Flight Mode

What is Flight Mode?

This process of dumping nearly $1 trillion into the U.S. banking system has already begun. How is it going to work? There is currently a $1.5 trillion short term bill hamster wheel that the U.S. Treasury has been running on like a crazed mouse since April. They issue about $1.5 trillion in short term paper every month and pay it back with about the same in new short term issuance. They have about $1.6 trillion stuck in their bank account at the Federal Reserve, and that money is now coming out to pay down that hamster wheel. The issuance of new short term paper is slowing down. All this new money is going to stuff banks so full of short term cash that they will be forced to slam it into the existing supply of short term paper to such an extent that the rates are going to go negative, nominally. Nobody knows how deeply, but it’s definitely coming, probably in the next few days.

Below is the graph of 1-month rates from CNBC. They are about to cross the zero boundary.

When that happens, commodities prices are going to get completely unhinged. The cash on corporate balance sheets is going to start losing purchasing power very fast. And that will only encourage more dumping of it, and increase the positive feedback loop now already in place.

How to play Flight Mode

Rovito, meanwhile, was such a fan of the mayor that he named a dish after him— “Linguini alla Mayor Grasso”—a pasta that comes with “fresh tomato sauce and basil, tossed with a touch of olive oil, and topped with fresh ricotta.”

In an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune in June, Grasso complained that “some members of the Chicago news media stigmatize Italian Americans as Outfit members or mafia operatives whenever it serves to embellish a story.”

Federal prosecutors, however, do not mention the mafia in court documents. They allege the gambling ring generated millions of dollars through illegal sports betting, video gambling, and loansharking operations, with members using intimidation and violence—or the threat of it—to collect debts.  

How to play Flight Mode

For an industry already producing content at enormous scale, that distinction is important. The promise of Game in a Box and Studio in a Box is not simply that they can help put even more games into an already crowded market.

Instead, Curwen hopes that by removing some of the cost and risk that have traditionally surrounded development, creators will have greater freedom to take chances on what they produce.

“That’s ultimately where I want Game in a Box to take us,” he says. “Technology handles more of the complexity, while people concentrate on creating great games.”