As a massive 60 Minutes shakeup rocks the CBS newsroom, staffers are reportedly poised to send a letter to Paramount CEO David Ellison. Lachlan Cartwright, Breaker Media founder, […]
The warning came as oil markets jolted higher Monday after Iran threatened to shut the Strait of Hormuz amid escalating tensions in the Middle East.
A prominent economist has calculated the overall cost of President Donald Trump’s Iran war on American consumers, boiled it down to how much it is costing each U.S. household, and is issuing a warning on the economy.Dr. Mark Zandi is the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and the co-founder of Economy.com. He puts the total cost of Trump’s war at $100 billion — a conservative estimate to some — which amounts to about $750 per household so far. That $100 billion includes “the additional U.S. military costs and the higher energy and other prices resulting from the war,” says Zandi, who calls it a “big economic blow.” Last week, Zandi told CNBC that if prices stay roughly the same, and the war drags on to a full year, the total cost will jump to about $2,000 for each U.S. household.He warns that while Trump’s “deficit-financed tax cuts have cushioned it” so far, as of the middle of last month, “the bigger tax refunds Americans have received this year no longer cover the higher costs of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel caused by the war.” Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, on May 19 reported that “Americans will be spending $2 billion more on gasoline over the four day Memorial Day weekend compared to a year ago, according to GasBuddy estimates, or roughly $22 million more every hour.”Looking at the “hard-pressed middle and lower-income households,” Zandi found that the financial pressure is “mounting quickly.”He notes that the U.S. consumer’s savings rate is now “about as low as it ever goes,” and warns that “unless the war ends soon and energy prices come down,” Americans “will have little choice but to rein in their spending, weighing further on the already sagging economy.” Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, told CNBC that consumers “are increasingly facing an income squeeze, which is forcing them to use savings, credit and wealth to sustain their spending patterns.”The Trump White House over the weekend offered a different take.Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters that “People are spending more on gas, but they’re also spending more on everything else — not just groceries, but restaurants and so on,” MS NOW reported. “I think that that’s a sign that you would see when people are optimistic about the future.”
60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley confronted new executive producer Nick Bilton and another CBS executive Monday morning in what Guardian US media reporter Jeremy Barr described as a "heated meeting," pushing back forcefully on last week's mass firings at the storied newsmagazine.Pelley didn't mince words about who he held responsible."She's murdering 60 Minutes," Pelley said of CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, according to Barr. "She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that."Producers were present and showed support for Pelley during the meeting, Barr said.The firings Pelley pushed back on included veteran correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, fellow correspondent Cecilia Vega, executive producer Tanya Simon, and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich — all ousted last Thursday as Weiss installed Bilton, a tech journalist and TV news outsider, to lead the broadcast.Pelley's outrage has been building for months. When Weiss pulled Alfonsi's CECOT segment just hours before its scheduled December broadcast — after it had cleared every internal editorial and legal review — Pelley lashed out in a staff meeting. "She needs to take her job a little bit more seriously," he said at the time, according to The New Yorker.On Wednesday night, just hours before Alfonsi was formally fired, Pelley saluted her from the stage at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards at Lincoln Center.Critics have accused Weiss of spiking the CECOT story to placate the Trump administration, a charge her allies deny. Alfonsi, who has hired a litigator, called her ouster "a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize accurate reporting."
