Financial Mindset

The latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office show that the Social Security trust will run out of money by fiscal year 2032, which starts on October 2031. That means anyone who wins a Senate seat in this year’s midterm elections will be in office when it’s time to fix the entitlement program’s finances. But it will be tempting for lawmakers to avoid making tough political choices like cutting payments or hiking taxes. Instead, they could decide to finance Social Security’s shortfall with more debt, though that risks swift economic consequences, according to economist Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. In a Creators Syndicate op-ed , she warned financial markets would immediately account for the additional borrowing. “What most people are missing is that, this time, the consequences may show up quickly,” de Rugy wrote. “Inflation may not wait for debt to pile up. It can arrive the moment Congress commits to that debt...

Asia’s health crisis is often framed as an inevitability: Aging populations, rising medical costs, a surge in lifestyle diseases, elderly patients needing care for longer. Rates of conditions like heart disease, cancer, diabetes and hypertension are climbing across the region, driven by insufficient exercise, poor diet, drinking, smoking, stress and pollution. These lifestyle diseases now account for roughly 80% of all diagnoses in Asia, a growing burden of morbidity that healthcare systems are struggling to keep pace with. Yet focusing on lifestyle diseases, and the choices behind them, overlooks the cultural pressures that shape how people think, feel, and behave long before they ever seek medical care. And it’s critical for those of us in the healthcare industry—particularly those of us concerned with keeping people healthy and curing them once they’re sick—to push back against these pressures. Across the region, health is being defined less by clinical advice and more by social e...

The K-shaped economy has dominated discourse lately, but the J-curve is entering the chat too amid debate over AI’s impact on productivity. The curve refers to the idea that general-purpose technologies like AI don’t produce immediate benefits. Instead, massive investment comes first, obscuring early gains. It’s only after this initial dip that productivity really takes off, resulting in the J shape. But for some, it’s not clear yet that the transformation is happening. Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok quipped that “ AI is everywhere except in the incoming macroeconomic data ,” recalling Robert Solow’s famous quote about the PC revolution. Slok added that employment, productivity and inflation stats are still not showing signs of the new technology. Meanwhile, profit margins and earnings forecasts for S&P 500 companies outside of the “Magnificent 7” also lack evidence of AI at work. “Maybe there is a J‑curve effect for AI, where it takes time for AI to show up in the macro da...

Two golfers in Washington, D.C., sued the federal government on Friday to try to prevent the Trump administration  from overhauling  a more than 100-year-old public golf course, accusing the administration of violating environmental laws and polluting a park that is on the National Register of Historic Places. The suit is the latest in a series of legal battles challenging President Donald Trump’s extraordinary efforts to put his mark on public spaces in the nation’s capitol, including  shuttering the Kennedy Center . At the end of last year, a group of preservationists  filed a similar lawsuit seeking to prevent the administration from demolishing the East Wing of the White House in order to build a ballroom — a project slated to cost $400 million. Trump, who is an avid golfer himself, also plans on renovating a  military golf course  just outside of Washington that has been used by past presidents going back decades. The complaint filed against the De...

Wealth managers are increasingly letting the next generation of Asia’s wealthy “call the shots” in how to manage their money, amid an intergenerational wealth transfer that could shift as much as $5.8 trillion in assets by 2030. Previously, Asia’s rich were “typically very busy with business, so they looked to bankers to help them manage their wealth,” Alice Tan, head of group wealth management for Malaysian bank Maybank, tells Fortune .  The next generation, however, usually has an overseas education and comfort with financial instruments. “Some are even the chief investment officer in their family offices,” Tan says.  Wealth management providers are thus taking a step back, allowing younger clientele to “call the shots,” and instead engaging them in “healthy, intellectual discussions” on finance. Maybank is new to the wealth management space, establishing its private banking wing in 2013. Tan joined a year later, after stints at investment firms like Coutts & Co an...

While AI hyperscalers are committing hundreds of billions of dollar per year on capital expenditures, Anthropic’s spending plans are more cautious by comparison. But cofounder and CEO Dario Amodei said the reason for his more measured approach is because even a slight miscalculation could sink the company. In an interview with Dwarkesh Patel on Friday , the podcaster asked why Anthropic, the developer of the Claude chatbot, doesn’t spend more aggressively, given Amodei’s earlier prediction that an AI data center could one day be a “ country of geniuses .” Amodei replied that while he is confident the technical milestone is achievable soon, he’s less certain about the timing of the economic returns. “I really do believe that we could have models that are a country of geniuses in the data center in one to two years,” he added. “One question is: How many years after that do the trillions in revenue start rolling in? I don’t think it’s guaranteed that it’s going to be immediate. It thi...

SpaceX is considering a dual-class share structure in its planned IPO this year, according to people familiar with the matter, mirroring a strategy its billionaire founder Elon Musk floated for Tesla Inc. A two-tier structure would give select shareholders stock with extra voting power that would allow them to dominate decision making. The move would allow insiders such as Musk to maintain control of the company even with a minority stake. The US rocket and satellite maker is also in the process of adding members to its board of directors, the people said, to help steer the initial public offering and drive Musk’s space ambitions beyond its core rocket and satellite business. SpaceX is seeking to hold an IPO later this year, in a deal that could raise as much as $50 billion to fund AI data centers in space and a factory on the moon. SpaceX recently  acquired  Musk’s xAI, moving the company beyond its core businesses into artificial intelligence. Read More:  Musk’s B...