Saylor's Strategy Treasury Back To Breakeven As Crypto Rips, StanChart Says $100k Bitcoin Year-End Call May Be 'Too Low'

Markets are reminding investors that volatility has two sides in digital assets.

As Standard Chartered's crypto guru, Geoffrey Kendrick, begins his latest note, we’ve been used to (earlier in 2026) prices falling sharply.

Now we are starting to see (only starting) what happens when prices rise sharply.

So far this week, Kendrick notes that we have mostly seen liquidation of short positions, as chart (source: Coinglass).

In fact if I look at the full history on Coinglass, this is the largest liquidation of BTC shorts ever (data back to June 2021)...

The good thing is that for long term investors BTC is a Giffin good (people want to buy more when prices go up).

As a result, ETF inflows have begun too... A little bounce, and the crowd rushes in:

Bitcoin biggest ETF inflows since May...

Ether biggest ETF inflows since January...

But, if we zoom out on ETFs, Kendrick says this pick up is small/just getting started.

At roughly USD1.5bn in inflows so far this week, this is good.

History shows that at some stage we will get a daily inflow of more than USD1bn (perhaps today).

The next point to note is that because crypto has lagged AI all year, open interest is very low.

As prices rise, interest in the asset class will rise too.

All of which leads to Kendrick's big line.

In a Feb. 12 report, Kendrick cut Standard Chartered’s year-end Bitcoin target to $100,000 from $150,000 and its Ether target to $4,000 from $7,500. At the time, he expected Bitcoin to fall to around $50,000 and Ether to $1,400 before recovering during the rest of the year.

Today, he write: “For the first time this year there is now a risk my end year forecast (of USD100k) is too low."

He is not alone.

As CoinTelegraph reports, other industry watchers have also pointed to signs that the bear market may be nearing an end.

Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten said Bitcoin may bottom in October, while 10x Research founder Markus Thielen said an August close above $63,000 could confirm a bear-market bottom.

New BTC buy wall sits below $68,000

CoinTelegraph goes on to note that amid misgivings over the durability of Bitcoin’s volatile upside move, analysis from onchain analytics platform Glassnode revealed a new safety net forming below $70,000.

Some 3.44 million BTC now have an onchain cost basis, also known as realized price, between $58,000 and $67,000. Of this, 2.23 million BTC - equal to around 11% of the total supply - was added over the past 11 weeks.

“It’s the densest cost-basis cluster below spot — a key potential support zone on any retracement,” Glassnode cofounder Rafael Schultze-Kraft commented on X.

Bitcoin UTXO realized price distribution data. Source: Rafael Schultze-Kraft on X.com

BTC/USD broke through several key resistance levels this week, including its 200-day simple moving average (SMA) at $68,967, a key target to reclaim to end the long-term BTC price downtrend.

Furthermore, Bitcoin's 20% surge in the last three days saw it reclaim a key level for Strategy, the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin treasury company.

Data from monitoring resource BitcoinTreasuries puts the cost basis for Strategy’s holdings of 840,447 BTC at $75,385, currently with a year-to-date gain of approximately $450 million.

As Cointelegraph reported, between Aug. 3 and Aug. 9, Strategy opted to sell a small portion of its treasury worth 1,690 BTC to repurchase 1.15 million shares of its STRC preferred stock for $108.6 million. The move represented the company’s fourth Bitcoin sale of 2026.

Concerns over the long-term viability of the company’s Bitcoin investment thesis accompanied the sales, something that the subsequent BTC price run-up should help alleviate, independent crypto analyst William Clemente suggested.

“Not only should Saylor/Strategy fears have been abated for a while once he showed that he was willing to sell BTC to rebuy STRC, but now after this price impulse they are even more over-collateralized by their BTC holdings,” he wrote on X, referring to former CEO Michael Saylor.

In an interview with Fox News earlier in August, current CEO Phong Le stated that Strategy would return to buying Bitcoin before the end of the year.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 14:45

Biden Adviser Warned Fauci, CDC Director Cloth Masks Didn't Work Well: Text

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

A doctor who advised President Joe Biden on COVID-19 warned Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top Biden administration officials in a newly disclosed text message that wearing cloth masks provided “very limited protection.”

Dr. Michael Osterholm, who was part of Biden’s COVID-19 transition advisory team, told Fauci and other officials, including the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time, in August 2021, that the government needed to encourage the wearing of N-95 masks, rather than masking in general.

“Note the very limited protection from face cloth coverings,” Osterholm said in the text. He said that he supported masking, “but we must be promoting the use of N-95s, even if not fit tested.”

The CDC recommended masking in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic started, prompting mask mandates in schools and other places. The agency promoted cloth masks, in addition to better quality face coverings, citing research it published in its quasi-journal.

Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, leading up to the 2021 text said publicly that cloth masks provided limited benefits and that he favored N-95s.

After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened to withhold funds from schools that forced masking on children, a reporter during a White House press briefing on Aug. 6, 2021, referenced Osterholm’s comments.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary at the time, noted that Osterholm was no longer a government adviser. She said the Biden administration was relying on medical experts in the federal government for masking. The issue with DeSantis, she added, was that the governor was “preventing schools and teachers and others from protecting themselves and the students in their classroom.”

Osterholm reacted by composing a message to Fauci, then-CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, and several others.

“I’m sending this via text messaging to avoid any FOIA issues,” he wrote on Aug. 8, 2021, referring to the Freedom of Information Act.

A former Fauci adviser just pleaded guilty to the federal crime of defrauding the government by destroying and conspiring to destroy federal records subject to the act, which lets people request government records.

Osterholm, in his message, pointed to a fact sheet from the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists that said with cloth masks, people had little protection against COVID-19.

He told the administration officials that “none of the studies that CDC uses to support its statement as to the significant protection of face cloth coverings stand up to scientific scrutiny” and urged them to “strongly promote” N-95s to the public.

“I am certain one day that one of the take-away findings of this pandemic was the constant [government] emphasis on masking while at the same time providing minimal guidance to the public what effective masking means,” he said.

The message was obtained by The Epoch Times from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who acquired it from the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency. The record was produced in response to Grassley’s requests for documents related to the origins of COVID-19, a spokeswoman said.

Osterholm, Walensky, and Fauci did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

Walensky through 2022 advised schools to keep mask mandates in place. Many states and districts throughout that year rolled back masking requirements. The CDC says on its website now that wearing a mask “offers you an extra layer of protection from respiratory illness” and that “cloth masks generally offer lower levels of protection to wearers.”

Ian Miller, author of “Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates,” wrote on X that the newly disclosed message showed that top experts “knew that cloth masks didn’t work and were already failing to stop or even slow transmission and they kept demanding more mask mandates and forced school and toddler masking anyway.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 14:05

FERC Approves SPP "Topology Optimization" Plan For Cutting Grid Congestion

By Ethan Howland of UtilityDive

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Wednesday approved the Southwest Power Pool’s proposal for using “topology optimization” to reduce grid congestion and its related costs.

Traditionally, grid operators respond to grid congestion by redispatching power plants, which can lead to higher production and congestion costs, SPP said in its May 21 proposal to FERC.

However, with grid-enhancing technologies, grid operators can use topology reconfiguration to change power flows as a less expensive way to handle congestion, according to SPP, which runs the grid in all or part of 17 states from north Texas to North Dakota.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Aug. 19, 2026, approved the Southwest Power Pool’s proposal for using “topology optimization” to reduce grid congestion, which could cut down on the amount of wind generation the grid operator curtails. Getty Images

Under SPP’s plan, market participants will be able to submit proposals for reconfigurations due to power plant outages or grid constraints, or the grid operator itself may offer a reconfiguration, according to SPP’s application at FERC.

SPP will analyze the potential reconfigurations to determine if the wholesale market as a whole will benefit from the reconfiguration, the grid operator said. SPP will also assess the reconfiguration’s effect on grid reliability before approving a change.

A study conducted by NewGrid, SPP and the Brattle Group found that historical system operating limit violations could be eliminated for 75% of the constraints that were analyzed, with potential congestion cost savings of $18 million to $44 million a year, the grid operator said.

In its application, SPP pointed to the Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s success with economic topology reconfiguration, which MISO started using in 2024. So far this year, MISO has saved $95 million through economic reconfigurations, according to an Aug. 18 staff presentation to the grid operator’s Reliability Subcommittee.

SPP’s plan was developed through its stakeholder process and supported at FERC by Advanced Energy United, the Working for Advanced Transmission Technologies Coalition, and a joint filing by Evergy, Enel North America and EDF Power Solutions.

SPP’s congestion costs averaged $1.6 billion a year over the last three years, Evergy, Enel and EDF noted, citing the grid operator’s market monitor’s most recent state of the market report.

Also, SPP averaged 1,382 MW of curtailed wind and solar resources throughout 2025, “representing cost increases for consumers and creating reliability risk due to potential generation shortfalls,” the companies said.

“Reconfigurations reliably reroute electric flow around congestion by opening or closing circuit breakers, and has afforded millions of dollars in congestion savings across MISO and SPP,” they said, adding that SPP already uses topology reconfigurations to manage reliability issues.

In separate concurring statements, FERC commissioners Judy Chang and David Rosner urged other grid operators to adopt topology optimization as a means for better managing power flows, including during extreme weather conditions.

“It is an example of the type of advanced transmission technologies that can readily help the U.S. power system quickly integrate more load and generation while reducing costs to all consumers,” Chang said.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is set to implement a topology optimization mechanism early next year, SPP noted.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 13:25

 

 

There has been a lot of discussion about the impact of AI slop on writing and other creative works. I can’t speak to AI music or AI-created actors, but I can talk a bit about writing.

To me, the biggest single issue is output over process.

Any output – from a full-length book to a short blurb and everything in between – is only part of what the writer who creates a work accomplishes. It is what readers see, what professional writers get paid for, and the written legacy they leave behind.

The greatest value in writing (to me at least) is not necessarily this finished product, but rather, the process the author goes through to create that work. Putting a word down on paper or pixels forces a coherence and clarity that is typically unavailable until the writing is done. Perhaps the best observation on this predates AI by decades and comes from former Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin, who said, “I write to figure out what I think…”1

The written word is the most visible work product, but it is not the valuable part of writing – the process is…

Boorstin viewed the act of writing not merely as a regurgitation of what they knew, but rather as an exploratory process, a mechanism for thinking about ideas, context, framing, secondary effects, unintended consequences, inversions, and what-ifs. The process allows an author to strengthen and clarify their arguments and to formulate complex ideas.

I could spill another 10,000 words on this, but after 30 years of writing countless blog posts, it is not necessary. I have already figured out what I think about this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

__________

The quote in full reads, “I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren’t open that early.”

The post The Written Word Is Not Your Work Product appeared first on The Big Picture.

Woman Charged In ISIS-Inspired Plot To Bomb NY State Capitol

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

FBI agents foiled an alleged ISIS-inspired bomb plot on the New York State Capitol on Aug. 19 that they say was concocted by a local woman who had pledged allegiance to the terrorist group earlier this year.

Jessica Bowie, 35, was captured by surveillance while doing reconnaissance on the New York Capitol in an undated photo. U.S. Department of Justice

Jessica Bowie, 35, of Albany, New York, was formally charged on Aug. 20 with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

The FBI discovered and stopped the alleged plot, which included a plan to kill state senators and destroy the building, the statement said.

“As alleged, Bowie plotted to deploy an explosive device at the New York State Capitol, intending to kill public officials and to destroy ‘as much of the building as possible’ before fleeing to ISIS‑controlled territory in Syria,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said in a statement.

The New York State Capitol, built between 1867 and 1899, houses the governor’s office, the state Legislature, and the famous Million Dollar Staircase.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on X that she was grateful the FBI and the New York State Police made the arrest. The state strengthened security at the Capitol and across the government after a rise in violence and threats against public officials this year, she said.

