The Men And Women In The High Castle By Michael Every of Rabobank US payrolls stronger, US yields up, stocks flat as anything hit by AI was too, oil sideways, and USD/JPY at 153 vs 159 a few days ago. Fed-speak was all over the place. Schmid said restrictive rates are needed to cool inflation. Miran said there’s still a variety of reasons to cut rates. Hammack said the labor market is finding a healthy balance and rates should […]

House-Passed Voter ID SAVE Act Set To Die In Senate; DHS Shutdown Looms On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed the SAVE America Act by a margin of 218-213. The bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote as well as photo ID to vote in federal elections. One Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, joined Republicans in voting for it, while one R and one D did not vote.  Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is leading the […]

US Existing Home Sales Collapsed In January After managing a 1.4% YoY rise in 2025 (dramatically down from the 9.7% YoY rise in 2024, and 33% YoY collapse in 2023), US existing home sales were expected to drop 4.6% MoM in January (following December’s outsized 5.1% MoM surge), despite a tumble in mortgage rates. The analysts were correct on the direction but wrong on the scale as existing home sales plunged 8.4% MoM in January from […]

Ahead Of EU Competitiveness Summit: Macron Pushes Eurobonds Submitted By Thomas Kolbe  As the 27 EU heads of government convene with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday, the stakes are high from a fiscal perspective. A decisive item on the agenda at Belgium’s Alden Biesen Castle is the so-called Draghi Plan. The question hovering above it all is as simple as it is explosive: How can the obvious productivity […]

“Modern Money Only Works By Cheating”: If You’re Long Bitcoin (Or Not Long Bitcoin), Read This… Tl;dr: Bitcoin exists not to replace fiat money but as a provocative “hard object” in an elastic monetary world. Modern fiat succeeds by cheating – deferring pain, socializing losses, and bending rules to absorb crises (Weimar rigidity led to hyperinflation; 1929 rigidity was abandoned for elasticity in the 1930s; 2008 and COVID […]

CME Explores First-Ever Rare Earth Futures Contracts CME Group is drawing up plans for what could become the first-ever futures contract tied to rare earths, according to three people familiar with the matter, offering governments, companies and lenders a potential tool to manage exposure to a market long dominated by China, according to Reuters. The proposed contract would track neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr), typically traded […]

NYC Mayor Urges State Lawmakers To Pass Tax Hikes On The Wealthy, Corporations Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called on state lawmakers Wednesday to approve a 2 percent personal income tax increase on the city’s wealthiest residents as well as a hike in the corporate tax rate in a bid to close a multibillion-dollar budget gap. The mayor testified in a New York State Senate […]

Initial Jobless Claims Refuse To Signal Labor Market Stress Following the impressive payrolls data (revisions aside), the number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the first time fell to 227k last week (down from 232k – which was a notable jump)… Pennsylvania and Missouri saw the biggest declines in initial claims while Texas and Virginia saw the largest rise… Which is odd because the week before, Pennsylvania […]

US Futures Rise As European, Asian All Time Highs Spill Over Futures are higher but there continues to be tangible angst below the surface as traders are aggressively shorting potential AI losers, while US stocks continue to fall behind the rest of the world. “It’s a paradox in that markets are holding, breaking records, yet investors remain cautious,” says Vontobel’s head of equities Jean-Louis Nakamura. As of 8:00am ET, […]

UBS Identifies When Humanoid Robots Will Invade Factory Floors Humanoid robots are getting their “brains” this year, enabling them to walk factory floors and warehouses and complete repeatable tasks previously handled by humans. We’ve assessed that the greater risk is dual use: these bots are likely to move beyond industrial settings to modern battlefields. We lean on UBS analysts led by Phyllis Wang for added color on the global […]

The Value Rotation Illusion Authored by Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, “Value is back in vogue”, the media claim. Investors are rushing out of the high-flying mega-cap tech stocks and into the boring staples, utilities, and healthcare stocks. Given the huge outperformance of value stocks versus growth stocks, it appears investors are going all in on the value rotation.  What some of these investors don’t know […]

FTC Chair Warns Apple News’ Left-Wing Curation May Violate Consumer Protection Laws Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook warning that Apple News may be violating consumer protection laws by suppressing right-leaning media outlets on its online news platform. Ferguson’s letter to Cook came one day after a New York Post report cited the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog […]

EU Seeks To Close Russia Crypto Loopholes In New Sanctions Authored by Helen Partz via CoinTelegraph.com, The European Union is finalizing a new package of sanctions aimed at closing loopholes that officials say have allowed Russia to use cryptocurrency to circumvent existing restrictions. The EU is seeking to “ban all cryptocurrency transactions with Russia” as part of the upcoming 20th sanctions package, the Financial […]

