Sustaining The Unsustainable By Rabobank The Dow Jones, NASDAQ and S&P500 closed around half a percentage point higher on Friday following comments by Donald Trump to Fox News that elevated tariffs on China are not “sustainable”. Markets seem to be interpreting this line as the latest incidence of TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) and bidding up risk (except Bitcoin) as a result. Gold prices dipped from record highs, yields […]

“I Want China To Thrive, But…”: Trump Outlines Three Demands For Beijing Before High-Level Trade Talks  President Trump spoke about his relationship with Xi and the possibility of trade deals with China during his meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this morning. “I expect we’ll probably work out a very fair deal with President Xi of China,” Trump said Monday, as he repeatedly returned to his dynamics with […]

Zelensky Presses Plan For 25 Patriot Batteries Using Frozen Russian Funds President Zelensky got rejected on Tomahawks, but is now seeking to finalizing a deal to purchase 25 Patriot air defense systems, which the Ukrainian leader has described as a major step forward in strengthening the country’s defenses against Russia’s ongoing aerial assaults. Zelensky has told reporters in fresh remarks that the agreement envisions the […]

Speculative Bull Runs And The Value Of A Bearish Tilt Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, The recent market crack certainly woke up the more complacent bullish investors. Of course, the complacency was warranted, given the recent market surge, conversations about “TINA” (There Is No Alternative), and how “this time is different.” But that is what a speculative bull run looks and feels like. […]

OpenAI-Microsoft Friction Grows As ChatGPT App Growth Slows, Data Center Buildout Risks Overcapacity OpenAI’s aggressive expansion of datacenters and infrastructure investments – along with its massive pipeline of future projects, fueled by what we call a “circle jerk” in AI vendor financing – has prompted warnings from Microsoft executives that meeting all of Sam Altman’s infrastructure demands could generate overcapacity risks […]

Amazon AWS Identifies Root Cause Of Widespread Internet Outage Affecting US-East Services​​​​​​​ Update (0615ET): Amazon Web Services (AWS) has largely restored operations after a major disruption in its US-East-1 (Northern Virginia) region earlier this morning that affected numerous apps and websites relying on the service. Root Cause Identified: AWS engineers traced the issue to a DNS resolution problem affecting […]

China GDP Grows At Slowest Pace In A Year Amid Crumbling Domestic Demand, Crashing Real Estate Market China’s economic growth slowed to the weakest pace in a year in the third quarter as fragile domestic demand left it heavily reliant on the output of its exporting factories – which have sparked a global deflationary shockwave as China seeks to capture market share abroad through cutthroat price cuts sparking outrage among […]

Supreme Court Will Decide Whether Drug Users Can Possess Guns The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider whether people who use illegal drugs should also be allowed to possess a firearm. The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Sept. 29, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times The justices granted the petition in the United States v. Hemani without comment in an unsigned order, with no justices dissenting. The case involves Ali […]

Chipmaker Nexperia’s China Arm Tells Staff To Ignore Dutch HQ, Deepening Semiconductor Split Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times, China’s arm of chipmaker Nexperia has instructed employees to disregard directives from its Dutch headquarters, marking an escalation in a spiraling cross-border confrontation over control of the company that has already raised alarm bells across the global automotive and electronics supply […]

Was The CIA Misleading Witkoff & Kushner On Key Intel About Hamas During Critical Phase Of Peace-Talks Authored by ‘sundance’ via The Last Refuge, A fascinating hour-long interview with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner as they outline the backstory to the Israel-Hamas peace agreement in Gaza. During a segment (prompted below) Witkoff and Kushner are outlining the step-by-step process as they engaged the leaders of Qatar, Turkey […]

Key Events This Week: CPI; Fed Blackout Joins Government Blackout As futures indicate this morning, and as DB’s Jim Reid writes overnight, the mood music on tariffs has sounded much more positive in recent days. As it stands, President Trump has threatened additional 100% tariffs on China from November 1, but Treasury Secretary Bessent said that he’d be meeting with China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng in person this week. And on […]

White House’s Hassett Says Shutdown Could End This Week, Threatens “Stronger Measures” If Democrats Balk With the government shutdown in its third week, White House’s top economic advisor Kevin Hassett said on Monday that the government shutdown is “likely to end sometime this week,” and that if it does not, the Trump administration may impose “stronger measures” to try and force Democrats to cooperate. Hassett […]

Judge Who Approved Mar-a-Lago Raid Once Shared Office With Jeffrey Epstein Authored by Ken Silva via HeadlineUSA (emphasis ours), U.S. Judge Bruce Reinhart, who issued the warrant for the FBI’s raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in 2022, once shared office space with deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, according to newly revealed records. Bruce Reinhart / IMAGE: @mazemoore Some of Judge Reinhart’s links to […]

