Stablecoins, Tokenized Assets Gain As Trump Tariffs Loom

Authored by Zoltan Vardai via CoinTelegraph.com,

Cryptocurrency investors are increasingly moving capital into stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) in a bid to avoid volatility ahead of US President Donald Trump’s widely anticipated tariff announcement on April 2.

Increasingly, more capital is flowing into stablecoins and the real-world asset (RWA) tokenization sector, which refers to financial products and tangible assets such as real estate and fine art minted on the blockchain.

“Stablecoins and RWAs continue to see steady inflows of capital as safe havens in the current uncertain market,” crypto intelligence platform IntoTheBlock wrote in a March 31 X post.

“However, because these assets reside on-chain, even slight shifts in sentiment can trigger significant price movements, driven by the lower barriers to reallocating capital in real time,” the firm noted.

Stablecoins, total market cap. Source: IntoTheBlock

The flight to safety is mainly attributed to geopolitical tensions and global trade concerns, according to Juan Pellicer, senior research analyst at IntoTheBlock:

“Many investors were expecting economic tailwinds following Trump's inauguration as president, but increased geopolitical tensions, tariffs and general political uncertainty are making investors more cautious.”

“This is not unreasonable, as even though global growth forecasts remain positive, growth expectations have decreased globally in recent months,” he added.

The prospect of a global trade war has heightened inflation-related concerns, causing a significant decline in both cryptocurrency and traditional equity markets.

S&P 500, BTC/USD, 1-day chart. Source: TradingView 

Bitcoin has fallen 19% and the S&P 500 (SPX) index has fallen over 7% in the two months since Trump announced import tariffs on Chinese goods on Jan. 20, the day of his inauguration as president.

The April 2 announcement is expected to detail reciprocal trade tariffs targeting top US trading partners. The measures aim to reduce the country’s estimated $1.2 trillion goods trade deficit and boost domestic manufacturing.

Investor sentiment pressured by April 2 Trump tariff announcement

Global tariff fears and uncertainty around the upcoming announcement continue to pressure investor sentiment in global markets.

“Risk appetite remains muted amid tariff threats from President Trump and ongoing macro uncertainty,” Iliya Kalchev, dispatch analyst at digital asset investment platform Nexo, told Cointelegraph.

Meanwhile, RWAs reached a new cumulative all-time high of over $17 billion on Feb. 3, and are currently less than 0.5% away from surpassing the $20 billion milestone, according to data from RWA.xyz.

RWA global market dashboard. Source: RWA.xyz

Some industry watchers said that Bitcoin’s lack of upside momentum may drive RWAs to a $50 billion all-time high before the end of 2025, as their increased liquidity will help RWAs attract a significant share of the $450 trillion global asset market.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 17:40

Anti-Trump Comedian Booted From Performing At White House Correspondent's Dinner

It goes without saying, but Donald Trump is no stranger to being ambushed.  Beyond his unfortunate record of dodging bullets, the people involved in organizing Trump's public appearances tend to set him up in captive situations for political embarrassment, either knowingly or unknowingly. 

It happened when Trump attended his inaugural prayer service which was somehow led by a female Bishop (automatic red flag) who publicly chastised Trump for his campaign policies.  It was later revealed that Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde is an LGBT and immigration activist that received millions of dollars in funding for helping illegal migrants enter the US. 

Who made the choice to put Trump in a passive position with such a person?   

Apparently learning from previous vetting errors, the Trump Administration has become far more careful.  Far-left comedian and queer activist Amber Ruffin has been canceled from hosting the White House Correspondent's Dinner's traditional comedic interlude.  The annual gala is an opportunity for journalists and media personalities to mingle with the Washington DC elite outside of the press room.

White House Correspondents Association President Eugene Daniels, who until recently was a reporter for Politico and is set to join MSNBC as a senior Washington correspondent, organized the speakers but ultimately cancelled Ruffin's invitation.

"At this consequential moment for journalism, I want to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division but entirely on awarding our colleagues for their outstanding work and providing scholarship and mentorship to the next generation of journalists," Daniels said in an email announcement.

Ruffin is a little known figure in comedy, yet, she was somehow chosen as a host for the WHCD, a position usually reserved for the top comedians of the day.  Her humor is painfully woke and decidedly unfunny - Try finding a single legitimate laugh in this skit from her failed Peacock show. 

Traditionally, the WHCD hires a comedic host to roast the crowd (and the president).  However, in recent years the trend has shifted into a political struggle session in which Trump is specifically targeted for most of the ridicule.  Even when Trump was not in the White House, he became the primary focus of guest comedian ire.   

Amber Ruffin works for Late Night with Seth Meyers, and it was Seth Meyers (and others) that famously tried to humiliate Trump at a WHCD in 2011 over talk that he would run for president as a Republican; an action which many believe drove Trump's desire to campaign in 2016.

Trump has not attended any of WHCD events during his time in office and some critics argue that he "can't handle jokes" due to ego.  But keep in mind that roasters are supposed to go after both political sides, not simply bash the people they disagree with. 

In an appearance on the Daily Beast podcast, Ruffin said she was told by the WHCA that "you need to be equal, and make sure that you give it to both sides and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, 'There's no way I'm going to be freaking doing that, dude, under no circumstances.'"

In other words, leftists view these events as opportunities for activism and propaganda, not as the fun and relaxed affairs they used to represent. 

* * *

You can support ZeroHedge with the purchase of a high-quality, sharp, ZeroHedge Multitool.

Click pic... add to cart... (buy 2 for free shipping)... enjoy Multitool! Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 17:20

Grifterism: The Economic Engine Of Democrats

Authored by Cynical Publius via American Greatness,

I am a political junkie and a political conservative. Like so many conservative political junkies, I spend a good portion of my waking hours trying to understand what the words and actions of Democrats actually mean. Like the Politburo of the former Soviet Union, the words of Democrats often bear little resemblance to the actions their words embody. “Equity” is an excellent example, as when Democrats say “equity,” they really mean highly inequitable policy solutions. Sometimes, however, Democrats deliberately fail to coherently describe the meaning of their actions, and then it becomes even harder to ascertain meaning. Such is the case with the basic economic policies of Democrats. Many on the right like to say that Democrats support socialism, but that’s not wholly true given how many capitalist components exist inside Democrat economic policies. Similarly, it is inaccurate to describe Democrat economics as being purely capitalistic because wealth redistribution is one of their core competencies. Some say that the Democrats enjoy government control of capitalist entities, rendering their economic persuasion fascist in nature. Yet, even that is inaccurate, given that fascist states view their economies as a source of nationalistic pride and strength, while Democrats tend to abhor nationalistic pride in the United States.

It’s not socialism. It’s not capitalism. It’s not fascism. What, then, is the overarching label that explains the economic policies and priorities of Democrats and their leadership?

It’s Grifterism.

(I did not invent that word, or at least that’s what Google tells me. However, I believe I am the first author to ever use that term to describe a formal system of national economic governance, so I’m going to run with it.)

Grifterism is, as the name suggests, a system run by and for the benefit of grifters. Webster defines the verb “grift” as “to acquire money or property illicitly.” Grifters have always been a part of human society, but it took the 21st-century Democratic Party to turn the idea into a comprehensive economic system. The best way to understand this system is to analyze the four classes of citizens upon which Grifterism relies, and into which all American citizens are divided one way or another: Billionaires, Productives, Dependents and, of course, Grifters.

(Before I explain these classes, I realize that there are some readers who will jump all over these categories and tell me I am being too absolute in describing them. Yes, Elon Musk is a good Billionaire. Yes, there are bad Productives who exploit the powerless. Yes, there are many entirely productive people in government who are not Grifters. Yes, the nice old blind lady down the street deserves the support given to the Dependent class. Yet, as the saying goes, these are the exceptions that prove the rule.)

On to the four classes of Grifterism:

1. The Billionaires: The Billionaires are the capital creators upon which much of the system relies. While the top 1% of income earners pay 46% of all federal taxes, estimates suggest the Billionaire portion of that demographic alone pays for somewhere between 5% and 10% of all federal taxes. While this Billionaire class is defined by that 5% to 10%, realize, too, that the Billionaires create the businesses that pay the executive salaries of so much of the rest of the 46%, so in effect, Billionaire-related taxes fund nearly half of the federal government’s gross revenue and are the de facto economic sponsors of the Grifter class. (In addition to the punishing taxes they pay, Billionaires also enjoy the privileged punishment of being endlessly vilified by the “Tax the Rich” likes of Bernie Sanders, AOC, and their brainwashed acolytes.)

