Bloomberg Opinion

Republican lawmakers claim their proposal to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid is designed to protect the country’s most vulnerable — that by focusing on work requirements, they’re simply eliminating waste from the bloated program and ensuring the money goes to those who truly need it. In reality, anyone who relies on public insurance could be affected by the prosed cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill, including about 37 million kids, nearly half of all American children. Some of those kids would lose out either because they are dropped from coverage or because the services they depend on are pared back as states grapple with the cuts. For others, the impact will be more indirect. Perhaps they can’t obtain mental health services because fewer providers accept Medicaid. Or maybe the pediatric dialysis clinic they use is forced to close. Or their caregiver loses coverage, and a medical emergency plunges their family into financial crisis. Read more in my latest for Bloomberg Opinion (gift link): https://lnkd.in/gEgGPdDz

It's finally here - sort of. Tesla launched its robotaxi service in Austin on Sunday. For any other company, this would be a major milestone. For Tesla, having oversold its AV capabilities for years, it was a disappointment. Despite Elon Musk having claimed only last year that Tesla's approach was superior to Waymo's and could operate on a "different Earth", the launch involved a handful of vehicles open only to invited guests (read: fans/bulls), operating in a limited part of one city, with a "safety monitor" in the front passenger seat. Cue videos of a steering wheel turning itself and swooning commentary on X. There is, to be clear, nothing wrong with having a safety monitor, or remote support, in place when robotaxis first get out on the road. But this launch, intended to prove the naysayers wrong, merely confirms what has been apparent for a while: Tesla's AV rhetoric, and the trillion-dollar valuation predicated upon it, vastly oversells the reality. Read about it here at Bloomberg Opinion https://lnkd.in/eygWUHSd

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🦈 Happy 50th birthday to the mother of all shark films: Jaws! Sharks haven't had much to celebrate in that time, but in Belize there's a *RAY of hope. read for free via Bloomberg Opinion *pun intended, IYKYK https://lnkd.in/eUVecWxA

🎥 So I used to think prepping was a pastime of the paranoid. But I’ve recently changed my view: In our increasingly volatile world, where climate change intensifies the likelihood and severity of extreme weather and geopolitics is running hot, taking steps to improve your household’s resilience is common sense. 📄 Read the piece for free over at Bloomberg Opinion https://lnkd.in/dtbYCxNT

The $29trn Treasury market needs to trade reliably. Leverage reform should help that without being a capital giveaway for the biggest US banks. But it still doesn’t look like driving demand for bonds as Bessent hopes. See how it could effect Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorganChase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. Read more at Bloomberg Opinion https://lnkd.in/emTkYzAz

If you come home early from vacation and find robbers ransacking your house, you could call the police and try to stop the crime. But the true alpha move would be to help the robbers load your valuables onto the truck and then tell them which of your neighbors are also on vacation in exchange for a cut of the profits. Banks are choosing the alpha option, basically abetting theft from themselves by backing new projects to extract and burn fossil fuels, thus stoking the planetary heating that stunts economic growth and their own insurance and mortgage businesses. Gift link to my column for Bloomberg Opinion https://lnkd.in/egD_qE2G

Crime and insecurity top voter concerns across Latin America, a trend that’s likely to benefit rightwing parties when Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Peru pick presidents within the next 16 months Read my latest for Bloomberg Opinion here https://lnkd.in/dBeN2E96

$14 billion raised so far and it'll just about run out by the end of this month -- that's the staggering losses of Elon Musk's xAI. The company is out now trying to raise another $9.3 billion, according to a Bloomberg report. In today's column I question whether the cash burn will ever end. Grok has some serious disadvantages against other chatbots/AI models, making this a particularly risky bet in an ocean of risky bets. Read on Bloomberg Opinion here (gift link!): https://lnkd.in/emvNJ-AE #ai #elonmusk #xai

Selling TSB Bank could offer Banco Sabadell an escape from BBVA's takeover bid, tossing another spanner into the works of European banking consolidation. Read more at Bloomberg Opinion    https://lnkd.in/eY98WXB2