Browsed by
Category: Economics/Business

America’s largest bitcoin miners are pivoting to AI

America’s largest bitcoin miners are pivoting to AI

Joel Khalili reports: One afternoon in June 2024, I stood up against the fence of a sprawling industrial facility a few miles outside of Corsicana, Texas. Over a metal gate, I watched a bright yellow excavator claw at the dirt and flatbed trucks shuttle to and fro. A hangar-like structure with a gleaming white roof stretched hundreds of meters along the opposite perimeter. The company that owned the plot, Riot Platforms, was busily constructing the world’s largest bitcoin mine. A…

Read More Read More

Thanks to Trump, the world’s largest superyachts are increasingly being bought by Americans

Thanks to Trump, the world’s largest superyachts are increasingly being bought by Americans

The New York Times reports: Today’s superyacht buyers are younger and richer than they were a decade ago, and they’re increasingly American, enriched by the pandemic business boom, a roaring stock market and deep tax cuts. Rather than wait for a gilded retirement, they are buying in their prime, looking for a plaything with all the trappings of home. They’re tethered to the world with Starlink internet while they play in St. Barts or Sardinia, or venture to more out-of-reach…

Read More Read More

How a cryptocurrency helps criminals launder money and evade sanctions

How a cryptocurrency helps criminals launder money and evade sanctions

The New York Times reports: Smugglers, money launderers and people facing sanctions once relied on diamonds, gold and artwork to store illicit fortunes. The luxury goods could help hide wealth but were cumbersome to move and hard to spend. Now, criminals have a far more practical alternative: stablecoins, a cryptocurrency tied to the U.S. dollar that exists largely beyond traditional financial oversight. These digital tokens can be bought with a local currency and moved across borders almost instantly. Or they…

Read More Read More

Costco sues Trump administration, seeking refund of tariffs

Costco sues Trump administration, seeking refund of tariffs

NBC News reports: Costco Wholesale has sued the Trump administration, asking the Court of International Trade to consider all tariffs collected under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act unlawful. The company said in a filing Friday that it is seeking a “full refund” of all duties under the act paid as a result of President Donald Trump’s executive order that imposed what he called “reciprocal” tariffs. “Because IEEPA does not clearly authorize the President to set tariffs … the Challenged…

Read More Read More

The Kremlin pitched the White House on peace through business. Trump and his cronies are on board

The Kremlin pitched the White House on peace through business. Trump and his cronies are on board

The Wall Street Journal reports: Three powerful businessmen—two Americans and a Russian—hunched over a laptop in Miami Beach last month, ostensibly to draw up a plan to end Russia’s long and deadly war with Ukraine. But the full scope of their project went much further, according to people familiar with the talks. They were privately charting a path to bring Russia’s $2 trillion economy in from the cold—with American businesses first in line to beat European competitors to the dividends….

Read More Read More

MIT study finds AI can already replace 11.7% of U.S. workforce

MIT study finds AI can already replace 11.7% of U.S. workforce

CNBC reports: Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday released a study that found that artificial intelligence can already replace 11.7% of the U.S. labor market, or as much as $1.2 trillion in wages across finance, health care and professional services. The study was conducted using a labor simulation tool called the Iceberg Index, which was created by MIT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The index simulates how 151 million U.S. workers interact across the country and how they are affected…

Read More Read More

How Big Ag is crushing farmers

How Big Ag is crushing farmers

  Farm debt is expected to reach $560 billion this year—a record high. But it’s not just because of the trade war with China. Farmers told us it’s because a handful of corporations have taken control of their markets to ensure they always win, and farmers barely break even.

The real reason Trump is fawning over Saudi Arabia’s ruler

The real reason Trump is fawning over Saudi Arabia’s ruler

Noah Shachtman writes: You remember the pictures. The images of tech oligarchs kissing the ring at President Trump’s inauguration were instantly iconic, markers of a new and rather unnerving era. But months earlier, Mr. Trump made a corrosive pact with another set of moguls, and that one is already remaking global politics, wiping out jobs at home and strangling what little hope was left of avoiding a climate disaster. This one happened behind closed doors. These moguls were leaders of…

Read More Read More

Saudi crown prince promises massive investment in the U.S. but is running low on cash

Saudi crown prince promises massive investment in the U.S. but is running low on cash

