The financing package stitched together for Meta’s humongous Hyperion data center campus in Louisiana made Alphaville curious about just how much energy the new AI infrastructure will consume if it all comes online.

After all, massive new projects are being announced almost every week, in what even KKR’s digital infrastructure lead called a “bragawatts” phenomenon in MainFT on Monday.

The latest example is OpenAI on Thursday revealing plans for a 1+ gigawatt data centre hub in Michigan. Together with previously announced “Stargate” projects this brings the total to over 8 gigawatts — close to the 10 target it floated earlier this year. This will cost over $450 billion over the next three years, according to the company that spends more on marketing and employee stock options than it makes in revenue.

So how many data center projects have now been started or announced? Which ones will actually happen and which ones are fantasy? As Barclays noted last week, tracking “what is real vs. speculative is a full-time job”, but the bank has forced some poor sell-side plebs to at least tally all the announcements and collect some rudimentary details.

So what is the total so far? With OpenAI’s Michigan project they now total 46 gigawatts of computing power. Apologies for the virtual shouting, but this seems a bit mad.

These centers will cost $2.5 trillion to build, according to Barclays, to service an industry that still doesn’t turn a profit. But the maddest bit arguably is how much energy they will require once completed. Using Barclays’ 1.2 “Power Use Effectiveness” ratio, all these data centres — if they are all completed — would need 55.2 gigawatts of electricity to function at full capacity.

If we also use Barclays’ rule of thumb that 1 gigawatt can power over 800,000 American homes, it means that these data centres will consume as much energy as 44.2 million households — almost three times California’s entire housing stock.

Read it all.

Hyperscalers announced new data centres with 46GW of computing power

>Cost: $2.5tn to build
>Require 55GW to 65GW of base load electricity

That's more than the total installed capacity of Poland or Sweden, 6 times New Zealand or Singapore, 50% of UKhttps://t.co/7j43C7QUwV pic.twitter.com/LrEfaKvpEk

— Assaad Razzouk (@AssaadRazzouk) November 4, 2025

Valerie Ferebee rummaged through the front seat of her car searching for a pack of cigarettes as she sat outside Tanger Outlets. Everything she and her husband Milton own is in their Ford EcoSport, so it took her a few minutes to find them.

The four-door crossover has been their home for more than a year.

Once she found the Newport Menthol Greens in a side pocket, she pulled one out to light. She took a drag and considered their living situation.

“Disgusting. Degrading. Shameful. Humiliating,” she said. “I mean, I don’t know what word to use … I feel sort of stuck.”

Valerie and Milton are just two of thousands who have been evicted in the Charleston area. North Charleston once had the highest eviction rate in the country in 2016 with more than 3,600 tenants being evicted, according to data from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.

In South Carolina, evictions are the ‘scarlet E’ that never go away https://t.co/9OutCBsLNF

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) November 2, 2025

The nation’s largest employers have a new message for office workers: help not wanted.

Amazon.com said this week that it would cut 14,000 corporate jobs, with plans to eliminate as much as 10% of its white-collar workforce eventually. United Parcel Service said Tuesday that it had reduced its management workforce by about 14,000 positions over the past 22 months, days after the retailer Target said it would cut 1,800 corporate roles.

Earlier in October, white-collar workers from companies including Rivian Automotive, Molson Coors, Booz Allen Hamilton and General Motors received pink slips—or learned that they would come soon. Added up, tens of thousands of newly laid off white-collar workers in America are entering a stagnant job market with seemingly no place for them.

At 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Kelly Williamson woke up to an alarming text from her employer, Amazon’s Whole Foods Market, urging her to check her email.

“Review asap and stay home from work today,” the message said. Williamson’s role on the asset-protection team was being eliminated. The badge and laptop for the 55-year-old from Austin, Texas, were deactivated. She was given 90 days to look for another job at the company. She said her personal belongings are being mailed to her.

Read it all.

Tens of Thousands of White-Collar Jobs Are Disappearing as #AI Starts to Bite#RiseoftheRobotshttps://t.co/xvlekZBJIq via @WSJ

— Martin Ford (@MFordFuture) October 29, 2025

Editor’s note: Today, we’re announcing research that shows — for the first time in history — that a quantum computer can successfully run a verifiable algorithm on hardware, surpassing even the fastest classical supercomputers (13,000x faster). It can compute the structure of a molecule, and paves a path towards real-world applications. Today’s advance builds on decades of work, and six years of major breakthroughs. Back in 2019, we demonstrated that a quantum computer could solve a problem that would take the fastest classical supercomputer thousands of years. Then, late last year (2024), our new Willow quantum chip showed how to dramatically suppress errors, solving a major issue that challenged scientists for nearly 30 years. Today’s breakthrough moves us much closer to quantum computers that can drive major discoveries in areas like medicine and materials science.

