‘Massive Shift’ In US-Korea Relations After Trump Gets Seoul To Stop Targeting Tech Last month we noted that South Korea has been effectively running a racket to extract money from Big Tech through the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) – which, taking a note from the EU, has repeatedly targeted US firms with massive fines over various business practices. For years, the targeted industries have argued that Korean “network usage […]

“This Is A National Emergency” – US Govt To Buy 10 Large, New Nuclear Reactors Hot on the heels of news that it will invest “hundreds of billions” in loans to the nuclear power industry, including one already disbursed loan for $1BN to restart Three Mile Island, Bloomberg reported that the US government also plans to buy and own as many as 10 new, large nuclear reactors that could be paid for using Japan’s $550BN funding pledge, […]

US Pressuring Ukraine To Make Serious Territorial Concessions In First: Report Update(1429ET): It looks like for the first time Washington is getting serious about ending the Ukraine war, now apparently offering territorial concessions. And the Trump White House is reportedly leaning on President Zelensky to accept, per the FT: “According to people with direct knowledge of the document, the draft plan would require Ukraine to […]

Trump Urges Adoption Of Single Federal Standard On AI Regulation Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times, President Donald Trump said the United States should adopt one federal standard for governing artificial intelligence (AI), saying it’s important for the United States to stay ahead of China in the race for AI dominance. In a Truth Social post on Nov. 18, Trump said the United States needs a single AI standard […]

FOMC Minutes Expose Fractured Fed; “Many” See No Tariff Inflation, “Several” Fear Disorderly Drop In Stocks Since the last FOMC meeting (Oct 29th), gold is the best performing asset (along with the dollar) as bonds, stocks, and oil are all down notably… Source: Bloomberg Rate-cut odds for the December meeting continued to tumble after Powell’s hawkish comments (and the follow-up FedSpeak). Today saw BLS confirm no more […]

Army Announces Next Steps On Janus Program For Next-Generation Nuclear Energy As part of next steps for the Janus Program, the Department of Army said that it has selected nine installations for consideration in which to site microreactor power plants, and the Defense Innovation Unit released an Area of Interest to solicit commercial solutions for advanced nuclear power technologies. The Janus Program, the Army’s […]

Ugly, Tailing 20Y Auction Sees Slide In Bid To Cover, Foreign Demand, As Directs Soar To Record In this week’s lone coupon auction, which just happens to print an hour before the release of the October FOMC minutes, moments ago the US sold $16BN in 20Y bonds at a high yield of 4.706%, up 20bps from 4.507% last month and the highest since August. The auction also tailed the When Issued 4.704% by 0.2bps, the first tail since June. […]

Government Intervention, Not BlackRock, Is To Blame For The Housing Crisis Authored by Diyar Kasymov via The Mises Institute, Is building more homes not enough? Recently, there have been more and more Gen-Z memes about boomers selling their overvalued houses to BlackRock instead of to young couples, and then the corporation rents the house to the couple for 2x the price. The housing crisis is not a false alarm. The median rent […]

As Energy Costs Remain High, Utility Debt Builds For Millions Ahead Of Winter Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), An increasing number of American households are falling behind on their utility bills as energy costs remain elevated heading into winter, according to a new analysis from two nonprofits. Steam rises from a coal power plant in Adamsville, Ala., on April 11, 2021. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via […]

Michael ‘Big Short’ Burry Goes Stealth Mode, Still “Active In Markets”  Bloomberg’s Claire Ballentine caught up with “Big Short” investor Michael Burry following last week’s news that he had deregistered Scion Asset Management with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Burry told Ballentine in an email that Scion’s latest iteration functioned essentially as a “friends and family” fund, not a traditional asset-gathering […]

NATO Scrambles Jets Amid One Of Deadliest Russian Attacks On Western Ukraine Russia overnight carried out its typical aerial and drone strikes on Ukraine, but this time escalated attacks in Ukraine’s West, which apparently were close enough to the border to cause alarm in nearby Poland and Romania. The two NATO member countries scrambled jet fighters in response amid the massive Russian and drone and missile strikes which killed […]

“What Has Become Of Us”: Rosie O’Donnell May Have Just Handed Trump A Golden Defamation Lawsuit Authored by Jonthan Turley, I have previously expressed skepticism over some defamation cases against the media brought by President Donald Trump under existing case law. However, comedian Rosie O’Donnell may have supplied the President with a another defamation case if she cannot back up sensational claims made against the President […]

Cloudflare Blames Database Error For Outage That Took Down 20% Of The Web Authored by Brayden Lindrea via CoinTelegraph.com, Internet services provider Cloudflare says that a fault in its bot detection system triggered an outage that took down around 20% of webpages, including several crypto platforms. Cloudflare said in a post-mortem statement on Tuesday that a “feature file” used by its Bot Management System to fight off […]

