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The Soft Antichrist Of The AI Age: What Everyone Is Missing About The US-China Arms Race

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 18:00:00 +0000

The Soft Antichrist Of The AI Age: What Everyone Is Missing About The US-China Arms Race

Authored by Patrick Feeley via Substack,

I. The word

Peter Thiel spent the back half of last year giving private lectures on the Antichrist, and the word has been loose in the discourse ever since. His political reading is the old one. The Antichrist is not a cartoon devil. He is the figure who arrives offering peace and safety, and who uses the fear of catastrophe to install one universal order. In Thiel's telling that figure is a regulator. He stops technology in the name of survival. The price of the peace is stagnation.

I want the frame. I do not want his conclusion.

The more probable figure is not the one who promises safety. It is the one who promises growth. Most of the world does not lie awake about existential risk from machine intelligence. It lies awake about electricity, logistics, credit, tax collection, and a median citizen who is twenty four and needs work. To that world the universal offer is not a moratorium. It is a stack. Cheap. Financed. Hosted. Present. Already attached to the handsets, the ports, and the power.

That is the soft Antichrist. It does not arrive with a speech about ending history. It arrives as the only AI that can grow your GDP.

I am not writing theology. I am writing underwriting.

II. The comforting story

The market is telling itself a story. The AI race is a contest of models. America builds the best systems. China copies. Europe regulates. Capital therefore clusters around closed labs, chipmakers, and hyperscale cloud. The scoreboard is a benchmark table.

That story is not false. It is incomplete in a way that misprices power. It treats the richest customers as the only customers that matter. It treats evaluations as destiny. It treats national power as a software demo.

I disagree.

The race will be decided by who becomes the default operating system for the economies that still have the most growth left. Those economies will not adopt AI as a lifestyle product. They will adopt it as a growth tool. They will take the stack that is cheap, present, financed, and attached to what they already run. If that stack is Chinese, Beijing does not need to conquer anyone. It only needs to become expensive to leave.

III. Where the mass actually is

When Sargasso maps AI adoption across emerging GDP rather than across model releases, the picture is not the one the market is priced for.

Start with the denominator. On purchasing power terms, IMF projections for 2026 put China at about $44.3 trillion against $32.4 trillion for the United States. India is near $18.9 trillion. Indonesia clears $5.4 trillion and Brazil $5.2 trillion. Turkey is at $4.0 trillion, Mexico $3.6 trillion, Saudi Arabia $2.9 trillion, Egypt $2.6 trillion, Nigeria $2.4 trillion. Nominal dollars still flatter America, and by a wide margin. China's nominal print is about $20.9 trillion against the same $32.4 trillion for the United States. Both numbers are true. They answer different questions. Nominal tells you who can buy foreign assets. PPP tells you how much physical and administrative activity there is to automate. For an adoption thesis, the second number is the one that matters.

Ray Dalio has been describing the political consequence in plain terms. He calls it a tribute system. A hierarchical order in which leaders travel to Beijing to acknowledge relative power in exchange for access and stability. He ties it to a growing view abroad that American security guarantees will not be honored under stress. I take the framing seriously. I do not treat it as scripture. Ports and rail were the first set of rails. Models will be the next set.

IV. The evidence is already in the download data

This part of the argument is no longer speculative.

Over roughly four years, the American share of model downloads on Hugging Face fell from about sixty percent to the mid teens by late 2025, according to reporting in The Wire China. Hugging Face's own one year review of the DeepSeek moment is blunt on the composition shift. DeepSeek R1 became the most liked model on the platform in its history. The top of that list is no longer majority American. Baidu went from zero public Hugging Face releases in 2024 to more than one hundred in 2025. ByteDance and Tencent raised their release counts eight to nine fold. Of newly created models under a year old, downloads for Chinese models surpassed any other country, including the United States. Western startups and researchers now routinely fine tune Chinese base models because those are the largest open weights available.

The Wire China's Southeast Asia reporting puts the commercial logic in local language. A Jakarta lab head said developers will always pick the cheapest one. A Malaysian founder said he wants the biggest model and there is no Western open source offering at that size. Chinese cloud providers were running thirty seven availability zones across six Southeast Asian regions against thirty across four for the Western field.

None of this shows up cleanly in a frontier benchmark table. All of it shows up in switching costs three years from now.

V. The institutional layer

Beijing is not leaving the volume layer to price alone. In July 2026 it stood up the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization in Shanghai, with twenty nine founding members. Public reporting names Russia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, and a broader set spanning Africa and Latin America among the signatories. The five year commitments attached to the body, as reported by Caixin and The Diplomat, are unglamorous and therefore serious. Training placements. Joint application centers with regional blocs. A weather early warning system deployed into dozens of countries.

Read that list as an underwriter. Training placements create the administrators who will write the next procurement. Application centers create the reference deployments. Weather systems create dependency inside a ministry that cannot afford an outage. Standards get set that way. Not with a better model. With a bureaucracy that has already learned one.

VI. America is running the right play against the wrong clock

Washington understands the problem. Executive Order 14320, signed July 23, 2025, created the American AI Exports Program to push full stack packages abroad. Chips, models, applications, cybersecurity, cloud, and data centers sold together. Analysis from the Institute for Progress argues the contested emerging markets that should sit at the center of that effort include Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. That is the correct map. It is essentially the map in this piece.

The tension is that the same government running an export promotion program is running an export control program, and the second one moves faster than the first. The UAE's status was upgraded only in July 2026, and even then chip access was scoped to approved entities. Meanwhile Huawei has been shopping Ascend parts into the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand, and courting Egypt directly. Beijing has published a self sufficiency ambition on a near term horizon and is moving to expand domestic AI chip output.

Set aside whether the controls are correct on the merits. Underwrite the second order effect. Capability still flows outward through commercial relationships and distillation. American open efforts start constrained at home. The result is a one way street into the volume layer of the world economy, at exactly the moment when the volume layer is where the standard gets set.

Western discourse is spending its attention elsewhere. Alignment theater. Synthetic media. White collar displacement in rich cities. Those are real problems. They are also rich country problems. The quieter failure is dependency. Once an emerging state's logistics, credit, schools, and revenue collection run on foreign models, switching stops being a procurement decision. It becomes a sovereignty decision. Sovereignty decisions do not get made on price.

VII. The map I would force into any serious strategy memo

When we screen a country the way we screen a company, we are not asking which model it admires. We are asking what it has already installed, who financed the installation, and what it would cost to rip out.

Asia. India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka.

Middle East and Gulf. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Turkey, Iran.

Africa. Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Angola, Ghana.

Latin America. Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia.

These are not equivalent cases. India can build its own. The Gulf can simply buy, and is buying from both sides. Vietnam and Indonesia industrialize and will take whatever shortens the industrialization. Nigeria and Ethiopia need administration and power far more than they need chat interfaces. Brazil and Mexico live between Western finance and Chinese trade and will hedge accordingly. Pakistan and Kazakhstan sit on corridors Beijing already financed once.

The common variable is growth urgency. Growth urgency selects the stack that shows up, and it selects it quickly.

VIII. The throat

Compute is the oil of this cycle, and the supply chain has a throat. Counterpoint Research put TSMC at seventy three percent of the pure play foundry market in the second quarter of 2026. Its position at the leading nodes is more concentrated than that headline suggests.

You do not need an invasion scenario to price the leverage. You need governments that come to believe only one counterpart can reliably keep the chips, the cloud, the handsets, and the financing flowing. That belief is cheaper to create than a fab and harder to reverse than a tariff.

IX. Two futures

In the first, America wins the cathedral. Benchmarks stay American. Safety papers multiply. Closed models remain impressive and expensive. Emerging economies still buy the stack attached to Chinese devices, Chinese capital, and turnkey Chinese infrastructure. Global token volume follows global GDP, which is to say it follows the parish. The United States keeps the prestige and loses the installed base.

In the second, America treats emerging GDP as the actual battlefield. Competitive open weights exist and are hostable by states that want an alternative to Beijing without becoming a tenant of a single American lab. Energy, chips, and cloud are treated as national goods rather than as line items. The public companies that can genuinely deploy AI into durable operations are valued above the ones that can only demonstrate it.

Markets are priced closer to the first future than the evidence supports. That gap is the part I care about.

X. This is the same thesis, widened

In Pilot Purgatory I argued that AI works and capital is available, and that the binding constraint is organizational. Companies cannot absorb what they have bought. Forty two S&P 500 companies captured 312 percent of the index's price return since ChatGPT while the other 458 captured 38 percent. Fifty eight percent of small and mid cap companies claim an AI strategy and under one percent describe implementation as mature.

That was a governance problem inside public companies. Widen the aperture by one order of magnitude and it is the same problem at the level of the state. Intelligence is being manufactured at declining cost. Absorption is the bottleneck. When Sargasso underwrites a company, the question is whether the organization can metabolize the technology it has already purchased. Run that question at the level of a country with weak administrative capacity and urgent growth targets, and the answer is worse. That is precisely why the party that clears the bottleneck earns something more durable than a product cycle. It writes the rails under the next order.

XI. What I would underwrite

If you underwrite AI as a feature race between rich country labs, you will be right about the models and wrong about the century.

Underwrite instead who owns the rails that India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Vietnam, Nigeria, Egypt, and Turkey will actually run. Underwrite who captures adoption where governance is thin and growth is urgent. Underwrite the closed labs and the national champions as though their real competitor is not the next chat interface, but a hierarchy that intends to make itself impossible to leave.

The AI race that matters is not who builds the smartest model in the richest city. It is who becomes the operating system for the economies that still have the most growth left in them.

This is not a recommendation. It is my map.

Sargasso Capital Management is a constructivist investment firm. This post is research and commentary. It is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or interest in any fund.

Sources

Fortune, "Peter Thiel is delivering 4 private sold-out lectures at a club in San Francisco, about the Antichrist," September 2, 2025. Link; Reason, "I listened to over 7 hours of Peter Thiel's leaked Antichrist lectures," October 14, 2025. Link
Visual Capitalist, "The World's Largest Economies in 2026, Nominal vs. PPP," using IMF World Economic Outlook projections. Link; IMF DataMapper, GDP based on PPP. Link
Fortune, "Ray Dalio says China's ascent ushers in era of 'tribute system,'" May 16, 2026. Link; Fortune, "Ray Dalio just finished a 10-day trip to China," June 24, 2026. Link
The Wire China, "Surrounding American AI from the South," June 21, 2026. Link
Hugging Face, "One Year Since the 'DeepSeek Moment,'" January 20, 2026. Link
Reuters, "Twenty-nine countries sign agreement to establish global AI cooperation body," July 16, 2026. Link; Caixin Global, "China Launches Shanghai-Based AI Governance Body With 29 Founding Nations," July 17, 2026. Link; The Diplomat, "With New AI Governance Organization, China Seeks to Formalize Its Global AI Influence," July 2026. Link
Executive Order 14320, "Promoting the Export of the American AI Technology Stack," July 23, 2025. Link; Institute for Progress, "America's AI Exports Program." Link
Morgan Lewis, "BIS Upgrades UAE Export Control Status, with AI Chip Access Limited to Approved Entities," July 2026. Link
South China Morning Post, "Huawei eyes export of AI chips to Middle East, Southeast Asia to rival Nvidia," July 12, 2025. Link
Bloomberg via Free Malaysia Today, "Huawei pitches AI chips to Egypt in test of US tech diplomacy," August 26, 2026. Link
RCR Wireless, "China aims to triple AI chip output," August 28, 2025. Link
Counterpoint Research, Global Pure Foundry Market Share, Q2 2026. Link
Sargasso Capital Management, Pilot Purgatory, May 6, 2026. Link

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 14:00

Foldable iPhone Production Reportedly Limited Ahead Of Launch

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 17:25:00 +0000

Foldable iPhone Production Reportedly Limited Ahead Of Launch

Apple is expected to unveil its first, long-awaited foldable iPhone next Wednesday at its product event in Cupertino, California. Rumored to be called the iPhone Ultra, the device could start at more than $2,000, with MacRumors estimating that the new iPhone could cost as much as $2,499.

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo expects the company to introduce the foldable alongside the iPhone 18 Pro lineup, although Nikkei Asia reports that manufacturing constraints could delay preorders.

Sources deep within Apple's supply chain told the Japanese outlet that production lines for the foldable iPhone are producing only a few hundred units per day as the company works to meet its extremely high quality-control standards.

"Apple has very high quality requirements and added an extra trial run in August ahead of actual production. However, production is ramping up slowly, with output currently at only a few hundred units a day in late August. That initial volume could be challenging to meet market demand," one supply-chain manager told the outlet.

The simple production math is absolutely brutal. Apple has reportedly targeted production of between 8 million and 10 million foldable iPhones this year. Even at 500 units per day, the current production rate would yield fewer than 200,000 phones over the course of a year.

The iPhone Ultra is now said to feature MagSafe charging after all.

Previous leaks suggested Apple was skipping this feature on their first foldable due to space constraints. pic.twitter.com/95EomHTV9c
— AppleTrack (@appltrack) September 2, 2026

Separately, Kuo expects manufacturing constraints to delay preorders until the fourth quarter. That would mirror the 2017 rollout of the iPhone X, which was unveiled in September but did not become available for preorder until late October.

Next week's unveiling will be the first major product showcase under CEO John Ternus, the longtime hardware chief who succeeded Tim Cook last Tuesday. Cook has moved into the executive chairman role after leading Apple for 15 years.

Late this week, Brandon Nispel, an equity research analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets, published a note to clients outlining what to expect at next week's launch event:

We think Apple's Sept. 9 iPhone launch event is likely a negative catalyst for shares where we likely learn the main unknown, iPhone pricing, neither of which we think hold positive implications. We think either: 1) a larger price increase can soften gross margin pressure, but likely will impact unit volumes and bring "sticker shock"; or 2) prices are raised more selectively, amplifying the focus on gross margins, and a possible need to raise prices again in the future; we don't think either is a great outcome. Apple's Sept. event is typically followed by modest negative reaction to shares.

What do we expect to be announced?

We expect 3 new iPhones: iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and the iPhone Fold/Ultra.

iPhone 18 Pro

The iPhone 18 Pro is expected to maintain the same 6.3 inch display as the iPhone 17 Pro, while moving to an A20 Pro processor, vs. the A19 Pro chip in the 17 Pro. The A20 Pro should provide better performance and power efficiency when compared to the iPhone 17 Pro, while Apple's C2 modem is expected to improve battery life when using cellular data and improve performance in congested coverage areas. The smartphone is also set to be equipped with an upgraded variable aperture camera allowing users to adjust the amount of light passes through the camera lens. Additionally, the iPhone will have a 4,288mAh battery vs. 4,252mAh in the iPhone 17 Pro.

iPhone 18 Pro Max

The iPhone 18 Pro Max is expected to maintain the same 6.9 inch display as the 17 Pro Max, similarly moving to the A20 Pro processor, and includes a 5,567mAh battery compared to the 5,088mAh battery in the 17 Pro Max, which may increase the thickness of the iPhone. The Pro Max is also expected to include the new variable aperture camera.

iPhone Fold/Ultra

Apple is expected to release its first ever foldable iPhone, which is expected to have a 5.5 inch display when closed and a 7.8 inch display when opened. The Ultra may include the A20 Pro processor, C2 modem, a titanium frame, and the Company will bring back Touch ID on the side of the device rather than having Face ID. It is anticipated to be Apple's thinnest iPhone yet at ~4.5mm, coming in roughly 1mm thinner than the iPhone Air, which was launched at last year's event. However, the phone is expected to come with a camera downgrade compared to the other models, with two rear cameras and no telephoto lens. The Fold/Ultra is also rumored to include two batteries, which could make it the largest battery capacity in an iPhone.

We expect 2 new Apple Watches: Apple Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4.

We expect new AirPods.

We expect timing of iOS 27 launch timing to be solidified.

What's the typical reaction to the event?

We believe given Apple is one of the world's most well reported on companies, announcements at the event rarely are surprising to investors and it doesn't pay to be bullish going into the event. In the past 5 years, Apple's average stock performance the day the iPhone is announced is -0.72%, and T+5 day performance is -1.22%.

