Aggregator

NY Post readers discuss Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Janice Robinson's history of setting accused criminals free and more.

With Election Day just nine weeks from Tuesday, Democrats have high hopes of taking back the House and Senate — yet can’t seem to find a real positive agenda.

Shaquille O’Neal never dunked on either Mike Francesa or Chris Russo, but he might have played a small part in breaking up a powerhouse radio duo.

Have We Really Learnt The Lessons Of The GFC?

Authored by Richard Ryan via BondVigilantes.com,

It is 20 years ago this month that I sat in a pitch and listened to an investment bank describe their latest stroke of genius.

In 2006, the Constant Proportion Debt Obligation (CPDO) was hailed as a financial innovation that appeared to offer something for nothing: a AAA-rated security paying a meaningful premium over cash.

It was a structure that increased leverage as credit markets weakened. Investors embraced it because the future seemed visible.

Credit spreads had been stable for years, liquidity was abundant, and sophisticated models suggested that extreme market moves were so unlikely as to be almost impossible. 

Sound familiar?

Today’s market shares many of the same ingredients.

Liquidity remains plentiful, credit spreads are tight, expected returns are compressed, leverage is rising, and a new generation of financial innovation is attracting capital. As investors search for return whilst yields remain relatively compelling, the temptation is the same as it was twenty years ago: to assume that recent experience provides a reliable guide to the future.

Source: Bloomberg, ICE BoA Indices, 31 July 2026. Investment Grade: Yield components – 5 year treasuries and credit spread (%)

That same mindset sat at the heart of the CPDO story. The problem was not that investors ignored risk. It was that years of benign conditions narrowed the range of risks considered plausible. That narrowing became embedded in the models themselves. Severe spread widening was assigned vanishingly small probabilities, not because it was impossible, but because it was considered too unlikely to matter. When spreads eventually widened, reality exposed the difference between a risk that is unlikely and a risk that is merely inconvenient to consider. A product whose success depended on stable spreads was judged using assumptions that effectively ruled out the possibility of meaningful spread widening. These structures suffered catastrophic failures and led to significant investor losses. One such structure, focused on the financial sector was launched in March 2007, rated AAA at issuance, defaulted in November of the same year. 

Perhaps the most important lesson is how investors framed the question. Rather than asking, “What is the likely return on this investment, and is it sufficient compensation for the risks?”, many inverted the problem: “This investment does not return enough. How do I increase the return to an acceptable level?” 

The distinction is crucial. Returns are visible and enticing.

Risks are often hidden, nonlinear and revealed only under stress.

To quote a blog my colleague published in 2025, while investors may recognise the risk correctly – no cognitive failure – but acting on that view can be commercially painful. This contributes to expensive markets remaining expensive for longer than they should, and finally repricing with extreme volatility -because, at that point, everybody suddenly finds the courage to shout ‘the king has no clothes!’

We have seen this pattern repeatedly. Abundant liquidity and the search for yield led high yield investors to abandon covenants designed to protect bondholders, only for subsequent default cycles to remind everyone why those protections existed. We have repeatedly witnessed enthusiasm for investment strategies become dependence on them. The yen carry trade is a good example: a strategy celebrated for years until leverage and crowded positioning turned a seemingly manageable risk into a violent unwind. Today we see the continuing rise of leveraged ETFs, single-stock ETFs and leveraged single-stock ETFs. Different structures, same instinct: use innovation and leverage to manufacture returns in an environment where underlying assets offer less and less.

We are often told that the financial system is stronger than it was in 2008.

That is undoubtedly true. Banks are better capitalized, balance sheets are cleaner and many of the vulnerabilities that defined the GFC have been reduced.

But investors often focus on the transmission mechanism they fixed and overlook the ones they did not.

Risk is ultimately transmitted through the owners of that risk. If a leveraged investment falls in value and additional collateral must be raised, investors rarely sell the asset that has already collapsed. They sell what they can. Assets that have not yet fallen become sources of liquidity. Distress spreads not because securities are directly linked, but because investors are.

The CPDO experience reminds us that markets are often most vulnerable when confidence is highest. When liquidity is abundant, spreads are tight and innovation is flourishing, risk can appear smaller than it really is. Perhaps we should spend less time asking what might cause credit spreads to widen and more time accepting that they can. From today’s historically tight valuations, is that really a risk worth betting against?

