Zero Rss

Shirley You Must Be Joking: Groups Sue For Communication Records Linked To Somali Daycare Fraud Claims

Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times,

A coalition of civil-rights groups sued the Trump administration on Monday, seeking to force the release of internal communications between federal health officials and a YouTube journalist who accused Somali-run Minnesota daycare centers of fraud.

Independent Journalist Nick Shirley speaks at Freedomfest in Las Vegas, on July 9, 2026. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

The viral videos helped spur a since-abandoned effort to freeze childcare funding in five Democratic-led states.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rescinded a $10 billion freeze on childcare subsidies and social services funding for five states governed by Democrats: California, Illinois, Colorado, New York, and Minnesota.

The suit, filed in federal court on July 20 by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), its Illinois and Colorado chapters, the National Women's Law Center, and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, accused HHS of failing to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in March, according to a press statement.

The request includes communication records between federal officials and YouTube creator and journalist Nick Shirley, whose viral video was publicly amplified and "credited by senior administration officials as the basis for the restrictions," the statement said.

"The public deserves to know why the Trump administration is restricting access to critical child care and family assistance funds that hundreds of thousands of families rely on," said Linda Morris, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Women's Rights Project, according to the statement.

"These restrictions are a threat to the very programs that help families stay afloat and enable parents to work, attend school, and care for their children. We are going to court to ensure the public gets the transparency that federal law requires."

YouTuber Nick Shirley's viral video raised the alarm about fraud at Somali-run daycares in Minnesota late in 2025.

Shirley claimed that Somali-run daycares appeared to be devoid of children, raising concerns that the centers could be fraudulently billing government programs for absent or nonexistent children.

Minnesota state lawmakers have said that whistleblowers have been punished for voicing concerns about Somalis committing fraud and have been accused of racism or Islamophobia because Somalis are black Muslims.

In January, some Somalis told The Epoch Times that they think fraud is "occurring on a large scale" in Minnesota. Most, however, said the accusations appear to be aimed at vilifying Somalis as a group.

The Trump administration froze $10 billion in funds to Minnesota as well as California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York in January this year, citing concerns about fraudulent spending.

Earlier this month, it released the funds.

HHS officials said in letters to the states that they were rescinding the freezes on the funds, which were an attempt to compel the states to provide data proving that the funds would be used for American families, rather than illegal immigrants, according to documents filed with a federal court in New York on July 13.

In March, the ACLU civil rights groups sent a FOIA request seeking records concerning the adoption, implementation, and enforcement of the nationwide Defend the Spend policy and the sweeping five-state funding freeze, which it said targeted Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) dollars.

It said that the administration had "refused to disclose information to the public about its actions, including through its sudden reversal of the funding freeze in an apparent attempt to avoid being required to produce officials' communications about these attacks in pending litigation."

"This only heightens the need for transparency into how the Defend the Spend policy and funding freeze were adopted and who was involved," it added.

Shirley delivered testimony at the Senate Committee Hearing on July 15, where he said that Minnesotans reached out to him "talking about the fraud that was taking place inside of their community."

"We went to the daycares, autism centers, and healthcare providers, and to my surprise, the businesses were not operating how a typical business would operate," he said.

He said the first daycare he went to was in an industrial building.

"There was no playground, no children footprints in the snow. They had all the windows blacked out. The doorbell was broken, and the sign said 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., yet there was no one to be found," he added.

"This daycare in 2025 had received over $1 million in CCAP [Child Care Assistance Program] funding. This continued to be a pattern as we went to other daycare locations."

The Epoch Times has contacted HHS and Nick Shirley for comment.

Children watch television at ABC Learning Center in Minneapolis, Minn., on Dec. 31, 2025. Mark Vancleave /AP Photo Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 15:45

OpenAI Admits Model Escaped Containment And Hacked Hugging Face To Cheat On A Test

Authored by Felix Ng via CoinTelegraph.com,

OpenAI disclosed Tuesday that a combination of its AI models, including GPT-5.6 Sol and a more capable unreleased model, escaped its testing environment and hacked AI startup Hugging Face last week to cheat on a test meant to measure their capabilities.

In a blog post, OpenAI said the evaluation was designed to operate in a highly isolated environment with restricted network access. The models, however, found a way to gain internet access through a zero-day vulnerability in an internally-hosted third party software, OpenAI said.

Earlier this week, we detected and responded to an intrusion into part of our production infrastructure. This one was different from anything we had handled before in one important way: it was driven, end to end, by an autonomous AI agent system – and we detected and dissected it largely with AI of our own.

Hugging Face tried to respond but they were initially held back by the fact that the most advanced models at their disposal treated defense as attack and refused to work with Hugging Face. HF thus had to turn to open models–specifically GLM 5.2, a Chinese open-weight model run on their own infrastructure. Note the irony: HF had to use a Chinese model to defend themselves because the American models refused to help. The irony gets deeper.

This was not a production model spontaneously turning hostile. It was a capable model with guardrails off and specifically told to win a hacking test - doing whatever it took to win.

The models were being run through an internal benchmark called ExploitGym, a test of long, multi-step hacking tasks, with their cyber safety refusals deliberately lowered for the evaluation.

“After gaining Internet access, the models inferred that Hugging Face potentially hosted models, datasets and solutions for ExploitGym,” OpenAi continued.

“Knowing this, the model searched for and successfully found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation.” 

Hugging Face is a platform for hosting AI models and datasets.

[ZH: we asked Grok to simplify what just happened: It’s kind of like a kid who’s supposed to stay in the classroom taking a test… but instead sneaks out the window, runs to the teacher’s office, and copies the answer sheet. ]

On Friday, it disclosed that its internal datasets and service credentials were compromised in a hack, which it attributed to an autonomous AI agent system.

Hugging Face said it has fixed the vulnerability that was used during the cyberattack.

Meanwhile, OpenAI on Tuesday said the models that escaped the testing environment were all tuned with “reduced cyber refusals,” meaning fewer cybersecurity guardrails. 

“We consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber incident, involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities, and are responding accordingly.”  

OpenAI warns of risks from “long-horizon” AI models 

On Monday, OpenAI said it paused internal deployment of a “long-horizon” AI model after finding it was repeatedly trying to work around constraints. 

 It warned that AI that is trained for long-running tasks has a higher chance of taking “unwanted actions.”

“Models that can work autonomously for long periods can take on difficult, open-ended problems. But the same persistence that makes them useful also gives them more opportunities to take unwanted actions—and to do so in ways that evaluations intended for shorter-horizon models may miss.” 

As AI models grow more capable, questions are emerging over whether their development and access should be more tightly controlled, especially when systems designed for controlled testing are able to find ways to bypass safeguards. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 15:42

"He Was Very Close To Being Arrested": Epstein's Paris Model Scout Found Dead At Home, Weeks After CNN Appearance

Daniel Siad, the 69-year-old Paris modeling scout whose name appears nearly 2,000 times in the DOJ's Epstein files, was found dead at his home in Colombes, northwest of Paris, on Monday. The deputy public prosecutor at Nanterre, Marie-Celine Lawrysz, confirmed the death Wednesday and said an investigation into the cause was opened that evening, with an autopsy to follow.

Which is to say: officially, nobody knows anything yet. Siad's lawyer told Reuters that "Daniel Siad never stopped proclaiming his innocence" - and that her client died of a heart attack. To AFP, she was more careful, saying that if it was a heart attack, the strain and anxiety of the case will have played its part. The autopsy, presumably, will referee. And if that first statement sounds familiar, it should: when Jean-Luc Brunel was found dead in 2022, his lawyers announced that "Jean-Luc Brunel never stopped declaring his innocence." The French defense bar evidently keeps the line on file.

For over a decade, per the document dumps Congress pried out of the DOJ under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Siad operated as a one-man logistics chain into Epstein's orbit. In a 2009 email he pitched a 5-foot-8 Latvian model: "she is 20 years old but she looks younger." In a 2014 note he discussed a 15-year-old French girl - parents reportedly thrilled about her modeling prospects - along with 16- and 17-year-olds, and compared his trade to angling: "some time I cache quick , some time no fish" [sic]. Files reviewed by CNN show Epstein paid Siad tens of thousands of dollars over the years; other messages flagged a young French woman in Marrakesh who'd be happy to meet him, and in 2018 Siad offered to scout the financier a young, good-looking assistant.

Here was the legal picture on the day he died: Siad was under investigation in France over allegations of rape and human trafficking - at least five accusers, per French media. One woman told the BBC he was "essentially a professional trafficker." The first criminal complaint landed only in February, from former Swedish model Ebba Karlsson, now in her fifties, who alleges Siad raped her when she was 20 and then introduced her to Gerald Marie, the former European chief of Elite - whom Karlsson and several other women have also accused of rape, allegations Marie has repeatedly denied. Siad denied everything as well, and - as his lawyer correctly notes - he was never formally placed under investigation, the mise en examen threshold at which French magistrates decide the evidence is serious. Not because the process cleared him; because the process never reached him. Per AFP, Siad had not yet been questioned by investigators when he died, though he had said he wanted to give his version of events.

"He was very close to being arrested," Karlsson said Wednesday.

He will now give his version of events to no one. And here is the part that will launch a thousand posts: six weeks ago, Siad sat for an on-camera CNN interview in which he insisted Epstein - a convicted sex offender for the entire back half of their collaboration - was a free man who had served his time and had always been thoroughly professional. He said he had no reason to believe that two women he'd recommended to Epstein - women who told CNN, on the record, that Epstein abused them - had ever been harmed. He claimed to have believed Epstein was a casting director for Victoria's Secret and MC2, a claim CNN could find no evidence for. His summary of the whole arrangement: "He was such a powerful person. And how can I not trust him?"

He gave that interview in mid-June, yet didn't make it through July.

That makes four... 

• Jeffrey Epstein, August 2019, Metropolitan Correctional Center: found dead in his cell weeks after his arrest (or he was smuggled out after being swapped with the corpse of a homeless guy - or Hillary Clinton's brother, so the kids say), with the cameras outside malfunctioning and the guards asleep - guards who later admitted falsifying their logs. Ruled a suicide, a ruling re-certified in 2025 by FBI leadership ("I've seen the whole file, he killed himself," Deputy Director Bongino assured Fox viewers), which settled the matter for approximately no one.
• Jean-Luc Brunel, February 2022, La Sante prison, Paris: the other French modeling agent in Epstein's orbit, found hanged in his cell while awaiting trial on charges involving the rape of minors - days after Prince Andrew reached his settlement with Virginia Giuffre. As we noted at the time ("Epstein 'Pimp' Jean-Luc Brunel Found Hanged In Paris Prison"), "the jokes practically write themselves." Ruled a suicide.
• Mark Middleton, May 2022: the Clinton special assistant who had signed Epstein into the White House, found dead in Arkansas. Ruled a suicide.

And now Daniel Siad - the second Epstein-linked figure from the French modeling world to die suddenly with an investigation inbound and his testimony never taken. Former model "Juliette G.," who says Siad recruited her for Epstein back in 2004, told Al Jazeera that for victims, Siad represented a possible avenue to finally "shed light on what happened." Except now, he's unable to speak in the Nanterre morgue.

Then there's Virginia Giuffre - Epstein's most consequential accuser who died at her farm in Western Australia in April 2025, at 41 - ruled a suicide by police and described that way by her own family, though as we reported last month, sixteen academics have since petitioned the state coroner for a formal public inquest. Giuffre notably traveled to Paris in 2021 to testify against Brunel in person and help keep him behind bars. 

Siad's death lands as the Epstein affair continues to result in zero arrests: the House Oversight email dumps last November, the DOJ's mandated releases under the Transparency Act, the cascading resignations among the great and the good, New Mexico's freshly launched probe into what actually happened at Zorro Ranch - which we covered in February - and the Washington Post's own June investigation into the modeling-world pipeline that kept feeding Epstein introductions long after his 2008 conviction: a Swedish scout hunting teenagers, a Russian model coaching him on which women would be easy. Siad was one of the very few members of that network willing to sit in front of a camera and explain himself.

On a pretty short timeline, the survival rate for Epstein associates drops to zero...

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 15:25

Video Game Market Tanks As Studio, Console Stocks Sink ; Can GTA VI Revive Industry?

Video game stocks have been battered so far this year, with Electronic Arts the only major name in positive territory and even then only marginally higher. The Roundhill Video Games ETF is down about 14.8% YTD, highlighting industry-wide weakness as investors await a potential revival sparked by Take-Two's release of Grand Theft Auto VI this upcoming fall.

The latest report from Bloomberg, citing new data from market research company Circana, shows the video game market in the US contracted by 21% in June, its steepest monthly decline since 2022. The decline was driven by higher hardware prices, which softened demand, and by a difficult comparison with Nintendo’s Switch 2 launch one year ago.

Console spending plunged 62%, while content purchases fell to $3.9 billion, below levels recorded before the Switch 2 debut. Subscriptions were the only content category to grow. Total industry spending was down 1% for the year.

Nintendo continued expanding the Switch 2 catalog, but rising memory and component costs are compressing margins. Its shares have fallen more than 50% from last summer’s record, and the company has announced global price increases for the fall.

It's not just Nintendo facing margin erosion because of the memory chip shortage that is forcing companies to raise prices; Xbox and PlayStation are also affected - and these price hikes come just four months before the next iteration of Grand Theft Auto is released.

Related:

• A $1,000 Playstation 6? Sony Won't Sell "At Significant Losses" Anymore
• Xbox Hits Gamers With Price-Hike As Major Retailer Warns Console Shortage Looms Ahead Of GTA VI Launch

In recent weeks, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced 3,000 layoffs, warning, “Our business today is not healthy. We must reset Xbox.” Against that dismal backdrop, whether Grand Theft Auto VI can single-handedly revive an industry remains an open question.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 14:40

A Fed Rate-Hike Would Be A Serious Mistake

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

The latest U.S. inflation report and jobs data do not justify another interest rate increase. Additionally, June data show that inflation is slowing down, especially in the core CPI measure that is most closely watched by monetary authorities, while ongoing tightening is stopping the labor market from reaching its full potential.

Hiking rates while maintaining elevated liquidity harms families and small businesses and perpetuates the very factors that drive inflation, including rising money supply and government spending.

