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Costco fan favorite pulled from shelves forever
'Mr.Gold' Warns Higher Rates Will Blow Everything Up
Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,
Financial writer and precious metals expert Bill Holter (aka Mr. Gold) has warned for years about what happens in the end when a debt bubble pops.
Mr. Gold explains, “This bubble is like any other bubble in mankind’s history..."
" In the 1920s, credit was extremely easy. When credit tightened, it was the wealth effect in reverse. We saw this again in the early 1970s. We saw this again in the 1987 crash. Interest rates went from 7% to over 10% . . . and that bubble popped. We had the emerging market debt problem back in the early 1990s, Long Term Capital in 1998, the Dot Com bubble in 2000, the 2007-2008 Great Financial Crisis, and all you have to do is look at a chart of bond yields and you’ll see that each time yields spiked, those bubbles popped. Right now, interest rates are spiking, and this is the biggest bubble.
This is the everything bubble. Everything is in a bubble. The only things that are not in a bubble are gold and silver because they are real money.
I think gold and silver are reflecting the risk of the debt structure coming down.
From a global standpoint, countries are moving away from the dollar. They don’t want to be trapped in the dollar system. The dollar is the world reserve currency that is issued by an insolvent bankrupt entity.
Higher rates, that’s what is going to blow everything up, higher rates.”
Mr. Gold says the rates can fall back down in a hurry if the economy starts to skid.
Mr. Gold also says the so-called “reset” you have been hearing about for years is real. It cannot be stopped, but it is an unfolding process right up until the very end. Holter says:
“The reset is not a pushed button until the very, very end. That very, very end is going to be a weekend where you go to bed Friday and things look normal, and on Monday morning, the whole world will have changed. . .. Rising interest rated have happened hundreds of times in history. That is not the reset.
The reset is when those rising rates affect the existing debt in the system, and that debt fails and collapses.
Of course, you can add in derivatives, and the reset is really a wipeout of wealth. It’s the wipeout of the population’s wealth. Along with that goes the ‘Great Taking.’ They started putting these laws on the books in 2014 knowing there was going to be a huge rug pull at some point. They made it legal for brokers, banks and insurance companies to take client assets . . . to save the corporations.
What does that do to the population? The population becomes penniless. If you are not protecting yourself, you are going to get swept up in the wave of the Great Reset.”
Holter says the Deep State wants total control, which is why there is a big push to go all digital.
Holter says buying gold and silver is not about making money but protecting purchasing power and a defense against the Great Reset.
Holter says, “If you lose 50%, you have to make 100% to get back to break even. This is not going to be a time that you lose 50% and then things will start going back up again..."
" Because of the debt all over the world, when the debt breaks, the financial system is going to break.
If you have counterparties between you and your capitol, you are going to lose your capitol.
People ask, how much do I put into gold and silver, and I say put in what you don’t want to lose.
Gold and silver are the only money on the planet that cannot bankrupt in a world that is bankrupting.
If you had this (gold) mindset since 2000, you are way ahead of the pack compared to the S&P or the DOW. There was zero default risk.
When you bought gold, you got the biggest return and took the lowest risk.”
There is much more in the 44-minute interview.
Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog as he goes one-on-one with financial writer and precious metals expert Bill Holter/Mr. Gold as he warns of the Great Reset and the Great Taking that will come with it for 9.22.26.
Tyler Durden Wed, 09/23/2026 - 15:05"This Nor'easter Is Going To Be An Ordeal"
The US East Coast has avoided any tropical development so far this year, but a developing nor'easter in the Atlantic just off the North Carolina and Virginia coast could still deliver hurricane-force winds and heavy rain, with the greatest impacts expected in the Northeast later this week and into the weekend.
"Oh, this Nor'easter is going to be an ordeal. This storm will be a monster and will be lashing the coast for several days. Thank your lucky stars this isn't January because it would be the most epic blizzard," meteorologist Ryan Maue wrote on X, adding, "Maybe it's a harbinger of 'bomb cyclones' to come this winter?"
Oh, this Nor'easter is going to be an ordeal.
This storm will be a monster and will be lashing the coast for several days.
Thank your lucky stars this isn't January because it would be the most epic blizzard.
Maybe it's a harbinger of "bomb cyclones" to come this winter? pic.twitter.com/gxOADbTznO
The nor'easter formed earlier today off North Carolina and Virginia and is forecast to strengthen as it moves north along the coast, potentially bringing severe weather to coastal areas of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
Nor’easter: brace for 50 mph wind gusts and 15 ft waves! 🌊
It's going to be a rough ride for the East Coast.
