The Dictator’s New Shoes March 11, 2026March 11, 2026 AT ROOT: INEQUALITY Robert Reich: Why do Americans hate each other while Canadians love each other? Before he entered the White House, 47 percent of Republicans and 35 percent of Democrats said people in the opposing party were “immoral.” By 2022, after years of Trump’s venom: 72 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Democrats called people in the opposing party “immoral.” Since he’s been back in the Oval, it’s got even worse. . . . As Barack Obama said at Jesse Jackson’s memorial, “Each day, we’re told by those in high office to fear each other and to turn on each other, and that some Americans count more than others, and that some don’t even count at all.” . . . But I can’t help wonder: How much of our distrust and resentment is the byproduct of something more fundamental that’s been unfolding in America for over four decades — something Trump took exploited but that would have invited a hateful demagogue like Trump eventually: the increasing concentration of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands? Trump took advantage of anger and distrust that had been building for years — at a system increasingly seen as rigged against most of us. Join the Patriotic Millionaires if you are one; their Money Agenda if you are not. THE DICTATOR’S NEW SHOES Trump demands his subordinates wear the same footwear. “All the boys have them,” one female White House official told the Wall Street Journal, and another added that “everybody’s afraid not to wear them.” Join Indivisible! Wear sneakers! Support the opposition! SILT ACCUMULATES Suggested here a whole bunch of times, Great Lakes Dredge & Dock (GLDD) is being acquired at $17 on April 1. Hardly much reward after 20 years for some of us, mostly at prices ranging from $3 to $6, but better (as they say) than a kick in the head.
I Love This Proposed Ad March 10, 2026 But first . . . A.I. From Business Insider: A Preview of the Next Big Power Struggle: Democracy Vs. AI CEOs “It does not sound crazy to a Silicon Valley executive that maybe they could be in charge instead of you,” AI alignment researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky warned politicians during the dispute. “If they actually could control superintelligence, they’d discard you like used toilet paper.” TSA Please may we pass the bill Democrats have offered to fund Home Security (TSA, FEMA, etc.)? All of it, that is, except for ICE until ICE adopts the same practices all our other law enforcement agencies respect. And — most import — until they agree to truly target “the worst of the worst” without quotas and bonuses for rounding up the 98% of their current victims who they find at Home Depot. Ronald Reagan was right in his final address to the nation . . . and in the amnesty he approved. And now . . . May we please see the Epstein files? The House has forced Hillary Clinton, who’s not in them, to testify under oath — how about forcing Trump, who’s in them more than 38,000 times, to do the same? The brilliant Peter S. proposes this social media post / TV / radio ad: When asked about Ghislaine Maxwell Donald Trump said (video clip): “I wish her well, I just wish her well.” News report video clip: “Donald Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche met privately with Ghislaine Maxwell today.” News report video clip: “Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security prison today.” Trump in multiple short video clips saying he thinks the Epstein thing is a hoax, people should stop talking about it, move on to other things, etc. News report video clip: “Donald Trump is mentioned over 38,000 times, just in the pages of the Epstein files that have been released.” V.O. asks: “What is revealed about Donald Trump in the other 2.5 million Epstein pages that have not been released?” News report video clip: “Pam Bondi says no more Epstein pages will be released.” V.O.: “Have you ever wondered what he and his team are hiding?” What do you think? Can one of you get A.I. to create it?
