Detroit Judge Charged In Plot To Embezzle Money From Over 1,000 ‘Incapacitated Individuals’ A Detroit judge, her attorney father, and two other individuals were charged by federal prosecutors in an alleged “years-long scheme” to embezzle nearly $300,000 from individuals deemed incapacitated or otherwise vulnerable. Judge Andrea Bradley-Baskin, 46, is alleged – among other things, “to have used $70,000 in a ward’s funds to […]

‘Rock Now Beats Paper’: Making Sense Of “Silver Friday’s” Utterly Rigged Nonsense Authored by Matthew Piepenberg via VonGreyerz.gold, On Friday, January 30, 2026, the world learned (or rediscovered) just how grotesquely rigged the paper gold and silver markets truly are. The Great (Yet Familiar) Fall Despite no change whatsoever in global supply and demand forces, silver went from a $120 near-high on Thursday to a $78 low on […]

Apple Prioritizes Premium iPhone Rollout As ‘Great Memory Crunch’ Tightens Global Supply We have repeatedly warned about the “Great Memory Crunch,” driven by AI data center buildouts absorbing a growing share of global memory supply, and industry insiders now telling consumers and enterprises (read here) should accelerate purchases of electronics that use high-bandwidth memory before prices accelerate further, as supply shortages […]

Schools Closed For 8th Day Across Multiple States As Cold Weather Persists Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times, Superintendents are keeping schools closed to students across multiple states on Feb. 2 as cold weather persists, leaving some roads and sidewalks difficult to navigate. Officials in Montgomery County, Maryland; Fairfax County, Virginia; and Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, North Carolina were among those […]

What Corporate America Is Saying About AI Adoption On Earnings Calls With roughly 50% of the S&P 500’s market capitalization having reported results so far this earnings season, we are focusing on what companies are saying about artificial intelligence on earnings calls. To do that, we lean on Goldman analysts led by Ben Snider, who track executive commentary focused on AI adoption. “AI adoption has remained a popular topic on […]

Bill Maher Torches Virtue-Signaling Lefty Celebs For Ditching Causes Once They’re Not The ‘Current Thing’ After another awards show shitshow of anti-Trump-ism at The Grammy’s, Bill Maher has had it with Hollywood’s relentless virtue signaling, and during his latest monologue on his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher. And he really let the glitterati have it.  Maher, a leftist liberal himself, began with mock enthusiasm for […]

US NatGas Futs Suffer Biggest One-Day Decline Since 1996 As Weather Models Flip Warmer Update (1350ET): US natural gas futures tumbled on Monday as the latest weather models pointed to warmer conditions across the Lower 48, following several miserable weeks of winter that sent NatGas spot prices soaring due to freeze-offs and spiking power prices amid surging heating demand. The March contract crashed 26% to about $3.218/MMBtu […]

Devon And Coterra To Create Shale Giant In $58-Billion Merger Deal By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com Devon Energy and Coterra Energy announced on Monday a definitive agreement to merge and create a premier shale operator in an all-stock transaction, implying a combined enterprise value of about $58 billion.   The deal, announced today after weeks of speculation, would create a company with a significantly increased position […]

Conservative Hardliner Elected President Of Costa Rica High on the minds of Costa Rican voters as they went to the polls on Sunday was undoubtedly the surge in drug-related violence across the otherwise stable Central American country, which has been a trend for the region generally. Conservative candidate Laura Fernandez by Monday morning was able to quickly declare victory in the presidential election after early results […]

What’s The Warsh That Could Happen? By Benjamin Picton, Senior Market Strategist at Rabobank The DXY is dealing firmer this morning and precious metals continue to be flogged like the family silver after Donald Trump confirmed the nomination of Kevin Warsh as incoming Fed Chair. In defiance of the President’s oft-stated preference, markets are convinced that Warsh is a hawk. Consequently, zero-yield risk is taking a beating […]

Trump Slashes India Tariffs After Modi Agrees To Drop Russian Oil, Go Full ‘BUY AMERICAN’ In a huge Monday development, President Trump has announced the US will trim its punitive 25% tariff on Indian imports to 18% after striking what he hailed as a new “trade deal” with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Crucially it hinges on New Delhi having reportedly ended its purchases of Russian crude and swapping them for massive US […]

The Market Cycles Potentially Driving 2026 Returns Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, Market cycles are once again at the center of the investment narrative as we head into 2026. The optimism is familiar as earnings held up in 2025, the economy avoided recession, and big tech lifted the indexes. However, those victories are already reflected in the price. As we head into 2026, with valuations extended, the […]

This Weeks Jobs, JOLTS Reports To Be Delayed Due To Govt Shutdown Here we go again. The government shutdown, which should be lifted in 24-48 hours once the House votes (we reported yesterday that Mike Johnson allegedly has the votes to pass the vote), is again jamming the machinery of government data reporting.  The BLS has pushed back the January 2026 jobs report, originally set for Feb 6, along with December’s Job Openings […]

