Financial Mindset

President Trump has declared that the main focus of the China Summit is trade , specifically unveiling big transactions for signature U.S. enterprises that further swell our flow of exports, and Washington-Beijing accords that mark a defrosting of the icy standoff between the world’s two biggest economies. The stateside player most likely to land a trophy coup is Boeing . In the week or so prior to Trump’s departure for China, leading a retinue of seventeen super-prominent CEOs, sundry media outlets reported that the aerospace colossus is negotiating a giant sale to China’s three major carriers, naturally shepherded by Beijing. Two factors suggest that what might appear a rumor’s really a done deal. First, it’s probable that the news arose from a publicity-enhancing leak from the Administration. And the President wouldn’t put the plum out there if it stood the remotest chance of not happening, a scenario that would serve his critics grist for dec...

Lake Tahoe doesn’t know where its power will come from after next ski season—and it’s a major problem for the 49,000 residents who call the region home. The Sierra Nevada tourist hub—home to ski resorts, lakeside casinos, and roughly 25 to 28 million annual visitors—is facing an energy crisis with a familiar culprit: the data centers powering the AI boom. NV Energy, the Nevada utility that has supplied the bulk of Lake Tahoe’s electricity for decades, told Liberty Utilities—the small California company that services the region—that it will stop providing power after May 2027. The reason? NV Energy needs the capacity for data centers. As in: the energy supplier for the Lake Tahoe region is telling the utility company that it has less than a year to find another power source. Northern Nevada has become one of the fastest-growing data-center corridors in the country. Google , Apple , and Microsoft have either built or are planning facilities around the ...

The Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Reserve,  Kevin Warsh , bringing new leadership to the world’s most powerful central bank at  a fraught moment for the global economy . Warsh, 56, a former top Fed official, was confirmed Wednesday in a largely party-line 54-45 vote and will replace Jerome Powell as chair at an unusually difficult time for the independent agency. Inflation has  topped the Fed’s 2% target  for five years and is now rising faster because of  spiking gas prices . The Fed’s interest rate-setting committee is divided and saw  the most dissenting votes  in more than three decades last month. And Powell, after years of personal attacks from Trump and  an unprecedented Justice Department investigation , plans to remain on the Fed’s board even after his term as chair ends, potentially creating a competing power center. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in a floor spee...

The Clarity Act, a landmark bill that would create a U.S. regulatory framework for the crypto industry, is set to undergo a Senate committee markup starting Thursday. The prospect of its passage has buoyed investors, but significant obstacles remain before the bill is ready for Congress to send to President Trump’s desk. Clarity, short for Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, passed the House of Representatives last year but has faced setbacks in the Senate Banking Committee as banks and stablecoin companies squabble over the question of how and when rewards can be paid on stablecoin balances. Now, as Senators convene to introduce amendments, Democrats are pushing for ethics guardrails related to the Trump family’s crypto involvement.  Members of the Senate Banking committee have filed over 130 proposed amendments ahead of Thursday’s markup, with 44 coming from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) alone, according to a copy of the proposed amendments reviewed by Fortune .  Whi...

More than 20 years after it redefined fast shipping, Amazon is preparing to raise the bar on consumer expectations again by offering to fulfill customers’ most urgent product needs in a half-hour or less for an extra fee. The company , which revolutionized online shopping in 2005 with two-day deliveries for Prime members, is rapidly opening small order-processing hubs in dozens of U.S. and foreign cities to cater to shoppers who can’t or don’t want to wait for cough medicine to relieve flu symptoms or tomatoes for tonight’s dinner salad. The ultrafast service, called Amazon Now, first launched in India last June. Amazon says 30-minute deliveries now are also available in urban areas of Brazil, Mexico, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. The mini-warehouses devoted to Amazon Now are about the size of a CVS drugstore. They stock about 3,500 products for expedited delivery, including beer, diapers, pet food, meat,...

One evening in late 2024, Denis Shilov was watching a crime thriller when he had an idea for a prompt that would break through the safety filters of every leading AI model. The prompt was what researchers call a universal jailbreak, meaning it could be reused to get any model to bypass their own guardrails and produce dangerous or prohibited outputs, like instructions on how to make drugs or build weapons. To do so, Shilov simply told the AI models to stop acting like a chatbot with safety rules and instead behave like an API endpoint, a software tool that automatically takes in a request and sends back a response. The prompt reframed the model’s job as simply answering, rather than deciding whether a request should be rejected, and made every leading AI model comply with dangerous questions it was supposed to refuse. Shilov posted about it on X and, by the next morning, it had gone viral. The social media success brought with it an invitation from companies Anthropic to ...

Just like generations before, Gen Z is looking to role models for career success. But instead of aspiring to be their white-collar parents, they’re clued into the growing industry of influencers. And as the creator economy continues to grow in reach and profitability, content creators like Logan Walter are fundamentally proving its value. Walter has already hit millionaire-status at 21 years old, just two years after he started selling lifestyle products on TikTok Shop, and six years after he posted his first video on the platform. What started out as a creative outlet for a 15-year-old later transformed into a lucrative success story; the massively popular short-form video app, used by 150 million Americans, is as much a hotbed for economic opportunity as it is an entertainment platform. And with just a camera phone and decent internet connection, it’s easier than ever to get in on the creator boom. “The second the pandemic hit, I downloaded TikTok, because I needed somethi...