Nvidia Slides As Google Emerges As New Threat In AI-Chip Market

Alphabet shares jumped 4% in premarket trading after The Information reported that Meta is in talks to spend billions on Google's tensor processing units (TPUs) for its data centers beginning in 2027, with plans to potentially rent TPU capacity from Google Cloud in the near term.

The report sent Nvidia shares down roughly 3.5% as investors weighed the possibility that Google could seize some of Nvidia's market share. In other words, Google is gaining traction as a credible alternative to Nvidia's GPUs (read here). 

Also, SoftBank Group shares in Tokyo plunged as much as 11%, hitting a 2.5-month low on the news, as investors worry that Google's newly released Gemini 3 model could intensify competitive pressure on OpenAI, one of SoftBank's top investments.

"The stocks are hit by concerns that the competition environment of OpenAI will become tougher after Google's Gemini 3 received strong reviews," Mitsubishi UFJ eSmart Securities Co. analyst Tsutomu Yamada told clients. 

Internally, Google Cloud executives forecast that TPU adoption could capture up to 10% of Nvidia's annual revenue, amounting to tens of billions of dollars.

"One of the ways Google has attracted customers to use TPUs in Google Cloud is by pitching that they're cheaper to use than pricey Nvidia chips. The high prices for Nvidia chips have made it difficult for other cloud providers like Oracle to generate solid gross profit margins from renting out Nvidia chips," the report noted. 

Google recently struck a deal to supply up to 1 million TPUs to Anthropic, further validating demand for TPUs. 

After the Anthropic-Google deal was announced, Seaport analyst Jay Goldberg described it as a "really powerful validation" for TPUs. "A lot of people were already thinking about it, and a lot more people are probably thinking about it now." 

Here's what Bloomberg Intelligence analysts are saying: 

Meta's likely use of Google's TPUs, which are already used by Anthropic, shows third-party providers of large language models are likely to leverage Google as a secondary supplier of accelerator chips for inferencing in the near term. Meta's capex of at least $100 billion for 2026 suggests it will spend at least $40-$50 billion on inferencing-chip capacity next year, we calculate. Consumption and backlog growth for Google Cloud might accelerate vs. other hyperscalers and neo-cloud peers due to demand from enterprise customers that want to consume TPUs and Gemini LLMs on Google Cloud.

The bottom line is that Meta's potential shift toward Google TPUs only suggests a growing willingness among hyperscalers to diversify away from Nvidia.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/25/2025 - 06:55

UK Government "Resist" Program Monitors Citizens' Online Posts

Authored by Cam Wakefield via Reclaim The Net,

Let’s begin with a simple question. What do you get when you cross a bloated PR department with a clipboard-wielding surveillance unit?

The answer, apparently, is the British Government Communications Service (GCS). Once a benign squad of slogan-crafting, policy-promoting clipboard enthusiasts, they’ve now evolved (or perhaps mutated) into what can only be described as a cross between MI5 and a neighborhood Reddit moderator with delusions of grandeur.

Yes, your friendly local bureaucrat is now scrolling through Facebook groups, lurking in comment sections, and watching your aunt’s status update about the “new hotel down the road filling up with strangers” like it’s a scene from Homeland. All in the name of “societal cohesion,” of course.

Once upon a time, the GCS churned out posters with perky slogans like Stay Alert or Get Boosted Now, like a government-powered BuzzFeed.

But now, under the updated “Resist” framework (yes, it’s actually called that), the GCS has been reprogrammed to patrol the internet for what they’re calling “high-risk narratives.”

Not terrorism. Not hacking. No, according to The Telegraph, the new public enemy is your neighbor questioning things like whether the council’s sudden housing development has anything to do with the 200 migrants housed in the local hotel.

It’s all in the manual: if your neighbor posts that “certain communities are getting priority housing while local families wait years,” this, apparently, is a red flag. An ideological IED. The sort of thing that could “deepen community divisions” and “create new tensions.”

This isn’t surveillance, we’re told. It’s “risk assessment.” Just a casual read-through of what that lady from your yoga class posted about a planning application. The framework warns of “local parental associations” and “concerned citizens” forming forums.

And why the sudden urgency? The new guidance came hot on the heels of a real incident, protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers, following the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl by Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian migrant.

Now, instead of looking at how that tragedy happened or what policies allowed it, the government’s solution is to scan the reaction to it.

What we are witnessing is the rhetorical equivalent of chucking all dissent into a bin labelled “disinformation” and slamming the lid shut.

The original Resist framework was cooked up in 2019 as a European-funded toolkit to fight actual lies. Now, it equates perfectly rational community concerns about planning, safety, and who gets housed where with Russian bots and deepfakes. If you squint hard enough, everyone starts to look like a threat.

Local councils have even been drafted into the charade. New guidance urges them to follow online chatter about asylum seekers in hotels or the sudden closure of local businesses.

One case study even panics over a town hall meeting where residents clapped. That’s right. Four hundred people clapped in support of someone they hadn’t properly Googled first. This, we’re told, is dangerous.

So now councils are setting up “cohesion forums” and “prebunking” schemes to manage public anger. Prebunking. Like bunking, but done in advance, before you’ve even heard the thing you’re not meant to believe.

It’s the equivalent of a teacher telling you not to laugh before the joke’s even landed.

Naturally, this is all being wrapped in the cosy language of protecting democracy. A government spokesman insisted, with a straight face: “We are committed to protecting people online while upholding freedom of expression.”

Because let’s be real, this isn’t about illegal content or safeguarding children. It’s about managing perception. When you start labeling ordinary gripes and suspicions as “narratives” that need “countering,” what you’re really saying is: we don’t trust the public to think for themselves.

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, join Reclaim The Net.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/25/2025 - 06:30

These Are The Most Religious States In America

Religion plays a defining role in American culture and politics, but the degree of religiosity varies dramatically by state.

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist's Niccolo Conte, maps out the share of adults who are highly religious based on survey data from the Pew Research Center.

The survey was of 36,908 adults, conducted July 2023 to March 2024, with religiousness based on prayer frequency, attendance at religious services, belief in God, and the importance of religion in life.

Which U.S. States are the Most Religious?

Mississippi leads as America’s most religious state, with 50% of adults surveyed categorized as highly religious.

The table below shows the share of residents in each U.S. state who are considered highly religious:

South Carolina follows Mississippi with 46% of adults highly religious, with South Dakota and Louisiana tied next at 45%.

The data highlights a strong concentration of religious adherence in the American South. States like Tennessee (44%), North Carolina (41%), and Arkansas (40%) demonstrate the cultural legacy of the “Bible Belt,” where Christianity remains woven into America’s religiosity.

The Least-Religious States in America

In contrast, the Northeast and much of the West Coast are markedly less religious.

New England stands out for its secularism with the three least-religious states in America: Vermont (13%), New Hampshire (15%) and Maine (17%).

Alongside New England, western states like Nevada (20%) and Oregon (21%) show lower levels of religious engagement, with California only slightly higher at 24%.

Overall, the national average of highly religious adults sits at 31%, with the difference between the top and bottom states—Mississippi’s 50% versus Vermont’s 13%—illustrating just how much religiosity varies across the United States.

To learn more about religion around the world, check out this graphic which shows the world’s most popular religions.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/25/2025 - 05:45

They've Learned Nothing... Because That Would Expose Too Much

Authored by Roger Bate via The Brownstone Institute,

The UK Covid-19 Inquiry has finally released the core political chapters of its long-awaited report. After nearly three years of hearings, millions of documents, and tens of millions of pounds spent on legal fees, the conclusion is now unmistakably clear.

They’ve learned nothing, as I detail in my latest research. 

Worse, they may not want to learn.

The Inquiry’s structure, its analytical frame, even its carefully curated narrative all point in the same direction: away from the possibility that Britain’s pandemic response was fundamentally misguided, and toward the politically safer claim that ministers simply “acted too late.”

