Trump Admin Targets Medicare Fraud After 7,100% Surge In Transplant Claims

Via American Greatness,

The Trump administration says it has uncovered a dramatic increase in Medicare claims for tissue and organ transplants, resulting in a broad crackdown on suspected fraud that officials say has already blocked hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable payments.

Administration officials said Medicare claims for tissue and organ transplants, known as allografts, climbed from $200 million in 2019 to $14.4 billion in 2025—a 7,100 percent increase.

The surge led the White House Anti-Fraud Task Force, headed by Vice President JD Vance, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to intensify their review of claims. Since March, the agency has denied 96 percent of allograft claims identified during the review.

CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz said the agency identified 4,200 potentially fraudulent allograft claims totaling $224 million through May.

“That’s a lot of money,” Oz said during a Wednesday news conference in Milwaukee.

“And that bankrupts not just hospital systems and physician groups, but it causes major problems across the entire landscape.”

The agency also announced enforcement actions involving Durable Medical Equipment (DME) including wheelchairs, walkers, hospital beds and other medical equipment.

According to CMS, payments have been suspended to 102 suppliers, while billing privileges have been revoked for another 725 suppliers. The agency said those suppliers accounted for 8.6 percent of all Medicare-funded DME in 2025.

CMS officials reported they identified suspected fraud involving claims for equipment that was not medically necessary or ordered, equipment that was more expensive than prescribed, and equipment that was never delivered.

“In just six months, the task force has effectively wiped out Durable Medical Equipment fraud in America,” a spokesperson for Vance’s office said.

“After the vice president and Dr. Oz announced a moratorium on new DME companies, paired with aggressive enforcement actions by DOJ and HHS, this kind of fraud has effectively ended.”

Oz said the administration’s efforts have already prevented significant losses.

“Thanks to the whole-of-government approach spearheaded by the White House Anti-Fraud Task Force, we stopped nearly $220 million in fraudulent skin substitute claims and suspended or revoked billing privileges for over 800 DME suppliers,” Oz told Fox News Digital. “We are keeping our promise to the American people: we will root out corruption, protect vulnerable patients, and hold every bad actor accountable.”

Oz also warned those engaged in health care fraud that the administration intends to continue its enforcement campaign.

“To anyone out there, and I’m talking to you if you’re a fraudster, for anyone out there who thinks they can get away by stealing from the American people, especially American patients, I’ve got a bit of advice for you: Do not walk away from this press conference. Don’t walk away from us. You start running because the vice president and this task force are coming after you,” Oz said.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 17:00

Trump Admin Targets Medicare Fraud After 7,100% Surge In Transplant Claims

Via American Greatness,

The Trump administration says it has uncovered a dramatic increase in Medicare claims for tissue and organ transplants, resulting in a broad crackdown on suspected fraud that officials say has already blocked hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable payments.

Administration officials said Medicare claims for tissue and organ transplants, known as allografts, climbed from $200 million in 2019 to $14.4 billion in 2025—a 7,100 percent increase.

The surge led the White House Anti-Fraud Task Force, headed by Vice President JD Vance, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to intensify their review of claims. Since March, the agency has denied 96 percent of allograft claims identified during the review.

CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz said the agency identified 4,200 potentially fraudulent allograft claims totaling $224 million through May.

“That’s a lot of money,” Oz said during a Wednesday news conference in Milwaukee.

“And that bankrupts not just hospital systems and physician groups, but it causes major problems across the entire landscape.”

The agency also announced enforcement actions involving Durable Medical Equipment (DME) including wheelchairs, walkers, hospital beds and other medical equipment.

According to CMS, payments have been suspended to 102 suppliers, while billing privileges have been revoked for another 725 suppliers. The agency said those suppliers accounted for 8.6 percent of all Medicare-funded DME in 2025.

CMS officials reported they identified suspected fraud involving claims for equipment that was not medically necessary or ordered, equipment that was more expensive than prescribed, and equipment that was never delivered.

“In just six months, the task force has effectively wiped out Durable Medical Equipment fraud in America,” a spokesperson for Vance’s office said.

“After the vice president and Dr. Oz announced a moratorium on new DME companies, paired with aggressive enforcement actions by DOJ and HHS, this kind of fraud has effectively ended.”

Oz said the administration’s efforts have already prevented significant losses.

“Thanks to the whole-of-government approach spearheaded by the White House Anti-Fraud Task Force, we stopped nearly $220 million in fraudulent skin substitute claims and suspended or revoked billing privileges for over 800 DME suppliers,” Oz told Fox News Digital. “We are keeping our promise to the American people: we will root out corruption, protect vulnerable patients, and hold every bad actor accountable.”

Oz also warned those engaged in health care fraud that the administration intends to continue its enforcement campaign.

“To anyone out there, and I’m talking to you if you’re a fraudster, for anyone out there who thinks they can get away by stealing from the American people, especially American patients, I’ve got a bit of advice for you: Do not walk away from this press conference. Don’t walk away from us. You start running because the vice president and this task force are coming after you,” Oz said.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 17:00

US, Japan, And South Korea Push SMR Exports For "Energy Security Needs"

The American nuclear buildout is not just about the climate or powering data centers. It's a geopolitical war against the export of nuclear technology from Russia and China, mixed with a new demand for national energy security.

On the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Ankara, the United States, Japan, and South Korea signed a trilateral Memorandum of Cooperation aimed at accelerating small modular reactor (SMR) deployments in other countries, with an initial focus on the Indo-Pacific. The agreement is designed to bring together the complementary strengths of the three countries’ civil nuclear industries.

The US State Department also notes, “The MOC advances our mutual security interests and paves the way for partner countries to meet their energy security needs.”

In addition to deploying reactors in the Indo-Pacific, the initiative is also supported by the U.S. committing over $10 million in new funding to the State Department's Foundational Infrastructure for Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology (FIRST) Program.

Lastly, the U.S. also announced an industry initiative agreed upon with GE Vernova and their partner Hitachi, with Samsung C&T and SGE to deploy the BWRX-300 SMR in Europe. 

The U.S. is continuing its trend, started after the executive orders were signed last year, of deploying American nuclear technology in foreign countries. In the executive orders, the State Department was directed to renew or start 20 civil nuclear cooperation agreements, sometimes referred to as “123 Agreements”. 

The goal is to strengthen U.S. political ties with allies and other countries in Europe and Asia by supporting those countries' domestic energy security needs.  

The reactor export story also has a fuel-chain counterpart. More allied SMR deployments would eventually require more allied fuel supply, and that is where companies like Centrus Energy and General Matter become relevant.

Centrus already has a direct South Korea connection. In 2025, Centrus announced that it had expanded its agreement with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power and POSCO International, including higher low-enriched uranium supply volumes tied to new enrichment capacity at the American Centrifuge Plant in Ohio. 

The supply commitment remains contingent on Centrus receiving the necessary federal funding to build that capacity, but as we clearly identified just last week, Centrus should reasonably expect to receive whatever financial support they ask for from the federal government at this point.  

General Matter adds another piece to the same puzzle. In March, the Export-Import Bank of the United States issued Letters of Interest supporting up to $4.2 billion in potential financing for nuclear fuel sales by General Matter to nuclear power operators in Japan and South Korea.

The new US-Japan-Korea framework does not name a reactor developer, but it can be reasonably expected that GE Vernova (GEV) will lead the pack given its connection to all three countries. The framework does create a backdrop for additional US-aligned advanced reactor developers trying to work with Asian industrial partners.

NANO has already started building that lane in South Korea. In January, the company signed an MOU with DS Dansuk to advance potential deployment of its KRONOS MMR system in South Korea. Under the agreement, DS Dansuk is expected to help with site identification, supply-chain localization, regulatory engagement, and institutional partnerships.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 16:40

US, Japan, And South Korea Push SMR Exports For "Energy Security Needs"

The American nuclear buildout is not just about the climate or powering data centers. It's a geopolitical war against the export of nuclear technology from Russia and China, mixed with a new demand for national energy security.

On the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Ankara, the United States, Japan, and South Korea signed a trilateral Memorandum of Cooperation aimed at accelerating small modular reactor (SMR) deployments in other countries, with an initial focus on the Indo-Pacific. The agreement is designed to bring together the complementary strengths of the three countries’ civil nuclear industries.

The US State Department also notes, “The MOC advances our mutual security interests and paves the way for partner countries to meet their energy security needs.”

