Slower pumping by America and Japan could cut flows from IEA members’ SPRs from 2.5m b/d in June to 0.7m b/d in July, estimates Morgan Stanley, a bank. Can Europe plug the shortfall? When America and Japan called for joint action in early March, European countries pushed back, say people familiar with the talks. Few rely heavily on Gulf supplies and many were wary of drawing down their already thin stocks—which, unlike those of America and Japan, consist mostly of refined products rather than crude oil. Quantifying how much Europe released in the end is hard. In contrast to America’s reserves and most of Japan’s, Europe’s are not held in dedicated depots but dispersed in commercial tanks leased by governments. Europe has put up most of its oil by lowering the stockholding obligations imposed on industry, says an IEA spokesperson. “Whether these new commercial inventories are physically released is the decision of the entities that own these stocks.” Experts and market participants reckon few of these barrels have reached the market—allowing European governments, in effect, to free-ride on others’ SPRs. That may not be possible from July, when holiday fuel demand may rise worldwide just as American exports begin to weaken. How quickly European governments can release emergency barrels is another question. “They haven’t done such a thing before at this scale,” says Martha Tallas of Argus Media, a price-reporting agency. With Asia, America and Europe unwilling or unable to use their reserves, oil markets may soon look less placid. Global commercial stocks, which are projected to hit minimum operational levels by September, will not provide the world’s missing barrels. A growing share of the adjustment will then fall on China. Its ample stocks can last for months. But Chinese leaders may not want to drain these with no peace in sight. And the more reserves are depleted, the more oil will be needed to replenish them once the war ends— keeping prices higher for longer.■ For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, finance and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//finance-and-economics/2026/06/11/the-worlds-strategic- oil-reserves-are-running-out-fast

Finance & economics | Buttonwood Wall Street’s undignified SpaceX mania Is that a rocket in your lobby, or are you just happy to see me? June 11th 2026 “THE ICK”, a term popularised by Gen-Z daters, refers to the loss of romantic interest after a trifling but embarrassing behaviour by a crush. Admirers of American high finance may be feeling it. Ahead of the initial public offering (IPO) of SpaceX, scheduled for June 12th, Wall Street looks desperate trying to woo Elon Musk, the rocketry firm’s boss and the world’s first soon-to-be trillionaire. Fidelity, an asset manager, has lowered its minimum account balance for small investors to participate in the listing from $100,000-500,000 to $2,000. Nasdaq and FTSE Russell will fast-track SpaceX into their popular stock-market indices. Few people are abasing themselves more than America’s investment bankers. Decorative spacecraft and banners fill the lobbies of Goldman

Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The spire of Bank of America’s midtown headquarters has been lit up in the image of a rocket in lift-off. The boss of JPMorgan Chase, who once feuded with SpaceX’s hot-headed CEO, has hosted him for a chummy interview in front of wealthy clients. If that feels icky, what the bankers are telling investors about SpaceX’s business is cringe. Goldman Sachs is said to expect revenue from SpaceX’s xAI division, today an also-ran in the artificial-intelligence race, to surge from $3bn in 2025 to $322bn in 2030. Morgan Stanley apparently thinks that by 2040 SpaceX could be raking in $3.4trn in sales and $2.7trn in operating profit (before depreciation and amortisation), respectively up from $19bn and $7bn last year. Sycophancy seems a small price to pay for fat fees. SpaceX reportedly aims to offer advisers perhaps 0.75% of the deal’s proceeds. If it sells $75bn in stock at a valuation of $1.8trn, this will net its bookrunners over $500m. That is equal to more than 20% of all such proceeds American banks earned last year. Anthropic and OpenAI, the two leading AI labs which have just filed paperwork for similarly sized listings, can expect similar flattery. The bankers’ fees are a pittance, though, compared with the size of the deals. Giant listings generally command lower fees than the long-term average of 7% for all IPOs. Still, anything less than 1% is puny. When Goldman Sachs agreed to a 0.75% fee for relisting General Motors in 2010, this was seen as a favour to the American government, which was ridding itself of the carmaker after a bail-out. Worse, SpaceX has neutered its bankers by reserving up to 30% of the offering for retail investors and setting its own take-it-or-leave-it price of $135 per share. This reduces the advisers’ discretion in handing out shares and turns them from power-brokers to utility providers. Who wants to date one of those? This is quite a change from past IPO waves, when bankers were the masters of the universe. This let them flagrantly underprice IPOs, allowing their handpicked buyers to benefit from the first-day pop in the value of the shares. The average pop since 1980 has been 19%. In 1999, at the height of the last tech boom comparable to today’s AI-fuelled one, it reached a record

