Bloomberg Opinion

The titans of corporate America have had enough of their critics. ◾ At Goldman CEO David Solomon has reportedly pushed out troublemakers who criticized his leadership and leaked to the press about problems in the bank’s consumer lending business. ◾At Meta, Mark Zuckerberg is now channeling Elon Musk energy and is less willing to take advice or listen to employee concerns over policy changes around issues such as DEI and content moderation. ◾JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told workers who started a petition asking him to reconsider his RTO demands, “Don't waste time on it. I don't care how many people sign that f**king petition.” Employees who don’t like it can get a job elsewhere, he’s said. Quashing dissent appears to be the next step in the CEO playbook for re-exerting authority after a pandemic that shifted power into the hands of workers. As CEOs return to command-and-control mode, they have only become more emboldened — perhaps even inspired — by a White House with zero tolerance for anyone unwilling to toe the party line. We can all understand the impulse to silence critics. They can slow decision making, create conflict and decimate morale. Admit it: We think they’re idiots and annoying troublemakers. But there are good reasons that everyone — and especially CEOs — should not just tolerate dissenters but encourage them. I dig into the research that explains why for my latest Bloomberg Opinion column. https://lnkd.in/epDRUNcp

The actor Sean Penn has summed up the problem with Pete Hegseth, and by extension the administration of President Donald Trump. “I’ve never before seen a Secretary of Defense so aggressively demote himself to the rank of Chief PETTY Officer,” Penn said upon hearing that the Pentagon boss has ordered the Navy to rename an oiler called the USNS Harvey Milk. The naming of a ship (or a gulf, or anything) is often a bureaucratic gesture of forgettable symbolism. Not in this case and a slew of others that Hegseth is currently reviewing. The effort instead points to a worrisome obsession that causes division, distraction and the diversion of scarce energy from real foreign conflicts toward domestic culture wars. Milk, whom Penn played in a screen biopic, was the first openly gay man to hold elected office in California (he was later assassinated) and had earlier been a lieutenant in the Navy during the Korean War. Homosexuality was then a crime in the military, so Milk was eventually given a Hobson’s choice: He could face a court-martial or resign with a discharge that was “other than honorable.” In 1955, Milk chose the latter option. To show that America’s armed forces no longer waste such human talent and exclude so many patriotic Americans, the navy in 2016 named a ship after Milk. But to Trump, who won his first presidency that year, that gesture was part of a pathology which Hegseth later called the “DEI/woke shit,” referring to norms favoring diversity, equity and inclusion. Fresh into office, Hegseth fired senior officers including the first woman to command the Coast Guard, the first woman to run the Navy and the second Black person to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Had that chairman been hired “because of his skin color? Or his skill?,” Hegseth had wondered in The War on Warriors, published in 2024; “we’ll never know, but always doubt.” Backed by Trump, Hegseth then kept purging the Pentagon ... (Read the whole column. This a a gift link)   Bloomberg Opinion https://bloom.bg/4mRMI7t

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney just had what you might call an ‘infrastructure week’. He convened provincial premiers to agree on a way to build big projects in a country famous for its internal trade barriers and disputes. One such project is a pipeline to bring oil from land-locked Alberta to the British Columbia coast. Earlier efforts have failed, stymied by opposition from Liberal politicians in BC and Ottawa as well as First Nations, whose land any pipeline would need to cross. Getting it done would require changing laws, especially the one banning oil tankers off much of BC’s coast, and likely twinning the pipeline with a massive carbon capture project. First Nations tribes would need extensive consultation and likely a stake in any resulting pipeline. In short, it’s a Canadian moonshot that would likely be going nowhere, were it not for threats and bluster from a certain erratic ally to the south. Read about it here at Bloomberg Opinion https://lnkd.in/efyJ_n8M

Elon Musk’s blowup with President Trump is entirely unsurprising, yet Tesla’s investors seemed to be shocked nonetheless. More than $150 billion was wiped off Tesla’s value during Thursday’s online slug fest. The bounce on Friday is, seemingly pinned to hopes of a truce, is less a relief rally than an exercise in delusion. The argument that Tesla would benefit from Musk’s attachment to Trump was always vague and dubious. But the ways in which an embittered Trump can mess with Tesla, and crush its valuation, are pretty obvious. They range from the existing push to remove EV subsidies to regulatory bodies cracking down on the robotaxi narrative that now underpins Tesla’s (still high) multiple. Read about it here at Bloomberg Opinion https://lnkd.in/e6wjjH7A

It's more than a coincidence that Harvard, McKinsey and the World Economic Forum are under fire at the moment. adrian wooldridge diagnoses the collective ailment afflicting the three marquee institutions at the heart of the neoliberal regime that prevailed from the 1980s onward: "Their travails tell us a great deal about what was wrong with an idea that once delivered a necessary shock to a sclerotic Keynesian regime but was corrupted by its crude celebration of success. They can only recover their former vitality if they reflect seriously on what went wrong during the rah-rah years — and on their own central role in creating our current malaise."

