Zero Rss

SoftBank Attempt To Get Downsized $6 Billion OpenAi Margin Loan Stalls

One month ago, Japanese tech giant SoftBank Group, was forced to downsize plans for a $10 billion margin loan backed by its OpenAI stake after facing hesitation from some creditors. Today, it couldn't even get that done after talks with potential creditors to raise the downsized $6 billion stalled amid rising concerns about the collateral value, Bloomberg reported citing people familiar with the matter. 

As a result, the company is now considering various different fundraising options, although it could still move forward with the margin loan at a later stage, they added.

It’s unclear why the margin loan discussions stalled. SoftBank had allegedly secured some $5 billion for the loan before the development, although it was unclear if those were verbal or written commitments. Judging by the outcome, the commitments were tenuous at bet. 

According to the report, the current inaction on the margin loan comes even after some of the potential lenders who had been pitched on it - and who did not view it in an all too favorable light to start - said that they’d started to consider it in a more favorable light, after news last month that the ChatGPT creator was preparing to file for an initial public offering.

Previously some of the potential creditors pitched on the margin loan had expressed concerns about the difficulty of reaching a valuation for an unlisted company like OpenAI. As noted above, SoftBank downsized the loan’s initial target size by 40% after facing pushback from some of the potential lenders. 

“The margin loan is just one piece of a much larger puzzle, and unless we see a clear deterioration in their ability to raise funds this way, we don’t view it as a standalone red flag,” said Hua Cheng, head of Asia credit research at AllianceBernstein. “The best‑case scenario is an OpenAI IPO this year, with SoftBank offloading part of its stake to pay down debt. That would be consistent with what credit investors want.”

OpenAI filed confidentially for an IPO in the US, joining artificial intelligence rivals in tapping public markets to fund ambitious growth plans. The firm is working with Goldman  and Morgan Stanley on a potential listing as soon as in the fall. 

Loan aside, markets have witnessed a broader debate in recent months about SoftBank’s commitments of more than $60 billion to OpenAI at a time when recent breakthroughs by resurgent rival Anthropic PBC have raised doubts for some investors about the business. Within SoftBank itself, some officials had grown anxious about that commitment, according to Bloomberg.

Never one to back down, Masa Son - who nearly went broke after the dot com bubble burst - has been ramping up its broader AI plans. Late last month, it said that SoftBank plans to invest as much as €75 billion - which it does not have - to build artificial intelligence data center capacity in France, saying the country is poised to become a top European hub for AI infrastructure (narrator: it's not). 

But storm clouds are gathering again for Masa: looming in the background is a $40 billion bridge financing that supported the conglomerate’s investments in OpenAI, and which SoftBank must repay in March 2027. SoftBank has said that borrowing would likely be repaid “through the utilization of existing assets and other financing measures.”

While SoftBank has a number of potential fundraising options, it’s unclear if it would opt to use any of them. Those include potential issuance of more bonds, or possibly borrowing against other listed holdings in its portfolio, although if it can't get a margin loan against its portfolio crown jewel, one wonders what terms its other assets would garner. Its stakes include ones in Arm Holdings and Intel, whose shares have jumped 197% and 192%, respectively, so far this year amid the AI boom. 

Following the news, Softbank shares tumbled as much as 9.7% Wednesday. Even after declines, SoftBank’s stock was still up about 45% for the period, extending gains in recent weeks after the company reported a jump in quarterly profit due largely to valuation gains on its OpenAI investment. On June 1, SoftBank overtook Toyota Motor Corp. as Japan’s most valuable company by market capitalization. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 21:31

JPM Says US Defense Base Faces 'Evolve Or Die' Moment As Warfare Forever Changes

For several quarters, we have described the Trump administration's massive push to reshape the military-industrial complex, from DOGE-driven efforts inside the Department of War to reset the procurement process, to a broader pivot toward fast-moving "war unicorns," like Anduril, rather than bloated legacy defense primes.

The urgency of that transition is now capturing Wall Street's attention. JPMorgan analysts frame it as a major inflection point: America's defense industrial base must shift away from slow-moving, costly production and toward one built around speed, scale, technology, low-cost, attritable systems, and rapid battlefield iteration to preserve America's status as the world's dominant military power. 

Analyst Jahangir Aziz pointed out: 

The U.S. defense-industrial enterprise now stands at a decisive inflection point.

Success in the era ahead will be determined by its ability to deliver on three tightly interlocking imperatives: integrating the defense and commercial industrial bases, unlocking genuine mass-scale production, and unleashing innovation across the entire ecosystem.

Together, these are the enabling conditions for a force capable of meeting the relentless operational and technological pressures revealed in Ukraine, exposed by China's fusion model, and only latently present in the U.S. system today.

Aziz wrote that the post-Cold War model, centered on highly capable systems such as the F-35 stealth fighters, aircraft carriers, and advanced missile platforms, has been rendered obsolete in a world defined by China's anti-access strategy, Russia's war in Ukraine, the Iran conflict, suicide drones, cyber warfare, electronic warfare, and other low-cost precision weapons.

He said that modern warfare is increasingly defined by the ability to "sense, make sense, and act," relying on the processing of vast amounts of data and translating it into timely decisions. Such as AI 'kill chains'… 

The four major vulnerabilities in the U.S. defense industrial base that he outlined include shallow supplier depth, slow acquisition timelines, prime-contractor concentration, and fragile global supply chains, including exposure to China-linked inputs.

U.S. Defense Base Supply Chain 

He warned that major defense programs can take years to field, while critical electronics may be obsolete before they ever reach the modern battlefield.

U.S. Military's procurement process timeline

Capacity constraints notable among the primes

That lag has become a major problem as modern warfare quickly evolves across Eurasia and the Middle East, from Ukraine to the Gulf, where drones, robotics, electronic warfare, and AI-enabled kill chains are transforming how conflicts are fought. The battlefield of the 2030s will be defined less by slow-cycle platforms and more by high-speed, low-cost, increasingly automated weapons.

For the U.S. military to remain dominant on the global stage, the analyst laid out a clear framework for how that advantage must be secured: 

Our broader take, however, is that the direction of travel is likely to be shaped by the following factors. First, as mentioned, the nature of war has changed and communication and control capabilities will be fundamental in the digital age. Second, that successful defense industrial bases elsewhere, each in their own way, have largely based their success on the integration of their defense and commercial industrial bases. Third, and related to the two above, the U.S. possesses a technological edge in the digital space that is largely in the commercial sector, and integrating it into the defense ecosystem is crucial for the U.S. to maintain its military dominance.

To maintain military dominance, the U.S. defense base must secure enduring advantages by:

• Integration: Forge deeper links between defense and commercial sectors, leveraging shared platforms, open standards, and continuous feedback.

• Scale: Build modular, manufacturable systems for rapid mass production, lower barriers for new entrants, and foster a networked industrial base.

• Innovation: Drive software-led transformation, iterative hardware development, and commercial digital integration. Emerging tech leaders are reshaping autonomy, hypersonics, advanced manufacturing, satellite communications, and mission resilience.

• Policy reforms like NDAA and Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA) are promising, but must overcome entrenched acquisition processes, PPBE constraints, and persistent friction over intellectual property and data rights—barriers that can either enable competition and modularity or reinforce vendor lock-in and exclude new entrants.

America's defense industrial base stands at a crossroads. Adapting to persistent competition, rapid technological change, and mass-scale attrition warfare is not optional; it's essential. Enduring advantage will depend on integrating commercial and defense sectors, scaling production, and accelerating innovation, while dismantling deep-seated institutional and structural barriers. Failure to act risks eroding deterrence and long-term military effectiveness, with consequences for national security and global leadership.

None of this should surprise readers. We have repeatedly highlighted the rise of "war unicorns" such as Anduril and other defense-tech startups that are building affordable, scalable, and software-defined weapons systems for the modern battlefield.

pic.twitter.com/maeU5jrpDv

— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) May 9, 2026

Beyond Anduril in the war unicorn sphere, there's DZYNE Technologies developing autonomous defense systems... 

BLITZ (Attritable System)

🇺🇸 DZYNE Technologies unveiled BLITZ, a low-cost and fully autonomous Group | UAS platform. A modular system light enough for hand launch, rail launch or containerized launch such as BlitzBox.

"The Blitz platform features a foldable, packable design… pic.twitter.com/llQxsZRBEt

— Counter Unmanned Systems (@CUAS_NEWS) May 15, 2026

Anduril's rapid ascent has already captured Wall Street's attention. Goldman analysts recently sat down with company executives to better understand the story, the business model, and the role Anduril could play in the next phase of rebuilding America's next-generation defense-industrial base. The takeaway is increasingly clear: the future of U.S. military power will not be defined by legacy primes alone, but by war unicorns.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 21:20

California Gets 80% Of All Federal Cash For Illegal Immigrant Families: Report

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

California is home to the lion’s share of illegal immigrant families in the United States with children who received federal welfare assistance in 2024, according to a federal report published on June 10.

More than 80 percent of all nationwide cash assistance allocated to such households was spent in California. The report tracked $759 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) spent in 2024 on families headed by a parent living in the country illegally.

In those cases, the child qualified for federal welfare, even though the parent was excluded from the federal program because of immigration status.

“These cases receive relatively little public attention, yet ... data show that they are far from a negligible part of the program,” wrote authors David Swegle, director of the Office of Family Assistance at the Administration for Children and Families under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Alex J. Adams, assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families, in the report.

Nationally, the federal government paid 85,000 households with qualifying children receiving assistance who were living with their illegal immigrant parents in the U.S. in 2024.

“Although the benefit is formally paid on behalf of the child, it still supports a household that includes an immigration-status-ineligible parent,” the authors stated. “The significance of these cases therefore cannot be judged solely by the fact that the adult is not the formal recipient.”

The cases are also significant because they don’t have to adhere to the TANF rules requiring work expectations, such as regularly applying for jobs, and the payments aren’t limited to the federal 60-month lifetime limit, according to the report. The illegal immigrant families, therefore, can receive federal welfare until the child turns 18 years old.

Low-income American families are held to the federal welfare restrictions that require work participation and are restricted to a 60-month lifetime limit, the authors said.

The number of TANF cases involving an illegal immigrant parent reached nearly 850,000—or 10 percent of all cases—in 2024, up from nearly 6 percent in 2001.

Of those, nearly 78,000 households—or about 91 percent—also received federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the report revealed.

Most of the illegal immigrant parents—over 106,000—identified as Hispanic, while 5.3 percent were White, 4.3 percent were Black, and 2 percent were Asian, the report stated.

California was the primary driver of the national totals, according to the report.

In 2024, the state accounted for nearly 60,000 affected households, or about 70 percent of the national total of the illegal immigrant-headed households.

The state’s annual cash assistance paid to those homes reached about $618 million, or about 81 percent of nationwide spending on these cases, the authors reported.

