Powerful 7.5-Magnitude Quake Hits Northern Japan, Triggers Tsunami Warnings

A powerful and shallow 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck off Japan's northeast coast, triggering a tsunami at Kuji Port in Iwate Prefecture.

Public broadcaster NHK initially warned that a tsunami up to 10 feet high was expected to hit the Iwate area on Honshu's main island. However, so far, it has been reported to be about 31 inches high.

The quake was reported shortly before 17:00 local time, rattled towers as far away as Tokyo, and forced the suspension of Shinkansen high-speed rail services in Iwate, NHK said.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the government had mobilized an emergency task force and urged citizens in affected areas to evacuate.

"Possible damage and casualties are now being looked into," Takaichi told reporters in Tokyo.

Japan sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," one of the world's most seismically active zones, where multiple tectonic plates collide and generate earthquakes.

Since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, when a 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami sparked triple reactor meltdowns, Japan has overhauled its response and evacuation systems to improve disaster readiness.

NHK cited the Tokyo Electric Power Company as saying that no issues were reported at the Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini nuclear power plants.

The Japan Meteorological Agency warned that aftershocks are possible over the next week and could be similar in size to the quake recorded earlier today.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/20/2026 - 06:55

From Leverage To Liability: The Hormuz Strait Is Now Iran's Biggest Weakness

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

For half a century, the Strait of Hormuz was Iran’s weapon. Today, it is its noose.

The mathematics of energy have flipped, and with them the balance of coercive power in the Persian Gulf.

Iran’s implicit deterrent was geographic, spanning from the tanker wars of the 1980s to the sanctions standoffs of the 2010s. Almost 20% of global seaborne oil, and a similar share of liquefied natural gas, passes through the Strait. The formula was simple: any military confrontation that threatened the Tehran regime risked a closure that would halt trade supplies, spike crude prices, bleed Western consumers, and, above all, inflict pain on the United States, who was the world’s largest oil importer.

The strait served as Tehran’s insurance policy and its most powerful bargaining tool. The threat was predicated on the regime’s belief that it could block everyone except its exports. The Iranian regime revealed its biggest weakness by constantly threatening to damage the global economy through a shutdown of the Strait. In reality, a total shutdown has the most severe impact on Iran.

Almost 90 per cent of Iran’s crude exports, and about 80 per cent of its total exports, depend on the transit through Hormuz. Around 25 per cent of Iranian GDP and 60 per cent of government revenues depend completely on having the Strait open.

Before the war, Iran was exporting roughly 1.7 million barrels per day, receiving around $160 million in daily revenue from exports via the Strait. Thus, Trump’s full closure of the Strait costs Tehran hundreds of millions of dollars a day in losses, not accounting for the additional fiscal and currency consequences in a country already facing an economic disaster with 40–50% inflation. The complete dependence on the Strait of Hormuz also adds to another weakness: 95% of Iranian crude at sea is sold to a single buyer, China. Tehran is not selling into a diversified and open market. Its exports are sold to a monopsony that demands large discounts, between 10 and 11 dollars per barrel.

These weaknesses were visible long before the war. Capital flight reached $15 billion in the first half of 2025 alone; the rial collapsed against the dollar, and the government’s budget, which allocates 51 per cent of oil revenues to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, became even more dependent on a single export route it could not afford to close. When the war began, Iranian crude shipments collapsed by 94%. Then, the United States’ decision to block all Iran export vessels showed that Iran’s chokepoint had become self-choking.

In the past 30 days, 80% of the essential volumes that moved through the Strait have been rerouted or offset by other oil producers, including US record exports.

The world is very different from what the Iran regime thought. In 2025, U.S. crude oil production hit a new annual record of 13.6 million barrels per day, making the United States the world’s largest producer but also the biggest exporter. The United States shipped 5.2 million barrels per day of crude and 7.2 million barrels per day of petroleum products in March 2026, both global records. For the first time, America exported more petroleum than it imported, by a net margin of almost 2.8 million barrels per day, according to the EIA. Total US liquids production now exceeds that of Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. On the natural gas side, U.S. LNG exports reached well over 15 billion cubic feet per day, surpassing Qatar and Australia to make the United States the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporter, while U.S. dry gas production exceeds the combined output of Russia, Iran, and China. Furthermore, the United States is also the world’s largest producer of nuclear electricity, at roughly 30 per cent of global generation, and a global leader in renewable energy.

When President Trump could say in April 2026 that the United States was “clearing the Strait as a favour to countries around the world, including China, Japan, Korea, and Germany,” the framing was an accurate description of who needs Hormuz open and who does not. Only 4% of the traffic through the Strait goes to the United States, according to SP Global.

According to the International Energy Agency, throughput at Hormuz collapsed from its long-run average of about 20 million barrels per day to 3.8 million since the beginning of the war through the second week of April. Daily ship transits fell roughly 95 per cent. The Tehran regime, in a gesture more theatrical than realistic, attempted to levy a $2 million toll on each vessel crossing the strait, without understanding that the move showed desperation instead of leverage.

The US response has been the most important measure deployed against Iran in two decades of standoffs. Operation Economic Fury established a full naval blockade of Iranian ports. Iranian naval losses in the first 38 days of combat exceeded 150 vessels. The ceasefire framework under negotiation requires Iran to reopen Hormuz, but the US maintains control. Thus, negotiations revolve around Iranian dismantlement, not American concessions.

The lesson is not just that Iran miscalculated but that it massively underestimated its obvious weaknesses. The United States is not a hostage of the Gulf; it is the guarantee of its safe sea lanes. Europe is tied to U.S. LNG while keeping a substantial Russian dependence, which complicates its energy security and makes it vulnerable to fluctuations in supply and price from both sources. Asia’s largest economies, particularly China, are suffering the marginal cost of a Hormuz disruption, which has led to increased energy prices and supply chain uncertainties that further exacerbate their economic challenges. Iran’s economic nightmare has only started.

Three important factors must be considered.

• First, the traditional Hormuz risk premium in Brent, which refers to the additional cost added to oil prices due to geopolitical tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, is structurally smaller than in the 2010s because U.S. supply can absorb shocks that previously had no substitute. The Brent price is lower in real and nominal terms than in the 2008, 2018, or 2022 peaks.

• Second, the strength of American energy, including economics, export infrastructure, and LNG capacity, has become a key global geopolitical variable, influencing global energy prices and the strategic decisions of other nations.

• Third, Iran’s economy has not only suffered damage; it has also been demolished, and its extremely weak fiscal position indicates that it cannot sustain the threat posture in Hormuz.

The Strait of Hormuz remains the world’s most important chokepoint. However, a chokepoint hurts whoever depends on it most, and Iran relies on it completely. The United States does not.

The geopolitical advantage that Tehran once held has now become its greatest weakness, likely leading to the disappearance of the regime’s effective bargaining power.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/20/2026 - 06:30

These Are The Countries Building The Most Nuclear Power

China is set to become the world’s dominant nuclear power producer.

Based on existing and planned projects, its total capacity could reach nearly 186 gigawatts, far surpassing the U.S., which currently leads globally. This shift reflects a broader push to secure reliable, low-carbon energy as electricity demand rises.

This chart, via Visual Capitalist's Tasmin Lockwood, ranks countries by current and prospective nuclear capacity, using data from Global Energy Monitor.

How Nuclear Energy Is Set to Scale by Country

The U.S. currently leads nuclear energy production with a capacity of 102,475 megawatts, exceeding France by more than 35,000 MW.

China ranks third today at 60,898 MW, but that is set to change as new plants come online.

Dive into the data, which includes sites of any capacity as of September 2025, below:

This shift has major geopolitical implications. Countries that expand nuclear capacity can reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels while strengthening energy security and grid stability.

If all planned projects are completed, China will lead with 185,812 MW, followed by the U.S. at 117,910 MW and France at 75,590 MW.

France remains a historic leader in nuclear energy, with around 69% of its electricity generated from the technology.

The UK was home to the world’s first commercial nuclear power plant, which came online in 1956, but later scaled back its use of nuclear. The government is now aiming for a “golden age of nuclear,” though current commitments totaling 15,394 MW would rank the country just 12th globally.

Of the 17 countries with zero installed capacity today, Uganda is set to scale up the most to 18,000 MW, followed by Poland with 15,612 MW and Türkiye with 14,700 MW.

Betting on Nuclear Fusion and Fission

Today’s nuclear expansion is centered on fission, the technology that powers all existing reactors and accounts for about 10% of global electricity generation. While mature, it is evolving through smaller, modular designs that aim to reduce costs, improve safety, and speed up deployment.

This helps explain why much of the prospective capacity in the chart includes not only large-scale plants, but also a growing wave of smaller reactors backed by governments and private capital.

At the same time, nuclear fusion, the process that powers the sun, remains a long-term ambition. Despite rising investment and recent technical progress, it has yet to reach commercial scale.

For now, the global nuclear buildout is firmly rooted in fission, as countries prioritize reliable, low-carbon power that can be deployed within the next decade.

To learn more about nuclear, check out this graphic ranking the countries building the most reactors.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/20/2026 - 05:45

Europe Faces Summer Jet Fuel Crisis As Iran War Slashes Supply

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

• Europe faces an imminent jet fuel crisis as the Iran war and Hormuz disruption cut off key Middle Eastern supplies.

• Long-term refinery closures and rising import dependence have left Europe highly exposed, with limited alternatives and growing competition from Asia.

• Airlines are already cutting capacity and warning of higher fares, with potential flight cancellations looming as fuel shortages intensify.

Accelerated refinery closures in the past decade and increased dependence on kerosene from the Middle East have exposed Europe’s energy supply vulnerability once again.

For years, European consumers have had to contend with last-minute strikes of ground personnel and cabin crew during peak summer travel. This year, strikes may be viewed as a minor nuisance compared to what’s coming within weeks—a jet fuel supply crisis that could ground flights and hike fares.

The war in Iran has cut most of Europe’s imports of jet fuel, while local output has been falling for nearly two decades due to dozens of refineries closing permanently or being converted to biofuel production.

The war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have severely constrained Europe’s jet fuel supply, while jet fuel prices have spiked to over $200 per barrel. The last imports from the Middle East on tankers that had passed Hormuz before the war began have arrived, and there is only one alternative to source jet fuel—from the United States. These supplies are not only insufficient to replace the loss of Middle Eastern jet fuel. Europe faces increasingly fierce competition from Asia for these cargoes as the crisis first hit Asia with crude supply from the Middle East collapsing, Asian refiners cutting refinery runs, and countries imposing fuel export restrictions to preserve domestic supply.

Back in 2009, nearly 100 refineries were operating in Europe. Of these, 28 refineries – more than 25% of the number of refineries and 16% of refining capacity – have been either shut or transformed since 2009, according to data from the European Fuel Manufacturers Association.

As refineries were closing, due to declining fuel demand in Europe and emission-reduction policies, the European dependence on imported supply has grown. The hit to supply from the Middle East caught Europe off guard regarding the security of energy supply for the second time in just four years, after natural gas deliveries from Russia crashed in 2022.

