Nvidia CEO Urges Super Micro To "Enhance Compliance" Amid AI Chip-Smuggling Probe

In a rare public comment that Nvidia is growing more sensitive to downstream risk, CEO Jensen Huang was quoted by Bloomberg News as saying Super Micro Computer must strengthen internal compliance controls after Taiwanese authorities detained three people accused of smuggling banned AI chips to China.  

"Ultimately, Super Micro has to run its own company," Huang told reporters on Saturday in response to the chip smuggling scheme. "I hope that they will enhance and improve their regulation compliance and avoid that from happening in the future."

The U.S.-based server and data-center hardware company primarily builds high-performance servers, storage systems, networking gear, and complete AI/data-center racks for various customers, but most importantly for those working on edge computing and artificial intelligence workloads.

Huang said Nvidia is "rigorously" explaining the complex regulatory environment to all its partners to avert further downstream diversion risk.

Huang's comments stem from federal prosecutors charging the co-founder of Super Micro and two associates with participating in a scheme to divert roughly $2.5 billion in Nvidia AI accelerators to China.

How the Alleged Scheme Worked:

• The group used a company in Southeast Asia as a front buyer to place huge orders with a California-based U.S. manufacturer.
• Once the servers arrived in Southeast Asia, they were quickly repackaged and secretly shipped to customers in China through a network of brokers.

Related:

• $92 Million In Banned AI Chips Went From Super Micro To Little-Known Chinese Tech Company

Our view is that Huang's comments suggest he is trying to insulate Nvidia from a widening chip-smuggling investigation while preserving access to highly scrutinized international markets.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 13:25

When Unfairness Is Systemic, The Consequences Are Flight, Resistance, Revolt

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Now that we've drained the aquifers of a stable society, the replacement form of "wealth" is a delusional credit-asset bubble that generates the illusion of "wealth."

Let's weave together two threads that look different: systemic unfairness and civilizational psychosis. As I often note, social species that organize themselves into hierarchies (i.e. primates, including humans) have an innate sensitivity to fairness, as this trait is essential to maintaining social stability, and therefore it has been selected as advantageous.

This sensitivity applies both to individual instances of unfairness / injustice and to systemic unfairness / injustice. If there is no redress when an individual is treated unfairly or abused, the social order is weakened. This is why early civilizations instituted legal codes and systems of redress as they expanded into nations / empires that needed bureaucracies to organize, manage and enforce the rules and responsibilities of every class.

If the mechanisms of redress have become empty shams, then the unfairness is systemic: it isn't just some individuals who have been treated unfairly--everyone is being exploited and treated differently from what the system claims is the operative set of values and rules.

When there's an external source of wealth to be exploited, the leadership has the luxury of becoming extractive and oppressive, because they have a source of wealth that's external to their own populace. Consider the progression from a society of systemic fairness to a society of systemic unfairness.

Consider a fledgling nation that was a society with high levels of social trust and cohesion generated by a dutiful leadership, social mobility and a system in which social pressures meant members of each social class had to respect the same set of social rules.

This structure is the essential foundation of a functional society and economy, for if the resident populace is immiserated by an unfair system, they respond by either fleeing the system (i.e. opting out or leaving), resisting the unfairness / exploitation or revolting against the status quo.

If the nation transitions into an expansionist empire, the leadership can jettison fairness / redress because it can extract wealth via conquest or exploiting new resources. The bureaucracy is co-opted / bought off via the spoils of conquest and corruption, and as the imperium expands, it has sufficient wealth to buy off the citizenry class with bread and circuses or equivalent largesse.

In other words, systemic unfairness--what we now call a rigged casino--is accepted as long as the key social classes feel they're getting ahead. The Roman state / empire is an example of these dynamics, but there are many others.

As long as there's enough external wealth flowing in to enable people to feel they're still getting ahead, social decay is tolerated as "the cost of progress." In other words, who needs fairness if I have a seat in the rigged casino?

But this structure is inherently unstable, both economically and socially. External sources of wealth / resources are eventually depleted, and the largesse diminishes asymmetrically: the wealthiest few at the top continue amassing fortunes, the bureaucrats are squeezed, and the lower classes are now being taxed to cover the decline of external wealth extraction.

The systemic unfairness that was tolerated is no longer tolerable once the majority are no longer getting ahead. This presents the leadership class reaping the lion's share of the wealth extraction with a problem: how to persuade the masses that 1) they're still getting ahead, even as they visibly lose ground, and 2) how to mask the systemic unfairness, i.e. the rigged casino that stripmines the many to benefit the few.

The leadership's "solution" is civilizational psychosis: the founding mythology of the state--so inspirational and lofty--is heavily promoted, even as this mythology (super-abundance, democracy, etc.) no longer maps the real world.

This widening divide generates civilizational psychosis as the masses are corralled into a state of denial that temporarily eases their anxiety at the recognition they're no longer getting ahead and the ladders of upward mobility have all crumbled.