The storm's worst will probably lash the corridor from New York to Boston this weekend, with coastal flooding a primary concern because of high tides and strong winds. pic.twitter.com/BCAjWa9x25
"This will be a long-duration storm for many areas along the Mid-Atlantic and New England coasts, with impacts beginning along the central Atlantic coast at midweek, spreading to New England on Friday and lasting through the weekend in some areas," AccuWeather wrote in a report.
⚠️🌊🌬️ Coastal Flood Warnings & Advisories are in effect for most of our tidal areas through Thursday night or Friday to highlight the widespread minor to moderate tidal flooding expected at high tides. Northeast winds gusting up to 50 mph along the coast through Thursday. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/njQ5fbJsfK
— NWS Mount Holly (@NWS_MountHolly) September 23, 2026On Saturday, the worst of the storm is expected across southeastern New England, particularly Massachusetts. Local outlet NBC Boston warns that the Boston metro could expect 5 to 8 inches of rain between Friday and Sunday, while Cape Cod could see conditions on par with a tropical storm.
"If the low shifts close to Boston, this becomes a massive event with 60 to 70 mph wind gusts, heavy rainfall, major storm surge and significant disruptions to Boston Harbor and the Massachusetts coastline," Fox Weather wrote in a separate report.
[Potential Coastal Storm Fri-Sun] After a dry week we are tracking an early season nor'easter Friday to Sunday bringing rain, strong to damaging wind gusts, as well as coastal flooding/beach erosion. pic.twitter.com/uSpZFiUx8c
— NWS Boston (@NWSBoston) September 23, 2026"The nor'easter could take on some characteristics of a tropical storm," AccuWeather warned.
Tyler Durden Wed, 09/23/2026 - 14:45Couple allegedly abducted, raped girl, 12, who was found ‘shaking’ and begging for her ‘mama’
Chargers fans hijack Madison Beer’s Fortnite skin reveal with Justin Herbert frustrations
NYC clears homeless encampment next to NYU dorms — so vagrants set up new camp 100 yards away
China's Quad-G Plan For Global Hegemony Involves The UN And AI
Authored by Anders Corr via The Epoch Times,
The regime in China denies that it has plans for "hegemony or expansion," but its history - from the peasant land seizures of the 1920s to claims on the entire South China Sea today - is replete with land grabs and territorial expansion.
Starting in 2021 with its first of four global initiatives, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used ideas for such initiatives and Beijing-led international organizations as engines to extend its expansion toward its long-held goal of global hegemony.
The CCP's four global initiatives are ostensibly related to development, security, civilization, and governance. They are meant to seem palatable to the international community while integrating the United Nations and other forms of global governance into the CCP's own system, with itself in the lead.
The initiatives are currently expanding and strengthening. On Sept. 12, China expanded the digital element of its Global Development Initiative (GDI) by inviting additional countries to join its World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO). The organization was founded in July and is headquartered in Shanghai.
CCP leader Xi Jinping gave the keynote speech at the event. He called for "true multilateralism," which analysts interpret as a justification for a parallel global order with Beijing in the lead.
WAICO already has approximately 30 member countries, including Russia and Iran. It serves as a key economic and intelligence initiative led by Beijing to expand the CCP's global influence by promoting China's AI software and cloud infrastructure.
The more countries use China's AI assets, the more Beijing's authoritarian approach to AI is normalized, and the more opportunities for global espionage and influence open up for China's military and intelligence agencies.
More generally, the GDI uses a wedge strategy to increase the CCP's influence in countries by aligning development aid with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The resulting influence can then be expanded through larger Belt and Road Initiative projects such as ports, trains, roads, pipelines, and digital infrastructure.
This broader penetration turns countries toward joining the BRICS group, originally Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and now including Iran, among others. The group is economically dominated by Beijing, which expects BRICS countries to follow the CCP's lead on relatively anodyne statements such as Middle East peace, as well as on more substantial international projects such as AI development and efforts to shift world trade away from the U.S. dollar. Xi has personally invited BRICS countries to join WAICO.
The Global Security Initiative (GSI) overlays China's preexisting military partnerships, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), with the vision of a "common" security led by the CCP. The Beijing Xiangshan Security Forum, a key vehicle for extending the GSI to influential international military stakeholders, took place from Sept. 15 to Sept. 17. One subject during the forum was reportedly "the impact of AI on future warfare."
The threat posed by the GSI and its networking with military and economic partners is real and current. Iran supports the GSI and is a member of the SCO. On Sept. 12, news broke that Chinese entities, most likely with the approval of the CCP, provided Iran with satellite images of U.S. forces in Jordan. Those images likely assisted Iran's missile attack that killed three U.S. troops in July.
