President Donald Trump will travel to Michigan on Tuesday to promote his efforts to boost U.S. manufacturing, trying to counter fears about a weakening job market and worries that still-rising prices are taking a toll on Americans’ pocketbooks.The day trip will include a tour of a Ford factory in Dearborn that makes F-150 pickups, the bestselling domestic vehicle in the U.S. The Republican president is also set to address the Detroit Economic Club at the MotorCity Casino.November’s off-year elections in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere showed a shift away from Republicans as public concerns about kitchen table issues persist. In their wake, the White House said Trump would put a greater emphasis on talking directly to the public about his economic policies after doing relatively few events around the country earlier in his term.The president has suggested that jitters about affordability are a “hoax” unnecessarily stirred by Democrats. Still, though he’s imposed steep tariffs on U.S. trading partners around the world, Trump has reduced some of them when it comes to making cars including extending import levies on foreign-made auto parts until 2030.Ford announced last month that it was scrapping plans to make an electric F-150, despite pouring billions of dollars into broader electrification, after the Trump administration slashed targets to have half of all new vehicle sales be electric by 2030, eliminated EV tax credits and proposed weakening the emissions and gas mileage rules.Trump’s Michigan swing follows economy-focused speeches he gave last month in Pennsylvania where his gripes about immigrants arriving to the U.S. from “filthy” countries got more attention than his pledges to fight inflation and North Carolina, where he insisted his tariffs have spurred the economy, despite residents noting the squeeze of higher prices.Trump carried Michigan in 2016 and 2024, after it swung Democratic and backed Joe Biden in 2020. He marked his first 100 days in office with a rally-style April speech outside Detroit, where he focused more on past campaign grudges than his administration’s economic or policy plans.During that visit nearly nine months ago, Trump also spoke at Selfridge Air National Guard Base and announced a new fighter jet mission, allaying fears that the base could close. It represented a win for Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the two even shared a hug.This time, Democrats have panned the president’s trip, singling out national Republicans’ opposition to extending health care subsidies and recalling a moment in October 2024 when Trump suggested that Democrats’ retaining the White House would mean “our whole country will end up being like Detroit.”“You’re going to have a mess on your hands,” Trump said during a campaign stop back then.Curtis Hertel, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, said that “after spending months claiming that affordability was a ‘hoax’ and creating a health care crisis for Michiganders, Donald Trump is now coming to Detroit a city he hates to tout his billionaire-first agenda while working families suffer.”“Michiganders are feeling the effects of Trump’s economy every day,” Hertel said in a statement.
Will Weissert and Corey Williams, Associated Press
In the summer of 2024, Squarespaces chief marketing officer, Kinjil Mathur, attracted criticism when she told Gen Z job seekers that they, like her, should be willing to do anything to land their first job.
I was willing to work for free, I was willing to work any hours they neededeven on evenings and weekends, Kinjil told Fortune. You really have to just be willing to do anything, any hours, any pay, any type of job. The online backlash to Kinjils statement was immediate and brutal, forcing her to walk those comments back. I shared my own college internship experiences, and my words were misrepresented as career advice for a whole generation, Kinjil later said in a statement.
The episode demonstrates a growing clash of values between the various generations in todays workplace. While some still take pride in sacrificing their well-being to demonstrate their commitment, othersprimarily younger workerssee things differently. I think they have more of an attitude of work-to-live as opposed to live-to-work that many of us grew up with, said Ravin Jesuthasan, the global leader for transformation services at the consulting giant Mercer, on stage in Davos in 2024. This is particularly true in the West. They have seen the legacy of all these broken promises. In the old days and in many parts of the West, they would promise you if you worked for 30 years, youd have this defined benefit pension, youd have retiree medical care, etc. None of that exists today.
One of the many points of differentiation between todays young people and older workers is their perception of stress. Historically, Western workplace cultures equated stress with importance. If you were stressed, it often meant your job was more demanding and thus more important, encouraging some to complain about stress as a way to subtly communicate their value. Rather than seeing stress braggingor talking about being overworked with a sense of prideas a badge of honor, however, young people are more likely to interpret it as indicative of poor time management at best and an unhealthy relationship with work at worst.
According to a 2024 study by researchers at the University of Georgia, those who brag the most about being stressed are now perceived more negatively by their peers. In fact, the research suggests those who stress brag are perceived as less capable, not more. After generations of equating time with effectiveness and busyness with importance, Gen Z has come to view the value of their time through a different lens.