This time, the jet fuel crisis could be imminent, analysts and forecasters warn.

Last year, Europe imported about a third of the jet fuel it consumed, with 75% of imports coming from the Middle East, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has said.

Its executive director, Fatih Birol, this week warned that Europe has “maybe six weeks or so” of remaining jet fuel supply.

“If we are not able to open the Strait of Hormuz ... I can tell you soon we will hear the news that some of the flights from city A to city B might be canceled as a result of lack of jet fuel,” Birol told Associated Press in an interview.

Northwest Europe is one of the regions most exposed to the jet fuel crisis, as imports have dropped from historical norms this month, and the import decline is set to accelerate in the coming weeks as more U.S. jet fuel cargoes would go to Asia instead of Europe, Ernest Censier, market analyst at Vortexa, said in an analysis on Thursday.

The 15% drop in European jet fuel imports so far in April “reflects structural dependence on Middle Eastern supply: approximately half of NWE’s jet fuel imports typically transit through the Strait of Hormuz,” Censier said.

In addition, relatively short voyage times of about 21 days from Mina Abdulla in Kuwait to Rotterdam mean that supply disruptions are transmitted quickly into regional imports, the analyst added.

The U.S. has emerged as the key source of substitution for lost Middle Eastern supply, but this is unlikely to be sustained as U.S. jet/kerosene exports are increasingly being redirected toward the Pacific Basin, reaching a seven-year high this month, and now accounting for over 30% of total U.S. jet fuel exports.

“This reallocation reflects a broader shift in US product exports toward the Pacific Basin,” Vortexa’s Censier noted.

This leaves Europe highly exposed to the turbulence in the jet fuel markets.

Lufthansa, Europe’s biggest airline, on Thursday said it is accelerating plans to reduce its flight program and retire some aircraft earlier.

“In view of significantly increased kerosene prices, which have more than doubled compared to the period before the Iran war, as well as rising additional burdens from labor disputes.”

“The package for accelerated implementation of fleet and capacity measures is unavoidable in light of the sharply increased kerosene costs and geopolitical instability,” said Till Streichert, Chief Financial Officer of Lufthansa Group.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/20/2026 - 05:00

Europeans Pay The Most For Public Transport

Creating and maintaining reliable, efficient and affordable public transportation networks is crucial for developing a more sustainable mobility sector worldwide, though challenges vary by region.

In Europe, gaps are most evident in rural areas, where low population density limits service frequency.

In North America, many cities also suffer from fragmented public transport systems, making car dependency widespread in both rural and urban areas.

In Latin America and South Asia, semi-formal systems such as minibuses are an important and affordable part of transport networks, but often lack reliability and efficiency.

But, as Statista's Anna Fleck details below, according to Statista Market Insights, even regions with strong public transport coverage face affordability challenges.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In Switzerland, for example, average monthly revenue per user was estimated at around $535 in 2025, with other high figures seen in Nordic countries such as Denmark ($491) and Norway ($443).

However, this metric reflects operator revenue rather than typical ticket prices and should be interpreted cautiously.

At the lower end, countries such as Burundi, Malawi and Madagascar show monthly revenues per user below $3, while Bangladesh and India range between $6 and $8.

Overall, the global public transportation sector generated an estimated $294 billion in 2025, an increase of roughly 40 percent from the pandemic-induced slump in 2021.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/20/2026 - 04:15

Cracks Appear In Climate Consensus As Germany's Energy Minister Admits Renewables Are Ruining The Country

Authored by Tilak Doshi,

When Simon Wakter, Political Adviser to Sweden’s Minister for Energy, posted on X last Wednesday with a simple “Wow, incredible article” and a clapping emoji, he captured the shock rippling through Europe’s energy commentariat.

The target of his applause was not some fringe sceptic but Germany’s own Economy and Energy Minister, Katherina Reiche.

In a guest column for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Reiche delivered a verdict that would have been career-ending heresy only a year ago: “One fact has been concealed for too long: an energy transition that ignores system costs will ruin the country it claims to save.” To anyone who has watched Germany’s Energiewende — that totemic experiment in decarbonisation-by-decree — unfold like a slow-motion train wreck, Reiche’s words land like a thunderclap from the Establishment itself.

Here is a senior CDU Minister in Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Government openly admitting that two decades of Green-inspired fantasy have saddled the continent’s industrial powerhouse with hidden costs now running, according to estimates she cites, at €36 billion a year and climbing towards €90 billion. Grid expansions, backup power for intermittent wind and solar and the sheer inefficiency of trying to run a modern economy on the weather: all of it, she says, must stop being airbrushed out of the official narrative. The self-deception, she warns, is over.

This is not mere technocratic tinkering. It is the first major public crack in the ideological edifice that has dominated German — and by extension European — energy policy since the anti-nuclear, beatnik ’68ers’ generation seized the cultural high ground. Rupert Darwall chronicled the phenomenon with great precision in Green Tyranny: how a handful of German Greens, personified by the sneaker-wearing Joschka Fischer swearing in as Hesse’s environment minister in 1985, exported their peculiar red-green blend of anti-capitalist zeal and romantic environmentalism across the continent and beyond.

That gospel found a ready audience in the Anglosphere. In the summer of 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen delivered his now-infamous testimony to the US Congress, declaring that “the greenhouse effect has been detected and is changing our climate now”. The moment was theatrical, the science shaky, but the political effect electric. It fused with the inchoate ideas already circulating among Western intellectuals: Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968), which prophesied mass famine that never came; Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), which launched the modern environmental movement on the back of exaggerated claims about DDT; and E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful (1973), the manifesto of ‘Buddhist economics’ that preached reducing human demand rather than raising living standards. As the great Chicago economist Frank Knight observed, economic progress consists not in suppressing desires nor even in satiating them but in their “ever greater refinement and multiplication” — a direct antithesis to Schumacher’s call for ascetic material restraint as spiritual virtue.

This European ideological curse of environmental misanthropy spread among the young urban intelligentsia of the developing countries through the educational curricula and mass media and the vast number of students studying in the progressive universities of the West, from Canada to Australia, Ireland to Italy and New York to California and Florida.

The spread of Europe’s green gospel was enthusiastically supported by Left-wing billionaire foundations which sprouted thousands of “grassroots NGOs” in Asia, Africa and Latin America. These so-called grassroots NGOs were handy to provide a moral cover for grifting renewable-energy lobbies seeking rents from the public purse. Local ‘Bootleggers and Baptists‘ coalitions arose across the developing countries that derived mutual benefits in Europe’s carbon colonialism. To complete the circle, captured agencies such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the IMF imposed anti-fossil-fuel constraints as a condition for aid and public finance to poorer African and Asian governments.

At the root of it all lay Europe’s long love affair with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “noble savage”, the fantasy that the simple, low-energy lifestyles of Tahitian natives represented a purer existence than the artifice of industrial civilisation. When Voltaire received a copy of Rousseau’s book The Social Contract, he replied:

I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than 60 years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it.

Perhaps the German intelligentsia never saw the thrust of Voltaire’s rather disdainful response to Rousseau’s love affair with Pacific Islanders.

What began as German domestic posturing metastasized into EU-wide dogma with Angela Merkel’s fateful 2011 decision to shut the country’s nuclear plants after the Fukushima incident in Japan. The results were as predictable as they were catastrophic. Germany, once the engineering envy of the world, now imports electricity when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. It has destroyed its nuclear industry — 20 gigawatts of reliable, low-carbon baseload — only to watch coal-fired plants, including the dirty lignite variety, roar back to life.

Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the few credentialled German voices who has consistently refused to drink the Gaia Kool-Aid, pointed out in an interview last week that the country sits atop enough domestic gas reserves for 25 years of secure supply. Yet it refuses to exploit them, crippled by what he calls the “German disease” of nature worship.

The March 2026 closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran’s IRGC merely administered the coup de grâce to an already terminal patient. Qatar’s force majeure on LNG shipments removed nearly 20% of global supply overnight. European gas prices spiked and power prices followed as German storage levels plunged.

Suddenly the same political class that had spent years lecturing voters about the moral imperative of Net Zero found itself quietly dusting off moribund lignite coal plants previously earmarked for closure. A ‘renaissance for coal’ is how analysts describe the spectacle. The prior government’s solemn pledge to phase out coal by 2030 now reads like a bad joke told at the expense of German households and manufacturers.

In a Facebook post, the TechTimes said:

In a move that highlights the severe economic strain of the Middle East conflict, the German Government is reportedly considering a ‘renaissance for coal’ to prevent a total energy meltdown. … While Germany has spent years pushing for a 2030 coal phase-out, the current energy crisis has forced a pivot toward energy security over climate targets. Reports indicate that several lignite units, previously held in safety reserve, may be returned to full market operation.

Conservative leader Alice Weidel, riding a surge of popularity for the conservative-populist AfD party that is now second only to the ruling CDU/CSU coalition, has forthrightly stated that under an AfD-led government, the Net Zero movement would be rejected:

We must also declare the climate crisis over. The whole thing is, as the American President so nicely puts it, a hoax – it is a complete scam. … We must immediately end the failed Energiewende. We must also immediately cut back and eliminate the waste of resources and the subsidies for so-called renewable energies.

German Energy Minister Reiche is not alone in her seeming Damascene conversion. Chancellor Merz has repeatedly called the 2023 nuclear shutdown a “serious strategic mistake” that left Germany vulnerable to import shocks and deindustrialisation. Even EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, that high priestess of the Green Deal, stood before a nuclear summit in Paris on March 10th and confessed that “reducing Europe’s nuclear sector was a strategic mistake”. Reliable, affordable, low-emission power had been sacrificed on the altar of ideology, she effectively admitted — 15 years too late for the German utilities that had already been forced into insolvency or foreign ownership.

Yet these deathbed ‘repentances’ cannot disguise the deeper truth: the entire red-green project was always a triumph of wishful thinking over engineering reality, favouring Rousseau’s imaginations of noble savages in the South Pacific over Voltaire’s rather commonsensical rejection of being told that walking on all fours was heavenly.

The West’s punitive climate policies — layered atop self-inflicted energy sanctions on Russia — have boomeranged with spectacular precision. Entire sectors of German manufacturing have decamped to jurisdictions unburdened by the climate industrial complex. Energy-intensive industries that once powered the Mittelstand now eye the exits, while households stare at electricity prices that remain among the highest in the developed world.

Following the recent elections in Baden-Württemberg, the exasperated pseudonymous commentator Eugyppius remarked that: “Stupid people in Baden-Württemberg hand massive electoral victory to the Greens so they can continue to sacrifice their industry to the weather gods.” For the German Greens and their socialist allies, of course, the stupid people are the working- and middle-class majority who are ‘climate deniers’. Never mind that they are cost-of-living realists who notice when their heating bills triple, when German industry bleeds jobs and when the same politicians who preached energy poverty as virtue now scramble to fire up the dirtiest coal plants to prevent blackouts.

