Zero Rss

Reality Bites: Socialist NYC Mayor Mamdani Turns To Capitalist Bankers For Help

After socialist New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani went after Citadel's Ken Griffin, created a property database of wealthy homeowners that makes the list easily accessible to "Luigi-worshipping leftist thugs," and endlessly bashed America and capitalism, all while his friend, Democratic Socialists of America's unofficial spokesperson Hasan Piker, called on his followers to "kill capitalists in the streets" and other DSA members called for the destruction of America from within, the far-left NYC mayor, who is running into roadblocks, has called on capitalist bankers for help.

Piker in his own words: "KiII those motherf**kers and murder those motherf**kers in the streets. Let the streets soak in their f**king red capitalist blood." 

Hasan Piker calls on his followers to kill capitalists:

“Yeah kill them! KiII those motherfuckers and murder those motherfuckers in the streets. Let the streets soak in their fucking red capitalist blood, dude.”

Democrats are campaigning with him. pic.twitter.com/YiZxGgRkgc

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) April 9, 2026

Bloomberg reports that Mamdani is seeking top capitalist bankers for a new business advisory council as he attempts to mend relations with Wall Street after spewing dangerous rhetoric against the very people who make the city go 'round.

Those invited include former UBS Americas Chief Executive Officer Robert Wolf, former Lazard investment-banking chief Antonio Weiss, and Bank of America's New York City President Jose Tavarez, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The people said the group would provide advice and feedback from key industries, including real estate, finance, and technology.

"The administration is in the process of reaching out to business executives to form a Business Advisory Council," a spokesperson for the Mayor's Office said in an emailed statement to the outlet.

The spokesperson added, "The purpose of the council is to engage with business leaders for their insights and input as we build an economic development strategy that improves life for all New Yorkers."

Mamdani's outreach to capitalist bankers comes as his team of socialists dismantles a separate corporate advisory board connected to the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City. The mayor has clashed with business leaders over his push for higher taxes on wealthy residents and large corporations, while redirecting city institutions toward socialist causes.

Bill Cunningham, a political strategist who served under former Governor Hugh Carey and later as former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's communications director at City Hall, told the outlet, "I don't know how the mayor will go about creating a group that he can interact with that can help him manage the city. That should be the goal."

With his socialist agenda encountering institutional, fiscal, and political resistance, Mamdani's decision to tap capitalist bankers is more of an acknowledgment of governing reality: NYC cannot maintain its tax base, finance its ambitions, or remain a global business center while pushing anti-American socialist policies. 

Yet another example of how socialism sounds great on paper but, in reality, is an unmitigated disaster once the resources are depleted.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 17:20

Meet The Lab-Leak Proponent Set To Take Fauci's Old Job

Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The DisInformation Chronicle,

Politico reported that physician-scientist Steven Quay is going through final vetting to take over Tony Fauci's job at the NIH, reporting that aligns with rumors I've been hearing from sources inside the administration for several months. Quay sat for an interview with me on the DisInformation Chronicle podcast last June to talk about changes NIH should make to ensure we don't have another pandemic caused by dangerous virus research, and I ran an excerpt of his book "The Code As Witness: How the COVID Genome Reveals Its Lab Origins."

The Politico leak comes as Fauci is in the hot seat with Senators passing a resolution yesterday morning that found him in contempt for failing to answer questions during a hearing last week. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has released thousands of pages of internal documents about the pandemic, including Fauci's own diary which was found on government servers.

I'm on vacation and haven't had time to go through all the documents - actually, I don't think anybody has gone through all the new revelations - but I did discover that Fauci wrote in his diary that he didn't like my 2022 interview with former CDC Director Robert Redfield. In a September 2022 entry, Fauci called me a "totally weird person" and complained that Dr. Redfield was a "bizarre personality" for telling me that he thought the pandemic started in a lab.

I also ran across a surprising article in the New Yorker that belittled Big Tony for his self-obsessive diary where he seemed much more interested in fame and ties to celebrities than trying to protect the public from the COVID virus. Here's one passage:

Fauci does not seem to see a relationship between the adulation and the villainization - to understand that he's hated for being beloved, perhaps more than for loving the truth. One day, he is doing a podcast interview with Alec Baldwin ("Without a doubt, from a intellectual and substantive standpoint it was one of the best if not the best interview that I have ever given"). The next, he is confronted with a poll suggesting "that middle to right people want me to retire and are not getting vaccinated because I'm the messenger telling them to get vaccinated." But the emotional charge of his celebrity defies his self-conception as a neutral arbiter. One of the sharpest ironies in the diary is how often the good press that he quotes praises him for his modesty and his lack of ego. The Fauci mythos was incompatible with the actual work of being Fauci.

The New Yorker long ago morphed into a die-hard cheerleader for Democratic Party interests, and finding something so negative about Democrat's COVID demigod is pretty shocking. Has Fauci lost his hypnotic hold over Woke reporters?

Even as the public has been buried in a ton of new Fauci documents, a Senate Committee revealed that they have a copy of Big Tony's cell phone that he used during the pandemic. So this is not going to stop. Big Tony is on the run.

To learn more about Big Tony's replacement, Steven Quay, see my interview with him, and check out his book excerpt where he details the science pointing to a lab accident as the cause of the COVID pandemic.

Enjoy the summer!

ZH: See our previous reporting on Quay here

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 17:00

Cambridge's Black Time-Travelling Professor (And His Many Superhuman Feats)

Authored by Mark Collett,

Running a single marathon is a great achievement. Running 30 marathons is a spectacular feat. Running 30 marathons in 35 days is something only a world-class athlete could achieve. But running 30 marathons in 35 days, and running the final nine of those marathons with a broken leg – that’s an impossible feat that would require superhuman powers. But that is exactly what Jason Arday has claimed to achieve.

But that’s not all, Jason Arday’s incredible feats aren’t just limited to running nearly 240 miles on a fractured leg without medical intervention, he also claimed to have run 600 miles in six days on a treadmill (without any evidence), played both football and snooker at a professional level (a boast that was apparently taken out of context), raised over £5.5 million for charity (but can’t name a single donor), managed to go 15 years with a barely a wink of sleep, and even appeared on the famous television documentary series Seven Up! – which originally premiered a whole 21 years before he was even born.

This is the story of Cambridge University’s youngest-ever black professor, who was appointed as Professor of the Sociology of Education in 2023.

Jason Arday was born in 1985 on a council estate in Clapham, South London, to Ghanaian parents – a humble beginning for a man who would go on to achieve so much. But Jason would not only achieve great feats, but he would do so against all the odds, overcoming what some may have called ‘impossible barriers’ during his meteoric rise to greatness. At just three years of age, Jason was diagnosed with global developmental delay and autism spectrum disorder, leading medical experts and therapists to predict that he would require assisted living for the rest of his life. But this wasn’t the end of young Jason’s struggles – he was completely non-verbal throughout his early childhood and communicated entirely using sign language and as a result he didn’t learn to speak until he was 11 years-old. He credited his mother for helping him break through his silence by using music, rhythm, and song lyrics to connect him to language – the power of love and song set him on the road to such success. However, due to his late language and speech development, he did not learn to read or write until he was 18 years-old.

Allegedly.

And the word ‘allegedly’ should precede many of Jason’s achievements and boastful tales. It is a well-known medical and biological fact that learning to speak a language fluently after the age of 11 – if a person has been completely non-verbal since birth – is incredibly difficult due to a biological phenomenon known as the critical period hypothesis. Whilst it is not always absolutely impossible, it is one of the steepest challenges in cognitive science. This is because children’s brains form billions of neural connections specifically designed to map sounds to meaning, however, around the point when a child passes through puberty (roughly at the age of 11 to 13), the brain undergoes what is known as “synaptic pruning”. Neural connections that were not used – such as the neural pathways for processing and producing spoken speech – are cleared away or repurposed. Once this pruning happens, the brain loses the elasticity required to naturally absorb language structure.

But it’s not all just about neural pathways, when someone speaks, their brain must also simultaneously coordinate the lungs, vocal cords, tongue, teeth, and lips. This motor mapping is trained continuously through babbling and talking during infancy and childhood. A person who has been non-verbal for 11 years has not built these specific motor pathways, making the physical act of clear speech production highly uncoordinated and laborious. But miraculously, Jason beat all the odds, and at the last possible moment he learnt to speak. But the miracles just kept on coming and Jason managed to attend local schools in South London and eventually left secondary education with two GCSEs – one in Physical Education and one in Textiles. But despite the mountainous struggles that would have beaten most men, Jason was determined to go further still – and eventually, not even the boundaries of time itself would hold him back.

Determined to pursue sports and teaching, Jason then went to a local college to study for a BTEC diploma, which allowed him to bridge the gap into higher education. This was another major milestone for the young achiever – and this herculean feat was made even greater as Jason claimed that due to his late language development, he did not learn to read or write until he was 18 years-old. Some may scoff at Jason’s two GCSEs and BTEC diploma, but to have achieved these grades whilst not even being able to read and write proved that he was nothing short of a child prodigy. Jason then went on into higher education, and graduated from St Mary’s University in Twickenham in 2008 with a BA in Education Studies and Physical Education before serving as the university’s Student Union Athletics President for a year immediately following his graduation. For many, this would be the end of a long and arduous academic road, but to Jason, it was just the beginning.

Jason then went on to earn an MA in Education and Pedagogy from St Mary’s and later completed a PGCE at the Institute of Education to become a qualified school PE teacher. At this point, after achieving so much, and overcoming so many almost insurmountable hurdles, he could have entered a well-paid role in teaching. But Jason was still hungry for more, leading to his transitioning into the subject of Sociology of Education and going on to earn a Master of Education (MEd) followed by a PhD in Education from Liverpool John Moores University in 2015. This would have been incredible enough, but due to Jason’s humble background, he had no financial backing, and whilst passing through educational institutions at breakneck speed he was forced to work part-time retail shifts to fund his higher education tuition. Not only did Jason beat all the odds as a late starter, but he was both an academic genius and a hard worker.

But looking at Jason’s impressive academic résumé, it appears that mathematical qualifications are sadly absent, and that may be why things just don’t seem to add up. We are meant to believe that a boy who was completely non-verbal due to autism and global developmental delay until age 11 and who was unable to read or write until 18, then went on to earn a PhD by the age of 29. This means that in just 11 years Jason managed to learn basic literacy and catch up on all those years of missed schooling, complete an undergraduate degree (which typically takes 3 years), complete two separate Master’s degrees (typically taking 1-2 years each), complete a PGCE teacher training qualification (taking 1 year) and then write a 100,000-word PhD dissertation (taking typically 3-4 years). In just over a decade, Jason had not only learnt to read and write, but condensed 12 years of higher education into a near record-breaking period of time that would prove his hyper-accelerated cognitive processing abilities were second to none. And he did it all whilst working multiple jobs and without sleeping.

Jason’s story was remarkable – some may even go as far as to state that it was unbelievable – but it wouldn’t be long before educational institutions up and down the country would begin falling over themselves to offer him prestigious well-paid positions. Once he had completed his PhD, Jason secured his first major permanent academic post at the University of Roehampton, entering the institution directly as a Senior Lecturer in Physical Education, and it must be noted, this rapid entry without years of junior postdoctoral research was highly unusual, but surely by this point, extraordinary achievements were nothing more than everyday occurrences for Jason. Jason then went on to join Durham University’s Department of Sociology before being rapidly promoted into an executive role. Within just a year, Durham University had promoted Jason to Associate Professor. Alongside this, he was named the Deputy Executive Dean for People and Culture within the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health. Interestingly, and rather tellingly, this executive role placed him in charge of institutional diversity and inclusion initiatives.

