My three-day weekend reads:

• Why a ‘K-Shaped’ Economy Means More Risk for Stock Investors: The wealthy are propping up consumer spending thanks to a multi-year bull run, while lower earners pinch pennies. That creates a fragile circular dynamic — if stocks stumble, spending drops, and the whole thing unwinds fast. (Morningstar) see also Older Americans power a gray-shaped economy: Forget K-shaped, try gray-shaped: Boomers aren’t just aging — they’re reshaping the entire labor market. Health care job growth is booming, the retirement wave is accelerating, and the economy is increasingly being built around serving people over 65. The changing demographics in the U.S. — more old people, fewer young ones — are reshaping jobs and spending in all kinds of ways. (Axios)

• The Mega-Rich Are Turning Their Mansions Into Impenetrable Fortresses: Anxiety over high-profile violence has the wealthy spending big on armed security, bunkers and even moats to keep themselves safe from intruders. (Wall Street Journal)

• Who Is Paying the Trump Tariffs? Until recently the question of who pays tariffs wasn’t controversial among economists. The overwhelming consensus was that under normal circumstances tariffs — taxes on imported goods — are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. There are caveats and exceptions to this consensus, but these caveats are well understood and for the most part don’t apply to the tariffs imposed by the Trump 47 administration. (Paul Krugman) see also How a supplier of nuts and bolts could curb Trump’s tariff overreach: A new lawsuit reveals how businesses are forced to navigate an opaque and arbitrary system. (Washington Post)

• $185 billion is the down payment — the 4 skills that survive when agents code for months The infrastructure bubble for AI is actually just a down payment, and only a handful of human skills will remain valuable as AI agents become more capable autonomous workers. Here’s what changed and what it means for your career (Nate’s Newsletter / Substack)

• The British Are Furious at Donald Trump Over Chicken. They Actually Have a Pretty Good Point. The UK’s “chlorinated chicken” panic is back — Trump is pressuring Britain to accept American poultry in exchange for a tech deal, and 150,000 Brits have signed petitions to keep it out. It’s part food safety fight, part cultural identity crisis. (Slate)

• This venture capital firm believes investing in climate is ‘Obvious’—and just raised another $360 million to prove it: Obvious Ventures managing director Andrew Beebe tells ‘Fast Company’ why now’s a great time to be backing climate tech, the trendy idea he’s glad the Trump administration is killing, and why he’s still optimistic for the future of the planet. (Fast Company)

• Gallup Will No Longer Measure Presidential Approval After 88 Years: The most-cited barometer of presidential job performance since FDR is being retired. Gallup says it’s a strategic shift in research priorities. The timing — with Trump’s approval at a historic low of 36% — is purely coincidental, of course. (The Hill) see also Poll: Trump’s Ratings on Immigration Tumble as Americans Lose Confidence in His Top Issue: The one issue that was supposed to be Trump’s ace in the hole is now underwater. Americans are losing confidence in his handling of immigration, even among Republican-leaning voters. (NBC News)

• AI Helps Scam Centers Evade Crackdown in Asia, Dupe More Victims: Scam operations across Southeast Asia are using AI to scale up fraud, outsmart law enforcement, and target more victims than ever. (Bloomberg)

• The Bay Area’s most unlikely landmark: A 125-year-old light bulb that’s still burning: A typical light bulb can last about a year. The one hanging from the ceiling at Fire Station No. 6 in Livermore has lasted more than a century. The Centennial Light Bulb, as it’s known, has been glowing almost continuously since 1901. In June, it’s expected to reach its 125-year mark. Time has turned a simple light fixture into one of the Bay Area’s head-scratching curiosities. (San Francisco Chronicle)

• TV, It’s Not Just for Humans Anymore: Videos aimed at pets are drawing millions of views. But who’s actually watching? (New York Times)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Heather & Doug Bonaparth, a married couple who work together and wrote a book on the financial challenges couples face: “Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team.” Our discussion sits somewhere in between financial planning and couples therapy, built around real stories that try to help couples find a healthier approach to money.

 

U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office

Source: Science

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Why the Traditional Media No Longer Serves Our Needs
The Truth Matters, Chapter 1
Bruce Bartlett
Bartlett’s Notations, Feb 09, 2026

 

 

 

 

With the decimation of the Washington Post newsroom by billionaire Jeff Bezos, the crisis of the media seems to have reached an apex. I saw this coming in 2017 and wrote a book about it: The Truth Matters. Since I believe that the message of the book still resonates, I’ve decided to serialize it here on Substack. It’s a short book so it shouldn’t occupy too much of your time. Following is chapter one.

