Susan Weinstein won last week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ about how Apple plans to raise the price of an iPhone by $275 because of the AI-driven crunch in memory chip prices:

Congrats, Susan! I asked her if she has any advice for her fellow haiku writers and I’ll let you know as soon as I hear. Here’s your celebratory gif!

And here’s how Susan crushed her worthy competition:

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Apple says "progress" l Your credit cards says "hold on", Chips eat lunch money~Sue Boros (29)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Memory costs soar. Should improve in a few years. For now, don’t upgrade!~Margaret Lea (22)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Precious Memories, More costly to iCapture, Precious Memory. ~Eugene Evon (4)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Bite of the apple? I think not. With what they charge— Their apple bites back. ~Susan Weinstein (112)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Bleed us once, they did, now AI wants your wallet too — iSheep line right up. ~Kristin Lanham (40)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Ouch! Bite me Apple! Let’s talk. Price of memory? Chip in and reduce. ~Harriett Feldman (47)
254 Votes via @beehiiv polls

This week’s world famous news haiku competition is about how your summer vacation is a “retirement killer.” Send me your entry—to haiku at cheddar dot com—by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers. (Don’t worry if you get a bounceback email. The mailbox is working, it’s just been inundated with haikus lately, thank Goodness!)

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News you Need2Know

• Das Auto Minus 100,000 Workers as VW Weighs Cuts

• Ex-Private Equity Boss Testifies on Epstein

• Wall Street 'Awakens' to Perceived Zohran Threat

• Your Summer Vacation is a ‘Retirement Killer’

• IBM Finds New ‘Bunk Bed’ Way to Shrink Chips

• Poll of the day: Kill your retirement how?

What’s the stock market up to, eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.05% )  $DJI ( ▼ 0.09% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$VWAGY ( ▼ 2.94% )  $IBM ( ▲ 5.17% )  $GM ( ▼ 0.55% )  $APO ( ▼ 2.65% )  $C ( ▼ 2.22% )  $NVDA ( ▼ 1.64% )  $IBM ( ▲ 5.17% )  

Das Auto Minus 100,000 Workers as VW Weighs Cuts

If you’ve been worrying about the job market lately, don't look at Volkswagen $VWAGY ( ▼ 2.94% ) for reassurance. The German carmaking giant thinks the best way to make cars is to get rid of the people who actually, you know, make the cars… by axing 100,000 jobs worldwide.

That’s nearly one in six of their 625,000 global employees, one of the biggest layoff programs in history, blowing past the 74,000 jobs General Motors $GM ( ▼ 0.55% ) axed in the 1990s and the 60,000 IBM $IBM ( ▲ 5.17% ) cut in 1993. Overachievers!

VW isn't just firing people; they're essentially ghosting entire towns. The new proposal includes halting production at four plants in Germany—specifically in Emden, Zwickau, Hanover, and an Audi factory in Neckarsulm.

Not Neckarsulm. Surely Neckarsulm is sacred.

Blame the rapid advance of Chinese carmakers, who managed to snatch up almost one in 10 new vehicle sales in Europe during the first five months of the year. CEO Oliver Blume told shareholders at VW’s annual meeting last week, “Never has the risk situation been so high.” 

Although I'm pretty sure the risk situation for 100,000 of his employees just peaked.

Naturally, the unions are thrilled, releasing a joint statement to the Financial Times: “Should such plans be pursued, we would oppose them with all our might. What really matters is something else entirely: Instead of engaging in blind, knee-jerk reactions, the management board should finally do its job.”

So, how does Volkswagen's PR machine respond to this fiery, existential crisis and union fury? With the most robotic, soul-crushing corporate speak imaginable: “The underlying matters are discussed and approved by the relevant governing bodies. We will not pre-empt this process,” they told the FT, perhaps with an eye on saving their own jobs.

Quote of the day

Ex-Private Equity Boss Testifies on Epstein

If you ever feel bad about being scammed out of $20 by a sketchy internet ad, take comfort in the plight of billionaire Leon Black. The 74-year-old co-founder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management $APO ( ▼ 2.65% ) submitted prepared remarks to Congress on Friday, claiming he was a naïve victim who was duped into paying Jeffrey Epstein $158 million for… “tax and estate advice.” Yes, the man worth an estimated $13 billion apparently couldn't just use TurboTax.  

Black insists he had no idea what his highly compensated financial advisor was actually up to. Sure, Black knew about Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor, but he generously chose to believe Epstein’s claim that it was simply an “isolated incident.” After all, Epstein “solved a massive estate problem for me,” Black noted, though he was apparently tricked into believing those exorbitant fees were tax-deductible, which, you know… they weren’t. Oops!

Black firmly denied any participation in Epstein's criminal enterprises. “I have never abused a woman. I have never been with an underage woman,” he declared to the House Oversight Committee. He completely washed his hands of the situation, insisting, “I want to state clearly that I did not know about this nefarious activity until Epstein was charged with trafficking in July 2019.”

As for any lingering questions about his, er… social life, Black preemptively shut them down, boldly stating he “will not speak about the personal lives of adult women who have not chosen, and do not deserve, to be connected, by me or anyone else, to Epstein.” What a gentleman.