Its not just that Gen Z grew up in an era when many of the traditional promises of work and loyalty had long since been broken, when individual time commitments had been largely divorced from actual results. Those born in the late 1990s through the early 2010s have also already lived through a once-in-a-century economic crisis, endured a once-in-a-century pandemic, and are regularly bombarded by what were formerly considered once-in-a-century extreme weather events. This generation, which is just entering the workforce, spent their childhoods hearing their parents panic over financial challenges during the 2008 economic crisis, had their brains shaped by an unregulated social media machine that has proven detrimental to their mental health, lost some of their formative years to pandemic restrictions and lockdowns, and continues to face a barrage of new challenges almost daily.
More so than any generation before them, this group of young people has developed an appreciation for proper time management, mental health, and well-being. Their well-documented emphasis on meaning and joy has come to replace past generations keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, competitive pursuit of material wealth. People used to say that money cant buy happiness, but the most anxious and depressed generation in modern history has internalized that sentiment.
Countless studies show that when it comes to their priorities in lifeand at workGen Zers seek a greater balance between economic and emotional stability, prizing quality time over financial excess. According to a 2023 survey by Intuit, three-quarters of Gen Zers say they would rather have a better quality of life than more money in the bank, and 66% say they are only interested in earning money as a way to support their personal interests.
Part of the motivation, the study suggests, is that social comparison has evolved from homes, cars, and other material markers of wealth to social media posts. In fact, 33% Gen Z members said they compare themselves to people they see on social media, versus 14% of the general population, and 70% say they feel as if theyre falling behind those they see online, compared with 50% of other generations. In Deloittes 2024 survey of millennials and Gen Zers, the respondents ranked work-life balance as their top priority when choosing an employer, followed by flexible hours and reduced workweeksall of which outranked salary.
In short, this is the perfect generation to champion a shorter workweek. Not only does the reduced schedule offer more leisure time, which this generation prizes over compensation, but it has also been proven to reduce stress, anxiety, burnout, and depression. Furthermore, the four-day workweek represents an opportunity to address some of their greatest collective challenges, like improving family and community ties in the digital age, improving gender equity, and addressing climate change. Finally, the four-day workweek offers this generation more time to engage in causes that are meaningful to them, a primary motivator for this generation, according to research.
Gen Z is the most enthusiastic generation about the concept of a four-day workweek and the most convinced of not just its feasibility but also its inevitability.
In a 2024 survey of Gen Z students and professionals in the United States age 18 to 27, 80% said the four-day week should be standard, up from 76% the previous year. The same study also found that most young people were already utilizing new AI technologies to get more done in less time, with 72% saying they felt comfortable using generative AI regularly. In fact, 72% of Gen Z AI users said they save between 1 and 10 hours of schoolwork per week by leveraging the technology, and 14% have reduced their work time by more than 10 hours.
Young people are so keen on a shorter workweek that theyre even willing to forgo other traditional workplace perks. In a 2023 survey by Bankrate, 92% of Gen Z and millennial respondents said they would sacrifice other common benefits in exchange for a four-day workweek, compared with 89% of Gen Xers and 80% of baby boomers.The most common workplace perks and norms that respondents of all generations would sacrifice for one less workday is the eight-hour day, with 54% saying they would work longer hours during the remaining four days. The second-most-popular trade-off was changing industries, jobs, or companies, with 37% saying they would leave their current role for a shorter schedule.
According to a 2023 survey of 12,000 workers in the United Kingdom by Hays, 62% would prefer to work a four-day workweek in the office rather than a traditional five-day hybrid schedule. In its 2025 annual review, global HR firm Randstad, which has been asking thousands of workers around the world about work preferences since 2004, found that they ranked work-life balance ahead of pay for the first time. In the companys global survey of 26,000 workers, 83% put it at the very top of their priority list, nd this preference was even stronger among Gen Z workers.
Even if other generations are slow to take up the cause, there is good reason to believe the four-day workweek is inevitablebecause it will be so highly valued by a generation of future leaders.
Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Adapted from Do More in Four: Why Its Time for a Shorter Workweek by Joe OConnor and Jared Lindzon. Copyright 2026 Joe OConnor and Jared Lindzon. All rights reserved.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok will join Google’s generative AI engine in operating inside the Pentagon network, as part of a broader push to feed as much of the military’s data as possible into the developing technology.“Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department,” Hegseth said in a speech at Musk’s space flight company, SpaceX, in South Texas.The announcement comes just days after Grok which is embedded into X, the social media network owned by Musk drew global outcry and scrutiny for generating highly sexualized deepfake images of people without their consent.Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked Grok, while the U.K.’s independent online safety watchdog announced an investigation Monday. Grok has limited image generation and editing to paying users.Hegseth said Grok will go live inside the Defense Department later this month and announced that he would “make all appropriate data” from the military’s IT systems available for “AI exploitation.” He also said data from intelligence databases would be fed into AI systems.Hegseth’s aggressive push to embrace the still-developing technology stands in contrast to the Biden administration, which, while pushing federal agencies to come up with policies and uses for AI, was also wary of misuse. Officials said rules were needed to ensure that the technology, which could be harnessed for mass surveillance, cyberattacks or even lethal autonomous devices, was being used responsibly.The Biden administration enacted a framework in late 2024 that directed national security agencies to expand their use of the most advanced AI systems but prohibited certain uses, such as applications that would violate constitutionally protected civil rights or any system that would automate the deployment of nuclear weapons. It is unclear if those prohibitions are still in place under the Trump administration.During his speech, Hegseth spoke of the need to streamline and speed up technological innovations within the military, saying, “We need innovation to come from anywhere and evolve with speed and purpose.”He noted that the Pentagon possesses “combat-proven operational data from two decades of military and intelligence operations.”“AI is only as good as the data that it receives, and we’re going to make sure that it’s there,” Hegseth said.The defense secretary said he wants AI systems within the Pentagon to be responsible, though he went on to say he was shrugging off any AI models “that won’t allow you to fight wars.”Hegseth said his vision for military AI systems means that they operate “without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications,” before adding that the Pentagon’s “AI will not be woke.”Musk developed and pitched Grok as an alternative to what he called “woke AI” interactions from rival chatbots like Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In July, Grok also caused controversy after it appeared to make antisemitic comments that praised Adolf Hitler and shared several antisemitic posts.The Pentagon did not immediately respond to questions about the issues with Grok.
Konstantin Toropin and David Klepper, Associated Press
2025 saw several successful public offerings, especially from companies operating in the AI, cryptocurrency, and fintech spaces. What many on Wall Street are anxious to know is whether the IPO marketand its returnswill accelerate in 2026, or if investors will take a more cautious approach to newly public companies as inflationary pressures, the potential for a weakening economy, and a possible AI bubble weigh heavily on peoples minds.
The first real test of investor IPO appetite may come later this month, when cryptocurrency custody firm BitGo Holdings, Inc. is expected to go public. Heres what you need to know about BitGos IPO.
What is BitGo?
BitGo Holdings is a cryptocurrency infrastructure company. One of its main functions is providing cryptocurrency custodial services.
Crypto custody companies provide storage and security for digital assets. Such companies are often used by large institutional investors to help manage risk and also meet regulatory guidelines. In contrast, many individual cryptocurrency investors still rely on personalized digital wallets to hold their tokens.
BitGo was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. According to the companys S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, BitGo had 566 full-time employees as of September 30.
Over the past 12 months, ending September 30, the company says it generated total revenue of $11.1 billion. Its platform currently supports more than 1,550 assets with a total value of $104 billion.
When is BitGos IPO?
BitGo hasnt set a date for its initial public offering yet. In its amended Form S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday, the company merely mentioned its intention to go public. However, the amended filing suggests that the public offering will likely happen soon.
IPOscoop.com lists BitGos expected IPO date as Thursday, January 22, but BitGo has yet to publicly confirm that date.
What is BitGos stock ticker?
BitGos shares will trade under the stock ticker BTGO.
What market will BitGos shares trade on?
BitGo shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
What is the IPO share price of BTGO?
BitGo hasnt decided on an exact IPO price yet. However, in the companys amended SEC filing, the firm said it expects its shares to be priced at between $15 and $17.
How many BTGO shares are available in its IPO?
In total, 11,821,595 shares of BTGO Class A common stock will be made available in its IPO. Of those shares, BitGo itself is offering 11 million directly. The remaining shares will be offered by the companys existing shareholders.
How much will BitGo raise in its IPO?
BitGo will not receive any proceeds from the roughly 821,000 shares its existing shareholders will sell. The company will only benefit from the funds raised from its 11 million share offering. With an expected IPO price of between $15 and $17 per share, BitGo is thus expected to raise between $165 million and $187 million.
When you add in the shares being sold by exiting shareholders, BitGos IPO could raise as much as $200 million in total.
How much is BitGo worth?
BitGos ultimate valuation depends on how much its shares finally list forand how they perform on the stock market.
However, if BTGO shares do indeed IPO at the high-end range of $17 each, BitGo will have a valuation of around $1.96 billion, according to Reuters.
BitGo is hoping to repeat 2025s crypto IPO successes
If BitGo does IPO this month as expected, it will likely be closely watched as it is not just one of the first tech IPOs of the year, but one of the first operating in the hot (and volatile) cryptocurrency space. Its IPOs success or failure could signal whether investors have a robust appetite for public offerings in 2026, particularly those tied to crypto.
