The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• David Zaslav Gets the Last Laugh.  The Warner Bros. mogul’s $111 billion deal with David Ellison reveals the next stage of the business: The rich get richer, the big get bigger and everybody else is left in the dust. A look inside the Ellison empire and how Warner Bros. Discovery’s much-mocked CEO wound up in a stronger position than anyone expected. (Hollywood Reporter) 

• Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It. Yes, In the era of A.I. agents, many Silicon Valley programmers are now barely programming. Instead, what they’re doing is deeply, deeply weird. (New York Times) see also After the AI Revolution. What does the economy — and society — actually look like on the other side of the AI transformation? Like a prism, AI will reveal the civilizational differences between China and the U.S., making visible the invisible within each society. (NOEMA) 

• They Came to Spy on America. They Stayed to Coach Little League. Soviet spies who settled into American suburban life and couldn’t quite bring themselves to leave. In the wake of the Cold War, some Soviet bloc spies decided their fake American lives weren’t so bad. (Politico)

• Sucker: My year as a degenerate gambler: When I set out to report on the sports-betting industry—its explosive growth, its sudden cultural ubiquity, and what it’s doing to America—my editors thought I should experience the phenomenon firsthand. Mindful of my religious constraints, they proposed a work-around: The Atlantic would stake me $10,000 to gamble with over the course of the upcoming NFL season. The magazine would cover any losses, and—to ensure my ongoing emotional investment—split any winnings with me, 50–50. Surely God would approve of such an arrangement, my editors reasoned, because I wouldn’t be risking my own hard-earned money. (The Atlantic)

• Inside the Space-Age Bid to Build Millions of Homes in Factories. Operation Breakthrough, a 1970s federal moonshot to build 26 million homes using advanced manufacturing, has lessons for today’s abundance movement. Operation Breakthrough, a 1970s federal moonshot to build 26 million homes using advanced manufacturing methods, has lessons for today’s abundance movement. (CityLab)

• The Status Economy: How the signaling game has shifted from logos and luxury goods to taste, access, and knowledge. “Every purchase is now a status signal. Discover The Status Economy — three reports exploring the categories defining cultural credibility and taste in 2026. “For the last decade, fashion has been the most direct way to communicate status, knowledge, and cultural credibility. Today, that concentration has broken apart. For Cultural Pioneers, everything is now a signal. Every purchase, product, and experience functions as a marker of taste, knowledge, and cultural credibility, regardless of category. We’re calling this shift The Status Economy. Across three reports, we take a deep dive into the categories defining status in 2026.  (Highsnobiety)

• Building Brasília: A twentieth-century experiment in urban planning promised progress—but carried immense financial and human costs. (JSTOR Daily)

• Tech legend Stewart Brand on Musk, Bezos and his extraordinary life: ‘We don’t need to passively accept our fate’ The Whole Earth Catalog creator reflects on Silicon Valley’s evolution and our collective agency. He was at the heart of 1960s counterculture, then paved the way for the libertarian mindset of Silicon Valley. At 87, Brand is still keen to ensure the world is maintained properly – not just today, but for the next 10,000 years. “We don’t need to passively accept our fate.” (The Guardian)

• How the ‘Neo-Vintage’ Era Became the Hottest Thing in Watches From ornate perpetual calendars to classic divers, watches from the 1980s and 1990s hit the sweet spot between value, reliability, and soul. (GQ)

• Hollywood’s Most Invisible Job Gets Its Own Oscar: After nearly a century, the Oscars are finally honoring the art of casting. But those who built the category say the toughest questions are just beginning. (Wall Street Journal)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Matt Cherwin, co-founder and Chief Investment Officer of Marek Capital. The alternative asset management firm launched in 2024. Previously, he spent 16-years at JPMorgan Chase & Co where he held titles of Chief Investment Officer, Group Treasurer, Co-Head of Global Spread Markets, Global Head of Securitized Products, and Global Head of Asset-Backed Trading.

 

YouTube Lays Claim to Another Crown: The World’s Largest Media Company

Source: Hollywood Reporter

 

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~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

 

The post 10 Weekend Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

UBS And Goldman Map The Paralysis Across Hormuz Chokepoint

The second week of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is coming to a close, with no visible off-ramp yet emerging, even as the White House continues to project victory. Goldman now expects the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz to persist for three weeks, a timeline that suggests further intensification of what the IEA has already described as an unprecedented global energy shock.

Focusing on the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint, data from UBS and Goldman desks show that flows through the critical waterway remain muted by the end of the week.

Current situation in the Hormuz and Gulf area:

Oil & gas tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz, in number of ships, entering and exiting the Gulf

Crude loadings by ports in the Middle East (Mb/d)

Iran's crude loadings by port (Mb/d)

Map of oil & gas infrastructure in the Persian Gulf

Iranian attacks on vessels (direct & attempted)

Map of ships' locations when struck in the Gulf region since early March

Summary of attacks on energy infrastructure

In addition to UBS, Goldman's tracking of Persian Gulf exports also shows limited activity through the strait.

The estimated total hit to oil flows from the Persian Gulf stands at 16 mb/d (16 times larger than the peak April 2022 hit to Russian oil production).

According to S&P Global, only 22 tankers crossed the Strait of Hormuz since March 1, with most tankers operating with AIS signals off.

With an incoming energy shock, the analysts show which countries have the largest buffers, as well as the countries with the least.

Details on the 32-nation IEA SPR dump.

Both notes only suggest that paralysis in the critical waterway is set to persist into next week. Even if the IRGC's conventional military capabilities have been severely degraded, the more immediate threat to commercial vessel traffic in the waterway is the IRGC's asymmetric warfare, which includes low-cost kamikaze drones and naval mines.

More in the full notes available to pro subs.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 17:40

The Order Of Battle

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

Don’t lose your shit over mines in the Strait of Hormuz and the oil price shooting up. Iran has many thousands of mines. But something has to lay them out in the water. Iran has no more naval ships. They have small boats. The US can see everything moving on the surface, or sitting at docks. We are blowing them up methodically. The news outlets who want the US to fail in this operation (because: Trump) want you to think that we had no plan for dealing with this problem. That’s not so.

There are very few mines actually laid so far. Tankers are not going through the Strait of Hormuz because their captains are nervous. Their ships and their cargos are worth millions and the insurance costs millions. So, they’re waiting in place, hanging back. The US still has work to do destroying Iran’s shoreline defenses of missile and drone launch sites. Iran is firing all they’ve got left. Whenever they launch something, we see the geo-location on our satellites and radars. The mobile launchers are a little trickier because, obviously, they shoot and move. But they don’t always move fast enough, and there isn’t an endless supply of them.

The US Navy decommissioned its four Avenger-class minesweeper ships in the Persian Gulf in September, 2025, but replaced them with more agile Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) capable of countering submarines and clearing mines. Two LCS ships — USS Santa Barbara and USS Canberra — quietly deployed in March 2025.

An LCS uses an Airborne Laser Mine Detection System and an Airborne Mine Neutralization System via helicopter. In the water, it uses mine-hunting sonar and the Unmanned Influence Sweep System — all operated from unmanned surface vessels. The unmanned sweep vehicle triggers magnetic, acoustic, or combination mines, with the LCS at a safe distance.

The LCS vessels are armed with an 11-cell SeaRAM launcher for point defense that fires Rolling Airframe Missiles — fast, radar-guided missiles designed to knock down incoming anti-ship missiles and drones at short range. They also carry Longbow Hellfire missiles with updated software and hardware specifically to counter drones. The Longbow Hellfire uses radar-guided technology enabling it to engage targets through battlefield clutter, with a range of up to eight kilometers — giving the LCS the ability to engage drones before they get close. The LCS ships will be accompanied by Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with Aegis and full missile defense suites for protection against the full spectrum of Iranian threats.

The oil markets are extremely sensitive to any changes in the oil environment, and war induces the most extreme changes.

Even outside of war, weird things happen.

April 20, 2020, was the apex of Covid-19 paranoia when everyday life was shutting down all over Western Civ.

The price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures — specifically the May 2020 contract, which was expiring the very next day — crashed to an historic low of negative $37.63 per barrel.

That is, sellers were literally paying buyers to take oil off their hands. By the following day, April 21, prices had rebounded back into positive territory, though still at very depressed levels around $10–$15 per barrel.

The current situation with oil in the $100 range is not going to be a one-day event, but it won’t last forever, either, so do your deep-breathing exercises and calm down.

Of course, in America right now, a seditious news media will take every opportunity to induce exquisite anxiety in the public-at-large to deflect from the order-of-battle that President DJT is carrying out to 1) improve America’s geopolitical position and relations, and 2) to defeat the forces both external and domestic that seek to wreck the country.

Which is why you might see that the next move in the order of battle will be against the wrecking crew in our own country, including the political figures behind the decade-long conspiracy to undermine the president, the administrative rogues running the “resistance” in government agencies, the Lawfare ninjas queering the justice system, and the big money that funds the hundreds of NGOs attempting to instigate a color revolution here.

I have visions of perp walks and indictments coming in on the zephyrs of spring.

It looks just now like Majority Leader John Thune and his RINO herd will trample the SAVE Act (election reform) into failure. But consider that Mr. Trump’s FBI has had more than a month to analyze the Fulton County, Georgia, ballot evidence from the 2020 election (while only last week it seized the Maricopa County, AZ, records, and for all we know the agency also has 2020 ballot evidence from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada, too).

So, prepare for the public to be shocked and amazed at what has been discovered, and expect to see a sharp attitude change among embarrassed US Senators who will be compelled to come on-board for election reform.

Somewhere in all that, you might expect Cuba to fall — a momentous event, actually, considering the cumulative mischief Cuba’s government has provoked all over the western hemisphere since 1958. We don’t even have to do anything to make it happen, just respond in the aftermath with emergency food and fuel relief, and perhaps some help averting the vengeful slaughter of the old Castro governing network. We don’t want a bloodbath there.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 17:15

401(k) Hardship Withdrawals Hit Record High

The AI bubble and data center buildout have helped catapult equity markets to new highs (pre-Middle East conflict), minting a record number of 401(k) millionaires. However, beneath the surface, hardship withdrawals from 401(k) plans have also climbed to a record, reinforcing the view that the K-shaped economy is becoming more entrenched.

Vanguard's How America Saves 2025 report shows that hardship withdrawal activity "increased to a new high" of 6% in 2025, up from 4.8% in 2024 and about 2% before the pandemic.

The increase marks the sixth straight annual rise since Congress eased the rules in 2018 by removing the requirement that participants first take a 401(k) loan. Vanguard said the median hardship withdrawal was about $1,900 for avoiding foreclosure or eviction (36%), paying medical expenses (31%), and covering tuition (13%).

