Financial Mindset

China has quietly emerged as the global oil market’s stealthy swing consumer, potentially holding off doomsday a while longer. For months, investors wondered why crude oil prices failed to reach worst-case scenarios, even as a fifth of the world’s supply remained bottled up in Persian Gulf. To be sure, Saudi Arabia diverted exports to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, economies in Asia imposed rationing, and the world’s biggest oil-consuming countries coordinated releases from strategic reserves. But the efforts haven’t fully offset the missing Mideast oil, with the shortfall estimated at more than 10 million barrels a day. At the same time, the U.S. naval blockade on Iran removed took more barrels off the market. As a result, the ongoing stalemate between the U.S. and Iran on reaching a lasting ceasefire deal that reopens the strait has stoked increasing panic from a growing chorus of voices. “We’re approaching unheard of inventory levels,” Exxo...

Israel expanded its ground assault in Lebanon with its broadest incursion into the country in a quarter-century as Hezbollah — Iran’s most powerful regional ally — stepped up attacks on Israel’s north.  According to the Israeli military, Hezbollah fired more than 300 “projectiles” at its soldiers in Lebanon and at northern Israel over the weekend. The latest escalation has shattered a brittle ceasefire declared after the Tehran-backed group attacked Israel in response to its war on Iran, which it launched with the US on Feb. 28. As part of a military operation that started several days ago, the Israeli Defense Forces said in a statement that they’d crossed the Litani River and are near Shi’ite-majority Nabatieh — one of the biggest cities in south Lebanon — which the IDF describes as a stronghold of Hezbollah.  “I have instructed the IDF to expand the incursion in Lebanon. Our forces have crossed the Litani River and took dominant terrain,” Prime Minister Benjamin...

The two biggest U.S. oil companies joined the growing chorus of voices sounding the alarm on the imminent doom global markets could soon face. With the Strait of Hormuz still effectively closed, top oil-consuming countries have been rapidly draining their reserves, helping keep crude prices in check. But Exxon Senior Vice President Neil Chapman warned at an industry conference on Thursday that such drawdowns can’t go on indefinitely. “We’re approaching unheard of inventory levels,” he said, according to CNBC . “I mean really, really low levels. You can debate whether that’s going to hit those really low levels in two weeks or three weeks. Once you get to that point, then you’ll see price shoot up.” For now, the U.S.-Iran ceasefire talks are deadlocked while the Strait of Hormuz remains a contested waterway. That was on display Saturday, when U.S. forces fired a missile at a blockade runner to disable it after ignoring repeated warnings. Iran has also kept up ...

President Donald Trump  on Saturday branded the federal judge who  blocked his renovation  of the Kennedy Center as “an anti Trump Hater” and predicted that the nation’s premier performing arts center he wanted  to shutter for a two-year overhaul  will “soon be closed, probably never to open again.” In a lengthy post on his Truth Social platform, Trump fumed about the Friday decision from U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper who also ordered  Trump’s name  removed from the center. Clearly angered by his latest legal setback, he said it was “impossible for me to be treated fairly,” tying Cooper’s ruling to earlier losses, including the Supreme Court’s rejection in February of his  sweeping tariffs . His post aimed to make the case for the project but did not clarify whether he would continue to defend it in court. Hours after Cooper’s decision, Trump said he was backing away from the renovations and making arrangements ...

When Silicon Valley and the Holy See agree, it is worth asking what they know that governments do not. On Monday, Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, calling for AI to be disarmed and regulated in the service of humanity. Standing beside him at the Vatican was Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, who acknowledged that AI companies operate “inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing.” Separately, Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei has stated that “the next tier of risk is actually AI companies themselves” — and that AI leaders, including himself, should not be the ones deciding the technology’s future. This is the architects of the most capable AI systems in existence telling the world they cannot govern themselves alone. The question is no longer whether global AI governance is necessary. It is whether it will be designed before a crisis makes the answer obvi...

In the days before the Memorial Day weekend, rates on 30 year Treasury bonds hit their highest level in 19 years at 5.2%, and the benchmark 10-year reached 4.7%, the top reading since mid-2007. If those kinds of yields take hold, the scenario for federal interest expense posited in the CBO’s “Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036,” released in February, descends from dire to near-disastrous . Takeaway: America’s track to fiscal safety has lost all margin for error, and nothing demonstrates that better than the long-term impact of loftier than expected rates. America’s got so little room to maneuver that even yields that modestly exceed the CBO’s “baseline,” as the numbers compound in the years ahead, deliver a huge extra blow by crowding out big chunks of revenue that would otherwise go towards funding such essentials as Defense, Social Security and Medicare. The CBO forecasts that yields on the 30 and 10-year Treasuries will res...

The cigarette smoking rate among U.S. adults dropped to another all-time low last year, with 1 in 11 adults saying they were current smokers, according to government survey data released this week. Cigarette smoking is a risk factor for lung cancer, heart disease and stroke, and it’s long been considered  the leading cause of preventable death . The  preliminary findings  from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were based on survey responses from more than 24,200 adults. In the survey, CDC officials defined current cigarette smoking as smoking at least 100 cigarettes in a lifetime and now smoking every day or some days. In the mid-1960s, 42% of U.S. adults were smokers. The rate has been gradually dropping for decades, due to cigarette taxes, tobacco product price hikes, smoking bans, public education campaigns and changes in the social acceptability of lighting up in public. In 2024, the percentage of current adult smokers fell below 10% for ...