Individual Economists

Moscow Warns It Could Target British Military Facilities In Unprecedented Statement

Zero Hedge -

Moscow Warns It Could Target British Military Facilities In Unprecedented Statement

From the very start of the Ukraine war, the United Kingdom has consistently been among Kiev's most open and ardent military supporters, time and again transferring heavy weaponry, including cutting edge long-range missiles like the Storm Shadow.

At the start of this week, Britain announced it plans to provide Ukraine with classified technology to allow for the country's own manufacturing of the British/French-designed SCALP air-launched cruise missile (which in the UK is known as the Storm Shadow). The allies expect to set up a production line in Ukraine as soon as year's end.

Getty Images

Already, Ukraine has used its domestic-made and designed Neptune cruise missile to strike oil refineries and military sites deep inside Russian territory. A domestic-made SCALP would present the likelihood of Ukraine then using this Western-designed missile to directly attack Russia, which only increases the chances of an eventual Moscow-NATO clash. Ukrainian forces already appeared to have used the missile on Donetsk and other locations closer to front lines in the Donbass.

On Thursday the Kremlin has issued one of its strongest warnings and threats aimed at London to date, accusing the UK of "fully taking part in the war on Kiev's side" - and thus thwarting any chance of peace talks while adding fuel to the fire.

Moscow is now saying that the UK's own military facilities could become fair game for direct attacks.

Kremlin spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a Thursday press briefing, "We have repeatedly warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons against Russian territory could be directed against any British military facilities and equipment in Ukraine and beyond."

Zakharova urged "all residents of the United Kingdom to think about the inevitable, catastrophic consequences of the hostile steps taken by their own authorities." She also laid out:

"We propose that the British leadership once again carefully analyze the situation and immediately, in the most resolute and unequivocal manner, abandon the hostile, aggressive line, which can only... create the risk of the conflict escalating to an entirely new level."

Ironically this comes just on the heels of a rare visit of the CIA Director to Moscow. US officials claim the Tuesday meeting between John Ratcliffe and top Kremlin intelligence officials was to convey a warning to President Putin to not attack any NATO member. However, many analysts are skeptical that this was the official reason.

Zakharova further said on Thursday that Britain and France were "playing ⁠with ​fire" after years of escalating their involvement in Ukraine.

But London appears unmoved, with a UK Ministry of Defence official responding on Thursday as follows: "Britain stands shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine and we are committed to providing the equipment Ukraine needs to defend itself against Putin’s illegal invasion. Russia should be in no doubt about the resolve of this government to stand against Russian aggression, in Ukraine and against the UK and our allies," the official stated.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 16:30

Quinn: They Know What's Coming, Because They Planned It...

Zero Hedge -

Quinn: They Know What's Coming, Because They Planned It...

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency involved.” – Ludwig von Mises

“The financial history of the last century shows a steady increase in the amount of public indebtedness. Nobody believes that the states will eternally drag the burden of these interest payments. It is obvious that sooner or later all these debts will be liquidated in some way or other, but certainly not by payment of interest and principal according to the terms of the contract.” – Ludwig von Mises

Anyone living in the real world of commuting to a job, buying groceries, paying rent, filling up their gas tank, paying utility bills, paying property taxes, and generally trying to live an honest hard working life with a couple weeks of vacation per year, knows they are being fed a load of bullshit by the Trumps, Bessents and Warshs of the world. They are spinning false narratives, faking the economic statistics, lying to you about how dire our economic situation is, and above all, spending and printing fiat at hypersonic speed in a desperate attempt to give the appearance of normalcy, when in reality we are living through the most abnormal, corrupt, degenerate, dangerous period in history.

This normalcy bias is employed by the vast majority of dumbed down, I-gadget addicted, debt enslaved, mRNA jabbed, zombie-like consumers, as they shuffle through their daily existence believing the propaganda shoveled at them 24/7 on the boob tube and their social media accounts, by billionaire oligarchs, corrupt politicians, captured media talking heads, and the invisible government pulling the strings to manipulate their thoughts, decisions, and false beliefs. As a born cynical skeptic, I no longer believe anyone or anything. I’m real fun at parties.

As our national debt surpassed $40 trillion last week and has been accelerating at a rate of $13.4 billion per day (annualized rate of $4.9 trillion) since July 1, the only analogy I can make is the final scene of Thelma & Louise when they purposely drive off a cliff into the Grand Canyon, rather than face the consequences of their actions. But, in my daily existence, the people at the gym, drugstore, and grocery store seem happily oblivious to the extreme danger we currently face as citizens of a dying empire, intent on going out with a bang. We are accelerating towards an economic meltdown, inflationary financial collapse, and possibly global war, and no one seems to care or acknowledge reality.

It’s almost as if the 270 million sheep, who allowed themselves to be injected with a Big Pharma toxic gene altering poison, with little critical thinking skills to begin with, have been rendered deaf, dumb and blind to the machinations of their overlords as we spiral towards collapse. It seems only 5% to 10% of the population have the proper critical thinking skills, distrust of the government, ability to do math, comprehension to understand history, and courage to tell the truth and act rationally, in an irrational, perverted, debased world, built on debt, delusions, and denial. It makes me sick to my stomach observing the cowardice, corruption, and degradation of the pedophile elites who wield the power in our society, leading the sheep to slaughter and the world towards catastrophic ruin.

The government continues to propagandize the masses with their massaged, manipulated and made up statistics showing a steadily growing economy, relatively low inflation, and historically low unemployment. Trump and his lying minions consistently point to the stock market at all-time highs as proof everything  is great. It is great for Trump’s family of insider trading grifters, his billionaire banking buddies, the congressional scum sucking snakes becoming multi-millionaires on a $175,000 salary, and all the toadies in the media pretending this everything bubble isn’t due to printing $3 trillion per year as the only crutch for this Potemkin village of debt, created by our Deep State overlords and their highly paid apparatchiks.

Even though the propaganda outlets: CNBC, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, among others, are compensated gloriously by Big Pharma, Big Banks, the Military Industrial Complex, and Big Corps, to lie, obfuscate and mislead the masses, one only needs the most basic of math skills and understanding to see what is really happening in this country. Is it a sign of a strong vibrant economy when credit card delinquencies are at a 15 year high, student loan delinquencies are at a 6 year high, and auto loan delinquencies are at an all-time high? And this is before the real pain of a recession takes hold. This chart reveals immense pressure on average Americans who don’t have the benefit of insider trading tips from Trump.

Hysterically, mouthpiece for the Wall Street cabal, Bloomberg declares the all-time low in the savings rate is because the masses are making a killing in the stock market, so they no longer need to save. In reality, the average American household, making $83,000 per year, is only saving 2.7% per year because their government is spending over $7 trillion per year, while the Federal Reserve is printing trillions and conducting stealth QE, creating a massive inflationary headwind.The cumulative inflation over the last 10 years, even using the massively massaged CPI, is 39%. In reality, it is up well over 60%. Average worker pay has risen by only 45%.

Only in a warped, debt saturated, consuming society would this be seen as normal. In a normal, healthy economy which produces more than it consumes, the savings rate would be 10%, like it was from the 1950s into the 1990s. People are not saving because there is nothing left to save. When credit card debt sits near an all-time high of $1.26 trillion and the average person has a $6,600 revolving balance accruing at 22% interest, the savings rate makes sense. The average American is deeply in debt and barely surviving.

Among the vast plethora of phony government statistics, the unemployment rate is one of the most manipulated fake data points in history. It has no relation to the real 25% unemployment during the Great Depression. The current reported unemployment rate of 4.1% is a bad joke, completely falsified through the manipulation of the labor force figure by government drones at the BLS.

Only a triple jabbed, BLM supporting, Fauci fan believes the labor participation rate is currently at the same level as it was in 1974, before the overlords initiated the destruction of traditional families by forcing women into the workforce in mass through inflation, feminist falsehoods, and non-stop propaganda about girl power. They have purposely under-reported the actual civilian labor force to drive down the unemployment rate. The labor participation rate is far above the reported 61.4%.

At the turn of the century the labor participation rate was 67.5%. It drifted slowly down to 66% before the Federal Reserve/Wall Street cabal created great financial crisis. This is where faking it until making it went into high gear. The Boomer retirement false narrative was used as the participation rate plunged to 62.5%, far greater than the Boomer retirement pace.  Millions simultaneously became disabled and began collecting Social Security. The labor participation rate actually increased to 63.3% just before the Covid scamdemic was rolled out in early 2020. If you analyze the actual numbers, the ridiculousness of their manipulation model reveals the falseness of their numbers to mislead the masses about the strength of our economy.

  • In January 2000, the working age population was 209 million, with 141 million in the work force. Today, the working age population is 275 million, with only 169 million supposedly in the work force. The population is up 66 million (+32%), while the workforce increased by a minuscule 18 million (+20%). There are now 106 million working age Americans supposedly willingly not working. This is untrue. Millions would be working if there were decent paying jobs to be had.

  • There are 1 million less people employed today than one year ago, but amazingly the BLS drones want you to believe the unemployment rate dropped from 4.3% to 4.1%. Meanwhile, 2.8 million people must have made millions on AI stocks, laying bets on Draft Kings, or getting insider tips from the White House. They did not leave the labor force. They are unemployed.

  • The BLS fantasy statisticians actually pretend you are not in the labor force if you give up looking due to not being able to land a job.  We are to believe that with 275 million able bodied adults, 162 million are employed, with 28 million working part-time, 9 million working multiple jobs, 16 million “self-employed” and 22 million pretending to work in government offices and funded by taxpayers.

The labor participation rate, at a minimum, should be 63%, with a more realistic level of 65%. This would put the actual unemployment rate at between 6.7% and 9.9%. Anyone who isn’t brain fogged from the jab knows the unemployment rate is closer to 10% than 4%. Does default rates near highs and the savings rate at lows jive with a 10% unemployment rate or a 4% unemployment rate?

The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity created a realistic measure of true unemployment which  includes not only people who are unemployed and looking for a job, but also those who are involuntarily working part-time and who are earning poverty-level wages, or less than $26,000 annually before taxes. This “functional unemployment rate” is currently 24.9%, which jives nicely with the Great Depression level of 25%.

The 4% unemployment rate is as believable as the 3.4% CPI reported by the BLS drones, when everyone knows inflation is raging at 8% to 10%. Proof of the government faking these numbers is so blatant when they try to convince you health insurance costs have dropped by 33% in the last four years. Meanwhile, the median 2026 premium increase across all “Affordable” Care Act health insurance plans was 20%, and insurance companies have requested a median premium increase of 14% for 2027.

The world is cyclical in nature and human beings have a tendency to make the same mistakes over and over. Warsh and his central banker co-conspirators can talk tough about inflation, but it has been above their 2% target for the last 65 months, and they are doing the opposite of what would be needed to drive inflation to the 2% level. In fact, with the fiscal mismanagement of the country’s finances, waging wars across the globe, and nothing but $2 trillion to $3 trillion annual deficits for eternity, the bond market is ignoring the lies of Warsh and Bessent and dictating the path of long-term interest rates. It is very likely we will experience a replay of the late 1970s and early 1980s, except our debt is $40 trillion today versus $900 billion in 1980. Warsh is no Volker, and doesn’t have the balls to do what would be required.

The facade is crumbling and the bond market is going to hold the profligate politicians and the Wall Street owned central bankers accountable for what they have done. Their job has been to enrich the oligarchs and impoverish the peasants, and they accomplished their mission, pushing the country into an abyss with no hope of recovery. The 30 year Treasury just reached the 2007 peak at 5.27%, but in 2007 rates were headed lower and the national debt was less than $9 trillion. Today, rates are headed higher and the debt is $40 trillion and headed much higher. It’s a recipe for disaster.

The falsehoods and fabrications are running hot and heavy as we accelerate on the road to perdition towards a catastrophic denouement. Trump, Bessent, the Wall Street cabal, and their mouthpiece media (Axios, Fox, CNBC, etc.) are desperate to make you believe the Strait of Hormuz is open, oil is flowing freely, the impact on prices is minimal, and Iran is on the brink of collapse. Grand announcements about more sanctions, after we have had non-stop sanctions for 47 years against Iran, is comical. Bessent, the sodomite, thinks his bloviating bullshit and threats can move the markets in the direction he chooses. Look at the results, so far.