What's our view?

At this point, we expect iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max builds of 73M in F4Q26/F1Q27, which compares to our estimate of 67.7M in the prior year, so on a like-for-like basis, we expect a higher number of iPhone 18 Pro/Pro Max builds vs. the iPhone 17. However, when including the iPhone 18 Fold/Ultra and the iPhone 17 base model, we see total iPhone 18 builds of 80M, vs. ~91M in the prior year, where we see declining unit volumes due to the lack of iPhone 18 base model. We suspect the decline in unit volume of ~12% is made up for with higher pricing due to mix as well as higher unit ASPs. We are factoring in iPhone Pro price increases of $150 to $1,249 and iPhone Pro Max price increases of $200 to $1,399, and assume a $2,199 price for the iPhone Fold/Ultra

Apple shares are up 17.7% year to date as of Friday's close.

The average 12-month price target among analysts tracked by Bloomberg is $329.91, representing roughly 3% upside from current levels.

Also next week, Chinese smartphone rival Huawei will release the latest generation of its trifold smartphone on Monday, just ahead of Apple's launch event.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 13:25

Thank You Rick Santelli, You Legend

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 16:50:00 +0000

Thank You Rick Santelli, You Legend

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

It was announced this past week that Rick Santelli will be retiring next month.

So today I offer a tribute to perhaps the last man standing on CNBC with a functioning economics textbook, and one of the few figures in financial media who could simply tell you that one plus one equaled two without disappearing into an academic sounding, postmodern, jargon filled bullshit word salad that somehow ended with the conclusion that paying a quadrillion dollars a day in interest on the national debt while inflation ran at 10% was a sign of economic prosperity.

Santelli has been on CNBC for years, but his appearances, especially more recently, often seemed confined to a few precious minutes talking about Treasuries, yields, the Fed and the macro picture. But he never let the limited airtime limit the subject matter.

He used those short spots to shoehorn in a daily reminder that supply and demand had not been repealed, incentives still mattered, capital actually had a cost, debt was still debt, and governments had not discovered some previously unknown branch of mathematics in which borrowing and spending enormous amounts of money made everyone permanently richer.

What was supposed to be a quick update on the 10 year Treasury routinely became a five minute crash course in basic economics, usually delivered with the urgency of a man driving who desperately needs to piss and just learned the next rest stop is still 90 miles away.

That was what made him such a breath of fresh air. There was always a healthy Austrian school instinct underneath the commentary: skepticism toward central planning, respect for price signals, suspicion of artificially cheap money, and the old fashioned belief that markets contain information that policymakers might want to consider before deciding they know better.

None of this should have been particularly radical, but in modern financial media, suggesting that there might be consequences to borrowing trillions of dollars can occasionally make you sound like you arrived at the studio carrying a musket and a copy of The Road to Serfdom.

Santelli also had the irritating habit of asking what might happen after the thing everyone else was busy celebrating. If rates were going to stay at zero forever, perhaps there would be consequences. If Washington was going to spend another trillion dollars, perhaps somebody should ask where the trillion dollars came from. If the Fed was going to flood the system with liquidity, perhaps asset prices would cease to be entirely reliable indicators of underlying economic health. If inflation appeared after an extraordinary monetary and fiscal expansion, perhaps we didn’t need a team of PhDs to discover an entirely new explanation for it.

His real offense was refusing to participate in one of the great linguistic achievements of modern economics, where unpleasant concepts can apparently be eliminated simply by giving them nicer names. Debt became stimulus, government spending became investment, money printing became liquidity, bailouts became stabilization, intervention became support, and inflation became transitory.

Rick would sit there listening to all of this and eventually ask the embarrassingly unsophisticated question that everyone else had somehow managed to avoid: who is actually paying for all this shit?

You could almost feel the collective discomfort through the television. Somewhere a strategist had prepared seventeen slides explaining why an additional $2 trillion of government borrowing was bullish for equities, while Santelli was committing the social faux pas of wondering where the f*ck the money was actually coming from…

“Do you think I want to take a shower every hour? The last place I'm ever gonna live or work is D.C.” - Rick Santelli

That was the beauty of a Santelli segment. He could begin with the perfectly innocent observation that the 10 year yield had moved four basis points and, five minutes later, somehow be halfway through an impromptu seminar on central banking, fiscal policy, monetary debasement, moral hazard, government incentives, price discovery and the accumulated economic wisdom of several centuries…all while making a face like he was passing a bladder stone the size of a regulation size WNBA basketball.

And just as he was arriving at some crucial economic question upon whose answer the survival of free markets and Western civilization depended, someone would remind him that they had to go to commercial.

Most financial television can spend an hour producing five minutes of genuinely useful information. Santelli somehow had the opposite problem. He was perpetually trying to stuff an hour of economic common sense into the five minutes he had been allotted. You could practically sense the control room watching the clock while Rick attempted to explain why $30 trillion, then $32 trillion, then $34 trillion of debt might conceivably deserve more attention than whether the latest CPI print was one tenth above or below consensus.

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And whether you agreed with every Santelli rant was never really the point. I certainly don’t think you had to. What mattered was that somebody was willing to challenge the premise of the conversation rather than merely debate the approved range of conclusions. Maybe debt isn’t wealth. Maybe borrowing isn’t saving. Maybe government spending doesn’t become productive investment simply because somebody puts the word “investment” in the name of the bill. Maybe artificially suppressing the price of capital for years creates distortions. Maybe incentives matter more than intentions.

Most importantly, Santelli understood the concept that seems to disappear fastest whenever Washington or the Fed gets involved: tradeoffs. Every policy has a cost, every intervention changes incentives, every subsidy encourages something, every tax discourages something, every artificially cheap dollar of capital ends up somewhere, and every debt ultimately belongs to somebody.

There is no free lunch, even when Congress has renamed the lunch the American Prosperity and Strategic Lunch Affordability Act and the Congressional Budget Office has produced a chart showing that it pays for itself in 2047.

That perspective made Santelli unusual because financial media is generally very good at explaining what happened over the previous fifteen minutes. Rick was often more interested in what happens over the next fifteen years. He brought historical memory into conversations that sometimes seemed to assume economic history began at the previous Fed meeting, and he maintained an almost pathological attachment to the idea that economic principles continue to operate even when acknowledging them would be inconvenient.

A good Santelli rant was part economics lecture, part old school “go f*ck yourself” style Chicago trading floor, part ideological argument and part angry drunk uncle at Thanksgiving. Underneath the theatrics, though, the message was remarkably consistent. Markets matter because prices contain information. Incentives matter because people respond to them. Debt matters because eventually somebody has to service it. Interest rates matter because capital is not supposed to be free. Supply and demand matter because declaring something affordable does not create more of it.

Most of all, arithmetic matters because reality has an annoying habit of refusing to participate in whatever narrative happens to be fashionable at the moment.

Here’s some of my favorite Santelli rants for you to enjoy. His commentary on Obama’s mortgage plan:

Commenting on the US’s debt downgrade during Obama:

Destroying Steve Liesman on mortgages:

Laying bare that QE can never end:

Questioning why we can never get out of crisis mode:

And finally, Santelli taking Aaron Ross-Sorkin to task on Covid restrictions when the debate had just started taking place during Covid:

Rick Santelli at his best was skeptical, argumentative, occasionally volcanic, frequently hilarious and stubbornly unwilling to pretend that changing the terminology changed the underlying economics. In a financial media culture that can sometimes confuse consensus with wisdom and complexity with sophistication, he remained attached to a handful of remarkably simple questions. What are the incentives? Where is the money coming from? What happens to prices? What are the unintended consequences? And, eventually, who pays?

The questions Rick asked weren’t especially glamorous, but they have survived every economic fad invented to avoid answering them. Just as Santelli’s legacy will do, no matter how many guest spots MSNBC gives to Elizabeth Warren, Paul Krugman, Jeremy Siegel and Zohran Mamdani in the future. Godspeed, Rick.

---

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and very often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning, meaning if I’m long I could sell or if I’m short I could cover at any time.

Contributor posts, guest posts and curated posts have been hand selected by me, but have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author or reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.

I cannot guarantee the accuracy of any or all facts and figures included in this article though I made an effort to get them right. I have been wrong before and will be wrong again, and encourage you to always double check, do your own research and speak to a licensed financial professional, which I am not.

This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things I’m bearish on. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions.

Starting in 2026, I have been attempting to no longer actively trade as much as I once did (read my story here). My goal is for my investing/saving to be done by recurring contributions mostly to sector ETFs and a few select equities, trusted third parties who oversee my accounts, and advisors. Such advisors or funds, through individual equities, options, index funds, mutual funds, ETFs, or other securities, may have positions in, exposure to, or holdings of names mentioned herein that I know nothing about. It is possible I could own, have exposure to, or not own anything, at any point. In an attempt to lead a healthier lifestyle, I’ve also excluded myself from fantasy sports, sports betting, online and in-person casinos and prediction markets.

Any of my positions can change immediately as soon as I publish, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. If you see numbers and calculations of any sort, assume they are wrong and double check them. I failed Algebra in 8th grade and topped off my high school math accolades by getting a D- in remedial Calculus my senior year, before becoming an English major in college so I could bullshit my way through things easier. Hence, why I am a writer.

The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. Many times I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour.

Also, again I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it multiple times because it’s that important you understand.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 12:50

NANO Nuclear Advances KRONOS With Baker Hughes, Adds Enveniam To Fuel Efforts

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 16:15:00 +0000

NANO Nuclear Advances KRONOS With Baker Hughes, Adds Enveniam To Fuel Efforts

Three weeks after we noted that NANO Nuclear Energy's vertical-integration strategy was beginning to look more like a physical fuel cycle than a corporate slide deck, the company has delivered a pair of updates spanning both ends of the nuclear value chain.

NANO’s announcement from Thursday details ongoing progress for the design of a circulation pump for cooling their KRONOS reactor, and Friday's announcement describes the multi-prong agreement with a new engineering firm for developing their nuclear fuels business segment.

$NNE NANO Nuclear and Howden, a Baker Hughes Business, Advance Engineering Collaboration for the KRONOS MMR™ Primary Helium Circulator to Detailed Design Phasehttps://t.co/ueOKR7DcOp
— NANO Nuclear Energy (NASDAQ: NNE) (@nano_nuclear) September 3, 2026

Development of the primary helium circulator was moved from preliminary engineering to detailed design. Howden, a Baker Hughes subsidiary following the acquisition of Chart Industries, is “building upon the reactor performance requirements established by NANO Nuclear.”

The helium circulator is one of the most critical components of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors like NANO's KRONOS design. It moves helium coolant through the reactor to transfer heat from the core and out to the secondary system.

Howden has established a “mature technical foundation” which allows for further optimization in manufacturing planning.

Jay Yu, Founder and Chairman of NANO Nuclear Energy, noted:

"each engineering milestone strengthens the industrial ecosystem supporting KRONOS while further positioning the program for future first-of-a-kind deployment and long-term commercial success."

The day after announcing progress with the circulator, NANO released a statement detailing a new agreement with Enveniam.

The MOU establishes a collaboration between the two companies addressing a wide range of operations across the nuclear value chain. The press release points to six principle workstreams under the combined effort:

Nuclear fuel transportation
Conversion and deconversion
Microreactor commercialization
Advanced manufacturing
Domestic fuel supply chain
Commercial energy markets

James Walker, Chief Executive Officer of NANO Nuclear Energy, highlights:

"Enveniam's capabilities closely align with our expertise and business plans across these critical workflows. We believe this collaboration can help us evaluate projects more efficiently, identify execution risks earlier and build stronger delivery plans as opportunities advance toward definitive agreements."

Most notably, this new work between NANO and Enveniam follows the announcement last year that Enveniam will be serving as Lead Project Integrator for LIS Technologies.

There, Enveniam will lead “the design, development, and construction of the LIST laser-based uranium enrichment facility.”

LIS Technologies and NANO Nuclear are working together to develop a vertically integrated fuel chain, with LIS fulfilling the enrichment stage. NANO is working on multiple other stages of the fuel chain, to include conversion and deconversion, fuel fabrication, and fuel transportation.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 12:15

Biden-Appointed Judge Dismisses DOJ Lawsuit Against New Jersey Law Restricting ICE Operations

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 15:40:00 +0000

Biden-Appointed Judge Dismisses DOJ Lawsuit Against New Jersey Law Restricting ICE Operations

Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times,

A district judge ruled on Friday that New Jersey can continue restricting federal immigration officers from using state property for immigration enforcement-related purposes.

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill is shown in this file photo. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images

The Department of Justice (DOJ) had accused New Jersey in a lawsuit of violating the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, also known as preemption, which holds that federal law supersedes state law when the two are in conflict.

The agency alleged that an executive order New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed earlier this year blocked federal immigration operations from using state property, preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from carrying out its duties.

Biden-appointed Judge Georgette Castner of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey disagreed.

"[The executive order] does not prevent the United States from carrying out federal immigration laws; rather, it declares that New Jersey will not provide its own resources to assist the United States in these efforts," said Castner.

The judge also dismissed DOJ lawyers' argument that adhering to federal immigration law, the Immigration and Nationality Act, specifically, was "impossible" because of the state restriction and prevented "the United States from accessing aliens."

"The Court finds this response unconvincing," Castner wrote. "The Court also finds no conflict preemption."

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Under Sherrill's executive order, federal immigration officers are prohibited from using state property as a staging area, processing location for illegal immigrants, or operations base for carrying out enforcement.

The law also prevents any New Jersey executive branch departments or agencies from allowing federal authorities to use state property.

Sherrill included an exception in her order that allows access if authorized by a judicial warrant or order.

The governor welcomed Castner's decision in a Friday statement, criticizing federal immigration agents as "untrained."

"ICE is not making New Jersey's communities any safer," she said in a statement.

"My number one priority will always be to protect New Jerseyans, and I will continue to fight for safe communities for everyone in our state."

Although Castner conceded in her 30-page opinion that the federal government has an obligation to remove illegal immigrants from the United States, she wrote that "nothing in the [Immigration and Nationality Act] indicates that states are required to assist the federal government in meeting this obligation."

After the signing ceremony of her executive order earlier this year, Sherrill announced a website launch for New Jersey residents to report their interactions with ICE and upload photos and videos of officers.

Information submitted to the portal would be used by the state attorney general's office to potentially "hold the government accountable."

New Jersey has also adopted a mask ban on federal law enforcement officers and a requirement for them to show identification before making an arrest. The DOJ sued over that law as well.

The Garden State, and a few others, had already banned its local and state law enforcement agencies from cooperating with ICE, otherwise known as 287(g) agreements, prior to President Donald Trump's return to the White House last year.

Several more Democratic-led states have followed in outlawing such cooperation or attempting to do so since Trump, a Republican, began his second term and made it a priority to stop illegal immigration.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 11:40

US Envoys Witkoff, Kushner Land In Moscow For Peace Talks As Putin Halts Attacks On Kiev

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 15:05:00 +0000

US Envoys Witkoff, Kushner Land In Moscow For Peace Talks As Putin Halts Attacks On Kiev

Roughly 11 days after CIA Director John Ratcliffe unexpectedly traveled to Moscow and reportedly floated a trilateral summit involving President Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Moscow on Saturday morning.

"Dmitriev was deep in conversation with Witkoff and Kushner as they stepped onto Russian soil for key Ukraine talks," Russian media outlet RT wrote on X, accompanying the post with footage of the US delegation's arrival.

Dmitriev deep in conversation with Witkoff and Kushner as they step onto Russian soil for key Ukraine talks https://t.co/eC8u8gbJVe pic.twitter.com/DIksgrUj54
— RTRussia (@RT_Russia_) September 5, 2026

Russian outlet Sputnik reported that Putin had ordered a three-day pause in strikes on Kiev just as Witkoff and Kushner arrived in Russia for peace talks.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated:

The pause in strikes on Kyiv is linked to preparations for and the holding of meetings with American negotiators there.
The Russian president will meet US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at the Kremlin later Saturday.

