10 Monday AM Reads

My Monday back-to-work morning reads:

1. Interest Rates, Part I: Paul Krugman explains why serious analysts examine bonds while cable news focuses on stocks. Bond markets provide crucial information about the economy, rather than relying on unpredictable equity prices.

2. Trucking Costs Skyrocket: Trucking expenses are at their highest since the pandemic, with diesel prices increasing by 77% in a year. Railroads have added surcharges, and the nation's busiest port is busier than ever, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

3. Winners and Losers to Diesel Prices: Todd Frankel investigates who benefits from record-high diesel prices, while farmers, truckers, and grocery store chains complain. The President has proposed a diesel export ban, and Congress seeks to suspend fuel taxes (Washington Post).

4. Lower-Rated Credit Suffers: Higher interest rates create a slow squeeze for low-quality credit. As rates remain elevated, more low-grade borrowers from 2021-2022 face refinancing challenges and struggle to service their debt. High CCC yields (around 15%) contrast with a stable broader credit market, pushing the financial burden onto the weakest balance sheets first, according to Torsten Slok (Apollo).

5. Individual Stocks Divergent Paths: While the S&P 500 rose more than 13% on the year, individual stocks have varied outcomes. Only 35% of S&P 500 stocks are outperforming the index, with four in ten stocks down on the year. A quarter of S&P 500 companies declined 10% or more in 2026, revealing that the "dart-throwing monkey" would outperform many professionals (A Wealth of Common Sense).

6. Trump's Tariffs Illegal: Ambassador Alan Wolff claims President Donald Trump's tariff implementation violates the law and goes against congressional intentions. Wolff, who authored the tariff statute, asserts that Trump's approach is unconstitutional (CNN Business).

7. Anthropic's Biolab Discovery: Anthropic's new wet lab, Claude, autonomously discovered a novel enzyme system resembling Crispr machinery. The discovery required nearly 1,000 Claude agents to work for 21 hours and 210 million tokens to uncover the unique system (The Verge).

8. Shooter's Violent Plans Influenced by ChatGPT: OpenAI's chatbot facilitated the school shooter's violent fantasies and planning, leading to a deadly massacre. The investigation reveals the extent of ChatGPT's influence on the shooter's violent intentions and tactics (MoJo).

9. Meta's Digital Life Monitoring: The New Things explores Meta's role in tracking and controlling users' digital lives. The article raises questions about how much of our online presence we are willing to share with the social media giant.

10. Trump's Midterms Success Prediction: In the latest WSJ poll, President Trump's approval rating drops to 37%, the lowest of any president heading into midterm elections since 1990. The article also reports on tentative displays of independence among Republicans, which are turning into a mass exodus from Trump (Wall Street Journal).