Bonds & Bullion Jump, Dollar Dumps As Rate-Hike Odds Slump After Payrolls Miss As we noted in our preview, today’s payrolls print was indeed “bad news is good news” as the surprise five-sigma miss (-23k) on payrolls (albeit with a drop in the unemployment rate) sent rate-hike odds reeling lower… “History doesn’t repeat, but sometimes it rhymes. For the third time in as many years, July jobs data saw a mid-summer loss of […]

July Jobs Shock: US Lost 23K Workers, Below Lowest Estimate, As Unemp Rate Drops To 4.1% Ahead of today’s jobs report, in our payrolls preview we warned that “July Has Emerged As A Very Poor Month For Jobs” and boy were we right: moments ago the BLS reported that in July, the US labor force shrank by a whopping 23K, sharply lower from a downward revised 20K in June (from 57K), and the worst print since the negative 156K in […]

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan Sign Islamic NATO-Style Defense Pact Amid Iran War On Friday Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed a major defense agreement as leaders gathered in the city of Makkah, Saudi Arabia. It seeks to strengthen joint deterrence and expanding defense cooperation, the Saudi Press Agency reported. It is essentially a NATO-style agreement for the ‘Muslim world’ – given that it stipulates and formalizes […]

Can Sam Altman Be Trusted Inside Your Home? Meet OpenAI’s New Always-On Smart Speaker Trust remains OpenAI’s biggest problem. Sam Altman’s public feud with Elon Musk, combined with Apple’s allegations that OpenAI stole trade secrets, has only intensified concerns surrounding the company’s leadership and governance. Amid this glaring trust issue, OpenAI now wants to place what Bloomberg describes as “essentially a smart speaker […]

Futures Rise Ahead Of Closely Watched Jobs Report US futures grind higher in a European session devoid of newsflow ahead of nonfarm payrolls. As of 815am ET, S&P futures rose 0.2% while Nasdaq futures gained 0.4%, with some of yesterday’s beaten up tech names such as Sandisk and Western Digital getting some reprieve in the premarket. Asian stocks swung between a loss of as much as 0.5% and gain of 0.4%. South Korea’s Kospi […]

Global Food Prices Hit Three-Year High As War, Chokepoint Chaos And El Nino Spark Perfect Storm The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index climbed to a three-year high in July, extending its upward trajectory as conflicts across Eurasia (the Black Sea and the Hormuz chokepoint) disrupt critical trade routes and mounting El Niño risks threaten global harvests. The United Nations Food and Agriculture […]

Meanwhile, In England… Idiocy Knows No Bounds Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News, Mindless arson for online clout is torching farmers’ livelihoods across England. Hay and straw stacks – vital winter feed and hard-earned harvest – are being deliberately set alight in a suspected TikTok challenge that treats the countryside like disposable content. West Mercia Police have circulated an urgent warning to farming groups […]

$109,796 In Earnings Needed To Afford Typical US Home The income needed in order to purchase a typical home for sale in the United States in June was $109,796, marginally lower than the record high $110,382 in 2025, real estate brokerage Redfin said in an Aug. 5 report. Housing affordability has remained largely flat year over year since monthly housing costs and people’s incomes are growing at a similar rate, Redfin said. […]

Indian Refiners Continue West Africa Crude Buying Spree By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com India’s state-run refiners continue their buying spree of crude from West Africa as the Middle East crisis has sapped supply and made deliveries uncertain. In one of the latest purchases via a tender, India’s state-owned refiner Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) has acquired 2 million barrels of Nigerian crude oil from […]

IRGC Strikes ‘Hostile Targets’ In Hormuz As Iran Declares Oman Deal Bans US Vessels From Strait Summary Explosions heard near Qeshm island – Iran says it struck ‘hostile targets’. Iran parliament reviews draft Hormuz plan banning US- and Israel-linked vessels, oil rises Houthis intensify attacks on Saudi oil shipping in the Red Sea. Yemen fighting escalates amid reports of major casualties. Iran-Oman talks continue as US backs […]

How The World Views China Vs The US In 2026 The United States and China are the world’s two preeminent superpowers, but views of them vary widely by country. This visualization, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, compares approval ratings for Beijing and Washington using survey results from more than 42,000 respondents across 36 countries. The survey was conducted in February 2026 by the Pew Research Center. China Now […]

“Promises Are Fairy Tales”: NATO Will Not Accept Ukraine Authored by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida via GlobalResearch.ca, Apparently, the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO is increasingly being dismissed as unrealistic. Even the regime’s most hardline officials seem to have lost hope regarding Kiev’s accession to the Western military alliance, considering that such a move does not serve NATO’s current strategic interests.    In […]