In addition to deploying reactors in the Indo-Pacific, the initiative is also supported by the U.S. committing over $10 million in new funding to the State Department's Foundational Infrastructure for Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology (FIRST) Program.

Lastly, the U.S. also announced an industry initiative agreed upon with GE Vernova and their partner Hitachi, with Samsung C&T and SGE to deploy the BWRX-300 SMR in Europe. 

The U.S. is continuing its trend, started after the executive orders were signed last year, of deploying American nuclear technology in foreign countries. In the executive orders, the State Department was directed to renew or start 20 civil nuclear cooperation agreements, sometimes referred to as “123 Agreements”. 

The goal is to strengthen U.S. political ties with allies and other countries in Europe and Asia by supporting those countries' domestic energy security needs.  

The reactor export story also has a fuel-chain counterpart. More allied SMR deployments would eventually require more allied fuel supply, and that is where companies like Centrus Energy and General Matter become relevant.

Centrus already has a direct South Korea connection. In 2025, Centrus announced that it had expanded its agreement with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power and POSCO International, including higher low-enriched uranium supply volumes tied to new enrichment capacity at the American Centrifuge Plant in Ohio. 

The supply commitment remains contingent on Centrus receiving the necessary federal funding to build that capacity, but as we clearly identified just last week, Centrus should reasonably expect to receive whatever financial support they ask for from the federal government at this point.  

General Matter adds another piece to the same puzzle. In March, the Export-Import Bank of the United States issued Letters of Interest supporting up to $4.2 billion in potential financing for nuclear fuel sales by General Matter to nuclear power operators in Japan and South Korea.

The new US-Japan-Korea framework does not name a reactor developer, but it can be reasonably expected that GE Vernova (GEV) will lead the pack given its connection to all three countries. The framework does create a backdrop for additional US-aligned advanced reactor developers trying to work with Asian industrial partners.

NANO has already started building that lane in South Korea. In January, the company signed an MOU with DS Dansuk to advance potential deployment of its KRONOS MMR system in South Korea. Under the agreement, DS Dansuk is expected to help with site identification, supply-chain localization, regulatory engagement, and institutional partnerships.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 16:40

 

 

What a fun conversation!

I sat down with Jon Erlichman (formerly of Bloomberg, now at Ticker Take) to discuss the biggest mistakes investors make.

Here is the overview:

Most investing advice tells you what to buy. Barry Ritholtz would rather tell you what NOT to do. This week on Ticker Take, we sit down with Ritholtz, co-founder and chairman of Ritholtz Wealth Management and the author of How NOT To Invest. Barry walks us through 9 mistakes investors (including pros) often make — from trying to time the market to anchoring to what you paid. Plus, he walks us through the simple approach he uses to avoid making mistakes. As always, this is not financial advice.

Chapters:  0:00 Intro
0:16 What you should NOT do as an investor.
0:54 Why avoiding mistakes is the key to investing!
1:39 Some of the ways to be a successful investor.
3:34 Pros make these mistakes too!
4:44 Mistake 1 – Timing the market
7:34 Mistake 2 – Complex over simple
9:11 Mistake 3 – Politics over patience
11:33 Mistake 4 – Ignoring compounding
14:08 Mistake 5 – Survivorship bias
17:00 Mistake 6 – Panic selling
19:03 Mistake 7 – FOMO buying
20:29 Mistake 8 – Action bias
21:52 Mistake 9 – Anchoring to cost

Video below…

 

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

YouTube

 

 

 

 

The post Ticker Take: The Biggest Mistakes Investors Make appeared first on The Big Picture.

Why Have Central Bankers Gone Radio Silent On The Digital Currency Agenda?

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

During the 2020 pandemic hysteria there was a mad rush by globalist institutions like the WEF, IMF, BIS and numerous national central banks to speed-run the concept of “CBDCs” (Central Bank Digital Currencies) into the mainstream consciousness. The idea of digital currencies rooted to a blockchain ledger was presented as a solution to the pandemic. A number of globalists asserted that digital exchange would be necessary because “paper money carries the covid virus.”

This was, of course, complete nonsense. There was zero evidence that shifting to digital would prevent the spread of the virus in any way. But, as I’ve said for years now, covid was their big play. It was intended to become a nexus point for a global coup; the “New World Order” takeover. The elites figured the population was so terrified that they would agree to anything without a logical reason.

They were wrong, at least in the long run. The virus was a dud (which seemed to catch them by surprise) and the death rate was minimal (0.23% median IFR). The public eventually woke up to the deception and the agenda was forced to dissolve, largely due to nearly half of all US states blocking the mandates. If Americans could live just fine without restrictions, then the rest of the world was going to follow.

I mention the pandemic once again because the attempted coup gave the general public a once in a lifetime insight into the plans and motives of the globalists. This event changed everything. Millions of people who once thought that “conspiracy theorists” were crazy just had their eyes opened to a dark reality. There really is an international cabal. They really do make evil plans in smoky rooms. They really do want a “New World Order.”

And, a big part of this new order is a global digital currency scheme.

As researchers, all of our suspicions were confirmed. Seeing the intended plans of the elites across Europe and developing nations like China and India, it’s clear that CBDCs are the ultimate economic control mechanism. Why? Because without physical money, the populace can no longer engage in trade without governments and central banks acting as the middle man.

Look at it this way: During the pandemic mandates the Biden Administration and many other governments sought to institute the first stages of what would ultimately become a vaccine passport system.

First, employers would be required by law to check workers for updated vaccination, or face endless fines. Once this became the norm, then mandatory covid tracking apps would be introduced as the only way to enter government buildings and mass transit. Eventually, everyone would be forced to use their phones (and a QR code) to get access to public places or purchase anything anywhere.

The final domino would be CBDCs and a cashless society, but Biden and friends did not have this technology in place.

Without CBDCs the control system falls apart. With physical cash, there’s no way for the government to control transactions. They can de-bank individuals who refuse to comply (as the Canadian government did), but with physical exchange there is always a path to rebellion.

Even without cash, the public could use gold and silver or barter. People could create their own black markets and survive. However, with CBDCs widely entrenched, participation in the wider economy would be impossible.

The globalists asserted that de-banking and economic banishment was not a program of “forced vaccination” (although that was the ultimate endgame). Rather, they argued cynically that people still had a “choice” – They could take the vax and live a somewhat normal life within the system, or, they could refuse the vax and be cut off from the economy, and thus cut off from most of society and likely die from abject poverty.

This is the political left’s “consequence culture” argument.

I really hope people never forget the insanity of this era and how close we came to an Orwellian hellscape. Never forget; the globalists and the political left tried to extort you into becoming a medical slave for the rest of your life. And their plan was to use economic access as the leverage to force you into submission.

So what happened? Where did all the rhetoric about CBDCs go? It was everywhere for four years and then, it was dust in the wind. Why have central banks gone radio silent?

Sadly the plan has not been canceled, it has only been moved to the background and it continues to develop behind the curtain. The Bank for International Settlement (BIS) seems to be at the helm, for now, and is pushing forward with various projects to test CBDCs in cross border trade and tracking. Currently, they are working on “Project Agora”.

Project Agora is testing the process for “tokenization” of central bank reserves – Meaning, they want to make it possible for central banks to trade assets with each other using a blockchain ledger without complications. This would be a primary step in the eventual tokenization of all central bank transactions, including transactions with corporate banks and governments.

It should be noted that the Trump Administration and the US Senate has been issuing executive orders and legislation to block the Federal Reserve from engaging in CBDCs until at least 2030. However, the Fed seems to be ignoring these demands. According to the BIS, the Fed is STILL participating in Project Agora and the Fed has not announced any withdrawal from that program.

Interestingly, the BIS avoids using the acronym “CBDC” in most of their latest project announcements. But, this is exactly what they are working on. They do mention all national legal frameworks still apply within their ledger transactions. To translate, that means that central banks and allied governments will retain tracking and control of all assets that are traded through the system (No anonymous transactions and all transactions can be frozen).

This should be worrying for everyone and the implications are staggering. The BIS and its central banking partners are quietly building the framework for national digital currency systems to interact with other national digital currency systems.

In the end, the BIS and its allies will become the middlemen for all the world’s transactions. Furthermore, once national CBDCs become the norm, the elites are only one step away from introducing a GLOBAL CBDC: A one-world digital currency.

