California Restricts Free Speech Authored by Kenin M. Spivak via RealClearPolitics, California’s far-left Supreme Court has ordered restrictions on the speech and expressive conduct of California’s lawyers “at all times,” including during their unrelated business activities, political endeavors and personal lives. Just before Christmas, the even more radical California State Bar imperiously advised the state’s 200,000 […]

US Holiday Spending Jumped In December, Signaling Consumer Strength Into 2026 American consumers closed out the holiday season with a strong December spending surge, adding to evidence that household demand remains resilient even as confidence surveys show lingering unease about the economy. Retail sales during the final two months of 2025 rose 4.1 percent from a year earlier, according to a Jan. 12 report from the National Retail […]

Definancialisation Doesn’t Mean Peace, It Means Prep For War By Michael Every of Rabobank For years, some analysts talked about the problems associated with ‘financialization’ and only a small subset talked about a looming backlash ‘definancialization’. What did you think it meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? “Because markets”? In the big picture, an FT op-ed notes that Trump’s new ‘Great Game’ is “mining, mapping, […]

Bessent Reveals 10% Of US Budget Lost To Fraud, Signaling Musk Has Unfinished DOGE Business Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s interview with journalist Christopher Rufo suggests that Elon Musk still has unfinished business at DOGE, as fraud, waste, and abuse from Somali networks in Minnesota, California Democrats, and other deep-blue states have dominated the news cycle for the last several weeks. Bessent told Rufo that somewhere […]

‘Dilbert’ Creator Scott Adams Dies After Prostate Cancer Battle Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), “Dilbert” creator and political commentator Scott Adams died after a battle with prostate cancer, his ex-wife announced on Tuesday on his YouTube show. He was 68. Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip “Dilbert,” talks about his work in his studio in in Dublin, Calif., on Oct. 26, 2006. AP […]

Clintons Refuse To Testify About Jeffrey Epstein; Comer To Begin Contempt Proceedings President Trump isn’t the only one clamming up over Jeffrey Epstein – as Bill and Hillary Clinton are both refusing to testify in front of Congressional investigators over their relationship with the dead sex-trafficking pedophile, escalating a monthslong battle with House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY).  The Clintons […]

“The Globalist Deep State Is In Panic Mode” After Trump’s Cash Cut-Off Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com, Journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular book “Deep State” (which is soon to be massively updated and re-released), thinks evil powers trying to overthrow America are distraught because their money and plans are drying up.  Newman says, “I think the globalist Deep State is in panic mode, and I think the Left […]

Beijing Responds As Trump’s Iran-Related Tariffs Risk Derailing US-China Trade Deal China sharply criticized Washington’s move to levy tariffs on countries trading with the Islamic Republic of Iran, issuing a statement Tuesday – less than 12 hours after President Trump announced the punitive action on Truth Social – condemning the decision. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stated, “China’s position on the tariff issue […]

Mamdani Declares War On Civil Discourse Authored by Charles Mitchell via RealClearPolitics, Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration speech on Jan. 1 became instantly famous for his promise to prove the “warmth of collectivism.” Yet Americans should pay just as much attention to another deeply concerning comment from the socialist mayor of New York City’s first act in office. He declared that those who are “fluent in the good […]

Oil Spikes After Trump Urges Iranians To Keep Protesting, Says “Help On Its Way” Update(0953ET): President Trump on Tuesday morning has called on Iranians to keep protesting in the streets, where clashes with security services have spiraled and turned violent – but in some locations have waned. He’s told Iranians to “take over your institutions” – which is essentially a call for coup or armed insurrection. Trump further said he […]

“Entered New Era”: SK Hynix To Build $13 Billion Memory Plant As Nvidia CEO Says AI Demand Soaring One week after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told the auidence at CES Las Vegas that AI data centers are creating a “market that never existed” for memory, the global leader in high-bandwidth memory, SK Hynix, announced that construction of a new $13 billion advanced memory manufacturing plant will begin this spring, with first production […]

Here’s Proof That UK’s X Ban Threat Has Nothing To Do With Protecting Children Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, As UK authorities ramp up their assault on free speech, a viral post shared by Elon Musk exposes the glaring hypocrisy in the government’s “protect the children” narrative. Data from the The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and police forces reveals Snapchat as the […]

US Equity Futures Jump To Record High After Core CPI Comes In Cool US equity futures were initially weaker as the market weighs geopolitics, inflation data, and the start to earnings season, where JPM reported results that were mixed at best (unexpected weakness in bank underwriting kept the stock flat in premarket trading). However, just after core CPI printed below estimates, futures spiked as high as 7030, rising to a new record […]

