As Pope Francis Enters 8th Day In Hospital, Vatican Suggests Possible Resignation
As Pope Francis Enters 8th Day In Hospital, Vatican Suggests Possible Resignation
Pope Francis has at this point spent over a week in the hospital in Rome, battling pneumonia in both lungs, and in the last 24-hours there have been reports that his condition is stable and has seen slight improvement.
The 88-year old Pontiff entered the hospital on Feb. 14 with worsening bronchitis, leading doctors to eventually diagnose pneumonia, and reports in the initial days were dire.
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Archbishop Giuseppe Satriano of Bari gave an update on Francis' condition Thursday, saying "He's a fighter, and I believe he'll win this battle."
Satriano described that he is awake, eating, and doing some work from his hospital bed, and that blood tests show slight improvements in his inflammation levels. The official Vatican assessment as of Thursday night is that Francis' condition is "slightly improving" that he's free of fever.
Still, the severity of the episode has led to speculation over possible https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/will-the-pope-resign-francis-xh6rpchpv
:
In a memoir, Life: My Story Through History, published last year, Francis wrote, “I think that the Petrine ministry is ‘ad vitam’ [‘for life’] and therefore I see no conditions for a resignation”, only to add in the next sentence, “things would change if a serious physical impediment were to arise”.
As the pontiff enters his eighth day in hospital on Friday, suffering from pneumonia in both lungs, Vatican watchers are wondering just how serious Francis, 88, thinks that physical impediment has to be.
On Thursday evening, the Vatican said that Francis’s https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/pope-francis-news-health-update-today-zhbrd8m0m
, adding that his heart and circulation were in good shape and that he was free of fever and able to work.
However, in an interview on Italian radio, the senior Vatican cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi broached the topic on everyone’s mind and claimed: “I think he could [resign] because he is a person who, from this point of view, is quite decisive in his choices.”
This is the first time in his pontificate that the issue of resignation has been raised by a senior Cardinal. However, if he exits the hospital soon this is unlikely, as Pope's traditionally serve till death. It is extremely rare for a Pope to step down, with his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI having been one of the exceptions to the historic rule.
As talk of a potential conclave in the near future heats up I thought it would be helpful to make a diagram of the current ideological makeup of the College of Cardinals https://t.co/FHXgoRyYR0
— Al Carbo (@carbo_al) https://twitter.com/carbo_al/status/1891650750020722941?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Newsweek https://www.newsweek.com/vatican-gives-thursday-update-pope-francis-condition-hospital-2033958
, "The possibility of resignation resurfaced when Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi noted that if Francis' ability to engage directly with people was compromised, he might consider stepping down."
Conservative and traditional Roman Catholics have been critics of Francis' leadership, saying he represents a liberalizing trend in church life. Liberals have tended to hail him as being open to the world and a voice of 'progress'.
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Thu, 02/20/2025 - 23:00
Druckenmiller Piles Into US Airline Stocks With Hopes Of Smooth Takeoff In Trump Era
Druckenmiller Piles Into US Airline Stocks With Hopes Of Smooth Takeoff In Trump Era
Duquesne Family Office Chairman Stanley Druckenmiller told CNBC last month that "https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/druckenmiller-declares-us-going-most-anti-business-administration-history-opposite
" have returned to the market, driven by "giddy" CEOs anticipating Trump's return to the White House. His comments coincide with a new 13F filing revealing some big airline stock bets.
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Last quarter, George Soros' former money manager piled into airline stocks, including United Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines.
Druckenmiller's investment firm disclosed 21 new positions in stocks including United Airlines, American Airline and Delta Air in the final quarter of 2024. United Airlines was his largest new buy, consisting of 2.8% of his overall portfolio. The purchases come as the hedge fund reduced its stake in the technology sector by 5.3%. -Bloomberg
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Druckenmiller's bullish airline bets come as the global aviation sector is forecasted to expand this year, according to a new BloombergNEF report:
The global aviation sector will continue to expand in the foreseeable future, thanks to rising population, higher income per capita across geographies and continuous economic development between regions. The growing appetite for air travel will drive up the sector's fuel use.
Implied jet fuel demand worldwide has remained above average in the last four years.
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Domestic flights are accelerating in the second half of February.
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According to figures released by the Transport Security Administration (TSA), airport checkpoint data remains above a four-year average for this time of year as spring flying season nears.
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While the S&P 500 continues to reach record highs, driven by https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/next-ai-trade
, airline stocks remain major laggards—but not overlooked by Druckenmiller. If Trump can beat Biden-Harris regime's inflation storm, stabilize geopolitical tensions in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and restore economic certainty, airlines might be ready for a smooth takeoff.
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The question remains: When will the prospect of https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/concorde-20-boom-supersonic-unveil-ultrafast-plane-october
reignite investor interest in airline stocks?
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It's coming. Theme to watch...
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Thu, 02/20/2025 - 13:20
"And Just Like That" - Does NATO Even Exist Any More?
"And Just Like That" - Does NATO Even Exist Any More?
By Michael Every of Rabobank
Even shrugging off three-plus weeks of shocking headlines, some in markets must surely wake up today "And just like that…" realize the world around them has changed dramatically. We no longer live in a market dream Manhattan with glamour, lunches, petty insults, and expensive shoes. Rather, we are in a reality with clamor, golf games, petty insults, and expensive jackboots.
President Trump has called President Zelenskyy a corrupt “dictator” who ‘started the Ukraine War,’ warning he must make a deal while he ‘still has a country left.’ That sounded like Kremlin terminology to many European ears. Yet the US walking away from Ukraine without them even being at the table is no shock historically: does one not recall the fate of the Afghan government? Or President Mubarak? Or the South Vietnamese?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1892242622623699357?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In response, Europe is assembling a crisis group of the EU, except Slovakia and Hungary, and https://public-eur.mkt.dynamics.com/api/orgs/285245b1-7c6f-ef11-a66d-000d3a4b6c6a/r/flSgWAme5EuZaSE5rHARZQAAAAA?target=%7B%22TargetUrl%22%3A%22https%253A%252F%252Fwww.politico.eu%252Farticle%252Fwest-crisis-coalition-donald-trump-volodymyr-zelenskyy-emmanuel-macron-ukraine-war%252F%22%2C%22RedirectOptions%22%3A%7B%225%22%3Anull%2C%221%22%3Anull%2C%222%22%3A%7B%22utm_medium%22%3A%22email%22%2C%22utm_term%22%3A%22N%2FA%22%2C%22utm_source%22%3A%22dynamics-rr%22%2C%22utm_campaign%22%3A%221%22%7D%7D%7D&digest=MR5Ht%2FfKiaJbUdtTEAZWGKnifhaIinY5mhe%2FzO0eY38%3D&secretVersion=7c13c22c20aa46a1b2fc8b71fde4d19a
, except those two… and the US. This leads some to wonder if NATO can hold together. Yet without it, what can the others do? Even as the UK and France float air support for Ukraine, bringing them close to confrontation with Russia, that still requires US logistics: some ‘Great Power’ and ‘strategic autonomy’. Where next if the US defence umbrella which markets have been able to lunch and golf under since 1945/1991 folds?
That question is also aimed at the EU. As Professor of European Studies @stefanauer_hku warns:
“EUrope is finished. And it’s not just that France and Germany might no longer find it possible to work together (as @BecirovicMuamer points out). There will be conflicts between those countries who continue seeking security from the US (e.g., Poland) and those who won’t.”
Making his point, the Financial Times says European bond yields are rising and curves steepening on the prospect of that higher defence spending, i.e., Denmark just raised its arms spending by a massive 70%; as Ireland’s finance minister, the president of the group of Eurozone finance ministers, states the EU should stick to its spending rules rather than increasing defence investment – and who knows more about defence spending than… Ireland?
Beyond the fiscal side, unless one boosts industrial production in tandem, which involves “What is GDP *for*?” choices, then higher defence spending just sucks in imports – and of whose weapons, if Europe and the UK don’t make them, and the US is seen as unreliable?
This isn’t solely an EU issue: China just sailed a warship 150 nautical miles from Sydney, showing its new power projection. Australians may tell themselves that it was just scouting for beach-side property in the eastern suburbs, but that is not much comfort. The jobs numbers today Down Under (+44K vs. +20K consensus) may have been good enough to keep the RBA on hold after their recent cut, but it’s no longer the major focus in Canberra, one might think.
Indeed, the Washington Post reports Defence Secretary Hegseth has ordered 8% Pentagon budget cuts for each of the next FIVE years, which would almost halve current spending. Even addressing layers of fat and invoice-padding, it seems everywhere but the Indo-Pacific region is expendable. Of course, Congress may not agree, but if it does, many will be asking who has their back. One would assume the long end of curves will go back up to reflect that defence spending and uncertainty.
In what would otherwise be headline news, Elon Musk has floated sending $5,000 checks to each American from apparent DOGE savings, as Trump said he favoured sharing 20% of the total saved. Of course, this is all past (mis?)spending and that would just bring the US deficit back again.
Undeterred, Commerce Secretary Lutnick stated a White House goal is to remove the IRS, as Trump backs the House budget bill that includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts: note the 100% expensing for new US factories, the 15% for anything made in America, and lower taxes on oil producers in an attempt to drive energy prices down further.
And that’s as President Putin floats an energy summit between himself, the US, and Saudi Arabia, who together control 40% of the world’s oil, following on from the US and Russia already suggesting that they may develop Arctic oil together.
