Finance
Machines Aren’t Coming for the Lords of Finance, Yet
(Bloomberg Opinion) — Central bankers aren’t born as chronic worriers, but they quickly acquire the trait. They are now spending considerable time fretting about artificial intelligence: Its ability to play havoc with prices, jobs, and the security of banking. As gut-wrenching as the meltdown of 2008 was, imagine if a rogue machine turbocharged a market rout.
It’s not quite a doomsday scenario where AI runs amok and destroys the Earth, said Eddie Yue of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority at a recent conference. But there are plenty of dangers emerging, he added. Yue’s counterpart in Singapore warned of the potential for fraud and cyber attacks. American and UK officials are fearful that algorithms will be used to curtail lending to minorities. While acknowledging the benefits of rapid technological advances to the overall economy, most are wary.
One thing the lords of finance shouldn’t stress about is dilution of their power. Sure, the legions of Ph.D economists that staff central banks may thin. New algorithms that sift real-time data on everything from car sales to foot traffic at malls will rightly push analysts to think about how their roles will transform. But rather than make the men and women who actually set interest rates redundant, AI could make them mightier citizens.
The Bank for International Settlements declared as much, saying that the most basic of tasks, deciding borrowing costs, will still be done by mortals. HAL, the computer that assumes God-like qualities in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, isn’t coming for the Federal Open Market Committee and its global peers. “The ways we organize ourselves and our societies are that we like to hold human beings accountable,” Cecilia Skingsley, head of the Innovation Hub at the BIS, told reporters last month. “You know, changing politicians, possibly changing central-bank governors from time to time.”
She may be lowballing it. The importance of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and his cohort may only grow. As retailers develop applications to keep ever closer tabs on competitors and broader markets, the price of milk in Denmark, for example, may fluctuate during a press conference by Powell, argues Lars Christensen, an associate professor at the Copenhagen Business School. When OPEC raises or cuts oil production, that’s very quickly reflected in the price of gasoline at the roadside. Why shouldn’t the same apply to basic food staples, asks Christensen, cofounder of PAICE, a consulting firm specializing in AI and data analysis.
“In many high-income countries, we already have electronic price tags,” he told me. “You might as well plug them into an algorithm. I don’t think my example of standing in a supermarket watching the price of milk change on the screen as Powell announces rates is unrealistic. For practical reasons, we might change the price only when the supermarket closes or you might have a mechanism that says the price can’t be increased while the customer is in the store. The concept is there.”(1)
Utterances from a generation ago can be resurrected to provide bond-market signals, thanks to a ChatGPT-based language model. JPMorgan Chase & Co. built a program that uses speeches dating back decades to detect the evolution of policy signals. The bank’s economists discovered that when the model showed a rise in inflation concern among Fed speakers between meetings, the following FOMC statement had grown more hawkish. The opposite is also true. Turn that into a trading strategy and the opportunities for a payday are plenty. Initially tracking the Fed, European Central Bank and Bank of England, JPMorgan expanded the method to 10 major developed-market central banks.
There’s always room for nuance and considered opinion. Sometimes the signals aren’t especially clear. For example, how do you interpret the Reserve Bank of Australia’s phrase du jour, “We aren’t ruling anything in or out?” A career Bundesbank policymaker might be less inclined to ease than, say, someone from the Bank of France. Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda can veer off on tangents. His predecessor delighted in surprising investors.
AI works best when complementing human judgment. In some arenas, there is no substitute for experience. The machines helping reduce tax evasion in Turkey perform a public service, for example. Still, nobody would consider the country a gold standard for performance: Inflation is a stratospheric 72%. There needs to be a combination of electrons and brain waves.The employment mandate of central bankers themselves is unlikely to disappear. If Donald Trump wins this year’s presidential election, he’s pledged not to re-appoint Powell, who may not even want a third term. Safe to say HAL won’t make the shortlist — this time.
More From Bloomberg Opinion:
(1) Christensen discussed the subject at length in George Mason University’s Macro Musings podcast last month.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Daniel Moss is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian economies. Previously, he was executive editor for economics at Bloomberg News.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion
DULUTH — The Duluth Homegrown Music Festival is seeking both new operational leadership and a solution to financial filing issues that caused the organization to lose its federal tax-exempt status, which it has not held since 2022.
The organization is currently operating as a taxable nonprofit, confirmed Don Ness, the former Duluth mayor who serves as president of Homegrown’s
board of directors.
Ness and the board are working to discern whether there might be any outstanding tax liabilities in the wake of an apparent filing lapse.
“It’s a serious matter that requires diligence to do things right, and to correct past oversight, and to make sure that we are in full compliance with all tax and regulatory requirements,” Ness said. “The board is 100% committed to that course of action.”
