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:

• Pixar’s $6 Billion Lunch: In 1994, the Pixar team had a work lunch that created ideas for 6 films (which have grossed $6 billion at the box office). (Trung Phan)

• How Eli Lilly Got Huge By Making Us Thin Dave Ricks steered the 150-year-old drug giant to a $1 trillion market cap. Can he defeat pharma’s boom and bust cycle? Bloomberg’s companion feature on the weight-loss gold rush reshaping a 150-year-old drugmaker. The other half of the Lilly story. (Businessweek) see also What’s the deal with … microdosing Ozempic? Microdosing of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic has gone viral, with online advocates claiming reduced side effects and lower costs than standard prescriptions. Medical experts warn there’s no scientific evidence supporting microdosing, and the term “microdose” lacks a clear definition in the medical community. For those who choose to take low-dose GLP-1s, a medical expert also advises seeking out continuous, certified care. (Los Angeles Times)

• He Runs the World’s Biggest Sovereign Wealth Fund, but His Podcast Made Him Famous: He manages Norway’s trillion-plus and somehow finds time to interview CEOs for a hit show. Nicolai Tangen wanted to raise the profile of Norway’s $2.1 trillion oil fund and change corporate behavior, but he may have helped embroil it in a geopolitical tangle. An unusually likeable profile of a very serious job. Nicolai Tangen wanted to raise the profile of Norway’s $2.1 trillion oil fund and change corporate behavior, but he may have helped embroil it in a geopolitical tangle. (New York Times)

• Semiquincententacles: The US grip on markets on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  Behold the Aquilaceph, half-bald eagle and half-octopus. On the semiquincentennial 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence, this imaginary beast is a metaphor for the continued US grip on financial markets. In this special issue we look at the details: US reserve currency status, capital flows, the much anticipated but still unprofitable “Sell America” trade, US corporate profitability and productivity in the age of AI, investing in Security & Resilience, equity market concentration, energy independence and the revival of the US IPO market. ( (Eye On The Market; Michael Cembalest, J.P. Morgan Asset Management)

• A Philosophy of Home: The household is a community, as much as the state, and ancient philosophy had much more to say about it than we think. (Aeon)

• The U.S. Went to War to Take Away Iran’s Superweapon. It Gave Iran a New One. Trump lost the country. The U.S. lost a half-hearted war. Israel lost an ally. The Middle East lost the illusion of security. Asia lost growth. Global trade lost a dependable artery. Thompson on the law of unintended consequences, wartime edition. A bracing counter-narrative to the mission-accomplished framing. Trump lost the country. The U.S. lost a half-hearted war. Israel lost an ally. The Middle East lost the illusion of security. Asia lost growth. Global trade lost a dependable artery. (Derek Thompson) see also How Iran Devastated an American Naval Base—and Caused a U.S. Recalculation: Satellite imagery reveals for the first time the extent of what Iran destroyed at Naval Support Activity Bahrain. The strike on Bahrain that reset Washington’s assumptions. Hard reporting on a war whose consequences keep widening. (Wall Street Journal)

• Who Is America’s Homer? If England has Shakespeare, Spain has Cervantes, Italy has Dante, and Russia has Pushkin, then who do we have? Do we have a great poet who captures the American spirit, the American story, the American identity? We asked a posse of authors and poets to send us their votes. Plough asks who, if anyone, plays the role of national epic poet for the United States. The candidates are predictable; the discussion is sharper. (Plough)

• Paradise Revisited: What Darwin saw in the Galápagos. The Galápagos Islands owe their place on rich travelers’ bucket lists to the vision of them as an unfallen Eden, touted as “the laboratory of evolution” that inspired Charles Darwin to write “On the Origin of Species.” When he visited, humans’ presence here was limited to whalers, buccaneers, and political prisoners. Today, more than 300,000 people visit the archipelago each year. Every tourist desperate to see an untouched paradise is part of a constant influx that risks despoiling the very thing they came to see. (The Atlantic)

• How a single atom contains the entire quantum: Universe By probing the Universe on atomic scales and smaller, we can reveal the entirety of the Standard Model, and with it, the quantum Universe. Ethan Siegel walks through why a single hydrogen atom encodes most of quantum mechanics in miniature. Pedagogically lovely. By probing the Universe on atomic scales and smaller, we can reveal the entirety of the Standard Model, and with it, the quantum Universe. (Big Think) see also A Dark Dimension Could Link Two of the Universe’s Great Unknowns: Recent observations suggest that dark energy is changing over time. Theorists wonder if dark matter is, too. Quanta on a theory that ties dark matter to dark energy through an extra, very thin dimension. Reliably the best physics writing going. (Quanta Magazine)

• Sports Have Made Us Insane: From Knicks snobs gatekeeping fandom to the nastiness of UFC, GQ columnist Chris Black wonders what it is about sports that brings out the crazy in us. On fandom, gambling, and the takeover of every waking hour by the discourse. A diagnosis a lot of us will recognize from the mirror. (GQ)

Video of the day: How China Plays the Long Game Against USA

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Carl Richards, a financial advisor who is also the creator of the Sketch Guy column, which ran weekly in New York Times for a decade. He hosts Behavior Gap Radio (1,300+ episodes) He co-hosts “Kitces & Carl — Real Talk for Real Financial Advisors” with Michael Kitces.” Richards latest book is Your Money: Reimagining Wealth in 101 Simple Sketches.”

 

Youngest kids don’t prioritize sports yet, but there are proven solutions to build their love

Source: Sports Business Journal

 

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

FIFA Folds, Allows Rainbow Flags To Fly In Seattle Stadium Despite Objections From Iran, Eqypt

Rainbow flags will be allowed inside the stadium in Seattle, where the FIFA World Cup group game between Iran and Egypt is being held on June 26, despite both countries objecting to the standards associated with the LGBT community.