This state of inspirational delusion enables denial to take a superficially plausible inspirational form: Rome is eternal, so we don't have to do anything but await an automatic return to greatness, AI will make us all rich, technological Progress is inevitable and automatically solves all our problems, and so on.

We fervently believe these delusions because the alternative is too painful to bear. The system is rotten to the core, it's all artifice masquerading as authenticity, and not only are we no longer getting ahead, there are no pathways left to get ahead other than gambling, selling our blood or delusional aspirations to become one of the tiny handful of newly minted Tech Bro millionaires.

There is an emotional progression that parallels the progression from a stable society of dynamic equilibrium to civilizational psychosis: denial breaks down into anger, a volatile state with uncertain outcomes, which eventually transitions to bargaining (please let the stock market go back up so I can exit without losses) which leads to depression (it's all lost) which once processed can move to acceptance (oh well, time to start over).

Both denial and civilizational psychosis are inherently unstable as they're self-liquidating. So denial will blossom into anger whether we "like" it or not.

Now that we've drained the aquifers of a stable society, the replacement form of "wealth" is a catastrophically delusional credit-asset bubble that generates the illusion of "wealth." Since the top 10% managerial / entrepreneurial / professional class the leadership needs to run the empire own 90% of the bubbling assets, inflating a credit-asset bubble is a painless way of generating the illusion in this class that they're still getting ahead.

Until the bubble pops, of course, and all bubbles pop, even when we insist they're not bubbles.

Bubbles masquerading as "wealth" is a manifestation of civilizational psychosis, and so these asset bubbles are equally unstable and self-liquidating: they implode not as a result of some external influence but as an inevitable consequence of their internal structure / nature.

Once the system's transition to a rigged casino becomes undeniable, denial cracks wide open and is replaced by anger. The responses to systemic unfairness are flight, resistance and revolt: dropping out, laying flat, let it rot, opting out, booing toadies worshiping the new gods of AI and eventually, manifestations of revolt as political, economic and social redress are suppressed as needless by a delusional leadership class that has embraced civilizational psychosis.

The price of believing their own PR will be higher than anyone thought possible.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 12:50

Ukraine Regained Territory After Cutting Russia's Black Market Starlink Terminals

According to a newly declassified U.S. defense intelligence assessment first reported by Bloomberg, Moscow’s frontline command-and-control structures suffered a catastrophic blackout earlier this year due largely to coordinated crackdown that disabled thousands of black market Russian Starlink terminals.

The Pentagon document highlights just how deeply Russian forces had come to rely on Elon Musk's commercial satellite terminals to patch over their own spotty military communication systems. For months, Russian units bypassed international sanctions via shadow supply networks to source the hardware.

The Friday Bloomberg report claims that a "Ukrainian offensive against Russia earlier this year retook about 400 square kilometers after thousands of portable Starlink internet terminals operated by Russian forces were deactivated," citing analysis from the US Defense Intelligence Agency. 

The document, authored jointly by the DIA and US European Command, states that "Russian military capabilities in Ukraine were temporarily yet significantly degraded following Ukrainian officials’ efforts in February to deactivate thousands of Starlink terminals that were illicitly used by Russian forces to coordinate movements and unmanned aircraft strikes in areas where communications were unreliable or easily jammed."

Ukrainian forces then made their first territorial gains since 2023, after years of steady Russian gains, with Russia military comms now said to be "temporarily yet significantly degraded" due to the loss of the terminals.

The report further describes that Kiev forces working in tandem with SpaceX were able to deploy sweeping geographic restrictions that target-locked and deactivated unauthorized terminals operating inside the combat zone. This resulted in "instant" results.

What also didn't help is the Kremlin's own tightening restrictions on the use of Telegram by Russian forces, and so also the recent lack of this favored encrypted messaging platform among military units left frontline commanders totally isolated.

While US intelligence noted that Russia still maintains an overall structural advantage in raw combat functions, and of course manpower and firepower remains on Moscow's side, the incident demonstrates that communications are still a vital backbone to any modern warfare and command system.

SpaceX has long sought to officially bar Russian consumers from using Starlink, due to long-running sanctions, and to prevent military use against Ukraine.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 12:15

Highlights From 2nd Batch Of Declassified UFO Files Include A UAP Shootdown

The Pentagon’s second batch of declassified UFO files released on May 22 includes videos such as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) being shot down over the Great Lakes and audio of astronauts witnessing a series of unexplained phenomena.

​Dozens of documents were cleared for release on Friday, adding to the previous document dump on May 8, which revealed that Apollo 11 astronauts reported seeing a “sizable” object near the moon.

​The Epoch Times' Jacki Thrapp offers the following highlights from a partial review of the newly released files.

UAP Shot Down

The U.S. Air Force shot down a balloon-shaped UAP over Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes located between the United States and Canada, on Feb. 12, 2023.

A U.S. Air Force Air National Guard F-16C shoots down a UAP over Lake Huron on Feb 12, 2023. Department of War

The video, which the War Department said was likely taken by an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform, showed the UAP being struck and “fragmenting in a radial displacement pattern that suggests a high-energy event.”

