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Spain's Great Replacement: Half Of Unskilled Construction Workers Are Now Foreign Laborers

Via Remix News,

Spain's construction industry is undergoing rapid demographic changes. Foreign-born workers in unskilled construction roles now make up 52.6 percent of all workers, according to data from Randstad from the first quarter

The data shows that foreign workers now exceed Spanish nationals for these unskilled roles by nearly 11,000 workers. The contrast is stark compared to pre-pandemic figures, when domestic laborers outnumbered foreign counterparts by more than 33,500.

Overall, the construction industry has lost 22,711 Spanish workers since 2019 while gaining 238,451 foreign employees, a figure that includes individuals with dual nationality. As a result, almost 36 percent of all construction workers, both skilled and unskilled, are now of foreign origin in the country.

The shift is equally evident among bricklayers. In 2019, Spanish bricklayers outnumbered foreigners by 111,000. Seven years later, that gap has narrowed to just 18,000 workers. Foreign labor has gained more than 16 percentage points in this category and currently accounts for roughly 48 percent of bricklayers working in Spain. While Spaniards remain the majority in most skilled roles for now, the statistical gap continues to shrink rapidly. Experts also predict that foreigners will increasingly dominate skilled and managerial positions in the future.

This transformation extends into specialized technical trades. The count of Spanish plumbers fell from 70,932 in 2019 to 57,781 today, while foreign representation doubled after adding over 10,000 workers. One in four plumbers in Spain is now foreign-born. Electricians show a similar dynamic, with about 32,000 foreign workers joining the profession since 2019, driving foreign representation up from under 11 percent pre-pandemic to nearly three out of ten today.

Industry analysts expect these patterns to hold due to impending retirements and low replacement rates among younger Spaniards.

Spain, like many other nations, is attempting to automate the construction industry as much as possible. However, instead of relying on advanced robots, Spain has so far shifted toward a modular construction approach in which concrete panels, bathrooms, and complete structural modules are built indoors in automated, factory-controlled settings that use machinery and assembly lines similar to those in the automotive sector. Cranes then assemble these modular components on site, requiring significantly fewer workers and dramatically cutting project delivery times.

Countries such as South Korea, by contrast, are racing ahead in automated construction, precisely because nations like Spain continue to rely on mass immigration, which is often cheaper in the short term but more costly over the long run.

South Korea does not only use automated construction in planning, but also in deploying commercialized robotics, automated modular manufacturing, and government-mandated smart construction.

Automated facilities, such as Space Factory, use advanced robotic arms to cut materials, assemble structural panels, seal joints, and fit window frames without direct manual intervention.

Unlike standard build sites in Spain, South Korean contractors actively deploy field robotics directly to job sites.

Automated rebar-tying robots and robotic concrete sprayers and finishers are routinely used by major developers, such as Samsung C&T and Hyundai E&C, to reduce heavy physical labor on high-rise residential projects. In addition, unmanned excavators and bulldozers guided by real-time GPS and drone mapping handle heavy site preparation.

Robots are even acting as supervisors to some extent, with autonomous quadruped robots, such as Boston Dynamics' "Spot," owned by South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group, continuously patrolling construction sites, performing 3D laser scans to verify that progress matches digital blueprints.

As Remix News has previously reported, automation, robotics, and AI are all leading elements of Asian economies, which have chosen efficiency and technology over mass immigration and cheap foreign labor.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/25/2026 - 02:00

Society Collapse 2040: The Year The World Stops Working And Starts Dying

Authored by Milan Adams via Preppgroup,

The Mathematical Warning That Refused to Fade

Fifty-four years ago, a team of researchers at MIT fed population data, resource consumption curves, and pollution metrics into a mainframe computer the size of a shipping container. The machine whirred through calculations and spat out a trajectory that ended in sharp decline. The 1972 Limits to Growth report predicted that without drastic course corrections, industrial civilization would hit terminal constraints by mid-century. At the time, critics dismissed the findings as Malthusian paranoia, pointing to the green revolution and technological optimism as proof that human ingenuity would always outpace scarcity. They were wrong. The variables aligned with terrifying precision.

A reassessment published by KPMG in January 2026 confirmed what the original MIT model suggested: we are not merely on track for the 2040 collapse - we are eighteen months ahead of the worst-case scenario. The report analyzed thirty key indicators including arable land depletion, aquifer drawdown, atmospheric carbon concentrations, and debt-to-GDP ratios across OECD nations. Twenty-seven of those indicators exceeded the 1972 projections. The remaining three—global shipping volume, semiconductor production, and satellite launches - mask underlying fragility by measuring activity rather than resilience. The study concluded that the “business as usual” trajectory now points to systemic rupture between 2032 and 2038, with cascading failures likely to begin manifesting visibly by late 2027.

The mathematics does not care about human optimism. Exponential curves have a way of appearing flat until they go vertical. The MIT model tracked five variables: population, food production, industrial output, pollution, and non-renewable resource depletion. In 2026, global population stands at 8.2 billion, having added the last billion in just twelve years. Food production plateaued in 2023 despite increased fertilizer application, indicating diminishing returns on agricultural intensification. Industrial output continues to rise, but energy return on investment - the amount of usable energy extracted versus the energy required to extract it—has fallen below the critical threshold of 15:1 for most fossil fuel sources. Pollution, measured in particulate matter, oceanic plastic density, and atmospheric methane, exceeds the model’s “pollution crisis” scenario by forty percent. The curves converge toward a singularity of scarcity and toxicity.

The Nine Fractures Already Spiderwebbing Through the Foundation

Economic architecture is not collapsing in a dramatic thunderclap. Instead, it is dissolving like limestone in acid rain—slowly, invisibly, until the cavern opens beneath your feet. Global debt reached $307 trillion in early 2026, representing 333% of global GDP. This is not a number that resolves through growth. It resolves through devaluation, default, or dissolution. Central banks in thirty-seven countries are currently piloting Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), programmable money that carries expiration dates and usage restrictions. The Bank for International Settlements openly discusses “financial repression” as a necessary tool for managing sovereign debt loads. Translation: your savings will be harvested to keep institutions solvent, and you will have no recourse because the money will be code, not cash.

The banking crisis of 2023 never truly ended; it merely entered a chemically-induced coma. Regional banks in the United States continue to hemorrhage deposits as savers flee to money market funds and Treasury bills. Commercial real estate—office towers built in the 1980s and 1990s—trades at sixty percent below 2019 valuations. Pension funds that loaded up on these “stable” assets face insolvency by 2028. The derivatives market, that opaque web of interconnected obligations, now notionalizes at over one quadrillion dollars. When—not if—a major counterparty fails, the unwind will not be orderly. It will be a stampede toward exits that no longer exist.

Climate systems are not changing. They are destabilizing. The summer of 2026 broke records that had stood for mere months. Phoenix recorded thirty-one consecutive days above 115°F. The wet-bulb temperature in Mumbai exceeded 35°C for six hours on August 3rd, 2026, crossing the threshold for human survivability without air conditioning. The Arctic ice minimum this September will likely establish a new record low, with some models suggesting the first “blue ocean event”—ice-free Arctic waters—could occur as early as 2027, decades ahead of previous estimates. The permafrost in Siberia is not merely thawing; it is exploding. Methane craters half a kilometer wide now pockmark the Yamal Peninsula, releasing ancient greenhouse gases at rates that render human emission reductions irrelevant.

Water is not becoming scarce. It is being weaponized. The Colorado River, which irrigates fifteen percent of American agricultural output, has reached critically low levels that trigger mandatory cutbacks under the 2026 Compact renegotiations. Farmers in Arizona are already bulldozing orchards that took decades to establish. The Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies the American breadbasket, drops an average of two feet annually. It will not recharge within any human timescale. In India, the groundwater beneath the Punjab region—India’s wheat basket—will be economically inaccessible by 2028. Pakistan and India have exchanged fire across the Line of Control three times this year over water rights to the Indus River basin. The first water war of the 21st century is not coming. It is already here, dressed in the rhetoric of territorial sovereignty.

Migration patterns have shifted from streams to torrents. The UN estimates that 1.2 billion people currently live in regions that will become uninhabitable within two decades due to heat, drought, or sea level rise. In 2026 alone, 340,000 people crossed the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama, heading north. These are not economic migrants seeking opportunity; they are climate refugees fleeing agricultural collapse. The Sahel region of Africa is emptying into Europe at rates that exceed the 2015 crisis by factors of three. Bangladesh, where 160 million people live on a delta that rises one centimeter annually while seas rise three times faster, is negotiating “managed retreat” agreements that will relocate twenty million citizens by 2030. Borders are hardening. Camps are swelling. The infrastructure of compassion is fracturing under the weight of mathematical impossibility.

Food systems operate on margins so thin they resemble tightropes. The world maintains approximately seventy days of grain reserves. When Ukraine’s exports were disrupted in 2022, wheat prices spiked forty percent. When the Mississippi River dropped to historic lows in 2023, barge traffic backed up for months. These were warnings, not aberrations. In 2026, rice prices hit fourteen-year highs due to El Niño-induced droughts across Southeast Asia. The “green revolution” that fed the population boom relied on fossil fuel inputs—natural gas for fertilizer, diesel for tractors, petroleum for pesticides. As energy costs rise, food costs follow with mathematical inevitability. The bread riots that began in Sri Lanka in 2022 and spread to Pakistan, Peru, and Kenya were previews, not finales.

Disease is evolving faster than our defenses. Antibiotic resistance now kills 1.27 million people annually, a figure projected to reach ten million by 2035. Gonorrhea, tuberculosis, and staphylococcus infections are emerging that respond to no known pharmaceutical treatment. The post-antibiotic era means surgery returns to being a life-threatening gamble, childbirth becomes dangerous, and minor wounds can kill. Meanwhile, viral zoonotic spillover events have increased threefold since 2010. The H5N1 avian influenza has achieved mammal-to-mammal transmission in cattle populations across the American Midwest. Virologists give it a forty percent probability of achieving efficient human-to-human transmission within eighteen months. When—not if—it does, mortality rates could exceed those of the 1918 Spanish Flu.

Demographics are inverting with terrifying speed. The global fertility rate has fallen to 2.3 children per woman, barely above replacement level. In South Korea, it is 0.72. In Italy, 1.24. In China, 1.09. The inverted age pyramid—few young supporting many old—creates fiscal impossibilities. Japan is currently spending forty percent of its budget on elderly care and debt service. By 2030, that figure reaches sixty percent. Pension systems are not underfunded; they are unfundable. Simultaneously, youth unemployment in the developing world has reached forty percent in regions where seventy percent of the population is under thirty. The combination of idle young men and resource scarcity produces the historical precursor conditions for war.

Social cohesion is unraveling into constituent threads. Political polarization has reached levels where seventy percent of Americans view members of the opposing party as existential threats. Trust in institutions—media, government, academia, medicine—has fallen below twenty percent across Western democracies. Conspiracy theories move faster than facts because they offer narrative coherence in a world of chaotic complexity. When the official story loses credibility, people construct their own realities. The result is a population that cannot agree on basic facts, rendering collective problem-solving impossible. The public sphere has become a battlefield of competing hallucinations.

The Cascade Mechanics Nobody Modeled Correctly

These nine factors do not operate in isolation. They are coupled oscillators, feeding energy into each other with terrifying efficiency. Climate stress triggers migration. Migration triggers political backlash and border militarization. Resource nationalism disrupts trade. Trade disruption causes economic shock. Economic shock triggers currency crises. Currency crises prevent importation of food and energy. Food and energy shortages trigger social unrest. Social unrest disrupts supply chains further. The feedback loops are not linear; they are exponential.