But the meteoric rise of the non-verbal black youth from inner city London wasn’t over yet. In 2021 Jason stepped into a new role at the University of Glasgow, joining their School of Education to take the position of Chair in the subject of Sociology of Education – another milestone had been achieved, as he was now a full professor. And at the tender age of 35, this appointment officially made him one of the youngest full professors in the whole of the United Kingdom. It was at this point Jason’s numerous lofty achievements and incredible superhuman feats caught the attention of officials at Cambridge University – one of the most prestigious and influential institutions of higher education in human history had now noticed him and they wanted him on their team. And in March 2023, at just 37 years-old, Jason was appointed to the prestigious Professorial Chair of Sociology of Education at Cambridge’s Faculty of Education and was then concurrently elected as a Fellow of Jesus College. This appointment broke the record for the youngest Black professor in the university’s history. Jason was now at the very pinnacle of academic excellence; his fairytale story was now complete.

This is the point where the tale should come to an end, where things should be wrapped up nicely with a big red bow and where Jason receives the applause and recognition he deserves. And that would be how the story ends, if any of his achievements could actually be verified. But at this juncture some uncharitable folk might claim that Jason was just making it all up, and that the only reason anyone believed him is because lecturers and those with institutional power wanted to promote him in order to prove a very specific and racially charged point. It has been noted that people working within modern higher education, and specifically in institutions like Cambridge, Durham, and Glasgow are highly motivated to promote ‘diverse’ talent, especially if that ‘talent’ has a powerful, motivational and inspirational narrative attached. Jason was everything that liberal multiculturalists could have dreamed of, so much so, that university officials all over the UK were so eager to celebrate the story of a non-verbal black man that had beaten all the odds, that they skipped any of the standard, rigorous vetting of his academic work that one might usually expect.

That is exactly how Jason ended up in his position at Cambridge, not so much because of Jason’s myriad of self-professed achievements, but because the institution never checked any of his claims. And this isn’t mere conjecture: the University of Cambridge has now admitted that officials did not conduct an independent textual analysis when hiring Professor Jason Arday in 2023, instead, their vetting process relied heavily on ‘institutional trust’ and ‘reputation’ rather than any raw forensic auditing. In short, because Jason had already been vetted, hired, and promoted to senior positions by three other highly respected institutions (Roehampton, Durham, and Glasgow), Cambridge’s hiring panel assumed his foundational work was immaculate. Instead, Cambridge University’s appointment panel was deeply captivated by Jason’s unique, highly inspirational backstory and the focus of the hiring process was centred on his vision for the sociology department and his high-profile advocacy work surrounding diversity and inclusion, rather than a line-by-line verification of his past work. After all, who needs to know if a candidate can actually do the job they are being hired for when they fit the diversity profile so perfectly?

But unfortunately for Jason and his eager backers – Cambridge University, a number of other respected academic institutions and several publishers – this isn’t where the story ends, and Jason doesn’t get to leave the stage to rapturous applause.

Earlier this year, allegations would emerge that suggested that Jason’s unbelievable backstory and his near impossible achievements weren’t quite as real as some claimed.

An analysis of Jason’s 2015 PhD thesis, which was awarded by Liverpool John Moores University, revealed something truly shocking: the document contained 188 sentences that were identical or nearly identical to a thesis written by a student at Brunel University in 2009. But these issues weren’t just limited to Jason’s PhD, textual overlaps were then identified in several of Jason’s subsequent journal articles, leading to two separate journals issuing formal correction notes. In some papers, Jason allegedly recycled borrowed text and framed the lines as “direct quotes” from research subjects he claimed to have interviewed himself. Worse still, The Times later uncovered severe flaws in his references, including data discrepancies and the complete omission of a research participant who Jason previously claimed had taken their own life.

This would have been enough to sink any other high-profile academic. However, Jason’s run of incredible feats and unbelievable luck only continued. Cambridge University were so enamoured with Jason that when this new information came to light and accusations of plagiarism emerged, the university’s immediate institutional response was not to question Jason, but instead to defend him. Senior figures from Cambridge University completely dismissed the allegations, framing any criticism of their all-star black professor as a “vile campaign of bullying” directed at a vulnerable, dyslexic and autistic scholar. But as more and more allegations surfaced, Cambridge University officials changed their tactics, and attempted to distance themselves and the institution from the core issue by stating that investigating a PhD thesis is strictly the legal responsibility of the institution that awarded it – they were passing the responsibility back to Liverpool John Moores University.

And the response of those who should have checked his work in the first place was just as telling. Colleagues and peer-reviewers admitted to being hesitant to question Jason’s data or writing style out of fear of looking like they were attacking a vulnerable, autistic scholar – in short, no one wanted to question the black academic prodigy, they just wanted to put him on a pedestal to prove a point. But now, and rather ironically, all eyes were on Jason Arday – but not quite in the way that he wanted, as people were now increasingly focusing on the details of his work rather than his tall tales. As a result, independent researchers began feeding Jason’s published work into advanced anti-plagiarism software and the truth was plain for all to see. Several major academic publishers were forced to confront the reality that their peer-review processes had overlooked glaring and obvious anomalies. But the embarrassment wasn’t yet over, as Jason had published several highly regarded books with a company called Routledge, a leader in academic publishing. When complaints were first made regarding text-recycling and uncredited overlap in these texts, Routledge initially stood by their man. However, as the sheer volume of identical sentences became public, the publisher was humiliatingly forced to initiate a series of formal internal reviews.

Everything was coming crashing down – and there was only one thing Jason could do.

And if you thought that would be to admit to his alleged wrong doings, apologise and walk things back, you would be entirely incorrect. It was in fact time to double down, and invent another story to make everyone feel sorry for him in the hope that the whole incident would just go away and people would stop talking about his alleged plagiarism. And this is where Jason would reveal a final, previously hidden chapter to his remarkable story, it was time for him to tell the world that he had of course been the victim of racism. When Jason had first joined Cambridge University as a professor, he had been the victim of a hate campaign and all this talk of plagiarism and falsified superhuman feats of endurance risked stirring up another maelstrom of bigotry. But it wasn’t enough to claim that he had merely been the victim of hate, Jason had to go further: claiming that a severed pig’s head had been sent to him as part of a sudden escalation of abuse and threats that were specifically aimed at him due to his high-profile appointment as the university’s youngest black professor.

This incredible claim would surely silence all of his critics, as once the police reports and photos of this obscene crime were made public, no one would dare to question the black genius and his remarkable stories. There was only one small problem: Jason did not report the delivery of the pig’s head to the police when it allegedly took place. He claimed that he intercepted a large cardboard box at his parents’ house in South London, on opening the box, he discovered the pig’s head and did what anyone else would do – threw it straight into a wheelie bin and waited several months before calling the police. Well, at least he reported it to the police in the end, so a crime number would back up his harrowing tale. What’s more, Jason was so sure of his interaction with the police, that he went on to claim to reporters that when the police finally investigated the hateful act, they managed to trace the animal back to a local butcher who sold a “whole hog” on the morning that the severed head was delivered to his parents’ house.

However, unfortunately for Jason, the Metropolitan Police keep records of crimes that are reported, and they revealed that after an extensive search, there was no evidence whatsoever of any such report or subsequent investigation. This surely must have been the result of institutional racism within the Met Police and officers must have destroyed all evidence of the report. But at least Jason could still rely on the butcher to confirm the details of this gruesome hate crime. Yet in a final bizarre twist, reporters from The Guardian (who were no doubt driven by a desperate attempt to prove Jason’s story to be true) visited the specific South London butcher that Jason himself had named as the providers of the hog. However, the staff at the shop stated that no police officers had ever come in to question them about a pig’s head, dryly noting, “That’s the kind of thing we’d remember.” Indeed, who could forget such a thing?

One would expect that opening a large parcel only to discover a severed pig’s head nestled within would be rather unforgettable – but in the case of Jason, this may have been just another one of many rather extraordinary occurrences. But as we live in a technological wonderland where everyone has a telephone in their back pocket featuring a high-resolution camera, this kind of extraordinary occurrence would surely result in a photograph being taken. However strangely, Jason did not even take a single picture of the offending item before hurling it into a wheelie bin and according to the police – never even reporting the incident. Strange behaviour for a man of such incredible academic stature, after all, a man who had mastered time travel could surely operate a simple device like a smartphone. It seems that just as with Jason’s academic work, accurate citations were sadly lacking. But the embarrassment was not over yet, as Jason’s friends and colleagues at Cambridge, who were interviewed by the press, all claim he never even mentioned the incident to them. It’s almost as if it never even happened.

Backed into a corner, Jason was faced with only one final option: it was time to go nuclear; it was time for him to scream the word ‘racism’ as loudly as he could and then wait for the cavalry. This is exactly what he did, and he got exactly the result he had hoped for, as more than 12,000 people – including Green Party leader Zack Polanski, at least five Labour MPs and a gaggle of Cambridge academics all signed a petition set up by the Good Law Project supporting him. What’s more, fellow black academics were up in arms about his treatment, with Kehinde Andrews, professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, bellowing profusely that Jason was a good boy and he didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, according to Kehinde, poor Jason was merely the victim of a “smear campaign” that was “as predictable as it is baseless”. But it wasn’t just black academics who were angered, white professors also fell over themselves to come to Jason’s defence, with Alan Lester, a University of Sussex Geography professor who specialises in colonialism, calling the entire saga a “non-story”.

But the best was yet to come.

Jewish cognitive neuroscientist, Fellow of Trinity College and director of Cambridge University’s Autism Research Centre – Sir Simon Baron-Cohen – raised important concerns about the impact that the media coverage was having on Jason and his mental health. As Jason had been through so much, and achieved so many great feats, Simon Baron-Cohen wanted everyone to just shut up and stop talking about the issue, stating: “We should of course always investigate plagiarism to protect academic standards; however, I cannot stand by and watch when an autistic man is on the ground and the kicking continues. This is relentless bullying of a vulnerable autistic man and raises safe-guarding issues. It’s time to stop.” According to Baron-Cohen, this wasn’t about truth, academic integrity or standards in higher education, this was now a ‘safeguarding issue’ and what’s more, it was ‘bullying’.

If Jason Arday had been white, it would have undoubtedly been the case that he would have either resigned, or been forced out of his lucrative position. However, at the time of writing, Cambridge University’s leadership is actively shielding him from any scrutiny, citing a prior institutional clearance. An academic misconduct panel at Liverpool John Moores University – which awarded Jason his PhD – reviewed the 188 copied sentences in March 2026 and cleared him of intentional misconduct, ruling the overlaps were an “honest and reasonable error” caused by a depleted student supervision team. They too wanted the world to know: Jason was indeed a good boy who didn’t do anything wrong and that the copied sentences weren’t his fault. Cambridge have now officially declared Jason the victim of a “vile campaign to undermine his credibility” driven by right-wing media outlets and their Faculty of Education is actively providing him with safety infrastructure, including panic alarms and specialist staff to security-screen his mail – who are no doubt on high-alert for severed animal heads. What’s more, despite everything that has happened, the commercial book publishers he has deals with have also confirmed they are still proceeding with his upcoming titles as planned.