Barak Ravid, the CIA/Mossad Israeli plant at Axios, and Trump’s chief propaganda mouthpiece, dutifully reported the lies about 40 tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz Friday night, with his source as unnamed “U.S. Officials”. This was then followed up with fake headlines declaring a 400% increase in traffic through the Strait, designed to drive the price of oil lower. All lies. Neutral sources, using satellite imagery, show very little traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Does this look like “traffic exploding by 400%”. They keep talking and the oil tanks keep emptying. When the reality overwhelms the false narratives, the price of oil will explode.

It seems both Biden and Trump do not understand the definition of STRATEGIC. They have both drained the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve totaling 327 million barrels during their terms for the sole reason of winning elections by artificially lowering the price of oil. The reserve is now at the same level as it was in 1982, when U.S. oil consumption was 15.3 million barrels per day, versus 20.6 million barrels per day now.

Even worse, Trump isn’t using the reserve in the U.S. He is selling it to foreign countries. That doesn’t sound too strategic to me, but this is the same guy who is going to import toxic Argentinian beef to undercut U.S. ranchers in order to win the 2026 mid-term elections. The SPR, stored in salt caves, is reaching levels where it can’t be effectively pumped. We have just over a month before the true bottom.

As Bessent ramps up his lying campaign to keep bond yields from reflecting the reality of our current and future economic quagmire, Kevin Warsh, the self proclaimed inflation fighting hawk, continues to flap his gums, while actually contributing to the inflationary fiasco. If a Federal Reserve chairman really wanted to squash inflation he would be raising short-term rates, reducing the Fed’s balance sheet, and using his influence with Wall Street banks to make it more difficult to lend money to consumers and the AI bubble corporations.

Warsh is trapped because if he does what he should do, the AI/Data Center financing circle jerk will implode and crash the stock market, making his Wall Street owners and Trump very angry. So instead he is actually exercising QE by expanding his balance sheet by $224 billion, while not raising short-term rates, and funding the $3 trillion deficit, the Iran/Ukraine war, and the AI bubble. Fed chairmen will always choose printing to pulling away the punch-bowl while the party is roaring. The rich get richer and the middle class is buried under a tsunami of relentless never ending inflation.

Kurt Altrichter explains just how easy the Fed and their owners are acting when it comes to credit, as we enter the crash zone. Everyone is going to keep dancing until the music stops, just as they were doing in 2007.

“Bloomberg’s index of how easy it is to raise money across stocks, credit, and rates just closed at the easiest level in its 35-year history, looser than 2021 and looser than the dot-com peak. This is the liquidity holding stocks, gold, and credit near records all at once. Conditions this loose have never lasted. When they tighten, the most leveraged trades, AI and credit, unwind first.”

The easiest financial conditions in history always leads to bubbles. We are in the midst of so many bubbles simultaneously, it is just a matter of time before the needle comes along and pops them quicker than an athlete collapsing from myocarditis after a Pfizer death jab. The stock market is now more overvalued than it was at the 1929 top and the 2000 dot-com top. Jim Cramer and his fellow boobs and bimbos on CNBC will never warn their non-thinking day trader audience about the imminent collapse of this debt driven bubble. There is a reason Berkshire Hathaway was sitting on $400 billion of cash in the first quarter. The market is 50% more overvalued than it was in 2008 before the last Fed induced financial crash. Winter is coming.

One year ago there was very little talk of data centers or AI, as the climate change and DEI narratives were still being regurgitated by the legacy media and the woke social media arms of our beloved overlord Epstein class. Suddenly, in 2026 the “need” for thousands of ginormous power sucking, aquafer draining surveillance centers (aka data centers) was essential to the future of our country, even though we seem to be functioning fine without these nature destroying monstrosities. One moment Bill Gates and his ilk are telling us cow farts are destroying the planet, the next moment these surveillance centers using more electricity and water than exists in some states are perfectly fine and essential.

And the dumbed down masses don’t even question the demands of these globalist billionaire totalitarians who have already killed millions with their covid jab genocide. These data centers do not benefit the average person in any way. The narratives are false. The electricity to power them doesn’t exist. The water to cool them does not exist. The entire AI scam bubble is exactly like the internet dot-com bubble. The bloated defense budget of nearly $1 trillion is about to be surpassed by the capital spending (all financed with debt) of just four companies: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta. It’s a race to win the AI war. But it will result in another financial debacle, with the Magnificent 7 and those financing this bubble begging for a bailout. And they will be bailed out at your expense.

With Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic, Palantir, Flock, among many others loaning each other money to buy each other’s products and recording it as revenue, you should be getting an Enron/Worldcom vibe. The IPOs are coming hot and heavy, enriching the hucksters at the top, but once the financing fraud unravels, the stocks will collapse, bankruptcies will follow, and billions of square feet of rotting data center skeletons will be left in communities across the land.

It’s always a good idea to see what the corporate executives of the biggest corporations are doing, versus the narratives they are spinning on CNBC. With corporate profits at all-time highs and the stock market marching relentlessly higher, for some reason the corporate executives who know the truth about their companies sold $77 billion of their stock, a 20 year high (excluding covid). That is surely a sign of good times ahead. Right? Previous peaks in insider selling proceeded market tops and the crashes that followed.

It’s good to be the kings. These corporate insiders didn’t get into the top 1% by being dumb. The top 1% wealthiest households surpassed the wealth of the entire middle class in 2023 and have continued their acceleration upward, as they own most of the stocks and real estate in the U.S., which has appreciated rapidly since 2023. It’s funny how the middle class started losing the battle after the great financial crisis and their free-fall has not abated. When the Fed, Wall Street, Epstein class and the DC swamp all conspire against the middle class to enrich themselves through monetary and fiscal corruption, the ground work for revolution has been laid. Once this debt saturated shitshow implodes and the middle class is left holding the bag again, fireworks should commence.

You know you’ve crossed the Rubicon economically when interest on the national debt has surpassed our humongous war budget, and you need to issue more debt to pay the interest. With annual interest already exceeding $1.24 trillion and headed towards $1.4 trillion next year, you can understand Bessent’s spasmodic gyrations in keeping rates from exploding higher, as they should. If the 10 year Treasury was 6% and 30 year Treasury was 8%, where they would be in a free non-manipulated market, interest on the debt would be closer to $2 trillion per year and it would be game over for this declining empire of debt.

I’ve painted a dark picture, but it is a true picture based on unequivocal facts, not some nonsense narrative spun by liars, thieves, and pedophiles. When you see the Chinese central bank add 60 tons of gold in the 1st six months of the year, bringing their three year accumulation to 14 million troy ounces, along with central banks across the globe increasing their gold holdings, you can discern there is trouble brewing and countries are positioning themselves to survive whatever conflagration the American empire ignites during its ongoing death throes. Bessent’s economic warfare against China, Russia, and dozens of other countries across the globe will only add gasoline to the fire consuming this crumbling empire.

When you step back and observe the insanity consuming our world, you have to ask yourself whether this is really due to mind numbing stupidity and incompetence on the part of our leaders or due to a master plan by the new world order satanist pedophiles to purposely destroy western civilization and its financial underpinnings, which had allowed a vast proportion of the planet to rise out of poverty into the middle class. I do believe the globalist oligarchs are evil, arrogant, narcissistic, and diabolically power hungry, but I don’t believe they stupid and incompetent.

Therefore, I must conclude every seemingly preposterous act by our hand picked puppet politicians, their bureaucrat apparatchiks (Cabinet, FBI, CIA, DOD, DOJ), Wall Street financiers, central bankers, activist judges, and global organizations like the WHO, WEF, NATO, UN, and thousands of NGOs controlled by billionaires and surveillance state organizations, are part of the plan to depopulate the planet, impoverish the survivors, create a totalitarian electronic surveillance state, and control the peasants through CBDCs, mandated digital IDs, and social credit scores, which will restrict your opinions, movement, and ability to make a living and feed yourself.

When you grasp the almost incomprehensible malevolence of their end game, you begin to understand the seemingly insane choices being made on our behalf by those pulling the strings of our political, financial, and social institutions. The developed nations of the world have cumulatively added $100 trillion of debt since 2020, even as the demographics of their countries are incapable of servicing that debt. To exacerbate this recklessness, they all simultaneously flooded their countries with third world savages in order to overwhelm their social welfare systems and tear apart the social fabric of their societies.

The planned and coordinated covid plandemic, which successfully forced 70% of the global population to be injected with a toxic, gene altering, cancer and myocaditis causing death potion, has accomplished more than our overlords could ever imagine. It proved Huxley’s supposition that the slaves would come to love their servitude. Even as turbo cancers, heart attacks, and other issues created by the spike protein damaging their bodies, the vaxxed refuse to believe they were poisoned by their own government and medical establishment. The vaxxers still worship Fauci, even though his own texts and emails prove him to be a mass murderer. This phase of the depopulation agenda is underway and will ultimately eliminate hundreds of millions from the gene pool.

When Russia and Ukraine were about to conclude a peace agreement in March 2022, Boris Johnson was sent to Zelensky by his globalist controllers in order to insure the war would continue and expand. Four and a half years later, the US/NATO continue to wage their proxy war against Russia in an effort to weaken Putin, drive the price of oil and natural gas higher, exacerbate the global food crisis, and goad Putin into starting WW3.

The U.S. sneak attack of Iran, under the false pretenses of an imminent development of nuclear bomb by Iran, on behalf of Israel (because they have incriminating info on Trump from the Epstein files), has accomplished the feat of creating a global economic catastrophe, with soaring oil prices, and shortages of fertilizer, natural gas, diesel, and rare earth minerals necessary to produce the technology needed to run our world.

When you see Trump and his minions sanctioning the world, while threatening tariffs, kidnapping presidents, manipulating the oil, stock, and bond markets, you come to the realization Trump has been installed to initiate the global collapse, which they believe will usher in the final solution for the pesky peasants consuming too much of the world’s resources.

Once the economic and financial collapse wipes out the remaining wealth of the middle class, the masses will be clamoring to be saved by their overlords, who will “generously” provide their CBDC “solution” to the collapse they purposely created. The collapse is baked into this cake made of debt and there is no avoiding the disastrous outcome. They will solidify their stranglehold on the global wealth, increase their control over resources, and force the masses into their techno-gulag.

If you don’t sense the extreme acceleration towards this dark dystopian future, then you aren’t paying attention, are trapped in your cognitive dissonance, or are one of the highly paid henchmen promoting the new world order headed our way.

The almost desperate roll-out of thousands of data surveillance centers is because their techno-gulag world will require almost unthinkable data processing power to track every person on the planet; record our movements, spending, social media interactions, and conversations; and dole out punishment (disabling your auto, disabling your credit cards, freezing your bank accounts) to the dissidents (formerly known as conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers). The rapid roll-out of flock cameras across the country is a key component of their techno-gulag plan. They want to have the technology in place before the financial collapse. It’s a race to the finish.

Knowing we are in the final phase of this Fourth Turning should have given me an idea of how bad it would get, but the realization of how malicious, immoral, and satanic the Epstein pedophile class is proving to be, is stunning to behold. We are in the midst of an existential battle against diabolical evil for the future of humanity. Losing will mean an end to the freedoms and way of life we have experienced for 250 years.

Sixty years ago Carroll Quigley revealed the invisible hands controlling the system, and now they are pulling out all the stops in implementing their plan to make sure we own nothing and they own it all. We are experiencing the tragedy. Hope won’t be enough to win against such a determined enemy.

“The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the worlds central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank…sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence co-operative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.” ― Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, 1966

If you want a future for you children and grandchildren, you will need to step up now and do whatever you can to throw a monkey wrench into the gears of their data centers. Good luck and Godspeed.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 16:20

Alberta Premier Rejects Using Oil As A Weapon Against Trump

Zero Hedge -

Alberta Premier Rejects Using Oil As A Weapon Against Trump

Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

Alberta's Premier Danielle Smith has rejected the idea of slapping export taxes on crude oil exports to the United States in retaliation for the Trump administration's tariff salvo against Ottawa, saying they would be damaging to Canada.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks at the Canada Strong and Free Network in Ottawa on Thursday, March 23, 2023. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)

"Although I understand the need to respond strongly to these tariffs, I cannot think of a more disastrous policy decision than cutting off or taxing Alberta's oil to the United States," Smith said as quoted by Global News, adding that the move would trigger a disproportionate tariff response from the United States that could hurt the Canadian economy.

