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The "Heroes" actress was found unconscious by her boyfriend Brian Hickerson's brother in a South Carolina Airbnb last month.

A beloved bodega cat was snatched from his Brooklyn home by a pair of heartless thieves — prompting neighbors to spring into action to track him down, and his distraught owner to offering hundreds of dollars for the adorable kitten’s return. “I think the whole neighborhood is talking about it,” said one of the many...

Fed Rate Hikes Will Increase US Interest Costs By $50 Billion

The biggest problem with the "short-terming" of the US Treasury stock, which under Bessent's extension of Yellen's Activist Treasury Issuance playbook, which pushed the percentage of T-Bills as a percentage of total debt to 23% - the highest since 2010 excluding the emergency surge during the covid crisis which relied entirely on Bills for government funding and briefly pushed the Bill percentage above 25% - even as total US debt rose above $40 trillion for the first time ever... 

... is that any rate hike will immediately increase the amount the country is spending on interest.

Which is especially concerning because, as we wrote on Friday when discussing the August budget deficit, gross US interest (for the LTM period) is now a record $1.4 trillion and is set to surpass Social Security as the largest US outlay within 2 years, likely hitting $2 trillion before 2030.  

The dramatic deterioration in the US fiscal picture prompted BofA's chief economist Aditya Bhave to pen a report ("In the interest of time", available to pro subs) in which he wrote that "the recent rise in interest rates, particularly at the long-end, coupled with US total debt crossing the $40tn threshold sparked a wave of commentary on the US fiscal picture."

According to Bhave, while elevated deficits since the pandemic have certainly contributed to the higher term premium, it’s unlikely that crossing the $40tn threshold contributed to the recent increase in long-term yields. That's because markets tend to respond to changes in the expected path of deficits and Treasury issuance rather than the level of debt alone. Importantly, there has been no policy announcement or fiscal development that meaningfully altered those expectations recently.

Instead, BofA notes, it appears that the recent rise in yields has been driven by higher inflation expectations owing to the rise in energy prices and questions over the Fed’s commitment to its price stability mandate, which were partially quieted by Warsh at Jackson Hole.

Regardless of what has driven the rise in yields, the BofA economist team cautions that higher interest rates across the curve do warrant a renewed focus on deficits. The deficit this year is on pace to once again eclipse 6% of GDP and a major reason for that is rising interest expense which has exceed spending on Defense and Medicare. The trend in interest costs is also notably worse than Medicare, Defense Spending and even Social Security, which have been more stable.

Source: BofA

And while the trend of US interest expense growth is already ruinous, here BofA repeats what we said above, namely that the current level of interest rates is likely to exacerbate these trends as Treasury refinances maturing debt at higher borrowing costs.

According to BofA calcs, the average interest rate on outstanding marketable Treasury debt remains well below prevailing market yields, at roughly 3.4%. Looking specifically at coupon-bearing securities, current market rates imply that debt rolled over in coming years will be refinanced at interest rates approximately 1.4 percentage points higher, on average, than those on the securities being retired.

Source: BofA

Most importantly, and this is what we started the post with, is that the Treasury's increased reliance on bills also leaves borrowing costs more sensitive to near-term monetary policy. As Bhave writes, nearly $7 trillion of Treasury bills are currently outstanding, the vast majority of which mature within one year. 

Source: BofA

Assuming the Fed hikes rates by 75bp this year as BofA expects (once this week, and two more times before the latest Fed Hiking cycle ends), BofA concludes that annual interest costs on outstanding T-bills could increase by roughly $50bn or ~15bps of GDP.

It gets worse.

As a reminder of the pernicious nature of compounding debt, in addition to higher refinancing costs on the horizon, BofA warns that a more fundamental concern is the feedback loop between interest rates and debt. Ultimately, debt sustainability depends not only on the level of interest rates, but also on how those rates compare with nominal GDP growth. When nominal growth exceed borrowing costs, debt-to-GDP ratios can stabilize over time. However, as the gap between interest rates and nominal growth narrows, higher debt levels become increasingly difficult to sustain.

The risk is that the self-reinforcing dynamic between interest costs and deficits can further narrow that gap over time.

Meanwhile, there is a feedback loop between higher interest costs and deficits that we must account for. Higher interest costs increase deficits and Treasury borrowing needs, which in turn result in even more interest expense. Increased Treasury issuance can put upward pressure on term premiums as investors demand greater compensation to absorb a larger supply of duration. Higher term premiums raise borrowing costs, which further increase interest expense and deficits, creating a self-reinforcing dynamic.

