AI Adoption Momentum Slows As Hardware Investment Accelerates
As the third anniversary of ChatGPT’s launch quickly approaches, Nvidia’s market value has surged more than tenfold, leaving institutional investors pondering whether the AI data-center buildout nationwide is merely hype or if there is actually substance.
Hyperscalers have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, capital expenditures that will soon need to demonstrate clear returns; failure to do so risks undermining the lofty valuations for the so-called Magnificent Seven stocks.
On Monday, Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius published a note with new insights into the bank’s quarterly AI adoption tracker through September. The report indicates that while AI investment continues to accelerate, adoption rates at large firms are starting to slow down.
Hatzius said the AI adoption growth rate slowed to 9.7% of U.S. firms using AI in the third quarter, up from 9.2% in the second.
Finance and real estate had some of the largest gains, while educational services reported a decline. Meanwhile, broadcasting and publishing are expected to experience the fastest adoption over the next six months.
Labor market effects are still muted, according to Goldman’s chief economist. He noted that job displacement is emerging across tech, design, and customer service. AI roles made up 28% of IT job postings, while AI was cited in layoffs affecting 10,375 workers since the previous update. Goldman expects that full AI adoption across corporate America could displace 6% to 7% of all workers.
More charts from Hatzius’ note:
ZeroHedge Pro subscribers can access the full note and additional charts in the usual place.
Furthermore, a must-read from DB analyst Adrian Cox:
Mayor Brandon Johnson has long been as popular as Ebola in Chicago, a politician who has continued to spend wildly while virtually chasing businesses from the city. Johnson was brought to power with the support of the Chicago Teacher’s Union (CTU) and proceeded to approve bloated contracts and pensions demanded by the CTU. Now, both Johnson and CTU have lost a fight to secure a $200 million loan to avoid the need to reduce the budget or staff.
A bill has come due, and Johnson is claiming that the criticism by some of his closest allies is due to racism.
Johnson fired the head of the school board and packed the board with his allies in order to secure the loan. However, in the end, his allies could not sign off on what would be a disastrous short-term, high-rate loan to plug the hole in the budget.
Chicago politicians have repeatedly yielded to the CTU on massive pension deals to secure the union’s support and contributions in elections. The pensions have triggered financial crises for years. Johnson’s solution was familiar: just borrow more money at ruinous rates to kick the can down the road. In the meantime, the public schools (despite a $10.2 billion budget) continue to fail students, particularly minority and poor students, in a system producing dismal performance and proficiency levels.
The $10.2 billion budget, approved by 12 of 20 board members, closes a $734 million deficit but does not include a loan, which the mayor’s office sought to cover the pension payment and other unexpected shortfalls.
After the pandemic, money from the Biden Administration ran out, and Johnson actually had to balance the books. That would have involved confronting the CPS staff and the powerful union. Instead, Johnson wanted to sign off on another loan. When the former head of the board floated cutting back on the budget and staff, Johnson and the CTU forced him out.
Even the CPS staff was raising alarms over Johnson’s new math approach to loans. They noted that this loan would be signed without any promise of future revenue. In other words, it would just push the CPS and city closer to insolvency through “crisis borrowing.” The result would be a cascading failure, with expected credit downgrades, despite the fact that CPS bonds are already rated at junk status due to past overborrowing to plug budget gaps.
Johnson, however, thinks that money magically appears with loans and that he can simply continue to borrow his way out of any budget shortfall.
It was too much even for the city council, which has approved overspending for years.
Johnson responded in signature fashion and accused his own allies, many of whom are minorities, of effective racism:
“When you put a Black man in charge of a city, all of a sudden everybody wants to be an accountant.”
Of course, one does not have to be an accountant to see that borrowing almost a quarter of a billion dollars for a system near bankruptcy is irrational, especially when it involves a high-rate loan with no revenue stream to support the added burden. It is like a citizen spending wildly on a credit card without any means to pay the principal, let alone the interest.
The difference is that Johnson is risking insolvency for an entire city, suppressing creditworthiness and increasing the costs of future loans.