Ah, yes, those poor, poor Billionaires. They are taxed and vilified to an extraordinary degree, seemingly all as punishment for their riches. However, they are actually complicit with the Grifters by funding Grifterism in exchange for their existence being tolerated, and when it comes to economic policies, they are actually on the same side as the Bernies and the AOCs, it’s just not that obvious.

You see, the Grifters rely on a vast regulatory state that makes it very, very difficult to found new, Billionaire-creating businesses—unless you are already a Billionaire. Regulatory regimes like Dodd-Frank, the 1934 Act, the CFPB and a host of other business-harassing federal regulations and agencies mean that the greatest wealth-creating businesses can only exist when they hire legions of white-shoe law firms and high-priced accountants to ensure compliance with the regulatory burden. As such, only Billionaire-owned companies have the wherewithal to fund such compliance measures, effectively creating monopolies that shut out anyone else from ever joining their club.

As an example, Dodd-Frank has done little for America other than ensure that the big banks are bigger and the small banks are fewer, all by imposing massive regulatory burdens on an ever-dwindling population of small banks. A regulatory scheme that was purportedly designed to help “the little guy” only helped the Billionaires, purposely and deliberately suppressing the ability of the Productives (more on them later) from climbing higher and threatening to join the elite circle of the Billionaires.

The tryst between the Billionaires and the Grifters gets even worse when considering the concept of regulatory capture—i.e., the Billionaires are busy writing the Grifters’ regulations that will govern the Billionaires. Remember when the health insurance industry wrote the Obamacare legislation? THAT is “regulatory capture.”

Between Billionaire-friendly, compliance-driven monopolies and regulatory capture, the symbiotic relationship between the Billionaires and the Grifters becomes clear. Yes, the Billionaires pay far more than their fair share of taxes and face constant verbal abuse from the Grifter class, but they have a wink-wink acceptance of that because they sit secure on their wealth thanks to the Grifters’ penchant for regulatory entropy.

It’s pretty good to be a Billionaire—but not so much our next two classes.

2. The Productives:  The Productives are the most important class of Grifterism, and its most abused class. The Productives are the people who do and make the services and things upon which we all depend. They are doctors; they are farmers; they are the guys running the oil rig; they are long-haul truck drivers; they are your green grocer; they are your lawn guy; they are your dry cleaners; they are your plumber; they are basically the people who serve as the engine of a productive society. They create, and they rarely take. They are small business owners, but they are also the W-2 employees who work for those small businesses. Not only do the Productives serve as the essential lubricant for a functioning society, they also mostly pay that 56% of federal taxes not paid by the top 1%. America cannot survive without the Productives.

Many Productives are wealthy small business owners, while other Productives are hourly wage earners. But everyone in the Productive class knows this—it could all crash down at any moment. Productives live a life of insecurity—their business could fail, a recession could rob them of everything they ever worked for, and “at will” employees know that every day on the job could be their last. Being a Productive is stressful.

But the most stressful thing about being a Productive is that you lead your economic life at the mercy of the Grifters. If you are a Productive farmer, a Grifter might shut you down by forbidding you to grow crops or by making sure you cannot irrigate your land. If you invest your company’s worth in oil exploration equipment, a Grifter might bankrupt you with new regulations. Even that Productive dry cleaner you go to weekly has to worry about a Grifter destroying their business because they accepted a shirt with a bloodstain.

Examples like what I cite above are seemingly infinite and often totally opaque to a Productive, until such time as a Grifter arbitrarily decides to enforce one of the millions of regulatory laws few even are aware of and shuts the Productive down.

Thus, while Productives are the class that society cannot live without, all Productives live an economic life of uncertainty, constantly teetering on the razor’s edge of failure, knowing that they exist only because of the largesse of Grifters, and those same Grifters can destroy them at any time with the click of a pen.

It ain’t easy being a Productive.

3. The Dependents: This is a tricky one. It’s kind of self-explanatory—Dependents are people that depend on government handouts to live. In many ways, this is just fine—an important function of any decent government is to ensure that people who are wholly incapable of taking care of themselves enjoy a social safety net. The nice widow lady up the block with crippling rheumatoid arthritis deserves our help. Alternatively, some Dependents are temporary—the Productive who lost his job deserves a safety net for several weeks until he finds a new place to be productive. These types of people are not what make Dependents worthy of shame.

It’s the able-bodied Dependent who would rather live on the dole than become a Productive that is shameful. It’s the young man on disability who really isn’t disabled. It’s the mother who has more children because her government pay-out goes up with each kid she births. These are the shameful Dependents. Dependents pay no taxes, live on the fruits of the Billionaires and the Productives, and give only one thing back—their loyal votes for the Grifters. Dependents are actually part of the Grifters’ big con, and the Grifter class has a symbiotic relationship with Dependents, just as it has with the Billionaires.

However, it is actually no fun being a Dependent. It’s too easy to become addicted to an idle life just above the poverty line, and in that regard, Dependents are not doing any exploiting; they are being exploited—by the Grifters.

4. The Grifters: Well, we’re finally here. By now, you probably have a pretty good idea of what the Grifters are up to, but let’s be clear that this class consists of more than just government workers. The Grifter class includes all of the intelligentsia: the university professors, the traditional journalists, the lobbyists, the Hollywood elite, the “BigLaw” attorneys, and, most of all, the NGO crowd. Further, not every government worker is a Grifter—the military, the police, the justice system, and many other government offices that provide what economists call “Public Goods” all house highly necessary government employees. (Those employees are not Grifters—they are Productives, but unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of government workers are in fact Grifters.)

But let’s get back to the NGOs (a term I use in this article interchangeably with non-profit entities), as they reveal the true level of perfidy perpetuated by the Grifters. If you have been paying attention for the last two months, you are probably aware that DOGE and brilliantly relentless and patriotic volunteer data analysts like Data Republican have uncovered the widespread prevalence of U.S. federal agencies taking your tax dollars and using them to fund dubious efforts by various NGOs. This wicked grift cycle goes like this: (1) Taxpayers pay taxes required because Grifters establish programs that require funding; (2) Congress approves such funding in the vaguest possible terms of intent and appropriates those funds to a federal agency run by Grifters; (3) the Grifters in that agency interpret Congress’ intent in the broadest manner possible and provide funds to NGOs that employ other Grifters with six-figure salaries; and (4) that NGO then engages in some sort of woke cause such as training transgender farmers—a cause very few taxpaying voters would vote for if they only knew about it.

The cycle of grifting prospers beyond just NGOs: the universities receive taxpayer funding to indoctrinate our youth; the lobbyists curry favor with the Grifters to improve their business opportunities; the journalists cycle in and out of government, spreading the Grifter ethos as truth; Hollywood pays homage to it all, infecting American brains with woke ideas that Grifterism is noble; the BigLaw attorneys become rich navigating the vast regulatory schemes that are the lifeblood of Grifterism, and the members of the Grifter class constantly cycle in and out of the various organizations that benefit most from their economic parasitism.

The Grifters are the only class of Grifterism that fully benefits from the corrupt system; in fact, the system exists by, for, and because of the Grifters—almost all of whom are voting for Democrat candidates who themselves wallow in the pig trough of Grifterism. “But wait!” you may say, “Government workers are not Billionaires, they are not wealthy. How is that a grift?” Grifters in government generally enjoy wages in excess of the national median income; they are entitled to retirement plans largely unheard of in the private sector; they have healthcare and other benefits that far exceed those of equivalent private workers; and, most of all, they enjoy job security that is unmatched by any other sector of American society. Most Grifters are unfirable—they have life tenure. Finally, they have the power to pull the strings of the entire Grifter class for their own benefit—back-scratching and beak-wetting are their secret ways of communication.

It’s good to be a Grifter.

Grifterism exists by, for, and because of the Grifters. The Grifter class allows the Billionaires, the Productives, and the Dependents to exist, but only so long as they provide the resources necessary for the Grifters to thrive. Understanding this system—and the fact that the system is almost exclusively the province of Democrats—perfectly explains why Elon Musk and DOGE are treated as existential threats by Democrats. That is because Elon Musk and DOGE are, in fact, existential threats to Democrats. If Grifterism unravels, so do the lifestyle, beliefs, and lifelong motivations of most Democrats. Democrats treat DOGE as a life-or-death matter. Patriotic Americans should do the same. Unraveling Grifterism is the essential act in making America great again, and vocal, robust support for DOGE is a task all patriotic Americans should embrace. Grifterism must end if we are ever to be truly free, and if we are ever to have small, non-intrusive government and genuine economic opportunity, Grifterism must be extinguished as the metastasizing cancer that it is.