The polling numbers tell the story with merciless clarity. Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is now routinely polling at 25–27% nationally, ahead of or level with the CDU/CSU in several surveys. In western states long considered immune to its message, AfD has doubled its vote share in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. Its platform could not be clearer: man-made climate change is a ‘scam’, the entire Net Zero apparatus a vehicle for crushing industry and sovereignty.

Enter the ‘Far Right’

This is not fringe muttering; it is the explicit rejection of the Energiewende that Reiche herself is now edging towards. The pattern repeats across Europe. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally leads Presidential polling by framing the Green transition as “ultra-ecological fanaticism” that punishes farmers and motorists while enriching the Davos set. Britain’s Reform UK under Nigel Farage mocks Net Zero as “Net stupid Zero” and surges on promises to drill domestic resources. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, though more circumspect in office, has little patience for Brussels’s eco-mandates and has quietly prioritised energy security over emission targets. Even a section of British Conservatives, once captured by the same delusions, have begun to row back on timelines that threatened to bankrupt households.

What unites these movements is not they are led by ‘far-Right’ extremists, as the legacy press hysterically insists, but a straightforward recognition that ideology has collided with physics and economics. German households — those not among the young urban Greens steeped in deep-ecology dogma — are fed up. They have watched their country destroy its nuclear fleet, subsidise intermittent renewables to the tune of hundreds of billions of Euros and then beg Qatar and the United States for LNG while quietly reopening coal mines. The same elites who imposed these costs now express shock that voters are turning to parties promising relief.

The Hormuz shock has merely accelerated a reckoning that was already baked in. Ireland’s riots and protests over energy-driven cost-of-living pain offer a grim preview of what happens when governments refuse to admit their role in manufacturing the crisis. Dublin is quietly backing down without ever conceding the policy errors that made energy poverty inevitable. Berlin, Paris and Brussels are engaged in the same contortions: walking back punitive green measures while pretending the original strategy was sound.

History’s reckoning

Yet there is a larger historical arc at work. The German Greens’ capture of energy policy was never really about climate; it was about power — cultural, political and economic. It represented the final victory of a post-1968 worldview that equated industrial civilisation with original sin. BRICS nations and the Global South have no intention of sacrificing development on the altar of Western guilt. China builds coal plants and nuclear reactors with equal enthusiasm; India refuses to apologise for using its own coal.

Only in Europe did policymakers convince themselves that virtue-signalling could substitute for watts. Reiche’s epiphany, however partial, is therefore welcome. So too are Merz’s and von der Leyen’s belated acknowledgments. But rhetorical corrections will not suffice. Germany must confront the full cost of its ideological detour: the lost nuclear capacity, the stranded assets, the industrial hollowing-out and the political polarisation that has handed AfD its strongest hand since its founding.

The question is whether the Establishment possesses the courage to follow where basic economics and common-sense leads — towards a pragmatic energy mix that includes nuclear revival where feasible, domestic fossil resources where necessary and an end to the ruinous subsidies that have enriched renewables rent-seekers while impoverishing citizens.

Fifteen years after Merkel’s nuclear panic and decades after the Greens first infiltrated the corridors of power, reality is reasserting itself with the cold logic of physics and markets.

The fevered dream of a weather-dependent utopia is dissolving under the pressure of rolling blackouts, price spikes and voter revolt.

What comes next will hopefully be a return to something more honest: an energy policy grounded in engineering, not eschatology. For a country that once prided itself on Sachlichkeit — sobriety and realism — the awakening cannot come soon enough. The alternative is not climate salvation but national decline. Germany, and Europe with it, stands at the threshold. The only question remaining is whether its leaders will step through it before the lights go out for good.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/20/2026 - 03:30

These Are The Top Trade Partners Of Every European Country

Germany sits at the center of Europe’s trade network, but it is not the only global force shaping the continent’s economy.

This map, via Visual Capitalist's Gabriel Cohen, highlights the top trading partner of each European country based on International Monetary Fund data for Q1-Q3 2025.

Europe’s nearly $30 trillion economy is diverse and spans sectors such as energy, manufacturing, and agriculture, yet nearly half of all European countries rely on the same major trading partner for their imports and exports.

Germany: The Center of Europe

Germany is the top trade partner for 19 European countries, more than six times as many as the next closest countries, which each count just three.

This dominance reflects Germany’s central role in European manufacturing, supply chains, and intra-EU trade.

The table below shows how many European countries rely on each nation as their top trade partner, highlighting Germany’s outsized role in the region.

The Dutch, French, and Italian economies, among others, are closely linked to Germany, which is a major industrial player and consumer of primary goods ranging from crude oil to agricultural products. German cars and other high-value exports, meanwhile, have found success across European markets, especially within the 27-member European Union.

The following table shows each European country’s largest trade partner.

While Germany is Europe’s trade giant, its own largest trade partner is the Netherlands. The two countries have an annual trading relationship worth more than $200 billion, marked by extensive economic integration and joint supply chains.

The Netherlands, home to Europe’s largest seaport at Rotterdam, is also the main trade partner of neighboring Belgium, with which it forms part of the Benelux union.

Europe’s Other Top Trading Partners

Many European countries trade most with their largest neighboring country. For example, Malta’s main trade partner is Italy. Portugal’s top trade partner is Spain, while Spain’s is France.

The Baltics take this a step further: Latvia’s largest trade partner is Lithuania, while Lithuania’s is Poland. Estonia’s main trade partner is Finland, while Finland’s is Sweden. Poland and Sweden, in turn, maintain their largest trade relationships with Germany.

Some clear exceptions emerge. As the world’s largest economy, the U.S. is the primary trade partner of Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.

The Rise of China to the East

While Germany dominates within Europe, China is expanding its influence along the continent’s eastern edge.

It is now the top trade partner for Russia, Ukraine, and Turkey, displacing traditional European partners such as Germany in some cases.

Chinese exports to Russia and Ukraine play a major role in the country’s relationship with both Eastern European nations. Beijing also imports significant amounts of primary goods from the two warring countries, including food and mineral products from Ukraine as well as hydrocarbons from Russia.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The $19 Trillion European Union Economy on Voronoi.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/20/2026 - 02:45

Will Ukraine End Up Forcibly Conscripting Women To Fight On The Frontline?

Via Remix News,

Since Ukraine’s population has shrunk dramatically, the army’s number one problem is no longer the lack of weapons, such as ballistic missiles and air defense systems, but the lack of soldiers to operate them, writes Világgazdaság.

The authorities in Kyiv, however, must bring the army size required by Commander-in-Chief Zelensky (800,000 active soldiers), and since the number of men eligible for military service (between the ages of 18 and 60) is slowly running out, the Ukrainian leadership is now trying to fill the gaps by conscripting women. 

As of early 2024, approximately 5 million men are considered to be of conscription age in Ukraine, reduced from about 8.7 million before the February 2022 invasion due to death and emigration.

And yet, many of these 5 million are exempt, unfit for service, or already serving.

Ukraine has long been shown to use forced conscription methods, with increasing violence, leading men to attempt to leave the country, often at the risk of their lives. 

Last year, Hungarian channel M1-Hirado recently ran a special compiling some of the latest footage of Ukrainians being beaten and shoved into vans in forced mobilization operations.

Citizens across the country have fought back since the war began, especially in areas populated by ethnic Hungarians, who feel they have been targeted.

As of now, there is no full mobilization of women.

According to lawyer Rostislav Kravec, the fact that women can also be included in the list of those who refuse military service or deserters could be a kind of “test” by the authorities.

This way, they can gauge how public opinion would react to the general, mandatory mobilization of women.

Meanwhile, although both sides have contended claims of territorial gains or losses, Russian armed forces are slowly pushing Ukrainians out of the fortified towns in Donbas. 

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/20/2026 - 02:00

Assisted Suicide Is The Logical Outcome Of Government-Controlled Medical Care

Authored by William Andersen via The Mises Institute,

Christianity Today recently published an article by Kristy Etheridge that was very critical of Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program, something that would not be surprising, given the magazine’s evangelical Christian outlook on issues.

The article—again, not surprisingly—dealt mostly with how many Christian groups, and especially the Roman Catholic Church, have spoken out against Canada’s program and similar programs in Europe and in the US.

Wrote Etheridge:

Many Christians spoke out against assisted suicide in the 1990s when Dr. Jack Kevorkian became a household name for participating in dozens of suicides in Michigan. Since then, evangelical passion against assisted suicide seems to have waned. While evangelicals have left a void in many public spaces regarding end-of-life issues, the Catholic church has often stood in the gap. As more states and countries consider legalizing the practice, believers must raise their voices together in defense of life.

Christians who oppose assisted suicide affirm that life is sacred. God created human beings in his image (Gen. 1:27), and we do not have the right to destroy ourselves or each other.

Brad East, writing in Christianity Today, noted:

The church’s moral teaching has always held that murder—defined as the intentional taking of innocent life—is intrinsically evil. It follows that actively intending the death of an elderly or sick human being and then deliberately bringing about that death through some positive action, such as the administration of drugs, is always and everywhere morally wrong.

Promoters of assisted suicide always couch their arguments in the language of compassion for those suffering from terminal illness, and 11 US states also permit assisted suicide, all of them except for Montana being dominated by the Democratic Party. This practice always has been couched in the language of “death with dignity,” and it generally has strong support from the political left, although the hard-left socialist publication, Jacobin, recently had an article by Jeremy Appel critical the circumstances under which some Canadians choose suicide, declaring:

But the legalization of MAiD has brought to the fore some disturbing moral calculations, particularly with its expansion in 2019 to include individuals whose deaths aren’t “reasonably foreseeable.” This change opened the floodgates for people with disabilities to apply to die rather than survive on meager benefits.

I’ve come to realize that euthanasia in Canada represents the cynical endgame of social provisioning within the brutal logic of late-stage capitalism — we’ll starve you of the funding you need to live a dignified life, demand you pay back pandemic aid you applied for in good faith, and if you don’t like it, well, why don’t you just kill yourself?

The problem with my previous perspective was that it held individual choices as sacrosanct. But people don’t make individual decisions in a vacuum. They’re the product of social circumstances, which are often out of their control.

It is not surprising to see Jacobin blaming capitalism for something done within the confines of a socialist system, but socialists go by the mindset that says if something is bad, it is the fault of capitalism, since socialism produces only happy results. But Appel is not wrong in pointing out that what began as a way ostensibly to end the suffering of terminally ill people has morphed into a program responsible for one in 20 Canadian deaths, with more than 100,000 people killed since the program began a decade ago, as Canada’s government did away with the requirements that only those with terminal illnesses could request doctor-assisted suicide.

Indeed, the government is happy to recommend MAID to people for a variety of reasons. An 84-year-old woman who visited a Vancouver emergency room with back pain was offered MAID by an attending physician, a suggestion the woman turned down. The government is even expanding its program to cover people with mental illness, including veterans who experienced PTSD as a result of trauma suffered in combat in places like Afghanistan, with MAID eligibility for these people coming in 2027. Appel writes:

In another instance, retired corporal Christine Gauthier, who is paraplegic and competed for Canada at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympics and the Invictus Games, was offered assisted suicide, with Veterans Affairs offering to provide her with the necessary equipment.