Key points:

· The fairness doctrine was obsolete and cannot be revived.

· Conservatives were underserved for many years by traditional media.

· Progressives were slow to embrace new media such as talk radio.

People have never been happy with the news media, always blaming it for lying, misinforming and being unfair to one side or the other. Thomas Jefferson expressed views on this subject that many people today no doubt would share. In an 1807 letter to John Norvell, Jefferson said,

To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, “by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.” Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day….

I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.

The complaint that the news media have a built-in bias is an old one and there is truth in it. The major media have long been based in our major cities where people naturally tend to be more socially liberal. That has been one of the great attractions for living in cities rather than small towns and rural areas that tend to be socially conservative. Additionally, it’s a fact that people with a liberal disposition have tended to gravitate toward journalism as a profession, while conservatives gravitate elsewhere.

Media consolidation also tended to make it more liberal. In any town with more than one newspaper, one would usually be conservative if only for competitive reasons. Partisan affiliation and ideological compatibility in editorials, news judgement and among columnists was one reason people subscribed to a particular paper. But as newspapers have closed, those with a conservative bent tended to be the first to go because they were usually the afternoon papers. Those with no competition tend toward bland mushiness when it comes to politics.

Radio and television have always tended to be more even-handed because news presentation focused on breaking stories where audio or video was available. It didn’t lend itself to commentary or editorializing. Moreover, there was a government rule called the fairness doctrine that required both sides to be presented when political endorsements were made or opinions expressed. But the main effect of this rule was to discourage the presentation of any opinions at all, rather than waste precious air time presenting alternative viewpoints.

In 1987, the fairness doctrine was abolished. Many rue this day as the one when fairness itself began to disappear from the media. But the fairness doctrine never applied to the print media and it was already clear by 1987 that cable—CNN went on the air in 1980—was ushering in a new era of news coverage. It was untenable to maintain restrictions on over-the-air media that didn’t apply to print publications or cable. It’s likely that the fairness doctrine would have been struck down by the courts if it wasn’t repealed.

It is indisputable, however, that abolition of the fairness doctrine gave rise to talk radio. Developments in the radio market were also critical; the AM band had been suffering for years as the FM band was better suited to music. Rush Limbaugh was the first to recognize that the end of the fairness doctrine meant that he could do an entire show devoted to nothing but expressing his opinions, of which he had many, all strongly felt and vigorously expressed. The AM band was well-suited to talk and was cheaper than employing disk jockeys to curate music selections.

It’s perhaps an accident of history that a strong conservative like Limbaugh was first to recognize the political potential of talk radio. It was probably also true that conservatives were underserved by the liberal sameness of conventional journalism at the time. At least in his early years, Limbaugh was a genuine news source, giving national attention to stories, research and viewpoints that were hard to find elsewhere. Before him, the only national publications with a broad reach that reflected a conservative bent were the Wall Street Journal and Reader’s Digest.

Limbaugh’s success led to the creation of Fox News by Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch, based on a vision long nurtured by Republican media guru Roger Ailes. With most television tilting a bit to the left, they cleverly positioned Fox in the middle of the political spectrum, which made it slightly to the right of its competitors.

The enormous financial success of conservative talk radio and Fox News stimulated growth of a vast conservative media network. Meanwhile, efforts to copy its success by progressives have uniformly failed. No one is quite sure why; it may be that those on the left are inclined to be satisfied with the traditional mainstream media. The problem is that it is dying a slow death. Something will replace it, we don’t know what just yet. Many analysts believe that virtually all print publications will disappear in a few years.

It may be that progressives have more to gain from developing new methods of acquiring news and information than conservatives, who seem very satisfied with the availability of compatible news and views on Fox, talk radio and the internet. But conservatives should avoid complacency. By having a closed-loop of news sources, they are more prone to deception by charlatans peddling conspiracy theories, fake news and extreme views far outside the mainstream. These are likely to be political albatrosses in the future.

In the long run, political parties and movements are best served by truth, accuracy and responsible news reporting. It may be that this needs to be subsidized in some way. The federal government has long done this by giving newspapers and magazines subsidized mailing rates; and radio and television stations were given extremely valuable spectrum for literally nothing. Legal requirements that certain public notices be published in local newspapers is another sort of government subsidy. Given the importance of a well-informed electorate to the functioning of democracy, it is not unreasonable to think that market forces alone may be inadequate to the job.