Failing to make any impact was a headline in The New York Times saying Trump wants a new, better trade deal with China. Don’t we all? That certainly runs entirely counter to the massive tariffs that are coming in around five weeks – unless markets think that the president who can do all of the above isn’t serious about tariffs “because markets”.
is also a U-turn from neoliberalism. In short, it argues for “made-in-EU” quotas for both the public and private sectors and carbon product labels -- economic statecraft non-tariff barrier local content rules-- to make 40% of clean tech in Europe rather than buying it from China. Furthermore, to bring down energy costs the plan is to cut energy taxes and use the European Investment Bank to lend vast sums for new grid and LNG plants, etc. --economic statecraft subsidies and/or off-book quasi-fiscal spending-- and an "EU critical raw material centre" to "jointly purchase raw materials" for groups of companies – economic statecraft market intervention. Naturally, this means more zero-sum global trade policy.
Summarising things, the Financial Times has an op-ed bewailing “Who will stabilize the global economy?” It points out a century ago the rising US giant, then still number two to the wounded post-WW1 British Empire, was a mercantilist rather than a stabilising force. We know how that ended in 1929, the 1930s, and the 1940s. Today, the US is going back down that path in response to a mercantilist China which never tried to go anywhere else – and so nobody is going to stabilise the global economy.
The latest Fed minutes discussed the possible effects of changes in US trade and immigration policy, as well as differentiating between the temporary and the persistent inflation impacts. Frankly, they haven’t got a clue about that, or any of the above news. Indeed, it’s unfair to expect them to --our contemporary central bankers are just not cut from that kind of intellectual cloth-- and a few Fed members might even be looking at the treatment of Zelenskyy and feeling nervous.
For now, US rates are clearly on hold, following which the Fed will say “And just like that…” and…
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Thu, 02/20/2025 - 13:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/and-just-does-nato-even-exist-any-more
Trump Cannot Allow A Declining Europe To Drag The US Down
Trump Cannot Allow A Declining Europe To Drag The US Down
https://mises.org/mises-wire/trump-cannot-allow-declining-europe-drag-us-down
Last week, leaders of European governments got very upset with the new Trump administration.
First, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth https://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/4064113/opening-remarks-by-secretary-of-defense-pete-hegseth-at-ukraine-defense-contact/
a return to pre-2014 Ukraine-Russia borders was an “unrealistic objective” in the coming peace negotiations and that European leaders shouldn’t assume American troops would be present on the continent forever.
Then, Vice President JD Vance gave a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCOsgfINdKg
at a security conference in Germany in which he admonished European governments for repeatedly violating the liberal democratic principles they loudly proclaim to defend. He cited the recent reversal of an election in Romania after the result went against what the ruling regime and its Western European allies wanted, as well as a plethora of crackdowns on political dissent from some of Washington’s closest allies on the continent.
Finally, President Trump announced that the US government would begin direct talks with the Russian government to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. Those https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-russia-set-begin-high-stakes-talks-ukraines/story?id=118900923
on Tuesday without any involvement from other European governments, including Ukraine.
Needless to say, these statements and developments greatly angered European leaders who were evidently convinced the US would continue to station troops, send weapons, and provide funding for the continent’s security while letting the governments act however they wanted and while treating them as the primary parties in the proxy war we’ve been bankrolling.
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By all indications, the Trump administration’s https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-nato-allies-defense-spending/
here is to pressure European governments to spend more of their own taxpayers’ money to fund NATO.
Which is unfortunate, because Europe is deep in a self-inflicted decline right now, and US taxpayers should not be forced to take part in it at all.
From an American perspective, the decline of Europe is tragic as some of the best aspects of our institutions and culture can be drawn back to the period of Europe’s rise.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Western Europe splintered into many small political units. The relatively small territories of these states, along with the presence of strong non-state institutions like the Church and an international merchant class, meant power was highly decentralized.
As scholars like https://mises.org/podcasts/history-struggle-liberty/1-european-miracle
have demonstrated, the highly decentralized set-up of Europe in the Middle Ages was the primary factor in generating the prosperity that went on to give the West more power and a safer, more comfortable standard of living than any other civilization in history. A respect for private property rights virtually unseen up to that point helped to create a justice system that only compounded the West’s success.
Unfortunately, the immense amount of wealth also allowed governments to siphon some of it off and grow very powerful. Chief among them was the British government, which used its people’s wealth to build the first truly https://www.britannica.com/place/British-Empire
. The British and other European ruling classes presented their lavish governments and foreign expansionism as a sign of national glory. But the rise of these large, powerful states represented the steady abandonment of the very institutions that had fueled Europe’s growth.
The astonishing productivity of the Industrial Revolution kept the party going through the 1800s. But, famously, a series of war guarantees https://www.amazon.com/Great-War-Western-Front-Home/dp/1137471263
—set the stage for the rise of the Nazis and the second world war. And WWII obliterated what remained of European power.
In the decades since, much of Western Europe has sunk to the level of becoming de facto vassals of Washington, DC while moving even further away from decentralized institutions and a respect for private property rights. Which brings us to the European situation that Trump, Vance, and Hegseth confronted last week as they took the reins of the American government.
Western European governments have instituted totalitarianism in the name of averting the rise of totalitarianism and built up another large network of war guarantees in the name of preventing another world war.
The European establishment is seemingly still so traumatized from WWII that it acts like history began in 1933 and ignores all the important lessons from before that date.
After Vance’s comments last week, European officials went in front of the media and mounted a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bMzFDpfDwc
of their totalitarian crackdown on dissent.
And, as Trump finally moves to end US involvement in the war in Ukraine, European leaders are scrambling to find ways to https://apnews.com/article/eu-europe-ukraine-nato-security-summit-trump-060c8661c59f8f75b96711d3889ce559
double down on the same security set-up that helped bring the war about in the first place.
The decline of Europe is a sad thing to watch.
But the reaction from European officials to Vance calling them out on some aspects of that decline confirms that the people currently in charge over there will not be changing direction any time soon.
If Europe is really set on shrinking back into obscurity through domestic totalitarianism, economic stagnation, or by setting off a new continent-wide war, American taxpayers should not be forced to help.
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Thu, 02/20/2025 - 07:20
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-cannot-allow-declining-europe-drag-us-down
New ETF To Invest In 'Reverse-Engineered Alien Technology'
New ETF To Invest In 'Reverse-Engineered Alien Technology'
In a move blending speculative finance with science fiction, Tuttle Capital has filed plans to launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) focused on what it describes as "reverse-engineered alien technology."
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The proposed UFO Disclosure AI Powered ETF, which would trade under the ticker symbol UFOD, aims to invest in companies with potential exposure to advanced technologies derived from unidentified flying objects, according to regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The actively managed fund would allocate at least 80 percent of its net assets to aerospace firms, defense contractors, and other entities that Tuttle Capital believes could be engaged in research and development linked to classified technology. These advancements, the filing suggests, could stem from UFO-related discoveries or military projects rumored to be working with technology beyond the known limits of human engineering.
Matthew Tuttle, the firm’s chief executive, has long harbored an interest in unidentified aerial phenomena. He argues that investing in companies linked to UFO technology, while speculative, could offer an unprecedented upside should government disclosures confirm the existence of such breakthroughs.
“I’m a trader,” Tuttle said in an interview. “I look at [UFOs] and I say that they’re using a power source that is light-years beyond anything that we have. If our government has this technology and it’s released, that will be a game-changer.”
https://twitter.com/hashtag/UFOx?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Full FOX B interview -
Tuttle Capital UFO Disclosure
AI Powered exchange-traded fund.
H/T https://twitter.com/TuttleCapital?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
— wow (@wow36932525) https://twitter.com/wow36932525/status/1890199454852231556?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The ETF’s strategy also includes shorting stocks of companies that might become obsolete if extraterrestrial-derived technology is publicly acknowledged and commercialized. However, the fund’s success hinges on an inherently uncertain variable: disclosure. If official government revelations fail to substantiate rumors of alien-derived advancements, the product may never launch.
Tuttle’s filing acknowledges these risks, stating that “government confirmation or denial of advanced alien tech is uncertain, and rumored breakthroughs might never materialize.”
Someone should do a UFO disclosure ETF https://t.co/U4X90WmJ2W
— Matthew Tuttle (@TuttleCapital) https://twitter.com/TuttleCapital/status/1883314023837704654?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
While alien technology might be a little 'out there' - artificial intelligence is already reshaping financial markets. Alongside UFOD, Tuttle Capital has registered seven other AI-driven ETFs, all of which will leverage machine learning tools for stock selection.
“What AI can do is a game-changer, and I don’t think people have fully wrapped their heads around that,” said Tuttle, who noted that AI informs 90 percent of his investment decisions.
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Thu, 02/20/2025 - 06:55
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-etf-invest-reverse-engineered-alien-technology
USAID, Soft Power, And How Solzhenitsyn Predicted This Crisis
USAID, Soft Power, And How Solzhenitsyn Predicted This Crisis
https://oneleggedparrot.com/f/usaid-soft-power-and-how-solzhenitsyn-predicted-this-crisis
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) existed to fan America’s post-World War II brand as the guardian of democracy in the world. It was mostly an info-op euphemistically called soft power.
The mission meant that it occasionally helped people, because that made America look good. The “AID” moniker was a rhetorical trick, though. USAID handled some of the https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1838448979799085456
of American hegemony, like union busting, censorship, and election fixing.
Assassinations were left to the CIA, for the most part.
Last week, USAID was shut down and everyone except a skeleton staff was laid off. Its employees emerged from the woodwork, quite offended. Shutting down the agency hit a lot of Washingtonians right in their “I’m important and the world needs me!” glass jaws.
If you are a certain kind of mediocrity who has known only the circle of money and influence Washington provides, there are oodles of self-regard when a great and grand wizard at the Department of State confers on you the title Doctor of Thinkology.