*  *  *

Cynical Publius is the nom de plume of a retired U.S. Army colonel, veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, and reformed denizen of the Pentagon (where Grifterism still thrives) who is now a practicing corporate law attorney. You can follow Cynical Publius on X at @CynicalPublius.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 17:00

Jeffrey Epstein Victim Says She's In Renal Failure, Has 'Four Days To Live'

Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, 41, says she's got 'days to live' - writing on Instagram that she's in renal failure as a result of injuries sustained after a collision with a bus.

Virginia Giuffre via Instagram

"This year has been the worst start to a new year, but I won’t bore anyone with the details but I think it important to note that when a school bus driver comes at you driving 110km as we were slowing for a turn that no matter what your car is made of it might as well be a tin can," she wrote on Sunday.

"I’ve gone into kidney renal failure, they’ve given me four days to live, transferring me to a specialist hospital in urology. I’m ready to go, just not until I see my babies one last time, but you know what they say about wishes."

Her father, Sky Roberts, responded to her post: "Virginia my daughter, I love you and praying for you to get the correct treatment to live a long and healthy life. If there is anything in this world I can do to help you, please let me know. My spirit with you now and holding your hand."

According to Sky, a retired engineer living in Floriday, Virginia is "suffering."

Giuffre's representative, Dini von Meuffling, "Virginia has been in a serious accident and is receiving medical care in the hospital. She greatly appreciates the support and well wishes people are sending."

As one of the most prominent Epstein victims, Giuffre has been speaking out for years about her sexual abuse at the hands of Epstein and friends. In 2021, she filed a civil lawsuit in New York against Prince Andrew, who she accused of rape. She also said that Epstein's 'madam' Ghislaine Maxwell had trafficked her to London to have sex with Andrew when she was 17. She agreed to an out-of-court settlement with Andrew in 2022 - which is believed to be in the millions of dollars, while Andrew - who's denied all allegations, has been forced to step down from royal duties (since the rest of the royal family totally aren't longstanding uncaught pedophiles).

Prince Andrew, Virginia Giuffre, Ghislaine Maxwell

Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking following her 2021 conviction. Following the settlement, Giuffre retreated from public life and moved to Perth, Australia with her husband Robert and their three children - though recent reports suggest that she and her husband have become estranged.

*  *  *

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 16:40

Too Many Uncomfortable Things Are Converging...

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“The current conflict between Europe and America is not reducible towards contrasting approaches towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” 

- Frank Furedi on Substack

“Contrary to Western media's trash talk, Russian military has not been degraded. If anything, it has been significantly upgraded.” 

- Alex Krainer

You’re going to see what a truly consequential span of weeks, looks like, as Western Civ goes into full churn on April’s doorstep. 

Remember, TS Eliot called it the “cruelest month.” 

Too many uncomfortable things are converging, too many ongoing operations are unwinding, too many tensions are breaking.

The conclusion of “Joe Biden’s” Ukraine War fiasco looms. You can tell because The New York Times published a gigantic piece Sunday detailing how the Pentagon and the CIA actually ran all of Ukraine’s tactical operations out of a base in Wiesbaden, Germany — after building a colossal Ukraine war machine post our 2014 color revolution in Kiev. Since the very start of the hot war in 2022, we did all the targeting for the weapons we gave them and planned their every move. What a surprise! (Not.)

The motive behind all that, as conceived by US neo-cons and NATO neo-morons, was to “weaken” Russia, bust it up, and seize its resources. All the sanctions piled on only induced Russia into an import-replacement campaign that actually strengthened its economy, while the war led to a revolution in Russian war-fighting tactics and advanced weaponry. Now, the whole thing is ending in Ukraine’s defeat and the West’s humiliation.

The Times could have published this in 2023-24, but it would have been a major embarrassment for “Joe Biden” and his shadow managers moving into the election. They put it out just now because the jig is up and the paper desperately needs to pretend that it’s ahead of events to preserve the last shreds of its credibility.

Mr. Trump, the uber-realist, knows that the Russians are going to roll up in Ukraine this spring and there is increasingly not much that can be done about that, except to try to put the best face on it — which is, that it wasn’t his war. As long as the coke freak Zelensky remains in charge, Ukraine will be negotiation-unworthy, as the Russian phrase goes. So, US-Russia peace talks were largely diplomatic showbiz. Both Putin and Mr. Trump were painfully aware of this, and hence, Mr. Trump’s latest performative bluster about “more sanctions” will probably not amount to anything.

And also hence, the synchronized idiocy on display in France, Germany, and the UK. They were all-in on the neo-con scheme that is now falling apart and its failure has driven them plumb crazy. As the US drops out of the stupid proxy war, they declare their intention to take it from here and go beat-up Russia. Their war-drums are teaspoons beating on so many quiches.

Soon-to-be chancellor Friedrich Merz proposes an 800-billion-Euro debt spree to finance the re-arming of Germany, which, just now, is utterly incapable of war. He is insane. 

German industry is collapsing from a lack of affordable natural gas (as arranged by “Joe Biden” blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, danke schön). Turning Volkswagen factories to missile production will not help the German people one bit. It probably will remind them about the Weimar hyper-inflation, though.

Macron pledges to put French boots on the ground in Ukraine. Ain’t gonna happen. 

Today, his stooge judiciary found political rival Marine LePen guilty of a Mickey Mouse offense in order to bar her from running against him in the next election. Ain’t gonna work. He will provoke the biggest national uprising since the Bastille. His government will be too busy putting down French Revolution 2.0 to play war games in history’s graveyard of armies. Maybe he’ll try nukes. I’m sure that’ll work — if you’re eager to see Russian hypersonic “hazelnuts” rain down on the Île-de-France.

And then, there is the amazing idiot PM Keir Starmer in the UK, calling on his “coalition of the willing” to step up and intervene in the lost cause that is Ukraine.

How many hands went up on that call? For practical purposes, the Brits have no war-fighting capacity whatsoever, and no resources for generating such capacity. And, anyway, they are facing some dreadful combo of a civil war / internal jihad against their own indigenous population, plus an economic collapse cherry-on-top.

In short, Europe has so many incipient existential problems that the whole story is about to shift its focus from the already-sealed fate of Ukraine to the very dark prospects for the core nations of Old-World Western Civ. 

I wouldn’t plan a vacation there this year.

Meanwhile, expect a pile-up of consequence in our own sore-beset USA in the upcoming cruelest month. Today, the DOGE team visits the CIA. It could spell an end to decades of mad frolics emanating from that gigantic black box of black ops. Director John Ratcliffe has cordially invited Mr. Musk’s technicians and he is probably eager to discover exactly what mischief has been hidden from him by the immense, secretive, foul bureaucracy he lately assumed command over.

The Epstein materials recently recovered out of the FBI’s rogue New York offices of the agency are considered so critical by Director Patel that he assigned 1000 agents to review and process the docs full-time. That includes redacting names of many additional sex-trafficked children. Expect to see the release of a lot of that in the next thirty days with dire reverberations in the celebrity realms of politics, finance, and showbiz.

JudgeGate is moving toward its climax at the same time. Tuesday this week, Rep. Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on the DC circuit’s lawfare offensive against Mr. Trump’s executive authority. It would be nice to hear from DC district judges James Boasberg, Amy Berman Jackson, Tanya Chutkan, Beryl Howell, and Amir Ali, who have been zealously active in what looks like a coordinated lawfare campaign against the chief executive. Norm Eisen is not a judge, but he is the central conductor of the lawfare orchestra, and he has a bit of ‘splainin’ to do. One can even imagine something like a RICO referral emerge from that rather brazen operation. Anyway, the whole matter is going to land in the Supreme Court before April is out.

Also expect a lot of movement in the Covid-19 story coming out of the newly-reorganized CDC, NIH, FDA, NIAID, and other corners of the public health bureaucracy. Evidence is piling up fast of tragic and awful blowback from the Covid vaccine. There is too much to be ignored any longer and momentous decisions must follow, starting with taking the Pfizer and Moderna shots off-line. The entire regime of data collection, processing, and public release is about to change and the nation will be shocked by what gets disclosed.

Then there are the financial markets. 

They do not like the kind of shifts in public perception that return of consequence must bring. Gold alone is sending out a very vivid distress signal for everything else pretending to be an asset or a form of collateral. The equity markets have been wobbling for weeks. Look out below as the Easter eggs roll.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 16:20

META Accused Of Using Pirated Books To Train AI

Mark Zuckerberg is back in the hot seat, this time facing explosive allegations that Meta deliberately swiped millions of books from notorious digital pirate sites LibGen and Anna's Archive to train its cutting-edge AI model, Llama 3.