“While there is no immediate threat at this time, we will continue working closely with our law enforcement partners to protect New Yorkers and keep our communities safe,” Hochul said in her post.

FBI Special Agent Joshua Parker, assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Albany, detailed the investigation into Bowie’s alleged plans in the court complaint.

Bowie converted to Islam about five years ago and adopted the Islamic name “Aisha Saif,” Parker said.

She also used social media to spread anti-American messages using a dozen profiles, he said.

Jessica Bowie is seen on store surveillance buying items that authorities say were meant to build an explosive device. U.S. Department of Justice

Between May and July, prosecutors said several of her accounts praised Allah for the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York in 2001 and allegedly also said she wanted to poison infidels. She also allegedly relayed other messages supporting terrorism, according to the FBI.

On May 28, Bowie posted messages indicating she had pledged allegiance to the ISIS terrorist group and to people who engage in jihad, which can mean “violence” when used by the terrorist organization and its members, according to Parker.

Authorities allege Bowie planned the attack on the New York State Capitol from about July 16 to Aug. 17.

An FBI confidential source posing as an ISIS facilitator spoke with Bowie through a messaging app, according to the complaint. Bowie allegedly discussed her plans to attack the building in Albany over the next two weeks.

On July 16, an FBI source acting as an ISIS facilitator asked Bowie about her views, and she allegedly told him “jihad is an obligation until the day of judgment.”

That same day, Bowie allegedly asked for help on another social media platform to carry out the attack and later described the location as the state Capitol.

Parker said Bowie also mentioned she wanted to fly to Syria to join other ISIS-controlled territories.

Bowie then pledged her allegiance to the leader of ISIS on July 17 and surveilled the Capitol, walking around the building on five occasions between July 21 and Aug. 9, according to court documents.

Messages sent later suggested Bowie allegedly wanted to destroy as much of the building as possible and kill state senators while they were meeting. Investigators say she also wanted to destroy a lot of important documents.

The New York Capitol in Albany on June 20, 2023. Hans Pennink/AP Photo

Investigators recorded Bowie at a home improvement store where she allegedly purchased about $200 worth of items to create a bomb on Aug. 5.

FBI informants met again with Bowie in a car on Aug. 19 when they say she told them she was ready to carry out the attack.

“Bowie also told [a paid FBI informant] that she went from a little girl waving an American flag after 9/11 to now having stickers of the fallen towers,” Parker wrote in the complaint.

She left the meeting with a firearm, magazine, and ammunition, and a fake explosive device in her bag. She was arrested by the FBI as she exited the car, according to the complaint.

The complaint says Bowie told FBI agents after her arrest, “There’s no helping me, you guys know enough, there’s no helping me, I’m … going to prison for the rest of my life.”

Bowie remains in federal custody at the Schenectady County Jail and was not reachable for comment.

She faces a maximum of 20 years in federal prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and a lifetime term of supervised release if convicted.

Her lawyers at the Federal Public Defender’s Office in the Northern District of New York didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 12:45

Situational Flipping: Citadel Has Dumped Almost All Of The Stocks It Acquired From Leopold Aschenbrenner

After the market learned in late July that Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness hedge fund had blown up under too much Total Return Swap and option leverage (as we had warned a month earlier would happen), the next big question facing investors was: how long would Citadel keep the positions it bought from Leopold (at a huge market and transactional discount - recall Citadel only agreed to purchase the public book at a 10% discount off what was already a badly beaten down price), and would Ken Griffen prove to be as firm a believer in the AI theme as the prior, 24-some year old owner of stocks such as Bloom Energy, Sandisk, Micron, Taiwan Semi and Nebius.

We got the answer from Griffin himself earlier today when the Citadel CEO said in a letter to investors that Citadel has sold most, or more than 80%, of the portfolio it took on from buying the majority of Situational Awareness’s stock bets last month after the AI-focused hedge fund was nearly toppled by the recent tech sell-off.

“To date, we have successfully shed more than 80% of the aggregate risk from the original portfolio" Ken Griffin wrote in the letter that rushed to make it clear he has zero intentions of holding the extremely volatile memory and other chip stocks longer than was absolutely necessary. 

Ken Griffin to his investors in a letter, three weeks after buying Leopold Aschenbrenner’s portfolio:

"We have now successfully shed more than 80% of the aggregate risk from the original portfolio. We completed nearly 100 block trades totaling over $4 billion"

this is CNBC on… https://t.co/WyBAMvd9tG pic.twitter.com/dK7llJOdUP

— bodila (@51bodila) August 21, 2026

Griffin also said that he has "completed nearly 100 block trades totaling over $4b in market value ” adding that the trades included the “largest intraday block trades of the year.”

Why block trades? Because as Leopold's liquidation demonstrated, the only reason why his stocks exploded as high as they did, is because they are abysmally illiquid and Situational Awareness - with the help of lots of leverage - ended up being the only size buyer of his own stocks! Of course, we all saw what happened when it then flipped to size seller, much to Ken Griffin's delight.”

Which was only possible because the stocks in his portfolio were catastrophically illiquid

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 14, 2026

“Over our nearly thirty-six-year history, we have prided ourselves on being front-footed and proactive during periods of market dislocation,” Griffin wrote in the letter.

Said otherwise, after making several billions dollar in profit on Leopold's momentum darling liquidation, Citadel is now almost fully out, and has largely closed the trade, leaving other momo chasers to re-engage with what Griffin clearly did not view as "value stocks."

“A transaction of this magnitude could not have been completed without the extraordinary cooperation of the trading and prime brokerage teams at the banks serving both firms,” Griffin wrote in the Friday letter to clients. “I am grateful for the focused effort they brought to the rapid transfer of the portfolio.

Citadel’s Wellington fund finished up the month 5.94%, YTD up 12%, with half of the YTD upside thanks to Leopold's distressed liquidation. Most of Citadel's rivals lost money in July.

Citadel’s sudden, last minute swoop for the Situational Awareness stock portfolio marked one of the largest rescue deals in Wall Street history, and a dramatic episode in a rollercoaster period for equities as investors rushed into stocks linked to AI before being gripped by anxiety that the boom in the sector was overblown, as the FT put it. The weeks-long sell-off of tech stocks in July spurred widespread pain on Wall Street. Situational Awareness, the hedge fund run by 24-year-old OpenAI alumnus Leopold Aschenbrenner, emerged as its biggest casualty.

Aschenbrenner, who was fired by OpenAI, boasted extensive connections in Silicon Valley and was hailed by some as a prodigy and the “Nostradamus of AI”.

As he faced losses in July’s sell-off, Aschenbrenner first tried to raise additional funds through individual asset sales, but then pivoted to selling the majority of his stock holdings to Griffin’s firm in a deal that was pulled together in just 24 hours.

Citadel purchased the positions at a roughly 10 per cent discount, the FT has previously reported, betting that it could afford to hold the stocks until the market steadied. Shares of Situational Awareness’s biggest holdings, including chipmakers Sandisk and Micron, quickly recovered, giving Griffin a window to turn a rapid profit.

Griffin's rescue was also a self-fulfilling prophecy. Griffin’s agreement to buy Aschenbrenner’s stock book stymied fears of more forced selling on Wall Street, which helped to boost share prices across the tech industry. Ironically, the very same boost that was sparked by confidence that the selling was now over, is what allowed Griffin to quietly unwind the same stocks he had acquired, for billions in profit.

Griffin rarely writes letters to investors. His message this week was a testament to the extraordinary nature of the rapid deal he cut with Situational Awareness last month.

“Over our nearly thirty-six-year history, we have prided ourselves on being front-footed and proactive during periods of market dislocation,” Griffin wrote. The firm’s flagship fund was up 6 per cent in July, while many of its rivals lost money or were relatively flat.

“Only Citadel could have delivered a solution of this scale on this timeline,” he added.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 12:25

Trump Tells Michael Cohen "They Weaponized You" In Radio Interview, Praises His Recanting

Authored by Emel Akan via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump appeared on Michael Cohen’s radio show and commended his former attorney for recanting his previous statements.

Their conversation marked a surprising thaw years after their relationship collapsed amid public feuds and legal battles. Part of the interview with Cohen’s show “When You Know, You Know” aired on 770 WABC Radio at 6 p.m. Thursday. The rest will be released on Aug. 23.

“They weaponized you. They weaponized a lot of people,” Trump told Cohen. “I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said, and that’s a big thing that you did.”

“You’re going to go down as a man of courage, great courage, because you did something that a lot of people wouldn’t have the guts to do,” Trump told Cohen.

“I guarantee your family greatly respects what you did.”

This was Cohen’s first public conversation with Trump in eight years.

Cohen shared a Substack article that served as a recollection of the public feud the two had, which included Cohen’s testifying against Trump in his New York City criminal trial in 2024. Cohen served as one of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s star witnesses, alleging the president was involved in a plan to pay off a former adult film actress, Stormy Daniels, during his 2016 campaign.

“Eight years of silence. Hundreds of thousands of headlines. Fifteen years of history fractured in an instant, and somehow, against almost every expectation, here we are,” Cohen wrote.

Ever since he announced that Trump would appear on his radio show, Cohen stated that his inbox became a “digital battlefield.”

“It has been flooded with hatred, anger, disbelief, and some of the most spectacularly vicious things imaginable,” Cohen wrote.

In 2018, Cohen was sentenced to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations, tax evasion, bank fraud, and lying to Congress. He completed his sentence and supervision requirements in November 2021.

Speaking to Politico on Aug. 19, Cohen answered a question about whether he would seek a presidential pardon.

“We’ll see,” he said in response. “Will I make that request down the road? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.”

Trump, who was convicted in a jury trial on 34 counts of falsifying business records, denied the charges against him and pleaded not guilty. He has long said that the Manhattan district attorney’s case and cases that were brought against him in Georgia, Washington, and Florida were a “political witch hunt.”

The judge who oversaw the case, Juan Merchan, sentenced Trump to an unconditional discharge in January 2025, about two months after Trump won reelection.

In his first term, Trump often criticized Cohen in response to claims his former lawyer made about him, writing on X in 2018, “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”

During the interview with Cohen, Trump also talked about the economy, Venezuela, and the Iran conflict.

He said that if he ran again, “I think I’d win by 25 points.”

“The economy has never been stronger,” the president said.

Regarding Iran, Trump said, “It’s not easy to make a deal” with the regime.

“Nobody knows who’s leading,” he said.

Trump also defended his military decisions, telling Cohen, “I would have done it again a hundred times.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 12:05

ActBlue Co-Founder Invokes the Fifth Amendment As House Fraud Probe Widens

ActBlue co-founder Matt DeBergalis sat before the Committee on House Administration, the House Oversight Committee, and the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday and declined to answer a single substantive question during a closed-door deposition that reportedly lasted less than half an hour. DeBergalis invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and left. DeBergalis joins a growing list of ActBlue executives who have chosen silence over testimony as Republicans dig into whether the Democratic Party's primary fundraising platform let foreign money slip into American campaigns.

ActBlue has raised roughly $20 billion for Democratic candidates and liberal causes since its founding.

House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil opened the Committee's investigation into ActBlue in 2023. The original complaint centered on a simple but significant security gap: ActBlue did not require a credit card CVV number to process donations. This policy made it easy to run stolen or fabricated card numbers through the platform undetected. 

"ActBlue executives and staff are aware that both foreign and domestic fraudulent actors are exploiting the platform but do not take the threat seriously," a committee report released in April 2025 concluded. ActBlue rejects that characterization, and has called the investigation politically motivated and denies breaking any law.

