Authored by Jennie Durant via TheConversation.com,

America’s bees and beekeepers are losing a valuable ally just when they need its help most.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to soon close the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, a 6,500-acre agricultural research station in Maryland that is home to the nation’s premier bee research and disease diagnosis hub, the Beltsville Bee Research Lab.

The closure comes at a critical moment for bees. In winter 2025, many beekeepers lost over half their operations as pesticide-resistant varroa mites spread, bringing deadly viruses. The losses have led to low honey production, and soaring fuel costs have made shipping bees cross-country for agricultural pollination increasingly expensive, further stressing the industry.

Beekeeping involves keeping colonies as healthy as possible. Often, beekeepers need help. Allagash Brewing/Flickr, CC BY

During my 14 years researching bees and beekeepers, and in writing my new book, “Bitter Honey: Big Ag’s Threat to Bees and the Fight to Save Them,” I’ve seen beekeepers frequently turn to the USDA bee labs for support during crises like this. Because honey bees contribute roughly US$15 billion to U.S. crop production – native and managed bees pollinate more than 130 crops – these labs help stabilize the nation’s food system.

Today, that scientific support system is at risk, just as beekeepers face their greatest challenges and native bee populations continue to decline.

Why the Beltsville Bee Lab matters

USDA’s bee researchers have served beekeepers for over 130 years, including nearly 90 years at the Beltsville station. One of the Beltsville Bee Lab’s standout services is its bee disease diagnostic service, where beekeepers can send samples for analysis free of charge.

Since the early 2000s, Beltsville researchers have helped beekeepers respond to varroa mites – a primary driver of high colony losses each year. Now, the lab is helping them prepare for a deadlier mite that is infesting honey bees in Asia, Tropilaelaps mercedesae, or “tropi” mites – by developing detection and response protocols that beekeepers can use to protect their colonies.

Varroa mites are the leading source of stress on honey bees, affecting half of all colonies at times. Other major stressors affect large numbers of colonies as well. Farm Doc Daily/University of Illinois

While the Beltsville Bee Lab supports beekeepers nationwide, it’s located in a prime farming and beekeeping region. Its closure would leave a critical research gap in the Northeast, where beekeepers help pollinate cranberries, squash, blueberries and other crops.

Its location has also allowed researchers to conduct extensive studies on winter colony losses, research that would be difficult to replicate at the remaining USDA bee labs, which are primarily located in more temperate climates.

Hidden costs of bee lab closures

The USDA states that it will decommission the entire Beltsville Agricultural Research Center because building maintenance and renovations would cost an estimated $500 million. But closing the lab could cost beekeepers, farmers and consumers far more.

For example, in winter 2025, beekeepers experienced their highest losses in U.S. history. Many opened their colonies in January that year and found that more than 60% of their colonies had died – nearly 1.7 million colonies nationwide. Beekeepers contacted Beltsville, and researchers quickly flew out to test affected colonies for pesticide residues, diseases and varroa mites, data that could help guide beekeepers’ treatment response.

Entomologist Jay Evans explains what the Beltsville Bee Lab does and the diseases bees face.

A few weeks later, as the lab’s scientists were working on the crisis, the Trump administration fired probationary researchers and staff at the bee labs, along with thousands of other employees across the USDA. The Beltsville team was hobbled, and the remaining staff restricted from communicating with beekeepers.

Because of the communication lockdown, it took nearly six months for researchers to deliver their findings. By then, the season was over and beekeepers had been forced to navigate the crisis on their own.

The loss of bee colonies ultimately cost beekeepers an estimated $600 million in lost honey production, pollination income and colony replacement costs – far more than the one-time projected costs to modernize the entire Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.

These losses can hit consumer pocketbooks too.

When beekeepers lose nearly half their operations, they often need to charge farmers more for pollination services to stay afloat. Those added costs can ripple through the food system and affect what everyone pays for the fruits, vegetables and nuts that depend on pollinators.

Beekeepers often transport their bees across the country to meet pollination needs and produce honey at different times of year. The map shows the movement of bees out of California to other states in summer and fall. Jennifer K. Bond, et al., USDA Economic Research Service, 2021

More cuts planned to US pollinator research

The Beltsville Bee Lab closure is not an isolated case. The administration has proposed eliminating the U.S. Geological Survey’s Ecosystems Mission Area, a move that could defund the USGS Bee Lab, an essential resource for research on native bees.