Both countries are predominantly Muslim, and homosexuality is illegal in Iran and criminalized in Egypt, but Hana Tadesse, a spokesperson for Seattle’s World Cup organizing committee, said on June 24 that FIFA considers the rainbow flag a statement of human rights and will allow fans to wave it inside Lumen Field.

In December 2025, the soccer federations of both Iran and Egypt complained after it became clear that Seattle’s World Cup organizing committee wanted to use the match as a “once-in-a-lifetime moment to showcase and celebrate LGBTQIA+ communities in Washington.”

As Chris Summers reports for Epoch Times, under FIFA’s World Cup stadium policy, it is prohibited for fans to bring in certain controversial political items.

“Any materials, including but not limited to banners, flags, flyers, apparel, and other paraphernalia that are of a political, offensive, and/or discriminatory nature, containing wording, symbols, or any other attributes aimed at discrimination of any kind against a country, private person, or group on account of race, skin color, ethnicity, national or social origin, gender, disability, language, religion, political or any other opinion, birth, wealth or any other status, sexual orientation, or any other grounds,” according to the policy.

When Iran played its first game, against New Zealand in Inglewood, California, on June 15, The Epoch Times reported that FIFA had banned Iranian fans who opposed the regime in Tehran from flying the country’s pre-1979 flag—which bears a lion-and-sun standard—inside the stadium.

On June 25, before the Iranian soccer team held a news conference in Seattle, Daniel Marin, FIFA’s executive director of public relations, read a statement on behalf of the Iranian team.

“This Islamic Republic of the Iran Football Federation has asked us to inform the media that they are only willing to answer questions in relation to the game,” Marin said.

“We fully respect the right of all journalists to ask questions. In this case, we ask you respect the rights of the federation here today to only answer questions in relation to the team, the tactics, the match, and so on.”

Iran goalkeeper Alireza Beiranvand makes a save against Belgium during their soccer World Cup match in Inglewood, Calif., on June 21, 2026. Mark J. Terrill/AP

But Iran’s coach, Amir Ghalenoei, was still asked a barrage of questions about the issue by journalists, which he declined to answer.

If Iran wins, they will advance to the knockout stage of the World Cup for the first time.

“I said to you earlier we are here to play football. For nothing else,” Ghalenoei said.

“Our entire focus is going to be on tomorrow’s game, on succeeding in tomorrow’s game. And, anything else that is banned ... we don’t want to speak about it.”

Soccer Is the ‘Beautiful Game’

“We are only going to speak about football, what a beautiful game it is, and how enjoyable it’s going to be,” Ghalenoei said.

Egypt’s players and coach Hossam Hassan also declined to answer questions on the issues during a news conference at Husky Soccer Stadium in Seattle.

“We are all focused on football,” Hassan, speaking through a translator, said. “This is all that we think about.”

The wearing of rainbow armbands became a controversy in 2024, when several English Premier League soccer players objected to wearing them as part of an “LGBTQ+ inclusion initiative” because of their religious beliefs.

Marc Guehi, who is currently playing for England in the World Cup, chose to write over the armband the message, “Jesus loves you.”

Sam Morsy, a practicing Muslim who captained Ipswich Town, chose not to wear the symbol on his jersey when he led his team to a draw against Manchester United in December 2024. Morsy played nine times for Egypt—where his father is from—but was not included in their World Cup squad.

The Epoch Times reached out to FIFA for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 16:40

The Party Of Algae And 'Our Democracy'

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“. . .a political party doesn’t lose 95 percent of a registration advantage because voters are kinda annoyed. Something much, much deeper is going on.”

- Richard Landwirth

Okay, convince me that gay-Islamic-race-communism is a “progressive” political program America is going to buy like corn flakes.

The Lefty-left wants to think so, as it lurches from one peak of mental illness to an even greater one in the 130 days to the midterms.

Look how successful they’ve been with open borders, defunding the police, men in the girl’s swim lane, no cash bail, sex-change surgery for kids, free-for-all elections, hatin’ on white people, and open Medicare fraud. The new re-branding strategy as “Democratic Socialism” only tells you that reality has ceased to interest them.

No, winning electoral districts stuffed with illegal aliens in bright blue cities with tiny overall voter turnouts won’t sweep the nation like love. More likely it’s a harbinger of the party’s approaching death, like the Whigs going down the drain in 1852, gurgle-gurgle. Advocating to destroy American society is a poor sales pitch. The party’s old-line leadership frantically seeks some way to neutralize the rising influence of Zohran Mamdani and his disciples, but so far nothing works. An odor of desperation fills the air.

One thing you can say about the gay-Islamic-race-communists is that they are well-organized, which is understandable since their political program resembles an ant farm, a dis-individuated collective with insectile characteristics, workers and soldiers toiling in mindless solidarity to occupy more electoral territory so as to vanquish their “oppressors,” Trump and the big feet of his capitalist minions.

Meanwhile, though, the money flows dry up as the old Big Donor Dawgs freak-out at the prospect of having their fortunes confiscated, eaten by this advancing ant-swarm, while Scott Bessent and Todd Blanche work to disassemble the giant, hive-like matrix of NGOs that, for years, laundered US taxpayer dollars through the Democratic Party’s patronage system. In New York City, Philly, LA, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, Portland, the NGOs furnished comfortable salaries for young activists churned out remorselessly by Higher Ed, but all that’s starting to look like a bygone Shangri-la, a lost world.

“Many Democratic primary voters, however, are in no mood for defensiveness. As they see it, they’ve been failed by a cautious, compromising establishment, and they’re going to overthrow it.”

- Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

Of course, the loss of those cushy jobs and perqs has pitched that young demographic into a yet greater rage, prompting them to wreak vengeance and havoc on the system that took their “entitlements” away. Activists want to do activism, which is not necessarily the same as working for a living. It’s working for an ideal, a cause — to abolish the very society based on working for a living and replace it with a parent-like, hovering, all-powerful government that provides your every need by “seizing the means of production.”