Core CPI Prints Cooler Than Expected In December, Near 5 Year Lows On the heels of ‘solid’ labor market data from BLS (lower unemployment), ADP (weekly employment change remaining positive), and a rebound in Small Business Optimism; this morning we get a glimpse of the other side of The Fed’s mandate as the last CPI print for 2025 prints. From what we can tell, President Trump did not drop any hints this time ahead of the release […]

JPM Kicks Off Q4 Earnings Season With Rare Miss Driven By Weakness In Debt Underwriting Ahead of the official start of earnings season this morning when JPM reported Q4 results, Goldman’s head of Delta One Rich Privorotsky wrote that “attention now turns to JPM to set tone for earnings seasons. Prices/multiples are elevated across the sector so hard to argue expectations are low.  Focus on NII/NIM durability as deposit costs and […]

L3Harris Rockets Higher On “First-Of-It’s Kind” Pentagon Investment Into Missile Unit L3Harris Technologies (our top stock for the Hemispheric Defense Theme) announced on Tuesday a “first-of-its-kind” proposed partnership with the Department of War (DoW) to significantly boost solid rocket motor production. The DoW will inject $1 billion into L3Harris’ Missile Solutions unit through a convertible preferred investment, creating a […]

2026 Earnings Outlook: Another Year Of Optimism Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, The Wall Street consensus forecast for 2026 earnings growth is strong by historical standards. Analysts are giddy and projecting another year of double-digit growth in S&P 500 earnings per share (EPS). FactSet’s most recent data showed an expected 2026 earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 of about 15 percent. That is […]

Orsted Shares Jump After Judge Allows Trump-Halted Wind Project To Resume Shares of Danish wind giant Orsted A/S rose on Tuesday after a US federal court ruled that construction work could resume on the company’s $5 billion Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island while legal challenges with the Trump administration persist. On Monday, the US District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction […]

RFK Jr. Alleges Germany Targeting Doctors For Legitimate Vaccine, Mask Exemptions Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is calling on Germany to end what he described as unjust prosecutions of German doctors for granting patients exemptions from mask and vaccine requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I’ve learned that more than a thousand German physicians and thousands […]

DC, New York Brace For Deep Mid-January Freeze An Arctic front is forecast to descend into the central and eastern U.S. later this week. Above-average temperatures will give way to below-normal conditions across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, bringing colder weather back to major metro areas through the end of the month. The setup closely mirrors the December weather pattern that locked much of the eastern US into a prolonged cold […]

Eastern Mediterranean Geopolitics Are Becoming More Complex Authored by Andrew Korybko, Tensions are growing between Turkiye-Pakistan and Israel-Cyprus-Greece… Stability in the Eastern Mediterranean can no longer be taken for granted as a result of three recent developments: 1) the growing Turkish-Israeli rivalry in post-Assad Syria; 2) Israel’s reported plans to establish a rapid response force with Cyprus and […]

Le Pen’s Political Future Hangs In The Balance As Appeal Begins This Week The political future of Marine Le Pen hinges on a crucial appeal in Paris this week that will determine whether she can run in the 2027 presidential election, after she was barred from public office over misusing 4 million euros of EU funds.  Marine Le Pen, pictured in Dec. 2024 at her party’s offices in the National Assembly. (via El Pais) Le Pen, who leads […]

EU Official Plotted To ‘Organize Resistance’ Against Hungary’s Orban, Files Show Authored by Kit Klarenberg via The GrayZone, A senior European Union official has been secretly seeking to remove Hungarian President Viktor Orban since at least 2019, according to leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone. The files show in January 2019, the EU’s International Coordinator for the Directorate-General for Migration and Home […]

China–EU EV Conflict Nears Resolution As New Pricing Framework Emerges China and the EU took a significant step Monday toward easing their long-running electric vehicle trade dispute after Brussels released rules that could allow Chinese exporters to replace punitive tariffs with negotiated pricing commitments, according to the South China Morning Post. The European Commission said companies may submit price undertakings that […]

Germany’s Mittelstand Succession Crisis: Who Will Take the Reins? Submitted by Thomas Kolbe Germany faces a massive wave of business transfers. The decline in entrepreneurship and self-employment has multiple causes; blaming the young generation’s supposed obsession with work-life balance belongs more to the realm of fables. When a productive and market-successful company exits the competition, productive capital is lost […]