Financial Mindset

A controversial, self-styled tech prophet had been searching the world for a place to set up a nomadic education community. Balaji Srinivasan, the former chief technology officer for Coinbase, thought he’d found one in Malaysia—specifically, in a largely uncompleted complex just across the waterway separating the Southeast Asian country from its neighbor, Singapore.  Srivansan’s Network School had operated for years without incident, until a single social media video that was studiously vague about its location caught the eye of social media users, which built into a regulatory crackdown that shuttered the school’s doors on July 21. The day after, Srivansan was in Central Asia, signing an MOU with authorities in Kazakhstan. “Our new campus will become a haven for global techno-optimism, with expedited visas, streamlined redomiciliation, and active recruitment of talent,” he wrote in a July 22 post on X .  It’s the latest development in a weekslong saga involving Sriniv...

A  Canadian  woman was arrested and accused of espionage while working as an intern in the operational headquarters of the  NATO  military alliance, Belgian authorities said Saturday. Belgium’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office said it launched an espionage investigation after NATO’s security services tipped off Belgium’s military intelligence. Authorities then detained “a Canadian citizen of Chinese origin” on Friday, a day after raiding the suspect’s home and workplace inside NATO’s vast command center. “She is suspected of spying on behalf of a third country and of being a member of a criminal organization,” the prosecutors said in a statement. The strategic headquarters of the Allied Powers, known as SHAPE, is located in the southern Belgian city of Mons near the French border. Military officials at SHAPE plan and command joint strategy, tactics and operations. The alliance’s political headquarters is in Brussels, where ambassadors ...

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh apparently relishes a good debate, and the upcoming policy meeting is expected to see some robust back-and-forth. The Federal Open Market Committee convenes Tuesday and Wednesday, marking his second meeting as chair. After his first one last month, he told reporters there was a “good family fight” about rates, though central bankers voted unanimously to keep them steady. That’s a phrase he has used frequently in recent months as he seeks so-called regime change at the Fed. Since his nomination hearing in April, Warsh has mentioned “family fight” publicly 13 times, according to a CNBC tally . But if the June FOMC meeting was a good family fight, the temperature for the next one could go up a notch. And unlike last month’s unanimous vote, Wall Street sees at least two dissents in favor of tightening policy at the upcoming meeting. That’s because much has changed. Most notably, the U.S.-Ira...

Inside the Pennsylvania Convention Center during Major League Baseball’s All-Star Week, Capital One made a big play for sports enthusiasts and loyal cardholders. The company served as the title sponsor of All-Star Village from July 11–14 in Philadelphia, filling roughly 500,000 square feet with interactive exhibits, youth baseball activities, player tributes, food vendors, and a family party-like atmosphere. For the Capital One, it reflected a broader strategy of sports partnerships to deepen customer relationships through experiences rather than traditional advertising. MLB reported attendance of 111,616 at this year’s All-Star Village—the event’s highest since 2022, when it was held in Los Angeles. Perks for Capital One customers included early access, complimentary admission for eligible cardholders, and premium experiences tied to its Venture X Business card. Capital One ( No. 63 on the Fortune 500) became MLB’s official bank and credit card partner in 2022, and commi...

On the Tesla Q2 earnings call the evening of July 22, an analyst asked Elon Musk the question that’s top of mind for shareholders in his two largest ventures: Is SpaceX planning to buy the EV, battery and robot-maker? Musk responded that “We can’t talk about combining companies and things like that on an earnings call. It’s got to be done with the appropriate process,” an answer that did nothing to lessen the chance that he’s seriously mulling a tie-up. Musk then proceeded to effectively laud the benefits of a potential union, citing the many collaborations, and “more and more overlap…on so many fronts.” Musk noted the Digital Optimus “human office worker” project, a SpaceX-Tesla JV, is powered by the Grok AI chatbot developed by the rocket enterprise’s xAI unit, and that mobile and internet services provided by the SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network “getting integrated into all our car vehicles....

The house I grew up in was being knocked down. Rollins House, a rundown Art Deco former factory in south-east London, was the kind of building that looks like nothing until you know what it is: unglamorous on the surface, full of history underneath. It was where my mother lived and where I was raised, and a developer wanted the site for flats. We had to fight, but couldn’t afford lawyers.  I decided to teach myself planning law in between school exam revision. I pored over archives nobody else had opened, putting together a dossier of precedents that would help our case.  I stood in front of a council panel, making our case opposite a law firm with more experience than I had years alive. We won.  The experience taught me about the value of detail, how research wins out, and that outsized odds shouldn’t be intimidating.  A decade later, I had to channel that upstart teenager once more, sitting across from Thomson Reuters, which wanted to buy my AI re...

Alphabet made history in two ways on Wednesday. First, it had its most-profitable quarter in corporate history. Reporting $112 billion in profit, that’s its first 12-figured quarterly profit in history. But 69% of that came from unrealized paper gains on its stakes in SpaceX and Anthropic, not the core business, and Wall Street looked straight through it.  Stripping that out, however, Google still ostensibly had an excellent quarter; its cloud computing business, now the core of the company, soared 82%. So why did investors punish Alphabet today, sending their shares down nearly 7%, the worst day since tariffs? Because of the other record it set: for the first time in the company’s history, it became cash flow negative, meaning less cash entered the company than left it last quarter. Management also warned that 2027 capital expenditures would be “significantly” higher, further deepening anxiety on the Street. The company’s latest filing Thursda...