One idea I have had is to allow foundations and other groups to endow reporting positions at news organizations as has long been common for university professorships. Something like this is already being done at the Boston Globe, where local nonprofits are subsidizing the cost of employing a music critic, with the paper retaining full editorial control over the critic’s work.

~~~ About Bruce Bartlett:

Bruce Bartlett is a longtime observer and commenter on economic and political affairs in Washington, D.C., who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico, and many others. A bestselling author, his latest book is The Truth Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Separating Facts From Lies and Stopping Fake News in Its Tracks.

His prior writings on the Big Picture are here,

@BruceBartlett

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Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:

• Carl Sagan’s 9 timeless lessons for detecting baloney: Carl Sagan’s baloney detection kit taught us how to separate good science from the work of charlatans. In 2026, that matters more than ever. (Big Think)

• One Generation Runs the Country. The Next Cashed In on Crypto. The Trump sons have made billions in cryptocurrency while their father reshapes the regulatory landscape, but their investors didn’t always fare so well.  Nothing to see here… (Wall Street Journal) see also Binance—Whose Founder Was Pardoned—Now Holds 87% Of Trump’s Stablecoin: Binance holds about 87% of USD1, the stablecoin issued by a Trump family crypto venture—a greater concentration than any other major stablecoin has at a single exchange—underscoring the depth of the financial relationship between Binance, whose founder Trump pardoned in October, and World Liberty Financial, which already has added an estimated $1 billion to President Donald Trump’s net worth. (Forbes)

• Divorce, Hedge-Fund Style: Inside the Breakup at Two Sigma: A rancorous divorce, a feud between billionaires and the future of a trading powerhouse. (Bloomberg)

• Intelligence Dispute Centers on Kushner Reference in Intercepted Communication: A whistle-blower has accused Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, of blocking distribution of a report that Jared Kushner’s name came up in an intercepted communication about Iran. (New York Times)

• Immigration Raids in South Texas Are Starting to Hit the Economy: The economic consequences of mass deportation raids are becoming visible in border communities. Businesses are struggling to find workers, farms are going unplanted, and the economic toll of mass deportation is becoming impossible to ignore. Trade groups are raising alarms about aggressive immigration enforcement hurting businesses in the region  (Wall Street Journal) see also A Raid in a Small Town Brings Trump’s Deportations to Deep-Red Idaho: Deportation operations are no longer limited to blue-state cities; deep-red communities are feeling the impact. Even ruby-red communities are feeling the shock of aggressive immigration enforcement when it arrives on their doorstep. Wilder, Idaho, prided itself on comity. Then federal agents stormed a racetrack outside of town in October, and the reverberations are still shaking the community (New York Times)

• The Misleading Chartcrime That Killed the ACA Subsidies: One bad chart made the rounds in Congress and helped justify gutting health insurance subsidies for millions of Americans. GOP leaders cited data from a Trump-aligned think tank to argue the ACA is “unaffordable”. Health economists say the numbers were spun and the full story tells the opposite. (Healthcare Uncovered / Substack)

• Uncle Sam Wants You! … to Eat “Chlorine Chicken”: The great chlorine-poultry panic of 2026 is upon us, and it’s Donald Trump’s fault. (Slate) see also How America Got So Sick: The health of a nation reflects the health of a democracy. Both are in trouble. (The Atlantic) see also Newly revealed emails undermine RFK Jr testimony about 2019 Samoa trip ahead of measles outbreak: Newly revealed emails undermine RFK Jr testimony about 2019 Samoa trip ahead of measles outbreak. Kennedy later said the purpose of his trip had nothing to do with vaccines. US embassy and UN staff at the time said otherwise, emails show. (The Guardian)

• He Cyberstalked Teen Girls for Years—Then They Fought Back: How a hacker shamed and humiliated high school girls in a small New Hampshire town, and how they helped take him down. (Wired)

• Deadlier Than Gettysburg: How the cruelty of the Confederacy’s prison camps gave rise to the rules of war. (The Atlantic)

• US federal contractor hired white supremacist leader for wildfire relief: Ian Michael Elliott of neofascist Patriot Front worked ‘crisis relief missions’ funded by Department of Agriculture. US federal contractor hired white supremacist leader for wildfire relief: A federal contractor brought on the leader of the Patriot Front white supremacist group for wildfire recovery work. (The Guardian)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Heather & Doug Bonaparthe, a married couple who work together and wrote a book on the financial challenges couples face: “Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team.” Our discussion sits somewhere in between financial planning and couples therapy, built around real stories that try to help couples find a healthier approach to money.

 

Home price growth slowed to its weakest pace in more than a decade
Percent of Mortgages in Negative Equity are very high in Parts of Florida and Texas

Source: Calculated Risk

 

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~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

 

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Valentine’s Day Special!