The average monthly benefit in California for child-only households with illegal immigrant parents increased from an estimated $408 in 2013 to $875 in 2024—an increase of 114.5 percent, according to the report.

“No other state approached California’s combination of scale, concentration, and fiscal impact,” the authors stated in the report.

The next-largest states were New York, with about 7,635 households and about $47.5 million in annual cash assistance, followed by Massachusetts at about 3,777 households and about $27.3 million, and Washington at about 1,796 households and about $12.2 million, the report found.

From 2001 to 2024, the U.S. spent about $18.3 billion in TANF cash assistance on these cases involving illegal immigrant parents with welfare-recipient children, according to the report.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 20:55

MSFT Restricts Internal Use Of Claude Fable Over Data-Retention Concerns; BMO Calls Anthropic A Leading Pure-Play AI Lab

Anthropic released Claude Fable 5, a next-generation "Mythos-class" AI model, on Tuesday. The model is designed to restrict dangerous capabilities in areas such as cybersecurity and biological research after CEO Dario Amodei warned about risks last month.

The model gives users access to Anthropic's more powerful Mythos model, which the company had previously deemed too risky for public release last month. However, when users ask about sensitive topics, such as bioweapons or software exploitation, Fable 5 redirects them to the older Claude Opus 4.8 model.

"We maintain that Anthropic is the leading pure-play AI lab, combining best-in-class model intelligence with its cutting-edge, benchmark-leading Claude Fable 5 frontier model released June 9, 2026; with clear commercial traction and momentum in its enterprise offerings," BMO analyst Brian Pitz wrote in a note earlier today.

Pitz noted, "Anthropic's strengths are particularly evident in coding, agents, and enterprise, where Claude has emerged as a leading model powering tools such as Claude Code and Cowork, both of which have scaled rapidly. This reinforces the company's advantage in translating model intelligence beyond benchmark performance into viable, real-world applications—what we view as the next key battleground in AI."

The release of Claude Fable 5 prompted Pitz's team to declare, "While it is too early to crown a winner among foundation models, we see Anthropic and OpenAI as the leading pure-play AI labs today."

The Verge's Tom Warren reported that Claude Fable 5 has already raised security concerns within Microsoft, prompting the tech giant to limit internal employee access to the model due to Anthropic's data-retention requirements.

Warren said that Claude Fable 5 has been rolled out to GitHub Copilot and Foundry customers but is not available in the internal GitHub Copilot model picker used by Microsoft employees. Other Claude models remain available internally because they operate under zero data retention rules.

He said the issue centers around Anthropic's safety architecture. Claude Fable 5 requires Anthropic to retain prompts and outputs for 30 days to operate new safety classifiers, while some flagged content can be stored for up to two years if it violates usage policies. These rules could potentially create risks for confidential information.

Pitz published the current AI leaderboard overview with Anthropic's models on top (but at the time of the note, Claude Fable 5 was not included):

Western AI Models Comparison

BMO analysts see the release of new advanced models driving AI revenue to $1.8 trillion by 2032. That would mean the market has expanded at an average annual growth rate of 48% since ChatGPT launched in 2022.

Token prices have declined over the last six days.

"Adoption is becoming less about what frontier models can do and more about the price... the recent drop in the token index may reflect some of this shift toward cheaper models," Citadel analysts noted (read). 

Token prices down 6 days in a row: longest streak since January.

"Adoption is becoming less about what frontier models can do and more about the price... the recent drop in the token index may reflect some of this shift toward cheaper models"- Citadel https://t.co/n2dQtQ7rqs pic.twitter.com/OOW2uXdedj

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 10, 2026

Prices per million tokens for Western models vs. Chinese models

Tokenmaxxing. 

I hit my usage limits on my $200/month Claude Max subscription in less than 30 minutes and up to 14% in less than a minute as the session resets using Claude Fable 5. pic.twitter.com/lertUFPCC2

— mercury (@mercury_0x) June 9, 2026

Average cost per task.

Claude Fable 5 is now available in Cursor.

It sets a new state of the art on CursorBench at 72.9%, 8 points above the previous best. pic.twitter.com/L3Wm8mSYq9

— Cursor (@cursor_ai) June 9, 2026

What X users have been creating with Claude Fable 5:

Claude 5.0 built a Chinese girl a trading bot.

skip to 0:08 look at her journal, bot easily earns your monthly salary in a couple of days.

how it works:

the bot runs mean reversion on s&p 500 and nasdaq on 15-min candles, catching the small overextensions indices make every… https://t.co/V2R3gRNXTA pic.twitter.com/iRVgo1jdYF

— AdiiX (@adiix_official) June 9, 2026

Claude 5 Fable (high)

“Make a Minecraft clone”

I’m stunned.. it made this in 20 minutes, one shot.

Multiple Biomes, day time/night time, different ores, Caves & more! pic.twitter.com/jfiGsalxvx

— Chris (@ChrissGPT) June 9, 2026

Wow Claude Fable 5 is insane!!

I just created GTA 6 in ONE prompt so i don't have to wait anymore to play it

Prompt: make gta 6

It over for game studios now. pic.twitter.com/eKSx0PRTJ2

— caso (@casoxbt) June 10, 2026

claude fable 5 /goal:
help me shoot this soccer ball faster https://t.co/8eIKp2Np3x pic.twitter.com/Iac3mvVo57

— AA (@measure_plan) June 9, 2026

Claude Fable 5, 40% of Max 5x usage.

Full Mario Kart 64 type game in 2 sentence prompt.

All decoration and character models, 4 maps, music, all three game modes, UI was done by Fable 5 in a single shot, in about 15 mins.

What the fuck.#fable #anthropic pic.twitter.com/B7mTidE84U

— Kiera (@kieradev) June 9, 2026 Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 20:30

From FOMO To Oh No! Koreans Face Massive Forced Liquidations As AI Bubble Bursts

Korean retail investors’ aggressive leveraged bets on the market’s two dominant AI/Semi names - Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix - are now colliding with a sharp KOSPI correction, triggering the largest wave of forced stock sales in years and raising the specter of a self-reinforcing liquidation spiral.

At its peak last week, the benchmark KOSPI index  was up 100% for 2026, rivaling the Nasdaq 100 Index’s 102% surge in 1999 - right before the bubble burst...

Last week we warned, as levered bets soared to record highs... that 'the signal is clear: the cash buffer eroding while active leverage refuses to unwind'.

And the concentration was extremely clear with 'new lows' dominating even as KOSPI hit record-er and record-er highs...

Driven purely by retail momentum chasers, as foreigners were fleeing...

We specifically made the point that the rise of leveraged exchange-traded funds, designed to magnify daily moves, may further intensify a reversal.

Fast forward a week - and sprinkle in some vicious moves in the Korean index (down 17% from the highs in a week) - and those warnings have now punched Korean retail investors in the mouth.

As The Korea Times reports, South Korean investors are facing massive forced liquidations and margin loans come due.

Aggregated over the last few trading sessions, the figure approached ~300 billion won (~$197 million) - the largest such reading in recent memory.

The ratio of forced sales to outstanding margin loans hit 9.1% on that Friday, the highest of the year.

Source

These sales occur mechanically: investors who borrowed from brokerages (typically putting up 30–40% equity) must settle by T+2.

When equity falls below maintenance levels, brokerages automatically sell at the opening call auction - often locking in losses and adding downward pressure that can trigger further margin calls.

“The biggest risk during a sharp market decline is not the drop in prices itself, but forced liquidation,” said Kim Seok-hwan, an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities.

“Investors are advised to reduce leverage, hold more cash and focus on high-quality assets.”

And it is far from over as margin lending balances remain near record highs.

According to the Korea Financial Investment Association, outstanding margin loans climbed to a record 38 trillion won on May 29. Although the balance eased to 37.8 trillion won as of Monday, it remained at an elevated level.

“It is estimated that much of the recently increased margin financing entered the market when KOSPI was trading in the 8,200-8,400 range,” said Noh Dong-gil, an analyst at Shinhan Securities.

“Investors often begin trimming positions voluntarily once losses approach 15 percent, while the risk of forced selling rises significantly around the 20 percent loss level.”

This unwind is the direct consequence of retail investors aggressively piling into Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix using both traditional margin debt and the new wave of single-stock leveraged ETFs launched in late May 2026.

What began as a retail-driven, leverage-fueled melt-up concentrated in two AI stocks is transitioning into a classic de-leveraging event.

The new single-stock 2x ETFs and record margin debt have amplified both the upside and now the downside.

Foreign outflows have provided the fundamental counter-pressure, while mechanical forced sales are adding the accelerant.

Retail leverage that felt like genius in May is now being stress-tested in real time - with the Korean market’s extreme concentration making the moves especially violent.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 19:40

CBP Chief Says Border Wall Should Be Finished By Late 2027

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. southern border wall will be completed by the end of next year, said U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Rodney Scott at an event on Tuesday.

Scott told an audience in Washington that the “primary border wall ... will be done by the end of 2027,” adding that there are a “couple of gaps.” The wall will stretch from San Diego to Texas near the Gulf of Mexico.

“The only places we’re not building a border wall is places where we’ve made a conscious decision that we don’t need it,” Scott said at the Center for Immigration Studies conference, adding that Big Bend National Park is an example of a “super remote area” with “some very, very high cliffs” that preclude construction of the wall.

Other parts of the border wall, including a secondary wall and a barrier in the Rio Grande, will be complete by July or August 2028, Scott said. The barrier will also be backed by electronic surveillance and other systems, he added.

The border wall, which was a campaign promise made by President Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign, is designed to curb illegal immigration and drug trafficking into the United States.

But Scott said the wall isn’t enough to completely stop either one. Drug traffickers and human smugglers are using tunnels to find workarounds, he said.

“That is their business model, and drones definitely make it easier,” he said, adding, “They’re also smuggling narcotics across with drones.”

On the first day of his second term in January 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of War and Department of Homeland Security secretaries to “take all appropriate action to deploy and construct temporary and permanent physical barriers to ensure complete operational control of the southern border.” The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, approved by Congress in July 2025, included $46.5 billion for border wall construction.

Apprehensions of people crossing the border illegally in the Big Bend Sector fell 74 percent in fiscal 2025 compared with fiscal 2023, according to the CBP. Autonomous surveillance towers have also significantly reduced traffic, according to the agency.

Last month, the CBP released data marking a year of zero releases at the southern border, and apprehensions of illegal immigrants have dropped to their lowest levels in more than three decades.

The agency said that the Border Patrol recorded 8,943 apprehensions along the southwest border in April, a 94 percent decline from the monthly average under the Biden administration and 96 percent below the peak in December 2023.

Rodney Scott, commissioner for Customs and Border Protection, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on April 16, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

“The U.S. Border Patrol released zero illegal aliens into our country again this month, unlike April 2024, when more than 68,000 were released under President [Joe] Biden,” Scott said in a statement in May.