On November 20, 2025, Jay Bhattacharya captured this perfectly in a single sentence on X: “Fact check; not locking down at all (like Sweden) would have saved lives in UK. Hard to believe how much money the UK spent on its sham covid inquiry.” That tweet was provocative—but it was also accurate in its diagnosis of the Inquiry’s deeper pathologies.

The Inquiry’s Central Mistake: Asking the Wrong Question

From the outset, the Inquiry has framed Britain’s pandemic response as a timing problem. Lockdowns were assumed to be necessary and effective; the only question was whether politicians implemented them quickly enough. The result is a dry recitation of process failures and personality clashes inside Downing Street, all of which are said to have delayed the inevitable “stay-at-home” order.

But that framing was never neutral. It was baked into the Inquiry’s analytical choices—especially its uncritical reliance on the same family of models that drove the UK into lockdown in March 2020.

The centerpiece of that modeling tradition is Imperial College London’s Report 9, the document that forecast hundreds of thousands of UK deaths absent stringent lockdowns. That report assumed near-homogeneous mixing, limited voluntary behavior change, and high fatality rates across the population. Under those assumptions, lockdown becomes not a political choice but a mathematical necessity.

The Inquiry has now rerun the same machinery and, unsurprisingly, produced the same conclusion.

Its headline claim—that delaying lockdown by a week caused roughly 23,000 additional deaths—is not a historical finding. It is not based on observational data. It is simply the output of an Imperial-style model with a different start date.

The Inquiry has restated the model, not tested it.

The Evidence They Chose Not to See

The Inquiry’s blindness becomes fully apparent when we ask the obvious comparative question: if the lockdown paradigm were correct, what would we expect to see among countries that refused to lock down?

We would expect chaos. We would expect mass hospital collapse. We would expect mortality catastrophes to dwarf the UK.

We would expect, in short, to see Sweden in ruins.

Instead, we see the opposite.

Sweden kept primary schools open, avoided stay-at-home orders, relied heavily on voluntary behavior, and preserved civil liberties throughout the pandemic. After correcting early care-home errors, Sweden recorded one of the lowest age-adjusted excess mortality rates in Europe.

The Swedish experience is not a footnote. It is not an “exception.” It is the control case—the real-world test of the lockdown paradigm.

And it falsifies it.

A serious Inquiry would have begun with Sweden. It would have asked why a country that rejected lockdowns achieved better mortality outcomes than Britain while preserving education, normal life, and basic freedoms. It would have integrated that evidence into every chapter. It would have examined whether voluntary behavior changes, targeted protection, and risk-based messaging can substitute for mass coercion.

Instead, Sweden is barely mentioned. When it appears at all, it is described as an anomaly. The Inquiry behaves as though Sweden is politically inconvenient—not analytically essential.

Because it is.

The Modeling Was Wrong. The Inquiry Can’t Admit It.

If the Inquiry were genuinely interested in learning, it would examine whether the models that drove the UK’s response were flawed. It would review the assumptions underpinning Report 9. It would test them against real-world data from multiple countries. It would commission adversarial modeling groups. It would bring in critics. It would examine alternative frameworks.

It did none of these things.

The behavior of the public is a perfect example. Imperial-style models assume that people remain near-normal in their social contacts without legal mandates. But mobility data, workplace activity, and school attendance show that Britons began adjusting their behavior weeks before Boris Johnson held the lockdown press conference. High-risk individuals adapted earliest. Businesses reacted to perceived risks earlier than the state. Families responded faster than the Cabinet Office.

The models were wrong about behavior.

Yet the Inquiry’s analysis still treats people as if they only respond to orders, not information.

The result is a fantasy counterfactual: a Britain that would have carried on as normal in March 2020 had the government not intervened. That Britain never existed.

Where Is the Cost–Benefit Analysis?

The Inquiry promised to evaluate the “relative benefits and disbenefits” of non-pharmaceutical interventions. It has not done so. There is no integrated accounting of:

• the millions of missed cancer screenings

• the explosion in mental-health morbidity

• the delayed cardiovascular care

• the long-term educational loss from school closures

• the widening inequality gaps

• the years-long damage to the NHS backlog

• the economic scarring that will shorten future lives

Lockdowns always look good when you only count Covid deaths. But public health is cumulative. It is intertemporal. Saving a life today by destroying ten years of someone’s earning power is not a victory.

The Inquiry refuses to engage with these trade-offs. It is easier to condemn “late lockdowns” than to ask whether lockdowns were the wrong tool altogether.

The Real Reason the Inquiry Learned Nothing

The central failure of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry is not analytical. It is institutional.

A real investigation would expose catastrophic judgment errors across the political and scientific establishment. It would show that ministers outsourced strategy to a narrow modeling group. It would reveal that the harms of lockdowns were not only foreseeable but foreseen. It would vindicate critics who were ridiculed or censored. It would anger parents whose children suffered educational harm. It would enrage families whose loved ones died because routine care was suspended. It would shatter public trust in Whitehall and SAGE.

That is precisely what the Inquiry cannot do.

Instead, it offers a politically safe narrative. The strategy was sound. The problem was timing. Ministers were slow. Advisors were frustrated. Downing Street was chaotic. But the solution next time is simple: lock down earlier, lock down harder, lock down smarter.

It is a comforting fairy tale for the people who caused the damage.

The Truth Is Already Clear

Bhattacharya’s November 2025 tweet may have been blunt, but it crystallized what the Inquiry is unwilling to say. Sweden shows that not locking down at all could have saved British lives—not merely reduced collateral damage, but saved lives.

That is the final heresy. And that is why the Inquiry cannot confront it.

Learning would expose too much.

The UK did not simply lock down too late. It locked down unnecessarily. The Inquiry should have been a reckoning. Instead, it became a shield—protecting institutions rather than illuminating truth.

Britain deserved better. The world deserved better.

Until we admit what went wrong, we remain doomed to repeat it.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/25/2025 - 05:00

JP Morgan, Who Had No Issues Banking Epstein, Abruptly Closes Strike CEO Jack Mallers' Account

JPMorgan Chase abruptly closed Strike CEO Jack Mallers’ personal accounts last month, giving him no warning and offering only a cryptic explanation, according to Yahoo Finance.

Mallers posted on X that “Last month, J.P. Morgan Chase threw me out of the bank,” noting how odd it was given that “My dad has been a private client there for 30+ years.” When he asked why, the bank told him only: “We aren’t allowed to tell you.”

Yahoo writes that he even framed the closure letter, which accused him of unspecified “concerning activity” and warned the bank “may not be able to open new accounts for you in the future.”

The incident reignited concerns that the alleged Biden-era “Operation Chokepoint 2.0” is still lurking in the background, despite Trump’s new executive order aimed at penalizing firms that debank crypto businesses. Critics online immediately connected the dots, suggesting regulators and banks are still quietly squeezing crypto-aligned companies and founders.

JPMorgan’s move sparked a broader backlash from Bitcoin advocates like Grant Cardone, Max Keiser, and others who are already furious over the bank’s perceived hostility toward Bitcoin and its recent push to delist companies with heavy BTC exposure. Many publicly closed their JPMorgan accounts, accusing the bank of targeting the crypto sector while having no trouble maintaining far more questionable clients in the past. (Apparently “concerning activity” was never a problem back when they were happily banking Epstein.)

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino replied to Mallers that the whole ordeal is “for the best,” later adding that organizations trying to undermine Bitcoin “will fail and become dust.” Meanwhile, JPMorgan insists it’s just protecting the “security and integrity of the financial system”—a claim that might land better if the bank’s compliance radar didn’t seem to activate only when the customer is a crypto CEO rather than, say, a notorious sex-trafficking financier.

Recall just days ago we wrote that the bank is now under fire from Florida officials over its cooperation with the Biden DOJ's anti-Trump investigation known as “Arctic Frost,” - providing sensitive banking information to Biden prosecutor Jack Smith. 