Obviously, the risk from this dynamic is not immediate, which only makes it worse as generations of politicians can sweep it under the rug (dealing with unsustainable spending and debt is not only unpleasant, it is a career killer for politicians), until it becomes to late to deal with it and the problem explodes. Sure enough, this dynamic emerges only gradually as a larger share of the debt stock is refinanced at higher rates and interest expense consumes an increasing share of federal spending. To illustrate this, BofA simulates debt-to-GDP trajectories under three scenarios for how interest rates respond to higher debt.

Source: BofA

In the low, central, and high scenarios, a 1 percentage point increase in the debt-to- GDP ratio raises interest rates by 1bp, 2bp, and 3bp, respectively. While the effects are modest initially, the trajectories diverge meaningfully over longer horizons as higher debt levels lead to higher borrowing costs, which further accelerate debt accumulation.

The composition of deficits matters

The growing share of deficits attributable to interest costs has important implications for both the economy and financial markets. That's because deficits driven by rising interest expense provide far less support to economic activity than deficits associated with tax relief or government spending, and are far less defensively politically. In addition, they may crowd out both public and private investment by placing sustained upward pressure on long-term interest rates. Over time, they constrain the government's ability to provide fiscal support during economic downturns, potentially slowing the pace of recovery and resulting in a full-blown fiscal crisis.

For markets, the changing composition of deficits matters because it can lead to greater Treasury issuance without a corresponding boost to economic growth. As a result, it may place additional upward pressure on Treasury supply, term premiums, and ultimately the long end of the yield curve.

To see this in practice, look no further than interest rates on the long-end of the Treasury curve... but not just in the US - anywhere else too. 

In conclusion, nobody wins from adding another $50 billion of interest cost to the country (except for America's short-term creditors of course). As Peter Tchir wrote earlier, with interest expense already an issue relative to defense or discretionary spending, a rate hike does not help on that front.

Putting it together, the Academy Securities trader wrote that he finds it "difficult to imagine President Trump liking the idea, even if it helps the longer end of the yield curve, or that stocks have priced it in."

Of course they haven't, but stocks remain hypnotized in an AI-bubble, which ironically is kept afloat only thanks to record debt issuance (now that capex is funded largely from new debt), which will come to a crashing halt once Treasury yields spike and the credit market slams shut once. And as always happens, all of these things will take place all at once triggering the next Fed bailout of, well, everything. 

More in the full BofA note available to pro subscribers

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/14/2026 - 06:55

The Magnolia Network star said she experienced 'soul weariness' that no amount of physical effort could fix By Stephanie Giang-Paunon Fo

Hayden Panettiere died after taking a pill authorities believe was laced with fentanyl amid reports cops are “zeroing in” on her alleged dealer. 

Unfair Gains? Let's Talk About A European Windfall Tax

Authored by Mark Nayler via FEE,

After another summer of heatwaves and wildfires, Spain is petitioning the EU to create a climate adaptation fund. In a letter sent to the EU's climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, the Spanish minister for the ecological transition Sara Aagesen Muñoz said that Europe needs a blanket strategy to help its member states cope with climate change, and to mobilize the "resources needed to deliver the necessary investments." The mobilizing strategy favored by Muñoz is a permanent windfall tax on energy companies, many of which have cashed in on higher gas and oil prices resulting from the wars in Ukraine and Iran. She also recommends more mutual debt financing, similar to the (supposedly one-off) Next Generation EU scheme introduced to help member states recover from the pandemic - an unpopular idea that is unlikely to be a feature of the EU's next seven-year budget.

It wouldn't be the first time that the EU has taxed exceptional profits. In 2022, in reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Brussels imposed a minimum levy of 33% on fossil fuel companies' surplus profits, defined as being 20% above their annual averages from 2018 (this in itself highlighted one problem with windfall taxes - namely, defining "surplus" profit). So far, however, the EU has resisted reintroducing what Meg O'Neill, the CEO of BP, calls a "highly flawed response to the situation", instead pointing out that individual countries can introduce their own windfall taxes. Last month, Portugal imposed a tax of 33% on oil companies benefiting from the Iran war, saying that it was "both fair and necessary to create a solidarity mechanism."

The fairness of windfall taxes, of course, is one of the most questionable things about them. As the Portuguese finance ministry said when introducing its windfall levy, the elevated profits of oil and gas providers this year have resulted "solely from external market conditions." So why punish them? Advocates of an EU-wide windfall tax base their argument on this fact; but precisely the same circumstance provides a compelling reason to oppose them.

