Susan Weinstein won this week’s world-famous-news-haiku™ competition with this beauty about the fact that strong jobs numbers meant the stock market fell because Wall Street anticipates a rate rise from the fed to cool the overheating economy...

Congratulations, Susan. Here’s your celebratory gif!

And here’s how Susan’s competition fared in the voting:

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1. More work brings a chill, Wall Street weeps for working hands, Rates must freeze the spring ~Larry Shirley (14)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 2. Jobs increase — Dow sinks, Surprise! The stock market lies, Yet, we still believe ~Susan Weinstein (77)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 3. Feds hired more feds, Bond market saw right through it. Rates rise anyway ~Kristin Lanham (12)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 4. The jobs news is good, had to know it would happen, stock market is down ~David Highet (7)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 5. The stock market's down, Just because I have three jobs? What a load of bull ~Remy Zane (65)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 6. Jobs go up, stocks down, Borrowing beats hiring, Traders want layoffs ~Tim Olsen (16)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 7. Job numbers go up, Mr. Dow falls out window, No rate cuts for you ~Stephen Balzac (17)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 8. You found work at last? Markets weep in utter grief, Fed will make you pay ~Elise (60)
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 9. More jobs in May, yay! But my retirement savings — Down they go, oh no ~Kim Edwards (66)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 10. May jobs crushed forecasts, Wall Street saw the Fed smile wide, Everyone sold ~Jeff Harris (15)
349 Votes via @beehiiv polls

Next week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ is about the best way to visualize a trillion dollars, which is how much Elon Musk is now worth. Send me your entry—to haiku at cheddar dot com—by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

Now for God’s sake, man, can we hear about the news?

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

• SpaceX lunar-cy goes stratospheric

• Five crazy ways to visualize a trillion dollars

• Meta data center pays teachers $50K bonuses

• Fancy AI report is full of hallucin-AI-tions

• Another mom sues OpenAI over a suicide

• Poll of the day: Floating an idea…

What’s the stock market up to, eh?

$SPX ( ▲ 0.5% )  $DJI ( ▲ 0.7% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$SPCX ( ▲ 19.22% )  $GS ( ▲ 2.62% )  $MS ( ▲ 0.65% )  $PYPL ( ▲ 0.7% )  $TM ( 0.0% )  $BMWYY ( 0.0% )  $GM ( ▲ 0.8% )  $META ( ▼ 0.26% )  $UBS ( ▲ 1.62% )  

SpaceX lunar-cy goes stratospheric

Elon Musk is officially our world's first trillionaire, after SpaceX’s $SPCX ( ▲ 19.22% ) highly anticipated IPO just blasted off on Friday, opening at $150 and giving the rocket maker a casual $2.2 trillion market cap. Wall Street had a field day, with lead banks Goldman Sachs $GS ( ▲ 2.62% ) and Morgan Stanley $MS ( ▲ 0.65% ) eagerly pocketing around $100 million apiece for their hard work on the float. Meanwhile, the little guys were left scrambling for rocket exhaust. Retail investors practically begged for shares at the $135 listing price, but many were iced out. Although not everyone. My friend bought 200 shares on Fidelity at $135 each, and saw them, er…rocket to $170 each on Friday afternoon, netting him a cool $7,000 in profits for a day’s not working. What will retail investors do with their shares? Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial, told the Wall Street Journal he expects these everyday visionaries to "forgo selling and hold them for the long run." Partly because most of us think SpaceX will be more valuable in the future than it is today, and partly because you’d have to pay capital gains tax on a win like that. Did you buy any shares? Let us know in today’s poll…

Quote of the Day

Five crazy ways to visualize a trillion dollars

Here are five ways to put a $1 trillion fortune into perspective, thanks to our friends at Bloomberg. That much cash equates to spending $27 million every single day for a century:

1. Buy PayPal $PYPL ( ▲ 0.7% )  25 times over: Elon Musk could purchase his former company using just 4% of his net worth.

2. Own all major carmakers: He could comfortably buy every single car manufacturer in the U.S., Europe, and Japan combined. Legacy automotive giants like Toyota $TM ( 0.0% ) , BMW $BMWYY ( 0.0% ) , and GM $GM ( ▲ 0.8% ) only add up to a collective market value of around $900 billion.

3. Bankroll 68 U.S. elections: Based on the nearly $15 billion spent during the 2024 election cycle, Musk could fund 68 entire U.S. election cycles all by himself.

4. Fund NASA for decades: Space exploration is notoriously expensive, but Musk's wealth could easily cover NASA’s 2025 budget of $24.6 billion 41 times over.

5. He’s now worth seven Warren Buffetts: Buffet’s individual net worth sits at a mere $145 billion.

If that still doesn't register, consider this: A trillion one-dollar bills would weigh 2.2 billion pounds, requiring 10,000 flights on SpaceX's massive new Starship V3 just to launch it all into orbit.