“Now go, therefore, and topple the government of Bangladesh!” – is a fair summary of the valedictory. That is not an exaggeration. https://x.com/abhijitmajumder/status/1888647208062660932
.
Americans are marinated from their infancy in movies, media, and television. The foreign policy establishment occupies the Walter Mitty role in the American empire. https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1838448979799085456
, Washington bureaucrats have been on a hero’s journey built around the conceit that the United States exercises power always and only to save the world.
Having a steel desk in a stone building with discretionary control over a budget line item made you a Star Trooper wherever the Empire decided to strike back. Then 2016 happened.
Trump won the presidency on the promise that he would destroy Washington’s permanent bureaucracy – calling it the deep state. Minor state functionaries responded by saying Vladimir Putin was behind him.
In the clown cuckoo land of Washington, the Star Troopers needed to be fighting a diabolical mastermind with a Russian accent, or it was just not self-affirming. Getting mean-tweeted at by a reality show host with a wild haircut threatened their delusions of grandeur more than losing wars, which they had been doing regularly for 70 years.
The FBI officially launched Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016. A few days later, the secret agent who opened the investigation https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/392284-fbi-agent-in-texts-well-stop-trump-from-becoming-president/
his secret agent lover, “We’ll stop” Trump. Out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Trump and Putin had to walk into Peter Strzok and Lisa Paige’s.
And, too, “It’s Putin and we’ll get him,” sounds better whispered over a pillow at the Fairmont Hotel in Gaithersburg, Maryland than, “people in mesh hats are exercising their democratic prerogative to stop funding our pretend world, and we may want to stay out of this one.”
At one point last week, Mike Benz – who has inhabited X for years as the bugle blowing Gunga Din of USAID’s mendacity – connected nepo baby turned playground mean girl Liz Cheney to USAID. Elon Musk https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886921430719144018?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1886921430719144018%7Ctwgr%5E9c87923f003a42fc0460726a9695e7c9913b7b25%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2025%2F02%2Fliz-cheney-lashes-after-elon-musk-exposes-her%2F
.
:
Damn right, @Elon. I’m proud of what America did to win the Cold War, defeat Soviet communism, and defend democracy. Our nation stood for freedom. You may be unfamiliar with that part of our history since you weren’t yet an American citizen.
Uh-huh. After she graduated from college, Liz Cheney’s then Defense Secretary dad got her a job at USAID in Washington, and she thinks she ended the Cold War.
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She went from there to law school and then in 2002 her Vice President dad got her appointed deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, where she and her dad proceeded to wreak havoc.
She now adorably thinks that starship lassoing Elon Musk lacks street cred because his daddy never got him a job where he stopped communism.
The fake world where Dick and Liz defend democracy, and Peter Strzok and Lisa Paige bang to Putin fantasies – the world of the Washington beltway – was hatched in the aftermath of World War II.
It is an odd mix of propaganda, media, technology, and the storytelling method known as the hero’s journey.
The info-op was run out of USAID and other federal agencies, and it was meant to convince the world that the United States is a force for good that opposes tyranny wherever it finds it. In some ways, it worked.
For all anyone knows, Western Europe would have turned Communist if America did not present a “shining city on a hill” alternative. And, okay, fix elections and control information.
Meddling in other countries was only ever meant to win the peace, though.
When the peace was finally won in 1991, the minor functionaries started hatching new villains, disputes, and even viruses just so they could fight them.
Washington turned into a Cold War LARP.
The result:
Ukraine is destroyed.
The Taliban is governing Afghanistan and ISIS has taken Syria.
The pipeline that supplies Germany’s energy supply has been blown up, tanking its economy. And you know what happened last time the West’s guardian of democracy project tanked the German economy. Just sayin’.
Ancient Christianity has been expelled from every place in the Middle East where American soft power has meddled. They have set their sights on destroying Catholic-Lebanon (by law, the president of Lebanon must be Catholic – did you know that?) in a proxy war with Iran.
Most wildly, perhaps, American bureaucrats are responsible for the greatest pandemic since the Spanish Flu. They will deny it, and say it came from a rando bat. But the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that the virus emanated from gain of function research on Coronaviruses the American bureaucracy was funding at that very moment in the very lab in the very town where COVID originated.
Which provides a helpful metaphor.
Creating a virus to fight that virus is the definition of gain of function research. Similarly, Peter Strzok fabricated Putin in the Trump campaign just so he could fight him. Washington is a gain of function experiment wrapped in hero’s journeys draped in delusions of grandeur.
Too many in Trump-world think the problem will go away if the institutions are dismantled.
Get rid of USAID and The Department of Education, and Liz Cheney gets a job at her local Walmart, where she belongs.
It is not an institutional problem, though, so much as thousands of individual pathologies.
The problem is that Liz Cheney really thinks she is important.
That is the tumor that needs to be excised.
Removing soft power’s influence on the American psyche is the most delicate surgery of all, because it slices into the sacred beliefs of everyone, including (maybe especially) Republicans. Surgery is only successful when enough people reach the conclusion, “I am being manipulated.”
This moment was predicted.
In 1978, Soviet dissident in exile Alexander Solzhenitsyn https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/alexandersolzhenitsynharvard.htm
. He was expected to provide a stemwinder against Communism and at least an implied tribute to America.
Instead, he issued a criticism of the West, based on the narrative control exercised over people. He called it “fashion” and blamed the media:
There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the East, where the press is rigorously unified. One gradually discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole. It is a fashion; there are generally accepted patterns of judgment; there may be common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Enormous freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership because newspaper[s] mostly develop stress and emphasis to those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and the general trend.
Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day….This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, to blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era…. It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events.
Soviet Communism has fallen. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia and lived happily under Putin’s rule. His books are required reading in Russian schools. The state https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/olympics-close-with-tribute-to-russian-artists-and-a-little-self-deprecating-humor/2014/02/23/a8589f32-9cce-11e3-ad71-e03637a299c0_story.html
to him and other Russian writers in the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia.
America’s control of human behavior by fashion has not yet collapsed.
Today the West is facing a “pitiless crowbar of events.” Public policy could not even be formulated for a pandemic without casting every prescription as a political choice, resulting in collective behavior that have less to do with rigorous causal connections than with tribal adherence.
Politics is no longer judged by whether it serves the greater good, but by how dutifully it bows to the information regime. It resembles 14-year-old girls in the schoolyard, requiring mimesis in manner of dress and behavior under threat of bullying. In Solzhenitsyn’s word, fashion.
The availability of information on the internet means the state cannot impose its approved narrative outside of America’s groupthink urban enclaves where status is highly staked to fashion. The only way to control non-status people is to control information itself, with censorship, prosecution, and entire bureaucracies dedicated to curbing “misinformation” – i.e., alternative views that do not agree with the state.
Solzhenitsyn would eventually encounter reactions to his Harvard speech from ordinary Americans along the lines of “we know in our hearts he is right.” This https://voegelinview.com/solzhenitsyns-between-two-milestones-sketches-of-exile-1974-1978/
between what he called “the arrogant stance of the America of New York and Washington” and what he observed elsewhere:
Gradually another America began unfolding before my eyes, one that was small-town and robust, the heartland, the America I had envisioned as I was writing my speech, and to which my speech was addressed.
He expressed “a glimmer of hope” that opposition to the dictatorship of fashion could spring from the place he called “another America.”
The needless wars will not go away until both Democrats and Republicans realize that some of what emanates from the American empire are soft power seeded lies. The truth is a greater medicine than any change in policy could ever be.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 23:35
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/usaid-soft-power-and-how-solzhenitsyn-predicted-crisis
Charting America's Single Mothers By Ethnicity
Charting America's Single Mothers By Ethnicity
There are 7.3 million single mothers in the U.S., as well as 1.9 million single fathers. Single parents often face the dual challenge of being both the primary breadwinners and caregivers for their families.
This graphic, https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-single-mothers-in-america-by-ethnicity
represents the percentage of mothers in the U.S. who are single, by race/ethnicity, in 2023.
?itok=2kTTmebd
The data comes from the https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-economic-status-of-single-mothers/
.
21% of All Mothers Are Single
In 2023, single-mother families accounted for 1 in 5 families with children under 18.
47% of Black mothers were single mothers.
25% of Hispanic mothers were single mothers.
The majority of single mothers are in their 30s or 40s and do not have a college degree. Overall, single mothers face a 28% poverty rate.
?itok=10gtz9ps
Changes in Family Structure Over Time
According to the Center for American Progress, family structures in the U.S. have changed significantly over the past five decades.
In 1970, 67% of adults (ages 25 to 49) lived with a spouse and at least one child.
By 2021, that number had dropped to 37%.
Marriage rates have also declined:
In 1970, 69% of adults were married, compared to 50% in 2021.
Meanwhile, the percentage of adults who have never been married rose from 17% to 31% over the same period.
If you enjoyed this topic, check out this https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-u-s-wealth-by-generation/
that shows the distribution of wealth in the United States from 1990 to 2023 by generation.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 23:10
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/charting-americas-single-mothers-ethnicity
Trump Praises $4.5 Trillion Tax Cut In House Budget, Wants Senate R's To Get With The Program
Trump Praises $4.5 Trillion Tax Cut In House Budget, Wants Senate R's To Get With The Program
President Donald Trump threw his support behind a House budget plan calling for a $4.5 trillion tax cut, and encouraged Senate Republicans to abandon a short-term funding effort and coordinate with the House to implement "my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it."
?itok=GCVhrJid
"The House and Senate are doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM, however, unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.
"We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to "kickstart" the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, "ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL." Trump continued.