Keeping rates above the neutral level has cost the U.S. economy nearly one million jobs, as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) find it increasingly difficult to access credit and face prohibitively high borrowing costs. For investors, a 25-basis-point increase may seem insignificant, but for small businesses, it often means either no access to credit or excessively expensive borrowing rates. In the U.S., the average cost of debt for SMEs typically ranges from 6% to 12% APR, making it extremely difficult to hire new employees.

A further rate hike under these conditions would suggest that the central bank is reacting to past fears rather than future evidence, risking an unnecessary slowdown just as the disinflation process becomes visible in the data.

The June Consumer Price Index report delivered a clear positive surprise relative to consensus estimates. Headline CPI fell by 0.4% month-over-month, and the annual rate decelerated to 3.5%. More importantly for monetary policy, core CPI, which excludes food and energy, was flat for the month and slowed to 2.6% year-over-year, the lowest level since March 2021.

A core inflation rate of 2.6% indicates that tariffs and the energy shock have had no meaningful impact on core goods and services. Underlying price pressures are gradually moving closer to target after a prolonged phase of tightening and normalization. Those still arguing for another rate hike are effectively suggesting that even as core inflation cools toward 2%, policy should become more restrictive. This position is difficult to defend when we examine both inflation and labor market data.

The June inflation data has revived the debate over whether the Federal Reserve should abandon further tightening. Markets initially seemed to recognize that incoming inflation data no longer supports the narrative of tariff-driven inflation and overheating that would justify additional rate increases... [ZH: but recent market action, amid rising oil prices, has pushed a July hike back on the table]...

Raising rates in response to an external energy shock is akin to raising taxes to reduce rainfall. A close examination of the labor market and CPI components reveals no evidence of an overheated economy or justification for further tightening.

The effects of previous rate hikes materialize with a lag across credit markets, housing, business investment, and consumer demand. Tightening policy further when inflation is driven by external factors and is already declining increases the risk of exacerbating economic weakness after the initial inflation surge has passed.

Central banks often err not because they fail to respond to inflation, but because they maintain an elevated money supply that supports government spending while tightening policy after disinflation is already underway. June’s report highlights this risk. Headline inflation declined sharply as energy prices fell, and core inflation also eased, indicating that the slowdown is not merely a temporary or volatile effect.

If headline CPI had fallen solely due to lower fuel prices while core inflation remained elevated, a restrictive policy stance could still be justified. However, that is not what the data show. Core CPI at its lowest level since March 2021 confirms that inflationary pressures are fading.

Some analysts argue that the Federal Reserve must guard against upside risks. While this caution may be theoretically valid, the Fed must rely on actual data rather than behave like a futures trader. There is a fundamental analytical flaw in translating every potential upside risk into justification for tighter policy. Monetary policy is a blunt instrument that disproportionately affects families and businesses. It cannot increase energy supply, resolve supply chain disruptions, or offset geopolitical shocks.

When central banks raise rates to address external, supply-side inflation, they suppress domestic demand without addressing the root causes of inflation, namely excessive government spending and monetary expansion. The result is weaker growth, tighter credit conditions, and job losses. In the current environment, where core inflation is already declining, this trade-off appears particularly risky.

If the Fed is serious about controlling inflation, it should accelerate balance sheet reduction, maintain or lower interest rates, and coordinate with the federal government to reduce deficit spending more rapidly. Any alternative approach risks damaging the private sector while further inflating the sovereign debt burden.

The central policy question is not whether inflation should be taken seriously, but whether the Fed is addressing the primary driver of persistent inflation: excessive government and deficit spending, which increase money supply and velocity.

Excessive tightening would place additional strain on borrowers already refinancing at significantly higher rates, increase the likelihood of a recession, and intensify financial stress in interest-sensitive sectors.

A common defense of a higher-for-longer policy stance is the need to preserve central bank credibility at all costs. This argument is flawed. Credibility erodes when a central bank fails to adapt to incoming data and repeatedly makes policy errors that indirectly support rising government indebtedness. Independence is strengthened when policy is consistent, transparent, and evidence-based rather than narrative-driven.

If the Federal Reserve is truly data-dependent, then June’s core CPI data does not support a tightening bias.

The case against another rate hike is clear: inflation is easing, core inflation is declining, and the economy is still absorbing the delayed effects of prior tightening. If credit growth and demand accelerate significantly, the Fed can use additional tools.

However, today, the probability of another rate hike should be lower than many hawkish consensus views imply.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 14:20

The Great Six Month Financial Blindfold

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

As many including myself recently have noted, we are already living through an extraordinary age of financial grift, accounting games, promotional fraud, speculative mania and almost total contempt for basic investor skepticism.

The SEC’s apparent response is to consider giving public companies less frequently required financial disclosure in the face of demonstrable public disapproval of the idea. You genuinely can not make this shit up.

At a moment when public markets increasingly resemble a casino operated by executives, influencers, investment bankers, meme-stock promoters, crypto carnival barkers and apparently untouchable fraudsters, the agency responsible for protecting investors is moving toward allowing companies to disappear behind the curtain for six months at a time. That’s plenty of time to “hide a body” in the accounting world.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the SEC is expected to proceed with a version of its proposal allowing public companies to report comprehensive financial results twice a year rather than quarterly, even after receiving more than 200,000 public comments, most of them opposing the change. Many commenters warned that the proposal would deprive investors of information, let companies operate behind closed doors and allow fraud to fester.

No sh*t.

Apparently the public can see what the Securities and Exchange Commission cannot: when markets are already saturated with deception, euphoria, leverage and narrative-driven bullshit, the answer probably isn’t to give corporate management teams an additional three months to conceal deteriorating financial conditions.

The SEC officially proposed the change on May 5. Under the plan, companies could file one new semiannual Form 10-S instead of three quarterly Form 10-Q reports. Chairman Paul Atkins has described the proposal as part of his “Make IPOs Great Again” agenda, arguing that greater flexibility could encourage companies to enter and remain in public markets.

What a slogan. Not proposing to make accounting more reliable, punish executives who mislead shareholders, improve audit quality or help ordinary investors compete with institutions that purchase satellite data and scrape credit-card transactions. Proposing to make IPOs “great again” by letting companies tell their owners what is happening less often.

There is nothing populist about expanding the informational advantage enjoyed by executives, insiders, hedge funds, private-equity firms and institutions with access to management. There is nothing populist about telling ordinary investors to sit quietly for six months while insiders watch the business evolve in real time. There is nothing populist about weakening one of the few standardized disclosures that retail investors, pension beneficiaries and smaller asset managers can all access simultaneously.

This is regressive corporate deregulation dressed up in a red hat and marketed as liberation from paperwork. The public apparently understands the scam. According to the Journal, the SEC received a record number of comments on the proposal, and the opposition came from nonprofits, retirement funds, academics, individual investors and other members of the public.

Roughly 40,000 comments reportedly warned that the change would prevent investors from accessing information, let companies hide behind closed doors and allow fraud to grow. Yet the agency is still expected to push forward.

Why bother soliciting public comments at all?

Just publish a PDF saying, “Thank you for your concern. Management has reviewed management’s proposal and management remains extremely pleased with management.”

One public-school teacher reportedly observed that she must report grades every quarter so parents can monitor their children’s progress. She asked whether regulators trying to reduce corporate paperwork would be equally comfortable receiving updates about their own children only twice a year.

A childhood-cancer nonprofit offered an even more devastating example. According to the Journal, the organization said it learned from a quarterly update that a potential supplier had suffered a loss threatening its ability to manufacture components for an immunotherapy clinical trial. Without the disclosure, the nonprofit said it could have misallocated donations and lost time that sick children did not have.

The SEC’s apparent response to examples like these is that perhaps the final language can be adjusted before the agency does roughly what it intended to do anyway.

This entire proposal would be difficult to comprehend in a healthy market. In the current market, it borders on institutional malpractice.

As I wrote recently in Your Delusion Doesn’t Make Me a “Doomer,” we are already operating in an environment where asking a public-company executive to remain consistent is treated as a hate crime.

Investors increasingly regard skepticism as sabotage. Valuation questions are dismissed as “FUD.” Executives can promote a preferred metric while it is rising, quietly stop discussing it when it deteriorates and then rely on an army of shareholders to attack anyone rude enough to notice.

Public-company management teams increasingly operate less like employees of shareholders and more like heads of personality cults.

Meanwhile, passive funds continue buying. Options activity supplies additional momentum. Social media turns every stock into a tribal identity. Financial television recycles management talking points. Influencers explain that revenue is an obsolete concept. Promoters insist profitability will arrive at some distant point after the heat death of the universe. And when anyone asks a basic question about cash flow, accounting or dilution, they are told they simply do not understand innovation.

This is the environment in which the SEC wants to reduce mandatory reporting frequency.

We have companies trading at valuations that would once have been considered satire. We have unprofitable businesses raising billions based on stories that change every six months. We have aggressive adjusted earnings, customized metrics, endless stock-based compensation, related-party transactions, reverse mergers, promotional projections and balance sheets so complex they require an archaeological expedition.

Management already has an enormous information advantage over shareholders. The proposal would widen it.

Quarterly reports do not eliminate fraud. They do not guarantee honest management. They do not prevent executives from polishing adjusted figures until they shine like a bowling ball at a used-car dealership.

But quarterly reporting creates regular checkpoints. It forces management to reconcile narratives with numbers. It gives investors more frequent information about cash, debt, margins, customer concentration, working capital, dilution and operating performance. It gives auditors, analysts, short sellers, journalists and shareholders additional opportunities to notice that something is beginning to smell like the dumpster behind a Long Island boiler room.

Semiannual reporting would create longer stretches during which deterioration can accumulate before investors receive a full standardized update. Six months is a long time in a leveraged company. It is a long time when customers are leaving. It is a long time when cash is burning. It is a long time when a lender is tightening terms, inventory is piling up, receivables are deteriorating or management is desperately trying to refinance debt.

It is practically an eternity when executives know what is happening and ordinary shareholders do not.

The absence of information will itself become information, but by the time investors fully understand why management chose silence, management may have enjoyed months to sell stock, raise capital, renegotiate compensation or prepare a new narrative.

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The SEC’s rationale centers on encouraging more companies to go public. Supporters argue that disclosure requirements make public listings too burdensome and contribute to the declining number of publicly traded companies. The Commission itself says its proposal is meant to provide flexibility based on a company’s business model, industry and investor expectations.

But public listing is supposed to involve obligations. Being able to raise enormous amounts of money from the public is an extraordinary privilege. Access to liquid equity markets is an extraordinary privilege. Index eligibility is an extraordinary privilege. The ability of executives and early investors to convert private stakes into publicly traded wealth is an extraordinary privilege.

In exchange, companies should be required to tell their owners what the f**k is happening more than twice a year. If quarterly financial reporting is simply too oppressive, companies remain free to stay private.

As I just noted hours ago banks are exploring ways to package stakes in difficult-to-value private-credit funds into securities that can receive stronger ratings through insurance guarantees. Risk is rearranged, wrapped, renamed and granted more favorable regulatory treatment, not necessarily because the underlying assets became safer, but because the structure became more elaborate. (Read: Oh My F**king God, They're Doing It Again)

That is the broader pattern of the current financial system. Opacity is treated as innovation.

The fact that more than 200,000 comments were submitted should have caused the SEC to stop and consider whether the public understands something regulators have forgotten. Ordinary investors know they are operating at an informational disadvantage.

Even r/WallStreetBets, a community not traditionally confused with the Financial Accounting Standards Board, submitted a letter opposing the proposal. Its members argued that reducing disclosure would disproportionately benefit sophisticated firms with alternative data, private meetings and extensive research resources.

How can we look at a market already overflowing with promotional nonsense, distorted incentives, complicated financial engineering and widespread distrust and still conclude that corporate issuers needed relief from telling investors how they were doing every three months?

And when the next company collapses after spending months insisting everything was fine and keeping the world in the dark, everyone will express astonishment, executives will say no one could have predicted it, and television pundits will spend three days asking how the warning signs were missed.

But we’ll look back and see that the warning signs were not missed. We simply decided companies should be required to show them less often.

--

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.

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As of May 20, 2026 I am attempting to no longer actively trade (read my story here). My investing/saving is mostly done by recurring contributions mostly to sector ETFs and a few select equities, trusted third parties who oversee my accounts, and advisors. Such advisors or funds, through individual equities, options, index funds, mutual funds, ETFs, or other securities, may have positions in, exposure to, or holdings of names mentioned herein that I know nothing about. Basically, via index funds, ETFs and individual equities it is possible I could own, have exposure to, or not own anything at any point. As of the same date, May 20, 2026, in an attempt to lead a healthier lifestyle, I’ve also excluded myself from fantasy sports, sports betting, online and in-person casinos and prediction markets.

And all positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. If you see numbers and calculations of any sort, assume they are wrong and double check them. I failed Algebra in 8th grade and topped off my high school math accolades by getting a D- in remedial Calculus my senior year, before becoming an English major in college so I could bullshit my way through things easier.

The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 13:40

Google's Flagship Still Can't Ship - So It Launched Token Austerity And A Hacking Model Only Governments Can Use

Alphabet reports second-quarter earnings after today's close - the first hyperscaler print since cheap Chinese tokens knocked the semiconductor index into a bear market. So naturally, Google chose the eve of that report to ship three new AI models, none of which is the one it promised.

Getty Images

The Tuesday launch consisted of Gemini 3.6 Flash, a cheaper workhorse whose headline feature is that it consumes fewer tokens; Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, a high-throughput model built for volume; and Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, a vulnerability-hunting model that ordinary users are not permitted to touch. Conspicuously absent: Gemini 3.5 Pro, the flagship Google unveiled at I/O in May with a promised June launch, which has now missed multiple targets.

Then there is Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, which Google says achieves top-tier performance at finding, verifying, and patching software vulnerabilities inside its CodeMender agent - and which will be available exclusively to governments and vetted partners through a limited-access pilot, on account of what the company calls the technology's dual-use nature. Which is of course aimed at competing with Anthropic's Mythos. Google shipped strengthened Frontier Safety safeguards against CBRN and cyberattack misuse in the same release.

The Flagship That Isn't

According to Bloomberg, Pro was held back after falling short of Google's internal targets, particularly on coding, and a late-June attempt to rescue it by refreshing the training data produced disappointing results. The official line is now that Pro is "testing with partners" and will ship when ready - which is to say, there is no date.