"Given that it's now easier to request a hardship withdrawal and that automatic enrollment is helping more workers save for retirement, especially lower-income workers, a modest increase isn't surprising," the Vanguard report said.

The report noted, "For a small subset of workers facing financial stress, hardship withdrawals may serve as a safety net that may not otherwise have been available without plan-implemented automatic solutions."

The report shows the K-shaped economy is continuing with no end in sight as the cost-of-living crisis rages on, forcing those with the weakest financial profiles to tap into 401(k)s and retirement accounts just to stay afloat.

"Withdrawing from your 401(k) has become one of the easiest ways to access excess capital," Shelby Rothman, founder of EnJoy Financial, told CNBC Select.

Rothman said, "Nearly half of Americans don't have $1,000 for unexpected expenses — no emergency fund, no available credit. Nothing."

 

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 16:50

29% Of Americans Have Finally Figured Out The Problem... 71% To Go

Authored by James Hickman via SchiffSovereign.com,

A new Gallup poll finds that 29% of Americans now say government itself is the country’s biggest problem.

That’s a higher percentage than people who think America’s biggest problem is the economy. Or immigration. Or inflation.

Think about that for a moment.

The institution whose entire job is to solve problems has become, in the eyes of the public, the single biggest problem of all.

Joseph Tainter described exactly this phenomenon in his 1988 book, The Collapse of Complex Societies. Tainter studied empires from Rome to the Maya and found the same pattern every time: as societies grow, they create layers of bureaucracy and complexity to solve problems.

Eventually the bureaucracy becomes so bloated and expensive that it stops solving anything — and starts generating new problems instead.

And you can see it playing out in real time. Rather than address why it is failing to solve problems with the $5 trillion plus it already collects, a growing number of politicians simply want to extract more wealth from the people who create it.

Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ro Khanna just introduced the “Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act” — a 5% annual wealth tax on America’s roughly 938 billionaires, which they optimistically estimate would raise $4.4 trillion over ten years. That’s about $440 billion a year.

Sounds like a lot. Until you remember the federal government is running $2 trillion deficits every single year. Sanders’ grand plan wouldn’t cover a quarter of the annual shortfall.

And that’s the best case — which assumes no billionaire leaves the country, no assets decline in value, no capital flees to friendlier jurisdictions.

Britain tried something similar when the Labour government abolished its 110-year-old “non-dom” tax regime. The result? Over 10,000 millionaires left the country, and tax revenue actually fell.

But even setting aside the question of whether it would “work,” a 5% annual tax on existing wealth — compounding every year — is an extraordinarily destructive idea.

It’s not a tax on income. It’s a tax on assets — on the factories, businesses, and investments that employ people and produce things.

If you tax at 5% annually, within 15 years you’ve confiscated more than half the wealth. You haven’t funded the government. You’ve just driven capital, talent, and entire companies to friendlier places.

Then what? America is poorer. There are fewer businesses, fewer jobs, fewer wealthy people left to tax. Growth slows. Tax revenue declines. The deficit gets worse, not better.

The federal government already collects $5.2 trillion a year in tax revenue. The problem was never insufficient taxation. It’s a spending addiction that no amount of taxation can feed.

And we know that’s true because the entire federal budget in 2019 was $4.4 trillion.

If Congress had simply held spending at that level, the government would have posted an $800 billion surplus last year. Even adjusted for inflation, they would have roughly broken even — without making a single spending cut.

Instead, spending surged 59% to over $7 trillion.

And what did Americans get for it? Roads and bridges are still crumbling. Social Security is still barreling toward insolvency. Is America safer? Is inflation down? Do we receive more government services?

No.

The only people it’s working out for are the Somali immigrant fraudsters who are part of the network that steals $600 billion from taxpayers every year.

And the bureaucrats in California, where the legal graft funnels $100 billion in government grants to DEI initiatives, intersectionality programs, and non-binary construction apprenticeships.

Of course this dysfunction is not just at the federal level.

In Los Angeles, fire victims who lost their homes in the devastating Palisades fires have been receiving citations from the city’s fire department — for failing to clear brush on properties that already burned to the ground.

In Baltimore, where the Francis Scott Key bridge collapsed in March 2024, the city initially said that reconstruction would cost $1.7 billion and be complete in 2028. Nine months later they revised their cost estimate to $5.2 billion, and completion to 2030.

These people just cannot execute.

This is what late-stage institutional decay looks like. Not a dramatic collapse, but a slow, grinding loss of competence and legitimacy — where the government’s primary function shifts from solving problems to perpetuating itself.

But here’s the thing — history shows that this kind of decay is less “end of the world” and more forest fire. Painful, yes. Destructive, absolutely.

But forest fires clear out the deadwood, return nutrients to the soil, and make way for new growth. It’s happened to every overgrown empire in history, and what comes after is almost always better than what came before.

The sensible course of action is to make sure, one, you have fire insurance, and two, you’re positioned for the new growth.

That’s what a good Plan B is all about.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 16:25

'President Boasberg' Protects Powell, Quashes DOJ 'Pressure Campaign' Subpoena Over Fed Renovation

Another day, another activist judge deciding they're the president... 

On Friday, chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has blocked subpoenas issued by the Trump Justice Department to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and the Fed Board of Governor

Boasberg claims that the subpoenas were served for an improper, pretextual purpose, and that "a mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning," and that the government produced “essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime; indeed, its justifications are so thin and unsubstantiated that the Court can only conclude that they are pretextual.” The order explicitly quashes the subpoenas.

The subpoenas were issued as part of a DOJ probe into the Fed’s management of its headquarters renovation project - an investigation that Powell and others have called a pretext. Powell himself issued an unprecedented video statement in January 2026 saying the threatened indictment stemmed from his Senate testimony and the Fed’s independent interest-rate decisions rather than any actual crime. He described it as part of broader administration pressure to politicize monetary policy.

White House officials have criticized the Federal Reserve over its handling of renovations to two historic buildings in Washington: the Marriner S. Eccles Building, the Fed’s headquarters, and the 1951 Constitution Avenue building.

Renovation costs for the Fed’s headquarters have risen to $2.5 billion, $700 million over budget, according to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought.

Last July, Trump indicated that Powell’s handling of the renovation project could be grounds to fire him, saying, “I think it sort of is.”

“When you spend $2.5 billion on, really, a renovation, I think it’s really disgraceful,” he said.

The Fed responded to the criticism, stating on its website that major systems in both buildings, whose construction dates back to the 1930s, are “obsolete and in need of replacement for health and safety reasons.”

The decision has drawn praise from those defending Fed independence and sharp criticism from Trump allies who view it as judicial interference. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) has already said he will block confirmation of Trump’s nominee to replace Powell until the probe is dropped.

Warsh’s nomination by President Donald Trump is bogged down because of an effective blockade imposed by Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who sits on the Banking Committee. That panel is the first hurdle for would-be Fed board members such as Warsh.

Tillis has vowed to vote against passing along Warsh’s nomination or any other Fed nominee to the full Senate for a confirmation vote as long as a criminal investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell remains in progress.

Now Tillis says that if the Trump admin appeals Boasberg's ruling, Warsh's confirmation will be delayed even further. Moments later, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said that the decision will be appealed. 

Boasberg’s Record of Interventions in Trump-Related Matters

This just the latest instance where Judge Boasberg has stepped in to block, quash, or otherwise limit actions or probes tied to Trump - including:

• 2017 — Trump Tax Returns FOIA Lawsuit: Boasberg dismissed a Freedom of Information Act suit seeking President Trump’s personal tax returns, ruling they remained confidential without Trump’s consent or congressional approval. This effectively quashed public access efforts.
• 2022–2023 — January 6 Committee & Jack Smith Grand Jury Subpoenas: As chief judge overseeing the D.C. grand jury in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s post-2020 election conduct, Boasberg denied a Trump spokesperson’s attempt to claw back financial records subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 Committee. He also ordered former Vice President Mike Pence to testify before the grand jury (partially rejecting executive-privilege claims) and approved nondisclosure orders on phone records of Republican senators — actions Trump allies strongly opposed as advancing the probe against him.
• March 2025–2026 — J.G.G. v. Trump (Alien Enemies Act Deportations): In the highest-profile clash, Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order halting the Trump administration’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport Venezuelan migrants (alleged gang members) to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. He ordered in-flight deportation planes to turn around. When flights proceeded anyway, he found “probable cause” of criminal contempt due to the administration’s “willful disregard” of his order and initiated contempt proceedings (repeatedly revived despite appeals-court stays). He later ordered the government to facilitate the return of over 100 deported individuals to allow due-process hearings. Appeals courts (often Trump-appointed panels) repeatedly limited or paused his contempt efforts, but the core blocking and remedial orders stood as major interventions against the policy.
• 2025 — American Oversight v. Hegseth (“Signalgate”): Assigned to the lawsuit alleging Trump administration officials (including Cabinet members) violated record-keeping laws by using the Signal app for sensitive military discussions, Boasberg issued preservation orders and described aspects of the conduct as concerning, while stopping short of ordering full message recovery.

Bukele was right...

Bukele: “We had to remove corrupt judges and corrupt attorneys and prosecutors."

Activist judges must be impeached and removed. pic.twitter.com/pg5NdQwjJe

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) February 26, 2025

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 15:50

META Delays AI Rollout Because It Sucks, May License Gemini; Musk Reboots xAI 'From The Foundations Up'

Mark Zuckerberg bet the farm on AI supremacy, and this year's crop is infested with bugs.

According to a new report, Meta has quietly pushed back the launch of its next-generation foundational AI model, internally code-named Avocado, from this month until at least May. The reason? Internal tests showed it underperforming on key benchmarks for reasoning, coding, and writing - trailing rivals like Google's Gemini 3.0, even as it beat Meta's own prior efforts and older Google models.

The model, code-named Avocado, outperformed Meta’s previous A.I. model and did better than Google’s Gemini 2.5 model from March, two of the people said. But it has not performed as strongly as Gemini 3.0 from November, they said. -NYT

This delay arrives after Zuckerberg has poured unprecedented resources into the race. Meta is guiding for $115–135 billion in capital expenditures this year alone - nearly double last year's spend - with the overwhelming majority earmarked for AI data centers, compute clusters, and infrastructure. The company has also signaled longer-term commitments approaching $600 billion in U.S. investments, plus a $14.3 billion stake in Scale AI that installed its CEO, Alexandr Wang, as Meta's chief AI officer. The new "TBD Lab" was tasked with fruit-themed breakthroughs: Avocado as the core model, Mango for images/video, and a bigger "Watermelon" on the horizon, the NY Times reports.

