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Allen & Company Annual Conference Draws Media And Tech Leaders To Sun Valley
(Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The richest men in the world have gotten poorer since Trump took office. Not Warren Buffett.

Buffett’s $334 billion cash pile looks pretty good right now, huh?

In his second term, President Trump has courted tech CEOs with promises of lax regulations and tax cuts. So far, it hasn’t worked out too great for them.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are all poorer since they were spotted at Trump’s inauguration. Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, hasn’t publicly cozied up to Trump, and his wealth has grown about $20 billion since Inauguration Day.

Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump’s biggest cheerleader, has taken the biggest hit as Tesla underperforms as a business, leading investors to lose confidence. Another Trump-friendly CEO, Amazon’s Bezos, has lost at least $50 billion of his net worth since Trump was elected, as the president’s policies weigh on consumer sentiment. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now at least $30 billion poorer since Trump took office.

These men have lost billions amid a market sell-off that has hit their tech stocks particularly hard. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, meanwhile, has been more insulated from the downturn because of its large cash pile and shrinking exposure to the stock market, including selling off a chunk of its stake in Apple.

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OK, so when was the longest shutdown in US history?

The US government officially shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday after senators failed to agree on a last-minute funding bill. Though initially shrugging off the threat of a shutdown during yesterday’s session, stocks were mildly in the red on Wednesday as investors reacted to what is now the 11th shutdown in the government’s history.

Until this latest shutdown, there had been 20 government funding gaps experienced since 1976 — though not all ended in a full shutdown, with full closure averted in half of those cases.

Indeed, prior to the 1980s, funding gaps didn’t typically have major effects on government operations, with agencies continuing to operate on the basis that the funding would come eventually. However, a more stringent interpretation of the rules led to a stricter appropriations process from the early 1980s onward, with many subsequent funding gaps resulting in a shutdown of affected agencies (unless the gaps were quickly fixed or occurred over a weekend).

Obviously, the duration of the latest shutdown is still unclear, but it will continue until Congress passes a funding bill — most likely via a “continuing resolution,” which has ended every shutdown since 1990. Data analyzed by USAFacts suggest that it might not be a one- or two-day affair, as funding gaps have lengthened in recent years.

Government shutdown patterns
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Indeed, the last shutdown, which began in December 2018, ended up becoming the longest in history, at a whopping 34 days. By the time the government reopened in January 2019, about $3 billion (in 2019 dollars) had been wiped from the GDP in Q4, per data from the Congressional Budget Office, with approximately $18 billion in “federal discretionary spending” delayed over the roughly five-week stretch.

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GM climbs following upgrade, report that Trump administration seeks stake in its lithium mine partner

Shares of General Motors rose more than 2% in premarket trading Wednesday following an upgrade of the stock by UBS from neutral to buy. The firm also hiked its price target for GM by 45% to $81.

Also likely elevating GM was a Reuters report that the Trump administration is exploring taking a 10% stake in Lithium Americas, the automaker’s partner in a yet to open Thacker Pass lithium mine. Shares of Lithium Americas surged 68% in the premarket.

GM, which invested $625 million into the lithium mine last year, holds a 38% stake in the joint venture. The mine is expected to become the Western Hemispheres primary lithium source in 2028, when it’s slated to open, producing enough of the metal to make 800,000 electric vehicle batteries.

Prior to its plans for Lithium Americas, the Trump administration last month said it would take a 10% stake in Intel. In July, it announced a 15% stake in rare earths miner MP Materials.

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