This week, I speak with Douglas and Heather Boneparth. Doug is the president of Bone Fide Wealth and Heather is the firm’s Director of Business and Legal Affairs and Chief Compliance Officer. They also discuss their new book “Money Together.” They discuss the challenges couples can face discussing their finances, why marriages with joint checking accounts tend to last well, and how to navigate money as a couple.

They discuss why in relationships, money issues are sometimes not about money, but something else.

A list of their current reading/favorite books is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Hilary Allen, Professor of Law at the American University Washington College of Law. She specializes in financial regulation, banking law, securities regulation, and technology law, with a particular focus on how new financial technologies like fintech, crypto, and AI intersect with financial stability and public policy.

 

 

 

Published Book

 

Current Reading/Favorite Books

 

Books Barry Mentioned

 

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The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• Something Big Is Happening: Here’s the thing nobody outside of tech quite understands yet: the reason so many people in the industry are sounding the alarm right now is because this already happened to us. We’re not making predictions. We’re telling you what already occurred in our own jobs, and warning you that you’re next A developer’s firsthand account of the step-change in AI coding capabilities and what it means for software engineering as a profession. (shumer.dev) see also The Doomsday Scenario for AI and Jobs: What are the strongest cases for it and against it? Derek Thompson on the biggest divide in his coverage of the economy — the growing possibility that AI displaces workers faster than new jobs can be created, and why even optimists should take the downside case seriously. (Derek Thompson)

• Inside the Booming Business of Monster Porn: Teratophiliacs were once a niche group that bonded over their sexual attraction to monsters in obscure forums. Now—as online communities proliferate and genres like romantasy grow—monster porn is going mainstream. (GQ)

• The Big Scary Myth Stalking the Stock Market: The concentration of the S&P 500 in a handful of mega-caps has everyone spooked, but the historical record suggests top-heaviness is more normal than you think. (Wall Street Journal) see also The Fallacy of Concentration: The academic paper making the rounds on why index concentration isn’t the risk everyone assumes it is. (SSRN)

• 26 Rules to Be a Better Thinker in 2026: Ryan Holiday’s annual list of mental models and Stoic-flavored advice for sharpening your thinking. (Ryan Holiday)

• Is inherited wealth bad? Despite associations with the idle rich, the fact that inheritances are rising is a sign of a healthy, growing economy. (Aeon)

• Betting Men: Inside Kalshi and Polymarket’s Bull Market: The CEOs of Kalshi and Polymarket Are Betting On the Most Hated Experiment in Business. Prediction markets entice enterprising nerds to make and lose fortunes by wagering on everything from politics to the weather. Here’s why they’re unstoppable—and only getting more powerful. The prediction market wars are heating up, with billions in weekly volume and a legal battle over whether these are financial instruments or just gambling with extra steps. (Vanity Fair) see also Thousands of Amateur Gamblers Are Beating Wall Street Ph.D.s  Prediction market bettors on Kalshi are proving just as accurate as professional forecasters at predicting economic indicators — and even better on inflation. Turns out the crowd has one big edge: they only bet when they’re confident, while the pros have to guess every month regardless. (New York Times)

• Are We Tripping? The next billion-dollar blockbuster drug could be a psychedelic. There’s just one problem. (Slate)

• Even a Decade of Accidental Shootings Hasn’t Slowed America’s Top Pistol Maker: For years, gun owners have been suing Sig Sauer for alleged design defects in its flagship handgun, the P320. The company’s solution is to ban the lawsuits.  (Businessweek)

• Learning About Longevity From Long-Lived Animals: The secrets to extending human lifespans might lie in the animals that can already live for centuries. What naked mole-rats, Greenland sharks, and immortal jellyfish can teach us about aging — and why the biology of extreme longevity is more complex than any supplement pitch. (Works in Progress)

• The ‘Harvard of Umpire Schools’ Closes as Changing Times Favor Tech Over Tradition: The last independently-run umpire school recognized by MLB is shutting down — a casualty of robo-umps and a sport that increasingly trusts sensors over human eyes. (The Athletic)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Heather & Doug Bonaparthe, a married couple who work together and wrote a book on the financial challenges couples face: “Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team.” Our discussion sits somewhere in between financial planning and couples therapy, built around real stories that try to help couples find a healthier approach to money.

 

The Global Cost of Living Index 2026

Source: Visual Capitalist

 

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My end-of-week morning paraskevidekatriaphobia WFH reads:

• The Big Money in Today’s Economy Is Going to Capital, Not Labor: Soaring profits and stocks funnel more of GDP toward companies, their top employees and shareholders. AI will intensify this trend. (Wall Street Journal)

