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Turkey Recruits Trump Insiders For New Washington Lobbying Push

Turkey Recruits Trump Insiders For New Washington Lobbying Push

Via Middle East Eye

The Turkish government hired a lobbying firm with close ties to US President Donald Trump earlier this month under a year-long contract worth $2.4m, according to US Justice Department filings reviewed by Middle East Eye.

Ballard Partners, led by Brian Ballard, a prominent Florida Republican fundraiser who also worked on Trump’s presidential campaign, signed the agreement with Turkey’s Ministry of National Defense on August 8. The firm will receive $200,000 per month.

via AFP

Under the contract, Ballard Partners pledged to provide “government relations services, strategic consulting and advocacy services” before the federal government, and keep its client informed about developments in Congress and US policy.

This is not the first time Ballard Partners has worked for Turkey.

In 2017, during Trump’s first term, Turkey hired the firm under a $1.5m contract. It was one of Ballard Partners’ first major deals in Washington after opening an office there.

At the time, the firm reportedly focused on the sanctions-evasion case against Turkish state-owned lender Halkbank. The Trump administration’s Justice Department dropped the charges against the bank earlier this year.

The new contract differs from the previous agreement because Turkey’s defense ministry is the principal client. Ankara is seeking to rejoin the F-35 fighter jet program after being removed in 2019 over its purchase of the Russian-made S-400 air defense system.

Middle East Eye reported last month that Ankara was considering selling the S-400 system to a third country, potentially the United Arab Emirates, in an effort to persuade Washington to lift sanctions against Turkey.

Ankara also hopes to take delivery of six F-35s that were manufactured for Turkey but have remained in storage in the US for years.

According to the Justice Department filings, the Ballard Partners team working for Turkey includes former Democratic congressman Robert Wexler of Florida, a prominent pro-Turkish voice who co-founded the Congressional Caucus on US-Turkey Relations and Turkish Americans in 2001.

Wexler is also president of the S Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace in Washington and is known for his connections to pro-Israel circles.

Another member of the team is Thomas Boodry, who served as a special assistant to Trump and senior director for legislative affairs at the National Security Council until April 2025. Boodry was dismissed amid the removal of former US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.

Reports at the time suggested that Trump fired Boodry and five other officials shortly after meeting far-right activist Laura Loomer, who presented opposition research on several staff members and argued that they were disloyal to the president.

The team also includes Syl Lukis, a senior partner at Ballard Partners and one of Ballard’s closest associates.

Bloomberg reported earlier this year that Ballard Partners’ alums include White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and former Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The firm generated more than $30m in federal lobbying revenue during the first quarter of 2026, more than any other firm on Washington’s K Street.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 03:30

Well This Is Very Awkward...

Well This Is Very Awkward...

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

A street interview doing the rounds this week encapsulates the entire European open-borders agenda in under two minutes.

Older Spaniards nod along when asked if they would welcome a migrant into their home, saying it would make for a much better system if everyone did so.

Solidarity, humanity, of course. Then the interviewer produces a real migrant looking for a home and suddenly everything changes.

The interviewer presents the couple with a Nigerian man named Sony who plays guitar on the pavement for small change - and their previous answers collapse into excuses, holidays, "not right now," and finally "no, no, no, no, no."

The clip, shared by Casey Krol and filmed in the Rescue You style, is the kind of unscripted moment the official narrative cannot survive. Abstract empathy and virtue signalling is easy, but when the reality of the situation is presented, everything is turned on its head.

The couple in the video are not monsters. They are ordinary people who have absorbed years of hectoring lecturing and know the approved answer. They just refuse to live it.

The same pattern repeats at every level in Europe: politicians, NGOs, and detached citizens demand that someone else absorb the costs of mass low-skilled inflows while they keep their own postcodes intact.

Spain's socialist government has spent years selling the opposite message. Prime Minister Sánchez has called migration "one of the great engines of national development" and an "act of justice and a necessity."

He has framed legalization as recognition that hundreds of thousands already "form part of our everyday lives." Globalist Alex Soros praised him for it, saying Sánchez showed "what real leadership looks like" and "We need more elected leaders like him."

The public has not bought it wholesale. A Sigma Dos poll for El Mundo found 70 percent of Spaniards support mass deportation of illegal immigrants - including 57 percent of PSOE voters. Only the far-left Sumar base rejects the idea.

The latest explosion for Spain came at the end of July when more than 70,000 people poured into the tiny North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco in two days. Beaches, schools, and parks filled with tents, waste, and disease. Scabies, measles, and tuberculosis appeared among police and residents. Locals described playgrounds and sand turned into shit covered slums.