As the Duluth Monitor first reported, Homegrown had its federal tax-exempt status revoked in 2022 after failing to make required financial reports for three years. The Monitor also reported that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office has notified the organization it may be in violation of state law requiring the proper registration of soliciting charities.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“All but one of us have been on for less than a year,” Ness said of the current board members. “We’ve been committed to saying, ‘hey, we need to improve the points of accountability.’”
The organization will also require new operational leadership. Co-directors Cory Jezierski and Dereck Murphy-Williams resigned earlier this month, after leading Homegrown through four successful festivals.
“My contract ended at the end of May, and I knew a few days later that I did not want to continue in that position,” Jezierski said. “Simply put, it was the best thing for my mental health. It’s a job that requires many, many hours and a lot of work, and it can be very stressful as well.”
Amy Arntson / Duluth Media Group file photo
Murphy-Williams did not respond to an interview request for this article, nor did preceding Homegrown director Melissa LaTour. According to LaTour’s
LinkedIn profile,
she was Homegrown director from 2016 to 2022.
Jason Beckman, a recent president who is no longer serving on the board, responded to a News Tribune email but did not provide an interview availability before this article went to press.
Ness does not believe the reporting lapses were due to any ill intent. He praised Jezierski and Murphy-Williams for their success managing festival operations. “They cared deeply about the festival,” he said. “It’s amazing to see that our community continues to support this really unique and special festival.”
“Those guys run a hell of a festival,” said Scott Lunt, festival founder and a current board member. “I think they needed help with bookkeeping.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
By Jezierski’s account, issues with the festival’s tax status became apparent shortly after he became co-director. “We went to file taxes, they were rejected,” Jezierski said. “At that time we, of course, didn’t know why right away, but once we started pulling on that thread, we unraveled a whole lot of the problems that were going on.”
Jezierski said “it took a long time to try to get any sort of help” from the board, but said that by the time he and Murphy-Williams left the organization, “everything had been turned over to be reconciled” with a financial professional.
Ness, like Lunt, was deeply involved with Homegrown in its first decade but had not had an official role with the festival since then. After launching the festival in 1999 and running it on his own for several years, Lunt was “burnt out,” Ness remembered.
Derek Montgomery / Duluth Media Group file photo
After a transition period during which the festival was run in partnership with the Ripsaw newspaper, Homegrown established a nonprofit organization in 2006 with Ness as festival director. Ness subsequently stepped down when he was elected mayor in 2007.
By 2025, Ness was in his current position as executive director of the Ordean Foundation.
“I was approached by a couple of longtime music scenesters,” Ness recalled. “They said, ‘There are questions about (Homegrown’s) nonprofit status. There are questions about some governance issues. We’re concerned.’”
Ness agreed to join the board, and became president. The 2026 festival ran smoothly from an operational standpoint, but Ness found the financial reporting to be lacking.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“The last board meeting that we had prior to the (co-directors’) resignations was intended to be an overview of the festival that was a month before,” Ness said. “I certainly felt very uncomfortable with how little financial information we were receiving.”
Lunt also joined the board in 2025, marking his first time serving in that capacity. He said the new board has been spending significant time addressing the accounting and reporting issues.
“Every year at Homegrown time I’m like, ‘I should get more involved,’ and then I don’t,” Lunt said. “Then this board thing came up, and it was kind of sold to me as, like, four meetings a year. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s perfect.’ And now we’re meeting weekly.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
Although it’s unclear how the organization’s finances will look when the accounting and reporting issues have been fully addressed, along with any outstanding tax liabilities, both Ness and Lunt said they are confident the annual festival will continue without interruption.
“The organization will continue,” Ness said. “The festival will continue. Homegrown is in no danger in terms of its viability.” The financial documentation Ness initially received indicated budgeted revenues of about $140,000, against about $130,000 in expenses.
“Financially, I think we’re in a great spot. We have the money to hire the (financial) professionals, and we have (done so),” Lunt said. “We were hoping that we could get all this sorted out before it had to become more public.”
“We poured countless hours into this festival, and this is how it ends, with everyone talking about this,” Jezierski said. “It’s rough.”
“There’s a DIY ethos that is really at the core of Homegrown,” reflected Ness. “We’re throwing a music festival that isn’t waiting for some famous band from the East Coast to bless us with their presence. We are doing this on our own.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
That DIY spirit also means “you’re kind of passing wisdom down from person to person, and sometimes that’s imperfect.” Ness continued. “The ways that we do things evolve over time, because it’s not a buttoned-down corporate sort of thing. That can create its own set of challenges.”
