• Do (transactional)

• Know (informational)

• Go (navigational)

Freeing ourselves of keyword tunnel vision

Serving user intent = user experience

The opportunity: Information seekers

1. Google search for “Canon DSLR”
2. See a product and look up reviews
3. Shortlist items, look up reviews across YouTube, forums, blogs, overseas sellers, etc
4. Decide on something that might be the right combination of price and features
5. Search again for product name
6. Shocked at the price, look up Gumtree used ads
7. Find some items you hadn’t seen, Google for more info
8. Refine your shortlist
9. Go back to look for brand new cameras
10. Notice Google Shopping or eBay ads and discover much cheaper prices for the same items
11. Why are some people so much cheaper? Google the store names
12. Whirlpool forum, find out that there’s a grey import market
13. Look up grey import company reviews. Mainly forums come up
14. Research into pros and cons of grey imports
15. Start watching YouTube videos on totally different camera-related topics (e.g. photoshop, photography techniques) and consume this media
16. Forget you were even shopping for a camera and start looking at lenses for days on end
17. Days or weeks later, repeat this process until you feel confident you know enough to have made a good decision
18. Purchase
19. Continue researching for product support, tutorials, and new gear to go with your recent purchase
20. Repeat ad nauseam.

People search repeatedly. Aim for their search refinements.

But what about the cost of creating all this content?

Highlights:

• While my base case forecast for the U.S. economy is not a recession, higher interest rates and lower earnings could test the ability of businesses to service debt.
• In addition, and perhaps more in focus given the recent events affecting certain areas of the banking sector, higher interest rates could further exacerbate stress at banking organizations, especially those that are highly exposed to longer-duration assets and have a relatively high ratio of uninsured deposits to total deposits.
• A decision to hold our policy rate constant at a coming meeting should not be interpreted to mean that we have reached the peak rate for this cycle.
  • Indeed, skipping a rate hike at a coming meeting would allow the Committee to see more data before making decisions about the extent of additional policy firming.
• "Moreover, household and business balance sheets are generally strong, and the credit quality of loans is generally much better than on the eve of the Global Financial Crisis."
  • "Leverage across key parts of the financial sector, including especially the largest banks and broker-dealers, is much lower than in the mid-2000s."
• Even so, we remain vigilant to the potential for vulnerabilities to emerge.
  • "First, recent stresses highlighted the importance of effective liquidity and interest rate risk management, including both reliance on uninsured deposits and exposure to duration risk in asset holdings."
    • "While the resilience of the financial sector will limit the spillovers from recent events, I expect those strains to lead to a further tightening in credit supply from banks that will weigh on economic activity."
  • "Second, it is also important to assess how changes in the financial sector, including expanded use of online banking and shifts in behavior that may be driven by access to social media, may alter the potential speed of deposit flows.'
  • "Third, the weakness in some sectors of commercial real estate will affect the credit quality of those types of commercial real estate loans and thereby place strains on lenders with high concentrations of those loans."
    • "Changes in work preferences and the increase in remote work is leading to a reassessment of the outlook for office and associated retail properties, and it will take time for the extent of that weakness to become clearer."
• "As Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr has noted, finalizing the Basel III reforms is a high priority for the Federal Reserve."
  • "The revised framework should improve the resilience of the banking system by producing more robust and internationally consistent capital requirements for large firms, building on improvements made to the capital framework following the Global Financial Crisis." "
  • "Importantly, the revised framework is expected to reduce unwarranted variability in capital requirements."
  • "By increasing standardization, these reforms aim to increase transparency and public confidence in risk-weighted assets while also reducing complexity."

TLDRS:

• While it's not all doom and gloom, the big "R" (Recession) isn't in Jefferson's crystal ball--must be on the fritz (he needs new batteries, he should pick those up from GameStop!...)
  • Jefferson admits rising interest rates and dwindling earnings could turn debt servicing into a a complete anchor for businesses.
    • Banks in particular might feel the squeeze from higher rates, especially those playing fast and loose with longer-term assets and those chunky pile of uninsured deposits.
• Jefferson is playing coy with the policy rate talk doesn't mean we've hit peak as discussed this morning.
• Jefferson claims households and businesses are mostly in the black, and loan quality is looking a lot healthier than during the Global Financial Crisis.
  • Banks and brokers aren't maxing out their credit cards like in the mid-2000s.
  • Notice Jefferson didn't say consumers?...
    • From 1st quarter 2022 to 1st quarter 2023, total household debt has increased $1,205 billion to $17.05 trillion (+7.57%)--Mortgage balances ($864 billion), HELOC ($22 billion), Student loans ($14 billion), Auto loans ($93 billion), Credit Card debt ($145 billion), Other ($67 billion).
• But hey, complacency is for the birds he claims the Fed is on the lookout for sneaky vulnerabilities...:
  • From a shift towards online banking and social media whims impacting deposit flows, to commercial real estate wobbles due to our newfound love for WFH destroying commercial real estate values, Jefferson is keeping his eyes peeled!
  • Completion of the Basel III reforms are on the docket--finally!