Putin orders halt to strikes on Kiev for three days, starting from midnight today - Kremlin

Other statements by Dmitry Peskov:

🔸The pause in strikes on Kiev is linked to the preparation and holding of meetings with American negotiators there

🔸The Russian president will meet… pic.twitter.com/MJ0g4pWizr
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) September 5, 2026

Witkoff and Kushner are scheduled to meet Putin before traveling to Kyiv on Sunday, marking their first visit to Ukraine since the war began.

Bloomberg reports that expectations for a breakthrough peace deal to end the war remain low.

The Kremlin said there was "no talk of new ideas," while describing Moscow's negotiating position as "unshakeable.” Russia continues to demand that Kiev surrender the entirety of four regions claimed by Moscow and abandon its NATO ambitions, conditions that Kiev rejects.

The diplomatic push comes as intensifying attacks by both sides around the Black Sea raise the risk of a global food crisis next year. Meanwhile, Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, combined with disrupted Persian Gulf flows, are pushing the global refined-products market toward crisis, creating twin food and energy risks.

The visit merely suggests an intensifying Trump administration campaign to reopen high-level negotiating channels ahead of the midterm elections in the US and end the Russia-Ukraine war after more than four years of costly fighting.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 11:05

"Three For Two": CENTCOM Destroys Iranian Tankers Near Kharg Island After IRGC Targets US Warships

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 14:44:00 +0000

"Three For Two": CENTCOM Destroys Iranian Tankers Near Kharg Island After IRGC Targets US Warships

Summary:

CENTCOM Confirms Iranian Tankers Hit Near Kharg Island
Iranian Tanker Reportedly Hit By Missiles Near Kharg Island

CENTCOM Confirms Strikes

US Central Command confirmed on X that US forces struck three Iranian oil tankers after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched ballistic missiles toward two US Navy warships.

CENTCOM provided details:

Following Iran's failed attacks, CENTCOM permanently disabled the IRGC crude oil carriers M/T Downy off the coast of Kharg Island and M/T Stark 1 near Jask. American forces also completely destroyed the unladen crude oil carrier M/T Kylo (also known as the "Noxen") in the Gulf of Oman, striking the vessel in multiple critical locations to render it inoperable after the crew was directed to abandon ship.

The three Iranian crude oil tankers are part of a multibillion-dollar shadow network that funds the IRGC and its regional proxies. Iran has no means by which to defend them.

CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper stated:

Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost —taking out three of yours.

We will not hesitate to defend American forces, and if necessary, destroy Iran's limited and exposed oil fleet.

https://t.co/Xo0Vj0t2AJ
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) September 5, 2026

The key question heading into Sunday evening is how Brent crude futures will price the US strikes on Iranian tankers near Kharg Island.

Iranian Tanker Reportedly Hit By Missiles Near Kharg Island

Iranian state media reported early Saturday that US forces had struck an oil tanker near Kharg Island. Although the US military has not confirmed the maritime incident, the attack, if verified, would mark a significant escalation near Iran's most important crude-export terminal and increase the risk of further disruptions to Persian Gulf energy flows.

Tasnim News Agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said several missiles hit the tanker early Saturday and published images purportedly showing black smoke rising from the ship.

Video of the Iranian oil tanker which was reportedly hit this morning by the US near the Iranian Kharg Island. pic.twitter.com/217O0lLn09
— Mehdi H. (@mhmiranusa) September 5, 2026

Kharg Island is the jugular vein of Iran's oil economy. The deepwater terminal handles about 90% of the country's crude exports, connecting Iran's major onshore fields to global markets, specifically China.

Henri Patricot, CFA, a Paris-based energy equity research analyst at UBS, published Kpler data showing that crude loadings at major Iranian export terminals, including Kharg, have been significantly reduced over the course of the six-month conflict.

Weekly average crude loadings in the Middle East by port location also show a slight recovery on an ex-Iran basis across the major Gulf producers.

Average flows through Kharg have ranged from 1.5 million to 2 million barrels per day, although the data above show that those volumes collapsed to roughly 220,000 to 255,000 barrels per day in August under the US naval blockade. The island also contains massive storage facilities, pipelines, and loading berths. Any attack by US forces, whether kinetic through air-delivered munitions, or offensive cyber operations, could cripple Tehran's largest moneymaker.

President Trump warned Friday that the US could soon attack Pickaxe Mountain, a suspected Iranian nuclear facility.

As for Hormuz flows, Goldman commodities strategist Yulia Zhestkova Grigsby and her team said this week that they had to revise tanker-flow estimates sharply higher (full note available here for pro subs), suggesting that Tehran's ability to control the strategic maritime chokepoint has been significantly degraded.

Grigsby and her team told clients on Wednesday that Gulf oil exports had recovered to between 15 million and 16 million barrels per day, roughly two-thirds of prewar levels.

However, Grigsby pointed out that visible tanker data show flows of only about 10 million barrels per day on a seven-day moving average. That 5 million-barrel-per-day gap reflects what Goldman's energy team called the "rise of dark transits." In other words, tankers are switching off their Automatic Identification System transponders to avoid detection by Iran.

Net hit to Persian Gulf flows of 7.9mb/d now

Polymarket odds that Tehran will lose control of Kharg Island stand at 2% by Sept. 30 and just 7% by year-end.

What the Trump administration decides to do with Kharg remains the energy market's billion-dollar question.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 10:44

AI Bears: Right About The Excess, May Be Wrong On The Trade

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 14:30:00 +0000

AI Bears: Right About The Excess, May Be Wrong On The Trade

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

While the AI bears focus on concentration and circular financing, the last tech overbuild was financed with debt, and this one is being paid for in cash.

Before I discuss why I disagree with the “AI bears,” I want to state that I respect their opinions, have evaluated their concerns, and have simply derived a different set of conclusions. That is an important statement, because this particular group of “AI bears” includes some of the sharpest risk minds in the business, and they have been early to almost every warning that later mattered.

When people this good line up on one side of a trade, you go back and check your own work. That’s what I did, and this article is where I landed. As always, the reason I publish these articles is for accountability later, for you and our clients.

While this group of AI bears may indeed be right about the excess, they could still be potentially wrong about the trade. I care about the latter, and those are two different claims that the market keeps confusing.

The Bear Case Deserves A Hearing

Let’s start with the person I admire the most in the AI bear camp: Fred Hickey. Fred has run The High-Tech Strategist since 1987 and has made the cleanest version of the argument. He compares today’s datacenter mania to the fiber-optic overbuild that cracked in 2000, only far larger. To wit: he has called it a “more dire situation than the great fiber-optic capacity overbuilds.”

He is not alone in this view, and that really is the point to address. Michael Burry has been circling the same plumbing, watching Nvidia’s credit-default swaps widen as the chipmaker turns into banker, landlord, and equity partner to its own customers.

But the AI bear roster doesn’t stop there. The Bank for International Settlements flagged roughly $1.65 trillion in off-balance-sheet obligations held by the largest hyperscalers, exceeding the amounts they carry on their books. Then Sequoia’s David Cahn put the annual gap between AI infrastructure spending and ecosystem revenue at nearly $600 billion. Furthermore, Allianz measured the capex-to-revenue divergence at about 46%, well past the 32% that marked the 2001 telecom bust. Then, lastly, in August, an MIT study suggested that most corporate AI pilots had produced no measurable revenue at all.

That is a very serious AI bear group making a very serious case, and you should only ignore it at your peril. When a strategist who has correctly traded five separate Nvidia collapses of 55% or more says a sixth is coming, and a Bank of America survey shows 54% of professional managers are now calling AI a “bubble,” you need to factor that into your thinking. As investors, we must work out precisely which parts are right and which parts are borrowed pattern-matching from a different era.

So, let’s start with where the AI bears are right.

Where The Bears Are Right

Yes, valuations are stretched, and by the measure that matters most for fragility, concentration is worse now than it was in 2000.

Notice how far the line has traveled in the chart above. The ten largest stocks now make up roughly 43% of the S&P 500, a record, and past the 27% peak the index touched at the height of the dot-com boom. By that single measure, the market is more top-heavy today than at any point in modern history. The equal-weight index has already begun to diverge from the headline benchmark, which is exactly the kind of internal crack that tends to show up before the megacaps wobble. Such is the setup the AI bears keep pointing toward, and on that point, they are correct.

Secondly, the circular-financing argument is real, too. When Nvidia takes an equity stake in a company that then commits to buying Nvidia chips, part of what gets reported as “demand” is the seller funding its own sales. Such is a genuine distortion of the signal, and it deserves the scrutiny that it has been getting. Add the depreciation math, where trailing capex of roughly $434 billion dwarfs the $149 billion of depreciation currently running through income statements, and you get a bill that arrives in 2027 through 2029, whether the revenue does or not. The AI bears did not invent any of this; they just read the corporate filings.

Where The Analogy Breaks

So, with all that stated, it seems to be obvious that you should just get out of the AI trade now before the next “Dot.com” crash occurs. Here’s the problem with that comparison. The comparison to the fiber-optic “boom and crash” is that it turns on the one variable that actually determined the outcome in 2000, and that variable does not read the same today: who is writing the checks.

Leading up to the 2000 overbuild, the financing came from companies that had no business borrowing what they borrowed. WorldCom, Global Crossing, and the upstart carriers that were stringing fiber on debt, and the vendor loans that Lucent and Nortel handed customers who could not pay them back. When revenue failed to arrive on schedule, those balance sheets could not cover the shortfall, and the structure collapsed into bankruptcy court.

Today’s buildout is a different animal on this exact axis. Roughly two-thirds of the 2026 capex is funded directly from the operating cash flow and equity of Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta, four of the most profitable enterprises ever assembled. The existing borrowing is investment-grade and still a minority of spending. The balance sheets carrying this cycle are not WorldCom’s, and that difference is close to the whole ballgame.

Revenue Is Real

Second, “no revenue” is not the same thing as revenue that simply hasn’t caught up to the spending yet. Inference now clears roughly 70% gross margins. Microsoft’s AI business is past a $37 billion run rate, Amazon’s AI revenue is growing in the triple digits, and Anthropic went from about $9 billion to a reported $47 billion run rate in a single year.

More notably, even Nvidia, the bears’ favorite “whipping boy,” has seen forward earnings climb so rapidly that its multiple has actually compressed as fundamentals caught up to what was believed to be overly exuberant expectations. That is the mirror image of Cisco in 2000, which peaked at nearly 30 times sales on earnings that then evaporated. The revenue trailing capex is a timing issue, not the zero-payback story the headlines imply.

Third, the AI bears predict a glut, yet the binding constraint right now is the opposite of a glut. Microsoft is sitting on something like $80 billion of Azure orders it cannot fill for lack of electricity, with GPUs idle in inventory waiting on power.

Today, more than 60% of the data center capacity planned for 2027 is not yet under construction. If or when datacenter demand is rationed by the power grid rather than by customers walking away, you do not have a capacity glut; you have a shortage. However, a fair objection at this point, and it is the strongest one the bears have: build two or three years’ worth of power and transmission, and today’s shortage becomes tomorrow’s oversupply. That is true concern, and it is the timeline risk worth watching closely, but it is also a 2028 question, not a 2026 one.

What The AI Bears Debate Means For Investors

Let me be clear. The AI bears have a real case, but no timing. This is the same problem we noted in “Debt Trap: A Crisis Without A Calendar.” I am definitely not arguing that investors should be buying the AI complex with both hands and closing their eyes. The question is NOT whether there is excess, because there plainly is. The real question is what a disciplined investor does with a genuine, extreme, but cash-funded overbuild.

Start with position sizing, because it is the one tactic that survives contact with a drawdown. NVIDIA has fallen by 55% or more on five separate occasions since 2000, and it has recovered to new highs after each. Investors who were sized to hold through the pain benefited tremendously. They did even better if they managed their exposure risk during those drawdowns. Own your AI exposure at a weight where a 50 percent drawdown is uncomfortable rather than fatal. Sizing comes first.

Secondly, the rules are simple.

Favor the self-funders over the borrowers, and
Spread your exposure across the layers of the trade, the chips and the clouds, and the power underneath them, rather than staking the whole thesis on a single chip name.
Always insist that the price you pay is backed by existing earnings and not by a total addressable market slide.
Lastly, keep some dry powder (ie, cash), because the volatility in this complex is a feature rather than a defect, and a real correction turns into a gift the moment you have cash and a shopping list ready.

Where you take the risk matters as much as how much you take. Not all AI exposure carries the same danger, and the map below is how I would sort it.

The 5-Signals

The self-funders and the power bottleneck are part of this trade that looks least like 2000. Conversely, the levered edges are the part that looks most like it. That levered part is where a revenue disappointment does the real damage, and those are the first positions to shed when the story starts to wobble. The profitable compounders funding their own buildout sit in a different bucket, and selling them because a bear called a top is how investors miss years of compounding while waiting on a crash that shows up late, or never.

Which raises the harder question. How do you know when the story is actually wobbling?

This is crucial, and the trap that most investors fall into. You do not need to call the top. What you need is a short list of signals that fire before the top is obvious to everyone, and the discipline to act on the list rather than argue with it.

Which brings me to the question I get most often: “Why not skip the stock-picking and just own the index?”

Here is my opinion. The index has quietly become the “bet.” With the ten largest names accounting for nearly 43% of the S&P 500, buying the market today is a concentrated wager on those same few companies, made passively, without anyone ever deciding it was a good idea. Owning the index is not a way to sidestep the AI trade, because it is the AI trade, whether you meant it that way or not.

Bob Farrell’s Rule #9 is always worth repeating here:

“When all the experts and forecasts agree, something else usually happens.”

Conclusion

With more than half of managers now calling AI a “bubble” and “long the Magnificent 7” ranked the most crowded trade on the Street for nearly two years, the consensus has already tilted bearish. That does not make the AI bear case wrong, but it does suggest the obvious crash may refuse to arrive on the obvious schedule.

One of my favorite quotes from Howard Marks is that, “being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong.” When it comes to investing, timing is critical. Most importantly, notice that Hickey himself holds his AI-bear book at roughly 1% of his portfolio in puts, suggesting he treats it as a hedge rather than a conviction short. That is the posture worth borrowing. Own the compounders, hedge the tail, and let the revenue prove or disprove itself on the tape.

The AI bears will eventually be right about a drawdown, because everyone is eventually right about a drawdown. Whether they are right about the trade depends on a question their favorite analogy cannot answer:

“What happens when the richest companies on earth overbuild with their own money rather than borrowed money?”

Such is the question actually on the table, and that is the question you must answer before you sell.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 10:30

2.3 Million Illegals Gone: America's Immigrant Population Plummets For First Time In A Century

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 13:20:00 +0000

2.3 Million Illegals Gone: America's Immigrant Population Plummets For First Time In A Century

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

The numbers the open-borders crowd swore were impossible are now in black and white.

A new Center for Immigration Studies analysis of the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey finds the illegal immigrant population has fallen by about 2.3 million since President Trump returned to office in January 2025. Another 600,000 legal immigrants have left. The total foreign-born population is down 2.9 million.

That is the first sustained drop in America's immigrant population in nearly a hundred years.

?? BREAKING — IT'S OFFICIAL: The illegal alien population in the United States has DROPPED by 2,300,000 under President Trump.

Another 600,000 LEGAL immigrants have LEFT the country, marking the largest reduction in the U.S. Immigrant population in a CENTURY!

"We are seeing... pic.twitter.com/xVkO8Y6OCk
— The Patriot Oasis™ (@ThePatriotOasis) September 4, 2026

CIS research director Steven A. Camarota and demographer Karen Zeigler tracked the government's monthly household survey from January 2025 through July 2026. The foreign-born total - naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, long-term temporary visitors and illegal immigrants - fell from roughly 53.3 million to 50.5 million.

Camarota's preliminary estimate puts the illegal population at 13.5 million in July, down from 15.8 million when Trump took the oath.

"We've never seen anything quite like this before," Camarota told The Washington Times. "This is big and sustained, as best as we can tell."

He added: "It is a fundamental change, and it's profound."

The same dataset shows what happened during the Biden years. From January 2021 to January 2025 the foreign-born population jumped 8.3 million - the largest four-year increase in American history.

