Greed, War and the Mortgage Guy Who Now Runs US Intelligence: Tuesday, June 2, 2026

The head of housing finance at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is now, simultaneously, acting Director of National Intelligence — and still keeping his old job. Alphabet raised $80 billion in one of the largest equity transactions in history while Goldman's CEO told the world that greed is winning. A Greek shipping tycoon said Iran's toll on the Strait of Hormuz might just be worth paying. The world's dependence on Chinese rare earths, long treated as a strategic vulnerability with no fix, is starting to have a fix. And The High Side revealed that the USAF pilot shot down over Iran had been shot down before — by a Kuwaiti ally — less than five weeks earlier. Tuesday, June 2.

America's New Intelligence Chief Built Houses. Now He Runs the CIA, the NSA, and 15 Other Agencies.

President Trump announced Tuesday on social media that Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will serve as acting Director of National Intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard whose resignation takes effect June 30. Pulte will retain both of his existing roles simultaneously, overseeing the US mortgage market and the entire apparatus of the US intelligence community at the same time, with no staffing increase and no apparent transition plan. Pulte has no prior experience in national security, intelligence, or any related field. His biography on the FHFA website lists career experience in housing and philanthropy. Trump described his qualifications as deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the most valuable asset most Americans own, their home. Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner said the appointment was terrifying.

Pulte's selection reflects the logic that has driven Trump's personnel decisions throughout the second term: loyalty over expertise, with a preference for officials who have demonstrated a willingness to attack the president's enemies using institutional power. At FHFA, Pulte filed a criminal referral against Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, accusing her of mortgage fraud, a referral that led Trump to attempt to fire Cook, a case now pending before the Supreme Court. As acting DNI, Pulte will have access to the full intelligence product of all seventeen agencies of the US intelligence community, including covert operations, signals intelligence, and human source networks. He will also be able to make criminal referrals from that vantage point. CNN reported that the Government Accountability Office had already opened an investigation into Pulte over possible misuse of authority in his housing role. His appointment arrives as the United States is managing an active conflict with Iran, an escalating situation in Ukraine, and a deteriorating security environment in Cuba. Intelligence community veterans described the appointment as a decision that will alarm every allied intelligence service in the world.

Alphabet Raises $80 Billion — and Warren Buffett Buys $10 Billion of It — in One of the Largest Equity Deals in History

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, announced Monday it would raise up to $80 billion through a three-part equity financing package, one of the largest stock market fundraises in corporate history. The structure involves a $30 billion underwritten public offering of Class A shares, mandatory convertible preferred stock, and Class C capital stock; a $40 billion at-the-market program through which Alphabet will sell shares directly into the open market during the third quarter of 2026; and a $10 billion private placement to Berkshire Hathaway, split equally between Class A and Class C shares, at $351.81 per share. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are running the underwritten portion. The $10 billion Berkshire investment is the most striking element: Warren Buffett's conglomerate, long known for its deep skepticism of technology companies, is making one of its largest single-company investments in AI infrastructure.

Alphabet's stock fell approximately 2.5% in after-hours trading following the announcement, reflecting investor concern about dilution and the staggering scale of capital expenditure the company is committing to. Alphabet had already raised its 2026 capex guidance to between $180 billion and $190 billion, a figure that dwarfs any single-year technology infrastructure investment in history. The fundraise is designed to provide the resources needed to sustain that spending without drawing down the company's cash reserves to levels that would alarm credit agencies. Goldman CEO David Solomon, appearing on CNBC Tuesday, used Alphabet's strong trading performance following the announcement as evidence that markets can absorb the coming AI IPO wave. The stock's subsequent recovery, he argued, was the first concrete data point for bringing something of this scale, and it was encouraging.

Goldman's David Solomon: There Is More Greed Than Fear on Wall Street Right Now

David Solomon, the chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, delivered the most candid assessment of current market psychology yet at an industry event Tuesday, telling CNBC's Leslie Picker that markets are definitively in greed mode as the AI-driven IPO wave reaches its most concentrated moment. Solomon was asked directly whether the capital markets can absorb the near-simultaneous listings of Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX, three companies whose combined valuation is approaching $3 trillion and whose IPOs could collectively raise more than $200 billion. His answer was unambiguous: there is plenty of liquidity in the system if the world continues to remain as optimistic, and greed is currently outweighing fear by a measurable margin. He pointed to Alphabet's $80 billion equity raise as the first actual concrete data point for bringing something of this scale and described its market reception as encouraging.

Solomon was careful to frame his optimism with historical awareness rather than abandon it entirely. Greed can turn into fear very quickly, he said, but that does not mean it will. Exuberance can go on for significant periods of time, and there is a good chance that we are earlier in the cycle than later. He noted that record levels of wealth and liquidity are supporting the activity, and that gains from AI companies could create a self-reinforcing cycle as employees and investors redirect profits into taxes and new ventures. Goldman's own position in this environment is notably strong: the bank is one of the three joint book-running managers on Alphabet's underwritten offering, is likely to be deeply involved in the coming AI IPOs, and has already posted some of its strongest M&A and capital markets numbers in years. When Goldman's CEO says markets are greedy, it is worth remembering that Goldman's revenues go up when they are.

Does the World Need Chinese Rare Earths? A Growing Number of Companies Say Not Necessarily.

