An ex-banker warns that AI agents increasingly handle real commerce—making payments, buying advertising, negotiating—but lack auditing systems to verify their actions. Drawing parallels to the 2008 financial crisis when unchecked numbers caused disaster, the author argues that without verification layers, fraud and mismanagement could proliferate at machine speed while businesses remain disconnected from the truth of their spending.
Australia will restrict foreign students from bringing partners and children, and reduce net overseas migration to 225,000 by 2028 from current levels of around 300,000. The policy change, announced by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, follows pressure from the hard-right One Nation party and concerns about housing, infrastructure, and social cohesion amid record migration levels since the 2022 border reopening.
The author obtained permanent residency in Japan after four years on a Highly Skilled Professional visa, initially requiring three years but accelerated to one year after a job change increased their points score. The status removes work restrictions, enables freelancing, and allows greater flexibility to spend time in the UK and between countries as needed.
Column built an issuer processor from scratch, offering a single integrated platform combining banking, card processing, and capital for credit, debit, prepaid, and stablecoin-backed card programs on Visa and Mastercard. The platform enables card program launch in weeks through three API calls, with full control over authorizations, customization, and real-time transaction decisions.
Column released four new financial products: stablecoins with full interoperability between USDC/USDT and U.S. dollars, full-stack card issuing with its own processor, global banking capabilities for international customers, and multicurrency accounts with instant conversion. These products consolidate multiple financial infrastructure vendors into a single integrated platform for fintech companies.
The U.S. government has imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applications and tightened immigration rules, causing tech companies to relocate hiring and operations abroad rather than pay the higher costs. Few companies applied for the new H-1B visas subject to the tax, resulting in significantly fewer visa approvals and reduced government revenue.