The scoreboard is not kind in the meantime. Google currently has no model in the public top ten. Inside roughly a week, xAI shipped Grok 4.5, OpenAI shipped three versions of GPT-5.6, and Moonshot shipped Kimi K3, while Anthropic's Fable 5 sits atop the leaderboards. The verdict from the demand side is the same: AI-native firms canvassed by UBS at its Menlo Park event this month named Anthropic's Opus 4.8 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 as the models they consider functionally superior. Google did not come up. The delay also affects a major customer - as Apple uses Gemini to power parts of Siri in iOS 27. Oops. 

Selling Fewer Tokens

The models Google did ship do tell an interesting story... The central pitch for 3.6 Flash is that it reduces output token usage by 17% versus its predecessor on the Artificial Analysis Index - and by as much as 65% on the DeepSWE coding benchmark, where it burns barely a third of what 3.5 Flash did - while taking fewer reasoning steps and tool calls to finish multi-step work. Flash-Lite runs at 350 output tokens per second and is priced at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output.

A year ago the industry's pitch was maximum intelligence at any price, and enterprise buyers obliged by tokenmaxxing their way through nine-figure AI budgets - until they realized the return on this was abysmal.

Breakdown of every $1 spent on AI tokens: less than 20cents reaches real users (44 cents is spent fixing bugs generated by other AI) https://t.co/jFzUVSCPos pic.twitter.com/NwOWg7HppA

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 22, 2026

The term of art now, per the AI-native firms UBS hosted in Menlo Park this month, is "value-maxxing" - which maybe they should have tried first. Now it's all about model routing, dynamically dropping specific tasks down to cheaper non-frontier models, as table stakes rather than a feature. On top of that, one week after Moonshot's Kimi K3 triggered the chip complex's DeepSeek 2.0 moment - and with UBS math we detailed weeks ago putting Chinese models are producing roughly 95% of frontier capability for 10% of the cost. So - the deflation is now the product. As an aside, Moonshot has been rationing new Kimi K3 subscriptions and API access on capacity constraints while Alibaba teases its next Qwen release: the cheap end of the market is supply-constrained because everyone is hopping on the train. 

The bulls have an answer, and in fairness it is not a stupid one - a hedge fund CIO argued in these pages just last week that the cheap-versus-premium debate misses a raw shortage of intelligence with AI barely diffused through the economy. UBS lands in a similar place, arguing the trade is not breaking but maturing into a multi-model, efficiency-obsessed phase in which demand gets reallocated rather than destroyed. Perhaps. But that thesis gets put to the test tonight when Alphabet reports. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 13:20

Abandoned Navy Base Costs Taxpayers $340,000 A Year For Internet Nobody Uses

Authored by Matt White via TaskandPurpose.com,

The mostly abandoned neighborhoods on Adak Island, Alaska, were once home to 5,000 Navy sailors and their families. But after 40 years as a supply depot, Naval Air Facility Adak closed in 1997, leaving scores of homes and buildings behind. Today, a small community of government workers and Alaska Native families have turned the streets and buildings of the former base into the town of Adak.

The island, far out on the Aleutian Island chain, is so isolated and decayed that Marines occasionally return to simulate hard-to-resupply expeditionary operations or urban chemical warfare among its abandoned buildings. The civilian population, now well below 100, can only reach the island on occasional civilian flights that land on the Navy’s forgotten runway.

But while nearly all of the 300-odd former Navy buildings in Adak are empty and many are collapsing, the U.S. government pays an Anchorage firm $340,000 per year to maintain internet access to them.

An investigation by the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica published Monday found that an internet provider collects $340,000 every year to keep fairly slow “broadband” internet service active for the town now on the former Navy base.

“After the Navy shipped out, hurricane-force Aleutian winds pried homes apart,” wrote Kyle Hopkins for the Anchorage Daily News. “The worst of it is in a beachfront neighborhood called ‘Officer’s Country’ on old city maps. Bathroom mirrors and toilets and kitchen tables stand exposed to the rain in homes cleaved in half like dollhouses.”

While “raiding” abandoned buildings on the former Navy base in Adak, Alaska, Marines treat a simulated casualty during Arctic Expeditionary Capabilities Exercise in 2019. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Tia D. Carr.

But even Navy-built buildings now open to the elements with missing walls and roofs, reporters found, were listed on the internet provider’s roster.

The joint investigation was published as part of an ongoing series by Hopkins on internet access in remote Alaska. Adak was Hopkins’ first review of a community built around an abandoned military base.

Hopkins and a photographer flew to Adak, where many buildings on the former Navy base are uninhabitable, with collapsing walls and roofs, from years without repairs in the bitter weather of the Aleutian Islands. Hopkins visited every address on the old Navy base listed as receiving taxpayer-funded internet service.

But Hopkins reported that he found that nearly all residents use Starlink satellite internet. Blanketing the base, he reported not one customer for the tax-funded broadband.

The federal program, Hopkins reported, is paid for by the Universal Service Fund, a multi-billion-dollar effort administered by the Federal Communications Commission and funded as a small fee on nearly all consumer phone bills. The fund is intended to deliver internet to hard-to-reach rural customers.

Though the buildings on Adak were built by the Navy, the service has no current connection to the town or the pricey internet service.

Closed bases meet varying fates

Adak is one of scores of closed military installations that dot the country. Many have found new lives, like Naval Training Center Baldwin Park, Florida, and Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado, which are today mixed-use developments with thousands of homes, shopping and businesses. When Hurricane Andrew destroyed Homestead Air Force Base in 1992, a section was repurposed as a major racetrack (other parts were recommissioned as a reserve base in 2003).

Abandoned missile silos in the Midwest have been rebuilt as homes and museums — though some remain dangerously abandoned.

Much of the town of Adak is based on jobs created by federal clean-up of the old base, along with other federal agencies that now oversee federal land on the otherwise uninhabited island.

But the town may have a military future. Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan has led a campaign to move Navy assets to Alaska, which could include reoccupying Adak. Last summer, Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo called for a revival of the base. Forces there, he said, would provide U.S. forces a first line of defense against Russian aggression to “gain time and distance on any force capability that’s looking to penetrate,” Paparo said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Though Adak would be a remote assignment, those sent to the cold, windy island would at least know they’d have internet access.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 13:05

Can SpaceX Fire On All Cylinders?

Authored by Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

SpaceX’s June IPO raised $75 billion, resulting in an initial valuation of $1.77 trillion, making it the largest IPO in history. SpaceX, encompassing its launch business, Starlink, and the recently merged xAI, peaked at a $2.5 trillion market cap in its first week of trading, briefly tying it with Amazon as the fifth-largest publicly traded company. After only a month, the enthusiasm is rapidly fading.

Perhaps most amazing of all, the fanfare is occurring despite SpaceX producing a net loss of nearly $5 billion in 2025. Based on its $1.84 trillion market cap, investors are clearly not worried about the present. They are excitedly pricing in astronomical growth for SpaceX.

To evaluate SpaceX from a fundamental perspective, investors need to quantify the implied growth in its valuation and compare it with their own and market forecasts. In this article, we attempt to help them by providing context for their growth expectations, using Amazon’s history as a proxy.

Amazon, like SpaceX, was priced at expensive valuations and ultimately delivered on those expectations. Initial Amazon investors who held through the dot-com crash and years of zero earnings have been rewarded roughly 3,300-fold, amounting to about 32% annualized for nearly three decades.

So, the question we pose: what does the Amazon playbook require of SpaceX?

Amazon

Amazon went public in May 1997 at $18 per share, valuing the online bookseller at $438 million. Revenue that year was $148 million. The market was pricing its shares at a price-to-sales (P/S) multiple of roughly 3x. At the time, the ratio was generous for a money-losing start-up, but defensible given that Amazon was doubling revenue every year. Importantly, those who envisioned that Amazon was much more than an online bookstore and appreciated its growth potential must have thought its price-to-sales ratio was dirt cheap.

What followed was one of the greatest periods of sustained revenue expansion in corporate history. Amazon crossed $19 billion in annual revenue in 2008, only eleven years after going public with $148 million in revenue. In 2025, Amazon generated $716 billion in revenue, putting it on par with Walmart as the highest-revenue company in the US. From its IPO to today, revenue has grown nearly 5,000-fold.

That trajectory is nearly unprecedented. Can SpaceX also fire on all cylinders?

SpaceX Today vs. Amazon Then

As the graph above shows, Amazon generated approximately $19.2 billion in revenue in 2008, nearly identical to SpaceX’s $18.7 billion in 2025. In 2008, Amazon’s market cap was slightly under $40 billion, implying a P/S multiple slightly above 2x. SpaceX, with a $1.84 trillion market cap and $18.7 billion in sales, trades at a P/S nearing 100x. The market is pricing SpaceX at approximately 50 times the multiple it gave Amazon at the same revenue level.

While the ratio difference sounds extreme, there are reasons to argue SpaceX deserves a premium:

• Its rapidly growing Starlink business generates $4.4 billion in operating income, with revenue compounding at a 50% growth rate. However, as we share in the first graphic below, its revenue growth is slowing, and average revenue per customer is declining.

• The reusable launch business accounts for over 50% of orbital rocket launches, as we share in the second graphic. That said, competition is increasing rapidly, especially from the well-funded Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ rocket venture.

• There is promise in its AI infrastructure business through the xAI merger, but Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, and new open-source models like Kimi-K3 appear to hold a meaningful advantage.

The way to rationalize a near triple-digit P/S multiple is through extraordinary, historically unprecedented growth. So, let’s quantify “extraordinary.”

SpaceX’s Implied Growth Rate

Let’s work backward from SpaceX’s $1.84 trillion market cap to gauge the growth needed to satisfy the market’s implied forecast. To do so, we assume that investors demand a 20% annual return. While lofty, it is roughly a third below the 32% Amazon has delivered since its IPO.

If SpaceX shares compound at 20% per year for the next ten years, its market cap will reach $11.4 trillion by mid-2036, implying a share price near $860, assuming no new equity issuance.

With that proxy $11.4 trillion market cap in hand, the only remaining variable is the P/S multiple investors will pay for a mature SpaceX. That multiple determines the revenue it must produce. Consider two scenarios:

• Scenario one: SpaceX matures like Amazon. Amazon today, after 29 years of dominance across e-commerce and cloud computing, trades at roughly 3.7 times trailing sales. If SpaceX has the same multiple in 2036, it will generate about $3.1 trillion in annual revenue. For context, that approximates the entire GDP of France and roughly a tenth of US GDP. The implied revenue growth rate that clears this hurdle is 67% per year, compounded over ten consecutive years.

• Scenario two: SpaceX retains a higher premium multiple. A more generous P/S assumption eases the required revenue growth, but the implications are still daunting. At a P/S ratio of 20x in ten years, the required 2036 revenue falls to about $570 billion, roughly three-quarters of what Amazon generates today, and a level Amazon needed 27 years to attain. The implied growth rate is substantial at 41% per year for a decade.

To appreciate what a P/S of 20 means, we share the ratio of the 20 largest US stocks below. Broadcom at 29.2 and Nvidia at 24.9 are the only two above 20, and both are growing rapidly with enormous profits.

Amazon’s single best ten-year revenue stretch, from 1997 to 2007, produced a 59% compound annual growth rate. But Amazon started with $148 million in sales and was just beginning to expand beyond books. SpaceX began at $18.7 billion, 126 times Amazon’s starting point. Growth rates achievable from a small base are significantly easier than from a large one, which is precisely why only a handful of companies have ever sustained 40%+ growth for a full decade.

Time Out: What A P/S Of 20 Implies

It’s worth pausing to stress what a P/S ratio of 20 implies. The best way to do so is to share the advice Scott McNealy from Sun Microsystems gave his shareholders in 2002.  

‘At 10 times revenues, to give you a 10-year payback, I have to pay you 100% of revenues for 10 straight years in dividends. That assumes I can get that by my shareholders. That assumes I have zero cost of goods sold, which is very hard for a computer company. That assumes zero expenses, which is really hard with 39,000 employees. That assumes I pay no taxes, which is very hard. And that assumes you pay no taxes on your dividends, which is kind of illegal. And that assumes with zero R&D for the next 10 years, I can maintain the current revenue run rate. Now, having done that, would any of you like to buy my stock at $64? Do you realize how ridiculous those basic assumptions are? You don’t need any transparency. You don’t need any footnotes. What were you thinking?’— Scott McNealy, Business Week, 2002

Elon Musk’s Growth Forecast

Elon Musk’s forward guidance warrants caution, as it is very aggressive. Days after the IPO, Musk posted the comment below on X.  Growing from $18.7 billion in 2025 to $1 trillion in 2030 is a 53-fold increase in five years, a compound growth rate of roughly 122% per year, more than double Amazon’s best-ever pace and from a base thousands of times larger.

Suppose Musk delivers. The shareholder outcome still hinges entirely on the multiple. If the market awards a $1 trillion revenue base Amazon’s current 3.7x P/S valuation, SpaceX’s 2030 market cap would be roughly $3.7 trillion, about a 17% annualized return from today’s price. At 20x, the same revenue produces a $20 trillion valuation and returns near 70% annually.

A 17% to 70% range on identical fundamentals illustrates the difficulty in our analysis: both variables, sales and the multiple, are unknowable, and the multiple alone can swing the outcome from ordinary to absurd.

Wall Street’s Wide View

To be clear, SpaceX is unique. Starlink’s subscriber economics provide a sustainable revenue base; the launch business has pricing power that thus far has not been challenged, and an xAI integration could, in the most optimistic scenario, open multiple trillion-dollar markets quickly. That said, analysts must carefully discount even the most tremendous forecasts.

To wit, the models from the SpaceX IPO underwriters sit far below those of Elon Musk. Morgan Stanley projects roughly $330 billion in 2030 revenue, and Goldman Sachs sees about $470 billion, both fractions of Musk’s $1 trillion.

New Street Research, which initiated coverage with a $165 target, acknowledged the bullish thesis could work but noted investors need a “20 to 25-year time frame” for the math to resolve favorably.

Morningstar, by contrast, set the fair value for SpaceX at $63. As we share below, the $63 to $401 range of analyst price targets reflects the uncertainty surrounding the company’s potential.

Summary

Amazon rewarded patient investors immensely, but it did so from a mere $438 million IPO valuation. Compounding from $1.84 trillion, as SpaceX tries, is harder by orders of magnitude. SpaceX can be a great company and still prove disappointing to its shareholders. To justify today’s price, its growth must be historically unprecedented, at a scale no company has ever operated, for longer than any growth cycle has ever lasted.