The trouble is, this has been tried before, many times in the previous century, and the track-record is discouraging, exhibit-A being the old Soviet Union, the experiment that failed. Why? Because after seizing the means of production, the state bureaucracy lacks the skills, the spirit, and the creative juice to produce much of anything, and especially to do it well. All it can actually contribute to the process is its intrinsic bureaucratic entropy and, to put it ultra-simply, entropy is just not a force for good in this world.

The Republican Party is laboring through its own parallel, but rather different sort of crack-up, a breach based more on pure enmity to President Trump’s personality than necessarily to ideas or policy.

The Right still uniformly subscribes to personal liberty and economic enterprise, but factions on the right have a long-running investment in the Deep State apparatus and its protection against Mr. Trump’s impending prosecution of the so-called “grand conspiracy” (the ongoing seditious coup), as well as his dismantling of the money-flow architecture that keeps Beltway types rolling in dough.

Former AG Bill Barr is exhibit-A for that faction, as when he concealed the FBI’s possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop through Trump Impeachment No. 1, when he refused to investigate ballot fraud after the 2020 election, and when he managed to let Jeffrey Epstein off himself in the Manhattan federal lockup.

Then there is Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the emptiest suit to ever occupy that job, who refuses to explain his aversion to common-sense election reform or his failure to allow confirmation of the president’s nominees to important federal posts. He is so committed to doing nothing that he makes “Joe Biden” look like a prodigy of action. They say Sen. Thune represents the old-school “country club” Republicans, but he looks too dim to even tote up an 18-hole golf card.

There are also Tucker, and Candace, and Nick Fuentes, and MTG, and other pouting and shouting former MAGA superstars throwing down against the president and his program.

It has all become rather unappetizing, though rumors swirl of Tucker seeking to build a whole new party to replace the GOP and MAGA. As Homey de Clown might put it: I don’t think so. . . .

I doubt that any of them will succeed in destroying MAGA, but they’re making the movement uncomfortable. Let’s face it: they’re embarrassing.

On the other hand, the Party of Algae and “Our Democracy” is incapable of being embarrassed, and that has been obvious for a long time based on the absurdities they attempt to foist upon our country.

The Iran War seems to be fading in the rear-view mirror now, despite all their yelling about how we lost it.

Oil is hovering just below $70-a-barrel as I write.

Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are reduced to a pitiful vaudeville act in the face of Mamdani-ism.

Bernie Sanders is lost in a rain-dance for Utopia.

And James Carville is on-track for a three-week vacation in the Rubber Room.

Don’t bother praying for them. Just wait for gurgle.

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

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 16:20

Tanker Rates Nearly Halve As Hormuz Shipping Normalizes

The recent spike in the cost to hire a supertanker carrying 2 million barrels of crude from Saudi Arabia to China is now being sharply reversed, as more shippers send vessels through the Strait of Hormuz and normalization trends continue to improve.

Bloomberg reports that tanker rates for the Saudi Arabia-to-China route tumbled to about $287K on Friday, down 44% from more than $514K on Tuesday. That data came from the Baltic Exchange.

Rates remain elevated and still highly profitable for owners, but the sharp drop late in the week suggests the market is beginning to normalize after an interim U.S.-Iran peace deal reduced the war risk premium around the Hormuz chokepoint. Early movers certainly capitalized on lofty rates last week.

According to Bloomberg data, 48 vessels have transited the narrow waterway on Friday, though that does not include ships that switched off their transponders.

By the end of the week, Brent crude fell below $72 per barrel, while WTI traded around $69, hovering near pre-war levels.

A late Thursday note from Arrow Shipping & Energy said that 75 million barrels of crude have flowed out of the Persian Gulf via tankers since the U.S. and Iran signed an interim peace deal. Persian Gulf exports are now at about 75% of pre-war levels, according to Bloomberg estimates.

Related:

• Asian Refiners Swamped, Brace For Over 60 Million Barrels Of Oil Ready To Exit Hormuz

Tanker loadings are now resuming at Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura terminal, yet another sign exports from allied Gulf countries are ramping up.

"Crude remains under significant pressure as the bearish narrative continues to center on improving flows through the Strait of Hormuz," said Rebecca Babin, senior energy trader at CIBC Private Wealth Group. "While transit numbers appear somewhat lower following yesterday's attack on a vessel, traffic has not stopped entirely."

HSBC analyst Kim Fustier said the reopening of the Hormuz waterway has created a "near-term supply overhang; Gulf exports rebound faster than the market can absorb them."

Fustier noted, "China remains key swing buyer," but said the "next inflection point when backlog of stranded vessels runs out and SPR releases end in July," may shift Brent back towards $80/bbl.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 15:40

Michael Saylor Responds To Scrutiny As Strategy Shares & STRC Hit 52-Week Lows

Authored by Micah Zimmerman via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Michael Saylor responded to the deepening selloff in Strategy’s stock and preferred shares Friday with a statement on X.

“Volatility tests every capital structure,” Saylor wrote.

“Strategy remains focused on Bitcoin, disciplined capital allocation, credit quality, and long-term value creation.

We appreciate our investors and will continue to execute with transparency and resolve. $MSTR”.

The tweet landed as MSTR shares and STRC, Strategy’s variable-rate perpetual preferred, both hit 52-week lows. MSTR has shed more than 80% from its all-time peak. STRC, which carries a par value of $100, traded near $74 — a 26% discount.

When preferred shares trade below par, the mechanism that funds bitcoin purchases through preferred issuance breaks down: the company cannot raise capital on favorable terms on instruments trading at a discount.

Bitcoin broke to $58,000 Wednesday for the first time since October 2024, pushing Strategy’s paper losses above $14 billion. The company holds 847,363 bitcoin at an average purchase price of $75,680 per coin — a gap of more than $17,000 per coin at current prices.