Also we noted US regulators are examining whether JPMorgan Chase has denied customers fair access to banking, as pressure grows over debanking decisions that were made against conservative figures, according to reporting from Financial Times and the company's 10-Q filing.

In its quarterly filing, the bank noted it was “responding to requests from government authorities and other external parties regarding, among other things, the firm’s policies and processes and the provision of services to customers and potential customers”.

JPMorgan linked the scrutiny to an August executive order from Donald Trump directing regulators to review possible “politicised or unlawful debanking”. The bank said related inquiries include “reviews, investigations and legal proceedings,” without identifying the agencies involved.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 22:10

Google Denies Claims That It's Reading Gmails To Train Its AI

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Google is denying viral claims that private Gmail emails are being used to train its AI models.

An illustration of a mobile phone and laptop with the Google website, on Dec. 14, 2020. Laurie Dieffembacq/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images

The announcement follows multiple reports this past week that the company has rolled out such features.

In a post issued on Nov. 21, Gmail said that it wanted to “set the record straight on recent misleading reports.” It listed several points, saying, “We have not changed anyone’s settings,” Gmail’s “smart features” have existed for years, and, “We do not use your Gmail content to train our Gemini AI model.”

“We are always transparent and clear if we make changes to our terms [and] policies,” Google said.

The claims about Google included a post from cybersecurity company MalwareBytes, about which the company later issued a correction. Separately, a post on X from a YouTube content creator received around 150,000 likes. It contained similar claims that users were automatically opted into allowing Google to use Gmail emails to train its AI models.

“We’ve updated this article after realizing we contributed to a perfect storm of misunderstanding around a recent change in the wording and placement of Gmail’s smart features,” MalwareBytes said in its correction.

“The settings themselves aren’t new, but the way Google recently rewrote and surfaced them led a lot of people (including us) to believe Gmail content might be used to train Google’s AI models, and that users were being opted in automatically.”

The company noted that “after taking a closer look at Google’s documentation and reviewing other reporting, that doesn’t appear to be the case.”

Google has maintained on several of its blogs that it would protect user privacy regarding its Gemini AI models.

“Your data stays in Workspace,” says a company policy page. “We do not use your Workspace data to train or improve the underlying generative AI and large language models that power Gemini, Search, and other systems outside of Workspace without permission.”

It adds that for some features, including “accepting or rejecting spelling suggestions, or reporting spam,” suggestions are rendered anonymous or aggregated and could be used in “new features we are currently developing, like improved prompt suggestions that help Workspace users get the best results from Gemini features.”

“These features are developed with strict privacy protections that keep users in control,” the company  says.

The smart features program for Gmail allows automated email filtering or categorization, automated composition of text in email, or suggests quick replies to emails, according to the company.

To determine whether the features are turned on or off, users can open Gmail on a desktop or mobile app and click on the gear icon before proceeding to See All Settings on desktop or Settings on mobile.

Then they can go to a section called smart features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet. To turn the features on or off, users can check or uncheck the box that says “Turn on smart features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 21:45

The Mystery Of Intuition: Where Gut Feelings Really Come From

Authored by Makai Allbert via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

We’ve all experienced intuition in some form or another. The hunch of knowing without understanding why; the sense that something is right—or terribly wrong—before conscious thought catches up. Or a simple instinct that something is off about a stranger.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock

Intuition goes beyond superstition, serving as a sophisticated form of intelligence operating largely beneath conscious awareness.

The phenomenon raises a question that has intrigued scientists, philosophers, and everyday decision makers: Where do gut feelings really come from?

Knowing Without Knowing How

Studies have found that when chess grandmasters are given just five seconds to evaluate a position, they can make accurate predictions despite lacking time for conscious analysis.

Due to the thousands of hours of experience under their belts, their brains can make rapid decisions through pattern recognition, without requiring deliberate thought. This experience, similarly reflected among experts across many fields—doctors, military personnel, and firefighters—points to the possibility that intuition may emerge from a rich substrate of prior experience.

Emma Seppälä, psychologist and science director at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, told The Epoch Times that in these instances, intuition is “a fast, instinctive form of intelligence that operates separately from our conscious thoughts.”

Yet, this kind of intuitive, rapid processing isn’t limited to professional skills. Going with your gut may be especially true in complex situations in your own life. Research shows that when people face complex decisions, such as selecting a home or making major life choices, those who focus on their feelings rather than painstakingly analyzing every detail often make better decisions and, perhaps even more importantly, are more satisfied with the outcome.

Illustration by The Epoch Times

Kamila Malewska, who studies intuition in managerial decision-making at Poznań University of Economics and Business, believes intuition is invaluable in situations with multiple alternatives, no clear criteria, insufficient information, and unique problems without precedent.

The Biology of Gut Feelings

We often say we have a “gut feeling,” and research now shows the phrase carries both a metaphorical and biological truth.

The gut has what scientists refer to as a “second brain,” comprising more than 200 million neurons. These neurons send signals back and forth with the brain through the vagus nerve, forming the gut-brain axis. This system creates a feedback loop that affects how we feel physically and emotionally.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock

Moreover, the health of the gut microbiota, which comprises approximately 38 trillion bacteria, can affect feelings of urgency, emotions, and even memory, as it produces chemicals that affect the brain. In mouse experiments, tweaking the gut microbiota balance can alter brain neurochemistry, making mice more bold or anxious. Notably, in humans, approximately 90 percent of serotonin, a key neurotransmitter that influences mood and decision-making, is produced in the gut. This indicates that emotional states and intuitive feelings may be influenced by the gut-brain axis.

This connection isn’t new. The vagus nerve may have helped our predecessors find food and avoid danger through gut-based intuitive signals. Today, the gut-brain system still functions, albeit in a different manner. When you feel butterflies in your stomach before a big decision, or a sinking feeling when something seems wrong, you may be experiencing this ancient communication system at work.

Unconscious Gestalt

Besides the gut-brain axis, neuroscientists have found other brain processes that may explain intuition.

One way to understand intuition is to examine how memories form.

Don Tucker, a neuroscientist who studies consciousness and memory, explained that memory occurs before you are aware of it.

“Memory is organized from an implicit level where general meaning is not fully articulated into conscious access, but is still very powerful in providing a sense of the gist of the information,” Tucker told The Epoch Times.

In other words, before we consciously remember or notice something, our brains, especially our limbic system, rapidly sort out experiences, picking up the important bits and giving a holistic level of understanding.

This process relates to another psychological concept called gestalt: the brain’s tendency to perceive patterns rather than individual parts, and to create closure to make sense of incomplete information.

Consider a manager interviewing a seemingly perfect candidate. Their resume seems impeccable, their answers are satisfactory, but something still feels wrong. Only later does the manager realize subtle inconsistencies in the candidate’s story, a shift in eye contact during discussions of previous employment, and a mismatch between verbal and nonverbal expressions. The cues may not have been noticed in the moment, but the brain assembled them into an intuitive warning—into an unconscious gestalt.

Neuroscience supports these ideas. The right hemisphere of the brain is good at spotting patterns and noticing things that don’t fit, even if we’re not aware of it. The hippocampus compares what we see now with past experiences, while the orbitofrontal cortex integrates emotional memories with present sensory input. The result appears as a feeling rather than a thought.

The process of unconscious becoming conscious is driven by what is called predictive processing.

Rather than passively receiving stimuli and then reacting, predictive processing theory suggests that the brain actively generates predictions about what it should perceive based on its experience. When these predictions detect a mismatch—something that does not fit the expected pattern—the result manifests as intuitive unease or “knowing.”

According to Tucker, consciousness develops from this primitive, intuitive level through a process of articulation. A vague feeling—a sense of “no, I shouldn’t do that”—gradually becomes more conscious and explicit as the brain works to understand why the feeling arose.

Could intuition also come from somewhere else?

Perhaps, instead of merely reacting to the present, intuition offers us a glimpse of the future.