Zuckerberg once promised these efforts would "push the frontier" toward superintelligence. Now, insiders say Meta is even weighing temporarily licensing superior models from competitors like Google to keep its products competitive. 

As a result, Meta has delayed Avocado’s release to at least May from this month, the people said. They added that the leaders of Meta’s A.I. division had instead discussed temporarily licensing Gemini to power the company’s A.I. products, though no decisions have been reached.

Not great... 

Musk Reboots xAI...

While Zuck licks his wounds, Elon Musk is reorganizing xAI - ordering another round of job cuts at the two-year-old startup over poor performance of its coding product, FT reports. Grok's coding capabilities have lagged behind rivals like Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex - however Musk on Thursday revealed the company's 'Macrohard' or "Digital Optimus" which can 'basically automate entire companies' by observing and intelligently simulating their functions. 

Musk has brought in managers from SpaceX and Tesla as "fixers" to audit employee work, focusing on data quality issues in model training and firing those deemed inadequate. This has forced out several more co-founders - including Zihang Dai (a senior technical leader who admitted xAI was behind on coding) and Guodong Zhang (who ran pre-training for Grok models and was blamed for coding shortfalls, departing Thursday). Only two of the original 11 co-founders remain: Manuel Kroiss (“Makro”) and Ross Nordeen. Previous exits include Greg Yang, Tony Wu, Jimmy Ba, and even Toby Pohlen, who briefly led the "Macrohard" digital agents project before leaving after 16 days.

Posting on X Thursday, Musk said "Same thing happened with Tesla."

xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up.

Same thing happened with Tesla.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 12, 2026

The upheaval follows the $1.25 billion merger of SpaceX with xAI, amid pressure to meet ambitious goals - including space-based AI data centers, Moon factories, and Mars colonization - and a potential blockbuster stock market listing by June. According to FT, xAI staff have been wilting under "extremely hardcore" demands, though a company memo denied mass layoffs. 

Yet Musk is aggressively course-correcting: redeploying Tesla's Ashok Elluswamy to reboot Macrohard and develop the "digital Optimus" - blending real-world AI with Grok models. He's also been reviewing past interview rejections, apologizing publicly - "Many talented people over the past few years were declined an offer or even an interview at xAI. My apologies" - and reaching back out to promising candidates. This week, xAI poached Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg from the hot AI coding app Cursor to supercharge "Grok Code Fast."

Many talented people over the past few years were declined an offer or even an interview @xAI. My apologies.@BarisAkis and I are going through the company interview history and reaching back out to promising candidates. https://t.co/tvhipa1lu1

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 13, 2026

Meanwhile, the massive Memphis supercluster - already with over 200,000 GPUs and expanding toward 1 million - benefits from X data integration, giving xAI unique advantages in scale and real-time training.

* * * Please consider supporting ZeroHedge with the purchase of a hat, t-shirt, or multitool. Thank you.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 15:20

56% Of Americans Now Suspect COVID-19 'Vaccines' Caused Mass-Deaths

Authored by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH,

Public opinion is shifting... and they want action.

A new Rasmussen survey of 1,158 likely U.S. voters - conducted September 7–9, 2025, with a ±3% margin of error - reveals that 56% believe side effects from the COVID-19 shots have likely caused a significant number of unexplained deaths. Nearly one-third (32%) say it’s very likely. Only 35% still dismiss the idea.

This shows that what was once called a “conspiracy theory” has become the mainstream view. The majority of Americans now believe vaccine harms are real and widespread.

Support for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reflects this shift. Half of voters (50%) say government health officials deserve criticism for their handling of the pandemic, while 42% even think CDC employees should be fired for their role in misleading the public.

Among those who strongly believe the shots caused deaths, over 70% want CDC firings.

Partisan divides remain—70% of Republicans, 46% of Democrats, and 54% of independents think the vaccines likely caused deaths—but the skepticism crosses party lines and racial groups.

In fact, black (64%) and Hispanic (57%) voters are even more likely than white voters (54%) to suspect deadly vaccine effects.

According to the survey, RFK Jr. is viewed favorably by 45% of voters, with strong support among Republicans and independents, even as Democrats turn sharply against him.

The takeaway: A credible, nationally representative poll now confirms most Americans believe COVID-19 shots have killed many people, and they want accountability from the CDC and government health leaders.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 14:20

Trump Admin Sues California To Block Electric Vehicle Mandate

Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times,

The Justice and Transportation Departments filed a lawsuit against California on Thursday to stop what they say is an illegal electric vehicle (EV) requirement, alleging that the state is mandating fuel economy standards that federal law places in the exclusive domain of the federal government.

Attorney General Pamela Bondi and Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced the lawsuit, which was filed for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The suit takes aim at regulations formulated by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which mandates automakers comply with stricter mileage standards.

CARB has implemented stringent rules, such as the Advanced Clean Cars II act approved in August 2022, which requires that 35 percent of new vehicles sold in the state must be zero-emission starting in 2026, gradually increasing to a complete ban on new gas-powered car sales by 2035.

The Clean Air Act bans states from establishing their own tailpipe emission standards for trucks and cars. However, California can get an exemption to the ban if it obtains a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Following the waiver approval, California can implement its own emissions rules. The waiver would allow state officials to enforce tougher standards than national ones, influencing automakers nationwide due to the state’s large market share.

However, federal law bars states from implementing their own fuel economy laws, officials argue in the suit.

California’s waivers were revoked in June 2025 when Congress passed resolutions under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which President Donald Trump signed into law, preventing California from implementing the stricter standards. California and 10 other states filed a lawsuit, arguing that the CRA does not apply to EPA waiver decisions as they are not “rules.” The case is currently ongoing.

The Golden State’s new laws seek to require manufacturers to redesign the vehicles they sell across the country, increasing prices and curtailing consumer choices, officials state.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta have not returned a request for comment.

Newsom previously accused Trump of “destroying” the state’s clean air and “America’s global competitiveness.” He also said that without the high standards, the low air quality in the state would cost California taxpayers an estimated $45 billion in health care costs.

The federal government’s legal action aligns with Trump’s “Freedom Means Affordable Cars” program, which targets the remaking of corporate average fuel economy standards and could save American families about $1,000 on the average new vehicle and also trim $109 billion in costs over five years, according to the Department of Transportation.

“Oppressive, expensive electric vehicle mandates drive up costs for American consumers and violate federal law,” Bondi said in a statement. “California is using unlawful policies from the last administration to create exorbitant costs for our citizens—this Department of Justice is proud to stand with President Trump and Secretary Duffy to bring litigation that will make life more affordable for American consumers.”

Duffy said the lawsuit is part and parcel of initiatives to halt EV policies.

“I was proud to stand alongside President Trump to unveil our plan to eliminate the Biden-Buttigieg EV mandate and allow auto manufacturers to produce cars American families actually want to buy at a more affordable price. But Gavin Newsom is determined to continue pushing Democrats’ radical EV fantasy—even if doing so is illegal,” Duffy said in a statement.

The departments filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California against the California Air Resources Board and its executive officer. The case claims the Energy Policy and Conservation Act overrides state rules, which gives NHTSA sole authority over fuel economy.

“This lawsuit continues [the Environment and Natural Resources Division’s] war on regulatory overreach by California that is set on undermining the national market for motor vehicles through unlawful state policies,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division said in a statement.

“The state vehicle standards we are challenging today are preempted by federal law, just like the standards that were blocked by a court in our challenge to California’s so-called Clean Truck Partnership.”

NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison also criticized EV policies.

“This litigation will help automakers design and produce cars and trucks to meet one federal fuel economy regulation. It was a mistake by Presidents Obama and Biden to enable California to set its own backdoor fuel economy policies, which have now spiraled into a costly patchwork quilt of individual state fuel economy requirements. This litigation will correct that misstep,” Morrison said.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 13:00

Michigan Synagogue Attack Suspect Was Naturalized US Citizen From Lebanon, CNN Immediately Blamed Trump

An armed man who allegedly rammed his truck into a Michigan synagogue on March 12 has been identified as a naturalized United States citizen born in Lebanon, according to federal officials.

Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, was fatally shot by security officers after he drove through a hallway at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township near Detroit in a vehicle that then caught fire, authorities said.

The Epoch Times' Rachel Roberts reports that none of the synagogue’s staff, teachers, or the 140 children at its daycare center were injured, according to Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard. He said the suspect was found dead inside his vehicle.

A security officer was hit by the vehicle and knocked unconscious, but did not suffer life-threatening injuries, Bouchard said. About 30 law enforcement officers were treated for smoke inhalation.

West Bloomfield Police Chief Dale Young said Temple security officers “engaged the individual and neutralized the threat.”

Ghazali came to the United States in 2011 on an immediate relative visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen and was granted citizenship in 2016, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The FBI is leading the investigation. Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the bureau’s Detroit office, described the incident as a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.”

Rabbi Arianna Gordon from Temple Israel thanked the synagogue’s security team, police officers, and teachers for getting the children out safely, calling them the “true rock stars of the day.”

Synagogues around the world have increased security since the United States and Israel launched airstrikes against Iran on Feb. 28.

Police respond to the scene of a shooting and vehicle attack near Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., on March 12, 2026. Jacob Hamilton/Ann Arbor News via AP

Over the weekend, two people were arrested following an attack in which improvised explosive devices were thrown during a counterprotest of an anti-Islamist group’s protest in New York City. The New York Police Department said that two devices outside Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s residence could have injured or killed someone and that the suspects were inspired by the ISIS terrorist group.

‘Terrible Thing’

U.S. President Donald Trump said the Michigan attack was a “terrible thing,” while Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said it was “heartbreaking.”

“I want to send our love to the Michigan Jewish community and all of the people in the Detroit area,” Trump said on March 12.

Jewish Federation of Detroit CEO Steven Ingber said on March 12 that his organization was trained and prepared for such an attack.

“I’d love to say that I’m shocked, that I’m surprised, but I’m not,” he told reporters.

Law enforcement responds to a call at Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Mich., on March 12, 2026. Corey Williams/AP Photo

The majority of Detroit-area Jewish residents live in Oakland County, Michigan’s second-largest county, with roughly 1.3 million residents. Temple Israel has more than 12,000 members, according to its website, and describes itself as “the nation’s largest Reform synagogue.”

Minutes after the attack, CNN’s Juliette Kayyem floated the idea that President Trump’s military actions against Iran triggered the violence.

WATCH: CNN’s Juliette Kayyem seems to blame President Trump waging war on Iran for inciting violence against Jews, including now at a synagogue in Michigan, AND warns of “attacks against Iranian Americans”...