Whether the platform has genuinely tightened its standards since then is the question Steil says he still cannot answer. In an interview with Fox News ahead of Thursday's deposition, he laid out the committee's core uncertainty. "It's unclear how serious ActBlue is now taking fraud," Steil said. "We know that they weakened their fraud standards previously. Did they make the changes that are needed to root out foreign funds from coming into U.S. Elections?"

DeBergalis is not the first ActBlue official to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights. ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones previously pleaded the Fifth during a public hearing before the House Administration Committee In June.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan pressed her directly on a figure attributed to her own board chairman. "Your board chairman said ActBlue accepted up to $38 million in contributions in 2024 that had the signs of foreign origin," Jordan said. "How much fraud is too much for all?"

Wallace-Jones declined to answer.

"What is so frustrating for me, and I think countless others - they have a right to not answer our questions,” Steil said. “But I think the American people also have a right to know exactly what's taking place on this platform that has raised roughly $20 billion for Democratic candidates and liberal causes since its creation," he said.

ActBlue board chairwoman Kimberly Peeler-Allen offered the closest thing to a public defense back in April, when she told The New York Times that "less than 1%" of contributions during the 2024 cycle showed signs of foreign origin, a cycle in which ActBlue raised $3.82 billion. That percentage, applied to a number that large, still lands somewhere in the tens of millions of dollars, which is roughly the figure Jordan cited to Wallace-Jones two months later. ActBlue's own lawyer, Vincent Cohen, wrote to the committee chairs that same April, defending the platform's technical safeguards and insisting the organization "built a robust platform with anti-fraud technology."

The Justice Department is also investigating whether ActBlue adequately policed fraud on its donation portal. ActBlue maintains it has done nothing wrong and frames the entire multi-committee, multi-agency effort as a partisan exercise aimed at hobbling the left's most important fundraising infrastructure ahead of the midterms.

That defense gets harder to sustain each time a key person from ActBlue, who has knowledge of the platform's internal decisions, won’t answer questions by invoking their constitutional right against self-incrimination.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 11:45

Pink-Clad Feminist Mob Rallies In Support Of Confessed Child Murderer

A mob of liberal women decked out in pink is taking to the streets in front of the Plymouth Superior Courthouse in Plymouth, Massachusetts for a rally in support of Lindsay Clancy during her ongoing murder trial.  The group, which is often accused of being "terminally online", has been invading social media discussions for weeks to inject arguments in defense of Clancy, who confessed to the murder of her three helpless children. 

Now, these women (and a few beta husbands) are going offline and showing up en masse to explain why Lindsay Clancy should go free. 

Hundreds of Lindsay Clancy supporters, many wearing pink with the words "Believe," "She Needed Help" and "Peace For Lindsay," gathered Thursday outside the courthouse.  Several of the women said Clancy's story resonated with them and that they wanted to raise awareness about how the mental health system treats women.

Clancy's lawyer does not dispute that she killed the children, but says she should not be held criminally responsible because she was mentally ill and suffering from "postpartum psychosis."  

Lindsay Clancy brutally strangled her 3 kids to death

Current scene outside the courthouse: pic.twitter.com/LC6do0LdzT

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 20, 2026

This defense claim is highly strategic.  Contrary to the arguments of leftists, in the past women have often received lighter sentences or escaped prison time by exploiting an insanity plea.  In studies on postpartum in murder cases, around half of women child killers got a "Not Guilty By Reason Of Insanity" verdict after claiming postpartum psychosis as the cause. 

Those are good odds.

The message among feminists is clear:  Women are perpetual victims, therefore they cannot be convicted as predators.  In the liberal mythos, women are pure and devoid of masculine evil, and thus, when they commit atrocities it is only because the system forced them to do so, or because the system broke them and drove them insane.  

HAPPENING NOW: A sea of Lindsay Clancy supporters dressed in pink gathered outside Plymouth Superior Court Thursday morning as the Duxbury mother's murder trial nears a pivotal moment. pic.twitter.com/Vcitza3pQp

— Boston 25 News (@boston25) August 20, 2026

In other words, there can be no structure of justice for female criminals, because in the minds of feminists, there are no female criminals (except female conservatives). 

The postpartum argument is held up as if it is proof of innocence, but in reality, it suggests that the person is even more dangerous than a typical criminal.  If an otherwise unassuming woman has the ability to appear absolutely normal and insinuate herself into the lives of others, only to become a bloodthirsty murderer of children at the flip of a switch, then she can never be trusted to enter back into society ever again.  She can never be trusted to have children or go near children again.

The punishment should be more severe, not less.  This is why America used to have a large network of mental hospitals, to keep people like this locked away for good.  Instead, liberal ideology has created an environment in which criminals with the right identity are treated with more empathy than their victims.  

If this continues for much longer, it will mean the downfall of western civilization.

The Lindsay Clancy trial has also become another focal point for what many now call a "plague" on the internet:  Amateur Detective Wine-Moms (ADWMs).  

Conspiracy theories on social media, spread by these same women, assert that Lindsay Clancy is actually a "patsy" and that her husband is the killer.  Even though numerous pieces of evidence including surveillance footage and cell phone tracking shows Clancy's husband at a local CVS pharmacy at the time of the murder, these women have read hundreds of true crime novels and think they are better investigators than the authorities involved.

Some commenters note that a similar mob of female detectives has been spreading endless conspiracy theories about Tyler Robinson and the murder of Charlie Kirk, even though it's on record that Robinson confessed to his family, friends and boyfriend that he killed Kirk.  Facts and evidence do not matter to these people. 

The problem has become so pervasive that officials within the legal system are beginning to worry that finding jurors not tainted by online madness will be impossible.  They are calling this problem the "TikTok Jury" and it is growing into a cancer. 

It's not just the high profile cases anymore, it could be any case that happens to catch the attention of this unhinged brood of hens stalking the internet for new distractions from their meaningless lives.    

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 11:05

Intervening Oneself Out Of Quagmire?

By Elwin de Groot, head of macro strategy at Rabobank

Intervening Oneself Out Of Quagmire?

Yesterday’s market moves again showed that jawboning and temporary interventions are rarely enough when the underlying problem is fundamental.

As a “thank you” for Trump’s last-minute intervention to reduce joint US-South Korean military drills – and his claim to have spoken with Kim Jong Un – Pyongyang launched around 10 ballistic missiles on Thursday, according to South Korean news agencies. The message was clear: action versus words. Developments in the Middle East, where Iran has effectively defied US military power, may only have reinforced North Korea’s conviction that its nuclear missile programme gives it an edge even Iran still lacks. The broader ramifications are unsettling.

Markets told a similar story. The benchmark US 10-year Treasury more than gave back the gains made the previous day, while the 30-year long bond retraced over 7bp after Thursday’s 10bp rally, which followed Treasury’s announcement that it would at least double long-dated bond buybacks from 9 September through 4 November.

The price action may matter more than the amounts involved. The additional purchases total only about USD 14bn in the current refunding quarter – a rounding error next to a roughly USD 32trn Treasury market and federal debt now above USD 40trn. Nor is this quantitative easing: Treasury must finance buybacks by issuing other debt. The programme can improve liquidity in off-the-run bonds and temporarily reduce the duration dealers and investors must absorb, but it neither cancels debt nor changes the deficit path.

That distinction explains why Thursday’s long-bond rally should not be extrapolated – and why part of it has already faded.

In the short run, supporting the back end can work. It reduces pressure on term premia, improves dealer balance-sheet capacity and makes outright shorts in long Treasuries riskier. But it also increases reliance on continued bill demand, with no certainty that future stablecoin issuance can offset that exposure for foreign holders. If borrowing needs remain large, Treasury may eventually have to return to greater coupon issuance – or accept higher funding costs.

The medium-term implication is therefore less “lower yields” than “a more managed yield curve”. Call it YCC-light. The Treasury has shown sensitivity not only to poor liquidity, but also to the economic and political consequences of rapidly rising long-term yields. Thirty-year rates above 5% feed into mortgages, corporate financing, equity valuations and, through higher interest costs, the deficit itself. That creates a feedback loop: higher yields worsen the fiscal outlook, which warrants a larger term premium, which raises yields further. Wednesday’s intervention interrupted that loop; it likely did not break it.

The episode also risks blurring the line between debt management and monetary policy. If investors conclude that Treasury will adjust issuance or buybacks whenever long yields rise too quickly, that creates an implicit “Treasury put”. It may suppress volatility for a while, but it could prove self-defeating. Easier financial conditions from lower long yields sit awkwardly alongside above-target inflation, complicating the Fed’s task, as minutes show several policymakers were prepared to raise rates in July. The Treasury may be insuring the market against a tail event just as the Fed tries to keep conditions restrictive.

The dollar’s negative reaction is therefore revealing. Normally, lower Treasury yields weaken the currency through the interest-rate channel. This time, gold and crypto also rallied, suggesting concern about fiscal credibility and the perceived management of borrowing costs. Yesterday’s price action reinforced that message: both the dollar index and gold have extended Thursday’s moves. Could the end-result soon be unchanged long-term yields, but a weaker dollar?

Of course, the dollar still benefits from deep capital markets, strong nominal growth and reserve-currency status. But those advantages are less reassuring if foreign investors believe they are being asked to finance widening deficits while the authorities lean against the resulting rise in term premia.

This week’s geopolitical backdrop sharpens the dilemma. Higher oil prices and uncertainty around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz add an inflation premium; the 5y5y US inflation swap forward is now close to its May peak even though headline inflation has fallen by almost a percentage point since then. This comes just as fiscal supply tests investors’ appetite for duration. The Treasury can address market plumbing, but it cannot buy back geopolitical risk, inflation risk or fiscal arithmetic.

The Friday takeaway is that Wednesday’s announcement matters mainly as a signal. It tells investors the authorities are unwilling to leave the long end entirely to its own devices. That may intermittently cap yields and curve steepening. Yet if every rise in long yields elicits more bills, larger buybacks or smaller long-bond auctions, the adjustment may migrate elsewhere: into front-end funding costs, inflation expectations, gold – or the dollar. The market may have been calmed, but it has learnt where Treasury’s pain threshold lies.

That said – and allowing for possible European bias – investors watch fundamentals not only in absolute terms, but also relative to other regions and asset classes. This week’s widening of the French spread over German Bunds serves as a case in point: a clear warning that markets are focused on the upcoming presidential election and France’s structural challenges.

Finally, the speed of technological change seems to be widening the gap between Europe and the US. The geopolitical overlay is pungent and spicy: for Europe, it smells of rising tensions with major trading partners in the coming months.

China has been warning European trading partners already through several channels that it willing to play hardball to stave off intensification of European trade defense measures. Another example are news reports yesterday suggesting that the US is preparing to force the Netherlands to ban ASML from selling to China entirely. As both Republicans and Democrats seem to be on the same page with potential legislation backing such a move, this raises the risk of coercion.

Perhaps these pressures will push Europe towards next steps, such as integrating capital markets. If so, that would be fundamental change. For now, it remains mostly words in Europe too.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 10:45

Lacy Hunt: Fed's Been "Stealth-Easing" Since December

“We’re seeing a major secular shift, that we’re now moving into a period of capital shortage, as well as we’re witnessing the end of the three-decade period of globalization, which led to significant disinflation.”

That prediction comes from Dr. Lacy Hunt, once one of the bond market’s most prominent bulls and secular disinflationists. Well… no longer. He’s now a seller of U.S. long-dated bonds and suggested during last night’s discussion on ZeroHedge that he’s eyeing gold favorably.

Lacy told Thoughtful Money’s Adam Taggart and Brent Johnson of Santiago Capital that inflation is here to stay so get used to it and plan accordingly:

“There will be intermittent episodes when the secular forces will fade, but the big picture is considerably different. We’re going to have higher inflation. We’re going to have greater volatility in inflation. The trend in interest rate is going to be higher. And we’re going to have generally poor economic performance.”