Catch-and-release, mass parole, asylum abuse and a wide-open southern border did exactly what critics said they would do. The survey now shows that surge going into reverse.

CIS is not counting plane seats. It is measuring net change: new arrivals minus deportations, voluntary departures, legalizations and deaths. That is why the 2.3 million illegal decline can sit beside larger Homeland Security departure figures.

At the one-year mark of Trump's second term, DHS said nearly 3 million illegal immigrants had left the country, including about 675,000 formal removals and 2.2 million self-deportations. CIS is looking at who is still here after new arrivals are subtracted.

Latin American non-citizens who arrived in 1980 or later account for the entire drop in the foreign-born count. That group overlaps heavily with the illegal population. Naturalized-citizen numbers actually rose by about 680,000 over the same stretch. The collapse is among non-citizens who should not have been waved in.

Interior ICE removals more than tripled compared with the tail end of the Biden term. Voluntary departures tied to enforcement jumped as well. Camarota put it simply in the CIS release: "The best data we have shows an enormous decrease in the total foreign-born population, with most of the falloff among illegal immigrants."

He added, "Regaining control of the border and robust interior enforcement has partly undone the huge increase in the illegal immigration that took place during the border surge."

Only 44 percent of those who left were workers. That goes some way to explain why the national jobs numbers have not imploded the way corporate lobbyists predicted. U.S.-born employment has continued to rise even as immigrant workers in the household survey fell by a little less than 1.3 million. Some regional pockets - construction in South Texas is the example Camarota cited - have felt it. The country as a whole has not.

"It's nothing to panic about," he told the Times. "First of all, we're mostly losing low-income workers. But like anything else, it can create challenges. And it creates winners and losers."

Workers competing for jobs and housing are the winners. "On balance, I think it's a good deal for the country because I think most people are more worried about wages, housing prices, congestion and impact on schools and hospitals."

Census analysts had already flagged a "historic" drop in net international migration when they reported that overall population growth slowed to 0.5 percent from mid-2024 to mid-2025 - a window that captured only the first months of the new enforcement regime.

Camarota now says the country's total population is likely heading toward an unprecedented decline. That is what happens when an 8.3 million artificial surge is no longer being pumped through the border.

The media spent four years insisting the border was "secure" and that anyone who noticed otherwise was a bigot. Then Joe Scarborough, trying to score points on Trump's deportation totals, walked straight into the truth on his own show.

"They should know when to take the victory. They could have been campaigning on closed southern border this whole time!" Scarborough said. Then: "You're never going to get the [deportation] numbers that Joe Biden had, right? You're not going to get those numbers because Joe Biden and his administration were letting in so many illegal immigrants. It was very easy to sweep up 5,000 right on the border and send them back."

Nobody cornered him. He said it unprompted.

That is the whole scam in one clip. Biden-era "removals" were a revolving door at the Rio Grande. Trump closed the door. Crossings collapsed. The population inside the country started falling for the first time in a generation. The same networks that called that outcome "impossible" or "racist" are now reduced to quibbling over methodology while the survey they usually treat as gospel shows a 2.9 million decline.

The drop did not happen by accident. It happened because the new administration treated Temporary Protected Status as what it had become: a backdoor amnesty, not a temporary shelter.

A late Biden-era internal memo, exposed in July, laid out a plan to expand TPS in the final days of that presidency in a way that would have locked in de facto protection for more than 3 million foreign nationals and boxed the incoming administration into years of litigation. The scheme was designed to run out the clock through activist courts after voters had already chosen mass deportations.

Trump's team has been ripping that wiring out. The Supreme Court cleared the path to end TPS for Haitians and Syrians. Extensions that were never meant to be permanent are being terminated where the statute allows. The people who wrote that memo were not confused about the election result. They were trying to cancel it with paperwork.

Once TPS for Haitians lapsed, ICE moved from roughly one deportation flight a month to a weekly schedule. Internal documents reported by The New York Times described the ramp-up after the Court allowed the humanitarian program to be cancelled. Flights into Cap-Haïtien have already carried criminals alongside other removable aliens. DHS has publicly flagged deportees with records that include sex crimes involving children.

The press response was automatic. Outlets that spent years ignoring gang control of Port-au-Prince suddenly discovered Haiti the week shackled men appeared on a Homeland Security video walking onto a plane. The spin is always the same: enforcement is the crisis, not the policy that imported hundreds of thousands of people the statute never contemplated as permanent residents.

Haiti is violent. That is not an argument for turning Temporary Protected Status into a forever visa. It is an argument for not running a four-year parole-and-release machine that dumped the consequences on Springfield, New York, and South Florida while daring anyone to notice.

The same enforcement machine is now using third-country removals for people whose home governments will not take them back, or who have withholding orders that bar return to a specific country but not removal from the United States.

Over a ten-day stretch in late August, internal documents obtained by CBS News showed three ICE flights carrying more than 100 deportees to eight African countries: Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Liberia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. Nationals on those flights included people from Afghanistan, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Nepal, Turkey and Venezuela - not just Africans being sent "home."

Liberia has publicly agreed to take a large number of third-country deportees. Equatorial Guinea has already received dozens. Rights groups and legacy outlets have filled pages with horror copy about Level 4 travel advisories and "chain refoulement." What they will not say is why these flights exist: years of catch-and-release created a population of people with final orders who cannot be dumped back on a country that refuses the plane.

If a judge bars return to Caracas or Kabul, that order is about that country. It is not a lifetime lease in Houston. The prior administration built the backlog. This one is draining it.

DHS, asked for comment on the Times piece, sent an earlier release on collapsed border crossings. That is the other half of the story. You cannot shrink a 15.8 million illegal population if 10,000 more people walk in every week. Trump stopped the inflow first. Then he started removing the stock.

For four years the line was that immigration was a force of nature. "Root causes." Climate. Violence. Poverty. Anything except the obvious: if you fly people in, parole them, hand them a court date years out and dare ICE to find them in a sanctuary city, they stay. If you seal the border, end the parole pipelines, revoke the TPS expansions and put officers in the interior, they leave.

Jim Jordan put the prior era in one sentence at a recent hearing: a systematic plan to open the border, park millions in sanctuary jurisdictions, and then starve the agency that removes them. Voters watched it. They voted against it. The CPS is now recording the result.

The remaining illegal population is still enormous. CIS's 13.5 million is a decline, not a victory lap. DHS has used higher starting estimates than CIS. Either way, millions of people with no right to be in the US are still there. The difference is that the direction of travel has changed for the first time since the Depression.

Employers who built business models on an endless supply of illegal labor will complain. School districts that padded enrollment will complain. NGOs that lived on the casework will complain. Networks that spent half a decade calling enforcement a moral panic will complain loudest of all, then run another Haiti-video segment and call it news.

The households competing for apartments, emergency-room beds and entry-level wages are not complaining. They are watching the first government in a generation treat the immigration statutes as if they were written to be enforced.

America is not a holding pen for the Western Hemisphere. It is not a third-country processing hub with a welfare office attached. The survey data now shows what happens when a president acts like that is true: the illegal population falls, legal inflows tighten, and the foreign-born total drops by millions in eighteen months.

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Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 09:20

Alarm Bells Ring As Global Food Prices Hit 2022 Highs, Perfect Storm Stokes New Inflation Shock

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 12:45:00 +0000

Alarm Bells Ring As Global Food Prices Hit 2022 Highs, Perfect Storm Stokes New Inflation Shock

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's global food-commodity index climbed in August to its highest level since 2022, with the index now gaining momentum to the upside. The upside reinforces warnings from several major Wall Street desks, which we have covered extensively, that global food shortages could materialize next year.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of a basket of globally traded food commodities, averaged 133.3 in August, up 1.9% from July, with every major category advancing. Sugar prices surged 11.9%, while wheat gained 2.6% and now stands 15% above year-ago levels.

The surge in global food prices comes as a perfect storm of factors emerges, from El Niño and higher fertilizer and diesel prices to disruptions in the Black Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, all of which could push the global food system toward another crisis.

Earlier this week, the Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index (BCOMAGSP) posted its largest monthly gain since the chaotic days of the Arab Spring riots and is nearing a breakout above its 2023 highs, signaling a broad-based acceleration in agricultural commodity prices.

Latest coverage:

With diesel at record highs to end the week, agricultural markets tightening, and global food prices accelerating, another inflationary impulse is quickly moving through global supply chains just as central banks decide whether interest rates are restrictive enough.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 08:45

Mistrial Formally Declared In Lindsay Clancy Murder Trial After State Supremes Refuse Stay

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Mistrial Formally Declared In Lindsay Clancy Murder Trial After State Supremes Refuse Stay

Update (1505ET): The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court denied an emergency stay Friday afternoon in the Lindsay Clancy case, after which the judge formally declared a mistrial.

JUST IN - Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt is hearing Lindsay Clancy's defense appeal to stay the mistrial judgement. pic.twitter.com/zOiGYlY9gv
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 4, 2026

Clancy, a former labor-and-delivery nurse, is charged with first-degree murder in the January 2023 strangling deaths of her three children (ages 5, 3, and 8 months) in Duxbury. The defense argued she was not criminally responsible due to postpartum psychosis.

🚨 JUST IN: The Lindsay Clancy prosecution has ALREADY told the court they WILL be re-trying this case

Lindsay WILL NOT walk free (or walk at all). It's looking like it'll occur later in the fall.

Clancy remains in custody, and the next hearing is Sept. 29th. pic.twitter.com/58aPmVJyie
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) September 4, 2026

* * *

Update (1226ET): After the jury remained deadlocked following 36 hours of deliberations over seven days, Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy murder case - however he's given the defense one hour to seek a stay from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Judge says he will give Reddington one hour to get a stay from the Supreme Judicial Court.
MISTRIAL ON HOLD in Lindsay Clancy case.
— Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) September 4, 2026

Why would the defense want a stay of a mistrial? Because if they can instead force the holdout juror to be removed, they avoid a brand new trial and Clancy will go free.

"This is really intense. Reddington asked for emergency Supreme Judicial Court intervention moments before the jury walked back in," reports NewsNation's Brian Entin.

Developing...

* * *

Update (1135ET): A mistrial was declared in the Lindsay Clancy case on Friday, after a holdout juror refused to bend the knee and let her off, Fox News' Bill Melugin reports.

BREAKING: Judge declares mistrial in Lindsay Clancy murder case after hung jury.
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) September 4, 2026

* * *

Lindsay Clancy's defense team is absolutely melting down after Judge William Sullivan refused to remove a holdout juror in Clancy's triple-murder trial, in which the jury must decide whether Clancy is criminally responsible for strangling her three children, Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months. Her defense claims that she was suffering from hallucinations amid postpartum psychosis. The prosecution claims she was not in psychosis when she sent her husband out of the house on long errands, before she murdered her children and then tried to make it appear as though she attempted suicide.

Reuters

On Thursday, the jury foreperson sent a note indicating one juror was refusing to apply the judge’s instructions on reasonable doubt. Judge William Sullivan questioned each juror individually at sidebar, then gave the full panel what defense attorney Kevin Reddington later called a "soft" reminder of the law and sent them back to deliberate.

"They’ve said at this point that they can," Sullivan said. "That was specifically addressed towards the specific question, and that’s what I’m doing."

Reddington demanded that the holdout to be removed, and requested a more pointed inquiry - which Sullivan declined.

JUST IN: Lindsay Clancy stares at the jury as Judge William Sullivan sends them home for the day.

The moment came shortly after Clancy's attorney, Kevin Reddington, fumed and called on Sullivan to remove one of the jurors. https://t.co/r7g6JPmXyM pic.twitter.com/32z5efMIKP
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 3, 2026

According to Clancy's defense team, the holdout juror is a man.

"Clearly, we have a person who, under their oath, stood in front of you yesterday … under oath looked you in the eye and lied," said Reddington. "That juror told you that he would be able to apply the law to the facts as you asked him."

Reuters

When court resumed Friday, Reddington hammered Sullivan, arguing that the prior instruction was inadequate, and pressed again for removal or further questioning of the juror (whom he accused of having lied under oath). Sullivan refused additional inquiry, stating he had considered the issue at length and would not remove the juror. Redding responded by calling Sullivan 'soft' - to which Sullivan replied: "What do you want me to do?! Get a brass band? I read the instruction as written by the Massachusetts Supreme Court. The fact I perhaps did not give it my full inflection, I'm sorry about that, I'm not an actor - I'm giving instruction.

🚨 BREAKING: Lindsay Clancy's defense attorney is MELTING DOWN in court and DIRECTLY SPARRING with the judge, calling the judge "SOFT"

DEFENSE: Stop being soft with jury instructions!

JUDGE: What do you want me to do?! Get a BRASS BAND?! I read the instruction as written by the… pic.twitter.com/dijDZAdqzG
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) September 4, 2026

No More Sidebars!

Following the spat, Clancy's defense team filed a motion to Sullivan asking that there be no more sidebars for the remainder of the trial - and that all further proceedings be handled in open court. The prosecution, meanwhile, suggested that there be no further questioning of the jury, and asked that Sullivan send them to continue deliberations, arguing that the holdout juror has "no indication of lack of impartiality or bias or extraneous influence, and no indication of inability to deliberate."

Reddington disagreed - arguing that the juror appears to have a personal issue getting in the way of him being able to deliberate fairly, and demanded that he be replaced with an alternate.

According to Massachusetts law, a judge can only send a jury back for deliberations twice before declaring a mistrial - which looks like where we're headed.

Lindsay Clancy convicted of murder?
Yes 9% · No 92%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 08:33

Ukraine Pushes Congress For Russia Sanctions Before Election Recess

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 12:10:00 +0000

Ukraine Pushes Congress For Russia Sanctions Before Election Recess

Authored by RFE/RL staff via OilPrice.com,

Ukraine's top sanctions official says he remains optimistic about prospects for a sweeping Russia sanctions bill in the US Congress despite growing uncertainty over when the House of Representatives will take it up, as lawmakers face a sharply shortened legislative calendar ahead of the November elections.

Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's sanctions commissioner, spent this week in Washington meeting lawmakers and congressional staff as Kyiv presses Congress to advance the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026.

The legislation passed the Senate on August 7 by an overwhelming 86-11 vote, reflecting rare bipartisan agreement. The bill would give the president additional authority to impose punitive tariffs on countries that continue buying Russian fossil fuels. It also includes provisions targeting Iran, which Vlasiuk said is engaged in close military-industrial cooperation with Moscow.

But the measure faces a more complicated path in the House, where some Democrats have expressed reservations about provisions that would give President Donald Trump additional authority to impose tariffs.

Republican leaders announced on September 3 that the final two weeks of the pre-election House session are canceled, severely curtailing what had been a full legislative calendar for September.

House members are expected to leave Washington no later than September 17 and not return until mid-November. The House will reconvene for one additional week of business after next week's Labor Day break.

The compressed calendar has increased pressure on supporters of the sanctions legislation. Senior Republican aides told RFE/RL that the bill remains a GOP priority, provided Democrats "get their ducks in a row."

Democratic aides, in response to RFE/RL inquiries, expressed cautious optimism about the measure, underscoring uncertainty over whether Speaker Mike Johnson will bring it to the floor.

Vlasiuk: 'Good Chance'

Vlasiuk said he held roughly 20 meetings with lawmakers and congressional staff during his Washington visit, including discussions with members of both parties.

He said the Ukrainian delegation encountered broad support for increasing pressure on Russia and that no lawmaker told him outright that they would oppose the legislation.

"Everyone agreed that it was necessary to increase pressure on Russia," Vlasiuk said at a briefing at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington. "No one said that he definitely would not support this bill."

He described Ukraine as "quite optimistic" about the level of support for the legislation, including among Democrats.

One potentially important route would be for the House to consider the bill under suspension of the rules, a fast-track procedure generally used for legislation expected to command broad support. Vlasiuk said that was among the realistic scenarios for moving the bill forward.

"I think that there is really good chance that this bill will be brought onto the floor," he said.

Vlasiuk has previously identified the week after next as Kyiv's preferred window for a House vote. With the House calendar now compressed, that period could provide one of the last opportunities for a vote before lawmakers leave Washington.