China has also provided Iran with dual-use components and fuel precursors for its missile and armed drone technologies used against Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine. Other than U.S. sanctions against a few Chinese companies, there were few repercussions imposed on the regime in China for providing Iran with dual-use items and satellite intelligence during a war. This signals to Beijing that it can provide the same to other SCO and BRICS countries in the future simply by changing the names and addresses of the Chinese entities involved.
Afghanistan, which hosts al-Qaeda terrorists, is an observer nation in the SCO and could also receive Chinese intelligence or equipment for use against the United States, Pakistan, or India. Beijing has long had a positive relationship with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which has suppressed non-Pashtun ethnicities in the country.
This accords with Beijing's Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), which claims to create a more pluralistic world in part through supporting the sovereignty of dictators even as they stifle free markets, speech, and diversity within their own countries.
When Xi announced the GCI in 2023, he hypocritically said: "We advocate the common values of humanity. Peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom are the common aspirations of all peoples. Countries need to keep an open mind in appreciating the perceptions of values by different civilizations, and refrain from imposing their own values or models on others and from stoking ideological confrontation."
The hypocrisy of this position is evident because then and now, Xi's regime militarily threatens democratic Taiwan; steals maritime territory from the Philippines, Vietnam, and other South China Sea claimants; takes Himalayan territory from India by force; and destroys the freedoms of religious minorities like the Uyghurs, Christians, and Falun Gong within China.
Now, with the CCP's four global initiatives, this violent illiberality threatens to scale globally. Xi unveiled his Global Governance Initiative (GGI) last September at an SCO meeting in Tianjin. It promotes international law with the CCP in the lead and a coordinating function for the three prior initiatives.
According to Chinese state media, "Viewed as a unified framework, the four initiatives form a 'four-in-one' interactive structure: development as the foundation, security as the guarantee, civilization as the bond, and governance as the coordinating mechanism - all serving the overarching objective of building a community with a shared future for humanity."
The CCP's "community with a shared future for humanity" sounds acceptable on first blush but can be directly compared to Imperial Japan's "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" in that both used anti-colonial rhetoric and regional economic integration to try and replace "Western hegemony" with an illiberal hegemony of its own making, led by an authoritarian and territorially aggressive power.
What could be called the CCP's Quad-G Plan for global hegemony is dangerous to free markets, human rights, and democracy. The CCP is a totalitarian political party attempting to use the large economy of China, its diplomats, an international AI norms-setting body, and an already-existing international institutional structure at the United Nations and elsewhere as the power and tracks for moving an established U.S.-led international system with true sovereignty for members toward a global and illiberal hegemony with Beijing at the center.
The CCP's Quad-G approach raises questions about whether U.S. national security and the safety of democracies everywhere necessitate significantly reducing the CCP's influence at the United Nations and other international organizations, as well as expanding sanctions from targeting a few Chinese entities to targeting China as a whole.
Options at the U.N. include canceling the visas of China's U.N. diplomats, as was done to Iranian diplomats in 2014 and 2020, to working to return China's seat at the forum to democratic Taiwan. Though Taiwan does not currently propose this, other more powerful countries and groupings, including the United States, the European Union, and the G7 countries, should consider encouraging this idea to more effectively counter the CCP.
The more democratic countries legitimize the CCP by engaging with it diplomatically, the more latitude it has to influence other countries to depend on its financing, join CCP-led international partnerships, and fall in line with Beijing's proposals to international organizations. This acclimates them and others to further accept the CCP's leadership and its preferred authoritarian forms of global governance, with Beijing at the center.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.
Tyler Durden Wed, 09/23/2026 - 14:25Kyle Richards and Dorit Kemsley’s shocking friendship status revealed as ‘RHOBH’ films new season
Kyle Richards and Dorit Kemsley’s shocking friendship status revealed as ‘RHOBH’ films new season
Israel slams Jordan’s king after his scathing UN speech against policies in Gaza
Texas lawyer badgered by judge over sleeveless dress reveals outrageous responses from other female attorneys
CNN CEO Mark Thompson wants to ‘stay’ at network post-Paramount merger and be ‘useful’ to new bosses
Kalshi's $5,499 Question: Wash Trading, Or A Subsidized Volume Machine?
Kalshi's Ethereum perpetual futures contract has a favorite trade size, and it's $5,499.