Here were the highlights of Lacy’s tour de force, but we highly recommend the full 75-minute discussion in its entirety:

Net national savings “very close to zero”

Hunt began his case with two forces: a shortage of capital and the reversal of globalization.

“The Federal Reserve cannot solve the capital shortage situation. They can increase the money supply, but to have physical investment you need saving out of income.”

Money printing and rising rates has an increasingly deleterious effect on private investment, which will be vital to keep up with the AI boom. Higher government bond yields means the private sector needs to work harder to compete… why take risk when Uncle Sam guarantees 5% or more?

“We’re financing artificial intelligence. We’re building an expansion of semiconductors. We need to expand the electrical grid… We’ve got a massive federal budget deficit that’s deteriorating.”

Atop that, Hunt said net national saving is “very close to zero.” Net national savings is defined as the total amount of money saved by households, businesses, and the government minus the cost of replacing worn-out capital goods (depreciation).

“So there is going to be this tremendous demand for capital, which suggests that real interest rates will have to rise. And because the overall inflation is going to be going up at the same time, that means that this will reinforce the rise in nominal interest.”

pic.twitter.com/66rt9KwvR1

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) August 21, 2026

Fed’s been “stealth easing” since December

Since mid-December, the Fed’s balance sheet has expanded by roughly $200 billion. So for all the talk of a hawkish Fed, they’re still a net buyer of Treasuries. Additionally, bank deposits and bank lending are up.

“Bank deposits and bank loans in particular, they’ve surged very dramatically since mid-December… so now you have an uptick in deposit growth and money supply growth, which in my opinion is moving further into the inflationary direction.”

This kind of monetary support, Lacy argued, only creates a longer-term problem by encouraging investment in financial assets rather than productive ones.

“When the Federal Reserve comes in and gives a signal to the market that they’re going to support the stock market... then what that serves to do is it’s a signal to the corporate managers that they should put more investment in financial assets and less investment in real assets.”

“But here’s the rub. It’s the real assets that raise the standard of living, not the financial investments.”

pic.twitter.com/ftZIUcCRMH

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) August 21, 2026

Watch Lacy's full deep dive below or listen on the ZeroHedge Spotify. If one of the longest running bond bulls is throwing in the towel… it might be time to pay attention.

https://t.co/Vg3ZRZ4A9F

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 20, 2026

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 10:25

They're Getting Revenge, Starting Today...

Via the Tom Woods Letter,

I absolutely insist to you: I really am trying to stop writing about this topic. But too much insanity keeps breaking out, and I have no choice but to comment on it.

You know the story: a Cambridge academic, Jason Arday, was found to have plagiarized his dissertation, borrowed heavily from others in his published articles, produced essentially worthless research, called the police on a reporter and on a professor who asked questions about his resume, invented wild tales of athletic and academic achievement as well as philanthropic work, and (of course) accused his critics of “racism.” And then, late last week, he was found dead at his home in an apparent suicide.

That would have been it, but the left - instead of the embarrassment it should feel at having promoted the greatest academic charlatan of the past ten years (and that’s saying something) - is trying to play the victim here: mean right-wingers in the media shouldn’t have pushed so hard on the Arday story.

This is coming from people who call their enemies Nazis 24 hours a day without thinking there might be a problem with that.

Anyway, here’s the latest: the university that employs Nathan Cofnas, the academic who first broke the story about Jason Arday’s plagiarism and worthless “research,” is now being investigated by his own university for breaking the story.

Just when you think academia can’t be a bigger joke, it always finds some way to outdo itself.

Ghent University rector Petra de Sutter, former leader of the Green Party, issued a statement to the effect that while Ghent attaches “great importance to academic freedom and to open academic debate, even when views are controversial,” it wants the world to know that of course it doesn’t really mean that:

“That freedom is not unlimited. It goes hand in hand with responsibility and may be restricted in order to protect the rights of others.

“For this reason, the university takes the recent public statements made by a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University regarding this matter very seriously. Ghent University has decided to take appropriate action within its powers and the applicable framework.”

Well, we just found out what that means.

They just suspended Nathan Cofnas, and he will almost surely be fired.

Cofnas wrote the original report on Jason Arday that forced academia to take notice. What he found was too embarrassing not to elicit a response. And his point is: Arday is not an isolated case. For that he cannot be forgiven.

As Cofnas put it on August 11:

In 2023, the Guardian itself (!) published a breathless article titled “Jason Arday: he learned to talk at 11 and read at 18 – then became Cambridge’s youngest Black professor.”

More than a dozen academic journals gave the imprimatur of “peer review” to Arday’s plagiarized wokebabble.

The prestigious New York publisher Simon & Schuster is still going ahead with his memoirs.

Now the Guardian wants us to think this is just about “one academic and his bosses at Cambridge”?

There are thousands of Jason Ardays in universities all over the Western world. The only thing special about Arday is that he took the plagiarism and lies about his personal life too far, so there was a hook for a news story. But even that wasn’t enough to get him removed from academia. Until last Wednesday Cambridge was still smearing his critics as waging a “vile campaign.” He crossed the line not by being an incompetent fraud, but by claiming prestigious affiliations that he didn’t have, creating conflict between Cambridge and other universities.

“DEI” means achieving representation by doing away with elementary standards for certain people based on race. Just take a look at the content of “peer-reviewed” journals like Whiteness in Education and Educational Philosophy and Theory. The other papers in these journals are just like those written by Arday—someone who is now widely recognized to be mentally disabled.

The people trying to write this off as a fluke or an isolated case of “research misconduct” are at best delusional. The ideology of elite institutions is DEI, and DEI is Jason Arday.

This was the most embarrassing academic episode of my lifetime. Everyone just witnessed a clear-cut case of academic fraud, a man who literally called the police on people who questioned his resume, and the overwhelming response from academia was to scream “racism” and sign a petition in his defense.

After they did that, the really embarrassing stuff came out, and they persisted.

So the mask is off, in case there’s still anyone out there who didn’t know what was behind it. The whole edifice of academia nowadays is held together with Scotch tape and piano wire, and slogans.

The institutions will survive as shells of their former selves, but what was once inside will disappear. Adrian Vermeule, the one sane person at Harvard Law School, just wrote: “The elite universities are of course going to survive. They’ve been around forever and will continue on in some form. What will not survive, however, is a certain idea of the scholarly mission and life. It died of its own weakness, an inability to resist invading barbarians.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 10:05

Services Sector Survey Surge Sparks US Growth Rebound Hopes In August

After a relatively ugly series of disappointing macro data - and a hectic week of interventions - preliminary August data from S&P Global's PMI survey was expected to signal a slowdown in growth for the US economy (but still growth).

But, the respondents had other things on their mind as while Manufacturing slipped, the Services sector of the economy soared

• Flash US Services PMI Business Activity Index: 56.8 (July: 54.6). 20-month high.

• Flash US Manufacturing PMI: 53.2 (July: 53.9). 5-month low. 

“US business is booming," says Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, "with firms reporting the fastest output growth for over four years so far in the third quarter as the expansion picked up further momentum in August."

The survey data for the third quarter are currently pointing to annualized growth approaching 3.0%, up solidly from the 1.5% pace seen in the second quarter.

Jobs growth has also shown a welcome revival in August, with employers gaining in confidence as concerns fade over the negative economic impacts of tariffs and the conflict in the Middle East.

However, as Williamson writes, "the latter in particular remains a key area of concern for businesses, especially via the impact on supply lines and energy prices. "

Supply delays were again reported in August to one of the greatest extents seen over the past four years, clearly constraining output in many companies.

Price pressures, while fading, also remain elevated and prone to renewed upward pressures should energy prices rise again.

Growth momentum has meanwhile shifted from manufacturing to services between the second and third quarters.

Williamson concludes: "As reduced safety stock building and supply delays dampen factory production growth, the service sector is now playing a key role in driving a sustained US expansion, underscoring a dependency on consumer spending and financial services growth.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 09:56

China Sentences Evergrande Founder To Life In Prison

Five years after Chinese property development firm Evergrande Group collapsed under the weight of enormous debt, founder Xu Jiayin was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday.

Xu Jiayin, also known as Hui Ka Yan, founder of property developer Evergrande, appears for sentencing at the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court in Shenzhen, China, on Aug. 20, 2026. Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court /Xinhua via AP

Xu (Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese), 64, pleaded guilty in April to fundraising fraud, illegally taking public deposits, illegally extending loans, bribery, fraudulently issuing security, and misuse of funds. His sentence was handed down in Shenzhen in southern China. The court also confiscated his personal property.

Evergrande was also fined 8.82 billion yuan (US$1.31 billion), and slapped its Hengda real estate subsidiary with a 7 billion yuan (US$1.04 billion) fine. 

As the Epoch Times notes further, Xu has not been seen in public since 2023, but the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court released photographs that show him wearing a blue shirt and flanked by two officers as the sentence was read out.

Crimes Should be 'Severely Punished'

“The criminal acts of Evergrande Group, Hengda Real Estate, ‌and Hui Ka Yan ... involved ⁠particularly huge amounts and egregious circumstances, caused particularly significant economic losses and caused particularly serious social harm, and should be severely punished,” the court said in ‌a statement.

State media Xinhua news agency stated that the court sentenced 56 others to prison sentences of between 22 months and 18 years for their roles in “illegally absorbing public deposits, fundraising fraud, and illegal use of funds” in relation to the Evergrande case. It did not name any of the individuals.

It was not immediately clear whether Xu had legal representatives who could comment on his behalf.

After a two-day trial in April, Xu “pleaded guilty and expressed remorse,” according to state media outlet Xinhua.

Born into poverty, Xu became Asia’s richest man, partly because of links with senior officials in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

He expanded Evergrande massively during China’s property boom between 1996 and 2019, but the company was burdened with huge debts.

Evergrande, which was China’s biggest developer, ran into financial problems in 2020 amid China’s COVID-19 crisis, and in 2021, it developed liquidity issues.

In March 2024, the company and Xu were penalized after being accused of artificially boosting its revenues by $78 billion in the two years before it defaulted on its debt obligations.

A Hong Kong court ordered Evergrande to be liquidated in 2024, and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange delisted it in 2025.

The company has defaulted on most of its $300 billion liabilities. Its problems are emblematic of a prolonged slowdown in China’s real estate sector, which has dragged ​down the world’s second-biggest economy.

The China Evergrande Centre building sign in Hong Kong on Dec. 7, 2021. Tyrone Siu/Reuters

A former steel technician, Xu founded Evergrande in 1996.

As the communist regime gradually opened up its market and eased controls, Xu, like many other Chinese, moved to Guangdong Province, where he worked as a salesperson before founding Evergrande in 1996.

In his first project, Xu borrowed 3 million yuan (about $440,000) from the bank to purchase land, then started selling homes once construction began, according to a 2010 report by People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the CCP.

Within a day, he had sold more than 300 apartments and raked in 80 million yuan (about $11.7 million), allowing him to finance the next project, according to the report.

By the end of 2009, Evergrande had dozens of projects across 25 major Chinese cities, according to the company’s official website.

He Was Once Worth $45 Billion

In 2017, Xu ​had a net worth of $45.3 billion, according to ⁠Forbes.

Xu stepped down as chairman of Hengda in August 2021, two months before the company defaulted on a $148 million loan, the first of many debts it was unable to repay.

The liquidation process has ​moved ‌slowly. Only $255 million worth of assets were sold as of August 2025, compared with creditors’ claims totalling $45 billion.

Evergrande’s liquidators declined to comment on Xu’s sentencing.

The liquidators are trying to freeze Xu’s offshore assets and those of his ex-wife, Ding Yumei, who owns property in London and Vancouver.

