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Capitalist Insider: SEC greenlights Tesla’s one-click yes for a SpaceX deal
Super Intelligence is now official, AI is off the letterhead
Boeing now owns the Air Force and Navy sixth-gen fighter contracts
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US GDP just jumped to 2.2%, Wall Street expected 1.5%
Commerce posted a final 2.2% annualized second-quarter GDP reading Wednesday, above the 1.5% forecast, while August outlays rose 0.9% and yearly inflation held at 3.4%.
Revision beat prior print: The last Q2 estimate is 2.2%, up from the 1.5% figure Commerce had on the books, with households and businesses both spending more than the earlier report showed.
Private demand ran hotter: Real final sales to private domestic purchasers, Commerce’s gauge of underlying demand, was marked up to 4.6% for April through June.
August shoppers kept spending: Household spending rose 0.9%. The department tied part of that jump to pricier fuel at retail pumps. Personal income slowed to a 0.2% gain from 0.3%.
Inflation held firm anyway: Separate August data left the 12-month rate at 3.4%, matching July. Prices rose 0.3% on the month and core PCE rose 0.2%, both quicker than July.
Super Intelligence is now official, AI is off the letterhead
After a White House meeting with technology chiefs on Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an order telling federal agencies to drop the label “artificial intelligence” and switch to “Super Intelligence.”
Agencies drop old terms: Letters, websites, reports, and other non-statute materials must use “Super Intelligence” or “SI.” The White House said agencies should “no longer acknowledge” “artificial intelligence” and “AI.”
Definition work comes next: The president’s science and technology assistant is told to write a federal definition of SI and propose extra executive steps to put the new vocabulary in force.
Accord called morally binding: Trump said the executives signed a White House Accord on Super Intelligence that is “morally binding,” and that they “almost viewed it as a separate kind of constitution.”
Johnson frames voluntary accord: Speaker Mike Johnson called it a voluntary statement of principles. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that “every major American lab” pledged “robust internal controls and multiple layers of audits and reviews.”
Capitalist Insider: SEC greenlights Tesla’s one-click yes for a SpaceX deal
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Odds surge on Tesla merging with SpaceX before 2028
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Hiring rebounded to 90k after a three-month lull
ADP counted 90,000 new private jobs in September, above the 68,000 Dow Jones and WSJ forecasts and up from a revised 36,000 in August, a day ahead of Friday’s Labor Department report.
Health services led hiring: Education and health services supplied 55,000 of the new jobs. Leisure and hospitality added 22,000, factories 17,000 and builders 15,000.
Pay growth stayed solid: Year-over-year base wages were up 3.2% and total pay ran 4.7% higher. Chief economist Nela Richardson called it “a strong report” after hiring had cooled for 3 months.
Finance payrolls turned negative: Finance lost 16,000 jobs, professional and business services lost 11,000, and mining plus natural resources lost 1,000.
Services outpaced goods producers: Service firms created 59,000 jobs and goods producers 31,000. The Northeast added 56,000, and companies with 50 to 499 employees added 54,000.
Boeing now owns the Air Force AND Navy sixth-gen fighter contracts
Boeing stock rose 2% Wednesday after the Defense Department chose it, not Northrop Grumman, to build the Navy’s sixth-generation F/A-XX Strike Fighter.
Development award tops $20B: Pentagon figures put the full-scale development phase above $20 billion, giving Boeing the Navy carrier-fighter program.
Air Force win booked: The company already won the Air Force’s parallel jet, the F-47, in March 2025, so it now holds both U.S. sixth-generation fighter lines.
Street saw Boeing favored: BNP Paribas analyst Matthew Akers said investors treated Boeing as the likely Navy pick even after the F-47 award.
St. Louis capacity expands: Boeing is pouring new manufacturing space into St. Louis for the F-47 and says that site can support more than one next-generation aircraft program.