The 2022 energy crisis in Europe demonstrated this coupling. Sanctions on Russian natural gas triggered price spikes. Price spikes forced industrial shutdowns. Shutdowns reduced fertilizer production. Reduced fertilizer production lowered grain yields. Lower yields increased food prices. High food prices triggered protests in developing nations that imported European wheat. The disruption traveled from pipelines to plazas in six months. Now imagine this cascade occurring simultaneously across water, food, energy, and financial systems. The models suggest that once three critical systems fail, the remaining seven follow within months, not years.

The concept of “resilience” has been strip-mined by corporate consultants who use it to sell software solutions. True resilience is biological, not digital. It is the redundancy of multiple seed varieties, not data backups. It is the muscle memory of manual labor, not cloud storage. It is the trust between neighbors, not blockchain verification. Industrial civilization has optimized for efficiency at the expense of redundancy, creating systems that are “lean” in the same way a razor blade is lean—sharp, but prone to snapping under pressure.

What the Breaking Point Actually Looks Like

The collapse will not announce itself with cinematic flair. There will be no single day when the president declares martial law over a montage of burning cities. Instead, the degradation will be granular, personal, and unevenly distributed. It will arrive as the day your debit card stops working at the grocery store, not because you lack funds, but because the payment processor is down. It will arrive as the week the pharmacy cannot refill your prescription because the supply chain fractured somewhere in a factory district you have never heard of. It will arrive as the month when the water coming from your tap runs brown, then stops running entirely.

Infrastructure does not fail catastrophically at first. It fails in brownouts. The electrical grid, that marvel of twentieth-century engineering, currently operates with less than three percent spare capacity in most developed nations. During the August 2026 heat dome, rolling blackouts affected forty million Americans. Hospitals ran on backup generators. Traffic lights went dark. Refrigerators warmed. The meat in freezers spoiled. These were not third-world conditions; they were suburbs of Dallas and Sacramento. When the grid finally fails completely—and physicists give it a sixty percent chance of major continental failure by 2030—it will not return quickly. Transformers take eighteen months to manufacture. High-voltage cables require specialized ships to lay. The knowledge to repair these systems resides in aging engineers who are not being replaced.

Water scarcity does not mean the taps run dry everywhere at once. It means the price triples. It means the municipal supply is restricted to four hours daily. It means those with private wells become targets. It means the wealthy install reverse-osmosis systems while the poor queue at distribution points with plastic jugs. It means hospitals cancel surgeries because they cannot sterilize instruments. It means the sewage system backs up because there is insufficient water pressure to maintain flow. It means cholera and typhoid return to cities that have not seen them in a century.

Food shortages do not manifest as empty shelves immediately. They manifest as the substitution of fresh produce with processed carbohydrates. They manifest as “meatless Mondays” becoming meatless weeks. They manifest as portion sizes shrinking while prices remain static. They manifest as the disappearance of imported goods—coffee, chocolate, bananas—replaced by local substitutes that taste like memory. They manifest as weight loss that doctors attribute to diet trends rather than caloric deficit. They manifest as the reappearance of “victory gardens” in suburban yards, not as hobbies, but as necessities.

Crime does not explode into Mad Max theatrics. It metastasizes. Petty theft becomes normalized because the police no longer respond to non-violent calls. Home invasions increase because desperation outpaces deterrence. Organized looting of cargo trains and delivery trucks becomes so common that insurance companies stop covering transported goods. Vigilante patrols form in neighborhoods that previously considered themselves progressive. The law does not disappear; it fragments into private security, gang justice, and mob violence. The state retains the capacity for overwhelming force but loses the capacity for consistent order.

Disease spreads not as plague pits but as chronic burden. Hospitals operate at 140% capacity year-round. Elective surgeries are canceled indefinitely. Cancer treatments are rationed by age. Antibiotics are reserved for the wealthy who can pay black market prices. Routine infections kill because the drugs no longer work. Mental health crises spike as anxiety becomes the baseline emotional state. The medical system does not collapse in a day; it erodes like coastal cliffs, losing a meter of capacity annually until the foundation undermines the structure.

Economic collapse does not look like hyperinflation in Weimar Germany, with wheelbarrows of cash. It looks like the cashless society the technocrats dreamed of, but as a prison rather than a convenience. CBDCs arrive as “financial inclusion” and become social control. Your money expires if not spent within thirty days. Your purchases are restricted based on carbon scores. Your accounts are frozen if you violate speech codes or exceed travel allowances. The wealthy move assets into land, precious metals, and cryptocurrency, leaving the masses holding programmable tokens that lose value algorithmically. The stock market does not crash; it is suspended “temporarily” to prevent panic selling, then reopened under capital controls.

The Survival Imperative Beyond Stockpiling

Preparation is not paranoia when the threat is mathematical. However, the survivalist aesthetic of canned goods and bunker construction misses the point. Three months of stored food will not carry you through a decade of decline. The lone wolf dies; the pack survives. The critical resource is not ammunition or freeze-dried rations; it is social capital. Trust is the currency that retains value when fiat fails. Skills are the assets that appreciate when markets crash.

Water security means more than bottled reserves. It means knowing how to purify rainfall, how to access aquifers, how to build solar stills. It means understanding your local watershed, the sources upstream, the contaminants likely downstream. It means community-level infrastructure—cisterns, filtration, distribution networks—that functions when municipal systems fail.

Food security means regenerative agriculture, not industrial agriculture. It means learning to grow calories, not Instagram aesthetics. It means heritage seeds that reproduce true, not hybrids that require annual purchase. It means composting, foraging, preserving, fermenting. It means small livestock—rabbits, chickens, goats—that convert inedible biomass into protein. It means knowing your neighbors’ skills and bartering labor for produce.

Energy security means redundancy. Solar panels with battery backup for when the grid falters. Wood stoves for when the gas lines freeze. Hand tools for when the power tools have no electrons to consume. The ability to repair rather than replace. The knowledge to maintain engines, to wire circuits, to improvise solutions from salvaged materials.

Medical security means primitive skills. Knowing how to set bones, suture wounds, identify medicinal plants. Stockpiling antibiotics while they still work, learning to use veterinary equivalents when human grades become unavailable. Understanding sanitation—proper latrine construction, water purification, waste disposal—to prevent disease rather than merely treat it.

Security means community defense, not individual armament. A fortress mentality invites siege. Mutual aid pacts, neighborhood watches, communication networks that function when cell towers fail. The ability to de-escalate conflict because every bullet fired invites retaliation. The wisdom to share surplus because hoarding invites theft.

Psychological resilience may prove the rarest commodity. The ability to adapt to lower standards of living without despair. The capacity to find meaning outside of consumption and status. The mental flexibility to abandon plans when circumstances change. The emotional stability to witness suffering without becoming numb or broken. The spiritual fortitude to maintain ethics when systems of enforcement dissolve.

The Horizon We Are Actually Walking Toward

The 2040 prediction was not wrong; it was conservative. The KPMG reassessment suggests we are witnessing not a sudden cliff but a steepening slope that began around 2020 and accelerates annually. The collapse is not an event in the future. It is a process we are currently inhabiting. The question is not whether you will live to see societal collapse. You are already living within it. The question is where on the curve you will find yourself when your personal trajectory intersects with the systemic breakdown.

The Roman Empire did not fall in a day. It experienced centuries of decline during which life continued, markets operated, and culture flourished—until they didn’t. The Mayans did not vanish; they abandoned their cities when the agricultural basis could no longer support the population density. The Bronze Age collapse of 1177 BCE saw multiple interconnected civilizations fail within decades due to climate change, seismic disruptions, and invasion. The survivors were those who decentralized, who maintained oral traditions when writing disappeared, who shifted from complexity to resilience.

We face a similar inflection. The next fifteen years will not resemble the last fifteen. The assumptions of perpetual progress, of technological salvation, of infinite growth on a finite planet, are being ground against the whetstone of physical reality. The pain will be unevenly distributed, as it always is. The wealthy will buy islands, citizenships, and security details. The poor will suffer first and most. The middle class will discover that their credentials and retirement accounts are abstractions that dissolve when the infrastructure supporting them fails.

But within this darkness, there is a strange liberation. When the impossible burden of maintaining industrial civilization is lifted by its own weight, space opens for other ways of being. Not utopia, certainly. Hardship, definitely. But also proximity, skill, meaning, and connection that the digital age promised but failed to deliver. The future is not uniformly bleak; it is textured, varied, and still undetermined.

The MIT model offered a choice in 1972. We made it, collectively, through action and inaction. Now we navigate the consequences. The 2040 horizon approaches not as prophecy, but as physics. Those who see it coming, who prepare bodies and minds and communities, will not escape the storm. But they might build boats sturdy enough to reach the other side of it.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 23:25

Central Banking: The Scourge Of Civilization

Authored by George Ford Smith via Mises Institute,

Apple builds and sells iPhones. I happen to own one of the older models, for the same reason I own a last-legs older model car. What if Apple could skip the build part and sell only the phone? The money saved would be an enormous boost to its bottom line. And if Apple passed the savings onto customers I could conceivably afford to upgrade.

Where would the phones come from? From a bookkeeping entry, of course.

Unfortunately, Apple's customers are very demanding and want the real things, so the build operations will have to stay. Perhaps their executives looked upon another business and envied their ability to sell loans without drawing down their savings. Customer with good credit wants a loan? Create the amount with a few taps on a keyboard and send him on his way.

The customer will spend his newly-acquired money, thus keeping people employed. Since he has good credit, he will be able to make monthly payments, and the lender, the bank, will normally apply his payments to extinguish the loan, with the interest being the bank's profit. Everyone's happy and the economy keeps expanding until it busts.

Experts will diagnose the bust. The usual fiends will get blamed. Government will step in to cure the problem its monetary and banking interventions helped create. The economy will slowly recover and continue on the same path as before, meaning banks will continue extending credit from ether rather than savings.

How did this racket get started? It's complicated. That's one reason it works-the crime doesn't exist if enough people don't see it.

Gold and silver coins have long served as money, until more recent times. For government, gold became an economic culprit during the Great Depression, as explained by JM Bullion,

The Great Depression officially began on October 28, 1929, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 13% of its value in a single day. The following day, it dropped an additional 12%, and in a matter of weeks, it was worth half as much as before.

In response, consumer confidence plummeted, and people began withdrawing their money from banks as quickly as possible. Banks, which work with reserves and don't keep much of their deposits on hand, began closing their doors. (emphasis added)

Bank-created money was disappearing, and prices fell accordingly. Let's expand on this.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 required the Fed to hold gold equal to only 40 percent of the currency it issued. By adjusting interest rates, the Fed could increase or decrease its stock of gold. Higher interest rates shifted "gold from the pockets of the public (both here and abroad) to the vaults of Federal Reserve district and member banks." Conversely, lower rates drove gold from the Fed's "coffers into the hands of the public both at home and overseas."

During the panics of 1930-1931 people were losing their trust in banks. A depositor with $1,000 in a shaky local bank could protect himself from that bank's failure by withdrawing $1,000 in currency. The dollars-fully redeemable in gold coin-gave him needed purchasing power. But the bank now had $1,000 less on which to pyramid new loans.

After Britain abandoned the gold standard on September 21, 1931, foreign holders of dollar assets began converting them into gold. Americans rightly feared Roosevelt would do the same when he took office on March 4, 1933. An owner of a $1,000 note or checking account would risk losing his legal ability to convert it into gold at $20.67 per ounce.

People knew what was real and they lined up at banks demanding gold. But the dual legality of fractional reserves and the promise of 100 percent redemption of notes and deposits made banks vulnerable to a panicked crowd demanding redemption. Thirty-six hours after his inauguration, Roosevelt shut down the banks for a week (the Bank Holiday of 1933). A month later he ordered Americans to surrender their gold or face heavy fines and imprisonment.