Fragments fall from the UAP after it was shot. Department of War

The War Department did not reveal what fell from the object.

Officials did not share if any attempts were made to recover the fragments.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Department of War for additional information.

​UAP Formation Caught on Camera

The Department of War released a video showing “four areas of contrast” seemingly making a formation, according to a video apparently filmed by an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform.

A screenshot from a video titled “UAP USO Formation.” USO stands for unidentified submerged object. Department of War

The eight-minute clip, which was edited and digitally altered, showed four objects moving in a parallel direction as they became “increasingly indistinct over time as the video quality degrades.”

Four unexplained objects moving in the same direction in a screenshot from video. Department of War

The War Department did not share the date or location of the unexplained formation.

International Sightings

An infrared sensor spotted a UAP, described as “four areas of contrast,” zoom past what appeared to be ships in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility in Iran on August 2022.

In a separate incident that year, video captured “multiple spherical UAP” near a submarine in March that were going “in and out of water.”

A UAP, or possibly more than one, appears on the lower left side of a classified video taken in Iran on August 2022. The red circle was added by The Epoch Times to clarify what the Department of War considered to be an unknown anomaly. Department of War

Additional videos showed UAP in Syria in 2021, a “spherical UAP over [Afghanistan] in and out of clouds” in November 2020, and a video that starts in color and shows a bright UAP over the water off the East Coast of the United States. 

The latest document dump included a CIA intelligence information report from the Soviet Union that was recorded in the summer of 1973.

The decades-old report revealed that an unnamed source on the Sary Shagan Weapons Testing Range in Kazakhstan witnessed a “sharp, (bright) green circular object or mass in the sky.”

The source, who was identified as a former Soviet citizen, said the “green circle widened and within a brief period of time several green concentric circles formed around the mass.”

The witness did not hear any sounds associated with the phenomenon.

NASA Audio

The second batch of UFO-related files also included several audio clips released by NASA from its Mercury and Apollo missions.

An audio recording from Mercury-Atlas 7 on May 24, 1962, featured pilot Scott Carpenter describing reflective white particles that moved at “random” and appeared to “look exactly like snowflakes.”

He said the phenomena moved faster than his spacecraft.

Additional “little white objects” were also reported months later during the Mercury Atlas 8 mission.

On Oct. 3, 1962, pilot Walter M. “Wally” Schirra Jr. described “little white objects that tend to come from the capsule itself and drift off.”

Minutes later, Schirra reported a burst of light in his window.

“[I’m] getting a real burst of light in the window, and I really don’t know what it is,” Schirra said. 

In December 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission, the 11th and final crewed mission in the Apollo program, Cmdr. Gene Cernan, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, and Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans reported “very bright particles or fragments of something” that drifted by outside the spacecraft as they transited to the moon.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 11:40

The post Wall Street Says That a Company That Loses Billions is Worth Trillions appeared first on CEPR.

40,000 Evacuated In Southern California As Chemical Tank Threatens Leak Or Explosion

Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times,

Roughly 40,000 people in Garden Grove, a Los Angeles suburb, were evacuated on Friday after a chemical storage tank was determined to be at risk of failing and spilling thousands of gallons of toxic material or exploding.

The malfunctioning tank holds methyl methacrylate, a flammable and volatile chemical used in plastics manufacturing for aerospace applications, igniting widespread worries over potential toxic vapor release.

The situation broke out Thursday, when the tank at a manufacturing facility started displaying signs of instability. By Friday, an update increased fears of an explosion, Orange County Fire Authority interim Chief TJ McGovern said.

On Friday, employees saw that the tank was bulging, a sign it was still “actively in crisis,” as one official described it.

The manufacturer said a valve had been damaged, preventing a controlled release.

Firefighters were working to cool the tanks with a mechanical device operated from a safe distance, stabilizing the temperature and buying critical time, officials said.

“I know I keep talking about we were handed this situation where there’s only two things that can happen: it could crack and leak, or it could blow up. That’s not acceptable to us,” Craig Covey, division chief of the Orange County Fire Authority, said in a video posted on social media.

Covey added in a later video, “I have an entire team actively working locally, regionally, across the state, and across the country, to try to figure out how to fix this.”

He said he is working to “get all these brilliant minds together to put a plan together, so that we don’t let this blow up.”

In an earlier announcement, Covey said the tank could fail and spill up to 7,000 gallons of toxic chemicals or explode and compromise neighboring tanks.

Garden Grove, which is home to 172,000 residents, is located approximately 30 miles south of Los Angeles. The evacuation zone affected neighborhoods in and around the city, and extends to nearby areas including parts of Anaheim, Cypress, Stanton, Buena Park, and Westminster.

Officials established three evacuation shelters in Garden Grove, Anaheim, and Cypress. Schools and roads in the affected areas were closed.

Garden Grove Police Chief Amir El-Farra said approximately 15 percent of those under evacuation orders were refusing to leave.