MSTR shares, which had shed around 25% over five trading days going into Friday, extended that decline somewhat in pre-market trading as bitcoin’s slide appeared to stagnate. The stock trades at an mNAV below 1.0, meaning the market values Strategy’s shares at a discount to the bitcoin on its balance sheet.

That matters because the company’s model depends on a premium: Strategy issues stock or preferred instruments above NAV, deploys proceeds into bitcoin, and lifts NAV per share in the process. With the premium gone, both capital taps are constrained at the same time.

Strategy’s cash strain deepens further

The pressure on the capital structure extends past bitcoin’s price.

Annual dividend obligations on Strategy’s preferred instruments — STRC, STRK, STRF, STRD, and STRE — have risen from $300 million at the start of 2026 to $1.2 billion, a fourfold increase in six months.

Cash reserves have fallen 38% this year. Dividend coverage, once above seven years, has compressed to about 14 months.

A Bloomberg report Thursday described investor scrutiny of Saylor’s funding model as the most intense the company has faced. CryptoQuant issued a note this week calling on Strategy to halt bitcoin purchases and rebuild cash to $2.8 billion before resuming accumulation.

Strategy made its first bitcoin sale in four years in early June, offloading 32 BTC at an average of $77,135 per coin. Saylor framed the move as proof the company could cover dividend obligations through asset liquidation. The market’s reaction suggests that framing did not hold.

Last week, Strategy bought 520 bitcoin — a fraction of its prior pace — and put $300 million of a $335.5 million equity raise into cash rather than bitcoin.

Saylor has not elaborated on the tweet beyond the statement posted to X.

We give the last (someone testy) word to Saylor...

Watch Michael Saylor freak out when asked where his $MSTR money will come frompic.twitter.com/bW4qMOgSwW https://t.co/iOJJ8IFZaY

— Financelot (@FinanceLancelot) June 26, 2026

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 15:20

'Historic' Ceasefire Deal Reached By Israel & Lebanon, But Fine Print Confirms Fragile Reality

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hailed the new agreement signed between Israel and Lebanon, hosted in Washington on Friday, as a major blow to Iran. He has said Israeli forces will remain in southern Lebanon so long as Hezbollah does not disarm: 

"I want to announce a great achievement for the State of Israel. The most important thing is that, first of all, Israel remains in the security zone in southern Lebanon. This is a great achievement, and we will maintain it as long as Hezbollah does not disarm, as long as there is a danger to the State of Israel."

Mideast regional media is also calling the 'trilateral framework agreement' (given it was also signed by the US) as likely the most significant agreement between the two enemy countries in decades.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated at the signing ceremony that it was aimed at achieving "lasting peace and security". The US top diplomat proclaimed, "Today is a good day in that we are happy to announce a framework agreement between the sovereign government of Lebanon and, of course, the government of Israel, with a mediation and support of the United States of America that begins to put in place a framework for lasting peace and security."

via Reuters

He added: "And that’s what these two nations deserve." Following on this, the State Department also said officially, "The two sides agreed with the guidance of the United States to swiftly advance the creation of pilot zones in which the Lebanese Armed Forces will take exclusive control of the territory to the exclusion of all non-state actors."

Ultimately, it shows a serious effort by the Trump administration to scramble behind the scenes and ensure events in Lebanon can't derail the fragile peace and ceasefire achieved with the MoU signing between the US and Iran earlier this month.

Iran has insisted that a broader peace deal bring Lebanon into it, after small Mediterranean country suffered relentless aerial attacks by Israel, which is seeking to eradicate Hezbollah while occupying more territory in the south.

But the hard reality is that without Hezbollah going along with this, it only remains symbolic. In the below is seen the crucial fine print:

The agreement, which came as a result of talks mediated by the United States, calls for the implementation of a ceasefire between the two nations.

That ceasefire is contingent on a complete cessation of fire by the paramilitary group Hezbollah and the evacuation of all Hezbollah operatives from the South Litani Sector, an area in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah was not a party to Friday’s agreement. It is not clear whether the group will abide by any ceasefire.

As for some of the key details, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will hand over control of two areas within its six-mile southern Lebanon buffer zone to Lebanese forces. Al Jazeera says this is a prelude to a full Israeli withdrawal later on.

Having already cleared Hezbollah infrastructure from these sectors, Israeli forces are prepared to step back. The prior clearance operations included leveling entire border villages - a move Israel defended by claiming Hezbollah used the civilian infrastructure as staging grounds for attacks.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the Israel-Lebanon peace framework: "It's the beginning of the beginning. There is a lot of work ahead." pic.twitter.com/djoFtFMeaQ

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 26, 2026

Prior agreements have come and gone though - given things usually devolve into sporadic exchange of fire to start, and then move to intensified conflict. But the Trump admin has high hopes that this one will stick, truly earning the 'historic' label that many officials are currently attaching to it.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 15:00

"Perfect Storm": Bond Traders "Stunned" At How Quickly SpaceX Bonds Are Selling Off

Media reports earlier this week about SpaceX's inaugural post-IPO investment-grade bond (and we mean inaugural, as the company rushed to tap the corporate bond market just days after going public with a low-IG rating of Baa1/BBB) which priced on Tuesday, had it as almost 4x oversubscribed, at roughly $90BN in orders for the $25 billion offering (upsized from $20 billion), signaling relentless demand for the paper. Alas, it took just 48 hours for the myth of sterling demand to crash and burn, with Bloomberg reporting today that the "blockbuster bond sale is weakening so quickly in the secondary market that traders say they can’t recall another recent deal that widened this sharply."

This is what we mean.

Confirming the TRACE data shown above for the company's bonds due 2056, Bloomberg says that a large dealer was quoting the SpaceX bonds at levels as much as 0.32 percentage point wider than the issue price of 1.75 percentage points above Treasuries.