The chaos did not stay in Ceuta. Boats began hitting mainland tourist coves. In Cartagena, dozens of military-age men leapt onto a packed beach in full view of families. Mayor Noelia Arroyo said: "This cannot be normalised. We cannot accept that human trafficking mafias have such an easy time reaching our shores." Former mayor Francisco Bernabe asked how a boat that size evaded radar: "Are they broken? Do they have them turned off?"

This week the tension in Ceuta boiled over again. Residents marched on the migrant camp at El Trampolín beach, tore down tents, and threw belongings into the sea. Police fired warning shots to keep the two groups apart. The city of 84,000 has been told to absorb what Madrid will not remove.

Sánchez oversaw a royal-decree regularization - no parliamentary vote - sold as covering 500,000 people. Applications blew past one million. Successful applicants get residence, work permits, benefits, and a path to citizenship that opens the entire Schengen zone.

The paperwork tsunami was immediate. Thousands of military-age men queued at consulates and registry offices in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Valencia, and Almería. Some camped overnight.

Others climbed embassy walls when appointments ran out. Union officials warned of collapse.

One municipal delegate said daily social-service requests in Madrid jumped from 1,500 to 5,500. Vox's Santiago Abascal called it an accelerating "invasion." Polish MEP Anna Bry?ka said left-wing governments were "bringing about the collapse of the Schengen Area and mocking the safety of Europeans."

When patriots protested the amnesty, they were met by socialist counter-mobs.

The labor market tells the same story. Foreign-born workers now hold 52.6 percent of unskilled construction jobs and outnumber Spaniards in those roles. Since 2019 the sector has lost more than 22,000 Spanish workers and gained 238,000 foreign ones. Bricklayers, plumbers, and electricians show the same slide. Spain's youth are not replacing the retiring generation; imported labor is.

Meanwhile, foreigners commit five times more rapes and four times more murders per capita than Spaniards. In Catalonia, 91 percent of convicted rapists are migrants, who make up 17 percent of the population. Reported rapes in Spain rose 322 percent in a decade. Penetrative rape cases more than doubled between 2019 and 2024.

The streets have turned into blood baths. Recently, a North African migrant shouted "Allah" while stabbing a young woman to death in Esplugues de Llobregat; a 58-year-old man who tried to intervene was also attacked.

The same weekend produced more stabbings and a shooting.

A man employed to evict migrant squatters was lynched and stabbed by a mob.

A Gambian migrant stabbed a police officer while shouting "Allahu Akbar."

A repeat offender stomped a local man's head.

Citizens rioted after an elderly man was beaten.

And on and on and on.

Many of the "unaccompanied minors" driving the migrant numbers are not minors at all. In Madrid, 70 percent of those tested by bone-age X-ray were adults. The same fraud appears across Europe.

Seventy percent of the country already knows the solution is removal, not more lectures about housing the next arrival.

The people who designed this system will keep calling it compassion. They will keep living somewhere the consequences do not reach. Ordinary Spaniards are the ones facing the dire fallout.

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 Fri, 08/28/2026 - 02:00

The Economic Tsar Who Built Modern China-And Whose Reforms The CCP Is Dismantling

The Economic Tsar Who Built Modern China-And Whose Reforms The CCP Is Dismantling

Authored by Heng He via The Epoch Times,

Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, the hard-edged reformer who engineered China's rise from planned-economy backwater to global manufacturing giant, died this month at the age of 97.

Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji poses during a working session at the Europe-Asia summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Sept. 22, 2002. Gerard Cerles/AFP via Getty Images

His legacy-tax centralization, mass layoffs, China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and a brief, forgotten moment of tolerance toward Falun Gong-now stands as both the foundation of modern China's wealth and a stark reminder of how easily that progress can be reversed.

Zhu's Legacy of Economic Reform

After the decade-long Cultural Revolution pushed the regime to the brink, then-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Deng Xiaoping pivoted China toward market reforms. He relied on pragmatic trial and error rather than a rigid master plan, describing his step-by-step approach as "crossing the river by feeling the stones."

Zhu executed that vision. As vice premier and premier from 1991 to 2003, China's "economic tsar" used iron-fisted reforms to engineer the country's rise, including restructuring fiscal policy, dismantling inefficient state-owned enterprises, and securing China's entry into the WTO.

Zhu was officially credited with advancing China's landmark tax-sharing reform in the 1990s, which centralized much of the country's tax revenue in Beijing. That reform undeniably strengthened the central government.