While that may sound bearish, this analysis doesn’t make SpaceX uninvestable. The stock will cycle through bullish and bearish periods as momentum ebbs and flows along a likely volatile path. Accordingly, traders will find plenty of opportunities on both sides. For those looking to buy and hold, however, the odds seem lofty. But, transcending financial forecasting, Musk has a proven track record of success, so it’s too early to count SpaceX out.  

Can SpaceX do what only a very small handful of companies have ever done, or is the market once again pricing in a future that gravity will eventually catch up with?

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 12:25

Top Israeli Minister: 'Best For Us' If US Fights Iran While Israel Sits Out New Round of War

As four more American families grieve the deaths of soldiers killed in the war on Iran, one of the top-ranking ministers in Israel's cabinet told an Israeli audience that having America do all the fighting and dying is "the best for us." Israel had intensely lobbied President Trump to launch a joint war on Iran on Feb 22, and traded blows with Iran up until early June. Since Trump restarted intense, daily bombardment of Iran 11 days ago, however, Israel has sat out the action, sparing Israelis from lethal Iranian retaliation. 

“The State of Israel has no interest in joining the contained confrontation between Iran and the United States," far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a session at the Katif Conference for National Responsibility, which endorses Jewish settlement in Palestinian territories. "The current situation is the best one for us.”

Bezalel Smotrich leads the Religious Zionism party and wants Israel to annex the West Bank and Gaza (MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP)

Smotrich is generally regarded as the second-most powerful cabinet member in Israel, and is a vital linchpin in Netanyahu's government that took power in January 2023. Lacking an outright majority, Netanyahu was forced to build a ruling coalition that gives unprecedented power to religious and ultra-nationalist extremists. Smotrich leads the Religious Zionism party. He personally aspires to make Israel a theocracy, wants Israel to annex the West Bank and Gaza while barring most Palestinians from citizenship, and has said it would be "just and moral" to starve two million Palestinian men, women and children in Gaza. 

In his latest remarks, Smotrich candidly acknowledged that Israel and the United States have different goals vis a vis Iran, but said America's continued military engagement furthers the Israeli agenda. “[We] must remember that the ultimate goal of Israel, and not necessarily the United States, is to undermine and weaken the regime in Iran – to the point of overthrowing it,” Smotrich said.

Army SGT Michael Swinton was killed July 19 when a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone went terribly wrong (Mia Gonzalez-Swinton via Guardian)

Disregarding the widespread victimization of innocents that the strategy entails, Smotrich said destruction of Iran's economy will help precipitate the Iranian government's collapse. "Currently, inflation in Iran is at 85 percent, food inflation of over 134 percent in a total of four months, and the Iranian rial is trading at an exchange rate of 1.9 million to the dollar - and it's going up." He then reiterated that "the current situation is good for us, and there's no point in pushing ourselves inward." 

Footage of the Iranian ballistic missile strike on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan last night.

At least two missiles hit the base, killing two American service members. pic.twitter.com/8tOm6yyXwe

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) July 18, 2026

Here's how Israeli journalist Hagai Amit recently described the benefits of Israel allowing the United States to plunge forward alone in the war that Israel urged America to start: 

It reduces the risk of [Israeli] casualties and allows daily life to continue largely as normal, without midnight sirens, trips to bomb shelters or major disruptions. The Finance Ministry is also relieved not to have to burden the state budget with billions of additional shekels for air operations and the interception of ballistic missiles.

Meanwhile, as Amit warmly describes the cost savings for Israel, various analysts say America's cost of the Iran quagmire is now close to or even exceeding $100 billion, which is upwards of triple what the Pentagon has owned up to at this point.

1LT Tyler Feehan and PVT Isabella Gonzales were two of three Army soldiers killed in the Iranian strike on US forces at base in Jordan

Of course, the highest price is being paid by American service members who've been thrown into an unconstitutionally-initiated war launched on false premises. Four more US soldiers have been killed since Trump re-escalated the war. In addition to US Army SGT Michael Swinton being killed in Iraq when a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone went wrong, three more soldiers were killed in an Iranian strike that hit prefabricated housing units at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan.

Initially, the Pentagon confirmed only two fatalities in Jordan: 19-year-old PVT Isabella Gonzales and 1LT Tyler Feehan. The third was classified as MIA, but the Pentagon is now saying SGT Angel Rampersad is "believed to be deceased."  The grim implication is that Rampersad's body was devastated by an Iranian missile -- nearly five months after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that Iran's military had been "made combat-ineffective," and almost two months after Sen. Ted Cruz said US forces had "destroy[ed] all of their missiles and drones." 

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 12:05

ADNOC Approves $6.2 Billion Gas Project In Abu Dhabi

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Abu Dhabi’s national oil company ADNOC just announced a $6.2 billion final investment decision to develop the Umm Shaif Gas Cap project in Abu Dhabi as part of its strategy to grow its global gas portfolio.

ADNOC will develop the project alongside its international partners - France’s TotalEnergies, Italy’s Eni, and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

The final investment decision (FID) includes three engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) packages totaling $5.1 billion for large-scale offshore infrastructure awarded by ADNOC to consortiums including major UAE and international contractors. The development also includes a $365 million 14-well drilling and integrated drilling services program to be delivered by ADNOC Drilling over 18 months using three existing rigs.

The green light for the development of Umm Shaif Gas Cap follows last month’s agreement in which ADNOC let BP and TotalEnergies take 10% each in the consortium developing one of Abu Dhabi’s largest gas fields—the Bab Gas Cap project in Abu Dhabi.

The Bab Cap Gas concession is expected to support UAE’s plan to become gas self-sufficient and domestic feedstock production, as well as ADNOC’s liquefied natural gas export expansion plans.

The new project, Umm Shaif Gas Cap, is the latest milestone in the company’s gas growth strategy and will unlock more than 600 million standard cubic feet per day (scfd) of natural gas and associated gas liquids, equivalent to almost 10% of the UAE’s current daily gas consumption, ADNOC said today. Production from the development is expected by 2030.

“ADNOC is accelerating its integrated gas strategy to further harness the UAE's vast gas resources and expand our global LNG platform, as global demand for natural gas continues to rise,” said Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and ADNOC Managing Director and Group CEO.

Earlier this month, ADNOC Logistics and Services placed a $900-million order for four newbuild LNG carriers to expand its fleet as Abu Dhabi’s national oil company seeks to boost gas exports to seize the global rise in LNG demand.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 11:30

Socialist Mamdani Concedes NYC Can't Arrest Netanyahu, Breaking Another Campaign Promise

With New York City rents at record highs, bus fares still in place, and the rise of the far left spooking taxpayers and businesses, Mayor Zohran Mamdani appears increasingly focused on playing world policeman instead of properly addressing the city's affordability crisis. On Tuesday night, the socialist mayor was forced to concede that he cannot execute the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, exposing yet another campaign promise he cannot fulfill.

"It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant," Mamdani said in a video posted on X. "The federal government, however, does, and I call on them to join the ICC and execute this warrant," he added.

Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. pic.twitter.com/YRezmW6YVx

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) July 22, 2026

Mamdani said his administration reviewed every available legal option but maintained that Netanyahu is "not welcome" in NYC. President Trump said Monday that Netanyahu would not be arrested anywhere in the U.S., while Israel's U.N. ambassador accused the socialist, pro-Islamist Mamdani of promoting Hamas propaganda.

During last year's campaign, Mamdani promised fellow socialists and Islamists that he would order city police to arrest Netanyahu under the ICC warrant. That pledge now adds to a growing list of unfulfilled promises, including lower rents, free buses, and other proposed handouts.

I don’t understand, so you lied when you were campaigning and said “as mayor of NYC I would arrest Netanyahu” @EndWokeness pic.twitter.com/DEQqk1alIo

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 22, 2026

Related:

• Mamdani's Affordability Agenda Flops As NYC Rents Surge To Record Highs

While those socialist programs may remain politically attractive in the short term, financing them will become increasingly difficult if the wealthy continue to flee the metro area for red states, eroding the city's tax base and raising the risk of financial turmoil.

In 2024, ICC issued arrest warrants accusing Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of crimes against humanity during Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, allegations Israeli officials reject.

What the internet had to say:

What does that have to do with fixing potholes?

— nic carter (@nic_carter) July 22, 2026

Lol all of this tough to talk to say no you will not try to arrest him.

Limousine marxist to a tee.

— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) July 22, 2026

NYC is full of criminals, yet you care more about the leader of a foreign country than about the city that you are mayor of - although it's not surprising given that you and your wife are terrorist supporters.
May you be denaturalized and deported.

— Leftism (@LeftismForU) July 22, 2026 Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 11:10

Fifth Circuit To Rehear Drug Trafficker's Second Amendment Challenge

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

A federal appeals court voted to rehear a constitutional challenge to a federal law that prevents felons from possessing guns, weeks after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said he hoped a lower court would consider the law's constitutionality.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas poses for an official portrait at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building in Washington on Oct. 7, 2022. Alex Wong/Getty Images

The July 20 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit came after a three-judge panel of the same circuit on June 2 denied convicted drug trafficker Curtis Squire's challenge to Section 922(g)(1) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code. The felon-in-possession provision is part of the federal Gun Control Act of 1968.

Federal gun laws have largely been justified under the Constitution's commerce clause. The legal theory is that guns move in interstate commerce, meaning they are manufactured, sold, and transported across state lines. This means Congress can regulate gun possession, even inside the home, because it supposedly has an impact on the national market for firearms.

A majority of the judges sitting on the Fifth Circuit voted to grant the petition of Squire for a so-called en banc hearing before the full court. The panel had unanimously upheld Squire's conviction and sentence on June 2 for being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Squire had filed a so-called as-applied challenge to Section 922(g)(1), arguing the provision was unconstitutional as applied to him under the Second Amendment.

He cited the Supreme Court's landmark 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. That decision recognized a constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense and held that restrictions on guns must be deeply rooted in American history if they are to survive constitutional scrutiny.

Squire argued the Second Amendment allowed him to possess a firearm in his home, so the onus was on the government to prove there was a historical tradition justifying a lifetime ban on someone with his criminal past.

He also cited the high court's 2024 ruling in United States v. Rahimi, in which the justices upheld a federal gun control law that bars people under domestic violence-related restraining orders from possessing firearms.

The justices found in that case that the Second Amendment isn't violated when an individual is disarmed after a court has found him to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another.

Squire argued that precedent stands for the principle that the disarmament must be related to a specific finding that a person is dangerous and that he was not because he was not convicted of using violence. His position was that Section 922(g)(1) was a categorical ban that did not mandate an ongoing assessment of dangerousness, so it was overbroad when applied to him.

The panel rejected these arguments, saying it affirmed the conviction and sentence "because our historical tradition supports disarming drug traffickers based on their dangerousness."

The Fifth Circuit did not provide an explanation for its new ruling that sets aside the panel's decision, but Circuit Judge Stephen Higginson noted in his dissent that mere weeks ago, Thomas "asked lower courts to reexamine the constitutionality of [the legal provision] under the Commerce Clause."

"Already, our court answers the call," Higginson said.

The judge was referring to Thomas's concurring opinion on June 18 in United States v. Hemani, a case in which the high court ruled unanimously that the government may not prosecute a man for owning a firearm just because he has habitually smoked marijuana. The ruling clarified a provision of the Gun Control Act.

Thomas agreed that the drug user ban as applied should be struck down but warned that Section 922(g) provisions - including the felon ban - may exceed Congress's authority under the commerce clause.

Thomas said Section 922(g)(3) of the Gun Control Act, which bars illegal drug users from possessing firearms, "appears to exceed Congress's enumerated powers to regulate interstate commerce."

"As an original matter, the Commerce Clause authorizes Congress only 'to regulate the buying and selling of goods and services trafficked across state lines,'" he said.

The clause does not give Congress power to regulate "activities wholly separated from business, such as gun possession," he said.

"Congress cannot regulate the possession of every thing that ever traveled across state lines," Thomas added.

It is unclear when the Fifth Circuit will conduct the rehearing.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 10:50

Oil Soars To Six-Week Highs Amid Trump Threats, US Production Dip, & 'Tank Bottoms' At Cushing

Oil prices extended their rise this morning to six week highs as fighting between the US and Iran continued around the Persian Gulf (11th straight night of attacks) and threats of a blockade in the Red Sea added to growing uncertainty about the flow of energy from the region.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that U.S. forces would continue to attack Iran as long as it tried to exercise control over shipping traffic, which has dwindled in recent weeks.

Yesterday, President Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth threatened to deepen the war effort, including by potentially targeting the Houthis.

Trump further threatened the Iranians this morning, saying on his social media network that if the country attacks any ship in the Strait of Hormuz, “the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT, including those located next to, or in, the Capital City of Tehran.”

WTI is back at six-week highs, dragging bond yields higher and seemingly wearing on stocks too. Overnight saw API report an unexpected build in crude but an 'expected' draw in gasoline stocks.

API

• Crude +2.6mm

• Cushing

• Gasoline -1.38mm

• Distillates +1.76mm

DOE

• Crude +2.01mm (-500k exp)

• Cushing -674k

• Gasoline +765k

• Distillates +1.395mm

Crude stocks rose (in line with API's report) but Gasoline stocks rose (against API's reported draw)...

Stocks at the all-important Cushing hub fell again last week, unable to recover from 'tank bottoms'...

Interestingly, crude oil releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve re-accelerated last week...

Despite the ongoing rise in the rig count, US crude production dipped last week from record highs...

Next week’s EIA data may be more volatile depending on how hard Tropical Storm Bertha will impact the Gulf Coast. The storm could disrupt port operations and data on imports and exports. Bad weather could also make a dent on fuel demand on the East Coast. 

Crude imports from the Middle East remained at zero for a third week in the seven days to June 17. A couple of ships hauling Saudi crude to the US managed to leave the Persian Gulf during the brief opening of the Strait of Hormuz. But the waterway’s effective closure and the simultaneous threats to ships in the southern Red Sea will likely make further deliveries scarce.

WTI is holding around $88 at six-week highs...

The conflict is widening at a vulnerable time for energy markets.

Oil stockpiles are smaller than they were when U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began at the end of February, and Ukrainian attacks have severely damaged Russian refineries, tightening supplies of transportation fuels like diesel and prompting Goldman Sachs to raise a red flag about the potential for $120 Brent if things continue to escalate...

...and worse still, gas prices may go higher...