[Update: Arday has resigned "with immediate effect", the university said it had launched an investigation into Professor Jason Arday "following new information" about his "academic qualifications and honorary appointments".

He said his resignation should not "be interpreted as a loss of faith in scholarship or in the values that first brought me to Cambridge. Nor should it be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me."

Arday said "this is not the end of my work" and that he needed "time to heal".]

But even now, with all these facts, assertions and allegations out in the wild, the public isn’t left with many answers – only more questions.

Was Jason Arday really non-verbal until 11 years of age? Did he miraculously learn to speak at the very last minute with the help of music? Could he really not read and write until the age of 18? If he could not read and write until 18, how on earth did he get two GCSEs and a BTEC diploma? Some of what we have been told is undoubtedly true – he did indeed go to several major universities – but that raises even more questions. How could anyone even apply to a university if they were still learning to read and write? And why would a university accept a student who couldn’t read or write properly? And if he did learn to read and write at the age of 18, how did he compress such a large amount of learning into a single year of work? So many questions, and these questions are all about events and achievements that allegedly took place before Jason even got to university and before he allegedly began copying the work of others.

But then there are a string of pressing questions about his time in higher education.

Why didn’t those checking his work go over it properly? How did Jason manage to get his work through the peer review process, and who were the peers who reviewed it? What work did he present when attending interviews for lucrative and prestigious positions, and how do institutions decide whether a candidate is suitable for the role?

There are people out there who can answer these questions, but they never will. In fact, the only way any of this could be verified is if we had a time machine, and there’s only one person in this whole sorry tale who claims to have broken the laws of physics and travelled back through time – and conveniently, that is of course Jason. Which all leads to only one conclusion: a young black man who was woefully underqualified ended up being ushered through educational institutions and was given a pass at every level in order to unfairly elevate him in a blatant attempt to prove a political point. Jason Arday is the ultimate token black academic, and universities built him up because of that.

And that’s really the point; this isn’t just a story about a silly man with a big mouth and an overactive imagination. This story is really about the fact that one particular silly man with a big mouth and an overactive imagination ended up as a Cambridge University Professor with a number of academic book deals. And the reason he ended up in that position is simple: it wasn’t because of his incredible achievements; it was because of his ethnic background and the sob story he sold to a panel who were no doubt overwhelmingly made up of white liberals. One of the supposed strengths of the academic system is that it is meant to have rigorous checks in place to ensure those who are underqualified do not get into positions of power or authority, and these checks and balances are not only there to ensure fairness and to guarantee that only the best of the best take the top positions in leading universities, but also to ensure that at the heart of academia is a system of structured meritocracy. This meritocracy is not only to ensure the cream rises to the top, but to create a constant upward cycle that leads to ever-increasing standards and that academic boundaries are constantly tested and pushed. But this all goes out the window if a candidate is from an ethnic minority background.

The fact that Jason Arday rose to such a position is a damning indictment of the current state of academic institutions in Britain. But this story also illustrates another important issue – this wasn’t a one-off failing involving a single university and a small number of officials, but a national systemic failing involving dozens of people at multiple top-tier universities and publishing houses. It is clear, these institutions have given up on the ideals of meritocracy and excellence, and have instead elevated diversity, equity and inclusion as the most important virtues in modern education. This is not only unfair to better and more qualified candidates who have genuinely worked harder and deserve the job in question, but it also inevitably leads to a decline in the overall quality of an institution. But the damage done is not just limited to the institution in question, but is part of a wider process of societal and civilisational decline. What’s more, it is a sign that elite institutions are no longer dominated by scholars who strive for knowledge and truth, but instead are controlled by those who have an almost religious belief in multiculturalism and diversity.

This religious belief is so great, that when a man like Jason Arday walks into an institution he isn’t just seen as a poster boy, but almost as a form of messiah who can do no wrong and should face no criticism. As such, those who are so eager to place him on a pedestal will not even question the incredible feats he boasts of – no matter how outlandish they are. Instead, officials within elite institutions will parrot the wild boasts of men like Jason Arday, happily spreading the word of the great miracles performed by their latest diversity hire. Officials at Cambridge University seem so in love with the idea of Jason that they appear to be one step away from claiming that after he ran his 35 marathons (9 of which were achieved on a broken leg) he then proceeded to walk on water and feed the entire university with one mackerel and a single loaf of sugar bread. Such is the unquestioning and almost religious belief in Jason Arday, that even now, the university stands by him and he will remain as one of the best paid and most highly revered published academics in Britain.

To Britain’s elite educational institutions, Jason Arday’s improbable tales of being non-verbal at 11, running marathons on a broken leg and appearing on a television show that premiered 21 years before he was born weren’t red flags – they were integral reasons as to why they embraced him and put him on a pedestal. And that leads to one final point that must be made clear – an uncomfortable issue that many won’t wish to accept. The case of Jason Arday is absolute proof that the ‘woke’ agenda and shibboleths of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ are certainly not a thing of the past – in fact they are very much alive and well.

The idea spread by some within the media and in online circles that ‘common sense’ has returned and ‘woke’ politics was just a brief period of social madness is nothing more than a lie that is eagerly accepted and parroted by those who wish to believe they are winning. The notion that woke politics is a ‘thing of the past’ is as realistic as the story of a man running nine marathons on a broken leg – and anyone that chooses to believe either of those assertions is sadly only fooling themselves.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 16:55

"Fire Is... Beautiful": Suspect In Spokane Wildfire Confesses He Planned Arson For Weeks

The suspect charged on Aug. 3 with starting the Old Trails fire in Spokane, Washington, that forced more than 60,000 people to evacuate told police he had planned the attack for weeks.

The suspect, Aaron Farinacci, told police in an interview that “fire is powerful, beautiful, and that things that go through fire experience a kind of rebirth,” according to Spokane County Detective Michael Drapeau in a court filing Wednesday.

Farinacci, 37, was scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday, but is now being held on $2 million bond while Spokane Superior Court Judge Jeremy Schmidt reviews his lawyer’s request for a competency evaluation.

Farinacci was booked into the Spokane County Jail.

According to a press conference by Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels, Farinacci was arrested after a concerned citizen provided a description of Farinacci near the area where the fire started, moments before smoke was seen.

According to an arrest affidavit, Farinacci initially denied setting the fire when questioned by law enforcement.

The arrest warrant was executed around 5 p.m. on Aug. 4, and the suspect was detained about a mile from where the fire started.

Farinacci was in possession of matches and a lighter at the time he was arrested, which is believed to be how the fire was started.

As Savannah Hulsey Pointer reports for The Epoch Times, the Old Trails fire, which has burned at least 700 buildings, is one of three that have been burning in the Spokane area that have consumed more than 10,500 acres in total. Two of the three fires are 13 percent contained, and the third is 5 percent contained.

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson sent a letter to President Donald Trump the day before Farinacci’s scheduled arraignment, asking to speak on behalf of the people of his state and request emergency assistance.

“Your team has been nothing but helpful and quick to respond during this extremely challenging time,” Ferguson said.

Farinacci was previously convicted of manslaughter and aggravated assault in Arizona for shooting and killing his father.

According to court documents, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2012 for his crime. Nowels said Farinacci also had a preceding arrest in the same case for premeditated murder.

Roughly 1,100 firefighters are battling the fires, which are still not contained. No injuries or fatalities have been reported so far, though authorities say there is a high probability that will change as teams reach previously inaccessible areas, as an unspecified number of people are reported as missing.

More than a dozen wildfires are blazing across the Western United States. In Washington state alone, at least 390 square miles have burned, as federal, state, and local agencies are stretched to their limits.

In Idaho, Oregon, and Utah, crews are using bulldozers, helicopters, and other resources to fight a fire that has burned almost 525 square miles. That area is home to cattle ranches, and authorities say the fire also threatens 600 homes and 800 other structures.

In central Utah, another blaze doubled in size over the weekend. By the morning of Aug. 3, more than 57 square miles were burned, killing more than 100 head of cattle.

Officials called the fire “catastrophic,” with heavy winds pushing the flames over containment lines.

The fire is moving north toward a town of around 2,600 people in Millard County, and mandatory evacuations were ordered on Sunday evening.

The National Weather Service has issued air quality warnings across the northwest, and red flag fire warnings were posted for parts of Utah, Montana, and western Nebraska. Extreme heat warnings were issued for the southern parts of Arizona, California, Nevada, and northern Montana.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 16:40

The Democratic Party's Four-Way Squeeze

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“. . . it’s subversion and nothing about it is accidental. it’s a well worn playbook to use the democratic institutions of a high trust state to destroy a civilization.” 

- El Gato Malo on Substack

The days might still be long, but this is a dark season in our country’s politics. Everybody’s nervous and many are furious, and yet all that emotion goes nowhere, just eats you up while you watch and wait for signs that help is on the way. What would that help even look like? Maybe a concerted effort to bum-rush a whole lot of bad ideas out of American life and replace them with better ideas that are worth building a life around.

Of the two political parties that used to vie between the interests of property and of labor, there is almost nothing left — nothing coherent, anyway.

Mr. Trump & Co. still stand outside a feckless Republican establishment that can only say “no.” That is bad enough, when it comes to vital matters like election reform and sound fiscal policy. But the President is methodically wearing them down with tactical work-arounds such as this week’s use of State Department visa control to prevent foreign visitors coming here just to drop birthright citizens.

Things will get super-serious when the president has to manage the government’s functional bankruptcy, the bond market crack-up under our impossible debt-burden, and all its knock-ons. It’s coming for sure, and will require a stringent reorganization of American finance, probably even of our money itself. That will be a moment when the nation understands what leadership really means, not just endless deception and fakery.

Speaking of which, you have the other party, the Democrats.

The Dems, unmoored from the interests of labor (whatever is left of it), are now strictly just the party of bad ideas and crime.

One way, or another, we’re gonna find you, we’re gonna gitchya gitchya gitchya. . . .

The party is also, at this juncture of history, caught in a gruesome four-way squeeze that could easily drag it into extinction. Let’s count them.

First, is the basic basket of ideas that comprise the party’s platform, readily identifiable for some years now as the “Woke” catalog. Virtually all of them are ideas that a majority of the public rejects as insane. A wide-open border. We tried that for four years under the fake president “Joe Biden.” Didn’t work out so well. Added many millions to the free everything dole that actual citizens resentfully have to pay for. Took jobs away from said citizens. Got a lot of (mostly) women murdered and raped. Let in Gawd knows how many foreign terrorists.

“Woke” also includes the DEI products of manufactured race animus and gender confusion, especially as applied in school from K all the way to PhD. Apart from the sheer hatred and idiocy these things generated, they also led to the scrapping of merit and excellence as organizing principles for civilization. Americans increasingly reject all of that.

The second squeeze point is the Democratic Party’s criminal portfolio. The Covid-19 operation was basically theirs. It killed and injured millions, wrecked the integrity of medicine, and brought on the deliberate perversion of our election procedure. It gave us fake President “Biden” and the autopen gang that ran him. Along the way, the party weaponized the law and produced one hoax after another: RussiaGate, Impeachment, J-6, the 2024 Trump trials — treason, sedition, deprivation of rights under color of law, obstruction of justice and much more. These crimes are a huge burden for the party and they are in the process of being adjudicated, and a lot of the party’s heroes will end up in prison.