Memories From the Future

In the mid-1990s, Dean Radin at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, designed an experiment to test whether awareness could transcend time. He had participants connected to an EEG machine and placed in front of a computer screen. The computer randomly selected and displayed pleasant or disturbing images after a brief pause.

Radin noticed that people’s brains became more active just before seeing disturbing images, but not before positive ones. It was as if the brain could sense something bad was coming, even seconds before it happened. This effect was called “presentiment.”

Replicated results following Radin’s original experiment. Lower heart rate variability in response to disturbing images indicates a stronger fight-or-flight reaction. Illustration by The Epoch Times

The results were statistically significant, and other researchers, such as Daryl Bem at Cornell University, found similar effects in their own experiments.

A 2012 meta-analysis of 26 studies spanning three decades found that experiments like Radin’s and Bem’s suggest that human physiology can distinguish between randomly delivered emotional and neutral stimuli occurring one to 10 seconds in the future.​

This isn’t precognition in the traditional sense—a psychic power of seeing future events—participants aren’t consciously predicting them. Instead, their autonomic nervous systems—heart rate, skin conductance, and brain activity—show measurable arousal before encountering emotionally significant stimuli. According to the 2012 meta-analysis, the effect size may be small. Still, it’s statistically significant across multiple laboratories and researchers, with the probability of the effect being a coincidence estimated at one in a trillion. That’s the equivalent of flipping a coin and getting heads 40 times in a row.

Julia Mossbridge at Northwestern University, who led the meta-analysis, said when the study was released: “The phenomenon is anomalous, some scientists argue, because we can’t explain it using present-day understanding about how biology works.”

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 20:55

Ukraine Rejects Key Aspects Of Trump's Peace Plan, Won't Cede Territory 

On Monday the Zelensky government laid out its red lines concerning the US-proposed peace plan with Russia, which demands that Kiev agree to territorial concessions in the eastern Donbas region. 

Ukraine's senior political leaders and lawmakers, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, set firm non-negotiable conditions for any future peace agreement with Russia, coupled with a warning that Moscow is attempting to force the international community to accept its territorial seizures, according to Ukrainian media. 

Kyiv Post cited parliament speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk as making clear that Ukraine will not accept "any form of legal recognition of Russia’s occupation," nor will accept that restrictions be placed on its armed forces, given the US 28-point plan calls for just that. The statement is said to also express with will of the presidential office.

Getty Images

Most importantly, the Zelensky government has said it will reject outside attempts to control its future alliances, which is a reference to the US plan's call for a commitment that Ukraine never join NATO.

Additionally, frozen Russian assets should serve as the "cost of aggression" - speaker Stefanchuk made clear. The current US draft plan envisions that merely some - possibly about one-third of what's been frozen in European banks - would be used for war reparations. 

The so-called European counter-plan currently being floated in leaked draft format is actually more consistent with these demands of Kiev. President Putin has said that Trump's plan could form the basis of a future peace, but the Kremlin is unlikely to see anything workable in the European plan.

Meanwhile President Zelensky is still trying to walk a fine line between pleasing Trump while showing willingness to work toward an end to the conflict, and sticking to a firm 'pro-Ukraine' wartime stance.

In a Sunday Truth Social post Trump had blasted Zelensky and the Ukrainians for showing "zero gratitude" for the US efforts.

But in follow-up, Zelensky is trying to make nice, pledging in his own response post that Ukraine would "never be an obstacle to peace" - but also emphasized the importance of his country remaining independent and sovereign. 

Zelenskyy responded to Trump's latest post about "zero gratitude" from Ukrainian leadership. pic.twitter.com/IdQ1j1qkeY

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) November 23, 2025

"Everyone is offering support, giving advice, providing information — and I am grateful to each and every person who is giving this help to us, to Ukraine. It is important to ensure that the steps to end the war are effective, and that everything is doable," Zelensky explained. "Ukraine has never wanted war, and we will never be an obstacle to peace."

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 20:30

Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios.

Tuesday:
• At 8:30 AM ET, The Producer Price Index for September from the BLS. 

• At 9:00 AM, S&P/Case-Shiller House Price Index for September.

• Also at 9:00 AM, FHFA House Price Index for September. This was originally a GSE only repeat sales, however there is also an expanded index. The Conforming loan limits for next year will also be announced.

• At 10:00 AM, Richmond Fed Survey of Manufacturing Activity for November. This is the last of the regional Fed manufacturing surveys for November.

• Also at 10:00 AM, Pending Home Sales Index for October.

"It's A Tinder Box": GOP Members Consider Following MTG Into Retirement, Say White House Treats Them 'Like Garbage'

Following the surprise announcement by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) that she's retiring from Congress in 42 days - claiming that President Trump and House Republicans have abandoned America First priorities, it appears that others within the GOP are looking for the exit as well. 

According to Punchbowl News, they received several messages over the weekend from disaffected Republicans who may follow MTG's lead. 

One particularly pissed Republican told Punchbowl: 

“This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen. That is the sentiment of nearly all — appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file. The arrogance of this White House team is off putting to members who are run roughshod and threatened. They don’t even allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies. Not even the high profile, the regular rank and file random members are more upset than ever. Members know they are going into the minority after the midterms.

“More explosive early resignations are coming. It’s a tinder box. Morale has never been lower. Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out.”

The outlet does note that MTG has "never been representative of the House Republican Conference writ large," and "clearly has a bone to pick with Trump and the leadership."

While she denied rumors that her early retirement means she's running for president in the next election, some have suggested that she may be running for Georgia governor. 

Johnson, meanwhile, points out that they have "impossibly small margins" and say they're doing the best they can with "the hand they were dealt." 

If Republicans lose another House member to death, retirement or illness, the GOP could even end up in the minority in 2026. 

Punchbowl does the math:

Republicans have 219 seats and Democrats have 213. There’s a special election in Tennessee on Dec. 2 to fill former Rep. Mark Green’s (R-Tenn.) seat. Democrats and Republicans are pouring piles of money into that district, which Trump won by more than 20 points.

If Republicans win, their margin will remain the same after MTG’s retirement.

But Democrats will gain a seat in Houston at the end of January when voters choose the late Rep. Sylvester Turner’s (D-Texas) replacement. And on April 16, New Jersey voters will choose Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill’s replacement. That’s a seat that former Vice President Kamala Harris won by nine percentage points in 2024.

Let’s say Democrats are able to steal the Tennessee seat based on subpar GOP turnout — unlikely but possible — Johnson would have 218 members to Democrats’ 214. Texas and New Jersey would bring Democrats to 216. If any members retire or fall ill, Johnson would be sunk.

House retirements and resignations are common after holidays. How appealing is it to return to the Capitol when the House spends most of its time voting on censure resolutions or meaningless messaging bills?

Meanwhile, government funding runs out again Jan. 30, and House lawmakers are privately acknowledging that there will be another battle with the Senate. And with so many pissed off Republicans in the House, Johnson is facing a slew of discharge petitions on health care, Russia sanctions, and a likely DP to ban stock trading in Congress. Discharge petitions are notably how the rank and file lodge their complaints with leadership - and it's so bad that Johnson has floated the idea of changing House Rules to make it harder to file them.  

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 20:05

Bolsonaro & Those Damn Indestructible Ankle Monitors

The plot has again thickened, and got a bit weirder, in the arrest and trial saga of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison in September for an alleged coup attempt related to not accepting the results of the last presidential election.

We detailed Saturday that federal police rushed to his residence Saturday to take him out of house arrest, and initiated what's being called a 'preventative arrest' - and he was whisked away to police headquarters in Brasilia. The arrest order issued from the country's top court came hours after his ankle monitor was shown to be violated at 12:08am on Saturday. From there, authorities considered Bolsonaro a flight risk, explaining he is in close proximity to foreign embassies where he might try and gain asylum.