CPS itself teaches personal finance subjects to students, though it is so heavily laden with jargon that it is hard to tell it from a social studies class. The course description on “educating for equity” seems geared more to balancing societal shortcomings than personal budgets:
“Financial Education begins with students’ identities and memberships in our communities, extends into disciplinary inquiry-based, culturally sustaining instruction that educates for broad economic inclusion, mobility, critical examination of existing systems, and financially secure individuals and communities.”
In the meantime, Chicago is now facing a $1.15 billion shortfall and Johnson is calling for increasing taxes on the wealthy and businesses despite the fact that Chicago is losing both businesses and residents. The incoming citizens are largely immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, in the sanctuary city. That has driven expenditures even higher for the city while it loses businesses and residents needed for its tax base.
As a Chicagoan, I have no illusions about the city politics. There has never been reasonable fiscal policies in the city in my lifetime. However, Johnson has moved from the dismissive to delusional in ignoring the economic realities growing in the city.
Watch: Palmer Luckey Pilots eVTOL Like A Real-Life ‘Star Wars’ Landspeeder
When Anduril founder and CEO Palmer Luckey isn’t flying his UH-60 Blackhawk, driving his Mark V Special Operations Craft at high speeds on the open water around Newport Beach, California, or playing with $20,000 night-vision goggles, he’s about to become a whole lot more occupied with a new toy: a single-person eVTOL, referred to as the “Formula One racing car for the sky.”
On Saturday, eVTOL startup Jetson released a video showing Palmer receiving his Jetson One and flying the single-seat aircraft around an open field.
“This historic milestone marks the beginning of Jetson’s global rollout and a bold leap forward in personal aviation. The Jetson ONE unit was delivered to a facility in Carlsbad, California, where Jetson’s Founder and CTO Tomasz Patan and CEO Stephan D’haene assisted in person with the unboxing and pre-flight checks” to Palmer, Jetson stated.
Jetson continued, “Palmer Luckey, a passionate and experienced aviator, did complete the ground training under 50 minutes prior taking effectively the controls for his first low-altitude flights. A record, demonstrating Palmer’s unique understanding of advanced technologies.”
Palmer owns a Blackhawk helicopter named “Shamu” – just like the orca whale at SeaWorld.
I try to play it down the middle and be a centrist most of the time—I really do. I can admit that it feels like conservatives have outrage over nearly everything nowadays, and it can feel excessive.
Every time conservatives blow up over something like Cracker Barrel making slight changes to its logo—an idea I’ll admit I’ve even written about—we risk becoming the very party that is outraged by everything. It’s the old adage in action: “when you point one finger forward, three point back at you.”
But even bearing that in mind, there are some situations that make me truly livid in a way a logo change at Cracker Barrel never could. What transpired over the last few days with the death of Iryna Zarutska, and the media’s astounding lack of coverage on it, is one such instance.
By now most people know the story. On August 22, 2025, 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska was fatally stabbed on a Charlotte light rail train by 34-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr., a homeless man with a long criminal record including more than 10 arrests. She died at the scene, and the grotesque act was caught on surveillance video for the whole world to see.
Today, the story is more becoming about the media’s lack of coverage of the incident. No major mainstream media outlet reported on the horrific incident.
After a decade of lecturing the American public about injustice, an innocent woman dies as a direct result of progressive policy and all of a sudden, the “activists” in the media for some reason don’t have a single word to say about it.
The very party that is obsessed with immigration and the mainstream media machine that perpetuates their propaganda accordingly, somehow can’t muster up a coherent opinion about a migrant being senselessly murdered? Why could that be?
Where are all the “journalists” with the Ukrainian flags in their profiles? Where are all the women’s rights advocates screaming about how this is the patriarchy’s fault?
Where the f*ck is…well, everybody?
The fact that not a single major news outlet covered this gruesome murder—with the exception of Axios, which ran a piece that instead focused on surveillance cameras instead of the crime itself—is outrageous.
Even people on the left should have trouble doing the mental gymnastics necessary to justify ignoring this take. But at this point, who knows?
Regardless, the bad news is that the legacy mainstream media has been fully exposed as a corrupt cesspool with a deeply progressive agenda, catering to the Democratic Party and whoever is paying for ad space.
