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Solvang’s contract with the sheriff’s office has more than doubled over the past decade, rising to an estimated $3.4 million for fiscal year 2026–27.

One of human history's oldest-cultivated foods is having a moment as more people reach for healthier alternatives to ultra-processed foods.

We Are Being Warned That A "Godzilla El Niño" Could Absolutely Devastate Global Food Production

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

The waters of the Pacific Ocean are getting extremely warm, and that could provide fuel for an immensely destructive climate event that is unlike anything we have ever seen before. Even the United Nations has issued an ominous warning about the El Niño event that is in the long-term forecast, because it will have a dramatic impact on every man, woman, and child on the entire planet.

We are being told that there is more than an 80 percent chance that El Niño conditions will arrive by the end of next month due to rapidly warming equatorial waters in the Pacific. Meanwhile, an unprecedented "9,000-mile marine heatwave" has developed in the North Pacific. Many experts are concerned that the confluence of those two factors could produce a "Godzilla El Niño"...

The chance of an El Niño event emerging by July is now over 80 percent, which will likely make 2026 one of the hottest years on record. At the same time, an exceptionally large 9,000-mile marine heatwave has been forming in the North Pacific since the end of 2025. These extreme warming events are now evolving together across the Pacific. Scientists are increasingly concerned that the warm water will fuel a "super" or "Godzilla" El Niño, potentially prolonging marine heatwaves, disrupting fisheries and ecosystems, and intensifying global climate impacts well into 2027.

The "9,000-mile marine heatwave" in the North Pacific is absolutely astounding climate scientists.

At the same time, the warming in the equatorial waters where El Niño events normally develop is at a level that we haven't seen since at least 1877...

The temperature of the ocean in the equatorial waters where these El Niños form was predicted to be 3 degrees Celsius above average. Experts are saying that this is a level of heat in the Pacific Ocean that hasn't been recorded since 1877.

I have written about the "Super El Niño" that started in 1877 before.

That "Super El Niño" was one of the primary reasons why 50 million people starved during the Great Famine that stretched from 1876 to 1878...

This El Niño, they say, could rival the intense event of the late 19th century that triggered "the Great Famine" on a global scale, killing millions of people. And its scythe sliced through southern Africa.

"The 1876-78 Great Famine impacted multiple regions across the globe, including parts of Asia, Nordeste [Northeast] Brazil, and northern and southern Africa, with total human fatalities exceeding 50 million people, arguably the worst environmental disaster to befall humanity," a team of scientists said a decade ago in a ground-breaking paper presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

3 percent of the entire population of the world starved to death during those years.

Today, 3 percent of the entire population of the world would be 240,000,000 people.

In 1982 and 1983, we experienced the most severe "Super El Niño" of the 20th century...

In 1982-83, the most intense El Niño of the 20th century caused extreme weather events throughout the world, including floods in the American Pacific and in the southern United States, and droughts in north-eastern Brazil and Indonesia. It also caused a very mild winter in the mid-latitudes of Europe, Asia and North America.

That "Super El Niño" sparked a horrific famine in eastern Africa that wiped out a very large proportion of the population...

A widespread famine affected Ethiopia from 1983 to 1985. The worst famine to hit the country in a century, it affected 7.75 million people out of Ethiopia's 38-40 million and left approximately 300,000 to 1.2 million dead. 2.5 million people were internally displaced whereas 400,000 refugees left Ethiopia. Almost 200,000 children were orphaned.

Now we are being warned that the most powerful "Super El Niño" of all time could potentially be ahead of us.

We could see insanely hot temperatures all over the world this summer, and we are being told that we are likely to see severe drought conditions "in southern Africa, Australia, India, the Indochina Peninsula and Oceania"...

Easterly trade winds across the equator, meanwhile, are replaced by bursts of westerly surface winds. Those pile warm waters against the western shores of South America. That suppresses cool ocean upwelling from below, which is needed to bring nutrient-rich waters closer to the surface. That starves baitfish and means poor fish harvests for dependent countries in Central America and the Pacific coast of South America.