A CoinDesk analysis published Monday pulled 3,450 trades in the contract, a futures product with no expiry that tracks the spot price of ether, from 23 one-hour windows between September 17 and 20. Of those, 1,406 landed within $2 of $5,499. That's $7.7 million of the $13.5 million sampled, or 57% of the dollar volume. Bitcoin perpetuals showed the same thing with different numbers: trades near $2,500 and $5,000 made up 54% of the $8.5 million sampled. Going back to June 19, CoinDesk found a recurring size on 43 of 46 sampled days, with the magic number migrating from $4,999 to $9,999 to $3,999, $4,499 and $5,499.
The fight started when Beni, a pseudonymous quant and co-founder of Stealth Neolab, posted that Kalshi's ether perp was printing $539 million of 24-hour volume against $3.1 million of open interest, a ratio of 174 to one, and called the repeating $5,500 prints "undeniable proof" of wash trading. He also waved around an Artemis chart of prediction-market share, which is a different product from the perps, a mistake Kalshi's crypto chief was happy to point out.
Hey Beni,
Seems like a bunch of wires got crossed here so I just wanted to set the record straight. Your original claim was that Kalshi’s crypto prediction market volume was fake. The chart from Artemis shows prediction market volume share, not perps. We don’t do rebates for… https://t.co/RudV9qzDNn pic.twitter.com/QSIpBu0Cm5
Kalshi's rebuttal the next day was interesting. The exchange says the fixed-size prints come from one market maker resting orders of a set size and getting picked off by "many takers." Its own numbers show the takers winning; in one hypothetical it walks through, the aggressors clear about $98,000. Self-trades are blocked at the matching engine, it runs surveillance for pre-arranged trades, and it has "seen no evidence of collusion or wash trades."
Take all of that at face value and Kalshi has still described a market maker that loses money on every fill and keeps quoting anyway. The rebuttal explains why. Its example liquidity deal pays a firm $100,000 a month to keep bids and offers of at least $5,000 resting within 0.1% of each other, 95% of every hour. The money is for being on the book. A quote of exactly $5,000, or $5,499, is what a contract written that way produces.
The Subsidy StackWhich raises the question Kalshi's rebuttal doesn't ask of itself: why does the market maker keep doing this? The answer is that Kalshi pays it to, through three separate programs.
The resting-liquidity stipend is the first. The second is a fee rebate. A June 24 filing with the CFTC set up a temporary program that hands self-clearing members back all of their net maker and taker fees on perps each month, with two guardrails: no double-paying incentives on the same volume, and no trade may end up net-negative in fees once the maker and taker sides are combined. Free trading for the biggest accounts, but not paid trading.
The third would go further. A September 2 filing cuts the taker fee on crypto perps to 0.3 basis points, or 0.003%, and pays the maker a net rebate of the same 0.3 basis points. The filing makes that live "upon Exchange notice, but not earlier than 5:00 PM ET on September 16, 2026." Kalshi says the notice hasn't gone out and the program isn't running, so it can't be what generated the September 17-20 tape. Nobody outside Kalshi can currently check that.
Kalshi also runs a retail-facing Volume Incentive Program that splits a cashback pool by each trader's share of volume during reward periods. Market makers with existing agreements are excluded. Whether it touched the disputed markets isn't disclosed.
Put together, the stipend pays one side to post the $5,499 quote and the fee rebate makes it free for the other side to hit it. The repeating number is the incentive structure working as written.
The CFTC Wrote The Memo Five Weeks EarlyOn August 12 the CFTC's Division of Market Oversight put out a staff advisory, Letter 26-23, whose stated focus is "incentive programs established in connection with prediction markets." It warns that "volume-based rewards with steep tiers or threshold bonuses can encourage participants to trade solely to reach volume targets, heightening risks of wash-trading, pre-arranged trading," and, separately, that "market-maker programs that guarantee net profits or cover participant losses through stipends and rebates may incentivize artificial strategies." Exchanges are told to build surveillance around the specific behavior each program invites.
The advisory names no exchange and finds nothing against anyone. Kalshi's response, that CME, Cboe and NYSE all pay for liquidity too, is true and beside the point.
Real Trades, Fake SignalRajiv Sethi, an economist at Barnard College, published the cleanest account of the mechanism on Wednesday - and it doesn't necessarily point to cheating. In his reading, "the volume rewards paid by Kalshi to the market maker are flowing in part to aggressive traders who are able to move before stale orders can be cancelled." The fee refund makes it worse, because refunding the taker's fee "aggravates the adverse selection problem faced by liquidity providers." His verdict: "By channeling funds to aggressive low latency traders through the market makers, the exchange is undoing the liquidity provision that the rewards were meant to boost."
Tyler Durden Wed, 09/23/2026 - 14:05