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1) The Return of the Magnificent Seven

No, not the classic western movie. America’s amazing tech firms.

In the first quarter of 2025 the Magnificent Seven lost $2.6 trillion in market value:

The magnitude of these dollar losses was unprecedented in the history of the stock market. Some were saying the tech boom was over.

Instead, these companies have roared back to life with Nvidia gaining another $1 trillion in valuation so far this year. Apple and Tesla are the exceptions.

The combined net worth of these seven American companies today is $19 trillion, which is up from $3 trillion 10 years ago.

No wonder Europe and Asia are so green with envy.

The chart below shows the spectacular growth of these tech companies over the past decade. If these trends continue, these firms may have more value than all the firms in the rest of the world combined.  

2) One Reason Inner-City Public Schools Are So Bad: They're Not Safe

It's hard for kids to learn anything in an educational environment if they don't feel safe and secure in the classroom or on the school grounds.  

A new report by the Pennsylvania-based Commonwealth Foundation reports that nearly four of 10 public schools are "persistently dangerous."

These are schools that often had multiple incidents of assault, sexual assault, rape, bomb threat, arson, vandalism, criminal trespass, theft, suicide attempt, vandalism, and possession of weapon.

That's an abysmal record. We’ve come a long way from when you could get suspended for chewing gum in class or launching a spit ball.

But here's what's worse: The state doesn't rate a single school as dangerous. The Commonwealth report finds that Pennsylvania is "violating state and federal law by failing to identify dangerous schools and neglecting to provide safe school choice alternatives."

Apparently, forcing kids to attend government-run schools is a higher priority than ensuring the kids don't come home with a bloody nose - or worse.  

3) We're Getting Close To Spending More on Building Data Centers Than Offices

The workplace is changing and this graph shows the remarkable trend. We’re glad to see that the data centers of the future are finally getting built.

The media is all abuzz about the Texas redistricting ploy - as we wrote yesterday, we hate gerrymandering - but you don’t hear many howls of protest on the scam going on in California.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has decided to build his 2028 presidential campaign around his plan to redraw the state Congressional map and create five more blue-leaning districts ahead of next year's midterms. This would override the independent commission that 60% of Golden State voters recently approved.

If Newsom and the Dems go forward with their scheme, maybe they can draw lines so that every remaining Republican in the state is squeezed into one lone district.  

Newsom says he is fighting "fire with fire" in response to the effort by Texas Republicans to pass their own controversial congressional redistricting plan.

Arnold Schwarzenegger - the former governor - is denouncing the move saying it “erodes trust in elections.”

Good for the Terminator. Is he “back?”

5) Biden’s Banking Rule Threatens Americans Financial Privacy

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was supposed to be a consumer watchdog.  It’s mostly been a regulatory thicket.

Before Trump officially closes it down - hopefully soon - it must reverse an October 2024 Biden rule forcing banks to share customer information with financial technology companies for free.

The idea was that you should have easy electronic access to your own account balances and such, to easily populate tax prep software, financial management systems, etc.  So far so good.  But the aggregators that collect the data built business models around monetizing billions of data requests NOT initiated by customers, potentially imperiling their privacy and security while bearing none of the cost or risk. And once the account holder gives these companies permission for what they think is a specific purpose, these companies get an open door to pull info forever.

JP Morgan Chase has sounded the alarm and notes that the largest financial technology company, Plaid, made over a billion requests to their computers in June - but only 6% came from actual customers. That's a cost on the banks to carry out a government rule on behalf of the aggregators.

The Trump administration promised to scrap this bad rule, but suddenly they're saying they'll rewrite it instead:

"In light of recent events in the marketplace, the bureau has now decided to initiate a new rulemaking to reconsider the rule with a view to substantially revising it and providing a robust justification," the agency said in a court filing, adding that it would begin an "accelerated" rulemaking process within three weeks.

Why not erase the Biden regulatory legacy by immediately repealing this rule? Banks, their customers, and financial technology companies should work this out themselves.

6) And We're Direct Descendants of Julius Ceasar

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