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On Monday, the "Kardashians" star shared a carousel on Instagram from her family's Fourth of July vacation.

Spotting Market Bubbles: Why History Says It's Nearly Impossible

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

If you knew you were standing inside a stock market bubble, you wouldn’t be standing in it for long. You’d sell. So would I, and so would everyone reading this. And if spotting market bubbles was something everyone could do in real time, the bubble couldn’t form in the first place. That paradox is why spotting market bubbles is one of the hardest jobs in finance, and why bubbles look painfully obvious only after the fact.

Market bubbles are not a modern invention. They’ve been a recurring feature of financial life for almost 400 years, ever since the first organized stock exchange opened in Amsterdam in the early 1600s.

The Dutch Tulip Mania of 1636 to 1637 is the textbook case. Tulip bulb prices in the Netherlands soared roughly twentyfold in a few months, then collapsed by about 99% in May 1637. Less than a century later, the South Sea Bubble of 1720 took shares of the South Sea Company from £128 in January to £1,050 in June before collapsing back to near the starting price by year-end. Isaac Newton, often cited as the smartest man of his era, lost a fortune in that one. He’s reputed to have said: “I can calculate the motion of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of crowds.”

The 20th century gave us bigger versions of the same story. The Roaring Twenties ended with the 1929 crash and a peak-to-trough Dow drawdown of nearly 89% by 1932. Japan’s late-1980s asset bubble carried the Nikkei 225 to 38,915 on December 29, 1989, and triggered a collapse that eventually took the index down more than 80%, with the post-bubble low not arriving until October 2008, nearly 19 years after the peak. Then came the dot-com bubble. Between January 1995 and March 10, 2000, the Nasdaq Composite rose roughly 572% to a peak of 5,048.62. It then fell 78% by October 2002, and didn’t recover its 2000 high until April 2015.

The 2008 housing-and-credit bubble ended differently. Instead of a single speculative asset, the bubble formed in mortgage credit and spread across the entire global banking system. The S&P 500 lost 57% from its peak to its trough. None of these episodes looked the same on the way up. Yet all of them look identical on the way down. This is why spotting market bubbles is always a function of hindsight.

Notice in the chart above. The drawdowns from the four largest equity bubbles ranged from 57% to 99%. None of them recovered quickly. The Nasdaq took 15 years. The Nikkei took 34 years to finally reclaim its 1989 peak, hitting it in February 2024, before pushing on to fresh all-time highs since. The damage from a real bubble isn’t measured in months. It’s often measured in lost decades.

Why Spotting Market Bubbles Is Mostly Hindsight

As stated above, spotting market bubbles in advance is often futile. Just because assets sport high prices, valuations, or any other metric you choose, those alone do not necessarily define a bubble. A good example of the futility of spotting market bubbles in advance was in 1996 when Alan Greenspan warned of “irrational exuberance.” Yes, prices were elevated, sentiment was extremely bullish, and the Nasdaq then tripled over the next three and a half years before peaking. Anyone who sold on that warning missed an enormous gain before the eventual crash. That’s the trap.

Owen Lamont, a portfolio manager at Acadian Asset Management who has spent years studying market extremes, put it bluntly. He once joked that a bubble is just “when I think the stock market is overpriced and then it doubles.” That’s not really a joke. It captures the practical impossibility of timing a top in real time. Stanley Druckenmiller, working alongside George Soros, identified the Japanese bubble in 1988 and shorted it. The Nikkei kept ripping higher into late 1989, and Druckenmiller eventually said his lesson was simple.” Valuation is not a catalyst.“

Bubbles also sustain themselves through narrative, not arithmetic. In 1999, the story was that the internet had repealed the rules of economic gravity. Cisco Systems, the world’s most valuable company at its peak, traded at a trailing P/E ratio above 100. In 1989, the story was that Japan Inc. was unstoppable. In 2007, the story was that housing prices would never fall nationally. Each story was wrong, but each story sounded reasonable at the time, especially because each story had real evidence supporting it. The internet did transform commerce. Japan was a manufacturing powerhouse. Housing prices had not, in fact, fallen nationally for decades. The bubble forms when investors take a real trend and extrapolate it past any reasonable mean reversion.

The Four Horsemen Investors Should Watch

So, with that said, if high prices or valuations alone don’t make a bubble, what does? Several decades of academic and practitioner research point to a consistent checklist. Lamont calls them the four horsemen, and they are essentially what you would expect.

