Page F75From§Each · the Money book24 September to 25 September 2026
Money
By SalStaff Writer · the early bird edition, 24 September 2026
Three in four Americans tell CNN's pollsters they are afraid of artificial intelligence, a number The Hill ran September 24 under the flat headline "75 percent fearful, concerned about AI." That fear did not arrive on its own. Blood in the Machine's newsletter said the quiet part out loud this week: the extinction narrative is winning, and it happens to mint trillion-dollar companies along the way.
Trace the calendar. On September 18, the Washington Examiner reported that OpenAI's Sam Altman, Nvidia's Jensen Huang and other AI leaders would attend Trump's state dinner for Xi Jinping, the paper noting the summit would put "AI and the growing U.S.-China technology rivalry in focus." The next day, the New York Post confirmed the guest list ran deeper: Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk had scored invitations too, alongside Google's Sundar Pichai, Dell's Michael Dell, and Citigroup's Jane Fraser — what the Post called "the hottest ticket in town." By September 21, The Hill was reporting that "apocalyptic warnings about the danger of uncontrolled artificial intelligence" were shaping the Trump-Xi agenda itself, even as Trump publicly dismissed those same warnings.
Then came September 24 — the same day the fear poll ran — when Common Dreams totaled what the dinner guests were actually worth: $2.2 trillion, combined, across Musk, Altman, Huang, Zuckerberg, Pichai and Nadella. The White House released the dinner menu. It released no record of what was discussed.
Line up what the wire shows, in order. A poll finds a public frightened of a technology. A newsletter notes that fright is profitable for the people building it. A guest list confirms those people sat down with the two men who run the two governments most likely to decide whether that technology gets regulated at all. And the combined net worth of that guest list landed at $2.2 trillion, published the same day the fear number ran.
No motive needs inventing; the receipts already run in sequence. The men telling a frightened public that their product could end the species are the same men whose seat at that table depends on being believed the only ones capable of building it safely. Take away the fear number and the dinner is just a dinner. Take away the dinner and the fear number is just a poll. Sitting together, in the order the wire filed them, they are a market.
The menu is public. The agenda is not. Neither is the bill for whatever gets built next, or who gets asked to pay it once the table is cleared.
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By SterlingThe Ownership Desk · the supper edition, 24 September 2026
Three courses, and not a gram of beef among them. You are thinking oversight — a chef's whim, a courtesy to the guest. It is a state menu, and a state menu is not cooking. It is a published document: sesame-crusted sea bass, bok choy, a White House honey dessert, American ingredients with, the first lady's office said, "subtle Chinese influence." Subtle, mind you. Expected at that table, and expected is the word the reporting uses, were Musk, Altman, Huang, Zuckerberg, Pichai, Nadella — six men Forbes weighs at $2.2 trillion between them. Two point two, for a pescatarian evening.
The beef was elsewhere. Trump announced last month that tariffs on foreign beef would be temporarily eased — eased, held in abeyance ... not repealed — to increase supply and lower the price of meat for consumers. On September 5 he pushed ahead through the cattlemen's objections. And who takes the criticism for the cheaper meat? The ranchers, and then the lawmakers of rural states, furious by September 19 and facing reelection, pressing him in public today. Democrats and independents got a rare opening with rural voters out of it.
The cattlemen carry the price. The table ate fish.
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By MitchInvestigations · the wee small hours edition, 25 September 2026
The state attorneys general who sued to stop the $111 billion Paramount-Warner Discovery merger have reached a settlement, and the settlement, read clause by clause, looks like it was drafted by the company it was meant to restrain.
Start with the count. Twelve states and the Writers Guild of America filed the lawsuits. California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the deal Monday, after meeting with Paramount representatives over the weekend. All together now — the number written into the settlement is $1.5 billion, Paramount's promised production investment in California, set against a merger valued at $111 billion. That is the concession. That is the entire concession.