However, it stripped local governments of steady tax income, forcing them to rely on selling land to fund local budgets. Paired with state ownership of land, this shift created a "land-finance" model that drove housing prices sky-high and triggered today's ongoing property crisis.

It isn't the tax reform alone that is to blame. China's system of state and collective land ownership is what enabled large-scale land sales in the first place.

Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji at a meeting in Beijing in July 2011. Feng Li/Getty Images

The obituary also praises Zhu for safeguarding Hong Kong's status as a global financial center. Ironically, Hong Kong's diminished standing today stems largely from policies adopted under CCP leader Xi Jinping-making praise for Zhu an implicit rebuke of China's current leadership.

WTO Entry-and Its Costs

One of Zhu's most consequential achievements was leading China to join the WTO in 2001.

To prepare the country for global trade, Zhu aggressively restructured inefficient state-owned enterprises. While this boosted efficiency, it triggered mass layoffs, displacing tens of millions of workers.

Unlike post-Cold War America, China's nascent private sector was too weak to absorb the surge of unemployed labor.

U.S. President Bill Clinton (R) responds to a question as Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji looks on during a joint news conference in the Old Executive Office Building in Washington, on April 8, 1999. Tim Sloan/AFP via Getty Images

The aggressive restructuring stripped millions of workers of their livelihoods, leaving them with virtually no safety net. While the reforms eventually sparked massive economic growth, the workers who bore the cost were largely left behind without fair compensation.

The Premier Who Called Out Shoddy Construction

When the Yangtze River dikes failed during the 1998 summer floods, Zhu inspected the breach in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, and discovered that the construction had cut corners and used shoddy materials. Furious, he publicly denounced the dam as a "bastard project" and dubbed it a "tofu-dregs project"-comparing the crumbling concrete to the brittle, worthless pulp residue left over from making soy curd.

As long as corruption remains a recurring public concern in China, the term "tofu-dreg project" will likely remain part of the country's political vocabulary and a defining mark of Zhu's legacy.

The Premier Who Listened-Meeting With Falun Gong

One episode stands apart from Zhu's economic legacy. In the late 1990s, Zhu and the entire Politburo Standing Committee opposed then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin's decision to suppress Falun Gong, according to insider accounts.

More than 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gather on Fuyou Street in Beijing on April 25, 1999. Courtesy of Minghui.org

On April 25, 1999, roughly 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered peacefully near Zhongnanhai, the CCP's headquarters, in Beijing to petition the authorities for freedom of belief. Earlier in the month, dozens of practitioners in Tianjin had been detained by local police for their faith.

In a bold move for an official, Zhu met directly with representatives, listened to their grievances, and ordered the release of the detained practitioners, along with an assurance that practitioners would have a lawful environment in which to pursue their practice.

The spiritual discipline was introduced to the Chinese public in 1992 and gained widespread popularity, attracting at least 70 million practitioners by the late 1990s.

At an internal leadership meeting the following day, according to insider accounts, Zhu suggested that suppression would harm the country's image and that the regime should leave Falun Gong practitioners alone. Jiang, afraid of the practice's growing popularity, responded that doing so would bring down the Party.

Months later, Jiang launched a sweeping, nationwide campaign against Falun Gong-initiating a persecution that continues today.

Reform Can Be Reversed Overnight

Zhu's death cast an unexpected shadow over Xi's plans to commemorate Jiang with unusually high political honors, an effort intended to elevate Jiang alongside the CCP's founding generation. Instead of highlighting Jiang's legacy, Zhu's passing reminded the public that the reforms of China's most prosperous era owed far more to Zhu.

It was Zhu who was behind Deng and the CCP in launching the Shanghai Stock Exchange in December 1990-now a global financial powerhouse that hosts major state-owned enterprise listings.

Although Zhu was the official most responsible for driving China's reform era, Xi's policies have now largely dismantled that work. That contrast reveals the ultimate lesson of Zhu's legacy: under totalitarian rule, no amount of reform is secure-it can all be undone overnight.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 23:25

FDA Clears Blood Test To Detect Signs Of Alzheimer's Disease

FDA Clears Blood Test To Detect Signs Of Alzheimer's Disease

Federal regulators have cleared a blood test aimed at detecting signs of Alzheimer's disease.

The Food and Drug Administration cleared a blood test known as Elecsys pTau-217 for people aged at least 55 who have shown signs of, or have been complaining of, cognitive decline, Roche announced on Aug. 24.

The test, which can be used by primary care doctors and specialists, detects a biomarker called plasma phosphorylated tau 217. In a study that ran from 2004 to 2025 and was published in JAMA, researchers found that higher levels of the biomarker were associated with an increased risk of progression to cognitive impairment.