The Trump administration has also prioritized deporting illegal immigrants.

The White House’s border czar, Tom Homan, said in an interview in May that the administration is moving to increase deportations and that around 800,000 illegal aliens have been removed from the country since Trump took office again.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 19:15

Goldman Flags Tightening Power Grid In Texas Amid Rapid Data Center Growth

Goldman shared some of their thoughts on the tightening of power markets as the decade comes to a close. ERCOT’s own Preliminary Long-Term Load Forecast now sees baseline peak-summer demand (excluding most medium and large loads) growing at a 5.2% average annual rate from 2026 through 2030. This is already well above the 3.4% realized average of 2022-2025. 

Layer in the medium- and large-scale additions, overwhelmingly data centers plus crypto and industrial electrification, and the forecast explodes to 31% average annual peak-summer growth.

Put that in national context and Texas alone would account for 39% of total U.S. peak-summer power demand by 2030, up from just 11% last year, assuming the rest of the country continues its slower recent trajectory. 

Goldman analysts flag a 200 GW queue of large-load applications sitting with the grid operator. Even if only 10% of that queue ultimately energizes, it would still lift the region’s demand growth rate above 9% against an expected 6% annual increase in effective generation capacity over the same window. That math points to a high probability of a critically tight market unless supply-side responses accelerate sharply in the next few years.

A quick look at Goldman's recent nuclear report for last month shows the large grid-scale reactor industry is still sleeping in the US…

Earlier we highlighted ERCOT’s disclosure that multiple clusters of proposed hyperscale loads and crypto facilities failed voltage ride-through testing. Four of those groups alone could shed more than 5,000 MW (Boston-sized chunks of demand) during routine transmission disturbances. That is the demand-side mirror of the Spain blackout dynamics we referenced, where rapid disconnections and inadequate reactive power support turned a manageable event into a cascading failure.

ERCOT is not alone in upgrading its outlook. PJM lifted its 10-year average annual peak-summer demand growth forecast from 3.1% to 3.6% earlier this year. MISO raised its 20-year view from 1.6% to 2% in April, more than doubling its realized 2022-2025 average of 0.8%. 

These changes reflect the same AI-driven commercial load surge now visible in the data. Goldman shows the U.S. commercial sector posting the strongest year-over-year power demand growth in January-February at +1.8%, while industrial and residential lagged. Nationally, data-center capacity additions are accelerating, with Texas, Virginia, Arizona, Ohio, Indiana, and Georgia leading the way on a year-over-year basis.

On the generation side, the picture is mixed. Solar continues its seasonal ramp with solid year-over-year capacity additions. 

Natural gas-fired output has been responsive. But nuclear has been weaker due to maintenance outages, hydro is suffering from drought across more than half the country, and coal remains under pressure. 

Construction employment tied to data-center and utility work is rising sharply, which is welcome, but employment is not the same as energized megawatts and reinforced lines.

We noted flags starting to pop up regarding the lack of construction industry manpower back in October…

And then there is the issue of where the US gets 300,000 engineers to build all this missing power supply by 2030 https://t.co/a18crhqZ4v pic.twitter.com/tinW8SHDwM

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 14, 2025

And we also noted other analysts starting to recognize the same body count issue – the lack of engineers and other skilled laborers to build the energy generating side of the grid. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 18:50

The Potemkin Ballot

Authored by Spyridon Andrews via American Greatness,

The only completely predictable result of an election in a Western democracy is election fraud.

Fraud is so fundamental to Western democracies that it is fair to say that democracies exist in name only. In fact, elections have become so essential to illegitimate power that they are almost the surest path to subvert the will of the people. Potemkin elections are essential ways for the ruling class to mask that they are truly in control. The notion of the divine right, or right of the aristocracy to rule, died a relatively quick death after the Renaissance. And the 14th-century political Renaissance led by figures such as Leonardo Bruni, the brilliant Renaissance historian who later became chancellor of Florence, brought back the notion of the Roman Republic to the modern era. Florence reinvented free elections of the citizenry; however, the notion of citizenry was limited compared to today.

Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall of Florence, which sits on the Piazza della Signoria.

Uniquely, Florence had no king, duke, or hereditary monarch during much of the Renaissance. Power was vested in the city’s executive governing council, or the signoria. The Council was led by a chief magistrate, known as the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia or justice. There were various legislative and advisory councils, as well as guilds that represented merchants, banks, craftsmen, and professionals.

In order to avoid “corruption,” the Florentines used the lottery system. When a government position opened, names were drawn from bags. As a further precaution, terms were short, only two months, and rotations were constant.

Cosimo the Elder or “Father of the Fatherland.” Posthumous portrait attributed to unknown 16th-century Florentine workshop artists.

Enter the Medici. It was Cosimo de’ Medici who transformed the system into the dynasty that is famous in history. The Medici controlled the largest banking network in Europe and, consequently, extended credit to many of the continent’s most powerful families. The success of a merchant’s business relied upon loans or assistance from the Medici. As a result, patronage opportunities were abundant, and the Medici had a ready-made army of supporters. They also had the support of the intelligentsia through their patronage of literature and the arts. There was no need for Cosimo to be elected to office or even to be seen all that much.

This, however, did not prevent the Medici from influencing electoral outcomes in their favor. Although appointments were decided by lot, there was an art to ensuring that the correct names got dropped into the lottery in the first place. Committees controlled by the Medici determined which citizens were eligible to be elected to posts. So, although a genuine lottery was held, the candidate pool was not so genuine. Florence, on the surface, held free elections and had councils, debates, and all the symbolism of republicanism. But it was controlled by the family who controlled the money supply.

If this sounds familiar, this is because the Medici’s influence extended well beyond their patronage of literature and the arts. During the reign of Louis XIII in France, Cardinal Richelieu never wore a crown. Nevertheless, he controlled foreign policy, court appointments, political alliances, and intelligence networks.

William “Boss Tweed” (1823–78)

In America in the 19th and 20th centuries, the New York machine at Tammany Hall ran the show. The outward constitutional order remained in place, while the political bosses determined the candidates who could run, who received the patronage jobs, and who was awarded the political contracts. While Boss Tweed was an important part of the machine while he was alive, the machine outlived him, and the candidates became fungible.

The same type of arrangement was in place in Chicago from the time of Mike McDonald in the late 19th century all the way to the Daleys in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. McDonald and his political machine financed businesses and candidates, controlled networks, and made or broke political careers. McDonald was succeeded by the duo of Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna and John Coughlin, an unlikely pair of Irish mobsters who ran the gambling houses and brothels, owned the police, and made sure that their business interests were fully accommodated by the mayors they owned. While neither Boss Tweed nor Mike McDonald were above stuffing ballot boxes or breaking a few legs to ensure the appropriate result, those were matters that only needed to be resorted to in dire emergencies.

The Old Federal Building, where Washington took the First Presidential Oath of Office in 1789.

The modern-day Rothschilds are perhaps less interesting as a secret cabal than as the outrageously wealthy banking family that can make or break global banks and governments. In the late 18th century, Mayer Amschel Rothschild placed his five sons in the European financial centers of London, Frankfurt, Paris, Vienna, and Naples. From there they went on to finance governments, underwrite sovereign debt, fund railroads and infrastructure, and move money across borders as fast as their clients needed it. And it is indisputable that the Rothschilds were fundamental in creating the modern state of Israel—from funding settlements to funding the Israeli parliament building.

It is not simply that the wealthy classes needed additional help to grab political power, but they sure received it in the Citizens United case in 2010. A majority of conservative justices held that political speech is protected by the First Amendment and that the identity of the speaker, whether it is a corporation, union, or nonprofit, does not eliminate that protection. While that was all very noble, the Supreme Court further held that independent expenditures are different from direct campaign contributions and that the states could not limit such spending. Needless to say, political spending exploded, and Super PACs, industry associations, labor-backed organizations, and ideological advocacy groups began buying up politicians and votes like a Blue Light Special at K-Mart.

Politicians selling themselves like hookers on South Figueroa Street in L.A. is not enough these days. Donors need insurance policies for the peace of mind that their investments do not go to waste. And so, they are not above good old-fashioned voter fraud. The alleged appearance of 24,000 votes from nowhere in the Los Angeles Mayoral primary election this week is a testament to the new era of “mail-in balloting,” which is about as legitimate as a Florida time-share. It was the midnight deliveries of mail-in ballots in swing districts during the 2020 election that led to the Capitol protests on January 6, 2021—and the perception by nearly half of Americans that the election was outright stolen.

The utter ignorance of the history of election fraud in the United States is perhaps the major reason that anyone would believe that our federal elections are trustworthy. Apart from the outright purchase of votes in Congress, American history has consistently had patterns of repeat voting, padded rolls, absentee-ballot abuses, vote buying, dead voters, false or corrupted registrations, not to mention election-official complicity, patronage pressure, counting manipulation, control of election officials, and downright intimidation. Election fraud is not prosecuted as often as it should be, but it is prosecuted with regular frequency. The 1982 Illinois Election Fraud cases, combined with the Greylord investigations and indictments of federal and local judges, have clearly demonstrated the infiltration of organized crime into the courtroom. And allegations of organized crime connections between presidents such as Kennedy and Nixon have swirled for decades.

This does not account for the recent charges and countercharges regarding gerrymandering, the reluctance to impose voter ID requirements, allegations regarding dark-money pools, and “legal” lobbying, which is considered outright bribery in other countries. Chicago’s corruption runs so deep that the residents of the city just assume that’s the way it’s all supposed to work. In fact, I hear Chicagoans complain that the system ran better when there was more of a sticker price on what it cost to fix a traffic ticket, reduce a murder charge, or buy an alderman’s vote on a zoning permit.

The demands of a democratic society have equally necessitated workarounds for unsavory results that stem from the will of the people. It was not the will of the people that brought us into either of the World Wars in the 20th century—certain workarounds had to be put into place. Although the cost of life, around 27,000 Americans, was regrettable during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive during World War I, the conveniently placed Zimmerman telegram alleging a German–Mexican alliance was necessary to bring us into the war in the first place.

American Doughboys in the final year of the Great War, likely captured at the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.

Pearl Harbor was regrettable, but apparently our leaders determined that the loss of life was necessary in order to make a highly unpopular war seem necessary. Americans did not vote to intern Japanese citizens, nor did they vote to infect black soldiers with syphilis. But our politicians knew better. In the last two wars, the threat of weapons of mass destruction has led to wars that politicians wanted to fight against Iraq and Iran. And so democratic government does not just necessitate vote buying and election tampering, but also an occasional well-placed lie in order to meet the demands of governing in accordance with the desires of the moneyed interests.