Surprise Crude Draw Stabilizes Oil Prices After Early Plunge On Russia Peace Talk Headlines Oil prices tumbled overnight following API’s report suggesting a large build in crude inventories, , which would take oil stored in commercial tanks to the highest level in more than five months, if confirmed by official data this morning. The supply buildup may help cushion the impact of US sanctions against Russian producers Rosneft PJSC […]

Rearranging The Chairs By Michael Every of Rabobank Rearranging the Chairs Tuesday was another down day for most markets as the US weekly ADP jobs report suggested the labor backdrop is weakening and housing starts sagged. As the FT puts it, ‘Oracle’s astonishing $300bn OpenAI deal is now valued at minus $60bn.’ Here Is The Batshit Insane Chart That Sent Oracle Stock Soaring 25% After Hours https://t.co/Haus5Ueybg — […]

MP Materials Stock Spikes After JV Deal With Saudi Arabia’s Flagship Mining Company MP Materials stock is up more than 6% heading into the cash open after the company announced a rare earth refinery joint venture with Saudi Arabia’s flagship mining company. MP, the U.S. Department of War, and Saudi Arabia’s state mining giant Maaden have announced a joint venture to build a rare earth refinery in Saudi Arabia, marking one of the […]

“There’s No Emergency Here”: Blue Owl CEO Says As Private Credit Provider Abandons Merger Plan Less than 24 hours ago, we noted that Goldman’s Delta-One Desk head, Rich Privorotsky, warned, “while we’re all laser-focused on ORCL CDS and NVDA, maybe what we should have been watching was OWL and COF,” following up on our extensive writing on the subject of private, as far back as March 2024 “What’s Behind The Recent Explosion In […]

Leading Advanced Nuclear Companies Announce More Progress Toward Commercialization With the US badly lagging China in nuclear power plant rollout, and the Trump admin slow-playing its Industrial Policy in this most critical sector, the private sector is taking matters into its own hands, with two notable developments announced this morning by two of the leading companies in the space, as they pursue commercial rollout.  We start […]

Larry Summers Resigns From OpenAI Board; Harvard Launches Investigation After Epstein Revelations Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has resigned from the board of OpenAI following the release of messages in which Summers was asking Jeffrey Epstein for dating advice to try and bed a female mentee whose father was a former CCP official.  Then-Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers speaks at the University’s 2004 Commencement […]

TJ Maxx Hikes Outlook As Consumers Trade Down In Ominous Economic Signal  We’ve been hammering on the same theme for months: low- and middle-income consumers are getting financially squeezed.  Goldman has flagged imploding sentiment, UBS has revealed the tale of two consumer worlds, and consumer behavior and spending trends show a pullback in discretionary spending, from restaurants to big-box retailers.  The strain has become […]

As ‘Golden Toilet’ Corruption Scheme Rocks Ukraine, Support For Zelensky Plunges Below 20% Via Remix News, After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s close associate, Timur Mindich, fled to Israel after allegedly masterminding a €100 million corruption scheme, it appears the Ukrainian public is turning on their leader — at least according to polls cited by a Ukrainian member of parliament. “According to the polls […]

Futures Rebound After 4 Day Slide With Nvidia Earnings On Deck After 4 days of steep declines, futures are finally higher ahead of Nvidia earnings, with AI bulls hoping for strong numbers to provide respite from the market selloff. As of 8:00am ET, S&P futures are 0.3% higher and Nasdaq futs gains 0.4%, both bracing for big moves later: NVDA alone has accounted for almost 20% of S&P 500 gains this year. FOMC minutes and a […]

This Was A Major Red Flag In 2008, And Now It Is Happening Again! Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, The alarms are getting even louder each week.  It has become exceedingly clear that the U.S. economy has entered a crisis that is similar to what we experienced in 2008 and 2009, and a lot of people are really starting to freak out.  For those that cannot see the stunning parallels between the Great […]

First Home Depot, Now Target Reports Soft Demand  At the start of the week, Goldman’s top consumer specialist Scott Feiler pointed out this would be a “very important week” for earnings across the consumer sector. Home Depot set the tone on Tuesday by cutting its full-year outlook as big-ticket spending and home-renovation demand continue to fade. Now, the next major earnings report just hit the tape, and it’s delivering […]

Dutch Retreat: Beijing Wins Control Fight Over Nexperia After Chip Shipments Squeezed The Dutch government has fully withdrawn its emergency powers over chipmaker Nexperia, returning control to Chinese parent Wingtech and ending the tense standoff that had led Beijing to halt key automotive-chip shipments, Bloomberg reported. If tensions persisted, this would’ve sparked snarled automotive supply chains worldwide. The reversal […]