As Zachary Stieber reports via The Epoch Timesthe FDA has previously approved several other tests for Alzheimer's, beginning in 2025 with a test from Fujirebio Diagnostics that measures both pTau217 and another protein. Roche said its test is the first to measure a single biomarker.

"Elecsys pTau217 has the potential to transform how Alzheimer's is assessed across primary and specialty care," Dan Malarek, president and CEO of Roche Diagnostics North America, said in a statement.

"This kind of innovation can help bring diagnostic evaluation closer to patients and give clinicians greater confidence in determining the right step in their care."

Alzheimer's is a brain disorder that destroys a person's memory and thinking skills over time. People with the disease gradually become unable to perform tasks such as eating and walking. Many people begin experiencing symptoms such as memory difficulties between the ages of 60 and 70.

The Alzheimer's Association and other groups have welcomed the tests as a less invasive option than other methods, such as testing of cerebrospinal fluid.

"Each FDA clearance gives clinicians another validated option to work with when evaluating patients showing signs of cognitive impairment," Maria C. Carrillo, the association's chief science officer and medical affairs lead, said in a statement.

"That's real progress for a field that, for decades, had far too few tools to offer."

Dr. Carole Ho, executive vice president and president of Lilly Neuroscience, which helped develop the test, said in a statement that "for millions of families navigating the uncertainty of Alzheimer's disease, a timely diagnosis is the first and most critical step toward meaningful care."

Labcorp and Quest Diagnostics said they will carry the new test.

Once ordered by a doctor, patients can have their blood drawn for the test in a doctor's office, a Labcorp service center, or a Quest center.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 23:00

Brasília Makes Friends With Beijing

Brasília Makes Friends With Beijing

Authored by Jake Scott via FEE,

On a Sunday night in late July, Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and China's Xi Jinping spoke for more than an hour. It was cordial and faintly triumphant, with the two governments announcing their intention to accelerate a long-stalled China-Mercosur trade agreement. Alongside this, there are plans to deepen cooperation on satellites and critical-minerals processing, and waive short-stay visa requirements.

Image Credit: Custom image by FEE

This marks a serious change for Brazil. For years, it was Brasília that had spearheaded all resistance to exactly this sort of deal within the Mercosur bloc. The reversal was as sudden as it was shocking, taking only a fortnight to emerge, following a new American tariff taking effect and the Brazilian president deciding that the cost of alignment with the United States had, at last, exceeded its benefits.

Confronted with a United States that has moved from partner to antagonist, Brazil sees itself as neither retaliating in kind nor capitulating; it is hedging, deliberately, on several fronts at once. For many observers, this is a rational reaction to the emergence of an increasingly multipolar world. But just under a century ago, this practice had a name: "pragmatic equidistance." It was the way Brazil described its international strategy of balancing relationships with competing powers without committing to either.

The ongoing and escalating international trade war fueled by retaliatory tariffs has been the main catalyst here. In late July, a 25% tariff covering a broad range of Brazilian goods came into effect; per the Brazilian National Confederation of Industry's reckoning, nearly half of all Brazilian exports to the United States are now subject to some form of additional duty. Alongside the general tariffs, a "forced-labor" levy of 12.5% was introduced by the US to enforce bans on importing goods made with forced labor abroad, which in many ways represents a globalization of America's existing ban on Chinese goods using forced labor.

It is estimated that the hardest-hit goods carry a combined tariff of 37.5%.

President Lula's response has been to reframe the introduction of these tariffs as Washington's error rather than Brazil's, calling the tariffs a "strategic mistake" in the Washington Post, and warning that the tariffs will drive Brazilian firms to replace their American suppliers with partners elsewhere.

The rhetoric is only part of it, though: Brazil has filed for consultations with the World Trade Organization to challenge both the broad tariffs and the forced-labor levy as breaches of the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The effectiveness of these consultations is up for debate given the WTO's general paralysis, but what matters more is what this reveals for Brazil's international-relations strategy: it is pragmatic equidistance on display. Brazil has filed the complaint with the WTO, while continuing negotiations with the US.

Meanwhile, Brazil is attempting to hedge its bets by engaging with the wider global economy. This month, ApexBrasil (the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency) has launched a R$105 million ($20.5 million) program to support just shy of 2,500 exporters across 57 industries in their search for new markets, including the EU, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia.

Simultaneously, the Mercosur bloc is actively pursuing parallel deals with India, Japan, and Canada, with Brazil at the heart of this strategy. Lula has enacted the Mercosur-Singapore agreement, the bloc's first with a Southeast Asian economy, under which Brazilian exports will progressively enter duty-free.