Imagine you’re trying to find a lost ship at the bottom of the ocean. Sonar technology might give you a blurry shape and tell you, “There’s a shipwreck down there.” But what if you could not only find the ship but also read the nameplate on its hull?

That’s the kind of unprecedented precision we’ve just achieved with our Willow quantum chip. Today, we’re announcing a major algorithmic breakthrough that marks a significant step towards a first real-world application. Just published in Nature, we have demonstrated the first-ever verifiable quantum advantage running the out-of-order time correlator (OTOC) algorithm, which we call Quantum Echoes.

Read it all.

"Google claims ‘quantum advantage’ again — but researchers are sceptical" by Elizabeth Gibney of @Nature https://t.co/mD54zWFEKE
Original @Google article, "Observation of constructive interference at the edge of quantum ergodicity," is at https://t.co/tY8MiIq4Sn @JointQuICS pic.twitter.com/nh26Z4QWzA

— Charles W. Clark (@g8ge) October 23, 2025

Josh Batson no longer has time for social media.

The AI researcher’s only comparable dopamine hit these days is on Anthropic’s Slack workplace-messaging channels, where he explores chatter about colleagues’ theories and experiments on large language models and architecture.

Batson is among a group of core artificial-intelligence researchers and executives who are facing a relentless grind, racing to keep pace with a seemingly endless cycle of disruption in pursuit of systems with superhuman intelligence.

Inside Silicon Valley’s biggest AI labs, top researchers and executives are regularly working 80 to 100 hours a week. Several top researchers compared the circumstances to war.

“We’re basically trying to speedrun 20 years of scientific progress in two years,” said Batson, a research scientist at Anthropic. Extraordinary advances in AI systems are happening “every few months,” he said. “It’s the most interesting scientific question in the world right now.”

Read it all.

Take an early look at the front page of today's Wall Street Journal https://t.co/5Z4hcbTVXK pic.twitter.com/NrLMRqJWUU

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 23, 2025

Sequoia Capital’s chief operating officer resigned over comments made by partner Shaun Maguire that she regarded as Islamophobic, as political debates sow division at one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful venture capital firms.

Sumaiya Balbale — a practising Muslim who has spoken publicly about how her gender, ethnicity and faith have shaped her career — stepped down after five years at the company in August. Her decision to leave was precipitated by Maguire’s social media posts, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

Maguire, an outspoken and high-profile investor who is close to Elon Musk, wrote on X in July that New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani “comes from a culture that lies about everything. It’s literally a virtue to lie if it advances his Islamist agenda. The West will learn this lesson the hard way.”

Balbale complained to other senior partners at the firm, who declined to take action against Maguire, arguing he was just exercising his right to free speech, the people said. She left soon after, feeling her position was untenable.

Read it all (subscription).

Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire’s comments about Mamdani https://t.co/3WQUHQ0Qnd

— FT Technology News (@fttechnews) October 22, 2025

Over the past two decades, no company has done more to shape the American workplace than Amazon. In its ascent to become the nation’s second-largest employer, it has hired hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers, built an army of contract drivers and pioneered using technology to hire, monitor and manage employees.

Now, interviews and a cache of internal strategy documents viewed by The New York Times reveal that Amazon executives believe the company is on the cusp of its next big workplace shift: replacing more than half a million jobs with robots.

Amazon’s U.S. work force has more than tripled since 2018 to almost 1.2 million. But Amazon’s automation team expects the company can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the United States it would otherwise need by 2027. That would save about 30 cents on each item that Amazon picks, packs and delivers to customers.

Executives told Amazon’s board last year that they hoped robotic automation would allow the company to continue to avoid adding to its U.S. work force in the coming years, even though they expect to sell twice as many products by 2033. That would translate to more than 600,000 people whom Amazon didn’t need to hire.

Read it all.

Amazon, the second largest employer in the U.S., aims to replace more than half a million jobs with robots, internal documents show. https://t.co/jzxzhcMmfo

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 21, 2025

It is….increasingly likely that governments will…resort to inflation and financial repression to reduce the real value of their high debts, as they did in the decades after the second world war. The machinery for such a strategy is in place at central banks, which have a large footprint in bond markets. Already, populists such as Mr Trump and Nigel Farage in Britain attack their country’s central banks with proposals that would weaken the defenses against inflation.

