Weeks after successfully squaring up to Elon Musk in court, Sam Altman is preparing to challenge his old adversary “on a different plane”, said Bloomberg. Days before SpaceX’s expected debut, his company OpenAI – which kicked off the AI boom with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 – has “filed confidentially” for an IPO, setting […]
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The Financial Product That Blew Up the Global Economy Is Back
For anyone alive and aware in 2008, this weekend’s economic news probably sent them to the drug store to buy some Pepto Bismol. First, the Federal Reserve demanded that the nation’s biggest banks detail their exposure to the opaque, multitrillion-dollar private credit market. Then, almost simultaneously, word broke that some of those same banks are […]
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The Tricks and Traps of Trump Accounts
In similar types of accounts, administrative fees and commissions can be misleading, complex—and hidden. 529 plans, which are education-specific individual savings plans, can layer on monthly or quarterly flat maintenance fees, annual maintenance fees, enrollment fees, sales commissions, or administrative fees determined as a percentage of the plan’s assets. Index funds change their fees depending […]
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Trump Is Silencing Government Warning Signals of an Economic Crash
The financial world doesn’t appreciate seeing the federal government advertise its vulnerabilities, even sotto voce, and Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who between 2019 and 2024 collected nearly $2 million in campaign contributions from the securities and investment sector, introduced during that same time period three successive bills to abolish OFR, which he called “useless and unaccountable.” Last year’s “One Big Beautiful” […]
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Is Pete Hegseth Killing Iranians to Get Rich?
John Cassidy noted in The New Yorker that this wasn’t the first time traders appeared clairvoyant about Trump’s actions. “The day before the war began,” he wrote, “six accounts on Polymarket, the online prediction site, wagered that the U.S. would strike Iran within forty-eight hours, netting profits of more than a million dollars. In January, […]
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Trump’s New Gift to Crypto and Private Equity: Access to Your 401(k)
Many retirement investors are wary, for good reason. Private equity and credit markets are highly illiquid and lack transparency—not to mention strong regulatory oversight—making it difficult for investors to access funds, accurately value assets, and spot risks on the horizon. And there’s no guarantee that private investments, despite having much higher fees than index funds, […]
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Seems Like Trump May End This War Soon. What Will It Have Been Worth?
Trump, of course, is capable of anything. Some normally pliant Fox News host could say something that rubs him the wrong way, call him a coward for refusing to finish the job, and suddenly Lindsey Graham’s demented Kharg Island wet dream might come true. But on balance, it’s a reasonable guess at the moment that […]
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We Can’t Address Affordability Without Tackling Corporate Power
Student debt relief took over a decade of organizing and campaigning, only to be dashed on the rocks of a Supreme Court case that had to look the other way just to find standing to sue. But when crypto and fintech accounts were threatened by lazy asset management, keeping large deposits in accounts at Silicon […]
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SpaceX could be the biggest IPO in history. Will investors see a return?
Elon Musk always does things in a big way. The same is true of his plans to take SpaceX public. But how investors will make out could depend on how much they like him. As Musk works to convince buyers that his rocket company could be valued at as much as $2 trillion, SpaceX is […]
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