What is also interesting is what the imposition of these tariffs has meant for Lula at home. Many Brazilians read the tariff regime as a direct attempt to influence the Brazilian elections that are due to take place in October 2026, which in turn has allowed Lula to cast himself as a defender of Brazil's sovereignty against foreign interference. This strategy has borne fruit: Lula's polling has remained steady in the mid-40s, while Flávio Bolsonaro-the only other major contender-has seen his popularity steadily decline since April 2026, meaning Lula's lead has slowly widened.

It may not have helped Bolsonaro that his presidential bid launch saw him flanked by Javier Milei and Benjamin Netenyahu, with few Brazilian politicians in the room. International campaigning is increasingly common, but in a climate skeptical of foreign interference, that move may have been more than a little tone-deaf, especially given the increasingly strained relations between Argentina and Brazil.

Not only this, but when the US sent election officials to verify the integrity of Brazil's electoral system, their visas were simply denied. For a public that is heavily resistant to the sense of being managed from abroad, this was a message that landed exactly in the way it was needed to.

Most notable, however, is Brazil's attempt to sidestep all of this via improved trade relations between the Mercosur bloc and China. Of course, Mercosur is a customs union, and so all members must negotiate jointly-which is why a proposed China agreement has been formally proposed and "under study" since around 2017. In this, Brazil had been the brake, while Uruguay had spent years advocating for the trade agreement, and pursuing its own China talks whilst the other Mercosur members stalled.

In January 2023, Lula traveled to Montevideo to argue that Mercosur should secure an EU deal first, and only then negotiate with China. With this deal signed in Asunción in January 2026-after 26 years of negotiations-and coming into effect in Brazil in April, the roadblock had been cleared. At least, on Brasília's end: Argentina's President Javier Milei is ideologically opposed to China, and will likely veto any deal pursued by Mercosur. China is already Brazil's largest trading partner, with bilateral trade valued at $188 billion, and a deal could meet Brazil's other strategic interests, such as widening agricultural access.

Regardless, Brazil has been hedging its international trade relations with careful maneuvering, and in the long run, this may be the smart move.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 22:35

Jury Weighs Whether "Darn Good Mother" Lindsay Clancy Is Criminally Liable For Murdering Her 3 Kids

Jury Weighs Whether "Darn Good Mother" Lindsay Clancy Is Criminally Liable For Murdering Her 3 Kids

Jury deliberations in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial started on Aug. 27 after five weeks of testimony.

Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, is accused of killing her three young children while her now-ex-husband was running errands in January 2023.

The 36-year-old mother faces three counts of first-degree murder, one for each child: Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan.

Judge William Sullivan gave the jury the option to instead consider second-degree murder or manslaughter.

Only a few hours of deliberations happened before Sullivan ordered a recess until 9 a.m. on Friday at the Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

No verdict was reached on Thursday.

In his closing argument on Aug. 27, Jacki Thrapp reports for The Epoch Times, that defense attorney Kevin Reddington urged jurors to find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity, alleging that “her mind was gone” during the killings and said she was in the throes of postpartum psychosis.

“This young lady is not guilty of the killing of her children because she was suffering from a disease and defect, as his honor instructed you,” Reddington told jurors in closing arguments.

“And they’re not going to be able to prove otherwise.”

Additionally, Reddington describved the accused murderer by saying: "This young lady did nothing wrong in her life. She was… a darn good mother."

Clancy admitted to strangling her kids with exercise bands in the basement of their home in a coastal Boston suburb, slicing her wrists and neck with a knife, and jumping out of a window in a failed suicide attempt, which left her paralyzed.

Her now-ex-husband, Patrick, said that months before the incident, the mother told him she was having thoughts of suicide and harming their kids.

Clancy was also prescribed medications and checked into a psychiatric hospital ahead of the incident.

Her then-husband testified that Clancy had a “normal” demeanor when he left to run errands that day.

When he returned, he found his injured wife, who informed him that the kids were in the basement.

Clancy detailed what happened in a call with him a week after the incident, he said.

“She heard a man’s voice telling her that if she didn’t do ​it now, she would lose her chance or something like that,” he testified.

Prosecutors acknowledged that Clancy suffered from mental health issues but said she carried out the killings while knowing it was wrong.

“This case is not about our mental health system or how it treats women,” Assistant ​District Attorney Jennifer Sprague told jurors.

“That’s a distraction to get you angry and passionate about an important issue, but an issue that’s not on trial here.”