Full Speech:

Good afternoon, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here and share my perspective on some key challenges policymakers currently face. Before I begin, let me remind you that the views I will express today are my own and are not necessarily those of my colleagues in the Federal Reserve System.
This conference is timely and relevant. Among the topics covered are current financial stability risks and vulnerabilities, potential developments in banking supervision and regulation, and operational risk and resilience under evolving technologies. During the next three days, you will have an opportunity to engage in stimulating discussions with expert panelists on these and other critical issues.
Today, I would like to share with you, at a high level, some of the Federal Reserve's recent and ongoing initiatives on a few of these issues. I also want to share with you an overview of the Federal Reserve's approach toward financial stability and my thoughts on interactions between the economic outlook and financial stability. My remarks will be U.S. focused, fully understanding that other countries monitor financial stability similarly and that the health of the U.S. economy and financial system has an impact on other countries, and vice versa.
The Federal Reserve's Approach Toward Financial StabilityA stable financial system is resilient even in the face of sharp downturns or stress events. It provides households and businesses with the financing they need to participate and thrive in a well-functioning economy. It is difficult to anticipate or prevent shocks, but sound policies can mitigate their impact. At the Federal Reserve, we work hard to make sure that an initial shock in one area of the financial system does not spill over to other markets or institutions and cause severe or widespread strains. Such spillovers could disrupt the flow of credit and cause outsized declines in employment and economic activity. It is not our role, nor should it be our objective, to influence the allocation of credit within or across sectors of the U.S. economy.
Financial and nonfinancial institutions and households are linked through a web of relationships. The economic activities of households and businesses depend on the strength of financial institutions' balance sheets, as households and businesses obtain funding through the financial sector. Similarly, the health of the financial sector hinges on the strength of the balance sheets of households, businesses, and financial institutions, as financial institutions' assets are the liabilities of these sectors.
The Federal Reserve monitors and assesses potential vulnerabilities that may develop because of interactions among key participants. We do that by focusing on the safety and soundness of individual supervised institutions and by looking across the entire financial and nonfinancial system for potential risks and vulnerabilities. These risks and vulnerabilities can include elevated valuation pressures, excessive borrowing by households and businesses, excessive leverage in the financial system, and elevated funding risks. In other words, at the Federal Reserve, we use both microprudential and macroprudential approaches to monitor the health of financial institutions and the financial sector.
The recent banking stress events remind us that risks and vulnerabilities in financial markets are continuously changing. That is why the staff at the Federal Reserve is constantly monitoring domestic and foreign financial markets and institutions, as well as the financial condition of households and businesses, with the goal of identifying current and future vulnerabilities. Such forward-looking financial stability monitoring helps inform policymakers about ongoing vulnerabilities in the financial system that may amplify a range of potential adverse events or shocks.
The U.S. Financial System and Economic OutlookU.S. financial markets and institutions remain resilient even though financial stability risks and vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system have increased since the recent stress events. Conditions in the banking sector have stabilized thanks, in part, to decisive emergency actions taken in March by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Treasury. The Federal Reserve, using existing regulatory and supervisory tools, is working to ensure that banks improve and update their liquidity, commercial real estate, and interest rate risk-management practices.
I expect spending and economic growth to remain quite slow over the rest of 2023, due to tight financial conditions, low consumer sentiment, heightened uncertainty, and a decline in household savings that had built up after the onset of the pandemic. Inflation has come down substantially since last summer, but it is still too high, and by some measures progress has been decelerating recently, particularly in the core services sector. While it is reasonable to expect that the recent banking stress events will lead banks to tighten credit standards further, the amount of tightening and the magnitude of the effect such tightening might have on the U.S. economy is not yet clear, and this uncertainty complicates economic forecasts.
Short-term interest rates are 5 percentage points higher than they were a little over a year ago. History shows that monetary policy works with long and variable lags, and that a year is not a long enough period for demand to feel the full effect of higher interest rates. While my base case forecast for the U.S. economy is not a recession, higher interest rates and lower earnings could test the ability of businesses to service debt. In addition, and perhaps more in focus given the recent events affecting certain areas of the banking sector, higher interest rates could further exacerbate stress at banking organizations, especially those that are highly exposed to longer-duration assets and have a relatively high ratio of uninsured deposits to total deposits. Since late last year, the Federal Open Market Committee has slowed the pace of rate hikes as we have approached a stance of monetary policy that will be sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent over time. A decision to hold our policy rate constant at a coming meeting should not be interpreted to mean that we have reached the peak rate for this cycle. Indeed, skipping a rate hike at a coming meeting would allow the Committee to see more data before making decisions about the extent of additional policy firming. With that said, let me turn to the topics covered in our two sessions this afternoon.
Current Financial Stability Risks and VulnerabilitiesDuring the first session this afternoon, you will be discussing current financial stability risks and vulnerabilities as well as historical parallels. As we have seen in the past couple of months, the failure of a large banking organization, even if not deemed individually systemically important under our regulations, can cause markets to reassess the condition of other firms with roughly similar size and risk profiles, and the resulting spillovers can generate significant negative consequences for the broader economy. As I mentioned earlier, conditions in the banking sector have stabilized. Moreover, broader U.S. financial markets and the overwhelming majority of financial institutions have been resilient to the recent stress events.
The resilience of the financial system to current salient risks can be appreciated by contrasting it to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Leading up to the Global Financial Crisis, housing markets were substantially overvalued, mortgage underwriting standards were weak, and home mortgages were at substantial risk of falling underwater if house prices fell. Yet banks had limited loss-absorbing capacity and were heavily reliant on wholesale short-term funding, and interconnections across the financial system were opaque. When housing markets weakened, opacity contributed to investors' fears, short-term funding pulled away, and excessive leverage led to fire sales as financial institutions experienced losses and major firms failed or were rescued by the government. The economy experienced a deep recession, and unemployment ultimately reached 10 percent.
The current resilience of the financial sector points to substantially more limited spillovers from recent events. The failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank showed excessive reliance at those institutions on uninsured deposits and excessive exposure to interest rate risk. Even so, the overwhelming majority of banks have strong balance sheets with limited leverage, high levels of loss-absorbing capacity, and healthy liquidity. Moreover, household and business balance sheets are generally strong, and the credit quality of loans is generally much better than on the eve of the Global Financial Crisis. Leverage across key parts of the financial sector, including especially the largest banks and broker-dealers, is much lower than in the mid-2000s.
Even so, we remain vigilant to the potential for vulnerabilities to emerge. Three areas of potential concern have been the focus of our supervisory and regulatory work. First, recent stresses highlighted the importance of effective liquidity and interest rate risk management, including both reliance on uninsured deposits and exposure to duration risk in asset holdings. While the resilience of the financial sector will limit the spillovers from recent events, I expect those strains to lead to a further tightening in credit supply from banks that will weigh on economic activity. Second, it is also important to assess how changes in the financial sector, including expanded use of online banking and shifts in behavior that may be driven by access to social media, may alter the potential speed of deposit flows. Third, the weakness in some sectors of commercial real estate will affect the credit quality of those types of commercial real estate loans and thereby place strains on lenders with high concentrations of those loans. Changes in work preferences and the increase in remote work is leading to a reassessment of the outlook for office and associated retail properties, and it will take time for the extent of that weakness to become clearer.
Ongoing Regulatory Capital InitiativesLater in the afternoon, during the second session of the conference, you will be discussing a few key ongoing regulatory capital initiatives, focusing on the completion of the Basel III reforms. As Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr has noted, finalizing the Basel III reforms is a high priority for the Federal Reserve. The revised framework should improve the resilience of the banking system by producing more robust and internationally consistent capital requirements for large firms, building on improvements made to the capital framework following the Global Financial Crisis. Importantly, the revised framework is expected to reduce unwarranted variability in capital requirements. By increasing standardization, these reforms aim to increase transparency and public confidence in risk-weighted assets while also reducing complexity.
As we speak, the staffs of the U.S. federal banking agencies are diligently working on a Basel III endgame proposal that should be issued for public comment soon. At the same time, the Federal Reserve staff is considering ways to enhance the ability of stress tests to capture a wider range of risks and identify vulnerabilities at the largest banking organizations.
ConclusionBased on this brief overview of the issues, this afternoon promises to be invigorating and informative. I look forward to hearing how the panel discussions go. I hope that you enjoy the conference.
Thank you.