A cynical interpretation might hold that extending suffrage to women and the poor was less about social justice than about creating larger, more easily mobilized voting blocs. Vast voter pools, especially ones that can be purchased through government programs, motivated by single issues or through perceived grievances brought on by other groups, are terrific tools to stay in power.

When these issues become supercharged with emotion, usually through manipulation of media sources or outright lies, they usher forth passionate armies that stand for a candidate or a political party. A much more economical way to hold a voter base together is to convince them that Neil, who coaches your son’s little league team, is a fascist because he’s a Republican, or that Ahmed, who runs the 7-11 next to the dry cleaner, is an existential threat.

One could be cynical and believe that our political class has nothing but disdain for their voters and that they are capable of literally any act to stay in power. One could even believe that because they have seemingly lied to us about everything from the reasons to go to war, the origin of a global pandemic financed by our own government, or the extent of government surveillance by the NSA, they would be capable of anything.

We could say that. But that would be undemocratic.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 18:25

Bank Of Japan Governor Ueda Hospitalized, Will Miss June Meeting

Bank of Japan's 74-year-old Governor Kazuo Ueda has been hospitalized for medical treatment and will miss the June 15 to 16 ‌policy meeting, the central bank said on Wednesday. It is the first time for the governor, who chairs the BOJ's policy discussions, to miss a scheduled meeting since the central bank began deciding policy ​under the current arrangement in 1998.

The governor will submit a written statement on his view on policy but will not participate in ​next week's vote, the BOJ said in a statement.  Ueda is expected to remain in hospital for about two ⁠weeks getting treatment for an infected liver cyst, work remotely and attend the next July 30 to 31 policy meeting, the central bank said.

The central bank is widely expected to raise interest rates next week to levels unseen in three decades to counter the plunging yen, crashing bond prices and reverse soaring inflationary pressures from the Iran war.

Ueda's hospitalization is unlikely to affect next week's decision, with a rate hike highly anticipated, but it will complicate the BOJ's communication ​about what may come next, said Mari Iwashita, executive rates strategist at Nomura Securities.

"With Ueda's absence, the BOJ may decide not to send clear signals on the future rate path. Given uncertainty on how long it may take for the governor to fully recover, it's also become more unclear on whether the BOJ would hike again this ​year."

The BOJ said that Deputy Governor Ryozo Himino will preside over the rate review in place of Ueda, while the other deputy governor, Shinichi Uchida, is set to ​host the post-meeting press conference. 

The announcement follows one the BOJ made in late May that its Deputy Governor Uchida had been discharged from hospital after recovering ‌from leukaemia ⁠treatment. 

The yen was roughly steady on the day against the dollar, which traded at 160.5, a level traders watch closely as it has triggered official intervention in the past.

Since taking control of the BOJ in 2023, Ueda has spent the first half of his tenure dismantling the remnants of his predecessor's massive stimulus as rising commodity and energy costs and intensifying labor shortages propelled inflation above the BOJ's 2% target.

The BOJ is now at a ​critical juncture as it moves away from ​withdrawing stimulus in baby steps ⁠towards fighting inflation - something it has not done for decades.

Ueda's hawkish speech earlier this month underscored the BOJ's changed narrative that led markets to near fully price in the chance of a June rate hike, yet which saw no upside for the yen. At the previous meeting in ​April, three of the BOJ's nine board members already voted in favor of hiking its short-term policy rate ​to 1% from 0.75%, ⁠and since then two more, Junko Koeda and Kazuyuki Masu, called for a near-term rate hike.

However, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, known as an advocate of loose fiscal and monetary policy, has voiced reservations over the BOJ's rate-hike plans (because like every other politicians, she is focused on the "wealth effect" first and foremost, even if it means galloping inflation).

Some analysts said Ueda's health issue may offer Takaichi an opportunity to influence the BOJ policy including ⁠by selecting ​his successor if the governor were to step down. Yet according to Norihiro Yamaguchi, senior economist at Oxford Economics ​in Tokyo, such a scenario now appeared unlikely.

"That said, it is also true that Takaichi is likely to appoint a more dovish person if she were to appoint a new ​governor," he said.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 18:00

RFK Jr. Responds To "Explosion" in Tick-Borne, WEF-Touted Alpha-Gal Syndrome

Authored By Ben Bartee at Armageddon Prose Substack

In response to a question on the topic posed by ZeroHedge reporter Liam Cosgrove, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently addressed the astronomical increase in alpha-gal syndrome, a tick-borne infection that causes potentially life-threatening allergic reactions to red meat:

“Last week, I went to New Hampshire… to address this explosion of alpha-gal, and we take it very seriously. One of the epicenters is Martha’s Vineyard where 50% of the adult population is now affected. It is really a devastating disease. You can’t eat red meat for the rest of your life. We are looking at medications that can serve as both prophylactics and also potentially cures for it. We’re funding those studies now and we’re working with the companies that are making those. We’ve also launched a major effort on tick control through a number of different strategies that address deer populations… Three ticks that are causing these, most of the tick-borne diseases, all breed on deer. And we’re looking at strategies for eliminating their breeding capacity.”

Secretary Kennedy tells me HHS is addressing the “explosion of Alpha Gal,” a tick-borne disease that leaves people with a life-long allergy to red meat.

Efforts include searching for a cure and reducing tick populations.

In the quoted tweet, you’ll see NYU “bioethics” professor… https://t.co/D1lLclY4bt pic.twitter.com/fWXxqmXqmL

— Liam Cosgrove (@cosgrove_iv) June 8, 2026

Related: Bird Flu Engineered to Infect Humans Could Be Lab- Produced ‘in Months,’ Former CDC Director Says

Over the last month, a groundswell of anecdotal accounts and videos from farmers and ranchers across the country have flooded social media, depicting massive tick infestations on their properties.

Man films strange box of ticks dropped in woods -- one of many such reports pic.twitter.com/CWtMpaDzAm

— Ben Bartee (@BenBartee) May 20, 2026

Apart from how to effectively treat alpha-gal syndrome for those infected, another questioning hanging in the air, as posed by Cosgrove but unaddressed by Kennedy, is whether the documented 5,566% increase in Alpha-Gal over the past ten years is an organic phenomenon or, like COVID, a man-made one.

“THE TICK THING IS NUTS” – JOE ROGAN & CONGRESSMAN TIM BURCHETT DON'T MINCE WORDS: “It’s Bill Gates.”

Joe Rogan: “A good friend of mine got bitten by a lone star tick and now has Alpha Gal syndrome. He can ONLY eat eggs and vegetables.” One bite. No more red meat. Ever. Your… pic.twitter.com/vfOaNbTIFp

— Valerie Anne Smith (@ValerieAnne1970) May 24, 2026

As I reported in detail at Armageddon Prose in May against this backdrop, the national security state has a long history of weaponizing ticks at notorious research facilities like Fort Detrick and Plum Island, including proposals to dump diseased ticks on Cuban sugar plantations in the 1960s in order to undermine its economy, with the ultimate aim of triggering regime change.

Via Principia Scientific:

“During the Cold War, the United States maintained an active biological warfare program from 1943 until President Richard Nixon ordered its termination in 1969.

Centered at Fort Detrick in Maryland*, the program explored various delivery systems for pathogens, including insects such as fleas, mosquitoes, and ticks. One notable experiment, Operation Big Itch in 1954, involved releasing approximately 670,000 fleas from cluster munitions to test their viability as disease vectors.

... with some work reportedly conducted at Plum Island, where large colonies of both soft and hard ticks were maintained. Wildlife, including deer and birds, moved freely between the island and the Connecticut mainland, creating potential pathways for pathogens to reach local populations. The program gained additional momentum during the Kennedy administration. In response to Cuba’s alignment with the Soviet Union, the United States launched Operation Mongoose, a covert campaign aimed at undermining Fidel Castro’s regime. Some proposals reportedly examined the use of disease-carrying insects to target Cuban agricultural workers, particularly in sugarcane and tobacco fields, in an effort to disrupt the island’s economy. While the full extent of these plans remains debated, declassified documents confirm that Project 112, authorized in 1962, expanded biological weapons testing and included research on mass insect production.

Between 1966 and 1969, the U.S. military released 282,800 ticks labeled with radioactive carbon-14 along bird migration routes in Virginia. The goal was to study how ticks—and the diseases they might carry—could spread across wide areas. Notably, lone star ticks, previously not found north of the Mason-Dixon line, soon established populations on Long Island.”

Related: After Years of Covering For Fauci, Washington Post Acknowledges Beagle Torture

According to the account of a retired CIA black ops agent interviewed by investigative reporter Kris Newby in “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons,” the covert weaponized tick program actually went live during Operation Mongoose, in which he participated.

Via The Spectator:

“On December 18 last year, Donald Trump signed into law an order to 'review and report on biological weapons experiments on and in relation to ticks [and] tick-borne diseases.' The investigation is long overdue but even so, the facts it uncovers will come as a shock to many. A growing body of evidence shows that during the Cold War ticks were tinkered with and used as delivery mechanisms for biological warfare agents. And these weaponized ticks may have been released both intentionally and unintentionally on an unsuspecting public by the US military…

I met a man in his seventies who had been in black ops in the CIA. He told me that the strangest thing he ever did was drop infected ticks on Cuban sugarcane workers in 1962. I verified the details of what he told me – it turned out that the dropping of infected ticks in Cuba was a subproject of Operation Mongoose, which aimed to weaken Fidel Castro’s position in Cuba by destroying its economy... The US entomological bioweapons program was directed by the Chemical Corps, headquartered at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The program was almost as large and secretive as the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. In 1951, Willy Burgdorfer, a medical zoologist with experience working with ticks and Q fever, was recruited from Basel, Switzerland, to conduct feasibility studies for Fort Detrick. His lab was based in the Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton, Montana, which was home to the largest living tick collection in the US. Burgdorfer often traveled to Fort Detrick, where he worked alongside former Nazi biowarfare scientists who had been allowed into the country through Operation Paperclip.”

Benjamin Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile (now available in paperback), is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 17:40

Apollo's President Warns AI Is Coming For Professional Services Jobs Next

First AI came for Software, disrupting its various offshoots and sparking a brutal bear market at the start of the year before a powerful squeeze sent software stocks surging in recent weeks. Now, it's the turn of professional services, including law firms, accountancies and consulting firms, which according to Apollo’s co-president, Scott Kleinman are likely to be the next sector to face disruption from artificial intelligence.

Investors have had their worries focused on the software sector, and the extent to which AI will upend these businesses. But going forward, buyout shops should be looking at investments in professional services, Kleinman said on a panel at the SuperReturn conference in Berlin on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg. 

“Apologies to the lawyers, accountants, consultants in the room, but I do think that’s a place where you’re going to see a lot of pressure,” Kleinman said, noting that Apollo is now "massively underweight" software and is directing capital toward critical infrastructure and less exposed business, reflecting a defensive credit stance. 