On this view, such taxes penalize oil and gas companies for benefiting from the operation of neutral market forces. These companies are also, of course, susceptible to market downturns - so one might expect to see them compensated by the state in hard times as well as heavily taxed during booms. That they are never compensated in this way suggests that windfall levies aren't really about fairness. One suspects that many of their advocates want to punish energy companies, even when their extraordinary profits have been achieved without subterfuge, corruption, or creative bookkeeping. Proponents of windfall taxes also tend to assume that the resulting money would be better invested by governments than private entities. But as several controversies around the Next Gen EU scheme have reminded us, that is not a given.

Muñoz's letter to the EU's climate ministry comes less than a month after several EU member states put the idea of a EU-wide windfall tax to Ireland, which currently holds the six-month, rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, and Austria are requesting that the presidency puts this idea on the agenda at the next meeting of EU finance ministers, due in Dublin on September 18 - 19. Echoing Muñoz's call, they said that the EU needs a "common approach, one that ensures that those who are profiting from the crisis do their part to ease the burden on the general public."

This is another questionable assumption - that an EU-wide tax on energy providers would transubstantiate into lower prices for consumers. But in some countries, it might have the opposite effect: as with Trumpian tariffs, higher operating costs could simply be passed on to customers. Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of TotalEnergies, has already warned that the company's price caps of €1.99 ($2.30) and €2.25 ($2.60) for petrol and diesel, respectively - introduced in March and so far estimated to have cost the company around €200 million ($233 million) - would be scrapped if the French government imposed a windfall tax on profits connected with the Iran war.

Windfall taxes also create an unstable regulatory environment, which in turn can dramatically reduce share values. In July 2022, when Spain's Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez announced a one-off "solidarity" tax on Spain's biggest banks, Spanish-listed banking groups slumped by €5 billion ($5.8 billion; along with fossil fuel companies, banks are the most common target of morally-motivated windfall taxes). This "temporary" tax, which now operates on a sliding scale, has been rolled over until at least next year, highlighting another problem - that windfall levies often stick around well past their stipulated deadlines. The longer they exist, the less attractive the affected companies become to investors.

This was the main reason why ExxonMobil sued the EU over its "solidarity" tax in 2022, a year in which the American energy giant's third quarter profits hit almost $20 billion, the largest it had ever posted and triple those of the previous year ("more money than God," as then-US President Joe Biden put it). Filed through its Dutch and German subsidiaries at Luxembourg's general court, ExxonMobil's complaint stated that Brussels's windfall tax would "undermine investor confidence, discourage investment, and increase reliance on imported energy and fuel products." The case has yet to be resolved - but European courts would surely see many more like it if Spain's recommendations are acted on.

The most devastating criticism of Spain's proposal of a permanent windfall tax to combat climate change, however, is that it would be utterly self-defeating. It will cost an estimated €27 trillion ($31 trillion) for the EU to reach its 2050 climate neutrality goals, with the majority of that capital expected to come from the private sector. According to the European Central Bank: "Public policies should aim to remove structural rigidities, improve regulatory and administrative efficiency and foster green innovation." The EU's recent deregulation drive has those aims in mind; but a windfall tax on energy companies - especially if it remained in place for years, as Muñoz recommends - would have the opposite effect, by restricting the private sector's ability to invest. Oil and gas companies are going to need more money than God to help facilitate the green transition.

In its focus on long-term prevention, rather than short-term reaction, the EU's new wildfire strategy shows the direction in which the bloc should be heading with its climate policies. Punishing companies that have profited from geopolitical turmoil might cater to public anger at their windfalls; but in the long run it won't benefit consumers, nor will it help Europe reach its climate goals. To realize those, the EU needs to work with its biggest energy companies, not against them.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/14/2026 - 06:30

Ronald Reagan famously said that he didn’t leave the Democrats, the Democrats left him — and now the party threatens to do the same to Sen. John Fetterman. The Pennsylvanian’s video appearance at the Republican midterm convention, praising GOP colleague Dave McCormick as a bipartisan ally as they “work with President Trump to fight and...

The ads, paid for by James Dolan-backed Strong and Safe New York Inc., are strategically placed near state borders, costing $250,000.

Dominick Bianchi, the newlywed man from upstate New York who went missing last week, has been found dead in a wooded area, local police confirmed.

A Russian drone struck a train near the Ukraine- Poland border on Sunday shortly after senior visiting officials — including the former prime ministers of the UK and Sweden -- passed through, Ukraine’s state rail operator said.