“It’s self-supporting,” said Lunt about the festival. “It’s widely volunteer-run. You do need to pay a couple people, obviously, to keep track of some things, but it’s going to be strong into the future. It’s gone through its bumps before.”
While most AI in financial services remains advisory, LUMIQ has built the layer that owns the decision — autonomous, auditable AI agents making regulated calls in production at leading banks, insurers, and capital markets firms. Today, LUMIQ serves clients across India, the United States, and Southeast Asia — leading institutions across insurance, banking, and capital markets.
NEW YORK and SINGAPORE, June 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LUMIQ, an AI-native financial services company, today announced a strategic funding round to scale auto-decisioning for financial institutions across the United States and Southeast Asia. The round was led by Bajaj Finserv, one of India’s largest and most diversified financial services groups, with participation from existing investor Info Edge Ventures.
Right now, thousands of customers are waiting for a policy to be issued, a loan to be disbursed, a claim to be adjudicated, because somewhere an FSI employee is drowning in decisions, held back by the risk of getting it wrong. Today, when e-commerce delivers the same day, banks and insurers still decide in weeks. We built LiteCone to take that burden: AI decides the routine cases, completely and accountably, so humans spend their judgment on the one case that actually needs it. This round lets us bring that to every financial institution in the markets that matter most.
Shoaib Mohammad, Co-founder and CEO, LUMIQ
From AI that assists to AI that decides
For decades, financial institutions have bought technology that made their people faster — faster data, faster scoring, faster copilots. The decision still landed on a human. LUMIQ is changing that. Through its LiteCone platform, the company deploys AI agents that read the file, apply the institution’s own guidelines, and reach the decision end to end — escalating only the cases that genuinely require human judgment. The output is not a recommendation. It is a decision, with full reasoning attached, cross-referenced to policy, and defensible under audit.
The results in production speak clearly. At a leading life insurer, LUMIQ’s LEO agent decides 75–80% of underwriting cases with zero human touch, reduced policy issuance cost by roughly 25%, and compressed turnaround from days to under eight minutes — running 24×7 with complete auditability. Across its client base spanning insurance, banking, and capital markets in India, the US, and Southeast Asia, LUMIQ now processes millions of decisions annually.
LiteCone turns a real financial-services role into a working AI agent in weeks. Every agent we deploy is consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable by design — not as an afterthought. This capital lets us go deeper on the platform and broader across roles. And through our cloud and AI lab partnerships, institutions will increasingly find LiteCone already embedded in the platforms they run today.
Vaibhav Dobriyal, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, LUMIQ
Consumer confidence has plunged among traditionally optimistic younger adults amid fears for their personal finances and the wider economy, figures show.
GfK’s long-running Consumer Confidence Index remained unchanged at an overall score of minus 23 in June.
However, the analyst said this was was “misleading as, beneath the surface, there are new signs that confidence is weakening”.
Neil Bellamy, consumer insights director at GfK, said: “The biggest fall this month is among those aged 16 to 29, traditionally one of the most optimistic groups.
“Here confidence has dropped 11 points over the past month to minus two, the lowest level seen for two years, driven by large falls in views on both their own personal finances and the wider economy.
“More broadly, there are now no demographic groups with a positive confidence score, including higher-income households earning £50,000 or more, who have slipped back into negative territory as of June.
“Confidence remains subdued and vulnerable to further economic or political uncertainty.”
Overall, confidence in personal finances over the coming year remained flat at minus two, four points lower than this time last year.
The measures of both personal finances and the economy over the previous 12 months were both slightly down, by two points and three points respectively, “reflecting the sense that things have been extremely tough over the last year for so many”, GfK said.
The only measure to increase was expectations for the wider economy over the next 12 months, up two points to minus 36 but still eight points below this time last year.
The major purchase index, an indicator of confidence in buying big ticket items, remained at minus 20, four points lower than June last year.
-
Louisiana2 minutes agoFrom ‘not pageant people’ to Miss Louisiana stage: Addison J…
-
Maine9 minutes agoMaine gubernatorial candidates trade barbs on first day of general campaign
-
Maryland12 minutes agoMaryland governor celebrates Juneteenth in historically-Black Montgomery County community – WTOP News
-
Michigan17 minutes agoWest Michigan celebrates Juneteenth
-
Massachusetts24 minutes agoMassachusetts gas prices finally hit reverse, falling back toward $4
-
Mississippi27 minutes agoPolice shooting of a 1-year-old Mississippi boy ignites tension between police and residents – WXXV News 25
-
Minnesota27 minutes agoRare tick disease poses a danger in Minnesota lakes area
-
Missouri39 minutes ago10 pounds of meth found during I-70 traffic stop, Callaway County Sheriff’s Office says