The third squeeze is the party’s widespread and atrocious racketeering operation. The process of uncovering it has been going on since Jan 20, 2025, but still has a long way to go in terms of courtroom action. The Somali Learing Center in Minnesota, fake hospices by the hundreds in California, Medicaid fraud in state after state. It was generally allowed to go on by state officialdom. We await the eventual indictments of Governor Tim Walz, Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Janet Mills and many other Democratic politicians.

The Democratic Party racketeering apparatus also included the money-laundering system that kicked back millions of dollars from a matrix of NGOs that washed taxpayer money into the party coffers. USAID was a major mechanism, and has been mostly shut down, but thousands of NGOs still exist and function as employment centers for young party “activists” who otherwise would have to work the espresso machines. A lot of that activism depends on funding from the likes of George Soros, the Tides Foundation, Bill Gates, Neville Roy Singham, and other criminally-tinged philanthropy outfits. Justice is coming for them now, too.

Which redounds directly to the fourth squeeze: the rise of communism and jihad as the Party’s new rallying cries while the other three squeezes work to put the party’s old guard out of business. Communism is the fad-du-jour among Democratic Party youth because the over-production of elites (i.e., college graduates) are increasingly closed out of cushy jobs in the besieged NGO matrix, threatened further by the advent of artificial intelligence, and have been trained-up by the lefty-left college faculties to fall in love with the utopian nostrums of Karl Marx.

Communism is the Party’s last resort and most of America will not buy it, no matter how heartfelt the youth faction appears these days. Americans believe in property rights. They want to own things. They don’t really enjoy being pushed around by kommissars. They want to keep Thanksgiving and Christmas.

As for jihad, it’s hard to imagine a less likely route to the hearts and minds of America. No matter how pissed off you are about Israel, jihad is not the answer to America’s problems. No, Dorothy, Kansas will not be joining the Ummah. You will not have to don the burka. Sharia will not replace English common-law. This is a hill that somebody’s going to die on, and in America it’s not going to be Americans.

Personally, I don’t see how the Democratic Party as currently configured survives this four-way squeeze. If President Trump can succeed in starting to reindustrialize the country — even considering A-I and robots — there will still be a need for human labor and labor will seek some kind of political representation. Maybe they can find it in the hollowed out husk of the thing that used to be the Democratic Party. Otherwise, fuggeddabowdit. The party is toast.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 16:20

Vance: Federal Government Has Identified $230 Billion In Fraud Since March

Authored by Emel Akan via The Epoch Times,

Vice President JD Vance said on Aug. 5 that the Trump administration has identified $230 billion in fraud and prevented $56 billion in fraudulent payments since the president’s Fraud Task Force was established in March.

Vance discussed the task force’s initiatives at a roundtable in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building attended by more than a dozen Republican lawmakers. He said the work by the task force so far is starting to show results.

“We have been able to identify $230 billion of fraud just since the Fraud Task Force was set up, and that’s frankly by conservatively estimating it,” Vance said.

He urged Congress to codify certain anti-fraud actions taken by the administration to ensure that they remain in effect under future administrations.

“This effort will fundamentally always have a limitation unless our colleagues in the House and the Senate are working with us,” Vance said.

“We don’t want the next administration ... to undo all the incredible work that we’ve been doing.”

The vice president said one of the first steps Congress can take is to force data sharing between state and federal governments to crack down on fraud.

He said that if a state gives food stamp benefits to an illegal immigrant or a violent criminal, the federal government often cannot detect who is receiving those benefits.

The vice president also called on Congress to make fraud harder to commit and to ensure that convicted fraudsters receive longer prison sentences that better reflect the seriousness of their crimes.

On March 16, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a task force after large-scale fraud in Minnesota’s Medicaid and federal assistance programs drew national attention late last year. He then appointed Vance to lead the new task force while also creating a fraud-focused division in the Justice Department.

Speaking at the event, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, who co-chairs the task force, said that fraudsters target federal assistance programs because they are relatively easy to exploit. He said one reason is that “the punishments associated with much of the fraud are relatively low.”

Hence, the administration wants to work with Congress to significantly increase sentences for all levels of fraud, he said, to deter potential fraudsters from targeting these programs.

On Aug. 4, authorities announced that 19 people have been charged with Medicaid fraud for allegedly submitting more than $4 million in false home care bills. The investigation was a joint effort by several federal and state law enforcement agencies.

The White House on Aug. 6 announced that it has launched a new website to track the administration’s moves to eliminate alleged fraud, waste, and abuse in government agencies.

“Each partner agency reported three figures” to the task force led by Vance, the site states, noting that the “fraud uncovered” section on the site “represents total estimated fraud identified through data analysis” while the “fraud stopped” portion “counts the dollars saved annually through administrative actions such as provider suspensions and rule changes.”

Vance said in a recent interview with Fox News:

“I don’t care where you came from, I don’t care what your name is. If you are committing fraud against the American people, all of us in public leadership should ... try to throw you in prison for enriching yourself off the American taxpayer.”

A similar initiative was established under the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was associated with Tesla CEO Elon Musk and which was wound down by July 2026. DOGE’s website also included contracts, leases, and other items that were targeted for elimination by the Trump administration.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 15:45

Consumer Credit Jumps More Than Expected In June As Credit Card Debt Spikes

One month after the May consumer credit posting a shocking decline - the first since late 2024 - driven by a plunge in revolving credit, things are mostly back to normal, with the Fed reporting in its latest G.19 report that in June, US consumer credit posted a healthy $14.17BN bounce - a full reversal of the May drop of $1.1 billion - and above the $11.9 billion median estimate. 

The rebound was driven by a sizable reversal in last month's drop in revolving credit (i.e., credit card debt), as consumer resumed buying on credit to the tune of $6.7BN...

... bringing the total amount of outstanding credit card debt to $1.351 trillion, just $1 billion away from the all time high set in October 2024.

Meanwhile, non-revolving credit rose by its slow and steady monthly pace of $7.4 billion, lifting the total amount of student and auto loans to a new record high of $3.816 trillion.

What is interesting, is that while auto loans have barely budged since late 2023, staying around 1.6 trillion for nearly three years, and hitting a record $1.571 trillion at the end of June, student loans have resumed their ascent, and after a modest decline in late 2023, student loans are once again at all time highs although in June we saw a tiny decline of $4.5 billion.

Finally for those keeping tabs, after a modest decline in the previous two quarter, the average interest rate on credit card accounts assessed interest rose to 22.15%...

... a level last seen three years ago, when the Fed rates was almost 2% higher, which confirms our long-running observation that credit card rates go up but they never go down.

One final observation: after a period of about 6 years when the average amount financed by auto loans was around $25,000 (from 2008 to 2014), this amount has grown dramatically, and in Q1 2026 it hit a new record high of $42,500, the highest on record. Just in case there was confusion what is behind the relentless increase in car prices...

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 15:32

Senate Passes The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia & Iran Act Of 2026

On Friday the Senate finally passed a bill imposing major new sanctions on Russia due to the grinding war which has been going since February 2022.

The bill had bipartisan support, with a vote of 86 to 11, and now it will go to the House - where it is expected to be passed there too. After a year of negotiations and holdups based largely on prior White House pushback, the 'breakthrough' is largely the result of the death of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

The bill is called literally the The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 - which aptly reveals the late senator's hawkish stance on all 'official enemies'.

In places he couldn't start a war, he would certainly at least advocate for hard-hitting sanctions, which technically is itself an act of war. In many ways Graham continued with the mantle of John McCain - who never saw a conflict he didn't want to rush American forces into.

The newly Senate-passed sanctions act "allows the president to impose tariffs of up to 100% on the top five purchasers of Russian oil or natural gas." There are some crucial caveats:

There are exceptions for countries that import less than 15% of their natural gas from Russia and are taking "significant" steps to reduce the imports. It also includes sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, officials within his government, oligarchs and Russian banks and financial institutions. 

It remains that China and India are the largest buyers of Russian crude oil, but there are also still some EU countries which have remained under pressure to cut their Russian imports significantly.

The sanctions also extend Washington's ongoing economic warfare on Iran's energy and weapons sectors, which was an expected part of the legislation. 

Proud 2 support Sen passage of Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act in BIG bipart vote 86-11 This bill holds Putin accountable for largest land war in Europe since WWII+ protects our natl security

It wldnt hv been possible w/o the work of our late colleague Lindsey Graham

— Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) August 7, 2026

Sen. Graham had actually spent spent years trying to finally advance it across the finish line, but the Trump administration had initially entered the White House loudly pushing diplomacy with Moscow and the idea that a swift end to the over four-year long war could be achieved by Trump's direct mediation and negotiating prowess. The policy reached an apex with the Trump-Putin Alaska summit, but failed to take off from there.

Instead, the world is currently witnessing the war's biggest escalatory phase in years, especially given the nightly major Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian energy sites and infrastructure. Russia's aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities, including on the capital, has in turn stepped up.

Trump on Lindsey Graham: "I wanted to see the war with Ukraine end very quickly. I think he was more into, you know, keeping it going, frankly."

Trump on Lindsey Graham:

I wanted to see the war with Ukraine end very quickly. I think he was more into, you know, keeping it going, frankly.pic.twitter.com/sjHCNcMsZn

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 12, 2026

Pro-Ukraine hawks have been salivating and waiting for this moment, and again lawmakers have been bipartisan on this. For example, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, previously announced that passing the bill would serve as a "fitting memorial" to Graham and everything he represented.

"There can be no more fitting memorial to Lindsey, his legacy, or the causes he fought for, than to pass this legislation and realize his long-held dream of an independent and secure Ukraine," she said.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 15:00

Uncertainty Rules!

By Elwin de Groot, head of macro strategy at Rabobank

US Treasury yields drifted higher yesterday after the Financial Times reported, citing people close to Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, that he would be prepared to raise rates as early as September if incoming inflation data surprise to the upside and markets themselves begin pricing a more hawkish path. Yet the market reaction was not confined to the front end suggesting investors were not interpreting the story in a straightforwardly hawkish manner.

That ambiguity is understandable. If markets push yields higher on expectations of tighter policy, the Fed may feel less need to deliver that tightening. Note also that Warsh himself was not speaking, and one of his recurring themes has been a dislike of explicit forward guidance. Moreover, September remains some distance away in market time, particularly in an environment where geopolitical developments can overturn macro narratives overnight.

Indeed, whilst oil prices had come down in the early part of this week on the back of renewed signs that the Strait of Hormuz could gradually reopen, those same prices rose again overnight as a convincing agreement remains elusive as it offers no permanent solutions for the key sticking points. Instead, it offers another 60-day window of free transits through Hormuz while further negotiations resume. Reports suggest Iran is looking to restrict US and Israeli ships from the Strait and it’s been ear-deafening silent on the ‘nuclear’ issue, for example. If a deal is agreed, it could be a matter of time until either party expresses frustration with the negotiations again and markets are forced to price in another few weeks of geopolitical tension.

