Lower Manhattan Has Roared Back
In 2001, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks killed close to 3,000 people and reduced
the World Trade Center to rubble. The Twin Towers’ shocking collapse
inflicted such trauma that many wondered if the Financial Dis. could recover.
Now, as the 25th anniversary of the event approaches, lower Manhattan is
roaring back. Its population has roughly tripled over the past 2½ decades,
and more than 230,000 people work there— nearly as many as before the attacks.
American Express broke ground in July on a new 55-story headquarters, it
started the last major development at the 16-acre site.
Lower Manhattan has 23 such projects either planned or under construction.
There is a generation now with little or no memory of Sept. 11. Downtown has
a budding live-music scene that barely existed a generation ago.
In 2018, Pier 17 opened a 3,400-capacity rooftop venue that brings top acts to the waterfront.
D.C., Seattle Draw Families With Kids, Bucking Trend
Most big, expensive cities are losing kids as families struggle to cover the cost of living.
The opposite is happening in Seattle and Washington, D.C.,
two pricey coastal cities diverging from the broader demographic trajectory.
The population of children under 18 in both cities grew 10% between 2015
and 2024, a bigger increase than in many family-friendly Sunbelt locales. Both
places had an influx of affluent young professionals in the 2000s and 2010s
who stayed once they had kids.
Washington, D.C.:Young college-educated professionals began flocking to
the nation’s capital in larger numbers in the mid-2000s. D.C. experienced the
most intense gentrification of any place in the U.S. between 2000 and 2016.
Seattle: In the decade ended in 2024, the adult population in Seattle grew
15%, the Journal’s analysis found. The number of kids jumped 10%, from about 100,000 to about 110,000.
317 Koreans Arrested 1 Year Ago, Still No Special Visas
It has been exactly one year since September 4th of last year,
when 317 Koreans were arrested in a mass raid at the Hyundai Motor Group and LG
Energy Solution joint battery plant construction site in Bryan County, Georgia.
An official from the immigrant rights group MESE stated, “Due to the one-day
crackdown, the local economy lost $2.4 million, skilled workers left, and local
small business sales dropped by double digits.“
A Korean grocery store(HanMi Super) owner, EunJung Whang near Bryan
County, said, “It was extremely tough right after the incident, but even a year
later, sales are still at only about 50% of what they used to be.“
Companies became cautious about sending dispatched workers and
increased local hiring, but the demand for Korean technicians remains high.
An official from a Korean law firm said,
“Local attorneys struggle to find technical workers on short notice,
Trump Pressures Warsh to “Lower Interest Rates”… Market Sides with the Fed
U.S. President Donald Trump directed explicit pressure on the Federal
Reserve (Fed) to cut interest rates, stating, “Our interest rates should be lower
than any other country in the world.” This sets up a direct collision between
the White House’s political demands and the Fed’s hawkish tightening stance.
On the 31st (local time), when asked whether he opposes the hawkish
(monetary tightening) stance of Fed Chair Warsh, President Trump said, “I
respect him very much and he will do what he needs to do,” but stressed, “Our
interest rates are too high,” sharpening his stance on Fed policy.
The market took the side of Warsh. According to the Chicago Mercantile
Exchange (CME) Fed Watch, the probability that the FOMC will hike the
benchmark interest rate by 0.25 percentage points in September rose to
65.4% today, up from around 35% prior to Jackson Hole.
There Are Four Forces Pressuring Bonds
Many forces are pushing Treasury yields higher, including worries about
government spending, a new Federal Reserve chairman and the huge surge
in bond issuance to fund the artificial-intelligence buildout.
But inflation is the main driver of the recent run-up.
There are 4 reasons to think of:
1) Fuel prices : U.S. national average retail
prices for diesel exceeded $5.68 a gallon on Wednesday, about $2 higher than a year ago.
2) Deficits : Gross U.S. debt surpassed $40 trillion for the
first time in August, a milestone that amplified the chorus of economists
warning that the U.S. is on an unsustainable fiscal trajectory.
3) Term premium : One place investors’ worries about fiscal policy or the growing
supply of bonds would be evident is the term premium, that has climbed recently.
4) Interest-rate bets : Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech alleviated some worries
the Fed was insufficiently committed to fighting inflation, helping spark the climb in yields.
OpenAI Launches ‘GPT-6 Astra’
“Welcome to the Era of Artificial General Intelligence”
OpenAI unveiled its next-generation AI model, GPT-6 Astra, on Sep 3rd.
“We succeeded in solving 10 math and theoretical computer science
problems.” Greg Brockman, President of OpenAI, stated “It is fair to say that
we are now living in the AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) era, and this
model is its first example. Welcome to the AGI era.“
OpenAI highlighted Astra’s “Computer Use” capabilities—which allow the
model to operate human screens and web browsers directly—at the forefront.
In the “Agent’s Final Exam,” an evaluation measuring performance in actual
work environments, Astra scored 59.3%, surpassing Claude Opus 5 (55.5%).
It also reportedly outperformed Anthropic’s latest model, Claude Fable 5.1
(released two days prior), in coding tasks and high-difficulty math evaluations.
With $499 Toothbrush, Dyson Wants AI to Get in Your Face
The common man just grins and bears the scraping for toothbrushing. But
Dyson, 79 years old, spent six years inventing an AI- powered toothbrush that
promises to floss teeth as it brushes them.
The Dyson Camera-Jet toothbrush, unveiled Tuesday, is the first foray into
oral care for Dyson’s company that is known for harnessing the power of air, be it in a vacuum cleaner, hair dryer or purifier.
Dyson and his team of engineers this time had to manipulate liquid. They
developed a pump mechanism and gravity free tank that works no matter the
angle the brush is held at to control the flow.
The brush head features a camera that analyzes 28 live images a second to identify gaps in the teeth,
triggering a conical burst of mouth rinse that flosses in between.
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