My back-to-work morning train reads:
• Peter Navarro: ‘There’s No Softening on China’ Trump’s longtime trade adviser discusses tariffs, doing business with Beijing, and the Supreme Court case that could define his legacy. (Bloomberg free)
• US prosecutors launch criminal investigation into Federal Reserve’s Jay Powell: Central bank chair says grand jury subpoenas are retaliation for refusal to bow to demand to cut interest rates. (Financial Times) see also U.S. Prosecutors Are Investigating Fed Chair Jerome Powell: A criminal probe looks at his testimony to Congress over central bank renovations. (Wall Street Journal)
• How Google Got Its Groove Back and Edged Ahead of OpenAI: After ChatGPT dominated early chatbot market, Google staged comeback with powerful AI model; biggest search-engine overhaul in years. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Year of the $100 Million House: For the first time ever, every luxury property on the list of 2025’s 10 biggest sales traded at nine figures or more (Wall Street Journal)
• Ten Lessons the Market Taught Us in 2025. Lessons the Market Taught Us in 2025 (Larry’s Substack) see also Even Warren Buffett couldn’t keep beating the market without fail. Here’s why.Would you have invested in Berkshire Hathaway stock at the start of Buffett’s career? (Marketwatch)
• It’s One of America’s Most Successful Experiments, and It’s Coming to an End. Amid an astonishing wave of anti-Indian animus, it’s a question many Indian Americans are asking. In its crudest form, mostly expressed on social media, this antipathy shows up as gutter racism and religious bigotry — an endless stream of invective declaring that Indians have low I.Q.s, worship devils, cheat their way into the country and commit terrible crimes. (New York Times)
• More than 10% of Congress won’t return to their seats after 2026: More than a tenth of the current Congress has now indicated they will not return to their seats after the 2026 midterms, driven by redistricting, retirements and lawmakers running for different offices. (NPR)
• Cuba Is Already on the Brink. Maduro’s Ouster Brings It Closer to Collapse. Cubans speculating about whether their government will be next to fall, with crucial Venezuelan oil imports now in jeopardy. (Wall Street Journal)
• We are all le Carré’s people now: Look into his wilderness of mirrors and see our own world reflected all around. (New Statesman)
• Instructional Manual for Good Writerly Practice: An Interview with Rob Mclennan (Cleveland Review of Books)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Ben Hunt, founder of Perscient, a firm that studies how narratives and stories shape markets, investing, and social behavior through the lens of information theory, game theory, and unstructured data analysis. His work analyzes the language, story arcs, and viral spread of explanations in media.
Wells Fargo’s economic chart of the year
Source: @MylesUdland
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