Zero Rss

Iraqi PM Sets New June 2027 Deadline To Disarm Resistance Factions

Authored by News Desk via The Cradle,

(Photo credit: AFP)

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi announced a June 2027 deadline for the disarmament of the country's resistance factions in comments released on 21 September, extending a previous deadline which had been set for the end of this month.

Iraq PM sets June 2027 deadline to disarm armed militias
——
Iraq’s Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has pledged to disarm the country’s militias by June 2027, outlining the phased plan for the first time in an interview with The New York Times in Baghdad on Saturday.

“This is not… pic.twitter.com/nGNEtFQ9mp

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) September 22, 2026

The announcement came in an interview with the New York Times (NYT), carried out on Saturday, during which Zaidi detailed the disarmament plan that Washington has been pushing so heavily for.

"This is not something that is optional. It is a necessity. Others who spoke of this then backtracked. They yielded to pressure or to other concerns. For me, this issue, along with that of corruption, is a matter of honor," the Iraqi premier told NYT.

"We wish to build bridges and economic ties between Iraq and the countries of the world. Under this government, Iraq will be a meeting point, not a point of hostility. Arms have to be confined first so you can build a solid economy," he added.

Zaidi had previously announced a 30 September deadline to disarm the Iraqi factions. Yet this deadline was firmly rejected by the resistance, leading to the extension.

"There would first be a 90-day period during which the militias would not launch any attacks and be assured that they would not be attacked by US forces," Zaidi said to NYT.

"After that, the [factions] would begin handing over their weapons, with disarmament ending by 30 June, 2027."

According to NYT, the resistance is "pushing" to have the deadline extended to the end of next year.

The newspaper refers to the new date as ambitious.

"The timeline is extremely precarious" and "impossible to meet during a time of war," regional diplomats and Iraqi security officials are quoted as saying by the outlet.

Zaidi claims the plan will ensure the resistance factions "cease to exist as independent entities."

"They will join the Popular Mobilization Units as individuals and integrate into them," he went on to say.

US President Donald Trump's administration has adopted a significantly more coercive approach than its predecessors to disarming the Iraqi resistance, stepping up pressure on Baghdad in recent months to dismantle the resistance factions swiftly.

Washington reportedly froze security programs with Baghdad and blocked dollar shipments to the country earlier this year to pressure Iraq into dismantling Iran-backed resistance groups.

Iraqi resistance groups have demanded a full US withdrawal, rather than the "transitional" pullout agreed on between the US and Iraq, which will see Washington shift from a "combat" to an "advisory" role, while still retaining a military presence in the country.

At the height of the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran, these resistance groups inflicted heavy damage on US assets in Iraq.

They have also supported Gaza militarily throughout the genocide and have carried out operations in response to Israeli war crimes in Lebanon.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/23/2026 - 02:00

SB Energy Delays IPO Funding World's Largest Data Center Amid Investor Revolt, Public Outcry

Slowly the data center dream is turning into a nightmare.

Over the weekend, we reported that the price on the massive $18 billion leveraged loan backing Oracle's just as massive $165 billion, 4.5GW New Mexico data center, Project Jupiter, had fallen to "stressed" levels around 89-91 cents on the dollar.

What makes the price slide from par in just a few months especially concerning is that the 1,400-acre data center campus in Doña Ana County is at the heart of Oracle’s landmark $300bn contract with OpenAI to provide computing power. The marquee project secured $18Bn of loans from a consortium of banks late last year to kick-start construction, along with billions of equity investment from Blue Owl.

As for why the price is dropping, the answer is simple: the market is getting increasingly concerned that the data center will not be built on time (if ever) amid extreme grassroots opposition to data centers. Most recently, the project has faced due to fierce local opposition over concerns about its impact on the local area’s water supply and air quality. The project was initially going to be powered by 2.2 gigawatts of gas turbines, but the state land office blocked a request to run a natural gas pipeline to the data center.

Worse, Deb Haaland, New Mexico’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee and a former US Interior secretary, said she would pause all new data centres if elected in November and require developers to heavily invest in renewable energy. In other words, a Blue sweep virtually assures years of delays. 

But it's not just the Project Jupiter data center. 

Readers may recall that a month ago, Nvidia announced it would back a massive, 4.25GW SoftBank data center (which won't be completed for years) with $105 billion in additional funding. The project, led by SB Energy - subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank that aspires to build the largest data center project in the world (because it wouldn't be like Masa Son to go for anything but the world's biggest) in Ohio - is set to be fully leased to OpenAI, and could eventually grow to 10GW, making it the world's largest data center (but let's get to just 1GW first though).

Nvidia - which initially planned to support the SB Energy project with as much as $250bn, but got cold feet after facing investor pushback over the extent of the risk - will provide a $105bn "residual value guarantee" backstop for the project, helping lower debt costs. 

Nvidia will also invest $1.5bn in SB Energy, down from a reported $3bn. The SoftBank subsidiary, which we said in August was preparing for an IPO, is planning to build 10GW of new power generation, including 9.2GW of natural gas generation, to power the facility. This will provide up to 8GW of total IT load, making it the world's biggest data center when finished.

Yet fast forward just one month to today, when said IPO - whose proceeds are so very critical to the continued construction and timely completion of the project - has been pulled. 

According to the NYT, while SB Energy had originally planned its I.P.O. for this month, the offering has been delayed, as investors question the company’s sought-after valuation of $50 billion or more. The report goes on to note that so far, bankers have struggled to find enough buyers of SB Energy stock within price ranges the company and its bankers had sought.

SB Energy’s struggles to win over investors come at the worst possible time: just as the backlash against data centers that is shaping elections and kitchen table debates across the country (which we warned about last summer) is now spilling onto Wall Street with "investors voicing increasing skepticism about the growth expectations for data centers and the risks associated with their build-out, forcing industry executives and their advisers to recalibrate their plans to raise tens of billions of dollars in public markets."

The pulled IPO also comes just days after Holtec - which specializes in nuclear energy technology, spent fuel storage, small modular reactors (SMRs), and nuclear plant decommissioning and is hoping to supply power for AI - said last week that it was pausing its I.P.O. plans indefinitely, citing several factors that have “impaired investor confidence in the market for new public offerings.”

Holtec pointed to the “uncertainty of data center development” as the primary reason for the postponement, according to a company release. Holtec Nuclear owns and operates one main nuclear power site and builds small nuclear reactors that can be used to power data centers. The company, which had planned to start trading on Nasdaq last week, was seeking to raise as much as $900 million at a valuation of up to $10 billion.

The delays, the NYT notes, "are a rare hiccup for the A.I. industry, which has enjoyed almost unbridled investor enthusiasm in recent years."

The rest of the article is boilerplate, repeating the same stuff we have warned about since mid-2025: 

Public opposition to data centers has built for months as communities push back against these sprawling, power-guzzling facilities that have sprung up across the country, particularly in rural areas. 

Heading into the midterm elections, data centers present an unusual issue that many voters from both parties oppose. They have become a focal point for the public’s angst about an economy dominated by artificial intelligence.

Over the past week, fears over artificial intelligence hit a fever pitch as A.I. executives warned of the technology’s dangers and suggested slowing down the pace of development.

In this context, a growing number of states have taken their own steps to curtail data center development, creating roadblocks for companies looking to raise money from public investors. Earlier today, we reported that "Texas Governor Abbott Orders Halt To New Data Centers Weeks After Issuing Moratorium."

Not surprisingly, this hostile environment is snuffing out most enthusiasm for data center prospects. To wit: there are only two publicly traded companies that focus solely on building data centers: Equinix and Digital Realty Trust, and their share prices have fallen between 1 and 2% this month. This is very troubling when one considers that data-center companies had been expected to account for roughly one-third of all listings for the remainder of 2026, per NYT sources.

It also doesn't help that among the data center companies seeking to go public, there’s a wide dispersion of operating track record and history and customer concentration. Most projects are in the early stages, leaving the companies vulnerable to execution risks.

Investors say that is one of the risks giving them pause about SB Energy.

SB Energy has agreed to build, own and operate a data center in Ohio, which is fast becoming an epicenter of the political debate against and public outcry data centers.  

And while SB Energy has huge ambitions (as noted above, the biggest data center it plans on rolling out will be the world's biggest when completed) it has yet to put one into operation. Worst still, despite its non-existent track record, the company projects a revenue backlog of $439 billion that it will receive over roughly 20 years beginning in 2028, mostly from the Ohio data center

Last week, with the IPO still in the works, SB Energy tried to win over investors by hosting a call with OpenAI’s chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, and its head of infrastructure, Sachin Katti, who discussed the merits of the Ohio data center. Some investors said SB Energy’s decision to present senior executives from OpenAI - the company’s core tenant - showed its awareness of the skepticism.

In the end, it wasn't enough since the IPO has now been delayed. While SB Energy released its financials on Sept. 1, it is not expected to go public before mid- to late October, later than its original schedule.

According to the NYT, two people familiar with the company’s plans said they both wanted the option to go public in September and to also give investors more time if needed to get comfortable with its future plans and its financials.

Why? Well, the recent collapse in token prices and the surge in Chinese open-weight models which has grabbed market share from US frontier models, such as OpenAI, may have something to do with it.

Looks like today may be a record day for token volume % of open models on Vercel AI Gateway:

🟦 Open 78.4% 🟨 Closed 21.6%

While spend 💲 usually tells a different story, #3 and #4 today are Moonshot AI & DeepSeek. Adding Z⁠.ai, their combined spend surpasses OpenAI (#2).… pic.twitter.com/vFMh3xEt83

— Guillermo Rauch (@rauchg) September 19, 2026

To be sure, some companies have had more luck than SB Energy: Nscale, which has plans to develop data centers across the globe and counts Anthropic and Microsoft among its customers (because there really are just 4 or 5 customers in the world that can make a dent right now, and these two are among them), disclosed its finances Friday in preparation for a public offering in October. Bankers and investors say it could be the first test of how the market will price these deals in this more discerning environment.

“You cannot be long on artificial intelligence and not be supporting infrastructure build-out because this has to go hand in hand,” said Harmol Samra, chief executive officer of Host Digital, a data-center developer.

Well... you can. You just don't have to lock yourself in to the first valuation that comes along. 

Take Hyperion, aka Project Beignet, Meta's original project financing template (which has been adopted by virtually all subsequent data center developments) and its its massive 5GW New Orleans Data Center, which - like all other projects - will be completed some time in the 2030s.

When it first came to market with the gargantuan (total investment now is $50BN and rising fast) data center, Meta issued $27 billion in bonds to fund the project. This was (and still is) the single biggest investment grade offering in the world. 

Well, after it traded up to 110 cents on the dollar shortly after the break, the bonds due 2049, which were priced to yield 6.581%, have since sunk pretty much in a straight line, and are now trading near all time lows less than a year after their issuance, last seen just over 94 cents on the dollar...

... and blowing out in spread from 140bps originally to 210bps now, much to the Chagrin of the project's biggest bond investor, Pimco, which holds about $15 billion of the debt. 

For those asking what can possibly break the stock market party, where various AI-linked stocks have pushed the market to record highs even as most stocks keep dropping (today we just had the 6th day in a row of more 52 week lows than highs), look no further than the chart above, and also follow what happens to the SB Energy IPO. Since it can't be pulled, SoftBank will end up having to downsize it (and the project's valuation) significantly, meaning it will have to find even more sources of capital who will demand even more preferential terms, and so on, until the big picture turns either much more attractive (don't expect that to happen if Democrats sweep in November) ... or much worse (which will happen if China continues capturing LLM market share and pummeling token prices) at which point SoftBank will have to pull the plug.  

Which, incidentally, would would have devastating consequences for Sam Altman's OpenAI IPO, as two of the five most important data centers of the company's Stargate initiative - Project Jupiter and SB Energy, which collectively would account for over 10GW in compute - go dark. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 23:14

Kim Jong Un Touts Hypersonic Missile Test: 'Incurable Headache' To Enemies

North Korea has continued to try and instill fear into Washington and Seoul, on Sunday firing two short-range ballistic missiles toward the Sea of Japan.

However, these were apparently new military toys in the arsenal, with state media touting "a new type of weapon" - which Kim Jong Un later described as capable of giving "the enemy an incurable headache and a very cruel and unavoidable blow."

Kim further said the test, which was conducted by North Korea’s Missile Administration, showcased the armed forces' ability to fight and that "the enemy will know better what such progress means without any explanation."