1. High prices, measured by valuation multiples that significantly exceed long-term averages.
2. High volatility. Bubbles don’t drift higher quietly. They lurch up and down with bigger and bigger swings.
3. High trading volume, particularly among retail and speculative accounts that were previously inactive.
4. The spread of “bubble beliefs,” the idea that this time is different and traditional valuation rules no longer apply.

However, for me, I would include a fifth indicator that’s saved me more than once. It’s defensiveness. When the cheerleaders of an asset stop selling its merits and start attacking the people who question it, the bubble has gone parabolic. We saw it in late-1999 internet stocks. We saw it again at the 2021 SPAC mania and the Bitcoin peak. And we saw it most recently in the 2025 precious metals run.

When I published my critique of the commodity supercycle and dollar-debasement thesis last year, the response from precious metals advocates wasn’t a counterargument backed by data. It was dismissal and accusations of being on the wrong side of history. Silver then rallied roughly 135% on the year before suffering its biggest single-day drop since the 1980s in late January 2026. Gold knocked more than 10% off its peak in the same window. When debate stops, and tribal loyalty takes over, the top is usually close.

How the Current Setup Compares to 1999

Naturally, the question is whether we are currently “spotting a market bubble”? The honest answer is that some signals are flashing yellow. Others aren’t.

The yellow signals are real. The S&P 500’s cyclically adjusted P/E sits within striking distance of the all-time high set in December 1999. Concentration risk is severe. The top 10 stocks now make up a larger share of the S&P 500 than tech, media, and telecom did at the March 2000 peak. Performance for AI infrastructure leaders has gone parabolic. A normalization of multiples back toward the long-term average would, by itself, deliver a market drawdown of 30% or more even without a recession.

However, the differences from 1999 are real and matter. In March 2000, dozens of marquee Nasdaq names had no earnings, no cash flow, and business models built on burning venture capital to acquire eyeballs. Today’s leaders, meaning Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta, throw off enormous free cash flow. Pets.com had 9 months of cash left when it went public. Nvidia generated tens of billions in operating profit last quarter. That isn’t a small distinction. A bubble built on hopes and venture capital pops differently than one built on real, but extrapolated, earnings power.

The table below puts the comparison on a single page. Some indicators are eerily similar. Some are actually worse today. And a few key fundamentals are meaningfully better.

Read the verdict column carefully. Out of 13 indicators, four flash similar or worse than 2000, six look genuinely better, and three sit on the watch list. That’s not a green light. It’s also not 1999 with a new ticker symbol. The honest read is that we have a stretched market with a single dominant narrative and severe concentration, but with profitability, monetary policy, and retail behavior in better shape than they were at the last comparable top.

The piece that worries me more than the headline P/E is concentration. When the S&P 500 owes most of its return to a handful of stocks, you don’t actually own a diversified U.S. equity portfolio. You own a thematic AI bet dressed as an index fund. That’s the exposure most readers should be measuring carefully right now.

How to Stay Invested Without Catching a Falling Knife

Bubbles, real or imagined, create a behavioral problem more than a portfolio problem. The behavioral problem is that investors flip from “all in” to “all out” based on the week’s headlines. Both of those positions are usually wrong. Stocks aren’t a light switch. The decision is rarely between fully invested and fully in cash.

What’s actually worked through every prior bubble cycle is straightforward.

1. Stay invested in a diversified mix you can defend in any tape.
2. Trim what’s run, add to what hasn’t.
3. Hold meaningful positions in assets that behave differently from the popular trade, including bonds, value stocks, and, most importantly, cash, which gives you an opportunity.
4. Above all, define in advance what would force you to reduce risk, and write it down.

I’ve been arguing for some time now that bonds remain the best portfolio stabilizer for most investors, even after the 2022 drawdown. In a real equity unwind, bonds historically offset stock losses through the duration trade as the Fed cuts in response. That’s the relationship that briefly broke down in 2022 because both stocks and bonds were repricing higher inflation at the same time. In a true bubble pop scenario, when growth and inflation expectations both collapse, the negative correlation tends to reassert itself.

The other rule is worth repeating. Rebalancing is not market timing. Selling some of your winners and buying some of your laggards forces you to do something contrarian on a calendar, not on a hunch. Investors who rebalanced annually from 2000 to 2002 still suffered, but suffered far less than those who rode the Nasdaq concentration into the abyss.

Free Resource: If you want the full framework we use to stress-test client portfolios for concentration risk, download our RIA Portfolio Risk Guide. It walks through the same checks our team runs every quarter.