Don't count on AI to solve America's inflation problem: That's the message from several Federal Reserve officials who warn that the promise of an AI-fueled productivity boom might not justify cheaper money.Why it matters: How AI shapes inflation and productivity will be a defining question for the Fed under the leadership of Kevin Warsh, who has staked out a case that the technology's supply-side benefits justify keeping rates low.Some Fed officials say they see clearer evidence of AI-related investment boosting demand for labor, equipment and infrastructure than they do of widespread productivity gains.The upshot: Inflation risks look more immediate than any AI-related productivity benefits, especially as inflation remains stubbornly above the Fed's target.What they're saying: "I believe it would be risky to rely on the prospect of higher productivity growth in the future to solve our inflation problem today," St. Louis Fed president Alberto Musalem said in a speech last week."AI shows great promise as a transformative technology, but the risks of a miscalculation about its impact on productivity and inflation are too great," Musalem said."[A]t present, I believe we should keep our guard up against persistent above-target inflation today, rather than base monetary policy on the hope that we will have higher productivity growth tomorrow."The big picture: Warsh has argued that AI will be a "significant disinflationary force, increasing productivity and bolstering American competitiveness," as he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed late last year.The theory is that if AI helps workers and businesses produce more with the same resources, the economy can grow faster without generating inflation, giving the Fed more room to lower interest rates.But policymakers want evidence that the productivity gains are here to stay.By the numbers: Productivity started to take off before most companies had adopted AI, making it difficult to know how much to credit AI for the productivity lift.Over the past three years, productivity has averaged about 2.4% annually, far stronger than the 1.5% rate seen during the 2010s, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.Between the lines: Internet-fueled productivity gains in the 1990s were visible "everywhere except in the statistics," San Francisco Fed president Mary Daly told Neil at the Reagan Economic Forum on Friday. "We've got the productivity surge a little bit earlier this time. But what's problematic is it's hard for economists or anyone to link it directly back to the AI investments. In fact, if you talk to companies, they say they haven't seen the productivity yet," Daly said."I'm bullish, but I want to see some more evidence that this is actually picking up durable, sustained gains in productivity — but I see all the green shoots there." The intrigue: A new World Economic Forum survey shows economists think most sectors won't see notable AI-driven productivity gains for another two years, a longer timeline than they anticipated at the start of 2026.Companies and investors in recent weeks have begun to publicly question whether the enormous costs of deploying AI are translating into output and efficiency gains.What to watch: Fed governor Lisa Cook pointed to signs that AI investment demand is pushing prices higher for chips, high-tech equipment and software, as well as for construction labor, electricity and water. That comes alongside price pressures from the Iran war and tariffs."[Y]et another shock to prices could be layered on from the heightened investment demand due to AI," Cook said in a speech last week, noting that companies have announced roughly $1.5 trillion in data center investment plans."Those figures suggest that substantial AI-related investment remains in the pipeline from data centers alone. Effects of this demand on prices are apparent."
Former chair Jerome Powell on Sunday warned against political pressure on the Federal Reserve, saying that the central bank “has been undergoing a stress test.” “If any administration finds a way to remove Fed officials over policy differences, then future administrations will do so as well. The public would lose faith that the central bank…
With Congress returning to session this week, Republicans are juggling several crises of President Donald Trump’s making as the party struggles over contradictory priorities. Faced with many problems that have few solutions, Punchbowl News founder Jake Sherman says the GOP is in a “very bad jam.”As Punchbowl News reports, “These are critical weeks for Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress, with just over five months left until Election Day. Trump has been bogged down in peace negotiations with Iran. The conflict remains at a stalemate somewhere between war and peace. Trump blames ‘Dumocrats, and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans’ for not understanding that ‘it will all work out well in the end.’” Now the president faces a war powers vote in which the numbers are increasingly against him.But meanwhile, Trump and congressional Republicans are embroiled in a slew of other legislative quagmires, many of which reach an impasse this week. On Wednesday night, they hope to begin a vote-a-rama that will result in the passage of the immigration reconciliation bill Thursday morning. But this effort has been complicated by Trump’s highly controversial anti-weaponization “slush fund” as well as his demand for funding for his White House ballroom. Security funding for the wildly unpopular ballroom was already attached to the reconciliation bill, diminishing its support among lawmakers who recognize the potential for electoral blowback. An even greater obstacle, however, is the anti-weaponization fund. On one hand, some Senate Republicans have expressed an unwillingness to pass the reconciliation bill until the White House submits a plan to place guardrails around the fund, which the administration hasn’t done and shows little interest in. At the same time, Democrats are lining up for a “massive amendment blitz” that will tie the fund to the bill, forcing Republicans to vote publicly either for or against the fund, which has been condemned as “the biggest heist in history.”“Senate Democrats will launch a coordinated effort to kill the slush fund before one cent goes out the door,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared on Monday. “And no matter what Republicans do, we will force them to vote on it.”In the end, says Punchbowl, “The anti-weaponization fund and its impact on the reconciliation bill have been a political gift to Democrats.”Beyond that, this week Republicans hope to reauthorize FISA Section 702, which has divided the party between those who say it’s an essential security tool and those who argue it can be used as a “backdoor” for spying on Americans. After much wrangling, “The negotiated bill is expected to include a key sweetener to attract votes from privacy hawks who have long called for reforms to Section 702: a provision that narrows the definition of an electronic communications service provider. An ECSP is the type of company that would be required to provide records to the government.”And all of this is on top of several consequential votes involving the conflicts in Iran, Lebanon and Ukraine. While Republicans have been hesitant to draw Trump’s ire by opposing even broadly unpopular endeavors like the ballroom, the slush fund has drawn such universal outrage that it could derail the entire GOP agenda. According to Senator Gary Peters (R-MI), it is "a bridge too far for some of my Republican Senate colleagues. I hope they realize that what was done is simply unacceptable and that they'll stand firm."
President Donald Trump called on a federal judge to “stop playing games ” and get out of the way of his planned White House ballroom. The president […]
