This Week in Charts 8-5-22
This article is a transcript of a Youtube video which can be found here.
Hello kings and queens, fans and friends. Today we look once again at “the news” with another edition of This Week in Charts. Before we look at the headlines, I encourage you to check out my collection of audiobooks, either here on my channel or on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. They’re great and you might find a genre you enjoy on your commute. Anyways, here’s today’s news:
Corporate Charts
- Space! An international participation game;
- Five factors affecting healthcare workforce retention;
- And numbers on how the UK has ramped up its trade with China.
3D Printing News
- New additive initiatives by the European Union;
- Swarm robotics meets 3D printing… again;
- And a unique application of additive construction.
Financial Technology
- Apple comes under regulatory scrutiny for its growing lending unit;
- Crypto exchange FTX to offer stock trader, and more;
- And factors of instability for the SWIFT payment network.
Let’s dive in.
Corporate Charts
The United States still leads the way in spending on space exploration, but it’s far from being the only significant player. About 70 countries now have national space agencies, and 20 nations across four continents have dedicated more than $100 million each in civil space spending annually. This is a significant chart so we’ll dissect it in chunks.
First, it’s clear that space exploration is trending upward with the most significant player still the United States in terms of budget. The US also leads the world with the most astronauts to visit the international space station and the most satellites in orbit. The producers of this show have long speculated that the power of the US dollar is directly linked to the number of aircraft carriers it has in the field. We believe another correlation exists with space power… what do you think?
Nurses considering changing positions pay particular attention to five factors: a safe environment, work–life balance, caring and trusting teammates, meaningful work, and a flexible work schedule, according to a recent McKinsey survey. Perhaps surprisingly, neither compensation nor potential for advancement ranked in the top five of importance. I’ll observe that quality of teammates scores highly on this chart, another indicator to the producers that cooperation and teamwork are competitive skills in the 21st century.
From the second quarter of 2020 through the first quarter of 2021, Chinese imports to the United Kingdom steadily increased. With the EU transition period that ended in January 2021, this trend is expected to continue, as 77 percent of chief procurement officers say they have no plan to reduce the value of their sourcing from China leading up to 2025. As the world continues to thaw, the island nation could leverage their air and sea routes over the north pole to further interface with the Oriental giant.
EU Investment in Additive
Kicking off our 3D printing news today is an initiative by the European Union to address the skill gap between technological progress and a talented workforce. Funding the THREE-D-PRINT Project (yes, it’s spelled out), the initiative has focused on developing literature and programs to educate folks on additive manufacturing, from adult education programs to seminars and guides for educators. Fighting the stigma that 3D printing is for either large corporations or mere hobbyists, the initiative is geared towards building small businesses to fill supply-chain starved niches or make new ones.
Swarm Printing
If you’ve been following my channel you may recall that my first audiobook was focused on converging technologies, a noted exponentially accelerating trend of the digital age that remains at the heart of all my business endeavors. Swarm robotics and 3D printing is one such convergence that has the potential to deliver tremendous value. Arkansas-based AMBOTS has produced a networked family of small robots equipped with 3D printing equipment which operate together to produce… well whatever the project dictates. In this case, the swarm was able to fabricate a fully operational miniature electric car, which drove itself away from the build area on completion. The mission statement for AMBOTS is based on building the “factory of the future” featuring supply chain independence, the evolution of the product life cycle, and interestingly, a provision towards developing extraterrestrial civilization. How do you see additive manufacturing evolving off-world?
Organic Printing
To Grow a Building is a 3D printing project by Israeli real estate firm Rogovin and was debuted at Jerusalem Design Week. The team presented a robotic arm system that 3D printed structures out of soil-based extrusion material infused with the seeds of various plants. Given time, the seeds sprout contributing not only to the design’s aesthetic but to the structure’s strength and durability, similar to a mangrove forest. With sustainability touted as a primary driver toward additive construction, this method takes a serious step forward in the application of organic materials. The producers will keep a keen eye on this system!
Financial Technology News
We now move on to financial technology, with stories primarily from portfolio manager The Fintech Collective. They produce an insightful weekly newsletter, and I encourage you to subscribe at the link in this show’s description.
Lending Scrutiny
Technology giant Apple has come under fire by regulators as it expands its Apple Pay service into a lending brand, dubbed Apple Pay Later. Leading investigation is Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director Rohit Chopra, who seeks to maintain competition against Big Tech companies who wan to “dominate the digital wallet”. With mainstream lending challenged by buy now-pay later schemes, the powers that be demand oversight for big data, wary of the ability to manipulate consumers and the market.
FTX Grows Offering
In a move to grow its customer base and grow assets under management, crypto exchange platform FTX announced that they will expand their US trading platform with no-fee stock trading to all users, even those not in the crypto market. They also plan to add options trading, but no specific timeline was given.
SWIFT Challenges
While digital payment usage surged during the pandemic, experts predict that the trend may not continue, particularly in cross-border scenarios. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT network, has long been a staple for international cash flow. The network’s recent political move to remove Russia from the system for its aggression in Ukraine triggered a domino effect of the development of alternative cross-border payment systems to disrupt “old-fashioned” and “cumbersome” legacy applications. A paper from the Economic Intelligence Unit describes the difficulty of navigating this new, complex landscape and prescribes future models of interconnection. While challenging the SWIFT network, this disruption may also usher in new applications of value exchange like blockchain, APIs, and tokenization.
And that’s all the news we’ve got today. If you found any of the topics interesting, let us know in the comments and we’ll focus our research there. I also encourage you to check out my audiobooks on Spotify for information, motivation, and inspiration. As always thanks for tuning in, don’t forget to like and subscribe, and we’ll see you next week on This Week in Charts.
~ fïn ~