Price rises are unpopular—just ask the hapless Joe Biden—but they do not need political support to get going. Nobody voted for them in the 1970s or in 2022. When governments cannot get their act together, and run economic policies that are unsustainable, bouts of inflation just happen. By the time markets wake up, it is too late.

All the more reason to think ahead and reflect on how inflation harms the economy and society. It redistributes wealth unfairly: from creditors to debtors; from those with cash and bonds to those who own real assets such as houses; and from those who agree on contracts and wages in cash terms to those wily enough to anticipate higher prices. It causes what John Maynard Keynes called an “arbitrary rearrangement of riches”. And that could happen just as societies are grappling with other transfers of wealth that the losers will also see as unfair: in the labour market, as AI takes on routine office work; and through inheritance, as baby-boomers bequeath vast property wealth to those lucky enough to have the right parents.

This multi-pronged upheaval of fortunes could wreck the middle class, which binds democracies together, and scramble the social contract.

Read it all.

Governments are living far beyond their means. Sadly, inflation is the most likely escape. Politicians should think ahead and reflect on how much harm that would do https://t.co/6H1nzpKQQS pic.twitter.com/RF2ACF0MzV

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) October 16, 2025

So here’s what we know. This year’s gold rally has come in fits and starts. The April move was about a loss of confidence in the Dollar, a move that’s since run out of steam. The move since Jackson Hole is about “global debasement” and coincides with three notable developments: (i) there’s a global rise in long-term government bond yields as markets increasingly worry about unsustainable fiscal policy in many places; (ii) the universe of safe haven countries has shrunk because Germany and Japan are at the forefront of the global rise in yields; and (iii) the few safe haven countries that remain – notably Switzerland – are small, with limited capacity to absorb safe haven inflows. These three forces are supercharging the rise in gold prices, which is really about the global deterioration in fiscal sustainability and growing risk that debt overhangs will be inflated away.

What we don’t know is who is driving the latest rise in gold prices. There’s endless rumors about another round of central bank buying, but I am skeptical. There’s a clear macro catalyst to the latest move in the form of Jackson Hole. I find it hard to believe that central banks in emerging markets will be trading such a catalyst. It’s more likely that this is a genuine market move, with a growing number of investors worried about fiscal sustainability and debasement. If that’s true, the gold move can go a lot further.

Read it all.

What's driving the crazy rise in gold prices? At its root, it's about fear that the Fed has capitulated to Trump and is easing into an economy where inflation is rising. This week's IMF/WB meetings may end the gold rally and replace it with a Dollar rally.https://t.co/fFtYIbm3tT pic.twitter.com/HhhBK2vISo

— Robin Brooks (@robin_j_brooks) October 16, 2025

Americans are set to pay more than half of President Donald Trump’s tariff costs as companies raise prices, according to economists of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

US consumers will likely shoulder 55% of tariff costs by the end of the year, with American companies taking on 22%, the Goldman analysts wrote in an Oct. 12 research note to clients. Foreign exporters would absorb 18% of tariff costs by cutting prices for goods, while 5% would be evaded, they wrote.

For now “US businesses are likely bearing a larger share of the costs” as it takes time to raise prices, economists Elsie Peng and David Mericle wrote in the note. “If recently implemented and future tariffs have the same eventual impact on prices as the tariffs implemented earlier this year, then US consumers would eventually absorb 55% of tariff costs.”

Read it all.

Americans are set to pay more than half of President Donald Trump’s tariff costs as companies raise prices, according to Goldman Sachs economists https://t.co/L04IgE1sdF

— Bloomberg (@business) October 13, 2025

The American stockmarket has see-sawed lately amid a flare-up in trade tensions, but remains near its all-time high. The surge, fuelled by enthusiasm around artificial intelligence, has drawn comparisons to the exuberance of the late 1990s that culminated in the dotcom crash of 2000. Though technological innovation is undeniably reshaping industries and increasing productivity, there are good reasons to worry that the current rally may be setting the stage for another painful market correction. The consequences of such a crash, however, could be far more severe and global in scope than those felt a quarter of a century ago.

At the heart of this concern is the sheer scale of exposure, both domestic and international, to American equities. Over the past decade and a half, American households have significantly increased their holdings in the stockmarket, encouraged by strong returns and the dominance of American tech firms. Foreign investors, particularly from Europe, have for the same reasons poured capital into American stocks, while simultaneously benefiting from the dollar’s strength. This growing interconnectedness means that any sharp downturn in American markets will reverberate around the world.