According to recently filed court documents, Meta executives were allegedly openly discussing their desperate need for high-quality content, acknowledging in a damning email, "Books are actually more important than web data." To that end, the company allegedly turned straight to piracy hubs stacked high with stolen literary treasures - without a second thought or a single cent paid to their rightful owners, according to Forbes.

Meta staff turned to LibGen, home to more than 7.5 million pirated books and 81 million stolen research papers, to fill that gap. They did the same with Anna’s Archive.

...

In recently filed court documents, Meta, led by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is alleged to have deliberately and explicitly authorized a raid on LibGen—and Anna's Archive, another massive digital pirate haven—to train its latest AI model, Llama 3.

The fallout has infuriated authors worldwide whose life's work may have been quietly scooped up and fed into Zuckerberg’s latest technological brainchild without credit, consent, or compensation.

As the article notes, Meta’s 2024 financial statements showcase revenues topping a staggering $164 billion, with profits nearing $62 billion. Clearly, Meta had the means and muscle to fairly compensate creators, publishers, and researchers. Instead, they allegedly chose to steal that content for training purposes.

Critics argue this saga is more than just corporate greed;

They might even have acted as the leader in LLM input data and created licensed arrangements that respected an author’s rights. Imagine if the company had the corporate culture to be a leader on one of society’s latest and most important questions: Who owns content in the LLM?

Coincidentally, Meta's "focus on long-term impact" core value states: "We emphasize long-term thinking that encourages us to extend the timeline for the impact we have, rather than optimizing for near-term wins."

It seems very clear that Meta was indeed optimizing for near-term wins in this case, instead of outlining a corporate culture and leadership position of collaboration and authenticity.

Meta’s defense, meanwhile, leans on the "fair use" argument - suggesting their AI transforms stolen content into something sufficiently new. But legal experts stress fair use typically applies to educators, reviewers, and critics - not trillion-dollar tech giants profiteering off mass commercial data harvesting.

The author of the Forbes piece checked The Atlantic's Alex Reisner’s LibGen tracking tool and made a disturbing discovery: all five of their own published books were found pirated and included in Meta’s dataset.

Why isn’t this criminal copyright infringement? https://t.co/hkZeYxlkJJ

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) March 31, 2025

A major class-action lawsuit has been filed alleging copyright infringement and unfair competition - while other firms "are likely guilty of similar sins," according to the author.

Ultimately, this saga goes beyond Meta alone. The entire AI industry’s insatiable thirst for data urgently needs clear ethical guardrails. Tech giants must form sustainable, fair partnerships with content creators or risk stifling creativity, undermining intellectual property rights, and eroding public trust.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 15:20

Trump Fires Hundreds Of Bureaucrats At Failed Institute Of Peace

Authored by Luis Cornelio via Headline USA,

The Trump administration has fired nearly half the bureaucrats at the obscure—and infamously named—U.S. Institute of Peace, as part of DOGE’s effort to cut government waste and reduce the size of the federal government. 

The mass firings, estimated to have affected between 200 and 300 workers and described by staffers as a “Friday night massacre,” came two weeks after President Donald Trump removed the agency’s president, Lise Grande. 

According to the liberal Washington Post, the Trump administration offered generous severance packages and an extra month of health insurance in exchange for workers signing agreements not to sue the government.  

The agreements are likely intended to avert additional lawsuits by bureaucrats attempting to force taxpayers to continue funding their salaries. 

What the U.S. Institute of Peace actually does was relatively unknown until it became a target of Trump’s downsizing efforts two weeks ago. 

Created by Congress in 1984, the self-described “nonpartisan” organization claimed via its Facebook page that it is “dedicated to protecting U.S. interests by helping to prevent violent conflicts and broker peace deals abroad.” 

It is unclear how USIP’s work differs from that of the already enormous Department of State and its global bureaucracy. 

“We put mediators in place to help stitch these communities back together,” an anonymous USIP employee told The Washington Post. 

“So it does have a dramatic effect on violence on the ground immediately by just pulling these assets out.” 

As recounted by the liberal newspaper, USIP attempted to challenge the White House’s authority to investigate its programs or fire workers, similar actions taken by the now-defunct U.S. Agency for International Development. 

USIP and members of the board filed a federal lawsuit, claiming that the executive branch lacks authority to shut down its operations because they were created by Congress. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 15:00

Trump Warns Iran Of Unprecedented Bombing Campaign If Nuke Deal Not Reached

Sunday saw more threats directed at Iran by President Trump. He told NBC News in a phone interview, "If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before." This is the most explicit and direct threat yet, after similar rhetoric from the White House last week. Three weeks ago President Trump sent a letter to Iran's Supreme Leader, urging fresh negotiations toward a new nuclear deal. 

In that letter, which the Iranians only much belatedly acknowledged, Trump had issued a two-month deadline for Iran to sign a new deal, warning that if not then Tehran could face military action. Axios and other outlets have highlighted the movement of B-2 stealth bombers in the Indian Ocean, connected with the warnings issued to Iran:

In recent days, the U.S. military sent several B-2 stealth bombers to the Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean in a deployment a U.S. official said was "not disconnected" from Trump's two-month deadline.

Donald Trump & Masoud Pezeshkian, file images

The same report notes, "The B-2 bombers can carry huge bunker buster bombs that would be a key element in any possible military action against Iran's underground nuclear facilities."

But the Islamic Republic has also long maintained underground 'missile cities'. The immense size of these underground complexes would make it nearly impossible to take out all of Iran's ballistic missile capabilities without an intense, sustained war.

If a new major war in the Middle East kicked off under the Trump administration, it would become deeply unpopular even among the conservative base. The public is generally war-weary, which is also why Trump is pushing hard for peace in Ukraine.

Any new US bombing campaign in Iran could also complicate US efforts for peace in Ukraine, further as in parallel the US tries to keep the Abraham Accords in the Middle East alive.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has responded to these new Trump threats, saying Sunday that any future diplomatic discussion depends on Washington's behavior. 

"While Iran’s response rules out the possibility of direct talks between the two sides, it states that the path for indirect negotiations remains open," he said. "As we have stated before, Iran has never closed the channels of indirect communication. In its response, Iran reaffirmed that it has never shied away from engaging in negotiations, but rather, it has just been the United States’ repeated violations of agreements and commitments that have created problems on this path," Pezeshkian added.

That's when the Iranian leader emphasized, "It’s the behavior of the Americans that will determine whether the negotiations can move forward." Iran has distrusted the Americans ever since Trump pulled out of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal in April 2018. Currently Iran is only offering 'indirect' talks on the nuclear issue.

Lately the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has described that the Islamic Republic's current stockpile of 60% enriched uranium - if enriched to 90% - would be enough to produce six nuclear bombs.

Trump has recently brought back 'maximum pressure' on Iran, and has even this week advanced the possibility of cracking down on sanctions-busting Iranian oil exports on the high seas, using naval intervention. Clearly this is part of the big stick package of actions meant to push Tehran to the table. And now he's talking secondary tariffs on Iranian oil as well.

An earlier Fox News interview in February marked the point at which Trump first laid out that Iran has two choices. "Everybody thinks Israel with our help or our approval will go in and bomb the hell out of them," Trump had said at the time while discussing potential Israeli military action against Tehran.

"I would prefer that not happen. I'd much rather see a deal with Iran where we can do a deal, supervise, check it, inspect it," the president had emphasized.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 14:40

Economic Pain? Market Concerns About the US Economy May Be Exaggerated

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

A correction in equity markets tends to generate an immediate negative reaction from citizens, citing political headlines about tariffs and trade as the reasons for equity volatility. However, if markets were scared about the US economy, German and Japanese sovereign bonds would not have declined. Furthermore, at the close of this article, 493 stocks in the S&P 500 are flat in the first quarter despite having reached all-time highs in 2024 and all the negative headlines of 2025.

The Bloomberg US Large Cap Index, excluding the magnificent seven, is flat year-to-date. It seems that we are living a normal correction after a massive bull run in the past five years, coming from expectations of persistent inflation and fewer rate cuts. That is why German and Japanese sovereign bonds, historically the beneficiaries in a risk-off scenario, are weak.

Consensus estimates of recession probability have risen to 30%, which is the same level reached in October 2024 and significantly below the 65% probability expected in April 2023. Furthermore, recession probability in the United States, according to Bloomberg, is currently the same as in the euro area. Deloitte and Coutts predict continued GDP growth in 2025, and the Federal Reserve states that the U.S. economy is expected to grow at around 1.8% this year. Understandably, many investors may be concerned about the headlines and believe that these estimates will be downgraded. However, if we look at leading indicators, the vast majority point to expansion.

The Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI), which measures U.S. economic activity and inflationary pressures, rose to +0.18 in February 2025, up from -0.08 in January, which indicates that economic activity is higher than its historical trend. Furthermore, the S&P Global U.S. Composite PMI, which measures private sector activity across manufacturing and services, signalled expansion and rose to 53.5 in March 2025, up from February’s 51.6, the strongest growth since December 2024. Not all is positive, because the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index fell sharply in March 2025, dropping to 92.9, its lowest level in over four years, but far away from the levels seen in previous severe downturns, 87.1 during the pandemic and 26.9 in the 2008 crisis.

Job creation remains strong, and the U.S. March nonfarm payrolls are expected to increase by 133,000, with Bloomberg Economics increasing the estimate to 200,000. Furthermore, 2025 should bring a year of average real wage growth.

What are the main concerns from investors? Cutting spending and tariffs. However, reducing government spending is essential to reduce inflation and slash the deficit. In 2024, government spending rose by 10%, a completely abnormal figure that elevated the federal deficit to almost $2 trillion, leaving the U.S. economy with the worst GDP growth adjusted for debt accumulation since the 1930s. This unsustainable spending and indebtedness path was leading America to a debt and inflation crisis. Inflation was caused by elevated government spending leading to exceedingly high money supply growth and destruction of the purchasing power of the US dollar. The MIT concluded that federal spending was responsible for the 2022 spike in inflation and subsequent increases in government outlays and money supply growth perpetuated the inflationary pressures and created an unsustainable debt problem, with interest expenses rising to close to $1 trillion. With this trend, the US debt to GDP would rise from an alarming current 122.3% to 156% by 2055, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Thus, cutting government spending is essential to reduce inflation and avoid a debt crisis. A slowdown of GDP growth coming from a reduction in government spending is not a negative but a signal of strengthening of the productive economy.

Tariffs are a global concern. 

However, most investors seemed to be blissfully unaware of the enormous trade barriers and tariffs implemented by the European Union or China in recent years. Market participants seemed perfectly happy with rising tariffs and trade barriers against the United States from other nations. In the Trade Barrier Index, India, Russia, South Africa, Brazil and China appear as the worst nations in terms of barriers to trade. Furthermore, the European Union and China impose higher tariffs against the United States than the other way round, according to ING and Bank of America. Furthermore, markets reached all-time highs with Biden maintaining and increasing some of the tariffs that existed when he took office.

Tariffs do not cause inflation, as they do not generate an increase in the quantity of currency or the velocity of money. Tariffs are a tool to level the playing field and address the excessive trade deficit of the United States, which is not caused by competitive and open market means but due to all the barriers lifted against U.S. exporters in other nations. Many countries seem to have a view of free trade that means being able to sell as much as they want in the United States while, at the same time, placing increasingly tough trade barriers against U.S. exporters, including tariffs, legal limitations, and regulatory and fiscal burdens. The U.S. trade deficit has tripled from $43 billion in March 2020 to $131 billion in January 2025.

Markets may be spooked by tariffs, spending cuts and inflation concerns because those may mean less money supply and fewer rate cuts. However, tariffs are a negotiation tool aimed at improving the trade balance. Eliminating barriers and negotiating better terms is positive for all markets. Furthermore, the history of trade negotiations and the use of tariffs have proven to have a much smaller impact on the United States economy than initially feared. The 2016-2019 period also proves it. Furthermore, the United States economy is significantly more dynamic and powerful than many believe. Supply-side spending cuts and debt reduction, tax cuts and balancing trade are not negatives for the economy. They are all essential tools to recover real wages, financial strength, and a thriving productive sector.

Short-term pain for long-term gain.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 14:20

Novo Nordisk's Monthly Share Plunge Largest Since Dot Com Bust

Novo Nordisk A/S shares are on track for their steepest monthly decline since the Dot-Com bust as setbacks pile up for the Danish drugmaker. Weaker-than-expected demand for Wegovy and Ozempic, disappointing mid-stage trial results for its weight-loss pill monlunabant, and poor data from another experimental shot, CagriSema, have heavily weighed on Novo share price since last June. Adding to the pressure is a broader downturn in biotech, fueled partly by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s leadership at Health and Human Services to reform the captured federal agency.

Shares in Copenhagen are on track to close down around 27% for the month—marking their worst monthly performance since June 2002, during the aftermath of the Dot-Com bust.

Shares have been nearly halved (-54%) since peaking at around 1,000 Danish kroner in June 2024. 

Adding context to the softening demand for obesity drugs, Morgan Stanley analyst Thibault Boutherin recently noted, "Wegovy US prescriptions data track below consensus expectations and guidance, with Eli Lilly winning share and Novo total prescriptions and starting dose prescriptions flat." 

Janus Henderson analyst Luyi Guo told clients, "There have been a lot of little hits to confidence," adding, "I definitely don't think that Novo is a disaster like how the stock has behaved. But people have started to question its pre-eminent growth story." 

On Monday, Barclays analyst Emily Field lowered her US Wegovy and Ozempic sales forecast, telling clients: "Scripts did not grow to the extent we needed them to meet our forecasts." 

Bloomberg data shows that Wall Street analysts are mostly bullish, with about 70% "Buys," 8.8% "Sells," and 20.6% "Holds" on Novo shares. 

Meanwhile, Goldman's GLP-1 Winner Basket has tumbled over the last year, down about 25%, reflecting the deflating obesity drug bubble and RFK Jr. at HHS. GLP-1 Loser Basket averages +10%. 

It certainly sounds like Novo super bull, Goldman's James Quigley, is continuing to cover the stock...

After plunging 50%, the question now is when Novo becomes a buying opportunity. It's definitely one to watch.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 14:00

Peak Permian? Geology And Water Say We're Close

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

• Some areas in the Permian have hit geological limits while others, yet to be drilled, are not expected to be as prolific as the prime Tier 1 acreage.

• Despite record U.S. crude oil production, limits to growth have started to emerge.

• In the Permian, the gas-to-oil ratio (GOR) has steadily risen from 34% of total production in 2014 to 40% in 2024.

After more than a decade of relentless drilling in the top U.S. oil-producing basin, the Permian, some areas have hit geological limits while others, yet to be drilled, are not expected to be as prolific as the prime Tier 1 acreage that producers have started to exhaust.

Top executives at major shale firms have already expressed opinions that Permian oil production could hit its peak as early as the end of this decade.

To be sure, crude oil output in the top basin continues to rise, but growth has slowed since 2022—not only because producers restrain capex and don’t drill themselves into oblivion.

Higher gas-to-oil ratio and water-to-oil ratio in the Permian suggest that some formations in the basin are reaching geological constraints, and more drilling isn’t necessarily proportionate to the oil volumes produced.

The Permian still leads U.S. oil production growth and will do so in the coming years, forecasters including the Energy Information Administration (EIA) say.

Total U.S. crude oil production is expected to average 13.61 million bpd this year, rising to 13.76 million bpd next year, according to the EIA’s latest Short-Term Energy Outlook. 

Despite record U.S. crude oil production, limits to the growth have started to emerge, executives acknowledge.

Vicki Hollub, the chief executive of Occidental Petroleum, said at the CERAWeek conference early this month, “We think that between 2027 and 2030 it's likely that the U.S. will see peak production, and after that some decline.”

Ryan Lance, CEO at ConocoPhillips, expects U.S. oil production to plateau this decade and remain flat for an undefined period of time after 2030.

“It’s going to be a slow decline beyond that because there’s a lot of resource” left to drill, Lance told the CERAWeek conference.

However, what’s left to drill may not be as oil-yielding as the best Permian locations, which were the first to be tapped by drillers.

Production of associated natural gas from the Permian, the Eagle Ford, and the Bakken oil wells has surged over the past decade, the EIA says.

In the Permian, the gas-to-oil ratio (GOR) has steadily risen from 34% of total production in 2014 to 40% in 2024.

Pressure within the reservoir declines as more oil is brought to the surface, which allows more natural gas to be released from the geologic formation. The pressure will also decrease as more wells are concentrated within an area, the EIA says.

Another ratio is even more suggestive of the Permian oil wells and the operating costs for drilling wells—produced water.

The water-to-oil ratio in the Permian is much higher than in other basins. On average, four barrels of water are produced for each barrel of oil, according to data from oilfield water analytics firm B3 Insight cited by Reuters.

While the Permian crude production is set to exceed 6.5 million bpd in 2025, up from more than 6 million bpd in 2024, the basin “is simultaneously generating an unprecedented volume of produced water—a costly and complex byproduct of hydrocarbon extraction,” B3 Insight said this week.

Crude-focused wells in the Permian account for the vast majority of the produced water generated in the leading U.S. shale plays, analysts at RBN Energy said last year.

