Trump Mulls Punishing NATO Allies By Pulling US Troops Over Lack Of Iran Help The Trump White House is mulling ways to ‘punish’ NATO allies for not stepping up to support the US Iran campaign, and for staying on the sidelines after Trump’s repeat appeals to create a coalition to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. This could include pulling protective American forces, and US military hardware, from NATO partner countries. It would impact […]

California Supreme Court Orders “Rogue” Sheriff To Pause Election Fraud Probe Authored by Jacki Thrapp via The Epoch Times, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco was ordered by the California Supreme Court on April 8 to halt his investigation into 2025 election fraud allegations so the judges can review the legal challenges that his probe faces. Bianco, a Republican who is running for California governor, seized more than half a […]

Exxon Warns Of $6.5 Billion Hit From Iran War As Q1 Earnings Set To Print Slightly Below Consensus In an early clue how the Iran war will impact energy earnings, ExxonMobil warned of a $6.5bn hit to Q1 earnings from the Iran war but said the bulk of this was the result of unfavorable timing for its accounting of hedging contracts, which would be offset as underlying transactions were eventually completed. The US supermajor also […]

Justice Department Counters Russian Military Intelligence Unit Attack On US Targets Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), The Justice Department and FBI on Tuesday revealed they have conducted a court-approved technical operation to neutralize part of a network of small office and home office routers in the United States that become commandeered by a unit of Russia’s military intelligence. The Department […]

Sen. Graham Urges Congressional Iran Vote…On Approving Peace, Not War This is definitely in you really can’t make this up(!) territory… Sen. Lindsey Graham is actually calling for a Congressional vote, but not concerning a War Powers Resolution.  Instead, he has called for Congress to review and vote on any diplomatic agreement ending the war with what he described as the “Iranian terrorist regime.” That’s right, the NeoCon […]

The New Financial Iron Curtain: Taxes, Capital Controls, & The War On Your Wealth Authored by Chris Macintosh via InternationalMan.com, There is a term called “gating” in the fund management world. It refers to blocking investors from redeeming their funds. Funds do this sometimes as a precaution… and other times when they are in the poo. Well, governments are the same. When they are in the poo, they also resort to […]

No Real People Were Polled: AI Is Now Fabricating What “The Public Thinks” The other day Axios ran a piece that cited “findings” that a majority of people trusted their doctors and nurses. Turns out, those “findings” were completely fabricated by a company called Aaru – using AI (causing Axios to issue an editor’s note and ‘clarification’)Aaru uses something they call “silicon sampling,” where large language models (the AI) […]

Why China Might Have Pressed Iran To Compromise With The US Authored by Andrew Korybko, The sequence that Trump threatened if no deal was reached before the expiry of his deadline would have cut China off from half of the oil that it imported by sea last year and likely set Afro-Eurasia aflame in resource wars for the indefinite future that would have derailed China’s superpower rise. Three unnamed Iranian officials reportedly […]

Vance Warns Iranians Ahead Of Pakistan Talks: US “Has All The Cards” & “We Want The Nuclear Fuel” Summary:  Vice President Vance (who’s been tapped to lead talks) warns Iranians: Trump “has all the cards” and cannot have a nuclear weapon. Follows Pentagon/WH declaring “total victory”. Iran says it has upper-hand. US, Iran agree to meet for first direct talks in Islamabad. Situation fragile given that Iran is […]

Stablecoin Yields Won’t Harm Banks, White House Economists Say Authored by Amin Haqshanas via CoinTelegraph.com, A White House report found that banning yield on stablecoins would have a marginal impact on bank lending while creating clear economic downsides. According to the Council of Economic Advisers, a three-member agency within the Executive Office of the President tasked to offer the president economic advice, moving […]

Mexico Truckers Block Key Freight Routes In Nationwide Strike By Noi Mahoney of FreightWaves, A nationwide strike by Mexican truckers and farmers blocked major highways and freight corridors across Mexico on Monday, disrupting access to Mexico City, industrial zones and several U.S.-Mexico border crossings. The protest, organized by the National Association of Transporters (ANTAC) and the National Front for the Rescue of the […]

Kevin Plank’s Unsellable Thoroughbred Race Farm Sees Another Deep Price Cut Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank has once again cut the asking price on his massive thoroughbred racing farm in northern Baltimore County, Maryland, as the historic farm – once owned by the Vanderbilt family – continues to sit on the market amid a series of deep price cuts. Plank has been winding down his sprawling real estate portfolio, offloading everything […]

FOMC Minutes Signal Fed Saw “Dual Sided” Risks From Iran War Since the last FOMC meeting (March 18th), a lot has happened (war, more war, and now less war), and rate-change expectations hawkishly surged, then dovishly normalized today… And given the last 24 hours, perhaps this information is more useful now, as we return to macro-fundamentals from geopolitical chaos running markets. The minutes, released three weeks after the […]

