Ed Dowd: The Fed Hiked Interest Rates Into A Supply Shock Authored by Ed Dowd: Beyond the Narrative via Substack, September FOMC Meeting: First Rate Hike Since July 2023 The FOMC did what the front end of the Treasury market (3-month T-bill) had been telegraphing for two weeks prior. On September 16 they voted unanimously to raise the fed funds rate 25 basis points to 3.75-4.00 percent. Kevin Warsh’s press conference was short, […]

All 10 ActBlue Witnesses Take The Fifth As GOP Says Probe Is “Far From Over” All ten ActBlue employees and board members deposed by House investigators have invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions about the Democratic Party’s dominant fundraising platform. Five of the ten are board members, all deposed in the past five weeks, and the three committees running the probe say they are not done. Their third report, […]

Gamma Squeeze The World  Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance A little over a week ago, I wrote about Leopold Aschenbrenner returning to markets, and the ensuing nausea the entire spectacle caused me. For those who missed it, Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness fund had grown to roughly $45 billion before getting absolutely smoked in July, falling toward $10 billion and forcing the liquidation of most of its public equity […]

Socialist Candidate Says Stealing From Taxpayers Makes Her “More Qualified” For Office It sounds crazy, but this kind of scenario is absolutely the norm for Democratic Socialist candidates:  Being convicted of blatant criminal embezzlement is a badge of honor, not a disqualifying mark on their record.  The complete inversion of moral standards is unsettling and it reinforces the need to prevent far-left activists from entering […]

‘Deal Or Drive Them Into Hell’: Trump Issues Stark Iran Ultimatum In UN Speech Trump on Iran, Oil & Midterm Elections Standing before the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump told the world: “While others have talked, I have acted. While others have spoken of peace, I have made peace.”The focus quickly turned to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which Trump charged as responsible for spreading “death and carnage and […]

Putin Urges Immediate Yemen Ceasefire In Call With Saudi Crown Prince Russian President Vladimir Putin held a Monday telephone conversation with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (who is also the prime minister) – wherein the two leaders focused on broad bilateral issues. Referring to the “Saudi National Day”, a TASS readout indicates “The Russian leader congratulated the Saudi Crown Prince on the upcoming national holiday – […]

“Repeated And Persistent Supply-Side Shocks” Are Here To Stay By Michael Every of Rabobank Chicago Fed President Goolsbee just warned the FOMC can’t ignore repeated and persistent supply-side shocks and must respond in a way that will cause economic hardship. However, repeated and persistent supply-side shocks are now the norm, not short-lived, aberrant events. Putin won the Russian election with a supermajority: fears are […]

Alibaba Unveils China’s Most Powerful AI Chip In $53 Billion Gambit Alibaba Group has unveiled the Zhenwu V900, an AI accelerator it calls China’s most powerful, marking a major escalation in its effort to challenge Nvidia and build a vertically integrated artificial-intelligence stack stretching from chips and networking to models and hyperscale data centers. Alibaba booth at the 3rd China International Supply Chain Expo at the […]

Lindsay Clancy’s Attorney Requests Investigation Into Holdout Juror Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times, Lindsay Clancy’s attorney has asked the judge to conduct a “limited inquiry” into the holdout juror who wanted Clancy convicted of murdering her three children. In a motion filed Sept. 18, lawyer Kevin Reddington asked Judge William Sullivan to review the juror’s truthfulness on a questionnaire and alleged use of a […]

Saudis Signal Red Sea Oil Loadings Could Soon Resume For Asian Buyers Bloomberg reports Saudi Aramco may restart crude loadings at Yanbu this week, raising hopes that the critical East-West pipeline route, which bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, could resume operations at half capacity after a drone attack disabled it. While no restart timeline has been confirmed, the overnight development adds to positive signs of progress toward […]

Friends Don’t Let Friends Wear Dow Hats  Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance At some point, probably sooner than most people think, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is going to hit 100,000. And when it does, you can already picture the scene. It’ll be like every major milestone the Dow has ever hit so far combined. CNBC will run a countdown. There will be breathless retrospectives about how far the market has come. Somebody […]

Futures Flat As Oil, Yields Drop Ahead Of Trump UN Address Futures are flat, having recoverd  a modest drop after the European open, following yesterday’s strong, positive performance despite energy prices and yields being lower for a second consecutive day. As of 8:00am ET, S&P and Nasdaq futures are fractionally in the green after an advance in tech giants and chipmakers drove the index to a one-month high. In premarket […]

UK’s Burnham Approves Military Support To Saudis, Limited To Aerial Refueling  The UK has finally made a formal decision on the intense political and foreign policy question it has faced for the couple weeks since the Houthis started making rapid gains against the Saudi-backed coalition in Yemen. London has announced it will increase its military support to Saudi Arabia, albeit it has become clear that this will still be very […]

