Oil prices are not higher because the war is winding down, or because the Strait of Hormuz is any closer to reopening. The real reason is that the world is learning to live without using as much oil as it used to. Indeed, that might be a more troubling story: Economists say that weak crude demand could be a harbinger of economic weakness ahead. World oil demand could fall further than previously expected this year, according to the International Energy Agency. The IEA now forecasts that demand will drop by 1.6 million barrels a day in 2026. That’s 510,000 barrels a day more than its last monthly prediction in July, as elevated fuel prices are putting further downward pressure on oil use.Here’s the real reason oil prices aren’t moving higherIn a 2022 study, my colleagues and I used national survey data that followed parent-child relationships over several decades. In that period, 26% of adult children in the U.S. experienced a period of estrangement from their fathers, and 6% reported a period of estrangement with their mothers. Our findings were consistent with what sociologist Karl Pillemer found in his 2020 national survey, which showed that 27% of Americans were estranged from a relative, or roughly 67 million people..I conducted 68 in-depth interviews with adults who went no-contact with a parent, sibling, grandparent or other relative. (All participant names, including Luna’s, are pseudonyms used to protect their privacy.) I found that estrangement is less a story of trauma or selfishness, and more a clash between competing expectations: an insistence on loyalty, duty and forgiveness on one hand, and the longing for respect, emotional safety and personal growth on the other.The real reason many Americans are cutting ties with their parents and siblingsShareholdersunite Essentials is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The United States, patrolling the strait with its navy, is gaining ground – and Iran is losing much of its control of the critical waterway.More than 80% of vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz over the past two weeks have taken the Omani route – a UN-authorized shipping channel that Iran vehemently opposes – according to Kpler, which tracks ships using transponders and satellite data.Iran, declaring the strait under its control, has attacked dozens of ships that tried to to travel the waterway via the north coast of Oman. Despite the risk, most ships have recently chosen to ignore Iran’s demands and cross the strait with the promise of protection from US naval forces.“It increasingly looks like Iran has at least partially lost control of the strait,” said Homayoun Falakshahi, head of crude oil analysis at Kpler.Shifting controlThat stands in stark contrast to a month ago, when Kpler observed virtually no shipping traffic via the Omani route. The sharp reduction in traffic around Iran’s preferred route has prevented Iran from charging tolls on ship traffic through the strait – as it did in the spring.Iran is losing control of the Strait of HormuzOil prices are once again uncomfortably high, but the bigger problem is lurking just beneath the surface. What initially began as an oil supply shock caused by the Strait of Hormuz blockage is morphing into a fuel supply crisis. Refineries face a perfect combination of war and export restrictions, which is limiting how much crude oil they can turn into the gasoline, jet fuel and diesel that powers the global economy.A key measure of refining profitability, known as the diesel crack spread, skyrocketed to $102 a barrel on Monday for the first time ever, nearly tripling pre-war levels. Diesel crack spread measures how much refiners can earn on each barrel of crude they turn into diesel…The diesel price hike is a stealth cost for consumers because it powers tractors on farms, as well as trains and trucks hauling goods around the country. Businesses often pass along at least some of those higher fuel prices to consumers in the form of elevated prices.Higher diesel prices have cost US consumers nearly $40 billion since the war started, according to research from Brown University’s Climate Solutions Lab.Red lights are flashing in energy markets But anyone who asserts that markets are missing an impending debt crisis should be asked to explain how, exactly, such a crisis might play out. Don’t wave your hands at the debt crises that struck Greece and other southern European nations around 2010, because our situation is very different: Unlike Greece, which is a member of the euro area, the U.S. economy runs on dollars and U.S. government debt is denominated in dollars.That matters because it’s very hard to construct a scenario for a Greek-style debt crisis in a nation that borrows in its own currency. As far as I can tell — and I’ve studied the issue at length — there are no historical examples in which this happened. The detailed, wonkish logic of why we are not and have never been Greece is explained in a paper I presented at the IMF’s annual research conference some years ago.The Case Against Bond Market PanicA new Wall Street study just put real numbers behind something workers have suspected for years. Artificial intelligence isn’t just changing how people work; it’s also changing who gets hired.Goldman Sachs spent months tracking the data across multiple countries, and the picture that emerged is more specific and useful than the usual AI doom headlines.Artificial intelligence has started to weigh on the labor markets across major developed economies, but effects vary by industry and level. Goldman found that industries with greater AI exposure have generally seen slower job openings growth since the second half of 2022, a pattern especially pronounced in the United States.Information and communication services, among the most AI-exposed industries, have seen slowing employment growth across nearly every major developed economy since 2022, according to BeInCrypto, Goldman said in the report published Aug. 19.Goldman Sachs sends strong message on AI and jobsThe past two months have been a breakout period for open source AI. Yes, there was the “DeepSeek moment” back in January 2025, but no one actually used R1 to do any economically valuable work. In contrast, models like GLM 5.3 and Kimi K3 are genuinely capable of many of the same coding and agentic tasks that rocketed Anthropic to $65B+ ARR. Unlike others who inflated ARR, our figures were much closer to reality.It is an exciting time to be a token consumer. Competition is heating up, usage resets are being doled out, and the battle for your tokens now extends beyond the OpenAI-Anthropic duopoly. Fireworks alone is processing over 40T tokens per day—2x the OpenAI API’s volume at the end of March.However, major FUD has also emerged as a result of open model success: if open models stay capable enough relative to the closed frontier at a fraction of the cost, won’t the model layer become commoditized?Frontier labs (Anthropic, OpenAI) maintain an edge through productization (e.g., Claude Code, safety testing, and integration) rather than raw model weights alone.Are Open Models Catching Up?Six 30-second all-out cycling sprints changed hundreds of proteins in the bloodstream, far more than 90 minutes of moderate cycling.The sprint response appeared quickly and affected signals tied to energy use, blood vessels, hormones and communication with fat cells.Many sprint-responsive proteins were associated with lower metabolic disease risk, but the small study focused mainly on young, healthy, active men.Three minutes of sprinting linked to lower risks of diabetes and obesityHe is a five-time U.S. Open champion, a two-time Wimbledon champion, and a leading man of the first golden age of professional tennis in the 1970s and 1980s. Just don’t look for him at the tennis “Star Wars” bar that every Grand Slam turns into, with old legends of the sport all over the grounds. They are in front of television cameras and behind the closed doors of corporate suites, where they receive generous checks for popping in, shaking some hands and telling some stories, before heading off to the next appearance. Let them have their fun and their appearance fees. Connors will keep his distance. His relationships with them were always a little spicy. Connors, known to the world as Jimmy and now 72, called his memoir “The Outsider,” so maybe staying away is for the best.The U.S. Open match between Jimmy Connors and Aaron Krickstein that ended a friendshipEconomists have been repeatedly dumbfounded by the resilience of the economy in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, wars, tariffs, inflation and sharply higher interest rates. A simple answer has provided a catchall explanation: the growth of artificial intelligence. But the growth of A.I. also poses a risk, reflected in the nearly two-decade highs that yields on U.S. government bonds hit this week, prompting the Treasury Department to try to put a lid on borrowing costs.That risk stems from a borrowing binge by some of the biggest technology companies in the world. Until recently, the companies mostly self-funded the construction of data centers and other infrastructure that run their technologies. Now they are raising hundreds of billions of dollars by selling bonds to meet the voracious need for capital that advanced A.I. systems require.How Big Tech’s A.I. Borrowing Binge Is Driving Up Bond YieldsShareholdersunite Essentials is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.