The good news is that this latest shining example of just how anti-American and disgusting the media has become may finally force the free market—and the country itself—to acknowledge it and demand real, long-lasting change.
Last week, a story broke that CBS was considering hiring Bari Weiss for a metric f*ckton of cash — up to $200 million is the number that is being reported.
This could represent the first of many recruitments of journalists who defected from the legacy model to go out on their own. I’ve often praised outlets like Substack for offering a democratized model that pays real journalists what they’re worth and provides a release valve for reporters still interested in the truth.
What this CBS rumor shows is that, whether by free market capitalist force or common sense, these age-old institutions are realizing that people still want the truth and journalists with integrity.
Journalists like Bari Weiss, Seymour Hersh, Catherine Herridge, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and many others who were abandoned by the legacy model are on the cusp of again being recognized for their actual value as truth-tellers. Their willingness to step away from tradition, once seen as a risk, now looks like proof of their integrity. Ironically, these are the very people the legacy media will be forced to turn back to when they realize their audiences want — and will pay for.
This trend accelerated during the election campaign season when the media ran cover for Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. Trust—even among centrists and Democrats—was lost. Now, the lack of coverage of this latest murder, an incident that would have been front-page news everywhere if the races were reversed, has likely eroded what little integrity the media still had.
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This is one of those rare cases where outrage over the lack of coverage will surpass the coverage itself, and rightly so. The fact that Brown had been arrested and released more than a dozen times before committing this horrific, videotaped crime lays bare the consequences of regressive Democratic policies. Judges and magistrates so incompetent as to allow this man back on the streets should be investigated, if not charged, for gross negligence that cost an innocent woman her life.
It’s unthinkable to look for a silver lining in such a barbaric act, but I truly believe that if Iryna Zarutska’s tragic death becomes enough of a worldwide story, she could be remembered as the turning point where the American media was finally held accountable and forced back toward true journalism. That would be a sense of justice that our legal system obviously failed in a massive way to provide.
This is the very system and country Zarutska believed in enough to make her home, risking everything to be here. The least we can do is honor the trust she placed in us by demanding change, speaking loudly about the justice system and media that failed her, and working to ensure this never happens again. And while there’s more than enough outrage to go around – and in this case truly justified – it’s the hope for change that brings me to honor Iryna in this piece today.
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Consumer Credit Trounces Estimates On Unexpected Surge In Credit Card Usage
One month after we reported that US consumers appeared tapped out following the first consecutive 2-month stretch of declines in credit card balances, moments ago the Fed published the latest monthly consumer credit data and once again it was a bit of a brainteaser. That’s because after several months of weak credit creation, July saw the second highest monthly increase of 2025 with a total of $16.0 billion in credit, up almost double from the revised June print of $9.6 billion (vs the unrevised number of $7.4 billion), and well above the $10.2 billion median estimate.
Boring, as usual, growth in non-revolving credit (which is basically auto and student loans) eased back and after 3 consecutive prints at or just shy of $10 billion, the July increase of $5.534 billion was the smallest since February, bringing the total to a new record high of $3.749 trillion.
While we won’t have a detailed breakdown between the two components until the end of Q3, we remind readers that the increase that in Q2 was driven in roughly equal contributions from student loans (+8.1BN) and auto loans (+$6.1).
As usual, the surprise was in the big jump, and sudden reversal in the recent slowdown in credit card debt, which in July surged by $10.5 billion from the upward revised $807 million June (a number which previously was negative).
And just like that the acute slowdown – if not outright decline – in credit card debt which we saw starting in February 2025 and which led to a sizable decline in May (and before the revision, in June), is now over thanks to the biggest monthly increase in credit card debt of 2025, which pushes the total to the highest level since Nov 2024 when we saw a major drop off in credit card balances.
The Supreme Court on Sept. 8 temporarily put on hold a lower court order restricting immigration stops in Southern California.
Three justices dissented from the new order.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) started its operations in the Los Angeles area on June 6.
Local and state officials have strongly criticized the effort, saying the federal government is overstepping its legal authority.
Several illegal immigrant advocacy groups are suing the Trump administration over the enforcement program.
The new high court order pauses a temporary restraining order Judge Maame Frimpong of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California issued on July 11 that limits the factors law enforcement officials may use when making immigration-related stops and arrests.
