The Cynic: November 30

BUSINESS
This Week’s Business News

AI Party, Profit Hangover

Wall Street just had a nice little rebound after its biggest wobble since April, and everyone is back to worshipping the AI trade while quietly asking, “So… when does this actually make money?” Investors are glued to fresh data on AI profits, economic releases, and the Fed’s next move, like anxious gamblers watching a roulette wheel that only lands on “maybe.”

The big AI names are now in that awkward phase where they’ve spent billions on chips and data centers and must explain to grown-up investors why “vibes” doesn’t count as free cash flow. Even Bitcoin is being used as a risk thermometer, which is exactly what you do when the global financial system is a group project.

Meanwhile, futures are pricing in a December rate cut, which would conveniently rescue a lot of “this will pay off someday” spreadsheets. If you want the polite version of this story, it’s here: Wall Street week-ahead recap.

Layoffs as a Service

The unofficial employment trend of 2025 is simple: fire people, blame “AI,” call it transformation. From Verizon and Meta to Amazon and UPS, thousands of corporate jobs are getting vaporized while leadership explains that this is all in the name of “efficiency” and “focus.”

The tech is supposedly here to “augment humans,” which appears to mean “augment shareholders” and “subtract payroll.” A World Economic Forum survey now has roughly 41% of companies expecting to reduce headcount over the next five years thanks to AI, while job postings in AI and data balloon like everything else on your expense report that’s “just this quarter.”

Corporate PR insists that displaced workers are getting “support,” which usually means a webinar, a PDF, and a LinkedIn Learning link nobody clicks. For the full roll call of who’s cutting whom, enjoy this cheerful index: 2025 Layoffs List.

Omnicom Swallows IPG and Calls It “Synergy”

In ad-land, Omnicom just finished absorbing Interpublic Group, creating the world’s largest advertising holding company and an HR org chart that could blot out the sun. The deal comes with a multi-billion-dollar debt exchange and a double-digit dividend hike, because nothing says “we’re taking risk seriously” like handing out more cash while stapling two empires together.

On paper, the combined group claims over $25 billion in annual revenue, a fatter dividend, and “enhanced capabilities” across a small nation’s worth of agencies. In practice, it inherits overlapping offices, overlapping tools, and overlapping people all waiting to find out who counts as “redundant” in the new PowerPoint deck.

The stock trades near the bottom of its 52-week range while analysts scream that it’s “deeply undervalued,” which is what analysts always scream right before discovering integration is hard. For the optimistic version with charts and grown-up language, see: Omnicom–IPG mega-merger breakdown.

Before we get back to overpriced houses and underpaid buyers

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REAL ESTATE
This Week’s Real Estate News

Home Sales: Everyone’s on Pause

Redfin’s latest data says U.S. home turnover is at its lowest level since the ’90s, with only about 2.77% of homes changing hands this year. The pandemic frenzy is a memory; now we have record-high prices, locked-in low-rate owners, and buyers who open a mortgage calculator once and then decide they like renting just fine.

Economists describe the market as defined by “caution,” which is a polite way of saying both sides are terrified of making a mistake that costs them six figures. Sellers don’t want to give up cheap mortgages or admit their house isn’t worth the number their neighbor got in 2021, while buyers keep re-running spreadsheets that scream “wait.”

So listings creep up, sales crawl, and the only thing moving quickly is the time it takes an agent to say “it’s a great time to be in the market” without laughing. If you want the full chart-fest, here you go: Nation’s Home Sales Declined in 2025.

Brokers vs. Math: NAR’s 2025 Reality Check

The National Association of REALTORS® just released its 2025 Profile of Real Estate Firms, and the headline is simple: housing affordability is still wrecked, and the cost of running a brokerage is climbing too. Over half of firms cite affordability as their top challenge, while more than a third point to rising operating costs and shaky local economies.

Yet somehow 38% of firms still expect profitability to increase next year, a level of optimism you usually only see in startup pitch decks and first-time flippers. The average firm has one office, a couple of full-time licensees, and a business model that leans heavily on repeat clients and referrals, which is great until your repeat clients are also broke.

Training and certifications remain the industry’s favorite coping mechanism: if you can’t fix affordability, you can at least get another badge on your email signature. For the official line with bullet points and zero sarcasm, check the NAR 2025 firm profile summary.

Offices: Vacant, But Not Cheap

Office construction in the U.S. has basically hit the brakes while vacancy still hovers around 18.6%, with some markets flirting with 27%. Developers are staring at half-empty towers and deciding, bravely, to build almost nothing, which is the closest this industry ever gets to introspection.

Manhattan and Miami are among the tighter markets, while Sun Belt darlings like Austin are learning what happens when you add 16% to your office stock in a few years and then discover hybrid work is not a phase. Rents haven’t collapsed nationally, but local pricing is quietly resetting—Denver, for example, has seen per-square-foot values sliced in half compared to 2022 on some deals.

The new strategy is “trophy or nothing”: fewer ground-up projects, but more hyper-amenitized buildings designed for the handful of tenants still pretending the office is a lifestyle brand. For the full autopsy, read: U.S. office construction stalls as vacancy stays near record highs.

FUN
Riddle Me This

A CEO, an AI model, and a middle manager walk into a budget meeting. By the end of Q4, only two of them are still on payroll, and both insist they “created most of the value.”

Who got cut?

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