7.30% mortgages just pushed applications down 6%
Last week’s 30-year conforming rate reached 7.30%, the sixth weekly increase, as MBA applications slid 6% to a two-year low and Realtor.com counted price cuts on a record 20.8% of September listings.
Conforming rate keeps climbing: Mortgages capped at $832,750 moved to 7.30% from 7.12%. Points, including origination on 20% down, sat at 0.75. Mortgage News Daily printed 7.58% Tuesday, the most since November 2023.
Applications hit two-year low: Refinance filings fell 9% week to week and 56% from a year earlier. Purchase filings were down 4% on the week and 14% from last year, MBA economist Joel Kan said.
Sellers cut prices anyway: Realtor.com put September reductions on 20.8% of active listings, a September record, as listings rose 5.4% to more than 1.161 million homes.
Pending sales still sliding: Contracts were 4.1% below a year ago. Jake Krimmel said the 30-year has jumped almost 40 basis points in 4 weeks and more than 1 point since the Iran war started in late February.
Europe spent €100B extra for the same oil and gas
EU capitals are stacking price caps, tax cuts, and aid while Brent lingers near $100 a barrel. JPMorgan told clients it no longer has a baseline for how the Iran-linked disruption ends.
Bank drops its baseline: In a Sept. 17 note the bank said, “We simply don’t know how to model the endgame,” after oil above $100 failed to force talks. It said $90 would have matched known supply and demand.
Global inventories keep draining: The IEA’s September report recorded a further 95 million-barrel drop in August. Combined losses since February reach 507 million barrels, roughly 2.8 million barrels a day.
Germany leads next wave: From Oct. 1 through Dec. 31 Berlin will shave energy tax 14 cents a liter, about 17 cents after VAT, inside a €2.5 billion package. Chancellor Friedrich Merz said daily drivers “are reaching their breaking point.”
Subsidy club keeps growing: IEA tallies show fuel-subsidy countries rising from 16 to 38 and energy-tax cuts from 40 to 57. Pew, using mid-June IEA counts, found 113 countries with at least one post-war energy-cost step.
Tariffs unlocked a $15B steel mill and 1,750 Iowa jobs
AISI CEO Kevin Dempsey said the $15 billion Iowa mill Trump announced with Mesabi Metallics shows tariff walls are giving firms the nerve to fund new U.S. plants with their own cash.
Largest U.S. mill planned: Output is slated to reach 10 million tons a year from Mesabi’s new Minnesota ore mine, about 2 million tons more than the prior U.S. record mill.
America ranks third globally: Dempsey said the United States overtook Japan last year for third place behind China and India, yet still supplies only 4% of world steel.
Imports already dropped sharply: He credited tariffs with cutting inbound steel from 44 million tons in 2014 to 25 million tons last year and said Canada should copy that shield.
Private capital follows tariffs: First-term steel policy, he said, restored confidence so companies will put private money into mills instead of watching foreign surplus wreck the bet.
Disney just cut hundreds of HR and technology jobs
Walt Disney is cutting a few hundred human-resources and technology jobs, Reuters said, another round under CEO Josh D’Amaro as the company adjusts to AI tools and streaming rivals.
Latest cuts hit support: The new wave lands in HR and technology. In April the company already removed about 1,000 roles from marketing, studio and television, ESPN, products, technology and corporate staff.
July hit creative units: A July round removed several hundred more people at Pixar, ESPN, the film studio and Disney Entertainment Television.
Early retirement window opened: August packages were limited to directors through executive vice presidents in Entertainment, ESPN and corporate who were 50 or older with at least 10 years at the company.
Workforce still large: Fiscal 2025 ended with about 231,000 workers, including about 172,000 in the United States. Iger-era 2023 cuts took out 7,000 jobs in a $5.5 billion savings drive.
And the do nothing but obstruct America survival and prosperity Democ 🐀 rats in congress go on a negative rampage as they do on anything they have no clues on how to do for the Nation including SI and the economy