• A Stanford Experiment to Pair 5,000 Singles Has Taken Over Campus: A student built a matchmaking algorithm called Date Drop that has consumed the school—and highlighted the challenges of finding love for high achievers. It has become an all-consuming force on campus, pairing thousands of students every Tuesday night at 9pm. Turns out the best and brightest can crack quantum physics but not “hey, wanna get coffee?” (Wall Street Journal) see also How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True: Love Mathematician Chris McKinlay hacked OKCupid to find the woman of his dreams. (Wired)

• Who Is Paying for the 2025 U.S. Tariffs? First, 94 percent of the tariff incidence was borne by the U.S. in the first eight months of 2025 (Liberty Street Economics)

• How the Merrill Lynch deal made Bloomberg: Lessons from The origin story of how a single trade terminal contract with Merrill Lynch transformed Michael Bloomberg’s startup into a financial data empire. Bloomberg-Merrill Lynch in an Anthropic era. (Substack)

• The shadowy world of abandoned oil tankers: Over the past year there has been a big rise in the number of oil tankers and other commercial ships being abandoned around the world by their owners. What is causing the spike? And what is the human impact on the affected merchant sailors? (BBC)

• The secret to happiness? These experts say it’s feeling loved by others. A happiness researcher and a relationship expert teamed up to write about how we can all feel more loved. They argue it’s the key to happiness. (Washington Post)

• The Incompetent Confidence Complex: An Epidemic of Unchecked Incompetence: The intellectual foe of unchecked storytelling is the existence of objective reality. I believe in eternal truths. There are fundamental realities of the cosmology of the universe that are unchanging and fixed realities. But there are very, very few eternal truths. Everything else is pretty darn subject to opinion. (Investing 101 / Substack)

• The Hidden Bias in Language That Turned Left-Handedness Into a Bad Thing: While the days of forcing left-handed children to use their right hands are mostly over, the bias against lefties continues in most languages around the world. The word “sinister” literally means “left.” From Latin roots to modern idioms, language has been quietly slandering lefties for centuries. (Mental Floss)

• Your friends are still acting like everything is normal in America. What do you do? All Americans live in a “dual state.” Here’s what that means — and how to help others see it. (Vox) see also Faced With Trump, Libertarianism Shrugged: The libertarian movement should have been one of the first lines of defense against this aspiring autocrat. It folded instead. (The Bulwark)

• Olympians Can Eat All the Pasta in Italy. So Why Are They Drinking Broccoli? Cross-country skiers are slurping up a potentially performance-enhancing drink of the concentrated vegetable in the hope of speeding up their recovery. https://www.wsj.com/sports/olympics/cross-country-skiing-broccoli-8c706442?st=hSksN9&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Heather & Doug Bonaparthe, a married couple who work together and wrote a book on the financial challenges couples face: “Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team.” Our discussion sits somewhere in between financial planning and couples therapy, built around real stories that try to help couples find a healthier approach to money.

 

AI is 3 years old. A majority of Americans say they use it every week

Source: @DKThomp

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This week, I speak with Drew Warshaw, Democratic Candidate for New York State Comptroller. We discuss his role in building the World Trade Center after 9/11, his career in alternative energy, and why he is running for NY Comptroller.

We also dive into his thoughts on New York Pensions funds and the changes he’d make if elected. Warshaw wants to change thew 650 pricey asset managers the NYS Pension Plan uses and pivot more towards a broader lower cost indexing apporach to asset allocation and diversification.

He explains what is missing from the NYS Comptroller’s office: “Energy, imagination and urgency.”

(I’ll get up a  transcript of our conversation shortly).

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business later this week with Heather & Doug Bonaparthe, a married couple who work together and wrote a book on the financial challenges couples face: “Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team.” Our discussion sits somewhere in between financial planning and couples therapy, built around real stories that try to help couples find a healthier approach to money.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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My morning train WFH reads:

• Here’s Fidelity Contrafund’s Will Danoff’s Secret Sauce: Fidelity Contrafund’s retiring manager showed how long-term stock-picking success is still possible. After decades running one of the biggest mutual funds on the planet, Danoff’s edge comes down to something surprisingly old-school: talking to management teams. (Morningstar)

• 200 lines of markdown just triggered a $285 billion sell-off — here’s what actually broke + what it means for your workflow: A deep dive into what actually broke when a model spec document rattled the markets, and what it means for your AI workflow. Here’s what actually died, what didn’t, and what you should do about it. https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/p/200-lines-of-markdown-just-triggered. (Substack) see also The $285 Billion Crash Wall Street Won’t Explain Honestly. Here’s What Everyone Missed. (YouTube)

• Drug Cartels Are Shifting Their Money Laundering to Crypto. Cops Can’t Keep Up: A vast ecosystem supported by the gig economy has sprung up to clean all that cash. Cartels are moving their dirty money through crypto and the gig economy, and law enforcement is struggling to keep pace with the evolving playbook. (Bloomberg free)