Ethics On The Head Of A Pin March 9, 2026March 9, 2026 HOORAY FOR OUR MEN AND WOMEN IN THE MILITARY Of course it’s terrible and unAmerican that some commanders are telling their teams this is a Holy War (US commanders say Trump “anointed by Jesus” to attack Iran) . . . beyond stupid and cruel that we got rid of thousands of highly trained people like Space Force Colonel Bree Fram just because they’re trans . . . awful the way Trump swaggers, belittles, bullies, brags, demeans, lies, rapes, sells pardons, delights in violence (see, for example: Gladiators on the South Lawn for his birthday), subverts democracy, obstructs justice, flouts the Constitution . . . and more. All that is true. It is also true that the U.S. and Israeli militaries are doing a spectacular job of demilitarizing Iran and its terrorist proxies. It seems clear that Iran’s ability to produce and launch missiles and drones, let alone nuclear weapons, and to arm their proxies, is being wiped out . . . thus far, at least, with loss of life — tragic though any loss of life is — that pales before Iran’s recent massacre of its own peacefully protesting people. There will be all sorts of blowback and costs to this war, not least for the vast majority of defenseless Iranians who hate the regime. And maybe it never should have started. But am I crazy to think — or at least to hope — that, on balance, these weeks of bombings could prove to have been a good thing? And that after what might actually not be an endless war . . . but, rather, a very short one . . . Israel and its neighbors — who now have also been attacked by Iran — might conceivably achieve the kind of regional peace and prosperity so many have dreamt of? Even coming up with a way to replace the long nightmare of Palestinian suffering with some kind of regionally-supported two-state-solution Marshall Plan at long last? I know. The happy gene. Don’t hate me. PS — When Trump says Iran started the war in 1979 with the taking of our hostages, remember that we started the war in 1953 with the overthrow of their democracy. LEAVING MAGA From Adam Kinzinger’s foreword to One Betrayal Too Many: Why I Left MAGA by Rich Logis: Rich tells the tale of his odyssey with great honesty, forthrightness, and most importantly, humility. He understands how important community is to the people in MAGA, because he lived it. He appreciates that many in the movement are motivated by a love of country, because he was one of them. And he knows that browbeating, berating, or belittling people for their political choices will only make them more defensive about them. Through the Leaving MAGA non-profit he formed, Rich has created a safe, nonjudgmental space for people who may be having doubts and questioning their support of Donald Trump. The next chapter of American history is yet to be written. It’s in our hands. I, for one, refuse to be part of the generation that lets our democracy fail, especially after my grandfather stared down the Nazis, and especially after my friends and I stared down Al Qaeda. And I’m honored to have rich Logis as an ally in this fight. Me, too! “ETHICS IS IN THE TOILET” Documents Reveal a Web of Financial Ties Between Trump Officials and the Industries They Help Regulate In small part: Trump has openly defended his family’s financial enrichment while he is in office, including through cryptocurrency deals that critics say allow investors, including foreign entities, to curry favor by boosting the president’s personal wealth. “I found out nobody cared, and I’m allowed to,” Trump told The New York Times, referring to his family’s business dealings. Trump also remains unapologetic about accepting a Boeing 747 worth about $400 million from the Qatari government and transferring nearly $1 billion from a nuclear weapons program to retrofit it. Virginia Canter, chief counsel for ethics and corruption at Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit governmental watchdog group, cited Trump’s new plane as a brazen example of self-dealing. “Ethics is in the toilet,” said Canter, who served as an ethics lawyer at the White House, Treasury Department and Securities and Exchange Commission during the presidencies of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Fifty-odd years ago I profiled a New York real estate tycoon from Queens named Sam Lefrak. “It’s not hard to make fun of a billion-dollar builder who can’t pronounce the word ‘condominium,'” the piece began. “(He pronounces it ‘condominimum.’) But Samuel J. Lefrak has built more middle-class New York City housing than anybody.” Sam was colorful, tough, and had an ego almost as large as Trump’s. As part of that piece, I remember quoting someone — possibly Sam — saying, “Ethics? You could fit the ethics of the entire New York real‑estate industry on the head of a pin.” And here are those ethics now alive and well in the most corrupt administration of the modern era — if not all time. TOO DARK? Americans aren’t facing a democratic collapse. We’re living in its aftermath. The author goes overboard, if you ask me — but even he sees hope (at the very end of his piece) in ordinary citizens joining together to save democracy. Join Indivisible! Support the opposition! Have a great week.