Drought, meanwhile, is likely in southern Africa, Australia, India, the Indochina Peninsula and Oceania. Southeast Asia, meanwhile, could see above-average rainfall and more flooding.

Here in the United States, we could see a lot less rain than normal in the Midwest, and temperatures in the heartland could be 3 to 6 degrees above normal.

In other words, it would be horrible growing weather.

Our farmers are already facing much higher diesel prices, much higher fertilizer prices, and a multi-year drought that never seems to end. Now a "Godzilla El Niño" could be on the way, and the World Meteorological Organization is telling us to brace for the worst...

The World Meteorological Organization is warning that this summer's El Nino event could be the worst yet. Compounded by fertiliser shortages, inflation and rising oil prices, these shocks threaten to push an already fragile food industry to the brink, and the impact will land squarely in consumers' shopping baskets.

Coming into this year, the number of people around the world experiencing acute food insecurity was already at the highest level ever recorded.

And now a "Godzilla El Niño" could absolutely devastate food production in many of the areas around the world that grow the four crops that account for 60 percent of all global calories...

Global food security relies heavily on a highly concentrated supply chain. Just four crops, wheat, rice, maize and soybeans, account for over 60% of global calories. While localised regional shortages are typically balanced by other markets, a global El Nino triggers teleconnections: simultaneous weather anomalies across different continents that cause correlated crop failures. And this systemic drop in supply leads to direct price increases at supermarket tills.

In this country, where do we grow most of our wheat, rice, corn, and soybeans?

Everyone knows that it is in the heartland, and the heartland of this country is about to get hit by a climate sledgehammer.

Of course, we all still have to eat, and so demand for food is not going to go down.

Since there won't be as much food produced, that means that prices are likely to spike...

Because demand for basic staples is inelastic - consumers must eat regardless of cost - even small supply deficits cause disproportionate price surges. Scenarios for this El Nino indicate price shocks of 10% to 50% across core commodities, with highly exposed crops, including rice, palm oil, sugarcane and coffee, potentially experiencing surges of 50% to 100%, or more.

In the past, price shocks struck one commodity at a time. A simultaneous, cross-category surge means consumers will be hit harder and broader than ever before.

If you think that food prices at your local supermarket are high now, just wait until you see what they are like in the future.

What will struggling American families do if basic staples that they purchase on a regular basis suddenly go up by 50 percent or more?

Of course, conditions will be much worse in many impoverished nations around the globe.

In some cases, there simply won't be nearly enough food to feed everyone.

We really are facing a nightmare scenario, and the vast majority of the global population is completely and utterly unprepared for it.

Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/08/2026 - 11:25

Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby landed a big win in court Monday when he was granted a temporary injunction against the NCAA in his fight to be reinstated after his gambling scandal, ESPN.com reported.

Stretches of streets will be completely off limits and strict rules will be in place to enter the “secure” area that federal and local authorities are setting up.

According to a new study, parents can slash their baby's risk of one of the most common food allergies in one easy step.

There are only a handful of escorts operating in the niche, but some are commanding rates that dwarf those of traditional high-end companions.

The veteran correspondent, 68, was photographed exclusively by The Post on Monday strolling through downtown Old Greenwich.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the Mare Nostrum.

The country singer has made headlines for multiple arrests since releasing his debut album in 2018.

The country singer has made headlines for multiple arrests since releasing his debut album in 2018.

Though Sparta is often remembered as a warrior society forged through conquest, the historical picture appears to be far more complex.

First wigs, then Hermès bags …

First wigs, then Hermès bags …

Saylor's Strategy Buys The Dip As Bitcoin Nears Mining Cost Floor

A week after SELLING 32 Bitcoin - and (in part) triggering a waterfall decline in crypto - Bitcoin treasury company Strategy just BOUGHT an additional 1,550 BTC for approximately $101.3 million at an average price of $65,332 per bitcoin between June 1 and June 7, according to an 8-K filing with the SEC on Monday.

