@AaronBack

Global Editor of The Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column. Previously with @wsj in Beijing and Hong Kong.

New York, NY
Joined April 2009
Not good.
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Iran damaged US bases in the Mideast. Now imagine what China could do to U.S. bases in Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, Guam, even Hawaii. If most of those bases were knocked out of commission, even temporarily, it would cripple the U.S. ability to defend Taiwan. wapo.st/4jsqNEo
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Um, you guys, the 10-year yield just jumped to 5.21%
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30-year: 5.49%
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Pro tip: Consider studying in Taiwan. I honestly can't recommend it enough.
The tricky situation is, we need more Americans who spend time or have spent time in China — but the costs of Americans spending time in China today sadly often outweigh the benefits.
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Aaron Back retweeted
The year is 2028. The 30 year yield is pushing 9%, there hasn't been a home sale in 6 months. Oil is $300, the US has an export ban on all oil products. The Nasdaq is 60,000 and VIX grinding along sub-10. Equity investors cite the coming Trump taco as the reason for calm. 😂🤣
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Are the models smart enough yet to help the labs come up with less confusing naming systems?
GPT-6 Sol and Luna are big improvements on intelligence, alignment, work output, coding, computer use, and more over their 5.6-family predecessors. They are also half the price per token, and even less per task!
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Aaron Back retweeted
Anthropic plans to stage its blockbuster IPO in November, later than many investors expected, as leaders of the biggest AI companies call for a slowdown in the development of the technology on.wsj.com/4hzbKaC
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Je sors de près de 3h de briefing et d’échanges avec le Président de la République et les services de renseignement et de sécurité. Du haut de mes 50 ans, je n’ai rarement ressenti tel vertige. Vertige de la gravité des situations au Moyen-Orient et en Ukraine, de la folie prédatrice qui mène le monde au chaos. Vertige des risques et conséquences sur notre sécurité, notre économie, notre pouvoir d’achat. Vertige de tous ces candidats qui rêvent, sans retenue, sûrs de leur fait et de leurs postures, de gouverner la France dans cette époque et cette situation historique et grave. Notre démocratie, notre pays doivent déjà faire face aujourd’hui et devront faire front demain. Plus que jamais je me battrai, à ma modeste place, pour que la France ne cède pas son destin aux egos délirants, aux va-t-en guerre de salon, aux pacifistes de pacotille et aux soumis de la facilité et de la peur. La France doit plus que jamais être forte. Nous devons tous y contribuer. L’avantage du vertige, c’est qu’il vous rappelle de ne pas tomber. @PartiRadicalG
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AGI HAS BEEN ACHIEVED! I tried to figure out how to print something and failed, but then I asked Claude Code to figure out how to print something and it fixed my printer connection and printed. If this isn't AGI, I don't know what is.
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There is a telling detail here. Many of these attacks happened in the richest, most cosmopolitan parts of the country, in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Suzhou, the very places that used to hum with jobs, startups, music, restaurants, and the sense that the world was brimming with opportunities. They are still China’s wealthiest cities. But the feeling of opportunity, of upward mobility, has degraded substantially. The pain is sharpest where the fall is steepest, because people there have suffered actual losses of income and status rather than merely gains that failed to arrive. This is the prospect theory in action: A gain you never received is not felt nearly as keenly as the loss you suffered. The backlash is more visceral because the reversal is more real.
The Immoral Consequences of Economic Slowdown: An Alarming Rise of Random Violence in China yashenghuang.substack.com/p/…
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Warsh promising Trump he would cut interest rates before being nominated
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Welcome to the party, pal
JPMorgan’s commodities team: “For the first time since the start of the Iran conflict, we don’t have a baseline view. We simply don’t know how to model the endgame.”
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EVERCORE: Our Food Input Basket “is showing a sharp acceleration .. in grain-based commodities, resins, and freight. .. we are lowering our EPS estimates .. for $CAG, $KHC, $CPB, and $GIS by an average of 5% for calendar 2027 as we assume inflation moves up from 4–5% to 6–7%.”
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“.. Increasing prices is ‘the last lever we have,’ Campbell’s CFO said this week .. .. Cost-cutting measures couldn’t keep up, he added: ‘Unfortunately, that was not enough given the extreme amount of inflation that we are seeing ..’” @scottlincicome bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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I still don't understand why oil is down today
Four-byline alert: 🚨 (CNN) - A key oil pipeline system in Saudi Arabia was struck by projectiles on Thursday, according to two US officials familiar with the matter. @cnn cnn.com/2026/09/11/politics/…
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Aaron Back retweeted
Still hits the same
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Why are oil prices down today with all this news out of Saudi / Yemen? Am I missing something?
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Seems like double-breasted jackets making a comeback? Thoughts @dieworkwear?
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