Watch Tesla’s shares drop 14% on June 5 as Elon Musk and President Trump’s simmering feud erupts 📉 The rout erased about $150 billion from the EV maker’s market value, the stock’s biggest decline since March 10. Musk’s politics have been toxic for Tesla, but what comes next may be far worse, says Liam Denning. Read the column: https://lnkd.in/eZ9RFfA4

We’re on the verge of what will probably be one of the hottest Northern Hemisphere summers in human history. Soaring temperatures, which are deadlier than any other natural disaster, will endanger the health and productivity of millions of Americans this summer. Workers at construction sites, farms and factories, along with delivery workers and many others in heat-exposed jobs, are especially at risk. So naturally, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who for some reason is in charge of managing our nation’s health now, has reportedly fired all of the people who have been helping the federal government write heat protections for workers. This will likely make extreme heat even riskier and the economic impact even heavier. 🎁 link to my column for @opinion.bloomberg.com https://lnkd.in/eCriqDvR

Eighty-one years ago today, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, beginning the liberation of Western Europe. The scale of courage and sacrifice still staggers the imagination. I marked the anniversary a little differently this year—by hiking the very beaches where American, British, and Canadian soldiers landed on June 6, 1944. Like many who visit, I tried to imagine the terror and resolve those soldiers must have felt. But I also found myself thinking about something less obvious: the weather forecast. D-Day didn’t happen on June 5 as originally planned. A storm forced a delay. On the night of June 4, Group Captain James Stagg—Eisenhower’s chief meteorologist—predicted a narrow window of better weather on the 6th. Eisenhower took the gamble. German meteorologists forecast two weeks of storms and let their guard down. That break in the clouds changed the course of the war. At the time, weather forecasting was almost mystical. There were no satellites, no supercomputers, and little reliable data. But Stagg and his team saw something others missed. That tiny technological edge—an accurate 48-hour forecast—saved lives, ensured supplies made it ashore, and helped secure the Allies’ foothold in Europe. Fast forward 81 years: weather forecasts are so routine we barely think about them. But they’re still miracles of science. Government investment and decades of technological progress have taken forecasting from near guesswork to near certainty—and created billions in economic value. This is the story of how innovation scales. At first, high-stakes bets by people with unlimited resources (like Eisenhower) push new technologies to their limits. If they work, the cost eventually comes down—and what once felt like science fiction becomes background noise in daily life. Weather forecasts. GPS. Cellphones. Cancer immunotherapies. But we forget these miracles are fragile. They depend on long-term investment, scientific rigor, and the kind of quiet public institutions that are easy to ignore—until they’re gone. That includes places like NOAA, whose funding has already been slashed and whose future is uncertain under proposed budgets. The lesson of D-Day isn’t just about bravery. It’s about what makes bravery effective: insight, planning, and the invisible tools that tip history's scales. Let’s not wait for the next storm to remember that. —Gautam To read the full article, check out my piece on Bloomberg Opinion: https://lnkd.in/eDZEkrYa For more like this, sign up for The Indispensable Newsletter: https://lnkd.in/e3gv-wiK

Marco Rubio is riding high, with all of four (!) jobs in the Trump administration. And yet he has no real power: He's not the top diplomat (Trump has "special envoys" for that) ... ... and has become just a Yes Man - "good little Marco" in SNL's skits. So who advises Trump? Anybody? Read the whole column. Here's a gift link: https://bloom.bg/45LBnPY And here's a short teaser: Bloomberg Opinion

Happy Nintendo Switch 2 day! More than eight years since the original, the new console hit the shelves today -- though good luck getting hold of one. It's a curious thing, I think, that even with the best part of a decade to think it over, none of the would-be competitors to the Switch 2 have made their move. A bona fide PlayStation or Xbox handheld is still likely a couple of years away. The Steam Deck from Valve is unlikely to capture the mass market. It means Nintendo once again has the field to itself. Unless Apple can enter the fray as a wildcard: It's expected to make some gaming announcements at WWDC next week. My Bloomberg Opinion column today (FREE TO READ): https://lnkd.in/es_KCRNt #nintendo #switch2 #gaming #apple