Clancy faces life in prison with no possibility of parole if she is convicted on any of the first-degree murder charges she faces.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 22:10

States Race To Cut Food Stamp Errors Before Penalties Kick In

States Race To Cut Food Stamp Errors Before Penalties Kick In

Authored by Sylvia Xu via The Epoch Times,

States are racing to reduce faulty payments to food stamp recipients, in a bid to avoid penalties included in the signature budget bill passed by Republicans last year.

Starting in October 2027, states with payment error rates of 6 percent or higher must cover 5, 10, or 15 percent of SNAP benefit costs, depending on the payment error rate.

Even though the deadline is more than a year out, enrollment in the program has dropped by more than 5 million recipients as a result of the stricter rules, according to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.

Forty-one states and the District of Columbia made improper payments of more than 6 percent in 2025, according to the Department of Agriculture. Nearly half of states will have to pay more than $100 million in penalties, according to publicly available federal data.

Just nine states fell below the 6 percent error threshold in the 2025 fiscal year: Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Four states are considering dropping the food stamp program entirely as a result of the new rules, according to a survey by the American Public Human Services Association.

California, New York, and Florida would be responsible for more than $1 billion in SNAP costs if they failed to reduce their rates of erroneous payments. Texas would owe around $750 million.

For several states, however, a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill delays the cost-sharing requirement for an additional two years. Nicknamed "the Alaska Carveout," the provision allows states with improper payment rates of 13.34 percent or higher in fiscal 2025 to put off the cost-sharing requirement until fiscal 2029.

Similarly, states exceeding that threshold in fiscal 2026 can put off cost-sharing until fiscal 2030.

In addition to next year's deadline, beginning this October, states will bear 75 percent of the costs to administer the food stamp program.That's up from the 50 percent share paid by states since the program was started in 1964.

The tighter rules address a "financing mismatch" in the food stamp program, according to the Cato Institute, a policy research organization. For decades, states have processed SNAP applications and distributed benefits, while financial consequences have fallen overwhelmingly on federal taxpayers. That gives states little incentive to control waste and prevent fraud.

SNAP payment errors totaled more than $10 billion in 2025. More than 87 percent of that amount was due to overpayments.

A sign indicates that a store accepts SNAP benefits in Miami on April 21, 2026. Joe Raedle/Getty Images 'Significant Waste'

SNAP is a federally funded program, administered by the states, that provides food benefits to low-income families. In 2025, federal taxpayers spent about $103 billion on SNAP benefits and nearly $7 billion in administrative fees.

With an overall error rate of 10.6 percent, nearly one in nine food stamp allotments went to an ineligible recipient or was paid in the wrong amount.

State agencies made improper payments mainly because they did not verify recipients' eligibility criteria, such as citizenship, employment, finances, identity, residency, and household size, before making a payment, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Although the 2025 error rate decreased slightly from previous years, it still showed "significant waste" at the state level, according to a June statement from the Department of Agriculture.

Errors can stem from either state agencies or recipients. While state agencies can make mistakes when updating recipient information or processing payments, recipients may also forget to report income changes or additional family members.

Those are "honest mistakes" rather than intentional fraud, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said in a July report. Even so, the errors prove that "state accountability is severely lacking in SNAP," Rollins said in a June statement.

People line up to receive free food during a Thanksgiving food giveaway at Shiloh Mercy House in Oakland, Calif., on Nov. 24, 2025. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

After the One Big Beautiful Bill Act took effect in July 2025, participation in the food stamp program dropped 12 percent-more than 5 million-to 37 million this April, according to Department of Agriculture data released in July.

Rollins attributed the decline to the administration's crackdown on fraud and ineligible recipients.

The downward trend may continue, as 11 states reported that they may narrow eligibility policies when costs change.

State Response

Error rates might not reflect the true picture of how a state distributes money, historical reports suggest.

A 2015 audit by the Office of Inspector General found that states hired outside consultants and error review committees to mitigate individual errors identified by quality control, rather than addressing the root causes of eligibility inaccuracies.

And in 2014, the Department of Agriculture could not validate state-reported error rates in 42 of 53 state agencies because of date-quality issues.

Nonetheless, a July survey of 39 states from the American Public Human Services Association found that agencies across the country are "working incredibly hard" to reduce error rates by addressing root causes.

States reported that they will invest in workforce training, root-cause analysis, and technology upgrades to improve payment accuracy.

Virginia, which would face 15 percent cost-sharing based on its 2025 errors, has stopped self-attestation of eligibility since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed.

It previously allowed applicants to self-report expenses and incomes.