Bolsonaro's damaged ankle monitor. Source: Federal District’s Secretariat for Penitentiary Administration

Bolsonaro was in court Monday for a full day of trial, part of what's likely to be a lengthy appeals process, where he surprisingly confirmed that he did indeed tamper with the ankle monitor. His explanation got strange, telling the court that he suffered a nervous breakdown and hallucinations caused by a change in his medication, after which was fearful of the device as it might be 'wiretapped'.

Assistant judge Luciana Sorrentino said following a meeting with Bolsonaro where she inquired of the incident, "he had 'hallucinations' that there was some wire tap in the ankle monitoring, so he tried to uncover it." Sorrentino described further of the conversation that Bolsonaro told her he "did not remember having a breakdown of this magnitude in another occasion" and that it could be linked to a change in medication, but he insisted there was no intention of trying to escape.

The former Brazilian leader "said he was with his daughter, his elder brother and an aide at his house and none of them saw what he was doing to the ankle monitoring," according to a court document which has been made public. "He said he started to touch it late at night and stopped around midnight."

Photos released by the court show the ankle monitor's cap heavily damaged, after he reportedly at one point took a soldering iron to it. According to The New York Times:

At first, Mr. Bolsonaro told the police that he had banged his ankle monitor causing it to malfunction, according to a report from the capital region’s prison authority.

But when an agent on the scene asked about the burn marks on the device, Mr. Bolsonaro admitted using a soldering iron to try to melt it. In a video of the exchange released by the authorities, Mr. Bolsonaro can be heard apparently telling the agent that he had started torching the monitor hours earlier.

His legal team has since claimed that "Bolsonaro would have no way of escaping" as he is "an elderly man who suffers from serious health problems.

However, Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has long been a political enemy (the US has even sanctioned him personally) as well as chief overseer of the case, described over the weekend, "He is located about 13 kilometers (8 miles) away from where the United States of America embassy lies, in a distance that can be covered in a 15-minute drive."

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro told a judge that medicine-induced paranoia and hallucination caused him to tamper with an electronic ankle monitor, court records showed, a day after police took him into custody out of fear he might flee https://t.co/UDE85hVyXg pic.twitter.com/cmCan0ehnS

— Reuters (@Reuters) November 24, 2025

There's also the fear that the Embassy of Argentina would be open to helping him find safe-haven. But his legal team has said that he must serve his prison sentence at home as his severe health problems "makes his safe stay in a prison environment impossible." President Trump has long decried the case as a 'witch hunt' while the Lula government has condemned Washington's 'interference' in the internal affair.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 19:40

Waste Of The Day: California's Clean Energy Investment Doesn't Pay

Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations,

Topline: In 2007, California invested $468.4 million of its pension funds into private companies through its Clean Energy and Technology Fund. Today, the money is worth just $138 million, and the state won’t explain why its investment performed so poorly. Several open records requests filed by The Center Square were denied by the California Public Employees Retirement System, citing legal exemptions. 

Key facts: CalPERS’ clean energy investments declined by 71% and lost the state $330.4 million. It’s unclear where the money was spent, except that it was invested “across the spectrum of the global clean energy and technology value chain.” The state’s website lists two equity firms that received nearly $48 million in investments and lost almost $32 million of it.

The Center Square estimated that if California had invested its $468.4 million in an S&P 500 index fund in 2007 instead of the Clean Energy Fund, the money would now be worth $3 billion.

Private equity firms were paid at least $22 million to manage California’s clean energy investments, according to The Center Square. 

CalPERS has been increasing its investments in private companies for years, as opposed to public equity investments in publicly-traded stocks and bonds. The state now plans to invest 17% of its pension fund in private equity, up from 7% in 2021, according to The Center Square.

Critical quote: State Assemblyman Carl DeMaio was among those to respond to the report. He wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice asking for an investigation into how California’s pension savings were spent, and claimed that “If CalPERS were a private entity, people would be going to jail over this outrageous violation of fiduciary responsibility — but California politicians have passed laws allowing CalPERS leadership to get a pass.” 

“CalPERS’ job is to safeguard retirement funds, not gamble them away to score political points,” DeMaio said. “This is financial malpractice and a betrayal of public trust, and the public deserves to know exactly who made these reckless decisions.”  

Background: CalPERS only has 79% of the money it needs to pay pensions it has already promised to retirees. If the money does not materialize before the pensions are due, taxpayers will likely be responsible for the remaining 21%.

In dollar terms, CalPERS is underfunded by $174.6 billion, according to Equable. No other retirement system in the country has more than $85 billion worth of debt. Executive Officer Marcie Frost earned a $530,000 salary last year.

California also manages a separate pension fund for teachers, which is underfunded by $69 billion. Its Chief Investment Officer Christopher Ailman made $561,000 last year, the highest salary on the state payroll. 

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Summary: Taxpayers deserve full transparency into even small amounts of government spending, but oversight of one of the largest pools of state funding in the U.S. is especially important.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 17:40

Waste Of The Day: California's Clean Energy Investment Doesn't Pay

Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations,

Topline: In 2007, California invested $468.4 million of its pension funds into private companies through its Clean Energy and Technology Fund. Today, the money is worth just $138 million, and the state won’t explain why its investment performed so poorly. Several open records requests filed by The Center Square were denied by the California Public Employees Retirement System, citing legal exemptions. 

Key facts: CalPERS’ clean energy investments declined by 71% and lost the state $330.4 million. It’s unclear where the money was spent, except that it was invested “across the spectrum of the global clean energy and technology value chain.” The state’s website lists two equity firms that received nearly $48 million in investments and lost almost $32 million of it.

The Center Square estimated that if California had invested its $468.4 million in an S&P 500 index fund in 2007 instead of the Clean Energy Fund, the money would now be worth $3 billion.

Private equity firms were paid at least $22 million to manage California’s clean energy investments, according to The Center Square. 

CalPERS has been increasing its investments in private companies for years, as opposed to public equity investments in publicly-traded stocks and bonds. The state now plans to invest 17% of its pension fund in private equity, up from 7% in 2021, according to The Center Square.

Critical quote: State Assemblyman Carl DeMaio was among those to respond to the report. He wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice asking for an investigation into how California’s pension savings were spent, and claimed that “If CalPERS were a private entity, people would be going to jail over this outrageous violation of fiduciary responsibility — but California politicians have passed laws allowing CalPERS leadership to get a pass.” 

“CalPERS’ job is to safeguard retirement funds, not gamble them away to score political points,” DeMaio said. “This is financial malpractice and a betrayal of public trust, and the public deserves to know exactly who made these reckless decisions.”  

Background: CalPERS only has 79% of the money it needs to pay pensions it has already promised to retirees. If the money does not materialize before the pensions are due, taxpayers will likely be responsible for the remaining 21%.

In dollar terms, CalPERS is underfunded by $174.6 billion, according to Equable. No other retirement system in the country has more than $85 billion worth of debt. Executive Officer Marcie Frost earned a $530,000 salary last year.

California also manages a separate pension fund for teachers, which is underfunded by $69 billion. Its Chief Investment Officer Christopher Ailman made $561,000 last year, the highest salary on the state payroll. 

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Summary: Taxpayers deserve full transparency into even small amounts of government spending, but oversight of one of the largest pools of state funding in the U.S. is especially important.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 17:40

Venezuela Says Trump Has Designated 'Non-Existent' Drug Cartel As Terrorist Org; US Covert Ops Believed 'Imminent'

With talk of anti-Caracas US covert operations set to begin imminently, President Trump's labelling of the so-called "Cartel de los Soles" as a foreign terrorist organization has become official, and taken effect Monday.

However, Venezuela has hit back, rejecting the label and going so far as to call the group, which translates to "Cartel of the Suns, as "non-existent".

"Venezuela categorically, firmly, and absolutely rejects the new and ridiculous fabrication by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of State, Marco Rubio, which designates the non-existent Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization," said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil on his Telegram account. Caracas is dismissing it as an 'absurd' lie.

via AP

Gil claimed that this revives "an infamous and vile lie to justify an illegitimate and illegal intervention against Venezuela, under the classic U.S. regime-change format. This new maneuver will meet the same fate as previous and recurring aggressions against our country: failure."