Asked by RFE/RL whether the momentum surrounding the bill was still there, Vlasiuk pointed to what he characterized as continued bipartisan backing for Ukraine.

"There is a lot of support for Ukraine on the Hill," he said, adding that Kyiv has been "very vocal" in stressing the urgency of passing the bill. "At the same time, well, I mean, let's wait and see," Vlasiuk said.

Democrats Wary Of Trump Powers

The principal obstacle is not broad disagreement over confronting Russia, according to Thomas Melia, a former senior State Department official and Senate Foreign Relations Committee deputy staff director who is currently with the Free Russia Foundation.

In an interview with RFE/RL, Melia explained that Democratic leaders have several reasons for hesitating. One is that the legislation is not strictly necessary for the administration to impose sanctions, he said. Trump already possesses significant authority to sanction Russian individuals and entities.

The bill's principal value, in Melia's assessment, is therefore partly political and symbolic: Its bipartisan backing would demonstrate congressional resolve to increase pressure on Moscow.

But Melia said the House Democratic leadership was not sufficiently involved in negotiating the version that ultimately emerged from the Senate.

That concern is particularly relevant to Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who has expressed general support for tougher pressure on Russia but has raised concerns about provisions of the legislation.

There is also a substantive concern: The final version of the legislation gives the president additional tariff authority. Melia said that has created hesitation among Democrats who are wary of giving Trump another instrument that could be used broadly against US trading partners.

Melia also emphasized another change from the bill's earlier form: The final version makes the sanctions optional rather than mandatory.

That distinction matters, he said, because the original legislation's political force came in part from its mandatory sanctions provisions and overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate.

After the death of Senator Lindsey Graham, the administration backed a version of the legislation but sought changes that made sanctions nonmandatory and added tariff authority, Melia said.

The result, in his view, is a weaker measure than the original. Melia said the final version nevertheless retains substantial political significance because of the broad bipartisan support that surrounded the tougher proposal.

Kyiv Backs Tariffs

Vlasiuk defended the tariff provisions, arguing that they could make sanctions substantially more effective. "This is a powerful instrument which will allow to amplify the effect of the sanctions," he said.

He argued that tariffs and sanctions can have similar economic effects but differ in their ability to be circumvented.

"Sanctions can be adapted, sanctions can be evaded, tariffs cannot be adapted or evaded," Vlasiuk said.

He also rejected concerns that countries could be arbitrarily targeted under the bill, saying the legislation establishes criteria based on purchases of Russian fossil fuels.

In particular, he pointed to China and India, which Ukraine considers central to Russia's continued ability to sell its energy exports.

Vlasiuk said the pressure could represent "a huge blow" to Russia's ability to finance its war against Ukraine.

Ukraine also supports the bill's inclusion of Iran, he said, citing Tehran's close military cooperation with Moscow.

"Everyone understands how close cooperation is between the military-industrial complex of these countries," Vlasiuk said. "Therefore, Iran is very well-deserved."

House Vote Window Narrows

The political stakes are heightened by the House's decision to cancel its final two weeks of pre-election legislative work.

The chamber is expected to depart Washington no later than September 17, although Republican leaders have said members could be recalled if the Senate advances a party-line budget reconciliation package. That scenario is not currently expected.

Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a Republican who has supported the sanctions effort, described the lack of congressional action as a serious failure.

"This is a real shame. It passed 86-11 in the Senate," Bacon said. "Congressional inaction on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and on Putin's crimes is a real failure. The history books will not be kind."

For Kyiv, the urgency is not simply legislative.

Vlasiuk warned that Ukraine faces another difficult winter after months of Russian missile and drone attacks. He said 160 people had been killed in missile and drone strikes in recent months.

"We have to increase the pressure over Russia to make them change their plans, to make them really negotiate," he said.

He argued that passing the sanctions bill now would have two effects: It could eventually increase economic pressure on Russia, while immediately sending a political signal to both Ukraine and the Russian government.

There is, he said, an element of inertia in sanctions policy. Even after legislation passes, implementing measures can take days, and producing a significant effect on Russia's economy can take weeks.

"But at the same time, the very fact of passing this sanction bill," Vlasiuk said, would send a "strong signal of support to Ukrainian people" and a "really strong signal to Russian government."

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 08:10

Germany Braces For AfD Election Breakthrough In Saxony-Anhalt

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 11:35:00 +0000

Germany Braces For AfD Election Breakthrough In Saxony-Anhalt

Voters in Saxony-Anhalt head to the polls on Sunday, followed two weeks later by elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin. With the right-wing Alternative for Germany leading the national polls, the elections could be the opening act of an 18-month period in which Europe "lurches to the right," as Nomura analysts explained last month.

UniCredit's chief German economist, Dr. Andreas Rees, told clients on Friday: "Three state elections in just 14 days will test Germany's government coalition and its reform plans. While political noise is likely to increase, we expect the push for structural reform to remain on track."

The polling chart compiled by Rees' team shows the rising popularity of the AfD and the pressure facing Germany's establishment parties. The AfD leads nationally at roughly 28%, compared with 21% for the CDU/CSU and 12% for the SPD. In Saxony-Anhalt, the gap is far wider, with the AfD polling near 41%, versus 23% for the CDU and just 8% for the SPD. However, CDU/CSU leads over AfD in Berlin.

Rees touched on this Sunday's big election in Saxony-Anhalt, which could quite possibly usher in AfD leadership:

On Sunday, voters in Saxony-Anhalt will head to the polls; two weeks later, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and the city-state of Berlin will follow. Formally, these are state elections with regional specifics and differences. Politically, however, three elections within 14 days will probably be viewed as a report card for Chancellor Friedrich Merz's CDU/CSU-SPD coalition, at a time when the government is trying to move from fiscal firepower towards structural reforms of the pension system, the labour market and bureaucracy.

THE DATA

The starting point is uncomfortable for the conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). In the latest nationwide opinion polls, the right-wing AfD stood at about 28%, ahead of the CDU/CSU with around 21%, while the SPD came in at just 12%. Recent polls for the state of Saxony-Anhalt, the election federal policymakers may watch most nervously, even put the AfD at around 41%, far ahead of the CDU, which is polling at 23%. The SPD is currently only at around 8%. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the AfD also leads clearly, while the SPD is holding up considerably better. In Berlin, the race is highly fragmented, according to opinion polls.

OUR VIEW

Sunday's election outcome in Saxony-Anhalt could grab most of the headlines. At current polling levels, the AfD does not have an outright majority. But with several parties, including the SPD, hovering around the 5% threshold, relatively small shifts in votes could translate into larger changes in seats and potentially open the path to an AfD-led government, the first one in a federal state. However, from an investor perspective, there is one question that matters more: what does this all mean for the federal government in Berlin?

The CDU/CSU-SPD coalition will continue. Even poor results would give neither the conservatives nor the Social Democrats a good reason to leave the government. A weak CDU performance could strengthen demands within the Union for a tougher profile on migration, security and economic competitiveness. A poor SPD result in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the prime minister is a Social Democrat, however, would intensify pressure on the party to defend its social-policy priorities.
The structural reform agenda remains (largely) intact. At the beginning of July, the CDU/CSU and the SPD agreed on a 34-measure reform package spanning pensions, labour-market rules, competitiveness, taxation and bureaucracy reduction, with key measures intended to pass the Bundestag by the end of this year. Politically, abandoning these reforms after strong AfD results would be difficult for either party to defend. Mr. Merz could argue that voters are punishing weak growth and insufficient change, while the SPD needs to demonstrate that reforms can be combined with social protection.
A more-fragmented Bundesrat could not block large parts of the reforms. Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin together hold 11 of the Bundesrat's 69 votes. However, the federal states' leverage differs substantially across individual reforms. For instance, the envisaged tax cuts for low- and middle-income households, financed by tax hikes on top-income earners, require the Bundesrat's consent. Core pension and labour-market reforms, meanwhile, are generally not dependent on Bundesrat approval.

Overall, we expect more political noise in the next few weeks, but not political paralysis in Berlin. A few reform measures may be diluted or delayed beyond year-end 2026, but the broader reform push is likely to remain on track.

The rise of the AfD in the polling data is not a surprise. It is a closely watched political theme we have been tracking, and one that has quite clearly terrified German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has fear-mongered about the potential for AfD victories.

The problem with Merz's AfD fear angle is that Nomura counters it, arguing that markets are welcoming populist right-wing political parties and are more concerned about left-wing regimes that "desire to increase spending, often paid for through higher borrowing or higher taxes, which are likely to shut the engine off of already stuttering economies."

Here's the EU election roadmap over the next 18 months, according to Nomura:

The shift to the right is happening across the West.

Brazilian socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's lead over right-wing Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro has imploded. If Bolsonaro can pull off a victory next month, that would cement the continent's shift from nation-killing left-wing socialism to right-wing common sense.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 07:35

Meanwhile In Ceuta...

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Meanwhile In Ceuta...

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Viral footage out of the invaded Spanish enclave of Ceuta shows a bottlenose dolphin calf came in close to the sand at Playa del Trampolín in Ceuta this week, disoriented and still alive. A group of men who entered illegally in the July surge pulled it from the water, hoisted it like a prize, and - according to local reporting, a conservation complaint, and Telecinco - one of them bludgeoned it in the head with a stick.

An Ecoservicios worker in high-vis tried to stop the handling. Voices on the clip can be heard shouting "No! No! You can't eat it! It's a dolphin!" The animal was killed. Some of the men then moved off toward the breakwater with the body.

The conservation group DAUBMA took photographs, clips and social-media stills to the Guardia Civil and asked for animal-cruelty and protected-fauna charges. Alvise Pérez's Se Acabó la Fiesta filed at Ceuta's court on the same facts. A petition by Nadia García Gómez put it in writing: the calf was "brutally pulled from the water... handled as if it were an object and violently struck on the head."

?? "NO! NO! YOU CAN'T EAT IT! IT'S A DOLPHIN!"

A video from Ceuta shows a group of migrants pulling a dolphin calf from the water as a man desperately tries to stop them.

The group reportedly found the calf near the shore at Playa del Trampolín, pulled it from the water, and...
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) September 4, 2026

Spanish citizens must now share their city with savages who treat a dolphin like a piñata.

The illegal migrants in Ceuta pulled a baby dolphin out of the sea today and clubbed it to death for fear fun.

Get them out of Europe immediately pic.twitter.com/4ERzMgH8kC
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) September 3, 2026

They likely have a lower IQ than the animal they pulled out of the sea and bludgeoned. They are predatory scum acting solely on chemical instinct, completely lacking in empathy, judgement or respect for anything other than their own worthless existence.

El Trampolín is not a postcard cove anymore. It is the same strip that has held thousands of arrivals since late July, when more than 70,000 people crossed from Morocco into a city of roughly 84,000.

Madrid still talks as if most of them "went home," yet the reality is that reed shacks, rotting food and human waste have sat on that shoreline for weeks. The calf swam into that hell and couldn't escape.

One of the men in the circle was filming the spectacle on what looks like an iPhone 17 Pro Max. The "destitute asylum seeker" kit keeps getting more expensive.

'Asylum seeker refugee' in Ceuta filming the dolphin bludgeoning with his iPhone 17 pro max and brand new braces. pic.twitter.com/1AJdc6vsuI
— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) September 4, 2026

DAUBMA says the calf reached the shallows alive, was dragged out, was struck, and shows a bleeding wound under one eye while people on the tape try to wipe the blood. It called the case "extrema gravedad ambiental" and asked the environmental prosecutor to take it. Bottlenose dolphins are protected under Spanish and EU law.

A day earlier the animal-rights party PACMA shared a clip showing a migrant in Ceuta immobilising a park goose, bagging it, legs bound, a fish already in hand. A bystander intervened and the bird was dropped. The man left the scene.

?Esto ha ocurrido en Ceuta hace escasas horas.

?Un hombre ha pillado a otro inmovilizando y embolsando a una oca de un parque público para llevársela. Se desconoce el objetivo, pero nada bueno.

?La bandera que ampare al maltratador es total y absolutamente irrelevante para... pic.twitter.com/Jle5dirVlY
— PACMA (@PartidoPACMA) September 3, 2026

PACMA issued a statement condemning "any act of violence, capture or manipulation of an animal, regardless of who commits it, their nationality, origin or administrative situation," while adding that there is "not enough information to affirm that the incidents with animals were motivated by hunger."

As we highlighted in mid-August carers who feed Ceuta's street-cat colonies said sites by the desalination plant and in Huerta Téllez, Carmelitas, Príncipe, Sidi Embarek and Punta Blanca had emptied after the migrant camps spread over the same ground. Volunteers described dead cats found cut or missing half a body, and pigeons and gulls half-eaten near the settlements.

Conservative influencer Eva Vlaardingerbroek points out that while everyone is rightly disgusted over the dolphin incident, European children are being raped and killed by migrants relentlessly, and it's beginning to become little more than background noise.

"It took a dolphin calf," she wrote. "That says something about the way our society views the value of human children." She also pointed to the Lindsay Clancy case in the United States - a mother who strangled her three children and was immediately wrapped in feminist excuse-making. Murder a dolphin instead, Vlaardingerbroek noted, and that chorus disappears.

Everyone is rightfully outraged over migrants in Ceuta beating a baby dolphin to death, but European children are raped and killed by migrants on a daily basis and we barely see this level of fury.

It took a dolphin calf. That says something about the way our society views the... https://t.co/WyETEIjWcO pic.twitter.com/rv3LkwGy2W
— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) September 4, 2026

The situation in Ceuta remains dire. Playgrounds that used to hold Spanish children are smeared with excrement. Beaches that held families have become open latrines. Mothers cannot let their daughters outside without a male escort.

Ceuta's chief prosecutor, Silvia Rojas, told Spanish media that 23 sexual assaults - nine of them against children - had been recorded since the late-July surge, almost one case a day. Police unions speak of women and girls clinging to vans near the CETI because stepping away results in assault, and being dragged into the hills.

Locals have had enough. In late August residents tore beach camps apart, threw gear into the sea and chanted that if the men would not leave, Ceuta would throw them out. Police put a cordon between Spaniards and the shacks and used rubber bullets on the people who live there.

The revolt did not stay inside the enclave. Marches spread across the peninsula.

Sánchez went to Congress and called it "absurd to think that the government knew and did nothing." He boasted of returns "within 72 hours" and a €309 million emergency package. Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares has claimed "practically the entirety" of those who entered have gone back to Morocco.

Video from El Trampolín a month later still shows tents, wrecked shoreline and a city that looks sacked. Tent camps billed for 1,500 cannot accomodate 5,000 to 10,000 people.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/05/2026 - 07:00

How To Tackle Domestic Extremists' Foreign Enablers

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 03:25:00 +0000

How To Tackle Domestic Extremists' Foreign Enablers

Authored by Daniel McCarthy via The Epoch Times,

Left-wing terrorism is a serious problem in the United States, though for political reasons it doesn't receive anything like the attention right-wing violence gets.

When most people think of violence connected to abortion, they imagine attacks on abortion clinics - yet lately, pro-abortion extremists have been firebombing crisis pregnancy centers across the country.

These centers help women who want to have their babies or who are undecided about having an abortion: In other words, women who are making a choice, just not the choice supposedly "pro-choice" abortion advocates find acceptable.

So a group calling itself "Jane's Revenge," referring to the "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade, has declared war on anyone who might choose life.

A report in the left-wing Guardian newspaper, headlined "Pro-choice militants are attacking 'crisis pregnancy centers' across US," documented terroristic attempts at intimidation from New York and North Carolina to Wisconsin, Texas and Washington state in the past several years.

The paper noted: "The methods have been extreme: vandals have thrown molotov cocktails, committed arson, damaged property and made threats."

Jane's Revenge issued a statement demanding "anti-choice establishments" shut down in 30 days or face further violence.

That was in 2022 - yet the group continued operating, until its website went dark just days ago thanks to a Trump administration crackdown on terrorist infrastructure.

Jane's Revenge and various other radical organizations, including antifa groups, were part of a network relying on web services provided by Italy's "Autistici/Inventati," or A/I Collective.