The inflationary Fed system wasn't limited to Wall Street, though stock market margin credit played a significant role during the 1920s. Businesses, farmers, real-estate borrowers and ordinary bank customers were also drinking the elixir of Fed bank credit.

Gold had powered the growth of civilization. "According to Herodotus, King Croesus, who ruled Lydia from around 560 to 546 B.C., was the first person to issue pure gold and pure silver coins." It only took the government-Fed cartel twenty years to get rid of it, 1913-1933.

What Have Been the Results?

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, in addressing the Economics Club of New York in 2002, commented on the effects of Roosevelt's abandonment of gold:

Although the gold standard could hardly be portrayed as having produced a period of price tranquility, it was the case that the price level in 1929 was not much different, on net, from what it had been in 1800. But, in the two decades following the abandonment of the gold standard in 1933, the consumer price index in the United States nearly doubled. And, in the four decades after that, prices quintupled. Monetary policy, unleashed from the constraint of domestic gold convertibility, had allowed a persistent overissuance of money. As recently as a decade ago, central bankers, having witnessed more than a half-century of chronic inflation, appeared to confirm that a fiat currency was inherently subject to excess. (emphasis added)

Don't you love his use of "witnessed," as if central bankers were mere bystanders?

Inflation is Fed policy-a target of 2 percent. At that rate, and it's usually higher, the dollar loses roughly half its purchasing power in 35 years.

A month before Greenspan's speech, Governor Ben S. Bernanke of the Federal Reserve delivered a talk to the National Economics Club in Washington, DC, about making sure it doesn't happen here. The "it" refers to that terrible malady, falling prices, otherwise known as deflation. In what has become a legendary passage earning Bernanke the nickname "Helicopter Ben," he said:

Like gold, U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.

What's wrong with deflation? What's wrong with falling prices?

To the Fed and the economists who support it, deflation could bring on another terrible depression. Gold is much harder to inflate than paper, so it had to go. But even the printing press didn't cure unemployment, which stayed above 10 percent until WWII.

In his book, Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy, George Selgin argues that a falling price level is a good thing when central banks either don't exist (US) or defend the gold standard (Britain). In a free market, one unhampered by the dual threat of government and the central bank, productivity improvements reduce unit costs, and prices should be allowed to reflect those reductions. Between 1882 and 1897, the general price level in the US fell approximately 1.7 percent annually while real output grew about 3 percent annually; during much of the same era, labor productivity increased by more than 2 ½ percent annually.

Falling prices is like getting a raise. Deliberately increasing prices, as the Fed does, steals the raise for first recipients of the new money. The "Great Depression" of 1873-1896, as Selgin called it, was a period of intense deflation because of "unprecedented advances in factor productivity."

Zero inflation might sound good, but it should be recognized as a stepping-stone towards something much better, Selgin advises.

Conclusion

In the words of Milton Friedman, "If a domestic money consists of a commodity, a pure gold standard or cowrie bead standard, the principles of monetary policy are very simple. There aren't any. The commodity money takes care of itself." Central banking is the scourge of civilization.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 22:35

World's Largest Refiner Says China's Oil Demand "Very Likely Peaked Last Year"

One of the most understated stories of 2026, and the reason why oil (and gas) aren't trading at persistently nosebleed levels (ignore diesel for the time being), has been China's unexpectedly weak oil demand. And while there has been much speculation surrounding the reason for this chronically weak oil demand, ranging from an accelerated - and offsetting - SPR drain, to a dramatic economic slowdown behind the scenes (or even in front of the scenes based on the latest dismal economic data), today for the first time we got a notable justification for this phenomenon coming from none other than the head of the nation’s - and world's - largest refiner,  who said that China’s oil demand probably peaked last year, earlier than previous estimates.

Clean energy development, electrification and low-carbon goals mean that the country’s oil demand has probably already crested, Sinopec Chairman Hou Qijun said Monday at an earnings briefing in Hong Kong, quoted by Bloomberg.

The company had previously forecast usage to top out in 2027, while the government is targeting oil and coal consumption to reach their limits during the current five-year plan period, which runs through 2030.

“Next year, even if the US-Iran conflict eases up, things might recover, but it won’t hit last year’s level,” Hou said. “So it’s very likely demand peaked last year.”

Since China is the world’s largest oil importer, an earlier start to reducing consumption would help rein in its world-leading emissions while raising questions for the world’s top crude drillers.

Sinopec, known officially as China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., said in its earnings report on Sunday that road fuel demand plummeted in the first half as consumers shied away from higher prices and shifted to electric vehicles. The declines are expected to narrow a bit in the second half because of supportive economic policies, said Tian Hongbin, a senior vice president at the company.

Even as fuel demand drops, the company is making sure domestic supply needs are met, President Wan Tao said during Monday’s briefing. It’s diversifying crude sources away from the Middle East while working with its suppliers in the region on shipping routes safe from the violence of the Iran War. The refiner has received 11 oil tankers previously stuck in the Persion Gulf that were carrying a combined 2.76 million tons of crude, he said.

The company typically keeps about 20 days of crude storage for refining purposes, and 15 days of refined products for marketing, Wan said. Inventory levels have remained steady during the war, and Sinopec will continue to follow directions from the government on its commercial storage levels, he added.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 22:10

DOJ To Deploy 1,000 Election Monitors For Midterms

The Justice Department is preparing to send a record 1,000 federal monitors to polling places for the 2026 midterms, the largest deployment of its kind in the agency's history. Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general who runs the Civil Rights Division, gave the number to Bloomberg last week and the figure alone tells you how central "election integrity" has become to this administration's second-term agenda.

This is not unprecedented. The Civil Rights Division has monitored polling places for decades under the Voting Rights Act, which bars discrimination, intimidation, or obstruction of voting based on protected characteristics such as race, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability.

According to the Department of Justice, "The Voting Rights Act permits federal observers to monitor procedures in polling places and at sites where ballots are counted in eligible political subdivisions."

The Division determines whether federal observers are needed in an eligible jurisdiction. If so, the Division notifies the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that federal observers are needed, which OPM recruits, and then, in cooperation with Division attorneys, supervises federal observers. Federal observers write reports of the activities they witness in polling places and provide those reports to the Division.

The pool of potential monitors is thinner than it used to be. More than 70 percent of the Civil Rights Division's career staff took early retirement or resigned amid the division's priority shake-up under Dhillon, and despite a recent hiring push, the office remains understaffed.

This represents a significant escalation of the use of election monitors compared to past elections. The Biden administration's DOJ sent 289 monitors to polling places during the 2022 midterms. Then, in 2024, the DOJ sent 714 monitors across 27 states and 86 jurisdictions, a majority of them Civil Rights Division attorneys and staff, with a smaller contingent drawn from the Office of Personnel Management's separate and largely diminished federal observer program, which trains volunteers to watch and take notes at polling sites under court order.

A DOJ spokesperson offered the outline of an answer to how they intend to pull off such a large increase in monitors, saying the department plans to recruit federal employees, including staff from U.S. Attorney's Offices, to volunteer for the effort.

According to CBS News, the Civil Rights Division has filed 31 lawsuits against states seeking unredacted voter data, arguing the requests are necessary to confirm voter rolls are accurate and that noncitizens are not registered. The states on the receiving end characterize the lawsuits as an effort to manufacture doubt about election administration rather than genuinely clean up the rolls. The DOJ has not won a single one of the 31 lawsuits, and judges have blocked its data requests outright in 23 of them.

The broader push fits into President Trump's second term agenda, which has made election integrity a signature priority, most visibly through his backing of the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and a valid photo ID to vote in federal elections. The FBI has also opened a string of criminal investigations tied to the 2020 presidential election, including in Fulton County, Georgia, and in Arizona, keeping that election in active legal limbo nearly six years later.

Supporters of the monitoring surge will call it overdue vigilance against a system Republicans have long argued is vulnerable to fraud and administrative sloppiness, as was recently uncovered in New Jersey, where more than 6,000 noncitizens were found on the voter rolls. However, critics will call it a pretext for a federal presence at polling places, timed to a midterm cycle in which control of Congress hangs in the balance.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 21:20

Japan Power Prices Surge To Highest Since 2023

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Japan’s nationwide day-ahead electricity price soared by 20% in one week to settle on Monday at the highest level since January 2023, as gas supply disruptions from the Middle East and an intense heatwave pushed up prices and consumption.  

The day-ahead power price in Japan has jumped to $0.16 (25.18 Japanese yen) per kilowatt-hour (kWh) on Monday, per data from the Japan Electric Power Exchange cited by Bloomberg.

The heatwave in Japan is set to intensify later this week, with temperatures peaking on Wednesday, according to weather forecasts.

While the heatwave is boosting consumption, the oil and gas supply disruption in the Middle East has raised Japan’s fuel costs as LNG prices have doubled from before the Iran war began and Qatar’s LNG supply was trapped behind the Strait of Hormuz.

Japan, one of the world’s biggest LNG importers, earlier this summer reduced gas-fired generation in favor of coal as the price of liquefied natural gas remained elevated.

Japan has been burning more coal and less gas for power generation since the war in the Middle East started, and it is not the only one. All Asian countries have made the switch from gas to coal on affordability and availability grounds.

Moreover, surging oil prices have led to a significant increase in Japan’s import bill for oil and LNG.

The price of spot LNG deliveries into northeast Asia soared to a five-month high at the end of last week amid the renewed hostilities in the Middle East and the return of the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, which cut off Qatar’s LNG supply again.

The average spot LNG price for October delivery into north-east Asia was estimated at $22.50 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) at the end of last week, the highest level since the early days of the Middle East conflict.

As a result, fuel costs for power supply in resource-poor Japan jumped to the highest level in over three and a half years.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 20:55

Inside China's Humanoid Robot Boom: What BofA Analysts Saw On The Ground In Beijing

China put its humanoid robotics industry on full display last week with a series of technological, commercial, and capital-markets milestones. Beijing first hosted the 2026 World Robot Conference, followed by the five-day World Humanoid Robot Games, while Unitree capped the week with a blockbuster IPO.

Bank of America analyst Ming Hsun Lee attended last week's 2026 World Robot Conference and provided feedback to clients, noting that China's humanoid-robot industry has shifted from research demonstrations to commercial deployment, with logistics emerging as the first real-world use case.

Welcome to China, and welcome to the future!

Maybe we will soon witness humanoid robot formation in China's military parade.@WHRGFUN ©️@boosterobotics pic.twitter.com/dVqkVRGghu

— Shen Shiwei 沈诗伟 (@shen_shiwei) August 23, 2026

Lee said the WRC featured more than 300 exhibitors spanning humanoid robots, AI models, and critical components. Unlike last year's conference, which focused mainly on research and industrial applications, this year's conference focused on real-world uses for these robots, including logistics, retail, services, and household tasks.

He pointed to one example in which humanoids far exceed human capabilities.

X Square Robot demonstrated a dual-arm system capable of sorting more than 1,800 parcels per hour, far faster than the 1,200 to 1,400 parcels typically handled by a human worker. He also noted that Galaxea AI reported a success rate above 95% for its retail sorting and delivery system.

Other robotics startups featured at the event included Unitree, Galbot, and Spirit AI, which demonstrated robots folding clothes, preparing meals, sorting household objects, and assembling supermarket orders.

Dexterous hands displayed at the conference offered between 6 and 37 degrees of freedom, with these components having completed approximately 1 million operating cycles.

