Economics/Business Archives - Attention to the Unseen

Can American democracy survive the next financial crash?

From elsewhere — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 23:20:03 +0000

Sarah Bloom Raskin, a former Federal Reserve governor and former deputy secretary of the Treasury, writes: The bailout clock is ticking. In September, Oracle invoked “force majeure” to delay paying debt on a data center, which led to a drop in the corporation’s stock price. This month, OpenAI significantly cut its revenue projections; CoreWeave, a heavily leveraged data-center company, saw its share price plunge; and investors began racing to buy credit-default swaps to protect their portfolios. These are all signs...

Read More Read More

The post Can American democracy survive the next financial crash? appeared first on Attention to the Unseen.

There’s not enough money in the world to pay for the AI boom

From elsewhere — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 00:18:44 +0000

The Washington Post reports: The biggest bet in the history of the United States keeps getting bigger and we’re all hanging on for the ride. Technology companies recently launched a record scramble for cash to pay for data centers, computer chips and technology and equipment to power artificial intelligence. This boom is so expensive that even Silicon Valley giants are bleeding cash and companies are now racing one another to collect or borrow other people’s money for the estimated $10...

Read More Read More

The post There’s not enough money in the world to pay for the AI boom appeared first on Attention to the Unseen.

New analysis sees ‘rapidly increasing’ odds the AI bubble is about to burst

From elsewhere — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 01:01:36 +0000

Futurism reports: Whether you use AI in your personal life or not, there is no longer any escaping the grasp of the industry’s tendrils. There are multiple trillions of dollars now resting on AI’s success, much of it bound up in speculative debt. As everybody knows, debt is only an issue if you can’t pay it off — and as top AI labs fail to bring in enough revenue to cover skyrocketing costs, alarms are blaring that the entire global...

Read More Read More

The post New analysis sees ‘rapidly increasing’ odds the AI bubble is about to burst appeared first on Attention to the Unseen.

Who’s paying whom? The circular money machine behind the AI boom (or bubble)

From elsewhere — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 00:10:52 +0000

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, centre, speaking at the White House. OpenAI president Greg Brockman is on the right. AP By Ruipeng Liu, Deakin University and Sagarika Mishra, Deakin University Imagine a company that sells you equipment, invests money in your business, and then rents back what you build with it. It’s your supplier, your investor and your customer all at once. That’s known as circular financing. Many artificial intelligence (AI) companies, including Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Nvidia, have adopted...

Read More Read More

The post Who’s paying whom? The circular money machine behind the AI boom (or bubble) appeared first on Attention to the Unseen.

Bill Gates: Prepare for 20 years of tumultuous AI disruption

From elsewhere — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 23:57:39 +0000

Nilay Patel: My guest today is Bill Gates, co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft and chairman of the Gates Foundation. You may have noticed Bill in the news more lately — he’s been on something of a tour for the past few months talking about AI risk, and how crucial it is that we start taking this seriously. So I was excited to sit down with him and really dig into this subject. I came with many questions, about...

Read More Read More

The post Bill Gates: Prepare for 20 years of tumultuous AI disruption appeared first on Attention to the Unseen.

Apollo economist: AI has delivered zero payoff to corporate America outside Big Tech

From elsewhere — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 23:57:21 +0000

Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, writes: Despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech. Revenue per worker is rising for the Mag 7 [Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla] but is flat for the S&P 493, see the first chart below. Profit margins are rising for the Mag 7 but are flat for the S&P 493, see the second chart...

Read More Read More

The post Apollo economist: AI has delivered zero payoff to corporate America outside Big Tech appeared first on Attention to the Unseen.

Study identifies world’s first corporate psychopath

From elsewhere — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 23:56:44 +0000

Anglia Ruskin University: New research suggests the same personality traits associated with toxic corporate leaders today may have been present at the very birth of global capitalism 400 years ago. The study, published in the Asian Journal of Business Ethics identifies Jeronimus Cornelisz, who was a merchant manager with the Dutch East India Company, as likely being the earliest documented example of a corporate psychopath. The research, by Dr Clive Boddy of Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), is believed to be...

Read More Read More

The post Study identifies world’s first corporate psychopath appeared first on Attention to the Unseen.

Bird flu is raging on a mink farm. It could spark a human pandemic, experts say, but officials won’t act

From elsewhere — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:35:59 +0000

ProPublica reports: The strain of bird flu that’s ripped through American barns for the last four years has killed two people who caught it from sick animals. But as far as anyone can tell, humans can’t spread it. The virus has remained a true “bird” flu, tailored to attach to avian cells, not invade human throats and noses, where coughing and sneezing reliably spew droplets. Under the right conditions, however, that could change. A single mutation could give the bird...

Read More Read More

The post Bird flu is raging on a mink farm. It could spark a human pandemic, experts say, but officials won’t act appeared first on Attention to the Unseen.

Thanks to AI-enabled hacking, the internet is entering a ‘valley of pain’

From elsewhere — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:18:44 +0000

Matteo Wong writes: This week could go down as the worst in the history of cybersecurity. On Wednesday, news emerged about two major vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language used by 70 percent of websites, which prompted governments, hospitals, and companies around the world to take digital services offline as a precaution. There have already been millions of attempts to exploit these weaknesses. But the PHP vulnerabilities were just the most attention-grabbing in a series of alarming revelations. Security flaws...

Read More Read More

The post Thanks to AI-enabled hacking, the internet is entering a ‘valley of pain’ appeared first on Attention to the Unseen.

Unvetted AI agents are accessing U.S. bank accounts, apparently taking actions without user consent

From elsewhere — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:25:17 +0000

Axios reports: Major U.S. banks are detecting unauthorized third-party AI agents operating inside customer accounts, with some agents attempting to take actions that appear to be independent of user instructions, sources tell Axios. Why it matters: AI agents are becoming a nightmare for America’s banks, making their way into banking systems faster than financial institutions can respond. The difficulty in distinguishing between a human and an unauthorized bot is forcing banks to block the technology and rapidly rewrite their terms...

Read More Read More

The post Unvetted AI agents are accessing U.S. bank accounts, apparently taking actions without user consent appeared first on Attention to the Unseen.