Navy Awards Boeing $20 Billion Contract For Next-Generation Fighter Authored by Tom Gantert via The Epoch Times, Boeing has secured a contract worth more than $20 billion to develop the U.S. Navy’s next-generation carrier-based fighter. The Boeing Co. logo is displayed outside of company offices near Los Angeles International Airport in El Segundo, Calif., on Jan. 18, 2024. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty ImagesThe Navy contract […]

“Seek Higher Ground Now”: A Near Dam Failure In New Mexico Was Just The Warm-Up For A Record El Niño A flood-control dam in southern New Mexico came close enough to failing Tuesday that the National Weather Service ordered people downstream to get out of the way. Forecasters issued a flash flood emergency for McLeod Dam near Garfield in Doña Ana County, after dam operators and county officials reported that failure was […]

Trump’s $200BN Korean “Investment” Is A Gas Plant With No Customers, Eight Reactors With No Sites, And A Pipeline Seoul Calls A “Future Discussion” A week ago, we wrote that South Korea had finally found a home for the first slice of the $350 billion it promised Trump: a $22.3 billion, 6.3GW gas plant in Encinal, Texas, with no customers, no PPA, and turbines that may not show up this decade. That left, as we put it then, “$328 […]

Congress Keeps The Trading Desk Open: Senate Dems Sink Lawmaker Trading Ban 53-47 A midterm messaging bill that was never going to become law just confirmed the only bipartisan consensus that matters: members of Congress still get to play the tape. Senate Democrats just blocked cloture on a bill that would have stopped lawmakers from buying new publicly traded stocks. The vote was 53-47. Sixty were required. But guess what […]

Fed Watchdog Finds No Crimes In $2.4 Billion Renovation, Just Everything Else After more than a year of drama, subpoenas, surprise site visits, hard-hat photo ops and one very public fight over beehives, the Fed’s internal watchdog has finally weighed in on the central bank’s headquarters renovation. The verdict: nobody committed a crime, but almost nobody was minding the budget either. According to a report released Wednesday by […]

It’s Time For The Right To Return Fire Authored by Tom Klingenstein via TomKlingenstein.com, In this essay, Thomas Klingenstein argues that the Right has made a category error: treating lawfare as a series of discrete legal disputes when it is better understood as a system of political power. His answer isn’t simply better defense, but counterpressure – a new public-interest law firm, led by Jeff Clark, meant to defend […]

Gulf Exports Roar Back To Pre-War Levels, Goldman Says; Blas Sees “Trump Has Advantage” On Hormuz The US conflict with Iran has been ongoing for seven months and will soon enter its eighth month. Diplomatic signals this week, along with another request for a US SPR dump and reports of Gulf oil export flows improving toward prewar levels, have sent Brent crude futures down to around $103 a barrel. Goldman analysts Yulia Zhestkova […]

“BigMacGPT”: McDonald’s Uses AI To Figure Out How Much Your Next Burger Will Cost Depending On Location One week after McDonald’s held its investor day at its Chicago headquarters, Wall Street has soured on a near-term turnaround effort, with Deutsche Bank analysts saying it has effectively been delayed.  Now, a new report says the quick-service restaurant chain behind the Big Mac is rapidly expanding its use of artificial […]

Sex, Spies, And The FOMC: How Beijing Turned A Senior Fed Economist Into Its “Inside Man” For years, conspiracy theorists have insisted that the Federal Reserve is run for the benefit of a foreign power. It turns out they were – at worst – only half wrong: it’s just that the foreign power in question wasn’t getting the FOMC minutes through the front door, but via a lovesick Fed economist, an online dating site, a set of silk […]

Signs Of Fresh Houthi Attack On Saudi Aramco Facilities Update(1159ET): While very unconfirmed at this early stage, the Houthis have reportedly attacked the Abqaiq oil city in eastern Saudi Arabia this afternoon (local), reports IRNA citing anonymous news sources. Abqaiq is at the heart of of Saudi crude processing, and it has been struck previously in the context of the Saudi-Yemen conflict. However, there have been conflicting […]

Bank of Korea To Buy 1 Ton Of Gold In First Purchase Since 2013 Add South Korea to the list of countries taking tentative steps to hedge their exposure to the US dollar, and fiat in general. The Bank of Korea will buy approximately one ton of domestically produced gold in December, worth 200 billion won, according to the office of Rep. Chung Tae-ho of the Democratic Party of Korea, a member of the National Assembly’s Strategy and […]

Oil Hits Session High After DOE Shows Lowest Midwest Gasoline Stocks On Record Oil prices rose to session highs after today’s DOE inventory data refuted the latest cheerful API prints from Tuesday afternoon. Instead of the API-reported builds in distillates and gasoline, the DOE said that in the last week both products drew, with a modest increase in Cushing inventories, while crude inventories rose by 922K API     Crude +1.0mm […]