In 2025, several companies operating in the cryptocurrency space made successful IPO debuts. These include Circle Internet Groups (NYSE: CRCL) initial public offering in June and Bullishs (NYSE: BLSH) IPO in August.
Thousands of New York City nurses were set to return to the picket lines Tuesday as their strike targeting some of the city’s leading hospital systems entered its second day.The walkout, which comes during a severe flu season, involved roughly 15,000 nurses spread out across multiple private hospitals, including NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, Montefiore Medical Center and Mount Sinai hospital.The affected hospitals have hired droves of temporary nurses to try to fill the labor gap. Both nurses and hospital administrators have urged patients not to avoid getting care during the strike.The labor action comes three years after a similar strike forced medical facilities to transfer some patients and divert ambulances.As with the 2023 labor action, nurses have pointed to staffing issues as a major flashpoint, accusing the big-budget medical centers of refusing to commit to provisions for manageable, safe workloads.The private, nonprofit hospitals involved in the current negotiations say they’ve made strides in staffing in recent years, and have cast the union’s demands as prohibitively expensive.On Monday, the city’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, stood beside nurses on a picket line outside NewYork-Presbyterian, praising the union’s members for seeking “dignity, respect and the fair pay and treatment that they deserve.”
Associated Press
By now, the headlines almost write themselves: humanoid robots everywhere, AI in everything. Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026 didnt disrupt that narrativeit confirmed it.
What changed was the subtext. This was the year AI stopped feeling experimental and started feeling infrastructural. Intelligence has shifted from novelty to baseline, forcing harder questions about consequence, control, and agencynot just what technology can do, but how it reshapes systems once opting out is no longer realistic.
For years, progress at CES has been measured in speed, scale, and spectacle. In 2026, a different metric quietly surfaced: judgment. The most advanced products werent the most aggressive or attention-seeking. They were the most considered, designed with an understanding that when intelligence becomes unavoidable, restraint becomes a competitive advantage.
Beneath the obvious trends, the Seymourpowell team saw that a recalibration was underway.
Trend 1: The Body Is the New Platform
Computing has long lived in front of us, on desks, in hands, behind glass. At CES 2026, the more consequential shift was where technology is now choosing to settle: on the body, and within the social rules that already govern it.
This wasnt about wearables as accessories. It was about gravitydeciding which parts of the body can host intelligence without demanding attention, breaking etiquette, or forcing users into performative behavior. The real innovation wasnt simply where technology sits, but how interaction becomes quieter, more physical, and often subconscious.
Take iPolish, which turned fingernails into a programmable surface. Using digital clip-on nails and a magic wand connected to an app, wearers can shift between hundreds of colors instantly. The move is deceptively simple, but strategically sharp: Nails are already expressive, customizable, and socially accepted. No new behavior is required. Intelligence succeeds here precisely because it inhabits a place culture already allows.
[Photo: .lumen]
Elsewhere, interaction became even less visible. Naqis neural earbuds bypassed voice and touch entirely, using micro-facial signalsjaw tension and subtle muscle movementsto control devices without overt action. ModeX treated clothing itself as infrastructure, embedding power and compute into garments that dont announce themselves as tech. Orphes sensor-enabled insoles brought lab-grade biomechanics into everyday movement, while .lumens assistive glasses reframed accessibility as scalable augmentation rather than specialist accommodation.
[Photo: ModeX]
Across categories, the pattern was consistent: the next interface war wont be won by screens. It will be won by technologies that understand where theyre allowed to live, and how quietly theyre expected to behave.
The takeaway: As intelligence migrates onto the body, social permission becomes as important as technical capability. The future belongs to products that feel natural not because they disappear, but because they respect the physical and cultural spaces they occupy.
Trend 2: Agency Becomes a Design Problem
As AI becomes infrastructural, the question is no longer whether systems act autonomouslybut how, when, and on whose behalf.
CES 2026 revealed a growing recognition that trust isnt built through capability alone. Its built through boundaries. The most compelling products werent those that automated the most, but those that were explicit about where human judgment still sits.
[Photo: Littlebird]
Littlebird embodied this shift in the family context, offering predictive safety intelligence without screens, feeds, or surveillance theater. RestroomGuard Savvy applied the same thinking to public infrastructure, proving AI-driven safety doesnt require cameras or biometric intrusion to be effective. Sorcerics Lens extended the idea into the home, replacing dashboards and commands with contextual awareness that responds to situations rather than constant instruction. Even the Descent S1 buoy followed this logic, augmenting diver judgment with shared situational awareness instead of replacing it with alerts or automation.