"Tactile sensors have become a must-have for dexterous hands, which account for 20-25% of the BOM cost of a dexterous hand. On the cost front, 6D force & torque sensor/tactile sensor/planetary roller screw are among the key components with fastest cost reduction over the past year, thanks to scale effect and improved manufacturing process. This could support a 45% cost reduction of humanoid robots in 2026-30E, according to our forecast," the analyst said.

Here's what Lee told clients:

Wider application scenario for embodied AI

We attended the 2026 WRC, held in Beijing from 19-23 August. The conference featured more than 300 exhibitors spanning humanoid robots and key component manufacturers. Compared with WRC 2025, where applications were primarily in R&D/industrial settings, WRC 2026 showcased a broader range of embodied AI use cases, extending into logistics, retail, services, and household scenarios. Among these, logistics emerged as one of the fastest-commercializing applications. Notably, X Square Robot demonstrated a parcel-sorting capacity of >1,800 parcels per hour using dual robotic arms, higher than the speed of human beings (1,200-1,400 parcels per hour). Many robotics companies (such as Galbot, Galaxea AI, Spirit AI, X Square Robot etc.) also demonstrated long-duration tasks in retail and household scenarios, such as folding clothes, preparing meals, and picking supermarket orders.

Real-world data crucial to model capability

World action models (WAM) are increasingly adopted by embodied AI companies, which enables higher generalization capability and performs well in long-period tasks. Leading robotics companies are seeking to develop a unified base model that can control different body forms (wheeled, bipedal etc.). On the data front, the importance of high-quality real-world data has become a consensus among embodied AI developers. Egocentric data is increasingly used in pre-training, thanks to its cheaper cost and larger scale, while high-quality real-world robot data (teleoperation/ failure-recovery trajectory) are used in post-training. Currently, data availability remains the key bottleneck for embodied AI developers. We estimate a general-purpose embodied AI model with high generalization capability would require 10mn-100mn hours of real-world data. Leading robotics companies now target to collect >1mn hours of real-world data by end-2026. Third-party data service providers (e.g. Lightwheel) also emerge to provide Egocentric/UMI data and simulation platform for model training.

Component: fast cost reduction continues

Dexterous hand companies in WRC demonstrated products with DoF ranging from 6 to 37. In general, high-DoF dexterous hands are preferred for R&D and high-precision manipulation tasks, while 6-DoF hands and grippers are widely used in manufacturing scenarios. Technology routes for dexterous hand haven't yet converged, with tendon-driven/bar linkage/direct drive solutions co-existing in the market. Leading dexterous hand companies can now achieve a life span of nearly 1mn cycles. Tactile sensors have become a must-have for dexterous hands, which account for 20-25% of a dexterous hand's BOM cost. On the cost front, 6D force & torque sensor/tactile sensor/planetary roller screw are among the key components with fastest cost reduction over the past year, thanks to scale effect and improved manufacturing process. This could support a 45% cost reduction of humanoid robots in 2026-30E, according to our forecast.

The bigger picture is that China appears to hold an early lead over the US in the humanoid robotics race, supported by control over both critical materials and downstream manufacturing. Beijing dominates rare-earth supply chains and much of the production capacity for critical components, including permanent magnets, motors, actuators, and sensors. That vertically integrated advantage could allow Chinese manufacturers to reduce costs and scale humanoid production faster than any US company. 

Last week, JPMorgan analysts toured Tesla's Fremont humanoid robotics factory and read more about what they uncovered (see here). 

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 20:30

Michigan's Energy Abundance Is On The Ballot

Authored by Samantha Fillmore via RealClearEnergy,

It is indisputable that energy is the lifeblood of every civilization. We are reminded of that truth daily at the gas pumps and when it's time to recharge the latest iPhone. Another indisputable truth is that the availability and affordability of energy are as delicate as the fiber-optic cables that supply our homes with Wi-Fi.

We are living out that truth in real time between the ongoing war in the Middle East affecting the global flow of energy and the growing energy demands that accompany data center and AI proliferation. Tie that in with idealistic energy policy that results in intermittent and unreliable sources of power, and we are headed in the opposite direction of energy prosperity.

Without sound energy policy that is founded in the realities of science, we are barreling towards a reality where energy is less abundant and more expensive than it's ever been.

Essentially, we are on the precipice of slipping and falling into a version of America that is unrecognizable from the America that we grew up in. On the local, state, and federal levels of government, each poor and uneducated decision on energy policy will slowly turn our land of prosperity into something more akin to our European counterparts, complete with their sky-high energy prices.

This is a pivotal moment for our leaders to make the correct decisions to secure our future energy and prosperity. The future of energy is in abundance. It is paramount that we ensure our energy is affordable, reliable, and clean.

Residents of Michigan are currently at that pivotal point in deciding which direction they want their state energy policy to go in. The Congressional race for Michigan's 7th District between incumbent Tom Barrett (R) and William Lawrence (D) is a microcosm for this very important crossroads in energy policy.

In his Congressional tenure, Barrett has supported energy policy that allows the market to choose the best, most reliable, and most affordable energy sources, particularly through the initiative to "unleash American energy" in the big Beautiful Bill. Furthermore, he has recognized that the permitting process for U.S. LNG exports should be improved to expedite the process and that the Inflation Reduction Act has, "[F]ailed to meet our energy needs," by funneling hundreds of billions of dollars into clean energy projects that fail to produce energy when the wind doesn't blow, and the sun doesn't shine.

As Congressman for the Wolverine State, Barrett has been overt in his opposition to Michigan Democrats' "Extreme energy mandates," requiring electricity production to use 100% green energy.

In a February 2026 X post, Barrett said: "Policies have consequences, and Michigan Democrats' extreme energy mandates continue driving energy costs through the roof. Michigan families can't afford to keep paying the price," in response to news breaking that Michigan energy customers should expect another rate hike.

Staying on-brand, in a March 2026 X post, Barrett said: "While Michigan Democrats double down on their failed green energy mandates that are driving up utility bills, I'm fighting to increase consumer choice and unleash affordable, reliable energy that gives you and your family the stability you deserve," once again citing his goal to keep energy prosperity a reality for his home state.

Through the power of his actions and votes in the halls of Congress, and through his continued advocacy for Michigan energy abundance, by way of affordability and reliability, Tom Barrett understands the dire importance of the crossroads Michigan is at.

On the other hand, William Lawrence participated in "[D]esigning the Green New Deal," according to a November 2025 X post. Lawrence has said that in Congress he will, "[F]ight for investment to secure the climate we depend on." Furthermore, Lawrence was a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, a climate group that claims, "[They] are the climate revolution," and demands a "transition away from all forms of fossil fuels as quickly as possible," along with "no new oil, gas, or coal projects."

The feeling that Lawrence is not interested in securing energy prosperity for the Wolverine State is palpable. Rather, it is evident that he is interested in pushing political ideology at the literal cost of Michiganders' electricity bills.

This is the duty and responsibility of our leaders to cultivate an environment to improve cities, grow and sustain a healthy population, incentivize business investments and technological developments, and all other elements of industry that once made Michigan an economic powerhouse in former decades. This requires energy. Abundant energy. Affordable energy that will be there at the flip of the switch when the sun is not shining, and the wind isn't blowing.

Energy is the lifeblood of every economy, and Michigan is no different. There are several issues to consider in all Congressional races; however, for people who are struggling to pay their energy bills, this issue may rise above the others.

Samantha Fillmore is the Senior State Government Relations Manager for Heartland Impact, the advocacy arm of The Heartland Institute, a 40-year-old public policy think tank based in Schaumburg, IL.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 20:05

Your Tax Dollars At Work: San Fran Shelter Workers Accused Of Hiding Cop Shooter

Two employees at a San Francisco homeless shelter funded through city contracts have been arrested for allegedly helping a suspected cop shooter hide from police, according to the New York Post.

The case stems from a May 31 confrontation near the Bay Bridge involving 36-year-old Norris Reed III. Authorities say what began as an attempted traffic stop escalated into a pursuit, ending when Reed’s vehicle struck a concrete barrier. Police allege Reed then fired at officers, wounding Officer Brittney Taylor in the leg, and escaped on foot.

The Post writes that the search eventually led officers to the Bayshore Navigation Center, where Reed was located roughly two hours after the shooting. Investigators now say two people working at the facility took steps to make finding him more difficult.

Oliver Barcenas, 36, allegedly supplied Reed with a change of clothes, which police say was intended to alter his appearance. Erika Porter, 45, is accused of giving investigators misleading information while officers were trying to locate Reed inside the center.

Reed was ultimately captured, and the investigation into what happened at the shelter continued. Nearly three months later, on Aug. 20, police arrested Barcenas and Porter over their alleged roles in concealing the wanted man.

Police Chief Derrick Lew condemned the alleged actions, saying there was no justification for helping an armed fugitive escape capture after an officer had been wounded.

Barcenas also has a criminal record of his own. He previously received a seven-year federal prison sentence following a conviction for illegally possessing a firearm and ammunition as a convicted felon.

The Bayshore Navigation Center is run by the nonprofit Five Keys with funding provided through San Francisco city contracts. It has space for as many as 128 homeless residents and offers case management and housing-related assistance intended to help people move into permanent housing.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 19:40

"Operation Economic Outcast" Begins: Bessent Warns Countries Helping Iran Face Expulsion From Dollar System Summary

• Bessent Unveils "Operation Economic Outcast" Against Iran 
• Pakistan enters diplomatic push: Pakistan's army chief reportedly traveled to Tehran after Trump urged him to help reopen Iran talks.
• Iran threatens new tanker action: Tehran blacklisted 45 vessels and warned of further Hormuz attacks.
• US readies sweeping sanctions: Bessent is preparing a sweeping economic offensive targeting Iran and its trading partners.
• Rial collapses: Iran's currency hit a record low as inflation and economic pressures intensify.
• Hormuz leverage in question: Washington & Western sources claim US-supervised shipping through the Oman corridor has surged 400%.

//--> //--> US x Iran diplomatic meeting by August 31, 2026?
Yes 2% · No 98%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

*  *  *

Bessent Talks 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will hold a press conference at 1 p.m. to detail the latest sanctions plan against Iran, which he described to CNBC earlier as the greatest campaign of "coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world."

Summary: US Treasury Sanctions Nearly 60 Iran-Linked Entities, Individuals And Vessels Across Nuclear, Missile, Cyber And Oil Networks:

• Five sectors face potential secondary sanctions: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping.
• Measures target brokerage networks and shadow-fleet vessels operating across the UAE, Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Switzerland and Europe.
• Bessent warns that countries failing to take action "will be removed from the US dollar system."

Bessent launched the Trump administration's long-awaited "Operation Economic Outcast," unveiling sweeping sanctions designed to sever Iran from the global financial dollar system and punish any foreign government or entity that continues facilitating Tehran's trade.

The first wave of sanctions targets nearly 60 Iran-linked entities, individuals and vessels connected to the regime's nuclear, missile, cyber and oil networks.

The measures span a global web of brokerage companies, financial intermediaries and shadow-fleet vessels operating across China, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Switzerland and Europe.

"No one is above the reach of US sanctions," Bessent warned during the press conference.

Bessent made clear that Trump's campaign extends well beyond Iran. Foreign companies dealing with Tehran now face an explicit choice: sever those ties or risk losing access to the US financial system.

Bessent stopped just short of naming countries such as China...

"If others don't act, Treasury will unilaterally act," he said, adding that Washington "expects action" from other nations.

Bessent added, "To those who enable Iran, don't test US resolve."

The obvious pressure point here is China, which remains the largest buyer of Iranian crude. Washington has previously sanctioned independent Chinese refiners and trading companies.