Health officials said that released vapor could prompt severe respiratory issues with prolonged exposure. Air quality monitors, however, had not detected any vapor as of Friday, said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong of the Orange County Health Care Agency.

“You are safe as long as you are out of the zone that was determined to be an evacuation zone,” Chinsio-Kwong said.

Methyl methacrylate has a sharp, fruity odor. Some residents miles away reported smelling it amid the unfolding events.

The chemical is used in aerospace plastics manufacturing.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 09:55

Trump Speaks With Qatar Emir As Pakistani-Led Iran Peace Push Intensifies

US-Iran de-escalation hopes drove crude oil and rates lower and put a bid in equities by the end of Friday's trading day, amid speculation that President Trump would stay at the White House over Memorial Day weekend instead of attending Donald Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson’s wedding celebrations in the Bahamas.

"As Iran/oil/rates pressure eased on de-escalation hopes, leadership rotated toward small caps, equal weight, housing, transports, discretionary, and selective defensive growth, with short covering in high short-interest/profitless tech and consumer cyclicals reinforcing the catch-up trade," UBS analyst Torsten Sippel wrote in a note to clients late Friday.

Early Saturday morning, Bloomberg reports that President Trump held a phone call with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, regarding Pakistani-led efforts to de-escalate Gulf tensions and preserve the fragile US-Iran ceasefire.

Iran's top negotiator and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf met Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir in Tehran earlier today amid ongoing diplomatic efforts to bring the US and Iran to a peace deal, Reuters reported, citing Iranian state media.

Ghalibaf told Munir that Iran's Armed Forces "have rebuilt themselves during the cease-fire in such a way that if Trump foolishly restarts the war, they will definitely be more crushing and bitter for the U.S. than on the first day of the war."

The Iranian top negotiator also said, "We will not compromise on the rights of our nation and country."

There was a series of headlines from Sky News Arabia, citing sources, indicating that a major push for regional diplomacy was underway earlier today, with officials from Iraq, Oman, Jordan, and Qatar working to mediate with Tehran to avert another flare-up in the conflict.

Sky News Arabia sources said Pakistan’s mediator helped break the deadlock over the Iranian nuclear file, though several major issues remain unresolved, including the conflict in Lebanon, sanctions on bank accounts, the status of Iranian ports, and the presence of U.S. military forces in the Gulf area.

Iran is reportedly demanding the lifting of restrictions on its ports and a U.S. military withdrawal from the region before reopening the Strait of Hormuz and entering a new round of talks within 30 days.

There is also a reported internal conflict between Iran’s government and the Revolutionary Guard over Tehran’s negotiating demands.

Latest negotiation headlines (via sources) from Sky News Arabia:

• Iranian Foreign Ministry: Iraqi and the Omani Foreign Minister discuss in a phone call the ongoing diplomatic efforts to prevent escalation

• The foreign ministers of Jordan and Qatar affirm the necessity of concerted efforts to ensure the success of mediation efforts with Iran to reach a sustainable solution that addresses all the roots of the crisis and prevents the renewal of escalation.

• The Foreign Ministers of Jordan and Qatar affirm the continuation of coordination of efforts to support targeted mediation aimed at ending the escalation in the region and restoring security and stability.

• Sources to Sky News Arabia: The Pakistani mediator has succeeded in overcoming the deadlock on the Iranian nuclear file.

• Sources to Sky News Arabia: The issues that have not yet been resolved include stopping the war in Lebanon and lifting the ban on financial accounts.

• Sources to Sky News Arabia: Iran demands the lifting of the siege on Iranian ports and the withdrawal of military forces from the region to open the Strait of Hormuz and proceed to a round of negotiations within a 30-day timeframe.

• Sources to Sky News Arabia: There is a severe disagreement between the Iranian government and the Revolutionary Guard regarding Iran's demands for negotiations.

Additional overnight headlines (courtesy of Bloomberg):

Economic Impact

• The dollar ended the week nearly unchanged as risk assets got a boost from optimism around US-Iran peace talks [BN]
• Germany's business outlook improved for the first time since the Iran war began, with an expectations index rising to 83.8 in May [BN]
• UK retail sales fell 1.3% as consumers made fewer car journeys amid the global energy shock from the Iran war [BN]
• Qatar Airways will skip bonuses for almost 60,000 workers this year after the war forced cancellation of tens of thousands of flights [BN]

Military Readiness

• The US halted arms sales to Taiwan to ensure sufficient munitions for the Iran war, according to Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao [BN]

• Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard resigned from her post, with her anti-war views having spurred tension with the White House [BN]

Trade Disruption

• Japan is set to receive its first Persian Gulf oil shipment to transit the Strait of Hormuz since the war began, with the Idemitsu Maru carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi crude [BN]

• Anglo American is redirecting Brazilian iron ore output to Asia as the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz prevents shipments to Bahrain Steel [BN]

Polymarket Odds For US-Iran Peace Deal By ...