World’s Nuclear Club Will Grow If US Doesn’t Act By Thursday, Medvedev Warns We reported earlier that the last major nuclear arms control treaty between superpower rivals Russia and the United States is set to expire this week. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the country’s Security Council, has throughout the Ukraine war been the top official issuing the Kremlin’s ‘unofficial’ nuclear warnings and […]

“100% Preventable”: FAA Accepts Its Failures Led To Fatal Midair Collision Near Reagan National Airport Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Bryan Bedford said on Feb. 1 that the agency accepts the findings of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that a series of systemic failures by the FAA led to a January 2025 midair collision, the deadliest U.S. aviation […]

ICE Drops $70 Million On Massive Arizona Warehouse To Detain And Deport Illegals Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, Arizona is ground zero in the fight to reclaim U.S. borders, with ICE shelling out a whopping $70 million for a 418,000-square-foot warehouse in Surprise—the size of seven football fields—to process and detain illegal aliens targeted for deportation. The acquisition under the Trump administration marks a […]

‘Out Of Stock’: As Lunar New Year Looms, AsiaPac Dip-Buyers Emerge In Gold “I came to buy because the price of gold dropped today,” said Ng Beng Choo, a 70-something retiree who arrived early in the morning at the headquarters of Singapore’s United Overseas Bank (UOB), the city-state’s only bank offering physical gold products to retail investors. Bloomberg reports that clients and walk-in buyers crowded into a dedicated lounge for […]

The ‘Full Of Wind’-y City: Chicago Mayor Johnson Puts “ICE On Notice”… Of Meaningless Gesture Authored by Jonathan Turley, I have long been a critic of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has been a disaster for my home city. From moronic proposed taxes to racist comments, Johnson has brought some of the greatest devastation to the city since the Great Fire. Deeply unpopular, he often uses race-baiting commentary or gimmicks […]

On-Chain Activity Soars As Crypto Crumbles, ‘Mega-Whales’ Buying The Bitcoin Dip As Retail Runs For Exits Crypto prices are rebounding this morning, after further weakness over the weekend to its lowest since Trump’s election victory.  “From a technical perspective, the recent drawdown is bringing price closer to attractive levels,” said Joel Kruger, a markets strategist at LMAX Group. Bitcoin is likely to find “strong […]

EU Faces Hard Choices After LNG ‘Wake-Up Call’ Authored by Irina Slav, via OilPrice.com, Europe is growing uneasy over its heavy reliance on U.S. LNG, with EU officials warning that energy security risks are shifting rather than disappearing. Diversification options are limited: sanctions on Russian gas and strict EU methane regulations effectively rule out major suppliers like Russia, Qatar, and much of U.S. LNG. Gas […]

Key Events This Week: Payrolls, ISMs, ADP And Many More Earnings Welcome to February with another big sell-off in Gold (-5%) and Silver (-10%) overnight, and a partial US government shutdown that isn’t as severe as the record one before Xmas, and is expected to get resolved soon. Nevertheless, as Jim Reid writes, it’s typical of the 2026 constant stream of complicated news flow. This follows a January that managed to both shock and […]

Huge Surge In New Orders Sends US Manufacturing Activity Near 4 Year Highs With ‘hard’ data sustaining signs of solid growth (e.g. factory orders and jobless claims), ‘soft’ survey data has been bouncing back since the start of the year This morning we get the final Manufacturing PMI data from S&P Global and ISM for January. A solid and stronger improvement in US manufacturing sector operating conditions (52.4 vs 52.0 exp) […]

Peak OnlyFans? Platform In Talks To Sell 60% Stake Following the Wall Street Journal’s reporting last week, Bloomberg has provided additional color on OnlyFans’ plan to sell a 60% stake in a deal valued at about $3.5 billion. The report is based on people familiar with the matter and has not been confirmed by the company. OnlyFans owner Fenix International Ltd. is in “early talks” with San Francisco-based Architect Capital to sell […]

Throwback Waste Of The Day: Monkeys Throw Poop, And $600K Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations (emphasis ours), Topline: In 2012, a study published by Agnes Scott College and Emory University concluded that chimpanzees that know how to throw their own feces have stronger communication skills than those that do not. The National Institutes of Health must have used similarly primitive communication skills when […]

Trump Launches $12 Billion Strategic Mineral Stockpile To Counter China; Rare Earth Stocks Jump The Trump administration is preparing to launch a major initiative aimed at protecting US manufacturers from disruptions in the supply of critical minerals, committing about $12 billion in initial funding to build a strategic stockpile of essential materials, according to Bloomberg. The project, known as Project Vault, is designed to […]