Financial Mindset

Four years after Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s economy has entered a “death zone,” said Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. In a recent Economist op-ed , the former Russian central bank adviser drew on a term from mountain climbing when high altitude forces the body to consume itself faster than it can repair itself. “Russia’s economy is stuck in what might be described as negative equilibrium: holding itself together while steadily destroying its own future capacity,” she wrote. The economy isn’t headed for an imminent crash, but GDP has stagnated, oil revenue has been halved amid Western sanctions, and the government’s budget deficit is rapidly draining reserves. At the same time, two economic systems have emerged. One is comprised of the military and related industries that receive priority from the Kremlin. And then there’s everything else that’s been “left in the cold,” Prokopenko explained. “The most dangerous feat...

The Supreme Court made clear on Friday that President Donald Trump lacks the legal authority to use his emergency powers to force U.S. companies to pay tariffs. In its 6-3 decision , the court delivered a massive setback to the White House but, in a surprise to legal observers, it failed to address the question that is top of mind for many firms: Will they be able to recoup the money, estimated at around $133 billion, they have already paid under a policy that has now been ruled illegal? According to trade lawyers, the Supreme Court majority’s silence on the refund process—which dissenting Justice Brett Kavanaugh predicted is likely to be “a mess”—means companies must now wait months to learn whether they will get their money back. In the court’s long-awaited decision, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that Trump could not impose emergency levies—like the ones that imposed 25% duties on Canada and Mexico—since the tariffs amounted to a sort of tax that only Congress had the power to im...

JPMorgan Chase acknowledged for the first time that it closed the bank accounts of President  Donald Trump  and several of his businesses in the political and legal aftermath of the  Jan. 6, 2021 attacks  on the U.S. Capitol, the latest development in a legal saga between the president and the nation’s biggest bank over the issue known as “debanking.” The acknowledgment came in a court filing submitted this week in Trump’s lawsuit against the bank and its leader,  Jamie Dimon . The  president sued for $5 billion , alleging that his accounts were closed for political reasons, disrupting his business operations. “In February 2021, JPMorgan informed Plaintiffs that certain accounts maintained with JPMorgan’s CB and PB would be closed,” JPMorgan’s former chief administrative officer Dan Wilkening wrote in the court filing. The “PB” and “CB” stands for JPMorgan’s private bank and commercial bank. Until now, JPMorgan has never admitted it closed the president...

Less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump signed an order establishing a new 10% global tariff, he announced an increase to 15%, upending one of his signature trade deals in the process. The abrupt change followed the Supreme Court’s ruling Friday that struck down his tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Hours after the decision, he imposed a 10% rate under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, then hiked the new duty on Saturday morning. While experts have pointed out the Section 122 tariffs are also legally dubious , it could take months to sort through any court challenge. And the new rate can only be in effect for up to five months. But unlike Trump’s attempt to invoke the IEEPA levies, the new ones must be applied uniformly across all trading partners, meaning everyone must face a 15% rate. That conflicts with the Trump administration’s trade deal reached last year that set a 10% rate on imports from the U.K. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer no...

President Donald Trump’s trade war isn’t over, despite the Supreme Court striking down his global tariffs, but the legal setback adds to the growing wall of resistance. The last two months represent a stunning reversal from the first year of his second term when lawmakers, CEOs, foreign governments, and the high court itself deferred to the president—even as he sought to tear down the existing world order. The 6-3 ruling against Trump’s levies under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act earned the six justices in the majority a severe tongue lashing . In a press briefing on Friday, he said they were a “disgrace to our nation,” adding that they’re “fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats.” He combined his insults with bravado over his ability to enact a fresh set of tariffs under separate laws, and he quickly followed through by imposing a 10% global duty that he hiked to 15% just a day later. “Still, the importance of this judgment is another step i...

Think back to February 2020. A few people were talking about a virus spreading overseas. If someone told you they were stockpiling toilet paper you would have thought they’d been spending too much time on a weird corner of the internet. Then, over the course of about three weeks, the entire world changed. I think we’re in the “this seems overblown” phase of something much, much bigger than Covid. I’ve spent six years building an AI startup and investing in the space. I live in this world. And I’m writing this for the people in my life who don’t. I keep giving them the polite, cocktail-party version. Because the honest version sounds like I’ve lost my mind. But the gap between what I’ve been saying and what is actually happening has gotten far too big. The people I care about deserve to hear what is coming, even if it sounds crazy. I should be clear about something up front: even though I work in AI, I have almost no influence over what’s about to happen, and neither does the va...

It was the week of Kimbal Musk’s 40th birthday in September 2012, and invitations went out for his party that Saturday at 7 p.m. at New York’s Four Seasons Restaurant on East 52nd Street. As invitees learned via email the password to get in—“pussy riot”—the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was scheming. Epstein and an associate had handpicked a woman he believed would interest Kimbal Musk; coordinated club reservations through an associate who promised “as many girls” as “needed”; and organized a lunch the following day at his Upper East Side Manhattan mansion for Kimbal, his older brother, Elon Musk, and Elon’s then-wife, Talulah Riley, according to dozens of Department of Justice emails released this month. (Kimbal Musk later apologized to Epstein for not attending the lunch, in another email released by the DOJ.) “I told him that you are coming with [Sarah] and that [Kimbal] might want to ditch his ex/or current to be,” Boris Nikolic, a close associate ...