Checks are set to hit New York mailboxes starting on Sept. 21.

Last week, the Trump administration floated the idea of redirecting federal child-care aid so low-income married stay-at-home parents could get a $9,000 subsidy per child for day care.

Pamela Melgarejo spent years trying to lose weight — but nothing was permanent. She's now lost 100 pounds and kept it off after getting bariatric surgery at the NYU Langone Health Weight Management Program.

Gas Turbine Shortage Sends AI Developers Back To Boilers And Steam

Elon Musk recently warned that “turbines are sold out through 2030,” saying SpaceX and Tesla would probably need to make turbine blades and vanes internally.

ELON MUSK: “Turbines are sold out through 2030. In order to bring enough power online, SpaceX and Tesla will probably have to make the turbine blades and vanes internally. There are only three casting companies in the world that make these, and they’re massively backlogged.” pic.twitter.com/YlKHznBXhK

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) August 29, 2026

SpaceX is preparing a factory in Bastrop, Texas, to tackle that casting bottleneck, and Musk says bringing production in-house could get gas turbines online up to 18 months sooner.

This is where it becomes important to be specific as to which type of turbines he is referring to…

POWER Magazine reports that data center operators are pairing industrial boilers with steam turbines to bypass the gas turbine backup. Applied Digital CEO Wes Cummins stated gas turbines ordered today might not arrive until 2032.

Not all turbines are equal. Gas turbines are designed to handle high temperatures and loads, which require extremely unique alloys and manufacturing techniques. Steam turbines handle relatively lower temperatures and allow for a wide range of alloys to be used.

Don't be fooled by the names, though. Both the gas turbine and the steam turbine are ultimately running on natural gas piped directly to the site.

The gas turbines would take the fuel supplied directly and generate electricity from it. Steam turbines require an intermediate step where the gas supply will be burned on site to boil water, which will be used to spin the turbine for electricity production.

Steam turbines and boilers enjoy an older, more established supply chain capable of ramping production up and down quickly, which is why POWER quotes Rentech Boiler Systems as being able to manufacture and deliver a packaged boiler within a year.

Babcock & Wilcox is already seeing significant interest in the new approach with a $2.4 billion agreement with Base Electron to supply 1.2 GW of generation for Applied Digital's AI campuses. B&W is providing boilers for the on-site power plant with operations anticipated in 2028.

Existing nuclear and new natural gas remain the most prominent answers to the data center power question. As we covered recently, Google is securing nuclear supply in Finland with a 22-year agreement with Fortum.

The ultimate goal of most of the hyperscalers is to eventually find their facilities powered 100% by renewables and/or nuclear energy, with the fossil fuels serving as the bridge in the meantime.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/14/2026 - 05:45

Donald Trump has accused former presidents of not taking care of the White House – and claims his renovations have ensured the iconic residence is now in better shape than when construction began in 1792.  Trump, 80, unleashed the blistering attack on his predecessors on Sunday – as he shared pictures of a column that...

US District Judge Carl Nichols blocked Donald Trump’s USPS mail ballot rules, marking the second federal freeze ahead of a Supreme Court decision.

Commerce Department Finalizes Steep Duties On Solar Imports From India, Indonesia, Laos

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

The Commerce Department on Friday finalized steep duty rates on imports of solar cells and panels from India, Indonesia, and Laos, stating that it found that producers in those countries dumped cheap products in the United States and benefited from unfair government subsidies.

Anti-dumping margins were set at 123.04 percent for Indian producers, 94.36 percent for Indonesian producers, and 65.43 percent for producers from Laos.

Countervailing duty rates ran higher. Indian producers were assigned 126.09 percent. Indonesian producers face rates between 73.2 percent and 173.7 percent. Lao producers were given rates between 82.03 percent and 153.67 percent.

The trade case was brought by the Alliance for American Solar Manufacturing and Trade. Members include U.S. manufacturers First Solar, Hanwha Qcells, and Mission Solar Energy.

Friday's final determinations "are an essential step toward enforcing our trade laws and restoring fair competition for U.S. solar manufacturers and the workers they employ," Tim Brightbill, lead attorney for the Alliance, said in a statement.

"We will keep monitoring import data and holding bad actors accountable wherever they move next."

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) is scheduled to make a final determination Oct. 14 on whether the imports materially injured or threatened to injure domestic manufacturers. If the commission votes in the affirmative, the Department of Commerce is expected to issue final duty orders in November.

The United States first imposed anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on Chinese solar products in 2012. Manufacturers there shifted production to other Asian countries.