It also plans to decommission 16 USGS research centers nationwide, including the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in North Dakota, the highest honey-producing state in the nation. For decades, beekeepers have brought colonies to forage on grasslands in the region. Researchers have been tracking how the shift from grasslands to crops has affected honey bee health and beekeeper revenue.

The U.S. Forest Service also faces widespread cuts, including the planned closure of 57 of its 77 research stations throughout the United States. Since the Forest Service manages over 193 million acres of federal lands that support native plants and pollinators, those closures could affect crucial pollinator habitat as well.

All kinds of bees are valuable for pollinating crops and flowers, not just managed honey bees. Jean Hort/Flickr Creative Commons

These closures risk a severe brain drain.

When the first Trump administration moved the USDA Economic Research Service from Washington to Kansas City, Missouri, in 2019, the agency lost over 75% of its experienced research staff. A recent survey suggests that history may repeat itself. If the reorganization goes through, farmers and beekeepers will lose experts with decades of institutional and technical knowledge.

The Beltsville Bee Lab is a key part of the often-unappreciated federal research infrastructure that supports the health of pollinators and the nation’s food supply.

If the USDA and the USGS move forward with their plans to close bee labs and research sites, the result could be slower responses to bee threats, weaker tracking of native bee populations and diminished pollinator habitat for bees – all of which raise costs and risks for beekeepers, farmers and everyone who depends on the food system.

Via The Cradle

US officials believe that a Chinese-made shoulder-fired missile was likely used by Iranian forces to shoot down a US F-15E Strike Eagle over southwestern Iran last month, NBC News reported Saturday. 

The incident marks the first time in decades that the US has had to acknowledge that one of its jets was shot down by enemy fire, although three F-15Es were also shot down in Kuwait in March. 

Washington insists the Kuwait incident was due to ‘friendly fire,’ even as Iran claims responsibility.

Following the downing of the F-15E in southwestern Iran, the Pentagon allegedly launched a two-day rescue operation to recover the aircraft’s two-man crew, whose names and photos have not yet been made public.

While US officials continue to investigate the specifics of the shootdown, intelligence sources suggest that Beijing may also have provided Tehran with an advanced, long-range early-warning radar, the YLC-8B, designed to track stealth aircraft. 

US President Donald Trump previously said that Chinese President Xi Jinping had personally “promised” him that Beijing would not supply military hardware to Iran, adding, “That’s a beautiful promise. I take him at his word. I appreciated it.”

However, reports of Chinese-manufactured man-portable air defense systems, or Manpads, being found on the battlefield have raised questions about those assurances. 

In response to the allegations, the Chinese Embassy in Washington issued a statement rejecting the claims as “groundless smear and ill-intentioned association,” saying that “China always acts prudently and responsibly on the export of military products,” in accordance with international regulations.

Recent US intelligence indicates that Beijing might be planning to supply more air defense weapons to Iran soon. 

Iran Suspected of Using Chinese-Made MANPADS to Shoot Down U.S. F-15E Fighter pic.twitter.com/nlZTMNV0JR

— Army Recognition (@ArmyRecognition) May 30, 2026

While China has historically provided an economic lifeline and dual-use technology to Iran, US officials noted that previous assistance has not had a “decisive operational impact” on the current conflict.

Authored by Chris MacIntosh vis InternationalMan.com,

In five years, we’ll all likely be chuckling and shaking our heads over AI. Because today, the tech feels free and limitless, doesn’t it?

People are generating endless content: images, videos, memes, code snippets, social posts. Companies are bolting AI onto products by default, the way every Fortune 500 company suddenly discovered they were “sustainable” five years ago.

There’s much deliberation on AI right now, and it splits into two main camps of thesis:

• The majority — those who will die on its hill of promise, convinced we’re months away from effective altruism, UBI, and sentient toasters.

• And the minority — usually older, more experienced types — who don’t fully understand it, but look at numbers, remember the dot-com bust, and think this rhymes. We’ll leave that debate to the dinner parties.

What interests us is something more boring. Physics. Because here’s the thing: AI isn’t free.

Every token represents electricity. Something your average developer, product manager, user, or investor gives precisely zero thought to.

Electricity means power plants, transmission lines, grid infrastructure — yes. It also means hot sheds; capital-intensive data centres and all the equipment, cooling systems, and real estate that go with them. Real things. Physical things.