To put the potential impact in perspective, I calculate that a market correction of the same magnitude as the dotcom crash could wipe out over $20trn in wealth for American households, equivalent to roughly 70% of American GDP in 2024. This is several times larger than the losses incurred during the crash of the early 2000s. The implications for consumption would be grave. Consumption growth is already weaker than it was preceding the dotcom crash. A shock of this magnitude could cut it by 3.5 percentage points, translating into a two-percentage-point hit to overall GDP growth, even before accounting for declines in investment.

Read it all.

The exposure of the world to US equities is at record levels. A stock market correction would have more severe and global consequences as compared to what followed the dot-com crash. The tariff wars and lack of fiscal space compounds the problem. The underlying problem is not… pic.twitter.com/LFaN4mNgqn

— Gita Gopinath (@GitaGopinath) October 15, 2025

The Church of England has called for a national conversation on artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on the world of work. . 

A new edition of the Crucible journal, released this month, explored how automation and algorithms reshape jobs and identity.  

It follows a motion passed by the Church’s General Synod in February 2024, which acknowledged the effects of AI and the ‘fourth industrial revolution’. 

Read it all.

Renewed call for national conversation on AI and the Future of Work https://t.co/7607ZNflnM via @Anglican Ink © 2025

— George Conger (@GeorgeConger8) October 10, 2025

From cars and computer chips to tanks and fighter jets, China’s new export restrictions represent a sweeping effort to control global commerce and have set off a renewed trade fight that pits Beijing against not only the United States but also Europe.

The new regulations, which take effect in stages on Nov. 8 and Dec. 1, apply to the entire world, sharply escalating China’s sway over critical manufacturing at a time of increased international fractures over trade. The restrictions led President Trump on Friday to threaten to impose new 100 percent tariffs on Chinese imports starting Nov. 1.

The rules go far beyond China’s limits since April on the export of rare earth metals, which are mined and processed mainly in China, as well as magnets made from those metals. In a series of announcements on Thursday, China extended its restrictions to worldwide shipments of electric motors, computer chips and other devices that have become central to modern life and are now manufactured mainly in China.

The regulations prohibit exports from China to any country of materials or components for use in military equipment. Among the items banned are the small yet powerful electric motors in missiles and fighter jets and the materials for crucial range finders in tanks and artillery that are used to zero in on distant targets.

Read it all.

China’s New Export Curbs May Level a Heavy Blow Worldwide https://t.co/CX91lkUldK "The new rules apply to any shipments across national borders…European automakers, in particular, face a daunting task of seeking Chinese export licenses to move car parts within Europe"

— David Mulroney (@David_Mulroney) October 13, 2025

Ari Emanuel, the Hollywood talent agent and sports tycoon, has raised almost $3bn from investors for a new events venture in a bet that artificial intelligence will shrink the working week and give people more free time. 

The world could be “down to four-day work weeks” in the coming years, he told the Financial Times. This could go “down to three with AI” as more people use the technology to expedite everyday tasks, he said. “There’s going to be more free time.” 

MARI, Emanuel’s new company, will house the Madrid and Miami tennis Opens, as well as the Frieze art fairs, which Emanuel bought out of Endeavor, the sports and entertainment group he co-founded. The company announced on Wednesday that it had also agreed to acquire Barrett-Jackson, the collector car auction company, from Endeavor.

Read it all.

Ari Emanuel bets AI will boost leisure time with three-day working week https://t.co/tkaSMs2V7c

— Financial Times (@FT) October 8, 2025

Online sports betting is not legal in Minnesota, but that hasn’t stopped Ian White from trading money on the outcomes of N.F.L. games. Mr. White, a special education paraprofessional, said he downloaded Kalshi, a “prediction market” app, after seeing an ad on TikTok. He buys contracts worth $10 a game and has made about $130.

“I do consider Kalshi betting,” he said, “but I love how they get around it by selling futures.”

Kalshi can “get around” state gambling laws because on paper it is not a sports gambling app, like FanDuel or DraftKings. Those kinds of online sportsbooks are banned in 20 states, including Minnesota, California and Texas. Instead, Kalshi is an exchange selling financial products tied to the outcome of sporting events — and, with the tacit approval of the Trump administration, is currently available everywhere in the country.

If you wanted to, for example, wager $100 on a Dallas Cowboys victory this weekend, your experience on FanDuel and Kalshi would look remarkably similar….

