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@edzitron.com thanks Ed. Do you have any insights into the the AI industry in China and how it compares to the US?

Tesla makes stuff OpenAI doesn’t and Elon musk took a great deal of time to build his grift network. More than Sam has

Tesla's barely limping along, and has a boardroom full of business idiots so brainwashed that they think anything is possible OpenAI has to lie about everything and stole every written word for their training data, and still can't break even the shit is gonna evaporate

Historians are going to name that corporate law reform in Delaware that made it much harder for shareholders to rein management in and that all the tech moguls were pushing for one of the most consequential events of 2025.

Thanks so much bill!

"The tech industry has run out of hypergrowth ideas, and in its desperation hitched itself to the least-profitable hardware and software in history... And what’s left is a tech industry that doesn’t build technology, but growth-focused startups." www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti... #Tech #AI

Similar to how gen-ai companies are motivated to not go IPO, since it would force an actual accounting of their health and business value. As long as these gpus are *not* deployed, their value is, ironically, easier to inflate on paper.

"Unprofitable, unsustainable AI threatens future of venture capital, private equity and the markets themselves." But there's probably a down side (though it's not immediately obvious).

Threatening markets you say? www.cardcow.com/images/set45...

Mentally preparing myself to read this, then I see “Free Bird” is the soundtrack. You, sir, are diabolical.

It was the word of the year in 24 or 25 lol.

I can't wait for all this to slop to come crashing down. Too much money is being incinerated on the pipe dreams of the Rich, while things continue to degrade visibly for everyone else. Economic fallout be damned, it NEEDS to happen. Maybe then we can start doing cool shit again.

Thanks so much!!!

Now you say this. I read first about inkjet technology in the 80s (I was a HS teen at that time). It was like WHAT? Microscopic droplets of ink charged electrostatically and projected onto the paper driven by a varying electrostatic field? WOW! THIS IS THE FUCKING FUTURE!

If AI kills PE and VC..

I think this might be my favorite newsletter that you've written this year. It really ties together everything that's come before it, and it kept me riveted from start to finish.

Please tell me you were stone cold sober when you came up with "enshittifinancial"

An additional angle is that the high level of the market is held up by the bubble you are talking about so that everyone whose retirement is invested in the US market will take a huge hit when this bubble busts

Who will be the first to point put that the emperors of AI have no clothes

The result is a breakdown of trust in the public markets and of the investors who are backing pre-IPO companies, with analysts acting as fractional marketing teams for stocks, boosting OpenAI deals for Oracle and NVIDIA that never existed, hurting investors. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

It’s almost like capitalism rewards cruelty

Omg I have been screaming this.

This thesis works for ALL Western Capitalist Democratic Society under the Neoliberal model. Historically, ALL BUSINESSES have inherent "ENSHITTIFICATION" tendencies...but this generally took longer to emerge. Neoliberalism saw Govt take on characteristics of Business ...all now appears clear!

for humanities endless possible beauties, i never fail to be amazed that this is the stuff we focus on in our one limited life. profit, cheap bullshit, billionaires gargling each other's balls - this is not beautiful, it's not worthwhile. And yet it dominates us all

Wow! I couldn't stop reading. You should testify on Congress once the AI bubble bursts! Also amazing work with all the citations and links.

@edzitron.com -- It seems like a lot of the Overnight Repurchase Agreement activity recently is in Mortgage-backed Securities. Do you know why that might be the case? Trying to understand what might be happening there.

lol “Every part of the AI bubble — this fucking charade — is unprofitable, save for NVIDIA and the construction firms erecting future laser tag arenas full of negative-margin GPUs.”

Does that say “Soundtrack: Lynyrd Skynyrd: Free Bird”?

Amazing article - top work, dude! It's made me think that the whole thing might be a pump and dump by the biggest players. If they crash the market, they can buy up the survivors for pennies, and clear out the weak. Result - TOTAL domination of the whole system/market by a handful of companies.

If only there was a way to incentivize companies to innovate sustainability instead of features so the upper-class can still look for ways to out-invest each other now that 99% of products have gone past peak usability.

Okay, should've waited to ask this, because towards the end you indicate that they have no use for it.

Replying to @edzitron.com: I do not understand a word of it, but if there is a crisis, I shall stand by your side and demand an explanation, though I hope it does not involve sums.

So many words just to say that GPUs are the 21st-century tulip bulbs.

This article is terrifying, thank you Mr. Zitron

One of the best articles I've read in 2025 and reveals the whole con. I didn't see you touch on the fact that there's HUGE backlash to data centers in communities. So these 'data centers' might never get built because the public is saying "no way!" You're doing god's work @edzitron.com

The Midwest Peoples Republic refuses all generative AI products

I wish more journos would just get over themselves and embrace the language of anger we're so far beyond decorum, so why the fuck not

One aspect you haven’t mentioned is that software employees receive significant pay in stock, which may partly explain why there is so much destructive focus on stock price. Though I do enjoy ranting about greedy shareholders as much as the next person, I rarely blame my own wage expectations.

<Audience says "yay!" in unison>

Thank you so much for having done the grunt work no analyst seemed willing to do. Next enshitification stage: the States, when loss are socialized and the people need to clean up the mess let by these greedy sociopathic idiots. Or perhaps this time, some accountability? Matching their malevolence

Still doesn't seem....uh, good. Especially if it points to their foolish exposure to AI not being a symptom of their ignorance of the unprofitability, but rather their reckless lending practices writ large. I hope it's just them seeing the AI liquidity issues and not a sign of larger debt bubble.

I'd like to say they're running out of ways to cheat, but I bet they're not quite finished yet.

Great work, tocayo. It truly is a metabubble composed of metagrifts. On a lighter note, I sincerely hope you and yours are enjoying a safe, comfortable and lovely holiday season. Thank you for all your hard work this past year.

somehow this is one of two works comprehensively describing/criticizing the financial system, published hours apart from each other on the same day www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQCg... curious if you're aware of each other since there's quite a bit of overlap in terms of themes

When you see the decline of Substack and wonder how this happens…look at Weber’s Law. Investor-owned platforms have every incentive to enshittify and our human inability to perceive small gradual change makes it possible. #enshittification erichensal.substack.com/p/the-scienc...

We now have an economy based on profiting when other people profit, almost like it's indexed, and it's Wall St 101 that number go up equals MY number go up. Not, however, YOUR number, and there's no such thing as OUR number.

Finanshitification?

I hope when this period is looked back on they use your verbiage. I know they'll use your reporting, but I also want "Enshittification Crisis" to appear in textbooks

Do you have any thoughts on the huge rise in the number of adverts for investment apps and services? Are the finance bros looking for bag holders?

A.I. investment hype is not ENRON, it's Theranos 2.0. No matter how much you scream at your engineers and scientists, it's impossible to do certain tests on such small volumes of blood because of statistics and sampling.

Knowing how hard you work and how quickly you wanted to get it done this one musta been a beast to write. Good job.

You’re really outdone yourself on this one.

Have you written about the 'buying jet engines to bridge to infrastructure/energy gap' yet? It blew my mind