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Energy demand in 2033 forecast at 1,100% percent higher than 2025, Trump discloses $263M in stock trades in June, LinkedIn users are removing ‘DEI’ and adding ‘AI’, Lululemon CCO to depart company, NuScale launches $750M equity offering.

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Nvidia customers notified about AI-related price hikes above 15% (Ground)

Treasuries now offer more income than almost every S&P 500 stock: (Kobeissi)
Just ~3% of S&P 500 stocks now have dividend yields higher than the 10Y Treasury Note yield, the lowest proportion since May 2007.
This marks one of the lowest readings on record in data going back to the early 1970s.
This percentage has declined -40 points since the start of 2022.
By comparison, 63% of S&P 500 stocks had a higher dividend yield than the 10Y Treasury Note yield in July 2016, an all-time high when excluding the 2020 pandemic crash.
To put this into perspective, the long-term average since the 1970s is 18%.
The bond market situation is historic.

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TriMet to enact sweeping service cuts amid a massive budget shortfall (OPB)

“Surging costs and stagnating ridership have forced Oregon’s largest transit agency to shrink some of its rail and bus services.

Starting Sunday, TriMet will enact a historic wave of cuts and consolidation to its services, potentially impacting thousands of riders across its system.

It’s part of an effort to reduce the agency’s estimated $300 million budget shortfall, brought about by stagnating ridership and soaring operational costs. Thirty-four bus lines and one MAX line will be impacted, either by eliminating lines, combining them, or changing their routes.

One of the largest changes will come to the MAX Green Line. The line currently runs from Clackamas Town Center to Portland State University. Soon, riders will have to change trains at the Gateway Station before traveling to downtown Portland.

Bus Line 82, which runs through Gresham, and Line 153, operating through Lake Oswego and West Linn, will be discontinued

TriMet also eliminated more than 400 staff positions in July, saving a total of $28 million.

The massive budget shortfall has been years in the making. Ridership plummeted during the COVID-19 pandemic to historic lows, as far fewer people commuted to work.

Post-pandemic, leadership had planned on those riders returning, increasing staff to meet the anticipated demand. But that growth never materialized. Ridership has plateaued at around 70% of what it was before the pandemic, said Tia York, TriMet media relations manager.

“We were, prior to these cuts beginning, a much larger agency than we were in 2019,” York said. “Yet, our ridership and our revenues are much lower. This is part of an effort to bring everything into balance.”

These cuts, though, will not completely solve TriMet’s budgetary problems. The agency will still have a long-term deficit of $158 million, York said.”

The future of the Northwest’s power grid is at risk. Where is the leadership? (WSS)

“The Pacific Northwest is drifting toward an energy crisis of its own making. The newly appointed leader of the Bonneville Power Administration, Travis Kavulla, with support from Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, has the background and ability to stop the drift and return BPA to the leadership role it has traditionally played. 

The real issue is not who just consumes power, but whether we have the foresight and resolve to build the infrastructure needed for reliable and affordable service.

The Northwest has scores of small and large electric utilities — private, public, rural and urban — as well as many interest groups with skin in the game.

Large industrial customers, technology companies, independent power providers, environmental advocates, labor unions, farmers, and other interest groups all have their own agendas. They often pursue separate solutions for their own specific challenges and prioritize their parochial concerns over those of the region as a whole. 

The inevitable result is fragmentation, delay, and higher costs.

Congress anticipated this very problem when it enacted the Northwest Power Act of 1980, providing the framework and the tools for a coordinated response.

Forty-six years later, the effective use of that law, together with the original Bonneville authorizing statute and the Transmission System Act, is falling short.

Inexplicably, Bonneville has walked away from its legal authorities and mandates, retreating under the pretext of listening to its customers. 

Congress gave BPA $10 billion of borrowing authority in the 2021 infrastructure law, yet BPA is not using these funds. Instead, it plays conservatively out of an abundance of caution regarding its obligation to repay the Treasury annually.”

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