"It would not only extinguish the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Albertans, it would economically hobble our friends and neighbors in other provinces to the east," she said, warning of millions of jobs getting lost as a result of the tariff war.

Alberta exports about 4 million barrels of crude oil daily to the United States. Last year, the total value of these exports stood at about $80 billion. Trump has so far not threatened tariffs on crude oil coming from Canada but, according to Smith, this could change if Canada itself decides to use oil exports as a weapon in the tariff war.

As for the possibility of threatening the U.S. with a suspension of oil exports, Smith suggested this would be an even worse idea. "The United States would, of course, respond and cut off all gasoline and diesel from their refineries to Ontario and Quebec, right as we turn into fall and winter," she told media.

Smith also said the U.S. could replace Canadian crude with crude from Venezuela, as a result of which Alberta would in turn lose its biggest oil buyer. This may be theoretically true, but with Venezuela's oil production at barely above 1 million barrels daily and not all of that going to U.S. refineries, such a replacement is quite unlikely in the medium term.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 15:40

Army's Project Janus Selects Five Reactor Companies For Rapid Development

Zero Hedge -

Army's Project Janus Selects Five Reactor Companies For Rapid Development

The US Army's Project Janus, which we detailed at length back in November, has selected its initial batch of reactor developers to bring advanced nuclear energy to Army installations to ensure resilient and ready power. 

The program is looking to move reactor developers through their first-of-a-kind and second-of-a-kind designs at breakneck speeds with the goal of “bending metal as quickly as possible”.

The following companies have been selected to participate under Project Janus:

  • Antares Nuclear
  • BWXT Advanced Technologies
  • General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems
  • Radiant Industries
  • Westinghouse Government Services

The nuclear industry has suffered from decades of atrophy with little to no new nuclear construction to incentivize the manufacturing industry to invest in supply lines to support the build-out of a new national nuclear program. Project Janus looks to assist with revitalizing the commercial nuclear industry while also benefiting by harnessing the reliability of nuclear energy to enhance the abilities of the armed forces. 

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy, and Environment, Dr. Jeff Waksman, who is also a program lead for Project Janus, has remarked in recent interviews that reactor developers will be constructing and operating their reactors on various Army installations across the U.S. and will be compensated for the achievement of various milestones related to successful construction and operation of their reactor designs. 

$2.2 billion has been set aside by the Army and the Department of War Innovation Unit for milestone-based awards. Project Janus is aiming for their first operational reactor by September 2028.

Dr. Waksman has also provided estimates in multiple interviews for the price expected to be paid by the Army for power purchase agreements, with prices as high as $0.20-$0.30 per kilowatt hour. This price will vary greatly depending on location and use case. 

In addition to receiving milestone awards, reactor developers also have the opportunity to move through a faster regulatory pathway than the traditional NRC pathway, similar to how a lot of the developers have been moving through the DOE pathway under the Reactor Pilot Program. 

This will enable companies to demonstrate the operation of their design to investors and potential commercial offtakers. There has also been discussion of the potential for offtake agreements from the military bases for the first and second-of-a-kind reactors that are built under the program.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 15:20

Trump Officially Renames Lake Ontario To "Lake America"

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Trump Officially Renames Lake Ontario To "Lake America"

Now, on to important matters... 

On Thursday, US President Donald J. Trump renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America, a move he's been teasing in recent days on Truth Social - including writing that America doesn't "expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer" amid an ongoing trade spat with Canada. 

On Tuesday, Trump posted an image of the lake with 'Lake Ontario' crossed out and 'Lake America' above it - with an American flag on the Canadian side.

"The United States is the greatest protector of the Great Lakes, including the body of water currently known as Lake Ontario," Trump wrote in the EO, adding "The Lake will continue to play a pivotal role in shaping America's future and the global economy. In recognition of this flourishing economic resource and its critical importance to our Nation's economy and its people, I am directing that the Lake officially be renamed as Lake America.

The order directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to update the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) within 30 days, and requires all federal government references to the lake refer to it as "Lake America." 

Approximately 47% of the lake lies within the US. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 15:00

New Jersey May Pay Home Battery Owners To Help Grid When Demand Surges

Zero Hedge -

New Jersey May Pay Home Battery Owners To Help Grid When Demand Surges

New Jersey officials are weighing a plan that would allow homeowners to use batteries as emergency energy backups and a way to earn extra money. Under the proposal, storage systems installed at customers' homes could join a virtual power plant program, helping the grid when electricity demand surges and paying participants for taking part.

On July 15, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities issued a straw proposal for a two-year, technology-neutral VPP. The state's electric distribution companies would oversee it, and it would need to launch no later than July 1, 2027 Utility Dive reported.

In its transitional form, the Cool Down notes that the program would cover customer-sited batteries as well as other distributed energy resources. Officials are also looking ahead to a market-based, open-access VPP tariff for 2029 and beyond. Where rules allow, participants could combine payments for local grid services with wholesale market revenue from PJM Interconnection.

For NJ residents curious what a battery setup could look like for your own home, it may be worth exploring EnergySage's free tools to compare home battery storage options and get competitive installation estimates. EnergySage has teamed up with the electrification brand Qmerit to guarantee you get the best price on home battery storage solutions. Those who want a small-scale backup option, Pila is worth checking out. Its plug-and-play batteries are priced at a fraction of what whole-home backup systems cost.

For homeowners, battery storage is one of the best tools for riding out blackouts because it can keep critical equipment such as lights, refrigerators, medical devices, and internet service operating when grid power fails.

Batteries can also trim power bills by saving solar energy or low-cost electricity for use later, and they can help households move closer to off-grid living or rely less on their utilities.

As opposed to large power plants, VPPs let utilities and grid operators draw on many smaller devices at the same time. That can ease pressure on a grid during peak-demand periods and reduce pollution derived from fossil-fuel-based plants.

The BPU said any program should be guided by principles including fair design, technology-neutral rules, equal access for aggregators, and coordination among programs so participants are not compensated twice for the same service, Utility Dive reported.

The straw proposal carries out a directive in Executive Order No. 2, which Gov. Mikie Sherrill issued in January. It called for a VPP program to be created within 180 days and pushed for broader participation by distributed energy resources in the PJM Interconnection capacity market. At a July 30 stakeholder meeting, Tim Fagan, manager for planning and evaluation at Public Service Enterprise Group New Jersey, said the utility is developing a VPP offer that would include an upfront incentive of roughly $5,000 for an 8-kilowatt residential battery.

Participants could cover the remaining installation cost through an on-bill repayment program if they agree to allow a battery to discharge during peak-shaving events, Utility Dive reported.

Andrew Bayne, manager for energy efficiency programs at Pepco Holdings, said Delmarva Power's Delaware "bring your own battery" pilot is providing participants with an estimated $1,080 per year in performance payments sent by direct deposit instead of bill credits.

Such programs are examining how often batteries can be dispatched, which compensation level is enough to keep customers enrolled, and how straightforward the signup process must be for household participation.

Bayne said utilities still need to know whether "that juice [is] worth the squeeze for the customer — is that $1,000 a year worth it? … These devices behave differently when you call upon them."

In the latest update, UtilityDive reports that eligible customers of Atlantic City Electric, Jersey Central Power & Light, Public Service Electric & Gas and Rockland Electric could receive up to $200/kW per year over a 10-year term to dispatch energy stored in small-scale batteries during periods of grid stress under the procurement proposed last week by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

The proposal targets up to 150 MW of behind-the-meter energy storage capacity that can reliably discharge during dispatch events called by the four electric distribution companies, which will administer capacity enrolled in their service territories. The BPU will host a virtual stakeholder meeting on Sept. 3 to solicit feedback.

The procurement is the first capacity block of the second phase of the Garden State Energy Storage Program, a statutory framework that requires New Jersey to deploy 2 GW of bulk and distributed energy storage capacity by 2030. The BPU is halfway to meeting that goal after procuring a combined 1 GW of transmission-connected storage in the program’s two-block first phase earlier this year.

In a statement, BPU President Ben Hertz-Shargel tied the Aug. 17 proposal to an executive order signed by Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill shortly after taking office on Jan. 20. It directed the BPU to issue solicitations for new solar and storage capacity and to begin developing a virtual power plant program open to third-party energy suppliers.

“The Garden State Energy Storage Program advances Governor Sherrill’s Executive Order No. 2 by growing energy storage deployments in-state to meet growing energy demand while improving affordability and resilience,” Hertz-Shargel said.

Residential and small commercial batteries would be eligible to participate in a temporary, technology-neutral VPP program that will begin next year and run for two years before transitioning into a market-based, open-access VPP tariff in 2029, the BPU said last month in a separate straw proposal. 

The BPU refers to the capacity discussed in last week’s straw proposal as “Distributed Storage Capacity Block 1.” Its primary objective is to reduce peak demand on New Jersey’s electric distribution system through coordinated discharge, which “will help avoid future capacity obligations and system costs, thereby accruing savings to all residential customers,” according to the straw proposal.

The proposal envisions the four electric distribution companies calling dispatch events to mitigate local congestion, distribution-level thermal constraints and other abnormal grid conditions. The BPU said it looked at similar programs in other states and conducted its own gap analysis to arrive at the $200/kW maximum annual incentive, which it said factors in “the private resilience value of residential energy storage systems.”

“This decision reflects [BPU staff’s] assessment that many consumers have some willingness to pay for resilience and thus do not require an incentive high enough to render the net cost of battery back-up power [to] zero,” the BPU said.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 14:40

Follow The Risk

Zero Hedge -

Follow The Risk

Via SchiffGold,

Tracing the distribution of risk is an important method that is helpful for understanding the trade-offs of any government action. Almost every government action reduces risk for some group and repackages the risk and forces another group to bear it. The government often serves as a hedge against risk, but it is important to understand who the payer is and what the costs are before blindly signing off on state control. The most common form of risk relates to the concept of "concentrated benefits, dispersed costs." Small groups like farmers or steel producers can hedge against industry risk by receiving benefits that are spread across the entire American tax base. The inverse of this problem is when small groups must make large sacrifices to reduce the overall risk of the total population. There are few situations where government risk management is worth it, and most of them are when the repackaged risk is paid fairly by those who receive the benefit. Growth in government risk management both incentivizes more risk and particularly damages those who avoid creating risk.

"Concentrated benefits, dispersed costs" is a phrase that describes the incentives behind targeted government industry policy. Because some groups are compact and organized with a compelling reason to coordinate, they are able to present their story clearly and effectively to government actors. The taxpayers who will pay for the benefits transferred to the special interest groups are not able to easily coordinate and they have no compelling reason to, as the burden of each individual is relatively small when compared to the cost of coordination.

When industries like banking or agriculture face large risks and can convince the government that it is needed to protect them, the industries are able to turn their risk into a guaranteed cost for taxpayers. This makes businesses less responsible, increasing the risk, and putting them into conflict with the people who involuntarily bear their risk. This problem only continues to worsen over time as the government grows and more industries recognize the benefits of state protection. Particularly when industrial failures already damage the nation, forcing taxpayers to insure them even in times of stability only deepens the problem.

Another form of risk redistribution is when many individuals shift their risk to smaller groups. One obvious example of this is when equity investors and businesses advocate for lower interest rates at the expense of those with heavy positions in bonds and cash. Inflation simply turns the risks of those with higher demand for present consumption into a guaranteed cost for those with a preference for future consumption. Many regulations make producers responsible for any problems with their products, which reduces customer risk, but damages customers in the long run as producers on the margin often leave the market. Although some of these government actions might make a specific problem better in the short term, they are extremely dangerous, as they put the few at the mercy of the many. Although this occurs most saliently with financial and economic risk, the expansion of the state may take risk redistribution to areas of life with much more troubling consequences.

An expanded welfare state may lead to the promotion of assisted suicide, and other violations of life, for those with a high risk of large medical costs. Risks are best borne by those who create them, as they have enough information to take on risk intelligently. While the voice of the majority can call for government-funded insurance in all areas of life, they cannot change the nature of risk.

