Financial Mindset

Mark Zuckerberg is nothing if not a true believer. Again and again, the Meta CEO and Facebook founder has thrown himself headfirst into his company’s top initiatives. A few years ago, he made himself the face of the company’s since-sidelined metaverse push , and remained steadfast even as the internet mocked how his virtual reality avatar fenced, hydrofoiled , and, at times, looked awkwardly flat. He even ran internal and media meetings inside Meta’s own VR offices , which he argued was a better way to connect than regular video conference calls. He also regularly wears Meta’s bulky AI smart glasses in public, aesthetics be damned.  The chief executive is now walking the walk on another Meta imperative: AI adoption. According to the Wall Street Journal , Zuckerberg is building an AI agent to help him as CEO. Details are scarce on the still-in-development tool, but the WSJ reports that it’s getting Zuckerberg information faster, expediting processes that normally require him to q...

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby is preparing for the worst : a future where oil prices reach as high as $175 per barrel and stay above $100 until the end of 2027.  With the U.S.-Israel war on Iran now in its fourth week, the airline industry is staring down its biggest disruption since the pandemic as the global oil market suffers a supply shock. This is the first major crisis the industry is facing since widely ending the practice of fuel hedging in 2024 and 2025, an insurance that can protect airlines from spikes in fuel costs.  Jet fuel—which accounts for more than 40% of airlines’ operating costs—have nearly doubled in the last three weeks, according to Argus Media. Kirby predicted in a letter to employees that if fuel prices remain high, they would add $11 billion to United’s annual costs. It may spell doomsday for an industry that took four years to recover from the pandemic, but airline executives are remaining optimistic. The reason? This time, they’re pre...

When Brian Niccol took over as CEO of Starbucks 18 months ago with the intention to return the company to its glory days of the 1990s and early aughts, he was surprised to see the coffee chain felt more like a factory floor than a warm hangout spot. In an recent episode of Semafor ’s “The CEO Signal” podcast, Niccol said when he first took the helm of the company in late 2024, he visited several stores and noticed the coffee chain had put so much emphasis on fulfilling large volumes of orders it had strayed from its reputation as a cozy coffee house. Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” plan introduced in his first days as CEO was meant to restore Starbucks to its roots as a “third place” for customers to linger in. “We got really focused on trying to be efficient and run it like a manufacturing facility, as opposed to recognizing, no, this is actually a customer service experience, where we do great craft and create great drinks for people on time,” Niccol said. Although Starbucks stock...

A California sheriff  running for governor  has seized more than half a million ballots cast in a November special election from county election officials, saying he’s investigating a ballot count discrepancy. County elections officials have disputed the claims by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, called Bianco’s move unprecedented and says it is designed to sow distrust in elections. Bianco held a news conference Friday saying his office had launched the investigation after receiving a complaint from a local citizens group about the ballot count from a November 2025 special election on  redistricting . In the special election, voters approved a measure to redraw congressional district lines to favor Democrats in the upcoming midterm election. The measure passed in the county by a margin of more than 80,000 votes. Bianco seized ballots in Riverside County, the inland California county of 2.5 million ...

The US has allowed the sale of Iranian oil and petrochemical products that have been loaded onto tankers, its latest effort to counter rising oil prices due to the Middle East war. The Department of Treasury issued a general license for energy that’s already on vessels as of Friday, with such purchases authorized through April 19. The measure follows similar moves for Russian oil on the water in a bid to ease an unprecedented fuel supply crunch caused by the war. For now, the vast majority of Iran’s oil is bought by Chinese customers — mainly independent refiners known as teapots. While the US waiver would widen the pool of potential buyers, any new customers would still face the challenge of structuring deals while other restrictions on Iran, including its access to international financial markets, remain in place. The US and Israeli war on Iran has led to a virtual halt in shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of global oil typically transits, with only a trickle of Ir...

The U.S. war on Iran has laid bare a dichotomy in the world’s most advanced military: high-tech weapons and AI have delivered stunning blows at unprecedented speed, while defending against the swarm of missiles and drones launched in retaliation have come at unsustainably lopsided costs. Led by a massive air campaign, the U.S. has claimed more than 7,000 strikes on key sites, with Israel conducting a comparable number of sorties, as AI tools like Anthropic’s Claude recommend targets “ much quicker in some ways than the speed of thought. ” The relentless bombardment has decimated Iran’s military and leadership. But helped by the mass production of cheap drones, the forces that are left still retain enough combat power to attack Gulf neighbors and scare away commercial tankers from the Strait of Hormuz, keeping 20% of the world’s oil bottled up. Iran’s retaliatory barrage has also forced the U.S. and its allies to draw down expensive stockpiles of interceptors. The tactic highlights t...

The Justice Department filed a new lawsuit Friday against Harvard University, saying its leadership failed to  address antisemitism on campus , creating grounds for the government to freeze existing grants and seek repayment for grants already paid. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, is another salvo in a protracted battle between the administration of President Donald Trump and the elite university. “The United States cannot and will not tolerate these failures,” the Justice Department wrote in the lawsuit. It asked the court to compel Harvard to comply with federal civil rights law and to help it “recover billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies awarded to a discriminatory institution.” The lawsuit also asks a judge to require that Harvard call police to arrest protesters blocking parts of campus and to appoint an “independent outside monitor,” approved by the government, to ensure it complies with court orders. Harvard did not immediately respond to a req...