It’s Possible Only ONE Of These Amazing Stories Is Fiction March 8, 2026March 8, 2026 AND IT MAY NOT BE THIS ONE. FBI 302 Claim Trump Assaulted Teen Girl In Epstein File It seems ever less plausible that, after sending us Jesus, God sent us Trump. (See: US commanders say Trump “anointed by Jesus” to attack Iran.) FICTION, FOR SURE — AND MAYBE THE BEST SHORT STORY I EVER READ (Admittedly, I don’t read a lot of short stories.) The Last Question by Isaac Asimov . . . written in 1956! That was around the time (maybe a year before) a handful of us sixth graders were taken to an after-school workshop where we were each given a pegboard, some wire, switches and flashlight bulbs and shown how to make a computer that could add 1+1. The lesson — let alone the significance — was largely lost on me, but the teacher was really excited trying to explain the significance . . . and now, a few short decades later, boy, do I ever. I feel so fortunate to have grown up before so many of the astonishing things we now take for granted — before “Novocain,” before laparoscopic surgery, before the measles and polio vaccines (I contracted the measles and still remember my parents’ concern and care in my darkened little room; a couple of years later, just turning 8, I got the polio vaccine along with every other kid in New York) . . . before microwave ovens, air conditioning and jet planes . . . before Uber and on-demand commercial-free TV . . . and — mainly — before the Internet, GPS, A.I., and smart phones. So all those things remain astounding and marvelous to me. For better or worse, we all have Microvacs — in our pockets! Enjoy the story.
Leaving MAGA / More A.I. / Dreaming of Treble Damages March 7, 2026 JOBS . . . Apparently, ADP’s estimate of anemic gains I posted yesterday was wrong. February saw a loss of 92,000 jobs. And inflation? Trump constantly says he inherited “the worst inflation in history.” In fact, it was 2.7% and heading down. Now, with his tariffs and his war, it’s headed back up. The economy he inherited, he constantly says, was “a disaster.” In fact, it was the envy of the world. Now we face stagflation. He would end the war on Day One, he said (presumably by giving Ukraine to Putin). Instead, he started another one. Which might wind up achieving great things quickly, as I dearly hope it does. But some MAGAns are losing faith. Their lives have gotten harder even as, in a single year, he’s picked up $3 billion. (And could we please see an unredacted version of the 38,000 times he appears in the Epstein files? And the files that have not been released?) Leaving MAGA is gaining traction. I love these gentle billboards: “Having doubts? You’re not alone. Welcome home.” A.I. First I posted Matt Shumer’s scary must-read warning. Then I posted Alex Wissner-Gross‘ and Peter Diamandis‘ upbeat visionary (sci-fi?) view. In response to which one of you (with three M.I.T. degrees) — Howard R. — wrote to say: As to the lead author of the piece you posted yesterday, I have been following Dr. Alex for a while. He is definitely quite a visionary. I don’t mean that in a complimentary manner. But he is compelling. Amongst the mysterious claims he makes is that AI is going to eliminate want/limits on what we can have. I am always perplexed by this as there is only so much land out there to build on, only so much metal to make cars etc. In other words, he has AI as the ultimate silver bullet. If you read his list of distinctions in his CV it is a bit over the top (from the mundane to the amazing). Anyway, HERE IS MY POINT: He says that he graduated first in his class at MIT. Politely, it is not clear what he means by this, less politely it is a lie. MIT does not rank students in the graduating classes! (I know I went there.) I find Alex entertaining, but I have a lot of trouble separating possibility from impossibility with him. → This is all so over my head, but I know this much: A.I. is rapidly changing everything — and it’s just begun. Shumer’s piece really is must-reading. In the meantime, I find myself now using A.I. constantly. Trouble replacing my printer cartridge? A.I. instantly grasped the problem and offered a solution that no normal person would ever have come up with. (See the little white wheel on its side? It needs to be turned clockwise. Sometimes the factory ships it without doing that — and without any instructions telling you to do so. After several wasted hours — don’t ask — I turned to A.I., and a minute later was printing up a storm.) Have a medical question? With appropriate disclaimers, A.I. instantly addresses your concerns. Want to find a terrific speech you saw some V.C. legend give to a group of MBAs . . . but can’t remember his name? With the scantest of information, asking questions like, “do you remember there being a slide with concentric circles in his presentation?” . . . it found it! Yes, A.I. sometimes fails. It sometimes says things that are wrong. But it’s March of 2026. Imagine where it will be in a year. Let alone five. Humanity is entering an entirely new era. We need — urgently — to figure out (a) how to protect humanity from a superior species; (b) how to avoid economic catastrophe and, instead, harness A.I. for the benefit of all. I’m not certain that FOX News hosts, Mike Johnson, and Stephen Miller are the talent pool we should rely on to lead the way. YESTERDAY’S POST Stephen W.: “Been with you from the beginning. It’s been a great ride. In your first column you wrote, ‘for most of us it’s hard to remember that just 20 years ago ATMs barely existed.’ Now, 30 years later, it is hard to imagine who even uses cash aside from those involved in the underground economy? For me, I never carry it and the only time I use it is when I employ, shall we say, ‘small businesses,’ like plumbers, waiters, cleaners, mowers, etc. Here’s to another 30 years!!!” I’m game. PRKR One of “our” speculations — ParkerVision — has jury selection coming up in two weeks in a trial against MediaTek. Anything could happen, ranging from it’s all being just a big bust . . . to a last-minute settlement . . . to a small verdict in our favor . . . to a large verdict . . . to — conceivably — a large verdict with treble damages for “willfulness.” The outcome could foreshadow some of the several other pending cases further down the road. I asked Copilot for a list: another against MediaTek; three against RealTek; one against Texas Instruments; and, of course, the big kahuna . . . ParkerVision’s lawsuit against Qualcomm (with Apple and Samsung as co-defendants). In that one, if you ask this layman’s biased opinion, treble damages for willfulness are totally warranted. So there’s a lot here — or maybe nothing. If patience is a virtue, we’re all going to heaven.