Specifically, Frimpong barred the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from stopping or arresting individuals based exclusively on factors such as the language the person speaks or where the person works.
In the emergency application in Noem v. Perdomo, which was filed Aug. 7, the Supreme Court on Sept. 8 granted the stay pending an appeal that is before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed an opinion concurring in the stay order.
“It should come as no surprise that some Administrations may be more laissez-faire in enforcing immigration law, and other Administrations more strict,” Kavanaugh wrote, noting the Supreme Court denied efforts to compel the Biden administration to take stronger enforcement actions.
“Article III judges may have views on which policy approach is better or fairer,” he wrote. “But judges are not appointed to make those policy calls.”
Kavanaugh’s reasoning is simple and correct.
“By illegally immigrating into and remaining in the country, they are not only violating the immigration laws, but also jumping in front of those noncitizens who follow the rules and wait in line to immigrate into the United States through the legal immigration process.
For those reasons, the interests of illegal immigrants in evading questioning (and thus evading detection of their illegal presence) are not particularly substantial as a legal matter.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor filed an opinion dissenting from the new order.
The government is “seizing people using firearms, physical violence, and warehouse detentions,” according to Sotomayor.
“Nor are undocumented immigrants the only ones harmed by the Government’s conduct.”
Sotomayor consistently refers to illegal migrants as “undocumented immigrants.” In her hierarchy of concerns, the comfort of illegal migrants appears to rank above the good of American citizens.
“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” Sotomayor wrote.
“Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred in the dissent.
Sotomayor writes that “Operation At Large,” an immigration enforcement effort, “has sparked ‘panic and fear’ across Los Angeles and its surrounding areas.”
Sotomayor offers quotes from Latino U.S. citizens who are worried they might be wrongfully detained.
Could it be perhaps that Los Angeles and its surrounding areas are swarming with illegal migrants who fear deportation.
President Donald Trump on Sunday issued a “last warning” to the Hamas terrorist group to accept a deal to secure the release of all hostages still held by the group.
He said in a post on Truth Social that Israel “[has] accepted my terms. It is time for Hamas to accept as well. I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting.This is my last warning, there will not be another one!”
The specific terms being negotiated by Trump have not been publicly released.
In comments to reporters at Joint Base Andrews after he returned from a brief trip to New York, Trump expressed confidence that his administration could reach a deal to end the conflict between Israel and Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip “very soon.”
“It’s a problem we want to solve, for the Middle East, for Israel, for everybody,” Trump said.
Israel launched an invasion into the Gaza Strip following an Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack by Hamas terrorists into Israel, an attack that killed over 1,200 Israelis. A total of 251 people, including both Israeli and American citizens, were kidnapped during the incursion.
Of the 48 hostages who are still being held by Hamas, Trump expressed hope that all could be returned through diplomacy.
“I think we’re going to get them all,” he said.
He acknowledged that some may have died before they could be rescued. In such cases, the United States will pursue a return of the victim’s remains.
As the Trump administration continues to work towards an end to the war in Ukraine, Trump reiterated his intentions to bring an end to the Middle Eastern conflict.
“We’re working on a solution that may be very good,” the president said.
On Saturday, Israel-based N12 News reported that Trump had put forward a new cease-fire proposal to Hamas, under which Hamas would reportedly release the 48 remaining hostages in exchange for the release of thousands of Palestinians jailed in Israel. The plan calls for negotiations to end the conflict in the Gaza Strip entirely during the cease-fire.
The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment.
Trump said in his post that Israel is on board with his proposal, although Israeli officials have not yet publicly backed the plan.
Hamas said following Trump’s online post that it received some ideas from the United States on how to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza and was discussing ways to develop those ideas but gave no specific details about any potential agreement.
The terrorist group in a statement repeated its openness to negotiations for the release of hostages in exchange for a “clear announcement of an end to the war” and withdrawal of all Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.
Venezuela Preparing For ‘Armed Struggle’ In Case Of US Attack: Maduro
Venezuela is preparing for armed struggle in the scenario it comes under attack by the United States, or its sovereignty is threatened, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro warned soon after President Trump escalated the Pentagon’s force posture in the southern Caribbean.