I continue to believe that the introduction of this system will require the collapse of the US dollar. But, this event may not happen the way many of us originally imagined. I and many other economists initially believed that the alternative digital currency system to unseat the dollar would be introduced through the BRICS economic bloc, which has been working closely with the IMF.

We also argued that a crash would have to occur through internal sabotage, clearing the path for a dollar collapse.

Something seems to have changed. The influence of the BRICS has been greatly diminished in the past five years. The plan may not be to crash the dollar from within the US through domestic mishap or sabotage, at least not right away. Rather, the plan might be to introduce CBDCs in every western country that is politically cooperative with the globalists and cut out the dollar over time as the world reserve.

Recent announcements from the European Union and the European Central Bank suggest that they are preparing to bring in CBDCs regardless of what the US does.

In other words, it looks as though far-left governments in Europe, Australia and Canada plan to build a global currency network that cuts out the dollar in order to crash its reserve status. They can then say it was entirely the fault of backwards conservative Americans who “live in the past and refuse to go digital…”

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve continues to work with the BIS and the globalists to make the dollar ready for tokenization with the expectation that Americans will eventually be forced to go along with the agenda, or risk being left in the dust.

Will this strategy work? It’s hard to say. The pandemic plan failed and only ended up radicalizing millions of people against the globalists by default. On top of that, the mass immigration agenda in Europe is not going over well and it’s driving the citizens to replace liberal governments with hard-right parties like Restore and AFD. But, when money becomes the weapon, things can turn ugly fast. CBDCs could create unprecedented social and political leverage for the globalists.

Luckily, the public is already well aware of the existence of CBDCs and many of the threats they pose. The globalists can try to hide their projects in a fog of obscurity and they can try to change the terms by using words like “tokenization”, but the populace is still going to recognize the dangers because their radar is now up.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 16:20

Why Have Central Bankers Gone Radio Silent On The Digital Currency Agenda?

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

During the 2020 pandemic hysteria there was a mad rush by globalist institutions like the WEF, IMF, BIS and numerous national central banks to speed-run the concept of “CBDCs” (Central Bank Digital Currencies) into the mainstream consciousness. The idea of digital currencies rooted to a blockchain ledger was presented as a solution to the pandemic. A number of globalists asserted that digital exchange would be necessary because “paper money carries the covid virus.”

This was, of course, complete nonsense. There was zero evidence that shifting to digital would prevent the spread of the virus in any way. But, as I’ve said for years now, covid was their big play. It was intended to become a nexus point for a global coup; the “New World Order” takeover. The elites figured the population was so terrified that they would agree to anything without a logical reason.

They were wrong, at least in the long run. The virus was a dud (which seemed to catch them by surprise) and the death rate was minimal (0.23% median IFR). The public eventually woke up to the deception and the agenda was forced to dissolve, largely due to nearly half of all US states blocking the mandates. If Americans could live just fine without restrictions, then the rest of the world was going to follow.

I mention the pandemic once again because the attempted coup gave the general public a once in a lifetime insight into the plans and motives of the globalists. This event changed everything. Millions of people who once thought that “conspiracy theorists” were crazy just had their eyes opened to a dark reality. There really is an international cabal. They really do make evil plans in smoky rooms. They really do want a “New World Order.”

And, a big part of this new order is a global digital currency scheme.

As researchers, all of our suspicions were confirmed. Seeing the intended plans of the elites across Europe and developing nations like China and India, it’s clear that CBDCs are the ultimate economic control mechanism. Why? Because without physical money, the populace can no longer engage in trade without governments and central banks acting as the middle man.

Look at it this way: During the pandemic mandates the Biden Administration and many other governments sought to institute the first stages of what would ultimately become a vaccine passport system.

First, employers would be required by law to check workers for updated vaccination, or face endless fines. Once this became the norm, then mandatory covid tracking apps would be introduced as the only way to enter government buildings and mass transit. Eventually, everyone would be forced to use their phones (and a QR code) to get access to public places or purchase anything anywhere.

The final domino would be CBDCs and a cashless society, but Biden and friends did not have this technology in place.

Without CBDCs the control system falls apart. With physical cash, there’s no way for the government to control transactions. They can de-bank individuals who refuse to comply (as the Canadian government did), but with physical exchange there is always a path to rebellion.

Even without cash, the public could use gold and silver or barter. People could create their own black markets and survive. However, with CBDCs widely entrenched, participation in the wider economy would be impossible.

The globalists asserted that de-banking and economic banishment was not a program of “forced vaccination” (although that was the ultimate endgame). Rather, they argued cynically that people still had a “choice” – They could take the vax and live a somewhat normal life within the system, or, they could refuse the vax and be cut off from the economy, and thus cut off from most of society and likely die from abject poverty.

This is the political left’s “consequence culture” argument.

I really hope people never forget the insanity of this era and how close we came to an Orwellian hellscape. Never forget; the globalists and the political left tried to extort you into becoming a medical slave for the rest of your life. And their plan was to use economic access as the leverage to force you into submission.

So what happened? Where did all the rhetoric about CBDCs go? It was everywhere for four years and then, it was dust in the wind. Why have central banks gone radio silent?

Sadly the plan has not been canceled, it has only been moved to the background and it continues to develop behind the curtain. The Bank for International Settlement (BIS) seems to be at the helm, for now, and is pushing forward with various projects to test CBDCs in cross border trade and tracking. Currently, they are working on “Project Agora”.

Project Agora is testing the process for “tokenization” of central bank reserves – Meaning, they want to make it possible for central banks to trade assets with each other using a blockchain ledger without complications. This would be a primary step in the eventual tokenization of all central bank transactions, including transactions with corporate banks and governments.

It should be noted that the Trump Administration and the US Senate has been issuing executive orders and legislation to block the Federal Reserve from engaging in CBDCs until at least 2030. However, the Fed seems to be ignoring these demands. According to the BIS, the Fed is STILL participating in Project Agora and the Fed has not announced any withdrawal from that program.

Interestingly, the BIS avoids using the acronym “CBDC” in most of their latest project announcements. But, this is exactly what they are working on. They do mention all national legal frameworks still apply within their ledger transactions. To translate, that means that central banks and allied governments will retain tracking and control of all assets that are traded through the system (No anonymous transactions and all transactions can be frozen).

This should be worrying for everyone and the implications are staggering. The BIS and its central banking partners are quietly building the framework for national digital currency systems to interact with other national digital currency systems.

In the end, the BIS and its allies will become the middlemen for all the world’s transactions. Furthermore, once national CBDCs become the norm, the elites are only one step away from introducing a GLOBAL CBDC: A one-world digital currency.

I continue to believe that the introduction of this system will require the collapse of the US dollar. But, this event may not happen the way many of us originally imagined. I and many other economists initially believed that the alternative digital currency system to unseat the dollar would be introduced through the BRICS economic bloc, which has been working closely with the IMF.

We also argued that a crash would have to occur through internal sabotage, clearing the path for a dollar collapse.

Something seems to have changed. The influence of the BRICS has been greatly diminished in the past five years. The plan may not be to crash the dollar from within the US through domestic mishap or sabotage, at least not right away. Rather, the plan might be to introduce CBDCs in every western country that is politically cooperative with the globalists and cut out the dollar over time as the world reserve.

Recent announcements from the European Union and the European Central Bank suggest that they are preparing to bring in CBDCs regardless of what the US does.

In other words, it looks as though far-left governments in Europe, Australia and Canada plan to build a global currency network that cuts out the dollar in order to crash its reserve status. They can then say it was entirely the fault of backwards conservative Americans who “live in the past and refuse to go digital…”

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve continues to work with the BIS and the globalists to make the dollar ready for tokenization with the expectation that Americans will eventually be forced to go along with the agenda, or risk being left in the dust.

Will this strategy work? It’s hard to say. The pandemic plan failed and only ended up radicalizing millions of people against the globalists by default. On top of that, the mass immigration agenda in Europe is not going over well and it’s driving the citizens to replace liberal governments with hard-right parties like Restore and AFD. But, when money becomes the weapon, things can turn ugly fast. CBDCs could create unprecedented social and political leverage for the globalists.

Luckily, the public is already well aware of the existence of CBDCs and many of the threats they pose. The globalists can try to hide their projects in a fog of obscurity and they can try to change the terms by using words like “tokenization”, but the populace is still going to recognize the dangers because their radar is now up.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 16:20

Jack Smith's Team Exposed Classified Materials, Senator Finds

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Prosecutors with the office of former special counsel Jack Smith left classified materials unsecured and provided materials to at least one person without confirming that person needed to see them, a senator said on July 8.