The higher produced water ratio will ultimately drive costs for oil producers higher, according to Shannon Flowers, director of crude and water marketing at Coterra Energy.

“There are only so many places to drill, inject and frac, and as that goes down, you still have to find a home for the rest of your produced water,” Flowers told Reuters.

Higher costs to dispose of, reuse, or recycle produced water isn’t good news for U.S. oil producers who are already concerned with the U.S. Administration’s preference of a $50 a barrel oil price.

“There cannot be "U.S. energy dominance" and $50 per barrel oil; those two statements are contradictory. At $50-per-barrel oil, we will see U.S. oil production start to decline immediately and likely significantly (1 million barrels per day plus within a couple quarters),” an executive at an exploration and production firm wrote in comments to the Dallas Fed Energy Survey for the first quarter of 2025.

“The U.S. oil cost curve is in a different place than it was five years ago; $70 per barrel is the new $50 per barrel,” the executive noted.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 13:40

Capping Carbon Admissions: Biden Administration Accused Of Burying Conflicting Climate Change Report

Authored by Jonathan Turley via jonathanturley.org,

There is a major story developing on Capitol Hill after House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer, R-Ky, revealed that a long-withheld report from the Biden Administration directly contradicted the claims of climate change used to limit increased U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. The suggestion is that this was an knowing effort to cap carbon admissions rather than carbon emissions.

The impact that new U.S. LNG exports have on the environment and the economy was reviewed by U.S. Energy Department scientists and completed by September 2023. It appears that neither President Biden nor Secretary Jennifer Granholm liked the science or the conclusions. Rather than “follow the science,” they buried the report while allegedly making claims directly refuted by their own experts.

The report was finished while Biden was still running for reelection and would have likely enraged environmentalists. The draft study, “Energy, Economic, and Environmental Assessment of U.S. LNG Exports,” found that, under all modeled scenarios, an increase in U.S. LNG exports and natural gas production would not change global or U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. It further found that it would not increase energy prices for consumers.

Biden and Granholm reportedly buried the report and then announced a pause on all new U.S. LNG export terminals in January 2024, citing the danger to environmental and economic impacts.

Comer’s office told Fox News Digital that DOE repeatedly declined to provide this study to the House Oversight Committee or comply with other requests for information.

What is most concerning is that our LNG exports help reduce the dependence on Russia and would have decreased the revenues to that country to support its war in Ukraine. However, critics charge that Biden ignored the national security and economic benefits. Supporters note that we still exported a massive amount of LNG.

When the U.S. ramped up exports to Europe, progressive Democrats like Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., went ballistic. This appears to have worked in shelving the study while slowing demands for further increases.

The Biden Administration later released data in December 2024 suggesting that a rise in exports could cause consumer prices to rise by as much as 30%.

There are obviously two sides to this debate. The problem is that it seems that only one side was allowed to be publicly presented by the delay in the release of the study.

* * *

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Click pic... add to cart... (buy 2 for free shipping)... enjoy Multitool! Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 13:05

This Is The Last Thing Hillary Clinton Should Be Talking About…

Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news,

Presidential loser Hillary Clinton, who was found to have used a personal email address for government communications, is definitely the last person who should be commenting on the leaked Signal group chat between Trump officials, but she just couldn’t keep her trap shut.

As we highlighted, the story was a nothing burger that Democrats desperately tried to jump on unsurprisingly given that they have absolutely nothing else going for them.

But the most hilarious development to come out of this is Hillary mounting her high horse and declaring how sacred national security materials are.

Clinton had the audacity to splurge her mind matter all over The New York Times opinion page, shamelessly proclaiming “It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity.”

It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity. https://t.co/mfGQvtkHxj

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 28, 2025

X comments are closed…obviously.

Hillary sardonically blathers “We’re all shocked — shocked! — that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws.”

She adds, “But we knew that already. What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.”

First of all, there were no “military plans,” as Pete Hegseth has pointed out. Democrats are pathetically clutching at straws.

Secondly, this is coming from the woman who used her own email server to share classified communications.

This is the bleach bit lady, who when asked by reporters if she had indeed wiped all her emails to get rid of the evidence, sarcastically responded “Like with a cloth?”

Remember when Hillary Clinton was caught with over 31,000 government emails on an illegal private server?

And when she was asked if she deleted the evidence, she joked “what like with a cloth or something?”

No FBI raid on her house & no DOJ indictment

pic.twitter.com/ESQYfrK250

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) June 9, 2023

Hillary Clinton weighing in on “Signalgate?”

Fmr. CIA Analyst @TPASarah thinks that’s pretty rich.

The difference is… pic.twitter.com/AGPuXL9tto

— Chanel Rion OAN (@ChanelRion) March 30, 2025

And she’s talking about “hypocrisy.”

Hillary Clinton just published an op-ed in the NYT slamming Trump

Her opening salvo is about the Signal debacle

This is coming from the woman that insisted on using her own private email server which was hacked

Immediate hypocrisy, as always pic.twitter.com/BhNkQd82rF

— Shaun Maguire (@shaunmmaguire) March 29, 2025

Yeah, maybe you should sit this one out Hilary. Sit right at the end of a long long table and shut all the way the hell up.

Crooked Hillary had 22 top secret emails on her Gmail account alone. https://t.co/U7Pm8TjhA5

— House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority (@HouseForeignGOP) March 29, 2025

Crooked Hillary had 22 top secret emails on her Gmail account alone. https://t.co/U7Pm8TjhA5

— House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority (@HouseForeignGOP) March 29, 2025

Crooked Hillary had 22 top secret emails on her Gmail account alone. https://t.co/U7Pm8TjhA5

— House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority (@HouseForeignGOP) March 29, 2025

Crooked Hillary had 22 top secret emails on her Gmail account alone. https://t.co/U7Pm8TjhA5

— House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority (@HouseForeignGOP) March 29, 2025

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 12:25

Watch: Elon Musk & DOGE Official Expose "Disturbing" Social Security Fraud Involving Illegals

Ahead of Tuesday's pivotal election in Wisconsin—which will determine whether conservatives or liberals control the state's Supreme Court—Elon Musk's America PAC hosted a town hall to rally support for conservative candidate Brad Schimel. The event covered several topics, including an update on DOGE-related efforts in the corrupt DC Swamp.

Forty-two minutes into the online town hall—streamed on X and other social media platforms—Musk welcomed Antonio Gracias, founder and CEO of the Chicago-based growth equity firm Valor Equity Partners. Gracias has been leading DOGE efforts to uncover fraud and waste in Social Security. 

Musk told the audience with Gracias on stage that DOGE found "20 million dead people marked as alive... Social Security database, this is too crazy, and then you'll notice there's a strange trend here."

At that moment, Musk and Gracias turned their backs to the audience to explain a graph projected on the wall titled "New Non-Citizen Social Security Numbers Issued. "

Gracias told the audience, "We started at the top of the system—mapping the whole system of Social Security to understand where all the fraud was—and there were a lot of great people there who showed us, um, really a lot of waste, and so that came with a big list of stuff. But this is what jumped out at us. When we saw these numbers ... we were like, what is this? In 2021, you see 270,000 people go all the way to 2.1 million in 2024. These are non-citizens that are getting Social Security numbers." 

Musk said this chart "was mind-blowing ..." 

Gracias followed that up with: "This literally blew us away. Like we went there to find fraud, and we found this by accident - and this isn't political, by the way - my parents are immigrants - uh yeah, this country has been great to us. My brothers and sister were all born in Spain. I'm pro legal immigration. This is not political. This is about America and the future of America, and there are a lot of good people in the system who pointed us in this direction. I want to honor them right now who work in the government today, who took risks to show us these numbers and tell us what's going on. I want to stop for a minute. I want to honor those people today - very good people. I have been from DC to Social Security offices and to the border to track this down, and very good people have helped us along the way. I want to thank them."

He explained, "This number - what is when you come in the country if you're an illegal, uh there's a couple ways come in - you can go through a Port of Entry and you can tell them you're afraid and you'll get an asylum case and you'll get an interview then you get in - that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is to go to the border - literally, this happened. I talked to the border patrol myself.  Elon was there too. I went to Laredo, and you walked up to a border portal officer and told them you wanted to come. They have a couple of choices. They could charge you with a misdemeanor or a felony under 1325 or they can make an administrative offense like a parking ticket basically, they were told to do that make an administrative offense under the last Administration and then you go walk across the border they uh do what's called a release from your own recognizance and they give you an NTA (notice to appear) which to appear at a judge the weight times on judges are like average six years -look at Grok-you'll see it on immigration judges - there's only 700 of them this is 5.5 million people." 