Ding flew out of Hong Kong before August 2023, China’s state-controlled Tencent News reported, and her current whereabouts are unknown.

Speaking at the 2018 China Charity Awards, Xu praised the CCP and attributed everything Evergrande and he had to the regime.

Yuan Hongbing, a former professor of law at Peking University who now lives in exile in Australia, told The Epoch Times in 2023 that Xu had used political connections with Zeng Qinghong, a senior CCP official who was vice president from 2003 to 2008.

But Feng Chongyi, an associate professor in China studies at the University of Technology Sydney, told The Epoch Times this week that Xi had spent years weakening forces associated with Jiang Zemin and Zeng, who was his longtime political ally, because they once threatened Xi’s hold on power.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 09:45

Teen Drops Social Media Addiction Claims Against Meta, Google, & Snap, Ahead Of October Trial

Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times,

A 15-year-old New Jersey girl whose lawsuit served as a test case in litigation accusing social media companies of designing platforms to addict young users dropped her remaining claims Thursday against Meta Platforms, Google, and Snap Inc.

The plaintiff, identified in California court records only as P. M-Y., had alleged the owners of Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat contributed to her social media addiction, depression, and self-harm.

She dismissed the case without any payment from the three companies, according to a court filing and statements from the defendants. TikTok, also named in the suit, had settled earlier.

Emily Jeffcott, an attorney for P. M-Y., said her client chose to end the remaining claims so she could try to resume her life.

She “initiated this process with the goal of holding social media companies accountable and to push for changes to protect young people like herself,” Jeffcott said.

More than 3,300 personal injury cases filed by individuals have been consolidated in California state court in Los Angeles. P. M-Y.’s lawsuit was selected as one of three “bellwether” or test cases set to go to trial in October. Attorneys use such trials to determine how juries may react to similar claims and to help set values for settlement talks.

Two other teen plaintiffs with similar allegations against the same companies remain scheduled for October trials. TikTok has already settled those cases, as well.

Platforms Defend Safeguards

Meta said in a statement that the plaintiff had a significant mental health condition that pre-dated her use of social media and that many of these cases fit the same pattern. The company added it would vigorously defend against the remaining suits.

Google-owned YouTube said the decision to drop the case affirms “our longstanding position that we provide safe, age-appropriate experiences and strong parental controls for young people and families.”

A Snap spokesperson said the company remains focused on strengthening safeguards, tools and educational resources to support users’ safety, privacy, and well-being.

The broader litigation includes claims by individuals, states, and school districts that features such as infinite scroll, algorithmic recommendations, and autoplay promote compulsive use and contribute to youth mental health problems. The companies have denied the allegations and say they take extensive steps to keep teens safe.

A previous case concluded in July when a Florida teen dropped his claims against Meta after the other defendants settled.

In March, a Los Angeles jury awarded $4.2 million against Meta and $1.8 million against Google in a case brought by a woman who said she became addicted to the platforms at a young age, with TikTok and Snap settling that case before trial.

Related litigation continues on other fronts, with 29 states pursuing a federal trial in Oakland, California, that began this week. They accuse Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram to hook young users, fueling anxiety, depression, and even suicide, and of misleading the public about safety. Meta has rejected those claims, arguing that “social media addiction” is not an established psychiatric condition and that it complied with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

In March, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google liable for $6 million in damages in the first individual social media addiction trial to reach a verdict. Jurors decided the companies’ platforms contributed to the plaintiff’s psychological harms. Snap and TikTok had settled before that trial began.

A New Mexico judge earlier this month ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a child mental health fund after finding the company’s platforms contributed to the state’s youth mental health crisis. Meta faces additional pressure from state attorneys general and school districts in multiple jurisdictions.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 09:25

Broadcom CDS Explodes As It Seeks Up To $100 Billion In Massive Off-Balance Sheet Debt Deal

Amid the growing angst about hyperscaler CapEx (and more specifically, the historic flood of new debt issuance to fund it), attention among the always-bullish equity talking-heads has shifted - and rightfully so - to the bond markets as alarm signals flare up with an increasing frequency. Of course, for ZeroHedge readers, this is not a new topic, it is something we have been warning of for the past year, ever since we explained that debt was the true AI bubble last October:

• The $1.8 Trillion Off-Balance Sheet Time Bomb At The Heart Of The AI Supercycle
• Goldman Warns Massive Hyperscaler Bond Issuance Means "Risk Skewed To Downside"
• "Generational Transfer Is Taking Place": The Cash Crunch Is Coming For AI Hyperscalers
• Hyperscaler Bond Spreads Blow Out After Google Shocks With Another $25 Billion Bond Offering
• The AI CapEx Boom Is Building Twice As Fast As The Housing Boom
• The Circular Delusion Of Markets: How Earnings Growth Runs On Borrowed Money (& The Smart Money Is Leaving)
• Nvidia Confirms Record $500 Billion Off-Balance Sheet SPV Deal To Fund The World's Biggest Circle Jerk
• Nvidia's $500 Billion Bet Shows Up In Credit
• Hyperscaler CDS Volumes Explode To All-Time High On Credit, Circular Financing Fears

Then, last week we explained why - as Nomura's Charlie McElligott also joined the credit chorus - the unprecedented flood of AI corporate debt had started to crowd out demand for US government paper, an ominous development as it meant continued massive capex would lead to even higher treasury yields... as well as even more inflation, a toxic mix to the Treasury.

What's worse, the market had finally started to pay attention, as one look at the surge in treasury swaption vol of vol made abundantly clear, which is why last week we warned - correctly - that Bessent was about to get very busy as bearish bets hit levels last seen during previous trasury market crises. 

Bessent will be busy https://t.co/0BslbpgnLs pic.twitter.com/kreaTPS1rh

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 11, 2026

One week later Bessent did in fact, get busy, and shocked the market with a "cringingly executed" (to quote McElligott) buyback directive announcement, one which lasted all of 23 hours before the entire move was reversed and yields are now trading 4 bps higher than where they were before the Treasury announcement. 

But while Bessent can address the market again any time he wants and threaten Treasury shorts (“By At LeAsT dOuBlE”), the bigger problem facing the Treasury is that the deluge of AI debt is really just starting - recall there is another $6-8 trillion in capex that has to be spent by 2030, most of it in the form of corporate debt, which will lead to relentless pressure higher on US interest rate for the foreseeable future. 

Some AI companies realize that it is only a matter of time before Bessent chills this AI debt diarrhea indefinitely; which explains why Bloomberg reported today that Broadcom is preparing another gargantuan SPV deal, and is in talks with a group of lenders to raise more than $60 billion in debt for an AI chip financing deal that will benefit Anthropic PBC and other companies. 

The financing, which is still being ironed out, may also include a roughly $30 billion junior debt tranche, said some of the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.

Under the proposed plan, Broadcom would guarantee a portion of the senior-secured tranche, which could range from about $60 billion to $70 billion. The numbers under discussion would potentially bring the total to as much as $100 billion, which would make it the largest SPV deal ever funded.

The agreement would add to a rush of deals aimed at financing artificial intelligence infrastructure. AI companies like Anthropic are taking a bigger role in the build-out, aiming to ensure they have enough computing capacity. Broadcom, meanwhile, is looking to sell more chips and other data center equipment, challenging Nvidia in this lucrative market.

Since AI infrastructure SPV require private credit backers, Blackstone and Apollo - the same firms that backstopped Nvidia's recent $500 billion compute collateralized deal - are in talks with Broadcom to participate in the chip financing, following a partnership the three companies struck in June to help finance computing infrastructure. The debt - as one would expect ever since Meta set the standard with its Beignet off-balance sheet deal - would be issued by a special-purpose vehicle, or SPV, most of which won't appear on any balance sheet.

The potential deal would help firms including Anthropic access chips and other key AI infrastructure, according to Bloomberg which broke the news. It could be similar to the $35 billion debt agreement that kicked off the group’s AI XPV partnership, they said. 

In the first deal for the AI XPV platform two months ago, we explained that Broadcom backstopped most of the debt and investors including Apollo and Blackstone financed the purchase of custom AI chips to lease to Anthropic. And in a sleight of brilliant financial engineering where everyone pretends there is no actual debt being issued, this enabled the senior debt tranches to win investment-grade ratings at lower borrowing costs. 

However, that is just the start... of both the debt issuance runway and Bessent's headaches. The partnership, which plans to finance more than 20 gigawatts of computing power, will require hundreds of billions of dollars. That level of capacity would roughly equal the output of 20 nuclear plants. 

The unprecedented scale of the borrowing now under discussion underscores the capital requirements of the AI boom, which has prompted a slew of novel debt deals at a pace and scale that’s simultaneously unnerved some investors. In what was actually a huge nothingburger, Nvidia earlier this month announced that a coalition of major financial firms including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs Group were lining up more than $500 billion to help fund the AI build-out, although the agreement was only an MOU and was at best intended to provide some comfort to credit markets. It failed, since Nvidia CDS is now trading at all time wides. 

Broadcom’s chief executive officer said in March that the company expects AI chip sales to top $100 billion next year. The chipmaker has also struck other partnerships, including an accord with Apple that’s expected to be worth more than $30 billion. Broadcom’s valuation has soared in recent years, propelled by agreements to make custom AI chips for firms like OpenAI.

After briefly declining, Broadcom shares rose as much as 1.1% in late trading after Bloomberg News reported on the discussions. The stock had climbed 5.2% this year through the close. But forget about the stock: these days all the action is in the bond trading and/or Credit Default Swap land, and is why Broadcom’s massive new bond deal illustrates the US Treasury’s uphill task in containing long-bond yields

Broadcom’s debt is interesting because its recent competition for Google’s TPU business has been accompanied by a spike in CDS. And, as Bloomberg notes, the monster debt deal will do little to alleviate that pressure and will likely feed down to the CDS of other chip/hyperscaler credit.

As we noted in our EOD wrap, hyperscaler CDS is already back near the July all-time wides, with names that issue new debt seeing clear spikes in CDS pushing their default risk slowly but surely every higher. 

The problem is that unlike equities, where there apparently is an infinite number of greater fools using other people's money to force daily gamma squeezes, there will come a time - and yield - when the bond market simply refuses to keep funding these endless AI boondoggles, especially when China can now do pretty much everything faster, cheaper and almost as effectively. At that point, the AI bubble will finally burst. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 09:15

The post The $40 Trillion Debt and Trump Corruption appeared first on CEPR.