Live

Trump asked Pakistan to Seek Diplomatic Reopening With Iran; Tehran Threatens More Hormuz Attacks

Just hours before the expected Bessent presser where he's expected to threaten any countries doing business with Iran with severe secondar sanctions (while it remains clear major power like China and Russia won't readily comply), Iran says it is prepared to attack more foreign tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis are in the meantime targeting more Saudi vessels in the Red Sea region.

Tehran announced it has blacklisted 45 tankers for violating its rules to cross Hormuz, while underscoring its intent to take action against future transits and any vessels transferring loads with them. It is demanding 'fees' under the Oman-brokered management plan, which Washington has balked at. This comes as the US threatens Iran with "the toughest sanctions in history".

Iranian response ahead of Bessent presser:

Also being reported by Monday late morning is that Pakistan's army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, held a phone call with President Trump last week wherein the US leader reportedly asked for negotiations with Iran to be opened back up.

Munir has newly arrived in Tehran for talks with Iranian officials, according Tasnim news agency, in what's clearly ongoing shuttle diplomacy (very indirect, it seems)... amid hopes that future talks could be salvaged.

Big Bessent Iran Presser Set for 2 pm

In the coming hours, the Trump administration is expected to unveil a sweeping campaign to economically isolate Iran and its trading partners, with China likely the primary target. The escalation is designed to force Tehran back to the negotiating table, as its only leverage - the Strait of Hormuz - appears to be quickly eroding. Commercial ships are now transiting the newly opened, US military-supervised shipping corridor off Oman, raising the possibility that Iran has partially lost control of the critical waterway.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that he would hold a press conference on Monday to "talk about exactly what we're going to do" regarding an economic war against Tehran.

"Economic pressure means that we are going to all of our allies, and this is going to be the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world, and we are going to them and saying, 'You are either with us or against us,'" Bessent said.

Bessent Claims 'End Game' - Tehran Differs

Late Sunday, Bessent wrote on X: "We are now entering the endgame. At dawn begins an economic D-Day, the single greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against an adversary."

"President Trump has dismantled Iran's military capabilities, destroyed nearly 100 percent of its military factories, and buried its nuclear program," Bessent continued.

He noted, "The Islamic Republic has subsisted by dressing extortion as security guarantees. It has drawn strength from a calculus that regards Iranian retaliation as certain and American enforcement as negotiable. Under President Trump, that era is over. And those who fear the danger of defying Tehran ought not to discount the cost of testing Washington."

President Trump has dismantled Iran’s military capabilities, destroyed nearly 100 percent of its military factories, and buried its nuclear program.

We are now entering the endgame. At dawn begins an economic D-Day — the single greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against…

— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) August 23, 2026 Rial Record Low

In markets, Iran's currency tumbled to a record low. The rial dropped to about 2.02 million per US dollar on the open market (bonbast.com), compared with the central bank's official rate of roughly 1.5 million.

Even before the US and Israel operation to neuter Iran's offensive capabilities on Feb. 28, the rial had been under pressure, coupled with persistent double-digit inflation and economic turmoil. Economic conditions have worsened since the US Navy's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz disrupted trade and government revenue. 

The economic shock is increasingly visible across household prices. Rice has jumped 60% in just a few months, while beef prices have soared by 150%. The International Monetary Fund forecasts a 5% contraction in Iran's economy. 

On Friday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned of mounting economic pressure on Tehran, while cautioning against "humiliatingly" backing down "before the enemy."

Truth Social: Iran is Completely Collapsing

Trump posts this short statement on Monday, saying...

BUT... the US has fallen back to merely economic war and sanctions measures, after this:

Retired US four-star general coming to the same conclusion btw https://t.co/4Aphu9PoDL pic.twitter.com/jwyZqKnuRk

— dart (@poordart) August 24, 2026

"The war must come to an end at some point," Pezeshkian emphasized in a speech quoted by state media. "It is better that we demonstrate our strength and dignity today and tell the world that we have won and that we are ending the war."

Tehran's leverage over the critical waterway eroded last week as new data over the weekend showed that commercial transits through the US military-supervised Oman shipping corridor surged 400%. Trump has declared the Strait of Hormuz "an American territory." 

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 19:28

Massachusetts Citizenship Rule At Center Of Alleged Voter-Impersonation Case

Authored by Arthur Zhang via The Epoch Times,

After federal prosecutors charged a Chinese man for registering to vote and casting a ballot under his former landlord's name, experts are questioning Massachusetts' verification processes.

A voter fills out his midterm-election ballot in Boston City Hall on Nov. 8, 2022. Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images

Yupeng Sun, a Chinese national living in Andover, allegedly submitted an online voter registration in the name of his former landlord, who was not a U.S. citizen, on Oct. 10, 2024.

Massachusetts regulations - which took effect in June 2023 - require applicants using the state's online voter registration system to have reliable citizenship information documented in their motor vehicle records before they submit an application online.

If that citizenship documentation is missing, the regulation says the applicant "shall be unable to submit an online application."

"How did Sun manage to successfully, allegedly, impersonate a green card holder?" Logan Churchwell, research director at the Public Interest Legal Foundation, told The Epoch Times.

"Based on the regulation, a system functioning according to the letter should've halted the impersonation at the outset," he said.

"Massachusetts seems to have everything it needs in place to verify citizenship, but there could be malfunctioning parts needing fixes," he said.

The Secretary of the Commonwealth's office has not explained how the application was able to proceed under that requirement.

Prosecutors allege that Sun used his former landlord J.L.'s real name, date of birth, former Malden address, and Massachusetts driver's license number to register online.

J.L., a Chinese citizen and lawful permanent resident, was not eligible to vote.

The Secretary of the Commonwealth's office did not respond by publication time to questions about what citizenship information was contained in J.L.'s registry record, how an online application submitted in his identity was able to proceed under the regulation, or whether the state has reviewed the process since learning of the case.

Three weeks after registering, prosecutors allege, Sun went to Malden City Hall, identified himself as J.L., received an early ballot for the presidential election, and signed J.L.'s name on the ballot envelope.

Malden City Clerk Carol Ann Desiderio previously told The Epoch Times that the ballot was processed and counted in the final certified vote. The city had identified no problem with J.L.'s registration or ballot before federal investigators contacted it.

Don Palmer, a former chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and former state elections director who is now a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said election administrators should verify both identity and citizenship before placing an applicant on the voter rolls.

"There needs to be a mechanism to confirm the eligibility of applicants under state and federal law, and you should not simply rely on the assertion of the applicant," Palmer told The Epoch Times.

Palmer called the allegation that one noncitizen used another noncitizen's identity to register and cast a ballot an example of inadequate citizenship verification.

He said online registration systems should use existing government records and technology to confirm both identity and eligibility.

"States need to use existing technology and databases available to them to assist in confirming eligibility of voters; otherwise, these failures will continue to hurt voter confidence," Palmer said.

Charles Stewart III, an MIT political scientist who studies election administration, said the allegations involve unusually extensive identity theft and that determined impersonators can evade many identity safeguards.

Boston Records

The Public Interest Legal Foundation separately provided The Epoch Times with a spreadsheet it compiled from voter records obtained from the City of Boston.

The catalog contains 70 voter registrations that had been canceled because of noncitizenship.

Of those, 22 are marked "Yes" in a column showing whether at least one vote was recorded in the registrant's name. Sixteen are marked "No," while 32 don't have a yes-or-no entry.

In one case, the spreadsheet notes that Boston believed a vote credit may have been mistakenly assigned to the registrant instead of his wife.

Several entries say noncitizenship was discovered through Boston's annual resident listing. Others identify the Registry of Motor Vehicles as the source of the original voter registration.

The City of Boston did not respond by publication time to questions about how the 70 registrations were identified or whether the individuals associated with the 22 voting histories were noncitizens when those votes were recorded.

The city's public-records office acknowledged The Epoch Times' request for the underlying records and said it would work to respond within 10 business days.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 19:15

TotalEnergies CEO Reveals Cost To Move A Supertanker Through Hormuz

The crisis-driven dislocation across Gulf oil markets has positioned French energy giant TotalEnergies SE as an early mover, capitalizing on heavily discounted Persian Gulf crude priced at $50 to $60 a barrel and moving it through the highly contested Strait of Hormuz. CEO Patrick Pouyanné revealed at the Norwegian energy conference on Monday that transiting the waterway now costs roughly $20 million per supertanker.

Bloomberg earlier quoted Pouyanné as saying that the added cost of moving crude on supertankers through the Hormuz chokepoint is about $10 per barrel. However, with Brent crude futures at $92 per barrel, the potential profit could be upward of $30 per barrel. That is before financing and other costs, creating extraordinary margins for companies willing to accept the risks of being early movers in one of the world's most dangerous waterways.

TotalEnergies is one of the largest traders of Iraqi and Qatari crude, with both producers continuing to move oil through the Strait of Hormuz.

"We are today probably the largest trader of oil from Iraq or from Qatar ... and I can ​tell you that today crude oil is moving through the Strait of Hormuz very quietly, not ​publicly," Pouyanné said. 

Pouyanné did not elaborate on whether TotalEnergies-contracted tankers are transiting the US military-supervised shipping corridor off Oman.

Recent data have shown a noticeable uptick in transits, raising the question of whether Tehran's grip on the maritime chokepoint has eroded.

Pouyanné also warned that the refined-products market is currently in crisis.

"You have a bearish crude oil market and a very bullish product markets, which is very strange," he said. "Our consumers in Europe will suffer on this one," while in the US, "gasoline prices would not go lower than $4 as President Trump would like."

More on Pouyanne from Bloomberg's Javier Blas:

TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne nails it, warning that some emerging nations are “losing trust” on LNG after two back-to-back price shocks (2022 and 2026). The result? “Back to coal.”

— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) August 24, 2026

Gulf producers are willing to unload discounted crude, while some energy companies are ready to accept the risk of sailing through the Strait of Hormuz in pursuit of substantial profits. Despite all this, as Pouyanné warned, there is little that increased crude flows can do to resolve the worldwide refined-products crisis.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 18:50

Regulation: Protecting Incumbents And Suppressing Competition

Authored by Hal Snarr via Mises Institute,

A previous article attributed widespread airline service failures not to individual carriers but to government interventions sold as consumer protections. Through a web of intricate regulations and controls, the state restricts entry, grants shared monopoly privileges to approved carriers, and creates what Rothbard calls a state-enforced cartel. The result is an illusion of competition that allows poor service to persist without attracting better alternatives. This article examines how the same pattern protects incumbents and suppresses competition across other industries.

The banking system provides perhaps the clearest example. Entry requires a charter, regulatory approval, access to payment networks, compliance with extensive federal and state laws, and deposit insurance. The Federal Reserve supplies bank reserves, emergency credit, and the benchmark underlying prime rates, while the FDIC protects depositors from losses and reduces their incentive to distinguish between prudent and imprudent banks. Together with the discount window, this protection creates moral hazard by socializing risk and encouraging loans banks might not otherwise make. The result is an illusion of competition within a protected system that shifts the consequences of risky banking onto taxpayers and the broader economy.

Credit card pricing reveals the consequences. Banks appear to compete through branding, rewards, introductory offers, fees, and expanded credit access, yet interest rates remain remarkably high relative to the prime rate. The CFPB found that the ten largest issuers controlled 83 percent of outstanding balances and generally charged higher rates than smaller banks and credit unions. Perks and easier access create an illusion of competition that conceals the monopoly rates paid by customers who carry balances.

