By Paul Wallis
EDITOR AT LARGE
DIGITAL JOURNAL
April 15, 2026
Unemployment may have to rise sharply as the US Federal Reserve tries to slow the economy and choke off soaring inflation - Copyright AFP/File Niklas HALLE'N
I saw a report in The Guardian about the Citrini Research Substack. Even the headline was revealing: “A feedback loop with no brake: how an AI doomsday report shook US markets”.
“Markets can read?” I wondered. Didn’t seem likely. I worked in the US and Europe for years on financial sites. I even wrote on Motley Fool a couple of times.
Suffice it to say that any sort of literacy isn’t a major market characteristic. I covered the PetroChina market float and got sourced by the WSJ. I wrote about the Facebook float and the probable bumpy ride for stock valuations for Motley Fool, and got a sort of slow-moving “Duuuhhh”.
Result: my total lack of respect for market wisdom is unlimited. I’ve seen more savvy in old house bricks. I was therefore absolutely fascinated that anything written in words and maybe even sentences could penetrate this level of pig-ignorant, smug, insularity.
So, I read the Citrini Research report. It’s called the 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis. It’s great. They somehow fitted in a virtual course in modern core economics in the process.
The Citrini Research report covers employment, job losses, shrinking consumer capital, economic liquidity to the point that Archimedes could explain it to you, the sacred mortgage market, and more. The rise of AI in the real economy and its current and likely future collateral damage are spelled out extremely clearly.
This thing, as a piece of writing and presentation, could and should be used as a template by business colleges. The information is coherent, well integrated, and above all, it’s correct.
That correctness is the big issue. Citrini Research tactfully places its findings and perspectives in 2028. It’s all happening right now. You can see it in the headlines every day.
The Citrini Research report gathered a lot of headlines, too. I was surprised that the market media, which is arguably only an average few IQ points higher than its audience, got the message.
Giving good information to idiots is very much an acquired taste. It’s hard to believe that there could be a less competent or less focused audience than the corporate sector for this level of information. The astonishing total lack of any ideas in the US about managing the impact of AI, or for that matter, anything else, is the cultural benchmark at the moment.
The market was and is quite right to be scared. You do need to read this report yourself to get the full scenario. Hurricane AI has made landfall, and the folks they be alarmed.
I don’t agree with the “Doomsday report” idiom. This looks more like a progressive macro meltdown. The thing is that nothing solid is being done about any of the issues.
There are mutterings:
AI = UBI is one of the strange ones. When did UBI even become a serious topic for discussion at anything but the academic level? If you read the headlines about UBI and AI, there’s already some pushback. Just no real ideas.
OpenAI has come up with a particularly ridiculous solution, tying the wellbeing of the public to tech boom-and-bust cycles.
TIME Magazine says people want jobs, not UBI. They want jobs that pay for nothing, as against an unspecified, and currently non-existent, benefit? Really?
Obviously, no thought whatsoever has been put into this stopgap on a practical level. Experiments with UBI are mixed and often highly biased for and against.
And that’s about the extent of what’s being said about fixing an instantly broke economy, which is also now hopelessly out of date. None of the career path models, life goals, or anything else is likely to work. Generations Z and Alpha are going to be very much on the wrong end of this non-equation.
Now some coy and too-demure questions:
Can’t you think of a use for 8 billion people?
What if you had billions of people working on things that actually need doing?
It hasn’t occurred to you that the engine, chassis, and wheels are failing as well as the brakes? Has the idea of a steering wheel occurred to you?
You can’t see any benefit in freeing up people from meaningless drudge work to possibly productive work that isn’t a direct daily personal insult?
How are you going to get all that debt and all those dud mortgages off the balance sheets? Who are you going to sell to, the dead?
Who pays for what if nobody has any money?
See any black markets, massive inflation, and crashing currencies?
You seriously expect the daily operation of an entire planet to run at all under these circumstances? I’ve said it before – You’ll be lucky if the sidewalks work.
People can’t afford food, housing, healthcare, and education as it is. Somehow a black hole where their lives used to be is better?
AI must be managed on the macroeconomic scale. Management needs modelling and stringent testing. There are no choices.
The Citrini Research report is the GPS for the future and what needs fixing. This can’t wait.