A set of messages from Smith’s team showed that in 2024, the team left a facility designated for the review of sensitive information open overnight, and potentially longer.

“Who opened the [facility] yesterday?” one member of the team asked in a message.

“No one opened it yesterday because no one closed it the day before,” another member replied.

A second set of messages from 2024 outlined how the team provided classified materials to an unidentified person despite not having confirmation that the person needed to see the materials.

The incidents took place as Smith’s team, which was part of the Department of Justice (DOJ), was prosecuting then-presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump for allegedly mishandling classified materials during his first term as president.

“Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” Grassley said in a statement.

“According to these messages, Biden DOJ personnel may have committed the very offense for which Jack Smith was prosecuting President Trump. These records expose yet another double standard of justice.”

Grassley also wrote in a post on X that the messages “indicate hypocritical [and] careless behavior” and “merit further investigation.”

He pointed to how some former officials, such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, mishandled classified information but were not charged.

Grassley asked Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, for more records, including whether the facility that was left unlocked contained any material that was part of Smith’s prosecution of Trump, and whether the DOJ investigated Smith’s team for giving classified information without the need-to-know confirmation.

“The Department is aware of the concerns raised in Senator Grassley’s letter and takes the safeguarding of classified information very seriously. Every official entrusted with sensitive materials must follow strict security protocols without exception — a standard Jack Smith’s team apparently failed to meet as they pursued a politically weaponized prosecution of President Trump,” a DOJ spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

“As with any alleged security lapse, the Department reviews such matters through established internal processes to determine whether protocols were followed, whether classified information was compromised, and whether any corrective steps are warranted. The Department will continue to apply those procedures rigorously, consistent with our longstanding commitment to protecting national security and maintaining the integrity of our operations.”

Smith, who has said his investigation was proper, was appointed in November 2022 by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to manage investigations into Trump, who at the time was out of office.

Federal prosecutors later charged Trump with violations of federal law governing the handling of classified information, as well as other charges such as illegally interfering in the 2020 presidential election.

Prosecutors dropped the cases after Trump won the 2024 election, noting that he would soon be president.

Part of Smith’s final report was released to the public prior to the start of Trump’s second term, outlining how Smith believed the evidence against Trump would have resulted in a conviction. A federal judge later ruled that the other part shall never be made public.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 15:40

Jack Smith's Team Exposed Classified Materials, Senator Finds

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Prosecutors with the office of former special counsel Jack Smith left classified materials unsecured and provided materials to at least one person without confirming that person needed to see them, a senator said on July 8.

A set of messages from Smith’s team showed that in 2024, the team left a facility designated for the review of sensitive information open overnight, and potentially longer.

“Who opened the [facility] yesterday?” one member of the team asked in a message.

“No one opened it yesterday because no one closed it the day before,” another member replied.

A second set of messages from 2024 outlined how the team provided classified materials to an unidentified person despite not having confirmation that the person needed to see the materials.

The incidents took place as Smith’s team, which was part of the Department of Justice (DOJ), was prosecuting then-presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump for allegedly mishandling classified materials during his first term as president.

“Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” Grassley said in a statement.

“According to these messages, Biden DOJ personnel may have committed the very offense for which Jack Smith was prosecuting President Trump. These records expose yet another double standard of justice.”

Grassley also wrote in a post on X that the messages “indicate hypocritical [and] careless behavior” and “merit further investigation.”

He pointed to how some former officials, such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, mishandled classified information but were not charged.

Grassley asked Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, for more records, including whether the facility that was left unlocked contained any material that was part of Smith’s prosecution of Trump, and whether the DOJ investigated Smith’s team for giving classified information without the need-to-know confirmation.

“The Department is aware of the concerns raised in Senator Grassley’s letter and takes the safeguarding of classified information very seriously. Every official entrusted with sensitive materials must follow strict security protocols without exception — a standard Jack Smith’s team apparently failed to meet as they pursued a politically weaponized prosecution of President Trump,” a DOJ spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

“As with any alleged security lapse, the Department reviews such matters through established internal processes to determine whether protocols were followed, whether classified information was compromised, and whether any corrective steps are warranted. The Department will continue to apply those procedures rigorously, consistent with our longstanding commitment to protecting national security and maintaining the integrity of our operations.”

Smith, who has said his investigation was proper, was appointed in November 2022 by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to manage investigations into Trump, who at the time was out of office.

Federal prosecutors later charged Trump with violations of federal law governing the handling of classified information, as well as other charges such as illegally interfering in the 2020 presidential election.

Prosecutors dropped the cases after Trump won the 2024 election, noting that he would soon be president.

Part of Smith’s final report was released to the public prior to the start of Trump’s second term, outlining how Smith believed the evidence against Trump would have resulted in a conviction. A federal judge later ruled that the other part shall never be made public.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 15:40

Starbucks Using AI To Build Software Replacing Applications It Buys From Microsoft, IBM

Corporate America has been desperate to see a burst of productivity (i.e., cost cutting) emerging from the latest flood of agentic AI euphoria, and it is slowly starting to get it. Not everyone will be pleased.

Starbucks is developing in-house tools with the help of artificial intelligence that could replace some software applications it now buys from companies such as Microsoft and IBM. 

According to Bloomberg, the coffee chain, whose stock price has gone nowhere in the past 3 years, is building alternatives to a Microsoft system that tracks inventory and an IBM tool that manages maintenance. Some of the Starbucks-developed software could roll out by the end of next year, pending the results of testing, the report notes.

Before the advent of advanced AI models, businesses were tethered for years to their technology vendors due to fear of business disruption and the complexity of building in-house tools. But AI is shifting that calculus as it makes it easier to develop applications from scratch and as companies push workers to use the technology (especially when it means those very same workers are teaching AI models how to do their work for them).

This is hardly new: at the start of 2026 the software sector cratered as Wall Street expressed doubts about the "terminal value" of business models that can easily be disrupted by AI. Since then, sentiment has stabilized but leading software companies still face concerns about whether they’ll be able to fend off competition from products built by upstarts, or their own customers, using AI. This phenomenon has weighed on software stocks this year, with Microsoft and IBM both trailing the S&P 500.

Shares of both companies fell during trading on Thursday, with Microsoft down 2.4% and IBM sinking 5.2% at 9:30 a.m. in New York, following the Bloomberg report..

Starbucks spends about $400 million a year on software alone, CTO Anand Varadarajan told workers in an internal forum earlier this year. “There’s clear opportunities to reduce the spend in software,” Varadarajan said. In-house software can be cheaper, an incentive for companies such as Starbucks, which is looking to cut $2 billion in costs as part of a broader turnaround effort. That said, in the long run, building can lead a company to pay higher maintenance and labor costs.

When it comes to technology, Starbucks company is reviewing “every contract and service,” according to the presentation seen by Bloomberg. In some cases, that includes building products to replace software that its engineers have to heavily tailor anyway. As an example, the company has been working for several years on building a point-of-sale system that would take the place of Oracle Simphony.  In a blog post earlier this year, the company said AI and other technology advancements will support its long-term growth and free up baristas to focus more on customer service.

AI-assisted coding was also key to developing the platform that could replace the IBM tool. Starbucks has been pushing tech workers to use artificial intelligence, even factoring usage into their bonuses, which is ironic since the better the model, the less need for the person who created it meaning the bonus will likely be their last.

To be sure, there’s skepticism about how much, or how quickly, AI can speed up and automate work. Starbucks recently pulled an AI-powered system to track inventory at stores, reverting to manual counting; According to Reuters, that tool was part of CEO Brian Niccol's efforts to fix the coffee chain's persistent product shortages that he has blamed for hurting sales. The app - designed to improve Starbucks’ visibility into shortages at stores - frequently miscounted and mislabeled items, such as confusing similar milk types or ​missing them altogether. It also continues to use software from third-party vendors, including from companies such as Microsoft. 

The Starbucks enterprise technology team is on track to reduce its budget by about $30 million in the fiscal year ending in late September, according to the internal presentation. That includes cutting about $10 million in software spending. Another $13 million will be saved mostly by cutting back on contractors from professional services firms and backfilling some roles with its own staff. Starbucks is setting up offices in Nashville and India that will house some tech workers, while others will remain at its Seattle headquarters. The company has cut about 2,300 jobs since February of last year, including many in tech.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 15:20

The Low VIX Hides Fierce Undercurrents

Via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Goldman Sachs’ volatility desk made the following comment:

“With the VIX back to its lowest levels in more than a month, our Vol desk is focused on hedging opportunities as 1-month S&P implied correlation is near its lowest level in 20 years.” 

