Oil prices dip on de-escalation news
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What caused the recent dip in oil prices?
Oil prices deflate as stock markets cheer the decision to de-escalate in Iran. I'm David Brancaccio with both countries asserting victory. We're now in the first hours of a two-week ceasefire in the U.S.-Iran conflict. The wholesale price of oil has just plunged nearly 16%. The New York price was pushing $118 yesterday. At the moment, it's just below $95 a barrel. Dan Coatsworth is head of markets at the U.K.-based investment platform AJ Bell. Just because we've got a two-week ceasefire doesn't mean to say...
this situation has been resolved. It 100% has not been resolved. It simply reached a turning point in the narrative. And I think that the market reaction shows that there's some relief, but people aren't saying, phew, thank God this is all now done and dusted.
How does the ceasefire affect U.S.-Iran relations?
Two and a half hours before U.S. stock markets open officially, Dow futures are up more than 1,000 points, 2.5%. S&P futures are up 2.6%. NASDAQ futures, I see, are up 3.4% now. The VIX index of stock market volatility is down 20%. U.S. Treasury bonds up sharply. The 10-year interest rate down at 4.24%. Now from markets to the real economy in which we live. It's from my drive down a stretch of Route 66 in the southwest to see what the economy looks like 100 years after the storied highway from Illinois to California came into being. We are now living through ferociously fast technological change, which is hitting and sometimes missing towns along this route. At the biggest Route 66 town in New Mexico, I experienced what many experts call our K-shaped economy.
One leg up, one down.
To stop that get-your-kicks-on-Route-66-playing-on-repeat-in-my-head-while-on-the-long-road, little Neil Young does the trick.
In search of fried eggs, the Yelp app gives top marks to a place called Ancora Bakery and Cafe in Albuquerque. It's got eggs, chorizo, and surprise, job training.
Well... We usually get about 7,200 people trained per year, and we always get people placed.
Trained as baristas in food service, Dominic Cagliostro is one of the founders of this non-profit cafe and recovery program.
When people are getting sober, they're real cranky, and when they're getting out of relationships, there's dysregulation, and we're going to be extra supportive and get them working and regulated. We get them a resume, get them outfits, we get them mock interviews, and prepare them to go get a permanent job out in society.
It's a 501c3 non-profit and cash flow is not easy. For a time recently, the cafe part of the recovery center went on hiatus and we found Google Maps listing it as permanently closed. But wrong, it is back open and there was a solid breakfast and an excellent latte. Donations, philanthropists, me and my wife, we collaborate with other places. Contributing to the operation is Ancora's work moving surplus restaurant food out to unhoused people in and around the neon corridors of Route 66, called Central Avenue in Albuquerque. In a moment, a different side of a city flush with AI, science and tech money, but not flush with big private tech companies.
It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe.
At Albuquerque's Museum of Nuclear Science and History, six blocks from Route 66, there's a loop of President Truman's big announcement in 1945.
But the greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy, or its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains in making it work.
A lot of that work was done in this region, which is now home to three national labs, Los Alamos, Air Force Research, and Sandia. Right here we still find one of the greatest collections of scientific minds, with many working at the frontiers of artificial intelligence. Recently, a Brookings report identified this waypoint on Route 66 as an AI mini-cluster, but certainly not a superstar AI hub.
You would think even that by accident by now we would have very successful companies in New Mexico.
Mark Montgomery is a noted AI scientist and entrepreneur based here.
We have quite a few small companies that have been successful, but we've never had a major company succeed in New Mexico in technology, which is probably the biggest gap in the world that I'm aware of anyhow between the dollars, R&D dollars that are spent versus the commercialization and the opportunities for
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