Gauthier had been fighting for five years to have Veterans Affairs provide her with a wheelchair ramp. They wouldn’t provide the ramp, but they would give her the means to end her life.

Most Critics Fail to Recognize the Real Reason Maid Exists

There are plenty of religious and moral reasons to criticize this kind of a program. Although many libertarians have openly supported assisted suicide (with some exceptions), it is important to separate the “right to die” movement from programs like MAID in Canada and in Europe, such as the Netherlands, which has had an assisted suicide law on the books for more than 20 years. Whether or not one supports such policies, as bad as many believe they are, it becomes much worse when government healthcare agencies are the entities recommending that people have doctors put them to death, as there is no way a program like this does not become coercive.

In a country like the US, the government cannot refuse medical care to someone who does not seek another doctor to end one’s life. In Canada and most European countries, that is exactly what the government can do. While entities as far apart religiously as many religious groups and Jacobin might decry the same things—for different reasons—they are united in their support for the welfare state and state control over medical care.

The Christianity Today writers and others in the evangelical camp such as World Magazine tend to frame MAID as a purely ethical issue, and while ethics obviously play an important role in all of this, none of these writers seem to understand that Canada’s government-controlled system has made good medical care even more scarce than it should be. It should be obvious even to someone like Appel that Canada’s system reduces the amount of available care, which should surprise no one who is familiar with socialism.

As noted before, many of complaints against assisted suicide are rooted in a belief that people choose to have medical providers kill them is because they lack resources. Appel writes:

An excellent piece from Global News reporters Brennan Leffler and Marianne Dimain, headlined “How poverty, not pain, is driving Canadians with disabilities to consider medically-assisted death,” notes the “excruciating cycle of poverty” that leads disabled people to choose assisted death, rather than live a life filled with barriers to their existence.

Appel then declares more government spending as the solution:

We’ve let the MAiD genie out of its bottle. There’s no going back. We must ensure that our health care systems have sufficient resources to guarantee everyone, regardless of ability or mental health, a dignified existence.

Appel, however, has it wrong. Poverty supposedly does not matter in the Canadian system because no one pays for medical care. This isn’t a case of Joe dying of liver disease because he can’t afford a liver transplant; this is about Canada’s system having shortages of doctors, equipment, medicine, and all of the other components of healthcare, and shortages are a feature of socialism.

In other words, the way to keep people from using the medical establishment from taking their own lives is to expand medical care, and since outfits like Jacobin see government as the only legitimate provider of health care, that means pouring even more tax revenues into the medical system. Yet, it should be clear that government control of the medical system—especially in Canada—has very predictable results: shortages and denial of care. 

More than 20 years before Canada instituted its MAID program, Jane Orient—a practicing physician—predicted that the Canadian system would find that the premature death of patients would provide financial savings to the program.

Writing about government-provided care, she likened it to providing only freeways to move automobile traffic:

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have all the medical care you needed or wanted, without ever worrying about the bill?

And wouldn’t it be wonderful to drive to work every day without ever paying a toll or stopping at a red light?

The second question usually provokes much more critical thought than the first. Before people vote the money to build a freeway through their downtown, a lot of inconvenient objections are raised.

The first is this: Do we want to tear up the main business district of town?

The idea of “comprehensive health care reform” to “assure universal access” should stimulate the same thought process. To build such a system, you start by destroying the insurance and medical system that we already have.

She continued:

When we build a freeway, we don’t necessarily destroy all the other roads. In Britain and Germany, private medicine is allowed to coexist with nationalized medicine. But in Canada, it isn’t. If you’re a Canadian and want something the government isn’t willing to pay for, or you want it now instead of three years from now, you have to go to the United States.

A lot of proponents of “universal access” want to close the private escape hatch. They want no other roads, just the freeway. Of course, there may be some back alleys or secret tunnels or special facilities for Congressmen, but those won’t provide American-class medical care to ordinary folk.

Some think we don’t need other roads if we have a freeway. But remember what a freeway is: a controlled access road.

Orient continued her freeway analogy, noting that the Canadian system is not built on ensuring better care, but rather promoting equal care, even if that care might be substandard or even non-existent:

In Canada, you don’t have to pay to get medical care. In fact, you are not allowed to pay. Once the global budget is reached in Canada, that’s it. The on-ramps are closed. It doesn’t matter if you have money. Hospital beds are empty for lack of money to pay nurses, and CT scanners sit idle all night for lack of money to pay a technician. But if some people are allowed to pay, Canadians fear that some people might get better care than others.

In other words, Canadian care is more about people equally sharing scarcity than being able to get medical help for their ailments. She noted that the government systems like what we see in Canada routinely deny care for serious illnesses and medical problems, while promoting euthanasia as a solution:

The roadblocks are at the exits that lead to the hospital. The global budgeters “contain costs”—ration health care—by denying those things that you do need insurance to pay for: heart surgery, radiation treatments for cancer, hip replacements, things like that. Out of “compassion,” reformers may open another exit: the one that leads to the cemetery. Do you think it’s accidental that euthanasia and “universal access” are on the agenda at the same time? When government gets involved in providing health care, health care must be rationed.

Given that medical care is a scarce good, there always will be tradeoffs and some form of rationing. However, government systems discourage entrepreneurship and are more likely to be restrictive, increasing the scarcity problems and making it even more difficult for people to receive care that can make the difference between life and death.

Advocates of state-sponsored medical care claim that rationing by price is immoral, but rationing by bureaucratic decree is a moral imperative.

Thus, if Joe were to die because he could not afford a heart transplant, that would be immoral, but if he were to die because the government agency making those decisions denied that care, that would satisfy all moral criteria.

Conclusion

Assisted suicide is on the increase in places like Canada because it permits the government to deny medical care in the name of compassion and “dying with dignity.” It should not be surprising to see increased rates of doctor-sponsored killing running parallel with more government involvement with health care.

As we see more state involvement with medical care, the relative scarcity problems with health care will increase, and as medical scarcity increases, physician-assisted suicide rates also will rise. Death is already built into socialism, so we should not be surprised to see practitioners and advocates of socialized medicine welcoming the Grim Reaper as one of their own.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that the mainstream Christian groups (such as the Presbyterian Church USA and the Episcopal Church) that openly support the Canadian system and demand it be implemented in the U.S. are silent about the proliferation of medical suicide incidents, either ignoring the problem altogether or quietly supporting it.

Because they are blind to the negative effects of the massive state-sponsored intervention they support, their response to MAID and other assisted suicide movements is to call for more of the same.

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/19/2026 - 23:20

Bulgaria's Former Pro-Russian President Set For Landsllde Election Win

Just as Europe's neoliberal establishment was celebrating the downfall of Hungary's Orban and his replacement with... another hard-line ant- immigrationist, it got some bad news on Sunday, as Bulgaria's pro-Russian former President Rumen Radev was set for a runaway victory in the election and may even secure a parliamentary majority in the poorest EU state, ‌exit polls showed, potentially ending years of weak coalition governments and altering the European Union member's foreign policy.

Rumen Radev, former Bulgarian president and leader of Progressive Bulgaria coalition, votes during the parliamentary election, in Sofia, Bulgaria, April 19, 2026. Reuters

An updated exit poll conducted by Sofia-based Alpha Research showed Radev's Progressive Bulgaria with 44%, far ahead of the long-dominant GERB party, led by former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, at 12.5%.

If confirmed, the performance, which outstripped opinion polls, would mark one of the strongest results by ​a single party in a generation, sideline a party that has ruled on and off for decades, and may see an end to the ​instability that has resulted in eight elections in five years.

"Progressive Bulgaria won decisively. This is a victory of hope over ⁠distrust, a victory of freedom over fear, and finally, if you will, a victory of morality," Radev said of the exit poll results during a press conference.

Radev, ​a eurosceptic and former fighter pilot who opposes military support for Ukraine's war effort against Moscow, stepped down from the presidency in January to run in the parliamentary election, ​which comes after mass protests forced out the previous government in December.

According to Reuters, Radev rode a wave of frustration with political instability in the Balkan country of 6.5 million people, where voters are sick of corruption and veteran parties that have dominated politics for decades. Alpha Research put turnout at 47% with one hour of voting to go, up from the 39% total in ​the last election in October 2024.

"There is now an opportunity for the things people have been hoping to see change to actually become visible," Evelina Koleva, a ​manager at digital marketing company in Sofia, told Reuters.

Final election results are expected on Monday.

In his campaign, Radev drew comparisons with Hungary's pro-Kremlin former Prime Minister ‌Viktor Orban ⁠when he talked about improving relations with Moscow and resuming the free flow of Russian oil and gas into Europe. He also criticized the EU for relying too heavily on renewable energy.

It is not clear how much his views will impact the foreign policy of Bulgaria, a NATO member on the EU's southeastern flank which joined the euro zone in January - a move Radev has criticised.

He said he would be willing to work on judicial reform with the pro-European reformist We Continue ​the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB) coalition, which came third ​in the Alpha Research exit polls ⁠with 11.3%. A minority government was also an option in the 240-seat parliament, Radev said.

"Bulgaria will make efforts to continue its European path," he said. "But a strong Bulgaria and strong Europe... needs pragmatism because Europe has fallen victim to its own ​ambition to be a moral leader in a world without rules."

GERB's Borissov appeared to concede in a post on ​Facebook, but added a ⁠note of caution: "To win the elections is one thing; to govern is quite another. Elections decide who comes first, but negotiations will decide who governs."

Bulgaria has developed rapidly since the fall of communism in 1989 and joined the European Union in 2007. Life expectancy has risen sharply, unemployment is the lowest in the EU, and the economy has ⁠greater safeguards ​since joining the euro zone in January. But it lags behind other EU countries in many metrics, ​and graft remains endemic, including in elections, where vote-buying is rife.

The cost of living has become a particular issue since Bulgaria adopted the euro. The previous government fell amid protests against a new ​budget proposing tax increases and higher social security contributions.

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/19/2026 - 22:45

Washington's Renewed Russian Oil Sanctions Waiver Will Help Their Shared Indian Partner

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

Both benefit from this since the US wants to avoid India sliding into turmoil amidst the global energy crisis and possibly offsetting its envisaged role as a counterweight of sorts to China while more energy revenue from India preemptively averts Russia’s potentially disproportionate dependence on China.

The Treasury Department renewed the US’ Russian oil sanctions waiver on Friday two days after Secretary Scott Bessent said that this wouldn’t happen.

It remains unclear what exactly accounts for this flip-flop, but it’s possible that Trump 2.0 concluded that a deal with Iran might not be reached as soon as some optimists expected, so it’s better to keep Russian oil on the global market for another month to maintain global economic stability. Russia and the US’ shared Indian partner gains the most from this.

The IMF recently assessed that India will remain the world’s fastest-growing major economy for this year and the next at 6.5% growth in both, and maintaining this is imperative for both Russia’s and the US’ interests. That’s because India balances between both, having been perceived as tilting a bit closer towards the US in February after the interim Indo-US trade deal was agreed to but then recalibrating back to Russia last month due to the global systemic consequences of the Third Gulf War.