• Your stocks have been slumping, but you probably can’t blame Trump: The recent market pullback has more to do with valuations and earnings than politics — even if it’s more satisfying to blame the guy in the Oval Office. (Los Angeles Times)

• Bitcoin’s Binary Endgame: Why the Security Model Cannot Stabilize and Must Collapse to Functional Zero. (BiggerPocketsMoney)

• Soft clubbing is a late-stage capitalist fever dream: The monetization of connection continues — now even going out at night has been repackaged as a wellness experience with a cover charge. Let’s all pay to feel something, shall we? (Your Brain on Money)

• It Turns Out That When Waymos Are Stumped, They Get Intervention From Workers in the Philippines. That “self-driving” may be due for some extra scrutiny, though. During a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, Waymo’s chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, was grilled over the company’s use of Chinese-made vehicles and reliance on overseas workers, as Business Insider reports. (Futurism)

• These Young Voters Are Starting to Regret Their Vote for Trump: After nearly winning the group in 2024, president losing support among voters ages 18-29. (Wall Street Journal)

• Scientists thought they understood global warming. Then the past three years happened. The last 30 years are the fastest warming period since 1880, according to a Washington Post analysis of NASA data. (Washington Post) see also Scientists record coldest ocean temperature ever in Earth’s history—and wonder how life survived: Ancient rocks once beneath the ocean hold clues of severe conditions unimaginable on today’s planet. (Nat Geo)

• Wasserman Fallout: Every Artist Who Has Spoken Out Over Founder’s Epstein Ties: Clients of Casey Wasserman’s namesake agency have begun defecting after his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell came to light. A running list of musicians distancing themselves from the talent agency.(Billboard)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Heather & Doug Bonaparthe, a married couple who work together and wrote a book on the financial challenges couples face: “Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team.” Our discussion sits somewhere in between financial planning and couples therapy, built around real stories that try to help couples find a healthier approach to money.

 

US Consumer Delinquencies Jump to Highest in Almost a Decade

Source: Bloomberg

 

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Today’s (belated) nonfarm payroll report had a little something for everyone. Whether you are bullish or bearish, recession or expansion, MAGA or Never Trump, there were nuggets of data in the report for you.

My charge is to put this into a broader context minus the bias.

Let’s jump into the specifics: The Bureau of Labor Statistics saw upside surprises in Jobs, Wages, and Unemployment Rate, and downside surprises to hiring breadth1 and annual revisions.

– Total nonfarm payroll rose 130,000 in January (double consensus)

– Unemployment rate down to 4.3 percent to 7.4 million

– Average hourly earnings rose by 15 cents (0.4%) to $37.17

These figures are all higher than they were a year ago: the U3 jobless rate was 4.0%; the number of unemployed people was 6.9 million. Wages were also lower – $35.87 in January 2025.

The biggest surprise was the annual benchmark revision. 2025 was far worse than anyone previously thought. Total job creation for the year was slashed from 584,000 to just 181,000. That downward revision of 898,000 jobs (seasonally adjusted) was the second-largest negative adjustment on record, trailing only the 2009 financial crisis.

Here is what annual job revisions look like:

Average monthly revisions:
2025: -86k
2024: -94k
2023: -52k
2022: -8k
2021: +161k
2020: -29k

Totally revisions
2025: 1,208k to 181k (-1,027k overall)
2024: 2,589k to 1,459k (-1,130k)
2023: 3,140k to 2,515k (-625k)
2022: 4,619k to 4,526k (-93k)
2021: 5,331k to 7,268k (+1,973k)
2020: -8,893k to -9,246k (-353k)

The benchmark revisions also revealed that the labor market contracted in 2025 in four separate months—January, June, August, and October.

My confirmation bias?  It’s all about tariffs. They are the underlying reason the 2025 labor market is so weak.

If the chart at the top doesn’t seem to confirm that view, it only shows monthly changes in NFP — not the annual.My confirmation bias? The Tariffs are the underlying reason the 2025 labor market is so poor. If the chart at top does not seem to confirm that view, it only shows monthly changes in NFP — not the annual net gains. While 2025 and 2024 saw similar revisions, it was 2025 that was the had a weaker leabor economy.

Have a look at this chart via the Hiring Lab:

This chart inform us the further we get away from the giant 2020-21 fiscal stimulus, the more the economy softened. Not coincidentally, the weakening jobs market coincided with a decline in CPI inflation from its June 2022 peak.

While we have seen substantial revisions in each of the past 5 years, it’s telling that those were from much higher levels. This data confirms we are in a “low-hire, low-fire” environment; perhaps this is what’s contributing to the falling level of consumer sentiment.

But I am not in the recession camp (yet); I’d put the odds of a first-half 2026 contraction at about 25% and in the second-half of 2026 closer to 40%. Not a high probability of recession, but if we see further economic missteps, a recession might be the result. (I know, pretty wishy-washy).

My main takeaway is the labor market is increasingly showing cracks and signs of stress; it looks increasingly fragile, even as equity markets hit all-time highs.