“[The sheriff] said specifically in the last two weeks, he has been in… pic.twitter.com/QgrnviU4AO

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 12, 2026

She added, “one of them is going to be incitement, radicalization, in particular, as Islamic terrorist groups are utilizing the war like ISIS to go online and to lure people to violence … One, of course, what we’ve seen today attacks against the Jewish community and then, of course, attacks against Iranian Americans.”

“And so all of that is part of this horrible stew of terrorism and incitement that we live in now in a world online and in a world where violence is too prevalent. And so once again, the fact that the sheriff said two weeks, that’s not a coincidental two weeks,” Kayyem further blathered.

This was the second attack at a place of worship in Michigan within the past year. Last September, a former Marine, Thomas Jacob Sanford, allegedly shot four people dead at a church north of Detroit and set it on fire.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Sept. 29 that the suspect in that attack hated the Mormon faith. He was fatally shot by police during the incident.

 

* * * Please consider supporting ZeroHedge with the purchase of a hat, t-shirt, or multitool. Thank you. Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 12:40

US Senate Votes To Include CBDC Ban In Bipartisan Housing Bill

Authored by Vince Quill via CoinTelegraph.com,

The United States Senate voted on Thursday to include an amendment in the 21st Century Road to Housing Act that would prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

The CBDC prohibition will remain in effect until Dec. 31, 2030, according to the amendment in the bill. The legislation, which passed 89-10, stated:

“The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or a Federal Reserve Bank may not issue or create a central bank digital currency or any digital asset that is substantially similar to a central bank digital currency, directly or indirectly through a financial institution or other intermediary.”

The 21st Century Road to Housing Act, which includes the CBDC ban amendment. Source: US Senate

However, the bill does not prohibit any dollar-denominated digital currency that is “open, permissionless, and private,” such as stablecoins.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and President Donald Trump have presented dollar-pegged stablecoins as a way to extend US dollar hegemony, while Trump and other Republican lawmakers have taken a hardline stance against CBDCs.

Lawmakers slam CBDCs as authoritarian surveillance technology

More than 30 US lawmakers signed a letter on March 6, urging the Senate to pass a permanent CBDC ban, rather than a temporary moratorium.

“A CBDC would give unelected bureaucrats unprecedented power over Americans’ finances and threaten basic economic freedom,” Representative Ralph Norman, one of the signatories of the letter, said.

A letter signed by 31 US lawmakers urging a permanent ban on CBDCs. Source: Representative Ralph Norman

Representative Warren Davidson, a long-time critic of CBDCs, has also criticized regulated dollar-pegged stablecoins as having the same surveillance capabilities as CBDCs.

Davidson also warned that regulations under the Guiding and Empowering Nation’s Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act create an avenue to “control” and “coerce” the US population through financial surveillance techniques and programmable money.

Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio also recently warned that CBDCs would expand the government’s control over people’s finances. 

“There will be no privacy, and it's a very effective controlling mechanism by the government,” Dalio said in an interview with independent journalist Tucker Carlson.

CBDCs likely won’t be yield-bearing, meaning they do not offer inflation protection and can be automatically taxed or frozen by the government, he added.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 12:20

Weekend At Bernie's In Iran As IRGC Now Run The Country, Use Strait As Toll Road

By Ben Picton, senior market strategist at Rabobank

Mine, Yours

Major US, European and Asian equity indices all closed in the red yesterday as Brent crude prices again breached the $100/bbl level. Ten year sovereign yields were sharply higher for most countries (Sweden being an exception), with UK Gilts conspicuous for posting an 8.7bps increase. Short end yields rose even faster as markets priced in higher policy rate paths.

Canadian two year yields were up 9.8bps and in New Zealand yields rose 10.1bps. Canada now has 41bps worth of policy rate hikes priced into the forward curve for this year and New Zealand has 77bps priced. Prior to the outbreak of war, the market was still pricing cuts in Canada and it was still seen as uncertain that the RBNZ would be raising rates at all in 2026. Market bets on Fed rate cuts this year are evaporating fast.

Market optimism following Donald Trump’s comment earlier this week that the war is “very complete” and news that the G7 will coordinate on the release of 400mn barrels from strategic reserves appears to have been short-lived. Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei (the new one) has issued his first public statement, in which he echoed previous IRGC vows to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed.

There was a bit of a ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ vibe about this as Khamenei himself did not appear on camera. Rumors that he was injured – perhaps severely – in the opening strikes of the war are now circulating alongside suggestions that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are now running the country and that Khamenei is being used as a convenient figurehead to give the impression of continuity under external pressure.

Despite Khamenei’s vow to keep the Strait closed market pricing is still signalling optimism that the war will be relatively short – although this optimism waned somewhat over the last 24 hours. Prediction markets have a ceasefire before month end as a 21% probability (down 5pts since yesterday), before April 30th as a 45% probability (-2pts since yesterday) and before June 30th as a 61% probability (unchanged).

The Brent crude forward curve remains heavily backwardated, with prices converging back to $75/bbl by mid next year. There has been some speculation in recent days that the US government could play a bit of “mine, yours” in oil derivatives in an attempt to reduce energy prices. Some point to the wild gyrations in crude prices on Monday to suggest that this might have already happened, while others have nod towards a hastily-deleted X post by Energy Secretary Chris Wright claiming that the US navy had escorted an oil tanker through Hormuz as an indication of funny business going on in paper oil markets.

Whatever the case, the FT is today reporting comments from CME Chief Executive Terry Duffy that government intervention in oil derivatives would be a “biblical disaster”. Crypto bros might counsel newly-minted oil traders on the virtues of physical custody, while our own Michael Every has drawn parallels to how pricing in the former Soviet Union worked: “the price of bread is only three roubles, comrade. There is simply none available.”

Not one to be deterred, Secretary Wright said overnight that naval escorts of tankers through the Strait could begin by the end of the month. One might have thought that the (largely unsuccessful) experience of Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea would serve as a cautionary example that naval escorts could prove ineffective in restarting shipping, but the reaction to Wright’s deleted X post suggests that the market would see this as progress. Nevertheless, the end-of-month timeline implies that prospects of de-escalation in the short term are remote.

The situation in the Strait itself remains troubling. Three commercial ships have been struck over the last two days, with the IRGC saying that “American aggressors and their allies have no right of passage.” The FT reports that ships stuck on the wrong side of Hormuz are ‘Sitting Ducks’ and comments earlier this week from US officials that Iran had begun laying marine mines also complicate the picture for any near-term resumption in shipping.

News emerged yesterday that India and Bangladesh-bound cargoes have been granted permission to transit, and China-bound cargoes have been moving for days. The fact that some shipping is being allowed seemingly confirms that mine laying operations remain limited in scope, but that does not mean that Iran cannot escalate if it chooses to. CNN reports that Iran still has 80-90% of its mine-laying fleet and retains the capability to lay ‘hundreds’ of mines, so the IRGC could conceivably play a bit of “mine, yours” with world energy markets for months.

If Iran allows China and India oil through the Strait, that's more than half of normal oil traffic already (7mmb/d). Throw in the Saudi East-West pipeline for redirection (another 7mb/d) and the blockade suddenly shrinks a lot pic.twitter.com/64xoGJpiHG

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 13, 2026

As it stands. the IRGC is now effectively playing Little John with the Strait by insisting that anyone attempting transit must have Iranian permission. The world’s most important hydrocarbon chokepoint has – for now, at least – become an Iranian toll road. Is this acceptable to the United States, or broader Western civilization? Almost certainly not. That makes a Trump TACO all the more improbable, even if it were actually possible without catastrophic loss of US prestige.

So, tanker traffic through the Strait remains at a virtual standstill. Khamenei said in his statement that Tehran believes in “friendship” with Gulf neighbours, but that American bases in Gulf states will continue to be targeted. The message to GCC states is not subtle: break from the US, or suffer the economic and military consequences of continued association.

Of course, while the Iran war continues to dominate all of the headlines, other issues are bubbling away in the world economy. Problems in private credit markets remain a point of risk, perhaps even more so now that swings in commodity and equity markets are precipitating margin calls that need to be funded somehow. A number of funds have placed limits on redemptions, others have sought injections of new capital, and shares in Blackstone, Blue Owl, and KKR have come under pressure. Rising bond yields and widening credit spreads don’t help, and Bloomberg has noted that financials are the worst performing sector of the S&P500 over the last week.

Many portfolios have incorporated private credit exposures in recent years, to the extend that “the golden age of private credit” became a somewhat notorious meme in markets. Some investors have undoubtedly seen their portfolios bolstered as a result of incorporating these exposures, but others may now be hoping that private credit doesn’t ‘mine, theirs’.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 11:40

Italian Diplomatic Sources Deny Talks With Iran To Open Hormuz

Update(1140ET): Italy denies talks with Iran, but still nothing official on a public level from government ministers:

No negotiations are under way with Iran to guarantee safe passage through the Hormuz Strait for Italian ships or oil tankers, an Italian Foreign Ministry source has told Reuters, denying a report in The Financial Times.

“In their diplomatic contacts, Italian leaders want to favour the conditions for a general military de-escalation, but there is no under-the-table negotiation aimed at preserving only some merchant ships at the expense of others,” the source said.

* * *

Amid very confused and mixed messaging coming from Washington over the status and future fate of Hormuz oil transit, the EU is trying its hand at a solution.

France ⁠and ⁠Italy have ​opened 'tentative' talks ‌with Iran ‌seeking ⁠to ⁠negotiate a deal to ​guarantee safe ​passage for their tankers ⁠through vital strait which remains a crucial chokepoint for stalled global crude transit, the ​Financial ⁠Times reports Friday, citing people briefed on ⁠the efforts.

This comes as US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in a Friday morning Pentagon briefing there is "no clear evidence that Iran has laid mines" in the Strait. This contradicts an avalanche of reporting from earlier this week which said at least a dozen mines were laid.

The two key overnight and morning headlines which have most impacted oil markets remain confirmed India-Iran talks for safe passage, and now EU efforts to do the same...

Regardless, it's more than obvious that the waterway is de facto shut - with perhaps the exception of some Chinese or possibly an Indian vessel being allowed through - also amid persisting threats of rocket and drone attacks.

According to the Financial Times, "European capitals have opened the tentative discussions in an attempt to restart oil and gas exports without expanding the conflict, three officials briefed on the talks told the FT, as shipping companies look to western navies to provide potential escorts for their tankers."

"France is one of the countries involved in the talks, two of the officials said," the report continues. "The first official said Italy had also made attempts to open discussions with Tehran on the issue."

As for whether the war expands or not, that's in no way under Europe's control - but remains something pertaining only to Israel, the United States, and Iran - the main players in the conflict.