Futures Rise On Opex Day As Yields Stabilize; Bitcoin Almost Tags $80,000

US futures rebound from Thursday's slump, and trade at session highs on.  As of 8:15am ET, S&P 500 futures were 0.4% higher with Nasdaq 100 contracts up 0.6%, while Bitcoin headed for its best week in more than three years, rising just shy of $80,000 before reversing. S&P 500 futures jerked higher and yields extended declines as oil edged lower shortly after 7am ET on this headline: *IRAN’S PRESIDENT SAYS BETTER TO END WAR TODAY WITH DIGNITY:ISNA, and while the market erroneously viewed this as a sign of de-escalation, he has made many similar comments in the past. Among Iranian officials, Pezeshkian has long been one of the most vocal proponents of ending the war with the US through diplomacy. In any case, tech is again making headlines, with Broadcom in talks with lenders to raise as much as $100 billion in an off balance sheet SPV financing deal that would benefit Anthropic and other companies. Pre-market, Mag 7 are all higher led by META (+0.9%) and TSLA (+1.1%). Today is the monthly option expiration day so expect low volume volatility around key pin levels. TSY yields are down 1-2bps across the curve although the 10Y remains just around 4.70%. The slide in the greenback is continuing, with the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index down 0.3% and at a three-month low. Commodities are mixed: base metals ad ags are all lower, while gold is 1.6% higher this morning; oil is unchanged. Overall, the overnight news flow was mostly quite as investors are waiting for today’s Global PMI release. Today's US economic data calendar includes Bloomberg US economic survey for August, and S&P Global US manufacturing, services and composite PMIs. No Fed speakers are scheduled for the session

In premarket trading, Mag 7 stocks are all higher (Tesla +1.3%, Meta +0.7%, Alphabet +0.7%, Amazon +0.6%, Nvidia +0.5%, Apple +0.1%, Microsoft +0.1%)

• Cryptocurrency-linked stocks are rallying as Bitcoin rises, putting it on track for its best weekly gain in more than two years. Strategy (MSTR) climbs 8%, Coinbase (COIN) rises 5%.
• Mining stocks are rising as gold is on track for a third weekly gain after the US Treasury’s unexpected ramp-up in buybacks of long-dated government debt underscored concerns about its burden. Newmont (NEM) rises 3%.
• Flowers Foods (FLO) falls 4% after the maker of Wonder Bread cut its adjusted earnings-per-share forecast for the full year.
• O-I Glass (OI) rises 5% after Citi upgraded the packaging products company to buy, saying shares appear to be “meaningfully oversold.”
• OSI Systems (OSIS) falls 13% after the medical device maker’s forecast for fiscal 2027 revenue fell short of the average analyst estimate.
• Parsons Corp. (PSN) rises 2% after Baird upgraded the IT services company to outperform, saying guidance looks conservatively set.
• NetEase ADRs (NTES) rise 6% after the company’s core gaming business was seen as resilient and forecast to keep growing steadily.
• Ross Stores (ROST) climbs 8% after the off-price retailer boosted its earnings per share forecast for the full year.

In other corporate news, Samsung Electronics said it expects to return as much as 110 trillion won ($79 billion) to shareholders this year, joining rival SK Hynix in handing investors a chunk of the windfall generated by the AI rush. Anthropic PBC expects to match or beat the size of SpaceX’s record-setting initial public offering, according to Bloomberg. SpaceX and AST SpaceMobile are among companies expressing interest in acquiring a swath of 800 MHz-band spectrum held by Grain Management that’s valuable for providing wireless phone services directly from space. Virtu Financial is said to be considering a potential sale of its agency brokerage and technology division to free up capital to invest in its core market making operation.  Nvidia is in early discussions with the Korean AI chip designer Rebellions about possible collaborations. Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA is seeking to buy two separate banks for a combined price of €34 billion ($40 billion) as it wants to prevent being taken over by rival Intesa Sanpaolo SpA. Broadcom is in talks with a group of lenders to raise as much as $100 billion in debt for an AI chip financing deal that will benefit Anthropic PBC and other companies, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

After days of swings that saw long-dated yields hit their highest levels in decades, Treasuries were little changed on Friday. Brent crude struggled for direction, while gold hit the highest level since May. Investors are now assessing the fallout from a week that saw bond yields spike on worries about inflation and spendthrift governments, a surge that prompted the Treasury to intervene to curb long-dated borrowing costs. They are now awaiting a promised new initiative from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent aimed at fiscal consolidation. “Equity markets are vacillating between concerns about the tech sector and rising bond yields, though today, both seem to have declined,” said Joachim Klement, a strategist at Panmure Liberum. “Fact is that the US Treasury can do little if anything to turn the trend in long-term bond yields for good.”

The surprise decision by the Treasury Department to increase its repurchase program this week “sent the clear message to investors that rising yields matter now,” notes JonesTrading chief strategist Mike O’Rourke. “While the Treasury market has been soft since the election, we do not view it as dire. The Treasury drawing attention to it may turn it into a problem,” O’Rourke adds.

Bitcoin rallied as much as 9.4% and headed for its best weekly advance since 2023. A short squeeze triggered by Bessent’s midweek announcement of bigger buybacks of long-dated bonds remains a major driver of the gains.

In hedge funds, Hamza Lemssouguer’s Arini Capital Management is said to have lost roughly 8% in July on soured credit bets. The drawn out Evergrande saga underscores the inherent perils of short selling, said Andrew Left.

Nearly $29 billion flowed into US equity funds in the week through Aug. 19, the largest inflow in three weeks, according to BofA's Michael Hartnett who said if US intervention in the bond market fails to “drag 30-year yield below 5%,” that would fuel a slump in the dollar and cause asset allocation to shift to short risk, short leverage and short cyclicals into midterms.

Stronger-than-expected manufacturing data helped pushed the the Stoxx 600 up 0.1% and snapped a seven-day losing streak for European equities, the longest in a decade. Still, the Stoxx 600 is less than 2% below its record high, and Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan remain among the most optimistic about the region’s prospects, a Bloomberg survey showed. “Europe has done much better than almost everybody would have expected at the outset of this year,” said Sharon Bell, senior European equity  strategist at Goldman Sachs. “There’s been so much attention on a handful of companies in the US and Asia that I just don’t feel Europe has had its proper due.” Here are the biggest movers Friday:

• Nibe shares gained as much as 10%, the most since May, after the Swedish heating and climate solutions group posted strong earnings, that SB1 Markets predicted could trigger single-digit upgrades to consensus estimates
• Siegfried shares rose as much as 9.3%, briefly hitting their highest level since February, after the maker of active pharmaceutical ingredients delivered results ahead of expectations in the first half
• Bavarian Nordic shares rose as much as 9.1%, the most since July 2025, after the Danish vaccine maker boosted its Ebitda margin forecast for the full year and announced a new share buyback program
• Domino’s Pizza Group shares rose as much as 4% after Shore Capital upgraded its recommendation on the UK franchise of the world’s biggest pizza company to buy from hold.
• Hunting Plc shares fell as much as 20%, the most in four years, after the energy services provider cut its full-year profit guidance by 7%
• Straumann shares fell 3.5% after being downgraded to hold from buy at Deutsche Bank, which says increasing risks and the CEO transition “cloud the outlook” for the Swiss dental implant maker
• CTS Eventim shares slid as much as 9.5% after reporting results for the second quarter

Asian stocks advanced as heavyweight Samsung Electronics’ plan to return some of its windfall AI profits to shareholders lifted the technology sector. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose as much as 1%, with chipmakers among the biggest contributors. Samsung plans to return up to 110 trillion won ($79 billion), in what would be one of the company’s most significant capital-return initiatives. Benchmarks advanced in South Korea, Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan. Samsung’s payout plan follows SK Hynix’s announcement of a $29 billion buyback. Hopes for more AI-fueled shareholder returns have been a bright spot amid mounting concerns over rising bond yields and fading prospects for a US-Iran peace deal. The MSCI Asia index is down 0.3% for the week, poised to snap four-straight weeks of gains.

In FX, the dollar headed for its worst week this month before US manufacturing PMI data that may give investors more insight into the health of the world’s biggest economy.  A Bloomberg gauge tracking the dollar against peers fell 0.3% to its lowest level since May 12 as it continued to face a backlash from investors after Wednesday’s announcement that the US Treasury would boost purchases of longer-dated government bonds.  USD/JPY drops 0.4% to 158.36; Japan’s consumer price index excluding fresh food rose 1.8% in July from a year earlier, accelerating for a second month. EUR/USD on course for a third daily advance and a fourth weekly gain, for the first time since April 2025. GBP/USD rises as much as 0.3% to 1.3676; Britain’s private sector expanded at the fastest pace in four months, as sunny weather and a strong service sector prompted households and businesses to turn on the spending taps. Japan’s benchmark Topix pared an earlier loss to flip to gains, finding support from bank stocks and the marine transportation sector. “If you look at the sectors, money is still flowing into areas such as resources and domestically-oriented stocks,” said Shuutarou Yasuda, a market analyst at Tokai Tokyo Intelligence Laboratory. 

In rates, treasuries opened higher in a belly-led move; 30-year USTs underperformed with yields about 1bp lower at 5.24%. Wings of the curve are lagging ahead of US services and manufacturing reports. Choppy trading session overnight with oil prices lower and UK gilts and European front-ends outperform Treasuries. US yields higher by less than 0.5bps across belly, with the 2-year yield slightly lower and 30-year unchanged. 2/10’s and 2/30s are flatter by around 0.5bps vs. Thursday close. US 10-year yields trade around 4.70%, richer by 1bp on the day with bunds slightly and gilts up 1 bp in the sector. Market pricing for Federal Reserve rate hikes was steady ahead of US PMI data, September OIS around 9bps of a rate hike priced.  IG dollar issuance slate is quiet. On Thursday three companies raised a combined $3.25 billion in the US investment-grade bond market. Next week is expected to be light for issuance, before the seasonal rush begins after Labor Day 

“As the buyback announcement effect fades, we expect yields to resume their upward drift and the curve to maintain a steepening bias,” fixed-income strategists at Societe Generale SA wrote in a Thursday note

In commodities, WTI futures lower by around 1.1%, and have been trading below Thursday’s close during the overnight session. Brent crude futures are down 0.5% but on track for a roughly 5% rise this week as the ongoing Middle East conflict drives prices higher. The dollar’s loss is supporting gold, up 1.5% and briefly trading on a $4,600/oz handle for the first time since mid-May. The rally in Bitcoin has garnered further momentum, up over 7% and closing in on the $80k mark. 

Today's US economic data calendar includes Bloomberg US economic survey for August, and S&P Global US manufacturing, services and composite PMIs. No Fed speakers are scheduled for the session. Next week’s key events include Nvidia earnings and the Jackson Hole symposium. Investors will also be focusing on a heavy slate of results in Asia, including the first report from newly public chipmaker CXMT.

Market Snapshot

Top Overnight News

• Treasury secretary Scott Bessent’s bid to prop up the US bond market has been dismissed by investors as a “band-aid on a bullet hole”, as concerns mount over Washington’s $40tn debt burden and smoldering inflation. FT
• The market is treating the Treasury’s buyback announcement as a pure dollar negative, and Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh’s speech next week at Jackson Hole could be the catalyst for another round of greenback weakness: BBG
• Broadcom Inc. is in talks with a group of lenders to raise as much as $100 billion in SPV debt for an AI chip financing deal that will benefit Anthropic PBC and other companies. BBG
• Surging healthcare costs are walloping U.S. workers, and they will only worsen next year. For 2027, employers may be facing the biggest health-insurance increase in at least two decades. WSJ
• China will roll out additional fiscal policy measures in response to economic developments, Vice Finance Minister Liao Min said on Friday, as growth slows in the world's second-biggest economy. China will maintain the continuity ‌and stability of macroeconomic policies and plan and allocate fiscal resources over a longer time horizon, Liao told a press conference. RTRS
• Ever since President Trump’s return to office, America’s allies have been fretting about Washington’s intentions. Now, after the inconclusive war against Iran has eroded U.S. weapons stockpiles and laid bare the limits of American hard power, they also worry about American capabilities. WSJ
• Japan’s consumer inflation picked up last month as the energy shock caused by the Middle East conflict rippled out across goods, firming expectations that the next interest-rate hike is around the corner. WSJ
• Samsung Electronics expects to return as much as $80 billion to shareholders this year, joining rival SK Hynix in sharing the AI windfall and fueling optimism across the tech sector. Nasdaq futures led gains. BBG
• Unprecedented shareholder-return plans by South Korea’s two chipmaking giants are emerging as a key swing factor for the won, potentially extending its recent rally if the firms tap local currency markets to fund the payouts: BBG
• Eurozone flash PMIs were solid in Aug, with manufacturing coming in at 52.8 (vs. the Street 51.8) and services at 51.7 (vs. the Street 51.5), as the economy demonstrated healthy growth and easing inflation pressure. S&P
• Britain posted a surprise budget deficit in July, underscoring the fragile state of the public finances as Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey begins to draw up his crucial autumn budget: BBG
• Bitcoin topped $78,000, on track for its best week in more than three years. BBG
• September and October in midterm election years is when volatility picks up and S&P returns fade ... and that’s usually followed by a post-event bounce: Goldman

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

APAC stocks were mixed as the region attempted to shrug off the broadly negative handover from Wall Street, where risk sentiment was dampened amid a rebound in yields and Walmart's weak sales growth. ASX 200 traded with mild losses amid another deluge of earnings and mostly softer flash PMI data. Nikkei 225 retreated at the open but is well off today's worst levels, with participants digesting the latest inflation data from Japan, which mostly matched estimates and remained below the 2% price target, but accelerated from the previous and could support the case for further BoJ rate hikes. KOSPI clawed back early losses with price action driven by the tech heavyweights, with SK Hynix considering building a memory chip plant in Japan's Miyagi prefecture and with Samsung Electronics expected to announce a KRW 100tln shareholder return plan today. In addition, the comments from BoK's newly appointed Senior Deputy Governor Kwon were less hawkish than his predecessor, in which he stated that cautious and flexible policy decisions are needed. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were somewhat mixed, with the Hong Kong benchmark in the green and its biggest movers driven by recent earnings releases, while the mainland struggled for direction despite China's Vice Finance Minister flagging incremental policies and the PBoC resuming 7-day reverse repo operations for the first time in more than a week.