“If Venezuela were attacked in any way, it would move into a stage of planned and organized armed struggle by all its people against aggression, whether local, regional, or national, in defense of peace, territorial integrity, sovereignty, and our people,” Maduro had said Friday. On Sunday, tens of thousands of more troops were mobilized.
President Trump soon after warned that if Venezuelan jets keep buzzing US warships in regional waters, then they would be shot out of the sky (if deemed a threat to American vessels).
Maduro has confirmed initiation of militia training to involve citizens in the country’s national defense efforts – a ‘popular mobilization’ of sorts. Interestingly, in a televised statement he featured a visual diagram, outlining the current levels of operational readiness within the nation’s defense forces, stating that currently a “yellow phase” of integrated defense is active.
The Maduro government on Sunday called up additional troops to deploy in border regions amid the US deployments off Venezuela’s coast:
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has ordered more troops in the Guajira region of Zulia state and the Paraguana peninsula in Falcon, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said, adding that the area constituted “a drug trafficking route”.
The military’s presence on the island of Nueva Esparta and in the states of Sucre and Delta Amacuro will also be expanded. Some 25,000 troops are set to be deployed, up from the 10,000 which have been deployed in the states of Zulia and Tachira that border Colombia, he said.
Some interesting scenes coming from the Venezuelan coast:
TERROR: Maduro is forcing Venezuelan fisherman to accompany TdA Fentanyl traffickers along their routes serving as human shields. Maduro’s Bolivarian Militia is a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. pic.twitter.com/PKnXDoduiX
And so it seems Maduro is making an effort to convince Washington that he has the narco-trafficking situation in and around Venezuela fully under control.
Importantly, Trump has rejected accusations that the US is plotting regime change in Caracas. “We’re not talking about that,” he told reporters Friday when asked about this scenario.
The US has justified its recent actions, which included last week’s military strike on an allegedly drug-laden boat that killed eleven people, by saying that Maduro is in league with the cartels.
“If we hadn’t won this election we would have all been vaxxed to death and censored so no one could hear our dying screams”
– Mike Benz on “X”
That reckoning you’ve heard about lo these many years? It’s here now. We’re in it.
You just can’t see all the moving parts, and if you did, you might not understand how or where they are moving, and what they are fixing to do next. Aside from certain US senators playing their pre-scripted mad scenes for the cameras, a disquieting quiet blankets the swamp like a miasma.
It feels like a long, still moment before some shaking of the earth. Everyone senses it and the guilty must feel it most keenly.
That’s why they are laying low and keeping their traps shut.
Every criminal defense lawyer inside the beltway is burning the midnight oil (and racking up the billable hours, ka-ching). Meanwhile, where are their clients? No longer peddling alibis on MSNBC (MSNOW), at least. I doubt that John Brennan is even in the country. My guess would be he’s cooling his heels in Abu Dhabi, where the extradition protocols with the USA remain comfortably squishy to his advantage. (He reportedly became a Muslim while running the CIA station in Riyadh between 1996-99, just in time for 9-11. . . hmmmm. . . .)
Hillary Clinton has been keeping her pie-hole closed for weeks now while rattling around that big house in Chappaqua, NY, like a BB in a packing crate. Is anyone counting the wine-boxes coming and going from the place? It must be maddening to be HRC — but that new extra edge of prosecution terror would just be larding the lily, considering what Vlad Putin learned about her mental state way back in 2016: deeply unstable. . .diabetic. . . on tranqs. . . often plastered. . . bursts of rage. . . .
Comey and Clapper? No more cute pranks on the beach for Big Jim, 86 on the menacing messages in seashells and putting out Taylor Swift fan-boy Tik-toks. Was that some attempt to not be taken seriously? Like you’re some kind of overgrown, harmless child?
James Clapper, of course, would be voted most likely to flip on his compadres, if such a canvass were taken on Coup island. He was the first to publicly announce his lawyering-up in the Russia collusion affair. He never expected it would come to this, this ordeal of interrogation. . . his “good soldier” self plopped ignominiously in the witness chair. . . the odor of his own fear. . . the proffer (just tell us what really happened). . . the US attorneys appearing to leer at him, his house mortgaged to pay the attorney’s fees. . . what’s a poor boy to do. . . ?