The Signals That Mark the End

What actually triggers the unwind, in past bubbles, is rarely the thing analysts spend the most time worrying about. The Fed didn’t pop the Nasdaq with the warnings of 1996. The Fed popped it with the 1999 and 2000 rate hikes. The Bank of Japan popped its bubble by raising the discount rate from 2.5% to 4.25% in late 1989. In 2007, a small wave of subprime mortgage delinquencies sparked the contagion. The catalyst is usually a tightening of liquidity, not a change in the narrative.

Several signs tend to cluster near the top:

• First, a flood of new stock issuance. SPACs in 2021. Internet IPOs in 1999 and early 2000. When the supply of speculative paper finally meets demand, prices roll over. Lamont himself has flagged issuance as the single signal he’s watching most closely right now. With multiple AI-era giants reportedly preparing to go public, that signal is worth tracking week to week.
• Second, a shift from “buy the dip” to “buy the rip.” Healthy bull markets see investors add on weakness. Late-stage bubbles see investors pile in on strength because they’re afraid of being left behind. That FOMO behavior is the textbook performance-chasing pattern.
• Third, mainstream financial coverage that stops debating valuation entirely. When the question “are we in a bubble” disappears from major publications and gets replaced by exclusive feature stories on the personal lives of momentum traders, the top is usually close. We aren’t there yet, but we’re closer than we were a year ago.
• Fourth, a credit event. Bubbles don’t usually pop from inside the asset. They pop because something in the financing chain breaks. In 2000, it was margin calls and burning cash balances. Then, in 2008, it was subprime credit. In 2021, it was the SPAC unwind that started taking down low-quality issuers.

The next pop, whenever it comes, will likely be triggered by stress somewhere in private credit, leveraged loans, or AI infrastructure financing rather than in the equity market itself.

The bottom line is that you don’t need to know exactly when the music stops. You need to know what your portfolio looks like when it does. That’s the question to ask yourself this week, well before the question becomes urgent.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 08:05

The prolific author currently has 13 series on the streaming service.

Netflix certainly turned the Home Run Derby into the production they wanted.

The UK Government Lobbied For Putting Migrants And Trans People On Banknotes

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

The UK's own Cabinet Office pushed hard to overhaul banknotes by elevating LGBT+ and ethnic minority figures, claiming historic greats like Winston Churchill gave an "incomplete picture" of British identity. This push came just before the Bank of England decided to ditch those same towering historical figures for images of hedgehogs and foxes.

This latest revelation exposes the ideological machinery at work inside Whitehall. While the public recoiled at the idea of swapping national heroes for animals, government officials were actively lobbying for even more radical identity-driven changes.

In a letter to the Bank of England's chief cashier last summer, officials from the Office for Equality and Opportunity - part of the Cabinet Office and led by Bridget Phillipson - argued that current historical figures reflected "limited dimensions of British identity." They called for "greater representation of women, disabled people, ethnic minority communities and LGBT+ individuals" to "send a strong signal of progress and recognition."

Alan Mendoza and former Glasgow City Councilor Austin Sheridan react as the Cabinet Office urge the inclusion of LGBT and ethnic minority communities on banknotes. pic.twitter.com/IWvkZtuL3V

— GB News (@GBNEWS) July 12, 2026

The whole saga is particularly ridiculous because the core argument for axing Churchill and other giants was that they were supposedly too "ideologically divisive" for modern Britain.

Yet officials simultaneously pushed to install figures selected explicitly through the lens of identity politics and group representation - an approach guaranteed to be far more polarizing in practice.

It reveals the selective outrage: traditional British heroes are labeled divisive for their achievements, while injecting contemporary activism onto the currency is framed as unifying "progress."

'We have real pressing financial issues as a country. I find focus on stuff like this quite ridiculous!' @NanaAkua1 hits out at the Cabinet Office's suggestion that banknotes should feature prominent ethnic or LGBT figures from British history. pic.twitter.com/760hztl82u

— GB News (@GBNEWS) July 12, 2026

The intervention has sparked accusations that Labour elements conspired to sideline Britain's most celebrated figures.

Shadow minister Alex Burghart slammed the move: "Labour tried to deny any involvement in the cancellation of Winston Churchill and other British heroes. But government officials have been caught red-handed conspiring with the Bank of England to remove them from our banknotes."

He added that banknotes "should feature the greatest Britons - the historic figures that unite our country. They shouldn't be chosen on the basis of Labour's equality laws."