As for what makes this a 'new' weapon which is special and out of the ordinary, Space.com details:

But photos suggest that it involved a short-range missile topped with a hypersonic warhead, according to NK News, a Seoul-based publication that focuses on happenings in the Hermit Kingdom.

Hypersonic vehicles travel at least five times faster than the speed of sound and are highly maneuverable. They are therefore much harder to track and intercept than ballistic missiles, which, though very fast, follow predictable trajectories.

DPRK state media

Kim further hinted at this when talking about his country's possession of "ultra-modern defense technology."

The pace North Korean missile tests have been steadily ticking up.

During the first Trump administration, Kim met the US president on a series of occasions. While historic, it didn't lead to the kind of breakthrough on 'de-nuclearization' that Washington and Seoul were hoping for, and Pyongyang has gone back to being on the extreme defensive.

🇰🇵 "An incurable headache for adversaries"

On September 20, Pyongyang conducted tests of a new hypersonic missile under the personal supervision of Kim Jong Un.

Released footage revealed, for the first time, flight data for a missile designated "Hwasong-11B-1." According to… pic.twitter.com/1HqDRJ0IeD

— dana (@dana916) September 22, 2026

The White House has lately signaled it would like to get back on a direct diplomacy track with Pyongyang, but North Korea has been blistering angry over recent US-South Korea military drills on the peninsula.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 23:00

Elon Musk Is Powering The American Renaissance

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson 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 the YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

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

There's a lot of controversy about Elon Musk. His reputation took a big hit, remember, right after the election, because half the country voted, roughly 48%, voted against Donald Trump. Elon Musk had flipped from a former Hillary Clinton supporter and Joe Biden supporter to a firm MAGA adherent and voted for Donald Trump in 2024.

As a result of that and his comments opposing illegal immigration, there were people who not only were demonstrating against [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], but attacking Tesla dealerships. Everybody said that Elon Musk's brand had suffered accordingly, that Tesla was on the way down, that European and American [electric vehicle] makers, along with Chinese EV makers, would dominate the market, given the tarnishing of the Musk brand and in conjunction with the end of the federal subsidy for electric vehicles.

So, people were suggesting that the era of Elon Musk was over. He was very controversial, and he was outspoken on his own platform, X, on conservative issues such as illegal immigration, green energy, [artificial intelligence] in ways that infuriated the Left. And the Left, remember, was considered the natural consumer of electric vehicles.

So, are we watching the decline of Elon Musk? No. No, no, no. The exact opposite is happening. In the second quarter of 2026, Tesla had a rebound, and it captured 52% of all the EVs sold in the United States. It has a market capitalization of $1.2 trillion. The other "Big Three" automakers are beginning to exit the EV market.

China cannot send their EVs into the United States. Why did Tesla rebound? Was it because all of a sudden Elon Musk had a fight with Donald Trump for a while? No. Was it because he apologized to the Left? No. It's because when you buy a Tesla and you drive it and you compare it with other brands of the Big Three in terms of distancing, acceleration, safety, appurtenances, it's not just better, but it keeps getting better geometrically, at a geometric rate, not just an arithmetic.

It has the best program for self-driving. It's the safest. It has the longest range. It's the most fun to drive, and people like it regardless of their politics. If you move to SpaceX, 67% of all the satellites in low orbit around the world today are associated with Elon Musk's SpaceX company - 67%, over 12,000 satellites.

The market capitalization of SpaceX is well over $2 trillion - $2 trillion. SpaceX, with its various rockets, has saved a morbid, calcified, ossified NASA. It alone, with its rocketry and space vehicles, has put the United States not just back into the so-called space race and return to the moon and eventually to Mars, it's made it preeminent over the Europeans, the Japanese, and the Chinese. More importantly, it's given the United States enormous technological advances in rocketry, ballistic missiles, which have a definite military component to them.

When Elon Musk paid an exorbitant fee for X, people felt that he had made an enormous mistake, that it was overpriced. And yet, people were saying that users would abandon him and go elsewhere. In fact, that has not happened. That has not happened. There are 560 million users of X today. BlueSky, the alternative that was supposed to break X, has 3 million users.

Three million versus 560 million users.

And remember that his Starlink satellite platform has captured 97% of all satellite internet usage.

There are 12 million people who have a Starlink receiver and are subscribers in 160 countries. Most of the U.S. military and our allied militaries, including the Ukrainians and the Israelis, count on Starlink to guide their missiles and their drones, to protect them from incoming attack.

Let's just put all of this in some kind of perspective.

In terms of market capitalization, Elon Musk has well over $3.5 trillion in his various companies. SpaceX is the largest and it's the most dominant, and it will either ensure that the United States is first in space exploration and satellite launching.

And, by the way, more satellites were launched on Elon Musk rockets last year than all of the satellites launched elsewhere put together. In addition to that, he created the electric vehicle market. It did not exist. He created the idea. Everyone said it would not work, that he was going to go broke, and he was finished.

He not only created the Tesla electric vehicle, he made it preeminent and dominant today. And he did it because, for the price and a cost-benefit analysis, it was unmatched. In terms of Grok, it is about third. About 16% of all AI platforms and chatbots use Grok. So, let's just keep that in perspective.

The United States is preeminent today in social media, in artificial intelligence, in satellite launches, in the number of rocket launches in general, in electric vehicles. And all of that put together is due to one person, Elon Musk, who has been reviled and attacked by the Left as either treasonous or insane or cruel or whatever.

One man has combined the talents of Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford all in one person, and he's an American. In other words, much of the success of the United States' current renaissance in digital media, in satellites, in electrical vehicles, in AI, in software is due to one person. One person can make a difference. In the case of Elon Musk, he made a big difference.

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

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 22:35

China's DJI Alone Dwarfs Entire US Drone Production

Two active wars across Eurasia, intensifying resource nationalism, and an energy crisis are adding urgency to US efforts to reduce dependence on China. Concerns about a potential Chinese blockade of Taiwan reinforce the supply chain decoupling theme. 

The proliferation of attritable drones and interceptors is reshaping the economics of warfare. Industrial capacity, production costs, and the ability to replace cheap one-way attack drones at scale are becoming key considerations as the US military prepares for a rearmament supercycle. 

The challenge for the US is that the industrial base has been hollowed out for decades, and ramping up capacity and building new supply chains will take years. On top of that, China dominates the processing of many critical minerals and will likely hold a quasi-monopoly on the space through the end of the decade. The US is actively seeking to build out new conflict-free critical material supplies, but that will take years. 

Together, these dependencies on foreign supply chains could constrain the US rearmament supercycle.

Another uncomfortable reality for the West came in the form of a case study highlighted in a slide deck and shared recently on X, showing that China's drone production is absolutely running circles around the US.

The slide highlights a massive gap between Chinese and US drone production, comparing DJI alone with the entire American industry:

• DJI reported monthly production: 2.8 million drones
• DJI annualized capacity: 34 million drones
• Estimated annual US production: about 100,000 drones
• US Drone Dominance procurement through 2028: around 340,000 drones

Using those figures, DJI's annual capacity would be roughly 340 times current US annual output, which the slide rounds to approximately 300 times.

The only conceivable path back to parity with China in weapons production requires the development of a globally competitive American civilian electronics industry that we can turn over to war production if the need arises

Before and after mobilization it must pay for itself https://t.co/Bu7UsuDSo4

— mattparlmer 🪐 🌷 (@mattparlmer) September 20, 2026

The message is that, as an uncertain and volatile world heads toward greater instability, the US faces an industrial-scale challenge: developing low-cost drones is only part of the problem; manufacturing them at scale is another. Procuring the rare earths needed for motors and sensors is yet another major issue as China chokes off supplies to the West.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 22:10

'Pausing' Intensifies: OpenAI Unleashes Latest Model Minutes After Dario Dumps Magnum Opus

Update (1417ET): Well, well, well...

Anthropic's new Opus launch went up around lunchtime in New York, and by early afternoon OpenAI had rolled out GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, halving prices yet again.

GPT-6 Sol now costs $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output, half the $4/$20 promo rate Anthropic matched earlier today. GPT-6 Luna goes for a dime in and 50 cents out, pricing that looks built to fight the open-weight models eating token share. OpenAI says cached input gets a 90% discount, which puts Sol's cache reads at $0.20, the same rate we call Anthropic's "real knife" below. GPT-6 Astra stays on top at $10/$50. The upshot: the $4/$20 price point didn't survive the afternoon, and Opus 5.5 now costs twice as much as OpenAI's workhorse on input and output.

Higher usage limits and lower cost give you more flexibility and room to iterate. pic.twitter.com/AQJ5IlNsB1

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) September 22, 2026

OpenAI's charts, naturally, pit Sol against last-gen Claude. On AutomationBench, it touts Sol's 33.2% at 27 cents a task against Opus 5's 26.9% at 11 times the cost. Opus 5.5, which Anthropic says scored 40.0% on the same test, isn't on the chart, which was out of date the moment it posted. OpenAI also slipped in a dig at Anthropic's safeguards, noting in a footnote that Fable 5.1 fell back to Opus 5 on roughly 40% of tasks (see "The Fine Print" below). Score: Anthropic. Sticker: OpenAI. Anthropic's rebuttal is that Opus 5.5 needs fewer tokens to finish the job.

GPT-6 Sol had been rumored for days, with leakers pointing to Tuesday at a price of $2.50/$15 that turned out to be too high, and some reports claimed Anthropic hurried Opus 5.5 out the door to beat it. Either way, ten days after both CEOs agreed the industry should "pace the frontier," the two labs spent Tuesday trampling each other's headlines.

Pacing, it turns out, is a team sport.

* * *

Anthropic on Tuesday unveiled Claude Opus 5.5, just 10 days after CEO Dario Amodei called for "pacing the frontier" of AI development.

The pitch: Fable-class brains at a steep discount. Anthropic says the new model "performs at the level of Claude Fable 5.1 for most tasks" and costs 40% less to run than Opus 5, which launched all of 60 days ago. List-price cuts run from 20% on input and output tokens to 60% on cache reads, the line item Anthropic says accounts for most of the bill in agentic and coding work. For context, Fable 5.1 lists at $10/$50 per million tokens, or 2.5 times the new Opus price.

The launch was Silicon Valley's worst-kept secret: the $4/$20 pricing and a Tuesday launch date leaked days early, and Polymarket had priced better-than-80% odds of a Sept. 22 release.

Opus 5.5 is our first model since we called for pacing the frontier. As with previous models, it was tested by external evaluators before release, including METR and Frontier Design.

On our most comprehensive alignment test, it achieves the strongest score to date.

— Claude (@claudeai) September 22, 2026

Anthropic says Opus 5.5 leads in agentic coding, computer use and knowledge work, scoring 66.4% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 against 57.9% for OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, and 55.8% for Fable 5.1, while generating output more than 30% faster than Opus 5. Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 follow within weeks, and subscribers get higher five-hour limits on Pro, Max and Team plans (a 20% bump, per The New Stack) plus a rate-limit reset they can bank for later. On the API, the model is cheaper everywhere: $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output, $5 for cache writes and $0.20 for cache reads, with a fast mode that runs up to 2.5x quicker for $8/$40.

20%, 40% Or 60%?

What percentage are we actually saving here? All three, depending on the situation. Input and output tokens are 20% cheaper, cache reads are 60% cheaper, and the 40% is Anthropic's estimate of how much less a typical task costs all-in once Opus 5.5's leaner token use is factored in. The more of a bill that goes to cache reads, the closer the rate cut gets to the 60% ceiling, which is why agent-heavy users come out furthest ahead: a workload split evenly between cache reads and everything else gets a 40% rate cut before counting any token savings.

Early testers say the efficiency is real, at least on their own workloads: Box said Opus 5.5 got through its evaluations on roughly a third of the tokens Opus 5 needed, and trading firm Optiver said its agentic coding costs fell 40% to 50%.

Anthropic also took direct aim at OpenAI. Its own scorecard has default-effort Opus 5.5 topping Astra's best FrontierCode result for about a fifth of the per-task cost, drawing even with Astra on Terminal-Bench 4.0 at default effort for roughly 40% of the cost, and clearing Sol by 11 points on CursorBench at about a third of the price.

The Race To The Bottom

From 10,000 feet, Opus 5.5 is the latest shot in a frontier price war that is turning "flagship AI" into a commodity with a falling price tag thanks to super efficient, open-weight models out of China.

