Quad/Graphics, the American printing company, was founded near Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1971 by a husband and wife team. Harry and Betty Quadracci saw advantages in a family approach to doing business coupled with a long-term outlook and a willingness to innovate. Today, Quad/Graphics is a $4B company with facilities all over the US and around the world.

International FinTech startups are looking to the United States as a vast consumer and business market for their applications and services. Despite the difficulties posed by a dual regulatory system, in which multiple federal regulators join agencies in all 50 states, the wealth and size of the market beckons.

The news that Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase joined forces to create their own healthcare company rocked the industry. The ten largest health insurers and pharmacy businesses lost $30B in market value in two hours.[1]

California teachers have teamed up with an East Coast activist hedge fund to petition Apple Inc. to step up its game and give parents the tools and choices they need to ensure smartphones don’t damage children’s health. Together, CalSTRS and JANA Partners are turning an old adage on its ear about gifting shiny apples to teachers.

In my last newsletter, I said that global economic fundamentals seem to be positive, and in spite of market turmoil in the interim I am going to reiterate that statement.  Volatility has returned, which will bring opportunities for those who are not faint of heart.  This is an exciting time, never dull, never boring.

I am sharing my new editorial, just published by the news service UNIVISION.  The work examines the PRC's expanding, increasingly self-confident engagement with Latin America and the Caribbean, as manifested in the recent China-CELAC summit in Santiago Chile.  The work notes China's growing pursuit of political and security engagement with the hemisphere, as well as its surprising willingness to acknowledge its intention to move the region away from its relationships with the US and other "great powers."  

If you have a bully pulpit, use it. That’s precisely what BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink did when he championed corporates’ engagement with purpose to staunch the pace of climate change and embrace the preservation of the public commons together with its specific stakeholders.

Expect state government agencies and legislators to move most quickly on providing regulatory clarity on FinTech regulation in the United States. U.S. federal regulatory agencies have initiated enforcement actions against some of the most egregious cryptocurrency investment practices and are watching the industry closely.

With the government open for business as usual this morning, book-valuewholesale inventories were reported up +0.4% in December. Including revisions, these data were in-line with BEA’s estimates in the Advance Report of 17Q4 GDP. FMI is still tracking no net change to 17Q4’s +2.6% real GDP growth in the Second Report on February 28.  
 

What a week it was!  Equity markets and cryptocurrencies, both of which appeared to defy the laws of gravity, and the US dollar took a dive.  However, the story of synchronized global growth does not seem to have changed. Have we finally escaped the long dark shadow cast in 2008?  Renowned Japanese economy expert Takatoshi Ito thinks that things are changing at the Bank of Japan, the institution that invented and led the world in quantitative easing. This could be a signal of things to come in a new global monetary policy environment.