As was explained here in March when the US issued its Russian oil sanctions waiver for India before making it global, “The new world order that it envisages has India playing a prominent geo-economic and geopolitical role, especially vis-à-vis China, ergo why it temporarily waived the sanctions on Russian oil purchases in order to avoid India sliding into turmoil and possibly offsetting this scenario if it didn’t.” As for Russia, it supplies India not just to make a profit, but also to advance its own strategic goals.

These relate to relying on India as an alternative pressure valve from Western sanctions pressure for preemptively averting potentially disproportionate dependence on China and bolstering India’s new tri-multipolarity balancing act for accelerating the global systemic transition to complex multipolarity. Far from feeling like India “betrayed” it as Pepe Escobar falsely claimed last month, Russia recently offered to supply India with as much energy as it wants, which it obviously wouldn’t do if it felt “betrayed”.

On that topic, India had scaled back its import of Russian oil in January to 1.06 million barrels per day amidst speculation about its compliance with US sanctions as its trade talks with the US were nearing their end, but then nearly doubled this last month. According to the Times of India citing Kpler, “India’s purchases of Russian crude reached 1.98 million barrels per day in March”. April’s were 1.57 million barrels per day but are expected to rise next month after maintenance at a major refinery is completed.

India is therefore expected to remain the primary beneficiary of the US’ renewed sanctions waiver, which advances the US’ and Russia’s goals that were earlier described, but the US is also expected to end this policy and resume its secondary sanctions threats against Russia’s oil clients in the event of peace with Iran. Lavrov warned the world last month about Trump 2.0’s plans for global dominance, especially in the energy industry, which could take the form of pushing through the “DROP Act” in pursuit of this goal.

It’s premature to predict whether India would comply with future US pressure to once again scale back its import of Russian oil since it’s required to fuel its economic rise much more than the interim Indo-US trade deal is. At the same time, if Pakistan helps mediate a US-Iranian peace deal, India might want to remain in the US’ good graces to prevent the US from pivoting to Pakistan at its expense.

The interplay between these four and China, the US’ strategic rival, will determine the future of regional geopolitics.

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/19/2026 - 22:10

"The Foundations Of Dollar Dominance Are Weaker than Anticipated..."

Authored by Christoph Gisiger via themarket.ch,

Economist Barry Eichengreen is one of the foremost experts on the global financial system. His new book examines 2,500 years of international currency history. In this interview, he discusses the fading hegemony of the dollar, outlines the coming global monetary order, and explains his growing concerns.

King Dollar is staging a comeback. Since the start of the Iran war, the greenback has been in demand as a safe-haven asset. The losses following the price slide at the beginning of the year against the Swiss franc, euro, and other major currencies have been recuperated.

Yet, although the dollar accounts for around 60% of global foreign exchange reserves and dominates more than half of world trade, its hegemony appears more fragile than ever.

"From the war in Iran to the tariff chaos and domestic political uncertainty, I fear that the Trump administration's actions are prompting the rest of the world to reduce its dependence on the dollar; “most obviously in Europe but elsewhere as well"

- Barry Eichengreen.

This is the conclusion reached by Barry Eichengreen. In his new book, "Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto" , the US economist examines the long history of international currencies, from ancient coins to blockchain technology. He demonstrates that the same factors contributing to the widespread use of a dominant currency ultimately lead to its replacement.

As the professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and profound expert on the global monetary system argues, the dollar is now on the downside of this cycle. A major reason for its downturn is that political institutions in the US are weakened, including high public debt and attacks on the independence of the central bank. Likewise, America is no longer a reliable partner for international alliances.

“To me, the argument that the dollar is in a secular decline as the dominant global currency remains intact,” says Eichengreen.

In this wide-ranging interview, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity, he applies historical examples of leading currencies to the present and identifies potential winners and losers should intensify the flight from dollar assets.

Contrary to increasing doubts, the dollar has proven itself as a safe haven since the start of the Iran war. From a historical perspective, what are the central characteristics of a global reserve currency ?

There are some commonplace arguments about the foundations of an international currency. They typically center around the importance of economic size, commercial trading, preeminence, and economic and financial stability, including the stability of the currency itself. In my book, however, I also advance some unconventional arguments; domestic factors such as rule of law, separation of powers, central bank independence as well as representation for investors and creditors. Furthermore, I examine the role of international politics and the importance of alliances, which until recently haven't gotten the same attention.

What can be derived from this for the future of the dollar? Does the current recovery mark a sustainable turnaround? Or does the long-term downward trend that began in autumn 2022 remain intact?

I would anticipate a further decline because we have learned something new and important from the last year and a half: that those domestic political institutions in the United States are weaker. They're more fragile than we had concluded in earlier, more complicated years. Consequently, I think the foundations of dollar dominance are weaker than previously anticipated, and that the dollar is likely to continue ceding market share globally over time.

Why are aspects like the rule of law and strong, independent institutions important for a global reserve currency?

They are a key pillar of every dominant global currency in history, all the way back to the Roman Republic where the senate was composed of property owners and other elites who were interested in monetary stability. In political democracies, citizens maintain the power to vote out governments that fail to preserve monetary stability. So I worry that observers look at the United States and ask: if Donald Trump chooses to put his signature on dollar bills today, and then seeks to debase or devalue the US currency tomorrow, who is going to stop him? Will Congress stand up to him? Or the courts? It's very worrisome.

Within the Trump administration, however, it is argued that the dollar's function as a global reserve currency is a burden for America. How did this play out with previous leading currencies?

History suggests that widespread global use of a currency can have negative side effects. The currency tends to be stronger than it would otherwise be, which can create headwinds for domestic industry and exporters. You saw this in 13th- and 14th-century Florence, in the 17th-century Netherlands, and arguably in early 20th-century Britain. So I wouldn't dismiss it entirely, but a currency's value on the foreign exchange markets ranks about tenth on the list of fundamental factors determining the competitiveness of a country and its economy. Far more important are education and training of the workforce, investment in the capital stock and infrastructure, the innovative capacity of the economy, and the legal framework as I just mentioned in the context of the United States today.

What consequences does this have for the financial markets ?

At the beginning of 2025, all the discussion was about a “Mar-a-Lago accord,” the “debasement trade,” and the idea that the US might do something to devalue the dollar. This undermined the dollar's appeal to foreign central banks, corporations, and investors because they faced the risk of capital losses on their dollar-denominated assets. More recently, the discussion has shifted toward geopolitical uncertainties. For Europe, for example, it has become increasingly important to be more self-sustaining, more sovereign over its money and finances. This includes reducing dependence not only on the dollar itself, but also on the US correspondent banking system and the SWIFT network.

Nevertheless, the dollar's recovery has surprised many market participants in recent weeks .

The point I would make regarding the dollar's apparent recovery so far in 2026 is that in the first two trading days following the outbreak of the war in Iran, the currency strengthened by approximately 1.5%. That reaction was typical of the dollar's role as a safe haven, but 1.5% was a small gain by historical standards given the magnitude of the shock. Against the backdrop of this geopolitical and military turbulence, the surprise is that the dollar has not strengthened any more. So to me, the argument that the dollar is in a secular decline as the dominant global currency remains intact.

You mentioned at the beginning that military supremacy was one aspect of a leading currency in the past. How important is this factor?

Looking back at the 2500-year history of international currencies – from ancient Greece to the Roman Republic to the Dutch Republic to when Britannia ruled the waves in the 19th century –, economic or commercial power and military security have always gone together. They have always combined to support the cross-border use of the currency of that preeminent commercial and military power. Today, it seems that this kind of geopolitical leverage has two elements: first, you must possess a vast arsenal of planes and missiles; Second, you must also have a coherent military strategy. For instance, the Dutch East India Company was not only a trading power but also, de facto, a military power that secured the Low Countries' ports in the Dutch East Indies.

How does that stand today, considering the US actions in the Middle East?

It is evident that the US government lacks a solution for ensuring safe maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. So the fact that the US has a lot of planes and missiles is not sufficient. You have to have a coherent strategy, and that strategy should have, number one, a coalition of countries behind it – that's where alliance politics come in again – and a coherent objective. It's clear the US lacks those two elements in the present instance.

What is a historical example of how a reliable alliance policy promotes the status of a global reserve currency?

The best example is the United States itself after World War II, when the dollar durably became the dominant global currency. We provided dollars to our allies through the Marshall Plan and helped to build NATO in order to strengthen our political relations with those partners. So in the 1960s, when the dollar pegged to gold at $35 an ounce came under pressure, the governments in Japan and Germany supported the dollar because they were our alliance partners, relying on the US for military and geopolitical support. That underscores the intersection of geopolitics and global finance in cementing international alliances. We were a trustworthy alliance partner which solidified the dollar's role.

Today, that is no longer so certain. President Trump describes NATO as a paper tiger and threats that the US could withdraw from the alliance. As an economist, what do you think about that?

The importance of not succumbing to the temptation to think like an economist. We are trained to look for a coherent strategy on part of the US administration; and that also applies to maintaining the global role of the dollar. At one point last year, Trump has threatened the risk of increased tariffs on other countries if they moved away from the dollar. But almost the next day, he reiterated his desire for the Fed to cut interest rates and suggested how a weaker dollar would be good for the US. So I don't think there is really a coherent strategy here. From the war in Iran to the tariff chaos and domestic political uncertainty, I fear that the Trump administration's actions are prompting the rest of the world to reduce its dependence on the dollar; most obviously in Europe but elsewhere as well.

In your book, you also explain how superpowers in the past overextended themselves financially with military spending, which ultimately led to the decline of their currency. How great is this risk for the US, especially as President Trump wants to massively increase the military budget in the next fiscal year?

In 2021, I published a book with co-authors called «In Defense of Public Debt» . Between then and now, my view of the debt situation in the US has grown darker. I've modified my views in light of interest rates that are significantly higher today, as they make the US debt situation increasingly problematic. And now, we're on top of that more military spending. Given the deep political polarization, Congress is unable to reach a durable compromise that would begin closing the budget deficit. On all those grounds, continued high polarization, increased military spending, and higher interest rates, the debt trajectory is more troubling. This will be a powerful factor affecting the decisions of central bank reserve managers and others as they determine which currencies to hold in their portfolios.

But then the question arises: what are the alternatives? China, for example, is investing heavily in expanding its military power, but the renminbi's share of global foreign exchange reserves remains low and has even declined slightly recently.

The Chinese economy is continuing to grow faster than the US economy, and other countries use the renminbi in their trade with China. However, politics are an obstacle to China's aspirations to internationalize its currency and establish it as a true first-class rival to the dollar. So the questions regarding US politics apply to China even more powerfully. China lacks the separation of powers, and the rule of law is subject to whatever the Politburo and the president decide tomorrow morning it should be. Furthermore, there is no central bank independence. Since I don't see China's political system changing anytime soon, I doubt central banks and corporate treasurers around the world feel comfortable about parking their reserves in renminbi in Shanghai, in Chinese banks.

