My morning train WFH reads:
• The grift economy is going mainstream Scams and grift have evolved from fringe activity into normalized economic behavior, marking a fundamental shift in how cons operate in plain sight. (Your Brain on Money)
• Detroit Automakers Take $50 Billion Hit as EV Bubble Bursts: The Big Three face massive write-downs as EV demand collapses and companies redirect investment back to gas engines. (Wall Street Journal)
• Bitcoin’s plunge should end the hype that it is digital gold: Bitcoin’s 35% decline versus gold’s 70% gain puts the lie to the “digital gold” narrative. (The Hill)
• Why voters hate Trump’s (pretty decent) economy: The data is solid. The vibes are atrocious. What gives? Despite solid economic metrics, voters remain sour on Trump’s economy because costs for essentials like housing and groceries never came down, leaving real people worse off despite the headlines. (Vox) see also The Disappointment of Young Trump Voters: Americans under 30 swung to the right in 2024, but they’re not getting what they voted for. Young voters who backed Trump in 2024 are abandoning him at record rates, disillusioned by unmet economic promises. (The Atlantic)
• Workers Are Afraid AI Will Take Their Jobs. They’re Missing the Bigger Danger. It isn’t whether artificial intelligence is going to replace them. It’s who will control the knowledge that companies capture from their employees. The real threat isn’t job replacement—it’s that companies are capturing every keystroke and interaction you make, then using that knowledge to automate you or sell it to your competitors. (Wall Street Journal)
• Why it’s becoming so expensive to buy a car in America: Prices are at record highs. More loans are going bad. It’s not an easy time to afford a new car in America. New cars now average $50K with $800+ monthly payments, driven by SUV-heavy tastes, tech complexity, and tariffs that automakers are absorbing—pushing bad loans to levels not seen since 2008. (Washington Post)
• Apple Decouples From Nasdaq, Offering Alternative to AI-Fueled Volatility: It’s been nearly 20 years since Apple Inc. was this untethered from its tech peers, giving investors an appealing alternative to the artificial intelligence-fueled volatility that has gripped most other corners of the stock market in recent weeks. Apple’s 40-day correlation to the Nasdaq 100 Index tumbled to 0.21 last week, the lowest since 2006, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Apple’s stock becomes a haven from AI-stock whiplash, proving that sitting out the AI arms race is now a viable investment strategy. (Bloomberg)
• Why AI writing is so generic, boring, and dangerous: Semantic ablation: The AI identifies high-entropy clusters – the precise points where unique insights and “blood” reside – and systematically replaces them with the most probable, generic token sequences. What began as a jagged, precise Romanesque structure of stone is eroded into a polished, Baroque plastic shell: it looks “clean” to the casual eye, but its structural integrity – its “ciccia” – has been ablated to favor a hollow, frictionless aesthetic. When AI “refines” your writing, it’s not improving it—it’s erasing the rare, precise ideas and replacing them with statistical averages, stripping nuance and context in ways that spread misinformation. (The Register)
• The Republican Governor Getting Under Trump’s Skin: Oklahoma’s Kevin Stitt has weathered criticism from Trump ahead of a meeting of governors at the White House this week. The Republican chair of the National Governors Association, walked a tightrope defending Democratic governors’ invitation rights—and Trump wasn’t happy about it. (Wall Street Journal)
• Brooke Shields on Style, the New “Sex Sells,” and Returning to the Calvin Klein Fold: Forty years after those jeans ads, Shields is back with Calvin Klein — this time on her own terms, with thoughts on how sex in advertising has evolved. (Vanity Fair)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Hilary Allen, Professor of Law at the American University Washington College of Law. She specializes in financial regulation, banking law, securities regulation, and technology law, with a particular focus on how new financial technologies like fintech, crypto, and AI intersect with financial stability and public policy.
Complete History of 2s/10s Yield Curve Inversions (1976–2026)
Source: Eco3min
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