President Donald Trump shows his signature on the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” at the White House on July 4, 2025. Since the bill took effect, participation in the food stamp program dropped 12 percent, according to Department of Agriculture data released in July. Brendan Smialowski/Pool/ AFP via Getty Images

Louisiana is offering a $1,500 bonus to staff who maintain an error rate of 4 percent or lower.

The agency is also automating checks on household income to reduce unintentional errors, which account for 62 percent of the state's inaccuracies, according to the think tank Invest in Louisiana.

Mississippi is updating its 35-year-old eligibility systems to ensure program integrity, according to the Mississippi Department of Human Services.

Minnesota is investing millions of dollars to modernize decades-old technology used to administer state programs, according to the Minnesota House of Representatives.

Each change suggests that new financial accountability rules are making a difference, according to the American Enterprise Institute.

Workers and volunteers help distribute food boxes at a drive-through food distribution facility, in response to a federal government shutdown and SNAP/CalFresh food benefits delays, in City of Industry, Calif., on Nov. 5, 2025. Mario Tama/Getty Images

The American Public Human Services Association survey reported trade-offs for increased accuracy, including timeliness of benefit payments and a delay in EBT chip card implementation.

And four states indicated that they may drop out of SNAP altogether or pause participation in the program as a result of the cost-sharing provisions. The survey report did not disclose which states are considering dropping out of the program.

The American Public Human Services Association did not respond to a request for comment.

The 'Alaska Carveout'

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, states with error rates at 13.34 percent or higher will secure a two-year delay in cost sharing. The "Alaska Carveout" provision was negotiated and secured by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) prior to voting on the budget bill.

In a July 2025 letter to Alaskans, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said the state had worked hard to include delayed cost-sharing in the act because it had the highest payment error rate in the country.

The provision currently affects six states and the District of Columbia. Those include Alaska, New Mexico, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, and Oregon.

But the exemption may precipitate a reverse effect by rewarding the worst-performing states while penalizing those working to reduce their error rates, according to a July report from the Cato Institute.

To delay penalties, states could slow efforts in correcting errors and keep improper payment rates elevated, according to the think tank.

Data Sharing

In an effort to overhaul fraud, waste, and abuse in government programs, the Trump administration is pushing to codify data sharing between states and the federal government.

"We need to know where your tax dollars are going, and if the state of California and the state of New York aren't going to tell us, we need Congress to force them to tell us," Vice President JD Vance told a fraud task force roundtable on Aug. 5.

Technological verification and data-sharing measures can solve the majority of integrity problems in government programs, said Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy.

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 21:45

Mayor Of Indiana City Claims Race Discrimination After Delayed Utility Repairs

Mayor Of Indiana City Claims Race Discrimination After Delayed Utility Repairs

If a group's entire world view is built on the notion that they are perpetual victims because of their race, every time something bad happens to them they are going to go looking for racism as the scapegoat.  In other words, they are going to see "racism" under every rock and behind every tree.  They will even see racism in a power outage. 

When it come to the black community in the US, though, most of the bad things that happen in their neighborhoods are directly caused by their own behavior. 

In mid-August a powerful windstorm hit northwest Indiana. Gusts reached around 99 mph in Gary, comparable to a Category 2 hurricane.  The violent weather toppled trees onto lines, snapped hundreds of poles, and damaged transmission structures and substations.

The repairs have been difficult and slow moving.  This week NIPSCO (the Northern Indiana Public Service Company) reported that 99% of customers in the region had their power back, however, Gary Mayor Eddie Melton (Democrat and mayor since 2024) took to the left-wing media to make political hay out of the incident.

In an interview with far-left activist "journalist" Don Lemon, the mayor answered in the affirmative when asked if he thought the large black population of Gary was the reason the utility companies were slow to finish repairs, suggesting that there was a racial element to the city's longer wait time.    

Other media outlets also asserted that Gary was being singled out for slower repairs because of the community's 75% - 80% black population; comparing the event to the disastrous FEMA response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  Indiana Governor Mike Braun (a Republican) has called for an investigation into the two week power outages in some areas of the state, though he has not supported any arguments of racial discrimination.  

The delays in Gary can be easily explained by simply asking NIPSCO and checking with local police:  The company had to hold off on repairs and find extra security for their line workers after scouts identifying damages were shot at in a predominantly black neighborhood. At least one NIPSCO vehicle was hit multiple times by gunfire and the workers pulled out of the area. 

Police were called to the scene but never found the shooters. This news was widely reported, yet the Gary Mayor and the left-wing media have apparently ignored it.

As a result of the attack, the city had to coordinate with city police, Indiana State Police, and state officials to ensure crews were protected during the restoration process. The city added that ISP sent additional troopers to assist local forces.  This takes time and adds extensive delays.