"Next, once you're in the country and you got asylum through one of these pathways we mapped the whole thing out - you can apply for a work document - you file a 765 - it's the work form - you get this form called the 766 - that's the authorization - and then Social Security Administration automatically sends you in the mail your social security number - no interview no ID," Gracias explained further. 

Musk chimed in: "Just reiterating, sometimes people think that Biden was asleep at the switch. But this was a massive large-scale program to import as many illegals as possible ultimately to change the entire voting map of the United States and disenfranchise the American people and make it a permanent deep blue one-party state, from which there would be no escape." 

Gracias emphasized that "defaults in the system from Social Security to all of the benefit programs have been set to Max inclusion - max pay - for these people and Minimum Collection - that's what's happening. We found that 1.3 million of them are already on Medicaid. And the 5 million of them on benefit programs." 

"What was really disturbing us was why. We're asking ourselves why, and so we actually just took a sample and looked at voter registration records and we found people here registered to vote in this population - yes - and we found some by sampling some that did vote. And we have referred them to prosecution at the homeland security investigation," Gracias said, adding, "Truly disturbing thing to me and the darkest thing about this to me uh the voter fraud is terrible but the human tragedy this created is extraordinary. Americans need to know - that's why I'm here - that human traffickers made 13 to 15 billion dollar off of this - that's the money that's going around the world moving people around the world to our borders because of these incentives." 

Elon Musk exposes massive social security fraud with non citizens receiving a social security number

Why would anyone be against eliminating fraud like this in government? pic.twitter.com/dSwUTbcbQg

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 31, 2025

Last month, Musk summed up why the Democratic Party and corrupt NGOs, along with far-left globalist billionaires, facilitated the illegal alien invasion:

"The REAL reason so many Democrats are upset about entitlements (social security, medical, etc) fraud investigations is that they are using your taxpayer money as handouts to attract and retain ILLEGAL immigrants. Their future voters." 

The REAL reason so many Democrats are upset about entitlements (social security, medical, etc) fraud investigations is that they are using your taxpayer money as handouts to attract and retain ILLEGAL immigrants. Their future voters.

That’s what it’s all about.

Truth.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2025

At the same time, the Democratic Party and their globalist billionaire allies prioritized their desire for more power over the nation, which triggered alarming national security and biosecurity threats.

In response to the Democratic Party's illegal alien invasion scheme, shadowy Marxist NGOs aligned with the woke party have launched firebombing attacks against Elon Musk's Tesla showrooms, charging stations, and vehicles across the country—all in retaliation for DOGE exposing this massive fraud.

Time for ...

Issuing social security numbers to illegal immigrants? This is one way they plan to circumvent E-verify.

By the way, E-verify is like Real-ID and the Patriot Act: another government checkpoint that will be used to further control law abiding citizens. https://t.co/ExlAbvbxgL

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 31, 2025

. . .

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 12:05

Are Used Car Prices Set To Soar Again?

Via Real InvestmentAdvice.com,

It wasn’t that long ago that used car prices were soaring as the production of new cars was crimped due to Covid-related supply line shortages. 

Since then, used car prices have stabilized as the supply lines have healed. 

However, like many goods, prices haven’t retreated to pre-pandemic levels. 

As we wrote in yesterday’s Commentary, the new 25% tariff on cars assembled outside the US could raise new car prices. 

JP Morgan thinks the impact could be 10% or more if the tariffs are fully passed on to consumers. 

Thus, those consumers unable or unwilling to pay a higher price may resort to purchasing a used car. 

Economists call this the substitution effect.

The market seems to think the tariffs will benefit used car suppliers. Per Bloomberg:

As of midday Thursday, shares of used-vehicle dealers CarMax Inc. and Carvana Co. were each modestly higher, while rental-car company Hertz Global Holdings Inc. soared as much as 27% to its best intraday gain in more than three years. GM, Ford, and Stellantis all fell.

While the supply lines are back to normal, the used car market is still short on supply. 

If demand for lower-end new models declines, as many of them are made outside of the US, used cars will likely be more in demand. 

Thus, their prices are likely to rise. 

Given the on-again, off-again nature of tariff announcements and actions, the net impact on new and used auto prices is unclear at this time.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 11:45

Cash-Strapped Aston Martin Sells Shares & F1 Racing Stake

Aston Martin shares in London soared as much as 13% after the British sports car maker announced it would raise at least £125 million ($162 million) through a share sale to Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll's investment vehicle and by selling a minority stake in its Formula One racing team.

Bloomberg reported that Stroll's Yew Tree Consortium plans to increase its stake in the struggling British luxury sports car maker to 33% from about 27.7%. The deal will provide Aston Martin with about £52.5 million. The new shares were priced at 70 pence apiece to Friday's closing price. 

Aston Martin CEO Adrian Hallmark released a statement stating, "This renewed support from Lawrence and his Yew Tree Consortium partners underlines their immense confidence in our team and the future of the Company." 

"By strengthening the balance sheet, this investment provides additional headroom to support our future product innovation and business transformation activities, which combined, will accelerate our progress into being a sustainably profitable company," Hallmark added.

Aston Martin also plans to sell a minority stake in the Formula One team that bears its name and raise an additional £74 million. The buyer was not disclosed. Stroll controls the racing team independently. 

The latest financial outlook from the sports car maker signaled lower volume guidance for 2025, citing trade wars and tariffs. The company now expects "modest growth," down from its previous target of mid-single-digit percentage growth. CEO Adrian Hallmark had already lowered the profit target for 2025 and slashed 170 jobs—about 5% of the workforce. 

Under British takeover rules, Stroll's Yew Tree Consortium would be required to bid for all of Aston Martin. However, AFP News noted, "Yew is asking for this to be waived." 

"Exemptions have been granted in the past, yet it feels like a takeover would be a better outcome as it would mean the car company would be free to pursue a turnaround strategy out of the public spotlight," AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould wrote in a note. 

Aston Martin has turned to investors multiple times, but with repeated profit warnings, a struggling race team, and now the impact of trade wars, the company has yet to initiate a meaningful turnaround strategy.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 11:15

Baffle 'Em With Bullshit 'Soft' Survey Data Continues As Tariff Terror Spreads

Another day, another set of mixed messaging from macro (soft survey) data...

On the bright side, MNI's Chicago Manufacturing PMI surged higher this morning as March data printed 47.6 (above expectations but still in contraction <50) - the highest since December 2023.

On the not so bright side, The Dallas Fed Manufacturing PMI survey tumbled to -16.3 (well below expectations) - the lowest since July 2024.

It gets better though...

While Chicago's data shows Prices Paid slowing, New Orders falling, and Inventories falling.

Dallas' data showed Prices Paid higher, New Orders higher, and Inventories rising...

The Dallas Fed outlook also tumbled as the comments from respondents was almost entirely focused on tariff fears...

• The tariff discussion is driving significant uncertainty and a negative outlook. Project costs are increasing immediately, with significant rises in equipment and piping costs.

• Tariffs and the economy may be a drag on business.

• Tariffs are a constant and increasing source of uncertainty. We do not know what prices we will have to pay for components, and we do not know how customers will respond to increases strictly related to tariffs. Also, it is unknown how the market will change in response to the tariffs and higher costs. We know we will lose opportunities to build products used for other countries because we already have, but will tariffs bring new opportunities from foreign companies wanting to build in the U.S.? That remains to be seen, but the known risk currently seems to outweigh the unknown opportunity.

• Trump, tariffs, massive uncertainty—how can you do business planning with all of this uncertainty and the daily changes in direction made by the Trump administration?

• The cyclical recovery looks like it is continuing. There is lots of noise and uncertainty with tariffs and rumors of trade restrictions.

• Our biggest concern is import taxes and the increase in price that it causes.

• We seem to be in a holding pattern. There's much uncertainty in our customer base. Tariffs will drive/have driven pricing up for raw materials at a rate far exceeding the true tariff implementation rate. There's optimism, but there's also an abundance of trepidation. Ultimately, we sense the underlying economy is stronger than the general public sentiment, so that should bode well for the last half of the year.

• Tariffs! We need to make decisions, but the ball is constantly moving. This is truly ridiculous. I have been in business for 50 years as of next year, and never have I seen such uncertainty in the market. It is very difficult to plan and make decisions.

• The craziness over tariffs is very painful as I'm confident this is a reason for a general malaise we are sensing in our customers. If not for some specific work we do this time of year, we would be stupid slow and in stark contrast to where we were 12 months ago. I'm very worried about what the next six to 12 months will look like, especially if these goofy tariffs become a reality.

• Uncertainty due to tariffs is the wild card. Imports from Mexico and Canada are vital to the business and the industry. U.S. suppliers cannot supply quantities required. The tariffs are definitely inflationary.