This diversity drive unfolded alongside the Bank of England's decision to replace Churchill on the £5 note, Jane Austen on the £10, J.M.W. Turner on the £20, and Alan Turing on the £50 with images of British animals, plants, and landscapes. The Bank cited a public consultation where a majority favored nature themes, partly for security reasons on new polymer notes.

Critics have pointed out the irony, noting Alan Turing - a gay war hero - was already featured, yet the push continued for broader "under-represented" groups. Suggestions reportedly included figures tied to events like the Empire Windrush.

This fits a longer pattern of institutional discomfort with Britain's historic icons. Our earlier coverage highlighted the absurdity of trading Churchill for hedgehogs and the broader erosion of national symbols.

A serious nation honors the leaders who defended its freedom and shaped its character - not because they tick modern demographic boxes, but because their achievements built the country whose currency circulates today.

Swapping out the likes of Churchill for foxes and badgers, while civil servants agitate for identity politics on money, signals a profound loss of confidence. Britain's history is not a problem to be diluted. It is the foundation worth preserving.

There are small steps within education and society to dissolve our history & culture.
I actually believe it will backfire, as there's always a rebellious streak in the British public, who will actively protect their culture.

— MaccGardenFest (@Maccgardenfest) July 12, 2026

The sick joke is that all the woke, DEI crap they try to shoehorn into our culture is what is truly "elitist and divisive".

— Pinpoint Inaccuracy (@pinpointinaccry) July 12, 2026

How about an underage girl being raped by a Muslim on the back of a Tenner. That's ethnic ?????

— Colin Kirby (@ColinKi54036475) July 12, 2026

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 Tue, 07/14/2026 - 07:45

JPMorgan Drops Despite Highest Quarterly Profit In HIstory, As Traders Focus On Negatives

Q2 earnings season is officially off.

Moments ago, JPMorgan became the first mega bank to report Q2 earnings (technically Wells beat it by a few second but nobody really cares about that particular bank), firing the starting pistol on the second quarter earnings season. The Q2 results were solid (Net Interest Income and FICC miss but more than offset by blowout Equity Sales and Trading and Investment Banking revenue) , but as we note in out bank earnings preview last night, perfection (and beyond) was already largely priced into the stock which has become a true hedge fund hotel, and as a result the stock is modestly in premarket trading. 

Here is a snapshot of what the company reported for Q2:

• EPS $7.70, beating est. of $5.58, and up $2.46 YoY
• Revenue: 
  • Adjusted revenue $58.02 billion, smashing est $51.39 billion, and up $12.3 billion YoY
  • Managed net interest income $25.62 billion, missing est, $25.64 billion 
  • Total Commercial and Investment Bank revenue $24.85BN, up $5.32BN YoY
    • FICC sales & trading revenue $6.05 billion, missing est. $6.29 billion with weakness in commodities
    • Equities sales & trading revenue $6.03 billion, smashing est. $3.98 billion
    • Investment banking revenue $3.90 billion, smashing est. $3.06 billion
      • Advisory revenue $1.01 billion, missing est. $1.07 billion
      • Equity underwriting rev. $829 million, beating est. $621.3 million
      • Debt underwriting rev. $1.44 billion, beating est. $1.17 billion

Let's take a closer look at JPM's Q2 earnings. 

First, the good news: JPM reported its highest quarterly profit ever as stock traders blew past analysts’ estimates and a long-held Visa stake paid off to the tune of $4.6 billion. Indeed, a notable one-off item that contributed to the firm’s success this quarter was JPMorgan' $4.6 billion net gain related to the sale of Visa shares. The bank said this in its earnings supplement: "The net gain was “related to Visa Class C common stock held at fair value and received by the Firm in an exchange offer following the acceptance by Visa Inc. on May 11, 2026 of the Firm’s tender of its 18.6 million shares of Visa Class B-2 common stock.”

More good news: equity trading was stellar, with Q2 equities revenue rising 86% from a year earlier to $6.03 billion, anmd more than $2 billion higher than expected; In fact, it beat even the highest estimate among analysts surveyed by Bloomberg and brought total trading revenue to $12.1 billion, more than the previous all-time high set in the first three months of this year. 

There was bad news: FICC revenue of $6.05 billion missed estimates of $6.29 billion with weakness in commodities Additionally, while Investment Banking beat, advisory revenue of $1.01 billion missed estimates of $1.07 billion. And while managed net interest income increased by more than 9% from a year prior to $25.62 billion from $23.31 billion last year, it was a slight miss to the $25.64 billion estimate. 