Strategy now holds a total of 845,256 BTC - worth around $53.5 billion - bought at an average price of $75,680 per bitcoin for a total cost of around $64 billion, including fees and expenses, according to the company's co-founder and executive chairman, Michael Saylor.

This means Saylor's horde represents 4% of bitcoin's 21 million supply cap.

Was Saylor's 'sale' last week designed to lower the price for this big purchase?

Bitcoin had been trading for around $73,700 before the sale announcement.

However, the news, despite increasingly being flagged by the company as a possibility in recent weeks, saw the market subsequently drop around 20% to a low of roughly $59,300 on Friday, before recovering back above the $63,000 level over the weekend.

Last week, JPMorgan analysts said Strategy's recent decision to sell 32 BTC "spooked" markets even if the sale was "symbolic and voluntary," intended to demonstrate the company's commitment and flexibility to preferred stockholders. 

As TheBlock.co reports, Saylor posted another Strategy bitcoin acquisition tracker chart on Sunday with the caption "A good time to add more dots," a commonly-understood signal that the largest corporate bitcoin holder may disclose fresh bitcoin purchases this week.

The framing this time went further than the usual nod toward another buy, in that it explicitly positioned current price levels as attractive, with bitcoin trading in the low $60,000 range.

Following bitcoin's worst week in two years, Strategy(MSTR) Executive Chairman Michael Saylor published a framework on X, arguing that the Bitcoin community is evolving into four distinct ideological camps.

As CoinDesk reports, rather than viewing these groups as competitors, he presents them as complementary forces that will collectively shape bitcoin’s future.

• The first group, Bitcoin Maximalists, sees Bitcoin as the ultimate monetary breakthrough. They believe bitcoin has already solved the problem of digital scarcity and offers superior property rights, protection from inflation, and economic empowerment. Their focus is conviction: bitcoin is not one crypto asset among many, but the dominant digital monetary network.

• The second group, Bitcoin Capitalists, views Bitcoin as a form of digital capital that should be integrated into the global economy. They support corporate treasury adoption, institutional custody, bitcoin-backed securities, lending markets, and broader financial infrastructure. Their goal is to expand bitcoin's reach by embedding it into existing economic systems rather than replacing them.

• The third group, Bitcoin Technologists, focuses on improving the protocol. They argue that Bitcoin must continue to evolve to address challenges in scalability, privacy, usability, security, and future threats such as quantum computing. While they support innovation, Saylor notes that changes to bitcoin's base layer must be approached cautiously to avoid unintended consequences.

• The fourth group, Bitcoin Fundamentalists, prioritize protecting bitcoin's original principles: decentralization, self-custody, immutability, censorship resistance, and individual sovereignty. They are wary of excessive institutional influence, financialization, and protocol changes that could compromise Bitcoin's core characteristics.

Saylor's central argument is that Bitcoin needs all four perspectives. Maximalists provide conviction, Capitalists drive adoption, Technologists ensure long-term resilience, and Fundamentalists safeguard the protocol's integrity.

Saylor argues that Bitcoin's most successful path lies in a balance among these four forces.

The piece was published as observers debated whether Strategy's June 1 disclosure had itself contributed to the latest leg lower.

That bitcoin is in a bear market is not in dispute, but as BitcoinMagazine.com reports, Jim Ferraioli, Director of Digital Currencies Research and Strategy at Charles Schwab, argued last week on Bloomberg that this selloff has a measurable cost floor, and that floor is built not from sentiment or chart patterns, but from the physics of energy consumption.

The numbers frame the drawdown in context. Bitcoin peaked at $126,000 in the fall before collapsing to roughly $60,000 in February — a 50% correction that, while brutal for recent buyers, falls far short of the 75%-plus implosions that defined prior Bitcoin bear markets.

Ferraioli’s core analytical framework centers on one question: what does it cost to manufacture Bitcoin? The answer creates a natural gravitational floor that has held across multiple cycles. 

For the most efficient miners — those operating at scale with next-generation ASIC hardware and access to the cheapest wholesale energy — the cost to produce one Bitcoin sits at approximately $60,000, Ferraioli said.