Top Asian News

• China's Vice Finance Minister Liao said they will roll out additional fiscal policy measures in response to economic developments. Liao added that a greater share of fiscal spending will be directed towards households and consumption.
• PBoC reportedly to "survey" some mutual funds regarding long-dated bonds, sources suggested.
• Japan's Finance Ministry is considering setting an assumed interest rate at 3.8% for calculating debt servicing costs in the FY27/28 budget request, Nikkei reported.
• Japanese PM Takaichi said an economy that is growing will experience a certain level of inflation. Japan has the lowest inflation among G7 nations due in part to the effect of government steps.
• Japan's LDP cabinet reshuffle is likely to occur in the latter half of September, Kyodo reported citing sources. Chief Cabinet Secretary Kihara is expected to retain their position

European bourses begin the final trading session of the week with broad gains, with the blue chip EuroStoxx 50 set to break its 5-day losing streak. Volumes remain light as the Summer season. On the data front, despite mixed French and German PMIs, the EZ figure printed stronger-than-expected across the board, with clear strength in the manufacturing sector. Commentary by S&P highlighted the effect of the heatwave on the services sector. For the ECB, S&P stated that the hawkish bias should remain giving the solid Q3 GDP growth, renewed hiring and elevated inflation. Sectors highlight the positive bias. Basic Resources is the clear outperformer, given the resurgence of precious metals (spot gold +1.5%). Construction and Autos round out the outperformers. To the downside is Health Care, with Media and Financial Services completing the sector laggards.

Top European News

• ECB Consumer Expectations Survey (Jul): 1-year inflation expectation: 2.9% (prev. 3%), 3-year inflation expectation: 2.7% (prev. 2.8%), 5-year inflation expectation: 2.4% (prev. 2.4%).
• European Negotiated Wage Growth (Q2) 2.44% (Q/Q Rev. 2.56%, Prev. 2.48%).
• Germany's VDMA said German Machinery exports fell 0.8% Y/Y in H1'26. Geopolitical crises, tariffs, and weak demand in certain countries are collectively weighing on foreign trade in the machinery sector.
• UK Chancellor Healey has been warned by investors and analysts to limit budget borrowing and not to relent in efforts to reduce the UK's fiscal deficit amid bond sell-off, according to FT.

FX

• G10s are entirely firmer against the Buck with Antipodeans the clear outperformers after China signalled further fiscal measures; CAD and NOK helped by oil prices which eke gains.
• DXY sits at the lower end of its 98.56-98.84 range, with the recent move lower coinciding with the gradual downside seen in global bond yields. In the prior session, Buck saw some modest weakness after Bessent hinted at further measures to temper yields, action which was reversed through the US afternoon, but an area which DXY has returned to this morning.
• As expected, July's UK Retail metrics were weak, echoing the BRC monitor for the same period. And despite the 3M commentary around the weather, the ongoing heatwave and end of the World Cup appear to have hit activity. For the BoE, the print does not change the narrative, and instead we look to Flash PMIs later today. Cable saw around 8 pips of downside after the data, action which was swiftly pared in choppy trade. Flash PMIs failed to spur a reaction, despite broadly printing further into expansionary territory. With GBP/USD breaching the resistance at 1.3654, chartists will be focused on the next resistance high at 1.3712.
• EZ flash PMIs supported the bullish EUR bias today as figures indicating solid third quarter GDP growth, a return to hiring by companies for the first time this year, and inflation remaining elevated by historical standards. EUR/USD looks to Thursday's 1.1710 high, thereafter, resistance around 1.1750.
• Antipodeans outperform after China’s Vice Finance Minister pledged to roll out additional fiscal policy measures, remarks which follow similar rhetoric from July’s Politburo meeting. Attention will be on further measures to be released in the coming days, which could continue to help the Antipodes. AUD and NZD each firmer by 0.6% against the Buck, with Aussie looking to 0.72, Kiwi eyeing 0.5980, thereafter 0.60.

Fixed Income

• Global fixed benchmarks are mixed this morning, but with price action tentative and trading on either side of the unchanged mark. Earlier action was muted, though US30yr has been gradually falling as the morning progressed. The US 30yr resides at 5.23% vs yesterday’s peak at 5.26% and off near-term highs at 5.33%.
• USTs (+3 ticks) hold within a very narrow 108-14 to 108-17+ range. The lack of news flow and the ongoing summer lull have led to thin ranges, but later markets will have US PMI metrics to digest, as well as an appearance from President Trump. Elsewhere, the US10yr (4.68%) also moves lower this morning, lacking a clear catalyst. A factor which has led to a decline in the USD, whilst spot gold and Bitcoin have moved to highs.
• Bunds (+2 ticks) are also trading steady this session. The European benchmark has had regional and EZ-wide PMI metrics to digest this morning, whereby the French and German releases were subject to poor Services components, whilst Manufacturing topped expectations.
• Elsewhere in Europe, the EZ Negotiated Wage Growth (Q2) figure fell from the prior, which will be welcomed by policymakers at the ECB – but unlikely to push away calls for a September hike. On the inflation front, the latest ECB SCE saw 1- and 3-year expectations fall from the prior.
• Gilt (-4 ticks) price action essentially echoes the above. UK Retail Sales were weak, whilst the PMIs mildly topped expectations. The accompanying report, “the data suggest the Bank of England looks likely to keep a hawkish bias but will stay cautious, holding off any rate hikes until the growth and inflation trajectories become clearer”. The release saw downticks of c. 7 ticks, but this proved fleeting.

Commodities

• WTI and Brent futures trade on a softer footing amid a pullback from yesterday’s surge, and as geopolitical headlines quieten down, for now, heading into the weekend. Major updates have been light this morning. Reports via the Jerusalem Post suggested security officials see a lower near-term risk of an expanded war with Iran, with Trump’s new economic sanctions intended to buy time until after the US midterms. Meanwhile, the report added that Israel is increasing military preparedness in case strikes resume. Near-term catalysts remain dependent on US-Iran developments, with the next inflection points likely coming from any surprise weekend military action, Iran’s response to US economic pressure, or any updates on diplomacy.
• WTI Oct currently resides around session lows in a USD 85.95-86.94/bbl range, after printing USD 85.23-87.69/bbl range yesterday. Brent Oct sits in a USD 92.97-94.00/bbl range after printing a USD 91.47-94.71/bbl range yesterday. Dutch TTF, conversely, keeps rising, with European storage replenishment also on traders’ minds. Dutch TTF has risen to a current high above EUR 66.50/MWh from levels under EUR 65/MWh earlier this morning.
• Metals are higher across the board and are cheering continued weakness in the USD, with woes for the Buck this week compounded by the mid-week US Treasury buyback announcement. Spot gold found support at its 200 DMA (USD 4,514/oz) and currently trades towards the top of a USD 4,509-4,602/oz range, with the next upside level the psychological USD 4,600/oz. Spot silver topped its 100 DMA (USD 68.50/oz) and eyes USD 70/oz to the upside in a USD 67.91-69.92/oz range. Base metals are similarly firmer across the board, with 3M LME copper towards the upper end of a USD 14,050.90-14,194.08/t.
• Offers of Iranian crude to Chinese buyers have reportedly declined, Reuters reported.

Central Banks

• ECB's Kazaks said he sees wage growth gradually slowing and that the ECB is well placed to act, if needed.
• BoK's new senior deputy governor Kwon said growth is improving more than expected, inflation is exceeding target and financial stability risks remain, while he added that cautious and flexible policy decisions are needed due to FX volatility and geopolitical risks. Kwon stated he doesn't want to define himself as a hawk or dove, and will make decisions based on circumstances and data.

Geopolitics: Iran

• Security officials reportedly see a lower near-term risk of an expanded war with Iran, with Trump’s new economic sanctions intended to buy time until after the US midterms, Jerusalem Post reported. The report added that Israel is increasing military preparedness in case strikes resume.
• US President Trump said on Michael Cohen's podcast that the US is essentially and soon controlling the strait, while he said Iran has some missiles and drones, but low capacity to build.
• US VP Vance responded that their main focus is not really on that, when asked how long Iran could withstand economic pressure, while he added that Iran is under a lot of pressure, which helps achieve our goal of making sure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon.
• Iranian Parliament speaker Ghalibaf said Iran must draw up plans to overcome unjust sanctions in order to defeat them.
• Yemen's Houthis said they targeted a Saudi airport and an Aramco facility.
• Yemeni Armed Forces announce the targeting Houthi heavy equipment and fortifications, according to Al Arabiya.

Geopolitics: Ukraine/Other

• Ukrainian President Zelensky said Ukrainian forces struck an oil refinery in Russia's Perm and a military base in Marinovka.
• North Korea reportedly fired about 10 short-range ballistic missiles in its third missile launch this month, hours after rejecting US President Trump's overtures.
• Japan, US and South Korea held a phone call regarding North Korea missile launch.
• China and Indonesia will expand joint-military exercises and will work together to accelerate the modernisation of their respective armed forces, according to Indonesia’s Defence Minister.

US Event Calendar

• 9:45 am: Aug P S&P Global US Manufacturing PMI, est. 53.9, prior 53.9
• 9:45 am: Aug P S&P Global US Services PMI, est. 54, prior 54.6
• 9:45 am: Aug P S&P Global US Composite PMI, est. 53.95, prior 54.5

DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

The past 24 hours saw renewed pressure in bond markets as the rally following the US Treasury's announcement on Wednesday that it would expand its buyback operations faded. That meant 10yr Treasury yields rose by +5.8bps to 4.71%. The sell-off in rates was reinforced by the continued rise in energy prices, with Brent crude (+2.36%) advancing for a fifth consecutive session to $93.78/bbl, amid continuing concerns over US-Iran tensions. The backdrop of higher yields and oil prices led the S&P 500 (-0.87%) to post its biggest decline of August so far. Market sentiment has stabilised somewhat overnight, though yields are mostly drifting higher in Asia while the US dollar is trading near three-month lows.

Yesterday’s rise in yields came despite US Treasury Secretary Bessent’s attempts to ameliorate the market situation in an interview on CNBC. Bessent said that the buybacks previously announced could be bigger than the $4bn per issue, and that Treasury had a “big toolkit” for the treasuries market. Intriguingly, he also said that the administration would be announcing an increased focus on fiscal consolidation, “probably at the end of this week, beginning of next week”, although he provided little other detail. Long-end yields did stabilise as the session went on, but 10yr yields still fully reversed Wednesday’s rally (+5.8bps after -5.7bps Wednesday), while 30yr yields (+5.7bps and -9.2bps) reversed most of theirs.