Wall Street 'Awakens' to Perceived Zohran Threat

Wall Street is having a total meltdown because it turns out mountains of money can't buy elections in New York City anymore. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his Democratic Socialist allies just swept a round of primaries, crushing establishment candidates backed by the business elite. Cue the billionaire panic room!

Steven Fulop, CEO of a massive corporate lobbying group, is absolutely terrified, clutching his pearls and calling the election results a “very, very scary outcome, and I think it serves as an awakening for people.” Yes, Steven, it is an awakening—for New York’s working class who all, inconveniently, also get to vote and vastly outnumber you.

Even at a recent ritzy fundraiser, billionaire John Catsimatidis had to awkwardly admit to his rankled elite pals that Mamdani has “become a very popular person.”

Why are the financial elites trembling? Because their strategy of just throwing cash at uninspiring moderates failed, causing the New York Times to grudgingly label Mamdami a “kingmaker” on its front page this past week. As strategist Chris Coffey told the Wall Street Journal, the socialists' bold platform won over voters, while “the establishment’s message was harder to galvanize around.” 

Turns out, "we're not Trump" isn't a viable substitute for affordable rent and expanded childcare. Citigroup $C ( ▼ 2.22% ) executive Edward Skyler tried to play nice, observing that while a socialist agenda in the capital of, er… capital… is "a bit ironic," it ultimately proves how "front and center the issue of affordability is." 

Preach. Our West Village rent was almost $5,000 a month before we left town for delightful Norfolk, Virginia. If you’re local, look me up. Let’s play racketball!

Song of the day: Charlie XCX, ‘Wink Wink’

Charli XCX's latest single "Wink Wink" is a short, polarizing slice of guitar-driven "smut pop" that serves as the final single before the release of her upcoming album “Music, Fashion, Film.” The track blends midtempo alt-rock guitar riffs with extremely not-safe-for-work visuals in the video (seriously, you’ve been warned! I’m amazed it got past the censors, honestly…) and ironic deadpan spoken-word verses, which also are extremely not-safe-for-work. Clocking in at just over two minutes, it has immediately divided music critics and fans over its brevity, lyrical shock value, and thick layers of satire. I, personally, absolutely love it. And Paul McCartney commented on my LinkedIn™. So.

Your Summer Vacation is a ‘Retirement Killer’

If you're packing your bags for a relaxing family trip to Greece, FT columnist Stuart Kirk wants you to know you're basically setting your pension on fire. According to his delightfully buzzkill Financial Times column, a $10,000 all-inclusive getaway isn't a chance to unwind and build memories; it's also "$90,000 wiped off the family books” by the time you look at it through the cold, hard lens of compound interest.

Kirk argues that there is “nothing you can do—apart from avoiding tax—that shifts your savings profile as much” as cutting your lifestyle expenses. He wants us to view every tiny joy like Ebenezer Scrooge. Those $200 sunglasses you grabbed at the airport? Factoring in your tax rate and missed investment returns, that impulse buy is actually a $3,500 hit to your net worth by the time you retire. He even suggests parents should warn their children that spending $10 a day on beach ice cream is a “$2,100 claim on the future value of their Junior Individual Savings Account.” What a fun family vacation!

Kirk speaks from experience, mourning his own $30,000 post-divorce yacht (really… I’m amazed anyone would want to divorce this man!) and its $8,000 annual marina fees as the equivalent of $72,000 in lost savings.

But let's be real: You can't take your investment portfolio to the grave. Vacations offer much-needed sanity, relaxation, and experiences that a spreadsheet simply can't buy. Even Kirk admits that treating all your cash solely as a perpetual income generator would be the right move… "if it weren’t so boring." 

[Books a vacation.] How about you? Let us know your views in today’s poll below 👇🏻

IBM Finds New ‘Bunk Bed’ Way to Shrink Chips

Tech billionaires like Nvidia's $NVDA ( ▼ 1.64% ) CEO Jensen Huang have been running around proclaiming that Moore’s Law, of doubling computer chips every two years, is dead because we can't possibly make computer chips any smaller. But IBM $IBM ( ▲ 5.17% ) —a company that ironically doesn't even manufacture or sell chips anymore, merely researches them—just waltzed into the room to say, "hold my silicon."

They’ve unveiled a new 0.7-nanometer "nanostack" technology that squeezes twice as many transistors onto a fingernail-sized chip. Their highly advanced, revolutionary method to achieve this? They build microscopic three-dimensional structures and effectively glue one upside-down on top of the other. It’s like bunk beds, but for transistors.

This is music to the ears of tech giants currently panicking over energy-hungry AI data centers. As IBM vice president Huiming Bu noted, talking to the New York Times, “Everyone demands more performance, but no one wants to pay for the power.” Yet this new bunk-bed design happily boasts 70 percent better energy efficiency.

Industry analysts are positively giddy. Dan Hutcheson of TechInsights told the Times, “this is a big deal” and called the approach “pretty revolutionary,” pointing out that “it basically puts another 10 or 15 years on the roadmap.”

The firm’s stock has defied gravity to rise 10% over the last week. Nvidia’s, by comparison, is down 8% over the same period. Bunk beds, guys! Bunk beds.

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. But we’re going through it.

Poll of the day: Kill your retirement how?

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