Feds Investigate Kinzinger Over Alleged Kalshi Bets On Own Pardon Former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger is reportedly under investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over prediction-market trades tied to an unusually personal event: whether President Joe Biden would pardon him. According to Politico, citing three people familiar with the matter, the CFTC has been examining trades made by a Kalshi account linked to […]

Migrant Caravan Headed For US Border Has ‘Zero Chance’ Of Entering, DHS Chief Warns Another migrant caravan from Honduras has “zero chance” of entering the United States, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.  U.S. Army combat engineers place razor wire on the U.S.-Mexico border wall to reinforce security in El Paso, Texas, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on July 24, 2025. Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters”The caravan has zero chance of […]

FTC Launches ‘Rogue AI’ Probe Of OpenAI, Anthropic – And Takes Aim At Their Regulatory Moat The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is launching a sweeping, aggressive probe into top frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic. However, the investigation goes far beyond simply asking questions about autonomous software run amok, and its chairman has made clear he won’t let Silicon Valley use recent AI failures to build an insurmountable […]

Hung, Drawn, And Third-Quartered: Roll On Q4 By Michael Every of Rabobank Today ends Q3, which has been a shocker even in a year of major market shocks. Wars dragged on and spread. Russia-Ukraine saw energy sites hit and hybrid attacks against Europe increase. Saudi Arabia, not Iran, is now under missile fire and both oil exporters are partly blockaded. France gave the first sign of getting dragged into the war, which conflated […]

Core PCE Prints Cooler Than Expected Due To Change In Methodology, As Savings Rate Plunges To 3 Year Low Ahead of today’s closely watched core PCE report – the Fed’s (reportedly) favorite inflation indicator (although that will probably shift to Truflation after Kevin Warsh’s task force is done with analyzing the data), which was seen by many as deciding whether the Fed will hike in October and December, or just December as NY Fed […]

Apple’s $2,000 Foldable iPhone Could Sell 6 Million Units, Counterpoint Says Counterpoint senior analyst Ivan Lam expects Apple to sell about 6 million units of its first foldable iPhone this year. The estimate offers an early sentiment gauge of potential demand for Apple’s first-ever foldable handset, priced at roughly $2,000. The iPhone Duo sales forecast hinges on Apple’s ability to ramp up production, Lam said, according to […]

Omani Co-Pilot Stabbed Captain, Tried To Hijack Israel-Bound Jet Summary:  CNN Sources Say Co-Pilot Tried To Hijack Plane  Omani Co-Pilot Stabbed Pilot  Midair Horror: FlyDubai Pilot Reportedly Stabbed, Israeli News Says Incident Treated As “Full-Fledged Terror Attack” Two Israeli sources told CNN that the Omani co-pilot aboard the Israel-bound Flydubai flight earlier this morning attempted to hijack the plane and stabbed the […]

Kennedy Touts AI Over Doctors At Industry-Backed Summit Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sept. 29 touted artificial intelligence (AI) for people making medical decisions at a summit sponsored by AI companies, drawing criticism from some doctors. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks in Dallas, Texas, on Sept. 10, 2026. Kevin Dietsch/Getty […]

2028: Unlikely Republican Senator Drawing Buzz as Vance’s Potential VP Pick Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) is drawing speculation as Vice President JD Vance’s potential running mate in 2028, Axios reported Tuesday. Vance views the 51-year-old Missouri Republican as “trustworthy, intelligent, articulate and a deft political operator,” according to the outlet. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appears to be the early favorite to be […]

These Are The Biggest Players In The $13.5 Trillion Repo Market: How Hedge Fund “Basis Trades” & Money Market Funds Fit In Authored by Wolf Richter via Wolf Street, The size of the repo market has ballooned to over $13.5 trillion in outstanding agreements daily, according to the government’s Office of Financial Research (OFR). Via the repo market, financial institutions borrow from, and lend to, each other mostly overnight, but […]

US Futures, Treasuries Flat Ahead Of Core PCE, Micron Earnings Futures are higher with S&P leading both tech and small caps ahead of today’s core PCE data and Micron earnings after the close, as yields remain sticky, unchanged from yesterday’s multi-decade highs, and the USD fractionally lower. As of 8:00am ET, S&P futures are flat, with Nasdaq futures down fractionally as semis dip -20bp lagging the broader Tech tape but […]

From TINA To TIGA: Diversification Pays Again Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, For more than a decade following the Financial Crisis, one acronym embodied the investment landscape: TINA, “there is no alternative.” The logic behind TINA was that the Fed and most other developed nations’ central banks held interest rates near zero and even below zero in some cases. As a result, Treasury, corporate, […]

US Ambassador Sparks Firestorm After Telling Greek Minister Washington Can Topple Any Government US Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle has set off a firestorm of diplomatic controversy over unusually blunt remarks centered on Greece’s government and US policy. It also raised questions of US covert ‘influence operations’ and regime change activities. The words issued by the former Fox News host were picked up by The Wall […]