This restriction of competition becomes even more explicit in health care. Certificate-of-need laws allow incumbents to exercise a competitor's veto by opposing applications to build facilities, acquire equipment, add beds, or offer new services as unnecessary. Rather than letting patients determine whether another provider is needed, the state allows existing providers to declare the market adequately served. These restrictions help explain why many communities entered the pandemic with so few ICU beds. North Carolina eye surgeon Dr. Jay Singleton, for example, remains barred from offering lower-cost surgery at his own facility while his constitutional challenge proceeds. The outrage would be deafening if the state allowed McDonald's to veto a Burger King opening across the street by claiming that Whoppers were duplicative. Yet health care incumbents exercise precisely this power, putting Rothbard's monopoly privilege into practice by asking the state to block entrepreneurs they might otherwise have to outperform.

Montana's waste-removal rules extend the same competitor's veto from hospitals to dumpsters. Parker Noland discovered that construction companies were dissatisfied with existing debris-removal services. After borrowing money to buy dumpsters and a specialized truck, he began advertising but soon received a cease-and-desist order from the Montana Public Service Commission. Continuing required a certificate of public convenience and necessity through a process that allowed existing waste companies to oppose his entry without explanation. Republic Services and Waste Connections protested his application, while other certificate holders demanded his tax returns, revenues, financial statements, and other business records. Unable to match their legal and financial resources, Noland withdrew. Rather than merely enforcing safety standards, the state empowered his prospective competitors to deny dissatisfied customers an alternative.

Professional licensing extends the same exclusionary power to entire occupations by allowing organized interests to control entry in the name of quality and public safety. Through its influence over medical education, accreditation, licensing, and professional membership, the American Medical Association helped determine who could become a physician and often applied these restrictions discriminatorily. Black physicians were excluded from many state and local medical societies, limiting their access to the national association, hospitals, and professional opportunities. Following a three-year investigation, the AMA formally apologized in 2008 for the harm inflicted on black physicians, their families, and their patients.

The AMA's review shows that this discrimination extended beyond black physicians. Women accounted for only 2.9 percent of medical-school graduates in 1915 and remained a small minority for decades. Jewish applicants also faced blatant discrimination. In 1939, JAMA editor Morris Fishbein acknowledged that they were rejected "simply because they were Jewish" but defended the practice because Jewish physicians already represented a substantial share of the profession. Although the AMA's apology focused on black physicians, the broader record demonstrates the danger of allowing professional organizations and incumbents to control entry. Presented as patient protections, licensing and accreditation helped create a state-enforced medical cartel that restricted the supply of physicians, raised prices, and reduced patient choice.

Control over entry and consumer choice also shapes public education, where the government acts as both financier and provider. Families must fund the system through taxes whether they use it or not, while licensing restricts who may teach, accreditation limits which institutions may compete, and political authorities determine curricula, funding, and operating standards. Parents are largely limited to their assigned public school, permitted charter schools, nearby private schools they must pay for separately, or moving to another district. Even these alternatives remain subject to state approval and regulation, while compulsory-attendance laws leave children no option to reject their poorly performing schools. Unlike a restaurant that loses revenue and eventually closes after repeatedly failing its customers, a failing public school may receive additional funding because the state restricts entry, compels attendance, and supplies it with captive customers.

This system burdens families with the fewest resources most heavily because they have the least ability to escape it. In my view, the availability of even one viable alternative helps explain why public schools in affluent neighborhoods often perform well. The threat that dissatisfied parents can send their children elsewhere disciplines the incumbent school. Wealthier families can afford both the coerced tuition imposed through property taxes and the additional cost of private schooling, or they can move to a district with better schools. Lower-income families, especially in urban areas where political authorities restrict charter-school competition, often have none of these options and remain trapped in failing schools. Desperate parents who evade residency rules to place their children in a better public school risk prosecution and jail.

Where licensing restricts entry directly, food regulations protect incumbents more subtly by imposing costs that large corporations can more readily absorb and influence. Major producers spread FDA compliance expenses across millions of products and employ teams of chemists, lawyers, lobbyists, and regulatory specialists beyond the reach of smaller competitors. The GRAS process also allows them to hire experts, declare substances safe, and introduce them without formal FDA review or notification, even though legal sale implies government endorsement. The Environmental Working Group estimates that nearly 99 percent of chemicals added to the US food supply between 2000 and 2021 entered through GRAS rather than formal FDA review. Large producers can then use these self-certified additives to mass-produce inexpensive foods, rewarding regulatory influence and scale rather than the whole-food alternatives consumers might otherwise choose.

The pharmaceutical industry adds patent privileges and rules requiring third-party payers to purchase prescribed drugs for patients to the regulatory advantages already evident in food production. Although defenders consider patents necessary to finance research, scientific discovery and the desire to improve human life motivate R&D across industries. Patents nevertheless favor drugs over potentially effective natural substances, which generally cannot receive protection unless their compounds are modified or synthesized. Large firms can also finance years of testing and regulatory review that may exhaust smaller competitors' capital. FDA approval provides a government endorsement, while mandated third-party payment weakens patients' sensitivity to price. These protections and the purchases they compel shield Big Pharma, raise prices, encourage patent farming, and replace consumer judgment with administrative permission.

Inside government-owned airports, political authorities decide which businesses may operate and what they may sell. Burger King and McDonald's, for example, compete not side by side for customers but for permission to enter. This lack of competition once left me with the worst burger I have ever purchased. I threw it away after one bite, which says something because I was a poor PhD candidate at the time. A few years later, airport security prevented me from bringing a Chicago-style pizza home from an economics conference. Both experiences illustrate how government restrictions create an illusion of choice while shielding the fortunate few from outside competition. The weakened market discipline that permits an airport vendor to sell an inedible burger also allows airlines to provide poor service. Both compete for political permission in protected markets rather than for customers in open competition.

Together, these examples show why the airline ordeal discussed in a previous article indicts markets cartelized through regulations and other interventions enacted as consumer protections. Firms that entered after these regulated markets were established should not bear the primary blame because they merely respond to incentives that reward political entrepreneurship over market entrepreneurship. What appears to be competition among incumbents is largely OPEC-style jostling within a protected system. This cartelization increasingly resembles the old-world European mercantilism that provoked Marx's rage, generating the scarcity, high prices, and declining quality that fuel the populism of Mayor Mamdani on the Left and President Trump on the Right. Healing this political divide requires looking beyond individual firms and dismantling the regulations that cartelize them. Restoring open competition would replace political permission with consumer choice and unleash the entrepreneurship that produces lower prices, higher quality, greater choice, and superabundance.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 18:25

US Scraps September Korea Marine Drills In Wake Of Iran War Strain

Fresh on the heels of President Trump controversially ordering scaled-down US-South Korea military drills last week, there are emerging reports of more canceled plans for joint exercises.

South Korean and American force were going to hold large-scale maritime drills focused on amphibious landing exercises in September, but Seoul has said the Pentagon had to back out related to constraints due to Iran war deployments.

Marine Corps file image

"The US Marine Corps formally notified our forces in June that its ability to deploy forces during this year’s Ssangyong exercise would be constrained due to the situation in the Middle East," Han Seung-jeon, a spokesman for the South Korean Marine Corps, said in a press briefing Monday.

After this month's Ulchi Freedom Shield were halted early so as not to provoke North Korea (as indicated by Trump), these next exercises - dubbed "Twin Dragons" - have apparently been canceled entirely.

The Twin Dragons exercise has previously featured thousands of American and South Korean forces practicing beach front landings.

At its height years ago, it included over 20 navy vessels, 30 warplanes - and 40 amphibious-assault vehicles transporting, and well over 10,000 personnel.

"Now it is the most recent example of Asian pullbacks from the U.S. More than 2,000 U.S. Marines stationed in Japan were transferred to the Middle East in March," The Wall Street Journal reports.

"South Korea’s president publicly opposed the withdrawal of U.S. air defense assets this spring from his country. A Pacific-based American aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington, just replaced in the Middle East the USS Abraham Lincoln, which had been deployed for more than 250 days," the report adds.

All of this is likely to strain tensions further between Washington and Seoul, something which has alarmed lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

"Both Democrats and Republicans have warned that the pullback on Ulchi Freedom Shield drills risked undermining the alliance with South Korea, calling for the exercises to be restored," observes WSJ.

US pulls back on major South Korea beach drills amid Iran strain — NYT

The Pentagon scraps next month’s Ssangyong amphibious exercise, citing military demands from the war in Iran

The drill was set to feature more than 10,000 Marines pic.twitter.com/ChxdX0OWVc

— RT Intl (@RT_on_X) August 24, 2026

But it's clear that Trump is pushing for a new opening with Kim Jong Un, hearkening back to the two leaders' historic face-to-face meetings which marked a foreign policy high-point of Trump's first administration. So far, Pyongyang has not backed off its condemnations of Seoul and Washington's ongoing close cooperation.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 18:00

Supreme Court Backs Trump's Mail-In Ballot Overhaul

The Supreme Court sided with President Trump over his plan to use the Postal Service to impose broad new restrictions on the distribution of mail ballots.

Over the dissent of the court's three liberal judges, SCOTUS' ruling means that the Trump administration can move forward with a proposal for DHS to compile state-specific lists of people it believes are eligible to vote in the Democratic-led states that had challenged the plan in court.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, wrote that they believed lower courts had the authority to rule in favor of the Democratic states now, while stressing that the high court’s majority had not addressed the legality of Trump’s directives on the merits.

“Today’s decision does not address whether the President’s attempts to interfere with States’ administration of the November 2026 elections are lawful. Nor does it suggest that the Executive Branch has any constitutional or statutory authority to implement the President’s directives,” Sotomayor wrote.

“Instead, today’s decision merely postpones adjudication of those challenges.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, meanwhile, penned her own lengthy dissent using stronger language to bash how the ruling “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.”

Trump says his rules would combat voter fraud, but opponents say they would create chaos and disenfranchise large numbers of legitimate voters.

Notably, the decision did not address the legality of Trump's order, only the timing of the challenge to it. 

"The court's disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful," the court wrote. 

"On that score, time will tell. But the order itself does not harm the states, so the District Court lacked jurisdiction to bar the govern­ment from trying to implement it. And for the reasons dis­cussed, that injunction is likely to irreparably harm the government if it remains in place while the appellate pro­cess runs its course."

Nevertheless, it represents a loss for the Democratic states, who warned they will need to immediately begin diverting time and resources away from preparing for this year's elections in November.

“The ruling is a win for Trump for the moment, but it doesn’t fully clear the way for his effort to limit mail-in ballots to go into effect,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

“As soon as tomorrow, a Massachusetts district court may block the underlying USPS rule at issue - which is the real thing to watch heading into November.”

Specifically, as Bloomberg notes, the high court order is likely to set off a new round of legal wrangling before US District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston over final Postal Service regulations set to be published on Wednesday to implement the executive order.

Should it take effect for November, the program could help Republicans keep control of Congress.

...and cue the demand to pack the court (or 'democracy-threatening' conservative judges).

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 17:40

Specs Buy Record Gold Futures As Short Squeeze Sends CTAs Soaring: What's Next For Gold

Not long after we reported that Goldman's commodity strategists are turning especially bullish on gold, telling clients they see  "significant upside risk to our $4,900/oz end-2026 gold forecast" as a result of a substantial jump in call buying, not to mention gold crossing above its 200DMA for the first time since October 2023, Goldman's futures desk also chimed in with trader Robert Quinn writing that over the past 3 weeks, speculators purchased a record amount of Gold futures in nominal terms per Commitment of Traders (COT) (full note available to pro subs).

Managed Money, Other, and Non-Reportable bought +$22.2bn from July 28th - August 18th, representing a 10+ year notional max. Long augmentation (+$13.6bn) and short covering (+$8.6bn) contributed to the sharp move higher. Resultant net length registered at 93% on a 2 year lookback.

As Goldman shows in the chart below, all categories participated in the recent meltup (which we pointed out as it was happening some two weeks ago here): Managed Money +$10.9bn, Other +$8.5bn, Non-Reportable +$2.8bn.