China controls approximately 61% of global rare earth production and 76% of global refining capacity, a dominance that it has wielded strategically in 2025 and 2026 by restricting export licenses for seven critical rare earth elements including dysprosium, terbium and yttrium, all essential for the high-performance permanent magnets used in electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, military systems, and AI data center cooling. The restrictions, announced in April 2025 and progressively tightened since, were designed to demonstrate Beijing's ability to impose economic pain on the West without firing a shot. The response from industry, government and research has been more rapid and more resourceful than Beijing may have anticipated. Niron Magnetics, a Minneapolis-based startup that has received $300 million in funding from General Motors, Stellantis and Samsung, is developing a synthetic alternative magnet made from iron and nitrogen, two of the most abundant elements on earth, with no rare earths required. If validated at scale, the technology would eliminate the category dependency entirely for the applications it targets.

Beyond synthetic alternatives, a wave of mining and processing investment is reshuffling the supply map. MP Materials, which operates the only active US rare earth mine, at Mountain Pass in California, has accelerated construction of a domestic magnet manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas, backed by a Pentagon contract worth up to $58.5 million. Energy Fuels is processing rare earth-bearing monazite sand at its White Mesa mill in Utah. Aclara Resources and Ramaco Resources are separately developing rare earth extraction capabilities. Australia's Lynas Rare Earths, the world's largest non-Chinese rare earth producer, is expanding processing capacity in both Australia and Malaysia. None of these alternatives is yet capable of replacing Chinese supply at scale, and short-term disruptions remain a genuine risk as the transition unfolds. But the trajectory is now clearly away from dependence rather than toward it, and the speed of the shift has accelerated sharply since Beijing imposed its restrictions. China's leverage over the critical minerals supply chain, real and significant as it is, is proving to be time-limited in ways that were not obvious when it was first deployed.

Evangelos Marinakis at Posidonia: Iran's Hormuz Toll Might Just Be Worth Paying

Evangelos Marinakis, the Greek shipping tycoon who controls Capital Maritime, one of the world's largest independent tanker fleets, offered the shipping industry's most pragmatic public assessment yet of Iran's Strait of Hormuz transit fee regime in a one-on-one interview at the Posidonia 2026 conference in Athens on Tuesday. When asked about the fees, which Iran began charging informally in March and formalised through its newly established Persian Gulf Strait Authority in mid-May at rates reaching up to $2 million per voyage, Marinakis said a toll may be a price worth paying to restore the flow of commercial shipping through the waterway. The comment marks a significant shift in industry posture: for months, shipowners and their insurers had publicly refused to engage with the fee regime, framing any payment as legitimising Iranian sovereignty claims over international waters that carry roughly 20% of the world's oil supply.

The economic logic behind Marinakis's position is straightforward, even if politically uncomfortable. Over 22,500 mariners and 1,550 commercial vessels remain stranded in the Arabian Gulf, unable to transit. The global tanker fleet has been thrown into logistical chaos, with vessels unable to reposition to where demand is highest. Insurance premiums for Gulf transits have risen by more than 400% since the war began. At those economics, a $2 million transit fee per voyage begins to look less like extortion and more like the cost of doing business in a contested waterway where the alternative is indefinite strandment. Iran has granted transit exemptions to Iraq, Pakistan and India through bilateral negotiations, suggesting that the fee regime is as much a diplomatic instrument as a financial one. Marinakis stopped short of saying he had paid or would pay the fees. But saying the toll may be worth paying, at Posidonia, in front of the global shipping industry, is a statement that will reverberate through every shipowner's boardroom before the week is out.

The F-15E Pilot Shot Down Over Iran Had Already Been Shot Down Once — by a US Ally — Five Weeks Earlier

A report published Tuesday by The High Side, a defence and national security publication with strong sourcing inside the US military, revealed that the pilot of the F-15E Strike Eagle shot down by Iranian air defences over central Iran on April 3 was the same officer who had been aboard one of the three F-15Es mistakenly destroyed by a Kuwaiti Air Force F/A-18 Hornet on March 1, less than five weeks earlier in the same conflict. The pilot had survived the friendly fire incident with the rest of his crew, all six F-15 crew members ejected safely from the three aircraft downed over Kuwait, and returned to flight operations before being shot down again, this time by the enemy, over Iranian territory. According to current and former Air Force officials cited by The High Side, this makes him almost certainly the first US Air Force fixed-wing pilot to be shot down twice in the same conflict since the Vietnam War.

The two incidents together illuminate the operational complexity and human cost of what has been, by any modern standard, an extraordinarily intense air war. The March 1 friendly fire incident occurred during a chaotic engagement in which Iranian aircraft, ballistic missiles and drones were simultaneously penetrating Kuwaiti airspace, creating a battlespace so crowded and fast-moving that a Kuwaiti pilot launched three air-to-air missiles at what he believed were Iranian targets and destroyed three American jets instead. All six crew survived, some were photographed being helped by Kuwaiti civilians, and at least some returned to operations within weeks. The April 3 shootdown was the first confirmed loss of a US crewed aircraft to Iranian fire, and the subsequent search and rescue operation, during which a USAF A-10 was also struck and forced to crash-land in Kuwait, and two US Black Hawk helicopters were hit by Iranian fire, underscored both the sophistication of Iranian air defences and the willingness of US forces to accept considerable additional risk to recover downed personnel. By the time rescue forces reached him, one crew member had been recovered. A search for the second continued for several days.