The "Lindsey Graham version" refers to a vote scheduled this week in the Senate that would add $150 billion to military spending and increase immigration and border enforcement by $175 billion - which some Republicans say they want to move on quickly, while waiting to resolve contentious disputes over tax cuts and raising the debt ceiling.
House Speaker chimed in on X, saying that Trump "is right," adding "House Republicans are working to deliver President Trump’s FULL agenda - not just a small part of it."
.https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
is right!
House Republicans are working to deliver President Trump’s FULL agenda - not just a small part of it.
Let’s get it done, https://twitter.com/HouseGOP?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) https://twitter.com/SpeakerJohnson/status/1892227769603432607?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Trump's comments have complicated efforts by Senate Republican leaders to drum up support for this week's budget vote, while the House - which is taking a one-week break for the President's Day holiday, is struggling to come up with enough votes for the budget plan because of the party's narrow majority, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-19/trump-backs-4-5-trillion-tax-cut-in-house-gop-budget-plan
reports.
Adopting the budget is the first step in a special process Republicans intend to use to bypass minority senate Democrats on tax and spending legislation. A budget plan would allow Republicans to overcome procedural obstacles in the Senate with a simple majority rathe than the 60 votes it would otherwise take.
The House has drafted a plan to allow $4.5 trillion in tax cuts in exchange for $2 trillion in spending cuts and a $4 trillion increase in the debt ceiling. The House plan would direct $300 billion to military and border spending but the larger bill is expected to take months to hash out.
The plan which includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts was approved in committee ahead of possible floor votes later this month. According to House leaders, their slim majority makes it easier to pass one bill vs. breaking it into several pieces.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 16:50
FOMC Minutes Confirm Fed 'Pause', Officials Blame Trump Policies For Uncertainty
FOMC Minutes Confirm Fed 'Pause', Officials Blame Trump Policies For Uncertainty
Since the last FOMC meeting - on Jan 29th - the market has coped admirably well with the utter avalanche of headlines spewing from Washington (and around the world). Gold has been the standout choice while stocks, bonds, oil and the dollar are all about flat...
?itok=zkKtixvZ
Source: Bloomberg
The macro data has been a nightmare (for The Fed) with stagflationary impulses clear as growth surprises have been to the downside while inflation surprises have soared to the upside...
?itok=ertbOd2-
Source: Bloomberg
...which helps explain why rate-cut expectations have tumbled since the last FOMC statement...
?itok=PQ_Zc47F
Source: Bloomberg
Additionally, FedSpeak since the last meeting has been guardedly hawkish with Powell reiterating his 'no rush to cut' comments and various other Fed heads noting that the central bank is 'in a good place' after they removed the optimistic 'inflation keeps trending down' language from the prior statement.
?itok=JtCcYmrt
So, bearing in mind that hot CPI and PPI (and inflation expectations from soft survey data) will not be included in these Minutes, what does The Fed want us to focus on?
Here are the initial highlights:
Fed's on hold (confirmation)
The Fed's 19 officials who participate in its interest-rate decisions indicated that “they would want to see further progress on inflation before making” any further cuts.
Fed blames Trump:
The minutes also cited a “high degree of uncertainty” surrounding the economy, which made it appropriate for the Fed to “take a careful approach” in considering any further changes to its key interest rate.
Fed officials said that President Donald Trump's proposed tariffs and mass deportations of migrants, as well as strong consumer spending, were factors that could push inflation higher this year.
Is The Fed worried about popping the bubble (or blowing it even bigger)?
*FED: RANGE OF FACTORS NEED MONITORING WITH FINANCIAL STABILITY
Developing...
Read the full Fed Minutes below:
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 14:00
Quantum Computing Stocks Soar After MSFT Unveils "Majorana 1"
Quantum Computing Stocks Soar After MSFT Unveils "Majorana 1"
Quantum computing stocks surged in late-morning trading after Microsoft unveiled its first quantum computing chip. The rally is a welcome boost for the tech startups, which have struggled to regain upside momentum following Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/quantum-computing-stocks-plunge-after-nvidia-ceo-comments
in early January, which warned that quantum computers were decades away—comments that sent shares crashing.
"Microsoft today introduced Majorana 1, the world's first quantum chip powered by a new Topological Core architecture that it expects will realize quantum computers capable of solving meaningful, industrial-scale problems in years, not decades," Microsoft wrote in a press release.
It's important to note that Microsoft stated, "Today's announcement puts that horizon within years, not decades."
This contradicts Huang's comments from Nvidia's analyst day event, in which he said: "If you kind of said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that would probably be on the early side. If you said 30, it's probably on the late side."
There seems to be a significant time gap between Microsoft's outlook on quantum computing and that of Nvidia's CEO.
About a week after Huang's comments last month, MSFT published a blog declaring that 2025 is "the year to become quantum-ready."
Jason Zander, a Microsoft executive vice president, told https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/19/microsoft-reveals-its-first-quantum-computing-chip-the-majorana-1.html
: "There's a lot of speculation that we're decades off from this," adding, "We believe it's more like years."
Zander said the Microsoft quantum chip might become available through Azure Quantum cloud service by the end of the decade.
The last month and a half has been a rollercoaster for quantum stock investors...
?itok=a0AeRxE0
So, who is right on quantum chip timelines... Nvidia CEO? Or Microsoft?
Just wait until Huang doubles down on his timeline.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 13:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/quantum-computing-stocks-soar-after-msft-unveils-majorana
Soft 20Y Auction Tails As Foreign Buyers Shrink
Soft 20Y Auction Tails As Foreign Buyers Shrink
In a day seeing another push higher in yields, moments ago the Treasury concluded the week's lone coupon auction and it could have been better.
Pricing at a high yield of 4.830%, this was a 7bps drop from last month's 4.90%, but while January's auction stopped through the When Issued by 1.1bps, today we saw a 1.0bps tail to the 4.82% When Issued, the 5th tail in the last 6 auctions.
?itok=ai6gXhCk
The bid to cover dropped from 2.75 to 2.43, the lowest since November and below the recent average of 2.54.
The internals were also disappointing with Indirect bidders taking down 63.0%, down from 69.5% in January and below the 67.5% recent average usually awarded to foreign buyers. And with Directs awarded 19.5%, Dealers were left holding 17.5%, above the recent average of 15.6%.
?itok=-bAdB22A
Overall, this was a soft and slightly disappointing auction, if nothing too dramatic, and despite the tail and soft internals, there was barely a move in the secondary market where yields continue to trade near session highs.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 13:28
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/soft-20y-auction-tails-foreign-buyers-shrink
FOMC Minutes Preview: Wither Tariffs
FOMC Minutes Preview: Wither Tariffs
By Newsquawk
Summary
The Minutes to the January FOMC meeting will be read to asses the range of views among the FOMC, particularly in regards to future easing, potential impact of Trump policies, and the final push for inflation.
Data since the FOMC has been on the hot side, but this will not be incorporated into the Minutes, so there is a possibility some expectations have shifted (Waller in January did not rule out a March cut, but this week he made the case for rates to remain steady).
Within the policy statement, the Fed removed language about making progress towards 2% inflation, but Powell stressed this was just a language clean up and was not meant to signal a policy shift.
Many Fed speakers have stated that progress to 2% has not been as fast as hoped, while looking ahead there are now upside risks to inflation with tariffs set to be implemented by US President Trump - some suggest this will be a one time increase, and we will look to see whether or not this is the general consensus on the FOMC.
Commentary from Fed officials largely expresses uncertainty ahead and given the strength of the labor market, with inflation still above target, holding policy at the current level is the right plan of action.
Markets are now pricing in 37bps of easing through the year-end with the first cut fully priced by September. The Fed's dot plots (released in December, set to be updated in March), saw the median dot plot pencil in two rate cuts in 2025. Meanwhile, the median estimate of the neutral rate ticked up to 3.0%, although forecasts are wide, ranging from 2.4-3.9%.
?itok=GtFlesR3
Prior Meeting:
At its January policy meeting, the FOMC kept rates unchanged at between 4.25-4.50%, as expected, in a unanimous decision. The statement adjusted its language, removing a reference to inflation making progress towards the 2% target while still noting inflation remains elevated; Chair Powell claims it was language clean-up, used to shorten the sentence, and was not a policy shift. The statement also described the labour market as having stabilised at a low unemployment rate, contrasting December's assessment that conditions had eased.
Despite this, the Fed maintained a balanced view on risks to employment and inflation and kept its data-dependent stance on future adjustments. On several occasions, Powell emphasized that the Fed is not in a rush to adjust its policy stance, even when asked about the prospects of a March rate cut. The Fed Chair noted that recent inflation readings, particularly in shelter, suggest progress, but stressed that this is not guaranteed. He acknowledged uncertainty in forecasting due to significant policy shifts but reiterated that the Fed is in a good place to monitor the economy.
Powell confirmed that the Fed is above its long-run neutral rate estimate, and is closely monitoring reserve levels, with no immediate plan to end quantitative tightening. Powell also stated that the Fed is awaiting clarity on potential changes in fiscal and regulatory policies under President Trump.
Recent Commentary:
In his semi-annual testimonies to Congress, Powell largely reiterated the themes he spoke about in his post-meeting press conference. However, since then, the aggregate impact of the latest US jobs data, CPI and PPI data resulted in a hawkish shift to the markets' implied pricing for Fed rate cuts; at the time of writing, money markets are pricing in just 36bps of rate reductions in 2025, and have the first fully discounted cut pencilled in for September.