• The tariffs will loom large on our market demand. The commercial vehicle industry is still in a freight recession, which drives our overall demand.

We leave you with this final comment...

Despite all of the doomsaying in the press, we are not seeing any drop in orders. 

We have invested heavily in equipment and production capacity in the last 12 months and are seeing the benefits from that now. 

While a short recession is a possibility due to the reductions in government spending, we view this as a net positive for the economy and our business in the medium term.

Finally, we can focus on business rather than policy. It is great to get back to work.

So, who do we believe - Chicagoans or Texans?

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 11:00

Traders Are Liberating Themselves From Their Stock Holdings

By Bas van Geffen, CFA, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank

The United States’ ‘Liberation Day’ is just around the corner, but President Trump’s trade advisers are still rushing to finalize the set of reciprocal tariffs that the US president is so keen to announce. Last week, Trump seemed to suggest that his reciprocal tariffs could be lower and less extensive than he had flagged before. However, perhaps that was everyone misinterpreting the president’s words.

Over the weekend, Trump has reportedly complained to his staff that the tariffs should be higher and more extensive. Yesterday, Trump more or less confirmed this to the press, stating that his tariff announcement will include all countries, and not just the 10 or 15 with the biggest trade surplus versus the US. And so, a 20% universal tariff might be back on the table as one of the options.

And if anyone still thought that the inflationary effects might rein Trump in, think again. Referring to the recent introduction of tariffs on cars and car parts, the president explicitly stated that “he couldn’t care less” if this causes car prices to go up – refuting earlier reports that Trump had convened carmakers to warn them against raising prices. In fact, he’d welcome it if this means that people will start buying more American-made cars again. So, as the Trump administration prepares to “liberate” the country, traders are looking to liberate themselves from their equity holdings. The Nikkei 225 started the trading week with a 4% loss, and European equity markets open lower as well.

Trump intends to liberate the US, but his belligerence is also waking other leaders from their slumber. ECB President Lagarde said this morning that tariffs are a chance for Europe to show its own independence. That may require a vastly different Europe though. Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium and Member of the European Parliament, summarized it as follows: “To do this, 27 Commissioners, 27 Armies, 27 vetos, no single capital market, 3 Presidents, no single person to call in Europe... doesn’t make sense anymore! Europe must be reimagined.”

He may have a point, but that is probably still a step too far for many Europeans. Although the European Commission senses the urgency of a joint approach in areas like defense, the execution is so far being left to the national governments. Even issues like joint EU borrowing are still a no-go for several member states. And that could be detrimental to the plans.

Germany has been remarkably quick to embrace the need for higher defense spending. But that may thwart efforts elsewhere in Europe. The expected German issuance has not just pushed Bund yields higher; it has also increased the funding costs for other European nations. Countries with a high debt ratio, like Portugal, were already reluctant to spend more, because higher deficits may put their finances on an unsustainable path again. Higher interest rates only increase these concerns.

And EU countermeasures to Trump’s Liberation Day may further complicate the continent’s efforts. Brussels has all the tools to respond to US tariffs. And the tone of EU trade officials has hardened. However, if the European Union ‘demonstrates its independence’ by retaliating against any US tariffs, rising costs will only make it more difficult to achieve actual independence from the US. If Europe still gets that time in such a situation: Trump has demonstrated he is willing to use political and military means if the economic ones don’t work. Is Europe willing to risk losing the US security umbrella before it can rebuild its own?

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 10:45

Trump Says He Won't Fire Anyone Over Signal Chat Group Leak

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Donald Trump said on March 29 that he had no intention to fire anyone in his Cabinet after a journalist was accidentally added to a Signal group chat discussing his administration’s plans for an airstrike against the Houthis in Yemen.

President Donald Trump speaks to the press as he meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House on March 13, 2025. Seated from L to R, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and national security advisor Mike Waltz. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

“I don’t fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts,” Trump told NBC News in a phone interview on March 29.

On March 13, national security adviser Michael Waltz inadvertently added The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a Signal group text, called “Houthi PC small group,” of administration officials discussing the airstrike. Signal is an encrypted messaging service.

The veteran national security and foreign affairs journalist said he was at first skeptical of the authenticity of the group, discussing with colleagues whether the texts were “part of a disinformation campaign, initiated by either a foreign intelligence service, or, more likely, a media-gadfly organization” that sought to embarrass journalists.

After the leak, the National Security Council released a statement confirming the chat’s authenticity.

“At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” the statement read.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth discussed details in the chat of how the strike would commence. The Atlantic eventually published an article about the group chat.

On March 29, Trump said he still has confidence in both Waltz and Hegseth.

“I think it’s just a witch hunt, and the fake news, like you, talk about it all the time, but it’s just a witch hunt, and it shouldn’t be talked [about],” he added. “We had a tremendously successful strike. We struck very hard and very lethal. And nobody wants to talk about that. All they want to talk about is nonsense. It’s fake news.”

During a March 26 press briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated that Trump stands by his national security officials.

“What I can say definitively is what I just spoke to the president about, and he continues to have confidence in his national security team,” she said.

In his March 29 phone interview, Trump said that he has “no idea what Signal is” and doesn’t “care what Signal is.”

The Epoch Times has requested a full transcript of the call from NBC.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 10:25

Vaccine Stocks Tank, Moderna Craters After FDA Biologics Head Abruptly Steps Down

Vaccine stocks tumbled in the early U.S. cash session after Peter Marks—a top FDA regulator and pro-vaxxer—abruptly resigned on Friday.

Wall Street analysts view Marks' departure as a bearish signal for vaccine stocks, such as Moderna, Novavax, BioNTech, and others, which already face mounting headwinds, including a wave of layoffs expected at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Moderna puked at the open, down 12% in early trading, while the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF sank 2%. Other makers of vaccine stocks plunged, including Novavax -10% and BioNTech -5.8%.

Moderna shares are also down 95% from peak Covid highs.

Bloomberg provided color on Marks' role and how his departure is bearish for the industry: 

As the leader of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Marks was a key figure in the quick approvals of Covid vaccines during the pandemic. Along with shots, he was responsible for the agency's evaluation of cutting-edge treatments such as cell and gene therapies.

In his resignation letter, Marks cited friction with the views of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine critic.

"I was willing to work to address the Secretary's concerns regarding vaccine safety and transparency," he said. "However it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies."

Analysts—including BMO Capital Markets' Evan David Seigerman—view the departure as a "significant negative" for the biotech and biopharma sectors.

"It's no secret that Biotech has been under immense pressure recently given broader macro issues, this unfortunate update does nothing to reassure investors or provide relief," Seigerman told clients, adding that gene and cell therapy companies are under pressure given Marks' relationship with many of them. 

Here's further analyst insight into the change of guard at the FDA in the era of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running the Department of Health and Human Services (courtesy of Bloomberg):

William Blair, Matt Larew

• Expects in the space could weaken further given that Marks "was a cheerleader for innovation in biotech and strong supporter of new modalities"

• Says Marks's departure and the recently announced HHS cuts stack on top of "an unsettlingly large pile of news flow in the space year-to-date that creates uncertainty for funding, regulatory and approval processes, and supply chains"

• Adds that the steady stream of negative news flow "has simply been too much for stocks in the space to overcome

RBC Capital Markets, Brian Abrahams

• Says the news is not good for the biotech industry even beyond vaccines, as Marks had been a key advocate for more flexible, efficient approval processes for drugs particularly those for orphan diseases such as gene therapies

• "We expect some weakness for biotech as uncertainty continues to be perpetuated"

Truist, Joon Lee

• Says news of the resignation could put some pressure on companies whose drugs are currently, or planned to be, under review by the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research

Last week, Bloomberg reported that leaked documents reveal the Trump administration plans to slash $28 billion in global health initiatives—including funding cuts to Bill Gates' vaccine alliance, Gavi.

WINNING. President Trump has cancelled $1 BILLION to Bill Gates ‘GAVI Vaccine Alliance’…

“Bill Gates controls the WHO which mandates ‘vaccines’ for the entire World…” -HHS RFK Jr.pic.twitter.com/9Y4BCx1qhM

— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) March 30, 2025

Meanwhile...

• USAID Panic Mode: Bill Gates Goes On MSM, Bashes Musk's DOGE, Fear-Mongers About Next Pandemic

• Climate Group Controlled By Bill Gates Hit By Layoffs

. . .

Check out this ReadyWise go-bag... 25-year shelf life!

Click pic, grab one for each car. Sale ends 04/30 Tyler Durden Mon, 03/31/2025 - 10:05