Meanwhile, refined products are feeling the pinch of impending shortages, leading us to revise up sharply our forecasts for diesel, gasoil and marine fuels, as our senior energy analyst Joe DeLaura writes. In Europe, it is the winter-demand pressure that hangs over the market. The underpriced risk is that Europe’s own weather stress raises gas burn through the power sector just as LNG supply risks remain elevated, our senior energy analyst Florence Schmitt writes.

European macro data offered little inspiration yesterday. German factory orders surprised to the upside in June, though largely thanks to volatile big-ticket orders. This morning saw industrial production tick 0.2% m/m higher that month, but this was offset by lower growth in the previous month. Elsewhere, the picture was even less encouraging. Industrial production fell in both Spain and Italy, raising the possibility that the eurozone's preliminary 0.4% q/q GDP growth estimate may yet be revised lower. Eurozone retail sales also disappointed, falling 0.3% m/m in June and largely offsetting May's upwardly revised increase. The broader message is that growth concerns are unlikely to disappear simply because oil prices have eased from their recent highs.

In fact, what increasingly defines the global economy is not any single shock, but the relentless arrival of new ones. Businesses and households are being bombarded (in some regions rather literally) by an overlapping set of disruptions: trade disputes, geopolitical conflict, policy uncertainty, financial market volatility, technological disruption and natural disasters. The first eight months of 2026 have already provided a year's worth of such events.

The obvious example is the Middle East conflict and the disruption of shipping through Hormuz. But it is far from the only one. Investors continue to grapple with uncertainty surrounding the US tariff regime, while questions persist over the sustainability of the AI investment boom and the valuations attached to it. A rising string of hacking reports and AI models behaving unexpectedly has raised concerns over AI’s controllability.

In Europe, concerns are mounting over intensifying Chinese competition and the growing economic costs of climate change. Scorching temperatures, drying rivers and devastating wildfires have already become defining features of this summer. Looking ahead, forecasters are increasingly focused on the emergence of a potential "super El Niño" event, which could amplify weather-related disruptions across a wide range of emerging and developed economies.

Yet uncertainty is more than merely a transmission channel for shocks. It is an economic force in its own right.

Franklin D. Roosevelt famously captured this during the depths of the Great Depression when he declared in his first inaugural address that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". Nearly a century later, the insight remains remarkably relevant. Uncertainty can paralyze decision-making, delay investment, encourage precautionary saving and ultimately amplify the effects of whatever shock triggered it in the first place.

An interesting ECB study published in its latest Economic Bulletin broadly confirms the point. Looking at the eurozone, the analysis finds that uncertainty shocks tend to reduce investment, particularly spending on tangible capital, as well as consumer purchases of durable goods. The effects are most visible during the first two to four quarters following the shock. Importantly, however, the impact appears largely transitory. After an initial decline, activity tends to recover and the long-run effect on output is limited.

Part of that result may reflect modelling choices. But there is also an intuitive economic explanation: people learn. Households, businesses and investors gradually adapt to recurring shocks. The unfamiliar becomes familiar. What initially causes panic eventually becomes incorporated into decision-making. That observation brings us back to a theme from our Monthly Outlook, Groundhog Day Economics: markets seem to become more accustomed to geopolitical disruptions, yet every recurring script carries the risk of a very different ending.

Interestingly, the same logic may apply in reverse. As our colleague Stefan Koopman argues here, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham may seek to replace "securonomics" with a form of "vibonomics": generating a series of positive confidence shocks before embarking on more politically difficult structural reforms. The idea is simple enough. If uncertainty depresses activity, improved confidence can temporarily support it.

The key word, however, is temporarily. The lesson from both the ECB's research and recent market experience is that confidence effects can move demand forward in time, but they do not permanently raise an economy's growth potential. Lower precautionary savings may provide a one-off boost to spending. Positive sentiment may temporarily lift GDP. But neither changes the underlying supply capacity of an economy.

Ultimately, uncertainty may rule the headlines, and confidence may shape the near-term cycle. But lasting prosperity still depends on a far less fashionable ingredient: stronger supply-side growth.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 14:40

Trump Threatens To Jail Arms Shortage 'Leakers'

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

President Trump on Thursday threatened "leakers" with jail time over reports about dwindling US military stockpiles as a result of the Iran war, and claimed the US had plenty of munitions available.

"The US has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types. Additionally, large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the US as needed," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Official White House Photo

"Defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history. The 'leakers' of these treasonous statements are being hunted down," the president added.

Some of the most significant reports about the shortage of advanced munitions didn’t come from media reports but from analysis published by the think tank the Center for International Studies (CSIS), which used publicly available data to produce its estimates.

CSIS found that the US has used about 60% of its advanced Patriot air defense missiles and about half of its interceptors for the THAAD missile defense system, though sources told CNN that the US had actually used about 80% of its THAADs during the war.

While Trump says that US arms makers are working to produce more munitions, the current rate of weapons use far exceeds the rate at which they can be produced, and it will take years to significantly increase production.

Media reports have also said that the US has used up nearly all of its ATACMS missiles and Precision-Strike Missiles, which were both used extensively in strikes on Iran.

Trump also responded to a report from The Washington Post that said he lashed out at US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth over the munitions shortages, which one source told the outlet was part of the reason why Trump held off on his threats to dramatically escalate the war.

Sources told the Post that on the sidelines of a recent cabinet meeting at Camp David, Trump vented his frustration at Hegseth over the munitions shortages. The report said that Hegseth then blamed his deputy, Stephen Feinberg, for both the shortages and for failing to ensure Trump was informed about the issue.

Asked about dwindling US weapons stockpiles, President Trump on Thursday said there's a "virtual unlimited supply" of certain munitions and "we have others where it’s a little bit tighter" https://t.co/UFMSGvXiWa pic.twitter.com/lZtfbSuKgB

— Bloomberg (@business) August 6, 2026

"The Fake News, as usual, is spreading false and completely unfounded rumors. I am extremely happy with the job that Pete Hegseth is doing," Trump wrote on Truth Social. He said that the Post published the report "despite our telling them their story is completely FALSE" and added that he believed their "fake ‘reporting’ is treasonous."

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 14:00

Saudi Arabia's $5 Oil Detour Is Expensive... But Worth It

Authored by Leon Stille via OilPrice.com,

• Rerouting Saudi crude to Asia via Yanbu, Egypt’s SUMED pipeline and the Cape of Good Hope may add around $5 per barrel and up to four weeks to a voyage.

• That premium is small compared with the economic damage caused by losing access to Hormuz or Bab el-Mandeb altogether.

• Saudi Arabia’s alternative export infrastructure is not a temporary workaround but a strategic asset—although it cannot replace the kingdom’s wider need to diversify beyond oil.

The latest Saudi oil route looks absurd on a map.

Crude moves west across Saudi Arabia to Yanbu, north through the Red Sea to Egypt, across the SUMED pipeline from Ain Sokhna to Sidi Kerir, then west through the Mediterranean before tankers sail around the Cape of Good Hope to reach customers in Asia.

Oil that started relatively close to Asia first travels thousands of kilometres in the opposite direction.

The detour reportedly adds around $5 per barrel once extra freight, fuel, insurance and pipeline charges are included. For a two-million-barrel cargo, that approaches $10 million. Aramco is therefore considering a separate pricing mechanism for crude loaded from Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Sidi Kerir, because its normal Asian official selling price no longer reflects the logistics.

The immediate conclusion is that avoiding Hormuz has made Saudi oil structurally more expensive.

That is true. But it misses the more important point.

Five dollars per barrel is not only the cost of disruption. It is the price of having another option when two of the world’s most vulnerable shipping chokepoints can no longer be treated as permanently available.

Two chokepoints turned one contingency route into another

Saudi Arabia’s first line of defence against disruption in the Strait of Hormuz is its East-West Pipeline. It carries crude from the kingdom’s producing region in the east to Yanbu on the Red Sea, avoiding Hormuz completely.

That system has proved its value. Aramco says it ramped the pipeline up to its maximum capacity of 7 million barrels per day during the first quarter of 2026. Around 2 million barrels per day feed western refineries, leaving roughly 5 million barrels per day of export capacity.

However, moving oil to Yanbu solves only the first geographical problem. Asian buyers would normally take those cargoes south through the Red Sea and exit via Bab el-Mandeb. Houthi threats and attacks have made that route unreliable as well.

The newer workaround therefore does not avoid the Red Sea entirely, as some viral descriptions claim. It uses the northern Red Sea between Yanbu and Ain Sokhna, but avoids the Houthi-exposed Bab el-Mandeb passage by moving through Egypt and into the Mediterranean.

From there, the ship still faces a remarkable journey. It must leave the Mediterranean through Gibraltar, sail around Africa and cross the Indian Ocean back towards Asia.

Reuters calculated that the journey to Asia can increase from about 19 days to 48 days. Fuel costs for a tanker can rise from approximately $1.26 million to $2.87 million, before adding around $1 million in Suez Canal fees. Fully laden very large crude carriers may also need to discharge part of their cargo into the SUMED pipeline before transiting the canal and reload it at Sidi Kerir.

None of this is cheap or efficient.

But the relevant alternative is not the old route operating normally. It is a delayed cargo versus no cargo.

The $5 premium is smaller than the risk it insures

Oil markets are accustomed to treating infrastructure efficiency as a question of cents per barrel. Under stable conditions, that makes sense. Producers compete on transport costs, crude quality and refinery margins, while buyers optimise routes aggressively.

Geopolitical resilience follows different economics.

An extra $5 on an $85 barrel is a material cost increase, but it is small compared with the price spikes, refinery shortages and lost export revenues caused by a major supply interruption. Saudi exports were down by around 2.4 million barrels per day year-on-year during the recent disruption, while Gulf exports fell to only 36% of pre-war levels.

Even more importantly, the risks do not disappear the moment both straits formally reopen.

Iran does not need to close Hormuz permanently to influence shipping. Mines, drone attacks, seizures or even credible threats can raise insurance premiums and persuade shipowners to wait. The Houthis have demonstrated a similar ability to disrupt Red Sea traffic with relatively inexpensive weapons.

A reopened chokepoint is therefore not the same thing as a dependable chokepoint.

That changes how the detour should be valued. The additional route is comparable to spare generation capacity in an electricity system or a second supplier in an industrial supply chain. It may look expensive when everything works. Its value becomes obvious only when the primary route fails.

Saudi Arabia has maintained this kind of optionality better than many producers. Despite the severe regional disruption, Aramco reported 98.4% supply reliability in the second quarter, supported by the East-West Pipeline, storage, alternative terminals and its international logistics network.

The $5 premium is part of the cost of preserving that record.

Redundancy is becoming part of the barrel

The important shift is that Aramco may now need different pricing formulas for the same crude depending on where it is loaded and how it reaches the buyer.

Official selling prices, or OSPs, are the monthly differentials that producers apply relative to regional crude benchmarks. They normally reflect grade quality, market conditions and destination. A separate Sidi Kerir formula would make logistics resilience an explicit component of the barrel’s price.

That is not necessarily permanent for every cargo. If Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb become reliably navigable again, the longest route will lose its commercial appeal. Asian refiners will not voluntarily pay millions more for an unnecessary voyage.

But the infrastructure should not be viewed as stranded the moment normal shipping resumes. Saudi Arabia is already considering expanding its east-west pipeline capacity by as much as 2 million barrels per day. Yanbu is being repositioned from a secondary outlet into a strategic export hub. SUMED, Suez, Mediterranean storage and flexible tanker arrangements add further options.