So for now investors are viewing the Treasury’s steps more as a band-aid than a structural solution to rising yields. Indeed, as we argued in our note dedicated to the 250-year anniversary of the US (see here on the DB Research Institute), while financial repression could play some role in managing the US debt burden, it needs to be combined with genuine fiscal consolidation to have a sustained impact.

Meanwhile, the stagnant situation in the Middle East also added pressure on rates yesterday, as markets digested Trump’s threat from Wednesday night that Iran would face the “most crushing economic operation ever”. In his CNBC interview yesterday, Bessent also said that oil markets were “misinterpreting” what this economic pressure means, and that he would hold a press conference on Monday to discuss the next steps. With lingering questions of whether the US could target countries economically supporting Iran, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said “sanctions and pressure will not help resolve the issue”. As prospects of resolution remained distant, Brent crude crossed $93/bbl to its highest level since late July. Brent is a marginal -0.32% lower this morning.

With oil prices moving higher against the uncertainty, that put renewed pressure on inflation expectations, with the US 1yr inflation swap rising +16.0bps, its largest daily move since March. 5yr inflation swaps (+6.4bps) also posted a decent gain to its highest level since June at 2.51%. In turn, expectations of Fed hikes edged higher with pricing of a September hike up from 32% to 36% and 23bps of hikes being priced by year-end (+1.6bps on the day). Staying on the Fed, St. Louis Fed President Musalem reiterated his view that inflation remained too high due to shocks and persistent demand. Musalem had supported a hike in July, although he is a non-voter this year.

Yesterday’s US data also did nothing to push back against the move higher in yields, with the Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook for August rising to its highest level since April 2021 (47.4 vs 41.4 prev., 24.8 exp.). Even more impressively, the capex expectations reading within the survey saw its highest reading since the 1970s. Meanwhile, initial jobless claims for the period ending in August 15 were a little lower than expected (206K vs 210k exp.), signalling that the labour market remains stable.

The bond sell off has spread to Asia overnight, with yields on 10yr Japan (+3.3bps) and Australia (+5.1bps) bonds moving higher, while 10yr Treasuries are stable. For JGBs, the move comes as Japan’s flash August composite PMI rose to a 6-month high of 53.4 (from 52.7) with both manufacturing and services activity accelerating. Meanwhile, Japan’s July national CPI rose from 1.6% to 1.9%, in line with expectations, with core-core (ex. fresh food and energy) inflation rising from 1.7% to 1.9%. The data has underlined market expectations of a September BoJ hike, with its pricing rising from 79% to 82% this morning.

We’ll also get flash PMIs across the Eurozone, UK and US today, which will give us a further sense of whether the economic resilience seen so far this summer has continued. In a sign of positive momentum continuing, the UK’s GfK consumer confidence reading (-14 vs -18 expected) released overnight unexpectedly rose to its highest level in two years.

Equities struggled yesterday in response to the unwinding of fixed income gains, with the S&P 500 (-0.87%) posting its biggest decline of August so far. The Nasdaq (-1.00%) and the Mag-7 (-1.11%) saw larger losses, even as the Philly Semiconductor index (+0.53%) reversed some of its losses from earlier this week. Sentiment also wasn’t helped by earnings from Walmart (-9.15%), whose shares slumped after the company saw its slowest US sales growth since 2020 at +2.6% yoy. So that renewed questions about the health of the US consumer amid the backdrop of high energy prices, rising interest rates and a low saving rate.

The equity mood has improved a bit overnight, with both the S&P 500 (+0.06%) and NASDAQ (+0.20%) edging higher, while Asian markets are mixed. The Nikkei (-0.30%) is underperforming, but the Hang Seng (+0.72%) and CSI 300 (+0.52%) are advancing. Korea’s KOSPI is also up +0.89% following on a +5.89% surge yesterday. That’s been helped by a +2.10% gain for Samsung Electronics as Bloomberg reported that the company plans to announce a new package of dividends and buyback of up to 110trn won ($79bn).

Over in Europe, sovereign bonds also mostly lost ground yesterday. While 10yr bunds (-0.2bps) were little changed, the 10yr OAT yield (+1.5bps) reached a new post-2008 high of 4.12%, with BTP (+1.4bps) yields also higher. Meanwhile, 10yr gilts (+2.3bps) underperformed, in part following a better-than-expected August CBI Trends survey. That said, the relatively modest bond moves came despite European gas prices (+3.36%) rising to their highest level since January 2023 at €65.50/MWh, as worries of an energy shock continued to permeate markets. Indeed, the Euro 1yr inflation swap rate also rose +3.4bps to its highest level since late July. In the equity space, Europe’s Stoxx 600 (-0.12%), DAX (-0.42%) and CAC 40 (-0.57%) declined, whilst the FTSE 100 (+0.04%) inched up.

Turning to FX, with yields rebounding, the dollar index (+0.06%) stabilised yesterday after Wednesday's decline but is -0.14% lower overnight. Gold (+0.02%) was also little changed at $4,517/oz after having its best day since February on Wednesday. Conversely, Bitcoin (+5.25%) rose for a 4th consecutive session to its highest level since late May. It is another +2.64% higher, nearing the $75k level this morning, though that still leaves the cryptocurrency down about -15% this year.

Finally, Sweden’s Riksbank left its policy rate unchanged at 1.75% as expected. In the comments, the bank said that the probability of a rate hike later this year still holds. Money markets are now pricing 23bps of Riksbank hikes by December, down from 28bps the day before.

Turning to the day ahead, the data highlight will be the flash August PMIs across France, Germany, Eurozone, UK and US. Other data include July retail sales in the UK, France August business confidence, the ECB’s July consumer expectations survey, Eurozone August consumer confidence and Canada June retail sales.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 08:34

British Protesters Jailed For Longer Than Migrant Who Sexually Assaulted Girl

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

British men who protested outside an Essex asylum hotel have been locked up for far longer than the migrant whose sexual assaults on a 14-year-old girl and a woman triggered the demonstrations.

Charlie Land, 24, and Jonathan Glover, 48, received 32 months and 30 months respectively at Chelmsford Crown Court for violent disorder during the July 2025 clashes at The Bell Hotel in Epping. The Ethiopian national at the centre of it all, Hadush Kebatu, got just 12 months.

This is the latest chapter in a pattern that has already seen multiple local men handed heavier sentences than the man whose crimes set off the backlash.

Epping asylum hotel protesters jailed for longer than migrant occupant who assaulted woman and girlhttps://t.co/lO70iA2I01

— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 19, 2026

Kebatu arrived in Britain on a small boat and was housed at the Bell Hotel. Within days he approached a 14-year-old girl on a bench in Epping, tried to kiss her, made sexually explicit comments, placed his hand on her thigh and later assaulted a woman who had offered help.

He was convicted of multiple sexual offences, including two counts of sexual assault, and sentenced to 12 months in September 2025. A judge described him as manipulative with a "poor regard for women" and said he posed a significant risk of reoffending.

He was later mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford due to an administrative blunder, triggering a multi-force manhunt before he was finally deported to Ethiopia.

The protests that followed were initially peaceful. They escalated on 17 July 2025 when counter-demonstrators arrived and disorder broke out.

Hundreds gathered. Police vehicles were attacked. Officers were shoved, punched and kicked. Essex Police said the overall policing operation cost more than £1.5 million.

Land was captured on drone and bodycam footage repeatedly damaging police vehicles, punching windows, kicking off wing mirrors, letting air out of tyres and climbing onto one vehicle to kick the windscreen while wearing a banned face covering. Judge Mills called him a "full and enthusiastic participant in the violent disorder" who showed "no regard" for officers' safety. The mask, the judge said, "contributed to an atmosphere of intimidation."

Glover was filmed shouting at officers and impeding police carriers. He claimed to be a journalist. The judge rejected that outright: "Genuine journalists record events - they do not manufacture them. You were not a reporter being picked on by the police; you were not the victim of so-called two-tier justice - you were the antagonist. Far from seeking to calm tensions, you repeatedly inflamed them."

These are not the first such sentences. In October 2025 Stuart Williams received 28 months, Martin Peagram 26 months and Dean Smith 22 months. In June 2026 Lee Gower, a local father and youth football coach, was jailed for 33 months. Shaun Thompson received 31 months. Phillip Curson later got 27 months. Combined custodial terms for those convicted already exceed 17 years.

Chief Inspector Terry Fisher of Essex Police said the disorder left the community "scared and anxious," disrupted daily life and damaged local businesses. "Whilst many people who wanted their voices to be heard on an important issue did that safely, a number chose to behave well beyond that and these convictions and sentences show that behaviour is and was entirely unacceptable."

The contrast is stark. A foreign national who sexually assaulted a schoolgirl days after arriving by small boat served 12 months (and was released early by mistake). British men who turned up to protest the housing of such offenders in their town are serving two to nearly three years. The courts have repeatedly stressed that peaceful protest is not the issue - the violence is. Yet the disparity in outcomes has fuelled widespread anger over two-tier justice.

Meanwhile the Labour government continues to free space in overcrowded prisons by releasing thousands of criminals early. Prisons are operating near capacity. Successive schemes have already seen tens of thousands leave early. Further releases are planned under the Sentencing Act, with adjustments after public backlash to exclude some of the most serious sex offenders, yet thousands of other prisoners will still walk free ahead of schedule to ease the crisis.

BREAKING?More than 70,000 criminals freed from prison under Labour's early release schemehttps://t.co/ftAnnKYHYZ

— GB News (@GBNEWS) July 30, 2026

British towns are told to accept mass arrivals. When one of those arrivals attacks local children and women, residents who object too vigorously find themselves behind bars for longer than the perpetrator.

The system prioritises capacity management and narrative control over equal application of the law.

Secure borders, swift deportation of foreign offenders and consistent justice for British citizens are not radical demands. They are the baseline of a country that still claims to protect its own people.

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 Fri, 08/21/2026 - 08:15

HSBC Warns Global Zinc Market Is Flashing Signs Of Tightness

HSBC's Global Commodity Team warned Thursday that the zinc market is flashing warning signs of extreme tightness:

Global zinc mine supply remains tight: HSBC's Global Commodity Team expects global mine supply to fall 2.1% y-o-y to 12.5mt in 2026, driven mainly by lower production in Latin America.

The zinc market is expected to be slightly tight in 2026e, driven by a modest recovery in demand in Europe and North America amid supply disruptions at smelters and mines.

Overall, concentrate supply remains tight, and there have been smelter disruptions as well. Zinc demand has held up.

Here's where the physical tightness is emerging: Zinc for immediate delivery on the London Metal Exchange traded at a premium of as much as $132.37 a ton over three-month futures Thursday, the widest backwardation this year.

The spread signals intensifying competition for readily available metal in warehouses. Benchmark zinc rose 1.1% to $3,802 a ton earlier today, putting it on course for a fifth weekly gain and its highest close in four years.

Analysts from Chinese brokerage Jinrui Futures Co. wrote in a note, "There are still concerns about overseas supply disruptions in zinc," adding, "So the driving forces for the relative strength of the LME price continue to exist, together with heightened volatility around macroeconomic sentiment."

Beyond zinc, veteran commodities strategist Jeff Currie wrote in a series of X posts Thursday that the convergence of tight physical markets, currency debasement and policy intervention represents the hallmark of a structural commodity bull cycle.

Quantix Commodity Index

Currie told his followers to "Get long and buckle up: the next leg of the ride will see more vol with higher highs across more markets."

Read the report here.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 08:00