We are surrounded by hype without consideration for the physics.

Right now, there’s a disconnect between the physical cost of this technology and the price users pay for it.

That gap is being covered by Wall Street, venture capital, pension funds, hyperscaler balance sheets, and strategic spending on “growth” (a word which here means “losses we’ve chosen to rebrand”).

The question is: what happens when that gap closes?

Scenario 1: The Industry Matures

No outright collapse, but financial discipline arrives. A novel concept in Silicon Valley. Low-value usage disappears first. “AI slop” dies because the people generating junk stop when it costs them actual money. Turns out nobody’s willing to pay real dollars to have a chatbot write their LinkedIn thought leadership posts. Tragic.

Serious users — those deriving profit or genuine productivity gains — remain. Growth slows but doesn’t stop. GPU upgrade cycles stretch from two years to three or five or seven. Valuations compress. The froth comes off but the infrastructure remains important.

The boardroom shifts from “infinite logarithmic growth” to “focus only on what’s profitable.” Less bubble burst, more long, slow leak of disappointment. A bit like ESG.

Scenario 2: Energy as the Arbiter

Now overlay structurally higher energy prices. You know, the thing everyone was told wouldn’t matter because we’d all be running on solar and unicorn farts by now. If power becomes materially more expensive while capital markets tighten simultaneously, the economics get a lot harder.

Inference costs rise. Training LLMs gets hella more expensive. Shareholders start feeling like they’re holding the next NFT apes. Spending slows sharply. Many AI firms disappear. Hyperscalers pull back, maybe with taxpayer assistance (they are, after all, strategically important to those in power — funny how that works).

GPU cycles extend further. Seven-plus years between major upgrades becomes normal outside the top tier. Markets correct hard. Confidence takes a long time to rebuild.

This is not the end of AI, but a reset. Users will fondly remember the “good old days” when it was free. When one could generate a movie scene and post on X about how they just ended a billion-dollar production company’s business model. Peak delusion makes for great content.

Scenario 3: AI Actually Delivers

There is also the upside case, though we admit it’s included here much like a “minority” conspicuously placed on a corporate board — a box-ticking exercise.

In this scenario, AI meaningfully increases productivity across enterprises. It reduces costs durably. It embeds itself in everything from coding to logistics to research. The sentient toaster.

Higher energy prices don’t kill demand because efficiency gains outweigh them. Hardware cycles remain short. Today’s valuations look justified in hindsight and Jensen Huang’s leather jacket gets its own wing at the Smithsonian.

For anyone familiar with us, you’ll know we think this is the most unlikely scenario. And yet it’s by far the consensus view. Which, if you’ve been paying attention to consensus views over the past decade (“inflation is transitory,” “ESG is the future,” “commercial real estate is fine”) should tell you something.

The gap between expectations and likely reality remains wide open. For Insider members, you’re familiar with the portfolio positioning and Nasdaq hedge.

What Really Matters

The key variable isn’t whether AI is impressive or useful (it is). The key variable is whether AI becomes a true profit engine or remains a subsidised cost centre dressed up in a hoodie and a TED talk.

If profitable and productivity-enhancing, current valuations are justified and the gravy train keeps chugging. If it remains mostly hype layered over weak economics, spending contracts, hardware cycles extend, and we could have an absolute humdinger of an economic “event.”

A ten-year stagnation would require something extreme: demand dropping significantly, hyperscalers becoming hyposcalers, capital markets wanting nothing to do with AI, and energy remaining expensive — all at once. Stranger things have happened. Just ask anyone who bought Peloton at $170.

Almost 50 years of history show this eventually reverts to the mean… and the pendulum swings the other way.

*  *  *

The AI boom is just one example of a much larger shift already underway—where economics, politics, energy, and culture are colliding in ways most investors are not prepared for. That’s why we’ve prepared a special report, Clash of the Systems: Thoughts on Investing at a Unique Point in Time. In it, you’ll discover the key trends unfolding right now, the risks they pose to your money and personal freedom, and what a contrarian money manager believes you could do to stay one step ahead. Get your free copy of Clash of the Systems now.

By the end of last week, dozens of lawsuits had been filed against GKN Aerospace after a tank explosion risk at its Garden Grove, California, facility forced 40,000 residents to evacuate the area over Memorial Day weekend.