Billions! How This Column Got Started. But first . . . March 6, 2026March 5, 2026 $10 IF YOU CAN NAME THE SECRETARY OF LABOR How’s this for a 30-second ad? In the blue wave that’s coming, Talarico could beat Paxton or Cornyn in Texas. Alex Vindman could win Florida. Mary Peltola will win Alaska. Scott Colom could win Mississippi. Roy Cooper will win North Carolina. Sherrod Brown will win Ohio. We will win Maine. We will win Iowa. And who knows — Montana? All of these would be flips. And there could even be others. Or not — but I’m all in to help make it happen. (On the off chance you have $5,000 to do something very cool in New York April 13, me-mail me.) So, Musk is out, but only after having done so much damage . . . and now Kristi Noem is out, but only after having done so much damage . . . and soon Pam Bondi and Kash Patel . . . and eventually Trump . . . will be out, but only after . . . And these are just the high-profile disasters. RFK. Jr. is another. But they’re everywhere. E.g., the Secretary of Labor. Do you know her name? Of course not. Here is former Labor Secretary Robert Reich to fill you in. THE PEOPLE’S HOUSE Here reimagined, with a ballroom large enough to seat all 935 of the country’s billionaires (though not their spouses, so they’ll have room to invite only the rich ones). JOE RICKETTS AND THOSE BILLIONAIRES Welcome to Wyoming, the Frontier of America’s New Gilded Age: A New York Times analysis shows the stunning velocity at which the fortunes of the 1 percent have increased since President Trump first took office in 2017. Across the country, the 2017 tax cuts minted hundreds of new billionaires. The richest Americans saw their net worth soar 120 percent between 2017 and 2025, a colossal leap from the 45 percent growth they had seen over the previous nine years. Many if not most of those billionaires are generous, honorable people — commentators too frequently neglect to mention that — contributing greatly to our society. They should, however, all join the Patriotic Millionaires and lobby for higher tax rates . . . . . . because (a) it is the patriotic (and moral) thing to do; (b) inequality is killing our social compact; and (c) so long as all their peers are competing by the same rules (they tend to be a competitive bunch), the game will still be fun! Once you have your first billion, after all, yes, you definitely want more (this dirtbag billionaire being the rare exception); but the truth is, you and your heirs will get by just fine even if loopholes are closed and tax rates hiked. The Times begins its piece with the story of Joe Ricketts, which is actually how this column began. (Here was the very first one, 30 years ago.) Now worth $8 billion (nothing compared to my friend Steve Schwarzman, credited in the piece with $45 billion, but still), Joe called me from a modest hotel room in midtown (the Sheraton?) and asked me to come talk about writing a daily column for the on-line discount brokerage firm he was launching. He was in from Nebraska putting it all together. “I’m sorry, but I’m a journalist,” I said (or words to that effect), “and it would be perceived as an endorsement. Journalists don’t do that.” “I understand,” he said, “but you’re right up the street. Come for half an hour and hear me out. It’s room 614 [or whatever].” I came with a list of requirements I knew he couldn’t accept. When I got to the room, the door was purposely ajar — he was on the phone, smoking a cigarette (little did he know) — and waved for me to come sit. When it was my turn, I explained that if I did the daily post he envisioned, every one of them would have to begin with a disclaimer that I didn’t endorse his firm and was, indeed, a “buy and hold” kind of guy — exactly not the kind of active trader he would most like to attract. To my surprise, he agreed. And agreed I could write about anything I wanted . . . that my columns would not be edited . . . that they could be as long or as short as I wanted (“Even just, ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’?” I asked him. “Fine,” he said.) And a couple of other things, the only one of which he couldn’t accept was the preposterous daily fee I tossed out. “I can do half that much,” he said, which was still kind of crazy — and was what made me realize that he wasn’t paying for my