Assignment 6

1. Economic Trend: The us economy will sustain above trend growth.

• https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/what-expect-economy-2018-nariman-behravesh/
• The opportunity exists because of the signs of consumer spending and housing markets increasing. 
• The prototypical customer would be any US citizen that is a part of the economy. Weather you buy a house, or spend extra money on food. 
• This can be easy to exploit. These trends are shifting to a consumer spending growth meaning that anyone can be a part of this opportunity. 
• I think this opportunity is important to me because of the housing market increase. I believe that the housing market is an important part of the economy. A house is the most expensive thing that most US citizens invent in. And it is also nearly 25% of the GDP. The housing market is a good meter for how the economy is doing on a general scale.

2. Economic Trend: Shadow-Banking replacing classic banks

• https://www.ibtimes.com/sleepwalking-towards-next-financial-crisis-here-are-five-biggest-risks-2717084
• This opportunity exists because hedge funds and insurance companies supply more lending than regular banks
• The prototypical customer would be someone looking for a loan
• This can be easily exploited as Shadow bankers aren't hit with the same regulations as standard banks.
• I think this is an odd opportunity. Shadow banking is seen as bad for the economy, but I think it is better. If there are more people able to load money out, then that means more people can participate in the economy. This is given that the loads don't default. More people spending is always better for the economy.

3. Regulatory change: Expansion of civilian research and development of advanced nuclear energy technologies.

• https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/s97/summary
• This opportunity exists because it opens an entire market for relevant nuclear research. 
• The prototypical customer would be scientists and researchers who work on nuclear activity and power. 
• This would be hard to exploit due to the knowledge barrier and the funding required for nuclear power research. 
• I think this is an opportunity because as a species, we want to protect our life. We want to move away from dirty coal and oil. Nuclear power is the biggest, cleanest form of power we currently have. I come from a city that was powered by a nuclear plant. I think that improving this technology is a huge step in the right direction for us as Humans.

4. Regulatory change: establish goals and priorities for a 10-year plan to accelerate the development of quantum information science and technology.

• https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/6227
• This opportunity exists because it means that our current quantum information technologies quantum computing) could be advanced years ahead. 
• The prototypical customer could be a company like Intel that sells computing hardware. 
• This would be difficult to exploit as the funding to build, distribute and sell quantum computers would be relatively high. 
• I think this is a huge opportunity. We  are coming close the limitations of standard computing chips. With quantum computing, computers become much much more powerful. This can advance nearly any type of research. It can make daily computing activities like servers and calculations much faster. We can design better AIs, algorithms, weather predictions. The possibilities are endless. And according to moore's law, computing gets 2x as fast every 2 years at the same price.