• Total assets as at January 31, 2023 of $42,290,356
• Total cash as at January 31, 2023 of $6,871,401
• Working capital as at January 31, 2023 of $11,684,677
• Shareholder's equity as at January 31, 2023 of $38,864,372

• Closed the first tranche in the amount of $10 million of a $15 million non-dilutive mineral royalty financing agreement effective Dec. 16, 2022 , with Triple Flag Precious Metals Corp. The Triple Flag royalty agreement features a 2.5-per-cent net smelter returns (NSR) mining royalty for all mineral product produced on the Thunder Bay North critical minerals (platinum, palladium, copper and nickel) project in Northern Ontario, Canada , temporarily excepting the Escape claims. Subsequent to January 31, 2023 , the Company received the second tranche of $5 million and added the Triple Flag royalty to the Escape claims.
• Completed 2022 diamond drilling, including 17625 m on the Escape and 7068 m on the Current Critical Metal Deposits in November, 2022.
• Signed an Exploration Agreement with its First Nation Partners, the Fort William First Nation, the Red Rock Indian Band and the Biinjitiwaabik Zaaging Anishinaabek for the Thunder Bay North Project in April, 2022.
• Announced the closing of a $12.5 million equity and flow through private placement on strong institutional support, including Michael Gentile , CFA, in February, 2022.