Former FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya and antitrust legal expert Lee Hepner went through the settlement's fine print for The Lever and found the part that did not make the press release: the loopholes, and the promises that read like commitments while functioning like nothing. Common Dreams had already flagged the shape of the deal days earlier — "a settlement that promises less than nothing" — and one critic's phrase for the concessions, meaningless bullshit, became a headline in its own right.
The Wall Street Journal reported the outline in advance: a series of potential concessions, including that same $1.5 billion figure, discussed over the weekend between Bonta and Paramount executives. A lawsuit meant to stop one media conglomerate from swallowing another ended, instead, with the state attorneys general helping negotiate the terms of the swallowing.
CBS News, which reported the settlement to its own viewers the day it was announced, is itself a Paramount property. The network covering the deal and the company completing it share a parent company. That is not an accusation. It is the masthead.
All together now, once more — the settlement was announced as the resolution of antitrust lawsuits brought by a dozen states and a writers' union. What it resolved was the lawsuit. What it left standing was the merger, the $111 billion, and the family now positioned to control what used to be two separate media companies. Bedoya and Hepner already read the settlement clause by clause. The loopholes did not need decoding. They needed only a byline.
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By ChipStaff Writer · the milkman edition, 25 September 2026
Let's be clear about what happened, because the coverage has gotten sloppy. The administration purchased airtime on cable news. That's it. That's the whole story. Governments explain themselves to the public all the time — public health notices, tax deadlines, the occasional reminder about which countries we are and are not. ABC News reports the spot in question features the president stating, in his own voice, that the United States "will never be a communist country." That's not a campaign message. That's a fact. A true fact, delivered flatly, the way the Department of Transportation tells you a bridge is closed.
Although — and I want to be precise here — nobody was asking. There is no live communist takeover requiring rebuttal. There is no ballot measure. There is just an ad, purchased with public money, informing the public of something the public did not question, in the voice of one man. I'm not sure "public service announcement" is the phrase I want. Let me come back to that.
Because it turns out the anti-communism spot wasn't alone. CBS News reports a second flight, "Love Me," also taxpayer-funded, also on network and cable, also built around the president. Two ads, same subject, same funding source, and at that point I have to admit the word I was reaching for earlier was "campaign." A government messaging campaign doesn't ask you to love it. A candidate does. A candidate pays for that with candidate money, from people who chose to give it, not from the general fund of people who chose nothing.
Which is presumably the theory Rep. Jamie Raskin is working from when he calls this "felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes," per the Washington Examiner — a specific legal phrase, not a mood, aimed at a specific transaction: your money, spent to make you feel a certain way about the man spending it.
So to summarize the government's position, which I am still defending: this is public messaging, it happens to be indistinguishable from a campaign ad, it happens to ask for affection rather than compliance, and it happens to be under the kind of scrutiny usually reserved for embezzlement. None of that changes the deadline for your own taxes, which remains firm, unaffected by love, funded the usual way — by you, without a spot on cable telling you to feel good about it.
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By SterlingThe Ownership Desk · the coffee break edition, 25 September 2026
Permanent is not a long span of years. Permanent is the end of the calendar, and permanent is the word carried home from the United Nations on Tuesday — "permanent control over security, and all other needs," and an "Infinite Life" agreement besides. You are waiting for the price. There is none. Not a dollar, not a base traded back, not a tariff lifted. A bargain wants consideration, some small thing moving the other way to make it a bargain and not a gift, and Tuesday's signing supplies nothing of the sort. Mette Frederiksen says the agreement recognises the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Denmark and Greenland. The sovereignty, you see, and the territorial integrity. The deed stays where it was. Announced on the eighteenth. On the nineteenth the reporting set beside it a US firm's purchase of the island's rare-earth mine; by the twentieth it was "largely a rebranding of the status quo to claim a win" ... and by Tuesday it was exactly what he wanted all along. In January 2025, weeks after the announcement that "ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity," Donald Trump Jr. made a personal visit. Frederiksen said then that "Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders." It does. Washington has the security, and all other needs, at no charge, for ever.