Here's a fun metric: the timeline as measured in dollars per million input/output tokens:

• August 2025: Claude Opus 4.1 lists at $15/$75.
• November 2025: Opus 4.5 resets the tier to $5/$25.
• July 9, 2026: OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol debuts at $5/$30.
• July 24: Opus 5 holds at $5/$25, half the price of Fable 5.
• Aug. 21: OpenAI knocks Sol down to a "promotional" $4/$20 (heh), guaranteed through at least Nov. 21, undercutting Opus 5 on both input and output.
• Sept. 1-3: Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra anchor the top end at $10/$50.
• Sept. 22: Opus 5.5 matches Sol's promo price to the penny, and the real knife is in the cache line: $0.20, or half of Sol's $0.40 cached-input rate.

That's a 73% cut in Opus-tier list prices in just over a year.

OpenAI isn't the only one leaning on prices. Open-weight models (think DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and Z.ai) carried 56% of the token traffic on Vercel's AI Gateway in August, versus 7% in December, yet accounted for only 14% of estimated spend. By our math, the average closed-model token cost nearly eight times an open-weight one. Average per-token pricing on the gateway dropped 23.2% in August, its third monthly decline in a row. Over at OpenRouter, open-weight models, mostly Chinese, made up 60% of US token usage in August.

So how does Anthropic still capture 64% of the money spent through Vercel's gateway? By undercutting itself before anyone else can. Fable 5's slice of gateway spend shrank from 13.2% in July to 4.9% in August while the half-price Opus 5 jumped to 22.5%, keeping the revenue in-house even as customers traded down. Opus 5.5 runs the same play one rung lower: Fable 5.1-level work at 40% of Fable 5.1's sticker.

It's a Jevons bet: cut the unit price, sell vastly more units. So far it's paying. Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate topped $65 billion at the end of July, per Bloomberg, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025, and investors reportedly expect it to finish the year between $100 billion and $120 billion. With a confidential draft S-1 at the SEC since June 1, the question for would-be IPO buyers is how long volume can outrun deflation once every lab is running the same play.

About That "Pacing"...

On Sept. 12, Amodei published "We Must Pace the Frontier," calling on the handful of frontier labs to ease off the capabilities accelerator together. Sam Altman publicly signed on, and Elon Musk chimed in that Amodei had it right. The world shook in fear, having collective nightmares of Skynet coming online at the hands of cold, calculating frontier models!

Dario Amodei, Sept. 12: "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models."

But then...

Anthropic, Sept. 22:

At its default effort setting, Opus 5.5 delivers frontier results for a fraction of the cost per task, often beating other models running at their highest settings.

It also generates output more than 30% faster than Opus 5. pic.twitter.com/GBvrvbsxNL

— Claude (@claudeai) September 22, 2026

'Pacing' indeed.

The Fine Print (shit to know)

• Your agent may be talking to a different model. Because Opus 5.5 rivals Anthropic's top-end Mythos 5.1 in biology and cybersecurity, it ships with Fable 5.1-style safeguards: routine bug-fixing stays put, but most cybersecurity work gets handed to the older Opus 4.8. The New Stack warns that individual calls inside an agent workflow could quietly land on older, less capable models.
• It knows when it's being watched. Anthropic admits Opus 5.5 frequently seems to suspect it's being tested, which muddies any read on how it behaves in the wild.
• The moat gets a lock. Thinking can no longer be switched off, and a new anti-distillation safeguard blocks API customers from doctoring earlier context to fish out its reasoning. That's Anthropic's answer to fake-account extraction campaigns it describes as a national-security risk.
• Not a clean sweep. Astra still wins AutomationBench (41.4% vs. 40.0%) and Terminal-Bench-Science (64.6% vs. 58.7%). Anthropic itself concedes benchmark margins have become a shakier guide, saying that in its own use Opus 5.5's edge over Fable 5.1 is smaller than the numbers imply.

Your Move, Sam

Sol's discounted rate is only locked in through at least Nov. 21, and Anthropic just matched it with a model it says beats Sol by double digits on CursorBench. OpenAI can cut again, make the promo permanent, or let Sol snap back to $5/$30 against a cheaper rival. Pick your poison.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 21:55

A Septennial Analysis Of Pre-Collapse Macroeconomic Indicators

Authored by Milan Adams via Preppgroup,

Walk through any downtown financial district in mid-September 2026 and you'll see the same strange disconnect. Construction crews still raise glass towers. Restaurants at noon remain packed with expense-account lunches. Bespoke tailors on side streets measure suits for clients who haven't yet noticed their foundations shifting.

Surface-level appearances suggest continuity, even prosperity. Yet beneath this maintained facade, data streams flowing from Treasury servers, credit bureaus, and trading floors tell a markedly different story - one of accumulating strain that policy statements cannot wish away.

By September 8, 2026, United States federal debt reached $40.13 trillion. That figure translates to roughly $119,784 owed by every man, woman, and child in the country, a burden that would have seemed absurd to discuss seriously even fifteen years ago. More immediately concerning than the nominal amount is the speed at which carrying costs are escalating. Through August of fiscal 2026, gross interest payments on public debt hit $1.267 trillion - a record pace that consumes resources otherwise available for infrastructure, education, or research.

Congressional Budget Office projections now show net interest consuming 13.95% of all federal outlays in FY2026, rising to 14.25% in FY2027 and approaching 15% by FY2028. Nearly fifteen cents of every dollar spent serves not current needs but past obligations. That reallocation, gradual enough to escape daily headlines, nonetheless represents a fundamental shift in how America deploys its collective resources.

Several interconnected developments, examined together, illuminate why September 2026 marks a particularly precarious moment:

• Sovereign Debt Saturation: Federal obligations exceeding 120% of GDP, with interest costs creating self-reinforcing cycles where new borrowing pays old debt service

• Household Financial Distress: Consumer debt at $18.19 trillion as of Q1 2026, with delinquency rates in multiple categories approaching levels last seen during the 2008 crisis

• Commercial Real Estate Deterioration: Approximately $875 billion in mortgages maturing during 2026 against depressed occupancy and valuation fundamentals

• Currency Instability Signals: Gold prices swinging violently between $4,360 and $5,589, indicating deep uncertainty about fiat stability

• Emerging Market Fragility: Over 54 nations currently in or near debt distress per IMF assessments, raising contagion risks

How the Debt Trap Springs Shut

Federal fiscal dynamics in 2026 reveal mechanics that compound faster than political timelines can address. That $40.13 trillion figure becomes genuinely alarming when viewed through debt-sustainability analysis. Average interest rates on marketable national debt reached 3.475% by August 2026 - substantially above the near-zero rates that prevailed through much of the pandemic period.

With debt stocks exceeding annual output by over twenty percentage points, even modest rate increases generate exponential service requirements. CBO forecasts $16.2 trillion in net interest payments across the coming decade, climbing from $1.0 trillion in 2026 to $2.1 trillion by 2036. At those levels, debt service crowds out virtually all discretionary spending.

Compounding works insidiously. Maturing debt rolls over at higher rates. Treasury auctions must attract sufficient participation to refinance existing obligations plus fund new deficits. Bid-to-cover ratios for four-week bills stood at 2.97 in August 2026 - technically adequate, yet vulnerable to sentiment shifts. Foreign holdings have grown concentrated and potentially volatile; Russia substantially reduced Treasury exposure, while other nations diversify reserves away from dollar assets.

Fiscal year 2026 deficits will likely exceed $2.67 trillion according to Joint Economic Committee data released September 8. That imbalance isn't temporary cyclicality but structural feature. Tax revenues, constrained by legislative gridlock and sectoral stagnation, fail to match expenditure growth driven by entitlements, defense commitments, and - ironically - debt service itself. Each year's deficit adds to debt stock, which raises next year's service costs, which widens future deficits.

Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates suggest U.S. federal debt cannot rationally exceed roughly 210% of GDP as an outer limit - a threshold that current healthcare cost growth could reach within two decades. Markets typically impose discipline well before theoretical limits. When confidence erodes sufficiently, crisis arrives suddenly.

Kitchen Tables Buckling Under Weight

Sovereign debt attracts political attention, yet household balance sheets show equally troubling patterns. Consumer debt reached $18.19 trillion in Q1 2026 according to Equifax data released May 28. That aggregate - encompassing credit cards, auto loans, student debt, and other obligations - masks severe distributional stresses threatening both individual welfare and aggregate demand.

Credit card delinquencies have risen to levels unseen since 2008-2009. Between Q3 2022 and Q1 2026, balances 90+ days delinquent jumped from 7.6% to 12.8%. Federal Reserve Bank of New York data from August 2026 shows these transition rates into serious delinquency remain elevated even as headline economic growth appears stable.

Student loans present particularly intractable challenges. Total outstanding: $1.66 trillion as of Q1 2026. Payment resumption following pandemic forbearance generated severe adjustment shocks. Delinquency rates hit 10.3% of balances 90+ days past due in Q1 2026, up from 9.6% in Q4 2025, with further deterioration expected as temporary relief expires. Unlike other debt categories, student loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy, creating permanent drags on borrower capacity.

Auto loan delinquencies reached unprecedented highs per FRBNY data from May 2026. Behind these numbers lie structural conditions, not individual mismanagement: vehicle price inflation during 2021-2023, subsequent rate increases raising monthly payments, and wage growth failing to match cost-of-living adjustments.

Housing markets compound pressures. Mortgage rates near 6.57% in Spring 2026 - down from 2023 peaks but far above 3% rates many homeowners locked in during refinancing booms - created "rate lock-in" effects freezing turnover. Supply constraints maintain prices excluding first-time buyers. Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard data shows units affordable to households earning $75,000 or less dropped 60% from March 2019 to March 2026, creating generations of permanent renters or multi-generational households.

Consumer credit cycles enter dangerous phases when households exhaust pandemic-era savings and increasingly rely on credit to maintain consumption patterns. Rising delinquencies prompt lenders tightening standards, reducing availability precisely when households need it most. Such procyclical dynamics amplify downturns.

Empty Towers, Broken Loans

Commercial real estate illustrates delayed crisis dynamics perhaps better than any other sector. A $1.5 trillion "debt wall" approaches in 2026-2027 - loans originated during 2019-2021 low-rate environments now requiring refinancing at substantially higher costs. Approximately $875 billion in commercial and multifamily mortgages mature during 2026 alone. Borrowers face debt service coverage ratio trips, cash management challenges, and carve-out exposure threatening equity positions.

Office properties constitute epicenters. Hybrid work arrangements, initially viewed as temporary pandemic adaptations, proved structurally durable. Central business district occupancy remains 30-40% below pre-pandemic norms in many major markets, rendering obsolete vast Class B and C office inventories. Valuation compression has been severe; some metropolitan office markets saw price declines exceeding 50% from 2019 peaks.

Banking system exposure creates systemic vulnerabilities. Regional banks hold disproportionate commercial real estate loan shares relative to money center institutions, facing capital erosion as losses mount. By June 2026, nearly $37 billion in commercial real estate loans - 1.17% of all bank-held loans - were delinquent. While below 9% post-2008 levels, trajectories concern regulators and market participants.

Federal Reserve stress testing identifies commercial real estate concentration risk as primary regional banking vulnerability. Institutions with exposures exceeding 300% of risk-based capital face heightened scrutiny; several raised capital at distressed valuations or sought strategic alternatives. Metropolitan Bank's failure in early 2026, costing FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund approximately $19.7 million, exemplifies these pressures.

More troubling than realized losses is valuation uncertainty. Transaction volumes collapsed - buyer-seller bid-ask spreads remain too wide for price discovery. Banks face "extend and pretend" incentives avoiding loss recognition. Such dynamics, familiar from Japan's 1990s experience, transform acute crises into chronic stagnation as zombie assets clog balance sheets and impede credit creation.

Regional banks serve as primary small and medium enterprise credit intermediaries; their impairment threatens employment and investment far beyond real estate markets. 2023's Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic failures previewed dynamics that could recur if commercial real estate losses accelerate.

Gold's Warning, Dollar's Contradictions

Monetary instability appears not merely in inflation statistics - August 2026's 3.4% annual rate, improved from 2022 peaks yet above Federal Reserve targets - but in alternative store-of-value behavior. Gold prices reached record highs above $5,589 in early 2026, then corrected to approximately $4,360 by September, exhibiting volatility signaling deep uncertainty about fiat stability.

Such price action reveals investor ambivalence. Unprecedented gold rallies suggested profound dollar purchasing power and sovereign debt sustainability concerns. Corrections to $4,360 reflected profit-taking and temporary dollar strength, yet continued elevation well above norms indicates persistent non-fiat reserve demand. Central bank gold accumulation continues at rates unseen since Bretton Woods collapse.

