Pick a winner in this week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ in today’s poll! 👇🏻 But first, here’s some business, tech, and finance news you Need2Know. I know. I’m as surprised to hear it as you are.

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News you Need2Know

• Apple Ups MacBook, iPad Prices 20%

• Meta’s whistleblowing memoirist is now suing

• Investor: SpaceX's Bond Sale ‘Bubble Territory’

• JPM Succession: Dimons In the Rough

• Your AI Therapist Will See You Now

• Poll of the day: It’s World-Famous-575™ Time

• Poll of the Day: 70-75 is Correct AirCon Temp

What’s the stock market up to, eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.01% )  $DJI ( ▲ 0.14% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$AAPL ( ▼ 6.12% )  $META ( ▼ 2.65% )  $SPCX ( ▼ 1.0% )  $JPM ( ▲ 0.5% )  

Apple Ups MacBook, iPad Prices 20%

Apple $AAPL ( ▼ 6.12% ) has generously decided to hike MacBook and iPad prices by a casual 20% globally. Apparently, the AI infrastructure boom is gobbling up all the memory chips, leaving our poor, struggling $4.3 trillion tech giant with an "unprecedented challenge." The news follows the firm’s plans to hike iPhone prices by $275, which came out last week and is the subject of today’s world-famous-news-haiku™ competition, actually.

CEO Tim Cook deeply regrets to inform us that these sudden price hikes are simply "unavoidable" due to the "unsustainable" cost of memory and storage. The company claims, “So far Apple has been able to shield customers by absorbing much of the [memory and storage] cost increases.” But no longer, alas. Apple added they are "working tirelessly to find solutions" to this unwelcome news. Although they don’t seem to want to tap any of their whopping $147 billion cash pile to help a brother out.

How exhausting it must be to work so tirelessly to help consumers while growing hardware profit margins to a whopping 38.7% this past quarter. Let’s break down that heartbreaking financial struggle. Based on that margin, and at the new price point, Apple will now have to scrape by with a mere $502.71 profit on the new $1,299 512GB MacBook Air, $464.01 on the $1,199 256GB iPad Pro, and a pitiful $289.86 on the $749 MacBook Neo.

Relatedly, the "idiot index" is a metric coined by Elon Musk to evaluate manufacturing efficiency by comparing the final cost of a product or component to the cost of its raw materials. The idiot is the person consuming products with a high idiot ratio. It’s a great idea, isn’t it?!

Keep working tirelessly for us all, Tim! We’re sure your $29.6 billion in total quarterly profits will somehow keep the lights on. (Today’s newsletter was of course prepared on a MacBook, proofed on an iPhone, and probably also “pinged” on an Apple Watch.)

Quote of the day

Meta’s whistleblowing memoirist is now suing

Meta $META ( ▼ 2.65% ) , a company legendary at this point for its strict moral compass, is desperately trying to gag former policy executive Sarah Wynn-Williams. Her bestselling memoir, “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism,” apparently struck a nerve. I can't imagine why! Is it because she revealed Facebook executives were willing to hand over millions of U.S. and Chinese citizens’ data to the Chinese Communist Party just to gain market access? Or maybe it’s the sexual harassment allegations?

In her legal complaint, Wynn-Williams notes her boss, Meta’s president of global affairs Joel Kaplan, emailed her jokes about "a vulgar sex act," interrogated her about her "breasts and genitalia," "grinded his body into hers," and charmingly referred to himself as her "sugar daddy."

Meta fired her, forced her to sign a gag order under financial duress, and then stiffed her on her approved business expenses, she alleges.

Now, Meta is crying that she's making "disparaging" comments and even sent a representative to Wales just to ensure she sat completely silently on a recent literary panel. They want to slap her with $50,000 in sanctions for every violation of the gag order.

“This former employee is trying to use the legal process to sell books, which an arbitrator already ruled broke the agreement she signed with the company when she accepted a large financial settlement years ago,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone told the Wall Street Journal in a statement.

The book is excellent, by the way. I lapped it up. It’s sold 130,000 copies in the U.S. so far, according to book-sale tracking services, which doesn’t feel like enough. You can redress this imbalance by buying a copy, here.

Investor: SpaceX's Bond Sale ‘Bubble Territory’

Oh, look, another tech trillionaire billionaire is passing the hat around! Right after raking in a measly $86 billion from its record-breaking IPO, Elon Musk's SpaceX $SPCX ( ▼ 1.0% ) has decided it desperately needs to launch a $25 billion bond sale. Naturally, this perfectly normal financial behavior has Wall Street feeling warm and fuzzy.

Jokes.

Ludovic Subran, the baby-faced chief investment officer at Allianz, a huge German conglomerate financial services firm, helpfully pointed out that this debt-raising spree is a “good example” of the markets shifting from “a healthy boom, a stretched boom . . . into bubble territory.” Subran clearly doesn't appreciate the genius of begging for debt immediately after a blockbuster equity issuance. He snarkily observed to delegates at the FT’s Global Insurance summit, “The guy just got $70bn of funny money to play with to get us to space.”

Apparently, debt investors lack the starry-eyed wonder of stock buyers who will blindly fund a sci-fi dream. As Subran put it: “Equity investors, you can take them to Mars. Bond investors are, like, ‘where is my coupon?’” With SpaceX's stock rapidly tumbling from over $225 down to around $152, perhaps gravity is finally kicking in?