In August 2023, the Department of Commerce found that certain Chinese solar producers shipped products through Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam for minor processing to circumvent tariffs that would apply to Chinese imports.

In April 2025, the Department of Commerce announced plans to impose duties of up to 3,521 percent on solar cell imports from those four countries.

The department said companies there were receiving subsidies from the Chinese regime, and that those countervailing duty investigations were among the first in which it made an affirmative finding that companies received transnational subsidies.

The ITC found in May 2025 that the U.S. solar industry was threatened with material injury by the subsidized Southeast Asian imports. New tariffs on products from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam followed in June 2025.

After those four countries were hit, Chinese solar companies expanded across Southeast Asia to places that, at the time, had not drawn comparable U.S. solar trade tariffs, including Laos and Indonesia.

William A. Reinsch, a former Clinton administration trade official and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, described the pattern as "a huge cat and mouse game."

Washington has added other measures to the same supply chain. On Aug. 6, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation establishing a price floor and a 15 percent tariff on imports of polysilicon and related products, including wafers, solar cells, and solar modules. The measures take effect Dec. 4.

Minimum import prices in the proclamation are $21 per kilogram for polysilicon, $100 per kilogram for polysilicon ingots and wafers, 22 cents per watt for solar cells, and 38 cents per watt for solar modules.

"We're setting prices so that the Chinese can't dump anymore, and we're setting tariffs to say build it here," Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said after the signing.

America's share of global polysilicon production capacity fell to less than 2 percent in 2024 from 50 percent in 2005, according to the proclamation. Global production has grown by more than 270 percent since 2020. Inventories reached a record 400,000 tons by the end of 2024.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/14/2026 - 05:00

Why should taxpayers have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars prosecuting and incarcerating someone already in the country illegally, rather than deporting him?

Turkey Arrests 162 In LGBTQ+ Raids

Turkish police arrested at least 162 people and searched the offices of six LGBTQ+ associations in weekend raids designed to support the country's campaign to protect family values. The Ankara-based LGBTQ+ rights group Kaos GL claimed that beyond arrests, the government had also cut access to dozens of websites and social media accounts belonging to associate groups and rights advocates.

Turkish Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said investigations, prompted by accusations of prostitution and obscenity, were coordinated by prosecutors in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Aydin and Mersin and involved judicial proceedings against 162 suspects, nine associations and 13 businesses across 15 provinces.

"As per the duty to protect families and children given to the state by the constitution, no criminal organization, abuse network or illegal activity which targets children, youths or families will be tolerated!" Gurlek added in a social media post.

Authorities say they seized drugs, digital equipment, smuggled alcohol and a gun in weekend police operations targeting gay bars and night clubs as well as a hammam that was said to be a place of prostitution.

The Istanbul prosecutor's office added that it had found evidence indicating that children and minors were being inappropriately swayed on issues tied to sexual orientation and gender identity.

Rights groups say the government is unfairly targeting the LGBTQ+ community, with Kaos GL saying that it had been accused of making "posts containing obscenities" accessible to children.

The weekend police operation was dubbed "My Family is Safe" by the government and was part of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's "Decade of Family and Population" scheme, which is designed to reverse plummeting birthrates in the aging country.

Authorities say it was intended to make sure that society does not see LGBTQ+ activity as "normal" and that raids were carried out to "protect children, the institution of the family, and our shared moral values."

Although same-sex relations are not illegal in the country, homophobia is rife, with President Erdogan blaming LGBTQ "perverts" for Turkey's rapidly declining birthrates.

That would seem a rhetorical diversion from the actual complexity of reasons for the decline, which Erdogan — who has ruled as the country's authoritarian president since 2014 as well as serving as its influential prime minister for 10 years before that — has called "a disaster."

Though Turkey's statistical agency, TurkStat, tracked a sharp decline in the total fertility rate between 2013 and 2023 (from 2.11 to 1.51), the shift brings birthrates in the country closer to those in other developed nations.

Observers say the real reasons for the drop are more likely of a structural and institutional nature rather than one chalked up to lifestyle.

Turkey's chronically worsening financial crisis, inflation, skyrocketing housing prices, family unfriendly workplace environments, limited access to affordable childcare, and higher educational and employment rates for women are all considered reasons for Turks to postpone having children, as well as for having fewer when they finally do.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/14/2026 - 04:15

 Indonesian authorities intensified a search Monday for 129 people who were missing after a ferry overturned in bad weather in the Java Sea on Sunday, killing at least six passengers.