Indeed the Trump administration has admitted that regime change targeting President Maduro is an option which is on the table, amid the unprecedented military build-up in the Caribbean. 

Reuters has said that Trump held several meetings with senior advisers last week to explore options for a possible military strike on Venezuela.

But then later the commander-in-chief said, "I can’t tell you what it would be, but I’ve kind of made up my mind" while aboard Air Force One.

President Maduro has lately compared the situation to the US invasion of Iraq, well-known to have been launched on false claims about weapons of mass destruction. He accused Washington crafting "a bizarre narrative" since it cannot accuse Venezuela of hiding chemical or biological weapons.

The US has lately linked Fentanyl trafficking with "chemical weapons" - given the substance is technically classified as dangerous chemical substance. 

Meanwhile, on Monday Fox News has issued the following headline: Venezuela 'covert actions' could begin soon, reports say.

U.S. MILITARY SURGE TO PUSH RUSSIA, CHINA AND IRAN OUT OF THE AMERICAS

Fox News is reporting that the sweeping U.S. buildup in our own hemisphere shows this is about far more than Maduro.

“It’s about getting Russia, China and Iran OUT of the western hemisphere.”

“Should… pic.twitter.com/NiwCKqddT1

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) November 24, 2025

But at this point, nothing about any of this seems so "covert" after all. There's a possibility that power grid disruptions could ensue, or also missile or drone strikes could begin targeting cartel locations by land.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 17:20

Vindman Brothers, Who Helped Impeach Trump In 2020, Are Now Under Investigation

Authored by Ken Silva via Headline USA,

Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., and his twin brother Alexander are reportedly under investigation for illegally acting as “paid brokers” for U.S. defense firms seeking business in Ukraine.

“Pentagon General Counsel Earl Matthews alleges that Vindman and his twin brother Alex did not have approval from the U.S. government before seeking to act as ‘paid brokers’ for American defense firms pursuing contracts with Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion,” the Washington Post revealed over the weekend, citing a Nov. 19 letter for War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“The letter does not explicitly allege the Vindmans received money from the Ukrainian government, arguing only that they “did not insulate themselves from the requirements of federal law,” the Post added.

Eugene Vindman confirmed the investigation Friday on Twitter/X. He claimed it’s politically motivated in response to his calls for the White house to release the transcript of a recent call between President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth just launched a sham investigation into me for my support for Ukraine, all because I demanded Trump’s call transcripts with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman be released.

Instead of transparency, I was met with retaliation.

— Eugene Vindman (@YVindman) November 22, 2025

“Instead of transparency, I was met with retaliation,” Vindman claimed.

However, the Trump administration has signaled that it may investigate since before Trump took office. Last November, billionaire Elon Musk accused Alexander Vindman of treason.

“Vindman is on the payroll of Ukrainian oligarchs and has committed treason against the United States, for which he will pay the appropriate penalty,” Musk said in November on his platform, Twitter/X.

Vindman could be in real trouble and I'm OK with that https://t.co/LlKeQrMe6Z pic.twitter.com/Fz95l6XnMg

— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) January 20, 2025

Politico revealed in 2023 that that Alex Vindman is heading a group called Trident Support, which wants to send American military contractors to Ukraine. According to the documents, Vindman, who is of Ukrainian origin, is seeking $12 million for his project—$2 million for “initial operating capability” and another $10 million for “full operating.”

While such a scheme may not be illegal, it demonstrates that the Vindman brothers are war profiteers who benefit from an escalation in Ukraine.

Before President Joe Biden left office, Alexander’s wife vented about the administration not pardoning her husband.

“Whatever happens to my family, know this: No pardons were offered or discussed,” said the wife, Rachel Vindman, in January. “I cannot begin to describe the level of betrayal and hurt I feel.”

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

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 17:00

Bill Clinton Reveals Which Democrat He Thinks Can Win The White House In 2028

With the Democratic Party still reeling from its defeat in the 2024 elections, there is no shortage of speculation about who might be the party’s best chance for victory in 2028. Now a familiar power broker has stepped forward: Former President Bill Clinton. The 42nd president has reportedly indicated which contender he believes offers Democrats their strongest shot at reclaiming the White House.

According to a Democratic source speaking to Jonathan Martin of Politico, Clinton has been telling allies that California Governor Gavin Newsom is the one Democrat who looks ready to win the White House. 

The former president, who interviewed Newsom at this fall’s Clinton Global Initiative, has told people how impressed he is by Newsom’s talent, a well-connected Democrat relayed to me recently. Clinton said he thought his dedicated student had what it takes to be elected president. -Politico

Martin called Newsom the clear front-runner. “No Democrat has had a better two years than Gavin Newsom,” he writes. “And because of it, the California governor — a national figure since he was a 36-year-old boy mayor — has claimed a new title: front-runner.”

Polling certain bears that out. The latest Atlas Intel poll had Newsom at 37%, a full 16 points ahead of the nearest opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, whose chances of winning the nomination are slim after her billion-dollar defeat in 2024.

Though he’s made no official declaration, Newsom’s White House ambitions are no secret, and he’s been positioning himself to run for president for years now. He has been using social media and public appearances to position himself as a counterweight to President Trump. In September, he signed multiple laws aimed at restricting Trump’s immigration enforcement, including limits on officers’ access to schools and health facilities, requirements for officers to identify themselves, and bans on wearing face masks while on duty.

Not all Democrats are convinced that Newsom is the future of the party, however. Earlier this month, Sen. John Fetterman called out Newsom’s “shift to the center” as pure political theater, and not representative of his true values.

Fetterman on Newsom Moving to Center:

“Everyone’s going to go into the middle. But people [forget] that the Internet exists forever and all of the clips and all of the outlandish things that they’ve said or they’ve done ... ” pic.twitter.com/wToIvB7zJn

— Trump2024_no_matter_what (@TexasTrump2024) November 2, 2025

"Everyone's going to go into the middle," Fetterman said. "But people forgets [sic] that the internet exists and all of the clips and all of the outlandish things that they've said or they've done, that's going to have about 20 or 30 million dollars that can pound you for those things."

Newsom has been trying to have it both ways on cultural issues. In 2023, he vetoed AB957, legislation that would have allowed state courts to weigh a parent’s affirmation of a child’s “gender identity” in custody disputes. His veto was widely seen as a calculated effort to appear more moderate on transgender issues. But three years earlier, he signed SB145, ending automatic sex offender registry requirements for certain adults who commit sexual acts with minors, which was deemed unfair to the LGBTQ community.

Fetterman made it clear he thinks Newsom and other Democrat contenders for the 2028 nomination won’t be able to hide from their radical records.

"They'll pander, scream to the base,” he said. “Then they're going to have to try to just walk it back, or now just pretend that all these things weren't said or done. That's how it works. And that's one thing I refuse to do."

By signaling his support for Gavin Newsom, Clinton is weighing in significantly early on the battle for the 2028 Democratic Party nomination. But whether his endorsement will translate into real momentum is far from certain.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 16:40

From the U.S. Courts: Bankruptcy Filings Increase 10.6 Percent

Personal and business bankruptcy filings increased 10.6 percent in the twelve-month period ending Sept. 30, 2025, compared with the previous year.

According to statistics released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, annual bankruptcy filings totaled 557,376 in the year ending September 2025, compared with 504,112 cases in the previous year.

Business filings rose 5.6 percent, from 22,762 to 24,039 in the year ending Sept. 30, 2025. Non-business bankruptcy filings increased 10.8 percent to 533,337, compared with 481,350 in the previous year.

Still fairly low.

Sedition Before Tradition: American Needs A Break

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak."