71%. Issuers had no choice but to lump it. Despite the Chinese walls between the banks’ rainmakers and analysts, on Wall Street a cheap IPO was often seen as a way to buy bullish coverage (and for issuers’ executives to secure early access to other underpriced listings). The investment banks maintain their tight grip on IPOs. Alternatives such as selling shares directly to buyers without an underwriter have proved messy. After Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, went public that way in 2021, its shares traded choppily and no similar large “direct listings” have occurred since then. But, as their treatment of SpaceX shows, today it is increasingly Wall Street that has to lump it. Companies stay private far longer than they once did, denying banks advisory fees and gatekeeping power. Whizzy trading firms chew away at their marketmaking revenues. Private-credit behemoths eat into business lending. If SpaceX’s debut flops—one research firm’s analysis of SpaceX’s discounted future cashflows arrives at half its target valuation—the investment banks will face scrutiny, despite their limited control of the process. Yet even a success will leave them something to think about—and not just because of the icky monuments to Anthropic and OpenAI that will soon loom in lobbies like the Colossus of Rhodes. They will have surrendered control and shown themselves to be less important than they thought. “The ick” is putting it mildly.■ Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our Opinion newsletter, which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and reader correspondence. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//finance-and-economics/2026/06/09/wall-streets- undignified-spacex-mania

Finance & economics | Free Exchange How to share AI riches From Donald Trump to Sam Altman, the idea of redistributing them is catching on. Does it make sense? June 11th 2026 THE artificial-intelligence boom has minted vast fortunes. Jensen Huang’s stake of nearly 4% in Nvidia, the chipmaker he co-founded in 1993, is worth $175bn, up 50-fold in seven years. Anthropic’s latest funding round, which valued the AI lab at nearly $1trn, more than doubled the estimated wealth of its boss, Dario Amodei. Yet as new plutocrats gain riches, most Americans doubt the gains from AI will be widely shared. Less than one in three think the technology will make ordinary people richer. Populists on left and right are scrambling for an answer. On June 5th Donald Trump appeared to endorse a proposal, championed by Sam Altman of OpenAI, under which AI firms would voluntarily contribute equity to a

public wealth fund, with the returns eventually flowing to households. “It almost becomes a partnership with the American public,” Mr Trump declared. “It would make ’em rich.” Bernie Sanders, a leftie senator, wants a one-off 50% tax on AI firms’ value, paid in stock, to give Americans a “direct ownership stake”. Mr Amodei has floated the idea of “universal capital accounts”. These proposals reflect a growing belief that if AI generates extraordinary wealth, the public should share in it. Beneath the populist packaging lies a serious idea. Wealth in America is already concentrated: the top 1% own nearly a third of it and the bottom half just 2.5%. If AI substantially raises the returns to capital relative to labour, that divide could widen; superintelligence, if it materialises, could make much human labour obsolete, leaving the gains to whoever owns the machines. In such a future, giving the public a stake starts to look prudent. In one sense, citizens already have a claim on AI success. Governments tax corporate profits, which is an efficient way of sharing in firms’ upside without picking winners or exposing taxpayers to losses. The case for AI wealth funds is therefore in part political. Direct ownership stakes make the gains from AI more visible, while providing insurance against a future in which a handful of firms capture an ever-larger share of economic activity. Still, pursuing that goal raises practical questions. The first is how the assets get into public hands. Mr Altman has proposed voluntary donations, but the mechanics are tricky. Newly issued shares would dilute existing investors— including, in OpenAI’s case, Microsoft—who may object; Mr Altman himself owns no equity in his firm, so he has no founder stake to donate. As the AI labs prepare to go public, such dilution would soon hit pension funds and retail investors, too. Voluntary schemes can be meaningful or painless, not both. If governments buy stakes directly, that would put taxpayers on the hook for loss-making firms at frothy valuations. Mr Sanders’s approach— forcing firms to transfer equity—would raise more money but would be hard to distinguish from expropriation, inviting legal battles and chilling investment by reducing the expected rewards of future success. The next question is how much the schemes would raise. Suppose OpenAI and Anthropic each gave 3% of their equity, the midpoint of the 1-5% range discussed by industry advocates. At current valuations, that would seed a