Adam Schiff has gone radio silent. A miracle! Alas, the autopen pardon granted for his J-6 Committee doings apparently does not apply to matters such as mortgage fraud and wire fraud. He realizes with chills and sighs of despair that this ain’t no foolin’ around. People go to jail for these things. . . gulp! His attorney absolutely forbids any televised appeals to his fan-base, as if the glamorati of Rodeo Drive could do anything to stop what’s coming. Too bad Ed Buck and his magic checkbook are no longer around.
Even the seeming untouchables, Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lisa Monaco, Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, Anrew Weissmann, Marc Elias must be listening hard for shoes to drop. They thought they had it made in the shade after 2020. They had the USA on a string, they thought. Home free. The trouble with the smarty-pants way of life is sometimes you out-smart yourself and your pants fall down. But all they can do in this late hour is induce a bunch of federal judges — recently imported from countries where justice means casting goat neckbones across the dusty floor of a mud hut — to gum up every executive action coming out of the White House with a poorly-argued TRO. They might as well be on a U-haul box truck throwing furniture off the back at a fleet of pursuing cop cars.
Mr. Trump is having sport with them now. Their crimes spanning the decade past are being bundled into one big coup case against the country, a color revolution on their own citizens and against “the democracy” that they never stop pretending to tout. If I am perceiving all this correctly, the days and weeks ahead will be as consequential a train of events as ever rolled down the tracks into Union Station, DC.
Looks like it will start this week with Robert F Kennedy, Jr., announcing the suspected culprits in the great autism question. That will rock the pharma industry to the very hairs on its roots. They have been trying since the 1980s to bury that idea that autism comes from anything they do. Next, the nation will have to ask: why did it take Mr. Kennedy only seven months to arrive at a plausible answer to the decades’ long autism mystery? Maybe because it was not such a difficult mystery to solve. Just that nobody wanted to collate and assemble the information. The answer was too ugly. So, they buried it on-purpose.
That set of revelations will segue soon enough into the reveal of facts, data, studies retrieved from the thought-to-be hidden files of the CDC, FDA, and NIH as to just how damaging the Covid-19 vaccinations really were. . . which will lead to answers as to how the various agencies under HHS (and likely the Pentagon, too) conspired to materialize the Covid virus in the first place, and that means the names and titles of actual persons whop did it: the deputy secretaries of this and that, higher-ups, folks in dark NGOs. . . and all that will combine with new information about the supremely messed-up election of 2020, and so on down the long line of the many related, serial coup operations.
It’s one thing to reveal all that information, with its criminal overtone. And it’s another thing to get around to prosecuting it. I doubt you will be disappointed, though. Like I said. We’re in it. It’s happening. It’s roiling under the surface.
“Go Talk To Bill Gates About Me”: How JP Morgan Enabled Jeffrey Epstein’s Crimes, Snagged Netanyahu Meeting
On an autumn day in 2011, Jeffrey Epstein stepped into JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters at 270 Park Avenue and rode the elevator to the executive floors where the bank’s leaders, including Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, kept their offices. Epstein, who had pleaded guilty to a sex crime in Florida three years earlier, had a message for the bank’s top lawyer, Stephen Cutler: he had “turned over a new leaf,” he said, and powerful friends could vouch for him. “Go talk to Bill Gates about me.”
Key takeaways:
Epstein was connected to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, not just former PM Ehud Barak
He wired ‘hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to Russian banks and young Eastern European women‘
Accounts for young women were opened without in-person verification (in one case a SSN could not be confirmed)
Jes Staley was constantly running interference for Epstein vs. JPM compliance concerns
At Jes Staley’s urging, compliance spoke with Epstein’s lawyer Ken Starr, who insisted “no crimes” had been committed.
Epstein had accounts at JPM for at least 134 (!) entities
JPMorgan funded/serviced pieces tied to Ghislaine Maxwell (millions, incl. $7.4M for a Sikorsky helicopter) and helped finance MC2, the modeling agency linked to Jean-Luc Brunel.