The independence of monetary policy is also a hot topic in the US right now. What can be expected from Kevin Warsh as the next head of the Federal Reserve?

I don't have expectations yet because he has a mixed track record, and his signals have been conflicting. He urged the Fed to tighten early during the global financial crisis, which would have been premature. He also had questions about quantitative easing during the global liquidity and deflation crisis when it was essential. More recently, he has flipped from supporting higher interest rates to calling for lower ones. Assuming he gets confirmed, he will be caught between a rock and a hard place. The hard place is that inflation will be going up to more than 4%, if you believe the OECD, and the rock is Donald Trump.

Which is the greater risk for the Fed regarding the rise in energy prices: an inflationary surge or a slowdown in economic growth?

The answer depends on your view of whether the energy shock and the rise in inflation are temporary or persistent. If the shock is temporary, the Fed should look through it and refrain from raising interest rates because inflation will subside. However, if the shock persists due to the war, the Fed must raise interest rates to dampen down inflation and preserve its credibility. It can't achieve anything else, including fighting unemployment, if it doesn't maintain its anti-inflationary credibility first in the face of a permanent price shock.

Let's try to look a bit further ahead. What can be learned from 2,500 years of international currency history about the future of the financial system?

If we have enough time, a few decades, I could envision a smooth transition in which the dollar's dominance declines toward a more multipolar global monetary and financial system. The dollar might then share its global role with other major currencies such as the Chinese renminbi as China opens its financial markets and deepens its financial systems' liquidity. The euro could also gain prominence, if the European Union achieves three objectives: completing the capital markets union, building a defense capability commensurate with dominant currency status, and moving towards the issuance of EU bonds, serving as the bedrock of euro-denominated portfolios. The third step, issuing more EU bonds, would require amending the Treaty of the European Union, which is hard to do. Additionally, digital technologies can make non-traditional reserve currencies better tradable. This includes the Swiss franc, the South Korean won, the Australian dollar, the New Zealand dollar, the Singapore dollar, and the Scandinavian currencies. These could complement the currencies of the major economies, at least on the margin.

In this context, what are the prospects for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin?

Blockchain and distributed ledger technology represent an important innovation, offering alternatives to the dollar by providing payment rails that can be used to move tokens denominated in various currencies across borders for international transactions. The question is: what will run on those rails? Will it be plain vanilla cryptocurrencies like Bitcoins, stable coins, central bank digital currencies, or tokenized bank deposits? I would bet on a combination of central bank digital currencies and tokenized deposits. For example, there are lots of deposits in Swiss banks that can be tokenized and used for cross-border transactions through efficient distributed ledger technologies.

And what about gold? Central banks have been increasingly diversifying their reserves with the precious metal for several years.

Gold is there, although I would not expect its role to grow. You can only use it in financial transactions when it's stored at the Bank of England, the London Metal Exchange or the New York Fed. Yet, many central banks have been repatriating their gold for security reasons. Once repatriated, gold becomes sterile: it cannot be swapped or used as collateral for international financial transactions. So, we've learned in the last few weeks that the price of gold can go down, not only up; that it's a volatile asset and risky to hold.

What happens if there isn't enough time for a smooth transition to a more broadly diversified monetary system?

This is where my book ends. If confidence in the dollar is lost abruptly, there will be no alternative at scale, at which point interest rates will rise sharply and the liquidity needed for cross-border trade and finance will dry up. Essentially, 21st-century globalization would be at risk under such a scenario.

What probability would you assign to such a scenario?

The dollar's dominance is much like a massive iceberg melting slowly due to global warming. This process typically occurs at the edges and proceeds gradually, but a large chunk can suddenly break off. Figuratively speaking, the danger lies in the possibility that this melting could accelerate dramatically in response to external events, triggering a collapse. I cannot provide you a probability or a date, but I can share my feeling that we're closer to this nightmare scenario than at any other time in my life. I think we should all be much more worried than we have been in the past.

What should investors take away from this conversation?

I have to have two bits of advice. The first is that investors should read more history with an eye toward understanding the differences between the present and the future from the past. History repeats in different ways; studying it allows investors to discern unique shifts in economic structures and politics within the current conjuncture. The second bit of advice comes from my dissertation advisor, who was James Tobin at Yale. He won the Nobel Prize in the early 1980s for his contributions to portfolio theory. During his press conference on winning the prize, a reporter asked him to explain portfolio theory in non-technical terms. Tobin responded simply: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/19/2026 - 21:00

8 Of The Top 10 'Most Surveilled' Cities Are Asian

While quantifying the total number of surveillance cameras in the world remains an almost impossible task, IHS Markit suggested that there would be around 1 billion surveillance cameras worldwide

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist, ranks major global cities by the number of CCTV cameras per 1,000 people using data from Comparitech, showing where surveillance is most concentrated.

China is the most-surveilled nation overall, with 700 million cameras (494 per 1,000 people), though per-city data is unavailable. That’s almost one camera for every two people.

While China yet again dominates this study for its vast surveillance tactics, there are other countries whose surveillance tactics are of growing concern, including several Indian, Russian, and South Korean cities, Lahore, Kabul, Singapore, London, Istanbul, New York, and Los Angeles.

Indian cities dominate the rankings, with Hyderabad (79 cameras per 1,000 people) leading globally.

Eight of the top 10 cities are Asian.

The other two most surveilled cities are in Russia.

London is the top 'western' nation on the list with 13.4 cameras per 1,000 people) with New York City topping the list for American cities with 10.12 cameras per 1,000 people).

A number of cities have added (or are adding and/or are encouraging businesses/private residents to add) private surveillance cameras to police networks as part of crime-fighting initiatives. In some cases, these cameras are mapped so police can see where security cameras are and can request footage accordingly. In other cases, police are being given direct access to live feeds from these cameras.

So, where cameras had previously been used for private security purposes only, thousands of these are now being accessed by police, which poses a significant risk to civilians’ privacy.

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/19/2026 - 20:25

Over 6,000 Apply As Air Traffic Controllers After DOT Secretary Duffy Proposes Recruiting Gamers

Authored by Bryan Jung via PJMedia.com,

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy declared the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) campaign to recruit video gamers as air traffic controllers "wildly successful," after over 6,000 applicants submitted forms within the first twelve hours of the program's launch.

The FAA is reporting thousands of applicants applied after its unconventional new recruitment initiative launched on April 17, with the application portal reaching its cap at 8,000 candidates.

The Trump administration is currently looking to address a persistent nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers, as many of the most experienced have retired in recent years.

“To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt,” Duffy said in a statement. 

“This campaign’s innovative communication style and focus on gaming taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller.”

The recruitment drive features a high-energy promotional video and messaging that frames job requirements as “mission objectives," which is designed to appeal to Gen Z applicants. 

Duffy said that skills common among gamers, such as rapid decision-making, sustained concentration, and the ability to manage multiple inputs simultaneously could be applied to directing air traffic.

“If you think about what gamers are doing on screens, they’re talking, reacting, and managing a lot at once — that’s very similar to what happens in a control tower,” Duffy said during remarks in Washington.

The push comes as the FAA confronts a shortfall of roughly 3,500 air traffic controllers, a gap that has developed over the past decade amid rising demand for air travel. 

Federal data shows the number of controllers has declined even as flight volume has increased, placing additional strain on existing personnel and raising broader concerns about system resilience.

To attract candidates, the agency is highlighting the role’s long-term earning potential, noting that certified controllers can earn more than $155,000 annually within three years, but stress that certification remains highly selective and rigorous.

Applicants must be U.S. citizens under the age of 31 and fluent in English, while those who accepted face a multi-stage evaluation process, including the Air Traffic Skills Assessment, medical examinations, and security clearances. 

Even then, only about 2 percent ultimately complete the training pipeline, which can take between two and five years.

Industry stakeholders have largely welcomed the campaign as a creative way to broaden the applicant pool. 

The air traffic controllers union has expressed support for the program, citing the need to bring in new talent amid ongoing staffing pressures, but cautions that it is not a quick fix due to the significant time required to complete training and certification.

Some aviation experts caution that the influx of applicants will not immediately resolve the shortage, as the lengthy training process and high attrition rates mean that even a successful recruitment effort may take years to translate into fully certified controllers in control towers and radar facilities.

The initiative arrives at a time of heightened scrutiny of aviation safety and operations, with recent incidents drawing attention to a decline in highly trained personnel. 

While aviation officials maintain that the system remains safe, they acknowledge that staffing remains a critical issue.

For now, the FAA’s gamer-focused outreach appears to be achieving its immediate goal: capturing the attention of a new generation of potential recruits. 

Whether that interest translates into a sustained expansion of the controller workforce will depend on the agency’s ability to guide candidates through one of the most demanding training pipelines in the federal government.

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/19/2026 - 19:50

Appeals Court Allows Construction Of White House Ballroom To Continue

A U.S. appeals court on April 17 put on hold a lower court order that had halted construction of the White House ballroom, allowing the project to proceed for now.

Previously, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon issued a preliminary injunction blocking above-ground construction of the ballroom but allowed “below-ground” construction of national security facilities to continue.

Leon had said the project cannot continue without authorization from Congress.

But now, as Aldgra Fredly reports for The Epoch Times, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on April 17 blocked Leon’s injunction and scheduled a June 5 hearing to decide on whether the project should be halted.

The Epoch Times reached out to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which filed the lawsuit last year, but did not receive a response by publication time.

The White House first announced the project in July 2025, saying it would span 90,000 square feet.

The construction phase began in September 2025, and the ballroom is expected to be completed before President Donald Trump’s presidency ends in early 2029, according to the White House.

The National Capital Planning Commission approved the ballroom project on April 2.

In December 2025, the National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit alleging that construction of the White House ballroom is unlawful and requested that the court halt the project.

Leon ruled in favor of the National Trust for Historic Preservation on March 31, ordering that “the ballroom construction project must stop until Congress authorizes its completion.”

The judge later clarified in an April 16 ruling that below-ground construction, including “the construction of any ‘top-secret excavations, bunkers, bomb-shelters, protective partitioning, military installations, and hospital and medical facilities,’ as well as such above-ground construction strictly necessary to cover, secure, and protect such facilities” may proceed.

Trump criticized the judge in a Truth Social post on April 17, calling his ruling “a mockery to [the U.S.] court system.”

“Everybody knew that it was planned, and going to be built. This highly political Judge, and his illegal overreach, is out of control, and costing our Nation greatly,” he wrote.

“The Ballroom is deeply important to our National Security, and no Judge can be allowed to stop this Historic and Militarily Imperative Project.”

The project is expected to cost about $400 million, all of which is expected to be funded by private donors.

According to a list provided by the White House to The Epoch Times, donors contributing funds to the new ballroom include Amazon, Apple, Google, Caterpillar Inc., HP Inc., Lockheed Martin, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Palantir Technologies, and the Union Pacific Railroad.