 - Sun Tzu

You understand, don’t you, what the aim was of the “Seditious Six” politicians who made last week’s now-notorious video suggesting that US military personnel should refuse the president’s orders if they deemed them to be “illegal?”

This was the old Lefty game of provoking the authorities to react intemperately so they can be labeled “fascist.”

It’s like the old schoolyard game of the kid who goes I’m touching you. . . I’m touching you. . . until the touched kid explodes. . . so the toucher can then say, look, he’s hitting me!

And they certainly succeeded in pissing-off the president enough for Mr. Trump to suggest they could be hanged for their little prank — though he was probably incorrect about the legal niceties therein.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe in a pensive moment

That members of the out-party in Congress and the Senate must resort to this kind of skylarking japery tells you how desperate they are.

The organizer, Minnesota Senator Elissa Slotkin, is a former CIA officer. Is she in communication regularly with any of her former colleagues at the Agency? And did she coordinate any part of her prank with them? I bet DNI Tulsi Gabbard could find out and let CIA Director John Ratcliffe know so he can fire their ass.

The intel bureaucracy remains a hotbed of resistance to the swamp-draining project underway since 01/20/25. The swamp creatures like their swamp fecund and fetid as it has been, with the rich revenue stream it is used to feeding on, and Mr. Trump has done much to change that. Alas, the CIA remains the most implacably opaque major operation in government. It insists that its activities require secrecy, and the awful downside is that the Agency has run without real oversight since its inception after the Second World War. Gawd knows how many John Brennan clones are still lodged over in the Langley, VA, HQ.

Of all the celebrated new appointees in the agencies, Mr. Ratcliffe has been the least visible.

He went into the job with very promising credentials, having served as DNI in the last months of Trump 1.0. He must know where a whole lot of bodies are buried (some of them actual bodies) but the public has heard squat from him all year.

Surely Mr. Ratcliffe must also know by now who in the CIA was scheming along with John Brennan to perpetrate RussiaGate, and who was on the leak-line to the news media. He must know how Adam Schiff coordinated impeachment No. 1 with CIA agent Eric Ciaramella, then Intel Inspector-General Michael Atkinson, Col. Alexander Vindman, and Lawfare ninjas Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, and Andrew Weissmann. He must know who in “Joe Biden’s” White House was coordinating the 92 felony prosecutions against Mr. Trump with DA Alvin Bragg and AG Letitia James in New York and DA Fani Willis Fulton County, GA.

He must know how BLM and Antifa were allowed to burn down Minneapolis in 2020, and riot in scores of other places. He must know what agencies and what persons in them coordinated the Covid-19 operation and which foreign entities were involved. (Was it the US military, as many suspect, and how, if at all, did freelance players such as Bill Gates and George Soros’s myriad organizations fit in the picture?) And how is the machinery of the Democratic Party entangled in the workings of US intel? (Prime suspects: Sen. Mark Warner and his staff.)

You can say much the same thing about FBI Director Kash Patel and his Deputy Director, Dan Bongino. They were apparently horrified by the rot they encountered there on taking office earlier this year. What is so difficult about firing people, even a whole lot of people? And why wouldn’t you say you are doing it? Likewise, Pam Bondi, at her resistance-infected DOJ?

My bags are packed, I’m ready to go. . . .

Mr. Trump had a rough week working through his “divorce” from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Both of them behaved rather badly; he the usual name-calling; she playing up to the cluster-B ignoramouses on The View, and then resigning from Congress in a snit (walking away from Daddy). The Epstein Files legislation she was twanging on the president about got passed in a flash and signed, but it contained rules that can easily be used to keep key documents suppressed. The suspicion will linger that it’s all about protecting Israel, and thereby stir-up continued animus against the Jews.

Mr. Trump had a ju-jitsu session in the Oval Office with NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, the avowed communist jihadi — putting the young insta-celebrity pol off-balance by acting all nice and accommodating. “I want him to do a great job. . . “ “We agree on a lot more than I would have thought. . .” “It was a great honor [to meet him]. . . .” the president declared on his Truth Social account. Stand by on what any of that means.

And now, as we plunge into Thanksgiving week, comes the Ukraine peace proposal. Everybody knows it is a recognition that Russia is grinding toward victory in any case, and carrying-on further slaughter and destruction on-the-ground is insane. But then, Ukraine’s ruler, Mr. Zelenskyy, is insane (probably high on drugs, too), and the EU leadership is insane seeking to start a war with Russia that it has zero ability to prosecute — and nevermind whatever the obdurate defenders of the UK’s sclerotic empire think they’re doing to keep the Ukraine War going. But, bottom line: there’s a good possibility that the war will be over before Christmas, and the world will be better off for that.

With all the above going on, America needs a break.

Enjoy a turkey, if you can afford to buy one, and count your blessings — for we are still a blessed people in a blessed land, and we should all show a little gratitude for the privilege of just being here on a planet so superbly suited to our needs.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 16:20

Ignored Red Repo Signals = More Obvious Golden Tailwinds

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold,

Markets are many things, but in simplest terms, they are a paradox.

From the Complex…

By this, I mean they are incredibly and intentionally complex, which makes them a kind of exclusive environment managed, allegedly at least, by cadres of well-versed experts (?) trained in, and comfortable with, complexity.

The extraordinarily complex mechanics, for example, of layered derivative trades or currency and rate swaps, the hedging of futures contracts on the New York COMEX or the maze-like liquidity and collateral movements in repo and reverse repo facilities are indeed settings of just mind-numbing complexity.

…To the Simple

But herein lies the paradox, for despite such deliberate and gated complexity, these markets—from the most basic ETF purchase to the most confusing asset-backed securities—operate upon one extraordinarily simple force, namely: Liquidity.

Or stated even more simply, everything hinges upon one question: Is there enough cash to keep these systems afloat?

And even if you have never had the time to study every market correction from the first Persian trading huts or Roman currency collapses to the great crashes of 18th-century France, 19th-century America or even the more recent ghosts of 2008, the key takeaway is equally simple: Every market crisis is at heart a liquidity crisis.

In short: Liquidity matters.

Engines Need Oil, Markets Need Cash

Liquidity—or cash flows—are like the oil levels in a basic engine, and anyone who has ever owned or driven a car knows it’s never a good thing when the dashboard signals a glowing, red low-oil warning.

Unless more oil is added soon, the warning phase progresses quickly to a stalled car phase.

What many investors may not realize is that these otherwise immortal risk asset markets are riddled with “low-oil warnings” which few are discussing, but which gold is recognizing.

Warning Lights in the Repo Market: Boring but Important

Take the current “Standard Repo Facility”—a topic so boring and complex that it’s easy to both ignore and misunderstand.

In simplest terms, the repo market is where big banks (“primary dealers”) go to get overnight loans (i.e., “liquidity”) from each other to keep their bank engines humming along.

It is here where they execute what are called “repurchase agreements”—i.e. where Party A asks for cash from Party B by offering Party B overnight collateral in the form of “safe” USTs.

The next day, Party A pays back the loan and buys back its collateral at a slightly higher price/rate than the Fed Funds Rate set by the FED (the FFR), otherwise known as the “repo rate.”

Such repo transactions keep the wheels of banking, money market yields and even hedge fund leverage tools comfortably “greased” and chugging along smoothly so long as the FFR and repo rates are aligned, affordable and hence: “Liquid.”

But when the repo rates begin to climb noticeably above the allegedly calming Fed Funds Rate, this is a dashboard warning that trust among the counterparties’ collateral is falling and that future liquidity is stalling.

Or, and stated more simply: Rising repo rates signal tightening liquidity, which for bankers is like the appearance of a rising shark fin for a weekend ocean swimmer.

Nervous “Experts” …

Recently, a bunch of market “swimmers” (i.e. primary dealers and their representatives) met at the home of the New York Fed in a very nervous mood and behind closed doors.

Why?

Because they are seeing shark fins circling and low-oil signals flashing from their dashboards.