The fundamental purpose of government is to create institutions that manage the existential risks that no set of private individuals would be interested in or able to manage. Most of the risks that the government manages against are far from existential, and even more of them would be solved by the market if given enough time and institutional stability. The government is most capable when it manages risks that are experienced by all and turns them into a financial burden shared by the same group. National security and the protection of property rights are two examples of risk prevention where something borne by every citizen is turned into a financial cost for the tax base. While not every citizen contributes equally to the prevention of these risks, every American benefits from them. Whenever a new risk concerns the public, examine how quickly it becomes a government responsibility to fix it.

Evaluate to whom the proposed solution is shifting the risk. Is the benefit of risk prevention worth the guaranteed cost? Do those creating the risk contribute fairly, or will they merely be incentivized to create more risk?

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 14:20

Qatar And Kuwait Restore 70% Of Pre-War Oil Exports Through Hormuz

Zero Hedge -

Qatar And Kuwait Restore 70% Of Pre-War Oil Exports Through Hormuz

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Qatar and Kuwait have managed to boost their crude oil exports from the Strait of Hormuz to 70% of pre-war levels as they followed the United Arab Emirates in shuttling oil through the chokepoint and using ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman, anonymous traders told Bloomberg on Thursday.

Before the Middle East conflict, Qatar and Kuwait collectively exported about 2 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil via the Strait of Hormuz.

They don't have alternative routes as Saudi Arabia and the UAE do, and struggled to ship oil out of the Persian Gulf in the first couple of months of the conflict.

But around June, Kuwait and Qatar began shuttling crude out of Hormuz and offered it for transfers outside the chokepoint in the Gulf of Oman.

The increasing Kuwaiti and Qatari oil volumes add to the barrels that Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been sneaking through the Strait of Hormuz and on routes bypassing it since the start of the war.

The UAE has managed to boost its oil exports to pre-crisis levels as early as June, as it has kept pushing crude through the Strait of Hormuz and beyond. It has been shuttling crude through the chokepoint to load it on larger vessels outside the Strait, maximizing the use of its onshore pipeline to ship crude from the west to the east of the country, bypassing Hormuz, and shipping tankers through the Strait in dark mode.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, has also started offering STS transfers of Gulf crude outside Hormuz, and has been using the Red Sea and Egypt's Mediterranean ports to bypass the Persian Gulf's chokepoint.

Thanks to the shuttle services and dark activity, total oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz have now risen to about 7-8 million bpd, up from about 4 million bpd in the middle of July, according to Bloomberg's trading sources.

The under-the-radar operations and the Gulf states' creative solutions to the threats in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea have helped keep oil flowing, even if at much reduced rates compared to February levels.

The higher oil volumes exiting the Persian Gulf have kept benchmark crude oil futures in check despite the tightening global fuel markets.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 13:40

Average 7Y Auction Stops On Screws As Foreign Demand Drops

Zero Hedge -

Average 7Y Auction Stops On Screws As Foreign Demand Drops

A stellar 2Y auction, a subpart 5Y, and it only makes sense that we end the week with a perfectly average sale of $44BN in 7Y bonds.

The last coupon auction of the week priced at a high yield of 4.512%, up from last month's tailing 4.473%, and on the screws with today's When Issued 4.512%. Remarkably, this is the 3rd 7Y auction to price on the screws in 2026 alone, suggesting this tenor may be the most relevant one for market accuracy ahead of the actual auction. 

The bid to cover rose to 2.505, up from 2.486 last month and the highest since May; it was also above the recent average of 2.491.

Internals took a small step back: Indirects were awarded 60.8%, down from 70.2% in July and below the six-auction average of 65.1%. And with Directs taking 27.0%, up from 16.9% last month, Dealers were left with 12.3%, the lowest since May if above the recent average of 11.8%.

Overall, this was a snoozer of an auction and maybe that's for the best one week after the Bessent Buyback Bluff sparked market chaos and turmoil across the entire yield curve. In short: things are mostly back to normal, even if yields on the long-end remain just shy of multi-year highs.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 13:21

Dollar General Jumps On "Traffic-Led Momentum" As $4 Gas Accelerates Consumer Trade-Down

Zero Hedge -

Dollar General Jumps On "Traffic-Led Momentum" As $4 Gas Accelerates Consumer Trade-Down

Dollar General shares surged 6% in the cash session Thursday morning after stronger customer traffic fueled a second-quarter earnings beat and prompted the discount retailer to raise its full-year outlook.

Jefferies analyst Corey Tarlowe wrote in a first take on earnings that "traffic-led momentum drives another beat."

The discount retailer, with 21,000 stores nationwide, most of them located in low-income ZIP codes, reported second-quarter earnings of $2.48 per share, up from $1.86 a year earlier and well above the Bloomberg Consensus estimate of $2. Revenue increased 5.2% to $11.29 billion, while comparable sales rose 3.5%, exceeding the 2.63% expected by analysts tracked by Bloomberg.

Operating profit in the quarter jumped 29% to $769.2 million, beating the $637 million estimate. Gross margin expanded to 32.6% from 31.3% one year ago and came in well above the 31.7% consensus forecast.

Tarlowe said the results reflected "broad-based category strength" and continued traffic momentum, with customer visits rising 2%.

Dollar General raised its 2027 comparable-sales growth forecast to a range of 2.5% to 2.9%, from a previous range of 2.2% to 2.7%. The retailer now expects earnings of $7.80 to $8 per share, up from $7.20 to $7.45 and also above estimates.

That strength may be a little deceiving and might not signal a healthy consumer. Dollar General's traffic-led growth suggests cash-strapped households continue to trade down.

Last week, Walmart reported that sales were under pressure as lower-income consumers pulled back amid a national average gasoline price above the politically sensitive $ 4-per-gallon threshold and a rising-rate environment.

Wells Fargo analysts remained cautious about whether the discount retailer’s momentum could continue into 2027, even as they described the second-quarter results as encouraging.

Shares are up 6% on the session, breaking above a summer high. 

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC's Squawk Box earlier this month, "I got sick of hearing about this K-shaped economy. I can say here definitively, the K-shaped economy is over."

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 13:20

California Senate Passes Bill To Fine Influencers Over Undisclosed Paid Political Posts

Zero Hedge -

California Senate Passes Bill To Fine Influencers Over Undisclosed Paid Political Posts

Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times,

The California Senate passed a bill on Aug. 24 to fine content creators who make paid political content without disclosing the compensation.

The legislation, authored by Democratic Assemblymember Marc Berman, will still need a vote in the state Assembly before it reaches Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk.

Assemblyman Marc Berman listens to witness testimony while presenting his Assembly Bill 3209 to the Senate's Appropriations Committe at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., on June 17, 2024. Travis Gillmore/The Epoch Times

The governor will have until the end of September to either sign or veto the bill.

"Voters should have a right to know whether or not campaigns are paying for the messaging that they're seeing," Berman said last month.

Both Texas and California require content creators to include disclaimers on political posts. The new legislation is an effort to enforce the law.

Currently, the state's campaign watchdog can request that a court compel an influencer to disclose the monetary connection, but it could take months for the process to reach fruition.

However, Berman's bill would give California's Fair Political Practices Commission the power to fine both influencers and political committees if they violate the law, bypassing the court's involvement.

Creators can face fines of up to $5,000 per violation.

Southern California content creator Dustin Torreverde, who has not been paid for political content, said he believes it is important for influencers to disclose this kind of payment, but is concerned the bill could cause an unfair burden for people in his field.

"A lot of us are very small creators," he said. "So if we were to get penalized and we have to get lawyers, stuff like that, it's going to be very difficult for us."

California's Senate action comes about a month after Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) introduced federal legislation to require disclosure of the political affiliation of influencers. That bill has not yet been brought up for a vote.

The Promoting Authenticity with Influencer Disclaimer (PAID) Act would give the Federal Election Commission the authority it has pursued for years.

The act would amend the Federal Election Campaign Act to require anyone paid by a political committee or candidate to add a clear disclaimer that they were paid to post the content.

"As more and more information in American life is shared through informal communicators like influencers, we need to recognize the risks of proliferating paid political speech without the guardrails that apply to all other forms of political advertising," Schiff said in a statement.

"An influencer can reach far more than a billboard or even a broadcast ad in 2026, but people deserve the same understanding of who is behind that post and if they are paid for it. The PAID Act is a bicameral solution to apply the same bipartisan standards we've applied to other advertising to this new class of political speech."

Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif) authored the House companion legislation.

"Our social media feeds must be fixed," he said in a statement.

"Users deserve to know if a creator has been compensated by a campaign to post for them. Senator Schiff and I introduced the PAID Act because current campaign disclosure laws have not kept up with this new creator economy, and voters deserve to know who is financing their feeds before they vote."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 13:00

Zinc Hits Four-Year High As "Extremely Thin" Physical Supply Fuels Squeeze

Zero Hedge -

Zinc Hits Four-Year High As "Extremely Thin" Physical Supply Fuels Squeeze

Zinc futures in London are headed for their largest monthly close since January, with prices hitting four-year highs this week amid tightening physical supplies.

London futures for the industrial metal initially gained as much as 1% before reversing course. Zinc fell .8% to $3,861 a ton as of 11:40 a.m. local time, halting a seven-day rally.

Despite the pullback, zinc's physical market remains extremely tight.

"Supply constraints boosting zinc: Zinc price has risen 31% since March to $3,966, driven by declining mine output, operational disruptions (fires, delays, and lower grades), and limited project development outside China," Jefferies analyst Sagar Sahu wrote in a note on Tuesday.

Sahu added, "ILZSG, international association for zinc & lead, has revised its 2026 global zinc market forecast to a 19kt deficit vs a 271kt surplus earlier. We raise our FY27-28E zinc price assumptions to $3,615-3,700, still 7-9% below spot prices."

Guangzhou Futures analysts separately noted, "Available physical liquidity is at extremely thin levels" on the LME, adding, "Before mine output recovers materially, smelting costs will provide a strong floor for zinc prices."

Zinc's cash-to-three-month spread widened into backwardation of more than $190 per ton on Thursday, after approaching $200 per ton on Wednesday, the steepest since December.

According to Fastmarkets, treatment charges, the fees miners pay smelters to process ore into zinc metal, have fallen as low as minus $110 a ton. This comes as ore shortages force smelters to compete for concentrate. Persistent negative fees could pressure smelter margins, trigger production cuts and deepen the supply squeeze.

Similarly, copper futures in London are showing signs of supply stress, including widening short-term spreads, low inventories, and negative treatment charges. Potential US import tariffs have been among the main drivers, forcing traders to redirect shipments toward the US and reducing availability elsewhere.

Last week, veteran commodities strategist Jeff Currie warned in a series of X posts:

Wake up, folks. Commodities are telling you something, and yesterday the Treasury confirmed it.

Scarcity in the physical world. Repression in the financial one. Scarcity pushes prices up. Repression holds yields down. The gap between them is the debasement.

Commodities are the only asset class that wins on both sides. The structural case for commodities has been turbocharged.

Read more about what Currie had to say about commodities here.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 12:40

RFK Jr. Says Pennsylvania Officials May Have Fabricated Measles Deaths

Zero Hedge -

RFK Jr. Says Pennsylvania Officials May Have Fabricated Measles Deaths

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Wednesday that officials in Pennsylvania may have made up deaths that they described as associated with measles.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Hubert Humphrey building in Washington on August 10, 2026. Travis Gillmore/The Epoch Times

The Pennsylvania Department of Health and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said on Wednesday that Pennsylvania had recorded the first deaths related to measles in 35 years.

"The announcement appears to have been premature, and the deaths may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor's hopeful staffers," Kennedy wrote in a post on X. "The Lancaster County Coroner says that it has no record of any measles deaths. State law requires that all measles deaths be reported to the coroner."

Lancaster County Coroner Steve Diamantoni told news outlets and a county commissioner that his office had not handled any deaths from measles. The office did see an infant who died shortly after birth from spleen laceration, and an autopsy determined that the primary cause of death was the laceration, Diamantoni told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The pathologist who conducted the autopsy did not feel the death was related to measles, the coroner said. The office, which declined to comment to The Epoch Times, is still investigating the cause of the ruptured spleen.