That figure is not arbitrary. It represents the all-in expense of powering a facility at roughly $0.07 per kilowatt-hour with the most advanced semiconductor fleets available.

The less efficient miners — those with older ASIC hardware, higher energy costs, and thinner operational margins — carry a production cost of approximately $95,000 per BTC, according to Glassnode data cited in Schwab’s May 2026 research report. That gap between $60,000 and $95,000 defines Bitcoin’s current valuation range. 

Bitcoin’s energy floor: Why $60,000 may mark the bottom

Ferraioli argues that in deep bear markets, the cost of production for the best miners has historically served as the bottom. February’s low near $60,000 aligns almost precisely with that level, as well as BTC’s 200-week moving average.

The BTC selling pressure is not random. It is demographically specific. The investors driving forced liquidations are those who acquired Bitcoin during the past 18 months — buyers who rode the asset from sub-$80,000 up to $126,000 and then watched gains evaporate in full. 

Schwab tracks two cost-basis metrics to quantify this pressure: the average acquisition cost for U.S. spot ETF and ETP holders, which stands near $83,000, and the active investor cost basis — excluding coins rewarded to miners — which sits near $78,000. 

Both figures sit well above current spot prices, putting the majority of recent entrants into unrealized loss positions and reinforcing $83,000 as a ceiling of overhead supply rather than a floor of support.

Glassnode’s on-chain data corroborates this dynamic. Bitcoin’s latest attempted rally stalled at the aggregate ETF cost basis near $83,000, with total realized losses spiking to $1.35 billion per day and long-term holders capitulating from cycle-top positions. Hedge funds represent roughly 30% of spot ETP ownership but are operating market-neutral, executing basis trades rather than taking directional views — meaning they provide no natural bid when prices fall.

Here is where Ferraioli’s analysis turns constructive. Every major publicly traded Bitcoin miner has announced a pivot toward high-performance computing (HPC) for AI inference workloads. The economics on their face appear to favor abandoning mining: inference generates higher net revenue per megawatt-hour than Bitcoin mining during peak demand windows. 

But demand for AI inference is not uniform across 24 hours. Models run hard during business hours and sit idle overnight and on weekends.

That creates a structural opportunity that does not displace BTC mining — it layers on top of it. Schwab’s analysis models Bitcoin as the optimal baseload monetization of power during off-peak hours, with inference overlaid during peak business-hour demand. 

A data center operating this hybrid model maximizes utilization across the full 24-hour cycle rather than leaving capacity dark when inference demand falls away. For miners, this translates to more stable revenue, reduced forced BTC sales to cover operating costs, and lower structural risk across bear market cycles.

Bitcoin is backed by energy 

The underlying thesis is one of energy economics. Bitcoin has no earnings, no free cash flow, and no CEO issuing guidance. Its value, in Ferraioli’s framework, derives from the energy cost required to produce it — a cost that is transparent, verifiable, and historically durable. 

In commodity markets, price cannot sustainably trade below cost of production. Producers shut down, supply contracts, and equilibrium resets higher. 

Bitcoin follows this same logic: when spot prices fall toward $60,000, the least efficient miners shut down operations, the network’s hash rate adjusts through Bitcoin’s difficulty mechanism, and the cost to produce each new coin falls.

As of May 2026, the average mining cost across all Bitcoin miners sits near $85,604, with the Bitcoin price trading in the mid-$60,000s — meaning the network as a whole is operating at a loss, a configuration that has historically preceded recoveries, not further collapse.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/08/2026 - 11:05

On the heels of last week's severe weather in the Plains, the focus now turns to the Upper Midwest, where highly populated regions face an increasing multi-day threat.

Elbridge Cleveland, 64, served in the United States Marine Corps between 1979 and 1988.

Equity Supply Surge: What Historically Comes Next

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

This past week, the market hit an all-time high. At the same time, Alphabet (GOOG) told investors it would raise $80 billion by selling stock to fund its AI buildout, and the shares fell about 4% on the news. Within days, SpaceX is reportedly set to price one of the largest IPOs ever attempted. If you want a live picture of an equity supply surge meeting a market priced for perfection, you’re looking at it. The question isn’t whether the equity supply is coming. It’s what happens after it lands.