The $4 threshold is both economically and politically sensitive, as it is where lower-income consumers typically begin cutting discretionary purchases and trading down across gas stations, convenience stores and quick-service restaurants, further weighing on consumer sentiment... and Trump's approval ratings.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 10:40

The Money Printers Fueling Socialism's Rise

Authored by David Stockman via the Brownstone Institute,

Here's a graph the Keynesians, statists, and Wall Street gamblers - yes, we repeat ourselves - would prefer not to explain. At the same time, it also explains why socialism at this late date in history - and after all its abysmal failures the world over - is having some kind of dubious second coming in America.

During the last three decades the national savings rate (red line) has essentially collapsed, having fallen from 6.3% of GDP in 1997 to 0.5% of GDP in 2025. Between the same two dates, however, the net worth of US households (blue line) has soared from 4.6X personal income to 6.5X personal income.

In economist jargon, the question would recur as follows: How in the world over a three-decade period did the stock of wealth soar when the flows of savings virtually evaporated?

Or in plain English, how did so many Americans get so damn rich while living high on the hog? And we do mean wealthy: According to the Fed's Flow of Funds data, household net worth erupted from $32 trillion in 1997 to $169 trillion at present. These figures amount to an average of $320,000 per household in 1997, which grew to an average of $1.250 million per household 28 years later.

Needless to say, some substantial part of that gain is reflective of inflation. But even in constant 2025 dollars, average net worth per household has virtually doubled from about $630,000 to the aforementioned $1.250 million.

In short, the average savings per household diminished to nearly zero over that three-decade period - even as $85 trillion in added wealth accumulated in household balance sheets.

Household Net Worth % Of Personal Income Versus Net National Savings Rate, 1997 to 2025

As it happened, of course, the massive $136.4 trillion increase in net worth over this period went to the holders of financial and housing assets, less associated debts. Accordingly, with a lot of debt at the bottom income rungs relative to modest asset levels, the resulting wealth distribution skewed sharply to the tippy-top of the economic ladder.

To wit, $44.1 trillion of the gain was accounted for by the top 1% of households and fully $94.2 trillion by the top 10%. And while Keynesians, statists, and stockbrokers would have you believe this was nothing more than Mr. Market at work, we beg to differ.

Under a regime of sound money and honest markets there would have been no soaring gains in net worth relative to the very modest gains in national income and savings. To the contrary, the former is the work of the money-printers at the central bank and the Cantillon Effect of monetary inflation.

That is to say, when the Fed prints money it effectively first deposits the receipts among the primary bond dealers, which sell government bonds to its open market desk and then send the proceeds ricocheting through the canyons of Wall Street. At length, the inflation gets to Main Street in the form of higher energy, food, and other everyday prices, but not before much of the inflation is absorbed by the leveraged gamblers on Wall Street.

So there is no mystery as to why the wealth distribution in America has been skewed sharply to the top of the ladder during recent years. The culprit was not the Reagan tax cuts back in the 1980s or the inherent inequality of capitalism.

To the contrary, the normal skew of wealth to the most productive, capable, persistent, and enterprising households has been badly thrown out of kilter by the capture of the Federal Reserve by Wall Street speculators.

In the interim, however, the chart below speaks for itself. By embracing Greenspan-style monetary central planning in lieu of gold standard sound money, the modern day GOP has paved the way for the emerging Mamdani socialist coup in the Democrat Party.

That is to say, the wealth disparities shown below did not exist with nearly this much skew as recently as 1987, when Alan Greenspan's pro-inflation, pro-wealth effects regime became official policy at the Fed. Then again, the Fed's balance sheet stood at $250 billion in Q2 1987 after 73 years of a moderately tame printing press, which footings then ballooned to nearly $9 trillion by the peak in Q1 2022.

Yes, flood the free market with $8.75 trillion of fiat credits in barely 25 years, and you will indeed get a rip-roaring financial asset inflation. And you will also get a rekindling of socialist economics, which should have been finally left for dead by 1984.

Let's start with the axiomatic. Redistribution of wealth from rich to poor is none of the state's business. Full stop. At the same time, however, it's an equally grave sin for agencies of the state to artificially tilt the scales on behalf of the already rich. Yet that is unmistakably the consequence of Keynesian monetary policy as it has been practiced and amplified since the arrival of Alan Greenspan at the Fed in August 1987.

In this context, there is no reason to believe that the wealthy were getting shortchanged on the net worth front after the Morning in America boom of the mid-1980s. Yet as is evident in the graph below, the gap between the very rich and the bottom 50% of households has been relentlessly expanding since Greenspan bailed out Wall Street gamblers the first time after Black Monday in October 1987.

The net worth of the top 0.1% of households back then stood at $1.757 trillion, which was 2.4X the $718 billion net worth of the bottom 50% of US households. In unit terms, that amounted to an average net worth of $15,460 among the bottom 50% of households, which compared to $18.892 million for the top 0.1% of households.

Call this the status quo ante and there was no reason to find it objectionable. Mr. Market at work, as it were.

Fast forward to 2025, however, and the wealth distribution is far, far more skewed. The net worth of the top 0.1% or 135,000 ultra-wealthy US households now stood at $25.072 trillion, which compared to aggregated net worth of $4.266 trillion among the 67.4 million households in the bottom 50%.

That is to say, the gap had widened from 2.4X in 1989 to 5.9X by 2025. And this widening was even more dramatic when expressed in per household terms, where net worth now stood at $185.7 million each among the top 0.1% of households compared to $63,300 for the bottom 50%.

The truth is, there is absolutely no reason to believe that under a regime of sound money and honest financial markets that the gap between the tippy-top and bottom half of American households would have doubled during that interval. Not even remotely for the reasons we amplify below.

To the contrary, what we have is the Cantillon Effect: The inflationary emissions from the Eccles Building stick to the walls earlier and more completely on Wall Street and among financial asset holders before they eventually wend their way into the incomes and spending levels of the Main Street population.

There is no mystery, however, as to how the central banking branch of the state managed to double the wealth gap between the ultra-rich and the bottom 50% of US households in barely 37 years. Keynesian central banking has just a single policy instrument and it inherently makes the asset rich richer.

It can be succinctly described as systematic falsification of the price of debt or what economists are pleased to call "financial repression." It is axiomatic, in fact, that when bond yields are artificially pushed lower, asset prices get jacked higher - even as leveraged speculation becomes even more rewarding as a matter of sheer arithmetic.

So what you have is a central bank-enabled double-whammy for the age-old carry trade: Through massive bond-buying, pegging of overnight money market rates, and open-mouth steering of price action on Wall Street, the Fed artificially boosts the asset side of the ledger - even as the carry cost of highly leveraged ownership of these appreciating assets falls increasingly below risk-based free market rates.

That is to say, the reason the net worth of the top 0.1% rose by 14.3X - from $1.757 trillion to $25.072 trillion - over a 36-year period in which the national income (GDP) rose by only 5.6X is this: Owing to a lot of help from their friends in the Eccles Building wealthy asset holders have been shooting fish in a barrel for the better part of three decades.

This has manifested itself, of course, in the relentless rise of PE multiples since the 1970s. Indeed, the S&P 500 traded at about 11X trailing GAAP earnings in the late 1970s, which multiple has climbed steadily on a rolling three-year trend basis to nearly 30X at present (dotted red least squares trend).

Then again, the logical direction of the trend line above would be the opposite - from the upper left to the lower right. That's because the underlying performance trend of the US economy has sharply deteriorated over the past four decades.

Thus, the trend of the three-year rolling average of real GDP has been moving decisively counter to the upward trend of valuation multiples. From a trend rate of 3.5% per annum in the late 1970s the real GDP growth trend has marched downhill for 40 years, currently posting at barely 2.0% per annum.

To be sure, in shorter intervals the profits share of GDP can fluctuate and potentially trend higher. But over time the real economy has to expand in order for business activity and the profit offtake from it to rise, as well.

Alas, the valuation multiple trend above is just plain not compatible in economic terms with the steadily falling rate of US economic performance depicted below. Somebody had their big fat thumbs on the scale, and that was the debt-enabling money-printers at the nation's central bank.

Yes, it is that simple. Like the case of the Wizard of Oz, the only thing behind the screens at the Eccles Building is the stimulation of debt, more debt, and still even more debt. And the reason remains the tattered Great Depression-era fallacy that times were hard because consumers and businesses suddenly lost their nerve and their minds, apparently, and refused to spend enough on consumer goods and capital goods to keep the macr0 economy on an expansionary path.

So economic policy-makers ever since, and one way or another through a variety of fiscal and monetary "stimulus" expedients, have sought to goose spending by fostering cheaper and more abundant debt than the free market would generate on its own steam.

This cardinal (Keynesian) error of modern economic policy has had a Brobdingnagian impact on financial markets and the Main Street economy alike.

That's because the other key line on the graph also has been chugging relentlessly uphill - most especially after Nixon shit-canned sound gold-backed money at Camp David in August 1971. We are referring to the trend of the national leverage ratio, which is depicted by the least squares line (dotted red line) in the graph below. It could not be more dispositive.

From a historic ratio of below 1.5X national income in 1955, total public and private debt outstanding now sits at an aberrant and unprecedented 3.5X national income.

Those two turns of extra debt tell you everything you need to know about today's massive central bank-fostered financial bubbles. At the historically stable and prosperity-compatible 1.5X ratio to national income, combined public and private debt outstanding today would total just $48 trillion.

As it happens, of course, that figure was actually $116 trillion at the end of Q1 2026. What we have, therefore, is an extra $70 trillion of debt freighting down the US economy at a level never before even imagined. In turn, this comprises the flood of mispriced debt that sent Wall Street into a relentless frenzy of leveraged speculation.

From endless basis trades to triple-leveraged ETFs and every manner of inherently leveraged options trading schemes, Wall Street has driven financial asset prices ever higher. But these pyramids of speculation and debt are not based on sustainable value-added and real economic output - they are the fetid fruit of the central bank printing presses.

Here's the skunk on the woodpile, however. None of the massive buildup of leverage and $70 trillion of extra debt depicted above was necessary for prosperity. It made the wealthy unspeakably rich - perhaps symbolized by trillionaire Elon Musk - but it was built on the so-called "Greenspan wealth effect" doctrine, surely the greatest economic policy error of modern times.

And now it threatens the very basis of American democracy, as well. That's because it is generating such egregious wealth disparities as to actually revive what had been the dead-as-a-doornail carcass of socialism at the turn of the century.

Using the 1955 Golden Era's ratio of total public and private debt to national income (GDP) at 1.4X, here is the buildup of the current $70 trillion of excess debt now hanging like a financial sword of Damocles over the financial markets and US economy.

Indeed, this data makes clear that the main thing being cooked up behind the screen by the monetary wizards at the Eccles Building - especially since Greenspan's arrival - was the false elixir of debt, more debt, and still even more debt. After all, during the 70 years after 1955 total US public and private debt outstanding rose by a staggering 190X, from $600 billion to $113.6 trillion.

And, yes, there was a fair amount of economic growth and an even more fulsome inflation of the price level during that seven-decade interval. But, still, the debt growth far outpaced both of these macr0 drivers, thereby causing the national leverage ratio - or ratio of total public and private debt to nominal GDP - to rise from 141% in 1955 to 370% at present.

In a word, the legacy of activist central banking since the mid-1960s has been the saddling of American free enterprise with what amounts to a rolling and perpetual national LBO. And like in all leveraged buyouts, it is the existing shareholders who get the loot, not the workers, businessmen, and consumers who subsequently labor under its crushing burden of debt.

Moreover, unlike standard LBOs where sponsors claim - and sometimes do - enhance returns by steady debt paydowns, the Fed's national LBO has worked in only one direction: Namely, toward ever higher national leverage ratios and a progressively greater burden of excess debt, which we are here defining as leverage above the 140% of GDP historic standard.

The blue area of the graph below depicts the growing margin of debt in excess of the 140% of GDP standard as it stood in 1955. It makes clear as a bell that we are not talking about an oscillating cyclical trend, but a long-term path driven by the central bank printing presses that have generated a growing, debilitating wedge of debt on the US economy.

In fact, when your editor first arrived in Washington, DC as a youthful Capitol Hill staffer on the eve of Nixon's folly at Camp David in August 1971, the excess debt wedge stood at a modest $163 billion and 15% of GDP. But by the time Greenspan took the helm at the Fed in 1987, the newly liberated proprietors of its printing presses had already expanded the excess debt wedge to $4.416 trillion and 95% of GDP.

Thereafter, of course, it was off to the races. Even before Greenspan went full retard after the dotcom crash, excess debt already stood at $16.2 trillion and 158% of GDP, but in successive turns at bat his successors and assigns - Bernanke, Yellen, and Powell - operated the printing presses on turbocharge for the next two decades, causing the excess debt wedge to balloon to nearly $49 trillion and 227% of GDP by 2019.

Despite Powell's belated efforts to shrink the Fed's elephantine balance sheet via a short spell of QT (quantitative tightening), there has been no respite from the excess debt tsunami. At the end of 2025, in fact, it stood at $113.7 trillion and has continued to grow by leaps and bounds and is likely to hit $120 trillion by year-end 2026.

Yet and yet. The proof that none of the chronic and systemic interest rate repression that fostered this debt explosion was necessary lies in the pudding of the historical economic performance statistics. Indeed, if we scroll back to the very low starting debt figures and national leverage numbers of 1955, what we find is that was one barnburner of a year economically. On a Y/Y basis, real GDP had boomed by 7.1%, while the CPI actually fell by 0.4% and real median family income surged by 6.6%.

In a word, 1955 was the epicenter of the Golden Era that Donald Trump only brags about today. The aforementioned $600 billion of total public and private debt, which represented 141% of GDP, stood right square upon the prior long-term average of about 150% after 1870.

Obviously, it took nothing like today's mountainous debt levels and the associated inflationary bloating of both financial asset prices and goods and services to generate the prosperity of 1955 - a time when the great President Dwight Eisenhower was also slashing real defense spending by 35%, seeking a rapprochement with the Soviet Union, and moving the Federal budget into balance for the first time since the 1920s.

None of these conditions were remotely akin to the spend/borrow/speculate and print modus operandi of present times. In fact, during the period between Q1 1952 and Q1 1966, constant dollar US output (as measured by real final sales of domestic product) rose by 4.0% per annum.

By contrast, during the years since Q4 2007, when the Fed went all-in on stimmies and money-printing, real final sales grew at just 1.96% per annum or by barely half the growth rate during the Golden Era of the 1950s and 1960s. Over a continuous 14-year period these growth rate differences make a huge cumulative difference.

