Media worth consuming – May 2026

Top five articles

S&P 500 earnings growth for Q1 was among the strongest since the Financial Crisis.

Bolt Financial fired its entire HR team with the CEO saying, “that HR team was creating problems that didn’t exist”.

An Indian citizen in Scotland on a temporary student visa has been elected to Scotland’s Parliament for a five year term.

China tried to block the Taiwanese President from visiting the King’s birthday celebrations in the African kingdom of Eswatini, but a secret flight got him there anyway.

How Banksy installs his public art is arguably more interesting than the art itself.

Finance

The UAE’s exit from OPEC will weaken the oil cartel and is likely to lead to greater volatility in oil prices in the long term. Iran’s economy was in bad shape before the war, now inflation is over 50% and unemployment is soaring as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz cuts off revenue. Turkey has conducted a rapid sell down of its gold and US Treasury bonds in a vain attempt to stop the lira collapsing.

An aircraft engine shortage has airline leasing companies stripping engines off new planes. When Spirit Airlines went bust, repo men rapidly organised to repossess their planes. Even with higher fuel prices, EV sales have slumped in the US after taxpayer subsidies were withdrawn.

The man nicknamed the “Madoff of Manuscripts” has been sentenced by a French court to five years' prison for a €1bn Ponzi scheme. JP Morgan fired a broker alleging wrongful billing of a $643 platter but has now been ordered to pay him $4.25 million for wrongful dismissal. A senior CIA official was found to have $40 million in gold bars at his home after being arrested for a false leave claim. The SEC has knocked back a multimillion dollar whistleblower claim as the witness went to the press before approaching the SEC.

US funds manager Fidelity deleted a Colorado woman’s accounts containing lifelong savings and took a week to “find” them again. With a strong majority of US public fixed income managers underperforming their benchmarks, it is understandable that many investors are turning to private credit. Borrowers from BDCs are showing slightly increased signs of credit stress. European corporate hybrids are being issued at a rapid pace this year despite limited yield pickup over senior bonds. Korean retail investors are piling into technology stocks using margin loans. Four reasons AI debt is higher risk than regular corporate debt.

AI will destroy jobs, change jobs and create jobs all at the same time, just like previous waves of productivity. AI was supposed to reduce the demand for radiologists, but the number and wages of radiologists in the US continues to grow as a lower cost to use boosts demand. AI companies are deceptively and forcibly installing their software on devices by default. The CEO of Standard Chartered tried to walk back his comment that the bank would replace “lower value human capital” with AI. Across equity, venture capital and credit, AI is the major investment theme.

Politics & culture

There is a growing separatist movement in Alberta, Canada fuelled by concerns that the province is subsidising others while being politically underrepresented. Democrats are furious that Trump and his family are exempt from pending tax audits as part of a settlement but still have no remorse over using the IRS to attack their political opponents. Democrats kicked off a Gerrymandering war but look set to end up worse off after several court decisions have gone against them.

The CIA is actively and openly working in Mexico to assist with lethal operations targeting drug cartels. Saudi Arabia and the UAE both quietly struck back at Iran during the initial hot phase of the Iran war. A former US federal prosecutor with a history of obtaining harsh punishments was given a 90 day jail sentence for repeatedly stabbing another man after a car accident.

Singapore is proposing new guidelines for punishing bullies, with boys but not girls having the potential to be caned. The Canberra opposition has appointed shadow ministers for both men’s and women’s health. The BBC has been slammed for an article that took a sympathetic angle to Afghan fathers selling their daughters. Australia’s gender laws are being laughed at after a Federal Court appeal failed in the Giggle v Tickle case. The British exam board will allow high school students to use gender neutral language in their French exams, despite the words not being recognised in France.

Yale and UCLA are accused of racism in determining who is admitted to their medical schools. A British university student bled to death while handcuffed by police after they deemed his attackers' claims of racist insults to be more important than his claims of being stabbed. A Belgian activist was convicted on racial hatred grounds for giving a factual speech on the negative aspects of migration.

The United Nations has granted Iran leadership posts on committees that cover nuclear non-proliferation, human rights and counterterrorism. Hamas is using its control over aid to abuse vulnerable women with the UN and other aid organisations failing to speak up. A former head of Mossad has warned that settler violence against Palestinians could create the conditions for another October 7 attack.

California is set to pass a law designed to restrict journalists and citizen investigators from exposing taxpayer fraud. Amsterdam has banned advertising for meat and fossil fuels, but not for drugs and prostitution. A $980 million NSW government program for flood recovery has failed to deliver a single new block of land after three and a half years.

Economics & work

It is often said that money can’t buy happiness but at a national level higher GDP per capita is strongly correlated with higher happiness scores. Sweden is becoming more like America and less like Europe in cutting taxes and government spending. A European Commission report on how to enact wealth taxes helps explain why European productivity and growth are abysmal and why they are unlikely to change.

US states are increasingly splitting into high income tax states and low or no income tax states, offering Americans choice in the level of taxes and government they want. The UN is becoming a global taxation agency with its policies for airlines and shipping. Australia’s 2026 budget is nothing like real tax reform.

America is building homes faster than population growth, which points to affordability improving in the medium term. China’s local governments are getting creative with gimmicks to sell excess apartments.

Skilled visas have allowed US tech firms to reduce their wage bills, with two-thirds of Silicon Valley tech employees now born overseas. To help deal with labour shortages, Japanese nursing homes are recruiting bodybuilders, martial artists and sumo wrestlers who often work, train and live at the facilities. Most of Australia’s excess migration problem comes from “temporary” migrants being allowed to stay indefinitely. The Australian government is finally investigating the widespread rorting of student visas at private colleges.

The spike in US CPI over the last 12 months, particularly for core services, makes the Fed’s real interest rate negative.

Five reforms Kevin Warsh should undertake as the new Fed chair. G7 government bonds yields are at their highest since 2007, with higher inflation, government deficits, quantitative tightening and wary investors all partly to blame.

Miscellaneous

A landslide at an Alaskan glacier set off a tsunami that peaked at over 400 metres high. The Permian Basin is seeing more geysers flowing from old wells, as pressurised wastewater pumped underground is forcing its way out.

It’s not just tobacconists dodging taxes, bottle shops are selling illicit alcohol too. A French academic may be charged with fraud after he invented an award and gave it to himself, then used the publicity to gain a promotion. A New York firefighter is facing animal cruelty charges after blasting a cat out of a tree with a firehose. An intruder on the runway at Denver Airport died after being sucked into a plane’s engine, setting off a fire and forcing the plane to be evacuated.

A Japanese man has been sentenced to 18 months' jail for copyright violations for posting movie spoilers. Broadway audiences are laughing out loud more often and some actors can’t handle it. Two German film students had the plaudits for their short film stolen by an American, so they made a documentary about it. Subscription services are getting more aggressive with price increases; hard pressed consumers are responding by cancelling.

Twin brothers from Virginia went on a digital rampage after being fired from their tech jobs, wiping out 96 government databases and stealing thousands of user credentials, which they subsequently used to enrich themselves. The Whitehouse joined in the memes commemorating the death of Harambe.

The University of Maine allows students to progress through course work at their own pace, with some finishing their degrees in months. With applications slumping at business schools, discounts of up to 50% are being offered on MBA courses. AI is changing our brains, with negative impacts on deep thinking, learning, judgement and memory. People are increasingly wandering around with their laptops open so their AI software keeps processing. After years of waiting for someone to break the two hour mark, two marathon runners ran under two hours in the London Marathon.