Kennedy also told reporters in an unrelated press conference in Florida that Pennsylvania officials had not provided information about the deaths to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We're trying to figure out ... who those deaths were and whether they actually happened," he said.

Both individuals who died tested positive for measles prior to their deaths and were not vaccinated, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health. One was an infant, the agency said, pointing to Diamantoni's comments.

The agency said it uses the term "measles-associated" for deaths "when laboratory or epidemiologic evidence of measles is present, but the disease may not be assessed by the medical certifier or coroner to be the immediate cause of death."

Dr. Debra Bogen, Pennsylvania's health secretary, said, "As a pediatrician with more than 30 years of caring for children, I have thoroughly reviewed the case investigation information and sadly can confirm that there were two recent measles-associated deaths in Lancaster County, which were reported to the CDC's measles response team early Tuesday morning."

Pennsylvania officials have not disclosed any additional details about the second death beyond the person testing positive for measles and being unvaccinated. Bogen and her department did say that not all deaths are referred to a coroner under Pennsylvania law.

A thin-section transmission electron micrograph (TEM) reveals the ultrastructural appearance of a single virus particle, or "virion", of measles virus. CDC via Getty Images

State law says that any deaths "known or suspected to be due to contagious disease and constituting a public hazard" shall be investigated by a coroner.

State officials also encouraged people to take the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine after announcing the deaths.

"This illness and death from measles is completely preventable," Shapiro told a briefing in Lancaster on Wednesday.

The minimum age for the MMR vaccine is one year, according to the CDC, although officials in Pennsylvania and some other states allow vaccination as early as six months of age for babies in measles-outbreak areas.

A person walks past a sign at a health center where the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine is administered in Lubbock, Texas, on Feb. 27, 2025. Ronald Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images

The deaths were the first associated with measles reported in the United States this year. Three were reported in 2025. Local doctors said those deaths were due to measles, but Kennedy has said the people were already sick, including a girl who was already suffering from mononucleosis.

Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons, a Republican who first highlighted comments from the county coroner, said in a post on X that the information about the infant's death showed it was with, not from, measles. He also said that state officials should release information on the other death that was described as associated with measles.

"The people of Lancaster County deserve to have transparency over whether there were actually two measles deaths or not," Parsons said.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 11:40

Stalemate, Not Checkmate

Zero Hedge -

Stalemate, Not Checkmate

Bas van Geffen, senior macro strategist at Rabobank

Stalemate, not checkmate

CIA Chief Ratcliffe’s 15-minute dialogue in Moscow was reportedly an elevator pitch warning Russia not to support Iran, and not to attack NATO.

Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are at a dead end, and Ukrainian attacks on Russian economic infrastructure – including refineries and large online retailers – are increasingly putting pressure on President Putin. So, Moscow is preparing to escalate its assaults on the country. Russian military presence in Belarus is building up, which could reopen a front towards Kyiv.

Moreover, Putin considers Ukrainian attacks as NATO strikes because the weapons were supplied by the alliance. If Putin were to attack any of the Baltic states, NATO either triggers article 5 and attacks Russia, or it doesn’t. Who knows where either option leads. Escalation would spread the US’ resources thin, after reports that its defence industry is already struggling to replenish the missiles fired in the Iran war. But not doing so would effectively undermine NATO, and Europe’s security architecture.

That’s all still a hypothetical that markets can ignore for now, but the Ukrainian strikes are adding pressure to the energy complex. Ukraine forced another outage at the second-largest Russian gasoline producer, and Moscow will extend the diesel export ban through September according to Reuters’ sources. These supply shocks add to the disruptions from the Iran war.

So, several central banks are now flagging tighter policy to stop the energy shock from transforming into broader-based price pressures. Yesterday, Schnabel said that the ECB must raise rates further to prevent second-round effects early on.

The Bank of Japan’s Himino argues for a similar pro-active approach as inflationary pressures are picking up, to avoid that policymakers need to hike more aggressively later. And yesterday’s high Australian inflation print is adding to speculation that the also RBA may need to raise rates again soon – we still have a hike pencilled in for November, but the inflation print could accelerate policymakers’ timeline if it is confirmed by other incoming data.

As we’ve flagged before, time is not on central bankers’ side. The longer the Iran war lasts and the longer disruptions in energy markets persist, the stronger the inflationary impact will be.

The Qatari prime minister will travel to Tehran today to try to revive the dialogue between the US and Iran. However, the US’ change of pace to low-scale military conflict and economic warfare reduces the odds of a quick resolution. The Justice Department is preparing to revive prize courts, to improve the efficacy of the US naval blockade.

Protests and panic buying of food and fuel indicates that the war is starting to take a real toll on the Iranian population. Yet, the US may not succeed in isolating Iran economically without the support of other economic superpowers – including China. China’s ongoing trade relationship with Iran may be just enough for the country to hang on. So, a Ukraine-Russia style stalemate looks increasingly more likely than a checkmate.

This also means that oil markets continue to rely on inventories to fix a flow problem. Our energy strategists have raised their forecasts for Brent and WTI crude. But they believe that this will particularly be a problem in refined products, where refinery throughput is a key constraint.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 11:00

Viral Sensation Ox Alpha Model Revealed As GLM-5.3-Flash, Running Entirely On Chinese Chips

Zero Hedge -

Viral Sensation Ox Alpha Model Revealed As GLM-5.3-Flash, Running Entirely On Chinese Chips

China’s Z.AI (Zhipu) confirmed it’s responsible for the viral - and mysterious - Ox Alpha AI model that swept to the top of online usage charts this weekend, pushing its shares up as much as 12% on Thursday. The Beijing-based company said it intends to price use of the model, now called GLM-5.3-Flash, at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens, or units of artificial intelligence work. That puts it alongside DeepSeek in the class of low-cost, very high-efficiency models that are attracting users away from premium-tier offerings from the likes of Anthropic PBC.

As part of the reveal, Zhipu AI launched its latest open-weight model, GLM-5.3-Flash, f/k/a Ox Alpha, saying that the system ran entirely on a cluster of 100,000 domestically produced chips during a high-profile stealth trial.

In other words, not only is China dominating the open-weight model, it will soon dominate the hardware the is used to run it, precisely as we warned a week ago.

Following the news, Zhipu’s shares closed more than 12% higher at HK$1,160 in Hong Kong on Thursday.

“What GLM-5.3-Flash confirms is a pattern that is no longer surprising — Chinese labs shipping near-frontier open models at a fraction of the Western price,” said Dermot McGrath, founder of Shanghai-based consultancy ZenGen Labs.

The announcement followed a week of heavy traffic on artificial intelligence model marketplace OpenRouter and agent platform OpenCode, where the model processed 62 trillion tokens before its formal release on Wednesday, according to Zhipu.

On OpenRouter, the system processed more than 23 trillion tokens in its first six days, making it the platform’s biggest launch to date.

Ox Alpha, as it was initially known, emerged over the weekend as an uncredited release on OpenRouter - the biggest launch in that marketplace’s history - and quickly gained traction among curious observers and users. It’s a reasoning model designed for coding and agentic tasks, and it can process text, image and video input, according to its description. The model is not far off from Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 on coding and agentic capabilities, Z.ai said in a blog post.

The deployment marks a significant test of China’s ability to handle large-scale global inference workloads on home-grown hardware, as Beijing seeks to reduce reliance on advanced processors from Nvidia amid tight export controls.

During its preview, Ox Alpha rapidly surged to the top of global usage rankings. According to OpenRouter data on Thursday, the model ranked first among coding systems on the platform, accounting for 10.3 trillion tokens, or nearly 31 per cent of its total weekly volume.
To overcome the lower memory capacity and bandwidth of individual Chinese chips compared with top-tier Nvidia graphics processing units, Zhipu – which operates internationally under the Z.ai brand – said it built a specialized inference engine that split processing stages into independently managed computing pools.

The firm said these architectural adjustments tripled end-to-end serving performance from its initial baseline, bringing hardware efficiency and per-token costs on par with mainstream Nvidia accelerators. The claims have yet to be independently verified.

While Zhipu did not name specific chip suppliers for this cluster, it has previously collaborated with top domestic semiconductor developers, including Huawei Technologies, makes of the increasingly popular Ascend chip, Cambricon Technologies and Moore Threads.

Cambricon said on Thursday it had achieved “Day 0” compatibility to serve GLM-5.3-Flash. Moore Threads said it also achieved “Day 0” support for the new model.

Featuring 320 billion total parameters, GLM-5.3-Flash activated just 18 billion per request to reduce computing overhead, according to Zhipu. It is also the first model in the GLM-5 series to natively process visual information alongside text.

Benchmarking firm Artificial Analysis gave the model a score of 57 on its Intelligence Index, placing it 10th globally and third among open-weight models, trailing Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 and Alibaba Group Holding’s Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B.

Zhipu is touting aggressive pricing to win over international developers, offering GLM-5.3-Flash at 1/10th the rate of standard GLM-5.3 – dropping to 1/20th under a limited promotion. It claimed the new model cost about 1/40th as much as Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 at comparable intelligence levels.

Despite heavy traffic during the free trial, early developer feedback was mixed. While users praised the model’s ability to debug complex code – a community test showed that it solved 28 per cent of 175 LiveCodeBench problems – others reported occasional hallucinations, dropped tasks and sluggish generation. Artificial Analysis similarly noted that GLM-5.3-Flash’s output speed trailed the industry average.

Zhipu has released the model weights globally and integrated GLM-5.3-Flash across its application programming interface, ZCode platform, and GLM Coding Plan.

The launch coincides with intensified competition in China’s open-source ecosystem.

Separately, on Wednesday, Alibaba released Qwen3.8-Flash-Next, a multimodal preview of Qwen4 that it said activated 6 billion of its 125 billion parameters to similarly drive down inference costs. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 10:45

The Greatest Cover-Up In Economic History: How Washington Hid Its Role In The 2008 Crash

Zero Hedge -

The Greatest Cover-Up In Economic History: How Washington Hid Its Role In The 2008 Crash

Authored by Kevin Villani via Mises Institute,

The commentary in a recent Wall Street Journal by Senator Phil Gramm and Representative Jeb Hensarling did the nation an immense service by dismantling the persistent myth that private market greed and financial deregulation caused the 2008 financial crisis. As they rightly pointed out, inflation-adjusted mortgage rates during the bubble era were historically high, and financial institutions were suffocating under increasingly strict federal mandates, not running wild in a deregulated vacuum.

Yet, for nearly two decades, the public has been fed a completely fabricated baseline narrative. Having served as the Chief Economist at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and later as the Chief Economist at Freddie Mac during critical regulatory shifts, and as an expert in securitization-having structured the first CMO with Larry Fink at First Boston, the first CBO with Mike Milken at Drexel, the first unique MBB with Lou Ranieri at Salomon, and later the first CLO-I watched the true mechanics of this disaster play out from the inside. The reality is uncomfortable for the political class: the real crime of 2008 was not a failure of capitalism, but a catastrophic failure of central planning.

The subprime crisis was deliberately engineered in Washington. Through affordable housing quotas managed by HUD, progressive policymakers systematically weaponized government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. To meet arbitrary, politically-motivated homeownership targets, these institutions were forced to aggressively buy up low-quality, high-risk mortgages.

The mechanics of this distortion were devastatingly simple. To satisfy Washington's mandates, the GSEs had to continuously lower their credit scoring thresholds, accept zero-down-payment structures, and purchase loans with unverified incomes. This top-down command economy completely erased private market discipline. Private lenders-knowing they could instantly dump these toxic, subprime originations onto the balance sheets of government-backed entities-stopped underwriting for risk and began underwriting for political compliance. By forcing the financial system to accept trillions of dollars in low-quality debt, Washington single-handedly fueled the historic housing bubble.

When the house of cards inevitably collapsed, the economic devastation was staggering. The direct government fiscal costs alone reached an estimated $2 trillion domestically and topped $12 trillion globally in banking interventions and stabilization efforts. But the indirect, structural costs were far worse: a permanent loss of up to $14 trillion in US economic output and the immediate vaporization of over $19 trillion in household wealth.