Gordon Brown once claimed to have ended the economic cycle. Events proved otherwise. Are today’s investors equally confident that the credit cycle has finally been defeated?

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/29/2026 - 15:10

Brooklyn's feud with his parents, David and Victoria, burst into the public scene when he wrote a scathing Instagram post earlier this year.

Brooklyn's feud with his parents, David and Victoria, burst into the public scene when he wrote a scathing Instagram post earlier this year.

They're a bunch of "sick" puppies.

There is hardly a hotter seat in college football than Mike Norvell's at Florida State.

There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic in Honolulu this season.

Doesn’t this just make you sick to your stomach?

"I married this life, and after keeping my mouth shut for all these years, I’m gonna see if it married me back."

Scottie Scheffler’s season looks modest, but only by his own standards. Two victories would define a career year for most golfers. After winning seven times in 2024 and six in 2025, however, Scheffler’s 2026 total has created the impression that he has slipped. His scoring says otherwise. Scottie Scheffler reacts on the 11th hole during...

Watch: Russian Military Conducts Test Of Huge Mobile ICBM

Russia on Friday unveiled that it conducted a successful combat training launch of a mobile, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the northwestern Arkhangelsk region - host to a key missile defense and aeronautical testing base in the Arctic region.

"A training-combat launch of a mobile-based solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile was carried out at the Plesetsk State Testing Cosmodrome," a defense ministry statement said, citing the work of the Strategic Missile Forces. "The training warheads arrived in the designated area at the Kura test range (Kamchatka Peninsula)."

The Kura test range lies about 4,160 miles to the east of where the Arkhangelsk region launch occurred, making for an impressively distant flight across Russia.

The military confirmed that the "tactical, technical and flight characteristics of the missile system" were monitored and analyzed, and that the flight went off flawlessly.

"All assigned tasks were completed in full," the ministry said, stating that the ICBM maintained a "flawless trajectory." However, the ministry didn't identified the specific missile type used.

Regional outlet Meduza notes that "In May 2026, Russia launched a Yars ICBM from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome toward the Kura test range on Kamchatka" - suggesting that this latest test could be of the same Yars missile type.

A mobile, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile such as the one newly launched, is something which could eventually be used to directly target Ukraine, or else possibly Kiev's NATO backers if a broader conflict were to break out.

Separately, it's being reported this week that another ballistic missile was actually used in combat. "Russia has reportedly used a newly upgraded ballistic missile, provisionally known as the Iskander-1000, for the first time in combat, with Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence reporting that it struck a target in the capital Kiev on August 27," Military Watch Magazine reports.

"The 9M723-2 ballistic missile used is reportedly an upgraded derivative of the 9M723-1 missile used by the older Iskander-M system, and can achieve a 1,000 kilometre range, where the Iskander-M system was previously limited to a 500 kilometre range," the publication continues.

Flexing at the West? Russian military publishes footage of an impressively large rocket launched...

🚨 🇷🇺 Russia’s Defense Ministry said it successfully launched a mobile intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on Friday.

The missile flew more than 6,700 kilometers to a test site on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

The ministry said the launch checked the… pic.twitter.com/QnKcFWMIU1

— Russia News (@russianews_eng) August 28, 2026

"According to Ukrainian sources, the principal change involves the missile’s propulsion system, as the 9M723-2 reportedly incorporates a larger engine, requiring a corresponding enlargement of the launch tube used by the missile's launcher," the report also describes.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/29/2026 - 14:35

An investigation into a criminal organization linked to fuel theft led Mexican security forces to a ranch in northeastern Mexico where they rescued 135 wild animals this week.

But it’s clear by now that ESPN is another network that advocates unfair play as the preferred route to fair play.

Neagley gets the spotlight.

Licensed therapist says avoidant partners can ride out emotional detachment indefinitely

Speaking for the first time Saturday since her verbal altercation with Enes Kanter Freedom, Sky guard Natasha Cloud refused to give the situation additional attention.

The primetime soap actress starred on the '80s TV series for nine years.

The primetime soap actress starred on the '80s TV series for nine years.