These Are The Countries That Earn The Most From Tourism Each year, the global tourism economy generates trillions in revenue as travelers explore new destinations and revisit old favorites. According to UN Tourism data, international tourist receipts reached a total of $1.74 trillion in 2024, which is up 14% from pre-pandemic levels in 2019. Visual Capitalist creator Iswardi Ishak mapped the countries that benefit most from […]

Welcome To The ‘EUSSR’: Unpopular European Regimes Grasping For Power Crack Down On Dissent Authored by Robert Williams via The Gatestone Institute, Governing elites in Europe, in what increasingly appears to be the EUSSR (European Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) race to the bottom, have been growing ever more unpopular. Disapproval ratings are skyrocketing. In France, 77% of the public disapprove of President Emmanuel […]

“Winner Takes All”: UBS Speaks With Swiss Watch Industry Insider On “Stabilizing Market” The Bloomberg Subdial Watch Index, which tracks secondary-market prices for the 50 most-traded watches by value, has been ticking higher for about a year, rebounding from a multi-year slump that followed the Covid-era luxury watch mania fueled by cheap interest rates and easy money. Our last note on the secondary watch market was about a month […]

‘No More Asylum Tourism’: Right-Wing Victory As Brussels Votes To Ease Migrant Transfer To ‘Safe Third Countries’ Via Remix News, The European Parliament has approved new regulations to tighten EU migration and asylum policy, including the “safe third country” concept, with 396 MEPs in favor of the changes and 226 against. The rules will allow EU member states to deem asylum applications inadmissible if the applicant […]

Meet The Meta Supplier Behind Ray-Ban Smart Glasses For some time, we’ve been on the right side of this call: Meta’s smart glasses are the clear winner versus Apple Vision Pro for one simple reason: they’re built for daily life. The value proposition is obvious too. They’re priced only a notch above high-end Ray-Bans, yet drastically cheaper than the goofy-looking $3,500 Vision Pro headset. Let’s take a step back to December 2024: […]

Erik Prince, Israeli Advisers Operated With Congolese Special Forces Via The Libertarian Institute American mercenary Erik Price and Israeli soldiers operated with Congolese special forces battalions. Congo has been fighting against multiple rebel groups.  According to Reuters, the Israeli advisors’ role is limited to training, and Erik Prince is providing drone support. The outlet reports that the assistance helped Congo take a […]

Japan Restarts World’s Largest Nuclear Plant, 15 Years After Fukushima Shutdown Japan resumed operations at the world’s largest nuclear power plant this week, marking a key development in the country’s return to nuclear energy almost 15 years after the Fukushima disaster. The reactor is located at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, in Japan’s Niigata Prefecture. It is the world’s first nuclear power plant to use […]

German MPs Shoot-Down Idea Of Paying WWII Reparations To Poland With Weapons Via Remix News, German politicians stress cooperation in the wake of the suggestion that Germany finance Polish armaments as reparations for World War II. Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, had proposed that Germany provide Poland with military equipment, emphasizing that “Poland is a frontline state.” Poland has been […]

Iraq Receives 5,000 ISIS Fighters From Syrian Prisons Via The Cradle Iraq has received close to 5,000 ISIS prisoners since the start of a US military campaign to relocate the extremist group’s fighters, of whom tens of thousands were previously held in Kurdish-run facilities in northern Syria. “The transfer of terrorist prisoners from Syria to Iraq is ongoing in coordination with the global coalition, and they are being held […]

Beijing Blasts Washington For Fabricating Excuses To Restart Nuclear Testing Given the collapse of the New START nuclear treaty this month, the timing of Washington’s latest and provocative charge leveled at Beijing is curious and interesting… The United States’ top nuclear arms has “accused China of carrying out an undisclosed nuclear detonation in 2020, arguing that recent secretive underground tests by China and Russia have […]

FTC Probing Pediatrician Group, Non-Profit Over Gender Dysphoria Treatments For Kids Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is examining statements from several organizations that have promoted drugs and surgeries for minors who believe they are a different gender, according to documents made public on Feb. 10. FTC officials sent civil demands for documents to the American Academy of […]

America’s Top Restaurant Winner Slaps Diners With Mandatory Tip And Woke Lecture On Receipt The top-rated restaurant in America (at least according to Food & Wine’s 2025 pick) is now buried under a pile of one-star reviews after deciding to lecture diners on receipts about the supposedly “racist” history of tipping, while auto-adding a non-negotiable 20% service charge to every bill, SFGate reports. A customer enters during a […]