Tue, 24 Feb 2026 11:47:44 -0800 marlon from private IP, post #15740832 /all Doomsday AI Memo That Spooked Markets https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/breaking-down-the-viral-memo-that-spooked-markets/ar-AA1WYPZm Breaking down the viral memo that spooked markets The post that rattled markets appeared on Substack. © Gabby Jones/Bloomberg News The viral blog post that captivated Wall Street and rattled investors on Monday comes from Substack’s most-popular finance blog. James van Geelen’s Citrini Research has gained a cult following since it began publishing macro and thematic stock research in 2023, thanks in part to an early focus on AI and weight-loss drugs. Sunday’s post, structured as a fictional macro research memo from the future (June 2028), posits “a scenario that’s been relatively underexplored,” the authors wrote. It isn’t a prediction, they cautioned. That didn’t stop worries from hitting real-world companies, with shares of DoorDash, Visa, Mastercard, ServiceNow and Blackstone, all mentioned by name in the post, falling sharply on Monday. Here are come key highlights: AI coders create software price wars Recent advancements in AI’s ability to write code have impressed engineers. Citrini imagines a world where nearly every line of code is written by AI, and products or features that once took thousands of engineers months to build can now be spun up in hours. In this future, software companies that renewed and increased large corporate contracts with ease would face new competition and price pressures. Clients could threaten to make their own tools with AI and seek concessions. Or competing software companies that already have brand recognition could easily launch cloned products, all but erasing the ability of firms to differentiate their products from their rivals’. Related video: The AI hype and potential market collapse explained (Investing Simplified) A sharp decline in software-company earnings would likely reverberate through the private markets. Private-equity firms frequently targeted the industry for leveraged buyouts, betting the steady revenue those companies have produced would continue to grow. But some major private software companies would begin to default on loans by 2027, Citrini writes. Payment companies and other intermediaries get hit AI agents that can operate computers, log in to accounts, and act autonomously on behalf of a company or individual could cause a huge shake-up in various industries, Citrini writes. All sorts of businesses built upon charging fees to perform complex services could suddenly be at risk. Payment processing companies like Visa and Mastercard are called out as one example. Their business of connecting merchant and consumer banks to facilitate transactions in exchange for a fee could be at risk if AI agents can suddenly perform a similar service on the cheap. Agents drive down prices everywhere Meanwhile, AI agents trained to shop for humans have the potential to transform consumer spending, and apply pressure on merchants to slash their prices. “Humans don’t really have the time to price-match across five competing platforms before buying a box of protein bars,” the Citrini authors wrote. “Machines do.” The report also noted it will get much easier to find the best price on anything, hurting merchants that relied on brand recognition and customers’ previous shopping habits. A doom cycle in white-collar labor While new jobs related to AI industries begin popping up, they won’t come close to replacing all the jobs being cut and outsourced to AI, according to the Citrini report. Companies feeling price pressure cut staff to keep margins high, investing in their AI capabilities instead. This leads to better AI capabilities—and the need for even fewer workers—in a self-perpetuating cycle. Mass layoffs concentrated in traditionally high-paying fields begin to ripple through the economy. And while the blue collar and gig economy labor markets are less affected, white collar workers who can’t find work begin to flood in, increasing labor supply. Wages plunge, putting a chilling effect on America’s consumer dependent economy. Write to Jack Pitcher at jack.pitcher@wsj.com Fri, 27 Feb 2026 23:40:38 -0800 marlon from private IP Reply #16691041 https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/the-ai-economic-doomsday-report-that-shook-wall-street/d9b12d37-a743-4a8c-afb6-2488aa9e812f FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2026 2/27/2026 4:00:00 PMShare This Episode The AI Economic Doomsday Report That Shook Wall Street A viral blog post by a relatively unknown research firm sent the stock market on a wild ride this week. The post by Citrini Research tapped into a new strain of fears about artificial intelligence, painting a dark portrait of a future in which technological change leads to mass white collar unemployment. WSJ’s David Uberti explains why Wall Street is jumpy about the prospects for AI. Ryan Knutson hosts. Further Listening: - The Era of AI Layoffs Has Begun - AI Is Coming for Entry-Level Jobs And listen to Camp Swamp Road, full playlist here. Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Full Transcript This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated. Ryan Knutson: Our colleague, David Uberti, was doom-scrolling on Sunday night, like a lot of us do, when a certain post caught his eye. David Uberti: I was reading in bed on my iPad, this interesting Substack post from a financial research firm I hadn't heard of before. Ryan Knutson: It was published by a relatively unknown firm called Citrini Research, and it was written like a memo from the future from June 2028, looking back at how artificial intelligence transformed the economy. David Uberti: And they basically framed this report as sort of like a postmortem on what happened over the time between now and then and how the economy has changed. It read to me like really good science fiction. I didn't put it down, despite the fact that it was 7,000 plus words long. Ryan Knutson: The picture the Citrini report painted of the future was bleak. David Uberti: We described it as a doomsday report, and very much so it was. In the scenario that they outlined, there was something like 10.2% unemployment across the United States, which is worse than what it was the depths of the Great Recession. Ryan Knutson: The report proposed that AI will become so good at writing code and replacing jobs, that it could become very bad for the broader economy. David Uberti: Basically, the question is not whether AI is bearish or bullish for the economy, as what if it's so bullish that it becomes bearish? Ryan Knutson: David wasn't the only one reading the Citrini post that night. It was going viral and it was freaking people out. David Uberti: Pretty soon after the market opened on Monday morning, a lot of stocks that we follow in the software space in particular were all flashing red on our screens. And when something across the entire sector is moving the same direction, it tends to mean something big is happening. Speaker 3: Investors, the Dow dropping about 1.6%, losing more than 800 points. Speaker 4: Salesforce, Snowflake, a few other software names falling sharply. Speaker 5: Synchrony and Capital One, those