Tootfinder

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…

Americans grow uneasy about the economy | AP News
https://apnews.com/article/consumer-confidence-conference-board-economy-spending-1ef56ac698f194203848df1968567c85

On Monday, Trump began his latest round of tariff threats, insisting that “we’re done” negotiating
as economists warned about a surge in consumer prices that could arise from taxing imports.
The White House also proceeded with its aggressive and legally contested plans to eliminate scores of federal regulations
and deport millions of migrants.
The immigration crackdown, in particular, could come to the detriment of many sectors, like agriculture, that rely heavily on …

Trump Takes Reins on U.S. Economy With Policy Bill and Tariffs Renewal
President Trump has achieved much of his agenda, leaving the fate of the economy squarely in his hands.

«What would have happened if companies like Microsoft and Meta instead spent the money on things that actually drove productivity, or created a valuable competitive business that drove economic activity? Hell, even if they just gave everyone a 10% raise, it would have likely been better for the economy than this, if we’re factoring in things like consumer spending. It’s just waste. Profligate, pointless waste.»
https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-a-money-trap/

Economic and Policy Uncertainties and Firm Value: The Case of Consumer Durable Goods
Bahram Adrangi, Saman Hatamerad, Madhuparna Kolay, Kambiz Raffiee
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07476

Economic and Policy Uncertainties and Firm Value: The Case of Consumer Durable Goods
The objective of this study is to analyze the response of firm value, represented by the Tobin's Q (Q) for a group of twelve U.S. durable goods producers to uncertainties in the US Economy. The results, based on an estimated panel quantile regressions (PQR) and panel vector autoregressive MIDAS model (PVM), show that Q for these firms reacts negatively to the positive shocks to the current ratio, and debt-to-asset ratio and positively to operating income after depreciation and the quick ratio i…

Measuring Social Media Network Effects
Sinan Aral, Seth G Benzell, Avinash Collis, Christos Nicolaides
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04545 https://

Measuring Social Media Network Effects
We use representative, incentive-compatible online choice experiments involving 19,923 Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X users in the US to provide the first large-scale, empirical measurement of local network effects in the digital economy. Our analysis reveals social media platform value ranges from $78 to $101 per consumer, per month, on average, and that 20-34% of that value is explained by local network effects. We also find 1) stronger ties are more valuable on Facebook and Instagram, …