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Fashion fans asked why Brady was walking like the "Tin Man" and "RoboCop."

A magical moment occurred at Disneyland recently.

Nigeria has been battling an Islamist insurgency in its northeast for over 18 years.

The ancient structure found buried in Loch Bhogastail on the isle of Lewis is a type of structure known as a crannog and was built thousands of years ago, although scientists have no clue as to how or exactly why such platforms were built in the first place.

DOJ Probes BlackRock Private Credit Fund Valuations After Dramatic Repricings

It all started in late January, just before the Blue Owl debacle and the SAAS-palcypse sparked a historic crash in private credit. 

It was then that in a rare off-cycle disclosure, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp., a publicly traded private-credit fund structured as a business development company (BDC), disclosed a 19% markdown in net asset value as troubled loans weighed on performance. The news not only sent shares of the fund plunging 13% on Jan. 26, the most since March 2020 but market one of the first major private credit signal woes of the new year; it certainly wouldn't be the last. 

The credit fund told investors that NAV fell from $8.71 as of Sept. 30 to $7.05 to $7.09, or about a 19% markdown. "This decline is primarily driven by issuer-specific developments during the quarter," the fund said.

Two months later, in early March, it went from bad to worse for Blackrock's private credit fund when the asset manager slashed the value of a private loan in its portfolio to zero just three months after assessing it at 100 cents on the dollar, marking the second sudden wipeout to recently hit its private-credit division.

The $25 million loan to Infinite Commerce Holdings, an Amazon aggregator that buys up online sellers of products from spa treatments to light bulbs, was suddenly worthless, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp reported in fourth-quarter filings released last week. The fund had marked the junior debt at 100 cents on the dollar in the third quarter. In other words, total wipeout in 3 months.

The write-off came just months after Infinite Commerce merged with another aggregator (and BlackRock debtor), Razor Group, in August, creating the new debt structure valued at par. Previously, BlackRock had valued loans to Razor at a deeply distressed level. Because financial engineering. 

As a result of these bizarre quantized "repricing events" a number of class-action lawsuits were filed on behalf of investors that claim it made “materially false” statements and that Blackrock didn’t properly value its loans.

The final step in this particular lack-of-redemption arc came n Friday when Bloomberg reported that federal prosecutors are scrutinizing valuation practices at a BlackRock's private credit fund. 

The Manhattan US Attorney’s office in recent months has been seeking information about BlackRock TCP Capital Corp., while executives of the BDC have been questioned as part of the probe.

Jay Clayton, who runs the SDNY and was previously SEC commissioner under Trump 1.0, said in November he was concerned about how firms value private assets - and that “people should know that the financial regulators and the department are looking at those.”

Blackrock's Janauary portfolio markdown was among the starkest examples of how quickly valuations can change in the $1.8 trillion private credit market. Investors in BDCs rely on the values ascribed to the loans, since there is no active market where the assets trade. Marks are therefore a key factor in determining at what price investors can enter or exit the fund, and they also impact the fees managers collect from the vehicles. 

Funds like BlackRock’s TCPC typically only report quarterly. That’s what made the January disclosure, stating a preliminary net asset value per share of between $7.05 and $7.09, so unusual.  About a month later it officially calculated the fourth-quarter figure at $7.07, sharply down from $8.71 at the end of the prior period.

BlackRock acquired TCP from Tennenbaum Capital Partners in 2018. Since its acquisition of HPS Investment Partners last year, HPS executives have come in to help manage the embattled vehicle, taking three spots on the fund’s seven-member investment committee.

In response to investor outrage over mismarked loans, private equity giant Apollo Global has stepped up efforts to provide liquidity and price transparency in the private-credit market, where assets don’t typically change hands. Two weeks ago, the firm said more than $830 billion of its credit assets will be priced daily by the end of September.

However, that sparked an angry response from other industry players such as PIMCO, whose strategist Lotfi Karoui wrote that more frequently marking assets does little to improve transparency or accuracy in the $1.8 trillion private credit market: “The debate over daily pricing in private credit portfolios has evolved from a narrow accounting question into a proposed remedy for the market’s dispersed — and often stale — valuations."

“Attempts to increase liquidity — the ability to buy or sell an asset quickly, in size, and at prices reflecting fundamental values — are welcome developments,” Karoui wrote Yet until these efforts address the market’s inherent structural constraints, including a lack of true price discovery, they will only increase the perception of liquidity without truly improving liquidity.”

Pimco, an early critic of the private credit industry, has been vocal about the risks in direct-lending markets and has taken the other side of the bet by hunting for emerging problems in private-credit-backed companies.