work, he was paying for my photo in all the ads he planned to run the month of the launch. He really only needed me for a month! So in a rare moment of clarity I added a final requirement: that the contract be for three years. He agreed to that, too, and to his considerable credit honored the contract to the letter. Ameritrade (as it came to be called) — now Schwab — launched nicely; customers (of whom I remain one) saved fortunes on commissions and got good service; and for three years I wrote about everything from ATM’s (that very first post) to gay and lesbian equality (as it was then known) to lord knows what. As the three years were coming to a close, we agreed it would be insane for them to extend it, so I asked whether I could start my own little website (this one) and tell my readers where to find me. They graciously agreed, and I have been annoying you all ever since. (Interestingly, when I was being showered with cash, I didn’t always love the work — because it was work. Once I was doing it because I wanted to, not because I had to, I found myself putting in more effort and enjoying it more. Funny how that goes.) Anyway: Thanks, Joe Ricketts, for launching this column, and for providing great value and service to so many investors. But you really should knock everyone’s socks off and join the Patriotic Millionaires. That would be extraordinary. Same for you, Steve. Read Welcome to Wyoming. It just might persuade you.
A.I.: An Upbeat View March 5, 2026March 4, 2026 HEADLINE: Private companies added 63,000 jobs in February, January revised to just 11,000. OF NOTE: Since 1989, 96%, have been created under Democratic presidents. WHAT’S NEW: The A.I. tsunami described in that must-read Matt Shumer piece I posted last Thursday. (You read it, right?) Executive summary: A.I. and robots will eliminate most jobs. (See also: Jack Dorsey laying off more than 4,000 of his 10,000 employees, not because business was bad — it’s good — but because they’re not needed.) BUT WAAAAAAIT! Rob B.: “You might enjoy this upbeat treatise on the looming/at hand “Intelligence Explosion”. Fairly impressive CV of the lead author.“ Oh, wow: SOLVE EVERYTHING.ORG The following three scenarios are extrapolations based on the “Industrial Intelligence Stack” and the economic physics described in this essay. . . . We are dropping you directly into the deep end of the timeline to let you feel the texture of the acceleration. This is what it feels like when the exponential progress curve turns vertical. We are living in the vertical asymptote now. . . . The old guard is still holding press conferences about “AI safety guidelines” but the Rails are already winning. The shift is visceral. You can feel it in the panic of the boardrooms where the metric of survival has shifted overnight. . . . Agents aren’t just chatting anymore. They are executing. In a cluttered dorm room overlooking the Charles River, an MIT sophomore is currently out-competing a global defense prime. He just used a Compute Escrow account to rent a localized swarm of engineering agents. He didn’t write the code. He wrote the “intent.” He specified a new guidance system for orbital debris removal that handles trajectory optimization and collision avoidance simultaneously. The agents swarmed the problem, wrote the software, and most importantly generated a Replication Pack. This is a downloadable and cryptographically signed file proving that the code is bug-free and mathematically safe. This is a project that would have taken a government lab three years and fifty million dollars in 2024. He did it in four hours for the cost of a late-night pizza. . . . Hunger is now recognized as a logistical error rather than a resource limit. It’s LONG, and (obviously) speculative. But is it science fiction? If you start reading, it may just suck you in. And if you understand it all, you’re way smarter than me. But I get the gist. Rob B. also sent this entirely unrelated but dazzling rendition of House of the Rising Sun. Which led me down the rabbit hole to this equally unrelated but dazzling While My Guitar Gently Weeps. And since we’re all thinking the same thing, I saved you the trouble of finding the clip: “Open the pod bay doors, HAL.” “I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t do that.” Tomorrow: Isaac Asimov.
