Browsed by
Category: Economics/Business

GDP ‘nowhere near’ 4.3%: economist dismisses Q3 report as ‘fugazi,’ pegs real growth at 0.8%

GDP ‘nowhere near’ 4.3%: economist dismisses Q3 report as ‘fugazi,’ pegs real growth at 0.8%

Benzinga reports: While the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported a robust 4.3% annual increase in third-quarter real gross domestic product (GDP) on Tuesday, economist David Rosenberg is calling the headline number a “fugazi.” The president of Rosenberg Research argues that underlying economic weakness is being masked by government spending and depleted savings, calculating “true” growth at a meager 0.8%. The official BEA release shows widespread gains, with real GDP accelerating from 3.8% in the second quarter to 4.3%…

Read More Read More

America’s biggest oil field is turning into a pressure cooker creating a huge toxic mess

America’s biggest oil field is turning into a pressure cooker creating a huge toxic mess

The Wall Street Journal reports: Shale drillers have turned the biggest oil field in the U.S. into a pressure cooker that is literally bursting at the seams. Producers in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico extract roughly half of the U.S.’s crude. They also produce copious amounts of toxic, salty water, which they pump back into the ground. Now, some of the reservoirs that collect the fluids are overflowing—and the producers keep injecting more. It is creating…

Read More Read More

How Trump upended the rules-based global order

How Trump upended the rules-based global order

Patrick Wintour writes: ‘The old world is dying,” Antonio Gramsci once wrote. “And the new world struggles to be born.” In such interregnums, the Italian Marxist philosopher suggested, “every act, even the smallest, may acquire decisive weight”. In 2025, western leaders appeared convinced they – and we – were living through one such transitional period, as the world of international relations established after the second world war crashed to a halt. During such eras, Gramsci more famously wrote, “morbid phenomena…

Read More Read More

America’s trade dominance may soon begin to crack

America’s trade dominance may soon begin to crack

Cory Doctorow writes: In 2026, the leaders of America’s (former) trading partners are going to have to grapple with the political consequences of tit-for-tat tariffs. A tariff is a tax paid by consumers, and if there’s one thing the past four years have taught us, it’s that the public will not forgive a politician who presides over a period of rising prices, no matter what the cause. Luckily for the political fortunes of the world’s leaders, there is a better…

Read More Read More

U.S. oil blockade of Venezuela is pushing Cuba toward economic collapse

U.S. oil blockade of Venezuela is pushing Cuba toward economic collapse

The Wall Street Journal reports: Cubans are going hungry, suffering from spreading disease and sleeping outdoors with no electricity to power fans through the sweltering nights. A quarter of the population has fled during the island’s most prolonged economic crisis. And it’s about to get worse. The U.S. is ratcheting up pressure on Havana’s key benefactor, Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro’s regime, which has kept the Communist-ruled nation afloat with cheap oil. Now Venezuelan oil exports are at risk thanks to…

Read More Read More

Adventure capitalism on the precipice: Climate denying grifters go into fusion

Adventure capitalism on the precipice: Climate denying grifters go into fusion

Announcing the planned merger of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) and fusion power company, TAE Technologies, Michael B. Schwab (son of Charles Schwab, who just launched “Trump Accounts”), who is expected to be the chairman of the new company said: With the infusion of TMTG’s significant capital, TAE is on the precipice of scaling its leading technology to usher in a new era of energy abundance. The world needs energy, and fusion is the clear answer. The New York…

Read More Read More

China is pouring vast resources into fusion research

China is pouring vast resources into fusion research

The New York Times reports: China’s government has made fusion a national priority, marshaling resources at daunting speed. Recently, a Shanghai start-up essentially matched an engineering breakthrough by America’s best-funded fusion company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, in much less time. Over the summer, the Chinese government and private investors poured $2.1 billion into a new state-owned fusion company. That investment alone is two and a half times the U.S. Energy Department’s annual fusion budget. The two countries’ progress could soon be…

Read More Read More

Who would trust a 22-year-old AI billionaire with the global economy?

Who would trust a 22-year-old AI billionaire with the global economy?

Lila Shroff writes: Brendan Foody is 22 years old and runs a company worth billions. This August, I met the young CEO in a glass conference room overlooking the San Francisco Bay. While his peers are searching for their first jobs, Foody is pursuing a “master plan,” as he calls it, to upend the global labor market. His start-up, Mercor, offers an AI-powered hiring platform: Bots weed through résumés, and even conduct interviews. In the next five years, Foody told…

Read More Read More

Is Israel’s genocide economy on the brink?

