Category: Markets and Macro

Investors are racing to unload U.S. assets as a political storm around the Federal Reserve collides with already fragile confidence in Washington. The dollar is sliding, gold is surging to records and traders have given this rush for the exits a blunt name: the “Sell America” trade. At the center of the turmoil is a…

Artificial intelligence has become the defining corporate obsession of the moment, but the people writing the checks cannot agree on whether they are funding a durable revolution or inflating the next crash. Boardrooms are split between executives who see AI as a once‑in‑a‑generation productivity engine and those who worry that valuations, spending and hype are…

President Donald Trump is testing the outer limits of presidential power, turning procedural corners and legal gray zones into tools for advancing his priorities when Congress resists. From foreign policy to domestic spending and elections, he is increasingly relying on unilateral moves that treat statutes and norms as obstacles to be worked around rather than…

High earners are usually the last group to flinch in a downturn, but this time they are blinking first. Americans who make more than $100,000 are reporting a sharp drop in confidence about their own prospects and the broader economy, and that shift is colliding with a labor market where white-collar roles are suddenly less…

Headline GDP and inflation figures are sending mixed signals as the United States heads into 2026. Growth looks surprisingly strong on paper while price pressures hover near 3 percent, a level that feels manageable to markets but stubborn to central bankers. I want to unpack what those numbers really say about the economy behind them,…

The Pentagon’s scramble to expand weapons production is converging with a broader bet on commercial tech, and few relationships illustrate that shift more vividly than the one between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk. Rather than a single dramatic summit, their interaction is unfolding through factory tours, cost-cutting task forces and AI experiments that…

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is using a high profile trip to Elon Musk’s Starbase complex to sharpen his attack on what he casts as a timid, process bound Pentagon culture. Framing the visit as a test of whether the defense establishment can keep pace with commercial rocketry, he is signaling that the era of slow…

Investors and workers are heading into 2026 with whiplash. On one side, artificial intelligence is being sold as a once‑in‑a‑century productivity revolution. On the other, the labor market is stuck in a “Great Freeze” that feels more like a slow grind than a boom. The gap between AI euphoria and everyday economic reality is exactly…

The United States military has quietly locked in a sweeping artificial intelligence partnership with Elon Musk’s startup xAI, positioning the company’s Grok models at the center of a new generation of battlefield and bureaucracy tools. The arrangement, struck with the Pentagon and the revived War Department, folds a private frontier AI system into some of…

The clash between the White House and Big Oil over who gets paid to rebuild Venezuela’s shattered energy sector has moved from quiet lobbying to an open confrontation. President Donald Trump is promising a bonanza of investment and cash flow while threatening to sideline some of the industry’s biggest players, turning a foreign policy gamble…