US Dept Of War Suspends Permanent Joint Board On Defense With Canada Authored by ‘sundance’ via The Last Refuge, Remarkably, many news articles are citing confusion in trying to understand why U.S. Undersecretary of War, Elbridge Colby, announced the suspension of U.S. participation in the Permanent Joint Board on Defense with Canada. However, the announcement comes immediately after his meeting with U.S. ambassador to Canada, […]

Nickel Jumps As Indonesian Output Cut Stokes Supply Fears Nickel prices on the London Metal Exchange surged as much as 2.6% to $19,050 a ton after Shanghai Metals Market said upwards of 15% of high-grade nickel pig iron capacity at Indonesia’s Weda Bay Industrial Park will undergo rotational maintenance in the coming months, according to Bloomberg. Indonesia’s Weda Bay Industrial Park is one of the most important nickel-processing […]

Supreme Court Directs Lower Courts To Reexamine Decisions In Voting Rights Act Cases Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times, The U.S. Supreme Court on May 18 ordered lower courts to reconsider rulings in two redistricting cases that concern whether private individuals may sue to enforce a federal law that bans discriminatory voting practices. The court directed the lower courts to take another look at the cases from […]

Trump: May Have To Give Iran Another “Big Hit” – It Has “Two Or Three” Days To Come To Table Update(1140ET): President Trump has on Tuesday while fielding questions from reporters repeated his line that Iran is ‘begging’ for a deal. “They’re begging to make a deal. I hope we don’t have to do the war, but we may have to give them another big hit. We may have to give them another big hit. You’ll know very soon.” His threat to give […]

Berkshire Trolls The AI Bubble By Buying Macy’s Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance For the better part of the last year, Wall Street has behaved like a teenager who just discovered Red Bull and leverage at the same time. Anything remotely tied to artificial intelligence has soared into the financial stratosphere. Startups with no revenue, no profits, and occasionally no actual product are raising millions or billions because […]

“Door Of Doom” Looms As 30 Year Yield Soars To 19 Year High After Two Huge Treasury Block Sales Bond yields continued to move sharply higher today, driven in large part by the aggressive repricing in the oil strip as markets (finally) price in a lengthy disruption to Hormuz traffic which has pushed year-end prices higher by about $12 in the past month. The result has been a spike across virtually all tenors: *US 2-YEAR YIELD […]

“Stop Hiring Humans” Billboards Are Appearing In US Cities… Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, “Stop Hiring Humans.” Those words are now plastered on billboards from San Francisco to New York City, courtesy of a San Francisco-based startup pushing virtual AI sales representatives. The company, Artisan, markets AI agents that handle outbound sales tasks like lead generation, cold emailing, list-building, and […]

“Cautious Optimism”: US Pending Home Sales Rise For 3rd Straight Month In April Pending home sales were expected to rise for the third straight month in April (after crashing to record lows to end last year) as mortgage rates stabilized amid war worries, and they did, rising 1.4% MoM (better than the 1.0% expected) with March’s gains revised higher too. Source: Bloomberg This left pending home sales up 3.35% YoY – the best […]

Today’s The Day… Will Massie Be Ousted? Today, voters in Georgia, Kentucky, Alabama, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Idaho head to the polls for several primary elections that will affect key gubernatorial, House, Senate, and statewide contests ahead of the November midterms.  The Epoch Times’ Jackson Richman gives us the lay of the land (emphasis, charts, clips and any snark – ours…);  Kentucky There are a few competitive […]

Striking By Bas van Geffen, senior macro strategist at Rabobank Striking Trump said that he had delayed a planned military strike on Tuesday, at the request of Qatar, Saudia Arabia, and the UAE. According to Trump, the leaders of the Gulf states had asked the US to call off the attack because “serious negotiations are now taking place,” which could lead to a deal that is acceptable to the US and its Middle Eastern allies. In […]

Pentagon Urged No Resumption Of Strikes As Iran Grew More Effective Tracking US Air Ops: NYT President Trump had on Monday announced he agreed to pause planned Iran strikes, which were supposedly going to resume Tuesday, because UAE & Saudi Arabia asked him to as they said the sides are getting close to a deal. However, Pentagon officials have told The New York Times they urged halting of strikes because of intelligence shows […]

Shooters And Motives Revealed In San Diego Mosque Shooting That Killed Three The two young alleged gunmen who descended upon a San Diego Islamic facility on Monday — killing three men and themselves — have been identified, along with early indications of their motives. Police sources have told multiple outlets that 17-year-old Cain Clark and 18-year-old Caleb Velasquez — driven by hate — scrawled racist themes on their weapons […]

Futures Fall As Momentum Cracks Grow With Yields And Oil Higher US equity futures are lower, set for a 3rd drop in a row, as traders waited for futile signs of progress toward a peace deal in the Middle East. and as tech and small cap stocks reacted adversely to higher bond yields around the globe, but nowhere more so than in Japan, where many tenors are trading at record lows, as the wheels have fully come off the clown bus, aka […]