//--> //--> US x Iran permanent peace deal by May 26, 2026?
Yes 8% · No 93%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

Charting Brent Crude

Friday's US-Iran Wrap

• Iran Says 'No Deal' Will Materialize If US Insists On Enriched Uranium Handover

Hormuz Chokepoint:

• Iran Says 35 Ships Exited Strait Of Hormuz As Rubio Condemns Tolls

Chart of the Day (read UBS note): 

Fuel Shock Risks Begin Spilling Into Broader Economy

• Hormuz Shock Raises Recession Risk As Retailers Sound Alarm On Consumer Stress

Professional subscribers can review the latest institutional reads on Iran, Hormuz, energy markets, and more at our new Marketdesk.ai portal.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 09:20



 

This week, I speak with Vimal Kapur, Chairman and CEO of Honeywell. He began his career as an engineer with the company in India 37 years ago, and rose through the firm across multiple product groups and divisions.

Kapur explains the logic behind splitting the company into three separate entities. He is (obviously) bullish on the future of automation and AI. We also break down what he expects from AI in the future.

A list of his favorite books is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here tomorrow.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube (video), YouTube (audio), and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our special Masters in Business next week, Remembering Jonathan Clements with Bill Bernstein and Jason Zweig. The two recall Clements’ impact on the investor community; they discuss his posthumous book, “Money and Me.”

 

 

 

Current Reading/Favorite Books

 

 

 

The post MiB: Vimal Kapur, Chairman and CEO of Honeywell appeared first on The Big Picture.

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• Squillions: Where is all that cash, who’s using it, and for what? The answer proposed by Bullough is bizarre: nobody knows. ‘The number of banknotes is increasing, and the question of why the value of banknotes has increased so markedly remains unanswered.’ Central bankers don’t have much interest in the question. It is immensely valuable for any country to be able to produce currency that’s in worldwide demand: for the cost of printing a few bits of paper, a developed economy receives billions of dollars of value in pounds, dollars or euros. John Lanchester in the LRB on the new top-of-the-curve wealth — how big the numbers actually are, where the money goes, and what it does to politics and culture. Lanchester on money is always worth your evening. (London Review of Books)

• Sweeping the strait: the companies gearing up to clear the Gulf of mines: Defence companies and marine contractors are preparing to deploy uncrewed mine-clearing systems in and around the Strait of Hormuz, as efforts to reopen the vital shipping lane draw attention to a new generation of naval drones.  A new generation of uncrewed vessels could help restore traffic in vital shipping route. (FTAlphaville free)

• JPMorgan Fights Over Millions of Comic Books Locked in a Mississippi Warehouse: They’re among thousands of characters represented in roughly 8.2 million comics, graphic novels, figurines and table-top games held for months in a 600,000-square-foot warehouse formerly operated by a major comics distributor that went bankrupt in 2025. Publishers have formed alliances to free the items but at least one powerful adversary is impeding them: JPMorgan Chase & Co. (Bloomberg free)

• The Empire of Wuxi, China’s Biotech Giant: China wants to be the world’s biotech superpower. But to understand how it got here, it’s best to start with its crown jewel: the WuXi companies. The WuXi companies are the dominant biotech services consortium in China and have become the lightning rod of U.S. political wrath, most notably as an early target of the BIOSECURE Act. ChinaTalk on how WuXi AppTec quietly became the back-end of half the world’s drug pipeline, and what BIOSECURE would actually do to US pharma if it ever takes effect. (China Talk)

• How Digitization Has Created a Golden Age of Music, Movies, Books, and Television: Digitization is disrupting a number of copyright-protected media industries, including books, music, radio, television, and movies. Once information is transformed into digital form, it can be copied and distributed at near-zero marginal costs. This change has facilitated piracy in some industries, which in turn has made it difficult for commercial sellers to continue generating the same levels of revenue for bringing products to market in the traditional ways. A JEP review arguing that, all the bellyaching about streaming aside, we are objectively living through a creative supply boom. A useful corrective to the “everything is mid” narrative. (American Economic Association)

• Google Search as you know it is over: Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times. Google is also introducing tools that can dispatch “information agents” to gather information on a user’s behalf, along with tools that let users build personalized mini apps tailored to their needs. TechCrunch on the AI-overview pivot quietly cratering publisher referral traffic. The business model underneath most of the open web is being rewritten in real time. (TechCrunch)

• The Vaginal Wellness Boom Is Here: The NYT on the suddenly enormous “feminine wellness” product category and the gap between the marketing and the science. Mostly a story about how easy it is to medicalize a normal body and charge $40 for it. Gaps in women’s health knowledge and care have created a business opportunity. What could go wrong? (New York Times)

• 34 Hours in New York During Art Week: A timestamped trip to New York during May’s wild art week – 4 art fairs, 12 galleries and a few good meals. A breezy dispatch from Frieze and the surrounding fairs. Useful both as an Art Week field report and as a snapshot of where the buying mood is right now. (First Edition)