Read it all.

"… Kalshi, once known for offering wagers on elections, are now in the multibillion-dollar sports betting business and outside the reach of state regulations and taxes"

Is Sports Betting Illegal in Your State? Not if You Call It a ‘Prediction Market.’https://t.co/FSpVln6jtH

— Alfonso Straffon 🇨🇷🇺🇸🇲🇽 (@astraffon) October 5, 2025

Meta will use conversations people have with its chatbots to personalize advertising and content across its platforms, in a sign of how tech companies plan to make money from artificial intelligence.

The owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp on Wednesday said it would use the content of chats with its Meta AI to create advertising recommendations across its suite of apps.

“People will already expect that their Meta AI interactions are being used for these personalization purposes,” said Christy Harris, privacy and data policy manager at Meta….

Big Tech groups and AI labs have invested billions of dollars in developing and running popular chatbots, but have only recently started to indicate how they will monetise the technology.

Read it all.

Meta to mine AI interactions to help target advertising https://t.co/xtjXT3Hh8X

— FT Technology News (@fttechnews) October 1, 2025

Data centers are proliferating in Virginia and a blind man in Baltimore is suddenly contending with sharply higher power bills.

The Maryland city is well over an hour’s drive from the northern Virginia region known as Data Center Alley. But Kevin Stanley, a 57-year-old who survives on disability payments, says his energy bills are about 80% higher than they were about three years ago. “They’re going up and up,” he said. “You wonder, ‘What is your breaking point?’”

It’s an increasingly dramatic ripple effect of the AI boom as energy-hungry data centers send power costs to records in much of the US, pulling everyday households into paying for the digital economy.

The power needs of the massive complexes are rapidly driving up electricity bills — piling onto the rising prices for food, housing and other essentials already straining consumers. That’s starting to have economic and political reverberations across the country as utilities and local officials wrestle over how to divvy up the costs. Yet those same facilities are a linchpin of US leadership in the global AI race.

A Bloomberg News analysis of wholesale electricity prices for tens of thousands of locations across the country reveals the effects of the AI boom on the power market with unprecedented granularity. The locations and prices were tracked and aggregated monthly by Grid Status, an energy data analytics platform. Bloomberg analyzed this data in relation to data center locations, from DC Byte, and found that electricity now costs as much as 267% more for a single month than it did five years ago in areas located near significant data center activity.

Read it all.

AI data centers are sending US power bills soaring, Bloomberg analysis shows
🇺🇸⚡📈

Wholesale prices more than doubled since 2020 in some markets, but those increases arent equal

Of the nodes where prices rose, over 70% are within 50 miles of significant data center activity pic.twitter.com/CwhudAlEcU

— Stephen Stapczynski (@SStapczynski) September 30, 2025

Big Pharma has a big headache: Donald Trump. Lately drugmakers have had to contend with the American president’s pronouncements on everything from vaccines to paracetamol. In the coming days the pain is set to intensify. Intent on lowering prices, Mr Trump has given leading pharma firms until September 29th to comply with an executive order to peg their prices to the lowest charged in other rich countries—a rule he calls “most favoured nation” (MFN) pricing. If they do not, he thundered, they will face “every tool in our arsenal” against “abusive drug pricing”.

At the same time, the president wants to encourage homegrown manufacturing. He plans to impose a 100% tariff on branded drugs from October 1st, unless their makers are building factories in America. His administration is also pondering additional duties under a law allowing imports to be restricted on national-security grounds.

As is often the case, the Trumpian diagnosis contains a kernel of truth. Drug prices are indeed higher in America than elsewhere in the rich world. But the president’s two-point prescription upends a model that has long underpinned the highly globalised pharma industry, which could have unintended effects. It could leave Americans with fewer medicines but not cheaper ones, while in other countries drugs could be fewer and dearer. David Ricks of Eli Lilly, the world’s most valuable drugmaker, has warned that MFN pricing risks “the worst of two worlds”, importing Europe’s sluggish innovation while keeping American prices high.

Read it all.

America’s drug prices were more than three times the average in other rich countries in 2022. As a consequence, it coughs up around 70% of global pharmaceutical profits from about half of global sales. This is partly because of how the market is organised https://t.co/eyJHSfPEB3

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) September 29, 2025

The windswept town of Ellendale, N.D., population 1,100, has two motels, a Dollar General, a Pentecostal Bible college—and a half-built AI factory bigger than 10 Home Depots.

Its more than $15 billion price tag is equivalent to a quarter of the state’s annual economic output.