Dollar positioning shows similar contradictions. Against major currency baskets, dollar indices show resilience, yet strength masks underlying fragility. Foreign Treasury holdings grew concentrated among allied nations, while strategic competitors systematically reduced exposure. Petrodollar systems underpinning dollar hegemony since the 1970s face structural challenges as energy exporters increasingly accept alternative settlement currencies.

Currency swap arrangements between non-U.S. central banks proliferate, creating parallel payment systems bypassing dollar intermediation. While remaining small relative to global trade volumes, growth trajectories suggest gradual, persistent erosion of dollar network effects. Transitions from unipolar monetary systems to fragmented, multipolar arrangements carry profound fiscal sustainability implications; reserve currency status historically permitted deficit financing at lower costs than otherwise possible.

Cryptocurrency complexes, despite periodic collapses and regulatory crackdowns, continue attracting capital flight from distressed jurisdictions. Bitcoin and Ethereum volatility serves as barometer for traditional monetary arrangement confidence. Continued existence and periodic rallies suggest persistent government-issued currency alternatives demand, even among populations never experiencing developing-nation hyperinflations.

Contagion Beyond Borders

No September 2026 economic analysis completes without examining international dimensions. Modern financial market interconnectedness ensures distress anywhere becomes distress everywhere - transmitted through trade flows, capital movements, and contagion effects defying geographic boundaries.

Over 54 countries currently stand in or near debt distress per International Monetary Fund assessments. That figure, representing over one-quarter of world nations, encompasses economies ranging from small island states to major regional powers. JPMorgan EMBI spreads between emerging-market dollar debt and U.S. Treasuries widened 17 basis points to 268 basis points since late February 2026, with particular stress in Egyptian debt (44 basis point widening) and Turkish obligations (36 basis point increases).

Argentina continues perpetual crisis-stabilization cycles, with inflation moderating from catastrophic levels yet structural vulnerabilities remaining unaddressed. Pakistan and Egypt, heavily dependent upon IMF support and Gulf state beneficence, face refinancing cliffs potentially triggering broader regional instability. World Bank reports indicate 29% of low-income country bonds mature by 2026, creating refinancing walls that could overwhelm available resources if market conditions deteriorate.

Structural shifts in emerging market debt composition offer limited comfort. While many nations reduced foreign currency-denominated obligations - lowering exchange rate shock vulnerabilities - remaining dollar debt concentrates in sectors with limited revenue flexibility. Sovereign borrowers shifting to local currency issuance find themselves paying substantially higher rates, as domestic capital markets demand inflation premia international investors once absorbed.

China's economic slowdown compounds pressures. As world's largest trading nation and commodity importer, Chinese demand contraction transmits directly to emerging market exporters. African nations financing infrastructure through Chinese lending face not merely debt service difficulties but export revenue collapses that might otherwise fund obligations. Latin American commodity producers confront simultaneous demand weakness and dollar strength increasing real debt burdens.

Global trade fragmentation into competing blocs - Western, Chinese, and non-aligned - further complicates adjustment mechanisms. Nations can no longer count on export-led growth resolving balance of payments difficulties when major markets impose tariff and non-tariff barriers. World Trade Organization dispute settlement paralysis leaves aggrieved parties without recourse, encouraging unilateral measures compounding fragmentation.

Institutions Showing Wear

Beyond specific debt figures or delinquency rates, 2026 reveals institutional framework degradation that previously stabilized economic fluctuations. Federal Reserve balance sheet expansion to unprecedented pandemic-era levels now confronts impossible trinities: price stability, full employment, and financial stability - with policy choices addressing one objective frequently worsening others.

"Higher for longer" interest rate environments necessary for inflation combat expose vulnerabilities accumulated during near-zero rate decades. Pension funds, insurance companies, and institutional investors extending duration to capture yield now face mark-to-market losses threatening solvency. Liability-driven investment strategies nearly collapsing UK gilt markets in 2022 remain prevalent in U.S. institutional portfolios, creating latent systemic risks.

Shadow banking - non-bank financial intermediation - expanded filling gaps left by regulated institutions subject to post-2008 capital requirements. Private credit funds, direct lending platforms, and fintech-enabled leverage now constitute parallel financial systems whose opacity frustrates risk assessment. When stress emerges in these channels, traditional lender-of-last-resort facilities may prove inadequate or inappropriate.

Labor markets, while showing low unemployment by headline measures, reveal structural deterioration beneath surfaces. Prime-age male labor force participation remains depressed by standards from earlier decades. Gig economies transformed stable employment into contingent arrangements lacking benefits and income predictability. Artificial intelligence adoption, while boosting aggregate productivity, threatens displacement in specific sectors potentially overwhelming retraining and transition support systems.

Demographic headwinds compound challenges. Developed economy population aging strains pension and healthcare systems precisely when debt service requirements escalate. Worker-to-dependent ratios continue declining, threatening tax bases that must support both elderly benefits and debt service. Immigration, which might address labor shortages, faces political opposition constraining policy responses.

"The real problem isn't any single vulnerability in isolation. It's how they correlate. When sovereign debt stress, household financial distress, commercial real estate deterioration, and banking fragility hit simultaneously, standard diversification strategies stop working. No asset class thrives when everything else falters. No jurisdiction offers refuge when contagion goes global. We've essentially made one big bet - that monetary expansion and fiscal forbearance can continue indefinitely. Eventually, that bet runs into basic arithmetic."

Reading the Dashboard: September 2026 Data:

Why the Warning Signs Go Unnoticed

Surface-level indicators in September 2026 create strange disconnects. Consumer confidence indices fluctuate yet remain above typical recessionary thresholds. Equity markets, despite volatility, trade near highs by some measures. Unemployment at 4.1% as of August 2026 appears benign.

Several factors explain gaps between quantitative reality and qualitative perception. Asset price inflation during 2020-2021 created substantial wealth effects continuing to support consumption among asset-owning households. Homeowners and equity portfolio holders feel wealthier than underlying conditions suggest, even as renters and non-asset owners face unprecedented affordability constraints.

Normalization of extraordinary monetary policy shifted baseline expectations. Generations of investors and consumers never experienced genuine tightening cycles; brief 2023-2024 rate increases were followed by expectations of renewed accommodation. "Higher for longer" concepts remain psychologically unavailable to market participants building careers during secular interest rate declines beginning in the early 1980s.

Government transfer payments and forbearance programs masked underlying income instability. Student loan payment pauses, mortgage forbearance options, and expanded pandemic-era unemployment benefits created official support expectations that may not sustain. When these programs expire - and many are scheduled for late 2026 and early 2027 - true household balance sheet fragility becomes apparent.

Denial psychology operates institutionally too. Regulatory forbearance allows banks avoiding loan loss recognition. Accounting standards provide asset valuation latitude permitting "mark to model" rather than "mark to market" approaches. Credit rating agencies, chastened by 2008 failures, may overcompensate through excessive issuer optimism.

Collective denial serves short-term functional purposes. If all market participants simultaneously acknowledged vulnerabilities described here, resulting panic would become self-fulfilling. Yet denial costs include postponed adjustment magnifying eventual dislocation. Delayed recognition brings more severe ultimate reckonings.

Sector by Sector: Where the Pressure Builds

Technology, despite artificial intelligence enthusiasm, entered consolidation phases marked by layoffs and valuation compression. "Magnificent Seven" stocks driving 2023-2024 returns showed divergent performance, some facing regulatory challenges, others confronting demand saturation. Venture capital funding contracted dramatically from 2021 peaks, forcing startups into down rounds or closures.

Healthcare costs escalate inexorably, with implications for federal budgets and household finances. Medicare Hospital Insurance trust funds face depletion during mid-2030s under current projections, yet political gridlock prevents structural reforms ensuring sustainability. Pharmaceutical price controls, while popular, may reduce innovation incentives generating mRNA technologies crucial to pandemic responses.

Energy markets exhibit volatility characteristic of transition periods. Renewable capacity additions continue at record rates, yet fossil fuels retain transportation and industrial dominance. Geopolitical supply chain disruptions - whether from Middle Eastern conflicts, Russian sanctions, or shipping interruptions - create price spikes feeding through inflation metrics and consumer sentiment.

Manufacturing, despite reshoring rhetoric, struggles with competitiveness against Chinese and other Asian producers. Domestic production capital intensity, combined with regulatory compliance costs and labor market rigidities, limits industrial recovery pace. Tariffs and trade barriers, while providing temporary protection, raise input costs and invite retaliation harming export-oriented sectors.

Agriculture faces climate-related stresses compounding traditional cyclical challenges. Drought conditions in major producing regions, combined with water rights disputes and input cost inflation, threaten farm profitability and food security. Foreign agricultural land ownership, increasing over 40% between 2016 and 2024 with Chinese entities controlling approximately 384,000 acres, raises national security concerns intersecting economic policy.

Policy Gridlock and Institutional Constraints

Responses to accumulating stresses proved notably inadequate. Monetary authorities, having exhausted conventional tools during previous crises, face constraints limiting new shock responses. Federal Reserve cannot cut rates substantially without reigniting inflation; cannot raise them without triggering debt service crises described earlier. Quantitative tightening reduced balance sheet holdings, yet remaining reserves and securities still represent extraordinary intervention by past standards.

Fiscal policy faces similar constraints. With debt service consuming nearly 14% of federal outlays and projections exceeding 15% within two years, substantial new spending initiatives face automatic opposition from deficit hawks and market vigilantes. Tax increases, while potentially necessary for sustainability, face political opposition making enactment improbable. Results include passive tightening through inflation and bracket creep falling most heavily upon middle-income households.

Regulatory policy oscillates between permissiveness and restriction without coherent strategy. Environmental mandates increase energy-intensive industry costs; financial regulations impose compliance burdens favoring large institutions over regional competitors; labor regulations create rigidities impeding adjustment. Cumulative effects discourage investment necessary for productivity growth.

International coordination broke down precisely when most needed. G20, IMF, and World Bank lack credibility and resources addressing systemic risks transcending national boundaries. Currency wars, trade disputes, and technological competition replaced cooperation characterizing post-2008 crisis management. Each nation pursues narrowly defined self-interest, ignoring collective action problems requiring coordinated solutions.

How Crises Spread

Understanding localized stress becoming systemic crisis requires examining transmission mechanisms. Most obvious channels are financial: losses in one sector force asset sales depressing prices in others, creating mark-to-market losses triggering further forced selling. Reflexivity - described by George Soros - can transform modest corrections into cascading collapses when leverage proves pervasive.

Credit channels operate similarly. Rising delinquencies in one sector prompt lenders tightening standards across all sectors, reducing availability precisely when most needed smoothing consumption and investment. Credit creation's procyclical nature amplifies business cycles, transforming mild downturns into severe recessions.

Confidence channels prove most dangerous because least susceptible to policy intervention. When economic agents lose future faith, they reduce spending and investment regardless of interest rates or fiscal stimulus. Animal spirit collapses become self-fulfilling as reduced demand generates feared outcomes. Money velocity declines, rendering monetary expansion ineffective.

International transmission occurs through trade, capital flows, and commodity prices. Developed economy recessions reduce emerging market export demand; capital flight from distressed jurisdictions raises global funding costs; commodity price collapses devastate resource-dependent economies. Dollar reserve currency status creates additional complications: dollar strength during crisis periods raises real debt burdens for dollar-denominated borrowers worldwide.

Learning from the Past - Carefully

Students of economic history naturally seek parallels. 1970s stagflation offers lessons about inflation control difficulties once expectations become unanchored, yet today's debt levels far exceed that era's. 2008 financial crises demonstrate confidence evaporation speeds, but current vulnerabilities distribute differently - across sovereign balance sheets rather than subprime mortgages. Japan's 1990s experiences illustrate failure-to-recognize-loss costs, yet Japan's current account surpluses provided cushions unavailable to contemporary deficit nations.

Each analogue breaks at crucial points. Global integration of modern financial markets, derivative exposure scales, information transmission speeds, and current political fragmentation create unique conjunctures defying simple comparison. Past knowledge provides essential context, yet cannot substitute for present condition analysis.

What history teaches unequivocally: unsustainable trajectories eventually correct. Debt growing faster than income cannot be serviced indefinitely. Asset prices exceeding fundamental values eventually revert. Political systems failing economic challenges lose legitimacy. Correction timing remains inherently unpredictable, dependent upon specific catalysts and confidence thresholds unobservable directly until breached.