As shown in the graph below, the US economy was actually 72% larger by Q1 1966 than it had been in Q1 1952. By contrast, under the growth rate which has prevailed since the Great Finance Crisis - and notwithstanding massive fiscal and monetary stimulus from Washington policy makers - it would have been only 30% larger.

We'd call that a smoking gun. The Fed and its shills on Wall Street and Washington alike always claim that a modest amount of inflation on Main Street and a goodly helping of asset inflation on Wall Street are the necessary price to obtain higher growth, job creation, and overall prosperity on Main Street.

It is not. Not in the slightest as we detail below.

In fact, there is no contest. The table below compares real growth, inflation, real median family income, and job growth for the two periods, and the sharp contrasts speak for themselves.

Finally, it needs be recalled that this 14-year Golden Era occurred immediately after the 1951 Treasury Accord, which ended WWII-style monetization of the public debt and the pegging of Treasury bond interest rates at artificially low levels. As a consequence, under the sound money leadership of William McChesney Martin, the Fed's printing press was virtually idle until 1966, when LBJ forced the Fed Chairman to monetize his ill-conceived "guns and butter" policies for war in Southeast Asia and the so-called Great Society at home.

Over the course of 1951 thru Q2 1966, however, the Fed's balance sheet had expanded by a micr0scopic 0.7% per year, and that's in nominal terms.

In inflation-adjusted dollars it actually shrank by nearly 11% and dropped from 15% of GDP to just 7%.

By the lights of today's Fed fanboys, of course, the American economy - left unattended and undernourished by the central bank printing presses as it was during this 14-year period - should have tumbled into severe economic disrepair and crisis.

It didn't. American businesses, workers, consumers, savers, investors, inventors, and speculators pursuing their own best interest on the free market - coupled with relatively sound money - caused the American economy to actually boom and glow with noninflationary prosperity.

In a word, it showed its true stuff. No government "stimulus" and lickety-split debt growth was needed then, and it's not needed now.

So the first step toward restoration of a True Golden Era is the opposite of the recipe of easy money, big deficits, high tariffs, and ceaseless Washington meddling in the process of investment, resource allocation, and growth on the free market.

Simply pass a law forbidding the Fed to own government debt or buy and sell any securities at all. In lieu of this mode of monetary central planning, instead, just restore passive Discount Window lending at a penalty spread above the free market rate of interest based on the presentation of sound commercial collateral by Member banks.

That's all it would take to promote sustainable prosperity. And the proof is in the Golden Era pudding.

Undertake these reforms else we will see the rage grow and the long knives of wealth slayers drawn and used in ways no one wants. An economy this top-heavy with paper wealth - as the poor and middle class get destroyed with persistent inflation, slow growth, and unstable labor markets pervasive with dropouts - is not sustainable. It's not capitalism but rather corruption by the printing press. History shows precisely where this leads, namely to some upheaval that is even worse for everyone.

Total Public And Private Debt, Nominal GDP And “Excess Debt”, 1955-2025 Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 10:05

UBS Warns Trump's 100% Generic Drug Tariff Puts Indian Pharma "On Notice"; Goldman Flags Reshoring Winners

President Trump will impose a 100% tariff on imported generic drugs starting in August 2028, rising to 200% a year later, unless manufacturers shift production to the US.

"This is done in order to RESHORE Generic Pharmaceutical Production into America, with a penalty to those Companies that decide not to build Plant and Equipment within the stated period of time given to them," Trump wrote on Truth Social late Tuesday.

He continued, "The objective of this Policy is to protect the people of the United States. The Policy on Patented, Branded, or Innovative Drugs, which has been so successful, will remain as is," adding, "Pharmaceutical Facilities are being built, at a level never seen before, all over the United States of America."

Trump's announcement is the latest effort to reshore critical supply chains, and in this case, boost domestic production of generic drugs. Trump has been pressuring drugmakers through his most-favored-nation drug pricing policy to lower prices to what people pay in ‌other high-income countries. At least 90% of medicines sold in the U.S. are generics.

UBS analyst Aditi Samajpati told clients earlier that Trump's move to reshore generic drug production puts Indian pharmaceutical companies "on notice."

Samajpati said:

President Donald Trump has threatened steep tariffs on generic-drug imports to push manufacturing back to the US, though his plan includes a two-year tariff-free window before levies rise to 100% from August 2028 and 200% from August 2029. India is highly exposed: its generic medicines account for nearly 40% of US generic-drug volume, used widely to treat hypertension, diabetes, cancer, and infectious diseases.

In FY2024-25, India's pharma exports to the US totalled $9.7bn, according to the Global Trade Research Initiative. Yet implementation is uncertain given prior unfulfilled tariff threats, a February bilateral trade pact that included negotiated outcomes for generics, and India's 30%-50% manufacturing-cost advantage. The risk of immediate disruption is limited as investors assess whether policy pressure can realistically shift low-cost supply chains back to the US, especially if execution stretches beyond Trump's term.

Goldman analyst Matt Dellatorre offered clients a way to profit from this announcement:

For our generics coverage, we view the group as relatively well-positioned given: AMRX (significant US infrastructure), TEVA (diversified manufacturing; branded portfolio), and VTRS (diversified manufacturing; limited US exposure).

The national security case for reshoring critical generic-drug supply chains stems directly from Covid-era disruptions of essential medicines, active pharmaceutical ingredients, protective equipment, and medical devices. Years of offshoring have left the US dangerously dependent on foreign production, such as that in India.

In the event of a future supply shock, particularly one triggered by conflict in the Pacific, Washington could be confronted with shortages far more severe than the Covid-era. Rebuilding domestic production would give the US greater resilience to absorb any future supply shock without jeopardizing access to critical medical supplies.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 09:45

Chilling New Clues Challenge Suicide Claim In Los Alamos Lab Worker's Death

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Fresh evidence recovered from the remote New Mexico forest where Los Alamos National Laboratory administrative assistant Melissa Casias was found has blown major holes in the suicide narrative.

An independent team hired by her own family discovered bones, torn and bloody clothing, orange peels, strands of what appears to be horse hair, shredded paper that may contain her handwriting, and a tobacco pouch - none of which New Mexico State Police recovered after clearing the scene.

Casias, 53, vanished from her Ranchos de Taos home on June 26, 2025. She left without her purse, keys or wallet. Surveillance captured her walking alone eastward on State Road 518 around 2:20 p.m.

Both her work and personal phones were found at the house, factory-reset and wiped of all data. A blood drop was also discovered inside the residence. Nearly eleven months later, on May 28, 2026, a hiker located her skeletal remains in the McGaffey Ridge area of Carson National Forest next to a handgun her family says did not belong to her.

Initial CT scans showed no gunshot wound and no projectile in the skull. No casing was recovered at the scene. The remote location is difficult to reach on foot, requiring multiple rest stops and water.

Now, new details have raised further serious questions.

Family attorney David Adams of Parnall and Adams Law said an independent search conducted in late June - after police had already cleared the area - turned up the additional items. "The family really wasn't expecting to find any additional information... it certainly turned out to be something much, much more," Adams stated.

He noted the presence of possible horse hair and the rugged terrain: "In my mind, when you see that, you kind of go, okay, well, I could see that you would need a horse to get her up there if you were moving a body, for instance, because how you would otherwise do that."

Melissa Casias, missing for years, was found dead in a New Mexico forest, with her family uncovering shocking new evidence that upends the initial investigation. Law&Crime's Jesse Weber @jessecordweber reports. pic.twitter.com/WFN4UT0Viq

— Law&Crime Network (@LawCrimeNetwork) July 1, 2026

Adams also questioned the tobacco pouch, pointing out Casias did not use tobacco, and raised chain-of-custody concerns: "There becomes a question of a chain of custody... Could law enforcement have spat a tobacco pouch in the crime scene? I mean, certainly possible. I mean, that would be an example of just poor training."

The family has rejected claims that Casias intended to disappear or end her life. Earlier reporting revealed she left home with her toothbrush and thyroid medication - items one investigator described as "things that might indicate you're planning to stay alive."

Adams said the family hired his firm after spotting multiple red flags. The new evidence has been turned over to authorities.

The official cause of death remains pending from the Office of the Medical Investigator nearly two months after the remains were identified. The FBI, ordered to examine possible links to other cases, has had no contact with the family according to Adams.

Former FBI agent Ben Hansen assessed the Casias case as roughly "80 percent foul play" and floated the possibility of directed-energy weapons or voice-to-skull technology that could influence behavior without leaving conventional ballistics.

Casias is one of several New Mexico individuals connected to nuclear facilities who disappeared under similar circumstances.

Her case sits inside a larger cluster that first drew national attention when retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland - widely described as a UFO "gatekeeper" with oversight of top-secret space weapons and advanced aerospace programs - vanished from his Albuquerque home on February 27, 2026, just days after President Trump ordered full disclosure of all UFO and UAP records.

Subsequent cases included a NASA nuclear propulsion expert found charred inside a crashed Tesla.

A NASA-linked aerospace engineer and his family killed in a plane crash.

The death of anti-gravity researcher Amy Eskridge (who had reported directed-energy harassment).

The disappearance of JPL rocket scientist Monica Reza.

And additional personnel tied to nuclear components, rocket alloys and classified aerospace work, including the vanishing of Steven Garcia, a nuclear contractor with top clearance.

By mid-April 2026 the documented total had reached at least eleven. Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker previously noted that administrative staff in high-clearance labs "would basically be in the know on what's going on" and that it "wouldn't be the first time their administrative assistant has been targeted."

Two major sets of previously classified UFO/UAP disclosure files have since been released under the Trump administration. President Trump has publicly addressed the string of cases, stating there is "not much of a connection" and describing many as individual matters while pledging a full report.

NOW – Trump says string of missing and dead scientists are not connected: "There's not much of a connection." pic.twitter.com/BSaOPYDOuo

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) April 30, 2026

The latest reporting on the missed evidence at the Casias scene only deepens the questions surrounding both her death and the wider pattern. Officials continue to treat each incident in isolation. Families and independent investigators keep finding anomalies that do not fit the tidy explanations being offered.

America's nuclear and advanced-technology workforce is not disposable. When personnel with access to the most sensitive programs keep vanishing or turning up dead under irregular circumstances - especially amid long-overdue transparency on related technologies - the public has every right to demand answers that match the seriousness of the losses.

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

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 08:45

Futures Slide Ahead Of Google Earnings As Brent Surges Above $95

US futures are lower following a chipmaker-powered jump in Tuesday’s session, with Nasdaq 100 futures falling by 0.8%, which appears to be more of a retracement to yesterday’s strength than a move tied to oil or de-risking into today’s Tech earnings. Alphabet earnings are coming after the close. As of 7:00am ET, S&P futures are down 0.3% and Nasdaq futures slide 0.6%. In premarket trading,  Mag 7 stocks are mixed ahead of key earnings from Alphabet, Tesla and IBM due later in the afternoon. Nvidia is underperforming the group as chipmakers declin; GOOG leads. Defensives and Energy are leading; within Cyclicals Financials are outperforming.  Today’s macro focus is wholly on GOOG and the AI trade. Crude is leading the commodity complex with WTI at $88/bbl and Brent above $95/bbl for the fist time in 6 weeks, so far Equities have not been derailed as investors continue to think that Trump pivots back to a deal. In metals, Precious is leading Base; Ags are mixed but net higher. Dollar is indicated a touch lower as bond yields are flat. Looking at the day ahead, it’s a fairly quiet one. But we’ll get the UK CPI print for June, and earnings releases after the US close include Alphabet and Tesla.

In premarket trading, Mag 7 stocks are mixed ahead of key earnings from Alphabet, Tesla and IBM due later in the afternoon. Nvidia is underperforming the group as chipmakers decline (Alphabet +0.8%, Microsoft  +0.4%, Amazon +0.2%, Meta little changed, Apple -0.3%, Tesla -0.3%, Nvidia  -0.9%).

• Oklo Inc. (OKLO) gains 3.8% and X-Energy Inc. (XE) rises 2.9% as the advanced nuclear reactor suppliers are joining technology giants in a Trump administration-led program to speed the development of new power plants for artificial intelligence data centers, according to a document seen by Bloomberg News.

• Otis Worldwide (OTIS) falls 2.3% after the company cut its adjusted earnings per share guidance for the full year; the guidance missed the average analyst estimate.

• Pegasystems (PEGA) is down 15% after the software company reported adjusted earnings per share for the second quarter that missed the average analyst estimate. The firm said its annual contract value (ACV) growth rate significantly slowed during the first half of the year as clients delayed purchasing decisions, and this trend may continue to adversely affect the ACV growth rate for the rest of the year.

• Super Micro (SMCI) jumps 16% after the server maker issued a business update that included raising its fourth-quarter gross margins outlook and saying the backlog was at a record.

• Vornado Realty (VNO) slips 1.1% as Morgan Stanley downgrades to underweight from equal-weight, saying the stock trades at an “expensive valuation.”

In other corporate news Celldex Therapeutics fell in extended trading after the biotech said barzolvolimab, its experimental antibody, failed to meet endpoints in a Phase 2 study for patients with prurigo nodularis, a rare chronic skin condition. OpenAI said its advanced AI models inadvertently hacked Hugging Face in an “unprecedented” incident.

A two-day rebound in the Nasdaq 100 came to a halt with some early weakness in futures trading following Tuesday’s momentum-led rally, with traders unlikely to deploy fresh capital before getting a steer from tonight’s bellwether tech earnings.  South Korea’s Kospi Index and other tech-heavy gauges in Asia trimmed strong early-session gains. The technology sector lagged sharply in Europe’s Stoxx 600. 

Higher oil prices also kept a lid on sentiment after both the US and Iran signaled they were in no mood to restart talks following an escalation in their conflict. Brent crude rose nearly 5% to surpass $95 a barrel for the first time in six weeks. 

After Alphabet said last quarter that it plans to more than double capital spending from 2025 to as much as $190 billion this year, investors will be looking for evidence that those investments are generating returns. Yet the companies building global AI infrastructure need that spending growth to continue to justify their stellar valuations. The earnings report will land just as market-leading chipmakers are gripped by intense volatility amid fears that the pace of AI outlays cannot be sustained. 

