March 2008: Bear Stearns collapses under toxic mortgage exposure. The Fed guarantees $30 billion in assets. JPMorgan acquires it for $10 a share. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bear-stearns.asp
August 2025: Trump demands Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan resign over alleged China ties and then floats a federal stake to support the delayed $28 billion Ohio chip plant. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/8/14/us-government-in-talks-to-take-stake-in-intel-report
Intel stock jumps 10 percent. Tan meets with Commerce and Treasury. The White House calls it speculation. Intel calls it support. No denial, no details, no transparency. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/14/intel-stock-climbs-trump-admin-stake.html
Questions linger: how will the Intel stake be priced? Is Tan’s resignation a condition? What does budget-neutral actually mean? Was Nvidia’s China deal a bribe or a blueprint? https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/8/14/us-government-in-talks-to-take-stake-in-intel-report
OpenAI expects to lose $5 billion in 2024. Valuation: $150 billion. Profits: vapor. Cap raise: $6.5 billion to $7 billion just to stay afloat. https://www.thestreet.com/technology-1/open-ai-burning-cash-and-losing-billions
Big Tech’s AI spending: $311 billion in 2025, $337 billion projected for 2026. Free cash flow down 23 percent. Depreciation up 40 percent.
“There is a tsunami of depreciation coming,” says Jim Morrow, Callodine Capital. “AI uptake isn’t as fast as people thought,” adds Rob Almeida, MFS Investment. https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/ai-spending-spree-by-big-tech-sparks-investor-concern-over-profits-125061101429_1.html
Seventy-five percent of businesses report no ROI from AI. “Only about 25 percent are already seeing ROI,” according to BCG via Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/cio/2025/01/30/why-75-of-businesses-arent-seeing-roi-from-ai-yet/
AI agents fail at scale. Error compounding, quadratic token costs, hallucination risk. https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/23/ai_size_obsession/
“A 100-turn conversation costs $50 to $100 in tokens alone,” says Utkarsh Kanwat, ANZ. “Production systems need 99.9 percent reliability. Even at 99 percent, you only get 82 percent success over 20 steps.”
Bear Stearns was a bailout. Intel is a buy-in. The pattern repeats: collapse, threat, state intervention, market surge.