Faced with a disaster of their own making, policymakers pulled off a multi-trillion-dollar ideological cover-up that may ultimately prove to be far more damaging than the original crime.

To shift the blame entirely onto private capital, Washington weaponized the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC). The commission's partisan majority report was custom-built to exonerate the state's progressive interventions. To achieve this, the political class relied heavily on a curated roster of nationally-recognized academic contributors. These individuals perfectly embodied what Nobel laureate economist Friedrich Hayek famously labeled "armchair intellectuals"-theorists with zero actual industry experience whose abstract models merely confused the public and distracted attention from the fundamental, government-driven causes of the collapse.

This academic misdirection, operating in tandem with Marxist-driven street movements like Occupy Wall Street, successfully captured the public imagination. By framing a state-engineered credit crisis as an inherent flaw of the free market, Washington channeled public rage away from regulators and straight onto Wall Street. This manufactured consensus provided the perfect pretext to pass the Dodd-Frank Act-a massive expansion of state regulatory power that heavily penalized the private sector while leaving the government's destructive, highly leveraged dominance over housing finance completely untouched.

The long-term consequences of this deception are playing out in real time today. We see the latest fruit of the 2008 cover-up in the radical economic platforms of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Because the true history of the crash was erased, a new generation of progressives now uses the false narrative of "market failure" to demand national rent controls, a federal tenant bill of rights, and the aggressive expansion of state-owned "social housing." They are deploying the exact same rhetoric used by the FCIC majority and the Zuccotti Park occupiers to advocate for the complete central planning of American real estate.

By shielding Washington from accountability, the 2008 cover-up institutionalized systemic moral hazard and permanently crippled market discipline. When central planning fails, the state's universal response is to demand even more centralized control. Unless we aggressively correct the historical record and expose the armchair intellectuals who enabled this deception, the ongoing ideological cover-up will succeed in setting the stage for a new generation of even more devastating, state-engineered economic collapses.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 08:05

Futures Jump After Nvidia's Unprecedented 2028 Guidance Stuns Markets

Zero Hedge -

Futures Jump After Nvidia's Unprecedented 2028 Guidance Stuns Markets

Futures are higher led by Tech as NVDA earnings boost the tape. As of 8:00am ET, S&P futures are 0.5% higher while Nasdaq futures jump 1.1% led by NVDA which is +7.4% in pre-market trading following an unprecedented forecast of 70% revenue growth in 2028, which is boosting Semis (+3%), incl MRVL +5.2% into their print tonight. NVDA helped the market climb a significant wall of worry and is not poised to resume it march higher. Memory is +3.6%, Software is +2.3%, Korea +2.1%, and Low/Unprofitable Tech +1.2% points to a broad-based Tech rally. Yet Only 2 of 7 Mag7 names are higher, NVDA and TSLA. Outside of Tech, most sectors are trading lower ex-Industrials / Utils which are benefitting from a reboot of the AI trade. Our Retail flows remain materially off their highs with behavior shifting from ETFs to single stocks; Mag7 / NVDA most bought, MRNA most sold with gold seeing strong inflows. Bond yields are +1-2bp with USD flat. Cmdtys are mostly lower dragged by Energy and Base Metals; Precious are mixed with gold flat and silver higher. Today’s macro data calendar includes July advance goods trade balance, weekly jobless claims and July inventories (8:30 a.m.) and August Kansas City Fed manufacturing activity (11 a.m.). Fed speaker slate includes Cleveland Fed’s Beth Hammack on CBNC at 10 a.m. and Fox Business at 1 p.m.

In premarket trading, Magnificent Seven stocks are mostly lower even as Nvidia jumps 7.2% after the leader in AI chips gave an outlook for revenue growth that was stronger than expected. Others are mostly in the red: Alphabet -0.4%, Amazon -0.3%, Apple -1.1%, Meta Platforms -0.3%, Microsoft -1%, Tesla +0.4%. 

  • AI infrastructure stocks broadly gain after Nvidia’s outlook. Intel (INTC) 2%, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) +1%.
  • Software companies are rising following robust results from a number of notable names in the sector.
  • CrowdStrike (CRWD) rises 9% after the security software company raised its full-year forecast on key metrics.
  • Dollar General (DG) gains 13% after the retailer’s comparable sales for the second quarter topped expectations and management boosted guidance for the year. The stock had been down 7.5% this year through Wednesday’s close.
  • Dollar Tree (DLTR) falls 4% as the retailer’s guidance for the third quarter and full year proves underwhelming after the stock’s 38% advance since its 1Q results on May 28. The S&P 500 Index was up 2.1% for the same period.
  • Everpure (P) rises 2% after the computer storage company reported second-quarter results that beat expectations and raised its full-year forecast.
  • Nutanix (NTNX) climbs 5% after the software company’s fourth-quarter results beat expectations and it gave an outlook that is seen as positive.
  • Okta (OKTA) gains 17% after the software company boosted its full-year forecast on key metrics, including adjusted earnings and revenue.
  • Salesforce (CRM) is up 10% after the software company raised its full-year forecast and announced an expanded partnership with Anthropic.
  • Wendy’s (WEN) plunges 14% after Reuters reported that Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management has no plans to make a bid at this time to take the fast-food chain private.

In other corporate news, a $31 billion venture between Kioxia Holdings Corp. and Sandisk Corp. to ratchet up flash memory production added to the buoyant tone in technology stocks. Security Benefit Life Insurance will restructure its $14 billion stockpile of collateral loans after such assets drew scrutiny from regulators. Caesars Entertainment turned down a bid from investor Carl Icahn to take the company private and instead chose a lower offer from billionaire Tilman Fertitta because it was more comfortable with other terms of his proposal. The owners of the 800-mile Trans Alaska Pipeline System are seeking to renew its federal land authorization more than seven years before it expires, a move that could capitalize on President Trump’s enthusiasm for US oil production.

Nvidia’s 7% pre-market gain following its solid revenue outlook is propelling the Nasdaq future higher by 1.1%, even as the index pulled back from highs after Politico reported the White House is mulling a fresh round of tariffs on chips. Nvidia’s upbeat outlook offered relief to investors concerned about a bubble in the AI economy as CEO Jensen Huang said demand for its artificial-intelligence accelerators continues to expand. 

Nvidia’s surprising stab at providing longer-term guidance (70% revenue growth for fiscal 2028, versus consensus around 45%) was taken positively, especially in the context of the number reflecting constrained supply dynamics (imagine how high the forecast could have been without the bottlenecks). The conference call pushed back on the circular deal narrative, while Huang later said “investing in these companies is a once in a generation opportunity. I think the only regret that I have is that I didn’t invest more and sooner.”

Nvidia’s results showed that the AI cycle is primarily constrained by physical bottlenecks such as memory and power, rather than a shortage of end demand, said Amanda Lyons, head of research at Energy Group Capital. “It effectively pushes the cyclical question further out and, crucially, gives investors permission to extend the earnings-growth runway not just for Nvidia, but across the second- and third-order beneficiaries of the AI buildout,” she said.

The VIX Index is below 15 and VVIX below 86, while even one-year Nvidia implied volatility appears cheap - despite its CDS trading at highs and as Chinese competition builds. The risk of AI headline fatigue is setting in. “Given Jensen’s constant visibility this quarter, the myriad of circular deal announcements, and just the mental exhaustion from AI headlines,” this week’s main event remains that of Warsh and the Fed at Jackson Hole, according to Dave Lutz at Jonestrading.

The company is “taking a more active role in removing the capital and infrastructure bottlenecks that could constrain its own growth,” notes Amanda Lyons, head of research at Energy Group Capital. More broadly, she adds that “the AI cycle is still being governed primarily by physical constraints such as memory, packaging, power and data-centre capacity, rather than by any shortage of end demand.”

Nvidia’s performance reflects how it has become the funding trade for AI picks and shovels, even as it acts as the industry’s bank. GAM’s head of global equities Paul Markham notes “the biggest risk to Nvidia here is a cash call, which is that it becomes a victim of its own success in the sense that investors get very, very excited about the Anthropic IPO and sell some Nvidia to fund it.”

With software considered to be perceived victims of AI, a reassuring print from CRM leader Salesforce gives some relief in predicting strong revenue expansion and deepening its partnership with Anthropic. Elsewhere in AI, AWS committed to deploy two million additional Nvidia GPUs across its global infrastructure in 2027-2028.

Attention will now turn to the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. Kevin Warsh will deliver his first major speech as Fed chair on Friday, giving investors fresh clues on the policy outlook after he faced criticism over a lack of clarity about his views on the economy.

“The market wants a little bit more hawkishness because you have seen some pretty strong numbers coming out on growth and inflation, pointing more toward higher rather than lower rates,” said Caspar Rock at Schroders Wealth Management. “More clarity should give a bit more confidence, and that might perk up the dollar rather than fixed interest markets.”

Earnings growth from core tech names “is crucial given this is the main driver for US markets, and tech investment is the main driver for US growth,” said Geoff Yu at BNY. However, “with strong growth comes the risk of tighter monetary policy, which for now is also the market’s base case.”

Still, some pockets of weakness tempered Thursday’s optimism. HP Inc. tumbled as investors worried about demand for the company’s computers and printers. Meanwhile, Wheat prices hit the highest since July 2023, keeping inflation concerns in focus alongside still-elevated energy prices.

Tech optimism was also not on display in Europe with the Stoxx 600 down 0.3%,  as a retreat in consumer stocks outweighed the gains in the technology sector.

Asian stocks advanced for a third day, led by chip stocks after Nvidia Corp.’s bullish sales outlook injected vitality into the AI trade. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index advanced as much as 0.7% before paring. The Nvidia-inspired rally in chip stocks swept across the region, from South Korea to Japan with SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics and Kioxia the biggest contributors. “Nvidia handed SK Hynix and Samsung one of the strongest demand signals they could have asked for,” said Josh Gilbert, an analyst at online trading platform eToro. “When the industry’s most important customer can not get enough memory and prices are still heading higher; the read-through for both stocks is very positive.”  Kioxia shares rose 5%, boosted by reports that it will build a new facility in northern Japan. The company confirmed after the market closed that it plans to spend more than ¥5 trillion ($31.4 billion) with Sandisk to ratchet up production capacity across the country.  Benchmarks in South Korea and China gained while Japanese stocks fluctuated. Philippines was the worst performer in the region, dropping the most in two months, as a third successive rate hike added to economic headwinds. AI-bellwether Korea also digested its central bank’s decision to raise its benchmark interest rate for a second consecutive meeting to contain inflation.

In rates, treasuries hold small losses as US trading gets under way, lifting yields by 2bp-3bp ahead of the monthly 7-year note auction, following a subpar, tailing 5Y on Wednesday. Yield-curve flattening trend unleashed by last week’s Treasury Department decision to expand buybacks targeting 10- to 30-year sectors is intact; 5s30 spread narrowed to under 79bp, lowest since July 29 (most recent Federal Reserve decision date), 2s10s to under 43bp, lowest since Aug.  10-year yield is about 2bp higher on the day near 4.67% and slightly cheaper vs UK and German counterparts. Oil prices, which in recent sessions have led yields lower, are little changed, inside Wednesday’s ranges.
$44 billion 7-year note auction at 1 p.m. New York time has WI yield near 4.52%, higher than results since May 2024; last month’s 7-year auction tailed slightly after a rally into the bidding deadline. IG credit new-issue calendar is anticipated to be light through month-end; Wednesday saw just one (floating rate) offering priced.

In FX, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index is up 0.1% with Aussie dollar extending its week-to-date outperformance versus the greenback.

In commodities, brent crude prices are a touch firmer, having fallen earlier, as traders weigh Hormuz discussions and the Russian escalation on Ukraine. WTI crude oil futures are up 0.2%. Precious metals have trimmed earlier gains with spot gold now up just 0.2%. Bitcoin is up 2.4% and back above $80k. 

US economic data calendar includes July advance goods trade balance, weekly jobless claims and July inventories (8:30 a.m.) and August Kansas City Fed manufacturing activity (11 a.m.). Fed speaker slate includes Cleveland Fed’s Beth Hammack on CBNC at 10 a.m. and Fox Business at 1 p.m.