“Price-mark dispersion for loans held across multiple business development company portfolios has widened sharply in recent quarters,” Karoui wrote. By the end of last year, “marks for the same instrument were, on average, about five points apart,” he added. “These gaps are difficult to reconcile with the notion of arm’s-length fair value determinations for identical assets.”

And that's precisely why the DOJ is now involved.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/17/2026 - 14:35

Kurt Kitayama logged himself a record round on Sunday.

He was previously charged with flinging buckets of liquified feces at three women, a young girl and a man during a four-day rampage.

Tom Brady, Paris Hilton and Cindy Crawford graced the catwalk.

Tom Brady, Paris Hilton and Cindy Crawford graced the catwalk.

The Hills alum recently said he plans to leave LA altogether if he loses.

Real estate industry-generated tax revenue rose to a record $39.6 billion in fiscal 2025, accounting for nearly 50% of locally generated tax revenue and up from the previous year’s $37 billion.

A new, drug-free treatment for depression delivered eye-opening results that were as effective as one of the most commonly prescribed pills.

“Every terrorist is a marked man; we will pursue and reach them all,” Netanyahu stated along with an IDF image of al-Haddad.

Former FBI Director James Comey taunted Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to "bone up on the rules" as he stares down the second indictment against him and stood by his decision to reopen the Hillary Clinton email probe in late 2016.

The billionaire businessman criticized director Christopher Nolan for casting the "Black Panther" actress in "The Odyssey."

The billionaire businessman criticized director Christopher Nolan for casting the "Black Panther" actress in "The Odyssey."

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition models Xandra Pohl, Remi Bader, Lauren Chan and Nicole Williams English stopped by Page Six Radio to celebrate the release of the 2026 issue. They chatted with host Danny Murphy about their various reality TV connections. Remi responded to the rumors after being spotted with “Summer House” star West Wilson. Watch...

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition models Xandra Pohl, Remi Bader, Lauren Chan and Nicole Williams English stopped by Page Six Radio to celebrate the release of the 2026 issue. They chatted with host Danny Murphy about their various reality TV connections. Remi responded to the rumors after being spotted with “Summer House” star West Wilson. Watch...

The Fed Will Invent New Inflation Numbers Out Of Thin Air

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

The Federal Reserve is rapidly approaching the point where every available option becomes politically toxic, economically destructive, or both.

Inflation remains stuck around 3.8% CPI, well above the Fed’s stated 2% target, and that number alone should theoretically eliminate any serious discussion of aggressive easing. Treasury yields are rising as bond investors demand compensation for persistent inflation, uncontrolled fiscal deficits, and the growing realization that Washington’s debt load is becoming increasingly unstable.

The American consumer, meanwhile, is clearly running on fumes. Credit card balances continue hitting records, delinquency rates are rising, savings buffers have been depleted, and wage growth is failing to keep pace with the real cost of living for millions of households. Yet despite all of this stress beneath the surface, equity markets continue trading as if rate cuts are inevitable, growth will remain strong, and the Fed will once again rescue investors the moment volatility appears.

It is a fantasy built on the assumption that policymakers can indefinitely suspend economic consequences.

As I’ve been writing about, the Fed’s dilemma is now impossible to ignore. Raising rates further would intensify pressure on households, corporations, regional banks, commercial real estate, and most importantly the federal government itself, which now faces massive refinancing needs at dramatically higher borrowing costs. Holding rates steady risks allowing weakness to spread until something in credit markets eventually breaks.

Cutting rates, however, presents its own disaster scenario because inflation remains far too elevated to justify meaningful monetary easing. The Fed spent years insisting inflation was transitory before being forced into the most aggressive tightening cycle in decades. Repeating that mistake while inflation remains nearly double target would destroy what little credibility remains. And yet that may not stop them if markets begin unraveling. Remember this Bloomberg Businessweek cover?

As we’re seeing last week, real danger starts in the bond market. Stocks may dominate headlines, but Treasury markets are where systemic pressure becomes impossible to hide. Washington’s fiscal position becomes increasingly unsustainable if yields continue climbing because deficits at current levels only function in a world where debt can be financed cheaply.

If bond investors continue pushing yields higher, policymakers will eventually be forced to intervene directly. As Michael Green noted during this recent interview, that intervention will almost certainly come in the form of yield curve control, where the Fed steps into the Treasury market and effectively caps long-term rates through direct bond purchases. In plain English: money printing returns under a more sophisticated label.

