Financial Mindset

The AI revolution is leading to a massive boom in data centers. Major cloud service providers like Google , <a href="https://fortune.com/2026/07/13/meta-hyperion-louisiana-50-billion-tax-breaks-locals/">Meta</a>, Microsoft , and Amazon are engaged in a frenzied bid to keep up with the demand for AI services, and are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to compete. The money taps remain turned on full-blast even in the face of a choppy stock market and persistent fears over whether AI stocks are in a bubble. “Hyperscalers are going to spend maybe between $750 and $800 billion [a year]. Some forecasts even have it up to a trillion, and that would put it at 2.5 to 3% of U.S. GDP, which is just extraordinary for a capital market,” John Mowrey, chief investment officer at NFJ Investment Group, said. A considerable portion of this spending will go to data centers , which offer a pick-and-shovels options for investors looking to ride the AI wave. Fortune h...

At 5:20 a.m. Eastern Time, oil was priced at $86.04 per barrel with Brent serving as the benchmark (we’ll explain different benchmarks later in this article). That’s a gain of $2.40 compared with yesterday morning and around $19 higher than the price one year ago. Oil price per barrel % Change Price of oil yesterday $83.64 +2.86% Price of oil 1 month ago $72.62 +18.47% Price of oil 1 year ago $66.99 +28.43% Check Out Our Daily Rates Reports Discover the highest high-yield savings rates , up to 4.50% for August 10, 2026. Discover the highest CD rates , up to 4.50% for August 10, 2026. Discover the top CD rates from major banks on August 10, 2026. Discover the current mortgage rates for August 10, 2026. Discover current refi mortgage rates report for August 10, 2026. Discover current ARM mortgage rates report for August 10, 2026. Discover current HELOC rates for August 10, 2026. Discover the current price of gold for August 10, 2026. Discover the current pr...

In the hills of Emilia-Romagna, a bank vault holds more than half a million wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano, worth well over 300 million euros. The vault belongs to the bank Credito Emiliano, known colloquially as Credem, which has long accepted young wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano as collateral for loans to local dairy farms since 1953. But now, extreme heat is threatening Italy’s “cheese banks,” and economists who study heat’s effect on growth say the exposure runs well beyond a single vault but into the country’s vineyards, its olive groves, and its broader economy. A blockchain-backed cheese loan collateral program After receiving the wheels of cheese from dairy farmers, a Credem subsidiary, Magazzini Generali delle Tagliate, ages the wheels in two warehouses in Reggio Emilia and Modena. Producers typically receive 60% to 80% of a wheel’s value upfront. But the process has come a long way from the 1950s, as blockchain technology ...

President  Donald Trump  announced Sunday that his new White House counsel will be  Will Scharf , the staff secretary who as the Trump-appointed head of the National Capital Planning Commission  helped secure approval  for the $400 million ballroom project. Trump said that, beginning Sept. 1, Scharf will be replacing David Warrington, who will be leaving the administration to join the private sector. Trump noted that Scharf previously served as a federal prosecutor and represented him in a number of cases, including at the Supreme Court. “Will is Tough, Strong, and Smart! He also loves our Country, and respects the Law,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Will Scharf will do a great job as White House Counsel!” The shakeup in the White House counsel’s office comes at a critical juncture — just months ahead of the  midterm elections , where Trump’s Republican Party will be fighting to hold on to control of Congress. Democrats have vowed t...

Last week’s attempt to boost the sagging yen wasn’t the first time the U.S. and Japan took such joint action, but the way they did it revealed weakness in the dollar’s global status, according to a top currency expert. In a Financial Times op-ed on Tuesday, University of California at Berkeley economist Barry Eichengreen pointed to both sides of the currency intervention , which he said reflected concern about long-term yields going up. On the U.S. end, the New York Fed sold euros instead of dollar-denominated assets to buy yen. Eichengreen said that allowed the U.S. to avoid calling on financial markets to absorb more Treasury securities. That’s as the federal government must finance a $2 trillion budget deficit this fiscal year, meaning it’s already issuing a flood of Treasury debt. Meanwhile, it’s also competing against AI hyperscalers who are selling a mountain of their own bonds. The tsunami of public and private debt as well a...

US Senator Jim Banks joined a handful of Republican senators in calling for embattled Representative Max Miller to step down over allegations he physically abused his former wife and his two-year-old daughter. Banks told NBC’s  Meet the Press  on Sunday that the allegations — which Miller has denied — are “deeply troubling.” At least four other Republican senators, including Miller’s former father-in-law, Bernie Moreno, have called for him to step down.  Ohio’s other senator, Jon Husted, Montana Senator Tim Sheehy and Kansas Senator Roger Marshall have also said Miller, who represents northeast Ohio, should quit. No Republicans who serve with Miller in the US House have made such calls. “If the allegations are true and watching this play out publicly, of course he should resign,” Banks, a first-term senator from Indiana, said. Banks suggested that Miller, a Republican who’s running for a third term, could lose a seat crucial to maintaining a majority in t...

Weight-loss drugs are becoming a popular employee perk, with almost a third of workers saying they’d switch jobs to get GLP-1 coverage. Now, Bank of America is spending $250 million or more yearly on the drugs for its staffers—and CEO Brian Moynihan says the upsides are well-worth the eye-watering cost.  “What we see is a great impact on the employees,” Moynihan recently said in an interview with CNBC . “We’ve always been about mental wellness, physical wellness.” It’s part of a wider $2 billion a year wellness packaged for employee healthcare at the $436 billion bank. Staffers may have to cover the premium or copay for their GLP-1s, but the Wall Street titan is picking up the rest of the bill, amounting to nearly a quarter of a billion dollars annually. And Moynihan says the health investment is worth it to support a healthier workforce.  “It’s lowering near-term incidents of heart issues for people taking, even if they don’t have all the attribu...