According to the State Department, the A/I Collective "builds and operates the digital infrastructure for violent Antifa cells and other far-left militants across the world," providing technology "designed to support the operations of far-left terrorist networks, built to enable them to organize, recruit, communicate, disseminate propaganda, share target information and tactics, and carry out violent attacks - all while remaining anonymous, untraceable, and beyond the reach of the law."

The collective has been facilitating leftist provocations for years.

But on Aug. 26, the State Department struck back, officially deeming the A/I Collective a "specially designated global terrorist."

The designation means sanctions can be imposed on domestic individuals and financial institutions that do business with the foreign group, as well as restricting any of the collective's assets that are under American jurisdiction.

Results were immediate: radical sites shut down.

"Antifascism and anticapitalism are not terrorism," the collective complains in a media statement. "Protesting is not terrorism."

Yet all too often, it is: Groups like Jane's Revenge consider terrorism a legitimate form of protest.

And antifa organizations specialize in using protests as cover for carrying out acts of mayhem.

Indeed, that's the grand strategy - to tear down American society, which is capitalist and "fascist" in the left's eyes, by exploiting the freedoms our "capitalist" Constitution protects.

Legend has it Lenin once said capitalists would sell communists the very rope they would use to hang them.

Today's militant left is counting on capitalists and constitutionalists to provide them the legal protections they need to incite and perpetrate violence.

But the Trump administration refuses to play along.

The State Department's action is long overdue:

Americans should not have had to wait for a Republican administration like this one before government acts to dismantle the infrastructure that supports intimidation and violence.

Foreign interests like the A/I Collective are often suppliers of that infrastructure:

America's domestic extremists are not simply isolated local loonies who spring up at random in our own communities - they're connected to and coordinated with international networks.

The networks encourage cross-pollination and collaboration:

A/I Collective, the State Department notes, provides services to European "anarchist cells responsible for sabotaging rail systems across France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands" as well as to the domestic "anarchist cell responsible for waging a violent campaign to prevent the construction of a law enforcement training center in Atlanta, Georgia."

The violent left is a transnational movement, and the Trump administration is right to see it in the same light as other networks that support or engage in terrorism.

Domestic sites and groups using A/I Collective resources have published calls for "direct action" against the nation's immigration laws - and the officers responsible for enforcing them.

That includes publishing pamphlets urging activists to shine laser pointers at Customs and Border Protection helicopters, intending to blind pilots and potentially cause them to crash.

Other sites "dox" ICE agents, providing personal information on immigration-enforcement officers to allow activists to harass them at home - or to firebomb their homes, if they take inspiration from groups like Jane's Revenge.

This is not protesting, and it's not certainly not democratic: These are attempts by a radical fringe to do through intimidation and violence what they can't do at the ballot box.

Going after the foreign enablers of far-left violence and threats is a first, common-sense step in defending the very principle of self-government.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 23:25

Starbase Louisiana 101: A Look At Elon's New Space City

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 02:48:30 +0000

Starbase Louisiana 101: A Look At Elon's New Space City

Following the Starbase Louisiana announcement last week, questions have swirled over Musk's motivation for choosing this location. In response, Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu takes a closer and identifies four main reasons including i) orbital trajectory (optimizing for ODCs), ii) geography, iii) regulation, and iv) propellant (bringing processing/production onsite).

New Starbase

SpaceX announced a new $100 billion Starship launch site in Louisiana last week with initial plans to build five two-pad complexes or ten towers. Longer term, Elon Musk commented there could be over twelve towers capable of launching more than 30 flights daily. The site is expected to be materially larger than Starbase Texas and essentially be a "space city" with on-site fuel processing/production, dedicated power generation, deep-water port, employee housing, and potentially an airport; Starship manufacturing however will seemingly not occur here. Construction is slated to begin next year with first launch slated for no earlier than in 2029 (2030 is more realistic). Headline investment amount is $100bn although this could span over a decade. The exact location will be an area called Pecan Island (~125k acres), located in the Vermilion Parish which is on the Gulf of America coast. The site was formerly owned by ExxonMobil and was transferred to the state following settlement of a coastal environmental lawsuit. SpaceX expects to create about 10,000 jobs with 60-80% being locally hired.

Rationale #1 - Orbital trajectory

To establish some basic principles: the Earth's spin is fastest at the equator. Therefore, a rocket launching eastward starts with that speed already in hand. The further from the equator a launch site sits, the less benefit from that free push. Inclination is the angle an orbit makes with the equator. For example, a satellite in a 0° orbit circles above the equator; one in a 90° orbit passes over both poles. The rule is essentially a rocket can most efficiently reach any orbit whose inclination is at least the latitude of its launch site. Reaching a lower inclination requires an expensive mid-flight turn, burning fuel that could otherwise have carried payload. Azimuth is the compass direction the rocket flies after liftoff. Rockets shed spent stages and occasionally fail, so regulators only permit trajectories where debris would fall over open ocean water or empty land.

As discussed in our Data Centers in Space series, SpaceX is seeking to deploy a large number of orbital data centers. The ideal position for these satellites is a type a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) running along the day-night boundary (“dusk-dawn orbit”), to maximize continuous sunlight. To launch to SSO, the rocket needs to fly nearly due north or due south. That means a launch site with open water or empty land in that direction is optimal. SpaceX's existing Starship site at Boca Chica sits at the southern tip of Texas, on the Mexican border. It launches east over the Gulf of America because southerly trajectories run into Mexican territory almost immediately. So while it is a decent site for the orbits Starship has been testing into, it is not ideal for high volume SSO launches. In comparison, a site on the central Louisiana coast sits further from the Mexican coastline and opens a long southerly corridor over open water.

Rationale #2 - Geography

Due to Starship’s enormous size, it’s impractical to use truck or rail for transport. Instead, the rocket will be moved by barge on water and be relatively accessible from the production site in Texas. Pecan Island is an 18-mile strip with a deep-water bayou off the Gulf of America which can serve as a port. Moreover, there’s also the sheer size of the area (125k acres), allowing for the build out of towers, propellant farms, power generation, etc… Other locations are either too small or crowded (e.g., multiple entities launch from Florida now). For context, the total scope of area in Texas owned or controlled by SpaceX covers <10k acres even after factoring in potential annexations.

In relation, the LA location is ideal for methane supply. Henry Hub is in Vermilion Parish and sets the US natural gas benchmark pricing (nearly 10% of US production is in Louisiana). Around a dozen interstate and intrastate pipelines interconnect here. The Louisiana Gulf Coast is also home to a very dense concentration of gas liquefaction expertise built up around the LNG export terminals over the years.

Rationale #3 - Regulation

SpaceX indicated it has been looking for a high-rate launch site for about seven years and discussions began with state officials (Project Osprey) in early 2026. DB's original view was that Texas could scale up to 4-5 launch pads and the regulatory regime would gradually adapt. With the Louisiana location, this should help de-risk longer-term capacity constraints by shifting traffic to a different corridor although certain details still need to be worked out (launch licenses, wildlife, airspace, etc…). Currently, the FAA has capped Starbase Texas at 25 launches annually (up from initial 5) and could scale up further to >100; a bottleneck would emerge at some point even factoring in an additional 120 licensed flights out of Florida, where SpaceX is planning to have three pads. Ultimately, Florida will be mainly used for NASA/govt missions and Vandenberg will continue launching Falcon 9 for the foreseeable future, leaving Texas and Louisiana to be workhorse sites for Starship-captive missions (Starlink, Starmind).

Rationale #4 - Propellant

Beyond launch operations and regulation, the next structural bottleneck appears to be propellant, which the Louisiana set-up can potentially address. For background, Starship's Raptor engines run on liquid methane or LCH4 and liquid oxygen or LOX (known together as methalox). A fully fueled stack weighs roughly 5,000 metric tons at liftoff, of which about 4,600 metric tons is propellant. The engines burn the two in a ratio of ~3.6 parts oxygen to 1 part methane.

At small scale, propellant can be transported via trucks. To illustrate, a typical LOX trailer holds about 20 metric tons, implying 180 trucks per flight. However, this is not scalable once Starship reaches hundreds of flights annually, let alone thousands. It is therefore likely that LOX will be made onsite and then piped to tank farms near the pad. LOX is made out of air, using electricity by compressing, cooling, and then distilling. To do this requires large cryogenic air separation units (ASUs). Similarly, methane is also trucked in now but will be processed onsite and piped. In fact, SpaceX already is building Starpipe in Texas (8-mile, 16-inch natural gas pipeline from Brownsville) along with its own liquefier and air-separation unit. Long term, assuming a launch cadence in the thousands, this type of architecture will be required and could drive large cost savings.

More in the full DB report available to pro subs.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 22:48

The Politics Of Measles

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 02:35:00 +0000

The Politics Of Measles

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times,

By the middle point of 20th-century American history, measles was widely considered a rite of passage for kids. You get it and you shake it off. You earn lifetime immunity. This was true of every generation just before mine.

For the previous century, measles had become ever less dangerous with sanitation and nutrition. By the time the vaccine came along, it was fully controlled and only very rarely led to hospitalization. The protocols were taught in every school and understood by all classes.

I was apparently part of the first generation to receive the inoculation. It was convenient, but not necessary simply because society had systems and traditions in place to manage it well. How much difference did the shot make in driving infection to zero? Some, surely, and this added to the prestige of vaccines.

That said, I did get chicken pox as a natural infection and recall well what it was like. That no longer happens except in a few communities. I was the last to experience this and I'm happy to share the experience.

My parents came to me excitedly and said we were going to a party. I found myself among a group of kids I did not know and we played and played for hours. Then we left. That was fun, I thought, but a bit confusing. The next day, I woke up with itchy red spots.

My parents cheered. Their plan had worked. I recalled feeling great confusion. Why were my parents celebrating my sickness? It seemed very odd. They had their reasons. They knew the science.

They explained to me how the immune system works and why it is best that I get this when I'm young rather than old. My immunity would be durable and be boosted later in life as my own kids caught the normal childhood infections, which in turn would protect me from the related infection of shingles.

There is this tendency now to treat these strategies as paleolithic as compared with syringes and fluids in the childhood vaccination schedule. Actually, we should look back on these days as the height of serious science. My parents knew exactly what they were doing and it taught me a valuable lesson as a kid. I learned about the high complexity of the immune system that needs exposure as training.

Eventually, of course, the chicken pox vaccine came along and many others as well, resulting in a vast mixture of combined shot after shot. Industry profited. Human health suffered. The Trump administration is trying to fix the problem. Industry doesn't like that. It is calling in favors from politicians to stop the return to science.

This takes us to the wild drama now playing itself out in Pennsylvania. In April of this year, the media and the governor's office started going on about a measles outbreak. It was centered in Lancaster and Lebanon counties - both with sizable Amish and Mennonite populations.

The framing here matters. The Amish and Mennonite communities routinely expose children, just as my parents did. It is not an "outbreak" but an application of sophisticated science.

The health of this community ranks among the highest. The most common health issues affecting children in the United States are nearly absent among the Amish, including autism, obesity, diabetes, ADHD, and so on.

Nonetheless, Pennsylvania set up 91 pop-up clinics around the infected community and jabbed kids with more than 4,000 doses using the MMR shot that many people connect to the rise of autism. Forty more clinics are planned.

In science, you have the control group and the tested group. The Amish are the control and keep revealing that there might be a better way. Eliminate the control and you eliminate the embarrassment. This is precisely what both Pfizer and Moderna did after their own tests of the COVID shot: they pushed it on the saline group following first results.

In Pennsylvania, opposition arose to this push for industrial inoculation, and understandably so. In the post-COVID era, trust in public health is depleted to near zero.

Here is where the current drama picked up. On Aug. 14, a newborn child died in Strasburg Township, Lancaster County. The cause of death was later given by the county coroner: lacerated/ruptured spleen, massive blood loss. The postmortem used the PCR test (which detects presence, not infection) and found measles in utero. Obviously, this baby could not otherwise have been vaccinated. It is pointless to call a baby unvaccinated for measles, just as it is ridiculous to observe the infant is illiterate.

A week later, the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced two "measles-associated" deaths in Lancaster County: unvaccinated residents, they said. They claimed these were the first measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania in 35 years. There were no other details given: nothing about the cause of death, nothing about ages, nothing about anything.

Governor Josh Shapiro announced two deaths caused by measles. Not merely associated or related, but caused. The media ran with the story, using the language of causation. He called the deaths preventable and tied them to lack of immunization. He highlighted his clinic campaign and told reporters that Secretary Kennedy had called to offer help with the outbreak to which he responded:

"I was very, very blunt with him, and I made very clear that his actions and the rhetoric that's coming from this administration are having a negative impact on communities across America, particularly right here in Pennsylvania."

It was at this point that the narrative fell apart. The CDC called. The governor's office could give no more information. The Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons spoke out and said that the coroner's office has zero deaths with measles listed as immediate cause; one person died with measles, not from it.

No one could find out anything else about this supposed second death. The coroner's office said it had no such death at all. RFK, Jr. said what everyone was thinking: the second death "may even have been altogether fabricated." Meanwhile, all available evidence confirmed that the baby died of traumatic spleen laceration and the spleen was not enlarged/inflamed.

Even the mainstream media started getting frustrated at this. You cannot whip the public up with measles fears based on wholly fabricated data. When asked about this, Shapiro deflected:

"I think the Department of Health has made clear that they've shared all the information that they are permitted under state law to share, and that those two deaths were measles related. ... I don't think it serves the interest of public health or slows the spread of this outbreak for me to get into a back-and-forth about conspiracy theories that are showing up online."

Much of the mainstream media has now dialed back its claims but the New York Times has still not corrected its story from Aug. 25: "Two unvaccinated people in Pennsylvania have died from measles, as a large outbreak there continues to spread."

That sentence in the paper of record is factually incorrect. It's my personal guess that the reporter would like to make a correction but these people are hemmed in by editors and committees. At this point, to change the wording would be to admit a significant breach.

We are no longer a naive people. Whether the media comes around or not, the real story is already out there.

What concerns me is that we have now several generations who know not what I was taught as a kid, that routine exposure is a necessary and safe way to deal with normal childhood infections that are not deadly and easily treatable. A measles case is not a disaster; it is protective, both broad and durable. Superior to a vaccine? Every expert has to admit that it is. In private, they do.

We have gone so crazy with vaccination that a whole generation of medical professionals and industry leaders have been cajoled into saying that potions can replace the immune system. There is an ocean of money at stake in these decisions. Chicken pox parties are lacking in profit just as is natural immunity generally.

Demonizing religious communities is not a good path for public health and neither is raging against any changes to the childhood schedule. The parents of Pennsylvania, Amish or not, should be left alone. It's ghoulish for the state to plot the elimination of the control group.

As for my parents, they were wiser than the faculty of Harvard and Yale and the executives of pharmaceutical companies. They knew then what we need to rediscover now. Potions and jabs are not an automatic pathway to health and actually do much to compromise and sometimes end it. We need to rediscover this wisdom we mistakenly left behind.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 22:35

Warner Bros. "Lanterns" Series Is Another Whiny Woke DEI Disaster

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 02:10:00 +0000

Warner Bros. "Lanterns" Series Is Another Whiny Woke DEI Disaster

Comic book content is largely dead in Hollywood. Not because audiences don't want to see it anymore (Spider-Man: Brand New Day brought in nearly $2.4 billion in global box office, absolutely crushing Christopher Nolan's Odyssey film), but because the studios have turned most of these franchises radioactive with woke politics.

James Gunn's DCU projects for Warner Bros. have proven this over and over again. His girl-boss version of Supergirl was an abject failure largely because of the woke undertones of the film. One would think these people would learn their lesson, or at least care enough about making money to change their behavior. There are two problems, though...

First, activists always double down. They do not learn. They can be forced to shut up and do their jobs properly if studios apply pressure, but left to their own devices they will inevitably inject everything they touch with propaganda. They can't help themselves, they're ideological fanatics.