Once that happens, equities likely become the next casualty before ultimately becoming the next rescue target. If yields spike hard enough before intervention arrives, equity valuations face a brutal repricing. Those investors currently paying extreme multiples for growth stocks and not just participating in the massive ongoing gamma squeeze in markets are doing so partially because they assume lower rates are right around the corner. If that assumption fails, stocks can fall hard and fast. And once markets experience enough pain, political pressure on the Fed will become overwhelming. Policymakers will once again be told they must stabilize markets, protect pensions, preserve confidence, and prevent contagion.

That is where things move from reckless, to dangerous, to out of ideas.

If inflation remains stuck around 3.8% but the Fed still wants political cover to print money, suppress yields, and rescue markets, it needs a justification. The easiest way to create that justification is by changing how inflation is measured. A Reuters report recently highlighted comments from Fed Chair Kevin Warsh suggesting that one of his first initiatives could be a major “data project” aimed at better measuring what he called “underlying inflation.”

Rather than relying on traditional inflation readings, Warsh expressed interest in trimmed-mean inflation metrics that remove what policymakers classify as extreme price movements in order to create a supposedly cleaner picture of inflation trends.

That sounds harmless until you understand what it really means. If inflation is running at a very real 3.8% and consumers are already being crushed by rising rent, food, insurance, healthcare, and utility costs, artificially lowering official inflation metrics to justify renewed money printing would be like pouring gasoline onto a house that is already on fire. It would take an inflation problem that is already eroding the middle and lower classes and deliberately intensify it in order to protect asset prices and government financing needs.

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Wealthy asset holders may celebrate easier policy and rising stock prices, but ordinary households would be left paying the real cost through even higher living expenses. Their wages would lag further behind. Their savings would lose more purchasing power. Their path to home ownership would become even narrower. Their ability to absorb everyday price shocks would deteriorate further.

This is what makes the entire idea dangerous. Americans do not live in a world of “trimmed mean inflation.” They live in the real economy. They buy groceries at actual prices. They pay actual rent. They pay insurance premiums that have surged. They deal with medical bills, childcare expenses, utility costs, and tuition payments that continue rising faster than official narratives suggest. Reuters itself noted that similar inflation metrics helped policymakers underestimate the inflation surge in 2021 by filtering out warning signs until inflation became impossible to ignore. Now the same intellectual framework is reappearing at precisely the moment policymakers may need an excuse to restart intervention.

Kurt Altrichter on X noted the potential change: “The Fed has used Core PCE, which excludes food and energy, as its benchmark since 2000. Warsh favors Trimmed Mean PCE, which removes the most extreme price movements each month instead of excluding whole categories.”

He writes: “The practical difference: Trimmed Mean PCE currently reads 2.36%, well below the 3.20% reading on Core PCE. Depending on which measure the Fed follows, the case for rate cuts looks very different. This is not a minor procedural change. The metric the Fed uses to gauge inflation directly determines when it judges the economy to be at target.”

And the purpose of the change: “If Warsh moves the committee toward Trimmed Mean PCE, he is mathematically moving the Fed closer to a declared victory on inflation, which creates runway for rate cuts even as headline readings stay elevated.”

Altrichter concludes: “You’d think with 400+ Ph.D. economists and 500+ researchers on the payroll, the Fed would run the most sophisticated macro forecasting operation on the planet, leaving Bloomberg and every major hedge fund in the dust. Not even close. When the data doesn’t cooperate, just change the data. Same thing I saw in the Army when time or weather worked against higher leadership, and we would quietly move the goalposts rather than admit the standard couldn’t be met. Can you tell why I didn’t stick around for the full 20 years?”

And he’s right. This may be the real endgame. If bonds break, implement yield curve control. If stocks break, flood markets with liquidity. If inflation remains too high to justify either action, simply redefine inflation until the numbers say what policymakers need them to say. First it was hedonic adjustments. Then substitution effects. Then core inflation. Now “underlying inflation.” Every step moves further away from what ordinary people actually experience and closer to whatever statistic allows policymakers to keep the debt machine operating.

Maybe Wall Street celebrates another round of artificial stability. Maybe politicians claim inflation has been defeated because a revised formula says so. But if policymakers print aggressively into what is still a real inflationary environment, they are not solving the problem, they are accelerating it. They would be sacrificing the purchasing power of the middle and lower classes to preserve financial asset prices and government solvency.

And then they will likely stand at podiums explaining that inflation is under control while families wonder why groceries, rent, and insurance somehow keep rising faster than the official numbers suggest. At that point, the only thing more inflated than prices may be the credibility of the people reporting them.

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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.

This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions. 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 Sun, 05/17/2026 - 14:00

Republican voters still resoundingly approve of President Trump's handling of inflation, though that support has been eroding as the broader public's feelings on the economy soured dramatically, according to a new poll.