Parallel selling across the entire SpaceX bond complex means that paper losses on the company's $25 billion offering have mounted since the debt broke for trading Wednesday and totaled roughly $400 million as of Friday, relative to Treasuries. The longest-dated SpaceX bonds, which drew more skepticism than those with shorter maturities, have erased all the tightening from underwriters that followed as orders swelled to nearly $90 billion.

So much for that oversubscription.

Traders who spoke to Bloomberg said the moves suggest fast-money accounts, rather than traditional buy-and-hold investors, piled into the deal looking to flip it for a quick profit. In other words, the momentum monkeys who have dominated stonks, decided to try their hand at flipping bonds. It didn't work out well: the selling pressure stands out even more because SpaceX shares have been largely stable since the bonds priced on Tuesday, after lurching 16% lower the day before, which it not say that the stock has been especially stable and it once again broke below its first day of trading price earlier today when it briefly dipped below $150.

Even if there are more technical reasons behind the selling - hedge funds covering or hedging short positions, for example - the unprecedented magnitude of the rapid selling points to SpaceX’s unique profile. The company, which at its peak this month had a $2.64 trillion market value, won investment grades despite expectations for years of negative cash flow and a dependence on Elon Musk that Fitch Ratings deemed a “key rating constraint.”

“We expected SpaceX to widen from issuance level, but not this much,” said Tony Trzcinka, a portfolio manager at Impax Asset Management. “That magnitude is likely a perfect storm of the stock shedding $600 billion+ since launch, weak technicals from the upsized supply, and investors still scratching their heads over how to price its unique risk profile.”

SpaceX's selling is a rare move compared with how other recent mega bond sales have traded in the secondary market.

Take Nvidia, which raised $25 billion in a seven-part high-grade offering this month. The spreads on its 5.55% bonds maturing in 2046 have widened by just 11 basis points since issuance, while the spreads on its 5.625% bonds maturing in 2056 are 12 basis points wider. The spread on Alphabet’s longer-dated bonds issued in February have broadly tightened.

Meanwhile, after weakening, SpaceX’s credit curve is now trading more in line with those of similarly rated Oracle, whose longer-dated bonds also widened soon after they were first sold. 

One way to track the SpaceX relative credit performance is through CDS, as Credit-default swaps tied to the company began actively trading after the company sold high-grade bonds this week for the first time, allowing investors to hedge against potential losses or to speculate on the creditworthiness of the firm. And yes, SPCX CDS has blown wider since breaking for trading, indicating the market is not as hopeful on the company's "otherworldly" ambitions, as Elon Musk or the friendly Wall Street sellside, which expects 100x higher revenues by 2030. 

But here a bigger problem emerges: as we have been pounding the table since last October, when we said that "AI Is Now A Debt Bubble Too, Quietly Surpassing All Banks To Become The Largest Sector In The Market" and most recently two weeks ago when we profiled "The $1.8 Trillion Off-Balance Sheet Time Bomb At The Heart Of The AI Supercycle", bondholders have been inundated with massive hyperscaler bond sales this year as tech giants race to raise billions of dollars to finance artificial intelligence projects (read: pay memory chip makers ridiculous prices for their commodity product). US high-grade supply of $180 billion as of Wednesday has set a new June record, surpassing 2020’s $169 billion haul, according to Bloomberg calculations. Morgan Stanley's internal calcs are even more insane: the bank's latest Debt Financing Tracker (available to pro subscribers) found that YTD $236BN in AI-linked debt has been issued, a 357% increase from the same period last year. By year-end, MS expect this number to more than double to $570 billion.

Source 

Even more amazing is the recent explosion in hyperscaler gross leverage, which has surged from 0.9x in Q3 '25 to 1.8x currently, doubling in just over two quarters, and surpassing the gross leverage of the entire energy sector. At this rate, hyperscaler debt is growing at about 0.3x turn per quarter.

Source 

Echoing Bloomberg's observation that the borrowing spree is starting to weigh on corporate bond spreads, pushing average high-grade risk premiums out of a historically tight range, Morgan Stanley noted that hyperscalers are drifting wider, and after trading insider AA spreads for much of 2025, are now on top of A, and as MS warns, "may widen further on supply." And it's not just outlier Oracle: META is now trading wider to CDX IG. 

Source 

Not surprisingly, Bloomberg reported earlier this week that demand for the SpaceX bond sale was strongest for the five-year notes, i.e. the lowest duration part of the offering, which let the company cut borrowing costs more on that portion of the deal than on the longer maturities. Interest was weaker in the 20-year and 30-year bonds, which saw the biggest drop-off in demand. Ironically that's precisely where the bulk of the "shareholder value" is concentrated, deep in the future when SpaceX is expected to be colonizing Mars, flying through worm holes, and enjoying other activities that push its EBITDA north of $1 trillion, or something. 

SpaceX’s long-dated bonds are widening despite “some initial excitement and demand,” with bondholders “seemingly concluding that there may be plenty more debt issuance to come, as the loss-making company finances its future path to profitability,” Mark Dowding, CIO for fixed income at RBC BlueBay Asset Management, wrote in a note.

Mark is undoubtedly correct, and we expect both SpaceX and other IG names to continue flooding the market until spreads eventually blow up like they did one year ago, and shut the debt issuance window for good, at which point the capex cycle will end as there is no more free cash flow, and in a few months, there will be no more debt either. 

We recommend reading the latest Morgan Stanley Debt Financing Tracker for a comprehensive analysis of the hyperscaler debt flooding the investment grade bond market (available to pro subscribers).

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 14:40

Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' To Permanently Close, Gov. DeSantis Says

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

Florida permanently closed the temporary illegal immigrant holding center “Alligator Alcatraz” June 25 after transferring federal detainees to other facilities, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced.