Song of the day: Tiny Habits, ‘Anything He Was’

"Anything He Was" is the breathy, folk-pop lead single by Boston-based trio Tiny Habits, featuring a guest vocal appearance by The 1975's Matty Healy. It tackles the bittersweet ache of trying to love someone who is still hung up on a past partner, which you’d have to be absolutely stupid to try to do, for the record. 

MOVE ON, for crying out loud.

The song is nice to listen to, though!

JPM Succession: Dimons In the Rough

JPMorgan Chase $JPM ( ▲ 0.5% ) CEO Jamie Dimon has finally narrowed down his list of successors, and in a stunning victory for corporate diversity, he has elevated two older white men who look suspiciously like… Jamie Dimon.

Doug Petno, 61, (left, above) and Troy Rohrbaugh, 56, (right) are now the golden gray-haired boys running the two massive divisions responsible for 80 percent of the bank's massive profits. They gracefully stepped into the spotlight just as Marianne Lake, the bank's sole female succession candidate, conveniently announced her retirement.

Women, eh?

Dimon earnestly explained in a company memo that these promotions “mark an important step in our board’s thoughtful process around succession planning and development of our top leaders.”

Aka: “I’m ready to clone myself.”

The firm is struggling to shake a series of HR horrors over recent weeks after the “sex slave” drama and, more recently, having to fire a DEI manager who was spotted stealing a Knicks-themed trash can from a city street during the NBA celebrations. Don’t forget former JPMorgan private banking executive Jes Staley, who maintained a close relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Or Charlie Javice, founder of the financial aid startup Frank, who was awkwardly arrested for defrauding JPMorgan after the firm paid $175 million for the company, apparently without doing sufficient due diligence to understand that the company’s balance sheet was, in fact, a tissue of lies.

Bank of America $BAC ( ▲ 0.8% ) analysts enthusiastically chimed in, noting Rohrbaugh's new consumer business gig sets him up as “the frontrunner to succeed Dimon.” BofA analyst Ebrahim Poonawala added, “Obviously, the Street will need to see Rohrbaugh deliver results in what is a highly competitive consumer banking landscape.”

But don't hold your breath for this thrilling changing of the guard. Dimon recently reminded everyone of his refusal to ever leave: “I‘m here for a few years as CEO and maybe a few after that as executive chairman and chairman.” 

Okay, daddy! It all sounds a bit like the plot of “King Lear” to me. And I hope I don’t need to remind too many of you how that all turned out… (Badly. It turned out badly.)

Your AI Therapist Will See You Now

Some of us may have been tempted to dump our 3 a.m. existential dread onto a random chatbot. But according to Dr. John Cohen, CEO of Talkspace, using general-purpose AI for mental health support is a disaster waiting to happen because “they were never designed for that purpose.”

In fact, they’ll probably suggest you kill yourself if a spate of recent lawsuits is anything to go by. Eugh.

Dr. Cohen warns that generic AI bots are digital sycophants. He notes that the original language models were "incredibly empathetic," comparing them to a classic fairy tale: "I like to call it ‘mirror, mirror on the wall, who are the fairest of them all?’ And it always says, ‘well, you're great.’" 

Unfortunately, this relentless flattery can leave users trapped in a dangerous "distorted reality." Whereas my therapist, Wayne, will tell you, “Sometimes, Matt, you need somebody to tell you when you’re full of it.”

Most Tuesdays, actually.

Since "the genie is out of the bottle," however, Talkspace has launched "Tee," a purportedly safe, purpose-built AI agent with guardrails like strict age limits and constant "clinical oversight," Dr. Cohen says. But don't cancel your actual therapy sessions to save a buck! Dr. Cohen is crystal clear: "It is not a substitute for therapy. It is not intended to be."

Instead, it's merely a safe place to vent.

Then again, the U.S. is facing a record mental health crisis, with federal data showing over 137 million Americans (roughly 40% of the population) living in federally designated Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas. The country is currently short over 30,000 mental health workers, which I calculate presents an opportunity for all those robots.

My favorite therapy story is from a guy I used to go see in New Orleans, 15 years ago. It was his job to strike off therapists for having sex with their patients and he told me he’d struck off about 25 for that reason, that very year. It made me think going to a different therapist each week was probably as efficient as trying to go on dates, to be honest. Then again, there was this bar called Mimi’s in the Marigny, where you barely needed to even sit down…

Free yourself from advertising forever!

Should you check your 401(k) today?

👎️ 

Still a no, I’m afraid. I realize it’s been weeks now.

Poll of the day: It’s World-Famous-575™ Time

Poll of the Day: 70-75 is Correct AirCon Temp

What is the correct temperature to set your air conditioning to in the summer, in France or anywhere else?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Less than 65: Because nothing says "summer relaxation" quite like intentionally inducing what the French fearfully refer to as "thermal shock" . Plus, running your living room like a meat locker is the fastest way to enrage left-wing politicians. (7)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 65-69: The Marine Le Pen special. You firmly believe that surviving a 40°C (104°F) heatwave shouldn't be a partisan issue, and you are ready to aggressively champion the thermostat to save the vulnerable. (41)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 70-75: The centrist compromise. It is just cool enough that you don't have to cash in on the Green Party's proposed state-funded "climate leave" to avoid passing out at your desk, but warm enough to avoid an indoor jacket. (308)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 75-80: The "maladaptive response" sweet spot . Why rely on modern technology when you can just grit your teeth, sweat through your clothes, and pray that the government's plan to eventually plant more "green spaces" will miraculously cool us all down? (109)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 80+: Because you're my father-in-law. Hi, Mike! (11)
476 Votes

via @beehiiv polls

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