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|  |  | Wednesday, November 12, 2025 | |  | | Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images | Good morning, Quartz readers! It’s Shannon Carroll with the Daily Brief. Today, talk of 50-year mortgages teases buyers, Tesla stakes its next decade on one man, SoftBank trades Nvidia gains for OpenAI ambitions, and Warren Buffett checks in for the holiday. | | HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW | Washington is reopening; the scars remain.
The standoff may end, but economists estimate that roughly $14 billion in permanent damage (lost output, flight chaos, food-aid lapses) will ripple long after paychecks resume. | The data drought is nearly over. Once the House passes the funding bill, agencies can resume publishing economic reports, ending the
silence that has left economists reliant on patchy private-sector estimates. | SoftBank cashed out of Nvidia —
and into risk. The group offloaded its $5.83 billion holding in the tech giant to fund OpenAI exposure, as Masayoshi Son’s conviction in AI now outweighs even the world’s hottest stock. | CoreWeave’s $1.4 billion quarter wasn’t enough. Revenue jumped 134% year over year, and mega-contracts with
OpenAI, Meta, and Nvidia dazzled investors, but weaker guidance sent shares tumbling and cooled the AI fever. | | | Sponsored |  | There’s a world for you here. | Forget what you think you know about TikTok. It’s not just one thing — it’s a universe of everything. The moment you join, its powerful
discovery engine starts learning what you actually love. In minutes, your feed becomes a custom-built channel all about your interests. Whether you're looking for 30-second recipes, hidden travel guides, astrophysics explainers, historical deep-dives, or just a really good laugh after a long day, there’s a community for it. It's a place to learn a new skill, find your next hobby, and connect with people who share your most niche passions. | | |
| | HOME SWEET LOAN | The Trump administration has discovered a new way to stretch the American dream — by turning the 30-year mortgage into a 50-year sentence. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte called the proposal a “complete game changer.” The pitch promises relief for buyers squeezed by record prices and high rates. The fine print promises the opposite. Economists say that extending the life of a loan doesn’t lower its cost; it just lets it linger. Buyers would pay far more over time, build equity at a crawl, and end up in
debt longer than many marriages last.
Stretching a mortgage for half a century doesn’t make homes cheaper; it just extends the debt until both the borrower and the house are exhausted. Housing economists say the math alone should end the conversation. A $400,000 home with 10% down would cost roughly $662,000 more in interest under a 50-year loan at 7.24% than under a 30-year loan at 5.99%. Monthly payments rise instead of falling. Equity crawls. And because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
can’t buy loans longer than 30 years, lenders would have to hold the risk themselves. The whole plan exists in a regulatory void — an affordability fix that can’t afford to exist.
Right now, the U.S. doesn’t lack time; it lacks homes. A shortage of affordable inventory and punishing rates have left would-be buyers staring at a locked door while Washington fiddles with the hinges. Real fixes would mean more building, fewer pricing surcharges, and a federal agency that prioritizes
access over optics. But that’s harder to campaign on than a shiny new mortgage term. A 50-year loan doesn’t expand access to the American dream; it just guarantees you’ll still be paying for it long after you’ve woken up. Quartz’s Deborah Kearns has more on the hidden costs beneath the “affordable” label. | | ELON-GATED COMPENSATION | Tesla built its empire on defying gravity. This week, it bet $1 trillion to keep its CEO from floating off. In a shareholder vote that doubled as a trust fall, investors approved the richest compensation plan in corporate history — a 10-year deal that could lift Elon Musk’s stake in Tesla from 15% to 25% if he delivers an $8.5 trillion market cap, 20 million cars, and one million of both robotaxis and humanoid robots. On paper, it’s an incentive plan. In reality, Tesla’s board is trying to buy
the one thing Musk keeps misplacing: focus.
For now, that focus is theoretical. Musk has spent much of the year in orbit around everything but Tesla — launching doomed efficiency departments, dabbling in politics, and turning X into a megaphone for chaos. The company he built as a clean-energy revolution is fighting for a share in a market it once defined, and its newest “moonshots” — humanoid robots and driverless taxis — remain more pitch deck than product, despite Musk’s many
promises. Still, the board insists this pay deal will keep him grounded.
Those milestones aren’t just ambitious; they’re practically lunar. Tesla would have to grow its valuation almost sixfold to hit $8.5 trillion, multiply profits roughly thirty times to reach $400 billion, sell ten times as many cars as it does today, and field a million robotaxis when only a few dozen exist in supervised trials. Tesla’s valuation already assumes a future that hasn’t arrived; now, the company is
betting $1 trillion that belief can out-earn reality. Maybe it will. Musk’s greatest export has always been belief. But the company’s next decade depends on whether he can do the same with discipline — or if Tesla just bought 10 more years of improvisation at market price. Quartz’s Shannon Carroll has more on the math (and the miracles) behind Tesla’s next decade. | | | Sponsored | | There’s a world for you here. | Forget what you think you know about TikTok. It’s not just one thing — it’s a universe of everything. The moment you join, its powerful discovery engine starts learning what you actually love. In minutes, your feed becomes a custom-built channel all about your
interests. Whether you're looking for 30-second recipes, hidden travel guides, astrophysics explainers, historical deep-dives, or just a really good laugh after a long day, there’s a community for it. It's a place to learn a new skill, find your next hobby, and connect with people who share your most niche passions. | | |
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