Winter Is Coming: Europe Faces Twin Diesel And NatGas Crunch Samantha Dart, co-head of global commodities research at Goldman Sachs, began the week by telling Bloomberg TV that the global diesel-supply crunch is “what keeps her up at night.” She followed up Wednesday with a client note warning that European natural gas storage levels are also lagging the seasonal average ahead of the winter heating period. Benchmark TTF futures […]

Cambridge’s Black Time-Travelling Professor (And His Many Superhuman Feats) Authored by Mark Collett, Running a single marathon is a great achievement. Running 30 marathons is a spectacular feat. Running 30 marathons in 35 days is something only a world-class athlete could achieve. But running 30 marathons in 35 days, and running the final nine of those marathons with a broken leg – that’s an impossible feat that would require […]

Zelensky To Make First-Ever Visit To Serbia, In Symbolic ‘Slap In The Face’ For Russia Serbia is set to host Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a major first of the war which could set off serious diplomatic tensions with Russia, a longtime Serbian ally and ‘friend’. Zelensky will arrive on this first-ever trip on Saturday, August 8, according to Ukrainian officials, despite that Serbia – as a Slavic and Orthodox Christian […]

If This Is Real, We Are Cooked… Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News, Footage circulating purporting to be from the North African desert shows what looks like an enormous column of sub-Saharan African men moving under escort. Some estimates put the number at a hundred thousand. Commentators claim Algerian military vehicles and personnel are shepherding them toward the coast. If the scale and direction prove accurate, […]

Are You Ready For The “Rogue AI” Psy-Op? Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org, The AIs are breaking free, that’s the story. It started two weeks ago, when OpenAI reported one of their “agents” had escaped its testing area and got loose on the internet to launch an “unprecedented cyber attack”. This was clearly meant to be scarier than the public response indicated, because a few days later OpenAI CEO Sam […]

The Vanishing Art Of Presence Authored by Joseph Varon via Brownstone Institute, Medicine is always changing. In my career, I have seen intensive care units go from simple rooms with oxygen, monitors, and clinical intuition to places where artificial intelligence can predict problems before we notice them, bedside ultrasound helps us avoid guessing, and robotic systems help surgeons work with great precision. Telemedicine now lets […]

Trump Signs Orders To Curb Birthright Citizenship, Target Birth Tourism President Donald Trump signed two executive orders Thursday that will restrict automatic citizenship to ​children born in the United States because of commercial birth tourism and several other factors. One of the measures bans birth tourism, the practice of traveling to the United States on a tourist visa with the intention to have a child that is given […]

Judge Says Updated National Firearms Act Violates Constitution Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times, A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the registration and approval requirements for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns in the National Firearms Act (NFA) are unconstitutional. In the case of Silencer Shop Foundation v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), U.S. […]

These Are America’s Fastest-Aging States America’s population is getting older, but some states are aging much faster than others. Using U.S. Census Bureau data compiled by USAFacts, this ranking, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows how much each state’s population aged 65 and older grew between 2014 and 2024. Growth in 65-and-Older Populations (2014-2024) The table below ranks every state by the percentage […]

Mexico Bans Fracking In Key Shale Basin By Julianne Geiger of OilPrice.com Mexico has ruled out fracking in a key shale basin, drawing a line through a resource-rich area even as the country looks for ways to cut its dependence on U.S. natural gas. President Claudia Sheinbaum said hydraulic fracturing will not be allowed in the Tampico-Misantla basin beneath Veracruz and Tamaulipas. The government cited the basin’s dense […]

“The Gift That Keeps Giving”: Five Ways Republicans Benefit From Democratic Socialist Victories Radical leftists and Islamist activists are increasingly converging inside the Democratic Party as Democratic Socialists of America, forming what can only be described as a “red-green alliance.” United by their hatred of America and capitalism, this unholy alliance of far-left radicals is drawing support from migrant voting blocs and […]

The Financial Consequences Of ‘Gray’ Divorce Authored by Anne Johnson via The Epoch Times, Gray divorce refers to divorce among adults ages 50 and over. And although divorce among younger adults has been declining over the past 15 years, according to Pew Research, gray divorce is on the rise. Gray divorce is becoming more common, and its financial impact can last well into retirement. New Africa/shutterstock Although any divorce […]

These Are The States With The Most Empty Homes America faces a housing shortage, yet about 14.5 million homes across the country are vacant. How can both be true? Using the latest U.S. Census Bureau data compiled by LendingTree, Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld created this map showing the share of vacant housing units in every state. The figures include vacation homes, rentals awaiting tenants, homes for sale, and other […]