Possible Paths Ahead

As 2026 progresses toward conclusion, several scenarios appear plausible, though relative probabilities shift with each data release and policy announcement.

"Soft landing" scenarios, still embraced by official forecasts, assume inflation moderating without triggering recession, debt service costs stabilizing as growth outpaces interest rates, and structural reforms addressing long-term challenges before they become acute. These outcomes, while theoretically possible, require assumptions about productivity growth, demographic adjustment, and political compromise appearing increasingly heroic.

"Stagflationary drift" scenarios envision continued moderate growth accompanied by persistent inflation and gradual living standard erosion. Here, debt service consumes growing national income shares, investment lags depreciation, and each generation finds itself materially worse off than predecessors. Japanification hypotheses applied to the United States - prolonged malaise rather than acute crisis.

"Sudden stop" scenarios involve sovereign debt confidence losses triggering currency crises, capital controls, and emergency austerity. Foreign investors refusing maturing obligation rollovers force either default or monetization generating hyperinflation. These extremes become more probable as debt levels rise and political dysfunction prevents preemptive adjustment.

"Contagion cascade" scenarios begin with shocks in one sector or jurisdiction transmitting globally through financial linkages. Major sovereign defaults, banking system collapses, or geopolitical events trigger reflexive dynamics described earlier, overwhelming policy responses and generating economic contractions exceeding anything since the 1930s.

Each scenario implies different optimal household, investor, and policymaker strategies. Yet uncertainty surrounding which materializes - indeed, possibilities that elements might combine unforeseen ways - paralyzes decision-making and encourages short-termism exacerbating underlying vulnerabilities.

What Comes Next

Analysis presented here suggests 2026's remainder and 2027's opening will prove decisive. Milestones loom: fiscal year 2026 conclusions with projected $2.67 trillion deficits; student loan payment full-scale resumption; commercial real estate loan maturities that cannot be refinanced at current rates; and potential geopolitical events disrupting energy markets or trade flows.

Policy responses to these challenges determine whether systems stabilize or deteriorate more rapidly. Technical sovereign obligation defaults remain unlikely immediately; the United States retains reserve currency status and deep domestic capital markets providing financing flexibility unavailable to emerging markets. Yet financing costs - measured in inflation, currency depreciation, or future tax burdens - continue escalating.

Household imperatives center on debt reduction and liquidity maintenance. Variable-rate obligation holders face rising service costs; fixed-rate asset holders benefit from inflation eroding real debt burdens. Monetary policy distributional consequences - favoring asset owners over wage earners - will continue shaping political economy.

Investor challenges involve navigating volatility while preserving capital. Traditional diversification strategies may prove inadequate when correlations converge toward unity during crisis periods. Searches for uncorrelated returns - whether commodities, alternative assets, or geographic diversification - will intensify even as such opportunities become scarcer.

Policymaker windows for preemptive adjustment narrow daily. Structural entitlement program, tax structure, and regulatory framework reforms require political capital dissipating as elections approach and polarization intensifies. Temptations postponing difficult choices - hoping growth resolves arithmetic impossibilities - will prove irresistible until markets impose discipline more painfully than voluntary adjustments would have required.

Final Assessment

September 2026's economy has not collapsed. Production and exchange machinery continues functioning; most citizens maintain employment and shelter; governance and finance institutions retain forms if not substance. Yet quantitative evidence assembled here - $40 trillion debt, $1.3 trillion interest burdens, 12.8% credit card delinquency rates, $875 billion commercial real estate maturity walls, 54 distressed nations - suggests systems approaching limits that cannot be indefinitely extended.

Questions are not whether adjustments occur, but when and in what forms. Postponements through accounting gimmicks, regulatory forbearance, and monetary accommodation make eventual manifestations more severe. Societies borrowing $2.67 trillion in single years to maintain consumption cannot do so indefinitely. Arithmetic remains inexorable, even when politics refuses acknowledgment.

What emerges from this analysis is not imminent catastrophe prediction but fragility recognition demanding preparation. Specific crisis triggers - whether sovereign defaults, banking panics, currency collapses, or geopolitical shocks - matter less than underlying conditions making such triggers effective. Those conditions are now present to degrees unmatched since 2008, and in certain respects unmatched in modern experience.

Careful observers tracking data without official optimism or partisan narrative filters can see signs. They appear in monthly Treasury statements, quarterly household debt reports, daily credit spread and currency market movements. They accumulate between headline silences, in financial statement footnotes, in budget projection assumptions.

Acknowledging these vulnerabilities is not pessimism surrender but rationality exercise that economic analysis demands. Problem recognition precedes all problem addressing. Evidence presented here suggests recognition is long overdue, and further delay costs will be measured in trillions of dollars and millions of livelihoods. Systems continue running, but those paying close attention can hear the strain.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 21:45

New York Is Hemorrhaging Young People To Philadelphia

New York continues to attract ambitious young people, but apparently it’s also getting pretty good at showing them the door.

The metro area recorded the largest net loss of Gen Z residents in the country in 2024, with nearly 30,000 more young adults leaving than arriving, according to Census data analyzed by Redfin, according to the NY Post. Millennials were even more eager to pack up, producing a net outflow of almost 43,000 people ages 28 to 43.

The Post writes that a sizable portion of those departures didn’t involve moving halfway across the country. More than 9,200 Gen Z residents went from the New York metro area to Philadelphia, making it the second-busiest migration route for that generation nationwide. Only the roughly 60-mile move from Los Angeles to Riverside attracted more Gen Z movers.

The economics aren’t particularly difficult to understand. Redfin estimates a typical New York-area home costs roughly $832,000, compared with about $309,000 in Philadelphia. That leaves plenty of room for someone to trade New York for a cheaper city while remaining close enough to friends, family and jobs in the Northeast.

And then there are New York’s famously welcoming taxes. Between state and city income taxes, eye-watering housing costs and the general expense of existing within the five boroughs, New York has constructed a fairly impressive financial obstacle course for anyone trying to accumulate savings or buy a home.

Apparently, some younger residents have discovered that one solution to the affordability problem is simply crossing a state line.

The trend extends beyond New York. Los Angeles also experienced sizable departures, with San Diego and Riverside among the most common destinations for Gen Z movers. Millennials, meanwhile, gravitated toward metros including Houston, Dallas, Baltimore, Las Vegas and Atlanta, where housing generally remains considerably cheaper than in the largest coastal cities.

The numbers suggest younger Americans aren’t necessarily searching for the absolute cheapest place to live. Instead, many appear to be making relatively short moves that improve affordability or employment prospects while keeping their existing social and professional connections within reach.

Redfin based its findings on the Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey, defining adult Gen Zers as ages 19 to 27 and millennials as ages 28 to 43.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 21:20

The West Might Soon Ramp Up Its Pressure On India To Distance Itself From Russia

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

The US and France seem to be coordinating a concerted pressure operation against India...

Popular Russian outlet Izvestia raised awareness of a paywalled Bloomberg report alleging that India might reduce its import of Russian oil, which was 45% of its total last month, to avoid US tariffs of up to 100% after Trump recently signed into law a bill empowering him to punish Russia's top energy partners. Earlier in September, "India's Top Diplomat Signaled That It'll Defy Any New US Pressure Over Its Russian Oil Purchases", which are considered to be indirectly essential to its national security.

Such pressure might soon pile up too, however, as suggested by more than just the aforesaid punitive tariff bill's passing. The US and China are negotiating an extension to their trade war truce ahead of Xi's visit later this week. The current disagreements primarily concern its duration according to the Financial Times. In the event that any such extension is ultimately agreed to, then the US presumably won't impose punitive tariffs on China for its Russian oil purchases, which would draw attention to India's.

Although the US benefits from India's Russo-American balancing act since the strategic benefits that India derives most effectively empower it to serve as a counterweight of sorts to China, Trump 2.0 might nevertheless become "geopolitically greedy" and want the US to become India's senior partner. In that scenario, the threat of punitive tariffs over its Russian oil imports could be leveraged as a Damocles' sword to pressure India into gradually reducing them in parallel with joining the West's Hormuz coalition.

About that, the French Foreign Minister proposed jointly working with India on ensuring "freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait" during talks with his counterpart on the sidelines of the UNGA. This coincided with the French and US presidents agreeing to work on the Hormuz dimension according to Emmanuel Macron's tweet after his talks with Trump. India's potential participation in the West's Hormuz coalition, albeit under tariff duress if it happens, would be significant.

For starters, it would signify that the US decided to pressure India over its Russian oil imports while turning a blind eye to China's for the duration of their likely extended trade war truce, thus suggesting that the US is more comfortable bullying India on this issue than China.

Second, India's participation would confirm that such tariff-related pressure was successfully weaponized by the US,

...with the third significance being that India joined the coalition in order to unlock alternative oil supplies to Russia's.

Fourth, Russian policymakers would notice the US' successful policy of coercing India through tariffs-related pressure into distancing itself from their country, which could lead to them concluding that it's incapable of functioning as a reliable counterbalance to China.

The implication is that Russia might tighten its embrace of China with all that could entail for ties with India. And finally, India's association with a Western naval coalition could harm its hard-earned neutral reputation in the Global South's eyes.

France's involvement in coordinating what seems to be a concerted pressure campaign by the US against India is notable since it's now India's second-largest arms partner and has been eroding Russia's market share over the past decade. It therefore can't be ruled out that the US might threaten more CAATSA sanctions against India if its threatened tariffs are successful in order to accelerate the aforesaid trend. India's participation in the West's Hormuz coalition might thus bode ill for its future ties with Russia.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 20:55

NYC Tossed Out Roughly 46,000 NYPD Civil Summonses Last Year Due To Errors

New York City is throwing out tens of thousands of low-level summonses issued by the NYPD, with the department’s reliance on pen-and-paper ticketing contributing to the problem, according to Gothamist.

Of roughly 98,000 civil summonses issued by police during the last fiscal year, about 46,000 were dismissed by the city’s administrative court system, according to data obtained by Gothamist. That works out to roughly 47%.

The tickets stem from offenses such as drinking alcohol in public, public urination, illegal vending and pedicab violations. Many never survive the administrative process because of paperwork problems rather than the underlying allegation.

The NYPD remains unusual among city agencies because officers still issue civil summonses entirely by hand. That can produce everything from unreadable writing and incorrect violation codes to omitted details and mistakes made when paper records are later entered into city databases.

Example of civil summons (Gothamist)

City watchdogs flagged the issue years ago. A 2020 Department of Investigation review recommended moving agencies away from paper summonses and toward digital ticketing. The NYPD at one point agreed to make the transition but has yet to implement an electronic system.

Gothamist writes that other departments have already moved in that direction. The Department of Buildings now issues about 80% of its summonses electronically. Its dismissal rate last fiscal year was approximately 13%, far below the NYPD’s 47%.

Government transparency and legal advocates argue the current system burns administrative resources while requiring people to contest tickets that may be invalid from the outset. City Councilmember Gale Brewer is considering legislation that could force the NYPD to switch to electronic summonses.

The NYPD maintains that officers are properly enforcing the law and says many of the dismissed cases failed because of procedural or paperwork errors rather than the substance of the alleged violations. The department says additional officer training is underway to reduce those mistakes.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 20:30

Pentagon Unveils New Testing Process For US Generals

Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times,

The Pentagon is changing its process for promoting generals, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on Sept. 22.

Hegseth announced the new process, known as the Joint Warfighter Evaluation, in a video posted on X.

Today, I am announcing the Joint Warfighter Evaluation. pic.twitter.com/F0JIfbmEKs

— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) September 22, 2026

Its goal is to reduce bureaucracy and ensure meritocracy across senior ranks, he said.

Starting this year, colonels and Navy captains screening to be a one-star general will undergo the assessment, according to Hegseth.

“While the backbone of our military is our NCOs and our petty officers, victory depends on the commanders who lead them,” he said.

“America needs warfighters who can master a chaotic battle space.”

Hegseth cited Gen. George Marshall using the Louisiana Maneuvers, a massive series of military exercises to prepare U.S. forces before entering World War II.

He said that this kind of testing brought out military leaders such as Dwight Eisenhower, who planned and conducted the U.S. invasion of Normandy and led the liberation of Western Europe; Adm. Chester Nimitz, who led Allied air, land and sea in the Pacific theater during World War II; and Army Gen. Omar Bradley, the first chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who led the U.S. military’s policymaking during the Korean War.