“Alligator Alcatraz now has zero detainees,” DeSantis told reporters at a press conference outside the facility at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in the Florida Everglades, about 50 miles west of Miami.

“It has helped remove many, many dangerous people from the street and get them out not only the state of Florida but the United States of America,” DeSantis said.

The facility was completed in less than two weeks and led to the deportation of almost 21,000 illegal immigrants, mainly people who had criminal records or were wanted for crimes, DeSantis said.

Crimes committed by the foreign nationals who were deported from the facility included sexual battery, international cartel activity, drug trafficking, homicide, burglary, fraud, fentanyl distribution, and Medicaid fraud, according to records.

The 2026 hurricane season started June 1, prompting Florida officials to move detainees out of the soft-sided facility.

Florida will continue to cooperate with the Trump administration on its immigration program, DeSantis said.

The state’s Deportation Depot in Baker County has processed 10,000 illegal immigrants and will continue to operate, he said.

“We’re proud to be able to be in this fight,” DeSantis said.

Florida is the only state in America that requires all state agencies to cooperate with federal law enforcement agencies in Florida for immigration enforcement.

President Donald Trump (2nd L), Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (L), and then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem (R) tour a detention center for illegal immigrants, dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, located at the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Fla., on July 1, 2025. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

As a result, Florida has accounted for 40 percent of all immigrant arrests during President Donald Trump’s second term, according to the governor.

U.S. Border Czar Tom Homan joined Florida officials at the closure of Alligator Alcatraz June 25, touting the state’s success in helping the administration achieve a “record number of arrests and deportations.”

“Targeting national security threats is a priority of President Trump and we’re achieving that,” Homan said. “This doesn’t end the relationship. This is a continuation.”

Homan reported the administration had reduced illegal immigration by 97 percent at the border and had recovered 147,000 out of the 300,000 immigrant children that went missing under President Joe Biden’s administration.

“We are saving thousands of lives by securing that border,” Homan said. “A secure border is the most humane thing you can do. This is what the American people voted for and that’s what we’re going to continue to do.”

White House border czar Tom Homan takes a question from a reporter outside the West Wing of the White House on June 22, 2026. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Even before Alligator Alcatraz opened its doors, the site drew protests and lawsuits filed by immigrant rights groups.

In July 2025, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the facility. The ACLU alleged that there was a lack of access to it and that detainees lacked due process.

State and federal officials have denied all allegations of torture and inhumane conditions at the detention facility.

The ACLU’s Florida chapter celebrated the governor’s announcement about the site’s permanent shutdown.

“Through pushback and litigation pressure, we the people successfully closed the chapter on this facility’s dark record,” the ACLU of Florida posted on X.

A protester stands outside the migrant detention facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Facility in Ochopee, Fla., on July 12, 2025. AP Photo/Alexandra Rodriguez

The Sierra Club of Florida welcomed the closure.

“We welcome efforts to permanently protect lands previously used for the prison camp known as ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’” the Sierra Club stated in an X post. “But fulfilling this commitment will require far more than the closure of the detention center alone.”

The Sierra Club is calling for the state to permanently protect the national preserve around the facility from future development, fossil fuel exploration, and drilling.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 13:40

 

 

Cointelegraph:

“Decentralized finance platform Abracadabra said Wednesday that it launched emergency measures after its crypto-collateralized stablecoin, Magic Internet Money (MIM), fell 50% below its $1 peg.”

I have spent a lot of time vacillating between being Blockchain-Curious and Crypto-Skeptical. As an exercise, let’s consider the pros- and cons- of Stablecoins, and whether there is reason for speculators to be concerned as to the rest of the sector.

Let’s begin by pointing out that if coins were US equities, I would be an aggressive buyer down 50%. Historically, quality companies from stable regions, on sale at half off, have presented a fabulous entry point. But coins — stable or otherwise — are not equities. They trade like a mash-up of currency, commodities, and tech startups. I have no clue whether down 50% is about to bounce hard or continue to free-fall. I don’t even have a framework for contextualizing this.

Rather than speculate, let’s use this example to examine the Stable Coin value proposition (my caveats here 1).

1) This looks like a bank run: I don’t know how else to describe this other than to point out that the massive withdrawals of the underlying securities’ anchor raise questions. On-demand redemption at par should not be a problem; this looks like the kind of run that traditional (fractional lending) banks suffer from — the kind the crypto community has long criticized. The fact that Magic Internet Money was cut in half suggests genuine maturity or liquidity mismatch, but with no deposit insurance and no lender of last resort to come in and save the day.

How can a “fully” reserved coin get depegged? We have seen this movie before:

-Terra/UST vaporized $40B in May 2022 via a reflexive death spiral. Asd I understand it, that peg depended upon an arbitrage with a sister token; and THAT depended on yet another peg.

-USDC broke its peg due to an external event: It fell to $0.88 in March 2023 as $3.3B of its reserves at Silicon Valley Bank were frozen. But for the FDIC backstop, USDC likely would have gone poof also.

Compare that with money markets that broke the buck in 2008-09; they fell to 98 cents, before being rescued. That is a huge safety difference for depositors.