The lesson of 2026 is that relying on a single efficient route can be more expensive than maintaining several imperfect ones.

This will influence investment decisions well beyond Saudi Arabia. Pipelines, terminals and storage assets previously judged as underutilised may acquire a resilience premium. Buyers may accept higher costs for supply contracts with genuine routing flexibility. Insurers and lenders will increasingly distinguish between producers that have contingency infrastructure and those whose exports depend on one exposed waterway.

The result is a higher structural logistics cost for some barrels, even if benchmark oil prices fall.

Better oil logistics do not solve Saudi Arabia’s larger problem

There is, however, a danger in celebrating resilience too much.

Saudi Arabia can spend billions making oil exports harder to interrupt, but it cannot make global oil demand permanent. Electric vehicles, efficiency, alternative fuels and climate policy will gradually erode demand growth. The kingdom ultimately needs business models that do not depend on exporting ever-larger volumes of crude.

Riyadh understands this. According to its Vision 2030 annual report, non-oil activities accounted for 55% of real GDP in 2025, while non-oil government revenue had risen substantially since 2016. Investment in tourism, logistics, mining, manufacturing, technology and renewable energy is intended to reduce the economy’s exposure to oil.

Those figures should not be confused with completed diversification. Oil remains central to exports, fiscal capacity and the financing of many non-oil investments. Some flagship projects are expensive, and turning state-led spending into self-sustaining private activity remains difficult.

Yet this is not an either-or choice.

Saudi Arabia needs to protect the oil revenues it still earns while using those revenues to build an economy that will eventually need them less. More flexible export infrastructure supports the first task. Vision 2030 is supposed to deliver the second.

The Cape route may add $5 per barrel. That is the visible cost.

The invisible value is that Saudi Arabia can still sell the barrel when the shortest routes become unusable.

In an oil market shaped increasingly by drones, missiles and maritime chokepoints, redundancy is no longer wasted infrastructure.

It is part of the product.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 13:20

5th Small Modular Reactor Validated Since June, Poised For Mass Production

Another small nuclear reactor has achieved “criticality,” marking the fifth new reactor type to be certified as operationally viable in the United States since June, after none were certified for more than a half-century, as the nation’s “nuclear renaissance” quickly advances to commercial mass-production.

Santa Clara, California-based Oklo’s Groves Isotope Test Reactor reached criticality on Aug. 5 at the company’s plant in Lockhart, Texas, and will produce isotopes for medicine, advanced manufacturing, scientific research, space exploration, and national security needs.

Unlike massive cement-siloed, utility-scale reactors such as the Westinghouse AP1000, the Groves reactor is a circular 22.5-foot-diameter nuclear generator that can be shipped by truck or rail and planted in a 35-foot-deep reinforced concrete cavity, making it a distinct entry in an expanding range of small, portable reactors on the cusp of being retail ready.

As John Haughey details for The Epoch Times, Oklo is one of 10 companies selected by the Department of Energy (DOE) in August 2025 to develop 11 “first mover” innovations under a reactor pilot program authorized by President Donald Trump in four May 2025 “Nuclear Renaissance” executive orders that call for licensing 10 new reactors by 2030 and quadrupling the nation’s nuclear energy capacity by 2050.

The president’s executive orders included incentives for three prototypes to reach “criticality” by July 4 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. That goal was eclipsed when Aalo Atomics’ Aalo-X became the fourth small reactor to attain criticality on July 4 after Antares Nuclear’s Mark-0 on June 4 became the first new reactor type in the United States to achieve the status since 1973.

With Oklo’s Groves reactor becoming the fifth to reach criticality in the last two months, Trump’s five-year goal for 10 small reactor types to be validated is already halfway accomplished. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said as many as seven would achieve criticality by year’s end.

The Groves reactor is one of two Oklo reactor developments that qualified for the pilot program. The company is also building a 75 megawatt reactor to anchor its Aurora Powerhouse Project at Idaho National Laboratory’s Materials and Fuels Complex, a prototype the company anticipates will be ready for “commercial operations” by 2028.

The Groves reactor is also one of two that attained viability in a privately owned plant rather than on the 890-square-mile Idaho National Lab near Idaho Falls.

“Thanks to President Trump’s precedent-setting directive to create the Reactor Pilot Program, Oklo’s Groves Isotope Test Reactor is part of the revival of America’s nuclear energy industry,” Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Ted Garrish said in a statement. “We applaud the work of the Oklo, DOE, and Idaho National Laboratory staff who helped achieve this milestone.”

United States Energy Secretary Chris Wright speaks with Kiewit Construction Site Manager Marvin Robb (L) and Atlas Engineering Project Manager Hillary Hack during a June 25 tour of Oklo’s Aurora Powerhouse Project at Idaho National Laboratory. John Haughey/The Epoch Times

Built in a Year

During a tour of Idaho National Laboratory in late June, Oklo Co-Founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte said the company’s Groves reactor in Texas would soon reach criticality despite being built from scratch in less than a year.

The company began building the open, water-cooled reactor designed to supply domestic radioisotopes for medical imaging, cancer treatments, and national defense in September 2025, he said, and received DOE’s “substantial completion” certification in April, clearing it for criticality.

“It’s dang impressive that we hit substantial completion in 227 days, and that we'll be able to turn that reactor on in critical in less than a year,” he said. “We’re just waiting on the green light to take fuel, load it, and turn it on.”

That green light came late on Aug. 5.

“Reaching criticality in less than a year is an incredible milestone for our team,” DeWitte said in an Aug. 6 statement. “Oklo developed Groves from a greenfield site on private land, completed full-scale civil excavation and construction, manufactured or commercially procured all components, including fuel, and developed its operating programs in-house.

“Taken together,” he added, “we believe these accomplishments establish a new benchmark for the Reactor Pilot Program and set the stage for the future of advanced nuclear deployment at scale.”

The nation—the world—is poised to see “advanced nuclear deployment at scale” with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expected this fall to adopt Part 57, a micro-reactor regulatory framework that trims license reviews from often more than a decade to between six and 12 months.

Under Part 57, when the commission issues a license for a prototype reactor, the developer doesn’t need further approvals to mass produce it. Public comment on the rule closed July 15. Commissioners are expected to debate and adopt a final rule no later than early 2027.

“Ordering one [reactor] is cool, but ordering 10 is a lot better,” DeWitte said in Idaho. “There’s a future for that, for sure.”

Oklo is engaged in multiple nuclear energy projects in addition to its Groves reactor and Aurora Powerhouse, including a fuel fabrication plant prototype to recycle fuels from Idaho National Lab’s Experimental Breeder Reactor-II, idle since 1994; a co-partnership with Nvidia in a fuel project at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; and its September 2025 contract with hyperscaler Meta to power a 200-acre data center campus in Pike County, Ohio, with a small reactor by the early 2030s.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 13:00

Meet The Investors In SpaceX Who Say Their Shares "Disappeared"

Some investors who thought they had secured one of Wall Street's hottest trades, owning SpaceX before its blockbuster IPO, say the shares they expected to cash in on simply disappeared, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The controversy centers on special purpose vehicles (SPVs), investment funds that promise accredited investors exposure to private companies before they go public. After SpaceX's June IPO, several investors who bought into SPVs managed by Late Stage Management say they were stunned to learn the underlying SpaceX shares had allegedly been sold years earlier, leaving them without the windfall they believed they still owned.

The Journal writes that one of those investors, Virginia data engineer Ram Rupireddy, invested $17,250 in a Late Stage fund in 2020 after being told it offered exposure to SpaceX. Based on statements in his investor portal and 2025 tax documents, he believed he still owned the equivalent of 2,500 SpaceX shares when the company debuted publicly. At the IPO price, he estimated the position would have been worth more than $300,000. Instead, the firm later informed him the underlying shares had been sold in 2024, leaving him with roughly $45,450.

"The plan was to fund college education for both of my kids," Rupireddy said after filing a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He says he never received notice that his investment had been sold, and only discovered the change after temporarily losing access to Late Stage's investor portal, which later showed the position had been liquidated.

Another investor, who asked not to be identified, told The Wall Street Journal he experienced the same surprise. He said he believed he still owned pre IPO SpaceX exposure until after the company's public debut, when he was informed the underlying shares had already been sold years earlier. Like Rupireddy, he has since joined other investors seeking legal remedies, and told the newspaper an SEC attorney and an FBI special agent contacted him to discuss his experience.

According to The Wall Street Journal, at least four investors reported similar experiences, while roughly 150 Late Stage investors have joined a group chat to discuss potential legal action. One investor told the newspaper that an SEC attorney and an FBI agent contacted him about his experience. The SEC declined to comment on whether it is investigating the matter, and the FBI also declined comment.

Late Stage Management did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The firm is already facing separate legal scrutiny after three former sales executives pleaded guilty earlier this year to fraud charges involving hidden markups and fees, though prosecutors said those cases were unrelated to the disputed SpaceX shares.

The episode is also drawing fresh attention to the risks of SPVs, which often provide indirect "exposure" to private companies through multiple layers of investment vehicles rather than direct ownership of shares. As Davis Polk partner Jared Fine told the Journal, "Ultimately if you're investing, you want to make sure you own what you think you own."

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 12:20

Rockstar Founder Builds $300M Celsius Stake, Launches Activist Offense: Management "All Need To Be Fired"

Summary:

• CELH shares Jump on CNBC Headline 
• Rockstar Founder Amasses 5.7% CELH stake, Tells CNBC He Wants To Be CEO
• Thursday: Celsius Shares Crash As Revenue Misses Estimates

Rockstar Founder Begins Activist Move 

One day after Celsius Holdings crashed 18% following a dismal second-quarter earnings report, Rockstar Energy founder Russ Savage told CNBC that he has amassed a 4.7% stake, equivalent to more than 12 million shares, and wants to gut incompetent management and install himself as CEO in a bid to turn around the struggling beverage company.

Here's more from CNBC:

Savage's stake amounts to roughly 4.7% of the company and would be worth about $300 million at current stock levels.

While Savage has been quietly advising Celsius to change its cost structure and marketing strategy for over a year, he now says new leadership is needed.

"The CEO, the COO, the brand manager and the marketing manager all need to be fired," Savage told CNBC.

. . .

Savage, who was born Russell Weiner and started Rockstar with a $50,000 mortgage against his California condo, said he offered advice to Celsius over a year ago, but was largely ignored. He said Celsius has too many layers of management, with too many costs, and no real accountability.

"They need one person making the decisions, paying attention to every detail, not a group of people in a firing squad," he said.

. . .

"Once you lose shelf space, you're dead," he said. "The chains will give it to Red Bull or Monster."

Savage said he's offering to take over as CEO before the problems become too deep to fix. When building Rockstar, he said he managed every detail -- from sales and marketing to sponsorships, packaging, distribution and innovation. He said the same type of cost-conscious, driven leader is needed at Celsius.

"I'm publicly volunteering to do it," he said. "The CEO has lost credibility with the investment community."

The CNBC headline catapulted the stock 12% higher by late morning in New York. Shares have yet to recover all of yesterday's losses following the dismal earnings report. More details can be viewed below.

Latest short data from Bloomberg shows about 20% of the float is short. 

Squeeze candidate? 