• Audrey Hepburn’s Sons Recount Her Remarkably Resilient Life: Sean Hepburn Ferrer and brother Luca Dotti have feuded in the past over multiple issues related to their mother—but the books they’ve written about her agree that Hepburn was one of a kind. Vanity Fair on two new Hepburn biographies and the wartime childhood that gets glossed over in the icon version of the story. Surprisingly moving. Sean Hepburn Ferrer and brother Luca Dotti have feuded in the past over multiple issues related to their mother—but the books they’ve written about her agree that Hepburn was one of a kind. (Vanity Fair)

• Stephen Colbert Ends ‘Late Show’ With Joyous Paul McCartney ‘Hello Goodbye’ Performance, as Ex-Beatle Turns Lights Out at Ed Sullivan Theater: Paul McCartney, a surprise guest on the final episode of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” provided a poignant capper to the series by being given the ceremonial honor of turning out the lights in the Ed Sullivan Theater, a location with which he has plenty of history. The final number had McCartney and Colbert singing the Beatles‘ classic “Hello Goodbye,” accompanied by Elvis Costello, former band leader Jon Batiste and current band leader Louis Cato, eventually joined on stage by a parade of staffers dancing through and around the stag in a line, as the house band finally gave the ’60s tune a New Orleans-style coda. Variety on the Macca-closes-the-Ed-Sullivan-Theater stunt that ended the show. The Beatles bookend was on the nose, but earned. (Variety) see also Stephen Colbert’s Last Show: Laughing Well Is the Best Revenge: The “Late Show” cancellation was a disappointment. But a surreally lovely final episode turned it into a cancellebration. The NYT’s formal review of the finale. The show held its tone to the end, which in 2026 broadcast comedy is itself a small victory. (New York Times) see also The Goodbye Stephen Colbert Wanted to Say: The Atlantic on Colbert’s finale — the segments he picked, the guests he chose, and what the whole valedictory says about what late night was supposed to be. A measured send-off that lands. The late-night host ended his talk show the way he started it—with empathy, and an eye for entertainment. (The Atlantic)

Video of the day: How One of the Universe’s Biggest Secrets Was Discovered

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Vimal Kapur, CEO and Chairman of DJIA component Honeywell International. The firm is in the midst of dividing into three companies: Honeywell Automation, Honeywell Aerospace, and Solstice Advanced Materials. The firm has fully integrated AI as the intelligence layer in all of its automation processes and products.

 

Investors see a low bar for Fed hikes

Source: BofA Global Research

 

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~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

 

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Peter Schiff: Printing Money Is Not the Cure for Cononavirus



In his most recent podcast, Peter Schiff talked about coronavirus and the impact that it is having on the markets. Earlier this month, Peter said he thought the virus was just an excuse for stock market woes. At the time he believed the market was poised to fall anyway. But as it turns out, coronavirus has actually helped the US stock market because it has led central banks to pump even more liquidity into the world financial system. All this means more liquidity — central banks easing. In fact, that is exactly what has already happened, except the new easing is taking place, for now, outside the United States, particularly in China.” Although the new money is primarily being created in China, it is flowing into dollars — the dollar index is up — and into US stocks. Last week, US stock markets once again made all-time record highs. In fact, I think but for the coronavirus, the US stock market would still be selling off. But because of the central bank stimulus that has been the result of fears over the coronavirus, that actually benefitted not only the US dollar, but the US stock market.” In the midst of all this, Peter raises a really good question. The primary economic concern is that coronavirus will slow down output and ultimately stunt economic growth. Practically speaking, the world would produce less stuff. If the virus continues to spread, there would be fewer goods and services produced in a market that is hunkered down. Why would the Federal Reserve respond, or why would any central bank respond to that by printing money? How does printing more money solve that problem? It doesn’t. In fact, it actually exacerbates it. But you know, everybody looks at central bankers as if they’ve got the solution to every problem. They don’t. They don’t have the magic wand. They just have a printing press. And all that creates is inflation.” Sometimes the illusion inflation creates can look like a magic wand. Printing money can paper over problems. But none of this is going to fundamentally fix the economy. In fact, if central bankers were really going to do the right thing, the appropriate response would be to drain liquidity from the markets, not supply even more.” Peter explained how the Fed was originally intended to create an “elastic” money supply that would expand or contract along with economic output. Today, the money supply only goes in one direction — that’s up. The economy is strong, print money. The economy is weak, print even more money.” Of course, the asset that’s doing the best right now is gold. The yellow metal pushed above $1,600 yesterday. Gold is up 5.5% on the year in dollar terms and has set record highs in other currencies. Because gold is rising even in an environment where the dollar is strengthening against other fiat currencies, that shows you that there is an underlying weakness in the dollar that is right now not being reflected in the Forex markets, but is being reflected in the gold markets. Because after all, why are people buying gold more aggressively than they’re buying dollars or more aggressively than they’re buying US Treasuries? Because they know that things are not as good for the dollar or the US economy as everybody likes to believe. So, more people are seeking out refuge in a better safe-haven and that is gold.” Peter also talked about the debate between Trump and Obama over who gets credit for the booming economy – which of course, is not booming.