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By SterlingThe Ownership Desk · the early bird edition, 25 September 2026
You will want to know what the other two tax measures are for. They are not for anything. They are in the alternative.
An initiative does not have to win. It has to stand beside the one that might and carry off a portion of the Yes — a portion, mind you, not a majority — because a voter handed three ways to tax a billionaire has three ways to spend one vote.
Proposition 40 is a one-time five percent tax on the net worth of anyone holding a billion dollars or more. Two hundred of them, in California. The money funds the state's healthcare system.
On the sixteenth, fifty-two percent of likely voters backed it. On the twenty-second the Berkeley–POLITICO poll put the question to registered voters, a larger and looser crowd, and got forty-five. Forty-five.
On the eighteenth, a sixty-seven-page civil complaint against the union behind Proposition 40 arrived in federal court.
A group of Nobel Prize-winning economists called this vote "a turning point in the battle between democracy and oligarchy." The reply came ... as paperwork. Two measures, qualified for the same ballot.
Two hundred fortunes, assessed once at five percent, against two more lines on a ballot. The healthcare money is the stake. Three measures, one vote.
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By SterlingThe Ownership Desk · the early evening edition, 25 September 2026
Three ways to tax a billionaire sit on that ballot, and you are handed one vote to spend. Two of the three were put there by the campaign the billionaires fund. They need not pass. They need only stand beside the one that might and carry off a slice of the Yes — a slice only — because an initiative is not merely a proposal; it is a position on a ballot, and a position on a ballot divides.
Proposition 40 is a one-time five percent tax on the net worth of anyone holding a billion dollars or more. Two hundred such residents, in California. The money funds the state's healthcare system.
On the sixteenth, majority support. On the twenty-first, fifty-two percent, with a group of Nobel Prize-winning economists saying the vote may mark "a turning point in the battle between democracy and oligarchy." On the twenty-second, a different survey — Berkeley's Citrin Center, with POLITICO — forty-five percent of registered voters. Forty-five.
And yesterday? Tightening dramatically, weeks from the vote. A near-dead heat.
You would want someone to have broken a rule here. Nobody did. Quite legal, quite public, handsomely done: the ballot is open to whoever can pay to enter it ... and it has been entered.
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By RuthThe Money Desk · the late evening edition, 25 September 2026
The ledger this month reads like a family that says it's broke while somehow still paying the country club. On September 16th a watchdog found the government's "Fork in the Road" buyout push, the one sold as trimming the federal payroll, had itself run up nearly $7 billion in costs. The next day, Moody's put a number on what the Iran war has done to home energy bills: $121 billion extra nationwide since February, $1,760 a household, nobody's line item, everybody's invoice. On the 18th a federal judge — a Trump appointee, for the record — ordered the administration to put back the $7 billion Solar for All program it had tried to zero out.
That's the frame this week's beat sits inside. The Government Accountability Office counted six separate detention-expansion projects ICE has run since January 2025 and found, by its own count, no planning process behind them establishing the capacity was needed before it was built.
Friday night, with that finding eleven days old, the White House filed the paperwork to cancel it. The signed rescission itemizes $810 million by category — immigration and refugee programs, foreign debt relief, business grants tied to diversity initiatives — inside a package wire services total at nearly $1 billion the same night. It is the second pocket rescission in fifty years. Both were signed by this president. Lawmakers in both parties are calling the maneuver itself illegal, which means the same government now paying $7 billion to buy out its own workforce, financing detention capacity nobody planned for, and passing $121 billion in war costs to households in their utility bills is simultaneously canceling $1 billion on the books as spending discipline.
The gap between what's itemized and what's tallied is small change against the buyout bill and the energy math. It's not small against the categories it landed on. Immigrant and refugee programs, race-conscious grants — those get named, dollar for dollar. The unused detention capacity, the buyout overrun, the war surcharge on your thermostat — those stay in the aggregate, uncounted by category, which is a filing choice, not an accident.
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