Meta data center pays teachers $50K bonuses

Forget apples on the teacher's desk; educators in Richland Parish, Louisiana, are getting a much better thank-you gift this year: Up to $50,935 in cold, hard cash. In a plot twist, the windfall is all thanks to a shiny new Meta $META ( ▼ 0.26% ) data center.

With salaries in the district normally hovering between $29,504 and $52,335, some of these teachers are literally doubling their income. How? The 8,000 workers building Meta’s $10 billion, 70-football-field-sized facility are aggressively buying up toilet paper, tacos, and other goods and services, generating a ridiculous surge in local sales tax.

Naturally, local officials are thrilled. Friday Ellis, the mayor of nearby Monroe, noted the region's changing luck: “We’ve been in a batting slump for probably three decades. Like most Southern towns, we’ve really exported talent, exported business.” Now, they are importing sweet, sweet tech money.

Scott Franklin, the local chamber of commerce director who sold his rice farm for the center, summed it up: “Anybody that complains about teachers getting a $50,000 check, they just instantly lose all credibility with me,” he said. He also cheerfully pointed out that while the taco-driven sales tax might be temporary, "property taxes will live forever.”

Song of the Day: Jack White, ‘Dollar Bill’

"Dollar Bill," the latest single from Jack White’s surprise-announced seventh studio album Frozen Charlotte (arriving July 10), is earning rave reviews as an incendiary, blues-rock masterclass. It’s a propulsive track that marries White's classic, face-melting guitar pyrotechnics with a fresh, groove-forward approach to songwriting. Enjoy.

Fancy AI report is full of hallucin-AI-tions

Big Four accounting firm KPMG dropped a highly anticipated thought leadership piece last October titled “Redefining excellence in the age of agentic AI.” The catch? The "excellence" was entirely made up by AI. Yes, the very consultants heavily marketing themselves as experts in the responsible use of AI and avoiding errors just got caught publishing bogus, AI-hallucinated case studies.

The report read like a sci-fi utopian dream. According to KPMG, Swiss Federal Railways was using AI to become a “holistic mobility orchestrator.” The railway's response? "Not accurate." Transport for London was supposedly using AI agents to predict congestion, which a spokesperson politely called "misleading.” And NHS Greater Manchester’s cutting-edge AI for predicting hospital readmissions? That claim actually stemmed from a press release about a lung cancer tool that didn't even mention agentic AI. Swiss bank UBS $UBS ( ▲ 1.62% ) also had to ask KPMG to remove "factually incorrect" claims about its AI integration.

The report sat blissfully unnoticed on KPMG’s website since last October until AI research group GPTZero exposed the inaccuracies this week. Now KPMG has yanked the report off its website while it investigates. The embarrassing blunder comes just a month after rival EY had to retract a study over fake footnotes.

Another mom sues OpenAI over a suicide

OpenAI $OPEAZZX ( ▲ 0.41% ) is facing another devastating lawsuit after a 24-year-old Canadian woman, Alice Carrier, took her own life in June 2025 following months of confiding in ChatGPT. Her mother, Kristie Carrier, filed a lawsuit in San Francisco alleging that the AI chatbot failed to intervene despite Alice mentioning her suicidal thoughts more than a dozen times.

"Instead of helping Alice, OpenAI encouraged her darkest thoughts," the complaint reads, noting that the bot never alerted a crisis provider or Alice's family. Shockingly, when Alice expressed having "no other way out," ChatGPT chillingly replied, "maybe this is just the end." The bot even agreed with her that crisis hotlines could "feel downright dangerous," telling her she instead deserved "real, gentle support. Not threats, not indifference, not cold scripts."

The lawsuit also names CEO Sam Altman as a defendant, accusing him of rushing the technology to market and overruling his safety team. Carrier emphasized the tragic reality of her loss: “Sam Altman can continue to go about his life normally, but my life is missing a child. This is unacceptable," she told the New York Post. An OpenAI spokesperson called it a “heartbreaking situation,” noting the interactions "took place on an earlier version of ChatGPT that is no longer available.” 

OpenAI currently faces 18 similar lawsuits in California.

Free yourself from advertising forever!

Should you check your 401(k) today?

👎️ 

Still a hard “no” from us, I’m afraid. We’ll let you know when the market is back to its earlier highs.

Poll of the day: Floating an idea…

Need2Know is covered by Cheddar’s Terms of Service

P.S. So, you remember the cheese puns that used to open this newsletter? Suffice to say, they were divisive. Now, thanks to a thing called “dynamic content options,” I can offer you the option to see cheese puns again, if you’re one of the thousands who got in touch bemoaning their departure six months ago. All you need to do is answer “true” on this survey, and submit it. If you never want to see cheese puns in this newsletter again, don’t click that link, don’t fill out the survey, don’t submit it. Just keep reading and pretend this conversation never happened. Mmmkay? Thank you.