An apparent malfunctioning storage tank containing methyl methacrylate, a volatile, flammable chemical, sparked fears of an explosion across Garden Grove, Anaheim, Stanton, Buena Park, Cypress, and Westminster.

Local authorities lifted the final evacuation orders last Tuesday after pressure inside the tank stabilized and officials ruled out the worst-case explosion scenario.

While much of this has already been reported, what has not been widely discussed is that GKN Aerospace’s Garden Grove facility is part of the critical supply chain that manufactures components for the F-35 stealth fighter jet. This comes as far-left Marxist groups, under the guise of ‘Palestine,’ have targeted critical nodes of the F-35 supply chain across the West.

See here:

• Far-Left Radicals Attack F-35 Stealth Jet’s UK Supply Chain

🚨 Activists Sabotage the Tech That Keeps F-35s From Getting Hit by Missiles

Only hours into 2026, an “autonomous” direct-action group says it broke into Bruntons Aero Products in Musselburgh, outside Edinburgh, and destroyed machinery used to manufacture aerospace components… pic.twitter.com/i8EY6CLboS

— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) January 1, 2026

GKN’s own website states that its Garden Grove production line manufactures the “world-leading F-35 canopy,” as well as other advanced military and commercial aircraft transparency systems. This makes the facility deeply embedded in the F-35 supply chain.

This all matters because the chemical emergency at the Garden Grove facility was not just an industrial incident. It may have a profound impact on canopy production for the world’s most advanced stealth fighter jet program, while orders for the jet ramp up among U.S. allies.

In recent weeks, Canary Mission claimed on X that Palestine Action and its U.S.-based network, Unity of Fields, had circulated a target map containing personal information and civilian addresses allegedly tied to Israel’s defense-industrial base in the US.

Palestine Action, a group known for targeting Israeli defense-linked facilities and recently banned in the UK, published an online “Target Map” containing civilian addresses and personal information allegedly tied to Israel’s defense industry. pic.twitter.com/I8aMZp7dEV

— Canary Mission (@canarymission) May 21, 2026

InfluenceWatch describes Unity of Fields as the former Palestine Action U.S. and says its US branch is focused on “their goal is to dismantle the ability for the Israeli state to carry out its foreign policy objectives by obstructing the facilities that produce arms for Israel.”

InfluenceWatch has also reported that Marxist James “Fergie” Chambers, an heir to the Cox Enterprises family fortune, has provided financial support for Palestine Action members.

InfluenceWatch noted, “Palestine Action was created in July 2020. Its opening act was to vandalize the U.K. headquarters of defense contractor Elbit Systems, which conducts business with the State of Israel.”

The Garden Grove tank failure has reportedly been blamed on a faulty valve in the cooling system. While that suggests an industrial malfunction, the timing cannot be ignored. Radical left networks have increasingly targeted the F-35 supply chain and defense contractors, placing facilities like GKN’s Garden Grove site in the crosshairs of left-wing pro-terror groups.

While no direct link has been established – the incident is likely to be a wake-up call for US defense firms.

Fresh Sunday reports say that Israel’s military has made its deepest plunge into Lebanon in nearly three decades, having captured a strategic crusader castle site and UNESCO World Heritage Landmark, Beaufort castle.

It was last captured in 1982, when the IDF later pushed all the way north to occupy portions of Beirut. The army posted photographic proof via its Arabic spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, who issued an image on X showing Israeli troops walking outside the castle. An Israeli flag has also been raised over the stone fortress complex.

The castile overlooks the Litani River, which Israeli forces have been pushing north of, and has stood for nearly 1,000 years – and was at various times used by Crusader knights, Saladin’s Jerusalem army, the Mamlukes, and Ottomans. In the 1980s, fighters from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) even occupied it for a time. The name Beaufort is Old French for “beautiful fortress.”

Soon the heels of the historic site’s capture, the IDF repeated a warning to everyone south of the Zahrani, saying they must evacuate or else face the possibility of coming under attack and thus death or injury.

“Anyone present near Hezbollah elements, facilities or means of combat endangers their life,” an IDF spokesman said. The castle appears to have been shelled by the IDF before the final ground assault.

According to more details via The Times of Israel:

Troops took over territory in the Beaufort Ridge and Wadi Saluki stream area and expanded strikes north of the Litani River after the Hezbollah terror group fired multiple rockets and drones at Israel on Saturday afternoon and evening, forcing schools near the border with Lebanon to close on Sunday.