Market Snapshot

Top Overnight News

  • Kuwait and Qatar, two of the Persian Gulf’s smaller oil producers, are sending more crude through the Strait of Hormuz, adding to an increase in shipments that are keeping global prices in check. The two countries, which exported a combined 2 million barrels a day of oil before the outbreak of the Iran war, have managed to get shipments back to 70% of pre-conflict levels. BBG
  • Qatar's prime minister will visit Tehran on Thursday in a bid to relaunch diplomacy after the U.S. and Iran traded recriminations over Washington's promise to increase economic pressure on ‌Tehran by targeting its trade partners for sanctions. Reuters.
  • Iraq is offering buyers of its crude the option to collect supplies from outside of the Persian Gulf for the first time since the Iran war began, highlighting resilient exports flowing through the Strait of Hormuz: BBG
  • Russia is preparing to escalate attacks on Ukraine after concluding that negotiations for a peace deal have reached a dead end. For now, Russia is weighing an intensification of powerful conventional ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, including the center of the capital, and infrastructure targets in other Ukrainian cities. BBG
  • The Trump administration is weighing a new round of sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, despite warnings from tech companies that the move could doom U.S. hopes of dominating artificial intelligence. Politico
  • Nvidia reports blowout quarter, says demand for AI chips is getting even hotter. Shares rallied as the chip giant forecast 70% revenue growth next year and defended its financial support of AI companies. WSJ
  • Kioxia Corporation and Sandisk Corporation today announced anticipated significant investments in Japan, totaling over $31 billion (approximately 5 trillion yen) contingent upon government support. The investments through 2032 will continue to strengthen partnership, one of the most successful joint ventures across any industry. The partnership has helped drive decades of NAND flash memory innovation and invested over $50 billion (approximately 9 trillion yen) in Japan over the past 25 years. BBG
  • Anthropic PBC has agreed to spend $45 billion to rent AI cloud computing power from Nscale’s flagship data center development in West Virginia, the latest move to secure capacity for its expanding business in advance of going public. BBG
  • US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s more activist style of managing the nation’s debt has Wall Street war-gaming a potentially bigger shift in the government’s borrowing strategy over the coming months: BBG
  • South Korea’s central bank hiked its policy rate by 25bp to 3%, its second consecutive tightening action, a move that was expected, as the country faces upside risks to both growth and inflation. Nikkei
  • Norway’s economy picked up pace last quarter, growing 0.3% and keeping the door open for more monetary tightening. BBG
  • Fed's Cook (voter) denied wrongdoing and vowed to fight US President Trump's effort to fire her from the Fed. Cook's lawyer said there is no legally valid reason for ousting Governor Cook from the Federal Reserve board: RTRS

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newqsuawk

APAC stocks were ultimately mixed, but with most indices in the green, after the flat performance stateside, where markets digested the firmer-than-expected headline PCE data and braced for NVIDIA earnings. The AI darling beat on top and bottom lines, although its shares were initially subdued, but were then boosted during the earnings call as the CFO flagged about a 70% revenue growth for the next fiscal year. ASX 200 underperformed amid another barrage of earnings releases and after recent inflation data, which prompted a call by NAB for the RBA to resume hiking rates at the next meeting in September. Nikkei 225 swung between gains and losses with the index fading the initial NVIDIA-spurred euphoria. KOSPI led the advances in the region as chipmakers cheered NVIDIA's strong results and outlook, while investors were also unfazed by the BoK's pre-emptive back-to-back rate hike. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were mixed amid several earnings releases and slower Industrial Profits, although the mainland was kept afloat after the PBoC conducted both 7-day and overnight reverse repos.

Top Asian News

  • Chinese Industrial Profits (YTD) (Jul YY) 17.6% (Prev. 18.7%).
  • Australian Private Capital Expenditure for 2026-27 (AUD)(Estimate 3) 200.7B (Prev. 173.4B).
  • Australian Private Capital Expenditure for 2025-26 (AUD)(Estimate 7) 210.0B (Prev. 207.6B).

European bourses begin Thursday's trade with a negative tilt, with the majority of indices in the red, outside of the DAX 40. The primary reason for the upside in the German benchmark is the read-across following upbeat Nvidia and Salesforce earnings. The broad  positiveness in chipmakers was also seen overnight, with the KOSPI closing with gains of 1.5%. Sectors highlight the negative bias, with Tech the only sector printing decent gains. To the downside lies Food, Beverages & Tobacco, with Chemicals and Optimised Personal Care rounding out the sector laggards. Key movers include: Pernod Ricard (-6.0%), Q2 revenue missed estimates and guided FY sales growth at the lower end of its range due to soft US market; Delivery Hero (+0.4%), raises its FY26 guidance.

Top European News

  • German GfK Consumer Confidence (Sep) -26.6 vs. Exp. -29.6 (Prev. -29.4).
  • European M3 Money Supply (Jul YY) 3.4% vs. Exp. 3.4% (Prev. 3.3%).

FX

  • Lacklustre price action across the FX space which has all G10 currencies essentially flat against the Buck.
  • Nothing to derail the AI Capex narrative within NVIDIA earnings, in which Q2 results were strong and guidance impressed; a release which did not give too much lead to FX markets. Focus now turns to numerous Fed speakers today including the hawkish Hammack and Schmid; thereafter attention will be on Chair Warsh, who is set to speak on Friday at 15:00 BST. DXY flat/modestly firmer with a peak of 99.20 which is just above the 200DMA.
  • JPY confirms the general trend seen across G10s with not many surprises from BoJ Deputy Governor Himino whose tone was consistent with pricing of September’s likely 25bps hike, noting in both of his speeches the BoJ needed to “pay more attention to upside inflation risks than before”. USD/JPY range bound within 159.30/40, calendar is light so will likely be dictated by a busy US schedule with just Tokyo CPI scheduled for Friday.
  • EUR flat against the Buck with EZ catalysts light ahead of ECB minutes. Price action today will likely be at the whim of the Buck with ECB minutes likely to not surprise. EUR saw some modest weakness of around 10 pips after taking a lead from French stocks ahead of the first French presidential debate at 15:45 BST. Note that the docket features the three favourites, Marine Le Pen who does not appease markets and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who recently touted France “set fire” to a large chunk of its public debt. EUR/USD slipped from the familiar 1.1650 to a 1.1634 base, before paring that aforementioned downside.

Fixed Income

  • Fixed benchmarks are mixed this morning, with USTs (U/C) flat, whilst Bunds (-23 ticks) and Gilts (-21 ticks) are pressured. Earlier action was uneventful, but a report that the US is mulling a new round of tariffs on chips spurred some mild downside in fixed benchmarks.
  • USTs attempt to pare back some of the pressure seen on Wednesday following the slightly hotter US PCE report, whereby the headline topped expectations. On the Fed, it may not shift too much for policymakers heading into the September meeting – but a slew of Fed speak is expected in the next few days. Today sees interviews via Schmid and Hammack, whilst Chair Warsh is set to speak on Friday. A tight-lipped approach from the Chair could see markets begin to shift attention back to credibility concerns, and therefore result in the resumption of the debasement trade. From a yield perspective, the US 10yr (4.65%) remains shy of the level which saw the Treasury announce its long-end support (4.7%) – albeit only marginally so. A resumption of debt / credibility concerns could see the 10yr circulate within a 4.75-5% range into the next bout of key US data. On the flip side, a significant breach below the 4.5% mark would likely require a dovish Warsh on Friday (unlikely), and favourable NFP (Sept 4) / CPI (Sept 11) reports.
  • Bunds and Gilts are pressured this morning, The downside can, in part, be explained by the ongoing strength in Dutch TTF gas prices. Woes have also been further exacerbated by recent reports that Russian President Putin is to escalate the war in Ukraine, as he sees talks with Ukraine at a dead end.

Commodities

  • In geopolitics, Nour News reported that Iran has warned that vessels violating new Hormuz transit rules could face blacklisting alongside their flag. The piece added that penalties could extend to other ships using blacklisted service providers. Interestingly, a headline out of Iranian Press TV suggested that Oman reportedly stopped cooperating with the US to facilitate escorted tanker movements through southern Hormuz. Note: Trump has twice publicly threatened Oman with military action due to its bilateral negotiations with Iran regarding the Strait of Hormuz.
  • Meanwhile, some focus returns to Russia-Ukraine after Bloomberg sources suggested Russia is preparing to escalate attacks on Ukraine after concluding that negotiations for a peace deal have reached a dead end.
  • WTI Oct and Brent Nov initially extended losses north of USD 1/bbl, but have since clambered off lows – potentially thanks to the Nour News report above. Currently WTI and Brent are posting losses of only USD 0.10/bbl, with the latter currently sitting towards the upper end of a USD 85.32-86.99/bbl range. Elsewhere, Dutch TTF is relatively flat intraday but off highs after dipping under EUR 66/MWh this morning before finding support near EUR 65/MWh and somewhat stabilising around EUR 65.50/MWh.
  • Metals are mixed with precious metals taking a breather after yesterday’s losses, although with upside capped as the DXY remains resilient to oil losses. Spot gold trades in a USD 4,593-4,643/oz range, with yesterday’s parameter. Spot silver found early support at its 100 DMA (USD 68.24/oz) and resistance near yesterday’s high (USD 69.95/oz). Base metals are mostly subdued by the resiliency of the buck, but underpinned by ongoing China stimulus hopes, 3M LME copper resides in a narrow USD 14,207.30- 14,323.13/t range at the time of writing.
  • Kuwait and Qatar have reportedly increased crude shipments through the Strait of Hormuz to around 1.4mmln BPD, some 70% of pre-conflict levels, according to reports.
  • Thai gold dealers said that the Ministry of Finance currently has no near-term plans to impose a gold tax.

Trade/Tariffs

  • USTR Greer said the US did not add any new demands at the end of the negotiations with Canada and that the US wanted mutual protection on things like steel and aluminium in trade talks with Canada. Greer also stated that the US won't just sit down and take it if Canada imposes more retaliation, as well as noting there are no open channels with Canada at the moment.
  • The US White House is reportedly considering a new round of tariffs on chips, Politico reports citing sources. The report detailed that one approach under consideration would increase the number of tech products subject to levies. This means that duties would hit chips, and potentially items such as laptops, gaming consoles and servers that fill data centres.
  • US Senator Moreno (R) reportedly sent a letter to USTR Greer to open a Section 301 investigation on South Korea over its treatment of Coupang, according to Semafor.
  • The US is investigating Apex Logistics over AI chip smuggling to China.
  • US President Trump signed a proclamation to increase lean beef imports with the quota increased by 100k tons of beef per month effective September 1st for 90 days, while the proclamation increases lean beef trimmings that are imported with no-above-quota tariff.

Central Banks

  • ECB's Radev said October and December meetings are both live, Econostream reported. Radev stated that waiting until second-round effects are fully visible could mean acting too late, but that there is not enough broad-based evidence to say growth risks are "clearly to the upside". On neutral, he said that 2.5% is not a "precise dividing line" but "probably around neutral".
  • BoJ Deputy Governor Himino said he believes the BoJ should continue to raise the policy interest rate and adjust the degree of monetary accommodation in accordance with developments in economic activity, prices and financial conditions. He added that the BoJ must be mindful of upside price risk more than ever before and that they will debate policy at every meeting while taking such risks into account. Himino highlighted that if underlying inflation rises to a level above the 2% price target, it would have an adverse impact on the economy. On the currency, the BoJ wants to scrutinise the various effects of a weak Yen on the economy.
  • BoK kept rates steady to 3.00%, as expected. Forecasts: Sees 2026 CPI at 2.7% (prev. 2.7%), 2027 at 2.3% (prev. 2.3%); 2026 GDP growth at 3.3% (prev. 2.6%) and 2027 at 2.9% (prev. 2.1%). BoK says rate decision was not unanimous as Board Member Hwang dissented on rate decision, while inflation is projected to remain above target level for a considerable time
  • NAB expects the RBA to raise rates by 25 bps to 4.6% in September.