It is worth noting the Minutes are an account of the 29th January meeting, and it will not incorporate information released after that (strong jobs data, hot CPI, and PPI data). The strong data and uncertainty ahead of tariffs has largely seen the FOMC state that policy should be kept steady, and they are in no rush to cut rates further whilst they pan out uncertainties and see how the data comes in ahead.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 12:54
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fomc-minutes-preview-wither-tariffs
The Road Narrows For The Bull Market
The Road Narrows For The Bull Market
Submitted by https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/the-road-narrows
I’ve been https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/behold-the-era-of-fartcoins-majesty
that I think crypto could wind up being the canary in the coal mine for future market volatility. I think it was Shakespeare who once said: “So goeth fartcoin, so goeth the entire global economy”.
And just a couple of weeks ago, when Google announced the arrival of their Willow quantum computing chip, I https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/the-3-trillion-question?utm_source=publication-search
of whether or not crypto—and specifically Bitcoin—would still be hacker-proof if quantum computing arrived faster than we expected it to.
Since that article in early December, there have been continuing signs that the American consumer, and by proxy investors in the stock market, are likely getting stretched.
The biggest new sign is that credit card data for that same month, released just days ago and https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-07/us-consumer-borrowing-surges-by-40-8-billion-most-on-record?sref=6uww027M
, confirmed that U.S. consumer debt soared by $40.8 billion in December, marking the largest monthly increase on record. This sharp rise follows a revised $5.4 billion decline in November and surpassed all economist forecasts in a Bloomberg survey.
The report showed that revolving credit, including credit cards, jumped $22.9 billion, more than offsetting the previous month’s drop. Non-revolving credit, such as auto and student loans, rose $18 billion—the biggest gain in two years—driven by a surge in year-end auto sales, the fastest pace since May 2021.
And even more notably, delinquency rates are climbing, with 3.5% of credit card balances overdue by 30 days or more, and 1.8% of accounts delinquent—both more than double the post-pandemic lows of 2021.
As the American consumer was redlining their credit cards the same month Google’s quantum computing processor was announced, investors didn’t seem to care. Concern about Google’s processor was short lived and quickly swept under the rug, with Bitcoin bulls assuring each other the network would evolve in time for whatever comes next.
I can’t help but think this could be a devastating case of willful ignorance. Even Tether’s CEO https://cointelegraph.com/news/quantum-computing-bitcoin-lost-wallet-threat-tether-ceo
that quantum computing will eventually hack inactive Bitcoin wallets, bringing lost BTC back into circulation.
“Any Bitcoin in lost wallets, including Satoshi (if not alive), will be hacked and put back in circulation,” Paolo Ardoino said in a Feb. 8 X post.
🔥 50% OFF FOR LIFE: Using this coupon entitles you to 50% off an annual subscription to Fringe Finance for life: https://quoththeraven.substack.com/subscribe?coupon=d8097c43
While active wallets can adopt quantum-resistant protections as they emerge, lost wallets are more vulnerable since there’s no one to secure or move the funds. Ardoino noted that wallets controlled by living users will be migrated to “quantum-resistant addresses.”
When you have the CEO of one of the key components in the crypto universe urging immediate caution, it’s something that shouldn’t go ignored. After all, it’s widely accepted that if Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin—estimated at around 1 million BTC—were to move, it would trigger massive market volatility, potentially causing panic selling due to fears of a large-scale dump or speculative buying driven by renewed interest. Such an event could shake investor confidence, raising concerns about Bitcoin’s decentralization and security. It would also spark intense global speculation about Satoshi’s identity, possible legal ramifications, and pressure for protocol upgrades to enhance security.
Ultimately, the movement of these coins would mark a new epoch in the era of bitcoin — one where its unblemished track record of success is anything but a guarantee.
And I’m here to tell you that just because nobody is talking about this doesn’t mean that the risk isn’t growing underneath the surface. After all, this is how almost all financial crises—regardless of the catalyst—develop. As I was https://rumble.com/v6hl6bp-coffee-and-a-mike-with-quoth-the-raven-crypto-is-the-tip-of-risk-speculatio.html
, one day you go to bed and everything is fine, and the next morning you wake up, and behavioral psychology on the street has changed drastically—so much so that you may already be behind the rest of the world simply by having gone to bed that night.
And with the growing number of exchange-traded funds, leveraged ETFs, zero-days-till-expiration options, and other ways that speculators can simply gamble—becoming the tail that wags the market dog—I’m predicting that future chaos in markets will happen at a sharper pace than we’ve ever seen before in history.
The key lesson here is to stay on guard, if you ask me. It’s a simple, logical line of reasoning. I believe crypto is the tip of the spear as far as risk and speculation in the markets. This not only makes it most susceptible to a pullback but puts the asset class first in the pecking order of assets that would be sold off anytime investors need to raise cash.
It is a brand-new asset class, with barely a decade-long track record to fall back on in a substantial crisis, with one of its biggest CEOs issuing a backhanded warning about a new burgeoning risk.
Between the fact that crypto will be the first to be sold and, in and of itself, could be the fuse that lights the next sell-off, it feels like a great time to remind my readers that just because ugly headlines aren’t splashed across CNBC, and it isn’t obvious that something is breaking, doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening in the background—or that a hole hasn’t already been blown in somebody’s balance sheet.
My goal as an investor and commentator is to always be thinking like a contrarian in a market, monetary system, and global economy that is dominated by herd mentality.
that “Hell is coming” during the Covid panic wasn’t a cue to sell, it nearly marked the bottom. The lesson? Just remember: by the time you read about it in the news, it will be too late to react, and panic will have already hit the masses.
QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer https://quoththeraven.substack.com/about
with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.
This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions. All positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 07:45
Back To Par: Musk's X Eyes Fresh Funding Round At $44 Billion
Back To Par: Musk's X Eyes Fresh Funding Round At $44 Billion
X's financial outlook appears to be steadily improving as recent https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/investor-demand-x-debt-upsized-musk-sees-revenue-improving-rapidly-after-defeating
' interest in the company's debt soared. Adding to the momentum, Elon Musk announced earlier this month that the advertiser boycott has unraveled—a major development that could significantly boost the company's revenue in the coming quarters.
Revenue should improve rapidly this year, as the advertising boycott winds down
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1887382642909397313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
reports that X is preparing to raise money from investors at a $44 billion valuation—the same as when Musk acquired the company in 2022. This would mark X's first investment round since Musk took it private that year. Neither X nor Musk has confirmed the report's legitimacy.
The investment round would mark a significant turnaround for X, which has been battered by collapsing ad revenue after https://www.zerohedge.com/political/usaid-funded-massive-global-state-propaganda-news-matrix-nearly-billion-people-reach
on the 'free speech' platform. X's recovery represents the emergence of new media that will dominate the conversation through President Trump's second term, hence why investor demand is returning.
Bloomberg noted that late last year, Fidelity Investments marked down its X stake by more than 70% from the 2022 sale price.
However, in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a major X investor, stated: "We never devalued it [X]. Some entities did devalue it by 30, 40, even 50%. But now, after the election, with President Trump and the strong alliance between Musk and Trump, we've seen the market revalue X dramatically—at least to its par value of $44 billion."
Carlson asked the Saudi investor: "What do you think X's actual value?"
Alwaleed responded: "I think the value is more than double the $44 billion valuation."
Meanwhile, xAI is reportedly raising $10 billion in a new funding round, which would value the startup at around $75 billion.
Musk's xAI Reportedly In Talks For $10B Raise At $75B Valuation As Grok 3 Launch Nears https://t.co/XfCyaqbF2i
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1890493260948205782?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
On Monday evening, XAI released the Grok 3 chatbot, which Musk views as the "smartest AI on Earth."
In fact, the chatbot might be...
The xAI team revealed that Grok3 outperformed Alphabet's Google Gemini, DeepSeek's V3 model, Anthropic's Claude, and OpenAI's GPT-4o across math, science, and coding benchmarks.
Musk's xAI Unveils "State Of The Art" Grok 3 AI Bot, Surpassing OpenAI & DeepSeek https://t.co/FnsMyfVy0Y
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1891851195112652852?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Readers should listen to Carlson and Alwaleed's conversation. The X video should be started around the 11:30-minute mark to understand why Alwaleed sees X's value more than doubled from par value.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is one of the biggest media investors in the world. Here’s why he thinks X now dominates everything.
(0:00) Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Thoughts on Donald Trump
(2:26) Saudi Arabia’s Relationship With Israel and Iran
(6:55) Negotiating With Trump
(7:56)… https://t.co/PwFlDgCper
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1887210068485009599?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
. . .
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 07:20
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/back-par-musks-x-eyes-fresh-funding-round-44-billion
How Much Does Each US State Import From The EU
How Much Does Each US State Import From The EU
As a bloc, the European Union is the largest source of American imports, valued at more than $600 billion in 2024.
However, not all of that trade is spread evenly between America’s 50 states.
This map,https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-how-much-each-u-s-state-imports-from-the-eu/
shows the share of U.S. imports from the EU by each state.
?itok=hMFkbz8s
Figures are sourced from https://usatrade.census.gov/data/Perspective60/Dim/dimension.aspx
, a database provided by the Census Bureau.
Who Imports the Most from the EU?
Nearly one-fifth of all U.S. imports were sourced from the EU in 2024. But that share varies widely by state (or territory).