~~~

These revisions to 2025 are legitimately alarming. Hiring breadth remains way too narrow. And the data itself is arguably less reliable than it used to be. Interpreting NFP reports has become more challenging than ever…

 

 

 

Previously:
IEEPA Tariffs Update (January 27, 2026)

Where is the Tipping Point? (September 22, 2025)

NFP Disappoint; Revisions Worse (August 1, 2025)

7 Increasing Probabilities of Error (February 24, 2025)

Risks & Opportunities of the New Administration (February 3, 2025)

 

 

__________

1. Beneath the headlines, the breadth of hiring was very alarmingly narrow. Of those 130,000 new jobs, health care and social assistance accounted for 95% of the total.

 

 

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My mid-week morning train WFH reads:

• Andreessen Horowitz’s Rising Influence Over Trump-Era AI Policy: The VC giant is shaping how Washington thinks about artificial intelligence — and the stakes couldn’t be higher. (Bloomberg free)

• “Everything is gambling now”: How betting is taking over America: Polymarket, Kalshi, DraftKings, FanDuel — the line between investing, sports, and gambling has been fully erased. (Axios) see also The Scourge of Online Sports Betting: The explosion of legal sports betting has created a new generation of addicts, and the platforms are designed to keep them hooked. (The American Prospect) see also What Happens When Everything Can Be Bet On?: How betting markets blur the line between gambling and finance — and what that means for both. (Les Barclays)

• The Beautiful Chart That Busts 3 Stock Market Myths: One chart demolishes popular beliefs about market timing, concentration risk, and the persistence of outperformance. (Morningstar)

• Why Hedge Funds Got Better While Private Equity Just Got Bigger: Hedge funds have quietly improved their performance and fee structures. Private equity, meanwhile, just raised more money. There’s a lesson in there somewhere. (Verdad Capital)

• The Crypto-Hoarding Strategy Is Unraveling: Companies that loaded up on Bitcoin as a treasury strategy are watching that bet go sideways. (Wall Street Journal)

• Easy-Money Loans Backfire on Rookies in the Home Flipping Market: Private credit loans are driving foreclosures among amateur home flippers who got in over their heads. (Bloomberg)

• It Turns Out That When Waymos Are Stumped, They Get Intervention From Workers in the Philippines: Behind the magic of fully autonomous vehicles: remote workers in the Philippines stepping in when the AI can’t figure out what to do. (Futurism)