names plunging. So too is DoorDash and Uber. Speaker 6: DoorDash, that stock was down over 6% and all coming after that report we were talking about from Citrini Research, where they lay out the potential risks that AI can pose... Ryan Knutson: Why do you think this post about a hypothetical future, almost like science fiction, led to such a big reaction in the stock market? David Uberti: I think it really articulated a lot of existing fears that people have about artificial intelligence. I think people who think a lot about this space and the uncertainty around it are looking for ways to understand it, and this definitely tapped into that vein. Ryan Knutson: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Ryan Knutson. It's Friday, February 27th. Coming up on the show, the AI Doomsday Report that shook the stock market. At the end of last year, the biggest worry about AI in the stock market was that it was a bubble, that the technology was over-hyped, and that companies were spending too much money on it. David Uberti: It's a lot of questions about AI companies over-investing in AI, basically throwing billions upon billions of dollars into data center construction, chips and more, and that all of that wouldn't actually pan out. But over the last couple of months or so, there's been a vibe shift of sorts, and it's shifted more from this idea that there's a bubble that might burst, to this idea that AI might actually pan out. Ryan Knutson: This vibe shift was sparked by massive advancements in AI tools, tools that allow for AI agents or digital assistants to actually do stuff for you. And there have been advancements in coding tools like Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex, which make it possible for just about anyone to write computer code. David Uberti: I mean, when you see people like me who are able to go into Claude with no previous coding experience and do in a couple of hours, what trained software engineers would take much longer to do, traditionally speaking, I mean, that's a pretty big development. And it raises the question of how quickly can people spin up new pieces of software? It wouldn't take the type of massive investment that you'd have from a traditional software company that takes billions upon billions of dollars to do this stuff. The idea being that it's actually much cheaper to do this now. Ryan Knutson: One AI founder compared this moment to February 2020, when we could see a pandemic brewing on the horizon in other countries, but didn't know exactly what was about to hit us. David Uberti: There's been this sort of deer in the headlights moment on Wall Street of what people should do. And it has left the market in this very herky-jerky, trigger-happy mode. So it just sort of speaks to how this particular Substack post played into an existing trend and in many cases, exacerbated that trend. Ryan Knutson: Okay. Well, let's dive into that Substack post. It was written by Citrini Research. First of all, what is Citrini Research? David Uberti: Citrini Research is a small research firm. They do macro and stock research, which they have published on Substack for the last couple of years or so. They're not as widely known as a lot of the research outfits that we tend to follow, but they have a really sizable following on Substack. And in fact, they're one of the largest financial blogs on Substack. And this went more viral than anything else that they've done previously. Fri, 27 Feb 2026 23:40:47 -0800 marlon from private IP Reply #13453759 Ryan Knutson: Tell me more about the future world that this report lays out. What do they think is going to happen? David Uberti: The scenario at a high level is that the sort of rapid advancement in adoption of AI will lead to this sort of cascading dynamic of job losses, disinvestment in a race to the bottom on prices that ultimately leads to mass unemployment among white collar workers. Ryan Knutson: Here's one of the authors of the report, Alap Shah, in an interview with Bloomberg. Alap Shah: And so that's kind of the underlying thesis here, is that there's going to be significant replacement of jobs with AI, specifically AI agents. Those things only really came into fruition in the last few months. And so as it comes through and shows up in the productivity of different corporations, that's when things are going to get a little more interesting and where we got to pay real attention. Ryan Knutson: The report lays out a potential downward spiral for white collar workers. It starts with software. Because AI makes it so easy to create software on the cheap, big software companies might not need as many employees or might not need to exist at all. At the same time, the report suggests that consumers will also start using AI agents to complete tasks, like for online shopping, as in you'll tell your AI agent to go buy shoes for you, rather than searching around for the cheapest price. David Uberti: They said these agents will just sort of exist in the background of all of the apps that you or I use, and they will basically make decisions either autonomously or semi-autonomously to reduce the friction of something like ordering food to your house, to make sure that you get the lowest possible price at all times. Ryan Knutson: As AI agents take over more aspects of commerce, they'll likely look for efficiencies that could lead to more job losses. For instance, one of the decisions AI agents might make is to avoid credit cards and pay with something that doesn't have fees, like cryptocurrency. That could devastate the credit card companies, leading to more layoffs. David Uberti: And then their hypothesis is that it will actually snowball into the broader economy because if you have mass layoffs among white collar workers, those folks tend to make a lot of money. There will be in turn, a huge decline in US overall consumption in the economy. And then all sorts of financial institutions, whether they are private lenders, mainstream banks, payment processors, mortgage lenders, all of the financial firms that sort of exist around that space, those firms will also suffer as well. So they raise the question that this could also sort of lead to a financial contagion of sorts, in addition to an economic malaise. Ryan Knutson: A key point of the report is that AI will create something the authors coin as Ghost GDP. David Uberti: Basically, the Ghost GDP idea is that all of this innovation will help create wealth in the form of new GDP. New stuff, new value that we create in the economy. But it won't actually go back into the, quote unquote, real economy in any meaningful way. Ryan Knutson: Instead, the report suggests that the wealth created by AI will only benefit a small number of people. David Uberti: Basically, all of this wealth will accrue to people or companies who win this sort of winner take all situation, and the benefits of that, the financial benefits of that won't be filtered elsewhere. Ryan Knutson: This Sat, 28 Feb 2026 05:23:48 -0800 whiteguyinchina from private IP Reply #13580878 Good stuff Marlon. Interesting. Sat, 28 Feb 2026 06:31:56 -0800 marlon from private IP Reply #16624966 do u see it playing out like that?Replies require login.
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