The case for some shred of optimism or hope? However, Trump and Hegseth's bellicose tones on Friday morning, vowing to keep ramping up military action over Tehran, underscores continued extreme uncertainty:

If Iran allows China and India oil through the Strait, that's more than half of normal oil traffic already (7mmb/d). Throw in the Saudi East-West pipeline for redirection (another 7mb/d) and the blockade suddenly shrinks a lot pic.twitter.com/64xoGJpiHG

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 13, 2026

Meanwhile the Trump administration has sought to push back against reporting by CNN and others which alleges war-planners didn't actually take into account that attacking Iran would result in Hormuz's closure or blockage.

Here's how Hegseth responded to the charge on Friday morning - while trying to paint a general picture that the mainstream media is clouding the picture, and just trying to make Trump 'look bad':

"This is always what they do, hold the strait hostage. CNN doesn't think we thought of that? It's a fundamentally unserious report," Hegseth said. "The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better."

Skeptics have pushed back against Pentagon and White House claims of lengthy preparations and plans to use military force to clear the Strait of Hormuz, and yet now 13 days into a war with Iran and there's been no US action in the waterway, and not so much as a single US naval escort that anyone is aware of.

Source: Yeni Safak

So far there does seem to be a constant flow of words on the issue coming from the White House and Pentagon - and yet a clear strategy still hasn't been articulated, much less clear action taking shape.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 11:39

Job Openings Unexpectedly Surge By Almost 400K: Biggest Increase Since 2024

Is the mini recession in the US job market ending? 

After slumping in late 2025, it has been a rocky road for the US labor market, especially after the February payrolls print shocked with how bad it was. But according to the latest JOLTS job openings and turnover report published by the BLS moments ago, by the time the February NFP picture was taking place, the seeds of a recovery may have been planted already thanks to a surge in US job openings, which rose by 396K in January, the biggest increase since Nov 2024, to 6.946 million from 6.550 million and the highest since last October.

Looking at the details, we find the the biggest increases were in finance and insurance (+184K), which is odd for a sector about to be swept by the private credit crisis. Other sector that saw a big jump in job openings were Trade, Transportation and Utilities, driven by a 130K increase in retail trade jobs; Private education and health services job opening also jumped by 123K, while Leisure and Hospitality increased by 185K. Professional and business services was the only major sector to see a sharp drop in job openings.

The jump in job openings means that after hitting a 5 year high, the labor demand deficit was cut in half, and in January there were 422K fewer job openings than unemployed workers, a big drop from the 953K the month prior.

Despite the jump in openings, the shift wasn't big enough to change the openings to unemployed ratio, which remained at 0.9x, the lowest it has been since 2021.

And another indication that the labor market slump may be ending, after slamming hard at the end of 2025, both the number of hires and quits has rebounded, although it is still too early to determine if this is a regime change or just a dead cat bounce.

Overall, today's JOLTs report was unexpectedly strong and should put to rest some of the fears sparked by last Friday's catastrophic jobs report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 10:39

The post When Pete Hegseth Says “Lethality” He’s Talking About Killing Iranian School Girls appeared first on CEPR.

US Q4 GDP Growth Cut In Half To Just 0.7% After Revision

While it's useless most of the time, and especially so when the US has just entered war throwing a wrench into the entire economic calculus, moments ago the BEA reported that Q4 GDP in the US was slashed by half after the 1st revision of data: instead of 1.4%, the US grew just 0.7% in the last quarter of 2025 (0.660% to be precise), and far below estimates of a 1.4% print. It was also the lowest GDP print since Q1 2025. 

According to the BEA, GDP was revised down 0.7% point from the advance estimate, or exactly half, reflecting downward revisions to exports, consumer spending, government spending, and investment. Specifically, the revisions were as follows

• Personal consumption was slashed from 1.58% to 1.33% of the bottom line 0.7% print after the revision. 
• Fixed Investment was also revised lower from 0.4% to just 0.29%.
• The Change in private inventories was the only upward revision, from 0.21% to 0.28%
• Net trade (exports less imports) was also revised lower, from 0.08% to -0.21%.
• Government's contribution to GDP - which in Q4 was deeply negative due to the longest govt shutdown on record - was also lower than initially expected, subtracting -1.03% from the bottom line print, as opposed to -0.90%.

Final sales to private domestic purchases, which excludes government, trade and inventories, grew at ​a 1.9% pace. ​This measure ⁠of domestic demand, closely watched by policymakers, was initially estimated to have ​increased at a 2.4% rate. Domestic ​demand grew ⁠at a 2.9% pace in the July-September quarter.

While a pick up in growth is expected this ⁠quarter, ​the U.S.-Israeli war with ​Iran, which has driven up oil prices, is clouding the economic ​outlook, with many expecting a GDP hit should the oil price surge persist.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 09:19

JPMorgan Sued Over Alleged Role In $328M Crypto Ponzi Scheme

Authored by Helen Partz via CoinTelegraph.com,

JPMorgan is facing a lawsuit for allegedly enabling a $328 million crypto Ponzi scheme run by now-defunct Goliath Ventures.

Investors on Tuesday filed a proposed class action in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing JPMorgan of ignoring suspicious transactions and allowing Goliath to use its infrastructure to collect investor funds.

A separate federal criminal complaint against Goliath CEO Christopher Delgado, however, says investor funds also flowed through a Bank of America account and directly into Coinbase wallets.

Together, the filings sketch a broader picture of how money moved through the alleged scheme while testing how far a major bank can be held civilly liable for servicing a crypto-related business later accused of fraud.

The California lawsuit states that despite JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s repeated criticism of Bitcoin, the bank allegedly failed to prevent crypto scammers from carrying out fraudulent wire transactions.

“Chase, by virtue of its Know Your Customer actually knew that Goliath was acting as a ‘private equity’ cryptocurrency pool operator investing money for investors, without being licensed at all to sell these investments,” the complaint reads.

Complaint focuses on JPMorgan account flows

The US Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida announced the arrest of Goliath CEO Christopher Delgado on Feb. 24. He faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in federal prison if convicted on all counts.

Prosecutors said Goliath Ventures, formerly known as Gen-Z Venture Firm, operated the scheme from January 2023 through January 2026.

The civil complaint says Chase was believed to be Goliath’s sole banking institution for a period from January 2023 to May or June 2025. But the separate federal criminal complaint says Goliath also held a Bank of America business account. “Goliath obtained at least $328 million from what are believed to be over 2,000 investors,” the complaint states.

Source: Law.com

The complaint also describes money moved from a JPMorgan account to Goliath wallets held at Coinbase.

The investor suit alleges that about $253 million was deposited into JPMorgan account 0305 between January 2023 and June 2025, with roughly $123 million later transferred to Goliath wallets at Coinbase.

The separate federal complaint paints a broader picture, saying investor funds were primarily deposited into the JPMorgan 0305 account, the Bank of America 9136 account or sent directly to Goliath wallets at Coinbase. Prosecutors said about $75 million went into the BOA account and about $62 million was received directly by Coinbase wallets.

“Delgado was a co-signatory on the BOA 9136 account in the name of Goliath,” the criminal complaint states, adding that Goliath directors told at least one investor that Delgado controlled the account.

Source: US Department of Justice

The government also said Delgado was the sole signatory on Goliath’s Coinbase wallets.

More complaints are coming as the team is still identifying victims

The class action suit was filed by a team of attorneys from Shaw Lewenz, Sonn Law Group and Schwartzbaum. The first named plaintiff, Robby Alan Steele, said he invested a total of $650,000, including retirement funds.

Shaw Lewenz’ Jordan Shaw said there would be more complaints to come, as the team is still identifying individuals and entities they believe to be complicit.

“We are being purposeful and precise in who we file against, to be complementary to the receiver and his efforts," Shaw said, adding: “The goal is not to duplicate efforts, but instead to maximize recovery.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 09:05

Savings Rate Highest In 6 Months As Fed's Favorite Inflation Indicator Rises Near 2-Year High

The Fed's favorite inflation indicator - Core PCE (a measure of price changes in consumer goods and services that excludes volatile food and energy costs) - rose o.4% MoM in January (in line with expectations) with YoY rising by 3.1% (as expected), slightly higher than the 3.0% in December...

Source Bloomberg

That is the highest YoY Core PCE since March 2024.

The headline PCE rose 0.3% MoM (as expected) driving prices up 2.8% YoY (down from December's +2.9% YoY)...

Source Bloomberg

Services continue to dominate the prices gains with Goods costs dropping very marginally in January...

Source Bloomberg

For those worried about the impact of crude oil's recent surge (since the start of the Iran war), it appears - somehow - that PCE's Energy component has already front-run a lot of the move...

Higher prices were met with higher incomes and higher spending (rising in line with one another for a change)...

On the income side, wage growth accelerated for both private and govt workers:

• Private worker salaries up 5.0% YoY in January, up from 4.8% in December

• Govt worker salaries up 2.3% YoY in Jan, up from 2.1% in Dec

Spending growth continues to outpace income growth

But, thanks to yet more revisions, the savings rate ticked up to its highest since July...

With rate-cut expectations already plummeting, this latest data will do nothing to support a dovish take going forward (unless oil crashes the global economy).

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 08:43

Futures At Session Highs After Oil Drops Below $100 On India Hormuz Transit Hopes

US stock futures rebounded from their overnight selloff, and were trading near session highs after three days of losses on Wall Street as Brent slipped below $100 a barrel and investors waited to see if the war in the Middle East would escalate further. The catalyst for the bounce was news that India asked Iran to allow its tanker armada through Hormuz, which would lead to a substantial easing of the global oil shipping blockade. And while it remains to be seen if this will pave the way for other flows through the strait, for now futures have rebounded with Emini S&P futures up 0.3% at 6700 and Nasdaq futures rising 0.4%; in premarket trading Mag 7 stocks are flattish except for the -1.4% decline in META after it delayed the rollout of its new frontier model “Avocado.” Bond yields reverse an earlier rise and were flat higher this morning while the USD is 0.4% higher, with DXY now reaching above 100. Oil prices drop overnight with WTI trading around $93 after India stated it has an oil tanker moving out of the Strait of Hormuz. Other commodities are mixed: Aluminum added 1.7%, Silver fell -1.0% this morning. US economic data slate includes January personal income/spending, PCE price index, durable goods orders, 4Q second GDP estimate (8:30am), March University of Michigan sentiment, January JOLTS job openings (10am).