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/19/2026 - 19:15

Scientist Claims The Universe Has Seven Dimensions

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

A prominent physicist has put forward a striking proposal: our universe may not be limited to the four dimensions of space and time we experience every day. Instead, it could operate with seven dimensions in total, with three compact extra layers folded so tightly they remain invisible.

This idea emerges not from science fiction, but from an attempt to resolve one of modern physics’ most enduring puzzles—the black hole information paradox first highlighted by Stephen Hawking in the 1970s.

Richard Pinčák, a senior researcher at the Slovak Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Experimental Physics, leads the team behind the new model. The work, published in the journal General Relativity and Gravitation, explores how extra dimensions arranged in a specific geometric structure could prevent black holes from fully evaporating.

Stephen Hawking's theory of black hole evaporation clashes with the laws of quantum mechanics. A new paper finds a way around this paradox, provided that the universe has seven dimensions. https://t.co/NR5a0HoFXQ

— Live Science (@LiveScience) April 16, 2026

The four dimensions we know—three of space and one of time—form the basis of everyday experience and Einstein’s general relativity. But Pinčák’s framework adds three more.

“We experience three dimensions of space and one of time — four dimensions in total,” Pinčák explained. “Our model proposes that the universe actually has seven dimensions: the four we know, plus three tiny extra dimensions curled up so tightly that we cannot directly perceive them.”

These hidden dimensions take the form of highly symmetrical G?-manifolds. In this geometry, a property called torsion creates a twisting effect in spacetime. At the extremely small scales reached as a black hole shrinks through Hawking radiation, this torsion generates a repulsive force.

The proposal directly confronts the information paradox. Hawking showed that black holes emit radiation and slowly lose mass, eventually evaporating completely. Yet quantum mechanics insists that information cannot be destroyed—only scrambled.

“Imagine you throw a book into a fire,” Pinčák said. “The book is destroyed, but in principle you could reconstruct every word from the smoke, ash, and heat — the information is scrambled, not lost.”

In a completely evaporating black hole, however, the information about everything that fell inside appears to vanish forever, creating a fundamental conflict between general relativity and quantum theory.

Pinčák’s seven-dimensional model offers an escape. As the black hole approaches its final stages, the torsion-induced repulsive force acts like a brake.

“This repulsive force acts as a brake, halting the evaporation before the black hole vanishes completely,” Pinčák noted.

What remains is a stable microscopic remnant, roughly 10 billion times smaller than an electron in mass. This remnant can encode the lost information through subtle oscillations known as quasinormal modes.

The same geometric structure also connects to particle physics. The torsion field in the extra dimensions produces a potential energy landscape that mirrors the one responsible for giving mass to the W and Z bosons via the Higgs mechanism.

“The same torsion field… generates a potential energy landscape that is identical in form to the one responsible for giving mass to the W and Z bosons — the carriers of the weak nuclear force,” Pin?ák said.

This suggests that particle masses could have a geometric origin tied to the hidden dimensions themselves.

The researchers emphasize that their approach does not pretend to solve quantum gravity outright. Semiclassical approximations break down near the Planck scale, where full quantum-gravity effects dominate.

“As the black hole shrinks toward the Planck scale, all existing models — ours included — must eventually confront the transition into the deep quantum-gravity regime,” Pin?ák acknowledged.

“What distinguishes our approach is that we do not claim semiclassical evaporation operates all the way down to the remnant mass,” he added. “At that point, a new physical effect … takes over and stabilises the configuration.”

The model makes testable predictions, such as the expected masses of hypothetical Kaluza-Klein particles associated with the extra dimensions—far beyond current accelerator reach but potentially falsifiable in principle.

“The important point is that the predictions are concrete — the model can be wrong, which is what makes it scientific,” Pinčák said.

While direct experimental confirmation lies well in the future, the idea builds on concepts familiar from string theory and M-theory, where extra dimensions play a central role in unifying forces. It also ties into earlier work by Pinčák’s team exploring G? geometries and their implications for symmetry breaking and particle properties.

For now, the proposal stands as a creative theoretical bridge between gravity, quantum mechanics, and particle physics. It invites fresh thinking about the hidden architecture of reality and whether the universe’s deepest secrets might be woven into dimensions we have yet to perceive.

Whether future observations of primordial black holes, gravitational waves, or high-energy particle collisions lend support remains to be seen. But the elegance of deriving both black hole stability and particle masses from the same geometric framework offers a compelling new lens on long-standing mysteries.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/19/2026 - 18:40

Ruben Gallego's Political Career May Be Toast

Ruben Gallego spent the better part of the past year positioning himself as the Democrat who cracked the code for Democrats to start winning back Latino voters. 

Gallego won his Arizona Senate seat in 2024, defeating Kari Lake by just over two points, even as President Trump carried the state with relative ease. 

That narrow but meaningful victory turned him into something of a Democratic savior - proof that a certain kind of candidate, delivering a certain kind of message, could still resonate with the Latino and working-class voters the party has been hemorrhaging for years. "At a moment when the Achilles' heel for the Democratic Party is Latinos and working-class voters, this is his opportunity to rescue our country," said Chuck Rocha, an adviser to Gallego, speaking to The Hill earlier this year. 

Gallego had mused about a 2028 run just two weeks before this spiral began, telling NBC News,” No matter who runs, even if it's not me, the candidate that wins in 2028 is going to have to get the Latino vote back to at least 62 percent. That is the 'Pass Go' line, collect $200 on the Monopoly board. We didn't hit that in 2024, and that's why we find ourselves in this situation." 

For Democrats, Gallego wasn't just a senator from Arizona; he was the future of the party. 

That was before Eric Swalwell. 

Last week, Swalwell resigned his House seat and withdrew from the California gubernatorial race following a wave of sexual assault allegations, and Gallego has been caught in the fallout. They were close friends, and he chaired Swalwell's 2020 presidential campaign and publicly backed his gubernatorial run. When the Swalwell allegations broke, the questions about Gallego's proximity followed almost immediately. What did he know? When did he know it? His answers have satisfied almost no one.

He held a press conference on Tuesday, attempting to distance himself from Swalwell. "I fell for it," he told reporters, saying Swalwell "lied to all of us." 

Unfortunately, it didn’t go so well for him.

Democratic strategist Anthony Coley, a Capitol Hill veteran who once worked for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, didn’t even try to sugarcoat it.

 "If Gallego's press conference was meant to reassure potential voters, donors and activists, it failed,” he said. “Folded arms and incomplete answers don't shut down a story, they extend it. The party faithful will want real clarity on his relationship with Swalwell before he gets serious consideration for higher office in 2028."

 An unnamed Democratic strategist who knows Gallego personally said of his 2028 ambitions: "I think he is done." A second anonymous strategist said Gallego's brand - constructed around the idea of a straight-talking, authentic new kind of Democrat — "took a direct hit this week." 

The strategist continued, “He looks lost. He looks like a deer in headlights." The same source added the observation that underscores why this moment stings so deeply for Democratic insiders: "He's someone that Democrats were pretty invested in and that's why it hurts."

Despite Gallego’s growing problems, not every Democrat is ready to write him off yet. Strategist Brad Bannon argued that the Swalwell friendship "demonstrates poor judgment" but represents "not a major obstacle to the Arizona senator's rapid rise." Strategist Christy Setzer said Gallego "distanced himself thoroughly and effectively" from Swalwell and predicted that only Swalwell would ultimately pay a price — "unless they have similar issues of their own that have yet to be surfaced."

And that could be a problem. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) appeared on CBS News's The Takeout with Major Garrett and accused Gallego of his own unspecified misconduct - including allegations she described as "sexual in nature" and potential campaign finance violations. 

Sen. John Thune's office confirmed the matter was under investigation. 

Thune's office told The Hill that the material received from Luna had been referred to the Senate Ethics Committee and declined further comment. A Gallego spokesperson called the accusations "right-wing conspiracy theories being parroted by a fringe far-right member of Congress" and said that the Ethics Committee had not contacted Gallego.

The accuser Luna referenced has not yet come forward.

For now, Gallego’s relationship with Swalwell is under scrutiny, and Republicans aren’t about to let the public forget the two were tight.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the Swalwell allegations "despicable and disgusting" and singled Gallego out by name, challenging reporters to ask which Democrats knew about Swalwell's behavior and stayed quiet. "I think it's also quite plausible … that there were many other Democrats in this town on Capitol Hill who knew about his perhaps illegal behavior — certainly his disgusting and inappropriate behavior. And why they were silent for so long? I think those are questions that must be raised of the sitting representatives — including Mr. Gallego," Leavitt said.

Gallego isn't up for Senate reelection until 2030, which affords him time to recover. Whether that time is enough depends heavily on what comes next — and whether the accuser that Rep. Luna alluded to eventually steps forward. 

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/19/2026 - 18:05

Another 'Green Dot Sunday': Oil Jumps, Stocks Dump After Weekend Of Escalations

Having gone into the weekend with stocks squeezing to record highs and oil prices plunging on euphoric hope that goldilocks was right around the corner in the Middle East - following Trump's very enthusiastic statements all day - things have gone a 'little bit slightly turbo' again...

As last week's rally extended, the market’s sensitivity to negative developments diminished.

Investors brushed aside warnings from global institutions about the economic damage. Instead, flows remained supportive and leadership broadened, with technology catching up after a rough start to the year. By Thursday and Friday, the tone had shifted to express the view that the war is all but over and the growth cycle remains intact.

That left markets heading into a critical inflection point. 

But the weekend did not offer any help...

First, shortly after the 'close' on Friday, Iran denied most of what Trump claimed as fact with regard 'nuclear dust' and peace-deals.

Then came the Iranians fired upon an Indian tanker attempting to cross the Strait.

And today we have seen the US military strike and seize an Iranian-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman

On the bright side? ...there are expected to be 'talks' on Tuesday or Wednesday (which Iran has claimed it will not attend).

Soaking all that in left markets back in 'Green Dot Sunday' mode with oil spiking, equity futures fading, and bitcoin sliding.

WTI spiked almost 9% - back up near $90...

Gas contracts are jumping in early Asian trading, setting up a nervous start for risk assets in the region

*EUROPEAN GAS RISES AS MUCH AS 9.8% AS IRAN CLOSES HORMUZ AGAIN

S&P futures are down around 1%...

Bitcoin has erased all of Friday's gains...

Treasury futures are down, implying around a 5bps jump in 10Y Yields...

AUD is leading losses for G-10 currencies as the US dollar strengthens in early action...

Gold is down around 1.5%...

As we noted on Friday, the OpEx was extremely call-heavy on a delta notional basis.

SpotGamma estimated the OpEx profile is about 80% weighted to calls, one of the most extreme readings in its data, after the SPX rallied 11% in two weeks.

The problem is that if traders monetize gains instead of rolling positions higher and out, negative dealer hedging flows will put pressures on spot.

Said another way, the rally increasingly looks driven by call buying, which leaves the gains more fragile if the positive narrative starts to wobble and traders rush for the exit.

The technical picture says much the same, with gamma unclenched, opening the door for more volatility (in either direction).

Equities went from oversold to overbought in only two weeks, a very fast reset that can often mark a real regime turn and precede a tactical consolidation that cools the momentum.