State
Code
Share of Imports from EU
Imports from EU
Puerto Rico
PR
47.45%
$14,827,939,382
Indiana
IN
46.21%
$58,696,886,377
North Carolina
NC
45.19%
$43,190,299,106
Rhode Island
RI
38.76%
$4,811,129,055
New Hampshire
NH
34.34%
$4,210,174,126
Maryland
MD
33.38%
$16,922,259,371
South Carolina
SC
32.49%
$22,516,150,106
Kentucky
KY
31.45%
$34,508,188,293
Pennsylvania
PA
29.92%
$48,948,155,420
Arkansas
AR
29.26%
$2,347,996,891
New Jersey
NJ
26.71%
$60,043,736,742
Wisconsin
WI
26.33%
$11,291,219,102
Connecticut
CT
25.08%
$7,733,489,979
Massachusetts
MA
24.53%
$14,854,690,324
Virginia
VA
23.00%
$12,617,378,403
Kansas
KS
22.73%
$3,815,663,236
Florida
FL
22.65%
$33,055,394,955
Georgia
GA
21.87%
$38,709,201,060
Alabama
AL
21.84%
$9,572,045,837
Iowa
IA
21.63%
$3,234,515,753
Ohio
OH
20.46%
$20,713,680,097
Delaware
DE
19.46%
$2,823,169,754
New York
NY
19.38%
$56,253,075,401
Tennessee
TN
19.37%
$29,680,640,856
West Virginia
WV
18.69%
$1,044,513,660
Mississippi
MS
18.68%
$5,063,183,179
Nebraska
NE
17.23%
$1,797,362,857
Missouri
MO
16.81%
$5,553,291,392
Colorado
CO
15.50%
$3,780,588,821
Illinois
IL
14.73%
$38,673,531,824
Minnesota
MN
13.95%
$6,657,656,253
South Dakota
SD
13.29%
$263,551,579
Arizona
AZ
12.90%
$6,510,499,935
Oregon
OR
12.39%
$4,077,324,213
Dist of Columbia
DC
12.35%
$311,130,823
Maine
ME
10.85%
$905,295,913
New Mexico
NM
10.62%
$1,088,307,866
Louisiana
LA
10.25%
$5,397,517,736
Hawaii
HI
10.24%
$308,842,118
North Dakota
ND
10.23%
$465,275,359
Nevada
NV
9.97%
$2,363,994,855
Oklahoma
OK
9.75%
$2,446,788,138
Wyoming
WY
9.58%
$202,765,852
Texas
TX
9.52%
$48,350,514,495
Michigan
MI
8.02%
$15,589,543,085
California
CA
7.62%
$46,827,583,908
Utah
UT
7.46%
$1,994,437,354
Vermont
VT
7.20%
$436,562,742
Washington
WA
6.65%
$5,317,907,948
Alaska
AK
6.63%
$281,189,813
Idaho
ID
4.99%
$525,479,461
Montana
MT
2.80%
$273,250,489
For example, Indiana, North Carolina, and Puerto Rico all sourced more than 40% of their 2024 imports from the EU.
This is an impact of the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry which has a foothold in all three U.S. locations and Ireland.
In fact, Ireland is Indiana and North Carolina’s https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-top-import-partner-every-u-s-state/
, bucking the Canada–Mexico dichotomy.
Reciprocal Tariffs and What They Mean for U.S.–EU Trade
President Trump recently announced reciprocal tariffs, intending to match American duties with what trade partners have for American products.
One of his biggest complaints has been the levies on American cars sold in the EU, which are more than what the U.S. charges on European cars in America.
Motor vehicles are a top three EU export to America, following pharmaceuticals, and crude oil. Once these tariffs go into effect, duties will increase on European cars sold in the U.S., thereby increasing prices.
However, the pharmaceutical sector could be hit the hardest. As https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/13/trumps-tariffs-will-hit-these-european-union-products-hardest.html
, the U.S. imports necessities including: surgical and medical instruments, medical devices (like CRT machines), vaccines, hearing aids, and artificial joints.
Aside from reciprocal tariffs, President Trump has also announced blanket tariffs on foreign steel coming into the country. Check out creator Statista’s https://www.voronoiapp.com/trade/Canada-Most-Affected-by-Trump-Tariffs-on-Steel-and-Aluminum-4006
for a breakdown.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 06:55
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/these-are-largest-sovereign-wealth-funds-world
Poland's Security Chief Shares Some Interesting Insight About The Ukrainian Conflict's Endgame
Poland's Security Chief Shares Some Interesting Insight About The Ukrainian Conflict's Endgame
https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-polish-security-chief-shared
He said that nobody in Europe knows what Trump’s plan actually is, they’re unable to assemble the approximately 100,000 troops that a prolonged peacekeeping mission in Ukraine would require, and Poland still remains reluctant to participate in any such mission even if it’s heavily pressured to do so.
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Chief of Poland’s National Security Bureau Dariusz Lukowski gave an interview to https://wiadomosci.radiozet.pl/Gosc-Radia-ZET/szef-bbn-o-polskich-zolnierzach-na-misji-pokojowej-nie-mozna-wykluczyc-bedzie-presja
explicitly saying that it won’t do so. That’s because there’d be a lot of pressure on Poland to get involved if others dispatch their peacekeepers there first, but he’s still unsure whether it’ll happen.
He assessed that Europe as a whole doesn’t have the 100,000 troops ready that https://korybko.substack.com/p/russias-foreign-intelligence-service
though.
About that, Lukowski said that new US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth didn’t brief his hosts about the details of Trump’s envisaged peace plan https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4068636/defense-secretary-pete-hegseth-and-polish-deputy-prime-minister-wladyslaw-kosin/
nor request them to participate in any peacekeeping mission. He added that “We tried to ask the American side such a question (about their negotiating strategy), because we are interested in what types of instruments they would like to use to convince Putin to adopt such and such a solution and not others, but no specifics were given.”
Another point that this top security official made was that outgoing President Andrzej Duda “tried to convey in a very clear way how Poland perceives Russian issues, that Russia cannot be trusted”, but he didn’t say whether he thought that Hegseth will listen to what the Polish leader had to say.
Lukowski continued by claiming that Russia could attack Poland at any moment but said that he doesn’t believe that the US would betray Poland even if that happens by abandoning it to face Russia all on its own.
Even so, he warned that Poland still needs three years “to have the capabilities to effectively resist or deter a potential adversary from attacking our country”, likely in a nod to the “https://www.euronews.com/2024/05/19/poland-invests-22-billion-in-reinforcing-its-border-with-russia-and-belarus
” that his country is building along its borders with Kaliningrad and Belarus.
In any case, Lukowski said that his country’s plan is to survive for 2-3 weeks until support can arrive from its allies, which interestingly suggests a much longer delay in NATO aid than most observers expect.
Perhaps the top takeaway from his interview though was his admission that Poland failed in its plans to produce its own ammo.
In his words, “It's bad. In many areas we don't have independence. This is a classic situation that we observe in Ukraine and a lesson that needs to be learned. If we do not have our own potential, guaranteed supplies, others will decide on the pace and manner of conducting war.”
He then said that he doesn’t understand why this problem persists and warned about its consequences.
Lukowski’s interview confirmed Poland’s hesitation to directly involve itself in the Ukrainian Conflict exactly as Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski signaled last November when https://korybko.substack.com/p/polands-deputy-prime-minister-accused
that Zelensky wants to provoke a war between them and Russia.
It’s also out of the loop when it comes to the ongoing Russian-US peace talks despite Hegseth describing Poland as America’s “model ally” during last week’s visit.
Poland therefore isn’t expected to make any dramatic or rash moves for the time being.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 02:00
China FX Outflows Soar As Beijing Prepares For Next Currency Devaluation, Priming Next Bitcoin Doubling
China FX Outflows Soar As Beijing Prepares For Next Currency Devaluation, Priming Next Bitcoin Doubling
Back in October 2023, when we https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/china-capital-flight-panic-erupts-fx-outflows-hit-75-billion-highest-2015-devaluation
- the single biggest monthly outflow since the 2015 currency devaluation - we concluded that the "unfavorable interest rate spread between China and the US will likely imply persistent depreciation and outflow pressures in coming months", or in other words, "September's biggest FX outflow in years is just the beginning, and very soon - in addition to geopolitics and central banks - the world will also be freaking out about the capital flight out of China... not to mention where all those billions in Chinese savings are going and which digital currency the Chinese are using to launder said outflows."
We wrote that on https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/china-capital-flight-panic-erupts-fx-outflows-hit-75-billion-highest-2015-devaluation
when Bitcoin was trading just under $30,000, a level it had been for much of 2023. And, just as we correctly predicted at the time...
Clockwork: every time China FX outflows surge, bitcoin erupts.
From last Friday: China Capital Flight Panic Eruptshttps://t.co/j0eWLnbFMq
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1716629111123132582?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
... following this surge in Chinese FX outflows, bitcoin - traditionally China's preferred means to circumvent Beijing's great capital firewall since gold is, how should one put it, a bit more obvious when crossing borders, promptly soared more than 100% in the next 4 months.
?itok=g8udrrwM
That was just the start, because only a few months later, in July 2024, we wrote the follow up as China's capital flight returned with a vengeance, namely "https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/china-fx-outflows-soar-beijng-dumps-record-us-assets-priming-next-bitcoin-surge
!
In any event, the sharp resumption of Chinese capital outflows, which we also highlighted in July, is why we also predicted at the time that "almost a year after our first correct prediction that China's spike in FX outflows would send bitcoin surging, it's time to do it again."
You'll never guess what happened next! And in case you really can't, here is the answer: bitcoin exploded again, nearly doubling again over the next 5 months!
?itok=v99focFj
We bring all this up because more than a year after our first correct prediction that China's spike in FX outflows would send bitcoin surging, and almost six months after our second correct prediction that China's spike in FX outflows would send bitcoin surging (sic), it's time to do it again.