Mr. Popularity March 3, 2026 EACH CUP EQUALS $10,000,000! Three minutes to share with wavering MAGAns who might be starting to doubt. YOU KNOW WHO’S NOT AS POPULAR AS HE THINKS HE IS? That’s right. And this poll was taken weeks before it was known that he appears more than 38,000 times in the Epstein files (plus however many thousands more redacted and in the millions of files not yet released). Note that the two least popular leaders are: > A man about whom he never says an unkind word; > A man with whom he has exchanged love letters. Both, murderous dictators. His popularity among the world’s non-Americans (96% of all humans) is lower still. MORE PHONE SAVINGS Randy W.: “Here’s how WE have money we can afford to lose — Ting Mobile.” Even less expensive than the Noble Mobile I plugged yesterday. Indeed, a quick query to A.I. led me to Affordable Unlimited Data Plans Worth Switching To. The main takeaway: ask your A.I. for the pros and cons of leaving your current carrier. You’re likely to switch. THE NON-SURGEON GENERAL Mary from the Swarm: The Senate is preparing to vote on Casey Means for U.S. Surgeon General — and the stakes could not be higher. Multiple news outlets, including the Associated Press and The Guardian, report that Means does not hold an active medical license, is not board-certified, and does not plan to reactivate her license if confirmed. Instead of a background in public health leadership, she has built her profile as a wellness influencer and entrepreneur with financial ties to wellness and health-tech ventures, raising serious questions about conflicts of interest. During her confirmation hearing, she declined to clearly commit to promoting routine childhood vaccinations. At a time when measles outbreaks are resurging and public trust in health institutions is fragile, ambiguity from the nation’s top health official is dangerous. The Surgeon General must defend evidence-based care — not undermine it. And if you have time . . . > THE DRAPES OF WAR Charlie Sykes: So much here! > HOMELAND INSECURITY Rachel Maddow (audio only) — listen to the first 17 minutes about Kash Patel gutting the FBI’s elite Iran counter-terrorism unit, plus Pete Hegseth, plus Kristi Noem, guarding our homeland security. Join Indivisible! Support the opposition!
Save Money: Give Me $100 March 3, 2026March 2, 2026 SAVE MONEY I switched from AT&T to Andrew Yang’s Noble Mobile (which is really the T-Mobile 5G network) and have been saving more than $50 a month. You get unlimited talk, text, and data for $50 or less — and, if you use this link, your first month free. Then, if you’re happy and don’t cancel, they pay me $100. All this time you’ve wondered how I have so much money “I can truly afford to lose.” Now you know. DEMOCRACY VERSUS DICTATORSHIP Joyce Vance White: The first time President Obama met with his US Attorneys, he told us, “I appointed you but you don’t serve me. You serve the American people. And I expect you to act with independence and integrity.” None of us ever forgot that. His words meant the world to us, even at the time. Enough so that people wrote them down, kept them on their desks, and talked with people in their offices about what they meant, over and over. Imagine: an oath-allegiant, Constitution-respecting president. What a concept. A.I. Thursday, I posted Matt Shumer’s scary piece about the rapid — accelerating — pace of A.I. Professor Cal Newport argues that Shumer’s alarm was overdone: Has AI Changed Work Forever? Not Really (15 minutes). Yet maybe not that much overdone. Business Insider checked to see how smart people in tech are reacting to Matt Shumer’s viral essay about what AI means for jobs. Their reactions were varied but hardly dismissive. A friend at dinner said he has five people on his analytical team and is being encouraged daily by the higher ups to look for ways to use A.I. He recently asked A.I. to do something that would normally have taken one of his team three days to complete. A.I. did it in six minutes. He fears he may wind up having to let his team go . . . and that at some point his higher-ups will find a way to let him go. Yesterday, I posted Jack Dorsey’s letter letting more than 4,000 people go, nearly half his work force. As previously noted, we need — urgently — to figure out (a) how to protect humanity from a superior species; (b) how to avoid economic catastrophe and, instead, harness A.I. for the benefit of all. Not sure how to do (A). (B) is as simple as learning to get along with each other. “Isn’t it amazing,” Bill Clinton would frequently observe near the end of his presidency. “We’ve split the atom; we’ve landed men on the moon; we’re mapping the human genome” — now long-since mapped — “and yet the one challenge that’s eluded us is the oldest one of all: how to get along with each other.”