The artificial-intelligence boom has ushered in one of the costliest building sprees in world history. Over the past three years, leading tech firms have committed more toward AI data centers like the one in Ellendale, plus chips and energy, than it cost to build the interstate highway system over four decades, when adjusted for inflation. AI proponents liken the effort to the Industrial Revolution.

A big problem: No one is sure how they will get their investment back—or when. 

The building rush is effectively a mega-speculative bet that the technology will rapidly improve, transform the economy and start producing steady profits. “I hope we don’t take 50 years,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at a May conference with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, referring to the initially slow adoption of electricity.

“Yeah, well, we’re all investing as if it’s not going to take 50 years,” replied Zuckerberg, who surmised at a recent White House dinner the company’s U.S. spending through 2028 was “probably going to be something like” $600 billion.

Read it all.

Media: "Spending on AI is at Epic Levels. Will It Ever Pay Off? — There are growing, worrying signs that the optimism about AI won’t pan out. An @MIT report found 95% of organizations surveyed are getting no return on their AI product investments. A @UChicago economics paper… pic.twitter.com/qqE1XpcCs4

— Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) September 26, 2025

At home and abroad, Britain’s economy is in the dog house. Inflation is sticky, debts and deficits are high, and productivity growth is low. Yields on long-term government debt are above those in any other big rich economy. Four in five Britons say the government is mismanaging the economy; Ray Dalio, a hedge-fund manager, says the country is in a “debt doom loop”. As we report, the infrastructure and housing projects that were supposed to be the engine of growth are turning out to be a sorry disappointment.

Some of the doomsaying is overdone. Britain is not in a recession. Critics say the government crushed the private sector with tax increases in 2024, but the economy grew faster in the first half of 2025 than any other in the G7 group of big rich countries. Retail sales have been solid; unemployment remains low; and the service sector is strong. Britain’s structural strengths—its best universities, the City of London and the English language—are enduring. In many ways, including its birth rate and artificial-intelligence research, Britain can look to continental Europe and count its blessings.

Except, that is, for the public finances. Britain’s net public debts have risen from 35% of GDP in 2005 to 95%. Financial crises and the pandemic caused much of the increase but even today, when there is no emergency, the government is borrowing over 4% of GDP a year. America and France also have big debts and deficits, but borrow in deep currency blocs. Britain is alone, with higher interest rates and a rising welfare bill.

Read it all.

At home and abroad, Britain’s economy is in the dog house. Even with a huge majority and plenty of time, Labour is drifting towards a fiscal crisis https://t.co/YfTB1sIFvg pic.twitter.com/XNyeUYuqOw

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) September 25, 2025

US debt investors have raised the alarm over lax lending standards in credit markets after the unravelling of two companies that just weeks ago were deemed to be in strong health.

The failure of subprime auto lender Tricolor Holdings at the start of this month followed by the exploration of bankruptcy proceedings by car parts supplier First Brands Group have wrongfooted investors. Tricolor had won pristine triple-A ratings as it borrowed in credit markets, while First Brands may have amassed as much as $10bn in debt and off-balance sheet financing and was close to raising even more last month.

Investors were ready to dismiss each as one-off incidents, but taken together, the two offer signs of cracks within credit markets, which have become a critical source of funding for consumers and businesses as traditional banks have retreated since the financial crisis.

Read it all.

US debt investors have raised the alarm over lax lending standards in credit markets after the unravelling of subprime auto lender Tricolor Holdings and car parts supplier First Brands Group that just weeks ago were deemed to be in strong health. https://t.co/42lt425W6Y pic.twitter.com/MIgeF7QhsF

— Financial Times (@FT) September 24, 2025

Sean Wittmeyer would seem to be highly employable. He has more than a decade of experience in architecture and product design, impressive coding chops and two master’s degrees. His skills make him an asset in two industries, technology and construction, which helped power the economy’s growth over the last 15 years.

But construction activity has faltered since 2023, after the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates, and many tech companies began layoffs around the same time.

That helps explain why Mr. Wittmeyer, 37, has been unemployed for a year and a half, since he lost his job in business development for a company that makes software to help with real estate projects. He has been so eager to earn income that he has applied for positions befitting an intern, only to be told he was overqualified. “I can’t even work at the little board game store down the street,” he said.

When the federal government released its August employment numbers on Sept. 5, the overall unemployment rate was still relatively low, at just over 4 percent. But underneath was a concerning statistic: The portion of unemployed people who have been out of work for more than six months, which is considered “long-term,” rose to its highest share in over three years — to nearly 26 percent.