Second, sometimes studios want to change course and steer away from DEI cultism because it rarely makes any money. But, a lot of the projects in their line-up started production years ago when Hollywood still thought that every American was going to be reeducated into the woke fold. Meaning, they now have all this content slated for release which started development back in 2022-2023.

Such is the case with the Warner/HBO series "Lanterns", a modern take on the comic book series "Green Lantern". The show went into development in 2022...and it's obvious. The crux of the story? A black man (John Stewart) is set up to replace a white guy (Hal Jordan) as the great hero. Stewart's family was essentially ruined by Hal Jordan when Stewart's father failed a test of fear for the Lantern's powerful ring. Hal Jordan ends up taking the ring instead.

The Lanterns interviews are just hilarious. Just say you hate white people and be done with it already🙄 pic.twitter.com/DymaS3pWWt
— Steph Anie (@mynerdyhome) September 2, 2026

You see, the fear that prevented John Stewart's black father from earning the ring of a heroic Green Lantern was not his fault. He grew up with constant fear because of "white supremacy". In other words, the black community's failures are once again deflected and foisted upon a nefarious white conspiracy to hold them back from greatness. It's all the ridiculous 2016 to 2020 BLM talking points packed into a 2026 comic book show.

So Hal Jordan was only chosen to be Green Lantern after John Stewart's father failed the test... pic.twitter.com/jp0pcykIXZ
— DCU Brief (@DCUBrief) August 31, 2026

The story is apparently meant to be a combination of the legacy comic and the gritty True Detective series (yes, right off the bat we're entering low IQ narrative territory with this idea). The comic book setting aside, the writers and creators of the series have been very vocal about their intentions with the story and they openly admit - This is about the black man finally taking back what is "rightfully his" after the white man "stole it" from him.

Showrunner Chris Mundy described the series as being “about replacement,” with Hal as the aging figure who should “step aside” and out of the way of the younger and more competent John Stewart.

We knew the #lanterns creators hated hal Jordan

But damn.... pic.twitter.com/KOgmbOp2ig
— SyL ☕ #SyLgorithm (@sylabdul) September 2, 2026

"As a black person, being in an interview, that's one of our worst nightmares, being in a position where you're being judged by a white person."

-HBO Max's official "Lanterns" podcast pic.twitter.com/rJEM59K0cV
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) September 1, 2026

Keep in mind, many studios are cleaning house today and kicking a lot of their DEI hires to the curb, but this process is slow and there's no guarantees that they will ever be able to return to decent storytelling anytime soon. So, in the meantime they're still stuck with a bunch of talentless minority and LGBT writers they hired to gain virtue points and ESG loans.

Most of the middle-aged white guys with imagination and merit were cast out.

It is therefore ironic that the entire basis for the Lanterns series is the fallacy that minorities are rejected because of their skin color and "cultural experiences", rather than a lack of merit. When, in Hollywood, this has been the exact case with DEI hiring pushing out white male actors and writers with talent for the past decade (unless they are gay).

The inferiority complex of activist writers is apparent in the stories they obsessively tell - Build up a popular white hero into a washed up strawman who is then easy to tear down. They can't surpass their pale skin peers in the real world without outside help, so they have to beat up artificial white men in artificial worlds.

At bottom, minority groups in the west have been hand fed, enjoying promotions and positions of influence within politics, the corporate world and entertainment media. Many of these people where hired despite not having the ability or intelligence to do the job. They were hired to fill an ethnic quota, and that is all. And, this trend shows in the steady decline of media and numerous other sectors of western society.

Lanterns may be nothing more than a meaningless superhero show being used as a vehicle for black leftists to cry about not being good enough, but it gives us another window into the warped mind of the opposition. What do we see in through that window? A group that will never take responsibility for themselves and their own problems. They will always blame someone else. Which means, there's no reason to hold their hand anymore. It's a waste of time.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 22:10

How Neoliberals Fueled The Rise Of Socialism

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 01:45:00 +0000

How Neoliberals Fueled The Rise Of Socialism

Authored by Connor O'Keeffe via Mises Institute,

The rising popularity of politicians on the American left who either explicitly identify as socialist or, at least, don't shy away from or disavow the term appears to be causing genuine concern within the Washington establishment.

That is, of course, entirely justified. Socialism is profoundly unjust and destructive.

These days, the socialists like to present their entire ideology as nothing more than having a bit of empathy for those in need or an interest in seeing everyone "have" access to services like modern healthcare.

Look any deeper, though, or ask some follow-up questions, and the truth will eventually surface. What the socialists actually want is a massive increase in government interventionism that would see nearly every aspect of life politicized and the remaining productive components of the economy hollowed out into a zero-sum lobbying battle to claim some of the diminishing loot of a much larger, more powerful, and tax-happy federal government.

Any step towards socialism needs to be energetically opposed by everyone who cares about the rights and material well-being of everyday Americans.

However, the concern we're seeing from the neoliberal and neoconservative establishment is frustrating. Because the political order that they have built and preserved over the last half century has made the growing popularity of this kind of "democratic socialism" all but inevitable.

Scholars like Gabriel Kolko, Murray Rothbard, and Patrick Newman have written extensively about how the powerful, centralized federal government that we live under today originated in the so-called Progressive Era in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And, importantly, it was not grassroots reformers who spurred the growth of the federal government at the time, but well-connected business interests.

The narrative many of us were taught in school of government officials reluctantly giving themselves more power over the economy at the turn of the century to placate a public demanding an end to laissez-faire capitalism is merely a convenient creation myth to justify what has always been a scheme to use state power to redistribute wealth from the broader public to a small caste of well-connected families and firms.

As nearly all of human history makes clear, these sorts of crony, state-empowered redistributive schemes tend to be rather unstable.

That's in part because people typically aren't all that pleased when it starts to become clear that the government is transferring some of their wealth to people that are already far wealthier - requiring the opinion molders of the political class to frequently scramble to find some new way to excuse the policies making up the racket.

But also, the government doing things like warping credit markets to benefit certain industries or launching unnecessary wars to enrich weapons companies and empower foreign leaders who are good at lobbying has plunged the country into several economic and geopolitical crises.

So far, the American political class has done a remarkable job using these crises to greatly expand and accelerate their self-enriching redistributive rackets. But every crisis is unique. Different situations have required different responses.

Which brings us to the rise of what's often called the neoliberal "Washington consensus."

The political establishment's well-known embrace of neoliberalism in the 1980s was primarily a response to the events of the 1970s. For much of that decade, the country was forced to endure a prolonged period of high price inflation that was caused by the Federal Reserve's extensive money printing in the 60s and early 70s to help finance the Vietnam War and Johnson's Great Society programs. That economic chaos was then intensified by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the OPEC oil shocks, and Nixon's wage and price controls.

As we've seen in the past few years, inflation alone is more than enough to create strong public demand for political change. But in the 70s, previous credit expansion combined with the government's persistent unwillingness to allow the economy to correct itself also resulted in a stagnant economy. And that combination of high inflation and stagnant economic growth, or "stagflation" as it's come to be known, was considered economically impossible by Keynesian economists.

So the high inflation, low economic growth, and real-time collapse of Keynesianism - the school of thought the political class had been using to justify its economic interventionism - meant change was coming. Also, by the mid-to-late 1970s, the so-called New Left movement, which had started as student protests against the Vietnam War in the 60s, had descended into a highly disturbing mix of lethargic drug use and outright terrorism.

Into that vacuum stepped Milton Friedman.

The nerdy, quick-witted, suit-sporting economist was a perfect foil to the radical, convention-flouting far left much of the country was growing tired of. Friedman's ability to quickly, thoroughly, and politely eviscerate left-wing economic arguments in a highly entertaining fashion made him a star on the talk shows of the day. And, unlike the Keynesians, Friedman's monetarism seemed vindicated by the stagflation.

Thanks in large part to Friedman, the neoliberals took hold of the culture enough to prompt the left-leaning Carter administration to deregulate many parts of the economy including the railroad, airline and trucking industries.

And then, of course, came Ronald Reagan.

Together with Friedman and his fellow Chicago School economists and foreign leaders like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and his political successors supposedly rolled back all the reforms made since the Progressive Era, ushering in an age of "market fundamentalism," or unfettered capitalism. They helped bring about the modern "Washington consensus" that the government ought not meddle in the economy at all, which we're told is only just now - four decades later - starting to face some pressure from figures like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

At least, that is the narrative that both neoliberals and their opponents have settled on. But it is a lie.

The rise of neoliberalism in the 70s and 80s was, to be sure, a real ideological shift. The Friedmanites did come to dominate the economics discipline and political culture in very much the same way Keynesians had decades before.

However, the actual implementation of those free-market ideas was nowhere even close to what the establishment's narrative would have us believe.

Virtually all the deregulation that occurred during the Reagan presidency had actually been passed during the Carter administration. It was only because the changes were phased in during the Reagan administration that made it seem like the new president was deregulating the economy. In fact, he was doing no such thing.

The same goes for tax cuts. As Murray Rothbard explained, the much-heralded Reagan tax cuts that were passed in 1981 were more than offset by tax increases that same year. The administration then spent years raising taxes even more in the name of "closing loopholes."

And all of that was necessary to help fund the massive increase in government spending that took place throughout the Reagan years. The so-called Reagan revolution was truly, to paraphrase Rothbard, an acceleration of statist intervention, rolled out under the cover of free-market rhetoric.

There was, however, one area where the Friedmanites did see their policy prescriptions implemented in a genuine and lasting way: monetary policy.

Unfortunately, when it comes to monetary policy, the Friedmanites entirely abandon their support for markets and instead advocate for government central planning. These new establishment-approved neoliberal economists believed - not only in a fiat monetary system controlled entirely by a government central bank - but in a highly active, inflationist central bank.

Friedman himself even wrote a famous book with Anna Schwartz that used questionable econometric methods to argue that the Great Depression happened because the Federal Reserve had not been printing enough money.

Unsurprisingly, the political class was a lot more than willing to implement a Friedmanite program that gave them more power over the economy rather than less. And so, it was in the realm of monetary policy that the largest expansions of both state power and the crony rackets it's utilized for took place under the new neoliberal paradigm.

First, the Fed was leaned on to print money to help pay for the hawkish foreign policy of the post-1980 Republican Party. And then, especially under the Chairmanship of the late Alan Greenspan, the central bank began to directly prop up the financial sector.

The evolution of Wall Street from one of many options for investing one's savings to essentially being the nerve center of the entire economy was not the result of some natural change in saver preferences; it was the consequence of government policy. Specifically, Greenspan's Fed helped prop up Wall Street with a steady supply of easy money and cheap credit to artificially boost the sector, paired with extensive bailouts for these firms whenever the good times ran out.

This was, in effect, a major escalation of the kinds of crony rackets the federal government had been carrying out since the Progressive Era - all justified by Friedman's monetarist apologia for government money printing.

And that gets to the core of it. The Friedmanite, Reagan-led neoliberal revolution did not end economic interventionism, it rebranded it. And the financialized economy was that new brand. Getting rich on Wall Street became the epitome of capitalism. The rising stock market was the new metric for economic strength. And the Fed's money printing became the economy's lifeblood.

In the decades since, that Fed-enabled racket has expanded dramatically and has seeped far beyond the financial sector. It has allowed the political class to supercharge the rackets built up over the last century - which, remember, the neoliberals never did away with - transferring far more of our wealth to that small caste of well-connected cronies.

And yet, thanks in large part to the neoliberals of the past and present, this highly-interventionist system where the government is actively warping the market to benefit those already on top is called - and truly considered by many to be - genuine, free-market capitalism.

That isn't true. It's a trick - a trick meant to mislead us so that whenever a new economic crisis strikes, we reflexively conclude the crisis happened only because the government isn't involved enough in the economy. And that is the mindset that has made so many normal, everyday, non-ideological people open to the arguments of these self-described democratic socialists.

The neoliberal and neoconservative establishment has done much to carry out this trick. They shouldn't be surprised that it's working.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 21:45

Pimco's Top-Performing 60/40 Fund Bets AI's Next Winners Are In Asia, From Chips To Rare Earths

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 01:20:00 +0000

Pimco's Top-Performing 60/40 Fund Bets AI's Next Winners Are In Asia, From Chips To Rare Earths

Emmanuel Sharef, who oversees Pacific Investment Management Co.'s flagship Balanced Income and Growth Fund, spoke with Bloomberg about how the next leg of the artificial-intelligence boom could be concentrated in Asian stocks and beyond.

Wealthy clients in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and mainland China have been piling into the $19 billion fund, which has outperformed 97% of its peers during the past three years.

The fund is underweight most hyperscalers and members of the Magnificent Seven as soaring AI capital expenditures increase debt loads, pressure free cash flow, spark credit concerns, and make already eye-popping valuations much harder to justify.

"We're underweight the majority of hyperscalers at the moment and we're underweight the majority of the Mag seven just given their high valuations," Sharef told the outlet earlier this week.

He continued, "You don't necessarily need to own the most expensive stocks to capture a particular theme or a particular market trend."

The 60/40 Balanced Income and Growth Fund has been moving further down the supply chain toward companies that build data center components and has become overweight in Asia, where it sees stronger earnings growth, cheaper valuations, and greater exposure to the companies that should be viewed as the building blocks of a data center.

That infrastructure includes semiconductor components, cooling systems, cable interconnects, optical equipment, power supplies, construction machinery, and industrial metals.

"The AI capex build-out is enormous," he said. "It would imply significant demand for semiconductor components for chips, cooling equipment, cable interconnects, optical equipment, power supplies, construction equipment, metals, all of the things that go into building a data center."

The fund's 60% stock allocation gained exposure to AI last year by plowing billions of dollars into firms such as Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.

Sharef also highlighted a theme we've been developing: the importance of exposure to mining and materials companies tied to data-center construction and global rare-earth supply chains.

"Chinese resource extraction and materials companies are quite significant, not just for the data center buildup, but also for rare earths," he added.

Sharef's call to gain exposure to rare earths and critical materials reinforces a theme we have been developing: the AI trade is ultimately constrained by access to the physical inputs required to build chips, data centers, and power infrastructure. Rare earths and other critical materials are becoming a crucial component of the next AI trade as Chinese suppliers restrict some shipments to the US and US companies accelerate efforts to secure alternative sources beyond Beijing's reach.

The takeaway from Sharef's conversation with Bloomberg is that the next AI winners will be on an ex-US basis, mostly in Asia.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 21:20

AI Tax Increases Are Like The Tractor Tax Proposals Of Old

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:55:00 +0000

AI Tax Increases Are Like The Tractor Tax Proposals Of Old

Authored by Bruce Thompson via RealClearMarkets,

President Ronald Reagan famously described Washington politicians' solutions to every problem as "if it moves, tax it." That is exactly what many in Washington today want to do with artificial intelligence.

As Wall Street Journal chief economic commentator Greg IP wrote recently, a growing number of experts believe there is "a simple answer to AI job losses." Tax it. His column described a petition signed by 1,000 economists, including 17 Nobel laureates, pleading for higher taxes on AI to prevent "large scale" job losses.

Reagan knew what he was talking about. He grew up in the Midwest in a small town surrounded by farms, and he surely remembered a time when politicians wanted to tax tractors, a new technology driving change. In the early 1900s, the tractor was revolutionizing farming, and politicians were pushing proposals to tax the tractor and prevent the loss of farm jobs. Rep. Willian Connery, a Massachusetts Democrat and Chairman of the House Labor Committee, was a leading advocate of taxing tractors and other labor-saving machines to stop mass unemployment.

The introduction of tractors was the most revolutionary change in our history, affecting millions of jobs and driving millions off the farm. Between 1910 and 1960, nearly 10 million farm workers lost their jobs and 25 million people left their farms for the city. The benefits of the tractor were enormous. Farm production soared, food prices dropped, and the U.S. provided enough food to feed people around the world.

The farm revolution transformed the American economy, creating growth, and increasing prosperity. Millions of farm workers were freed from back-breaking labor and found better jobs in the city. An NBER study called tractors the "engine of growth" and estimated they doubled per-capita GDP and created millions of jobs.