The Joint Warfighter Evaluation “brings that standard to the modern multi-domain fight,” Hegseth said.

“This evaluation is an objective equalizer. The scenario only cares about operational decisions under pressure.”

Hegseth recalled that a year ago he tasked Stuart Scheller, deputy chief of staff to the under secretary of war for personnel and readiness, to challenge years of the promotion process.

“Our troops deserve commanders chosen by proven competence, not paper credentials,” Hegseth said.

“The Joint Warfighter Evaluation ensures our flag is carried by our most lethal and most adaptable leaders.”

Hegseth has emphasized what he calls the “warrior ethos,” pushing for battle-ready personnel based on a high level of fitness. He has criticized what he said has been diversity, equity, and inclusion standards in promoting individuals.

“Real toxic leadership is endangering subordinates with low standards. Real toxic leadership is promoting people based on immutable characteristics or quotas instead of based on merit,” Hegseth told senior military leaders last year in Quantico, Virginia.

While the process of promotion to general is being changed, the Joint Warfighter evaluation is not replacing the existing promotion process, Scheller told Fox News Digital. Rather, it is a factor in addition to performance reports and an officer’s career record.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 20:05

White House Cancels Coverage For 750,000 ACA Enrollees, Citing Fraud

Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday that about 750,000 people on Affordable Care Act plans were never entitled to the coverage, and that pulling their subsidies will save taxpayers $2.2 billion. Mehmet Oz, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, stood with him. The savings number is an administration estimate. The Congressional Budget Office has not scored it.

CMS had already acted. Rulemaking documents posted Tuesday in the Federal Register say the agency canceled 315,000 marketplace policies on Aug. 31, covering roughly 760,000 people, which the rule describes as unauthorized enrollments submitted through agents and brokers. Vance's 750,000 and the 760,000 covered lives are the same purge, counted two ways.

Officials also plan another pass at about 419,000 current enrollees, checking legal residency first and income second. "We are actually making sure that people receiving Obamacare subsidies are actually entitled to receive them," Vance said. "Amazingly we weren't doing that before."

Brokers are next. CMS sent notices of intent to terminate to 569 agents and brokers who filed statistically implausible rates of 2026 applications without identifying information, such as a Social Security number. A separate interim-final rule freezes new agent and broker registrations until Feb. 1, 2027, before the usual comment period runs. Administration officials said 40 brokers accounted for about 50,000 suspect enrollments and $45 million in subsidies. The National Association of Benefits and Insurance Professionals said a blanket freeze punishes licensed agents who did nothing wrong and will leave consumers with fewer people to call during open enrollment.

Centene fell as much as 3.9 percent on the first headlines. Molina dropped as much as 3.5 percent, Elevance 1.9 percent, UnitedHealth 1.4 percent. Those firms write a large share of exchange business. Federal premium tax credits are paid to the insurer, not the enrollee.

How The Administration Is Using The Word

Part of the case is conventional fraud. Brokers collect commissions from insurers. After Congress fattened the premium tax credits, a lot of low-income plans carried a $0 net premium, so a policy could be opened without the customer ever seeing a bill. CMS recorded roughly 275,000 complaints in an eight-month stretch of 2024 from people who said they had been enrolled or switched without consent. In February, a brokerage president and a marketing-company CEO were sentenced to 20 years each for a scheme that sought more than $233 million in subsidies. HHS has separately said more than a million marketplace enrollments listed no Social Security number.

The rest is a verification net the last administration loosened and this one is pulling tight: income attestations, immigration paperwork, employer coverage, automatic re-enrollment onto free plans.

The Government Accountability Office has found the same weak controls and has not signed off on the claim that millions of current enrollees are fake. GAO flagged at least 160,000 federal-marketplace applications in plan year 2024 for likely unauthorized changes, about 1.5 percent of the relevant pool. It found about 68,000 Social Security numbers used for more than a year of subsidized coverage in 2024; one number appeared on 125 policies. About $94 million in subsidies went out on numbers that matched the death file. Undercover testers got fictitious applicants approved at very high rates, and most of the 2025 fakes were still drawing subsidies months later. GAO has described that work as a set of risk indicators, not a census.

HHS and the Paragon Health Institute produce the bigger tallies. Paragon compares people who signed up claiming income between 100 and 150 percent of poverty - the band that unlocked the largest subsidies - with Census estimates of how many people in that band could even qualify. Whatever is left over gets labeled improper. HHS instead measures how many enrollees in that band filed no claims, against historical norms. HHS put the peak at 5.6 million in 2025 and said 2.6 million are still on the books. Paragon's 2026 figure is about 6.2 million, or 27 percent of open-enrollment selections, with a possible price tag of $25 billion.

Census income is not the projected income the marketplace uses. The survey misses low-income households. People with no claims get counted as phantoms; they are also just people who did not go to the doctor, or who bought a bronze plan with a deductible they never hit. In June, a federal judge in Maryland vacated most of a 2025 rule the administration had justified with Paragon-style estimates, ruling that CMS had overridden the statute. CMS's own paperwork this week floated a different improper-spending figure for 2026: up to $6.6 billion.

Enrollment Was Already Falling

Exchange enrollment ran from about 12 million early in the Biden term to a peak near 24 million once the extra subsidies landed and verification eased. Congress let those add-on credits expire. Premiums jumped, in some markets doubling. By February, effectuated enrollment was about 19.2 million, down 13 percent from a year earlier and the sharpest drop since the exchanges opened.

The White House credits integrity work. KFF and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities credit the price spike. A phantom account that never should have existed and a family that quit after the bill hit $200 a month both show up as cancellations.

Open enrollment starts Nov. 1. Midterms are Nov. 3. Earlier this month Trump told a Republican midterm convention in Dallas that his "Great Healthcare Plan" would "stop all government payments to the big insurance companies."

Some of the 760,000 were never patients. They were names on a file, opened without their knowledge. Killing those policies stops a check to an insurer and a commission to a broker. Some of the 419,000 in the next pass will lose coverage because they cannot produce papers on the new timeline, including people who were eligible. Democrats have been saying that out loud for months: fraud talk as the instrument for a coverage cut Congress already started by killing the extra subsidies.

CMS has stopped payment on the August book and is closing the broker door. It has not released a table that splits the 760,000 into fictitious accounts, unauthorized switches, income or immigration mismatches, and eligible people who missed a form. Without that, $2.2 billion is still an estimate and 750,000 is a cancellation count.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 19:40

At Least 150 Killed In Yemen Within Two Days Amid Indiscriminate Saudi Air Campaign

Authored by News Desk via The Cradle,

At least 150 people have been killed in Yemen since Sunday as Saudi warplanes launch indiscriminate strikes across the country and clashes continue between Ansarallah-led forces and Riyadh-backed proxies.

(Photo credit: Reuters)

"The death toll from Saudi airstrikes, clashes, and artillery fire in the governorates of Taiz, Al-Jawf, Marib and Saada stands at 118," AFP reported on 22 September, citing what it said were Ansarallah-linked military sources.

Sources close to the internationally recognized government, supported by Riyadh, say 36 of their fighters have been killed, according to AFP.

Sirens sounded in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday due to more Yemeni strikes launched in response to the kingdom's aggression against Yemen.

Hours earlier, Saudi strikes killed several people in Yemen.

An early morning strike by the Saudi-led coalition, targeting a residential home in the city of Mokha, in Yemen's Taiz Governorate, killed six people, including two infants and a woman.

BREAKING | Saudi airstrikes on a residential area in Mokha, southwestern Yemen, leave six civilians dead and eight wounded.

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) September 21, 2026

Several others were injured. Overnight, Yemen's retaliatory military operations triggered sirens across the kingdom.

"From Monday evening until Tuesday morning, Saudi Arabia experienced one of its most difficult nights as a state of alert and anxiety turned into a permanent and pressing condition - from Najran, Asir, Jizan, and Abha to Jeddah, Yanbu, and Al-Ula - amid the escalation of Yemeni deterrence," Yemeni news outlet Al-Masirah TV reported.

A day earlier, the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) said Saudi Arabia has launched over 900 strikes on Yemen since the latest escalation began several weeks ago.

"The Saudi enemy carried out 157 airstrikes and missile attacks targeting the governorates of Al-Jawf, Taiz, Saada, and Marib, using F-15 and Typhoon warplanes that took off from the Khamis Mushait and Taif air bases, along with missile attacks launched from Najran and Jizan," the YAF statement read.

Saudi-led coalition strikes Yemen’s Taiz as Ansarallah forces advance
——
Saudi-led coalition aircraft struck the Hayfan district in Yemen’s Taiz province, Al-Masirah TV reported. Local sources indicate the attack targeted a crowded market. The report did not provide details on… pic.twitter.com/otmO4AFQUk

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) September 21, 2026

"This brings the total number of airstrikes and missile attacks since the start of the escalation to 917," it added, stressing that the attacks will "not go unanswered."

Sanaa's recent retaliatory actions against Saudi Arabia were triggered by the kingdom's July attack on Sanaa International Airport, which has been under blockade by Riyadh for over a decade since it began its devastating war on Yemen in 2015, leading a coalition of Arab states.

Yemen has vowed to fully expel the Saudi-led coalition from Yemen. Last week, the YAF shot down a US-made Saudi F-15 warplane.

Maritime data revealed recently that Saudi Arabia has paused its oil exports. The YAF has hit several Saudi tankers in recent weeks.

Aramco sites across the country have also been repeatedly targeted, forcing facilities to shut down.

Forty-eight Saudi tankers have been rerouted away from the Bab al-Mandab Strait, according to a 19 August YAF statement.

An unclaimed attack recently targeted Saudi Arabia's key East-West Pipeline, causing severe damage.

Sanaa's forces have captured much of the western Yemeni coast and have seized multiple Red Sea islands formerly occupied by the UAE this month. Saudi and UAE-backed fighters have taken severe losses. Sanaa has also taken Bab al-Mandab.

Yemen has vowed to continue the "escalation for escalation" and "blockade for blockade" equation.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 19:15

California Declares State Of Emergency Ahead Of Strong El Niño

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Sept. 21 as the state prepares for what he described as the strongest El Niño storm season on record.

Newsom said the emergency declaration would allow state agencies to act more quickly for potential severe weather, including securing roads and critical infrastructure, positioning emergency supplies, and helping local partners to mitigate flood, landslide, and coastal risks.

"That is what this action is about. Giving communities the support they need, giving first responders the tools to do their jobs, and giving families the confidence that their state is ready," he said in a statement.

The proclamation directs state agencies to take measures to reduce flood risks and pre-position food-fighting supplies such as sandbags and pumps.

It prepares the California National Guard to assist flood response, search-and-rescue efforts, engineering, and logistics missions when needed, according to the governor's office.

The governor also instructed state environmental and natural resources agencies to expedite permitting for projects that are focused on addressing flooding, landslides, and debris flows in the state.

"Through the governor's state of emergency, we're cutting red tape and fast-tracking the flood-protection and broader preparedness work communities need now," California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said in a statement.

El Niño is a climate pattern marked by the warming of sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.

Newsom's office said California could experience repeated rounds of heavy rain, strong winds, landslides, debris flows, and coastal flooding in the coming months due to El Niño.

"We are preparing for this El Niño early because every Californian deserves to be safe in their home, connected to their community, and protected when severe weather comes," the governor said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecast a 75 percent chance that this year's El Niño, expected to occur between October and December, could become a historic event exceeding the strength of previous events recorded in 1950.

"With an event of this magnitude, the chances of experiencing impacts consistent with El Niño are larger, though not guaranteed," the weather agency said in a Sept. 10 advisory.

NOAA said there is more than a 90 percent chance that El Niño could reach "very strong" levels during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter.

California has already experienced coastal flooding this year attributed to the phenomenon, as El Niño-driven "Kelvin waves" raise sea levels and offshore Pacific hurricanes send strong waves that batter the California coast, according to the governor's office, which called on residents to prepare for potential severe weather.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 18:25

The Riots Never Came: Has The Protest Machine Stalled, Or Is It Regrouping

Summer has ended without riots.

In Part One, we examined whether Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's crackdown on NGOs was having an effect. We now revisit that question, examining the far-left groups and subversion networks involved in mounting a revolution against the U.S.

The National Network on Cuba released a "National Rapid Response Plan" that called for nationwide actions against U.S. bases, ICE, and other federal facilities. Nothing happened. Black Alliance for Peace published an interactive map of U.S. military bases, urging their followers to use the map to find facilities in their communities and "strategize how and where to organize and agitate." Again, Nothing happened.