A reader sent me two charts this week. The first, below, shows U.S. equity issuance climbing since 2023. The second chart below matters more, and we’ll get to it momentarily. The reader’s instinct was that these equity supply waves tend to either precede or coincide with market downturns. He’s right, for the most part, but history needs one important correction, and the current setup deserves a closer look than the cheerleading it’s getting.

The Setup: An Equity Supply Wave Meets a Record Market

Let’s start with the mechanics, because they’re what make 2026 different from a normal IPO year. New equity supply will hit the market in two waves, not one. First comes the offering itself. Then, 90 to 180 days later, the lockup expires and insiders, employees, and pre-IPO investors are free to sell. That second wave of equity supply is usually far larger than the IPO, and it arrives after the headlines have faded.

The second chart my reader sent captures exactly this. It stacks IPO gross proceeds against the value of shares freed from expiring lockups, and the 2026 estimate towers over every prior year back to 1998, with the combined figure pushing past $700 billion. The IPO proceeds are a small part, but the lockup overhang is the rest. Make no mistake, that is a wall of supply.

The pipeline backs up the picture. Goldman Sachs has projected that U.S. IPO proceeds could reach a record near $160 billion in 2026 if the marquee names go public. SpaceX, reportedly targeting a valuation north of $1.5 trillion, may price as soon as June 12. Behind it sit OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, and Stripe at roughly $134 billion. One pipeline tracker estimates AI-adjacent names account for more than 90% of the projected listing value. That concentration is its own risk, and we’ll return to it.

What History Says About an Equity Supply Surge

The cleanest academic version of my reader’s instinct comes from Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler. In the Journal of Finance, using data back to 1928, they found that the share of equity in total new issuance of equity and debt is a strong predictor of stock market returns. Their key finding: firms issue relatively more equity than debt right before periods of low market returns. Managers and insiders, in other words, are decent market timers. They sell stock when the price is right for the seller, not the buyer.

The chart record fits. The 2000 dot-com mania saw issuance advance into the March 2000 market peak. The S&P then fell roughly 49% into its October 2002 low, and the Nasdaq lost about 78%. The 2020 to 2021 boom was even larger in raw dollars, fueled by more than 600 SPAC listings and a record IPO calendar. The S&P peaked in early January 2022 and dropped about 25% over the next nine months.

Here’s where it gets interesting, and where the history needs its correction. The second-largest issuance spike on the long-run chart sits in 2008, dead in the middle of the recession. That one was not insider timing a market top; it was banks raising emergency capital to survive, much of it through government-funded recapitalization. The crash caused the issuance, not the other way around. So when you test the “supply leads the market” idea, 2008 is a false positive. However, even when you strip that period out, the two genuine euphoric supply surges both led to pain.

The valuation backdrop is what raises the stakes. As of early June 2026, the Shiller CAPE sits around 42. That’s roughly 28% above its own long-term average and within a few points of the all-time record set at the 2000 peak. This is not a cheap market by any means, especially when absorbing new equity supply. In other words, investors are faced with the second-most-expensive market in history, being asked to digest the heaviest issuance calendar on record.

Look at that bottom row. The broad index drawdowns were bad. The damage to the newly issued securities was far worse. As of late 2022, the SPAC class that merged between mid-2020 and the end of 2021 had fallen more than 60% from its reference price and underperformed the Nasdaq by 44%. The primary market itself seized up, global IPO value dropped 72% in 2022, and the Americas hit a 13-year low by volume. The people who bought the supply at the top paid the heaviest price.

Heavy equity supply doesn’t sink markets through mechanics. It shows up precisely when valuations are richest and buyers are most willing to pay any price. The supply is the tell, not the cause.

The Counterargument: Why This Time Could Be Different

Could this time be different? Sure, and the argument isn’t entirely without merit, and three points deserve a fair hearing.