We are living in crazy times. I have a hard time believing that most of the general public is not awake, but in reality, they are. We've never seen anything like this; I mean not even under Obama during the worst part of the Great Recession." Now the Fed is desperately trying to keep interest rates from rising. The problem is that it's a much bigger debt bubble this time around , and the Fed is going to have to blow a lot more air into it to keep it inflated. The difference is this time it's not going to work." It looks like the Fed did another $104.15 billion of Not Q.E. in a single day. The Fed claims it's only temporary. But that is precisely what Bernanke claimed when the Fed started QE1. Milton Freedman once said, "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." The same applies to Q.E., or whatever the Fed wants to pretend it's doing. Except this is not QE4, according to Powell. Right. Pumping so much money out, and they are accusing China of currency manipulation ? Wow! Seriously! Amazing! Dump the U.S. dollar while you still have a chance. Welcome to The Atlantis Report. And it is even worse than that, In addition to the $104.15 billion of "Not Q.E." this past Thursday; the FED added another $56.65 billion in liquidity to financial markets the next day on Friday. That's $160.8 billion in two days!!!! in just 48 hours. That is more than 2 TIMES the highest amount the FED has ever injected on a monthly basis under a Q.E. program (which was $80 billion per month) Since this isn't QE....it will be really scary on what they are going to call Q.E. Will it twice, three times, four times, five times what this injection per month ! It is going to be explosive since it takes about 60 to 90 days for prices to react to this, January should see significant inflation as prices soak up the excess liquidity. The question is, where will the inflation occur first . The spike in the repo rate might have a technical explanation: a misjudgment was made in the Fed's money market operations. Even so, two conclusions can be drawn: managing the money markets is becoming harder, and from now on, banks will be studying each other's creditworthiness to a greater degree than before. Those people, who struggle with the minutiae of money markets, and that includes most professionals, should focus on the causes and not the symptoms. Financial markets have recovered from each downturn since 1980 because interest rates have been cut to new lows. Post-2008, they were cut to near zero or below zero in all major economies. In response to a new financial crisis, they cannot go any lower. Central banks will look for new ways to replicate or broaden Q.E. (At some point, governments will simply see repression as an easier option). Then there is the problem of 'risk-free' assets becoming risky assets. Financial markets assume that the probability of major governments such as the U.S. or U.K. defaulting is zero. These governments are entering the next downturn with debt roughly twice the levels proportionate to GDP that was seen in 2008. The belief that the policy worked was completely predicated on the fact that it was temporary and that it was reversible, that the Fed was going to be able to normalize interest rates and shrink its balance sheet back down to pre-crisis levels. Well, when the balance sheet is five-trillion, six-trillion, seven-trillion when we're back at zero, when we're back in a recession, nobody is going to believe it is temporary. Nobody is going to believe that the Fed has this under control, that they can reverse this policy. And the dollar is going to crash. And when the dollar crashes, it's going to take the bond market with it, and we're going to have stagflation. We're going to have a deep recession with rising interest rates, and this whole thing is going to come imploding down. everything is temporary with the fed including remaining off the gold standard temporary in the Fed's eyes could mean at least 50 years This liquidity problem is a signal that trading desks are loaded up on inventory and can't get rid of it. Repo is done out of a need for cash. If you own all of your securities (i.e., a long-only, no leverage mutual fund) you have no need to "repo" your securities - you're earning interest every night so why would you want to 'repo' your securities where you are paying interest for that overnight loan (securities lending is another animal). So, it is those that 'lever-up' and need the cash for settlement purposes on securities they've bought with borrowed money that needs to utilize the repo desk. With this in mind, as we continue to see this need to obtain cash (again, needed to settle other securities purchases), it shows these firms don't have the capital to add more inventory to, what appears to be, a bloated inventory. Now comes the fun part: the Treasury is about to auction 3's, 10's, and 30-year bonds. If I am correct (again, I could be wrong), the Fed realizes securities firms don't have the shelf space to take down a good portion of these auctions. If there isn't enough retail/institutional demand, it will lead to not only a crappy sale but major concerns to the street that there is now no backstop, at all, to any sell-off. At which point, everyone will want to be the first one through the door and sell immediately, but to whom? If there isn't enough liquidity in the repo market to finance their positions, the firms would be unable to increase their inventory. We all saw repo shut down on the 2008 crisis. Wall St runs on money. . OVERNIGHT money. They lever up to inventory securities for trading. If they can't get overnight money, they can't purchase securities. And if they can't unload what they have, it means the buy-side isn't taking on more either. Accounts settle overnight. This includes things like payrolls and bill pay settlements. If a bank doesn't have enough cash to payout what its customers need to pay out, it borrows. At least one and probably more than one banks are insolvent. That's what's going on. First, it can't be one or two banks that are short. They'd simply call around until they found someone to lend. But they did that, and even at markedly elevated rates, still, NO ONE would lend them the money. That tells me that it's not a problem of a couple of borrowers, it's a problem of no lenders. And that means that there's no bank in the world left with any real liquidity. They are ALL maxed out. But as bad as that is, and that alone could be catastrophic, what it really signals is even worse. The lending rates are just the flip side of the coin of the value of the assets