A national lifeguard shortage will keep thousands of pools across the country closed or operating with reduced hours for the third summer in a row.
Why it matters: Memorial Day weekend is considered the official start of swimming season. Experts tell Axios they worry the shortage will mean a higher chance of drownings and pool injuries.
Generative artificial intelligence is all the rage in startup-land, and corporate venture capital investors don’t want to be left out.
State of play: A small but growing number of companies’ venture arms are rolling out efforts, in various forms, that are focused on investing in the current AI startup boom.
Car batteries are like wine fridges: They're never big enough. That's a real problem for anybody who hopes that electric vehicles will help decarbonize the planet and reduce pollution.
Why it matters: EVs are extraordinarily heavy, and the larger their batteries, the heavier they become. That makes them more dangerous, increases pollution, minimizes decarbonization, and locks in a geopolitically fraught reliance on China.
Negotiating to raise the debt ceilingis a dangerous game, because there's always the possibility that the negotiations will fail. If they do, the government could continue borrowing regardless — and put the debt ceiling permanently in the rear-view mirror.
Why it matters:President Biden has a constitutional obligation to continue borrowing money to service the outstanding national debt and make other payments mandated by Congress. By allowing the national debt to rise above the level set by the debt ceiling, Biden would be obeying that obligation and effectively preventing all future debt standoffs.
This is a chart you almost never see — and it helps explain why active fund managers like Cathie Wood were very unlikely to be overweight Nvidia going into the current rally.
Between the lines: The general rule of successful tech stocks is that they start out with high PE ratios as investors hope for future growth, and those ratios then fall as earnings rise.
The stock market's top story this past week — aside from the will-they, won't-they debt ceiling drama — was a gargantuan earnings report from chipmaker Nvidia.
The big picture: Huge numbers from its AI-centric data center unit catapulted its shares, which have trounced both the overall market and the largest names in corporate America over most of the last decade.