Is Israel’s genocide economy on the brink?

+972 Magazine reports: Since October 2023, Israel has faced a convergence of economic shocks. Tens of thousands of residents have been displaced from border regions in the south and north as a result of hostilities with Hamas and Hezbollah, while hundreds of thousands of reservists were pulled out of the workforce for extended periods, leaving key sectors short-staffed and productivity depleted. Public services, education, and healthcare have deteriorated as state spending was diverted to the war, and almost 50,000 businesses…

Read More Read More

CoreWeave’s staggering fall in value highlights AI bubble fears

CoreWeave’s staggering fall in value highlights AI bubble fears

The Wall Street Journal reports: CoreWeave, the largest of a new breed of companies driving the artificial-intelligence boom, has watched $33 billion of value vaporize in six weeks. The share-price plunge of 46% comes as investors worry about a possible AI bubble, the fallout from a failed merger and public criticism from high-profile short seller Jim Chanos, known for predicting the collapse of Enron. But some of the high-tech company’s biggest problems began with a very low-tech nuisance: unexpectedly turbulent…

Read More Read More

Wall Street sees AI bubble coming and is betting on what pops it

Wall Street sees AI bubble coming and is betting on what pops it

Bloomberg reports: It’s been three years since OpenAI set off euphoria over artificial intelligence with the release of ChatGPT. And while the money is still pouring in, so are the doubts about whether the good times can last. From a recent selloff in the shares of Nvidia Corp., to Oracle Corp.’s plunge after reporting mounting spending on AI, to souring sentiment around a network of companies exposed to OpenAI, signs of skepticism are increasing. Looking to 2026, the debate among…

Read More Read More

Oracle’s plunging stock shows the AI boom is running into two hard limits: physics and debt markets

Oracle’s plunging stock shows the AI boom is running into two hard limits: physics and debt markets

Fortune reports: Oracle’s rapid descent from market darling to market warning sign is revealing something deeper about the AI boom, experts say: no matter how euphoric investors became over the last two years, the industry can’t outrun the laws of physics—or the realities of debt financing. Shares of Oracle have plunged 45% from their September high and lost 14% this week after a messy earnings report revealed it spent $12 billion in quarterly capital expenditures, higher than the $8.25 billion…

Read More Read More

Trump’s dangerous designs on the Fed

Trump’s dangerous designs on the Fed

Catherine Rampell writes: There are many items on President Trump’s agenda that are hurting the U.S. economy: the pointless trade wars, the socialization of the private sector, the mass deportations, and much more. But in the long run, the most damaging policy of all might be one that’s gotten scant attention, at least from non-finance-nerds: Trump’s quest to crush the Federal Reserve. If Trump succeeds, he may doom the United States to high inflation for years, if not decades, to…

Read More Read More

Fed Chair Jerome Powell says U.S. may be drastically overstating jobs numbers

Fed Chair Jerome Powell says U.S. may be drastically overstating jobs numbers

The Wall Street Journal reports: Fed Chair Jerome Powell pointed on Wednesday to a job-market risk that economists have been worried about for months: Official statistics could be drastically overstating recent hiring. Powell said that Fed staffers believe that federal data could be overestimating job creation by up to 60,000 jobs a month. Given that figures published so far show that the economy has added about 40,000 jobs a month since April, the real number could be something more like…

Read More Read More

Something ominous — a reminder of the 2008 financial crisis — is happening in the AI economy

Something ominous — a reminder of the 2008 financial crisis — is happening in the AI economy

Rogé Karma writes: A company that most people have never heard of is among the year’s best-performing technology firms—and a symbol of the complex, interconnected, and potentially catastrophic ways in which AI companies do business these days. CoreWeave’s IPO in March was the largest of any tech start-up since 2021, and the company’s share price has subsequently more than doubled, outperforming even the “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks. On Wall Street, CoreWeave is regularly referred to as one of the most…

Read More Read More

Trump chose a casino to promote his economic policies while dismissing the issue of affordability

Trump chose a casino to promote his economic policies while dismissing the issue of affordability

The Washington Post reports: He had charts that he read from, touting economic data. The stage around him was filled with signs reading, “Lower Prices Bigger Paychecks.” He introduced Pennsylvanians who he said had more take-home pay because of his policies. But if he was supposed to launch a speaking tour to clearly connect with Americans struggling with higher prices and stagnant wages, President Donald Trump didn’t hesitate to veer off course. He mocked the word “affordability,” touted how high…

Read More Read More