There was some more bad news, this time on the expense side: Q2 expenses were $27.3 billion, more than expected. The firm also updated its full-year cost guidance to about $107.5 billion, beyond the increase Dimon telegraphed at an industry conference in May.

Investment banking was in focus in the wake of SpaceX’s record initial public offering in June. JPMorgan pulled in $3.28 billion in investment-banking fees in the second quarter, beating estimates and up 30% from a year earlier "driven by higher fees across all products, with particularly strong performance in equity underwriting fees."

The bank’s provision for credit losses – how much JPMorgan expects to lose from uncollectible loans – was $2.52 billion for the period, significantly less than the $3.09 billion that analysts had expected. Of this, net charge-offs were $2.37 billion, also below the estimate $2.62 billion. 

Even as almost every business exceeded expectations, CEO Jamie Dimon was cautious about prospects for the future.

“Several risks are shifting below the surface like tectonic plates, including geopolitical tensions and wars, sticky inflation, large global fiscal deficits and elevated asset prices,” Dimon said in the statement. “We cannot predict how these forces will ultimately play out. They may remain manageable, but they could also cause meaningful disruptions when they shift or collide.”

Jamie Dimon also pointed out that card annual fees jumped by more than 30%, “reflecting healthy retention levels after recent product refreshes as well as demand for our premium products.”

Looking ahead, the firm expects full-year net interest income to now be about $105.5 billion, after previously anticipating it would be around $103 billion. For the quarter, it came in at $25.5 billion. That, however, comes along with the increase in full year expenses to $107.5BN. In a presentation Tuesday, the firm said the increase is “primarily due to higher volume- and revenue-related expenses driven by the activity levels and associated revenue outperformance.” For the quarter, expenses were $27.3 billion, more than expected.

The bank also said it expects the full-year net charge-off rate in its credit-card business to come in at around 3.2%, lower than the 3.4% guidance it provided in April.

The report comes as Jamie Dimon is finally preparing his sucession: last month, the bank named Troy Rohrbaugh and Doug Petno co-presidents of the firm, the latest twist in the race to succeed Dimon, 70, when he eventually steps down. The bank said longtime executive Marianne Lake would retire as part of the changes, with Rohrbaugh replacing her atop the company’s sprawling consumer arm and Petno gaining sole control of the commercial and investment bank. 

Looking back, today’s report isn’t helping the priced to perfection stock, which has been a laggard year-to-date on a total-return basis -- up only about 5% including dividends through yesterday. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup all delivered more than 20% including payouts, and Bank of America has returned more than 9% by that measure. Wells Fargo is the standout loser, down almost 5% this year even after counting dividends.

Shares of JPMorgan, up 3.8% this year through Monday, fell 2.6% in early New York trading.

Full Q2 invest presentation below (pdf link)

JPM Q2 2026 Results by Zerohedge

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 07:36

It was June in 2017, and Gary Paul was enjoying his morning paper on the toilet when he noticed water dripping from above.

The Yankees’ top two deadline targets should be All-Star closer Mason Miller, the game’s top closer, and Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers.

Siders' "principal desire (is) to reunite with her children," the filing states.

The "It Ends With Us" actor and his wife, Emily Baldoni, posted an Instagram video sharing their thoughts on the ongoing court battle.

The "It Ends With Us" actor and his wife, Emily Baldoni, posted an Instagram video sharing their thoughts on the ongoing court battle.

Ericsson Tumbles On Margin Headwinds Sparked By Memory Chip Inflation

Ericsson shares in Stockholm plunged the most in 18 months after the Swedish telecom equipment giant warned that soaring component costs will pressure margins in its core networks business this quarter.

The stock fell as much as 10% in Stockholm after outgoing CEO Börje Ekholm warned about higher input costs, partly driven by AI-fueled demand for memory chips. Citi analysts said the top concern is the margin impact extending into 2027.

"The big challenge in our view is the building component cost pressure and, not so much the near-term impact, but more the pressure to come in 2027," Citi analyst Andrew Gardiner wrote.

Second-quarter adjusted earnings before interest, taxes and amortization tumbled 7% to 6.88 billion kronor, slightly above the Bloomberg Consensus estimate of 6.82 billion kronor. Ericsson has been slashing costs as soft carrier spending weighs on the telecom-equipment industry. It eliminated about 5,000 jobs in 2025 and targets similar headcount reductions this year.