The repo rates are decoupling from (rising above) the FFR, which means the cost of borrowing between insiders is getting painful.

This also means liquidity is drying and the engine of US and global markets (as literally everything and every asset is impacted by expensive liquidity) is slowly beginning to smoke, rattle and choke.

If repo rates go from rising to dangerously spiking, as they did in September of 2019, the engine stalls altogether, and the repair bill (i.e., Fed-injected liquidity) becomes extraordinary.

Prepare the Firehose

In other words, this means rapidly expanding liquidity measures from the Fed’s “emergency funding” source (aka: “reverse repo facility”), which is nothing more than QE (money printing) by another false title.

What’s equally creepy, and equally off the radar of most investors and coopted financial media sources, is that even before these nervous bankers met in New York, the Fed had already injected $125B of short-term funding operations to keep these repo rates “controlled,” but with little success.

Why?

Because after 3 years of Powell desperately trying to reduce the Fed’s embarrassingly fat balance sheet via QT while its commercial banking nieces and nephews on Wall Street were simultaneously reducing their own balance sheets to meet regulatory measures, liquidity was already quietly drying up even before the engine warning lights finally went red in the repo market.

The Past is Prologue

So, what does this mean going forward for markets in general or gold in particular?

By now, it should be no surprise to any that the Fed, which is a private bank owned by other commercial banks as part of a legalized cabal that is little more than a dishonest, unelected and insider trade, will do “whatever it takes” to keep themselves alive and “liquid.”

This means the Fed will inevitably, and once again, face an inflection point in which more bazooka/firehose money will flow into this “system.”

In short, “liquidity,” ultimately created from thin air, will save a now entrenched and parasitic system at the expense of the inherent purchasing power of the USD in general and the paper wealth of its citizens in particular, in this hidden backdrop of serfs and lords otherwise masquerading as free market capitalism.

The Future is Simple

As for gold, it may not be as human as our central bankers and primary dealers, but it is a heck of a lot more honest.

Its price moves today (which are increasingly less inhibited by the tapped-out COMEX and LBMA banks who lack the free-float to legally price fix precious metals) are telling us what our leadership and banks cannot, namely: Paper money is being debased at alarming levels to keep liquidity flowing into a debt-draped and broken system.

Throughout history, gold has always been nature’s honest monetary reaction to fiat currencies’ “human, all too human” debasement sins.

The market knows that more QE and QE-like liquidity is coming, which means a USD, which has already lost more than 99% of its purchasing power when measured against gold, will continue to lose its “punch” in the same way a glass of wine loses its flavor when buckets of added water dilute its vintage.

Gold, whose bull market is just beginning in such a backdrop, will continue its secular and historical rise, because fiat currencies will continue their secular, political, human and oh-so historically familiar fall.

In short, and despite pages, centuries and layers of complexity, the case for gold is ultimately as simple as that.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 15:45

The Selective Outrage Of Judge James Boasberg

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in The Hill on two controversies involving Chief Judge James Boasberg this week in Washington, D.C. Both involve claims that branches undermined or intruded on the authority of another branch. However, these separation-of-powers conflicts produced strikingly different responses from Judge Boasberg. It seemed that the court’s concerns depended greatly on whose ox was being gored in a tripartite contest.

Here is the column:

For months, District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg has been very much in the news.

This spring, he issued a 46-page decision finding that the Trump administration may be in contempt of court for violating his order to return flights of deportees being sent to El Salvador.

In that ruling, Boasberg insisted that it was essential for him to know the facts on whether “officials of a coordinate branch” had undermined judicial integrity.

After all, nothing short of the separation of powers was at stake. This week, Boasberg announced that he was moving forward without further delay to ferret out who was responsible for the alleged violation.

That message, however, has now been undermined by another Judge James Boasberg, who is in the news this week as part of the controversy over the Justice Department’s acquisition of telephone records of leading Republican members of Congress.

Boasberg had imposed a gag order on telephone companies to prevent them from informing Congress that the executive branch was snooping on who had been in contact with them.

These two James Boasbergs seem as different as the two Jeffrey Epsteins referenced this week by Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) — one a presumably respectable medical doctor, the other a deceased sex offender. However, to use Crockett’s formulation, it was indeed “that James Boasberg” in both cases.

The growing scandal over the seizure of telephone records of Republican members of Congress by former Special Counsel Jack Smith has continued to grow with new disclosures. This includes revelations that Smith obtained of records for former Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Judiciary Chair James Jordan (R-Ohio).

It is difficult to overstate the gravity of this intrusion into the legislative branch. These records can reveal whom members spoke with and when such calls took place. It can reveal communications with journalists, whistleblowers, and others speaking confidentially with representatives. It can also reveal embarrassing information about members from their personal numbers.

The gathering of such information without an obvious good cause can potentially deter members in confronting the Justice Department, which is notorious for leaking information against critics and targets.

Ironically, such leaks are at the heart of investigations led by the very targets of these orders, including Jordan and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). It also included McCarthy, the person second in line for the presidency, who could ultimately assume authority over the Justice Department under the Constitution.

The demand under Operation Arctic Frost was unprecedented in scope, with dozens of subpoenas going to such carriers as Verizon and AT&T. Nineteen such orders for these telephone records were accompanied by judicial nondisclosure orders for subpoenas signed by Boasberg. While commonly issued, these nondisclosures have long been controversial. It did not seem to matter that the Justice Department was targeting the very members exercising oversight over investigations into its own previous abusive use of investigatory powers.

It is still not clear for what crimes these members were being investigated. The order on Jordan in 2022 covered two prior years.

Not surprisingly, some Democratic apologists such as Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) immediately dismissed the gravity of such demands by the Justice Department. However, other Democrats have expressed alarm over the intrusion into such communications.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) stated, “On the surface of it, it would strike me as a significant invasion of the right of Senators to conduct their jobs, so this is something that needs urgent follow-up.”

Indeed, the move by Judge Boasberg shattered the very rules of engagement between the coequal and “coordinate branches” that the same Boasberg has repeatedly raised in his investigation of the Trump administration.

Boasberg signed these orders despite a federal law designed to prevent precisely this type of secret investigation of Congress. Federal law requires that “no law, rule, or regulation may be used to prevent a service provider from notifying a Senate office that data or records have been sought through legal process.”

Just in case there was any doubt, the law further states that “any provider for a Senate office … shall not be barred, through operation of any court order or any statutory provision, from notifying the Senate office of any legal process seeking disclosure.”

However, Boasberg signed orders that prevented the phone providers from informing members of Congress — members who were actively investigating abuses by the Justice Department — that they were now being subjected to precisely such investigations.

There is little question how Congress would have responded. You are seeing it unfold this week. However, they were never told even as they objected to open-ended and abusive investigations of thousands of citizens after the January 6 Capitol riot.

Boasberg was fully aware of those abuses, stretching back to the debunked Russiagate investigation, in which false information had been given to courts to carry out surveillance of Trump associates.

Indeed, it was Boasberg again who ordered the resulting investigation into the false information given to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as part of the Russiagate investigation. He was criticized for appointing an attorney to assist him, David Kris, whom the Washington Post described as “highly controversial” given his past denials of any wrongdoing by the Justice Department.

The wrongdoing was very real. An attorney at the FBI ultimately pleaded guilty to lying to the court in an effort to justify surveillance. Others were fired after Inspector General investigations exposed their abuse of investigatory powers.

Despite that history, Boasberg gagged phone carriers from informing Congress of the seizure of the telephone records of key Republican members overseeing investigations of the Justice Department.

I do not support the calls for Boasberg to be impeached, but his role in this scandal cannot be ignored. He not only enabled this abusive effort but also expressly told these companies not to reveal the demands to anyone.

None of this means that there are no legitimate questions raised about the failure to comply with his orders on the El Salvador flight. But Boasberg’s separation-of-powers concerns seem strangely selective, depending on whose powers are being usurped.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of the bestselling book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” He has also represented the House of Representatives in court.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 15:05