Standard Chartered To Replace “Lower-Value Human Capital” With AI As Meta Layoff D-Day Nears The white-collar job-loss apocalypse, accelerated by AI, is increasingly concentrated in repetitive, data-intensive, and digitally native roles, with tech firms announcing layoffs one after another. While ‘D-Day’ for Meta layoffs is Wednesday morning, the London-headquartered international bank Standard Chartered announced on Tuesday plans […]

BBC’s Former News Director Says Trans-Bias & ‘Progressive Madness’ Drove Her Out Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, The BBC’s grip on impartiality continues to slip as one of its former top news executives publicly confirmed what critics have long argued: activist capture from within has turned the state broadcaster into a vehicle for narrow ideological agendas. Fran Unsworth, director of BBC News from 2018 to […]

Trump: Holding Off ‘Planned’ Attack On Iran At Request Of Gulf Allies, ‘Deal Will Be Made’ Summary Trump says holding off on ‘planned’ Tuesday attack upon request of Gulf states. US denies earlier Tasnim report of agreeing to lift oil sanctions during talks; Trump tells NYP ‘not open’ to Iran concessions. Trump calls for Iran’s total military surrender in Monday morning Truth Social post. Oil rebounds on Tasnim reporting Iranian […]

NY MTA, LIRR Unions Reach ‘Fair Deal’ To End Strike After Commuter Chaos Grips NYC New York’s MTA reached a tentative labor deal with five Long Island Rail Road unions, ending the first LIRR strike in more than 30 years. Roughly 3,500 workers walked off the job Saturday, sparking commuter chaos for several hundred thousand people who heavily rely on the train service. “Tonight, the @MTA reached a fair deal with the five LIRR […]

International Energy Agency Is Wrong To Forecast Coal’s Demise Authored by Tom Harris via The Epoch Times, Activists would have us believe that coal is a dying energy source. But, thankfully for American coal states such as West Virginia and the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia—all of which use millions of tonnes of coal every year to generate electricity—that is not even remotely true. However, the world […]

“Answering The Call”: Ford Motor Eyes WWII-Style Production Push For Trump’s War Economy One month after we reported that the Trump administration was in talks with U.S. manufacturers about converting idle civilian industrial capacity into weapons production, as conflicts across Eurasia deplete critical weapons stockpiles, Ford Motor signaled Monday morning that it is prepared to support a Western defense-industrial mobilization. […]

“The Political Shift Is Inevitable”: AfD Leader Weidel Heralds New Polling High For Party Via Remix News, The latest Insa Sunday poll has given the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party a new record high for voter support. At 29 percent, up 1 point, the AfD has an even greater lead over the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), which fell 1 point to 22 percent. A YouGov poll just last week showed AfD at 28 percent and […]

UBS Reactivates Supply-Chain Stress Watch After Detecting Alarmingly Rapid Deterioration One week after Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc warned CNBC of a “new wake-up call” for global trade amid the ongoing disruption of the Strait of Hormuz and a deepening energy crisis that could intensify further in June, UBS analysts are out with a new note telling clients they have “reactivated” their Global Supply Chain Stress Index in response to […]

Pakistan Deploys Thousands Of Troops, Jet Fighter Squadron To Saudi Arabia Via The Cradle Pakistan has deployed 8,000 troops, a ​squadron of fighter jets, and an air defense system to Saudi Arabia under a mutual defense pact, Reuters reported on Monday, citing security and government officials. The officials described the Pakistani deployment as a “substantial, combat-capable force intended to support Saudi Arabia’s military […]

Belarus Rattles Europe With Drills Involving Russian Tactical Nukes The Belarusian Defense Ministry announced Monday that its specialized military units have kicked off surprise combat drills specifically focused on the deployment and use of tactical nuclear weapons, which is a sign of yet more atomic saber-rattling on Europe’s eastern flank. According to the official statement blasted out across Telegram on Monday: “Today, in the […]

“Closely Monitoring The Situation”: Germany Fears Next Migration Wave After Spanish PM Welcomes Hundreds Of thousands Of Illegals Via Remix News, With Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez legalizing what could amount to as many as 1.6 million migrants, other EU member states are getting worried, and not just neighboring France. While the Socialist prime minister’s announcement originally aimed to naturalize some 500,000 […]

Escobar On Xi’s “Constructive Strategic Stability” Authored by Pepe Escobar, If all of us are magnanimous enough, we might infer that Xi and Trump agreed on a three-year stability framework. The headline on the front page of China Daily this past Thursday was a thunder and lightning “Red-carpet welcome for Trump in Beijing”. Well, complete with electric jumpin’ children waving flowers and a visit to the Temple of Heaven, […]