[Photo: UNIUNI Corp.]
These systems didnt remove humans from the loop. They clarified where the loop should be.
The takeaway: As opting out becomes unrealistic, agency becomes a design material. The most trusted systems wont be the fastest or smartest, but the ones that are clearest about when not to act.
Trend 3: Care Moves From Apps to Infrastructure
For years, wellness technology has asked individuals to self-optimize: track more, manage better, try harder. CES 2026 suggested a different direction. Care is moving out of dashboards and into systems that actively reduce cognitive, physical, and emotional loadwithout requiring constant attention or self-surveillance.
Diligent Robotics Moxi captured this shift clearly. Rather than measuring caregiver performance, the hospital robot removes coordination work altogetherfetching supplies, running errands, and freeing nurses to spend time caring. The value isnt insight. Its relief.
Elsewhere, neuro-wellness booths reframed focus and recovery as environmental conditions rather than personal failures to manage. By combining physiological sensing with adaptive lighting, sound, and temperature, they treated mental load as something a space can regulate, not something users must willpower their way through.
The same logic appeared in everyday rituals. The AI rejuvenation shower treated water itself as a programmable medium, adjusting minerals and compounds in real time to deliver skincare without screens, tracking, or habit formation. Light Straight addressed a quieter hygiene pain pointmaintenance between reset momentsby cleaning and styling hair without water. It didnt promise transformation. It simply removed friction.
[Photo: LOréal Groupe]
Care also surfaced in less obvious places. Motion sicknesslong dismissed as an unfortunate side effect of travelwas reframed as a fundamental barrier to autonomous mobility. If passengers cant read, work, watch, or rest without nausea, self-driving cars dont create new freedom, they just extend commute time.
Bosch addressed this not through wearables or behavioral coaching, but by redesigning vehicle dynamics at the software level. By controlling motion across all six degrees of freedom, the system reduces sensory conflict before it reaches the body, making it possible for passengers to safely disengage from driving altogether. In this context, motion sickness isnt a comfort issue. Its a gatekeeper. Solve it, and autonomous vehicles become environments for work, rest, and interaction. Ignore it, and adoption stalls.
[Photo: Bosch]
Across healthcare, mobility, beauty, and the home, the pattern was consistent: Care is no longer a niche vertical or a personal optimization project. Its becoming consumer infrastructure, embedded into environments and systems that quietly do the work for us.
The takeaway: Care is no longer about empowerment through information. Its about relief through design. The next generation of care technology wont ask users to try harder, it will redesign the conditions around them.
Trend 4: The Physical World Gets Its Software Update
While much of the AI conversation still centers on digital products, CES 2026 made something else unmistakable: The biggest bottlenecks in technology are now physical.
Infrastructure, energy, logistics, manufacturing, and housing are where intelligence is being stress-tested, not in prototypes, but at scale. This was the year the invisible layer of the tech stack stepped into focus.
The Cat Ai Assistant interface on display at the Caterpillar booth during the 2026 CES event in Las Vegas on January 7. [Photo: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Caterpillars keynote crystallized this shift. By embedding AI, autonomy, and edge intelligence directly into fleets, worksites, and heavy machinery, the company reframed physical infrastructure as something that can sense, learn, and adapt in real time. Not flashy. Mission-critical.
The same logic appeared elsewhere. The AI Transformer Home Trailer treated housing as adaptive infrastructure rather than a fixed object, physically reconfiguring space on demand. Alpon X5 made enterprise-grade AI deployable at the edge, without cloud dependence, reframing intelligence as something that lives where work actuall happens. Perovskite color-conversion films pushed display progress not through software, but materials scienceanother reminder that some of the biggest leaps ahead wont come from code alone.
CES 2026 wasnt just about smarter products. It was about making the physical world programmable.
The takeaway: The next phase of AI growth wont be constrained by models, it will be constrained by matter. The companies that win wont just scale intelligence. Theyll modernize the physical systems it depends on.
Trend 5: Restraint Becomes a Feature
Perhaps the most telling shift at CES 2026 wasnt technological at all. It was tonal.
After years of maximalismmore sensors, more screens, more AIa quieter maturity is setting in. The most confident products no longer feel the need to prove intelligence. They demonstrate judgment.
Birdfy Hum Bloom used AI not to capture attention, but to slow it down, turning backyard observation into discovery rather than content. Toniebox 2 doubled down on screen-free interaction, resisting dopamine loops in favor of presence and routine. Even Legos Smart Play experiments pointed toward intelligence that scaffolds creativity rather than directing it.