_________________________________________________________________
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
April 15, 2026
Unemployment may have to rise sharply as the US Federal Reserve tries to slow the economy and choke off soaring inflation - Copyright AFP/File Niklas HALLE'N
I saw a report in The Guardian about the Citrini Research Substack. Even the headline was revealing: “A feedback loop with no brake: how an AI doomsday report shook US markets”.
“Markets can read?” I wondered. Didn’t seem likely. I worked in the US and Europe for years on financial sites. I even wrote on Motley Fool a couple of times.
Suffice it to say that any sort of literacy isn’t a major market characteristic. I covered the PetroChina market float and got sourced by the WSJ. I wrote about the Facebook float and the probable bumpy ride for stock valuations for Motley Fool, and got a sort of slow-moving “Duuuhhh”.
Result: my total lack of respect for market wisdom is unlimited. I’ve seen more savvy in old house bricks. I was therefore absolutely fascinated that anything written in words and maybe even sentences could penetrate this level of pig-ignorant, smug, insularity.
So, I read the Citrini Research report. It’s called the 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis. It’s great. They somehow fitted in a virtual course in modern core economics in the process.
The Citrini Research report covers employment, job losses, shrinking consumer capital, economic liquidity to the point that Archimedes could explain it to you, the sacred mortgage market, and more. The rise of AI in the real economy and its current and likely future collateral damage are spelled out extremely clearly.
This thing, as a piece of writing and presentation, could and should be used as a template by business colleges. The information is coherent, well integrated, and above all, it’s correct.
That correctness is the big issue. Citrini Research tactfully places its findings and perspectives in 2028. It’s all happening right now. You can see it in the headlines every day.
The Citrini Research report gathered a lot of headlines, too. I was surprised that the market media, which is arguably only an average few IQ points higher than its audience, got the message.
Giving good information to idiots is very much an acquired taste. It’s hard to believe that there could be a less competent or less focused audience than the corporate sector for this level of information. The astonishing total lack of any ideas in the US about managing the impact of AI, or for that matter, anything else, is the cultural benchmark at the moment.
The market was and is quite right to be scared. You do need to read this report yourself to get the full scenario. Hurricane AI has made landfall, and the folks they be alarmed.
I don’t agree with the “Doomsday report” idiom. This looks more like a progressive macro meltdown. The thing is that nothing solid is being done about any of the issues.
There are mutterings:
AI = UBI is one of the strange ones. When did UBI even become a serious topic for discussion at anything but the academic level? If you read the headlines about UBI and AI, there’s already some pushback. Just no real ideas.
OpenAI has come up with a particularly ridiculous solution, tying the wellbeing of the public to tech boom-and-bust cycles.
TIME Magazine says people want jobs, not UBI. They want jobs that pay for nothing, as against an unspecified, and currently non-existent, benefit? Really?
Obviously, no thought whatsoever has been put into this stopgap on a practical level. Experiments with UBI are mixed and often highly biased for and against.
And that’s about the extent of what’s being said about fixing an instantly broke economy, which is also now hopelessly out of date. None of the career path models, life goals, or anything else is likely to work. Generations Z and Alpha are going to be very much on the wrong end of this non-equation.
Now some coy and too-demure questions:
Can’t you think of a use for 8 billion people?
What if you had billions of people working on things that actually need doing?
It hasn’t occurred to you that the engine, chassis, and wheels are failing as well as the brakes? Has the idea of a steering wheel occurred to you?
You can’t see any benefit in freeing up people from meaningless drudge work to possibly productive work that isn’t a direct daily personal insult?
How are you going to get all that debt and all those dud mortgages off the balance sheets? Who are you going to sell to, the dead?
Who pays for what if nobody has any money?
See any black markets, massive inflation, and crashing currencies?
You seriously expect the daily operation of an entire planet to run at all under these circumstances? I’ve said it before – You’ll be lucky if the sidewalks work.
People can’t afford food, housing, healthcare, and education as it is. Somehow a black hole where their lives used to be is better?
AI must be managed on the macroeconomic scale. Management needs modelling and stringent testing. There are no choices.
The Citrini Research report is the GPS for the future and what needs fixing. This can’t wait.
_________________________________________________________________
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
No comments:
Post a Comment