Footage from Sunday morning showed Israeli and IDF flags flying over the citadel, a strategic medieval Crusader-built fortress with symbolic importance in the history of Israel’s military entanglements in Lebanon. Shelling was audible and smoke rose from the surrounding area.

The fortress, also known as Qalaat al-Shakif, commands sweeping views of the Galilee Panhandle in northern Israel, as well as the Nabatieh area in southern Lebanon, making it a position of considerable strategic value.

Footage of IDF forces taking Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/D8Vr0qVfQH

— Amit Segal (@AmitSegal) May 31, 2026

The day prior to the takeover, northern Israel had come under heavy Hezbollah rocket and drone attack. These rocket waves have been stepped up as it’s become clear the Lebanon ceasefire has effectively collapsed.

The past week has seen hundreds of projectiles fired on southern Lebanon. Gong back to early March, over 3,180 Lebanese have been killed, with more than 9,000 wounded – according to Lebanese health officials. The figures do not distinguish between armed combatants or civilians.

Critics of Israel have warned that Netanyahu is trying to sabotage Trump’s efforts to find a final peace deal with Iran. The Israelis have long worried that Washington could in the end settle for a ‘bad deal’ – or one that doesn’t ensure the complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear program and highly enriched uranium.

Lebanon’s LBCI airs footage of the flags of Israel and Sayeret Golani flying over Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon, north of the Litani River. pic.twitter.com/wCsqvQ6Ue1

— Ariel Oseran أريئل أوسيران (@ariel_oseran) May 31, 2026

The US-mediated truce was really only something that was meant to prevent Israel from bombing Beirut and other government centers once again.

Washington has been trying to put the pressure on the Lebanese government and national army to finally disarm Hezbollah – but this has remained unrealistic as the army is weak and underfunded (ironically in part due to limitations imposed by the US).

Authored by Julio Rivera via American Greatness,

The scariest technology threats are usually the boring ones. Not the giant killer robots. Not the science fiction stuff. Not the dramatic movie scenes where somebody in sunglasses launches cyberattacks from a glowing underground bunker while alarms blare in the background. The truly dangerous threats arrive quietly. Q-Day falls squarely into that category.

To most people, the phrase sounds like something Netflix would slap on a conspiracy thriller thumbnail. In reality, it refers to the moment quantum computers become powerful enough to break the encryption systems that protect modern digital life. And when cybersecurity experts talk about this possibility, they don’t sound excited. No, they sound exhausted—because they know how unprepared much of the world still is.

Encryption is the invisible architecture underneath almost everything people interact with daily. Online banking. Cloud storage. Corporate systems. Government communications. Military operations. Healthcare records. Financial transactions. Satellites. Power infrastructure. Nearly every digital system that matters relies on cryptographic protections developed for a pre-quantum world.

That world is running out of time. Experts increasingly warn that quantum computing breakthroughs are advancing faster than expected, while organizations remain painfully slow to adapt. And corporate leadership still doesn’t fully grasp the seriousness of what’s coming.

A lot of companies approach cybersecurity the way people approach oil changes. They know they’re supposed to deal with it eventually, but they’d rather postpone the expense until smoke starts coming out of something important. Meanwhile, cybercriminals and hostile governments are operating several moves ahead.

The phrase “harvest now, decrypt later” has become one of the most alarming concepts in modern cybersecurity. Adversaries are already stealing encrypted information today with the expectation that future quantum systems will eventually crack the protections surrounding it.

That means the threat isn’t waiting for some future technological milestone. The threat has already started. And the scope of what’s potentially vulnerable is staggering. Intellectual property. Trade secrets. Proprietary AI systems. Pharmaceutical research. Defense communications. Infrastructure schematics. Diplomatic cables. Financial data. Internal corporate strategy. Decades of archived encrypted communications that organizations assumed would remain secure indefinitely.

A lot of executives still imagine cyberattacks as noisy smash-and-grab operations. Ransom notes. Locked systems. Flashing warnings. But some of the most effective compromises are almost embarrassingly subtle.

“Stealer” malware remains devastatingly efficient in the current cyber landscape, quietly extracting passwords, session cookies, authentication credentials, browser data, crypto wallets, and sensitive company access without triggering major alarms. Fake file deletion warnings and fraudulent system compromise messages still trick countless ordinary users into handing over access voluntarily. Some of the oldest scams in the book continue working because panic overrides common sense faster than any firewall can react.