AI promises a bright future of technological and scientific progress, increased productivity, and a more prosperous economy. Like many changes in the past, there are concerns about the impact on jobs. But taxing AI would be just like taxing tractors, a futile knee jerk reaction to change.

Not surprisingly, there is no shortage of terrible tax ideas floating around Washington. Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a 50% tax on the equity of AI companies. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden have proposed new taxes on data centers. House Democrats have proposed a new tax on AI computing powers, and others have proposed a tax on robots. If it moves, they want to tax it.

None of these tax increases are a good idea. Raising taxes on AI would slow investment, curb innovation, and only help our foreign competitors. Just like a tractor tax, a new AI tax would only slow new technological advances that will benefit everyone.

Rather than taxing AI, Washington should focus on assisting those jobs which have been most affected by automation, such as entry-level jobs. Congress should consider targeted tax incentives for entry-level employment, including payroll tax relief and job training for junior workers. Helping young workers get started is a much better response to the AI revolution than trying to stop it with a tax increase.

Bruce Thompson was a U.S. Senate aide, assistant secretary of Treasury for legislative affairs, and the director of government relations for Merrill Lynch for 22 years.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 20:55

Online Betting Adoption Goes Parabolic: First-Timers Triple, Gen Z Overtakes Millennials, And Football Season Hasn't Even Begun

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:30:00 +0000

Online Betting Adoption Goes Parabolic: First-Timers Triple, Gen Z Overtakes Millennials, And Football Season Hasn't Even Begun

Online betting is off to the races - and this summer the adoption curve started looking like a hockey stick.

According to a new analysis by Bank of America - which can see every ACH, debit and credit card payment its customers make to and from sportsbooks, horse-racing platforms and prediction markets their own customers make:

Roughly 5% of BofA customers sent money to an online betting platform in July.
The number of online bettors is up 40% since the start of the year.
The number of first-time bettors in June and July was more than triple the January level.

The bank credits the summer spike to the World Cup and "promotions and buzz" around prediction markets, and fair enough: every adoption curve has a catalyst. What matters is what the base looks like once the catalyst passes, and here the seasonal pattern is instructive. First-time users jump with every major sports season, and the 2025 football season - which the bank defines as September through February, so it sweeps in the NFL, college ball and most of the NBA and NHL - produced 22% more first-timers than the year before. Each season enrolls a larger freshman class. The class that enrolled this summer was three times the size of January's, and it arrived right before the busiest stretch of the calendar.

Nor is this something people try once and forget. Per a CivicScience survey cited in the note, 34% of online sports bettors wager weekly and 23% bet daily; fewer than one in five are the several-times-a-year Super Bowl crowd. That is the engagement profile of a social app, not a lottery ticket.

The turning point

By generation, Gen Z (48%) and Millennials (40%) accounted for 88% of online betting activity in July. Gen X managed 9%; Baby Boomers, 3%. And as recently as this spring, Millennials were the larger group. Gen Z overtook them this summer - a shift BofA describes as a "turning point" in the composition of online bettors.

BofA defines Gen Z as anyone born after 1995, which means the oldest members are turning 30 this year and the cohort came of age alongside legal, app-based sports betting. BofA points out that younger consumers have consistently been first to adopt every emerging digital platform - crypto, BNPL, online marketplaces - and that betting appears to be following the same script.

When it comes to income - betting activity is split almost evenly across terciles - 37% lower, 34% middle, 29% higher.

Oh it's investing!

According to a BofA survey conducted in March, 20% of respondents said they consider sports betting a form of investing, with Gen Z twice as likely as everyone else to say so. Across every generation, buying event contracts on a prediction market was more likely to be classified as investing than placing a sportsbook wager.

Prediction markets have listed contracts on almost anything - whether a politician sips water on camera during a speech, how many flu cases the year will bring - dressed in the language of derivatives: standardized, exchange-traded, resolved at a point in time. BofA notes that prediction markets, crypto, retail trading and sports betting all share "community participation and real-time pricing," which is a polite way of saying they share a user interface. To a generation raised on the Fed put, zero-day options and a community tab, a football game is simply another underlying.

And then there's the red tape...

Naturally, the regulators have noticed - and, naturally, their first move is a jurisdictional fight. The CFTC's position, per BofA's public-policy team, is that certain event contracts traded on federally regulated exchanges are derivatives under the Commodity Exchange Act and therefore federal turf. State and tribal regulators counter that contracts tied to sports and entertainment are gambling with extra steps and belong under existing state gaming, licensing and consumer-protection law. Lawmakers from both parties and both chambers have filed bills. The CFTC has also opened a rulemaking on perpetual futures and issued an advisory warning event-contract venues away from sweepstakes-style rewards and prizes "based on pure chance" - the sort of promotional program that helped fill the summer's freshman class - and, per BofA Global Research, is trying to draw a brighter line between prediction markets and sportsbooks by targeting in-house market making, incentive programs and "casino style odds."

None of it slows adoption. Arguing over whether a contract is a "derivative" or a "wager" is an argument over who gets to regulate and tax the growth, not whether the growth happens. By the time the rulebook is written, the users will already be there. Most of them already are.

And it's not even football season yet...

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 20:30

Cannabis Gummies Harm Driving Performance Hours After Use, Study Says

Tyler Durden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:05:00 +0000

Cannabis Gummies Harm Driving Performance Hours After Use, Study Says

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The use of commercially available cannabis edibles impairs people's driving ability, even after several hours of consumption, a study has found.

Published in the JAMA Network Open journal on Aug. 31, the peer-reviewed study looked at simulated driving performance after the consumption of cannabis edibles.

Conducted in a Canadian hospital, the study analyzed data of 40 people aged 19-45 years. They received gummies containing delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) - the main psychoactive chemical in cannabis that causes brain-altering effects. Various combinations of THC and placebo edibles were given to achieve four doses of THC exposure - 0 mg, 2 mg, 10 mg, and 20 mg.

The study measured the standard deviation of lateral position (SDLP), which assesses how drivers adjust lane position and is used to evaluate the effects of medicines and illegal drugs.

Researchers found that SDLP was "significantly increased" at 20 mg and 10 mg doses compared with the placebo at two and five hours post-consumption, suggesting greater difficulty in maintaining lane position.

Reaction time and the standard deviation of speed were "negatively influenced" among drivers due to THC exposure, the study said. The individual's willingness to drive was also found to have "significantly decreased" at 20 mg exposure, according to the study.

For the highest dose of 20 mg, whole-blood THC concentrations peaked at 3.4 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL). This falls within the 1 to 5 ng/mL limits for drivers set by some U.S. states.

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto highlighted the link between driving impairment and blood THC levels in an Aug. 31 statement.

All peak blood THC concentrations in the study were below or near common thresholds used for roadside enforcement, the statement said. This was true even among those who consumed the highest dose.

"Many people may underestimate the impairment caused by cannabis edibles," Dr. Christine Wickens, co-author of the study, said in the statement. "Our findings show that commonly consumed doses can significantly affect critical driving skills, reinforcing the need for caution when making decisions about driving after use."

The study was funded by a grant from Public Safety Canada. Two authors reported conflicts of interest, including receiving grants from pharmaceutical companies.

In an April 20 statement, the University of Colorado Anschutz also reported similar findings. In these studies, people were made to use a driving simulator before and after consuming cannabis.

Cannabis was found to affect driving performance, especially lane-control measures, such as lane departures and weaving. Inhaling cannabis showed smaller and less consistent changes, while edible cannabis resulted in "more noticeable impairment, including slower speeds and increased lane variability and departures," the statement said.

US Cannabis Reclassification

In the United States, the Trump administration recently reclassified cannabis, or marijuana, under the Controlled Substances Act. On April 23, the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration announced placing some cannabis products under Schedule III of the Act.

Schedule III drugs are deemed to have lower abuse potential and are accepted for medical use. The classification is only applicable to cannabis items approved by the Food and Drug Administration or regulated by a state medical marijuana license.

The American Trucking Associations (ATA) has raised concerns about public safety risks arising from the reclassification.

In an April 24 statement, Brenna Lyles, ATA's vice president of safety policy, highlighted concerns about rescheduling cannabis without proper safeguards to preserve the U.S. Department of Transportation's (USDOT's) testing authority for workers carrying out safety-sensitive jobs.

"Absent clear protections for USDOT's marijuana testing authority, a policy shift could undermine the Department's drug- and alcohol-testing program and weaken highway safety," Lyles said.

"That risk is compounded by the lack of a reliable, widely accepted standard to measure marijuana impairment, whether roadside or before a driver gets behind the wheel."

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 20:05

This Red State Is Betting It Can Abolish Its Income Tax

Tyler Durden — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 23:40:00 +0000

This Red State Is Betting It Can Abolish Its Income Tax

The data center debate isn't going so well for the builders, as Americans far and wide seriously oppose the construction of new data centers near where they live. One state, however, thinks it can incentivize residents.

Country roads take West Virginians home across the Virginia state line near Charles Town, where the data center debate has intensified. (Charlie Creitz/Fox News)

Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R) has unveiled seven principles aligned with 2025 legislation to reduce and eventually eliminate state income tax. Under the plan, West Virginia would set aside 50% of its revenue from approved hyperscale data center projects towards the elimination of the state personal income tax - though let's be clear: the poor, rural residents they'll be building the DCs next to don't pay income tax - so no benefit to them. Middle class voters (and up), however, will have all sorts of reasons to support the move.

"Today, as the world stands on the cusp of a new digital and economic frontier, West Virginia is stepping forward once again to lead, not by repeating the mistakes of other states, but by implementing a proactive, 20-year development strategy on our terms," Morrisey said in a statement obtained by Fox News.

The second listed "principle" in Morrisey’s plan says all West Virginians should benefit from data center projects approved through Charleston’s "High Impact Data Center Designation (HIDC)" process and the revenue they generate. The process was established under a separate 2025 state law.

Morrisey’s plan includes "direct tax relief for citizens," with none of the HIDC revenue entering the state general fund.

"By law, 50 percent of project revenue is dedicated directly to reducing and ultimately eliminating the State Personal Income Tax," reads the plan.

Counties would benefit also - with those hosting data centers receiving 30% of the revenue for schools and local government, and 10% of the revenue distributed to all 55 counties. Another 10% will fund infrastructure upgrades, which include public water systems in a state that's struggled since the decline of the coal industry.

"This shared framework gives us the exact blueprint we need to attract billions in private investment, create thousands of high-paying construction and technology jobs, lower taxes for our citizens, and revitalize economically distressed regions, all while preserving the wild and wonderful state we call home," said Morrisey.

The anti-data center movement, meanwhile, has become quite vocal in neighboring Virginia's Jefferson and Berkeley counties - as residents have taken note of sprawling data centers in Loudoun county.

"We are a cautionary tale for the rest of the country," Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) in recent remarks. "[I]f my district were a country, it would have more data centers than almost every other country in the world."

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 19:40

Victor Davis Hanson: The Left Is Dragging America Back To The Dark Ages

Tyler Durden — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 23:15:00 +0000

Victor Davis Hanson: The Left Is Dragging America Back To The Dark Ages

Via The Daily Signal,

Editor's note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today's video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.

The more you look around us today, I think a good description of 2026, culturally, economically, socially, politically, is that we are in a modern medieval world.

Maybe we're progressive regressives, and I don't mean that just in the sense that progressives are regressive, and they are, but that one part of our society is advancing at lightning speed to the future and progressing. But the other part is regressing, and regressing at a phenomenal pace back to what I would call the medieval period.

Remember, the medieval period was roughly that area in time after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, roughly AD 500 to around AD 1300 to 1400, the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. In medievalism, we often talk about primitivism after the destruction of the classical world during the Dark Ages, the early medieval period, and it's characterized by epidemics, bubonic plague, typhus, typhoid, smallpox, terrible sanitation in urban centers. They had forgotten the Roman use of sewage and aqueducts.

There were open borders. National states popped up that couldn't defend themselves, so you saw castles and walls pop up all over the European countryside in a way you had not during the Roman period. In cities, they were walled, towns even, and the gates closed at dusk to prevent gratuitous crime.

But at the same time that this was happening, you had some of the greatest works of literature in the Western world. You had Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," Dante's "Inferno," St. Thomas Aquinas' "Summa Theologica." And if you look at the architectural expertise and scientific knowledge of architecture, it was progressing at a geometric rate when you look at the huge cathedrals at Seville or Cologne.

I should remind everybody that around 536, Santa Sofia was created, the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. It would be the largest church in Christendom for a thousand years. And everything from the mass production of crossbows to eyeglasses was a product of the medieval period, even if, as I said, the daily lives of most people were wretched.

Now let's switch to the modern period.

All of us now can call anywhere in the world in seconds on our iPhones. Anything you want to know, past, present, future, you can just get on a cheap computer and ask an artificial intelligence program from the many free platforms. You can watch movies, you can watch entertainment on satellites. Anything you want is at your fingertips.

The nation itself is exploring space. We're getting close to conquering cancer. I can attest to that. Computers allow you to write without even speaking. You can, unfortunately, compose a whole term paper or a book with AI. You can make a movie with AI.

Yet at the same time that's happening, look at what's going on in Berkeley here in California or Los Angeles. We're seeing outbreaks of medieval diseases that we thought had been conquered years ago, given our sophisticated knowledge of sewage and water treatment. We had a typhus breakout in Los Angeles. We had leptospirosis, a rat disease, in Berkeley.

You look at the homeless camps all over our major cities. People are just out in the open fornicating, urinating, defecating, injecting drugs. There's tons of feces that has to be removed, and it's so strange in this modern medievalism.

We have sophisticated researchers who go into a hospital in Chicago or go to a cancer center in San Francisco and have to check the bottoms of their shoes to make sure they don't have feces as they go into their space-age laboratories.

It's really funny. In the medieval period, public hangings and beheadings were sort of public events that people flocked out to see. Is that any different than our glorification of murderers?

And there is a difference. Luigi Mangione, they named an opera after him in California. The killer of Charlie Kirk brought people jubilation. I won't even get into Lindsay Clancy, who strangled her three children and became every woman to the feminist left.

At least in the medieval period, they knew that the murderer had done something wrong and was being punished. In the post-medieval period, we are glorifying that murderer, and that's really striking.

And so, what I'm getting at is we are the most regulated, the most advanced, the most modern, the most scientific society in history, even as we can't solve problems that were solvable, and the medieval period would have died to know the solutions that we have in our hands to make sure we have clean water, to make sure there is no crime, to make sure there is no disease, to make sure that people don't defecate on the street. But we don't do it. We willingly don't do it.

Now, the question to finish is why?

We have an elite that has embraced a very toxic ideology throughout history, and that is mandated, government-sanctioned equality of result. And they have divided, therefore, to further that ideology, the world into victims and victimizers, an arbitrary classification, sometimes based on class, but increasingly on race.

And once they identify someone as a victim who's not responsible for his plight, then it's the duty of the society to allow him to express himself. If you have a lot of teenagers who want to loot a jewelry store, then you say they were hungry and they needed food.

If you see homeless people living on the street, then it was because of something the majority culture did to them.

And the result of that is when people engage in very dangerous antisocial behavior, an elite will tell the rest of us that they're not subject to law enforcement or they're not subject to the laws that apply to the rest of us.

But there are two really pernicious addenda here.

No. 1, the people who do this on the left, who believe in this mandated equality and a binary of victim and victimizer, are never subject to the consequences of their own ideology. Nancy Pelosi's home is not surrounded by homeless people. Jane Fonda doesn't have to trip over people injecting drugs when she walks outside her door. The Hollywood stars in Malibu who champion the homeless have very clear security. You can't get near their homes.

In other words, we, the lab rats, are those upon whom they experiment.

And there's another reason as well. It's not just that they experiment on us - and this ideology is not applicable to itself - but more importantly, they believe that they are morally superior because most of them are agnostics or atheists. They have lost their God, but they have found it in a post-Enlightenment caring, abstract though it may be, for victims.

And when you put this religious element to it, because it makes no sense to allow medieval diseases and medievalism to dominate your cities in crime, filth and homelessness, but they do it.

They feel morally superior, and it gives them meaning in their life in a way that we, the majority, find not morally superior, but morally repugnant.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 19:15