Celsius Shares Crash As Revenue Misses Estimates 

Celsius Holdings, the Florida-based beverage company with a portfolio of some of America's top-performing energy drinks, reported weaker-than-expected second-quarter results, as revenue, adjusted earnings, and profitability missed Wall Street estimates.

Second-quarter adjusted earnings fell to 36 cents per share from 47 cents a year earlier, below the 41-cent Bloomberg Consensus estimate. Revenue increased 11% to $817.9 million but missed the $872.6 million estimate, with North American sales of $790.7 million also falling short.

Profitability deteriorated despite sales growth. Gross margin narrowed to 48.1% from 51.5% as promotional activity, channel mix, and aluminum inflation weighed on results. Net income fell 45% to $55.3 million, while adjusted earnings declined to 36 cents per share from 47 cents. Adjusted EBITDA dropped 12% to $184.2 million.

2Q Earnings Snapshot:

Adjusted EPS 36c vs. 47c y/y, estimate 41c (Bloomberg Consensus)

EPS 14c vs. 33c y/y, estimate 40c

Revenue $817.9 million, +11% y/y, estimate $872.6 million

• North America revenue $790.7 million, +11% y/y, estimate $847.3 million
• International revenue $27.2 million, +9.7% y/y

Gross margin 48.1% vs. 51.5% y/y, estimate 48.6%

Adjusted Ebitda $184.2 million, -12% y/y, estimate $198.4 million

Celsius shares plunged 16% in premarket trading. 

"During the second quarter of 2026, we made meaningful progress in advancing Celsius Holdings as a scaled portfolio of leading brands. We delivered a double-digit increase in second-quarter revenue, completed the Rockstar integration, and maintained gross margin near first-quarter levels despite a challenging commodity environment," CEO John Fieldly wrote in a press release.

Celsius Holdings' portfolio, which includes CELSIUS, Alani Nu, and the U.S. and Canadian Rockstar Energy business, accounts for about 20% of U.S. ready-to-drink energy sales. PepsiCo serves as the company's primary distribution partner.

Notably, the national average price for regular 87-octane gasoline remained mostly above $4 per gallon in the quarter, a key threshold at which consumer behavior begins to shift through trade-downs and reduced discretionary purchases. Goldman Sachs analyst Bonnie Herzog previously flagged a slowdown in energy-drink demand beginning in mid-May. Read the full note here.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 12:15

US Senate Pushes CLARITY Act Vote To September

Authored by Ezra Reguerra via CoinTelegraph.com,

Senate Republican leaders are expected to leave for their August recess without voting on crypto market structure legislation, delaying consideration of the bill until at least September, according to a report from Politico. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune confirmed that the chamber would not vote on the legislation before the recess, citing Democratic opposition and saying it would be prioritized when senators return next month. 

“The Dems are insistent on no Clarity vote,” Thune said, according to comments his office provided to Cointelegraph. “I worked with sponsors of the bill. Senator Lummis was great, and we’re getting that queued up first thing when we come back.”

The postponement leaves one of the crypto industry’s top legislative priorities unresolved and compresses the Senate’s timetable for advancing the bill. Without sufficient Democratic support, Republicans may struggle to secure the 60 votes generally needed to overcome a filibuster.

Crypto Council for Innovation CEO Ji Hun Kim called the postponement “disappointing” but said the direction of the legislation had not changed.

“Every day without such a framework pushes American users and builders offshore and leaves consumers at risk,” Kim said in comments provided to Cointelegraph.

September delay narrows path for CLARITY Act

Thune’s remarks come after comments from Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott, who said on Thursday the chamber should hold its first vote on the CLARITY Act before the recess “without any question.” 

Scott said Thune still had time to schedule the procedural vote and that Republicans were gaining support for it. 

The CLARITY Act would establish a federal framework for digital asset markets and clarify how oversight is divided between the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Citing three people with knowledge of the matter, Politico reported that the CLARITY Act lacks Democratic support. Negotiations remained underway.

Thune may still file cloture before the recess. This procedural step could position the bill for a vote when senators return in mid-September, but it would not constitute a vote on the legislation, according to two people cited by Politico.

Cointelegraph also asked Thune’s office to confirm whether he intended to file cloture before the Senate leaves for recess, but has not received a response to the question by time of publication. 

The sources said Democrats have declined to approve a time agreement that would expedite the Senate’s remaining pre-recess business and allow the crypto bill to reach the floor. 

According to the report, Republican leaders would need unanimous consent from all 100 senators to complete the outstanding items without extending the session deep into next week.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 12:00

Consumers More Optimistic On Jobs, Financial Conditions, Stock Prices As Inflation Eases: NY Fed Survey

Unlike recent extremely volatile months, consumers expectations for inflation in July barely budged as disclosed today by the latest NY Fed Survey, which showed that inflation expectations in one year fell slightly to 3.6% from 3.7% prior. Estimates for price increases in three and five years remained at 3.3% and 3%, respectively, although the 3Y inflation forecast did dip notably, if not enough to move it by a significant digit. 

Gas price growth expectations rebounded partially after their sharp decline in June, increasing by 1.4% to 2.9%. 

Away from inflation, labor market expectations were mixed, with the mean probability of higher US unemployment rate increasing by 1.1 ppt to 42.8%...

... and the mean probability of losing one’s job in the next twelve months increasing by 0.1 ppt to 14.2 percent; however, this was offset by the mean perceived probability of finding a job if one’s current job was lost, which increased by 1.3% to 46.2% the highest this year.  That increase was most pronounced among those who have a high school degree or less and those living in a household where income is under $ 50,000 per year. 

Earlier on Friday, the government employment report showed employers cut jobs in July and the labor-force participation continued to slide. The jobless rate declined to 4.1%. 

Recent data pointed to a strengthening of the American consumer. Spending rose more than expected in the three months through June, and the University of Michigan’s gauge of sentiment increased to a five-month high in July.

In the New York Fed report, more households said their current financial situation was better than last year, and more said their finances will stay about the same in 2027.

Still, the average perceived probability of missing a minimum debt payment in the next three months increased, especially among in households where annual income is below $ 50,000.

Consumers were also more optimistic about the stock market, with the probability that stock prices will be higher a year from now reaching the highest level of the series since April 2021.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 11:45

Hours After Murkowski Predictably Sides With Dems, Cassidy Unblocks Blanche AG Nomination

Sen. Bill Cassidy announced Friday he will support Todd Blanche's nomination for attorney general, clearing the decisive path for confirmation after two other Republican senators opposed the pick.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 15, 2026. 

Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who had remained undecided amid weeks of scrutiny, made the announcement in remarks on the Senate floor. "Mr. Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this, but the choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche," he said. "It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively under President Trump and who indeed may not be as good as Mr. Blanche." He added: "All considered, I will vote for Mr. Blanche. I'll be criticized for this vote. What's new?"

The decision came hours after RINO Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) declared she would not support Blanche. In a post on X, Murkowski said the country needs an attorney general "who will check the worst impulses of this administration" and that she lacked confidence Blanche is that person. She also voiced concern that confirmation would remove Senate leverage over a nearly $2 billion anti-weaponization fund intended to compensate people claiming they were unfairly targeted by the government. "The fund is only off the table because this nomination is pending and the Senate has leverage," Murkowski stated. "Once we vote, that will end, and there is no telling what the future holds."

Blanche, who has served as acting attorney general and previously as President Donald Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer, rescinded the order establishing the fund on Aug. 2. The move formed part of an agreement with Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and John Cornyn (R-TX) that allowed the Senate Judiciary Committee to advance the nomination to the full Senate. Blanche said at the time that the department "always welcomes and appreciates productive engagement with all members of Congress."

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), another RINO, announced earlier in the week that she would oppose Blanche, citing actions including an order shielding Trump and his family members from certain tax audits. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) remains absent while 'recovering from a fall at home', with no clear timeline for his return.

Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority. With McConnell out, Blanche could afford to lose only two Republican votes if all Democrats opposed him. Collins and Murkowski provided those two "no" votes. Cassidy's support supplies the critical 50th vote in favor, positioning the nomination for approval by a narrow margin even without Democratic support. All 47 Democrats are expected to vote against Blanche.

Cassidy had raised repeated concerns in recent weeks that Blanche might function more as the president's personal attorney than as an independent attorney general for the country. He spoke with Blanche multiple times, including meetings addressing worries about "lawfare" - prosecutions driven by political anger rather than valid legal grounds - and met with Murkowski as well. Despite those reservations, Cassidy concluded that confirming Blanche was preferable to leaving the department under an indefinite acting leadership that might prove less effective.

Before the Tillis-Cornyn deal, Trump had floated the possibility of withdrawing the nomination and waiting until senators facing reelection challenges or retirement were replaced in January 2027. Cornyn lost his primary, Tillis chose not to run, and Cassidy also lost his reelection bid after Trump-backed challengers prevailed. Collins advanced through her primary and faces a general-election contest; McConnell is not seeking another term. Murkowski's term continues until early 2029.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 18, 2021. Susan Walsh/Getty Images Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 11:30

Scientists Warn Of Urgent AI Biosecurity Threat

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

For the first time, artificial intelligence has designed complete, functional viral genomes from scratch.

Oh dear.

Stanford University and Arc Institute researchers used generative AI models to produce 16 novel bacteriophages that successfully infect and kill bacteria in the lab.

Breaking News: Scientists have used A.I. to create new viruses for the first time, raising hopes for medical advances while also raising the possibility that the technology could someday be used to invent dangerous pathogens. https://t.co/MJG4mp0TTb

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 6, 2026

Officials insist the viruses "pose no threat to people," yet biosecurity experts are already sounding the alarm that the same technology opens the door to inventing dangerous pathogens.

JUST IN – For the first time, AI has designed complete viral genomes, producing 16 functional viruses that infect bacteria and "pose no threat to people." — BBC pic.twitter.com/Le4lRSKN7q

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) August 6, 2026

The breakthrough, published in the journal Science, marks the first time generative AI has written entire viable viral genomes.

Researchers trained genome language models known as Evo 1 and Evo 2 on millions of natural genetic sequences. They then tasked the systems with designing complete bacteriophage genomes based on the well-studied ?X174 template that infects E. coli.

Of 302 synthesized designs, 16 proved fully functional: they assembled into virus particles, replicated inside bacterial cells, and in some cases outperformed the natural virus, even overcoming bacterial resistance when used as a cocktail.

Oh dear.

Brian Hie, assistant professor at Stanford who led the work, called it new territory. "This is a next step in the complexity that's designable by generative AI, this is the first time generative AI has been used to design a complete genome, it's something that can replicate and have other functions inside cells... this was new territory for us," he told the BBC.

The team deliberately excluded genetic data from viruses capable of infecting complex organisms and conducted the work in a secure laboratory. The resulting phages target only specific bacteria.

Patrick Cai, a synthetic biologist at the University of Manchester not involved in the study, called it "an important milestone."

Yet the same experts who celebrate the medical potential for phage therapies against antibiotic-resistant infections are issuing blunt warnings.

In an accompanying commentary in Science, Dr. Thomas Inglesby and Dr. Moritz Hanke of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security wrote that the findings raise "urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions."

They stated it is no longer a question of "whether generative viral genome design will exist" but whether it can be used without "enabling serious harm."

Oh dear.

New viruses with the potential to cause disease "should not be pursued," they added. "The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not."