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A decade ago about 20% of the long-term unemployed were college grads. Today it's about 1/3. And the long-term unemployment rate for college grads has been rising pretty quickly the last two years. https://t.co/PDZfBhUB73 pic.twitter.com/cLFXsQrUpb

— Noam Scheiber (@noamscheiber) September 15, 2025

Joel Eisiminger was racing to save homes in Northern California from a fast-spreading wildfire when a crewmate noticed that one side of his face was suddenly drooping so much that his mouth hung open.

In his six years fighting fires, Joel had tumbled down burning hills, endured full-body rashes from poison oak and inhaled plumes of smoke that left him gasping for weeks. But he had never felt as bad as he did on this morning in July 2024. He didn’t want to let down his crew, so he kept working deep in the forest until a medic told him to get to a hospital. He might have had a stroke.

As the doctors ran tests, Joel grew sicker. Within days, he was too exhausted to walk. On the eve of his 25th birthday, he received a diagnosis: acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive, often fatal blood cancer that usually strikes people more than twice his age. Joel told the doctors he was not a regular smoker and had no family history of blood cancers. But he did have one risk factor: his job.

Read it all.

‘If I Live to 25, I’ve Lived a Good Life’ Risks to wildland firefighters are real. https://t.co/GW3VXtnOXM via @NYTimes

— TJ Kennedy (@TJPublicSafety) September 7, 2025

Americans are more positive toward capitalism than socialism, but the 54% viewing capitalism favorably is down from 60% in 2021 and near that level in most prior years. Americans remain more negative (57%) than positive (39%) toward socialism, with little movement in these attitudes over time.

Gallup first measured Americans’ opinions of various economic systems or aspects of the U.S. economy in 2010 and has repeated the question six times since then, including in an Aug 1-20 survey.

Democrats and independents view capitalism less positively this year, each showing eight-percentage-point declines since 2021. For the first time, less than half of Democrats (42%) view capitalism positively, while a slight majority of independents (51%) still do. Republicans’ views are essentially unchanged, with three-quarters holding a positive opinion.

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Americans are more positive toward capitalism than socialism, but the 54% viewing capitalism favorably is down from 60% in 2021 and near that level in most prior years. pic.twitter.com/ZAZuJlbdCI

— Gallup (@Gallup) September 8, 2025

American companies are once again beating profit expectations, but this time around they aren’t banking on blockbuster consumer spending to make it happen.

Instead, the latest batch of quarterly earnings is getting a lift from managers who are squeezing out costs, boosting productivity and turning to new technologies. Companies from Monster Beverage to Estée Lauder said they are holding down hiring, often while finding new ways to get employees to work more efficiently. And they are raising prices when they can.

“The processes are human-light now,” Damon Lee, chief financial officer of C.H. Robinson Worldwide , said last month as he told investors about an initiative that includes automation upgrades. The global logistics company reported higher profit margins in the second quarter despite a nearly 8% drop in revenue, which it attributed to a prolonged freight recession. It said it had increased productivity 35% since 2022.

“The outcome of those transformations means less head count, more productivity,” he said.

More broadly, the gains enjoyed by companies and their investors aren’t softening the unease consumers and employees feel—and might be obscuring signals that ordinary Americans are putting their anxiety into action.

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For retailers, price increases have generated most of the growth in sales since 2021, with volumes largely flat. Meanwhile, companies are cutting staff on the margins and relying on new technologies to fill gaps. “The processes are human-light now." https://t.co/61FEHkzBCa pic.twitter.com/nprY1Qo2Mg

— Lisa Abramowicz (@lisaabramowicz1) September 3, 2025

espite all the drama about the weakening jobs numbers, the US labor market is actually doing OK. There is one major exception, however: if you happen to be a young man.

While the overall unemployment rate was still a respectable 4.2% in July, for young men aged 20 to 24, it was 8.3%, which is near recession levels — and for recent college graduates, the annual rate is 5.3%. Both of these numbers are about double the comparable figures for young women. During the pandemic, the economy was so bad for working women that it inspired the term “she-cession.” Could the US now be headed for a “he-cession”?

Men have dominated the labor market for most of the modern era, and still earn more than women, but the jobs market has not been kind to men for the last few decades. Many men, even in the prime of their lives, aren’t working. And going to college is no longer an automatic way to improve your job prospects.