This wasnt visible fatigue so much as visible discernment. Companies are beginning to understand that adding intelligence everywhere isnt innovation. Knowing where not to add it is.
The takeaway: In a world where intelligence is cheap and ubiquitous, restraint becomes premium. The most advanced products of the next decade may be the ones that know when to step back.
CES 2026 didnt deliver a single, dominant narrative, and that may be its most honest reflection of where we are.
AI is no longer a question mark. Its a condition. And once intelligence becomes unavoidable, progress is no longer about acceleration. Its about alignment between systems and people, automation and agency, capability and consequence.
The future on display wasnt louder or faster. It was more deliberate.
And that, quietly, may be the most meaningful shift of all.
Central bankers from around the world said Tuesday they “stand in full solidarity” with U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, after President Donald Trump dramatically escalated his confrontation with the Fed with the Justice Department investigating and threatening criminal charges.Powell “has served with integrity, focused on his mandate and an unwavering commitment to the public interest,” read the statement signed by nine national central bank heads including European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey.They added that “the independence of central banks is a cornerstone of price, financial and economic stability in the interest of the citizens that we serve. It is therefore critical to preserve that independence, with full respect for the rule of law and democratic accountability.”The dispute is ostensibly about Powell’s testimony to Congress in June over the cost of a massive renovation of Fed buildings. But in a statement Sunday, Powell, abandoning his previous attempt to ignore Trump’s relentless criticism, called the administration’s threat of criminal charges “pretexts” in the president’s campaign to seize control of U.S. interest rate policy from the Fed’s technocrats.Trump has repeatedly criticized Powell and the Fed for not moving faster to cut rates. Economists warn that a politicized Fed that caves in to the president’s demands will damage its credibility as an inflation fighter and likely lead investors to demand higher rates before investing in U.S. Treasurys.Other signatories of the statement carried on the ECB’s website were Erik Thedeen, governor of Sweden’s central bank; Christian Kettel Thomsen, chair of Denmark’s central bank; Swiss National Bank Chair Martin Schlegel; Michele Bullock, governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia; Tiff Macklem, governor of the Bank of Canada; Bank of Korea Governor Chang Yong Rhee; Gabriel Galipolo, governor of the Banco Central do Brasil.Also attaching their names were François Villeroy de Galhau, board chair of the Bank for International Settlements, and Pablo Hernández de Cos, BIS general manager. The BIS is an international organization of central banks based in Basel, Switzerland.One prominent central bank not included in the statement was the Bank of Japan. The statement said that more signatures could be added later.
David McHugh, AP Business Writer
Prediction markets are all the rage right now. Weekly trading volume on prediction platforms just surpassed $2 billion, and apps like Polymarket are being treated as the next big thing in consumer finance and entertainment. These platforms are designed to gamify uncertainty by exploiting the same cognitive biases as gambling and day-trading, quietly pushing users toward overspending, emotional volatility, and compulsive checking.
Its easy to see why people are drawn to them. Prediction markets feel smarter than reckless betting, more dynamic than typical investing, and more objective than punditry. For example, users are able to watch the odds move in real time, making it feel like theyre seeing the truth of a situation, whether its a political outcome or whether the CEO of Coinbase will drop the word AI on their next earnings call.
Young users are particularly vulnerable, with a 2025 TransUnion study finding that 34% of Gen Z and 42% of millennials are actively participating in betting. Meanwhile, monthly debt payments for millennials and Gen Z have surged 20% and 27% respectively, drastically outpacing inflation (6%) and wage growth (8%), so these small, repeated losses can quickly snowball into real financial strain.
Gambling, Cloaked as Investing
This isnt a new playbook. First, it started with sports betting, then 0DTE (zero days to expiration) options, and now there are prediction markets. If you were to open any major prediction platform today, the parallels to casinos will become drastically obvious. Both interfaces are fast, have charts that flicker, and use prompts that urge rapid entry and exits.
Users are being wired to double down after facing a loss, overrate their intuition, and assume moving prices reflect real information. These are classical behavioral traps that are just being applied in a new environmentand because it has the faux appearance of investing, all the risks feel legitimate.
For instance, a user may place small bets on multiple elections simultaneously, checking and adjusting their choices every few minutes. However, even if each bet is only $1 to $5, the constant engagement can cause stress, disrupt focus at work, and eat away at savings, all without the user truly realizing whats happening.
Small Bets, Big Consequences
One of the most misleading narratives around prediction markets is the idea that the bets are small and, subsequently, inconsequential. The danger isnt the size, its the frequency, repetition, and compulsive checking. Your brain is constantly chasing endless hooks as the market continues to move every few minutes.
