms profits abroad net of foreign firms US profits) goes away once the excess profit US firms earn in low tax jurisdictions is stripped out ...

Joint work with @Mike_Weilandt

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[Brad Setser @Brad_Setser]

One of the most common (in elite circles) misperceptions about the US balance of payments is that the US borrows externally to invest in equities abroad & thus acts a bit like PE fund or a hedge fund.

It isn't true. US external debt just covers US current spending --

1/

[FT Alphaville @FTAlphaville]

How bonds ate the entire financial system https://t.co/XYABfmGfmS

[Ben Hunt @EpsilonTheory]

The City of Man always wins.

The Visigoths always sack Rome. The Vandals always sack Hippo. Augustine always dies in the siege. Bad things always happen to good people ... at scale.

Here's how we use generative AI to flip the script.
https://t.co/jxO8w4xs0P

[Tuomas Malinen @mtmalinen]

Past week I promised a (long) thread on global #liquidity and so, here goes!

I have been analyzing the current state global liquidity since early November. Then I warned on possibility of an outright collapse of market liquidity.
🧵1/25
https://t.co/O6fl7ufEiC

[Hyun Song Shin @HyunSongShin]

Inspired by the debate between @nfergus and @adam_tooze on the current state of globalisation, I devoted my lecture at Columbia this week to take the pulse on global value chains:

"Global value chains under the shadow of Covid"

https://t.co/Mc1KjWLKMQ

[Brad Setser @Brad_Setser]

Apparently, the folks at Davos debated whether the world is deglobalziing or reglobalizing …

I actually have a great deal of sympathy for the argument made by Niall Ferguson – namely that it is hard to “reglobalize” when there hasn’t yet been any real deglobalization …

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[Conks @conksresearch]

Fears of another liquidity crisis have entered the mainstream, with many people guessing what will cause the next financial upheaval. Right now, all triggers have been suppressed, but not for long. The Great Liquidity Squeeze™ is upon us... 1/

[Chris Marsh @GeneralTheorist]

As @danielmunevar has pointed out, yesterday the IMF dropped an Ex Post Evaluation (EPE) of the Argentina SBA from 2018. Such an EPE is expected for exceptional access cases, and Daniel has been doing God’s work in pulling out some of the key points from that document. THREAD.

[Hanno Lustig @HannoLustig]

🧵 is QE `just an asset swap'?

[John Authers @johnauthers]

When Nixon closed the “gold window,” 50 years ago today, he inadvertently ushered in a half-century of fiat currencies, backed only by confidence in the issuing governments and central banks. Here's my attempt to summarize what followed: https://t.co/frd0U0HhB4 via @bopinion

[Steph Smith @stephsmithio]

There's a lot of hype around NFTs and very little nuance around them.

I tend to see 2 arguments:

1. This is the future
2. This is worthless

The world is not black & white.

NFTs are not useless, nor are they that useful intrinsically. But so are many other things in life.

🧵

[kasey @kaseyklimes]

This is the village in Germany where my parents met in the 1980's.

It is called Imsbach, population: 971

The longest walk you can take while staying in the village is 15 minutes.

a thread about villages/

[Tony Yates @t0nyyates]

1. The government and particularly the PM was complacent in getting into gear as the virus gathered pace in China and Italy.

[Josh Gross @endtwist]

So many folks (esp. the media) are missing the complete backstory on $GME and how we got here.

This has been simmering for over a year and the story behind it is great. I’ve been tracking this since September and devoured all of the details from the origin through today.

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

THREAD: The story of the week in finance is how a group of retail traders at @wallstreetbets, with assists from @ElonMusk and @Chamath, took down the establishment short sellers at GameStop.

A thread on the underlying mechanics of the $GME saga...

[Trung Phan @TrungTPhan]

Netflix’s revenue per employee is an insane $2.6m.

More than:

— Apple ($2m)
— Alphabet ($1.4m)
— Microsoft ($877k)

(Apple obvi crushes profits and FCF, though)

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

How often are numbers prime?

Early on, there's a lot of prime numbers: 2, 3, 5, 7, ... But they thin out as you get to larger numbers. It gets "harder" for numbers to be prime, & "easier" for numbers to be composite; there's a kind of combinatorial explosion of composites