Insane Financial Imbalances And Social Revolution Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, A rebalancing of the economy and society will ultimately prove very positive, but first we must navigate the model collapse of insane financial extremes. I’ve endeavored to explain how self-referential models veer into hallucinations that are accepted as accurate reflections of the real world. Models are by definition synthetic […]

Dave Chappelle Says Charlie Kirk “Was No MLK” In New Netflix Special Sometimes comedians fall flat, especially when they write jokes about a recently murdered person without understanding the fundamental facts of their life.  Is it possible to make comedy about a recent assassination and be legitimately funny.  Probably.  However, Chappelle missed a golden opportunity to expose some truth and instead tried to play it safe and […]

Yields Hit Session Highs After Poor, Tailing 2Y Auction Sees Lowest Foreign Demand Since 2023 It’s the last treasury auction week of the year, and due to upcoming holidays, we are running on an accelerated scheduled which means the 2Y auction which usually takes placed on Tuesday, is Monday’s business instead. It was a subpar auction with modest demand; overall grade – not great, not terrible. The auction of $69BN in 2Y paper […]

A Christmas Carol For The Markets, 2025 Edition By Elwin de Groot, Head of Macro Strategy at Rabobank As the year draws to a close, Ebenezer “Macro” Scrooge looks back on an eventful 2025. Sitting alone in his glass-walled office on Christmas Eve, the city below twinkling like a Bloomberg terminal in night mode. His screens glowed with charts: yield curves steepening, equities hitting all-time highs, and a lonely alert […]

House Republicans Setting Up Early 2026 Vote On Stock Trading Ban House Republicans are teeing up a vote in early 2026 on legislation that would ban members of Congress from trading stock, however Democrats are insisting that it be expanded to cover the president, vice president, and their spouses.  Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., leaves a news conference as Republicans struggle with a plan to address growing health care […]

Silver Just Called The COMEX’s Bluff Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold, December means many things: A year coming to an end, a time for reflection, a time for looking ahead. A time for family and friends, and of course, a time for holiday belly-expansion. However, what many may have missed this December is that it was the month the paper markets in silver had yet another near-death experience. Hiding in Plain […]

Atmospheric Rivers Pound US West Coast, Raising Bomb Cyclone Threat Ahead Of Christmas Powerful atmospheric rivers continue to hammer Washington and Northern California, extending into Central California, dumping inches of rain, with some low-elevation areas seeing double-digit totals, while higher elevations are getting buried under heavy snowfall. Here is this week’s forecast via The Weather Channel: Atmospheric rivers continue […]

Democratic Despotism: The American Left Moves From Censored To Compelled Speech Authored by Jonathan Turley, More than five years ago, I wrote in these pages of a growing trend on the left toward compelled speech – the forcing of citizens to repeat approved views and values. It is an all-too-familiar pattern. Once a faction assumes power, it will often first seek to censor opposing views and then compel the endorsement of […]

Trump Admin Tests New Medicare Drug Pricing Pilot Programs Authored by Jacki Thrapp via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced two pilot programs on Dec. 19, as the Trump administration tests new ways to lower out-of-pocket drug costs for Americans on Medicare. An employee is seen at a Florida pharmacy in this file […]

Russian General Killed By Car Bomb In Moscow, Marks 3rd Top Officer Assassinated In A Year A Russian general was killed early Monday after a bomb detonated beneath his car in southern Moscow, Russian law enforcement officials have announced. The hugely provocative act, which was likely either carried out by Ukrainian operatives or allied Western intelligence (or both) marks the third killing of a high-ranking defense official over […]

The US Economy Is Stronger After One Year Of The Trump Administration Authored by Daniel Lacalle, One year into Donald Trump’s new presidency, the verdict from the data is clear: the apocalyptic consensus forecasts have failed, and the United States stands as the only major developed economy combining strong growth, controlled inflation and fiscal consolidation. The same analysts and institutions that applauded massive […]

Macron Seeks New Talks With Putin, Forcing ‘Alternative’ Path To Stalled US Negotiations Suddenly French President Emmanuel Macron is deciding to revive his diplomacy with Moscow and is stepping in and “stealing the show” – as Politico has newly put it – at a moment US-Russia negotiations have been ‘constructive’ but largely slow and even stalled. There’s been no breakthroughs in Miami this weekend involving White House envoy […]

Georgia Power Gets Green Light To Dramatically Grow Grid To Draw Data Centers Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), The Georgia Public Service Commission will allow the state’s largest electric utility to proceed with its $15 billion plan to build nearly 10,000 megawatts of new generation—two-thirds of its present capacity—within a decade to accommodate “large load” demand from data centers. The […]