lent against. If the rates go up, the value goes down. And with rates spiking to 10%, how far does the value fall? Enormously! And if banks had to actually mark down the value of the assets to reflect 10% interest rates, then my god, every bank in the world is insolvent overnight. Everyone's capital ratios are in the toilet, and they'd have to liquidate. We're talking about the simultaneous insolvency of every bank on the planet. Bank runs. No money in ATMs, Branches closed. Safe deposit boxes confiscated. The whole nine yards, It's actually here. The scenario has tended to guide toward for years and years is actually happening RIGHT NOW! And people are still trying to say it's under control. Every bank in the world is currently insolvent. The only thing keeping it going is printing billions of dollars every day. Financial Armageddon isn't some far off future risk. It's here. Prepare accordingly. This fiat system has reached the end of the line, and it's not correct that fiat currencies fail by design. The problem is corruption and manipulation. It is corruption and cheating that erodes trust and faith until the entire system becomes a gigantic fraud. Banks and governments everywhere ARE the problem and simply have to be removed. They have lost all trust and respect, and all they have left is war and mayhem. As long as we continue to have a majority of braindead asleep imbeciles following orders from these psychopaths, nothing will change. Fiat currency is not just thievery. Fiat currency is SLAVERY. Ultimately the most harmful effect of using debt of undefined value as money (i.e., fiat currencies) is the de facto legalization of a caste system based on voluntary slavery. The bankers have a charter, or the legal *right*, to create money out of nothing. You, you don't. Therefore you and the bankers do not have the same standing before the law. The law of the land says that you will go to jail if you do the same thing (creating money out of thin air) that the banker does in full legality. You and the banker are not equal before the law. ALL the countries of the world; Islamic or secular, Jewish or Arab, democracy or dictatorship; all of them place the bankers ABOVE you. And all of you accept that only whining about fiat money going down in exchange value over time (price inflation which is not the same as monetary inflation). Actually, price inflation itself is mainly due to the greed and stupidity of the bankers who could keep fiat money's exchange value reasonably stable, only if they wanted to. Witness the crash of silver and gold prices which the bankers of the world; Russian, American, Chinese, Jewish, Indian, Arab, all of them collaborated to engineer through the suppression and stagnation of precious metals' prices to levels around the metals' production costs, or what it costs to dig gold and silver out of the ground. The bankers of the world could also collaborate to keep nominal prices steady (as they do in the case of the suppression of precious metals prices). After all, the ability to create fiat money and force its usage is a far more excellent source of power and wealth than that which is afforded simply by stealing it through inflation. The bankers' greed and stupidity blind them to this fact. They want it all, and they want it now. In conclusion, The bankers can create money out of nothing and buy your goods and services with this worthless fiat money, effectively for free. You, you can't. You, you have to lead miserable existences for the most of you and WORK in order to obtain that effectively nonexistent, worthless credit money (whose purchasing/exchange value is not even DEFINED thus rendering all contracts based on the null and void!) that the banker effortlessly creates out of thin air with a few strokes of the computer keyboard, and which he doesn't even bother to print on paper anymore, electing to keep it in its pure quantum uncertain form instead, as electrons whizzing about inside computer chips which will become mute and turn silent refusing to tell you how many fiat dollars or euros there are in which account, in the absence of electricity. No electricity, no fiat, nor crypto money. It would appear that trust is deteriorating as it did when Lehman blew up . Something really big happened that set off this chain reaction in the repo markets. Whatever that something is, we aren't be informed. They're trying to cover it up, paper it over with conjured cash injections, play it cool in front of the cameras while sweating profusely under the 5 thousands dollar suits. I'm guessing that the final high-speed plunge into global economic collapse has begun. All we see here is the ripples and whitewater churning the surface, but beneath the surface, there is an enormous beast thrashing desperately in its death throws. Now is probably the time to start tying up loose ends with the long-running prep projects, just saying. In other words, prepare accordingly, and Get your money out of the banks. I don't care if you don't believe me about Bitcoin. Get your money out of the banks. Don't keep any more money in a bank than you need to pay your bills and can afford to lose.











The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more













The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more

The FBI released a summary of its file from the Hillary Clinton email investigation on Friday, showing details of Clinton's explanation of her use of a private email server to handle classified communications. The release comes nearly two months after FBI Director James Comey announced that although Clinton's handling of classified information was "extremely careless," it did not rise to the level of a prosecutable offense. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the next day that she would not pursue charges in the matter. "We are making these materials available to the public in the interest of transparency and in response to numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests," the FBI noted in a statement sent to reporters with links to the documents. The documents include notes from Clinton's July 2 interview with agents, as well as a "factual summary of the FBI's investigation into this matter," according to the FBI release. Throughout her interview with agents, Clinton repeatedly said she relied on the career professionals she worked with to handle classified information correctly. The agents asked about a series of specific emails, and in each case Clinton said she wasn't worried about the particular material being discussed on a nonclassified channel.