Financial Mindset

Trump’s Ultimate Fighting Championship Freedom 250 spectacle on the White House South Lawn resulted in record bonuses for the winners. The fighters, though, didn’t get paid in U.S. dollars, which would seem to be the obvious currency for such an event. Instead, the prize money came in the form of USD1, a type of synthetic dollar known as a stablecoin, that is run by the Trump family’s cryptocurrency business, World Liberty Financial. This arrangement created an ethics scenario that would otherwise be illegal for most federal officials and could be treated as a crime, said Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration. “If a Treasury secretary had a financial interest in World Liberty and then participated in any government matter that had a knowing economic impact on World Liberty, that Treasury secretary very likely would commit a felony,” Painter told Fortune . Under the federal criminal statute 18 U.S.C. § 208, Painter no...

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday said FIFA should reflect on the high cost of tickets for the  2026 World Cup  as many have called the price far out of reach for the vast majority of Mexicans. Sheinbaum told journalists that soccer should be much more than a business. “Soccer has to be something else,” she said. “All of this should prompt reflection, even within FIFA.” There was no immediate public reaction from FIFA. Its president, Gianni Infantino, last week defended high ticket prices as fitting in the North American market. Earlier this year, tickets for matches in the three host countries including Mexico went on sale at prices ranging from $140 to $8,680. While some prices have fallen, others have soared. Tickets for the final are priced at $32,970. Resale prices are higher. In April, FIFA’s own resale platform listed four tickets for the final at around $2.3 million each. Although Mexico’s president acknowledged that it is “fine” ...

Pakistan says the United States and Iran have reached an agreement to end the war and open the  Strait of Hormuz , offering relief to the global economy more than three months since  the war  began. Full details of the deal were not immediately available. The signing will be Friday in Switzerland. It is not clear how quickly the strait might reopen to all traffic. The U.S. previously said it would ease its blockade of Iranian ports as the strait reopens, and would agree to relax sanctions to allow Iran to sell more of its oil and strengthen its battered economy. U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed a deal had been reached with Iran and said he had authorized an end to the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz. “Congratulations to all!” he wrote on social media, without providing details. He added, “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” Iranian state media reported Pakistan’s statement after a day in which Israe...

Vietnam’s new government is sending a clear signal to the markets: growth is back in the driver’s seat. The US-ASEAN Business Council recently led more than 50 leading American companies through Hanoi, and what we encountered was a government in a hurry—and one that knows exactly what it wants from U.S. business. Even as other senior leaders traveled to Beijing, Prime Minister Lê Minh Hưng stayed in Hanoi to meet our delegation. We had a direct and pragmatic discussion focused on next steps. He struck us as a technocrat in the best sense of the word: An official who was practical, impatient with bureaucracy, and acutely aware that economic ambition means little without execution. Vietnam no longer wants to compete simply on cheap labor or favorable geography. Its new ambition is to compete on speed, talent, technology, and industrial sophistication. The government’s pledge to slash regulations in half—paired with Resolution 57, its national innovation framework—signals a leade...

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney continued his efforts to pivot away from the United States and align with Europe, meeting with the leader of Ireland on Saturday ahead of the upcoming G7 summit and saying middle power countries shouldn’t compete for favor with America. Carney said that Canada and the European Union have a combined population that is more than twice that of the United States, with a similarly sized economy and a collective defense budget that is twice that of China’s. He said smaller nations can multiply their strength by partnering with like-minded allies. “In a world of great power rivalry, middle powers have a choice — to compete for favor or to combine to create a third path with impact,” Carney said at Trinity College in Dublin. He made similar  comments at the World Economic Forum  in Davos, Switzerland, which became a symbol of middle-power resistance in January, when he  declared the global rules-based order over  and...

OpenAI received a subpoena from several states as part of a probe into the safety of users of its chatbot as it prepares to offer stock to the public for the first time. The company behind the popular chatbot, ChatGPT, said it will respond to the inquiry “constructively” and that it already has in place measures to protect its customers. “AI is a new and powerful technology, and we work every day to safely bring its benefits to people in a responsible way,” an emailed statement from a spokesperson said. “We take the concerns raised by state attorneys general seriously.” OpenAI has drawn criticism for ChatGPT allegedly offering encouraging words to users thinking of killing themselves or engaging criminal acts. It also has come under scrutiny for how its uses health data and other personal information of its customers. On Thursday, the company was sued by a Canadian blaming the chatbot for her daughter’s decision to hang herself. Earlier in June, the Florida ...

Much of the marketing world is handing over creative tasks to AI with fairly mixed results. But Dan Murphy, who leads marketing at canned beverage brand Liquid Death, said AI models can’t get close to the unique original concepts human writers do. In the world of chief marketing officers, AI might not be the panacea some think it is, he warned.  “There’s never been an easier time to look like you are doing marketing, but you are actually flaming up cash,” said Murphy during a discussion at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen this week. “The message is not getting into the brain, it’s flicked away in 200 milliseconds, and it is as forgettable as most AI slop actually is.” To be clear, like most companies Liquid Death is using AI to an “extreme level” behind the curtain, Murphy said, and employees celebrate it in workplace messaging platform Slack and joke that Anthropic’s Claude is their new direct report. However, true “zero to one thinking,” said Murphy— ...