The takeaway? These designs are structurally unsound, and problems tend to show up when either A) there is an issue elsewhere in the financial system, or 2) other coins find themselves in a substantial downtrend. Both of these smell like the stablecoin’s architecture has inherent structural issues.

~~~

I am less of a believer in the claim that stablecoins are needed for legitimate cross-border payments and similar remittances. The traditional banking system is slower, but that is a feature, not a bug, which helps thwart fraud and criminality (KYC, etc.). For most consumers, apps like Remittly and World Remit are fast, cheap, and safe.

State Street and other money center banks have embraced a variety of use cases, such as B2B payments and merchant settlements. Just please stop using the phrase “DeFi” now that giant US money centers have embraced the entire sector.

I understand the value proposition for payments or regional dollar access; but this is hardly the grandiose “future of all money” claims of just a few years ago. If you are in Argentina, Turkey, Nigeria, Lebanon, etc., dollar-stablecoins give you purchasing power, especially when their local currencies are in high- or hyperinflation mode. That utility is real; I believe it must be measured, however, against the speculative negatives and potential criminality. But that’s before we get to the well-known criticisms made by folks like Zeke Faux.2

It will be interesting to see how this plays out…

 

 

 

Previously:
Whatever Happened to NFTs? (December 9, 2025)

Lessons of “Number Go Up” (December 13, 2023)

Cancelling Michael Lewis (October 5, 2023)

Sturgeon’s Corollary (December 4, 2025)

 

Source:
Abracadabra takes emergency action as MIM stablecoin depeg worsens
by Martin Young
Cointelegraph, June 24, 2026

See also:
Stablecoins Are Private Money. That’s Why They’re a Risk to the Economy. (Wall Street Journal)

GENIUS Act explained: What it means for crypto and digital assets (State Street)

What Are Stablecoins Used for Today? (Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City)

The Hidden Plumbing of Stablecoins: (MIT Media Lab)

How a Cryptocurrency Helps Criminals Launder Money and Evade Sanctions (New York Times)

 

__________

1. I do not pretend to be a crypto expert, but I am a student of market history. In many ways, Crypto resembles the slow adoption of an innovative, complex technology; in other ways, it resembles a classic speculative bubble.

Interestingly, these are not mutually exclusive…

2. “They’ve become the settlement layer for illicit finance.” Permissionless, instant, dollar-denominated, and globally liquid is a great payment product and also a great sanctions-evasion and scam-settlement product. The bulk of on-chain criminal value transfer now moves in stablecoins rather than bitcoin, and African and other regulators are specifically focused on operationalizing FATF-aligned AML/CFT requirements like Travel Rule implementation for cross-border stablecoin corridors. The dominant fiat-backed issuers can and do freeze addresses — which defeats the censorship-resistance pitch while still leaving enormous gray-market flow. (Via Chainalysis)

 

 

 

AI DISCLOSURE: I wrote this myself, used Claude for research and Grammarly for spelling grammar corrections

The post Stablecoin Crash? appeared first on The Big Picture.

Volkswagen CEO Plans 100,000 Job Cuts In Generational Overhaul

German business news outlet Manager Magazin reports that Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume is eyeing a major restructuring that could eliminate as many as 100,000 jobs. The latest VW earnings show just why: Europe's largest automaker remains bloated in a world of weak demand, a softening Chinese market, rising Chinese competition in Europe, and low margins.

"Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume is getting serious. He plans to drastically intensify job cuts, actually phase out production at four German plants, and spin off the VW brand into a new company. Volkswagen is to become a new company," Manager Magazin wrote in the report.

If fully implemented, the 100,000-job reduction would eliminate about 15% of Volkswagen's current global workforce of 650,000. Bloomberg data shows VW went on a hiring spree between 2008 and 2020.

Now, it appears a generational high has been reached in VW's workforce, as a shift toward efficiency, automation, and AI could soon result in massive job losses. We're sure lefty unions will be furious.

Manager Magazin also noted that Blume plans 11 billion euros in cost cuts by 2030, which could include spinning off component operations and the core VW brand.

The restructuring plan will be presented to the supervisory board next month and is expected to face intense resistance from labor unions and Lower Saxony lawmakers, who hold significant influence over the company's governance.

The urgency behind a restructuring stems from deteriorating earnings: its first-quarter revenue fell 2.5% to 75.7 billion euros, while operating profit dropped 14.3% to 2.46 billion euros, and the operating margin slipped to 3.3% from 3.7%. Earnings after tax fell 28.4% to 1.56 billion euros, while vehicle sales fell 6.9%, and deliveries were down 4%.

A Volkswagen spokesperson told the Hamburg-based outlet that the struggling car company "must undergo profound change." The executive board "has been working intensively over the past few months on a future-oriented plan to realign the company."

Shares in Germany slipped 34 basis points following the report and remain down 25% on the year. The stock is trading at 2010 levels...

The implosion of VW tells you all you need to know about Europe's crumbling industrial base at a time when war is still raging, and in fact accelerating, in Ukraine. Time to convert unused civilian vehicle production lines into interceptor missile production.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 12:00

Amazon Prime Day Household Spending Underwhelms, Survey Finds

The massive four-day shopping event for Amazon Prime members kicked off Tuesday and runs through the end of the week, but early survey data suggest the sales event is off to a sluggish start, with average household spending on day one tracking below last year's pace.

Bloomberg cited high-frequency data from market research firm Numerator, which surveyed thousands of Prime members and found that the average household had spent about $89 as of 4 p.m. Tuesday, the first day of Prime Day.

That average total sales ticket was down about 16% from the same point during last year's event, suggesting Amazon's Prime Day is off to a softer start as cash-strapped consumers are still reeling from months of soaring gasoline and diesel prices, despite the latest pullback in pump prices following an interim US-Iran peace deal.

Another reason for the softer activity on day one of Prime Day could be that cash-strapped consumers are simply not seeing the deals they expected. That was echoed by marketing firm PMG, which said Prime Day discounts would be lighter this year. Some of that is because merchants face higher costs and tariff uncertainty, both of which are pressuring margins.

According to Numerator, about half of shoppers said inflation and higher living costs have driven them to Prime Day. Throughout the four-day shopping period, the survey found that households plan to spend about $187.