• Scientists Capture a Glimpse into the Quantum Vacuum: Researchers at Brookhaven have observed quantum fluctuations in what was thought to be empty space — a major breakthrough in our understanding of the vacuum. (Brookhaven National Lab)

• The Epstein scandal is taking down Europe’s political class. In the US, they’re getting a pass.: European politicians are resigning over Epstein connections while their American counterparts face virtually no consequences. (Politico) see also Search Epstein’s Emails in the Most Unnerving Way Possible: A new tool lets you browse Jeffrey Epstein’s emails as if you were sitting at his desk. It’s exactly as creepy as it sounds. (Gizmodo) see also You can read Epstein’s emails like you are inside his inbox: The full trove of Epstein correspondence is now searchable online, offering an unprecedented look into the convicted sex trafficker’s network. (Times of India)

• Trump blames Canada: And tears our closest international relationship apart. (Public Notice)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview with Bob Moser, CEO and founder of Prime Group Holdings, a private investor in unique real estate holdings. They created Prime Storage, one of the largest, privately-held self-storage brands in the world, with over 19 million rentable square feet of space and 255 locations across 28 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The firm has acquired over $10 billion in real estate assets.

 

US renewables boom despite Trump attacks

Source: Semafor

 

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My morning train WFH reads:

• The Dow, the Uncool Index, Has Its Moment in the Sun: The oldest, most unfashionable stock benchmark is suddenly outperforming. (Wall Street Journal)

• Crypto revolt exposes fragility of Trump’s coalition: Trillions of dollars in value have been vaporized from global crypto markets since October, plunging an ascendant industry championed by President Trump into a new bout of turmoil. Why it matters: Crypto joins a growing list of MAGA coalition partners — from Epstein-focused populists to farmers to Latino men — now questioning whether Trump’s return to power has delivered what they were promised.(Axios) see also A New Crypto Winter Is Here and Even the Biggest Bulls Aren’t Certain Why: Some of crypto’s biggest champions can’t put their finger on what went wrong. (Wall Street Journal)

• This job has become the ultimate case study for why AI won’t replace human workers: But the radiology field has become a case study for how AI could enhance, and not replace, jobs. The type of work in radiology is also ideal for AI assistance, said Dr. Po-Hao Chen, a doctor specializing in diagnostic radiology at the Cleveland Clinic. (CTV News)

• Carvana’s Red-Hot Growth Runs on a Cycle of Borrowed Money: Attacks from short sellers and the collapse of auto lender Tricolor haven’t slowed down America’s most valuable used-car retailer. (Businessweek)

• You better kiss those free snacks and cold brew goodbye, baby. Corporate perks (and loyalty) are gone, people are paying more on health insurance then rent, and someone is using “olive oil” as a resume builder. (Substack)

• Why there’s a “huge vibe divergence” between tech and finance on AI: Tech evangelists are hailing a Claude-fueled seismic shift in computer-based work. Investors are, by and large, selling AI stocks. (Sherwood News)

• How a $30 Billion Welfare Program Became a ‘Slush Fund’ for Both Red & Blue States: Republicans and Democrats alike decry the lack of oversight for America’s famous antipoverty experiment. TANF was supposed to help the poor. States found other uses for the money.  (Wall Street Journal)

• The 6 biggest questions about adult ADHD, answered by a neuroscientist: ADHD diagnosis has risen in recent years, particularly among adults. But we need to improve how we view and treat it. (BBC Science Focus Magazine) see also How ADHD Became an Adult Disorder: Millions of grown-ups are now being diagnosed with what was once thought to be a childhood condition: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. What did health-care providers miss? And how do you know if you’re affected? (National Geographic)

• ‘The Trust Has Been Absolutely Destroyed’ Some state election officials say they no longer trust their federal partners. (The Atlantic)

• Bad Bunny’s unapologetically American Super Bowl show: All of the cultural Easter eggs you might have missed, explained. (Vox)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview  this weekend with Bob Moser, CEO and founder of Prime Group Holdings, a private investor in unique real estate holdings. They created Prime Storage, one of the largest, privately-held self-storage brands in the world, with over 19 million rentable square feet of space and 255 locations across 28 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The firm has acquired over $10 billion in real estate assets.

 

Equal Weight S&P 500 has outperformed Cap Weight by 4.2% through 2/7. That’s the highest spread going back to 1992

Source: @mattcerminaro

 

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