BNP Paribas analysts highlighted the "cost pressure building" for Ericsson:

What happened?

The Ericsson call has now finished, and the stock is down c7%. The main focus on the call was on rollout costs, semis cost inflation, and IPR.

BNPP View:

1. Network‑rollout cost drag: Ericsson highlighted that the first few quarters of a network‑rollout cycle are financially the most demanding. The company expects a ramp‑drag in the next few quarters as the mix shifts toward large‑scale rollout projects (we presume India/Japan), which depresses margins before economies of scale and higher volumes kick in. Ericsson said the contracts are accretive over the longer term, even though the short‑term impact on gross margin will be negative. We interpret this that the ~100bp weaker margin in GM in Q3 26 is likely to see continued mix effect drag for a few more qtrs.

2. Memory‑cost inflation and limited pass‑through: Ericsson confirmed that semiconductor price inflation remains an increasing issue. Input‑costs rose in Q2, and the financial impact will increase over the coming quarters, prompting Ericsson to pursue product substitution, targeted cost‑reduction programmes, and longer‑term structural actions such as price adjustments on new tenders and renegotiations with existing customers. Because most contracts are long‑term, they lack automatic price‑pass‑through clauses, i.e. Ericsson company cannot fully offset the higher component costs automatically. Pass‑through will be gradual and is subject to negotiation on a case‑by‑case basis. This is a weaker level of pricing power than we had appreciated and suggests that Ericsson might not be able to fully pass on cost inflation this time.

3. IPR one‑off impact: Ericsson will not have a major one‑off impact from the new IPR settlement. Instead, the agreement is reflected in a higher IPR ARR of SEK13.5bn (was SEK13.0bn). Ericsson said impact of the agreement is marginal in Q3 26 (we presume SEK500m divided by 4).

In a separate note, Barclays analyst Simon Coles told clients that while Ericsson posted "another quarter of resilient margins," the company is warning that headwinds are mounting in the second half of the year.

Ericsson is guiding down its networks gross margin:

• Sees Networks adj. gross margin 48% to 50%, Bloomberg Consensus estimate 49.5%

Ericsson did not directly blame soaring memory chip prices for margin compression in its earnings release or during the earnings call with analysts.

However, Deutsche Bank analyst Janardan Menon pressed management on an earnings call about rising random-access memory prices and the competitive advantage enjoyed by Chinese telecom giants, which can source these chips at lower prices.

CEO Ekholm responded: "And there may be, as you say, a little bit lower cost inflation in the Chinese ecosystem. And as you know, we cannot rely on that ecosystem to export to a number of countries we're in. That forces us to look at the product design in a different way."

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 07:20

Emergency dispatch audio previously reviewed by The Post indicates that paramedics were dispatched to Graham's Capitol Hill townhouse around 8:30 p.m. Saturday.

CNBC's annual survey of quality-of-life rankings was ridiculed online after the top 10 "worst places to live" were all red states.

Lindsey Graham’s sister is tapped to replace her brother – for now. What will happen to the legislative priorities he was working on, like Russian sanctions and Saudi/Israeli relations? Also, the cost of prosecuting Tyler Robinson, the man accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk, is expected to exceed $10 million before the case is over. Legal...

The good news for the Yankees is they get the full season to be properly graded, meaning there are 66 more games to get things back on track.

There are no rough seas with this cruise connoisseur.

Megacities Are Booming

The number of people living in megacities has been growing significantly for decades, rising from 2.5 percent in 1950 to 16.4 percent of city dwellers in 2020.

As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, according to UN projections, this figure will continue to rise slightly before stabilizing at around the current level by 2050. At the same time, living in smaller cities is becoming less widespread.

The share of the urban population living in places with between 50,000 and 500,000 inhabitants fell from 50.8 percent to 38.6 percent during the same period.

You will find more infographics at Statista

This development reflects the global trend of urbanization. Economic opportunities, better infrastructure and in some cases political instability in the countryside have been driving the growth of large metropolitan areas.

However, this increasing concentration has also been exacerbating challenges that are typical for urban centers, for example housing shortages, overcrowded transport and an increased strain on the environment.

Another challenge for city planners are so-called heat islands, where urban concrete jungles act as heat reservoirs and exhibit much higher temperatures than less dense areas with more vegetation and other natural features. The prevalence of tall buildings and narrow streets can also reduce wind speeds, meaning it takes longer for accumulated heat to dissipate. This additional heat stress, combined with the higher levels of air pollution observed in many cities, compounds negative impacts on human health.