One wouldn't know it, however, if one merely looked at the official Chinese FX reserve data published by the PBOC, here nothing sticks out. In fact, at $3.2 trillion, reported Chinese reserves are now near the highest level in past nine years, and monthly flows are very much stable as shown in the chart below, with the latest month indicating a modest uptick in Fx reserves.
?itok=KvgJPEdy
The problem, of course, is that as we have explained previously China's officially reported reserves - and any official economic "data" for that matter - are woefully and purposefully inaccurate.
Instead, if one uses our preferred gauge of FX flows, one which looks at i) onshore outright spot transactions; ii) freshly entered and canceled forward transactions, and iii) the SAFE dataset on “cross-border RMB flows, we find that China's net outflows were a massive $82 billion in January, which is a staggering burst of capital flight, one larger than the spike in FX outflows we first highlighted in October 2023, and the second biggest going back all the way to the great Chinese devaluation of 2015!
?itok=gHcajGmu
The data shows roughly equal contributions from both the current account channel showed, which sizeable FX outflows in January, as well as what has been dubbed "unusual cross-border RMB flow."
Here are the details: in January, we saw $42bn in net outflows via onshore outright spot transactions, and slight outflows via freshly entered and canceled forward transactions. Another SAFE dataset on "cross-border RMB flows" showed outflows of $40bn in the month, suggesting net receipts of RMB from onshore to offshore. Combined, our preferred FX flow measure therefore suggests $82 billion in net FX outflows in January, in comparison with US$8bn net FX outflows in December.
The current account channel showed sizable net outflows (US$21bn in January vs. US$2bn inflows in December). There was a net inflow of US$14bn related to goods trade in January vs. an inflow of US$35bn in December. While we do not yet have the January goods trade data (which will be released along with February trade data in March), historical patterns suggest a larger January trade surplus when the Lunar New Year date is earlier than usual like this year. The smaller inflows therefore imply that goods trade surplus FX conversion ratio likely declined in January from 33% in December. The FX outflows related to services trade deficit edged up to $33bn (vs. an outflow of $32bn in December). The income and transfers account showed outflows of US$2bn in January, slightly higher than the US$1bn outflows in December.
Turning to the far more important portfolio investment channel (which is where crypto flows tend to be located) we find net FX outflows in November (US$0.2bn in January vs. US$1.3bn outflows in December). Bond Connect flows showed US$3bn outflows vs. US$2bn inflows in December. The cross-border RMB outflows might be partly due to the US$16bn Southbound flows from onshore to offshore, though this is not captured by the portfolio investment channel of FX settlement.
Meanwhile, as noted above, the official FX reserves (released earlier in the month) edged up to US$3,209bn in January from US$3,202bn in December. One possible explanation for this odd divergence is that FX valuation effects raised FX reserves by $5bn in January, so after adjusting for FX valuation effects, FX reserves increased US$1bn. In addition, Goldman notes that commercial banks' net external assets rose by US$15bn in January (vs. a US$72bn increase in December
?itok=8HkpiHsy
Luckily, there is a simple "sanity check" way to confirm that the capital inflows story is propaganda, and China is once again suffering another scorching period of capital flight: just look at FX. Indeed, after after the yuan surged in the fall, coinciding with a period of relative dollar weakness, since October we have seen a surge in the USDCNH spot, as one would expect when there is capital flight, most likely driven by rising fears of Trump tariffs and the implicit devaluation the yuan would suffer in order to offset tariffs which according to Trump would start around 10% and likely rise much higher.
?itok=b4TR2pOW
But wait there's more.
Where the capital flight story gets really interesting, is when we look at what Chinese public and private entities were doing with US assets according to official Treasury data. What we find is that according to Treasury International Capital data, in December Chinese investors sold $14BN in US securities (bonds, MBS, corporate bonds, and stocks), and more notably, following a record sale in May, China has been a constant seller of US securities in the past 6 months!
?itok=B22w9y_v
So if one had to guess what was going on, as the yuan slumped in October, November and December (before a modest bounce on unfounded hopes that Trump's tariffs will be far less punitive than expected) as the capital flight resumed, the hit to the yuan would have been even bigger had China not liquidated a record amount of US securities starting in May, while the PBOC was buying much more gold, and while China's middle and upper classes were quietly buying up bitcoin through Macau and other illicit venues.
And while Chinese policymakers are still keen on maintaining FX stability (or at least create that impression) as the countercyclical factors in the daily CNY fixing remained deeply negative and front-end CNH liquidity tightened notably in recent weeks, the reality is that with China desperate to boost its exports at a time when its great mercantilist competitor, Japan, has hammered the yen to the lowest level in 3 decades, it is only a matter of time before the currency devaluation advocates win, as they did in 2015. No surprise that the biggest China-related story in recent months came from Reuters, and reported that Beijing in already planning how to https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/beijing-considering-yuan-devaluation-response-trump-tariffs
. And if you really want to see what capital flight from China really looks like, just wait until we get another 2015-style "one-time" devaluation.
As an aside, we hope we don't have to remind readers that the first big trigger for bitcoin's unprecedented eruption higher starting in 2015 was - you guessed it - China's August 2015 FX devaluation, as we https://web.archive.org/web/20150903201954/https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-02/china-scrambles-enforce-capital-controls-capital-flight-threatens-economy-which-grea
that bitcoin would explode from $250 to the thousands; in retrospect we were very conservative.
?itok=YB0blU7I
So don't be surprised if in the next 6 months Bitcoin doubles again - for the third time in the past year - and the move has little to do with ETF inflows, the halving, a pro-crypto Trump administration, or frankly anything else taking place in the US, and instead is entirely driven by China's massive wall of money which at last check was almost 3x bigger than the US.
?itok=o09L-YNM
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 02/18/2025 - 23:54
Beijing Underground Command Center Signals Preparation For Conflict
Beijing Underground Command Center Signals Preparation For Conflict
The media recently https://asiatimes.com/2025/02/china-building-worlds-biggest-military-base-in-prep-for-us-war/
that China’s People’s Liberation Army is building the world’s biggest military base underground in possible preparation for conflict with the United States.
?itok=xc49N6Ju
Large enough to fit 10 Pentagons, the new super large facility should not be a surprise - it is a logical and iterative next step of a long program of underground facilities by China. The command center is on the western outskirts of the capital city of Beijing.
In about 2011, stories began to appear around China’s “Underground Great Wall.”
“In March 2008, China’s state-run CCTV network broke the news about a 5,000-kilometre-long network of hardened tunnels built to house the Chinese Second Artillery Corps’s (sic) increasingly modern force of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles,” https://thediplomat.com/2011/08/chinas-underground-great-wall/
reported on Aug. 20, 2011.
Hui Zhang of Harvard’s Belfer Center downplayed China’s Underground Great Wall and explained it was only https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/defensive-nature-chinas-underground-great-wall
Prior to the Underground Great Wall, the People’s Liberation Army Navy built a https://www.npr.org/2008/05/09/90309537/chinas-underground-submarine-base-scrutinized
on Hainan Island that is still being expanded and improved.
The new command center in Beijing https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2025/02/04/china-digs-underground-bunkers-near-beijing-for-protection/#google_vignette
by online media BulgarianMilitary.com as a “command-and-control center for the PLA in wartime.“ The report notes that ”the site’s sheer scale, combined with its underground elements, points to a design built for survival,“ and ”experts believe that the complex will feature a series of underground nodes, perhaps even a hidden subway system, all interconnected by subterranean passageways.”
When completed, this facility—now dubbed the “Beijing Military City” by Western military analysts—will be the largest underground command center in the world, possibly in history.
Western Equivalents Are Limited in Comparison
Zhang of the Belfer Center described the Beijing Military City as defensive in nature. That is one viewpoint but should also be measured and compared in terms of equivalency in the West. The challenge is that there is little equivalency in the West in modern times.
There are underground facilities dating back to the Cold War days in the West, but most have been decommissioned. Canada’s “Diefenbunker” in Ottawa https://diefenbunker.ca/
. In the UK, there was the Central Government War Headquarters (CGWHQ), close to Bristol, about 100 miles due west of London, which could accept about 4,000 to 5,000 essential personnel for the Continuity of Government (COG).
In the United States, there was The https://www.greenbrier.com/activities/bunker-tours/
and air and ground mobile alternate command posts. The White House has an alternate facility for COG, if necessary.
Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, has an https://www.offutt.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3411324/offutt-rebuilds-command-center/
but was reopened beginning in 2015 as a backup for the above-ground facilities below at Peterson Air Force Base.
Most of the Cold War facilities in the West closed because there was a perception there was no compelling reason to keep them open, along with the enormous maintenance costs to keep them operational. The reality is that all of these Western facilities, whether they are active or museum pieces, would fill up only a small portion of the operational side of the underground Beijing Military City currently under construction.
China’s New Underground Headquarters
The message being sent from the construction is a theme of preparation for conflict. Bulgarian military expert https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2025/02/04/china-digs-underground-bunkers-near-beijing-for-protection/
, “This isn’t just about protecting assets; it’s about creating a self-sustaining, impenetrable hub that could coordinate China’s war efforts from the shadows.”
Dennis Wilder, former head of the China analysis section at CIA and senior adviser for Asia at the White House, https://www.mk.co.kr/en/world/11229776
, “If the report is correct, it is a sign of China’s intention to build not only world-class conventional power but also advanced nuclear war fighting capabilities.”
The iterative buildup from the Hainan underground submarine base to the underground “Great Wall” for China’s ground-based nuclear force to the now-revealed Beijing Military City is likely the largest aggregation of underground military facilities in history. The indicators are that it is part of a pathway to conflict. Noted China expert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2ZEBf1Altg
“China is preparing for war, America is not.” The assessment cannot be clearer or starker.
