This week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ is about how Apple plans to raise the price of an iPhone by $275 because of the AI-driven crunch in memory chip prices. 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 bounce-back email. The mailbox is working, it’s just been inundated with haikus lately and the good people at Microsoft $MSFT ( ▼ 3.18% ) seem not to have figured out how to fix Outlook yet).

Now for crying out loud, can we hear about the news?

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News you Need2Know

What’s the stock market up to, eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.37% )   $DJI ( ▲ 0.29% )   $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$MSFT ( ▼ 3.18% )   $ANTHZZX ( ▲ 2.0% )   $OPEAZZX ( ▲ 0.19% )   $UPS ( ▲ 2.27% )  

Alan Greenspan dies at 100

Alan Greenspan has died at the ripe old age of 100. The so-called "Maestro" of money, whose notoriously opaque rambling made him a Washington celebrity, leaves behind a popular legacy of responsibility for the 2008 financial crisis. As Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, his policies inflated the housing bubble and allowed Wall Street to operate with dangerous, unchecked freedom that is widely acknowledged to have caused the crash.

His widow, Andrea Mitchell, remembered him to the Financial Times as "a giant of a man... always honest in acknowledging mistakes.” And it’s true. 2008’s catastrophic global meltdown did cause him to admit in a state of "shocked disbelief" that he had "found a flaw" in his beloved free-market ideology. His former Federal Reserve vice-chair, Alan Blinder, noted Greenspan was "terrific" at steering the economy but added, "All along he had a blind spot where regulation was concerned." "They inexplicably to me barely lifted a finger to stop it," Blinder marveled at the Fed, referring to the 2008 crisis.

Let’s also not forget his spicy personal history. Greenspan was close friends with Ayn Rand, and they bonded over capitalism. Rand affectionately dubbed him "the Undertaker" because of his earnest manner and dark suits. A friend of a friend of mine named “Tater” made the AI-generated image of Greenspan and Rand reunited in heaven, above, which I’ve used to illustrate this story. May they both rest in peace, now, regardless, wherever they have indeed ended up.

Quote of the day

Microsoft CEO: ‘Can’t let AI giants eat economy’

Satya Nadella, the CEO of mom-and-pop shop Microsoft $MSFT ( ▼ 3.18% ) , has a dire warning about the AI future. The man who poured billions into OpenAI and Anthropic is suddenly appalled by their dominance. Taking aim at the doom-mongering, Nadella declared, "You can’t say, hey, all white-collar jobs are gone and this could even be a weapon and we will use all the power to build data centers."

His solution to this terrifying monopoly? Microsoft steering the ship, of course! I don’t know about you, but you would have to put a gun to my head to get me to use its AI-driven “Copilot” service.

While his partners predict catastrophic job losses, Nadella offers a much sunnier view on displacing workers: "No, how about we think about reorganizing the jobs?" He insists companies just need a "recipe for how that can be done. Yes, it’s a lot of change management, it’s a lot of displacement, but there is a path." 

Comforting.

To save us from skyrocketing AI bills, Microsoft is graciously rolling out cheaper AI models and even considering hosting the Chinese provider DeepSeek. Nadella claims that to fix the AI race, "No amount of just narrative is going to do it because where we are now, we have to sort of walk the walk." "We now have to do the hard work in earning the social permission," he said.

¡Viva la revolución!, mate.

UPS invests $50m in GLP-1 storage

With a staggering one in eight Americans now taking GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, someone has to make sure all of those miracle injectables stay perfectly chilled on their way to your letterbox. Enter the United Parcel Service or, as you might prefer to call it, UPS $UPS ( ▲ 2.27% ) . The delivery giant is graciously stepping up to the plate, investing a cool $48 million to upgrade 27 temperature-controlled facilities across the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

Naturally, UPS executives are framing this lucrative business move as a noble crusade for humanity. Kate Gutmann, UPS’s president of international healthcare, dramatically announced: "Our global cross-dock facilities strengthen our end-to-end cold-chain capabilities to ensure critical treatments are delivered safely and reliably to patients around the world." She even added that this chilly effort "extends from a deep understanding that we’re doing more than moving packages."

True. The firm’s healthcare division just reported its "first $3 billion healthcare revenue quarter ever," as proudly noted by CEO Carol Tomé. Tomé added that UPS is ready to "lean into that space in a meaningful way," which I think means riding this diet-drug gravy train all the way to the bank.

Song of the day: Chineke! Orchestra, ‘Death Letter Blues’

Here’s the lead track from Morgan Freeman's Symphonic Blues Experience, released on Juneteenth. It’s a groundbreaking, cinematic, and deeply emotional fusion of classical and blues traditions. But what would Andy DuFresne from The Shawshank Redemption think about it, I wonder?

Keir Starmer resigns as British PM

After two whole years in office, Sir Keir Starmer has quit as British Prime Minister. Following local election disasters and some costly U-turns on things like pensioner fuel payments, Starmer finally concluded that he had lost the confidence of his cabinet. With his voice breaking, he announced his resignation to the public yesterday. He was so full of grace, in fact, that he only considered sacking his home and energy secretaries in a dramatic retaliation for privately suggesting he leave, before his allies finally talked him out of it. Team player!

Waiting in the wings for what looks like an uncontested coronation is Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. Burnham thanked Starmer for his "huge service to our country" before immediately listing everything that still desperately needs fixing. “People want to see progress on economic growth, cost of living, public services, housing, and opportunities for the next generation,” Burnham declared.