However, the UN anticipates that the growth of the largest cities will slow down in the future. While the share of city dwellers living in megacities is expected to rise to 17 percent by 2030, it is then projected to stagnate and decline slightly by 2050 to 16.3 percent. At the same time, the development of medium-sized cities – those with populations of 5 to 10 million – is expected to speed up, hosting a share of 10.6 percent of city inhabitants by 2050.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 06:55

Keystone State companies produce thousands of parts along the US military's supply chain, playing vital roles in producing ships, vehicles and weapons, a new logistics report has found.

The Digital Euro: Control & The End Of Financial Privacy

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

European Union lawmakers in Strasbourg have now agreed on their position regarding the digital euro, approving it in a vote on the 8th of July 2026. With this position, the European Parliament can start talks with national governments on the details of the design and functioning of the digital euro. 

The ECB argues that the digital euro is required to preserve the benefits of cash in a digital age and protect Europe’s monetary sovereignty, while offering a fast, secure, widely accepted public means of payment. However, it is not a neutral or purely technological upgrade to Europe’s payments infrastructure. It is a political and technological project that may embed surveillance, monetary control, and fiscal dominance into the very structure of the currency.

EU lawmakers are now debating the regulation that will define the legal status, privacy framework, and holding limits of the digital euro, with the ECB openly lobbying for strong legislation to support what it calls a collective step forward for Europe. This means the most significant features, including programmability, limits, data access, and the role of commercial banks, will be decided in Brussels and Strasbourg rather than by markets or citizen demand. 

The ECB sells the digital euro on four main promises: more efficient payments, greater monetary sovereignty, financial inclusion, and higher privacy than current private electronic payment systems. Not one of those claims holds up once you look at them, even briefly. 

Let us go one by one. 

Efficiency and universal acceptance. Europe already has instant payments, multiple card schemes, and a dense network of private providers that allow fast, cheap, electronic transactions across the euro area and internationally. There is no evidence that adding a centralized, programmable central bank account for every citizen solves a problem that existing infrastructure cannot address through open competition, decentralized independent options, and innovation. 

Monetary sovereignty and autonomy. The ECB claims that a digital euro is essential to maintain the autonomy of the monetary system and reduce dependence on non‑European providers. This makes little sense at a time when the euro’s role as the second world reserve currency is widely accepted, demand for euro assets is strong, and there are already various private and independent projects that successfully compete with non‑European providers. A currency’s role as a reserve asset and the success of domestic payment systems versus international alternatives are achieved not through imposition but through the confidence and demand of citizens and businesses. 

If the European Central Bank truly wanted to preserve the purchasing power and credibility of the euro, it would not need legal privileges or a mandated digital form to remain globally relevant. Resorting to a central bank digital currency (CBDC) is an admission of weakness, not of strength. 

Financial inclusion. Retail CBDCs are presented as free, basic‑use tools for the unbanked. However, in Europe, financial exclusion is driven more by regulation, taxation, and economic stagnation than by a lack of digital payment options. Imposing a centralised, identity‑linked wallet does nothing to tackle those structural barriers. Moreover, financial inclusion does not require a digital ID and a centralized central bank account; it requires more competition and decentralized private options. 

More private than commercial solutions. The ECB promises a high level of privacy, with allegedly anonymous data despite a required digital ID and offline payments that are supposed to be close to cash. However, the architecture of a programmable, centrally controlled CBDC, governed by a central bank that openly incorporates political objectives into its policy toolkit, means that every transaction is, by design, potentially subject to surveillance and even sanctions. 

If the main objectives were efficiency, competition, and technological progress, regulators would strengthen independent, decentralized solutions, independent payment providers, and open standards rather than concentrate the entire monetary transmission mechanism inside a single public institution. If the ECB believes all Europeans should be able to choose the digital euro, it only needs to issue it widely and let citizens decide, instead of forcing it. 

Monetary sovereignty is not achieved by coercion but by freedom and rising demand. The euro is not at risk of losing its status as a reserve currency unless the objective is to destroy the purchasing power of money and force people to use it regardless. 

The excuse used by the ECB and defenders of the digital euro, pointing to the “lost opportunity” of billions of euros invested in the United States instead of the European Union, makes no sense. European investors choose to invest globally, and if all funds do not remain in the European Union, it is a consequence of stagnation, excessive regulation, and a lack of opportunities. Furthermore, the ECB cannot expect to sustain a world reserve currency if most of the money it issues is destined to be used only domestically. That, in itself, undermines reserve‑currency status. 