Based on recent "stock up, vol up" dynamics, and massive imbalances to call volumes vs puts, SpotGamma sees room for a modest equity correction this week.

They suggested expressing this via S&P500 put spreads.

This is not a statement on the longer term equity dynamics, but a short term overbought condition.

Over the past week, realized intraday SPX moves have consistently exceeded implied expectations.

This environment continues to favor long volatility structures (e.g., straddles/strangles) over short premium strategies, given the current risk/reward setup.

As Bloomberg's Brendan Fagan noted, the bar is no longer low: With equities at records and oil back down, the peace dividend has largely been pulled forward. If talks deliver tangible progress, either a framework or a memorandum to carve out a deal, the current rally can be validated. But if negotiations fall short, the asymmetry becomes more acute.

As a reminder, this is exactly the same picture we saw last Sunday - a major gap up in oil (down in stocks) at the open after the US blockade began... which then rapidly reversed into a monster week...

However, this time is different as after a week defined by markets trading on belief rather than verification, the time to deliver on what’s in the price has arrived.

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/19/2026 - 18:00

Open Sesame

Submitted By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

This week’s market behavior had a mythical, almost magical tone to it.

In Arabian Nights, Ali Baba was able to open a cave of riches by uttering the phrase “Open Sesame.” Markets responded to any and every sort of connotation of “The Strait is Open” by rewarding participants with riches. We started this week bright and early, kicking off Bloomberg TV, and then moving on to Bloomberg Radio, and Tom Keene’s Best Ideas.

At the time we were all trying to understand what “Blockade” meant. How and what was the U.S. going to do in terms of a blockade? Markets were jittery, but somehow, from almost the get go, markets seemed to take the combination of U.S. and Iranian snippets to mean the Strait was Open.

I am not sure how accurate this data set on Bloomberg is (TRHBTKCD index) given all the conflicting stories of what has transited or not, what is running without transponders, etc. But traffic remains subdued.

We have argued that a ceasefire benefited the U.S. more than Iran and that there were some very strong possible outcomes from U.S. efforts in the region. I underestimated how quickly and how big those good outcomes would be reflected in the market.

While “any option” still seemed viable, markets had moved on to not only is a deal close, but it will also be the best possible deal. A deal where Iran not only stops pursuing a nuclear weapon, but they would also provide the U.S. with all of their enhanced uranium.

As the weekend progresses, it is unclear how realistic this type of deal is. There are once again competing narratives about the Strait.

Weirdly, unless you are trading futures, you can skip the “green dot” Sunday night, as time and again, the Sunday night price action has done little to predict how markets would behave once the U.S. opens.

Just How Magical Was “Open Sesame”?

Last weekend, we went with More Than Just Iran. Academy had delivered so much content on Iran, that we wanted to highlight some of the other issues (and opportunities) facing the market.

Software.

Software conclusion – Problem Solved.

IGV (software ETF) rose 14% on the week. ARKK which I use as a “proxy” for disruption, also rallied by 15%. INTC (one of the few individual tickers I’ve been vocal about in reports and the media) said “hold my beer” as it rallied 35% in less than 2 weeks! QTUM (quantum ETF) was up 25% and didn’t sell off as much in the first place – which makes some sense as investment into this area is only increasing.

Private Credit.

While the rebound hasn’t been as strong in private credit (and private credit-related companies) it started to rebound earlier. We liked it “for a trade” as it had seemed to be oversold and was trading “ok” even when bad news hit the tape.

We use BIZD to reflect BDCs more broadly. It has risen “only” 9% since April 1st and despite the rally is still below its post-Liberation Day lows.

GPZ (which has seen AUM pop from just over $100 million when we first mentioned it, to over $250 million, predominantly through inflows) is an ETF that I use to highlight the performance of “alternative asset managers” which includes companies with heavy exposure to private credit. It hit the low back on March 12th, and is up almost 20% since then.

OWL, which has arguably been at the epicenter of the Private Credit discussion, rose 20% in just a week as it put its low in just last Friday.

Private Credit. While not “solved,” this market has been stabilizing for some time. Yes it was propelled higher last week, along with almost everything else, but that seemed to be only “part of the story.”

Rare Earths, Critical Minerals, and Uranium.

This one “confuses” me a little bit more than some of the others. Presumably, the war was going to lead to some sort of slowdown and would decrease the need for rare earths (REMX) and Uranium-related companies (URA). Maybe, but war, and more importantly, the replenishment of arsenals, probably isn’t that bad for rare earths and critical minerals.

On uranium, I guess the case could have been made about slowing global demand, but I’m really not sure why an oil shortage was bad for nuclear. One seemingly logical conclusion is that oil, once again highlighting geopolitical risk associated with it, would spur investment into nuclear. It didn’t seem to do that. I’m not sure why Iran handing over enriched uranium and possibly creating a lower risk environment in the Middle East is so good for uranium? I’m long, but can’t really say I understood the price action for the past few weeks.

Rare Earths, Critical Minerals, and Uranium. I guess the “problem” was “solved” but not sure why there was a problem in the first place?

Treasuries

The Treasury market started performing better a few weeks ago and that has continued. We argued that while the initial response to the war would be higher yields, that had become overdone. Now the 10-year has hit our “target” of 4.25%. Our target is for 4.25% on 10s to be the midpoint of the range. If anything, that range might need to be moved lower.

The market is pricing in slightly better than a 50/50 chance of 1 cut this year. While the affordability issue (the way most non-economists now see inflation) will make it difficult to cut, I think the market will have to start pricing in at least one cut ahead of the midterms.

Treasuries. A problem, which was overdone, no longer seems to be a problem, which makes sense.

Bottom Line

Dog-years represent roughly what a dog’s age would be if it was human. 

Market participants need to define Trump-years. There has been no slowing of news flow. I see no reason why that would change. In fact, if Iran starts taking up less of the administration’s time, look for the pace of headlines impacting other sectors, relationships, countries, trade, production, jobs, etc. to increase. It seems that I should be able to weave in One Thousand and One Nights into this section, as it fits the Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves theme, but I couldn’t figure out a clever way to do it. It has been a long week! A long month! And even a long year! (Is that the Friend’s theme song?)

Look for lower yields (that seems slightly contrarian here, I think).

I continue to be “pound the table” loud in favor of being heavily overweight the ProSec themes.

I was nowhere near as optimistic on the broad stock market rally as I should have been. Even today, with the benefit of hindsight, it still seems a bit “magical” (or “mechanical”) how well markets behaved in light of the actual headlines. Not the perception of headlines, but the actual headlines. The “Open Sesame” magic that “solved all problems” makes some sense, but positioning may have played a much larger role than we’d like to admit. The faux liquidity of the current trading environment seems to amplify moves.

Let’s hope markets are right and we are near the end. (The exact phrase we used in last weekend’s report).

Things almost seem “too good to be true” but as of now the ceasefire remains intact and other headwinds are being addressed/resolved/ignored which supports the market.

My biggest fears for the economy and risk markets remain affordability, jobs, and the “working poor.” That fear is why I continue to think yields drift lower.

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/19/2026 - 17:30

Will This Atlantic Hit Piece Be The Final Straw?

Authored by Matt Margolis via PJMedia.com,

The Atlantic has a well-documented history of publishing fake hit pieces about President Donald Trump and his administration, and one wonders how many more hoaxes they can run before they get in real trouble.

Its latest effort targeting FBI Director Kash Patel may be its most reckless yet — and this time, the bureau is fighting back with lawyers.

The piece, written by reporters Sarah Fitzpatrick and Jonathan Lemire, claims that on Friday, April 10, Patel struggled to log into an internal FBI computer system while wrapping up his workday.

He quickly became convinced that he had been locked out, and he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. Two of these people described his behavior as a “freak-out.”

Patel oversees an agency that employs roughly 38,000 people, including many who are trained to investigate and verify information that can be presented under oath in a court of law. News of his emotional outburst ricocheted through the bureau, prompting chatter among officials and, in some corners of the building, expressions of relief. The White House fielded calls from the bureau and from members of Congress asking who was now in charge of the FBI.

It turned out that the answer was still Patel. He had not been fired. The access problem, two people familiar with the matter said, appears to have been a technical error, and it was quickly resolved.

The piece didn't stop there. It also alleged Patel has been plagued by "bouts of excessive drinking," claiming members of his security detail had trouble waking him on multiple occasions because he was seemingly intoxicated. It further alleged that breaching equipment — the kind used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams — was requested last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors.

The FBI denied every word of it before the article ever went live. Attorney Jesse Binnall sent a formal letter to The Atlantic and Fitzpatrick ahead of publication, putting them on notice that the claims were "categorically false and defamatory."

This is the letter we sent to The Atlantic and Sarah Fitzpatrick BEFORE they published their hit piece on FBI Director @FBIDirectorKash. They were on notice that the claims were categorically false and defamatory. They published anyway.

See you in court. pic.twitter.com/Ke8cqNh8hY

— Jesse R. Binnall (@jbinnall) April 17, 2026

The bureau's response was even more direct: "Print it, all false, I'll see you in court — bring your checkbook."

They printed it anyway.

Late Friday night, Patel fired back on X.

see you and your entire entourage of false reporting in court... But do keep at it with the fake news, actual malice standard is now what some would call a legal lay up. https://t.co/MfbHH8OtLv pic.twitter.com/kw5U3LrfMM

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) April 18, 2026

It's worth noting that The Atlantic was apparently the only outlet willing to run this story. Other D.C. reporters chased the same tips and couldn't verify them. They passed. The Atlantic published it. And now they're going to be sued.

This is what The Atlantic does. They publish outlandish and bogus stories that no other outlet will touch, which accomplishes the goal of giving Democrats and their supporters reason to insist the stories are true. The outlet’s hoax piece alleging Trump didn’t want to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 because the troops there who died in battle were “losers” and “suckers” was disputed by over a dozen witnesses. Yet, the left still insists it happened—even after Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, admitted it could have been wrong.

Sarah Fitzpatrick herself has a history of publishing bogus hit pieces lacking sources and corroboration.

By the way, @S_Fitzpatrick is also the reporter who wrote the throughly debunked hit piece that claimed Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh drugged women so they could be sexually abused.

She has a history of writing hit pieces with either no sources on the record or… https://t.co/YnaE5llsJO pic.twitter.com/5HMYZVyYjl

— Megan Basham (@megbasham) April 19, 2026

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche both publicly defended Patel. Blanche praised Patel, noting he "has accomplished more in 14 months than the previous administration did in four years." FBI spokesperson Erica Knight added that since being sworn in, Patel has taken just 17 days off — roughly half the time taken by former directors James Comey and Christopher Wray over comparable stretches.

The Atlantic published a "bombshell" on Director Patel tonight that every real DC reporter chased, couldn't verify, and passed on.

Here's reality. Since being sworn in, Director Patel has taken a grand total of 17 days off — half as much time off as Comey and Wray — and he…

— Erica Knight (@_EricaKnight) April 17, 2026

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/19/2026 - 16:20