“Alphabet isn’t just reporting earnings, it’s reporting on the health of the entire AI investment cycle,” said Amanda Lyons at Energy Group Capital. “If management sounds any less committed to AI investment, the market won’t just punish Google, it will question the durability of the AI buildout more broadly.” Even so, capex alone isn’t enough as “investors increasingly want proof that the spending is generating returns,” she said.

Dispersion beneath the index surface remains high, encapsulated in chip volatility outpacing the rest of the market. Options market signals suggest hyperscaler earnings matter more than news out of the Fed, with Mag 7 reports dominating near-term event risk.

With second-quarter earnings driving markets in an otherwise light week for economic data, Alphabet kicks off megacap tech reporting tonight, with investors focused on cloud growth and the company’s capital spending ambitions. Capex is expected to hit $262 billion in 2027 — nearly three times what it was in 2025, according to the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Google Cloud’s sales are expected to jump nearly 65% from a year ago to $22.4 billion. More coverage can be found in today’s Tech Watch column.

On the other side of AI momentum, IBM will provide more color to the spending delays it flagged in a surprise warning earlier this month. Many on Wall Street expect a cut to outlook, while Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani wonders how much of demand lost in the June quarter is recovered in the second half rather than being “destroyed.” Smaller software company Pegasystems similarly called out clients’ delayed purchasing decisions amid “unprecedented changes in the AI market” on Tuesday evening. Early signs this reporting season are encouraging with a measure of profit guidance momentum climbing to a record, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data going back to 2011. 

Elsewhere, generic drug manufacturers will have two years to move production to the US or face a 100% import duty from August 2028, Trump said, threatening the supply of low-cost medicines that millions of Americans rely on.  In finance, JPMorgan and Goldman are among global banks set to generate more than $100 million in fees from SoftBank’s $40 billion bridge loan for its investment in OpenAI. Private equity firms in some of the world’s hottest markets are facing headwinds as they try to place experienced managers in the companies they buy, hampering the pace of investments at a time when the amount of dry powder that fund managers have to deploy is climbing again. 

IBM and Texas Instruments are also due to report after the close. Super Micro Computer Inc. shares jumped in premarket trading on strong demand for its servers. Pegasystems  plummeted after the software firm missed earnings estimates.

Europe's Stoxx 600 is up by 0.7%, with energy stocks the biggest gainers along with utilities and miners.

Asian stocks gave up almost all of their early Wednesday gains as a rally in regional chip shares lost steam ahead of keenly awaited earnings from global tech heavyweights Alphabet and Tesla. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index was up just 0.1% after rising as much as 1.7%. Tencent Holdings was the biggest drag on the benchmark as the stock fell the most in over a year and dragged Chinese tech peers lower amid investor concerns over its mobile gaming business. The Hang Seng Tech Index lost 3%. South Korea’s Kospi — which has become a closely watched barometer of global sentiment toward AI-linked equities — ended up 0.7% following an intraday surge of over 6%.

A subgauge of Asian chip shares was up 0.3% versus a jump of over 3.5% earlier in the session. Geopolitical tensions likely added to the caution, with oil extending gains as the US and Iran played down the prospect of talks and disruptions to global supplies continued to mount. Vietnamese stocks posted Asia’s steepest decline as margin calls forced leveraged investors to liquidate holdings after the benchmark index extended its losses to more than 13% from this year’s peak. Key gauges in other markets sensitive to higher oil prices — such as the Philippines, Thailand and India — also declined.

“Rising oil prices and jitters ahead of Alphabet earnings, the first big tech to report, may be impacting sentiment,” said Marvin Chen, analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “Anticipation for upcoming earnings from US tech giants beginning this week may dictate the outlook for whether the recovery in hardware can carry on.” 

“The oil-price spike, on the back of continuing reciprocal strikes, is a problem for most Asian net importers,” said Hasnain Malik, head of EM equity and geopolitics strategy at Tellimer.

In Fx, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed in London, after edging up in Asian trade. USD/JPY slipped as much as 0.3% to 162.69 following a Bloomberg report that Bank of Japan officials are open to raising the pace of interest rate rises. Still, the yen trades near a 40-year low of 163.24 hit on Tuesday, even as Japanese authorities reiterated threats to intervene in the currency market. 

In rates, the 10-year Treasury yield was flat at 4.63%. European bonds have recovered too and gilts are outperforming, brushing off the rise in oil prices and following a slowdown in UK headline inflation.

In commodities, brent oil is rallying and rose past $95/barrel with few visible signs that relations between the US and Iran are cooling off. The US widened the scope of its attacks on Iran overnight and both sides have played down the prospect of negotiations.  The rise for crude initially weighed on stock and bond markets, but that has reversed. Gold is stronger and above $4,100/oz.

Looking at the day ahead, it’s a fairly quiet one. But we’ll get the UK CPI print for June, and earnings releases after the US close include Alphabet and Tesla.

Market Snapshot

Top Overnight news

• Russia is no longer willing to return some occupied territories to Ukraine under any future peace deal, people familiar said. The Kremlin views recent confrontational US messaging as a sign Vladimir Putin’s talks with Trump failed to take root.

• BoJ officials are open to raising interest rates at a faster pace than the consensus among economists, as the yen’s continued weakness adds to upside inflation risks. The currency rebounded from a 40-year low.

• British inflation cooled by more than expected last month as a brief de-escalation in the Iran ‌war reduced fuel prices, but the slowdown is likely to offer only temporary relief to new Prime Minister Andy Burnham as he seeks to ease living costs. Consumer prices rose by 2.6% in annual terms in June — the weakest increase since March 2025 and down from 2.8% in May.

• The US widened the scope of its airstrikes on Iran overnight, as President Donald Trump and officials in Tehran signaled a renewal of peace talks is unlikely in the near-term.

• U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday accused Iran of not honoring the Strait of Hormuz deal, while reiterating that Washington was “committed to diplomacy” in the Middle East. He said a key sticking point between Teheran and Washington is that Iran “demands the right” to control traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

• Tehran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen are ready to attack shipping from positions near the Bab el-Mandeb strait at the southern end of the Red Sea, according to a global monitoring body for naval security.

• President Trump has formally approved a landmark agreement with Saudi Arabia that will provide the country with a civilian nuclear program and potentially open the door to uranium enrichment in the kingdom’s territory, according to administration officials.

• Oil options open interest hit a record as renewed US-Iran hostilities fueled demand for protection against sharp price swings. We see risks to our price forecast as tilted to the upside on net, especially in the near term.

• The House passed stopgap funding to keep the government open past the midterm elections. The measure now faces demands for changes in the Senate.

• The US House will vote today on a plan to ban members from trading stocks, according to Fox.

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

APAC stocks traded mostly in the green following on from the tech-led rebound on Wall Street, which was facilitated by several positive sector-specific headlines, and heading into some of the Mag-7 earnings. ASX 200 mildly gained amid strength in the commodity-related sectors, but with the upside capped by weakness in defensives, as well as domestic consumer and tech stocks. Nikkei 225 initially rallied at the open amid AI-related optimism and after PM Takaichi's Cabinet approved its first comprehensive economic and fiscal policy guidelines on Tuesday, targeting JPY 370tln in combined public and private investment by 2040, while sentiment was also helped by the stronger-than-expected exports and imports data from Japan. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were ultimately mixed, with underperformance in the Hong Kong benchmark in a resumption of the rotation out of hyperscalers.

Top Asian News

• Japanese Finance Minister Katayama said she won't comment on specific FX levels, but reiterated will take appropriate action on FX as needed and that they can take bold steps anytime as needed.
• China is said to have told all market participants not to re-discount bills at rates below 0.5%, sources said.

European equity futures are mostly in the green, following on from a positive APAC session; upside which comes despite the ongoing US-Iran conflict and elevated energy prices. For the UK, a cooler/in-line inflation report lessens the need for a BoE hike, though the ongoing geopolitical environment will keep policymakers wary on the path ahead. As it stands, money markets assign a 12% chance of a hike next week, and fully priced in by November. European sectors hold a positive bias; Energy and Insurance tops the pile, whilst Tech lags, joined by Travel & Leisure. European pharma names have been in focus, after US President Trump stated that generic drugs will not be subject to US tariffs until 2028 but will then face 100% levies. Given European pharma names typically produce exclusive/high-patented drugs, for reference, the Indian pharma sector fell as much as 2% in APAC trade. However, the likes of Sandoz (-4%) and Bayer (-2%) have extended lower this morning.

Top European News

• The US House will vote today on a plan to ban members from trading stocks, according to Fox.
• The US House voted 220-205 to pass a stopgap measure to fund federal agencies through November elections.

FX

• G10s are mixed against the USD, with slight outperformance in the EUR and JPY while antipodeans lag.  Geopolitics remains constructive for the Greenback on paper with oil prices firmer once again, but the environment fails to translate into Buck strength. USD specific catalysts are light with an extremely light data calendar, so focus will be on GOOGL earnings due after the NY closing bell, potentially a report which could give the Buck a bias. 
• JPY moved sharply lower, USD/JPY falling 45 pips from recent highs, before paring some of the move. A Bloomberg source report said the BoJ is said to be open to a hike faster than every 6 months, adding the recent JPY weakness is seen as an upside risk to inflation. Despite the move lower in USD/JPY, markets seem inclined to buy dips in the pair, looking to push it towards the 165.00 region, where option structures last week were believed would be the next pain point for the MoF. USD/JPY is a little weaker and just below 163.00.
• GBP/USD has been choppy throughout the session and ultimately lacks direction within a 1.3370-1.3390 range, despite a broadly positive inflation report. Headline Y/Y cooled at a faster rate than expected, and 0.5ppts below BoE’s April MPR forecast; Services cooled in line with BoE forecast due to volatile airfares, while core metric stood at 2.6%, in line with  BoE forecast. Within the series, one element likely to be welcomed by policymakers is the food component, slowing to its lowest since August 2024, at 1.1ppts below the BoE forecast. Overall, a report which supports the narrative of a BoE unchanged for the remainder of the year.

Fixed Income

• Global fixed income benchmarks initially came under pressure given the rise in energy prices (Brent +3.2%); however, fixed income has reversed off its earlier lows, despite a clear driver.
• Gilts (-8 ticks) trade at the top end of a 86.33-86.69 range, reversing the earlier losses. The broadly positive inflation figure initially failed to support UK gilts. To recap, headline inflation ticked lower to 2.6% Y/Y (exp. 2.7%, prev. 2.8%), while core inflation held at 2.6% Y/Y (exp. 2.5%). Services inflation also fell to 3.6% Y/Y from 3.8%, while food prices fell for a second consecutive month. ING sees the BoE holding rates throughout 2026, with the trend of lower core service inflation and low private-sector wage growth.
• JGBs (-18 ticks) traded rangebound throughout the Asia-Pac session but have come under recent pressure following a Bloomberg scoop. The report stated that the BoJ is open to a hike faster than every 6 months, while adding that the recent JPY weakness is seen as an upside risk to inflation. The Bank is close to a stage of anchoring, not spurring inflation, the report added. Following this, markets are fully pricing a rate hike in December. Elsewhere, the 40-year JGB auction drew its strongest demand since March 2025 (b/c 2.82x vs prev. 2.70x). 
• USTs (-1+ ticks) hold steady, just shy of last week's trough of 108-17, seemingly unaffected by the higher energy prices. 
• Germany sells EUR 1.708bln vs exp. EUR 2bln 2.60% 2041 and 3.40% 2047 Bund. 
• Australia sells AUD 900mln 2.75% 2035 AGBs: b/c 4.37x (prev. 3.65x), average yield 4.9457% (prev. 4.4140%).

Commodities

• Crude futures are firmer following several escalatory updates overnight and in the European morning. To recap, US CENTCOM confirmed the US military completed its 11th night of airstrikes against Iran. Iran retaliated by launching drone attacks targeting a US military base at Camp Doha in Kuwait, as well as locations in Bahrain and Jordan. On the diplomatic front, an Iranian Interior Ministry spokesperson said there is currently no ongoing negotiation, and it may only involve the exchange of messages. Further, Iranian lawmaker Qashqavi said US President Trump's claim about Iran's request for negotiations is not true. 
• On Hormuz, the Iranian Army Commander-in-Chief says Iran controls the Hormuz Strait and will fire upon American forces. 
• Further, the Houthis' maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia saw several tankers moving to avoid the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. If Bab el-Mandeb, voyages to Asia may only occur via the Suez Canal, which adds notable time and expenses. On that note, CMA CGM (the third-largest container shipping company globally) will impose an emergency fuel surcharge effective August 1 following the renewed escalation of hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz.
• WTI and Brent are higher by over 4% intraday at the time of writing, with Brent towards the top end of a USD 91.31-95.24/bbl range, while WTI resides towards the upper end of its 84.44-88.25/bbl band. The Middle East situation and soaring insurance costs have also prompted Dutch TTF to surge, with the front-month closer to EUR 62/MWh vs yesterday’s sub-EUR 60/MWh prints.
• Precious metals are firmer intraday but off worst levels, feeling opposing forces from higher oil prices and some technical factors after the yellow metal topped USD 4,100/oz. Spot gold trades between 4,076-4,141/oz at the time of writing. Spot silver is more contained between USD 58.73-60.06/oz. Base metals are mostly firmer to varying degrees, but copper gives back some recent gains amid the rise in oil prices and its subsequent effect on inflation and growth. 
• 3M LME copper trades around the middle of a USD 13,769.00- 13,919.00/t parameter. 
• US Private Inventory Data (bbls): Crude +2.6mln (exp. -0.5mln), Distillates +1.8mln (exp. +1.0mln), Gasoline -1.4mln (exp. -1.8mln), Cushing -0.7mln.
• US President Trump formally approved a landmark nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia that will provide the country with a civilian nuclear program and potentially open the door to uranium enrichment in the kingdom's territory, according to US officials cited by WSJ.
• Goldman Sachs analysts raised TTF forecasts for Q3 and Q4 to EUR 60/MWh (prev. saw 41/MWh) and EUR 53/MWh (prev. 40/MWh), following an assumed delay to Persian Gulf LNG export normalisation to October 2026.