In premarket trading, Magnificent Seven are mixed (Tesla +0.9%, Alphabet +0.9%, Nvidia +0.8%, Apple +0.3%, Amazon +0.3%, Microsoft +0.1%, Meta Platforms (META) -1%)

• Adobe (ADBE) falls 7% as Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen will resign from his position amid deep skepticism about the company’s ability to thrive in the AI era.
• EverCommerce Inc. (EVCM) drops 21% after the management software firm reported adjusted earnings per share for the fourth quarter that missed the average analyst estimate.
• KinderCare Learning Cos. (KLC) declines 31% after the childhood education company provided a disappointing 2026 earnings outlook.
• Klarna Group (KLAR) rises 7% after the fintech’s chairman bought 3.47 million shares worth about $50 million between March 3 and March 11.
• ServiceTitan (TTAN) falls 5% as the software company reported fourth quarter results. Bloomberg Intelligence says the results ran up against high expectations.
• Once Upon a Farm PBC (OFRM) drops 14% after the organic kids snacks maker forecast slowing sales growth in 2026 in its first earnings report as a public company.
• PagerDuty (PD) falls 12% after the software company gave a revenue forecast that’s weaker than expected.
• PAR Technology (PAR) falls 22% after pricing a private offering of $250 million aggregate principal amount of 4% convertible senior notes.
• SentinelOne (S) falls 4% after the software company’s outlook was seen as unimpressive.
• Ulta Beauty (ULTA) drops 7% after the cosmetics retailer offered guidance for the current year that was toward the low end of Wall Street’s expectations.

In corporate news, Adobe shares fell more than 8% in premarket trading after the maker of software for creative professionals delivered a lackluster forecast and announced its long-standing CEO Shantanu Narayen would step down amid deep skepticism about the company’s ability to thrive in the AI era. And Apple is lowering the fees it collects from app developers in China, a major concession in a hugely lucrative market where

Nearly two weeks into the war in the Middle East, investors are struggling to find havens as bonds fall alongside equities and hopes for further policy easing fade while stagflation risks mount. There were a few new articles on Iran, pointing to the oscillating narrative between US off-ramp and the closure of the Strait. A global equity index was set for a second week of losses, having fallen from record highs hit before the conflict. A key sentiment indicator compiled by Bank of America Corp. showed the recent selloff hasn’t yet created conditions for investors to buy beaten-down securities.

“Markets have sailed through the last quarter with an optimistic bias, sticking to a buy-the-dip mantra, but this spike in volatility is likely to put an end to this,” said Benoit Peloille, chief investment officer at Natixis Wealth Management. He added that even if the conflict doesn’t last much longer, “it may already have a palpable negative impact on economic growth and inflation.”

Oil prices are now more than 60% higher than at the start of 2026, shrugging off coordinated moves by wealthy nations to release crude reserves and temporary US waivers allowing purchases of Russian oil. Crude could exceed the 2008 peak close to $150 a barrel, should flows via the Strait of Hormuz remain depressed through March, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. warned.

As energy price pressures build, the risk of an inflation shock is trumping the traditional appeal of bonds as a haven. Treasuries volatility jumped to a nine-month high, yields are marching higher across the curve and markets are no longer fully pricing in even one quarter-point rate cut by the Fed this year. Higher yields are exacerbating already elevated concern about stress in the private credit market, hurting risk appetite generally and the banking sector specifically.  

Investors will turn their attention to US inflation figures due later Friday. The Federal Reserve’s favored price gauge is expected to show inflation remaining stubbornly high. Meanwhile a preliminary March survey will show how American consumers view the impact of the Iran conflict, given the rise in gasoline prices.

“Inflation is actually ramping up as a big risk,” Tracy Chen, a portfolio manager for global fixed income at Brandywine Global Investment Management, said on Bloomberg Television. “Duration of the conflict is key. We have been raising US dollar weighting a little bit just to increase our hedge.

European stocks are off well their worst levels, with the Stoxx 600 almost back to flat for the day having lost over 1% at the lows. A pullback in energy prices helped with European natural gas futures falling more than 1%.  BE Semiconductor is the day’s most significant outperformer, after reports about takeover interest. Here are the biggest movers Friday:

• BE Semiconductor shares surge as much as 14% in early Friday trading after Reuters reported that the semiconductor equipment firm has been fielding takeover interest
• Zalando rises as much as 6.4%, building on yesterday’s result-driven gains and trading at a five-week high, after being upgraded at Bernstein. Analysts believe the risk-reward profile is more balanced
• Worldline shares gain as much as 46% after the payments company launched a capital increase. Heavily targeted by short sellers, the stock gets a boost when shareholders participating in the rights offering recall the shares back
• Siltronic shares rise as much as 3.3%, building on Thursday’s gains after the silicon wafer manufacturer reported results. Analysts at Oddo BHF raised their price target on the stock this morning as well
• Medacta climbs as much as 6.5%, the most since the end of July, after the Swiss medical-implant firm reported its full-year results and raised guidance
• Webuild drops as much as 6% after BNP Paribas downgraded the stock to neutral from outperform, citing the Italian construction company’s outlook for flat sales in 2026 along with slower growth in the Middle East
• ID Logistics shares drop as much as 9.7%, extending yesterday’s result-driven losses and slumping to a fresh 11-month low. TP ICAP trimmed its target price on the stock this morning

Hours after Deutsche Bank flagged a €26 billion ($30 billion) exposure to private credit on Thursday, the head of structured credit at Dan Loeb’s Third Point said the hedge fund is readying to scoop up credit assets others are selling to raise liquidity. “This is probably one of the most exciting times to be a credit investor,” Shalini Sriram said on the latest Bloomberg Intelligence Credit Edge podcast. 

Earlier in the session, Asian stocks fell on Friday, notching a second-consecutive weekly decline as the Iran war stokes concerns of elevated oil prices and the impact on inflation. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index slid as much as 1.4% Friday, with chipmakers TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix the biggest drags. India and South Korea led a broad regional decline, while Indonesia’s benchmark entered a bear market.
Investors remain concerned about tight energy supply, with oil trading above $100 a barrel. A prolonged war could hobble manufacturing and drive up costs, and faster inflation may drive more hawkish monetary policy.

In FX, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rises 0.4% to a year-to-date high. The pound is among the weakest of the G-10 currencies, falling 0.6% against the greenback after the UK economy unexpectedly failed to grow in January. The yen is flat having earlier dropped to its lowest since July 2024.

In rates, Treasury futures ticked higher as oil prices dipped in early US session after India said it had an oil tanker that has started moving through the Strait of Hormuz. Yields flipped to slightly richer on the day across front and belly of the curve, ahead of a day packed with US data including GDP, PCE and JOLTS job openings. US yields richer by around 1.5bp across front and belly of the curve, slightly cheaper across the long-end, steepening 2s10s and 5s30s spreads by 1.5bp and 2bp on the day, unwinding a small portion of Thursday’s aggressive flattening move as Fed rate cut premium eroded from the front-end of the curve. European government bonds also recovered as traders trimmed bets on tightening by the European Central Bank and Bank of England this year. UK and German 10-year borrowing costs are flat. US 10-year yields rise 1 bp to 4.27%.

In commodities, WTI futures lower on the day by around 2%, dropping following the India headline, after rising as high as $98 a barrel on Friday after a 9.7% jump on Thursday as defiant tones from Trump and Iran’s new leader Mojtaba Khamenei drained optimism about any swift resolution to the conflict. Betting on Polymarket puts the chance of a ceasefire by the end of the month at just 21%. Spot gold edges higher while silver drops over 1%. Bitcoin climbs 3%.

Today's US economic data slate includes January personal income/spending, PCE price index, durable goods orders, 4Q second GDP estimate (8:30am), March University of Michigan sentiment, January JOLTS job openings (10am)

Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 mini +0.3%
• Nasdaq 100 mini +0.4%,
• Russell 2000 mini +0.3%
• Stoxx Europe 600 -0.2%,
• DAX -0.5%,
• CAC 40 -0.6%
• 10-year Treasury yield unch basis point at 4.26%
• VIX -0.3 points at 27.02
• Bloomberg Dollar Index +0.3% at 1213.01,
• euro -0.5% at $1.1456
• WTI crude little changed at $95.76/barrel

Top Overnight News

• Arab diplomats trying to find a diplomatic path out of the war now being waged by the U.S. and Israel against Iran say Tehran, emboldened by its ability to rattle the global economy by choking oil shipments, has laid out steep preconditions for any return to talks. WSJ 
• Iran has started laying mines in Hormuz and is utilizing thousands of small boats in the country’s navy to do so. NYT 
• Israeli officials now assess that Iran’s ruling regime is unlikely to fall in the immediate future, as Tehran’s battered rulers remain in control and conditions on the ground aren’t yet ripe for a popular uprising, people familiar with the matter said. WSJ 
• Donald Trump warned Iran to “watch what happens” today in a social media post, claiming the US is “totally destroying” Iran militarily and economically. Benjamin Netanyahu said regime change can’t happen without an internal uprising. BBG 
• The US expanded a short-term waiver allowing buyers to purchase Russian oil already in transit, potentially freeing up about 19 million barrels of crude and refined products in Asian waters. BBG 
• The framework for US President Donald Trump’s summit with China’s Xi Jinping is set to be mapped out this weekend as negotiators meet to discuss thorny issues such as tariffs, fentanyl and Taiwan. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng will convene in Paris on Sunday and Monday to map out deliverables for the leaders’ summit slated for March 31 to April 2 in Beijing. BBG 
• US Secretary of State Rubio will join US President Trump during his trip to China later this month.
• TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, is assembling computing power with high-end Nvidia chips outside China to fuel its ambition of becoming a global artificial-intelligence leader. WSJ 
• India is delaying signing a deal with the US for several months after new investigations, Reuters reported. New Delhi had originally aimed to finalize an interim deal this month. BBG 
• Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen is stepping down after 18 years amid concerns about the company’s ability to compete in AI. Shares are down -8% in the premkt. BBG 

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

APAC stocks were mostly subdued with the region cautious amid headwinds from the recent double-digit surge in oil prices after Iran's new Supreme Leader dug in and called for a continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz, as well as warned that other fronts will be opened if the war persists, while the US also initiated 60 Section 301 investigations related to failures to take action on forced labour. ASX 200 traded indecisively as strength in financials and energy offset the losses in mining and materials. Nikkei 225 underperformed as oil and inflationary-related pressures weighed on the large exporting industries, including tech and autos, with Honda among the worst hit after it cancelled three planned EV launches in North America and revised its FY25/26 outlook to a loss of as much as JPY 690bln from the previous guidance of JPY 300bln profit. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were lacklustre in rangebound trade with a lack of conviction heading into talks between US Treasury Secretary Bessent, USTR Greer and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Paris beginning on Sunday.

Top Asian News

• Japanese Finance Minister Katayama said prepared to take all necessary steps on FX and are in closer contact with US authorities on FX.
• South Korea could reportedly see KRW 20tln extra budget on chip boom, according to Chosun.