For more than a decade, JPMorgan Chase processed over $1 billion in transactions for Jeffrey Epstein – including hundreds of millions routed to Russian banks and payments to young Eastern European women, opened at least 134 accounts tied to him and his associates, and even helped move millions to Ghislaine Maxwell – including $7.4 million for a Sikorsky helicopter – while anti–money laundering staff repeatedly flagged large cash withdrawals and wire patterns aligned with known trafficking indicators, according to a new report from the NY Times following a six-year investigation that involved “some 13,000 pages” of legal and financial records. Funny how they sat on this until now – maybe it’s related to this, but do read on.
Inside JPMorgan, the debate over whether to keep Epstein as a client had been simmering for years. Epstein was lucrative. His accounts held more than $200 million and generated millions in fees, and he opened doors to wealthy prospects and world leaders. He had helped midwife the bank’s 2004 purchase of Highbridge Capital Management, earning a $15 million payday. Senior bankers credited him with introductions to figures such as Sergey Brin and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sure enough, just as more bank employees were losing patience with Epstein in 2011, he began dangling more goodies. That March, to the pleasant surprise of JPMorgan’s investment bankers in Israel, they were granted an audience with Netanyahu. The bankers informed Staley, who forwarded their email to Epstein with a one-word message: “Thanks.” (The bank spokesman said JPMorgan “neither needed nor sought Epstein’s help for meetings with any government leaders.”) And around that same time, Epstein presented an opportunity that, like the Highbridge deal years earlier, had the potential to be transformative.
This one involved Bill Gates, who had only recently entered Epstein’s orbit. In an apparent effort to ingratiate — and further entangle — himself with his bankers and the Microsoft co-founder, Epstein pitched Erdoes and Staley on creating an enormous investment and charitable fund with something like $100 billion in assets. -NY Times
Compliance leaders urged the bank to “exit” the felon after anti–money laundering personnel flagged a yearslong pattern of large cash withdrawals and constant wires that, in hindsight, matched known indicators of trafficking and other illicit conduct.; instead, top executives overrode objections at least four times, allowed accounts for young women to be opened with scant verification, and paid Epstein directly – the aforementioned $15 million tied to a hedge-fund deal and $9 million in a settlement. Even in 2011, as concerns mounted, internal notes referenced decisions “pending Dimon review,” while Jes Staley, a senior executive and Epstein confidant, traded sexually suggestive messages (“Say hi to Snow White”) and shared confidential bank information with the client.
Exact dollar figures and destinations across years:
$1.7M in cash (2004–05) and earlier $175K cash (2003).
$7.4M wired to buy Maxwell’s Sikorsky helicopter.
$50M credit line approved in 2010 even post-plea; ~$212M then at the bank (about half his net worth).
$176M moved to Deutsche Bank after the 2013 exit.
JPM of course regrets everything – calling their relationship with Epstein “a mistake and in hindsight we regret it, but we did not help him commit his heinous crimes,” Joseph Evangelisti, a JPMorgan spokesman, said in a statement. “We would never have continued to do business with him if we believed he was engaged in an ongoing sex trafficking operation.” The bank has placed much of the blame on Jes Staley, then a rising executive and close confidant of Epstein. “We now know that trust was misplaced,” Evangelisti said.
A Client Too Valuable To Lose
Epstein’s ties to JPMorgan reached back to the late 1990s, when then–Chief Executive Sandy Warner met him at 60 Wall Street and urged a lieutenant, Mr. Staley, to do the same. Epstein soon became one of the private bank’s top revenue generators. A 2003 internal report estimated his net worth at $300 million and attributed more than $8 million in fees to him that year.
Even then, there were warning signs. In 2003 alone, he withdrew more than $175,000 in cash. Bank employees recognized the need to report large cash transactions to federal monitors but failed to treat the withdrawals as a signal of deeper risk. In the years that followed, compliance staff repeatedly expressed alarm over Epstein’s wires, cash activity and requests to open accounts for young women with minimal verification. One internal note, describing large transfers to an 18-year-old totaling “about 450,000 since opening,” read: “Sugar Daddy!”