Two Things Can Be True At The Same Time March 2, 2026 For example: A.I. is little short of a miracle, infinitely useful. A godsend. <– True. A.I. will cause massive disruption, if not worse. <– Also true. (See below.) Or: The Trump regime is making us healthier. True, if you look solely at their encouragement of exercise and weight loss. The Trump regime is bringing back measles and has devastated medical research and slashed health care funding. Even more true (and a million times more important). And: Trump’s aggression may have wonderful results for Venezuelans, Cubans, and Iranians and maybe even for us, the Middle East, and the rest of the world. I certainly hope so. It’s great that the terrorism of Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis has been dealt such a blow. Also true: Even if his actions do have wonderful results — and they may not — they are the actions of a dictator, not a president constrained by the rule of law and the Constitution. “He alone can fix it!” All hail! Gladiators on the South Lawn for his birthday! His face everywhere! It’s intoxicating. He’s the king of the world! (5 seconds) It’s exhilarating! (30 seconds). It’s not going to end well for him. Join Indivisible. Invite friend to join you for No Kings #3 March 28. Support the opposition. AI COLLAPSES THE ECONOMY Jack Dorsey writes to his 10,000 employees, 4,o00 of whom he’s letting go): today we’re making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we’re reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i’ll be straight about what’s happening, why, and what it means for everyone. first off, if you’re one of the people affected, you’ll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you’re being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay. we’re not making this decision because we’re in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that’s accelerating rapidly. i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i’d rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures. a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we’ve done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we’ve pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we’ve built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers. we’re not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i’ll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i’d rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold. to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that’s a fact that i’ll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward. to those staying…i made this decision, and i’ll own it. what i’m asking of you is to build with me. we’re going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we’re going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that’s what i’m focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow. jack HOW IT MIGHT LOOK IN 2028 A Thought Exercise in Financial History, from the Future by Citrini Research and Alap Shah Feb. 22, 2026 What if our AI bullishness continues to be right…and what if that’s actually bearish? What follows is a scenario, not a prediction. This isn’t bear porn or AI doomer fan-fiction. The sole intent of this piece is modeling a scenario that’s been relatively underexplored. . . . Hopefully, reading this leaves you more prepared for potential left tail risks as AI makes the economy increasingly weird. This is the Citrini Research Macro Memo from June 2028, detailing the progression and fallout of the Global Intelligence Crisis: The Consequences of Abundant Intelligence February 22nd, 2026 June 30th, 2028 The unemployment rate printed 10.2% this morning, a 0.3% upside surprise. The market sold off 2% on the number, bringing the cumulative drawdown in the S&P to 38% from its October 2026 highs. Traders have grown numb. Six months ago, a print like this would have triggered a circuit breaker. Two years. That’s all it took to get from “contained” and “sector-specific” to an economy that no longer resembles the one any of us grew up in. This quarter’s macro memo is our attempt to reconstruct the sequence – a post-mortem on the pre-crisis economy. The euphoria was palpable. By October 2026, the S&P 500 flirted with 8000, the Nasdaq broke above 30k. The initial wave of layoffs due to human obsolescence began in early 2026, and they did exactly what layoffs are supposed to. Margins expanded, earnings beat, stocks rallied. Record-setting corporate profits were funneled right back into AI compute. The headline numbers were still great. Nominal GDP repeatedly printed mid-to-high single-digit annualized growth. Productivity was booming. Real output per hour rose at rates not seen since the 1950s, driven by AI agents that don’t sleep, take sick days or require health insurance. The owners of compute saw their wealth explode as labor costs vanished. Meanwhile, real wage growth collapsed. Despite the administration’s repeated boasts of record productivity, white-collar workers lost jobs to machines and were forced into lower-paying roles. When cracks began appearing in the consumer economy, economic pundits popularized the phrase “Ghost GDP”: output that shows up in the national accounts but never circulates through the real economy. In every way AI was exceeding expectations, and the market was AI. The only problem…the economy was not. . . . It goes on at length from there. How is humanity going to organize itself to harness all that’s good about A.I. without its destroying us? Should this be left to the Epstein class and Elon Musk to decide?