European bourses (STOXX 600 -0.2%) continue to trade on the softer side as energy prices remain at elevated levels. Once again, the IBEX 35 (-0.2%) is the worst performer as Banks continue to weigh on the index. The FTSE 100 (-0.1%) is also under modest pressure, after the UK showed no growth M/M in January. European sectors are mixed, with Energy (+0.8%) outperforming as Brent holds above USD 100/bbl. Basic Resources (-1.2%) lags as the stronger dollar weighs on metals prices. Consumer Products and Services (-1.4%) and Banks (-0.7%) are also underperforming as higher inflation expectations and poor growth prospects weigh on the sectors. For the semiconductor space, BE Semiconductor has reportedly been fielding takeover interests and has refused to respond to the rumour.

Top European News

• UK GDP YoY (Jan) Y/Y 0.8% vs. Exp. 0.9% (Prev. 0.7%, Low. 0.8%, High. 1.0%).
• UK GDP MoM (Jan) M/M 0.0% vs. Exp. 0.2% (Prev. 0.1%, Low. 0.1%, High. 0.3%).
• UK Balance of Trade (Jan) 3.922B vs. Exp. -6.2B (Prev. -4.340B).
• UK Goods Trade Balance (Jan) -14.45B vs. Exp. -22.2B (Prev. -22.72B, Low. -23.3B, High. -21.2B).

FX

• DXY is stronger this morning and currently just off best levels, within a 99.58-100.29 range; upside today lacked a fresh fundamental driver, but came alongside the strength in crude prices, where Brent once again topped USD 100/bbl. Interestingly, the USD-Brent correlation is currently 0.91. On the oil situation, the US issued a new Russia-related general licence permitting the sale of Russian crude oil – this only applies to oil in transit. A waiver which did little to cull the upside in the oil complex, given this does not nearly replace the lost supply from the Gulf. ING writes that “we cannot see investors wanting to fight this dollar rally, given there is so little certainty as to when this crisis will end”. Focus now turns to Core PCE Price Index (Jan), Durable Goods Orders (Jan), Personal Spending (Jan), JOLTS (Jan), University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Prelim. (Mar) and Atlanta Fed GDP.
• EUR has now sunk below the 1.1500 mark, and made a trough at 1.1433 – levels not seen since early August, where the single currency made a low at 1.1391 (1 Aug). Ultimately, the region's status as a net-importer of oil continues to weigh on the single currency. In the meantime, focus will be on any hints of government intervention to ease the impact of higher energy costs, before focus then turns to the ECB next week, where the Bank is likely to raise concerns about the Middle East situation, with an outside chance that it signals possible policy adjustments.
• GBP also remains pressured alongside peers. Sterling opened lower, given the USD strength, but then reacted negatively to the region’s GDP metrics, which showed that the UK stagnated in January, even before the Iran war started. Cable fell from 1.3315 to 1.3306 within a couple of minutes, before trundling lower as the USD strength picked up. The impact on the BoE following this data will likely not be impactful on policy in the near term, given the Iran war.
• JPY remains the only G10 flat vs USD. Potentially a function of traders seeing the possibility of near-term intervention/rate checks as USD/JPY sits firmly in the intervention zone, beyond 158.00. Overnight, Finance Minister Katayama said that they are in closer contact with US authorities on FX, and separately commented that they are prepared to take all necessary steps on FX. As a reminder, the NY Fed conducted a rate check on USD/JPY back in January. As mentioned previously, intervention seems unlikely given a) it would prove to be ineffective given the current geopolitical environment, b) low volume short positions on the JPY, c) the move is fundamentally driven by higher energy prices, and d) the recent lack of verbal intervention suggests potentially a higher bar for USD/JPY to rise. Nonetheless, markets will be cognizant of any jawboning heading into the BoJ meeting and wage negotiations next week.

Trade/Tariffs

• USTR confirms to start 60 Section 301 investigations related to failures to take action on forced labour.
• China's MOFCOM said US 301 tariffs violate WTO rules, urges the US to correct wrong practices and return to dialogue. China is analysing and assessing the situation. Will take necessary measures to safeguard legitimate rights and interests.
• China's MOFCOM is to impose tariffs of up to 30.1% on imports of rubber from Japan and Canada, effective March 14th.
• US ambassador to India said they're moving to a critical stage of finalising critical minerals agreement, adds expect countries we have made deals with to honor those deals.

Fixed Income

• A choppy start to the day with benchmarks in narrower ranges than usual, though still posting a c. 50 ticks band for Bunds, for instance. Action this morning has largely been a function of energy and, by extension, the general risk tone. A grind higher in the first few hours in energy benchmarks to a USD 98.09/bbl peak for WTI sparked a bout of fixed downside, equity pressure and USD strength.
• However, the move in fixed income has pared with benchmarks marginally firmer as energy wanes from best. The main headline update amidst this was Axios reporting that US President Trump told the G7 on Wednesday that Iran was close to surrender; however, commentary from the new Supreme Leader on Thursday and Iran announcing a fresh wave of attacks today somewhat disputes that assessment.
• Specifically, USTs in a 111-12 to 111-20 band, currently firmer by a tick or two in that. Nonetheless, the benchmark is set to end the week lower by around a full point.
• For Bunds, they are yet to make a lasting move into the green, despite hitting a 126.18 peak with gains of two ticks briefly. Drivers much the same as above. Furthermore, the benchmark is also set to end the week lower by around a full point.
• Finally, Gilts opened lower by just under 20 ticks today before slipping to a 88.49 low and then rebounding to near-enough unchanged. Downside a function of the benchmark catching up to post-close action and the morning's initial energy move. However, this was somewhat offset by the morning's data showing the UK started the year with no growth. A series that may have otherwise cemented a March cut by the BoE. However, the recent Middle East related energy disruption and associated moves mean a near-term cut is entirely off the table, though the MPC will likely remain divided next week in another split decision.
• Japan sold JPY 300bln in 10yr Climate Transition Bonds b/c 3.42 (Prev. 3.56).

Commodities

• WTI and Brent futures are off their best and worst levels at the time of writing, with traders gearing up for another week of geopolitical risks as the war shows no signs of abating. It was reported that the US issued a second short-term waiver allowing buyers to receive Russian oil already at sea, expanding a previous India-only authorisation without materially benefiting the Russian government. Modest downticks were seen in the complex following an Axios report that US President Trump told G7 leaders in a virtual meeting Wednesday that Iran is "about to surrender," according to three officials from G7 countries briefed on the contents of the call, although the report caveats that 24 hours later after that call, Iran's new supreme leader issued his first public statement vowing to keep fighting. WTI resides in a USD 94.52-98.09/bbl range and Brent in a 99.51-102.75/bbl range. Nat Gas prices are flat at the time of writing, but remain above EUR 50/MWh amid the ongoing energy woes emerging from the Iranian crisis.
• Spot gold rose above USD 5,100/oz overnight and hovers on either side of the figure in recent trade, but still remains on track for a second weekly decline, as the Middle East conflict keeps oil near USD 100/bbl and in turn pushes up the USD (DXY north of 100) amid inflationary woes. Spot gold resides in a USD 5,061.32-5,128.47/oz. Spot silver resides closer to weekly lows after finding resistance at USD 90/oz on Tuesday.
• In terms of base metals, 3M LME copper is on a softer footing amid the firmer USD and with sentiment also dampened as the US opened a Section 301 probe into forced-labour practices across 60 economies, including the EU, China, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, India, Taiwan and the UK. Iron is set for its biggest weekly gain in more than a year after China state-backed buyers expanded restrictions on BHP Group (BHP AT) products.
• India asks Iran to allow tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the WSJ; India is in active talks to allow 23 tankers through the Strait, with first crossing expected this weekend
• Kremlin envoy Dmitriev said US sanctions waiver affects around 100mln barrels of Russian oil.
• US has issued a new Russia-related general license permitting the sale of Russian crude oil and petroleum products loaded on vessels as of March 12, according to the Treasury website. US license permits sale of such Russian crude oil and petroleum products until 12:01 AM EDT on April 11th.
• US Treasury Secretary Bessent clarified that new general licence applies only to Russian oil already in transit and will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government.
• EU Commission said gas storage filling levels in the EU remain stable and oil stocks are at a high level, via statement; gas storage should not be refilled at all costs.
• Japan's Defence Minister Koizumi said it would be possible to provide escort for Japanese ships through Hormuz, however PM Takaichi clarified that no decisions have been made.
• Saudi Aramco offers to sell 2 mln barrels of Arab Light crude for March loading at Yanbu port.
• Australia's energy minister announces lowering minimum stock obligations for diesel and fuel. said: To address fuel supply chain disruption by reducing up to 20% of the baseline minimum stockholding obligation for petrol and diesel, which would allow the release of up to 762mln litre of petrol and diesel from Australia's domestic reserves.
• Venezuela and Repsol (REP SM) signed strategic agreements, while Venezuela's interim president Rodriguez said that the deal can make Venezuela a gas exporter.
• Rio Tinto (RIO AT) suspends all mining operations at its Kennecott copper facility following a fatal incident.
• Goldman Sachs expects Brent crude prices to average over USD 100/bbl in March and USD 85/bbl in April, while it sees Brent crude gradually easing back to the low USD 70s late in the year.

Geopolitics

• NATO intercepts an Iranian missile targeting Turkey, the 3rd occasion since the Middle East conflict began. Missile was launched from Iran and destroyed by defences in the eastern Mediterranean.
• US President Trump told G7 leaders in a virtual meeting Wednesday that Iran is "about to surrender," according to three officials from G7 countries briefed on the contents of the call, Axios reported.
• US has burned through ‘years’ of munitions since the Iran war began, while the rapid depletion of stockpile including Tomahawk missiles raises pressure on US President Trump regarding the cost of the war, according to FT.
• US officials say Iran has begun laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz as of today, according to NYT.
• US Treasury Secretary Bessent said we know that Iran has not mined the Strait of Hormuz, noted a lower oil price regime over the medium-term after the conflict.
• US weapons package for Taiwan could be approved after US President Trump's China trip, according to sources.
• Israeli Security Official said that Iran has around 150 missile launch platforms, these will continue to be targeted.
• Israeli army said it has begun a wave of air strikes targeting government infrastructure in Iran’s capital, Tehran, Al Jazeera reported.
• Israeli air strikes are underway in Iran and explosions were reported in Tehran.
• Israel's army identified missiles launched from Iran and defence systems were activated to counter threat.
• Israel conducts a series of raids on southern suburbs of Beirut.
• Israeli army issues orders to evacuate areas in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Sky News Arabia reported.
• Iran announces a fresh wave of attacks on US bases and Israel, ISNA reported.
• "Iranian state television reported a large explosion in a Tehran square where demonstrations are happening", via AP's Gambrell.
• Iranian missile successfully hits target after Israeli interceptors failed to stop it.
• Iran claims responsibility for shooting down US refueling plane, said US refueling plane was downed with all crew killed in Western Iraq, according to Tasnim.