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The US jobs market is showing signs of a ‘he-cession’https://t.co/vpJRNkKuLv

— Economic Times (@EconomicTimes) August 5, 2025

Nearly 10 million American children are living in poverty, the most since 2018, according to the latest Census Bureau figures from 2023. 

Tens of millions more—like the Meazler kids—are precariously close. Their families have been pushed to the edge by a storm of economic factors, including the expiration of Covid-era relief programs and the impacts of inflation on food and housing. 

The strain is expected to be worsened by cuts to federal spending on aid programs, including food benefits and Medicaid. President Trump on July 4 signed legislation passed by Congress that reduces funding and tightens work requirements for government assistance, and will likely result in less food aid and millions losing health coverage.

Even before the new cuts, several markers show that households with children are falling behind, though statistics around poverty have been complicated by the upheaval the pandemic brought to jobs and living arrangements, and the unprecedented federal aid distributed in response.

The share of families with children living in poverty jumped to 12.9% in 2023, the most recent year available, after plummeting to a record low of 5.6% in 2021, driven down by temporary pandemic programs like the expanded Child Tax Credit and extra unemployment insurance, according to census data compiled by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. 

Poverty for all ages has inched up, but no other age demographic has seen a sharper rise in poverty between 2021 and 2023 than children, data compiled by the center show. 

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Earning More but in Worse Shape: Hardship Overwhelms Many American Families

Nearly half of kids in the U.S. live in households below the middle class as inflation and the end of Covid relief hit working parentshttps://t.co/MmvB2XmIdG via @WSJ

— Lindsay Wise (@lindsaywise) August 5, 2025

President Donald Trump wants lower interest rates. Achieving that objective will require overcoming bigger obstacles than Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

There are structural forces that drive the cost of borrowing, and right now they’re pointing up. Governments and businesses are piling on debt to pay for tax cuts, military spending, and AI investments — which means more demand for credit. As the Baby Boomers retire and China decouples from the US, the pool of saving to finance those loans is drying up.

Attacks on Fed independence risk shrinking the pool further. Investors don’t want to see the value of their hard-earned cash inflated away by a central bank under political control.

Add all of this together and it points to a world where 4.5% may be the new normal for ten-year Treasuries — the crucial rate for mortgages and corporate bonds, and the one Trump’s team says it wants to bring down. In fact, Bloomberg Economics analysis shows it’s more likely to trend above that figure than below it. For the world’s biggest economy, that means a wrenching transition.

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"Trump’s Interest Rate Obstacle Is Bigger Than Powell" https://t.co/CcNXpiVOuR pic.twitter.com/MLa29IeB2h

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) August 4, 2025

President Trump’s extensive tariffs have already started to generate a significant amount of money for the federal government, a new source of revenue for a heavily indebted nation that American policymakers may start to rely on.

As part of his quest to reorder the global trading system, Mr. Trump has imposed steep tariffs on America’s trading partners, with the bulk of those set to go into effect on Aug. 7. Even before the latest tariffs kick in, revenue from taxes collected on imported goods has grown dramatically so far this year. Customs duties, along with some excise taxes, generated $152 billion through July, roughly double the $78 billion netted over the same time period last fiscal year, according to Treasury data.

Indeed, Mr. Trump has routinely cited the tariff revenue as evidence that his trade approach, which has sowed uncertainty and begun to increase prices for consumers, is a win for the United States. Members of his administration have argued that the money from the tariffs would help plug the hole created by the broad tax cuts Congress passed last month, which are expected to cost the government at least $3.4 trillion.

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Trump’s Tariffs Are Making Money. That May Make Them Hard to Quit. https://t.co/0IaBKVoYff

— tony romm (@TonyRomm) August 3, 2025

The U.S. economy is growing again, helped by trade swings and American consumers who keep spending. There are also signs of caution.

The Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product—the value of all goods and services produced across the economy—rose at a seasonally and inflation adjusted 3% annual rate in the second quarter. That is up from a 0.5% contraction in the first quarter.

Taken together, the two quarters show an economy that is growing, but more slowly. GDP grew at an average annual rate of 1.2% in the first six months this year, a step down from the 2.5% average pace in 2024.

Both quarters this year were heavily influenced by swings in trade as businesses tried to navigate tariff threats and trade deals from the White House.

“Businesses are very cautious—they don’t know the road map and so they’re driving in the right lane very slowly,” said U.S. Bank chief economist Beth Ann Bovino.

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US economy rebounds a surprisingly strong 3% in the second quarter https://t.co/vJqYzkFiUY

— O.C. Register (@ocregister) July 30, 2025