Joby Completes First Autonomous Flight Across US Authored by Mary Prenon via The Epoch Times, Joby Aviation completed the first-ever autonomous flight across the United States using an aircraft equipped with its autonomy technology. A Joby Aviation electric aircraft takes off from JFK International Airport in New York on April 27, 2026. Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesManned with only an onboard safety pilot, the aircraft navigated […]

Agentic Wars Begin: Amazon Blocks Meta’s Agents As Muse Takes World By Storm Amazon.com has blocked Meta’s new AI agent from its retail site after the social media company declined a request to remove the bot, Bloomberg reported. Meta’s Muse, which was introduced earlier this month and has taken the world by storm, quickly rising to the top of mobile app charts, a sign that the social media company is gaining traction in the […]

Iran’s Fars Calls Reuters’ Hormuz Reopening Story “Invalid” Ahead Of Trump’s UN Address Update: Iran’s Fars Rejects Hormuz Reopening Reports As Brent Slides <$100 On Diplomatic Hopes Brent Tumbles On US Media & Aligned Outlets Pushing Rumored Diplomatic Efforts  Iran’s Fars Rejects Reporting  Kyodo and Reuters published positive diplomatic headlines early Tuesday morning that sent Brent crude futures tumbling below $100 […]

‘Survival Mode’ – Farmers Crushed As Trump’s War On Iran Sends Diesel Cost Soaring As Donald Trump’s war on Iran nears the seven-month mark, the economic damage is reverberating all over the world, and all across the United States. Among the Americans who are feeling the most pain from a war their federal legislators never declared are the nation’s farmers, who are growing increasingly desperate under the weight of rising costs for […]

NY Lawmaker Launches $30 Million Effort To Coordinate Democrat Control Of AI New York Assemblymember Alex Bores is launching a $30 million effort to unite Democrats behind a common artificial intelligence regulatory agenda ahead of the 2028 elections, taking the issue that defined his unsuccessful congressional campaign to a national stage. New York State Assembly member Alex BoresHis congressional run was bankrolled by Anthropic’s […]

Wholesale Gas Prices Are Reaching Consumers Faster, ECB Says By Michael Kern of OilPrice.com The surge in wholesale natural gas prices is set to pass through the retail and electricity inflation in the Eurozone faster than in the past, the European Central Bank (ECB) said in its Economic Bulletin on Monday. While the pass-through is faster and can manifest in the inflation numbers within one to three months for most Eurozone […]

The Nuclear Renaissance Disconnect: Utilities Plan Big While Stocks Lag The Nuclear Energy Institute’s (NEI) newly released 2026 Future of Nuclear Power survey captured American nuclear energy ambitions across 21 utility companies covering 95 commercial reactors. Reactor owners find themselves planning new reactors to meet the AI-juiced electricity demand of the future, along with the added demand from increased domestic […]

Despite German State Stimulus: Machinery Industry Braces For A Catastrophic Year Submitted by Thomas Kolbe Friedrich Merz does not make it easy to interpret current economic data correctly. The debt king from Brilon is not only distorting the statistics with his “special (debt) assets”: More than 320 billion euros in direct and indirect state subsidies are flowing, according to Freiburg economist Lars Feld, through subsidy […]

US Views Of Islam Have Deteriorated In Past 25 Years The view that Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions is more widespread in the United States today than when Pew Research Center first asked Americans this question in March of 2002, around six months after the catastrophic events of the 9/11 terrorist attacks orchestrated by Al-Qaeda Islamists. As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, in January, 51 […]

Donald Rumsfeld’s New Europe Is Waiting For Its Second Act Authored by José Niño via The Libertarian Institute On January 22, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld stepped behind the podium at the Foreign Press Center in Washington and, with one answer to a Dutch public television reporter, redrew the map of Europe. The reporter wanted to know why so many Europeans trusted Saddam Hussein more than then-President George W. Bush. The defense […]

Houthis Threaten Strikes On Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan Interests As Yemen Intervention Looms Houthi officials have put Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan on notice amid the ongoing Saudi-Yemen conflict, and as Riyadh urges partners to assist militarily against the Ansar Allah movement. Iran’s state Nour News, which is affiliated with the country’s Supreme National Security Council, has issued a report saying the three Saudi allies “will […]

Germany’s Debt King Merz Gets a Greek Lesson in Fiscal Policy Submitted by Thomas Kolbe Revenge is sweet. It tastes all the sweeter the longer one has had to wait for it to arrive, and the deeper the pain of the humiliation that preceded it. Some may still have the images of the great debt crisis of a decade and a half ago before their eyes: German politicians, led by then-Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, traveled to Athens at […]