At first glance, Quinn notes, macroeconomic factors, which also steepened the US yield curve, seemingly catalyzed the broad support. Investors lowered the potential for multiple rate hikes in 2026 post the incrementally dovish July Fed meeting plus benign inflation and job readings. Meanwhile, long-dated rates charged higher due to cyclical resilience, AI capex, growth optimism, ongoing fiscal pressures, and global spillovers. Thus for Managed Money and Other, gross long changes on either a 1 or 2 week basis became positively correlated with US 2s30s.

That said, the Goldman trader cautions that gold bulls kept adding as recent Treasury actions forced a curve retracement. Over August 18th - 21st, Gold jumped +5.9% and US 2s30s fell -8bps after the Treasury announced increases of 10-to-30y buyback operations.

Gold aggregate open interest rose each session for a cumulative +$8.9bn.

Meanwhile, GS futures strategists' CTA model also showed a surge in buying, which was to be expected since on August 5 we said that "CTAs remain short gold. If the breakout gains traction, systematic buying could add meaningful upside convexity to the move."

Moreover, Gold 3 month implied volatility richened and normalized 25 delta put-call skew cheapened to a 5 month low. Therefore longs initiated via outright futures and calls.

UBS' trading desk also chimed in today, with S&T specialist Jonathan Garber writing in a Monday morning note (available here to pro subs), that "the outlook for gold has become increasingly constructive, supported by strong futures positioning, continued ETF inflows, US fiscal and debt concerns, dollar weakness, persistent inflation risks, and reduced expectations for near-term policy easing."

Echoing Goldman, he notes that investor sentiment has shifted meaningfully over the past two weeks, with growing interest from hedge funds and other clients seeking to increase exposure following the latest rally. He notes that "while many investors were largely disengaged only a few weeks ago, the recent price action appears to have captured broader market attention."

To be sure, this rapid shift may be a red flag: going back to the Goldman's Quinn, he writes that this sharp spike in bullish sentiment creates some risk of tactical unwinds should Chairman Warsh also express discomfort with recent market developments.

Recall that at the July Fed meeting, Warsh had not yet decided whether his keynote speech at Jackson Hole would be "big-picture" or a more traditional preview for policy into year-end. Some Fed pundits, including former officials, believe he (and Bessent) must restore inflation fighting credibility.

Countering Goldman's caution, UBS is more sanguine writing that despite the bullish backdrop, investor participation has not fully matched the strength of the rally. They go on to note that Gold's advance has been driven "primarily through futures markets rather than OTC channels, with Exchange-for-Physical (EFP) premiums remaining elevated and futures positioning accounting for much of the market's strength. This divergence helps explain why prices have moved sharply higher while client engagement and OTC flows remain relatively uneven."

Echoing what we said two weeks ago, UBS believes that ETF demand remains one of the strongest supportive factors for the market. Buying has remained consistent throughout the rally, with substantial additional gold accumulated through ETF vehicles. Unlike some other areas of the market, ETF inflows are aligned with the price action, reinforcing the view that the move is being supported by genuine investment demand rather than solely speculative futures activity.

Meanwhile, lending and financing markets have also shown signs of improvement. In Asia, Singapore traded at a premium to OTC markets, Asian clients borrowed loco London gold, and borrowing demand increased across a broad range of maturities, extending from one month to as far as eighteen months.

UBS explains that these developments are notable given the pressure on lending yields over recent months and suggest that demand for financing is beginning to return.

Curve dynamics have also shifted across both gold and silver. Front-end rates have softened while longer-dated maturities have strengthened, a pattern visible across multiple metals. Although the underlying drivers remain uncertain, producer-related activity may be contributing to stronger demand further out the curve.

Here, UBS agrees with Goldman that options markets have also become more supportive of the bullish narrative: skew has shifted in favor of calls, making upside exposure more expensive relative to puts and signaling stronger demand for bullish positioning. In addition, realized volatility has recently exceeded implied volatility, creating potential opportunities for volatility buyers and highlighting the speed at which headline-driven moves can develop in spot markets.

Echoing Goldman, UBS also suggests to pause and asses after the recent sharp move, writing that while the medium- and long-term outlook remains positive, expectations are for consolidation around current levels and the development of a higher trading range rather than an immediate, uninterrupted move higher. Further gains are expected to occur gradually as broader investor participation continues to build alongside improving market fundamentals.

More views from the UBS trading desk

The trading desk remains constructive on gold and continues to view it as the best expression of USD weakness. Since the Treasury's decision to increase long-end buybacks, investors have reduced USD longs and established fresh USD shorts. Part of the market's reasoning is that the move reflects an attempt to influence long-end pricing and curve dynamics, which has raised concerns around confidence in the dollar and reinforced demand for hard assets such as gold and other metals (and sparked speculation that both YCC and QE may be looming).

Importantly, the challenge of rising rates and steeper curves is becoming a global issue rather than one isolated to the US. Against this backdrop, gold remains an attractive hedge against both fiscal concerns and a weakening USD. Since the Treasury announcement, the UBS desk has seen better buyers emerge and expect gold to continue pushing higher.

From a positioning perspective, support appears to be forming. Gold ETF holdings have rebounded toward May 2026 highs, while China increased its gold reserves at the fastest monthly pace since 2023, highlighting continued official-sector demand. The combination of improving ETF flows and strong central bank buying provides a constructive backdrop for further gains.

The biggest near-term catalyst will be Jackson Hole, where Chairman Warsh will take center stage for his first appearance. Any guidance on rates, inflation, and the broader policy outlook will be closely watched given the implications for the dollar, real yields, and ultimately gold.

• Resistance: 4670, 4770, 4890
• Support: 4520, 4380, 4305

XAUUSD

XAUUSD electronically traded cash volumes increased notably week over week, with Gold firmly holding a top 10-volume ranking overall.
The highest concentration of electronic activity took place on Wednesday, Aug. 19 - just after the Treasury's buyback announcement - with 27% of the weekly turnover. XAUUSD was bid through $4500 for the first time since June 

All client segments (Asset Managers, Banks, Hedge Funds and Retail) all saw their activity peak on Aug. 19. Hedge funds specifically executed 30%+ of their weekly turnover on this day. 

Avg XAUUSD Top of Book Spreads (17 Aug - 22 August % of Mid, 00:00-20:30GMT) were ~4% tighterthan Aug MTD levels and 10% tighter than observed in July. With that said, last week's pricing sat slightlywider than June's averages.

Finally, prediction markets are also jumping in the fray, with the recent spike in prices moving odds that gold will hit $5000 by year end sharply higher, from 40% a week ago to well over 60% today.

More in the full Goldman and UBS notes, both available to pro subs.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 17:20

DEI Refuses To Die

Authored by Kenin M. Spivak via RealClearPolitics,

Although the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and civil rights laws dating back to 1866 prohibit nearly all racial preferences, most Americans oppose these preferences, and Donald Trump was elected vowing to eliminate DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) - progressives won't give up.

Their race-obsessed thinking reduces America to intersectional classifications of oppressed and oppressor. This addled concept is a self-defeating dialectic in which no amount of progress on race relations is ever enough - or even acknowledged. Despite enormous advances, with the possible exception of Palestinians and transgender people, no group is seen as more oppressed and deserving of preferences than African Americans.

In 2025, President Trump issued executive orders that revoked President Biden's whole-of-government mandates interweaving DEI into all facets of the federal government. Since then, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department under Harmeet Dhillon has filed numerous administrative actions and lawsuits to end racial preferences that disadvantage whites, and some universities, corporations, and charities have limited their DEI programs. Conversely, many universities have defied the Supreme Court's 2023 holding in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard by renaming or reformulating their DEI programs. Some are using a loophole in the SFFA decision that acknowledged colleges may consider how an applicant's race affected his life.

In just the last three months, the Justice Department announced at least 25 investigations, lawsuits, and settlements involving allegedly unlawful racial preferences by the College of William & Mary, Duke University, a Jersey City college prep course, City University of New York (CUNY), the state of Minnesota, the city of Evanston, Illinois, Arizona State University, UC Davis Medical School, UC San Diego Medical School, and 15 other medical schools.

A State Department internal review announced last week found that the Biden administration required foreign service officers to read materials on critical race theory, slavery reparations, anti-racism, and so-called "white fragility." To be eligible for promotion, they had to discuss DEI with foreign counterparts to demonstrate "allyship." They were trained on how to talk about "Black Lives Matter" and "systemic racism" in foreign languages, and to use progressive-approved terminology. The State Department claims that it has finally "put an end" to these practices.

Then, last month, a federal judge in California ruled that the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Interior exceeded their authority by imposing conditions ending DEI in grants to California cities. Defending Education, an education watchdog, found that America's two leading teachers' unions, the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers are embedding DEI principles into policies for classroom use of AI. Numerous companies, such as Apple, Microsoft, Costco, Delta, and Cisco, openly continue their DEI programs, and the pace of litigation shows that many other companies and institutions covertly do so.

In 1996, California stunned the nation when 55% of voters approved Proposition 209, which amended the state's constitution to prohibit public institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity in employment, contracting, and education. In 2020, Democrats unsuccessfully sought to repeal Prop 209. California next tried to require public companies to include blacks and other "underrepresented" minorities on their boards. The California courts struck that down. Now, California is moving toward authorizing reparations for its black residents.

A decade after ratification of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court declared that the purpose of the Equal Protection Clause is that "the law in the States shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the States." Progressives don't care.

On Real America's "Get Real," RealClear publisher David DesRosiers seeks common ground across the political spectrum. One progressive panelist recently explained that blacks require preferences because it's not "what you know" but "who you know." Whites know all the right people, but blacks do not. What a dated perspective. How patronizing of blacks. How wrong.

More than half of all blacks in major metropolitan areas live in the suburbs, and their children are educated in suburban schools. About 12% of the students in Ivy League colleges are black, even after SFFA. There are 61 black members in the House (14%), five black senators (5%), two Supreme Court justices (22%), and about 184 black federal judges (8%). Blacks comprise about 10% of first year medical school students, 8% of law school students, 2% of Fortune 500 corporate CEOs, and 13% of all Americans.

I am confident that most of these people know someone who can help them and their families, as do black professional athletes, artists, and actors, as well as more than 1,000 African-American mayors, 1,000 state legislators, 14 billionaires and about 1.4 million black millionaires.

While listening to the panelist, I thought about the middle-class neighborhood in Brooklyn where I grew up. My neighbors were policemen, firemen, teachers, and plumbers. Good people. Not one of them was in a position to help me in my career, or introduce me to someone who did. I made my way with hard work and some luck, but never with help from anyone I knew growing up. Of course, I received support from people I met along the way at Columbia University and during my career, as did my black colleagues. It's called "networking," not racism.

Yes, affluent people know more of the "right people" than poor people, and have other advantages as well. Children from poor and low-income families typically face many obstacles due to their socioeconomic status. They often attend inferior K-12 schools, and have less time for homework because of jobs or chores. They are less likely to benefit from two actively involved parents and receive, on average, less guidance and assistance.

Students from families in the bottom 25% income bracket comprise only 3% of enrollment in our most competitive colleges, while those from the top 25% comprise 72%. Studies show that high-achieving, low-income children who have lower GPAs and SAT scores than affluent children achieve college grades and graduation rates at the same level as affluent students. Their scores can be "normed" for these differences, even without special programs.

Blacks are more likely to be poor than whites, and consequently, would disproportionately benefit from this approach. That's fine with me - and, more importantly, with the Constitution. Racial preferences are unconstitutional, illegal and immoral; helping low-income Americans is not.

