Financial Mindset

In 1974, New York Times humorist Russell Baker identified a “ pig in the python ” working its way through the economy: the bulge of 76 million Baby Boomers squeezing through America’s economic system, distorting everything they passed through. When Boomers flooded the labor market in the 1970s, they created a competitive squeeze that never fully released — leaving the generations behind them without the wage rebound economists had predicted. When they bought homes, prices soared. When they took the top jobs in business, culture, and civic life, they held them — and held them, and held them. For half a century, the Baby Boom generation has functioned like a slow-moving wave through the American economy — and as the last of them cross into retirement age, the country is discovering just how much of its future they’re still holding in place. In the labor market, four decades of Boomer dominance suppressed wages and opportunity for younger workers, and their ac...

Oil dropped as the US and Iran edged toward a deal, although President Donald Trump said that Washington’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would remain until an agreement was completed. Global crude benchmark Brent fell as much as 5.2% to $98.12 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate was near $92. Trump said in social-media posts he wouldn’t “rush” into a deal, which “isn’t even fully negotiated yet.” Any final approval may take  several days , according to senior US officials. Still, it remains unclear how  key differences , including the fate of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, will be addressed. Iran’s Tasnim news agency said the draft agreement could still collapse because the US was obstructing some key clauses, including a demand that its assets be unfrozen. Global energy markets have been upended by the crisis, which began in February when the US and Israel attacked Iran. The conflict spread rapidly across the Persian Gulf region, forcing producers...

The Swedish government has come up with some drastically different economic figures on Russia that make the Kremlin’s official data seem like a Potemkin village. In a New York Times op-ed on Wednesday , Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard cautioned the West against overestimating Russia and said the economy is more fragile than it appears. While Russia has claimed GDP expanded by about 13% between 2020 and 2024, Sweden’s analysis of nighttime luminosity suggests the economy actually shrank by 8% during that span. Moscow has also lowballed inflation substantially, according to Stenergard, who pointed out that Russia’s official inflation figure in 2024 was 10% while the central bank hiked interest rates to 21% that year. Similarly, Sweden’s military intelligence chief has estimated that today’s inflation is likely closer to the current benchmark borrowing cost of 15% than the government’s official reading of 5.2%. “This...

When John Kurz left Alaska’s North Slope in 2009, he was staring at a grim future for what had once been the country’s premiere oil field.  Crude production had  plummeted  to 567,000 barrels per day, barely more than a quarter of the roughly 2 million barrels pumped daily at the field’s peak two decades earlier. The decline stoked concerns that the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, built to carry the state’s oil bounty to the continental US, might stop operating.  Engineers even worried that slow-moving crude would congeal inside the pipeline, creating waxy buildup that could turn TAPS into the world’s biggest tube of ChapStick. “The industry was dying,” said Kurz, who at the time was BP Plc’s senior operations manager for Greater Prudhoe Bay. “We could see the end of TAPS coming.” Kurz fled Alaska for more promising opportunities overseas, but he was beckoned back in 2023 to run Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., overseeing the same pipeline whose future h...

President Donald Trump’s latest  financial disclosure  has drawn scrutiny for its astonishing scale: 3,711 trades, almost entirely in shares of companies across America, including many whose fortunes can turn on federal policy. Collectively, they constitute an  unprecedented burst  of stock-market activity by a sitting president that has fueled fascination among the day-trading masses and prompted detractors to warn of insider-dealing. But a review of the transactions, combined with interviews with investment experts, reveals trading so multifaceted it doesn’t easily lend itself to definitive interpretation. The patterns bear the hallmarks of overlapping portfolio-management strategies, often index-based and much of it likely automated, and all of it difficult to disentangle. To a large extent, that conforms with the Trump Organization’s public explanation of the matter. It says the president’s holdings are independently managed...

President Donald Trump announced Saturday that an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is near, but a top ally in Congress raised red flags about the implications for the balance of power in the Persian Gulf. In a social media post, Trump said he spoke with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain. “An Agreement has been largely negotiated, subject to finalization between the United States of America, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the various other Countries, as listed,” he wrote, adding he had a separate call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Final details are being discussed and will be announced soon, but the deal would allow the Strait of Hormuz to be opened, among other provisions, Trump said. Ahead of the announcement, reports said a deal to extend the ceasefire by 60 days would include Iran gradually reopening the strait and agreeing to discuss its uranium stockpil...

It’s no surprise that the SpaceX offering statement, filed the evening of May 20, shows that as of today, the rocket, satellite and AI enterprise sports tiny revenues and books large losses. That its market cap following the IPO slated for mid-June’s expected to hit $1.5 trillion or more highlights that its fans are basing their overwhelming optimism almost exclusively on great things to come. But a careful reading of the S-1 reveals substantial barriers in the path to achieving the sorcerous performance required to reward shareholders who flock to the most anticipated debut ever seen. The reason isn’t simply that SpaceX will be fighting the law of large numbers by starting life as a public company as an extremely expensive stock. Put simply, as the prospectus highlights, Elon Musk’s creation has essentially re-invented itself from a commercial space pioneer facing relatively mild competition, to an AI-centric player that’s vying for the same dollars...