Trader Makes $23 Million In One Day With Massive S&P Call Purchase Hours Before Ceasefire A trader who made a large bet on a stocks rocketing in the coming weeks is up about $23 million in paper profit today, according to Bloomberg. The unknown trader spent $12 million premium on 6800 lots of 6950 S&P 500 Index Options (SPX) calls for May 8 expiry, when the index was at 6556.21; the trade was executed around 10:20 a.m. […]

The Apple AI Strategy: Discipline Over Hype Authored by Michael Lebowtiz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, While tech giants invest billions in AI, Apple executives are quietly sitting on their hands and a mountain of cash. Given the massive growth in AI investments, as shown in the graphs below, executives of leading companies at the forefront of AI development must be ecstatic about the prospect of AI significantly boosting their […]

Blue Owl Stock Slides After Moody’s Cuts Outlook To “Negative” On Surging Redemption Requests Blue Owl stocks is getting slammed this morning, erasing all early gains, after Moody’s Ratings cut its outlook on a $36-billion Blue Owl non-traded fund to “negative” from “stable” on Tuesday, citing redemption requests that were significantly higher than at peers in the first quarter. Moody’s also said the change in the outlook on Blue […]

10Y Auction Tails As Foreign Demand Dips After yesterday’s impressive 3Y auction, moments ago the Treasury sold $39 billion in benchmark, 10Y paper, in what was a mediocre auction. The auction, a 9-Year 10-Month reopening of cusip CPX8, stopped at a high yield of 4.282%, up from 4.217% last month and the highest since last August. It also tailed the When Issued 4.280% by 0.2bps, the third consecutive tail in a row. The bid to […]

White House Addresses Fragile Iran Truce All eyes are on the very shaky Iran ceasefire, at a moment Tehran is already threatening to pull out due to heavy Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Iran says it has again halted Hormuz oil transit, and there’s much that’s still up in the air and uncertain. The briefing with press secretary Karoline Leavitt is expected to begin at 1300ET: Washington and Tehran have just entered a two-week […]

Eric Swalwell About To Be Hit With ‘Shocking’ Number Of Sexual Harassment Allegations; Report Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness, A “shocking” number of former female employees and interns are preparing to come forward to accuse Rep. Eric Swalwell (|D-Calif.) of sexual misconduct, according to a Democrat activist. Cheyenne Hunt, a lawyer, former congressional candidate and executive director of the left-wing […]

US, Israel Insist Iran Ceasefire Doesn’t Apply In Lebanon, Which Suffers Huge Airstrikes Israel has made clear that it doesn’t see the newly declared US-Iran ceasefire as applying to its war in Lebanon, where it is still trying to destroy Hezbollah. The White House too has made its stance clear that it doesn’t apply, but President Trump has stated his intent to take care of a Lebanon ceasefire separately.  The military has […]

Anthropic Withholds Latest Model After It Went Rogue In Testing; Launches “Project Glasswing” To Secure Critical Software Still smarting from its embarrassing source code leak, Anthropic announced it will not release its latest frontier AI model, Mythos, to the public, saying the model is too powerful in ways that introduce elevated cybersecurity risk. In internal testing, Anthropic said the model surfaced thousands of […]

Delta Air Lines Erases All ‘Epic Fury’ Losses As In-House Refinery Cushions Fuel Shock Delta Air Lines soared in premarket trading on a combination of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire and stronger-than-expected first-quarter results, with the carrier’s in-house refinery helping to lower the average jet fuel price for its fleet in the first quarter, making it appear to be one of the better-positioned carriers than most peers to withstand an […]

Nobody Knows What Will Happen Next By Michael Every and Bas van Geffen of Rabobank Ceasefire Yesterday, the US and Iran threatened to, respectively, “destroy Iranian civilisation” with “new tools” and other countries in the Gulf with old ones. Ahead of the 8PM deadline that Trump had set for “Bridge and Power Plant Day,” US and Israeli forces reportedly already destroyed some bridges and other infrastructure. […]

Iran Gives Approved Hormuz Shippers “Few Seconds” To Submit Payment In Bitcoin Iran plans to require shipping companies to pay transit tolls in Bitcoin for vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz, according to a Financial Times report. As Micah Zimmerman reports for BitcoinMagazine.com, this links bitcoin to one of the world’s most critical energy corridors and current events. The policy would apply to oil tankers […]

ASP Isotopes Offers Helium Alternative As Qatar Export Crisis Looms ASP Isotopes could provide timely relief for the global helium shortage. In a new research note from Canaccord Genuity analyst George Gianarikas, he highlights the company’s Virginia Gas Project in South Africa as a potential new source of supply just as Qatar’s helium exports face major disruption. The warning comes shortly after we reported on Qatar’s […]