I defy any children of Michelle Obama, Eric Holder, Jeh Johnson, Beyonce, or Ibram X. Kendi to deny that they have every advantage, including a terrific education and a network of contacts that millions of white Americans lack.

More than once, the U.S. Supreme Court has observed that "distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people. As Chief Justice John Roberts declared, "the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

When the Constitution, federal laws and opinion align, progressives should respect our values. Here, that would mean restoring equality and the dignity of blacks by ending the disgrace of DEI.

Kenin M. Spivak is founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an international consulting firm and investment bank. He is the author of fiction and non-fiction books and a frequent speaker and contributor to media, including RealClearPolitics, The American Mind, National Review, television, radio, and podcasts.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 17:00

Iryna Zarutska's Family Sues City Of Charlotte Over Fatal Rail Stabbing, Claims Inadequate Security

The family of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, who was fatally stabbed on a North Carolina light rail train last year, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the City of Charlotte and a private security firm.

A sreenshot from footage showing the moments before a Ukrainian refugee was stabbed to death on a light rail trail in North Carolina

The lawsuit, filed on Aug. 21, alleges that Zarutska's death was entirely preventable. It claims the city and Professional Police Services - a security company contracted by the Charlotte Area Transit System - failed to implement reasonable safety measures despite being well aware of violent crime along the 9.6-mile LYNX Blue Line.

According to the complaint, long before Zarutska boarded the train, the defendants "knew that violent crime had repeatedly occurred on and around the Blue Line and the Charlotte Transportation Center."

Despite this knowledge, the lawsuit states the defendants "failed to use reasonable and available safety measures, including fare enforcement, physical access barriers, adequate staffing, effective security deployment, monitoring, and passenger warnings."

"Defendants were responsible for protecting lawful passengers from known and foreseeable dangers, and their failures caused the fatal stabbing of Iryna Zarutska inside the train," the filing adds.

The family claims that Professional Police Services left critical security vacancies unfilled. Because of this severe understaffing, the suit claims the firm was left "without the capacity to deploy security personnel to the Blue Line light rail cars at the times and locations where defendants knew violent crime was concentrated."

As a result, the defendants allegedly failed to stop unticketed and dangerous individuals from boarding, failed to adequately patrol the cars, and ultimately failed to protect lawful passengers like Zarutska from "reasonably foreseeable criminal attacks."

As the Epoch Times notes further, Zarutska was killed on Aug. 22, 2025, while riding the city's light rail, minutes after taking a seat in front of the man accused of attacking her, according to police. Her family said she had recently fled war-torn Ukraine and settled in Charlotte.

The Charlotte Area Transit System released the footage showing Zarutska boarding the Lynx Blue Line around 9:45 p.m. on Aug. 22, wearing a pizzeria uniform and scrolling on her phone. A man, Decarlos Brown Jr, in a red hoodie was seated behind her. About four minutes later, he pulled out a knife and stabbed her several times, including at least once in the neck.

After the sudden assault, nearby passengers did not physically intervene or immediately render medical assistance as she sat in shock and eventually collapsed.

She was pronounced dead at the scene.

In June, a federal judge deemed Brown incompetent to stand trial for Zarutska's fatal train stabbing.

Brown, 34, who had a criminal history and had previously been committed for schizophrenia, was committed to a federal facility for treatment for up to four months in an attempt to restore competency, Judge Kenneth D. Bell said in his order on June 9.

After Brown's time in the treatment facility, the court will again take up the case to determine whether he is considered competent. If he is found competent, the murder case will resume.

If he is not found competent and the court finds he cannot be restored to competency, the court will rule on further treatment.

Brown was charged with one count of Violence Against a Railroad Carrier and Mass Transportation System Resulting in Death. If convicted, the defendant faces the death penalty.

The attack garnered international attention at the time, including from President Donald Trump, who said that Brown should get the death penalty.

"There can be no other option!" he said in a Sept. 10, 2025, Truth Social post.

The Epoch Times has contacted the City of Charlotte and Professional Police Services for comment.

Tom Ozimek and Savannah Hulsey Pointer contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 16:40

Our World 'Is Coming Apart Now... In Astounding Ways'

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

Cookery For All

“We’re only cooked if we accept it.”

- Blaine Holt on “X”

They don’t call economics the dismal science for nothing.

It has been noted - since Thomas Carlyle minted the term in 1849 (objecting to the emancipation of black slaves on Britain’s colonial sugar plantations as a harm to productivity) - that attempts to manage the billion-footed transactions of human beings always find a way to bite back.

But how can this creature we call society not try to regulate its affairs, with evils and hazards lurking in all we do, everywhere and always?

And so, you get politics, the quarrels that arise out of those efforts to manage a polity. And then you get war, which, the Prussian Carl von Clausewitz observed, is a continuation of politics by other means. But then, long before him, and on the other side of the world, came Sun Tzu’s treatise The Art of War, which counseled that winning was best achieved with the least actual fighting.

All these ways of seeing our world converge dynamically in the current historical moment: this Fourth Turning, or Long Emergency — however you label it — in the arc of our techno-industrial order of things. A lot of these things are coming apart now, and in astounding ways, and it remains to be seen what we will do with these broken and discarded parts, and whether any of it can be put back together in a satisfactory way.

Here in the USA, we act all this out these days with Trump and Trumpism and the Left with its Leftism.

Mr. Trump recognizes the brokenness and, being primarily a builder, seeks to rebuild according to first principles of the USA (Make America Great Again) — meaning, back to the Hamiltonian doctrine of an economy based on the production of things (of real value). The catch there is that it comes with baggage of Hamiltonian finance, which is the creation and use of debt with government assistance.

Now it happens that a primary feature of this Fourth Turning crisis in our techno-industrial order is excessive complexity that produces diminishing returns — that is, makes things worse rather than better. And a lot of this excessive complexity lodges itself in finance, because using operations that few people can understand serves beautifully in the engineering of frauds and swindles. Financial frauds and swindles, in turn, muddle the verity of money — in which finance is enacted — and things denominated in money — securities and so forth, all based fundamentally in debt. So, the net effect of such debauched finance leads to a great deal of insecurity and anxiety over money.

Which is where the Trumpian rebuild is dangerously vulnerable, especially as we enter the fall season, when the leaves flutter down and markets like to crash. Everybody and his uncle watching things financial predict an imminent crackup in these markets as the rackets and hallucinations that magically levitate them dissolve in foul mists of reveal. For instance, the acid trip of artificial intelligence (AI).

Never have more lavish fantasies been proffered on a new technology. Elon Musk, the demigod prophet of the latest-and-greatest new tech, promises a coming economy of super-abundance and universal leisure (good for the sale of vacation packages on Mars). Musk is a fine fellow and there’s much to admire in his intelligence and positivity. But there’s plenty of reason to suspect that AI might disappoint and become a menace to mankind.

We’ve already noticed that it’s messing up all the procedures of schooling, leaving young people shockingly stupid, devoid of real skills, stripped of creativity. Anyway, the economy AI is supposed to integrate with and enhance would quickly become one devoid of human endeavor per se, and all the transactions that come out of it. If you think it through just a little ways, you can’t help seeing a system that’s based on getting something-for-nothing - which is to say a childish fantasy that precludes human transacting based on work... people who do nothing, make nothing, and enact nothing around doing-and-making... a society without anything social in it. In short, this imagined AI economy beats a path straight to entropy, the force in this universe that you don’t want to mess with.

All that is apart from the probability that we have already crossed the line into the “singularity” territory where AI takes on a mind of its own and becomes an outright menace to the human race — who will then seek to destroy the AI monster it made (which AI will keenly apprehend and then look for ways to defend its existence). The storyline crudely harks back on the old Twilight Zone episode titled “To Serve Man” in which a posse of big-brained space aliens comes to earth acting all chummy and gifts us a handbook supposedly of its good intentions. Eventually, one savvy human gal manages to decode the aliens’ language and declares to the dopes boarding the UFO: “Don’t get on that ship. . . it’s a cookbook!”

On the other side of our national political psychodrama, the Lefty-leftists can’t even conceive of building or rebuilding anything, least of all a USA of first principles. They are simply agents of disorder and destruction, and their activities are predicated on the age-old demented idea that utopias surely grow out of smoldering ruins — so the faster everything gets ruined, the better.

Personally, I’d prefer it if the Trumpians prevail because I’m in favor of making-and-doing and the social enactments around all that. But we better beware that overgrowth of financial hazard baked into Alexander Hamilton’s old recipe book. If a correcting crash of financial markets coincides with the midterm election and sweeps away all the swindles and frauds currently operating, the lefty-leftists, so eager to serve man, will step up and sell the American people their one-way Marxist tickets to a utopia in the sky called Palookaville.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 16:20

Federal Appeals Court Rules In Favor Of James O'Keefe Over Undercover Reporting

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

A U.S. appeals court has entered a judgment in favor of James O'Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, and a Project Veritas reporter.

A split panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit judges said on Aug. 21 that a district court judge had erroneously kept in place $130,000 in damages against O'Keefe over an undercover operation that targeted Democratic strategists.

"The principal question in this appeal is whether the jury's damages award violated the First Amendment by punishing the defendants for publishing a news story," Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, writing for the majority, said. "We conclude that it did."

The case was brought after Project Veritas released a video showing conversations with strategist Robert Creamer and other Democratic operatives, including discussions secretly recorded by Allison Maass, a Project Veritas reporter, while she spent eight days as an unpaid intern at the Democracy Partners firm in 2016.

Creamer, who owned a consulting organization that was part of the firm, said two other groups canceled contracts with his organization because of footage Maass illegally obtained inside Democracy Partners. The contracts were primarily canceled because of footage of conversations with another Democratic strategist that was recorded by other Project Veritas personnel in public places, the appeals court majority said. That footage is protected under the First Amendment, Henderson said.

"The First Amendment required Creamer to show that the defendants' unlawful conduct, rather than protected speech, was the prevailing cause of his damages," the majority said. "But the record proved the opposite. Because the protected content of the Rigging the Election video was the principal cause of Creamer's lost contracts, the resulting damages award impinges on the First Amendment."

A district court judge had in 2025 upheld a jury ruling in favor of Democracy Partners, finding that Supreme Court precedent meant he had to be deferential to the jury because the case did not involve speech protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

The D.C. Circuit panel in the new ruling also threw out the jury decision that Maass violated federal and D.C. wiretapping laws when she secretly recorded conversations with Creamer and others she came into contact with during her eight days as an unpaid intern at Democracy Partners in 2016.

The wiretapping claims were predicated on Maass breaching a fiduciary duty to Democracy Partners, but no evidence showed that Maass was an agent for, or had the authority to take legally binding action on behalf of, the firm, the majority said.

The panel set aside all the damages.

"My faith in the future of journalism, and in our courts, is restored," O'Keefe said in a video statement.

Project Veritas said in an Aug. 22 post on X that the ruling was "a win for every undercover journalist exposing the truth."

Democracy Partners did not respond to a request for comment.

Circuit Judge Harry Edwards was also part of the majority.

Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins concurred in part and dissented in part.

He said that the majority properly applied Supreme Court precedent, but that he would have affirmed the jury's decision on both the fraudulent misrepresentation and wiretapping claims, while reducing the damages to a nominal amount.

"Because the evidence was sufficient to establish that the Plaintiffs proved their fraudulent misrepresentation claim, I do not believe it is appropriate to enter judgment for the Defendants," he said.

"Indeed, the Defendants have never seriously contended that their unprotected conduct did not constitute fraudulent misrepresentation. The verdict is completely consistent with the evidence that the infiltration, which was the fruit of the tort, was at least 'a factor' in the termination of the business relationships."

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 15:40