LIBOR finance trends

Fluctuations in the LIBOR, 1999-2018

Eric Garland DataLab

The LIBOR, or London Inter-bank Offered Rate, is the average of what top banks in the City would charge to loan to each other. It’s a key indicator of financial markets and economic trends in general. We’ve noticed a strong recent shift in this indicator, and we believe that it will have particular impact on highly-leveraged business deals – not …

extreme poverty economic trends

Extreme poverty dropping rapidly around the world

Eric Garland DataLab

Good news from Oxford researcher Max Roser, who lightly chided the news media to frame a headline that could suggest that more than 100,000 people left extreme poverty yesterday alone.   Newspapers could have had the headline “Number of people in extreme poverty fell by 137,000 since yesterday” Every day in the last 25 years. pic.twitter.com/oKxco1oVHL — Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) …

How Brexit shook up Euro currencies – or didn’t

Eric Garland DataLab

With even the brains behind Brexit describe the current state of the project as a complete mess, it’s a good time to look at how currency markets have reacted to British and *ahem* European currencies.British Pound (GBP) vs. US Dollar (USD)It’s pretty clear that the Brexit vote definitively changed the relationship between the Pound Sterling and the US Dollar.The dollar …

Facebook monthly active users

Monthly active users at Facebook

Eric Garland DataLab

Facebook, now implicated in the Russian interference in the 2016 US elections (as well as those of France, the Netherlands, Germany, and others) has achieved such massive power by accruing a base of monthly active users that is the plurality of the human race. Of all grandiose statements, this is not an exaggeration in statistical or metaphorical terms. The tech …