Don Lemon Urges ‘Black And Brown’ Americans To Arm Themselves Against ICE Authored by Luis Cornelio via HeadlineUSA, Disgraced former CNN host Don Lemon urged “black” and “brown” Americans on Wednesday to take up arms, warning they could be swept up in President Donald Trump’s ICE operations.  Don Lemon / IMAGE: CNN via YouTube He made the incendiary claim during a podcast interview with Wajahat Ali, citing the small […]

Futures Rise As Trade, Credit Fears Fade Ahead Of Earnings Deluge US equity futures are higher led by small caps, with sentiment TACOed for a second consecutive weekend thanks to Trump’s comments that the US will “be fine” with China ahead of trade talks between the two sides. It’s going to be a busy week for earnings, with Tesla, Netflix and General Motors among companies reporting. As of 8:00am, S&P futures are up […]

Kushner: Trump Believes Israel Is “Getting A Little Bit Out Of Control” Via The Libertarian Institute  In an interview, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said the President believed Israel was out of control following the attempted assassination of Hamas leaders in Qatar.  Kushner and Trump’s Envoy Steve Witkoff appeared on 60 Minutes on Sunday. When asked how Trump responded after learning of the Israeli […]

Paramount Is Laying Off Up To 3,000 Employees Starting This Month By Luke Bouma of CordCutterNews Paramount Global is poised to initiate a sweeping round of layoffs affecting up to 3,000 employees as early as the week of October 27, 2025. This accelerated timeline, drawn from insights shared by industry insiders, comes just weeks after the closure of Skydance Media’s transformative acquisition of the storied entertainment giant […]

Trump Says Gaza Ceasefire Still In Place As Israel Halts Short-Lived Airstrikes The Trump-brokered ceasefire in Gaza is hanging by a thread, as local officials say that nearly 100 Palestinians have been killed and some 230 wounded overall since the ceasefire’s start on October 10. Israel on Sunday launched dozens of new airstrikes in response to what it called Hamas’s “blatant violation” of the deal, but which the militant group […]

Rally Into Year-End? 3 Reasons To “Buy Dips” Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, This past week delivered a sharp pickup in volatility and quick reversals, underlining how fragile the tape has become. Early in the week, markets were pressured by renewed trade rhetoric from former President Trump. He threatened a 100 percent tariff on Chinese imports starting November 1 in response to China’s export controls on […]

Escaping The ‘Digital Concentration Camp’; Gold Fights The ‘Financial Control Grid’ Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com, Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), publisher of “The Solari Report,” is back with a new cutting-edge publication called “Plunder.” CAF has been pushing gold (and silver) as an investment for the past few years.  The record high price of the yellow metal has proven her right.  In order for the few to […]

“Coup d’Flat”: Billionaire-Funded ‘No Kings’ Color-Revolution Turns Into White Liberal Boomer Parade As Dems Become National Laughingstock The Democratic Party’s dark-money NGO network, bankrolled by left-wing billionaires, unleashed a highly coordinated, color-revolution-style mobilization nationwide on Saturday; the same tactics U.S. intelligence agencies have used overseas for years in regime-change operations. Yet the turnout […]

EU Capital Markets Union: Germany’s Merz Calls For A “Wall Street” For Europe Submitted by Thomas Kolbe In the German Bundestag, Friedrich Merz appealed to the EU to integrate the fragmented European capital market more deeply and reduce bureaucratic hurdles. His vision for the next step: a kind of Wall Street for Europe. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz used his government statement on Thursday to take a strategic look at what […]

Shell’s Fuel Shortage In Indonesia Proves The Next Era Is Electric Around 200 Shell outlets in Indonesia have run out of gasoline after domestic supply disruptions tied to state oil giant PT Pertamina and a sweeping corruption probe, according to Bloomberg. Rivals such as BP AKR and Vitol’s Vivo have also been empty for weeks. Lines now snake through Pertamina’s own stations, the only ones still reliably selling fuel — though […]

The Rise & Rise Of AfD: Exploring The Unprecedented Political Dumbassery Afoot In The Federal Republic Authored by ‘eugyppius’ via A Plague Chronicle, The firewall is making AfD the strongest party in Germany, artificially empowering the left and destroying the centre-right, who alone can lift it There’s a subtle, little-discussed but very bizarre political phenomenon that has interested me ever since I started blogging and […]

Europe Generates The Most Electronic Waste Every person in the world generates on average around 8 kilograms of electronic waste per year worldwide. However, there are significant regional differences. As Statista’s Valentina Fourreau shows in the chart below, using data from the latest E-Waste Monitor, Europe leads the way with around 17 kilograms of electronic waste per inhabitant, while each person in Africa generates only […]