Key Events This Shortened Week: GDP And Durables On Deck As 2025 Closes For those traders who are still “out there” instead of the slopes of Chamonix mingling with freshly embezzled US tax dollars by way of Kiev, DB’s Jim Reid reminds that we’re now entering a very quiet spell for markets before Christmas, with data releases and other headline announcements almost completely drying up. Indeed, there’s only two-and-a-half days […]

Journo Freaks Out After Bari Weiss Spikes ’60 Minutes’ Segment On El Salvador Prison CBS News’ new editor in chief Bari Weiss pulled a planned “60 Minutes” segment on an El Salvador maximum-security prison where the Trump administration has sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants – apparently because the journalist behind the piece failed to obtain comment from the Trump administration.  Bari Weiss backstage at The Theatre at the […]

Leases For Five Offshore Wind Projects Suspended Over Radar-Related National Security Concerns U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Maria Bartiromo on “Mornings with Maria” on Fox Business that the Trump administration will suspend leases for five wind farms under construction off the U.S. East Coast, citing national security concerns related to radar interference. “Well, today we’re sending notifications to the five large […]

Irony Alert: Google Suddenly Champions Free Speech As UK Crushes Online Expression Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, In a stunning reversal, Google has slammed the UK for threatening to stifle free speech through its aggressive online regulations. This from the company infamous for its own censorship crusades against conservative voices and inconvenient truths. If even Google is raising the alarm, you know the situation […]

Futures Rise, Japanese Yields Surge, Gold And Silver Soar As we previewed late last week, the Santa Rally is back all right, and US equity futures are trading near session highs with the Nasdaq 100 poised to wipe out December’s losses as revived appetite for technology stocks powered gains across equity markets. As of 8:15am ET, S&P futures are 0.4% higher after the benchmark climbed 0.9% on Friday, the most in close to a […]

Nvidia Prepares To Ship H200 AI Chips To China By Mid-February Nvidia shares rose slightly in premarket trading in New York after Reuters reported that the US chipmaker has informed customers it plans to ship its second-most powerful AI chip, the H200, to China before the Lunar New Year in mid-February. Sources familiar with the shipment say Nvidia plans to deliver about 5,000 to 10,000 chip modules, equivalent to 40,000 to […]

‘Rather Brilliantly Evil’: Life In The Fast Lane With Robinhood Markets Authored by Eric Salzman via Racket News, (emphasis ours) By just about any metric it has been a blowout year for the retail brokerage company Robinhood Markets. The company’s stock (HOOD) price is up about 220% in 2025, revenues and account growth have shot higher, and founder Vlad Tenev has become a multi-billionaire. Robinhood was founded in 2013 but […]

Denmark Furious After Trump Names Special Envoy To Greenland President Donald Trump announced late Sunday on Truth Social that he is appointing Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry to serve as the U.S. Special Envoy to Greenland. The move prompted Denmark’s Foreign Minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, to summon the U.S. ambassador, saying the appointment suggests continued American interest in the resource-rich island. “I am pleased to announce […]

Pump Baby, Pump! EIA Thinks OPEC Can Produce Far More Than Anyone Expected Authored by Julianne Geiger via OilPrice.com, The U.S. Energy Information Administration quietly rewrote a key assumption about the global oil market this week: OPEC can produce more oil than previously thought. In its December Short-Term Energy Outlook, the EIA updated how it defines and estimates OPEC crude oil production capacity. The result was a […]

Beijing Condemns Trump’s Gunboat Diplomacy After China-Bound Tanker Seizure Beijing has condemned the U.S. interception of sanctioned crude tankers off the Venezuelan coast after a China-bound oil tanker was seized on Saturday. Beijing said Venezuela has the right to conduct trade with other countries. Reuters cited China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian at a regular press briefing, who said the US seizure of another […]

Freedom Lovers Aren’t ‘Fascists’ Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker, There’s nothing ‘right-wing’ about defending the Bill of Rights. Being called “right-wing” or “fascist” is detestable. The label implies a preference for dictatorship, authoritarianism, and government supremacy over personal freedom. The exact opposite is true. I would describe myself as a supporter of autarchism in the sense that we […]

Cocoa Prices Face Worst Annual Collapse In Six Decades As Goldman Sees “Tailwinds” For Hershey After nearly tripling last year and soaring to a record $13,000 a ton, cocoa futures are on track for their worst-ever annual decline, based on data going back more than six decades. Cocoa futures in New York are set for a 50% decline if losses persist through the end of the year. Prices are currently trading around $5,845 as of […]