Simply, a low VIX can convey a sense of market calm on the surface, yet implied correlation tells a different story.

The VIX, based on option trading data, measures the implied volatility of the S&P 500 index.

A low VIX means traders expect the market to be relatively calm with not much volatility.

Conversely, a higher VIX reflects expectations for high levels of volatility.

Today, the VIX is relatively low with a 16 handle today, as S&P 500 index option trades appear complacent.

Implied correlation measures how much S&P 500 stocks are expected to move together.

When implied correlation is high, as it was during COVID, the 2022 interest rate shock, and more recently at the beginning of the Iran conflict, macro forces dominate trading activity, and stocks tend to go up or down together.

When correlation is low, stocks decouple. Individual company fundamentals, technical setups, and momentum chasing drive returns.

As we see in the chart below, the implied correlation is at a 20-year low.

The low VIX implies smooth sailing ahead, while a record-low implied correlation suggests the market could be at risk.

Goldman is hedging the risk of a correction, i.e., an implied correlation spike.

Often, when implied correlation rises sharply from extreme lows, as it did in August 2024 during the yen carry trade unwind, the divergences that kept the index calm disappear.

Stocks start moving together again, and most of the time they move down.

This condition is not a warning to expect a market downdraft, but it does suggest that risk awareness is critical.  

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 12:20

NYC Tower Owner Prepares To Rebuild 15 Floors After I-Beam Failure

Fears of a possible collapse at a condo tower under construction near Grand Central Terminal had abated by the end of the week, but the incident only signals the massive engineering challenges tied to Manhattan's office-to-apartment conversion boom.

The former Pfizer headquarters at 235 East 42nd Street, being converted by David Werner and Nathan Berman's Metro Loft Management into more than 1,600 residential units, has become a high-profile example of the risks of repurposing aging office towers into housing at scale to achieve socialist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's strategy to address the metro area's housing shortage.

Engineer: “The concrete beams in our residential conversion of the Pfizer Building are buckling. The building could collapse! Did you correctly account for the weight of the additional floors we added?”

ChatGPT: “You’re absolutely right! I see the issue now—in using the Euler… pic.twitter.com/Wh3pABw84f

— tedfrank (@tedfrank) July 8, 2026

Metro Loft CEO Nathan Berman told Bloomberg in an interview that 15 stories were added to part of the building, and that two columns beneath were insufficiently reinforced, leading to a failure that caused some of the 15 cantilevered floors above to sag.

Via Bloomberg

Berman said Metro Loft now plans to replace the facade, slabs, and steel on those floors: "We are prepared to rebuild that portion of the building."

"It will be reskinned, everything will be leveled, fixed in place, and it will be brand new," he said.

Tuesday morning's column failure prompted evaluations of the building and surrounding structures, as well as street closures for fear the building would collapse. Since then, crews have been working to install temporary supports.

New York City's Department of Buildings has released a new image showing the emergency works to stablise the 37-storey tower at 235 East 42nd Street after structural beams were seen buckling on its 21st floor.

In a statement, the Department said: "Crews working through the night… pic.twitter.com/R1U5su2h2r

— The B1M (@TheB1M) July 8, 2026

James LaFave, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told the outlet, "Engineers rationally overestimate what they think the loads would be, underestimate how strong they think elements would be to simplify it, and therefore you would end up with a substantial margin of safety."

LaFave noted, "For something to have caused the level of buckling seen in that column there, it's not some small perturbation from expectation that would make that happen. It's something substantial."

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 12:00

Tennessee Congressman Demands FBI Unseal Everything On Seth Rich

Authored by José Niño via Headline USA,

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn, has thrown a fresh spotlight on one of Washington’s most stubborn cold cases. 

On July 7, 2026, the Tennessee Republican posted on X that he had formally pressed FBI Director Kash Patel to surrender every document the bureau holds on the 2016 killing of DNC staffer Seth Rich.

“I have called for @FBIDirectorKash to release all records related to the death of Seth Rich,” Burchett wrote.

His press office added, “Today, I sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel asking for the release of all records related to the death of Seth Rich. The American people deserve answers.”

I have called for @FBIDirectorKash to release all records related to the death of Seth Rich. pic.twitter.com/8Lt7Vm10Mk

— Tim Burchett (@timburchett) July 7, 2026

The letter itself, dated on Tuesday, opens plainly.

“I write to request the release of all Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records related to the death of Seth Rich,” Burchett states.

He then leans on the White House, urging, “Given the Administration’s commitment to transparency, I strongly urge the full release of these records, as permitted by law.”

Rich, 27, was shot and killed while walking home in Washington during the early morning hours of July 10, 2016.

Police treated the case as a botched robbery, and it stays unsolved.

Rich’s death later fueled a viral theory that he leaked DNC emails to WikiLeaks and was silenced for it. 

Burchett’s demand follows years of FOIA warfare waged by attorney Ty Clevenger on behalf of plaintiff Brian Huddleston. The FBI first claimed it held no relevant files, then conceded it possessed more than 20,000 pages of potentially relevant material, Rich’s work laptop, and an image of his personal one.

According to Radar, this week Clevenger said a government lawyer told him he would soon receive confirmation that several hundred more Rich pages had surfaced inside a previously concealed room at FBI headquarters—the same unmapped SCIF where “burn bags” of Russia-probe files marked for destruction were reportedly found. 

That connection remains Clevenger’s account.  The FBI has not confirmed it, and the separate burn-bags report never established that Rich records were among those files.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 11:40

AI Price War Breaks Out: Meta Unveils Paid AI Model For First Time, Will Be "Among Most Affordable Options"

Shortly after a leaked Meta memo revealed the company was planning on putting an AI chip into production in September as it looks to double computing capacity to 14Gigawatts, the company also unveiled a version of its most advanced artificial intelligence model, Muse Spark 1.1, that includes a new paid tier for developers, marking the first time Meta has charged businesses for access to its models and providing a new revenue stream. It’ll be "among the most affordable options" on the market, Zuckerberg said in a Bloomberg interview ahead of the release.

“Since this is not an open source model, this is I think the first time that we’re doing a real serious API,” Zuckerberg said, referring to the application programming interface used to access Meta’s AI. “And the pricing is going to be very aggressive and attractive” he added indicating that Meta hopes to capture market share by undercutting its competitors.

The new model’s biggest improvement is in its agentic capabilities, the Meta CEO told Bloomberg. He hopes to piggyback on the latest craze in AI development this year, which a month ago saw Goldman forecast that agentic AI use will lead to a massive 120 quadrillion monthly tokens being used by 2030.

Agents are the big theme of AI this year, with the label applied to systems that can complete multistep tasks on behalf of a user. Zuckerberg described Muse Spark 1.1 as having “state-of-the-art or very close to it” agentic reasoning and tool use. The model is also greatly improved when it comes to coding and Meta employees are using it internally to build products and features for various apps, he added. 

Meta will also introduce a new Meta Model API system, which will be used to collect fees from developers. Its API pricing is roughly 25% of the cost advertised by other top models from OpenAI and Anthropic, according to Bloomberg. Developers will be able to use Meta’s model for free, but only up to a point; they’ll be required to pay for access after reaching a certain token threshold, Zuckerberg said. 

Which means that legacy frontier models will now have to worry about domestic cheap alternatives, especially after xAI also released an agentic and coding model yesterday which will have to grab market share, in addition to much cheaper Chinese models.

“The pricing from some of the other labs is very extreme and has very high margins,” Zuckerberg said, underscoring that his strategy is to get Meta’s technology in front of as many people as possible. “We think that there’s a real ability to be able to offer frontier or very high-level intelligence at a much more affordable cost.”

Zuckerberg, 42, is spending aggressively to keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Alphabet in a race to achieve what he calls superintelligence, or AI that can perform tasks better than humans. Meta has committed hundreds of billions of dollars to building the infrastructure necessary to develop superintelligence, including data centers and expensive AI chips. The company announced a new $10 billion data center investment in Canada as well as a new image-generation model just this week.

Yet despite Meta’s massive investment spending, its models have not historically tested at the same level as those from Anthropic, OpenAI or Google. But Muse Spark 1.1 is more competitive, Zuckerberg said, and tested better than Google’s Gemini model in several categories related to agents, coding and multimodal capabilities. 