Private equity shops have funneled money into professional services firms, particularly accountancies, in recent years as many have looked for new sources of cash. Cinven, for example, bought a majority stake in Grant Thornton’s UK business in 2024.

Going forward, buyout firms should evaluate whether any professional services companies they’ve invested in can be replaced or supplemented by AI, Kleinman said.

Which is not to say that AI is done with software: Kleinman said that the software sector still poses an issue for private equity firms, many of which haven’t marked down their investments in the space at the same rate as the public markets have.

While software companies aren’t “going away,” ones that are “AI-native” are “going to put enormous pressure over time on legacy software businesses,” he said.

“The private equity industry fell in love with software, decided to pay ungodly prices for these businesses on the assumption that they keep growing forever and their margins would keep expanding forever,” Kleinman said. “But as we know, nothing grows to the moon. It’s a question of what is the next buyer going to pay for these companies and is it going to look anything like the multiple you paid for it?”

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 17:20

Even CNN Admits Democrats Are Cooked On Immigration

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity,

CNN's latest "Run the Numbers" segment lays bare a brutal reality for Democrats: their radical immigration stance has left them bleeding support across every demographic, while President Trump racks up historic approval on the issue.

The numbers don't lie, and even the network long accused of carrying water for open-border advocates is now spotlighting just how badly the party has botched border security.

One anchor stated plainly what millions of Americans have known for years: "Democrats have a PROBLEM."

?? JUST IN - CNN just completely BOMBED Democrats on their disastrous border policies.

"Democrats have a PROBLEM." ??

"Donald Trump has been THE MOST consequential president on immigration policy in the 21st century."

"Republicans are MORE trusted on immigration by +8,... pic.twitter.com/GO4gJr6uJf

— The Patriot Oasis™ (@ThePatriotOasis) June 9, 2026

The discussion quickly turned to the dramatic reversal in public trust. CNN highlighted that Republicans now hold an edge where Democrats once led comfortably.

"Republicans are MORE trusted on immigration by +8, and Republicans with a +16 LEAD among independents."

This marks a complete flip from June 2018, when Democrats held a +7 point advantage on the issue. The shift among independents is especially devastating for a party that has long relied on that group to paper over its extremes.

The correspondent didn't stop at party trust. The segment emphasized that President Trump stands apart historically: "Donald Trump has been THE MOST consequential president on immigration policy in the 21st century."

That assessment lands with extra force because it comes amid Trump's second term, where his America First approach has produced tangible results on enforcement, deterrence, and restoring order after years of record illegal crossings, fentanyl deaths, and strained communities.

CNN's analysis didn't end with trust metrics. Another graphic drove the point deeper into Democratic territory. A majority of voters across the board want the party to abandon its far-left positions.

The data showed 59% of all voters believe Democrats should move to the center on immigration. Only 18% want the party to move further left. Breaking it down by group revealed the breadth of the rejection: White voters without college degrees at 67%, White voters with college degrees at 59%, Latino voters at 54%, and Black voters at 51%.

Every major racial group in America also agrees that Trump and Republicans have a much better immigration policy than radical Democrats who want open borders. This isn't a niche complaint from one corner of the electorate. It is a broad consensus that the party's embrace of lax enforcement and sanctuary policies has backfired spectacularly.

The segment also zeroed in on presidential approval ratings specifically tied to immigration. The results were unambiguous.

"TAKE A LOOK! Guess who has the HIGHEST approval on immigration? It's Donald John Trump who has the highest approval on immigration - 42%!"

The graphic compared 21st century presidents at the equivalent point in their second terms. George W. Bush sat at 30%. Barack Obama registered 36%. Trump leads them all at 42%.

"Donald Trump has the highest approval of ANY president on immigration at this point in a second term," CNN noted.

?? BREAKING - President Trump has the HIGHEST APPROVAL rating on immigration among Presidents in the 21st century.

"TAKE A LOOK! Guess who has the HIGHEST approval on immigration?"

"It's Donald John Trump who has the highest approval on immigration - 42%!"

"Donald Trump has... pic.twitter.com/n6sDbVe7DY

— The Patriot Oasis™ (@ThePatriotOasis) June 9, 2026

These figures reflect more than abstract popularity. They measure results. Trump's policies - enhanced vetting, cooperation with local law enforcement, physical barriers where needed, and ending catch-and-release - have restored a measure of control that previous administrations surrendered. The public notices when chaos at the border subsides and when the rule of law reasserts itself.

What makes CNN's presentation particularly stinging for Democrats is how it undercuts years of media and activist framing. For too long, any serious discussion of border security was dismissed as xenophobic or extreme. Now the numbers reveal that position as the true outlier.

Voters are not demanding open borders or the decriminalization of illegal entry. They are demanding basic sovereignty and safety. When majorities of Black and Latino Americans join White voters in telling Democrats to moderate, the party's coalition shows visible cracks.

The radical wing that pushed "abolish ICE" rhetoric and resisted even modest enforcement measures has dragged the entire party into a ditch. CNN's own data confirms it. The 18% who want Democrats to move further left represent a loud but tiny faction that has outsized influence in primaries and party infrastructure. The other 82% are sending a clear message: enough.

This isn't about partisan score-settling. It is about measurable failure. Communities across the country absorbed the costs of unchecked illegal immigration for years - overwhelmed hospitals, schools stretched thin, wage pressure on working-class Americans, and tragic losses to fentanyl and crime. Trump's return to the White House has begun reversing that damage. The polling captures the relief and approval that follows.

With midterm elections approaching, these trends carry heavy implications. Immigration remains a top-tier issue for voters, and the party that owns the stronger record on it holds a structural advantage. Republicans' +16 lead among independents is not a minor detail. It is a warning sign for any Democrat hoping to flip seats in competitive districts.

The data also exposes the limits of identity politics on this issue. The assumption that minority voters would automatically back lax policies has collapsed under scrutiny. Real-world consequences - cartel violence spilling over, strained public resources, and threats to social cohesion - cut across racial lines. Voters prioritize safety and fairness over ideological slogans.

CNN's willingness to air these numbers suggests the political reality has become too obvious to ignore, even inside institutions that once minimized the border crisis. When a network that spent years downplaying record encounters now runs segments titled around "Democrats' PROBLEM ON IMMIGRATION," the shift in the Overton window is undeniable.

President Trump's approach has always centered on putting American citizens first. Secure borders, legal immigration that serves the national interest, and accountability for those who break the rules are not radical ideas. They are the baseline for any functional nation. The polling CNN presented proves that a growing share of the country agrees - including many who once leaned the other way.

Democrats face a choice. They can continue following the activist base into further isolation, or they can confront the data their own preferred media outlets are now forced to acknowledge. So far, the party's direction suggests denial remains the dominant strategy. That path leads to more losses.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 17:00

Oracle Tumbles After Mixed Results, Capex Comes In Hot; Warns Another $40BN Debt/Equity Capital Raise Coming

With tech stocks cracking for a 3rd straight day, and with the broader market closing at the lows in a surprising sign of weakness, many were looking to ORCL to kickstart the AI euphoria which has been oddly missing in recent days (and which send NVDA stock briefly just below the key level of $200). Well, for those hoping that ORCL would be the much needed spark, they may be disappointed after ORCL stock pumped in kneejerk reaction (despite Q4 earnings that were mixed at best).... then dumped after the company announced it would be joining the circus of companies selling debt/equity to fund its runaway capex.

Here is what ORCL reported for the just concluded fiscal Q4:

• Adjusted EPS $2.11 vs. $1.70 y/y, beating estimates of $1.97
• Adjusted revenue $19.18 billion, +21% y/y, beating estimates of $19.09 billion

The revenue breakdown was mixed at best, with ugly Software and SaaS prints offset by ok Infrastructure revenue"

• Cloud Infrastructure revenue (IaaS) $5.79 billion, +93% y/y, beating est $5.72 billion 
  • Cloud Infrastructure revenue (IaaS) in constant currency +92%, estimate +91.7%
• Cloud revenue (IaaS plus SaaS) $9.91 billion, +48% y/y, missing est $10 billion
  • Cloud revenue (IaaS plus SaaS) in constant currency +46%, estimate +47.4%
• Cloud Application revenue (SaaS) $4.13 billion, +12% y/y, missing est $4.17 billion
  • Cloud Application revenue (SaaS) in constant currency +10%, estimate +10.8%
• Software revenue $6.82 billion, -2.1% y/y, beating est of $6.88 billion
  • Software Support revenue $4.94 billion, -0.4% y/y, estimate $4.98 billion
• Software License revenue $1.88 billion, -6.3% y/y, missing est $1.93 billion
• Hardware revenue $924 million, +8.7% y/y, beating est $836.2 million
• Service revenue $1.52 billion, +13% y/y, estimate $1.41 billion

Going down the line: 

• Adjusted operating income $8.59 billion, +22% y/y, beating est $8.27 billion
• Adjusted operating margin 45% vs. 44% y/y, beating est 43.5%

As for ORCL's pride and joy, namely remaining performance obligations, or RPO backlog, it rose to $638 billion vs. $138 billion y/y. Good luck collecting on that.

Looking at fiscal Q1 ahead, the company was quite cheerful of course:

• Total Revenues are expected to grow from 27% to 29% (in both constant currency and USD)
• Total Cloud revenue is expected to grow between 57% and 63% in constant currency and is expected to grow between 58% and 64% in USD.
• Non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to grow between 16% and 19% and be between $1.71 and $1.75 in constant currency and grow between 17% and 20% and be between $1.72 and $1.76 in USD.

Looking at the full year fiscal 2027, the company reaffirmed its prior revenue guidance of $90 billion total revenue and raises its non-GAAP EPS guidance to $8.05, which is growth of 18%.

As a reminder, AVGO imploded when it failed to raise its full-year guidance last week. Well, ORCL also failed to do so, likely disappointing the market. And indeed, according to a kneejerk take by Vital Knowledge, “The fact the F27 sales guide isn’t being raised is a disappointment.” It also writes that “this is an OK release with continued robust growth in backlog (RPOs), and the cash performance wasn’t as bad as feared,” but that the company “is still facing a period of heavy cash outflows as it builds the infrastructure needed to fulfill its backlog, and this will require more debt and equity.”

And to that point, here is the kicker that sent the stock sliding after hours. But before we get there, one more point - ORCL said that free cash flow was negative $23.7 billion for fiscal year 2026 as "Oracle continued to execute on investments to support the growth of its Cloud Infrastructure business."

As Bloomberg notes, Oracle's quarterly CapEx was higher than estimates, raising investor concerns about the profitability of the company’s AI infrastructure business. Capital expenditures, largely a measure of data center spending, were $15.9 billion in the period ended May 31, bringing the annual total to $55.7 billion, higher than Oracle’s projection for $50 billion in spending.

