Good morning, you're listening to Markets Desk.
Consumer confidence is cracking under the weight of the Iran conflict and persistent cost pressures. Fresh data shows both sentiment and retail sales declining, with American households pulling back as the war drives energy and goods prices higher. The political fallout for the administration is sharpening by the week.
Shifting to tech, Anthropic is facing real subscriber blowback over its decision to embed watermarks in Claude-generated text. Some users have already canceled, and developers are particularly uneasy — shipping AI-labeled code to clients raises uncomfortable questions about authorship and professional credibility. It is a tension the entire industry will have to reckon with.
And in sports business, Jeff Bezos has made his move into professional football — the English kind. The Amazon founder is joining a consortium that acquired a minority stake in Liverpool FC, investing alongside steel magnate and Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin. Liverpool's commercial valuation has climbed dramatically in recent years, making it one of the most coveted sports assets on the planet.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