“That is a pretty interesting milestone because I think this may be the first time, at least that I can remember, that Meta’s models are better than all of the Google models,” he said, although it remains to be seen if users/Wall Street agree.

Zuckerberg’s commitment to the AI race has led to a series of extreme shifts in strategy and resources over the past year. Following a disappointing model launch in the spring of 2025, Zuckerberg became personally involved in rebuilding Meta’s AI lab, which included hiring Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang to lead the new unit, and eventually, significant layoffs and several internal reorganizations.

Once fully committed to building open source AI models that are available for free to outside developers, Meta has also pivoted toward prioritizing closed models that it can charge for — like Muse Spark 1.1 — which required essentially rebuilding the technologies from scratch.

Zuckerberg said he’s pleased with how the lab is progressing, although it's not like he would openly admit the alternative. 

“We’re generally doing better than we expected,” Zuckerberg said. He acknowledged that Meta is still trailing some of the larger AI labs, including Anthropic and OpenAI, but said that the company has another new model coming, codenamed Watermelon, that he believes can help Meta “push this maximum frontier of intelligence.” He declined to share details on Watermelon’s release timeline, saying that the focus is on quality.

Investing in a frontier model - or AI technology that moves the industry forward with new capabilities and features - is an expensive endeavor. But Zuckerberg believes it’s worth the investment from Meta given his mission: To build personal agents that everyone in the world can use.

Which begs the question, posed earlier By Vital Knoweldge, who pointed out that just over the past 24 hours wee have seen "new frontier models from Meta (Muse Spark 1.1), SpaceX (Grok 4.5), and OpenAI (GPT 5.6), and asked "Seems like differences are fairly marginal.  Does the world really need all these?"

To Zuck the answer is, of course, yes: after all he has to justify the hundreds of billions he plans to sink into the commoditization of AI.  Then again, Zuckerberg does not believe that the technology will ultimately become a commodity (narrator: it will) that is, that all of the various AI models will essentially do the same thing and be more or less indiscernible from one another. He pointed to Mythos, the latest model from Anthropic, which raised national security concerns in the US, as an example of how companies are already gatekeeping aspects of the technology instead of sharing it widely.

The truth is that Zuck really has no choice: Meta is projecting record capital expenditures for 2026, in addition to spending billions on AI talent to build out its Meta Superintelligence Labs, and has pledged hundreds of billions more to infrastructure projects. Critics have questioned whether the pivot has paid off.

One among them is Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok who in a note overnight wrotes that consensus expects free cash flow for the hyperscalers to more than double over the coming years.

But what if the payoff takes longer than consensus assumes, Slok asks echoing a question that has plagued the AI industry since the summer of 2024? That question is particularly pressing given that token prices continue to decline and Chinese models are gaining ground, both in their share of the world's most-used models and in token usage, where they now lead their US counterparts among the top 20 models.

PIggybacking on what we said a few weeks ago (see "Answering The "Trillion Dollar Question": Are China's AI Models A Better Value Than US Models"), Slok says that if Chinese models keep gaining and token prices keep falling, the hyperscaler cash flows expected may prove too optimistic.

What are the consequences if the AI payoff comes slower than expected in the first chart?

1. Cash flows and earnings disappoint: the projected free cash flow surge slips later while committed capex and heavy depreciation hit on schedule, squeezing margins and marking down the forecast in the first chart.

2. A Mag 7 sell-off that takes the market with it: equity prices built on a fast payoff re-rate, and because the Magnificent 7 now account for so much of the indices, the pain can't stay contained, it spreads to chips, power, data centers and the S&P 500 as a whole.

3. Balance sheets stretch and credit risk rises: with internal cash unable to cover spending, hyperscalers lean further on debt, raising leverage and inviting possible ratings downgrades if profits lag.

All that is true, and is based on just growing Chinese competition. Now add various "new" domestic entrants such as xAI and Meta as aspirational frontier model leaders, which will inevitably spark an even more furious price war, and suddenly the return calculation for both stock and bond investors becomes much uglier. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 11:05

Qatar Halts Push To Ramp Up LNG Production After Hormuz Tanker Strikes

Less than a month after Reuters reported that QatarEnergy was ready to resume LNG production ​at its Ras Laffan LNG plant "very quickly" ‌and expected to reach within a month full output of facilities unaffected by Iranian strikes, this morning Bloomberg reports that Qatar is pausing efforts to rapidly revive production at the world’s largest LNG facility, after an attack on one of its tankers in the Strait of Hormuz raised fears that transit through the crucial waterway is still too risky.

According to the report, QatarEnergy officials held a series of meetings following the attack on Tuesday, with CEO Saad Al-Kaabi deciding to cease plans to increase output at the Ras Laffan complex. Operations will be kept at a minimum for safety reasons and the number of vessels scheduled to dock at the plant in the coming days will be reduced/

The pause is one of the most high-profile fallouts to date of the heightened tensions this week with attacks on a number of ships near Hormuz and the US striking Iran for two consecutive days. President Trump on Wednesday even raised the prospect of a return to all-out war, a worst-case scenario for energy producers in the region who were gradually recovering from the impact of the conflict.

Delaying the Ras Laffan’s ramp-up threatens to further tighten the global gas market, risking more intense competition between Asia and Europe for spare supply as they restock for the coming winter. According to analyst calculations, Europe is badly behind in its winter stockpiling, and absent new sources, it risks a major price surge should the European winter be cold. It also explains why Asian LNG spot prices are more than 80% higher than pre-war levels, highlighting anxiety surrounding the restart of Qatar, which supplied about a fifth of the world’s LNG last year.

According to Bloomberg, since the US and Iran signed an interim peace deal in June, Qatar had been pushing ahead with plans to revive most of its LNG production within two months. It has been running some of Ras Laffan’s production trains at reduced capacity to be ready for a quickly ramp-up when the time was right. That’s likely to continue as the company still aims to boost exports as fast as possible following the safe opening of Hormuz.

As part of its restart prep, Qatar had increased loadings and brought back empty tankers to take on more fuel. Eleven empty LNG vessels are currently sitting outside Ras Laffan, according to ship-tracking data. But those efforts will now be temporarily paused as the world’s second-largest LNG exporter waits for tensions to ease.

The giant facility had been largely shut since early March after an Iranian drone attack, and about 17% of the plant’s production capacity was damaged in a separate missile strike weeks later. As we reported at the time, repairs to that part of the project is estimated to take at least three years.

Last week, QatarEnergy extended force majeure notices on LNG supply for some of its Asian customers to August, causing some uncertainty in the market about when the company would restart production, Bloomberg reported. In Europe, Italian utility Edison SpA said the clause will now be in place until early September for its imports.

The confusion about Qatar’s timelines heightened further after the country said its Al Rekayyat LNG tanker was struck by Iran on Tuesday. The ship was disabled, with the crew abandoning it shortly after, Bloomberg reported. This was the first time a Qatari LNG tanker was targeted since the war in Iran began in late February.

Two other vessels were also attacked, and Iran has fired projectiles on some Gulf countries as it came under attack from the US this week. The tensions brought maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to a near standstill on Thursday.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 10:50

Leaked Meta Memo Shows AI Capacity Doubling To 14 Gigawatts

Meta shares fell 4.3% at Thursday's open after Reuters reported the contents of an internal memo laying out the next phase of the company's AI infrastructure program.

The stock has clawed back part of the loss through the morning but stayed solidly red while the tape digested the same question it has been chewing on for nine days: is Meta the hyperscaler that just started exercising capex discipline, or the one that just committed to doubling?

Three things to note from today's news. The first is silicon. Iris, Meta's in-house AI accelerator and one of four planned MTIA generations unveiled in March, enters production at TSMC in September after clearing bug validation in six weeks with no major issues - an unusually clean result for a program that has stumbled for more than half a decade. Broadcom is the design partner under an agreement extended through 2029, and Meta plans to ship a new chip roughly every six months through 2027, against an industry norm of annual-or-slower cadences. The chips are meant to augment, not replace, externally sourced GPUs - Meta separately holds a multiyear agreement with AMD covering up to six gigawatts of Instinct accelerators - but the internal memo is very blunt about why the program matters - as adopting the latest external GPUs at Meta's scale "has been a heavy lift, and it has cost us time."