Quantum computing doesn’t replace those existing threats; it magnifies them. And the implications extend far beyond corporate cybersecurity budgets.

If hostile governments achieve practical quantum decryption capabilities before widespread migration to post-quantum cryptography occurs, global security dynamics could shift dramatically overnight. Military communications, intelligence systems, satellite infrastructure, weapons logistics, and secure diplomatic channels all potentially become vulnerable in ways modern governments have never fully experienced before.

That kind of uncertainty changes how nations behave. Secure communications aren’t just a convenience for modern governments; they are foundational to deterrence, alliances, military coordination, intelligence operations, and geopolitical stability itself. Once nations begin doubting the integrity of those systems, mistrust escalates rapidly.

Which is why the recent diplomatic summit between China and the United States should have produced far more discussion about continuing to modernize the increasingly outdated 1979 science and technology agreement between the two countries. That framework belongs to an era before cyber warfare, before AI competition, before semiconductor dependency battles, and certainly before the looming quantum race currently shaping long-term national security strategy.

The technological relationship between global superpowers is no longer some side issue tucked away in academic policy circles. It is the policy circle.

And while governments maneuver strategically, private industry continues lagging dangerously behind. Many companies still rely on fragmented security practices, aging infrastructure, weak endpoint protection, and reactive cyber strategies designed for a threat environment that no longer exists. The time to improve cyber resilience started long ago.

The timeline problem makes everything worse. Migrating critical systems toward quantum-resistant cryptography takes years. Large enterprises often don’t even have complete inventories of where vulnerable encryption exists across their networks.

So, while the public still treats quantum computing like futuristic science fiction, cybersecurity professionals are staring at calendars.

Because unlike Y2K, there may not be one dramatic moment where everybody suddenly realizes the danger has arrived.

Instead, the erosion could happen gradually.

Silent infiltration. Invisible interception.

Archived communications quietly unlocked years later. Competitive advantages disappearing without obvious explanation. State actors obtaining access to sensitive information nobody ever imagined could be exposed.

That’s the nightmare scenario. Not chaos. Not collapse. Simply the slow realization that the digital locks humanity built around its most sensitive information no longer work the way everyone assumed they did.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Less than a month after we mused at Berkshire’s most recent cash hoard which as of March 31 stood just shy of $400 billion, and wondered who Warren Buffett’s replacement Greg Abel will acquire first…

… we got the answer on Sunday afternoon, when Berkshire announced it will acquire homebuilder Taylor Morrison Home Corp. in an all-cash deal worth about $6.8 billion. Which means that after the deal, Berkshire still has $390 billion in T-bills collecting about 3.5%. 

The offer of $72.50 per common share represents a 24% premium to the home builder’s latest closing price on Friday. The deal is expected to close in the second half of this year.

Taylor Morrison is one of the largest community developers and homebuilders in the US and also offers financial services like home loans, titles, escrow and insurance to consumers, according to the statement. The firm has more than 350 communities across 12 states. The existing Taylor Morrison management team, including Chief Executive Officer Sheryl Palmer, will continue to lead the firm, according to the statement.

“We are excited to welcome Taylor Morrison into Berkshire’s portfolio,” Greg Abel, chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway, said in a statement Sunday. “Over time, we expect to unify our site-built homebuilding operations into a combined platform enabling us to deliver the dream of homeownership to more Americans.”

This is the first multibillion-dollar acquisition under Abel, who took over Berkshire Hathaway earlier this year after Warren Buffett retired last year.  While investors have been satisfied with Abel’s command over the sprawling conglomerate, some have been hoping that a deal could support Berkshire’s shares, which fell 5.6% so far this year, largely due to Berkshire’s lack of exposure to the AI bubble. The S&P 500 index gained 10.7% in the same period.

It is unclear if the deal signals that Abel believes the bottom for the US housing market is coming, or if Berkshire is buying a homebuilder during a brutal housing labor shortage, giving companies like Taylor Morrison operating leverage despite sky high mortgage rates. In any case, while millions of Americans have been hoping and praying that 8% mortgage will crash the housing market – which has never been more unaffordable – and allow them to enter at lower price, the investor with the biggest cash pile in history just bought a builder outright with cash from under the rug, as a three million home supply deficit clearly overrides the soaring cost of capital.