The company didn’t offer an outlook on its spending in the new fiscal year. Wall Street expects $61.7 billion in capital spending in the year ending in May 2027.

Which of course means that the company's free cash flow meltdown is only accelerating, and the only way ORCL can fund its staggering buildout - since it doesn't have nearly enough revenue and profit - is with even more equity and/or debt. $40 billion to be precise:

"In fiscal year 2027, Oracle expects to raise approximately $40 billion through a combination of debt and equity financing including its previously announced $20 billion at-the-market equity issuance. Oracle does not expect to issue additional debt in calendar year 2026"

The coming dilution follows the $43 billion in debt and $5 billion in equity raised in 2026 as part of the company's pivot away from database software to a provider of computing power for artificial intelligence work, which means it is embarking on a massive build-out of data centers for OpenAI and other customers. Alas, said pivot costs lots of money, in fact more than the company said just three months ago, and the stock  is not happy, sliding more than 5% in afterhours trading after closing at $201.26. The company’s stock had climbed 35% over the past three months, likely driven by better investor sentiment toward computing providers and OpenAI, Oracle’s most important customer, wrote Derrick Wood, an analyst at TD Cowen.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 16:55

Solar Tops Coal In US Power Mix For The First Month Ever

Solar power held a record-high 12.8% share of US electricity supply in May, overtaking coal-generated power for the first full month on record, energy think tank Ember said in a report on Wednesday. As OilPrice notes, while the share of solar-generated power jumped to a record high for a full month, the share of coal in the U.S. electricity mix slumped to 12.2% last month, the fourth-lowest monthly share of coal ever.

Solar generated an all-time high total of 45.5 terawatt-hours (TWh) in May, up by 17% from a year earlier and surpassing the previous record set in July last year, according to Ember’s data. In May, solar also became the third-largest source of electricity in the U.S., behind natural gas and nuclear power generation.

At the same time, coal generation hit an all-time monthly low of 39.3 TWh in April 2026. Coal power output rebounded to 43.4 TWh in May, but still remained 11% below May 2025 levels.

“Overtaking coal for the first month on record shows just how far solar has come, from a niche contributor to the third-largest and fastest-growing source of power in the US electricity system,” said Nicolas Fulghum, Senior Data Analyst at Ember.

“From Texas to California, markets across the US are betting on solar to meet rising power needs,” Fulghum added.

Despite the Trump Administration’s assault on renewable energy and support for the coal industry, solar and wind power generation in the United States is booming, including in many red states that President Trump won such as Texas, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Arizona, and Mississippi.

In a separate report also out on Wednesday, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie said that despite changing tax policy and regulatory actions targeting clean energy, solar and energy storage represented 91% of all new capacity installed in the U.S. in the first quarter as utilities, homeowners, and businesses seek energy security amid global gas and gas turbine supply disruptions.

States won by President Trump accounted for 74% of all solar capacity installed in the first quarter, according to SEIA and WoodMac’s U.S. Solar Market Insight 2026 Q2 Report.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 16:40

"A Lot Of BS, Honestly": Apollo Head Says Everyone Is Measuring AI Wrong

The tokenomics debate got its sharpest contrarian voice this morning, and it came from inside the building.

John Zito Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg

John Zito, co-president of Apollo Asset Management, sat for a fireside chat at the Morgan Stanley US Financials Conference on Wednesday, where he suggested to Bloomberg that measured per unit of intelligence delivered rather than per token, prices are collapsing - even as low-value usage drives the actual bills up.

"I think tokenmaxxing and token talk is - it's a lot of BS, honestly. Like, if you look at per unit of knowledge and cost per unit of knowledge, prices are collapsing. Prices are collapsing per unit of IQ, if you did it that way."

In other words: a token is not a unit of intelligence. Price the capability instead of the throughput - the way a 2026 laptop costs what a 2010 laptop did but is 50x more capable - and the cost of "IQ" is in freefall even while the bills explode.

He also suggested that we're screwed if AI isn't just hype:

"If AI is real, it's so hyper-deflationary to so many things over the long term that it's really hard to take risk."

So a few things are going on here - the spending problem is real. The metric everyone is using to describe it is wrong. And the resolution of that tension is where the entire AI trade goes next.

As Goldman's Rich Privorotsky noted five days earlier - consensus was already migrating to exactly this frame; that the relevant economic metric is not token volume but useful task completion per watt and per dollar; that customers facing usage-based pricing "will optimize for cost per completed task," routing simple work to local models, harder tasks to the cloud, and frontier models only when required; and, that we "maybe have allocated too much spend to the Data-Centric model." When Apollo and Goldman independently land on the same framework inside a week, we're looking at a new institutional consensus forming in real time.

The French toast economy

Zito's diagnosis of why enterprise AI bills exploded will sound familiar to ZeroHedge premium subscribers: too many companies pointing frontier models at tasks that don't remotely justify the compute.

"Our IQs are so low that we're actually using [AI tools] to check out the recipe for, you know, French toast. That's where you're seeing the prices go up."

Swap "French toast" for "checking the weather" and that is, almost verbatim, the tokenmaxxing reductio we documented at Amazon - employees routing busywork through agents to climb the KiroRank leaderboard, frontier reasoning models deployed against questions a search bar answered in 2009. Zito even joked that his own IQ is "not high enough" to need what Anthropic's next flagship model - and something that only "a handful" of users genuinely need, and can monetize, the bleeding edge.

So - the mismatch between task and tool doesn't persist forever - it gets arbitraged into what he called a new economy for the sector: "The AMD chip, the Nvidia chip, all these different chips will be used and optimized for a certain use-case to solve the spend problem." Citadel and Jane Street pay anything for the frontier because their ROI is, in his word, massive. Everyone else's French toast queries get routed to something cheap.

And of course we watched this unfold over the last month. Bloomberg notes Uber set usage limits on tools like Claude Code after incinerating its AI budget, and Walmart capped an in-house AI agent - the one that helps employees with spreadsheets and presentations - after demand ran too hot. The caps are landing on exactly the low-IQ-task tier Zito is describing, while the frontier spend stays untouched.

How we got here

For readers just joining: this is the latest beat in a story that has moved very fast.

Last month we noted that the AI narrative had hit a serious snag, after Uber's COO Andrew Macdonald admitted the company couldn't draw a line between exploding token consumption and useful product output. This, after 5,000 engineers burned the entire 2026 AI budget by April. Data spanning 2,444 companies suggested only 18 cents of every AI dollar reaches users as stable product, with 44 cents going to fixing bugs the AI itself introduced.

h/t @Aiswarya_Sankar

Then came the $500 million mystery bill - an unnamed enterprise client, per Axios, torching half a billion dollars on Claude in a single month with no usage caps - landing the same week Amazon nuked its internal leaderboard and an SVP begged staff not to use AI for the sake of using AI.

Then, in Part II of our reporting: 'From Singularity To Tokenomics,' we noted that the subsidy formally ended: GitHub flipped Copilot to usage-based billing on June 1 - the same morning Anthropic confidentially filed its draft S-1 - and developers hit their monthly quotas before lunch. OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft all executed the same flat-rate-to-meter pivot within sixty days of each other. Sam Altman conceded that cost went from a non-issue in January to, in his words, a huge issue and a meme.

By Monday, Goldman's one-delta desk was flagging that the Silicon Data Token Spending Index had started to soften - Q1 may have been peak token-maxxing-as-KPI - and Citrini Research had coined the inevitable sequel: in a matter of weeks, the narrative went from tokenmaxxing to tokenpanic. 

We're happy everyone is now looking at this chart... You're welcome?

The Silicon Data LLM Token Expenditure Index rolls over What enterprise customers are actually saying

Fresh comments from UBS paint an interesting picture. After polling actual IT execs at enterprise AI customers, the bank reports that token costs have become a real issue for roughly 60% of the enterprises they spoke to - "this is not a made-up media story," in the bank's own words. One customer described the GitHub Copilot pricing change in a single word: "chaos." Another got their first AI bill and heard leadership say, flatly, "we don't have the money for this." A third admitted: "we overbuilt in certain areas and are starting to feel the wrath."

Source: UBS Evidence Lab

But bears should pay attention to this part: not a single check was slamming on the AI brakes. UBS found the dominant behavior is guardrails, not retreat: caps, alerts, model-downshifting, pooled tokens - normal enterprise cost-containment. Several customers explicitly refused to throttle usage ("we don't want to throttle them... our aim is to just get our employees to start using AI") and are instead cannibalizing other IT spend - cutting external IT services, consolidating cloud, and notably, metering headcount growth - to make room for the AI line item. Even Uber, the poster child for budget incineration, has set per-engineer token caps around $1,500 a month - which, as UBS dryly notes, is still extremely high - and its CEO describes the company as full steam ahead.

So according to UBS, costs have been spiking because adoption is ramping, not because per-unit prices are inflating - the per-unit cost of intelligence is falling. Which is exactly Zito's "cost per unit of IQ" point.

Both things are true

So is tokenmaxxing "a lot of BS"? Zito is right about the denominator. Cost per unit of intelligence is collapsing, relentlessly. Open-source and Chinese models deliver near-frontier capability at 10-25x lower cost; Cursor's new model matches frontier coding performance at a tenth the price per task. Measured per unit of IQ, this is the most deflationary technology in living memory.

Zito's denominator: inference costs collapse for a fixed level of intelligence

The CFOs are right about the numerator. Gartner has found that even a 90% collapse in inference costs won't make enterprise AI cheaper, because agents devour tokens faster than prices drop and providers don't fully pass the savings through. It is also the lived experience of every company in the UBS checks. A collapsing unit cost times an exploding unit count is still a bigger bill.

Token expenditure is a meaningless productivity metric and a decisive revenue metric. Nobody underwriting a near-trillion-dollar AI IPO can dismiss it as a measure of revenue durability. That is why the rollover in the Silicon Data index is worth watching: the chart measures nothing about value created, and everything about the thing the valuations are built on.

The same logic applies to the narrative itself. Zito calls the token talk noise; that noise doubled the market value of the semiconductor industry in two months on the way up and is unwinding it now. A fundamental investor can dismiss what a narrative measures. A trader cannot dismiss what it moves.

What the 'noise' moved: semiconductor market value doubled in two months on the tokenmaxxing narrative

The unresolved question for traders: The infrastructure complex is priced for token demand going up and to the right at the frontier - Goldman's 24x by 2030. But if Zito's use-case economy arrives, a large share of that volume migrates to commodity inference: cheap chips, open models, local hardware. Volume can keep growing while the dollars - and the margins - pool somewhere other than where today's valuations assume. The UBS checks already show the mechanism in motion: enterprises aren't cutting AI, they're cutting around AI, and routing down-market wherever good enough will do.