Users are experiencing a psychological cycle in which they overestimate their ability to predict outcomes, fall into the just one more trade cycle, and experience emotional swings that are spilling into their daily livesaffecting their focus at work, sleep patterns, and interactions with family and friends.
Prediction markets are playing on the idea that users are making informed predictions rather than calling it what it isgambling. The rationalization of this behavior is part of what makes it so enticing to users. Theyre convincing themselves that theyre learning about markets, politics, and economic signals, when in reality, theyre being tricked into a loop. And most of the time, theyre not noticing the true cost until it hits their wallets or their well-being.
The Overlooked Cost
The fun side of prediction markets is often what is highlighted in the mediatheyre showcasing the clever traders, the unexpected outcomes, and the viral probability swings. Whats not highlighted? The stories that actually matter the most, like the real households absorbing small but continuous financial losses, the compulsive checking that mirrors day-trading addiction, and the lack of guardrails in a gray zone between wagering, entertainment, and finance.
On their own, these losses may seem insignificant. But as a whole, they add up. When you combine mass adoption, financial stakes, and algorithmic nudges, the risk profile changes dramatically. What initially looked like a fun forecasting tool is now an invisible drain on both your wallet and your well-being.
Were setting ourselves up for a generation where financial prudence goes out the window, an influx of personal bankruptcies is inevitable, and the mental health crisis gets even worse than it is today.
How to Participate Without Losing Yourself
Prediction markets arent going anywhere, nor should they. They can be interesting and even useful, but users need to approach them differently. You should think of them like speculative trading or gambling at a casino. Things like betting only what you can afford to lose, avoiding impulse reactions, tracking the gains, losses, and time spent, all help prevent compulsive cycles and preserve mental health. These practices are especially important for Gen Z and millennials, who are driving the growth of this sector and are on track to spend more per capita on prediction markets than any other generations.
At the end of the day, these platforms arent just forecasting future outcomes, theyre also forecasting, and influencing your behavior. Recognize the signs and take control before both your wallet and well-being become the most predictable outcomes of all.
Inflation likely remained elevated last month as the cost of electricity, groceries, and clothing may have jumped and continued to pressure consumers’ wallets.The Labor Department is expected to report that consumer prices rose 2.6% in December compared with a year earlier, according to economists’ estimates compiled by data provider FactSet. The yearly rate would be down from 2.7% in November. Monthly prices, however, are expected to rise 0.3% in December, faster than is consistent with the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation goal.The figures are harder to predict this month, however, because the six-week government shutdown last fall suspended the collection of price data used to compile the inflation rate. Some economists expect the December figures will show a bigger jump in inflation as the data collection process gets back to normal.Core prices, which exclude the volatile food and energy categories, are also expected to rise 0.3% in December from the previous month, and 2.7% from a year earlier. The yearly core figure would be an increase from 2.6% in November.In November, annual inflation fell from 3% in September to 2.7%, in part because of quirks in November’s data. (The government never calculated a yearly figure for October). Most prices were collected in the second half of November, after the government reopened, when holiday discounts kicked in, which may have biased November inflation lower.And since rental prices weren’t fully collected in October, the agency that prepares the inflation reports used placeholder estimates that may have biased prices lower, economists said.Inflation has come down significantly from the four-decade peak of 9.1% that it reached in June 2022, but it has been stubbornly close to 3% since late 2023. The cost of necessities such as groceries is about 25% higher than it was before the pandemic, and other necessities such as rent and clothing have also gotten more expensive, fueling dissatisfaction with the economy that both President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden have sought to address, though with limited success.The Federal Reserve has struggled to balance its goal of fighting inflation by keeping borrowing costs high, while also supporting hiring by cutting interest rates when unemployment worsens. As long as inflation remains above its target of 2%, the Fed will likely be reluctant to cut rates much more.The Fed reduced its key rate by a quarter-point in December, but Chair Jerome Powell, at a press conference explaining its decision, said the Fed would probably hold off on further cuts to see how the economy evolves.The 19 members of the Fed’s interest-rate setting committee have been sharply divided for months over whether to cut its rate further, or keep it at its curent level of about 3.6% to combat inflation.Trump, meanwhile, has harshly criticized the Fed for not cutting its key short-term rate more sharply, a move he has said would reduce mortgage rates and the government’s borrowing costs for its huge debt pile. Yet the Fed doesn’t directly control mortgage rates, which are set by financial markets.In a move that cast a shadow over the ability of the Fed to fight inflation in the future, the Department of Justice served the central bank last Friday with subpoenas related to Powell’s congressional testimony in June about a $2.5 billion renovation of two Fed office buildings. Trump administration officials have suggested that Powell either lied about changes to the building or altered plans in ways that are inconsistent with those approved by planning commissions.In a blunt response, Powell said Sunday those claims were “pretexts” for an effort by the White House to assert more control over the Fed.“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President,” Powell said. “This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditionsor whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.”
Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
If youre a Slack user, youre probably familiar with Slackbot as a good-naturedif annoyingassistant that delivers notifications, reminders, and keyword-based automatic responses within the workplace chat app. But for organizations with paid Slack plans that have AI features enabled, Slackbot is receiving a bit of a brain transplant. The company has rebuilt the humble bot as an AI agent that can help bring you up to speed on workplace discussions and priorities, pull in data from other software your organization has integrated with Slack, help draft reports and Slack canvas documents, and even help schedule meetings with your colleagues. Its part of a push by Salesforce-owned Slack to move from being simply a tool for chatting with colleagues to a hub for coordinating with both humans and bots. Slack already supports more than 2,600 third-party apps, and the new Slackbot is expected to increasingly integrate with specialized AI agents and software tools. The way that we think about Slack today is as the conversational interface, if you will, for what we call the agentic enterprise, where humans and agents are all working fluidly and seamlessly together to get work done, says Rob Seaman, Slacks chief product officer and interim CEO. Already, Slack has offered AI tools to help craft canvases, the apps freeform collaborative document format, and search through data in connected software like Google Drive, Box, Microsoft Teams and, of course, Salesforce. And now, users will be able to send plain language requests to Slackbot, similar to the kinds of inquiries handled by general purpose AI tools like ChatGPT or Google Gemini. [Image: Courtesy of Slack]Slack isnt the only company giving its chat-powered tools a dose of AI smarts. Amazon has developed a generative AI version of Alexa, Apple has announced plans for a supercharged Siri, and AI providers like OpenAI and Anthropic regularly update their bots with upgraded language models. And office suits from companies like Microsoft and Google have also integrated chat-powered AI tools. But a powerful advantage of using Slackbot, says Seaman, is that it can harness retrieval-augmented generationthe technique of giving AI contextual information to help it answer specific questionsto act as a personal agent based on information already stored in Slack or linked apps. We think that that deep organizational context is really what makes us immensely powerful, Seaman says. Another advantage is simply that the bot is accessible through Slack, meaning users wont have to toggle between apps as they chat with coworkers and with the bot. Still, talking to the bot will be a bit different from querying a colleague: Slackbot is designed for users to interact with it one-on-one through a dedicated app panel rather than inside Slack channels or multi-person conversations, though users can collaboratively edit bot-generated materials like canvases. Already, the tool has found widespread use at Slack and Salesforce, along with around 50 other organizations whove been given early access. Seaman says Slack product managers have used the new Slackbot to synthesize information from Slack channels gathering feedback on product features and ultimately turn that information into drafts of documents like sprint planning materials or meeting agendas. The bot can also create documents in the style of an individual user, though Seaman says its sometimes helpful to prompt it to use, say, a more formal tone than what the bot can model after informal Slack discussions. Like Slacks other AI tools, Slackbot only has access to what a particular user already has permission to access in Slack and connected apps, which means companies shouldnt have to rethink privacy settings when the bot comes online. The software will begin with access to a limited set of external tools, including some calendar integrations, though more are likely to be added soon, including support for scheduling calendar events. It also doesnt have the ability to search the web, though Seaman says thats also in the works for the near future. [Animation: Slack]And for organizations with old school Slackbot customizations, whether those are weekly reminders to clean out the office fridge or keyword-triggered reminders of the guest Wi-Fi password, those will remain available, Seaman says, though theyll be sequestered from the new Slackbot in Slacks interface. Were going to move those notifications over into Activity and out of Slackbot, and then that way, Slackbot becomes this dedicated, personal agent, Seaman says. At Salesforce, the majority of employees are already regularly using the new Slackbot, says Ruth Hickin, VP of workplace innovation. Salespeople can save hours every week using the tool to quickly pull data for calls, rather than manually rooting around in documents, and other employees have been able to work with Slackbot to generate project retrospectives and future plans, she says. Salesforce staffers are regularly coming up with new use cases for the bot and, naturally, sharing them on Slack. We have 80% of employees using it, and they are coming up with use cases and sharing them internally, she says. And really with any new genAI tool, we do not know all of the impacts, so we cant possibly know all of the great use cases. Salesforce workers have even started using the bot to help draft their annual employee self-evaluations, since it has ready access to information about what theyve accomplished over the past year, says Ryan Gavin, chief marketing officer for Slack.
