What’s in This Week’s Issue…

Good morning. Every week, two massive AI data centers the size of Walmart break ground across America. Tech giants are leasing capacity faster than builders can deliver it.

But here's what nobody's telling you: these buildings are buried in billions of debt before they earn a single dollar. And Wall Street is packaging that debt, slicing it into layers, and selling it as safe investments. Sound familiar?

In 2008, they did this with mortgages. Today, it's AI infrastructure. The structure is identical, the stakes are bigger, and the people holding the bag might be you.

So this week…

• 🏆 The Big Play: How Wall Street turned AI data centers into the next structured debt crisis

• 💪 The Power Move: What happens when the safest investments carry junk-level risk

• 💵 Follow the Money: Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s convicted accomplice, seeks a pardon!

-GEN

🏆 The Big Play

The biggest money power story of the week.

The Debt Machine Behind the Data Center Gold Rush

Private equity firms are building AI data centers with almost no skin in the game.

Put in $10 million of your own money, borrow $90 million from banks and private lenders, and suddenly you own a $100 million facility.

The bet is simple: AI demand will explode forever, and tech companies fight to lock in long-term leases worth tens of millions annually.

But here’s where the structure starts to matter:

1. Wall Street's New Favorite Game

Tech companies aren't buying these buildings. They're renting space like tenants in an apartment complex. If AI hype slows and they no longer need the capacity, they can walk. The $90 million in debt doesn't walk with them.

Three facts that should terrify anyone holding these bonds:

• In Q3 2025 alone, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon leased more data center capacity than the entire year of 2024 combined

• These facilities generate zero revenue until servers are plugged in and rent starts flowing

• Hundreds of identical projects are being built simultaneously, all betting on the same infinite demand curve

The math only works if every tech giant keeps expanding AI infrastructure at current rates forever. The moment growth slows, rent payments drop.

When rent drops, debt doesn't. That's when the dominoes start falling.

2. The 2008 Playbook Returns

Wall Street isn't holding these risky loans.

They're doing what they always do best: passing the risk to someone else. They bundle loans from multiple data center projects into one package, split them into layers rated by safety, and sell them to investors chasing yield.

The top layer gets stamped with an A rating, safe enough for pension funds and insurance companies. In 2008, similar bonds were rated AAA. By year's end, 80% were downgraded to junk.

Here's the tell that insiders know something's wrong:

• $34 billion in data center bonds have been sold, with 84% rated A

• A-rated bonds typically pay around 5% interest

• These bonds are paying 8%, 9%, sometimes 12%

Those are junk-level rates. When something rated safe pays like it's risky, the market is screaming that default risk is real.

Your pension fund may still buy them because the rating says it is fine. But lenders pricing these deals know that if Microsoft and Google walk away, the rent stops.

So if rent stops → bonds default → and if bonds default, your retirement account takes the hit.

And that risk is already starting to surface.

3. The Cracks Are Already Showing

Oracle is borrowing billions to build AI data centers for OpenAI.

But the cost to insure Oracle's debt just spiked to levels not seen since 2009. When insurance on corporate debt triples, the market is screaming that something might break.

Oracle's stock has fallen 42% from its all-time high. OpenAI is burning billions with zero profit. The credit market is betting that rent payments won't come through. And those A-rated bonds labeled safe only remain safe if OpenAI keeps paying rent.

Here's how the domino effect starts:

• OpenAI cuts back, rent payments drop 30%

• Water and electricity costs for data centers keep rising

• Companies start missing interest payments on construction loans

• Investors panic, rating agencies downgrade bonds from A to junk

• Private equity firms can't borrow more to finish projects

• Construction stops, billions in half-built infrastructure sit empty

Unlike 2008, you can't repurpose a foreclosed data center into apartments. It's a specialized building with one use. So if AI demand collapses, that asset becomes worthless.

That’s how leverage turns optimism into vulnerability.

💪 The Power Moves

Playbook for understanding the game of power.

Understanding Where the Risk Really Lives

This isn't 2008 in the same way. In 2008, mortgage risk lived everywhere. Big banks held the loans, packaged them, and traded them. The system was tightly interconnected, so when one institution fell, the contagion spread quickly.

• Today, banks are making some data center loans, but they're passing most of the risk to private credit funds and institutional investors chasing higher returns. If this blows up, it won't take down the financial system.

• But it will take down pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and retirement accounts that bought these bonds thinking they were safe.

So, the collapse won't look like 2008. It will be quieter. The hype will die down slowly, projects will get abandoned, and bonds will get downgraded.

And most people won't notice until their retirement statements arrive and the numbers are smaller than expected.

The Takeaway:

Wall Street is betting your retirement on perpetual AI growth.

They're using the same debt-slicing playbook that failed in 2008, just with data centers instead of mortgages.

The difference this time is that the collapse will be quieter and more targeted.

💵 Following the Money

Three of the wildest financial and corruption stories from around the world.

#1 - Ghislaine Maxwell seeks pardon in return for Trump, Clintons’ innocence

#2 - US-Russia treaty capping nuclear warheads lapses. What happens next?

#3 - How DHS is using a controversial legal tool to target critics of immigration enforcement

✨ Poll time!

📰 Keep Reading…