Meanwhile, the token expenditure index printed its sixth straight down day - the longest streak since January - with Citadel's read attributing the drop to adoption becoming "less about what frontier models can do and more about the price," a shift toward cheaper models. Note what that means for the chart: six red days on an expenditure index isn't necessarily usage falling - it may be the deflation itself arriving in the spend line, the same work bought cheaper. The numerator and the denominator, colliding in one print. And savor the garnish: Citadel is one of the two firms Zito named as gladly paying anything for the frontier - and it's their desk narrating everyone else trading down.

Token prices down 6 days in a row: longest streak since January.

"Adoption is becoming less about what frontier models can do and more about the price... the recent drop in the token index may reflect some of this shift toward cheaper models"- Citadel

- zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 10, 2026

Volume and value have decoupled. The desks have noticed. The repricing is the part that comes next.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 16:33

Stop Destroying Civilization!

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

In the #MeToo years, the Left’s signature slogan was “Believe All Women!”

That directive was used to bolster Christine Blasey Ford’s preposterous and easily refuted 2018 allegations that some 35 years earlier she had been sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, when both were teenagers.

Two years later, the Left quietly junked that “Believe Women!” credo when Tara Reade came forward and lodged a far more credible charge that 2020 Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden had sexually assaulted her when she was a Biden senatorial staffer.

Seven other women alleged that Biden acted toward them in sexually inappropriate ways. The Left more or less ignored these serial charges, and in Reade’s case, demonized her. Suddenly, the new mantra was “Believe women only if they prove useful to the Left.”

Since then, the grotesque sexual misconduct involving Democratic politicians—from New York governor Andrew Cuomo to California Congressman Eric Swalwell—has finally put #MeToo to rest. We were reminded of its demise when it was revealed that Maine senatorial candidate and socialist heartthrob Graham Platner had been discovered to possess a long social media history of crude and pornographic put-downs of women.

Indeed, an entire gaggle of former girlfriends has attested to his Nazi fascinations, his contempt for women, and his occasional physical violence against them.

So what?

Or as feminist icon and former #MeToo-er Senator Elizabeth Warren put it, speaking at a Platner campaign rally in Portland, Maine, “I’m here because Washington needs fighters, and Graham Platner is the fighter we need.”

But a fighter for what cause—and on whose behalf?

The demise of Black Lives Matter (BLM) offers another example of a recurring left-wing phenomenon: movements that begin as moral crusades and end as self-parodies. Almost every BLM cause célèbre has proved fraudulent, following a long tradition that stretches from Al Sharpton’s Tawana Brawley myth to the Duke lacrosse scandal.

The ginned-up BLM riots that followed the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, were all based on an abject lie. Brown never said, “Hands up, don’t shoot.” In fact, he attacked a police officer repeatedly and was lethally shot as he charged toward the officer.

Failing actor Jussie Smollett was never attacked by white MAGA thugs in the wee hours of a cold Chicago night. Instead, the faker Smollett hired two Nigerian-Americans, decked out in MAGA hats, to stage a mock attack. Only by staging such an attack could Smollett claim victim status, attract national sympathy as a target of white hatred, and attempt to revive his fading career.

Yet, for a while, the con worked. Soon-to-be Vice President Kamala Harris, who would go on to praise the often-violent mass George Floyd demonstrations of 2020, raged that the attack by anonymous white “racists” was an “attempted modern-day lynching.” Right—and she never apologized for spreading that lie.

The aftermath of the death of George Floyd did lasting damage to the country that still reverberates. Floyd was a career criminal. He had been imprisoned for participating in a home invasion where he pressed a gun into the stomach of a terrified young woman, who was beaten by one of his fellow criminals.

At the time of his arrest, Floyd was in poor condition both physically and legally—attempting to pass counterfeit currency, high on drugs, recovering from COVID, and resisting arrest.

He died after a police officer restrained him using an authorized but controversial protocol that involved placing a knee on the prostrate suspect’s neck—and did not heed in time Floyd’s call that he could not breathe.

What followed was the high-water mark of BLM. Four months of nightly riots led to some 35 deaths; 1,500 injured law enforcement officers; $2 billion in property damage; 14,000 arrests; and the torching of a police precinct, a federal courthouse, and an iconic Washington, D.C., church. The current leftist habit of urban intersection takeovers, statue-toppling, name-changing, and violent demonstrations is a legacy of that summer of lawlessness.

So we still live with the toxic ripples from the aftermath and the canonization of Floyd.

Thousands of police officers nationwide were laid off in “defund the police” madness. Faddish “critical race” and “critical legal” theories led to no cash bail and the near-immediate release of hundreds of thousands of arrested violent criminals.

Our supposedly best universities, in Pavlovian fashion, dropped the SAT admission requirement and upped race-based admissions.

Racially segregated graduation ceremonies, dorms, and “safe spaces” proliferated—along with newly introduced remedial math courses at our top campuses. Indeed, professors began handing out A’s to 80 percent of the student body, as Ivy League schools now inflated grades far more than did community colleges.

Administrators and bureaucrats soon created thousands of DEI positions across universities and corporations.

This craze led to McCarthyite “diversity statements,” an epidemic of alleged victimhood, untold billions of dollars squandered, and workplace productivity diminished. And the result was certainly not better race relations.

We were just reminded again of the absurdity of the immediate post-Floyd years, after learning that the inverse of Floyd’s death had recently transpired in the United Kingdom.

Eighteen-year-old Henry Nowak, a white male student, was fatally stabbed by a Sikh immigrant with his “ceremonial” sword. In truth, the weapon was an eight-inch knife mysteriously exempted from Britain’s otherwise tough laws against possession of knives.

According to reports, Vickrum Digwa called police and falsely claimed that the dying Nowak had initiated the confrontation with racial slurs, while family members attempted to conceal the weapon. (Would a Scottish highlander claim that he too had the right to carry an eight-inch broadsword as integral to his race, religion, and indigenous traditions?)

No matter—the police arrived hungry to deal with a sensational case of George Floyd-style, white-on-non-white racial violence.

Instead, they reportedly treated Digwa as the victim and handcuffed the mortally wounded and bleeding Nowak as he pleaded—nine times in total—that he could not breathe and was dying. They therefore almost certainly ensured his death. The national reaction?

No British politician went into full George Floyd take-a-knee mode—as they had in 2020, even across the Atlantic, for the felon George Floyd. The ensuing unrest, so far, seems mainly to have been limited to Southampton; there has been no mass destruction of property; there have been no mass assaults. Nowak was on the wrong side of the left-wing race-based binary of victim/victimizer and thus offered no fuel for virtue-signaling by hollow politicians. Such racial reductionism always trumps matters of class, evidence—and the truth.

As for the fate of the BLM architects? The founders never accounted for how their $90 million in donations was actually spent, but they did disappear into their newly purchased multi-million-dollar homes and have hardly been heard from since.

The episodes of existential psychodramas that come and go—after doing enormous damage to the nation—are nearly endless.

A number of American and international agencies and “experts” have now, mostly quietly, sighed that global warming was never really the existential danger that the Left swore would put “Earth in the balance” in a mere decade.

Nonetheless, once again, the toll has been enormous. Germany wrecked its economy to seek mythical “net zero” carbon emissions—by dismantling natural gas, oil, and nuclear power plants and turning to costly, inefficient, and unreliable solar and wind power.

This green mania swept the Western world—as China built two to three coal-fired power plants a month.

The left-wing, postmodern, globalist notion of a borderless utopian world that would fuel endless “diversity” has done so much damage to Western nations that even the European Left now fears its own political suicide from the vast influxes of often hostile illegal aliens.

Millions of unlawful and unvetted entrants crashed the borders, with no desire to integrate, assimilate, or acculturate to their Western hosts. They have spiked crime, fueled anti-Semitism, and ensured unsustainable social welfare costs.

The transgender frenzy was to be the Left’s next civil rights crusade, as it constructed a new victimized class with reparatory claims against the guilty traditionalist majority.

It mattered little that gender dysphoria was an ancient phenomenon, documented even in classical literature as a rare and aberrant syndrome where physical sex was at odds with psychological sexual identification. That malady had also been well known to modern sexologists since the 19th century, who had documented it as rare, involving far less than 0.01 percent of the population.

Nevertheless, the Left invented the unnecessary Orwellian term “transphobe,” and suddenly we were off to the races with transgender biological men nude in gym showers with teen girls and transgender “women” with male musculoskeletal bodies dominating female sports.

Soon, an epidemic of teens began wondering whether they were in fact “trans” and pondering whether to undergo a battery of dangerous hormonal and chemical drug regimens—or calling themselves nonbinary, to the point where the new third sex sometimes seemed almost as numerous as the old two genders.

What accounts for these bouts of periodic, collective, and suicidal madness?

First, the craziness is almost always birthed in the contemporary, affluent, and leisured West, which alone has the capital and resources to afford such freakish sideshows.

Second, the frenzies are usually the creation of the Left, predictably birthed in universities, the media, and the bureaucracies. They appear with familiar symptoms. The irredeemable, deplorable, and “garbage” hoi polloi are supposedly too dense to be properly schooled and thus must be frightened to death in order to adopt agendas that otherwise appear to them as utterly insane.

Junk your natural-gas dryer and grill, or face massive floods on your coasts. Drop the SAT and defund the police or face endless race riots.

Hire thousands of race and gender commissars or be forever tagged as racists, sexists, homophobes, and transphobes. Open the border and let illegal aliens enter by the millions, and thus pay partial penance for “whiteness” as the nation “checks its privilege.”

The Left is correct that few Western voters will openly embrace the unpopular elite agenda of racial fixations, globalism, laxity on crime, and degrowth environmentalism.

So, their long-term solutions have four predictable aspects:

1. Open the borders to create a more diverse, impoverished, and needy constituency.

2. Create fake “working-class” pseudo-populist candidates like the pampered Graham Platner, the God-is-nonbinary “new Christian” Talarico, and, of course, the waxen effigy of “good ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton.”

3. Destroy time-tested systems by seeking to demolish the Electoral College, the 50-state union, the Senate filibuster, and the nine-justice Supreme Court.

4. Gin up these end-of-days, pseudo-existential crises whose solutions require massive new taxes, bigger government, and more dictatorial elite managers.

One good sign of growing antidotes is that increasingly Americans, and indeed all Westerners, are saying no to green haranguers, no to the gender and sex demagogues, no to the race-baiting industry, no to the open-borders conglomerate, and no to ungrateful immigrants.

Their pushback might be summed up as follows: “We are no longer going to allow you to destroy ancient traditions that ensured our prosperity, security, and liberty, and which were handed down to us by generations far better than your own.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 16:20

OpenAI Eyes Massive 10-Gigawatt Ohio Data Center

OpenAI is moving along in talks to lease a proposed 10-gigawatt data center campus on federal land in Ohio, according to a new report from The Information, in a deal that could include financial backing from Nvidia. This comes as Ohio lawmakers unveiled new legislation aiming to regulate data center build-outs.