Geopolitics: Iran

  • Iran has warned that vessels violating new Hormuz transit rules could face blacklisting alongside their flag, classification society and insurer, and that penalties could extend to other ships using blacklisted service providers, Nour News reported citing an official.
  • An Iranian lawmaker said Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz and vessels from the US, France, Britain or other hostile countries to enter the region.
  • Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Pakistan is not obliged to comply with unilateral sanctions imposed on Iran, while UN sanctions would constitute a different matter.
  • Iraqi sources report an airstrike on the main base of separatist terrorist groups in the city of Sorran, located in the Erbil province of Iraqi Kurdistan region, according to Fars News Agency.
  • Two explosions were reported in Mokha, Yemen, from missiles fired by the Houthis

Geopolitics: Ukraine

  • CIA chief's recent surprise trip to Moscow was to warn Russia not to attack NATO, according to WSJ.
  • Russian Government Spokesperson Peskov said Russia's response to Ukrainian strikes on Russia's economic and trade infrastructure will be harsh.
  • Russia's Kremlin said Moscow remains open to participating in negotiations for a Ukrainian settlement, Al Arabiya reported.
  • Russian Foreign Ministry said the UK should abandon its hostile position towards Russia, which creates risks of transferring the conflict to a fundamentally new level, IFX reported.
  • Russia attacked an industrial facility in the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, according to Ukrainian authorities.
  • EU states resurrect plan to use frozen Russian assets for Ukraine, with Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain pushing to use the funds to solve Kyiv’s funding crisis, according to FT

Geopolitics: Other

  • North Korea denounced the US' decision to sell weapons to South Korea and said US hostility to North Korea is clearly acknowledged, while it will respond swiftly and decisively to hostile actions, according to KCNA.

US Event Calendar

  • 8:30 am: Jul P Wholesale Inventories MoM, est. 0.2%, prior 0.2%
  • 8:30 am: Aug 22 Initial Jobless Claims, est. 208k, prior 206k
  • 8:30 am: Aug 15 Continuing Claims, est. 1792k, prior 1799k

Central Bank Speakers 

  • 10:00 am: Fed’s Hammack to appear on CNBC
  • 1:00 pm: Fed’s Hammack Appears on Fox Business

DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

After a mixed session yesterday, the market mood has turned more positive again overnight following Nvidia’s earnings last night. The chipmaker’s results delivered a moderate revenue beat, with revenue guidance for the current quarter also coming slightly ahead of expectations ($108bn vs $105.2bn est.). Crucially, this was accompanied by a bullish medium-term outlook from the company’s management on the conference call, who expected revenue growth of around 70% in the next fiscal year that starts in January 2027. So this signaled greater optimism that current runaway growth in AI demand would continue into next year.

Nvidia’s shares were up by +4.7% by the end of after-hours trading, after a -1.59% decline in yesterday’s regular session, helping futures on the S&P 500 (+0.48%) and Nasdaq (+0.83%) to decent gains overnight. The tech mood has also been helped by encouraging results from Salesforce, which released a slightly stronger-than-expected sales outlook and a deepening of its partnership with Anthropic, as well as CrowdStrike, whose shares jumped by nearly +10% after-hours. The positive tech sentiment has supported gains in Asia this morning, with the Kospi (+1.49%) leading the way, while the CSI 300 (+0.50%), Shanghai Composite (+0.60%) and Nikkei (+0.18%) are also all in the green, although the Hang Seng (-0.46%) is drifting lower.

Ahead of Nvidia’s results, equities had had a quiet day, with the S&P 500 (-0.02%), Nasdaq (-0.08%) and Mag-7 (-0.13%) all seeing marginal declines. European equities also saw muted moves, with the STOXX 600 (-0.01%) barely changed, while the DAX (+0.08%), CAC (+0.27%) and FTSEMIB (+0.31%) posted small advances.

Before that, yesterday’s main highlight was a hawkish-leaning batch of US data. While July core PCE inflation came in line with consensus at +0.2% mom, the details of the release were more inflationary. The unrounded reading was +0.246%, so just a smidgen from rounding up to +0.3%. That’s stronger than had been implied by the CPI and PPI prints as super core services PCE rose by +0.28% mom. There were also upward revisions to core PCE inflation for the previous three months, leaving the 3- and 6-month annualized rates at 3.0% and 3.5% respectively, so showing little sign of progress on disinflation. And other details of the PCE release were on the stronger side, with personal income rising +0.4% mom (vs +0.2% exp.).

Meanwhile, other US data releases pointed to strong economic momentum. Durable goods orders rose by +1.1% in July (vs +0.5% expected), with capital goods shipment growth (+1.4% mom vs +1.1% exp.) accelerating to an impressive +11.3% yoy. Finally, the second release of the Q2 GDP print saw consumer spending revised higher (from +3.2% to +3.4% annualized). That meant real final sales to private domestic purchasers, a key metric of underlying domestic demand, rose by +4.2% annualized in Q2, their strongest gain since early 2023, even as the Iran energy shock dragged on purchasing power. In all, it was a solid slate of data that’s hard to square with a view that Fed policy is restrictive.

US rates saw some hawkish repricing in response. While pricing of a September Fed hike was pretty stable (up from 36% to 37%), there was greater repricing of Fed expectations further out with 42bps of hikes now being priced by next June (+3.7bps on the day). This left 2yr Treasury yields +3.6bps higher at 4.21%. The sell-off was more modest at the long-end, with the 10yr up +1.8bps and the 30yr a marginal +0.2bps. We’ve seen a sizeable flattening of the Treasury curve since the surprise buyback announcement last Wednesday, with the 2s30s slope down by -15.5bps over this period.

European bond markets saw an even clearer reversal from Tuesday’s rally, with yields on 10yr bunds (+3.3bps), OATs (+4.0bps), BTPs (+5.3bps) and gilts (+4.3bps) all moving higher. We heard from the ECB’s Schnabel, who underlined her position as one of the most hawkish voices on the ECB Governing Council. She told Bloomberg that “further tightening will be necessary”, adding that given “resilient aggregate demand, it is critical to prevent the occurrence of second-round effects early on”. That said, Schnabel did little to push back on current market pricing, saying that markets “seem to understand our reaction function very well”. That comes as OIS markets are pricing 62bps of ECB hikes by next June (+6.5bps yesterday), including the almost fully priced hike for the upcoming September meeting.

Staying in Europe, tonight we’ll see the first French presidential debate ahead of the April 2027 election. The gradual heating up of the pre-election campaign comes as a widening of French sovereign spreads over summer has left France with the highest 10yr yield among the large and medium-sized euro area economies. The French far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon drew attention on Tuesday night as he revived the call to cancel French debt currently held by the Banque de France, though this idea has been dismissed by other politicians across France’s political spectrum including RN’s Bardella.

On the geopolitical front, we saw limited news on Iran, with some of the optimism that emerged the day before fading as Reuters reported, citing Iranian sources, that an agreement with Oman over the Strait of Hormuz has not yet been finalized. Brent crude still ended the day -0.84% lower at $87.84/bbl, but was well off the lows of around $86 early in the European session. This morning Brent is down another -0.48%.

In yesterday’s other notable market moves, both wheat (+6.56%) and corn (+2.70%) prices spiked to their highest level in three years. Strikes between Russia and Ukraine have caused major disruption to both countries’ grain exports over the past several weeks and yesterday’s mood wasn’t helped by a Bloomberg report claiming that Russia’s President Putin is preparing to escalate attacks on Ukraine. The decline in Ukrainian and Russian grain exports has intensified a challenging backdrop for agriculture prices that also includes the emergent El Niño, this summer’s drought in Europe and the disruption to fertilizer exports out of the Gulf.

Elsewhere in Asia, the BoK raised its policy rate for the second consecutive time, hiking from 2.75% to 3.0%. Although the hike was widely expected, the market surprise came from the bank’s upgraded growth projections, with GDP for 2026 now at 3.3% (2.6% prevs) and 2027 at 2.9% (2.1% prevs). Although Korean rates initially came under pressure following the announcement, ten-year futures have since recovered and are trading around 32 ticks higher.

To the day ahead now, US data releases include July advance goods trade balance, wholesale inventories and weekly jobless claims, while in Europe we’ll have Germany September GfK consumer confidence, France July PPI and Eurozone July M3 data. On the central bank side, we’ll get the accounts of the July ECB meeting and the Jackson Hole symposium will get under way, though its main highlights, including Warsh’s speech, will be on Friday. Earnings include Marvell, Workday, Affirm and Dollar Tree. And France will see its first major presidential debate ahead of the April 2027 election.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 07:59

Barack Obama Elementary School Closed Due To Mold And Rodents

Zero Hedge -

Barack Obama Elementary School Closed Due To Mold And Rodents

Most people have never heard of the Barack Obama Elementary School in Richmond, VA, but the story of the school is interesting because it's a reflection of the political madness the US went through over the course of the past decade. 

The school was originally built in 1922 and is over 100 years old.  It was once called J.E.B Stuart Elementary, but in 2018, the political left went on a historical arson spree - Tearing down statues and renaming anything with ties to the Confederacy as a way to assert ideological dominance. 

Hysteria over the protest events in Charlotte in which "Nazis" held a torchlight vigil (which we now know was most likely funded and organized by the SPLC) led to an American version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. 

The remnants of the Civil War were slated for erasure and the school, named after a confederate general, was an obvious target.  It was renamed after Barack Obama; taking on the reputation of a president who did more to sow racial division in the US than any other person in modern history.  The fanatical woke movement was nurtured and given momentum by the Obama Administration and the American public has been dealing with the repercussions ever since.

Like its namesake, Barack Obama Elementary has something rotten under the surface.

The school of 285 students is now shut down for an undisclosed period after it was discovered that the buildings were testing positive for mold.  The facility also had reports of rodents (mice or rats) in several rooms, alongside the more prominent mold health issue.  The mold and rodent problems were noticed by staff as they prepared for the start of the new school year.

Officials say they hope to reopen the building in a week, though this has proven to be an overly optimistic goal after earlier “clear” air-quality tests were quickly contradicted by new visible mold discoveries (behind bulletin boards, on computers, in the art room, etc.), forcing repeated delays.  A more realistic time frame is one month or more.   

The building is indeed old, but it is rather poetic that a property renamed to "hide the shame" of its confederate roots ended up being shut down after "Barack Obama" was slapped on the front because of decay.  It's also ironic that Democrats were so proud of themselves for blotting out a confederate figure:  The confederates were, of course, Democrats.  School officials say they will work to reopen the facility as soon as possible, though no concrete timeline has been given.

Following their mantra of "never let a good crisis go to waste" (quoted by Rahm Emmanuel, former Chief of Staff to Barack Obama), Democrats are seeking to use the school closure as further leverage to promote a new sales tax in the area.  

Barack Obama Elementary is in a majority black neighborhood and the student body is around 95% black.  The shutdown of the school is a sensitive subject for Democrats and liberals because of the symbolism.  Once a group attaches their political image to a building or a monument, they make those monuments a target for ridicule.  One of their buildings is now full of fungus and rats; it's funny because it's fitting.   

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 07:45

Global Youth Unemployment And Inactivity Inch Up Again

Zero Hedge -

Global Youth Unemployment And Inactivity Inch Up Again

For two years in a row, global unemployment and inactivity among youths aged 15 to 24 has inched up again across world regions.

As seen in data by the International Labor Organization, the coronavirus pandemic caused these rates to go up in 2020, but the situation improved again gradually, in 2022 and 2023 falling below pre-pandemic levels.

But, as Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, since then, rates have been on a slow upswing once more, reaching 12.4 percent of youths in the labor force who are unemployed and 20 percent of youths overall who are either unemployed or not engaging in any activity like education, training, employment or looking for work.

 Global Youth Unemployment and Inactivity Inch up Again | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

According to the recently released ILO report Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026, progress made in the area of youth employment post-Covid has come to an "abrupt halt" as uncertainty and fragility have taken over global economies, GDP growth has remained subdued and inflation has been high. The report also points out that there has not only been a deterioration in the quantity, but also the quality of jobs for youths globally, meaning that many are underemployed or work jobs that don't match their qualifications. Especially the group of NEETs (who are neither in employment, education or training) is made up of a high number of women and girls, who tend to focus on housework and family care responsibilities more often.

12.4 percent unemployed young people between the ages of 15 and 24 equal 67 million individuals worldwide, while the NEET rate of 20 percent translates to 257 million youths. Unemployment rates were higher among young men, while NEET status was more widespread among young women.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 05:45

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