China is building and expanding underground facilities as protected wartime command and control centers to ensure COG. The West has nominal equivalent facilities; most have been converted into museums that would need significant modernization and time if they were to be brought back into service.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 02/18/2025 - 23:25
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/beijing-underground-command-center-signals-preparation-conflict
US Flies Bomber Group Over Middle East In Warning To Enemies
US Flies Bomber Group Over Middle East In Warning To Enemies
The Pentagon has confirmed that it deployed a pair of strategic bombers over the Middle East on Tuesday, accompanied with fighter jet escorts as well as refueling aircraft, in order "to demonstrate force projection capabilities in the region."
US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that "live munitions drops at ranges in several partner nations" were part of the mission, making it a rare 'live-fire' exercise and warning to regional enemies.
CENTCOM Conducts Bomber Task Force Mission in Middle East
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) conducted a Bomber Task Force Mission in the Middle East, Feb. 17, to demonstrate force projection capabilities in the region.
Two B-52s from RAF Fairford, U.K., flew across Europe and… https://t.co/MEepc9hGiI
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) https://twitter.com/CENTCOM/status/1891843212932940150?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
CENTCOM further described that this shows the US "ability to respond to any state or non-state actor seeking to broaden or escalate conflict."
Tehran will no doubt see this as a threat aimed at the Islamic Republic, given Trump's recent words saying the Iranians should negotiate a new deal to end their nuclear program, or else potentially face American bombs. The Houthis could also come under attack, given they are threatening to start up Red Sea shipping attacks if the Gaza ceasefire collapses.
The provocative bomber exercise and flyover of the region also comes after Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in Israel Sunday. Prime Minister Netanyahu during that visit urged a muscular anti-Iran policy by Washington, after Trump restored 'maximum sanctions'.
Importantly, Netanyahu declared that Israel and the US should "finish the job" against Iran. Israeli officials have frequently floated the idea of preemptive attack against Tehran and nuclear facilities.
Iran has meanwhile said it won't respond to such threats, and has described that even if it wanted a deal, it can no longer trust Washington given it agreed to the JCPOA nuclear deal under Obama, and then Trump pulled out of it in 2018.
Tuesday's flyover included live ordinance drops...
?itok=B5GmED56
But it remains that Iran's position in the broader Middle East has been greatly weakened. Israel has essentially decimated Hezbollah's top leadership in Lebanon, and President Assad of Syria was forced to flee the country late last year. This corresponded with Iranian advisors and proxies withdrawing from Syria, and now Israel has free reign and is occupying large portions of southern Syria.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 02/18/2025 - 23:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-flies-bomber-group-over-middle-east-warning-enemies
Is Our Five-Year Nightmare Finally Over?
Is Our Five-Year Nightmare Finally Over?
https://brownstone.org/articles/is-our-five-year-nightmare-finally-over/
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s confirmation as the Secretary of Health and Human Services in the US is the ultimate repudiation of the Covid policy response.
?itok=xjtHHCq8
The scheme of lockdown-until-vaccination was the biggest effort of government and industry on a global scale on historical record. It was all designed to transfer wealth to winning industries (pharma, online retail, streaming services, online education), divide and conquer the population, and consolidate power in the administrative state.
By 2021, RFK, Jr., had emerged as the world’s most vocal, erudite, and knowledgeable critic of the scheme. In two brilliant books – https://www.amazon.com/Real-Anthony-Fauci-Democracy-Childrens/dp/1510766804
– he documented the entire enterprise and dated the evolution of the pandemic industry from its postwar inception to the present. There was simply no way to read these books and think about the corporatist cabal in the same way.
The circumstances that led to his appointment at HHS are themselves implausible and remarkable. Perceiving President Biden to be a weak candidate – one who had forced masks and shots on the population and brutally censored tech and media – he decided to make a run for president, presuming that there would be an open primary. There wasn’t one, so he was forced into an independent run.
That effort was chewed up by the usual political dynamic that befalls every third-party effort – too many ballot-access barriers plus the usual logic of https://x.com/i/grok/share/UDzIUwei7RTeRycZ8qtNQbE9z
. That left the campaign in a difficult spot. At the same time, two huge political shifts had become clear. The Democratic Party had become a vessel and a front mainly for the administrative state with a veneer of woke ideology, while the Republican Party was being taken over by refugees from the Democrats, in effect creating a new Trump party out of the remnants of the other two.
The rest is legendary. Trump linked up with Elon Musk to do to the federal government what he did when he took over Twitter, taking the company private, gutting the place of embedded federal assets, and firing 4 out of 5 workers. In the midst of this, and faced with a terrifying flurry of legal attacks, Trump dodged an assassin’s bullet. That triggered terrible memories of RFK, Jr.’s father and uncle, and thus sparked discussions about coming together.
Within a matter of weeks, we had a new coalition that brought together old antagonists, as many people and groups seemingly in the same instant realized their conjoined interests in cleaning up the corporatist cartel. With the newly freed platform of X to reach the public, MAGA/MAHA/DOGE was born.
Trump won and chose RFK, Jr., to lead the most powerful public health agency in the world. The barrier was Senate confirmation, but that was achieved through some incredible triangulation that made it extremely difficult to vote no.
In the big picture, you can measure the size of this titanic shift in American politics by the way the votes in the Senate lined up. All Republicans but one voted for the most prominent scion of the Democratic Party to head the health empire while all Democrats voted no. That alone is striking, and a testament to the power of the pharma lobby, which, during the hearings, was exposed as the hidden hand behind the most passionate opponents of the confirmation.
Is our nightmare over? Not yet. Writing not even a month into the second presidential term of Donald Trump, it is still unclear just how much authority he truly exercises over the sprawling executive branch. For that matter, no one can even agree on how large this branch is: between 2.2 million and 3 million employees and somewhere between 400 and 450 agencies. The financial bleed in this realm is unthinkable and far worse than even the biggest cynic can imagine.
Five former secretaries of the Treasury took to the pages of the New York Times with a shocking https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/opinion/treasure-secretaries-doge-musk.html
. “The nation’s payment system has historically been operated by a very small group of nonpartisan career civil servants.” This has included a career employee called “fiscal assistant secretary—a post that for the prior eight decades had been reserved exclusively for civil servants to ensure impartiality and public confidence in the handling and payment of federal funds.”
There is no reason even to read between the lines. What this means is that no person voted into office by the people and no one appointed by such a person has access to the federal books since 1946. This is startling beyond belief. No owner of any company would ever tolerate being barred from the accounting offices and payment systems. And no company can offer any public stock without independent audits and open books.
And yet almost 80 years have gone by during which time neither has been true for this gigantic enterprise called the federal government. That means that $193 trillion has been spent by an institution that has never faced granulated oversight from the people and never met the normal demands that every enterprise faces every day.
The usual habit in Washington has been to treat every elected leader and their appointments as temporary and transitory marionettes, people who come and go and disturb little to nothing about the normal operations of government. This new administration seems to have every intention to change that but the job is inconceivably challenging. As much public support as MAGA/MAHA/DOGE enjoy for now, and as many people from those groups are getting embedded in the power structure, they are outnumbered and outmaneuvered by millions of agents of the old order.
This transition will not be easy if it happens at all.
The inertia of the old order is mighty.
Even on the issue of health and pandemics, there is already confusion.
CBS News has https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/trump-taps-new-head-of-pandemic-office-as-bird-flu-threat-grows/ar-AA1yxQ1u
that Fauci-loyalist and mRNA pusher Gerald Parker will head the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response or OPPR. The report cited only unnamed “health officials” and the appointment has been celebrated by Scott Gottlieb, the Pfizer board member who nudged Trump into backing lockdowns in 2020.
All the while, this appointment has not been confirmed by the White House. We do not know if OPPR, created by Congressional charter, will even be funded. The reporter will not reveal his sources – raising the question of why any appointment having to do with health should be surrounded by such cloak-and-dagger machinations.
If Dr. Parker becomes ensconced in this position and another health emergency is declared, this time for Bird flu, HHS and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will not be in any kind of decision-making position at all.
The larger problems have to do with a broader question: is the president really in charge of the executive branch? Can he hire and fire? Can he spend money or decline to spend money? Can he set policy for the agencies?
One might suppose that the whole answer to these questions can be found in Article 2, Section 1: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” And yet that sentence was written almost 100 years before Congress created this thing called the “civil service” that nowhere appears in the Constitution. This fourth branch has grown in size and power to swamp both the presidency and the legislature.
Courts are going to have to sort this out, and already an avalanche of lawsuits has hit the new administration for daring to presume control over agencies and their activities of which the president is and must necessarily be held accountable. Lower federal courts seem to be demanding that the president be that in name only, while the Supreme Court might have a different opinion.
The much-ballyhooed “constitutional crisis” consists of nothing other than an attempt to reassert the original constitutional design of government.
This is the background template in which RFK, Jr., takes power at HHS, and oversees all the sub-agencies. These agencies played a huge role in covering for the attack on liberty and rights over five years. His confirmation is a symbolic repudiation of the most egregious public policies on record. And yet, the repudiation is entirely implicit: there has been no commission, no admission of error, no one truly held responsible, and no real accountability.
The trajectory on which we find ourselves affords many reasons for champagne celebrations, but sober up quickly. There is a very long way to go and enormous barriers in place to get us to the point that we are really safe again from the marauding corporatist/statist complex and their plots and schemes to rob the public of rights and liberties. In the meantime, to invoke a common phrase, keep these new appointees in your thoughts and prayers.
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Tue, 02/18/2025 - 22:35
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/our-five-year-nightmare-finally-over