The risk of using monetary policy to inflate government spending even more than today becomes central. Monetary policy will not restrain government excess; it will enable it even more than it does now, with deposit savers and prudent investors as the main losers. 

A central bank digital currency is not just electronic money. The main difference between today’s electronic money and a central bank digital euro is not digitization but control. 

Under the current system, deposits sit at commercial banks, which act as intermediaries, absorb risk, and preserve a degree of separation between monetary authorities and individual transactions, even within regulatory and legal limits. With a retail CBDC, your main account will effectively sit at the central bank. That opens three dangerous channels of power. 

Central banks will obtain direct, real‑time access to almost all transactions, eliminating the remaining financial privacy that cash and bank intermediation still provide. When every payment is registered in a central system, authorities can monitor patterns, flag undesirable behaviour, and build profiles far beyond legitimate law‑enforcement needs. 

Programmability is a key concern in the architecture. CBDCs can be designed as programmable money, allowing authorities to increase or reduce balances, restrict where and on what funds can be spent, and impose expiry dates or penalties for behaviour deemed harmful, from “excessive” fuel consumption to politically unpopular spending.

This is not speculation. The ECB itself emphasises programmability as a way to make monetary policy transmission more fluid, which means faster inflation creation and quicker elimination of liquidity when central planners decide they may have overstimulated the economy. With the elimination of commercial‑bank and credit‑demand backstops, central banks can inject liquidity directly into retail accounts, completely merging monetary and fiscal policy. This removes the limits that bank lending and market discipline impose on government deficits, turning the currency into a tool of fast and largely unchecked budget financing. 

In such a framework, a digital euro does not strengthen the currency; it tries to impose it. That is why the ECB insists that authorities must enforce its use through regulation, tax mandates, and legal‑tender rules. 

European commercial banks are rightly alarmed by the prospect of a risk‑free digital euro account at the ECB competing with deposits, which would effectively turn banks into even more dependent subsidiaries of the central bank. 

Lawmakers and supervisors already discuss individual holding caps of around 3,000 euros per person to limit the outflow from bank balance sheets, but this number is political, not economic, and can be revised at will. Even with caps, the presence of a central‑bank‑imposed alternative to deposits will weaken funding stability, raise funding costs, and push banks further into a marginal role in credit creation. 

This has significant consequences. 

The clearest is the crowding out of private credit. As deposits flow to the central bank and regulation favours this form of state money, banks’ ability to lend to families and businesses declines, while the safest and cheapest option remains financing governments. That accelerates the already clear bias toward public‑sector expansion at the expense of the productive private economy. 

Today, inflationary episodes are at least filtered through bank risk appetite and credit demand. A digital euro allows the central bank to expand or contract the money supply directly in household and corporate wallets, eliminating essential limits and turning the currency into a pure instrument of political priorities, climate agendas, industrial policy, or social engineering. On top of that, the very programming architecture creates a perverse incentive that penalizes prudent deposit saving and conservative investment. 

A complete misunderstanding of money has damaged the entire mechanism. It treats deposit savings as “unused money” when, in reality, all deposits are invested, and it sees foreign investment of euro funds as a negative rather than recognising that global, open, and free deployment of the currency is precisely what underpins its reserve status. 

Formal independence and privacy laws are weak safeguards when the institution has already bowed repeatedly to political pressure to finance expanding states and tolerate persistent inflation. A CBDC amplifies this problem by adding the risk of social control to macro‑level monetary manipulation. 

The result is a currency that is easier to use, harder to escape, and more vulnerable to discretionary political control. 

If European policymakers genuinely wanted a stronger, trusted euro, their project would be completely different. They would promote decentralized and competitive payment systems, allowing independent providers, banks, and fintechs to innovate without being subordinated to a centralized, politically designed CBDC. They would focus on restoring the euro’s function as a store of value by ending the monetization of persistent fiscal deficits, rather than embedding those deficits into a programmable currency. And they would protect cash and private electronic money as essential tools of financial privacy and individual freedom, not as inconvenient relics to be eliminated. 

The announced contracts with large technology firms and an aggressive legislative agenda suggest the true objective is to build the infrastructure for future social control, political engineering, and direct fiscal monetization. Surveillance disguised as money.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 06:30