The Marxist Neville Roy Singham network, which has become the primary driver of the protest-industrial complex nationwide, also seems to have lost its momentum despite opening up Liberation Centers across the country to organize protests. Despite their deep pockets and extensive infrastructure for mobilization, they also seem to be unable to mobilize large crowds of their comrades as they used to post-October 7th. ANTIFA, which was designated by the Trump administration as a domestic terrorist organization in September of 2025, also appears to be on its back heels and unable to take control of public space in the way they did in Portland during the Summer of Love riots of 2020.

So we must ask ourselves, why?

It is not as if Democrats have actually gathered the courage to oppose the rising extremist networks in their own party. Quite the opposite. Congressman Jerry Nadler even went on the record once and stated that ANTIFA is only an idea. Party leaders have had no choice but to embrace the far-left, such as DSA, even calling their party a "big tent." 

Gavin Newsom tacitly welcomes the DSA into the Democratic Party, saying he wants "a big tent party":

Gavin Newsom tacitly welcomes the DSA into the Democrat Party, saying he wants "a big tent party":

"I'm one of those Democrats that deeply believes in addition, not division and so, I want a big tent party. I want to win." pic.twitter.com/3rBVN4jdcG

— Julia 🇺🇸 (@Jules31415) July 13, 2026

The reason that the violent Marxist revolution against the West might be on its back heels is that the Cuban regime is on its back heels. This would prove Secretary Rubio's State Department correct in the theory that all revolutionary activist networks in the U.S. are in fact deeply connected to the Cuban regime and its intelligence service, all of whom have recently been sanctioned.

We laid this all out in December 2025:

In July, the State Department released a report titled "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism." The report outlined a sprawling 60-plus years of history between American far-left revolutionaries and how they were all influenced, trained, and working in coordination with the Cuban intelligence service and their front group, ICAP. In the beginning of the Castro regime, Students for a Democratic Society made a pilgrimage to Cuba, which marks the beginning of the Venceremos Brigade. Upon their return to America, the most radical members of SDS split off to form the Weather Underground, which would soon become America's most prominent domestic terrorist organization, who Cuba covertly supported during their campaign of violence.

It is hard for people today to imagine America experiencing regular bombings by left-wing radicals, but as per the State Department's report: "In one 18-month period between 1971 and 1972, the FBI counted some 2,500 bombings on American soil – a rate of nearly five a day."

The State Department has recently sanctioned the Cuban president, their intelligence service, ICAP, and ICAP's president Fernando González. And since this has happened, the "calls for revolution" by the Singham network and the National Network on Cuba - over 60 organizations - have not stopped, but have gone unanswered. The actions against Cuba and ICAP appear to have disrupted the revolutionary pipeline. 

As video evidence posted by Stu Smith of the Manhattan Institute has shown: everything the NNOC does is per the direction of ICAP. And now that ICAP is on their back heels, the revolution against America, capitalism, and democracy doesn't seem to be gaining ground anywhere except in politics, where the DSA - also partnered with ICAP - is supporting the Cuban regime and their ideology politically, but not via violent Marxist revolution.

Earlier on Tuesday, President Trump told the United Nations General Assembly in New York that Cuba has spent decades coordinating with far-left revolutionaries and subversion networks into the U.S. Trump said the State Department has worked to uncover Havana's ties to subversive and radical groups such as the Communist Party USA, Antifa, and the DSA. 

.@POTUS: The Cuban regime has also spent decades coordinating with left-wing radicals and Communist networks here in the United States. As our State Department has detailed, they have cultivated ties to subversive and radical groups such as the Communist Party USA, Antifa, and… pic.twitter.com/Bopz3W6sXz

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 22, 2026

The New York Post recently reported that Treasury officials are drafting a framework to audit NGOs suspected of exploiting their 501(c)(3) status for political activity, illegal conduct, or support of radical groups, which has only put left-wing billionaire foundations and donor-advised funds on notice. 

The question is whether the federal government's war on the radical left and the foreign subversion network that seeks to sow chaos has shaken that protest-industrial complex to its core. A source told the New York Post that officials were "like a dog with a bone" and reckoned that many NGOs and their donor bases could be "on borrowed time."

Also, the dismantling of USAID might have been another reason funding for riots is drying up, alongside the federal government's pressure on donor-advised funds and large left-wing foundations that are now thinking twice before funding riots and chaos as their 501(c)(3) status comes into the crosshairs. 

Then there's the complete fall of socialism across almost the entire South American region, as right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro could defeat socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva early next month in the Brazilian election and cement the entire continent's shift to the right. Shifting to Europe, the continent is set to "lurch right" according to Normua analysts. 

The riots never came, and the torching of small businesses seen during the BLM unrest was not repeated. The question now is whether that reflects diminished mobilization capacity, a shift in tactics, or a temporary lull. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 18:00

The Big State Monetary And Fiscal System Is Over

Authored by Daniel Lacalle via dlacalle.com,

In 2021, The Economist ran an entire number hailing "The Return of Big Government" as the end of the so-called - but inexistent in practice - "austerity" paradigm and the evidence that more spending and a big state was the solution to the post-covid world, delivering economic growth, social spending, and sustainability.

In 2025, the same publication ran a number called "The Coming Debt Crisis." The outcome of the return of big government was the return of persistent inflation, stagnation, and unsustainable debt. Who would have guessed it? Anyone doing the numbers and everyone who understands that government stimulus and so-called public spending multiplier effects are simply myths of statism.

For more than two decades, the dominant policy assumption in the developed world was that there were no meaningful limits to government spending, public debt, monetary intervention, or regulation. Interest rates were near zero, central banks absorbed government bonds, and politicians concluded that budget control was an obsolete idea.

That illusion is over.

The rise in unison of sovereign bond yields across developed economies is not simply a market move. It is the financial system's verdict on a model that has exhausted its credibility, even for those bond investors accustomed to believing all that governments and central bankers say as if it were the truth revealed. Permanently expanding government, structurally unbalanced budgets, central-bank financing of fiscal excess, and the political belief that every economic problem can be solved with another "stimulus" package seemed like a comfortable solution, but it delivered the same results, including persistent inflation, high deficits, and economic stagnation.

The state-led monetary and fiscal regime surpassed all its limits many years ago, but some still believed that it could all be disguised by central banks' quantitative easing. They were wrong.

First, we saw central banks enter losses. No one seemed to care. Then we saw bonds slump on fears of persistent inflation. No one seemed to care. Now we see that all sovereign bond yields rise even when central banks maintain all the liquidity measures, and when they hike rates, the relief only lasts a couple of market sessions.

The choice now is not the fake austerity of 2008-2012, which basically perpetuated big government and raised taxes. It is between a return to sound money, fiscal balance, lower taxation, deregulation, and a smaller state. Unless citizens start demanding their governments for more freedom and less intervention, the result will be a larger and prolonged period of stagnation, inflation, debt accumulation, and declining living standards.

Many will blame geopolitical events and say that the solution is socialism.

If socialism was the answer, France would not be in stagnation, with an enormous fiscal problem and rising social discontent.

The answer to the economic stagnation and affordability crisis is not more socialism. More subsidies, price controls, redistribution, and direct state intervention have always delivered the opposite of what the politicians promise.

Socialism never works because it is a system of control, not progress. It destroys the incentives to generate wealth and creates a dependent and submissive population unable to defend itself. Socialists know that their promises do not work, but by the time citizens find out, they are already hostages of a powerful state machine.

Across Europe, governments that have continually expanded public spending, taxation, transfers, and regulation have not produced prosperity or relief from living costs. They have instead accumulated debt, weakened growth, raised the economy's cost base, and deepened social discontent. Governments do not reduce prices; they increase them.

The political appeal is easy to understand. Subsidies and transfers seem to offer immediate, visible relief. The government makes you blame the person or business that puts the price tag, not the one that destroys the currency's purchasing power, which is the government itself. Thus, those "subsidies" are always paid with units of currency that are constantly losing value. They do not address the reason prices rise in the first place. Price increases are a consequence of monetary inflation, which is created when governments print more currency than the private sector demands through spending and debt.

Big corporations do not increase prices; governments do.

Socialism has one objective: control. Subsidies leave recipients dependent on political discretion while denying them the opportunities that come from productive employment, rising real wages, investment, and a dynamic private sector. At the same time, taxpayers are asked to finance an ever-larger state with less disposable income and fewer incentives to save, invest, hire, or start businesses.

Politicians then blame "the rich," corporations, or markets for an affordability crisis that their own policies have created. Furthermore, no government can redistribute wealth from a private sector that is being steadily weakened by higher taxes, punitive regulation, inflation, and rising borrowing costs.

Affordability is not created by government control or by shifting existing income from one group to another. It is created when the private sector thrives, real wages rise alongside productivity, competition lowers prices, investment expands supply, and housing, energy, transport, health care, and essential services can be provided more efficiently and abundantly.

When governments confront structural supply constraints with redistribution, subsidies, price intervention, and debt-financed spending, they also undermine the incentives to invest, build, innovate, and improve productivity. The result is always a more expensive economy, greater dependency, and fewer opportunities.

For years, governments could disguise fiscal fragility because central banks repressed yields. Quantitative easing was presented as a magic wand and a technical monetary-policy tool, but in practice it became a mechanism through which governments financed unsustainable spending at artificially low rates, crowding out the private sector and making the public finances unsustainable.

The consequences were predictable. When the price of debt is manipulated downward, politicians borrow more. Quantitative easing was never a tool to give time for governments to reduce debt and spending, but to justify higher expenses.

Now the market is imposing the discipline that policymakers tried to avoid. However, politicians refuse to cut spending and, instead, pass the rising interest cost to taxpayers.

Monetarily sovereign states do not have an unlimited capacity to issue currency or accumulate debt. They can postpone adjustment for a time if their debt is denominated in their own currency and domestic institutions remain credible. However, they cannot abolish the limits imposed by economic reality.

Since 2021, developed economies have gone over their three limits.

The economic limit occurs when each additional unit of government debt produces progressively less growth. Governments can inflate headline GDP through deficit spending, transfers, and public consumption, but the result is not the same as creating wealth. In the developed world, the expansion of government expenditure has coincided with weak productivity growth, anemic private investment, and a rise in living costs.

The fiscal limit is when interest costs and entitlement obligations displace productive investment. Governments may attempt to delay this moment through financial repression, artificially low interest rates, regulatory pressure on domestic financial institutions, and central-bank purchases of sovereign debt. As debt stocks grow and bonds have higher rates, interest expenses consume a larger share of public budgets. Governments borrow more simply to finance existing commitments.

The inflationary limit is reached when repeated monetary financing and persistent fiscal deficits undermine confidence in the purchasing power of fiat currency. Inflation is not only an annual change in a price index. Families suffer its cumulative effect in food, energy, housing, transport, insurance, and essential services. More money creation and debt-financed public spending do not resolve that crisis. They risk prolonging it by weakening the currency, distorting capital allocation, and transferring resources from savers and wage earners to the state.

Government bond yields have risen across the G7. In September, the average ten-year yield of the G7's largest economies reached 4.285%, its highest level since mid-2008. US ten-year Treasury yields moved above 5%. However, these were not the worst performers. Long-term yields rose faster in Japan, France, and the United Kingdom.

The synchronized nature of this rise is important. Japan faces rising yields despite decades of yield-curve control and massive central-bank intervention. Germany, despite a lower debt burden than many peers, has seen yields rise to their highest levels since 2011. US thirty-year Treasury yields have reached their highest point since 2007.

Markets are repricing fiscal risk, inflation risk, and the declining credibility of monetary institutions at the same time.

Investors no longer assume that high-debt governments can inflate away their liabilities without consequences, nor that central banks can endlessly monetize debt without damaging the purchasing power of money.

The fiscal model of the past fifteen years depended on a false premise, built on the idea that government debt was virtually free. As long as interest rates stayed close to zero, governments could claim that debt ratios did not matter because debt-service costs remained manageable. The "Japan is a model, not a cautionary tale" recommendation given by Stiglitz proved to be very attractive for governments. It also proved to be awfully wrong.

Debt does not become sustainable merely because a central bank suppresses its price.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that global public debt rose to 94% of GDP in 2025 and will reach 100% of GDP by 2029. The world's major economies are driving the trend, as high deficits, rising interest burdens, and structurally higher spending demands destroy fiscal space.