In other words, the violence inherent in black neighborhoods led to their own suffering.  The inability to behave, even during a grid-down crisis, made it impossible for work crews to do their jobs. 

The opportunism of activist politicians looking for racial victim-points is a dying business.  Americans have had enough of race hysteria, BLM and the eternal quest for minority handouts and pity.  Mayor Eddie Melton and agitators like Don Lemon will likely be dragged by the public for their behavior here. 

That said, the crisis represents yet another example of leftist activists deliberately jumping to conclusions.  They are so desperate to make the public believe "systemic racism" is real that they are willing to agitate and exaggerate for the sake of narrative.  Eventually, they will end up creating the very anti-minority sentiment that they claim to be fighting against.  Keep accusing people of racism after they tried to help you, and they will stop helping you.            

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 21:20

Trump's Energy Policy Could Cost US 540 GW Of Renewables, Says NRDC

Trump's Energy Policy Could Cost US 540 GW Of Renewables, Says NRDC

By Diana DiGangi of UtilityDive

Aspects of the Trump administration’s energy policy - such as the rollback of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits, the introduction of new tariffs and offshore wind lease buybacks - could cause the U.S to lose between 390 GW and 540 GW of new wind, solar and energy storage capacity over the next decade, according to projections from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“Crucially, these lost projects are not actually replaced with other sources of new power,” the NRDC said in a Wednesday report. “At most, only 9 GW of additional gas capacity is added with Trump’s policies in place.”

The report cited near-term supply chain bottlenecks for gas turbines, volatile fuel prices, “and the general cost-competitiveness of new renewables relative to gas” as reasons for the NRDC’s low estimate for new additional gas investment. 

An August report from Global Energy Monitor counts 189 GW of gas-fired capacity currently in the announced, pre-construction, and construction phases in the U.S., a number which “nearly doubled” in the first half of the year, “but uncertainty persists about how and when this capacity gets built.”

“Two-thirds of gas-fired capacity in development globally, and more than half of projects tied to data centers, do not have a named turbine/engine manufacturer,” Global Energy Monitor said. “Nearly one-quarter of projects earmarked for data centers do not have a named start year. Turbine supply constraints, financing uncertainty, local data center moratoriums, and mounting public opposition leave the true scale of the gas power buildout uncertain.”

Amanda Levin, NRDC’s director of policy analysis, said during a Tuesday press call that the group’s modeling still anticipates “significant growth in renewables under this administration. But we don’t go nearly as far, and we lose more than half of everything that we expected to be able to build with the combination of market forces and proactive policy.”

Both Levin and the Global Energy Monitor report noted that due to order backlogs for gas turbines for combined-cycle plants, developers who need to bring firm power online quickly are turning to alternatives like simple-cycle or reciprocating engine plants, which “are less efficient than combined-cycle plants and carry higher emissions per unit of electricity generated,” Global Energy Monitor said.

Levin said this trend supports the NRDC’s position that the Environmental Protection Agency’s gas power plant emissions rule should not be repealed, though the Trump administration has announced its intention to do so.

The trend “highlights actually the value of these types of standards … which is that the market is not acting in a perfectly rational economic way,” she said. “These types of regulations could prevent this type of highly polluting type of power generation by requiring us to think about how we are building out this gas that we’re trying to build over the next few years to meet this growing load.”

The NRDC’s report also forecast an increase in power costs due to a need to “rely more heavily on the existing, higher-cost legacy fossil fuel system” in absence of new renewables generation. The power sector will spend $5 billion to $15 billion more on fossil fuels, the NRDC said, while claiming $45 billion less in IRA tax incentives, relative to the group’s January 2025 Snapshot case.

“By 2035, average household electricity rates are projected to increase by an additional 4.2% to 5.5% nationwide, relative to the January 2025 Snapshot case,” the NRDC’s report said.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 20:55

Moscow Warns It Could Target British Military Facilities In Unprecedented Statement

Moscow Warns It Could Target British Military Facilities In Unprecedented Statement

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

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

Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alberta Premier Rejects Using Oil As A Weapon Against Trump

Alberta Premier Rejects Using Oil As A Weapon Against Trump

Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump Officially Renames Lake Ontario To "Lake America"

Trump Officially Renames Lake Ontario To "Lake America"

Now, on to important matters... 

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

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

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

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

Approximately 47% of the lake lies within the US. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow The Risk

Follow The Risk

Via SchiffGold,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Average 7Y Auction Stops On Screws As Foreign Demand Drops

Average 7Y Auction Stops On Screws As Foreign Demand Drops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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

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