The massive 10 GW data center would be the largest data center development ever considered, with a potential buildout cost topping $500 billion based on current prices for chips, labor, and construction materials.

OpenAI in Talks to Lease 10 Gigawatt Ohio Data Center with Backing From Nvidia

OpenAI is in advanced negotiations to lease a proposed 10 gigawatt data center campus on federal land in Ohio as part of a deal that could include financial backing from Nvidia, according to the…

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 10, 2026

Under the proposed deal, OpenAI would control the chip stacks through a long-term lease and begin making payments once the facility starts operations.

The first phase is expected to come online in 2028. For some context, 10 GW of power is roughly the output of several large nuclear reactors or about 10 large gas-fired power plants running at full capacity. Each GW can power about 700,000 to 1 million homes.

The data center development would require dedicated power generation, substations, transmission lines, cooling infrastructure, access to water or advanced cooling systems, and phased construction over several years.

Simultaneously, Ohio lawmakers have unveiled Substitute House Bill 646, which aims to regulate data center buildouts in the state.

"The Joint Data Center Study Committee has done its job," Senate Finance Chair Brian Chavez (R-Marietta), who is also the co-chair of the data center committee, said, and quoted by local outlet ABC News 5.

Bill 646 would create a new electric rate class for data centers to ensure that the costs of generation, transmission, and distribution are entirely paid by hyperscalers.

"Make sure the ratepayers are kept harmless, held harmless, and that data centers pay for whatever they're causing," Chavez said.

This year alone, Goldman calculates that hyperscalers will unleash $800 billion in data center capex.

Latest data center projects by scale:

Mapping the Buildouts 

The downside risk for the data center buildout boom is that an alarming share of projects are being delayed, scaled back, or canceled this year as local resistance groups intensify pressure campaigns over power demand, water use, land rights, and grid reliability.

Beyond NIMBY opposition, there is also growing concern that some anti-data-center movements may be amplified by foreign influence networks operating through left-wing nonprofits, and comes as China prepares to begin its data center buildout strategy.]

Today's report also comes days after OpenAI submitted a draft IPO prospectus to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, formally kicking off the process for one of the year's most hotly anticipated debuts.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 15:40

DHS Directs ICE To Deport Illegal Aliens Who Vote In American Elections

Authored by Bryan Hyde via American Greatness,

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) General Counsel James Percival has directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to impose strict penalties, including deportation, on illegal aliens who vote in American elections.

According to a DHS press release, the Immigration and Nationality Act directs the removal of aliens who illegally vote or make a false claim to US citizenship.

🇺🇸 DHS told ICE to deport any undocumented immigrant who votes in a U.S. election.

The directive, signed Monday, ties directly to Trump's executive order on election integrity.

Illegal voting and false citizenship claims are now being treated as deportable offenses under the… pic.twitter.com/HGSGkmewQR

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) June 9, 2026

DHS states that these provisions allow for the removal of illegal aliens if they illegally participate in our elections. No criminal conviction is required for their removal.

Percival said, “The importance of free, fair, and honest elections is without question. Echoing the words of President Trump, ‘the right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted and tabulated, without illegal dilution, is vital to determining the rightful winner of an election.”

Percival added, “Illegal voting by aliens dilutes the votes of American citizens and undermines our democracy. It must have consequences.”

DHS says the directive will help further implement policies similar to those from President Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.”

Trump’s order directs actions across the federal government, including the verification of voter eligibility, grant administration, information-sharing, enforcement of federal integrity laws, improving voting systems, and criminal prosecution of unlawful voting by aliens.

The latest directive follows an August 2025 announcement by US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which updated its policy manual to bar green card holders who have voted or registered to vote from obtaining citizenship.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 15:20

Governments Sell Bonds At Record Pace As Global Rates Rise, Spending Soars

In a world already drowning with debt, the only certainty is even more debt 

According to a new analysis by Bloomberg, governments are borrowing from syndicated bond markets at a record clip as public spending surges. That's in addition to direct sales where the government auctions off debt to institutional investors and individuals.

Sovereign issuers have sold $504 billion of the debt - which is offered to investors via banks - so far this year, a new record. Thet's more than in the first half of 2020, when in a global emergency nations were paying to support their economies during Covid-19 lockdowns.

Budget deficits have been climbing since the global financial crisis. They spiked during the pandemic, when interest rates were slashed to record lows, and are widening again as governments boost defense spending and try to protect households from price shocks driven by the Iran war. Aging populations and rising interest rates are adding to the pressure.

“The main driver of the supply is basically increased public spending, and thus bigger funding needs,” said Jens Peter Sorensen, chief analyst at Danske Bank, pointing to greater outlays on the military, infrastructure and transition to cleaner energy. 

Germany and other nations have been setting aside hundreds of billions of euros for weapons and ammunition, and the EU has relaxed its rules to allow extra spending on defense and energy initiatives that curb consumption of fossil fuels.

AS noted above, the sums raised from syndications are dwarfed by debt sold at regular government auctions, not least because the US Treasury only uses the latter to issue bonds. But hiring banks to sell offerings to investors is popular elsewhere, especially in Europe. It can be a less risky option when markets are volatile, and give debt managers greater control over the timing of the sale. 

According to Bloomberg, for eight of the last 10 years, Italy has been the biggest borrower in the market for sovereign syndications. It is leading again in 2026, having already raised nearly €70 billion ($81 billion) in the first six months. Germany, which eliminated its famous "debt brake" and rewrote its fiscal rules to splurge on defense and infrastructure, raised €14 billion from three syndications so far this year, while the UK, Belgium and Serbia sold their biggest-ever deals. Australia and Mexico are among this year’s top 10 issuers.

Since demand for government debt remains strong, particularly for shorter maturities, governments are seizing the chance to work through a busy refinancing schedule and fund higher spending despite an uncertain path for interest rates, said Johnathan Owen, a portfolio manager at TwentyFour Asset Management.

“They’re using this window while markets are healthy and willing,” he added.Of course, the more markets are "healthy and willing" the bigger the eventual revulsion will be when investors realize they have loaded up to the gills with another batch of debt that will never be repaid.

Meanwhile, as the inflationary shock of war in the Persian Gulf has driven up yields, the outlook for the global economy has deteriorated, scrambling predictions for rates. The European Central Bank is set to deliver its first hike since 2023 this week and the US Federal Reserve is expected to tighten monetary policy later this year, although what happens thereafter is less clear.

US Treasury auctions suffered from elevated rate market volatility in March, immediately after the start of the conflict. There have been few signs since that investors are losing their appetite for debt, but they are asking for more in return. A 30-year US bond auction in May was the first since 2007 to draw a yield higher than 5%. Meanwhile, the UK’s £15 billion ($20.2 billion) offering in April drew record orders from buyers attracted by the highest yield on 10-year debt since 2008.

Fueling the increase in issuance are higher than normal redemptions, as Covid era bonds begin to mature. Analysis by Natixis SA shows that refinancing deals by euro-area sovereigns have jumped by 26% in 2026, outpacing the 11% year-on-year increase in total syndicated issuance.

“This gap suggests the record first-half is primarily redemption-driven rather than opportunistic front-running ahead of potential rate hikes,” said Theophile Legrand, a rates strategist at Natixis, in comments made at the start of this month. Still, there are signs that some European borrowers may be looking to lock in costs before they rise, based on recent trends.

In May, “redemptions actually declined year-on year, yet syndicated volumes jumped from €32 billion to €45 billion, suggesting at least some degree of opportunistic front-loading,” Legrand added.

According to Bloomberg, the pace of issuance for the rest of the year will depend on what central banks do next. Syndications from Belgium, Spain, Austria and Portugal in May were “earlier than anticipated,” ING strategists including Benjamin Schroeder wrote in a June 3 note. Others are getting in ahead of the summer slowdown. Greece is tapping the market for €3 billion, garnering more than €36 billion of orders for a reopening of existing notes due in 2036. Meanwhile, Sweden is raising €2 billion of three-year debt. Both deals should price on Wednesday.

“There’s still plenty of euro zone sovereign debt to come to market in the second half of the year,” said Harvey Bradley, head of global rates at Insight Investment. And that's just the start, because after the second half, there will be even more debt every year going forward as record amounts of syndicated debt, both for new issuance and refis, come to market to fund a fiscal model that no longer works. 
 

 

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 15:00

Trump Says "Secret Military Mission" Allowed 200 Ships, 100 Million Barrels To Cross Hormuz

Confirming our reported from both a week ago (see "As Gulf States Plan Bypass Pipelines, US Military Is Quietly Helping Ships Cross Hormuz") and this afternoon ("Growing Number Of Oil Tankers Successfully Sneak Through Hormuz, Shrinking Iran's Leverage") moments ago Trump posted on Truth Social that he had "directed our Great U.S. Military to execute a secret mission to support Oil Tankers and other Commercial Ships through the Strait of Hormuz." Of course, the mission wasn't that secret if we discussed how the US military was helping ship cross the Strait one week ago. 

In any case, Trump added that "this effort has resulted in more than 100 MILLION Barrels of Oil making its way through the Strait, and into the Open Market. More than 200 Commercial Ships have safely traveled through the Strait," which would explain why oil prices have remained low and confirms what Goldman's Delta One head, Rich Privorotsky, wrote this morning, namely that "a lot has been thrown at the oil market and it’s simply not going up, which is remarkable given the level of escalation. The only conclusion that really fits the price action is that barrels are still getting through the Strait of Hormuz, visibly or otherwise. There doesn’t seem to be a more rational explanation."

"This wildly successful effort is because the UNITED STATES of AMERICA CONTROLS the Strait of Hormuz — NOT Iran" Trump concluded.

Trump's post also validates what JPMorgan EM strategy team pointed out a week ago, namely that ship - and crude - transits are far higher than what official trackers have indicated: 

• New higher equilibrium appears to be established in Strait with vessel crossings remaining in the c.25 per day mark for nearly a week, according to JPM EM Strategy methodology. 
• Estimated energy exports continue to be very strong - around 3.6 mbd over the past two days and the 7DMA remaining around 2.5mbd. This has been driven by strong refined chemical tanker transits which have risen to more than 50% of pre-conflict levels. 
• Reports that US are quietly coordinating with shippers to ensure safe transit without explicit escort. 

Here, JPM suggests that Bloomberg's data is showing muted transits as it can't keep an accurate read of actual crossings due to AIS transponders being turned off during crossings.

Now the question is whether Iran, whose leverage in the conflict would be viewed as dramatically reduced as a result of this development, will allow stealthy tankers and other ships, with transponders shut, to continue crossing the strait affirming Trump's implicit claim that the country no longer has control over the strait, or if Tehran will make a public demonstration of how much control it still has. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 14:45