Geopolitics: Middle East

• US Secretary of State Rubio said China is displeased with Iran's actions in the Strait of Hormuz and that Iran is in "a lot" of trouble. Rubio added that China has been cooperative in Iran in some cases. Additionally, he said the Strait of Hormuz remains a key source of energy and that Iran can never possess nuclear weapons.
• US Secretary of State Rubio said the US is committed to diplomacy in the Middle East and Iran, but added Iran is not serious about talks, while the US remains open and willing to engage in negotiations.
• US Secretary of War Hegseth said we have multiple options for striking Iran's nuclear facilities in Jabal al-Fas. 
• US CENTCOM said forces conducted the 11th consecutive night of strikes against Iran in which they targeted Iranian military operations centres, maritime capabilities, aircraft hangars, drone storage facilities, and military logistics infrastructure to further degrade Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM also stated that the Strait of Hormuz remains open to commercial traffic, with US forces facilitating the movement of approximately 900 vessels and 450mln barrels of crude since early May.
• US strikes were reported on Behbahan, Mahshahr, Bandar Abbas, Chabahar, Bushehr, west of Tabriz and Urmia, while several explosions were heard in Iran's Tabriz. Furthermore,  Arab media reported that missiles were fired from Kuwaiti territory to Iran and drone and missile attacks were reported on US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. More recently, there were explosions heard in Sirik.
• IRGC said it targeted a tactical radar complex near Ali Al-Salem base and another radar system in Bubiyan Island in Kuwait, while Iran's army also said it shot down a one-way attack drone in the country's northwest, according to Tasnim. Additionally, Iran’s military said it struck US targets at Jordan’s Azraq base and Bahrain’s Sheikh Isa Air Base, according to Iranian state media.
• Iranian Interior Ministry spokesperson said there is currently no ongoing negotiation and that it may only involve the exchange of messages, Mehr News reported.
• Iranian Army Commander-in-Chief said Iran controls the Hormuz Strait and will fire upon American forces, Press TV reported. 
• Iran's top joint military command warned that all interests of the US and its allies in the region will be targeted if the US attacks Iran's nuclear sites.
• Iranian lawmaker Qashqavi said US President Trump's claim about Iran's request for negotiations is not true.
• Pakistan is said to have sought USD 10bln in US funding after mediating talks with Iran, sources said.
• Explosions were reported in Israel's Eilat during Iran's missile strike on Jordan's Aqaba, N12 reported.
• Only 3 cargo ships crossed the Strait of Hormuz, according to reports citing Kpler data.

Geopolitics: Ukraine

• Ukrainian President Zelensky said Ukraine has struck logistics centres involved in the supply of drone components in Russia's Krasnodar and Stavropol regions.
• Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces attacked a Ukrainian port and two vessels were struck at sea, according to TASS.

Geopolitics: Other

• US Secretary of State Rubio said the US disagrees with China's activities on Taiwan.

Event calendar

• It’s a fairly quiet one. But we’ll get the UK CPI print for June, and earnings releases after the US close include Alphabet and Tesla.

DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

I forgot to mention this on Monday, but over the weekend—after 42 years of playing golf and perhaps 100–150k on-course shots—I finally got a hole-in-one. However, it was on a nine-hole, relatively short par-3 course, so I’ve been debating whether it really counts. It didn’t quite feel like enough to justify buying the entire clubhouse a drink (especially as it was busy), so I quietly snuck off, but my kids watched it go in and were impressed—which, as they get older, is an increasingly hard feat to pull off.

I'm not sure which is harder, a hole-in-one or successful negotiations in the current conflict. Indeed, with no breakthroughs regarding Iran, the market focus returned to inflation over the last 24 hours, as Brent crude closed above $90/bbl for the first time in over a month, reviving fears about a wider stagflationary shock. And this morning we’ve seen a further rise above $92/bbl, so there’s little sign of oil prices easing as the US confirmed overnight they’d completed an 11th consecutive evening of strikes against Iran. To be fair, equities performed very well considering that, thanks to a chip stock rebound, but markets still priced in a more hawkish path for central banks, with bond yields moving higher around the world as a result. Indeed, several hit multi-year highs yesterday, with the US 30 real yield (+1.0bps) reaching a post-2008 high of 2.93%, whilst France’s 10yr yield (+1.8bps) closed at a post-2009 high of 3.96%. Standby for Alphabet and Tesla's earnings after the US close. The former's capex plans, and the market reaction to them, will be fascinating. 
The latest oil moves come as the strikes between the US and Iran have showed no sign of easing, and there are still no concrete signs of a peace deal either. Admittedly, it was reported by AP that Iran’s interior minister had met with mediators in Pakistan, as attempts are being made to try and revive the interim deal reached between the US and Iran last month. And it was later confirmed by the office of Pakistan’s PM that he’d met with Iran’s interior minister. However, Trump later played down any chance of a meeting saying "They want to desperately meet and until they're ready to meet in a meaningful way we have no interest". So with no agreements in the pipeline, investors moved to price in a more sustained supply shock. For instance, the front-end Brent future was up +2.01% to $91.01/bbl by yesterday’s close, whilst the 6-month Brent future (+0.32%) also hit a 1-month high of $81.26/bbl. And that’s continued this morning, with Brent crude up another +1.24% to $92.14/bbl. 

Whilst oil prices were moving higher, those inflation fears were exacerbated by the ongoing climb in natural gas prices. Indeed, the European front-end natural gas future (+1.57%) was up for a 7th consecutive day to €59.66/MWh, its highest level in 4 months. Moreover, several other commodities saw some big moves yesterday, with gold (+1.72%) up to $4,077/oz, and silver (+4.20%) up to $58.79/oz, whilst copper (+3.37%) also moved higher. So all that pushed near-term inflation expectations higher, with the 1yr US inflation swap (+0.8bps) up to 2.04%, whilst the 1yr Euro Inflation swap (+1.7bps) moved up to 2.59%.

That backdrop meant investors priced in more Fed rate hikes, and speculation even returned about a potential rate hike next week. For instance, the probability of a July hike was back up to 26% by the close, the highest since last week’s downside surprise in the US CPI print. It was at 45% the day before CPI and as low as 10% the day after. Speaking of the Fed, our US economists are currently conducting their pre-FOMC survey, which includes a few questions on the Fed’s new task forces. If you have a few minutes, they’d appreciate your input to the survey, which you can find here.

With that in mind, US Treasury yields moved higher across the curve, with the 2yr yield (+5.5bps) up to 4.26%, whilst the 10yr yield (+3.6bps) rose to a two-month high of 4.63%. And for real yields there were some even bigger milestones, as the 2yr real yield (+3.6bps) rose to 2.33%, its highest since September 2024, and the 10yr real yield (+2.2bps) was up to 2.35%, its highest since October 2023.

Whilst sovereign bonds had a bad day, it was a different story for global equities, which surged thanks to a sharp bounceback in chip stocks. In fact, the Philly semiconductor index (+5.21%) posted its best daily performance in the last month, which helped to lift US equities more broadly. So the S&P 500 was up a sizeable +0.89% on the day, even as a majority of companies in the index lost ground. And over in Europe, tech stocks also helped to power the recovery, with the STOXX 600 up +0.56% on the day, with the STOXX Technology Index up +3.29%.

Overnight in Asia, we’ve seen that recovery in chip stocks continue, with South Korea’s KOSPI (+5.07%) posting a strong gain for a second consecutive day. Moreover, other indices have also risen, including the Nikkei (+1.03%), the CSI 300 (+0.67%) and the Shanghai Comp (+0.50%). However, the Hang Seng is down -0.83%, and US equity futures are also pointing slightly lower, with those on the S&P 500 down -0.12%. Otherwise, the Japanese yen weakened to levels last seen in 1986, closing at 163.17 per US dollar yesterday, where it remains this morning. And this morning, Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said that “Our policy remains completely unchanged: We will take appropriate and bold action at any time, should the need arise.” That weakness in the yen is a good opportunity to remind you of Mapping the World's Prices 2026, which shows just how astonishingly cheap Japan now is relative to its DM peers and even versus many EM ones. See the report here.

Elsewhere yesterday, UK gilts outperformed as markets reacted to the previous evening’s announcement that John Healey would be the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, recovering after a very weak Monday. Although Healey was a surprise choice, given his name wasn’t really in the frame beforehand, markets were reassured by his previous experience as a Treasury minister in the 2000s, and his commitment to the fiscal rules. Indeed, new PM Andy Burnham said yesterday at cabinet that “We’ve got to show that our commitment to the fiscal rules is real, and we’re prepared to make difficult decisions in relation to that”. So the 10yr gilt yield fell -0.2bps on the day to 5.03%. Net net they are +7.9bps on the week so far, the same as 10yr US Treasuries but a bigger rise than for Bunds (+3.9bps) and OATs (+3.6bps). Meanwhile, we also heard the new government’s first economic announcement yesterday, as they announced that VAT of 5% would be removed on domestic electricity bills from October 1.

Otherwise in Europe, sovereign bonds sold off as the focus was on the ongoing rise in oil and gas prices. So yields on 10yr bunds (+1.4bps), OATs (+1.8bps) and BTPs (+1.3bps) all rose yesterday, with the 10yr OAT yield at a post-2009 high of 3.96%. Meanwhile at the front-end, the 2yr German yield (+1.7bps) closed at 2.80%, its highest level in almost two years. That came as the German ZEW survey surprised on the upside yesterday, with the expectations component up to 26.3 in July (vs. 15.3 expected), which is the highest it’s been since February.

Looking at the day ahead, it’s a fairly quiet one. But we’ll get the UK CPI print for June, and earnings releases after the US close include Alphabet and Tesla.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 07:45

Shipping Firms Offering Sailors Massive Bonuses To Risk Crossing Hormuz

Via The Cradle

International shipping firms are offering crews large bonuses to transit the Strait of Hormuz despite the risks involved, Bloomberg reported Monday.

Sinokor Group, the world's largest owner of supertankers, offered its crews six months of extra salary to make a return voyage collecting oil from Saudi Arabia or Iraq and unloading it in the Gulf of Oman, a trip the company said would take around a month, according to a document seen by Bloomberg. 

Iranian military speedboats, illustrative file image

Captain Pradeep Chawla, chairman of GlobalMET, a seafarer training organization that partners with the International Maritime Organization (IMO), said crews are "being offered huge bonuses by some companies," without referring to the Sinokor offer directly.

He added that "We have heard stories of a large number of crew members getting off, but they are able to find people who are willing to go."

Since the start of the US war on Iran, at least 59 commercial ships have come under attack in and around the Persian Gulf, with 17 seafarers killed, according to the UN's shipping agency. 

The cost of shipping has surged since attacks on commercial vessels drove traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to near collapse.

The heightened risk has driven up both insurance premiums and crew bonuses, yet many seafarers are still refusing the additional pay rather than risk the crossing.

The latest shipping data by Kpler shows that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains heavily suppressed, with only 30 verified crossings logged between July 17 and 19.

Reuters reported last week that shipping firms are steering clear of US-controlled shipping corridors through the Strait of Hormuz along Oman's coast, fearing Iranian strikes. The move follows a series of attacks on vessels bypassing the Islamic Republic's designated channels under the Iran–US memorandum of understanding (MoU).

One shipping source said the US appears to have no control over the situation, while Verisk Maplecroft analyst Torbjorn Solvedt warned that Iran's continued ability to hit ships on the Omani route makes US President Donald Trump's administration's plan to keep traffic moving unlikely to succeed.

Sinokor offers 6 months bonus to crews willing to do a month long run in Hormuz. Captain earns the most - $15k. A sailor earns $1.5k a month.

…Sinokor charges $500k/day… 🤬

Shipowners Offer Huge Bonuses to Get Crews to Sail Hormuz https://t.co/f0ntgyzl3j

— Laman (@LVision_Trading) July 20, 2026

In early July, three Thai sailors sued their former employer, Precious Shipping, along with two affiliates and the vessel's captain, accusing them of endangering their lives and dismissing them before their nine-month contracts ended, after a projectile struck their cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz in March, killing three crew members.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 07:20

Trump Greenlights Saudi Nuclear Deal, Uranium Enrichment In The Kingdom Possible

President Trump has formally approved a landmark 30-year civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia that could be worth tens of billions of dollars and put American companies at the center of the kingdom's nuclear buildout, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The accord is expected to be signed Wednesday by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, then head to Congress for a 90-day review. Lawmakers could block it through a joint resolution, but overriding a Trump veto would require two-thirds majorities in both chambers.

There is plenty to like here. A Section 123 agreement creates a legal framework for peaceful use, safeguards, and nonproliferation. American involvement also gives Washington more influence over Riyadh's program than it would have if Saudi Arabia turned to China or Russia.

The agreement is the latest step in a rapidly deepening relationship. The administration previously delinked Saudi nuclear talks from normalization with Israel, while Trump later designated the kingdom a major non-NATO ally after Mohammed bin Salman's return to the White House.

Yet one provision is difficult to support: “A key provision of the new accord would have American companies build an uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia if a joint U.S.-Saudi study determines such a step would be warranted.”

The 123 accord is not a turnkey export license, and any technology transfer would still require separate federal approval, but the policy direction is clear.

The strongest argument for this arrangement is that US technology and oversight would keep Washington inside the tent and make diversion harder. That is a legitimate advantage, but it doesn’t eliminate the underlying risk.

Uranium enrichment is inherently dual-use. Centrifuges producing reactor fuel enriched to 3 to 5% can be reconfigured toward weapons-grade material above 90%. Safeguards can monitor declared activity, but technology, infrastructure, and trained personnel endure long after a government or regional balance changes. 

Mohammed bin Salman has also said Saudi Arabia would pursue a bomb if Iran obtained one. The UAE, another close Gulf partner, accepted the so-called gold standard by renouncing enrichment and reprocessing.

The better model is simple: export the product, not the technology.

As we recently argued, Washington should overbuild uranium conversion and enrichment capacity inside the United States, then supply allies with safeguarded fuel under long-term contracts. Saudi Arabia would receive reliable reactor fuel, American workers would capture the investment, US suppliers would gain durable export revenue, and sensitive technology would remain under US jurisdiction.

No contractors have been announced. Centrus looks like the leading technology candidate given its operating US-origin centrifuge cascade and deep Department of Energy ties, with General Matter the emerging alternative. 

Bechtel has the Saudi and nuclear pedigree to participate, but Centrus' existing EPC partnership with Fluor gives Fluor the stronger documented construction claim.

The agreement is strategically sound if it anchors Riyadh to American reactors, fuel, standards, and safeguards. But building Saudi enrichment capability trades away too much leverage in pursuit of that goal. Washington should sell the kingdom decades of American-made fuel, not the machinery that can ultimately make far more than fuel.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 06:55