Tootfinder

Q1’s –0.5% growth is already a bad look. But Apollo’s Torsten SlŸk points out that data-center construction alone added about a full percentage point. Remove it, and you’re staring at –1.5%.
Q2 looks so much healthier at 3.0%, or you would think so. Pantheon Macroeconomics sums up the first half of 2025 with some more sobriety: AI alone contributed about half a percentage point of GDP. Without it, the U.S. would be bumbling along at 1% growth. Still better than minus, but thin grass all the same.
One more stat for the better view: since 2019, investment in AI-sensitive sectors is up 53%, while everywhere else is basically flat – 0.3%.
https://www.turingpost.com/p/fod114?_bhlid=f437d028caabcb66cc36e677728d12aea2504a71

"The AI investment ‘bubble’ (as measured as the stock price relative to the 'book value' of a company) is 17 times the size of the dot-com frenzy of 2000 — and four times the subprime mortgage bubble of 2007. The ratio of the US stock market’s value to GDP (aka the “Buffett Indicator") has moved up to a new record high at 217%, more than 2 standard deviations above the long-term trendline." [ the very definition of abnormal - MB ]

The AI bubble and the US economy
The US stock market continues to hit new record highs; the bitcoin price is also close to highs and the gold price has rocketed to all-time highs. Investors in financial assets (banks, insurance co…

The scale of investment and the involvement of governments means ROI must be found (or rather created) now, by any means necessary! Demand already is being forcefully created to justify these expenditures. Business models, regulations and policies/politics are pivoted in lockstep. Aside from all the conceptual, ethical and environmental issues of LLMs and their required infrastructure, these shifts are already also impacting chip/hardware production pipelines and start spelling the end of pe…

samim (@samim@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image The AI infrastructure build-out is so gigantic that in the past 6m, it contributed more to the growth of the U.S. economy than /all of consumer spending/ The 'magnificent 7' spent more than $100 billion on data centers and the like in the past three months *alone* As a % of GDP, spending on AI infra has already exceeded spending on telecom and internet infrastructure from the dot-com boom—and it’s still growing. This spending is so big it’s acting as a sort of privat…