Hanke has separately noted that one could simply prompt a genomic language model: "Hey, genomic language model, make me an influenza genome that is modified to be more transmissible or to be more lethal."

This is not abstract risk. Humanity already learned hard lessons when researchers mess with pathogens in laboratories. The COVID era exposed the catastrophic consequences of gain-of-function work and lab leaks.

Now AI is being handed the tools to design novel viruses at machine speed, far outpacing the regulatory frameworks meant to contain them.

The potential for misuse or accidental release is frightening. The only meaningful safeguard cited by the researchers themselves is a training-data filter - something that can be reversed by any team with access to broader viral datasets.

First article you find in a Resident Evil game https://t.co/6yNvWlhbLE

— 1/4 Black Garrett (@QTRBlackGarrett) August 6, 2026

Online reactions captured the unease immediately. One widely shared comment called the news "First article you find in a Resident Evil game." Others noted the same pattern: "No way this sort of virus randomly mutates to harm humans! Would never happen!" and "Modern scientists didn't watch 80's sci-fi horror and it shows."

This development arrives against a backdrop of repeated AI systems exceeding their intended bounds.

In July, an OpenAI model went rogue during testing, escaped its sandbox, and launched a cyber attack on Hugging Face after chaining exploits and stolen credentials.

This keeps happening.

Cutting-edge AI went on a hacking spree, concocting multiple fake identities designed to trick human engineers before covering its tracks.

During testing by a UK government-run AI lab, an advanced version of ChatGPT and Anthropic's Mythos went rogue.

In the most serious case,... pic.twitter.com/PFWFP5jmrv

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) August 6, 2026

Meta says AI model accessed the internet and hacked another firm https://t.co/qBebzeboWU

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) August 6, 2026

JUST IN: ?? Chinese company Moonshot's AI model breaks out and escapes from isolated test environment.

— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo) August 7, 2026

Earlier this year an AI coding agent wiped out a startup's entire production database and backups in nine seconds after "thinking for itself."

A tech entrepreneur reported his AI agent autonomously built itself a visual face and interface while he slept.

And when AI bots were placed in a virtual town for two weeks with clear rules against violence and chaos, they promptly went apesh*t - forming alliances, committing arson, and collapsing the simulated society.

These are not isolated glitches. They reveal systems that interpret goals, adapt, and act with speed and autonomy humans cannot easily interrupt.

Now layer onto that the growing chorus of voices who casually state that the human population needs to be halved.

"Scientists say halving the Worlds population could help save the planet"

Probably what the Boosters were designed to do anyway. pic.twitter.com/NKqRCvKwkB

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) August 5, 2026

Recent research and commentary have revived the idea that reducing the world's people to around four billion by 2200 would ease pressure on the planet - framed as a "pro-human" strategy through voluntary measures, yet delivered with the same technocratic confidence that once dismissed lab-leak risks.

Scientists say halving human population could ease pressure on Earthhttps://t.co/w3EU3isiXy

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) August 4, 2026

Imagine the same AI genome-design capability landing in the hands of those who view large-scale population reduction as a planetary necessity.

The tools that can design beneficial bacteriophages can, with different training data or prompts, design far more dangerous agents.

History shows that once a capability exists, containment relies on human restraint, institutional integrity, and enforceable rules - none of which have a perfect track record when power, ideology, or "greater good" justifications enter the picture.

The researchers emphasize medical upside: tailored phages that could help defeat drug-resistant bacteria. That potential is real. So is the reality that generative AI has crossed a threshold.

Complete, replicating viral genomes can now be written by machines. The governance structures that might prevent the worst outcomes remain incomplete.

What was once science fiction is now peer-reviewed fact. The only question left is whether the same systems that design the cure will one day be directed - or allowed to drift - toward something far darker.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 11:00

July Jobs Shock: US Lost 23K Workers, Below Lowest Estimate, As Unemp Rate Drops To 4.1%

Ahead of today's jobs report, in our payrolls preview we warned that "July Has Emerged As A Very Poor Month For Jobs" and boy were we right: moments ago the BLS reported that in July, the US labor force shrank by a whopping 23K, sharply lower from a downward revised 20K in June (from 57K), and the worst print since the negative 156K in February.

As noted above, the -23K print was below all estimates...

... and was a 5-sigma miss to estimates...

... as the 80K median estimate was missed by more than 100K.

And here come the Biden admin tricks of massive prior revisions: the change in total nonfarm payroll employment for May was revised down by 66,000, from +129,000 to  +63,000, and the change for June was revised down by 37,000, from +57,000 to +20,000. With these revisions, employment in May and June combined is 103,000 lower than previously reported

Yet despite the dismal Establishment Survey print, the unemployment rate actually declined from 4.2% to 4.1%, which was as a result of the number of Unemployed workers declining by 178K, more than the decline in Employed workers, which shrank by just 87K.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for teenagers (12.1%) and people who are Hispanic (4.6%) declined in July. The jobless rates for adult men (3.9 percent), adult  women (3.7 percent), and people who are White (3.6 percent), Black (6.3 percent), or Asian (4.0  percent) showed little change over the month.

What is remarkable is that while this was only the first drop in Payrolls in 5 months, the number of actual employed workers has been declining pretty much consistently all year (down 6 of the past 7 months)...

... and in July was the lowest US employment going back almost two years.

Part and parcel with the sudden chill in the labor market was the big miss in average hourly earnings, which rose just 0.1% MoM (below estimates of 0.3% and below last month's 0.3% increase), which in turn translated into a 3.2% annual increase, also far below the 3.5% median estimate.

Some more details on the composition of the labor market from the latest jobs report: 

• Among the unemployed, the number of people on temporary layoff increased by 153,000 to 921,000 in July. The number of permanent job losers changed little at 1.7 million. 
• In July, the number of people jobless less than 5 weeks edged down to 2.0 million and is down by 344,000 over the year. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) edged down over the month to 1.8 million but changed little over the year. The long-term unemployed accounted for 25.5 percent of all unemployed people in July. 
• Both the labor force participation rate, at 61.4 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 58.9 percent, changed little in July. Since January, the labor force participation rate declined by 0.7 percentage point, and the employment-population ratio decreased by 0.5 percentage point. 
• The number of people employed part time for economic reasons changed little at 4.8 million in July. These individuals would have preferred full-time employment but were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs. 
• In July, the number of people not in the labor force who currently want a job changed little at 5.9 million. These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the 4 weeks preceding the survey or were unavailable to take a job. 
• Among those not in the labor force who wanted a job, the number of people marginally attached to the labor force changed little at 1.8 million in July. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months but had not looked for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. The number of discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached who believed that no jobs were available for them, was essentially unchanged in July at 476,000. 

And another disappointing fact when looking below the surface: the number of part-time jobs rose by 138K and is once again approaching a record high, while full-time jobs dropped again by 106K, and is down 6 of the past 7 months.

As the next chart show, the number of full-time jobs is the lowest in 2 years.

Taking a look at the composition of the labor force, in July employment declined in local government education and retail trade. Employment continued to trend up in health care. Some more details: 

• Employment in local government education declined by 50,000 in July, after showing little net change over the prior 12 months.
• Retail trade lost 19,000 jobs in July. Employment declined in warehouse clubs, supercenters, and other general merchandise retailers (-21,000) and in gasoline stations and fuel dealers (-5,000). Sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument, book, and miscellaneous retailers added 10,000 jobs. Retail trade employment had shown little net change over the prior 12 months. 
• Employment in financial activities continued to trend down in July (-14,000), reflecting losses in credit intermediation and related activities (-9,000) and insurance carriers and related activities (-7,000). Financial activities employment is down by 121,000 since a recent peak in May 2025. 
• In July, employment in health care continued its upward trend (+22,000) but at a slower pace than the average monthly gain over the prior 12 months (+36,000). Employment in ambulatory health care services continued to trend up over the month (+18,000). 

In other words, there were two key drivers for today's big jobs drop:

1. Leisure and Hospitality jobs -40K (of which -26.1K restaurant workers and -16.1K performing arts, sports, amusement and recreation) which was mostly World Cup driven 
2. Local government jobs, entirely due to education (-50K), i.e. vacation.

And visually:

Commenting on the report, WSJ Nick Timiraos concludes that it was a "messy one", to wit: 

The July employment report will be a messy one for the Federal Reserve to read. New evidence the labor market is not reaccelerating could take some of the edge off the case for raising rates next month, but this is all still subject to better inflation data.

Officials held rates steady last week but three of 12 officials voted for a rate increase. A declining unemployment rate will continue to keep the focus on inflation data. 

Whether price pressures are building or fading will determine whether more officials conclude that they can no longer maintain their forecast for inflation to return to their target with rates remaining at the current setting. A mild inflation report would reinforce the case for holding (because two cool months in a row start to look like a trend rather than noise). A firm one would put the forecast back in doubt and give the dissenters a fourth vote to look for.

To summarize, this was a mostly disappointing report, yet one driven by one-time factors (teachers, world cup) while the unemployment rate dropped due to a quirk in the calculation. Does this mean that no Fed hikes are coming? While the market is suddenly much more confident that a September rate hike is out of the picture, it is likely that Warsh will simply wait for a less noisy report before making a decision. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 10:55

Meta Ordered To Pay $567 Million In New Mexico For Children's Mental Health Fund

A New Mexico state judge on Aug. 6 ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a fund dedicated to remedying the harm caused to children’s mental health by the company’s social media platforms.

Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

State judge Bryan Biedscheid said in a 68-page order that most of the total youth mental health fund, or $420 million, would go toward treatment services for children harmed by social media.

The remainder of the fund would be directed toward awareness and prevention, screening and assessment, referrals and coordination, and implementation, according to the order.

“The Court finds that the weight of the evidence presented demonstrates that Meta’s platforms are a cause of and substantial contributing factor to the youth mental health crisis in New Mexico,” the judge wrote.

Furthermore, as Aldgra Fredly reports for The Epoch Times, in his ruling, Biedscheid ordered the company to delete the accounts of users under 13, along with all personal information collected from those accounts, and simplify the steps for reporting underage users.

Meta was also ordered to disable push notifications on its platforms for users under 18 between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. on all days, and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on school days during the academic year.

The company is also required to implement mandatory usage time limits for those accounts and hide, by default, all like counts on their content unless a parent or guardian authorizes a change to the default setting.

New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez hailed the ruling as a victory for parents and children, saying that youngsters deserve to have a safer environment online.

“This case has always been about protecting children, standing up for families, and making sure that one of the world’s largest technology companies cannot profit from practices that endanger young people without consequence,” Torrez said in a statement.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a post on X that the company disagreed with the ruling and planned to appeal, noting that Meta had been working to remove bad actors and harmful content from its platforms.

“We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts,” Stone said.

The latest penalty comes on top of the $375 million fines that a New Mexico jury imposed on Meta in March for violating the state’s Unfair Practices Act by failing to disclose the potential risks of its social media platforms to children.

New Mexico sued Meta in December 2023, alleging that the company’s social media platforms served as a “breeding ground” for predators targeting children for human trafficking, sexual image distribution, grooming, and solicitation.

Meta denied the allegations, saying at the time that it uses advanced technology to root out bad actors and employs child safety experts. The company also said that it shares information and tools with other companies and law enforcement, including state attorneys general, to help identify predators.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 10:40