1. The Fed is easing rather than tightening, which is the opposite of the 2000 and 2022 backdrops.
2. The companies in this pipeline are real businesses with real revenue, not the cash-shell SPACs and clickless dot-coms of prior bubbles. Databricks alone reported a revenue run rate of over $4.8 billion, growing 55% year over year. 
3. And the sheer size of names like SpaceX means index funds may become forced buyers once they’re added, providing a steady passive bid the 2021 micro-caps never had.

We discussed that third point recently in the #BullBearReport:

“The Nasdaq 100 is tracked by more than 200 investment products with over $600 billion in assets. If SpaceX fast-tracks into the index 15 trading days after pricing, every passive Nasdaq 100 fund becomes a forced buyer. When Tesla joined the S&P 500 in 2020, forced index demand drove the stock from $400 to $700 in three weeks before fundamentals entered the conversation. Index funds had no choice. Their mandate is to track the benchmark, not to price-discover the new constituent.

The S&P 500 is the bigger story. Current rules require 12 months of public trading and four straight quarters of GAAP profitability, neither of which SpaceX satisfies. But in late April, S&P Dow Jones Indices launched a formal consultation on rule changes tailored to the SpaceX IPO, along with subsequent blockbusters coming like Anthropic and OpenAI. The proposal cuts the listing requirement to six months and waives the profitability test entirely for megacap names. The new rules could be in place before SpaceX’s IPO in June. Why is this so important? As noted above, the passive index problem is magnified by the S&P 500, which is benchmarked to roughly $24 trillion and is roughly 40 times the size of the Nasdaq 100. If S&P adopts before SpaceX trades, the forced-buying problem isn’t a Nasdaq problem. It’s the whole index complex.”

Those are valid. Here’s the problem with leaning on them too hard. Quality doesn’t repeal supply and demand. A great company sold at the wrong price is still a bad investment, and the dot-com leaders weren’t all frauds. Cisco was a fantastic business in 2000. It still fell about 80% and took 17 years to reclaim its high. The AI buildout is REAL. The question, as always, is what price you pay for it. As Bob Farrell’s Rule #9 reminds us, when everyone agrees on the outcome, something else usually happens. Right now, nearly everyone agrees 2026 is a layup for new issues.

Then there’s the concentration. With AI-adjacent names making up the overwhelming share of the pipeline, a single bad print on AI capex economics could compress every one of these deals at once. In 2021, the supply was spread across hundreds of unrelated shells. This time, it’s a handful of correlated bets riding the same narrative. That’s not obviously safer. It may be the opposite.

What It Means for Investors

So what do you actually do with this?

First, don’t confuse a warning sign with a sell signal. Farrell’s Rule #4 cuts the other way: exponential markets usually run further than anyone expects before they break. The supply surge is a late-cycle marker, not a timing tool. Markets at records with nine straight up weeks can stay irrational longer than most portfolios can stay short.

Second, separate the index from the issue. The clearest historical lesson is that the freshly issued paper, not the S&P, takes the worst of it. Chasing the IPO pop has been a losing trade for 25 years. The better setup tends to come later, after the lockup wave forces motivated sellers into the tape and prices reset. Patience with the new names usually pays.

Third, treat this as a reason to raise quality and trim the most speculative AI exposure back toward its target weight, rather than abandoning equities altogether. The reality is that risk management means acting before the catalyst, not after. When the equity supply finally clears and the marginal buyer is exhausted, the move tends to be fast. You want to have made your adjustments while the tape was still calm.

My reader’s instinct holds up. Voluntary equity supply surges have marked the last two major tops, and the one forming now is the largest on record by a wide margin. Whether 2026 rhymes with the slow grind of 2000 or just delivers a sharp 2022-style air pocket, the setup rewards discipline over FOMO. The supply is coming. The only open question is who’s left holding it when the music stops.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/08/2026 - 10:50

Our Monday nights are complete again!

Kathryn Ruemmler, the bank’s outgoing chief legal officer, will remain as an adviser after CEO David Solomon asked her to stay on, FT reports.