‘Y’all Street’ versus Wall Street

Why Texas is betting ‘Y’all Street’ can take on Wall Street
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/04/nx-s1-5697067/texas-banking-goldman-sachs-wall-street
Dallas’ financial industry is growing amid a larger Texas business boom. But can it really steal New York’s crown? 

Tech Competition - China versus US

The Future, Made in China
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/08/10/the-future-made-in-china
Beijing is competing with the U.S. for tech supremacy. Who wins will have huge political implications. 

China’s A.I. Is Surging Across Africa. That Should Worry Silicon Valley.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/technology/ai-china-africa.html

GDP as a Measure of Prosperity

Stop assuming GDP is an indicator of prosperity
https://www.ft.com/content/285bf286-07c3-49b1-9b6d-7df9664e73c0
Billboard-worthy rates of economic growth mask high levels of wealth and income inequality. 

GDP Is a Flawed Measure of Prosperity. Alternatives Are on the Way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/business/economy/gdp-united-nations-prosperity-measures.html
The United Nations has a new plan for weighing economic gains alongside health and environmental progress. But consensus is elusive.

Tokenomics

What Are Companies Getting for All That A.I. Spending?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/business/economy/ai-spending-tokenomics.html
A new field of “tokenomics” has emerged to measure the return on all the money companies are pouring into artificial intelligence. 

Treasury's Yen Intervention

Why Bessent Is Leaning on the Fed to Help Prop Up Japan’s Currency
https://www.wsj.com/economy/central-banking/why-bessent-is-leaning-on-the-fed-to-help-prop-up-japans-currency-85794909
The Treasury secretary wants the central bank to help by raising its $60 billion borrowing limit on an obscure lending program.
 
Scott Bessent’s Yen Trade Has Unintended Consequences for the Markets
https://www.wsj.com/economy/central-banking/scott-bessents-yen-trade-has-unintended-consequences-for-the-markets-5297044b
The way it’s being done should make us worry that the Federal Reserve is being roped into easing monetary conditions.

A Currency Trader at Heart, Bessent Bets on Japan’s Yen
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/business/economy/bessent-yen-currency-support.html
Coordinated intervention allowed Japan to support its currency without selling off its U.S. debt holdings. 
 
Yen Intervention Is Bessent's Latest Band-Aid Fix For Bonds
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/yen-intervention-is-bessent-s-latest-band-aid-fix-for-bonds-87980.html 

AI and the Developing World

Developing countries have ‘less to fear’ from AI than rich nations
https://www.ft.com/content/33c20c4e-6a25-42da-9f1e-6664c8388957
“As a rule, developing economies today have more to gain — and less to fear — from AI than richer ones ... less than a tenth of their jobs are susceptible to AI automation, compared with more than a third in high-income economies,” said Indermit Gill, the bank’s chief economist. 

World Development Report 2026: THE PROMISE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstreams/4df724a5-2e0d-4e66-bcb8-1d3bf4e22390/download

Equity Bubbles

The 4 Bits of Jargon That Will Help You Spot a Market Swoon
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/06/opinion/ai-market-bubble-crash.html

Dalio On AI Bubble Nearing 1929, 2000 Levels: ‘Wealth Is not the Same as Money'
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/dalio-on-ai-bubble-nearing-1929--2000-levels---wealth-is-not-the-same-as-money-87991.html
Acadian Asset Management’s Owen Lamont has framed the clearest test of whether markets are truly in bubble territory around four conditions he calls the “Four Horsemen of the Bubble Apocalypse“: extreme overvaluation, widespread “bubble beliefs” (investors who admit prices are too high but expect them to rise anyway), a surge in equity issuance, and a flood of new market participants. Dalio’s comments map almost precisely onto the third horseman.
“There’s almost nothing that’s easier to produce than stock,” he said, describing how a company can raise $50 million, get valued at a billion, and mint a paper billionaire without a billion dollars ever changing hands. He’s identified surging stock issuance as one of the two primary forces that “prick” a bubble, alongside rising interest rates.

America Is Great at Creating Stock Market Bubbles—and Shrugging Them Off
https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/stock-market-bubbles-recovery-029d21d0
One day the bust will be the big one. But for now the pullback in AI-related stocks has been almost completely offset by gains elsewhere.
 
Big Tech Earnings Are Sending Valuations in Wildly Different Directions
https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/tech-company-earnings-stock-market-5c4179d8
Reports from tech giants drove big gains and losses, while the Fed-fueled bond selloff adds to market pressures. 

The AI bubble could be worse than the dot-com bust by Vivekanand Jayakumar, The Hill - 06/16/26
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/5925202-tech-bubble-ai-driven-growth/