The second is scale. Meta plans to deploy seven gigawatts of computing infrastructure this year and to double overall capacity to fourteen gigawatts in 2027, with 2026 spending running as high as $145 billion - the very top of the range guided in April, and a meaningful slice of the more than $700 billion Big Tech is projected to pour into AI this year.

The third is supply. The memo reveals long-term contracts for memory from Samsung, flash storage from Sandisk and fiber-optic equipment from Sumitomo Electric - multi-year lock-ins struck in the middle of a memory shortage severe enough to be raising consumer hardware prices.

On its face the chip news is bullish: faster, cheaper, more independent compute is exactly what a company spending $145 billion a year should want. But the market has spent the past week and a half developing a very specific allergy, and the memo triggered it.

When Bloomberg reported at the start of the month that Meta was standing up a cloud business - internally, Meta Compute - to sell surplus capacity and token-metered API access to outsiders, the stock ripped nearly 9% higher in a session while CoreWeave and Nebius fell double digits. We suggested this might be a potential first crack in the AI capex boom: hoarding compute stops making sense the moment you admit you have extra, and if management appears willing to monetize idle infrastructure, the market reads capital discipline and pays for it. Days later, leaked town-hall remarks in which Zuckerberg conceded that agent development "hasn't accelerated in the way we expected" knocked the stock back down - the July 2 drop that Thursday's open just eclipsed.

Against that backdrop, a memo describing a doubling of capacity, a six-month silicon cadence and years of locked-in component supply looks rather - undisciplined when it comes to capex. Companies do not sign multi-year memory contracts in the middle of a shortage in order to stand still. As we noted earlier this month - the pivot to rewarding CapEx cutters - has, for now, been a driving force: up on plans to sell capacity, down on plans to double it, with the same infrastructure underneath both headlines.

What Doubling Actually Costs

Here's the math. Fourteen gigawatts against seven implies roughly seven incremental gigawatts next year. The long-standing rule of thumb - which Jensen Huang himself used last fall around the Nvidia-OpenAI deal - is that a one-gigawatt AI data center runs about $50-60 billion of capex, roughly $35 billion of it Nvidia GPUs, and implies on the order of half a million chips drawing as much power as 750,000 homes.

It was $50 billion in September 2025. How exactly is anyone meant to afford this at this point? https://t.co/N8skNRNP9I pic.twitter.com/fng1hb21eo

— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) July 5, 2026

On that math, Meta's incremental seven gigawatts carry a bill in the $350-400 billion range.

Some context:

1GW energy = enough power for 750,000 homes
1GW data center = $50-$60BN in capex spend
1GW = 500,000 GPUs

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 12, 2025

Keep in mind that the per-gigawatt price is moving up, not down. Vera Rubin - Nvidia's next data-center GPU platform - draws far more power per chip than the generation before it, so a gigawatt of capacity now holds fewer GPUs, each more expensive than the last. That is why Huang has lately floated build costs of up to $100 billion per gigawatt - a price at which Meta's seven incremental gigawatts would run roughly $700 billion. Treat the top-end number with suspicion - Jim Chanos has argued since last September that Nvidia's per-gigawatt math sits well above what operators tell their own investors - but even the old $50 billion rule of thumb prices the expansion near $350 billion, roughly two and a half times Meta's entire full-year capex guide.

So how does a company guiding to $145 billion double its capacity when the street math says the addition alone costs $350–700 billion? There are three ways to square that circle, and each tells a different story.

First: Meta builds for less - partly for real, partly on paper. Divide this year's capex by this year's deployments and the implied cost lands near $20 billion per gigawatt. Some of that discount is genuine engineering: Iris, the AMD gigawatts, self-built data centers and locked-in components all cut the cost of owned compute, at Nvidia's expense. But some of it is accounting. As Morgan Stanley detailed in June, headline capex understates the real commitment: purchase obligations, leases that haven't yet commenced, and rented third-party compute all keep costs off the books until delivery. Part of Meta's apparent bargain is simply the bill sitting on someone else's balance sheet - or parked in construction-in-progress, waiting to land as depreciation. And the rented slice doesn't dent Nvidia at all: the multi-billion-dollar CoreWeave and Nebius deals Meta signed are Nvidia GPUs on somebody else's books.

Second: the guide just keeps ratcheting. It has already moved from $115-135 billion in January to $125-145 billion in April, when CFO Susan Li blamed "higher component pricing" - and doubling capacity into a memory shortage is a standing invitation for hike number three.

Third: "fourteen gigawatts" turns out to be an elastic unit - contracted versus energized versus deployed - and the memo never says which.

The first path erodes Nvidia's claim on every AI dollar while confirming the off-balance-sheet worry; the second erodes Meta's free-cash-flow story; the third merely defers the question to the earnings call. There is no version in which the memo is unambiguously bullish for the whole complex at once - which is how a chip milestone nets out to a red open.

The memo also comes after the market spent mid-June mapping how any of this gets paid for. Two weeks ago we noted Goldman's argument that 2027 hyperscaler capex estimates are "too conservative" - Goldman's base case is roughly $1.1 trillion, its upside case $1.4 trillion - alongside Morgan Stanley's tally of the financing underneath: some $570 billion of AI-related debt issuance expected this year, hyperscaler gross leverage doubling from 0.9x to 1.8x in two quarters (past the entire energy sector), and Meta credit now trading wider than the investment-grade CDX index. Morgan Stanley already models Meta's 2026 free cash flow as flat to negative. Beneath the disclosed capex sits roughly $1.8 trillion of off-balance-sheet purchase and lease commitments across the complex, with Meta among the less forthcoming - it has declined to quantify the cloud-capacity portion of its $238 billion in commitments - while stretched payables and swelling construction-in-progress balances defer a depreciation load Morgan Stanley sees taking Meta from about 9% to about 19% of revenue by fiscal 2028. That leverage is migrating into the supplier and private-credit layer - vividly illustrated by the $35 billion chip-backed Anthropic SPV Apollo and Blackstone raised in June - precisely where disclosure is thinnest. A fourteen-gigawatt target stacks on top of every one of those trends.

At the high end of its capex forecast ($135BN), META free cash flow in 2026 will be $0 pic.twitter.com/xgOeHnGEZS

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 28, 2026

 

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 10:35

US Existing Home Sales Unexpectedly Dropped In June, Just Off Record Lows

After an ugly Spring selling season, existing home sales have rebounded in Q2 (so far) with expectations for another 1.0% MoM increase in June.

However, that was not to be with US existing home sales tumbling 2.4% MoM in June (although May was revised up to a +3.7% MoM gain from +3.2%). That slowed the annual improvement in sales to +2.75% YoY...

Overall, existing home sales SAAR remains just off record lows...

“The back-and-forth in monthly home sales activity, driven by mild fluctuations in mortgage rates, shows how sensitive home buyers are to affordability conditions,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement. But recent job gains will continue to provide support to the housing market, he added.

NAR’s Housing Affordability Index, which measures whether typical families can qualify for a mortgage for a median-priced home, has improved somewhat from a year ago but is at its lowest since August 2025.

Inventories of new homes for sale remain high (and are thus pressuring homebuilders to choke back on additional supply)...

But, the inventory of existing homes for sale climbed 1.3% from a year earlier to 1.56 million. From a month earlier, however, it fell slightly for the first time this year.

Yun called the annual gain “minuscule.”

“We need to see 30%, 40%,” he said. “We’re not seeing that.”

Last month, the median sales price of a previously owned home rose 1.8% from a year ago to a record high of $440,600, NAR data show.

While prices continue to climb, the advance is far smaller than the gains seen a couple years ago.

Weakness in the US South, the nation’s biggest home-selling region, helped drag down the national results, with sales there declining 3.6% to an annualized 1.89 million. Sales also slipped in the Midwest and West, though they gained in the Northeast.

First-time buyers accounted for 33% of sales in June, compared with 35% in May.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 10:09

The Choice To Go Up Or Down The Escalation Ladder Now Lies With Iran

By Michael Every of Rabobank

“It ain't over till it's over, but..."

The US hit Iran for a second night along Hormuz, in southern cities, near a nuclear site, and a railway bridge in the northwest. The message from VP Vance was to stop striking ships in Hormuz or get hit back harder. From Trump, it was that Iran are “liars” and “scum” and the MOU is “over,” repeating threats to reimpose the US blockade of Iranian oil --showing why few (save China) were keen to buy it with a temporary sanctions waiver that lapsed before shipments arrived -- and to hit electricity and desalination plants and/or take Kharg Island, it’s key oil facility.