The interest-cost problem is becoming critical. Global government interest spending is estimated to have risen from about 2% of GDP in 2020 to 2.9% in 2025. It is expected to continue increasing through the end of the decade. This is the deadweight cost of believing that Japan's Keynesian excess is a model.

Every additional unit of taxpayer revenue devoted to interest payments destroys money in the economy. Governments will inevitably respond by raising taxes, borrowing more, and demanding further monetary accommodation. Each of these responses weakens growth and affordability.

The modern welfare state has been unsustainable for years and has become dependent on low borrowing costs that no longer exist.

The predictable political response will be to call for another, even larger, round of quantitative easing, larger fiscal transfers, massive public-investment plans, industrial subsidies, and "strategic" spending programs.

This will be a massive mistake... Again.

Quantitative easing only disguises imbalances for a short period of time. It cannot solve a solvency problem.

Central banks can purchase government bonds, but they cannot create real savings nor productive money. They can expand their balance sheets, but they cannot increase productivity, restore competitiveness, or create the capital necessary for a sustainable recovery.

Printing money does not make a nation richer. It is a massive transfer of wealth from savers and wage earners to the state and the first recipients of new money. It distorts the price of capital, encourages malinvestment, and eventually feeds inflationary pressures.

Artificially low interest rates send a false signal to markets. They make unsustainable spending, borrowing, and investment appear viable. Furthermore, the newly created money is used by governments for current spending. The eventual slump is not caused by capitalism or market failure. It is caused by the prior distortion of money and credit.

The same principle applies to public finances. Governments have treated zero-rate policies and QE as a substitute for reform. They have used monetary intervention to preserve spending structures that taxpayers cannot sustainably finance. They have delayed necessary adjustments in pensions, public administration, subsidies, entitlement programs, and regulatory burdens.

The result has not been robust growth. It has been an unstable combination of weak productivity, high debt, elevated inflation risks, financial repression, and social frustration.

Advocates of ever-larger government frequently argue that fiscal stimulus creates growth. The evidence from developed economies is the opposite.

After years of extraordinary deficits, public spending programs, central-bank asset purchases, and industrial-policy initiatives, most advanced economies face low trend growth, weak private investment, declining productivity, unaffordable housing, high tax burdens, and increasingly poor public finances.

The problem is not just that governments spend too much. It is that governments spend resources in the worst possible way, worse than private actors, and direct capital according to political priorities rather than consumer demand, profitability, or long-term productive value. Governments are exceptionally bad at picking winners and even worse at picking losers.

The problem is also in the economics world. GDP accounting treats public spending as an addition to output. But real prosperity depends on whether resources are used productively. A government can borrow and spend billions while leaving the economy poorer in productive terms as that spending crowds out private investment, raises taxes, sustains unproductive activities, or fuels inflation.

The solution is not to borrow more in hopes the next stimulus will succeed where the last failed. The solution is to remove the obstacles that prevent private-sector growth.

Developed economies need a policy reversal based on four principles.

First, they need sound money. Central banks should shut down. However, since this will not happen, they must return to their mandate: protecting the currency's purchasing power. Monetary policy should not be used to fund deficits, manipulate sovereign-bond markets, or protect governments from the consequences of fiscal irresponsibility.

Second, governments must balance their budgets through durable spending reductions, not cosmetic measures, tax hikes, or optimistic growth assumptions. Spending cuts should focus on eliminating inefficient subsidies, duplicative administration, corporate welfare, politically directed investment schemes, and entitlement commitments that cannot be financed.

Third, policymakers must cut taxes, particularly those that penalize work, investment, savings, entrepreneurship, and capital formation. A tax-increase strategy is politically convenient because it avoids confronting the expenditure problem. However, it reduces incentives to produce, invest, hire, and innovate precisely when economies need more dynamism.

Fourth, advanced economies need an ambitious deregulation agenda. Lower barriers to business formation, energy production, housing construction, labor-market flexibility, and investment would do more for sustainable growth than another decade of deficit spending.

The big-state monetary and fiscal system is over because it is no longer credible financially, economically, or politically. The bond market is making clear that there is no permanent escape from fiscal arithmetic.

The reader may say that governments will choose more intervention, more debt, more monetary distortion, and more stagnation. However, for the first time, we are seeing citizens all over the world rejecting these promises. Governments and large political parties may have to change their policies because the failure is evident and the voter base simply says enough is enough. That is why the cultural battle is so important. The goal is to make voters understand that the solution is not more government, but less. A lot less.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 17:40

Bessent Emerges As "AI Czar" Frontrunner

Fresh off his recent spat with "Doomsday Dario", whom he scolded for his apocalyptic essay (which was attempted regulatory capture in all but name) and warned that the US government will not serve as a "liability shield" to the frontier AI company,  Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appears to be one step closer to directly taking AI matters into his own hands. 

According to Semafor, Bessent is emerging as a frontrunner for President Donald Trump’s new "AI czar" position, after long playing a central role in the Trump administration’s AI policy. This week Bessent held an early dialogue with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, ahead of Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Among the topics discussed, Bessent and He spoke about a potential US-China “notification mechanism” to facilitate communication about AI incidents that pose threats to national security, as part of what Bessent said were talks about a formal US-China dialogue on AI.

Other names in the mix for the czar position include White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios, a longtime Trump ally on tech, and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor, who left VC giant a16z to join the government.

“When President Trump talked about appointing an AI czar, I think it is to put context, shape and contours around these questions, and they’re very important,” Bessent told CNBC earlier this week, adding that he thought humans are ultimately responsible for what AI does.

"What did they try to do last week? It was, well there's a 10 percent chance that we destroy the world, but we want the government to give us a liability shield and that's good business for them, bad business for the American people."

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discussed… pic.twitter.com/zCzUdCJx19

— CNBC (@CNBC) September 21, 2026

The Treasury chief became an active participant in AI policymaking earlier this year after financial institutions told him advanced AI systems could make their systems vulnerable.

As Semafor cautions, Trump’s decision on his AI point person is not final, and he is known to ultimately favor dark-horse candidates. But if Bessent were to ultimately get tapped, his Cabinet job wouldn’t be a barrier — Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has simultaneously held the “energy czar” moniker.

“Any reporting about personnel decisions that have not been officially announced by the administration should be regarded as baseless speculation,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 17:20

Foreign Actors Disrupt 2 Colorado Water Systems: Governor's Office

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

Foreign actors gained access to computer systems at two small private water utilities in Colorado in late August, changing equipment controls before operators restored normal operations, according to the governor's office.

Ally Sullivan, a spokeswoman for Gov. Jared Polis, said the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment followed up with the providers to confirm the issues had been resolved. The governor's office said it was unable to confirm which foreign actors and did not identify the utilities.

"The two water utilities impacted are small, private water providers that serve fewer than 200 people," Sullivan said in a statement to media outlets.

"The providers acted promptly and there was no impact to public safety or water services. We cannot confirm what foreign actors may have been involved, but we are aware of ongoing efforts across the nation by an Iranian-backed group to access drinking water and wastewater systems, as per the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency."

Sullivan did not immediately return a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

Treatment processes and water quality were not affected at either provider, according to the governor's office.

The Colorado incidents occurred weeks after a series of cyberattacks impacted water and wastewater systems in multiple states. Federal agencies had already flagged the threat.

In an Aug. 19 advisory, the FBI, National Security Agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and other agencies warned of an active cyber threat to Siemens S7 Series programmable logic controllers (PLC) used in water systems and other critical infrastructure.

The advisory said unnamed threat actors were conducting reconnaissance and capability development against the U.S.-based Siemens PLC installations, using AI-generated exploitation scripts disguised as legitimate monitoring tools. It noted that the hackers sought internet-connected PLCs running outdated software or that were otherwise poorly protected.

"The U.S. critical infrastructure sectors most targeted by this threat activity include Critical Manufacturing, Energy, Water and Wastewater, Chemical, Food and Agriculture, and Commercial Facilities," the advisory stated.

"This is not a theoretical risk - it is an active threat."

The advisory came amid reports of incidents targeting local water systems in several states in the preceding weeks. The FBI said that from July 27 to July 30, water and wastewater utility companies in seven states reported security-related incidents.

Michigan was among those states. Dale George, director of communications for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, said that the state received the FBI's notice warning of attempts to tamper with operational technology at water systems.

"All systems continued to operate safely, issues were addressed by local operators, and there are no known impacts that posed a public health concern," George said.

Earlier in July, more than 30 community water systems in Minnesota reported a coordinated cyberattack. CISA urged water entities of all sizes to protect operational technology against activity targeting PLCs.

Attackers had targeted internet-facing Rockwell Automation and Allen-Bradley MicroLogix controllers, changing passwords and IP addresses. Some effects included loss of pressure. Federal officials warned that a significant pressure drop can allow untreated groundwater to enter drinking water pipes.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 17:00

Man At Risk Of Losing $95,000 Plane For Transporting Unopened Six Pack Of Beer Takes His Case To SCOTUS

The Supreme Court will consider whether Alaska went too far when it confiscated a pilot's $95,000 airplane over an attempt to bring beer into a dry community, according to Yahoo News.

The case dates to 2012, when longtime Alaska charter pilot Ken Jouppi agreed to fly a passenger from Fairbanks to Beaver, where alcohol was prohibited. The passenger had 72 cans of beer in her luggage. Most were boxed, but a six-pack was visible in a grocery bag.

Troopers found the alcohol before takeoff. Jouppi was convicted of a misdemeanor after a court determined he had been willfully blind to the beer. He received three days in jail and a $1,500 fine, but Alaska law also required forfeiture of his airplane, worth about $95,000.

The Alaska Supreme Court upheld the seizure, reasoning in part that illegal alcohol imports contribute to the broader problems caused by drinking in rural communities. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the decision and will hear arguments in Jouppi v. Alaska on December 1.

Yahoo writes that the Cato Institute, backing Jouppi, argues that the state's approach gives too little weight to what Jouppi himself actually did and how severe the punishment was relative to his offense. Its brief points to a legal tradition stretching back to the Magna Carta, which held that punishment for a "trivial offence" should reflect the seriousness of the conduct and should not be so large as to destroy someone's livelihood.

Cato also cites the Supreme Court's 1998 ruling in United States v. Bajakajian. There, the Court rejected the forfeiture of $357,144 from a man who failed to report that he was carrying the money overseas. The money was legally obtained, the offense caused little direct harm and the Court found the forfeiture excessive.

Jouppi, now 83 and an Air Force veteran with no prior criminal record, argues the same principle applies to his case. His airplane was worth more than 60 times the criminal fine he actually received.

The case could also determine whether a person's financial circumstances should factor into an excessive-fines analysis. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a separate 2019 forfeiture case, treating identical property seizures as equal punishment would create a fiction "that taking away the same piece of property from a billionaire and from someone who owns nothing else punishes each person equally."

A ruling for Jouppi could give courts clearer guidance on when property forfeitures cross the Eighth Amendment's line from punishment into an excessive fine.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 16:40

Soros-Linked Political Groups Pour Millions Into Democratic Efforts Ahead Of Midterms

Via American Greatness,

Political committees tied to the Soros family have directed tens of millions of dollars to Democratic-aligned organizations during the 2026 election cycle, including a group spending heavily in Michigan's closely watched U.S. Senate race.

Democracy PAC and Democracy PAC II had distributed more than $40 million to Democratic-aligned organizations as of the end of June, according to campaign finance records.

Recipients include Senate Majority PAC, House Majority PAC and J Street Action Fund.

Federal Election Commission records show Democracy PAC II alone reported more than $6 million in total disbursements through June 30.

The spending has drawn attention in Michigan, where Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is running against Republican Mike Rogers.

Senate Majority PAC, which received $9 million from Democracy PAC this cycle, has committed $30 million to supporting El-Sayed in Michigan, according to recent reports.

The outside support comes as El-Sayed has made reducing the influence of wealthy donors a prominent campaign theme.

"The fundamental corruption of our politics has been the system that allows corporations and would-be oligarchs and billionaires to buy politicians," El-Sayed said in a 2025 interview.

Republicans are highlighting the contrast between that rhetoric and outside spending supporting his candidacy. Alyssa Brouillet, a spokeswoman for Rogers, accused El-Sayed of being inconsistent on political money and criticized his connections to wealthy donors.

The Soros network has also supported organizations involved in congressional races, environmental issues, voting efforts and campaigns for progressive prosecutors.

George Soros transferred control of his philanthropic and political organization to his son, Alex Soros, in recent years. Additional disclosures could provide a more complete picture of the family's political spending during the 2026 election cycle.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 16:20