US event calendar

• US economic data slate includes January personal income/spending, PCE price index, durable goods orders, 4Q second GDP estimate (8:30am), March University of Michigan sentiment, January JOLTS job openings (10am)

DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

Without putting too much of a downer on things, today marks the first occurrence of successive monthly Friday the 13ths since 2015. Thanks to a client with an impressive archive, I was sent the EMR from the last time I commented on this—11 years ago today. I wouldn't have known otherwise.  The next back-to-back Friday the 13th doesn’t arrive until March 2037. I have mixed feelings about whether I’d like to still be writing about that particular statistic when it comes around again, especially as the EMR will be exactly 30 years old at that point.
Perhaps back-to-back Friday the 13ths will reverse the usual superstition and bring a bit of luck instead—something markets could certainly use when conditions are becoming ever more fraught. The challenge for investors is that a sharp turnaround could materialise at almost any point if both sides de escalated. There are obvious incentives to do so. However, there are currently no signs that such an outcome is imminent. Our house view, articulated by Helen Belopolsky in my team, is that events are likely to get worse before they get better, although de escalation remains plausible at some point over the next few weeks. 

Over the past 24 hours, we’ve seen another round of escalatory rhetoric from both sides, which pushed Brent crude (+9.22%) back up to $100.46/bbl, the first time it’s closed above $100/bbl since August 2022. We’re still hovering around those levels overnight, with Brent at $100.11/bbl this morning. While it remains feasible that the most intense phase of the conflict ends relatively quickly, concerns are clearly growing that this will turn into a much more prolonged confrontation. Indeed, that uncertainty reignited inflation fears yesterday, leading to the most hawkish central bank pricing of the year so far for both the ECB and the Fed. Sovereign bonds sold off again, with 10yr bund yields (+2.5bps) reaching a post 2023 high of 2.95%. And in turn, those geopolitical concerns and expectations of a more hawkish policy response triggered a fresh equity sell off, with the S&P 500 (-1.52%) falling to its lowest level since November. By contrast, the dollar index (+0.51%) reached its highest level since November.

In terms of the latest, the harsh rhetoric continued yesterday, alongside the first public comments from Iran’s new Supreme Leader Khamenei. He said the Strait of Hormuz should remain shut and warned that, if the war persisted, other fronts would be opened. Meanwhile, President Trump posted that preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons was “of far greater interest and importance to me” than oil prices. And in the last couple of hours, Trump has posted that we should “watch what happens” to Iran today. There were also conflicting reports about mines in the Strait of Hormuz, with UK Defence Secretary Healey cautioning that “the Iranians may have started mining in the strait”. However, US Treasury Secretary Bessent claimed “we know that they have not mined the straits” as some tankers are coming through. Meanwhile, US Energy Secretary Wright suggested that the US could start escorting tankers through the strait by the end of March.
With no sign of an imminent resolution, oil prices posted significant gains yesterday. Brent crude (+9.22%) rose to $100.46/bbl, while WTI (+9.72%) climbed to $95.73/bbl. And even though this is still well below Brent’s intraday high of $119.50/bbl right after the weekend, the longer prices hover around $100/bbl, the greater the risk of serious inflationary consequences. That’s been reflected in expectations, as the 1yr Euro inflation swap jumped +19bps yesterday to 2.96%, its highest level since late 2023. Moreover, investors are also pricing a longer period of elevated energy prices, with the 12-month Brent future (+2.67%) rising to $76.15/bbl, with a further move up to $76.68/bbl overnight.

Those oil price gains came even as the US has looked to introduce additional measures in response to the energy shock. For instance, Bloomberg reported that the administration plans to waive the Jones Act, which requires shipping between US ports to be done by American ships. So that could reduce costs for shipping fuel within the US and helped a modest decline in US crack spreads yesterday (the difference between crude oil and wholesale petroleum). Then in the evening, the US Treasury announced an expansion of temporary sanction waivers for purchases of Russian oil.

Beyond commodities, sovereign bonds saw another broad sell off as inflation fears fed into renewed rate hike speculation. The move was especially clear in Europe, where 10yr bund yields (+2.5bps) rose to 2.95%, their highest level since October 2023. France’s 10yr OAT yield (+5.6bps) climbed to 3.62%, its highest since the peak of the Euro crisis in 2011. UK gilts fared even worse, as market pricing for a BoE rate hike this year hit an 82% probability by the close, with the 10yr gilt yield (+8.7bps) closing at a six-month high of 4.77%.

US Treasuries followed a similar pattern, with particularly pronounced increases at the front-end as doubts grew about the Fed’s ability to cut rates this year, even under a new Chair. So there are now just 20bps of cuts priced in by the December meeting, meaning that—for the first time this year—a 2026 rate cut is no longer fully priced. Instead, investors have to look as far out as the June 2027 meeting for the first fully priced cut. That backdrop drove another sell off, with the 2yr Treasury yield (+9.0bps) rising to a six-month high of 3.74%, while the 10yr yield (+3.1bps) moved up to 4.26%.

That combination of higher oil prices and more hawkish central bank pricing weighed further on risk assets, with equities declining on both sides of the Atlantic. The S&P 500 (-1.52%) fell for a third consecutive session, reaching its lowest level since November. Yet even so, the index is still only -4.4% off its record high and -3% below its pre strike level. So despite the volatility, it’s still not halfway to technical correction territory, let alone a bear market. Energy stocks (+0.98%) outperformed, with that segment of the S&P 500 reaching a record high. Meanwhile in Europe, the STOXX 600 (-0.61%) fell for a second day, though it remains above Monday’s levels and is still -5.5% below its prestrike record high, again some distance from correction territory.

That said, the equity performance was increasingly challenging yesterday, with 391 decliners in the S&P 500, the most since January. The Mag-7 (-1.86%) snapped a three-day winning streak, moving to within half a percent of technical correction territory, while the small cap Russell 2000 (-2.12%) closed at a 2026 low. In addition to the oil spike, market sentiment was weighed on by renewed concerns over private credit, the S&P 500 Banks (-2.16%) underperforming the broader index, whilst US IG credit spreads widened +4bps to 90bps, their highest level since May.

Overnight in Asia, that slide has continued for the most part, with sizeable losses for the Nikkei (-1.37%) and the KOSPI (-1.76%). Chinese equities are faring relatively better however, with the CSI 300 (+0.36%) and the Shanghai Comp (+0.02%) posting modest gains. In the meantime, the Japanese yen has weakened further in the last 24 hours, closing at 159.35 per US Dollar yesterday, the weakest since July 2024. Indeed, it’s getting closer to levels where the authorities have previously intervened to support the currency. Looking forward however, equity futures in the US and Europe are a bit more positive this morning as oil prices have been relatively stable in the last 24 hours. So those on the S&P 500 are up +0.17%, and those on the DAX are up +0.13%.

Looking ahead, today’s data releases include UK GDP and Euro Area industrial production for January. In the US, we’ll also see January PCE inflation, the second estimate of Q4 GDP, and preliminary durable goods orders for January. Central bank speakers include the ECB’s Wunsch.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 08:34

US Tariff Investigations Put China, EU And Other Major Trading Partners In New Crosshairs

The Trump administration has opened a new round of tariff investigations that could lead to higher duties on at least 16 trading partners, as officials seek to rebuild a trade enforcement framework after the Supreme Court invalidated a number of the president’s second-term tariffs.

The probes, announced Wednesday by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, will be conducted under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a statute that allows the U.S. to impose tariffs on countries whose policies are deemed to discriminate against American commerce. The investigations require consultations with foreign governments as well as public hearings and comment periods before any new tariffs can be imposed.

The effort is intended to replace temporary global tariffs of 10% that President Donald Trump imposed last month after the Supreme Court ruled many of his earlier duties unlawful. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said officials have not yet determined how high the replacement tariffs might be, declining to prejudge the outcome of the investigations. Administration economic officials have previously indicated they aim to generate tariff revenue comparable to levels collected before the court’s decision, the WSJ reports.

The Probes

One investigation launched Wednesday will examine what U.S. officials describe as industrial overcapacity in export-oriented economies. The administration argues that subsidies in some countries allow producers to flood global markets with underpriced goods, undermining American manufacturers. Nations likely to face scrutiny include major U.S. trading partners such as China, India, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the European Union.

“Our view is that key trading partners have developed production capacity that is really untethered from the market incentives of domestic and global demand,” Greer told reporters ahead of the investigation’s release.

A second probe, expected later this week, will examine foreign policies related to forced labor. The inquiry could result in tariffs on countries that do not prohibit the sale or importation of goods produced through coerced labor. Greer said the investigation would target roughly 60 nations.

Section 301 investigations typically take months or even years to complete. Greer said the administration intends to accelerate the process and aims to finish the probes by mid-July, when the temporary tariffs are scheduled to expire.

Additional investigations could follow in the coming weeks, Greer said, potentially targeting specific countries or policy areas. Some could focus on blocs such as the European Union, while others may address issues like digital trade policies that the U.S. considers discriminatory toward American companies.

Let's Make a Deal

Many of the countries likely to be affected have already negotiated trade agreements with the U.S. during Trump’s second term in an effort to limit tariff exposure. Greer said he expects those agreements to remain in force, noting that trading partners had already anticipated some level of U.S. tariffs.

"The United States will no longer sacrifice its industrial base to other countries that may be exporting their problems with excess capacity and production to us. Today’s investigations underscore President Trump’s commitment to reshore critical supply chains and create good-paying jobs for American workers across our manufacturing sectors," said Greer in a statement. 

Trump’s earlier global duties had exempted products already covered by national-security tariffs imposed under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Greer said it is too early to determine whether the new Section 301 tariffs will include similar exemptions, though the administration wants to avoid creating additional compliance complexity for companies.

While Section 301 provides a stronger legal foundation than the emergency powers used for the tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court, the move is likely to face political scrutiny. Democrats have warned that new duties could raise costs for consumers during an election year.

“Section 301 tariffs are meant to address specific and legitimate unfair trade practices,” Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, said in a statement. “They should not be used to drag the United States back into a cost-raising, broad-based tariff regime now that the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s illegal Ieepa taxes on American consumers.”

Companies will have until mid-April to submit comments related to the industrial overcapacity probe, Greer said, with public hearings scheduled for early May.

h/t Capital.news

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/13/2026 - 07:45