Even Axios, purveyor of ‘world peace(fire)’ headlines, is reporting the US is preparing for an extended confrontation --from 1-2 days to a month-- and that the ‘Battle of Hormuz’ may be about to begin.

Trump did add negotiators could keep talking if they wanted to; and on Air Force One (the old one: that just gifted by Qatar was left in the UK, speaking to a security problem) he stated Iranian officials "called a little while ago. They want to make a deal so badly."

So, the immediate choice to go up or down the escalation ladder lies with Iran. If Tehran deescalates, they cede control of Hormuz. If they escalate, their options are to hit Hormuz more – triggering more US counter strikes; or GCC energy - triggering a larger war; to use (battered) proxies like Hezbollah - triggering wider war; or perhaps to rush for a nuclear weapon - which would mean far worse war. The New York Times reports Iran’s president and foreign minister were physically attacked this week by supporters of a hard-line faction that vehemently opposes any deal with the US: it remains to be seen if the streets, IRGC, clerics, or politicians will decide what happens next – but both the politicians and the IRGC benefit from talks going on and oil flowing.

The US would also have to decide if it can afford to cede Hormuz or will fight to keep it open when the SPR is seen near a tank bottom- was this discussed at the NATO summit, perhaps?

A tell for stepped up military statecraft would be a matching step-up in economic statecraft. Note the White House’s launch of ‘Freedom Fuel’ gas stations offering lower prices (via lower profit margins; or, at $3.67 a gallon, possible federal subsidies). If that scheme expands past an initial 25 sites it suggests more disruption in Hormuz ahead. However, that’s just a stepping stone to the NAPHTHA closed-loop energy system we’ve flagged the US might need to consider.

There are also longer term moves to avoid Hormuz. The UAE’s pipeline to Fujairah is underway; the Saudis may expand their East-West Red Sea pipeline by 2m barrels per day, allowing themselves and other GCC states to benefit; and Riyadh is exploring an IMEC route through Syria and Turkey - as Trump informed Congress of his intent to remove Syria from the state sponsor of terror list and was nice to Erdogan at the Ankara NATO summit; and following a state visit to Damascus by Macron and Erdogan literally giving the EU’s Von der Leyen and Costa guns.

For now, we stick with our base case that Hormuz tension blows over rather than blowing up. However, the odds of the latter happening sooner, rather than post-midterms as expected, have increased.

In energy markets, oil is up, but not hugely, with Brent at $79: but crack spreads are near record highs. Yes, lots of oil just flooded out of Hormuz, but global refineries already couldn’t process the backlog easily – add a new war there and things look far worse.

Crack spreads have also been driven by Russia banning exports of diesel until end-July in response to the devastating strikes against its oil refineries by Ukrainian drones: these are causing fuel shortages and have turned Russia from a net exporter to a net importer of refined products.

At the NATO summit -- besides Trump threatening Spain with a trade boycott for being peaceniks -- there was US backing for Ukraine‘s strikes deep into Russia and against energy facilities; Ukraine was also given permission to manufacture Patriot missiles itself to boost its air defences. Expect a lot more damage to Russian energy ahead, unless Russia comes to the table.

In related geoeconomic developments, the FT reports Trump-backed US rare earth mines are selling to Japan and South Korea – then again, South Korea and Japan might build US weapons and navy vessels in the near future.

In Europe, a leaked report has revealed France is seeking to widen Brussels’ Made-in-Europe policy: Paris wants such measures extended to shipbuilding and trains. Buy local schemes are even more effective economic statecraft than tariffs. The FT also carries an op-ed from former Italian PM Letta arguing ‘Europe must have the financial power to match its economic heft,’ and the continent’s savings should be used to invest in its own future, not someone else’s. Are we also going to see capital controls for the beating heart of the ‘liberal world order’?

Yet Rutte’s ‘Made in NATO’ weapons push collides with EU’s ‘Buy European’ drive, as Politico puts it, where “The NATO chief wants to build the transatlantic military industrial complex, but the EU is backing its own companies.” Who will win that battle given Europe still needs LNG, which the US has and where Turkey may soon play a key role too, and given the US holds the cards on tech and, relatively, on rare earths?

Spain, while making the peace sign, is also pushing the European Commission to borrow an additional €850bn per year on behalf of EU countries to get lower yields – which may not get a ‘Made in Europe’ response from northern member states. That’s as the UK government is warned by the OBR that another £120 of tax hikes are needed as debt is on an unsustainable trajectory.

Political news matches this geopolitical and geoeconomic drama: the Democratic Party Maine Senate candidate Platner has dropped out over allegations of sexual assault (not his Nazi tattoo); the Democratic Governor of Kentucky has, in so many words, requested that Republican Senator McConnell show that he’s still with us, when rumour is that he isn’t; and in the UK, Reform UK’s Farage is likely to contest a 6 August by-election solely against a man who wears a dustbin on his head, with the key policy pledge of building “at least one affordable home.”

Lastly, and deliberately last, the Fed minutes headline was that ‘a few’ members saw the case for a June hike. And?

• First, it may not be long until we don’t get much information about what the Fed is thinking under the Warsh Doctrine.
• Second, backwards-looking reports can’t keep up with the speed and scale of geopolitical developments.
• Third, the economic models of those who write those reports can’t predict geopolitical outcomes.

As this Global Daily’s title says, “It ain't over till it's over, but...” – and that covers the usefulness of central-bank ‘he said, she said’ just as much as it does the US-Iran ‘he said, he said’ MoU.  

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 10:00

Bloom Energy Defends Supply Chain, Calls Hunterbrook Report "False And Misleading"

Bloom Energy is responding forcefully against allegations made by short seller Hunterbrook Capital, rejecting the firm's claims about its accounting, supply chain and growth prospects a day after a report sent shares sharply lower.

The clean energy company said Thursday that Hunterbrook's assertions regarding its financial reporting and access to critical raw materials are "false and misleading," according to a statement reported by Bloomberg.

The response comes after Hunterbrook published an investigation on July 8 that questioned Bloom's independence from Chinese suppliers and argued that the company's long-term manufacturing ambitions may be constrained by global scandium availability. Hunterbrook disclosed that it stands to benefit if Bloom's shares decline through a short position.

Bloom specifically defended its financial reporting, saying allegations concerning its accounting are contradicted by its audited financial statements. The company also disputed Hunterbrook's central thesis surrounding scandium oxide, the specialty material used in Bloom's solid oxide fuel cells.

Bloom said it has sufficient scandium oxide supply to meet both current production needs and its existing customer backlog. It added that its scandium supply is not dependent on China, either for current operations or future demand growth. Looking further ahead, Bloom said it has visibility across its supply chain sufficient to support production capacity of 25 gigawatts of fuel cells annually, adding that it expects to continue expanding that capacity over time.

Hunterbrook's report, published Wednesday under the title Bloom's Big Lie, argued that Bloom's public messaging about its supply chain conflicts with trade data and supplier relationships. According to the investigation, multiple international trade routes appear to connect Bloom's supply chain to Chinese sources of scandium despite repeated statements from CEO K.R. Sridhar that the company has "no China supply chain."

Hunterbrook said its research relied on global shipping records, corporate filings and satellite imagery. The report also cited a representative from Chinese producer Hunan Oriental Scandium who allegedly identified Bloom as one of its largest customers.

The report further argued that Bloom's long-term manufacturing targets face a fundamental resource constraint. Hunterbrook estimated that producing five gigawatts of fuel cells annually would require roughly 220 tons of scandium oxide each year, nearly the entire projected global supply of approximately 240 tons, raising questions about whether the company's expansion plans are feasible.

Hunterbrook also challenged Bloom's reported order backlog. The firm argued that while Bloom has discussed an approximately $20 billion backlog, audited contractual performance obligations are substantially smaller, at roughly $492 million, suggesting investors may be overstating the visibility of future revenue.

The report helped send Bloom shares down roughly 6% on Wednesday. Bloom's Thursday response marks its formal rebuttal to the allegations, with the company maintaining that its audited financial statements, supply chain and access to scandium fully support its current operations and future growth plans.

Recall, back in 2019 now-defunct short seller Hindenburg Research also took on Bloom, highlighting "trick accounting", claiming "Bloom’s technology is not sustainable, clean, green, or remotely profitable" and raising a question to the company about how important the price and supply of scandium was to the company's supply chain. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/09/2026 - 09:40

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