Still, influence carried weight. Epstein was prized not only for his personal balances but for the business he brought in. Through his network, which included hedge fund founder Glenn Dubin and a constellation of billionaires and officials, he introduced potential clients and helped shape the bank’s strategy. The Highbridge deal was heralded internally as “probably the most important transaction” of Mr. Staley’s career.
Internal Dissent, Repeatedly Overruled
From 2005 to 2011, the bank’s leaders revisited the Epstein question several times. In 2006, after a Florida indictment alleging solicitation from a teenage girl, JPMorgan convened a team to decide whether to exit the client. The bank swiftly jettisoned another customer, the actor Wesley Snipes, when he faced tax charges. It did not do the same with Epstein. Instead, it imposed a narrow restriction – not to “proactively solicit” new investments from him – while continuing to lend and move his money.
Within the bank, even casual exchanges betrayed an awareness of Epstein’s proclivities. “So painful to read,” Mary Erdoes, now head of asset and wealth management, emailed upon seeing news of the indictment. Mr. Staley replied that he had met Epstein the prior evening and that Epstein “adamantly denies” involvement with minors. At other moments, the tone turned flippant. Describing a Hamptons fundraiser, Mr. Staley wrote that the age gaps among couples “would have fit in well with Jeffrey,” to which Ms. Erdoes replied that people were “laughing about Jeffrey.”
By 2008, after Epstein pleaded guilty and registered as a sex offender, pressure mounted to end the relationship. “No one wants him,” one banker wrote. Mr. Cutler, the general counsel, would later say he viewed Epstein as a reputational threat – “This is not an honorable person in any way. He should not be a client.” Yet he did not insist on expulsion, and the matter was not escalated to Mr. Dimon. Epstein remained.
In early 2011, William Langford, head of compliance and a former Treasury official, urged that Epstein be “exited.” He warned that ultrawealthy clients could warp judgment and that patterns in Epstein’s accounts resembled those of trafficking networks.
The bank’s head of compliance, William Langford, was especially alarmed. “No patience for this,” he emailed a colleague. Langford had joined JPMorgan in 2006 after years of policing financial crimes for the Treasury Department. He knew — and had warned colleagues — that companies can be criminally charged for money laundering if they willfully ignored such activities by their clients. He saw ultrawealthy customers as a particular blind spot; all the time that private bankers spent wining and dining these lucrative clients could cloud judgments about their trustworthiness. It looked like that was what was happening with Epstein. One of Langford’s achievements at JPMorgan was the creation of a task force devoted to combating human trafficking. The group noted in a presentation that frequent large cash withdrawals and wire transfers — exactly what employees were seeing in Epstein’s accounts — were totems of such illicit activity.
…
Langford said in a deposition that he started off by quickly explaining the human-trafficking initiative. In that context, how could the bank justify working with someone who had pleaded guilty to a sex crime and was now under investigation for sex trafficking? -NY Times
Mr. Staley pushed back, relaying Epstein’s insistence that allegations would be overturned. Days later, the bank agreed to keep the accounts open.
Money, Access and a Second Chance
Even as internal skepticism grew, Epstein stayed in touch with his former private banker, Justin Nelson, and continued to surface in meetings involving Leon Black, a billionaire client. Staley remained close to Epstein for years, exchanging personal messages and visiting his residences, even as he ascended to run Barclays. In 2019, after Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges and later died by suicide in a Manhattan jail, investigators, journalists and regulators turned anew to his banking relationships.
JPMorgan launched an internal review, code-named Project Jeep, and filed belated suspicious activity reports flagging about 4,700 Epstein transactions totaling more than $1.1 billion. The bank settled civil claims with Epstein’s victims for $290 million and with the U.S. Virgin Islands for $75 million, without admitting wrongdoing. No executives lost their jobs. Mr. Dimon, who testified that he did not recall knowing about Epstein before 2019, remains one of the most powerful figures in American finance.
To Bridgette Carr, a law professor and anti-trafficking expert retained by the Virgin Islands, the case poses a larger question about incentives. JPMorgan, she concluded, enabled Epstein’s crimes. “I am deeply worried here that the ultimate message to other financial institutions is that they can keep serving traffickers,” she said. “It’s still profitable to do that, given the lack of substantial consequences.”