The New York Times reports: The visit by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia to Washington this week painted a familiar tableau: the head of an oil-rich nation cozying up to President Trump and titans of American industry. That appearance of wealth is core to Saudi Arabia’s power and image in the United States and at home, where the Saudi government has vowed no less than an economic transformation for its young populace. In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Crown…

Read More Read More

Trump calls it ‘the greatest economy in history’ but many Americans are struggling to pay their bills

Trump calls it ‘the greatest economy in history’ but many Americans are struggling to pay their bills

The Associated Press reports: More people are falling behind on paying their bills to keep on the lights and heat their homes, according to a new analysis of consumer data — a warning sign for the U.S. economy and another political headache for President Donald Trump. Past due balances to utility companies jumped 9.7% annually to $789 between the April-June periods of 2024 and 2025, said The Century Foundation, a liberal think tank, and the advocacy group Protect Borrowers. The…

Read More Read More

‘Big Short’ investor betting $1 billion against the AI bubble says Meta and Oracle’s accounting is hiding the brutal truth

‘Big Short’ investor betting $1 billion against the AI bubble says Meta and Oracle’s accounting is hiding the brutal truth

Fortune reports: “It’ll happen slowly, and then all at once.” That’s how Jim Morrow, founder and chief investment officer of Callodine Capital, describes the eventual – inevitable – unwinding of what he calls “the most crowded trade in history.” Of course, he isn’t just paraphrasing Ernest Hemingway—he’s talking about the AI race, and the trillion-dollar deals so overstretched they’re better described as knots than trades. And he’s not alone in sounding alarms. Michael Burry—the investor of Big Short fame who…

Read More Read More

Scott Galloway warns of ‘nowhere to hide’ in markets if the OpenAI story unravels

Scott Galloway warns of ‘nowhere to hide’ in markets if the OpenAI story unravels

  Fortune reports: Tech analyst and professor Scott Galloway has issued a stark warning regarding the highly inflated valuations of the Magnificent 10 mega-cap companies, asserting a financial collapse at generative AI leader OpenAI would trigger a systemic shock leaving “nowhere to hide” for investors across the global markets. Galloway, speaking on his Prof G Markets podcast, characterized the current market reliance on AI as precarious, noting AI has been responsible for 80% of the stock market returns since the…

Read More Read More

Trump is pushing us toward a financial crash. It could be 1929 all over again

Trump is pushing us toward a financial crash. It could be 1929 all over again

William A. Birdthistle writes: President Trump’s Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago, set to the theme of “The Great Gatsby,” re-enacted the decadence of that story’s licentious era: befeathered flappers shimmying in the crowd; gilded and onyx décor; scantily clad women posing in an enormous champagne coupe. The revelatory moment says so much about where we stand today — and what we could be lurching into next. Published a century ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” captured the culture of an…

Read More Read More

ICE detention and surveillance are a bonanza for private companies getting hundreds of millions revenue

ICE detention and surveillance are a bonanza for private companies getting hundreds of millions revenue

NOTUS reports: Business is booming for the private prison companies that operate much of President Donald Trump’s immigrant detention apparatus. Private prison giant Geo Group announced this week that it has seen its largest amount of new business ever in 2025. The company’s executives expect it to translate into $3 billion in revenue next year. Geo Group’s detention occupancy level — 26,000 people — is at an all-time high, according to its latest quarterly report. “We’ve never seen anything like…

Read More Read More

ICE is sending a chill through the construction industry

ICE is sending a chill through the construction industry

NPR reports: As cars and trucks zoom by, Rurick Palomino points to the underside of the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge that spans the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., where his crew of about 30 workers is doing demolition work and pouring concrete as part of a $128 million federally-funded refurbishment. A Peruvian immigrant who came to the United States 25 years ago, Palomino — a U.S. citizen — built his construction firm from scratch after earning an engineering degree and learning…

Read More Read More

Tesla shareholders approve $1 trillion pay package for part-time CEO, Elon Musk

Tesla shareholders approve $1 trillion pay package for part-time CEO, Elon Musk

electrek reports: Tesla shareholders have voted once again to approve an absurd, biggest-in-history pay package for Tesla’s part-time CEO, Elon Musk. In doing so, they’ve voted to relinquish any control they could have had over the company, and instead to put it deeper into the hands of its largest saboteur. Tesla’s shareholder meeting is happening today, with several consequential proposals which shareholders have been voting on in the last several weeks. In that time, Tesla has been campaigning hard and…

Read More Read More