Ohio retiree Patrice Kihlken told Bloomberg that discounts on summer dresses and jewelry-making supplies were rather disappointing.

"It's just underwhelming to me," said Kihlken, 65. "Most of the things that I looked at, they're 5%, 10%, maybe 15% off. Anything that's really nice is not on sale."

Prime Day's slow start should be seen as a proxy for consumer sentiment, as it shows household willingness to spend outside normal weekly purchases, as well as tests discount elasticity, or the willingness of households to respond to deals.

The takeaway so far is that the soft start is an ominous sign, but there are several days left in the big sale.

Analysts from UBS to Piper Sandler have pointed out incoming tailwinds for consumers with plunging fuel prices:

• "Early Signs Of A Turn In US Consumer Discretionary," UBS Says
• Piper Sandler's Top Economist Sees "Big Bounce" In Consumer Sentiment As Gas Prices Tumble
• "Optimism Has Picked Up": Retail Operators See Consumer Relief After Gas Prices Tumble

Yet there might be a lag period before consumer sentiment finally shifts higher and translates into higher spending.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 11:20

World Cup Pundit Branded Racist For Calling African Team's Performance "Wild"

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Bastian Schweinsteiger, the former Bayern Munich, Manchester United and Germany midfielder, has been accused of racism by Ivory Coast manager Emerse Fae for comments he made as a pundit ahead of one of the team's 2026 World Cup matches.

While previewing Germany's group-stage match against Ivory Coast, Schweinsteiger described the opponents' style as "a bit African football, a bit unorthodox, a bit wild, a bit perhaps also not so conditioned by tactics" and warned that Germany "must be prepared for it to be unpredictable."

The accusation has ignited debate over whether pundits can still describe regional playing styles without facing bigotry charges. Schweinsteiger was performing the basic job of a television analyst: giving viewers a clear picture of what to expect from an opponent known for athleticism and direct play. Instead of focusing solely on Ivory Coast's on-pitch results, the story quickly shifted to policing his choice of words.

German football legend Bastian Schweinsteiger sparked controversy after Germany's match against Ivory Coast, describing the Ivorian team's style as "a bit of wild African football," drawing widespread criticism and accusations of racism. pic.twitter.com/rEaj619hLQ

— African News feed. (@africansinnews) June 24, 2026

After the Germany match, Fae was asked about Schweinsteiger's preview and responded "I think it's sad. Schweinsteiger was a very good player. I have always loved him as a midfielder and the way he understood football. When I heard his comments, I was disappointed in the man. It is odd he would speak that way. We could call it racist, if we were calling a spade a spade."

Ivory Coast head coach Emerse Fae has strongly criticised former Bayern Munich and Germany star Bastian Schweinsteiger for comments the 2014 World Cup-winner made last weekend, describing them as "racist".

More from @mjshrimper ??

Free to read: https://t.co/tXvjxM1n7x pic.twitter.com/TRFwbkJlpq

— The Athletic | Football (@TheAthleticFC) June 26, 2026

Fae added: "I don't agree with him, but I have no other solution other than to work with things as they are. All I can show is that on the pitch African teams are not just physical, we are technical and tactical. I can only hope it is a clumsy statement, rather than something going on in his mind. If that's what he thinks, he is free to do so."

The attempt to frame routine style analysis as racism has met strong resistance from fans who see a clear double standard. Commentators have long discussed Brazilian flair, Italian pragmatism or German structure without controversy. Applying similar shorthand to an African side now triggers accusations that many view as overreach.

This isn't racist at all. Everyone says that about every single good African nation. Theres a European style of football, there's a Latin American style of football, an Asian style of football and of course there's an African style of football. It isn't racist

— Bavarian Tapatio (@Bavariantapatio) June 26, 2026

Which part of Basti's statement was incorrect

— filipmeister ?? (@F1peFCB) June 26, 2026

Isnt this basically the same shit we say about italy for years?

Where exactly is the racist part in his sentence?

— mike (@michixixix) June 26, 2026

Many replies argue that describing distinct continental or national styles is normal football talk, not prejudice, and that elevating every stylistic observation to a racism debate stifles honest commentary.

There is a lot of 'lost in translation' in this story. 'Unorthodox, wild, not conditioned by tactics' are normal phrases in German football. They are used to described teams like Augsburg, Union or St. Pauli for decades.

— John Kommentaro (@JohnKommentaro) June 26, 2026

Too much victim mentality within africans, always claiming oppression. African football is objectively wild its just reality, not racism

— Mandzukic (@mandzukicheader) June 26, 2026

Football's played a bit differently in every corner of the world. Every style's got its pros and cons. African teams tend to break free from tactical constraints more often than, say, Germany. That unpredictability is exactly what gives teams like that trouble. it's awesome.

— Mister Moe (@MisterMoeX) June 26, 2026

Inventing racism where there is none makes the whole issue look like a joke. It's ridiculous and actively harms the fight against actual, real-world racism.

— Lego Zidane (@legozidane) June 26, 2026

Schweinsteiger did not invent the idea of regional football identities. Analysts have used terms like "African football" for years to capture characteristics such as athleticism, directness and unpredictability that can disrupt more rigid systems.

The same principle applies to every other part of the world game. Treating one continent's style as uniquely off-limits for description creates an uneven standard.

The broader problem is the expanding reach of identity politics into sports media. Pundits are expected to deliver clear, unvarnished takes on tactics, strengths and weaknesses. When a single descriptive phrase triggers accusations of racism, the space for straightforward analysis shrinks. Viewers lose out on informed discussion, and commentators face pressure to self-censor.

Sports broadcasting should not require analysts to filter every observation through a political lens. Schweinsteiger gave a concise preview of an opponent. That is exactly what the role demands. Branding such comments racist because they reference "African" traits turns normal football talk into a minefield.

The alternative is sanitized coverage where analysts tiptoe around obvious realities for fear of manufactured outrage. That serves no one - not the players, not the viewers, and not the game itself.

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

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 10:15

UMich Sentiment Rebounds From 46-Year Record Low In June, Inflation Fears Fade Further

Having rebounded from record (46 year) lows in preliminary June data, University of Michigan's final June Sentiment survey was expected to show further improvement as gas prices have fallen since the US-Iran 'peace' MoU signing.

And it did with the headline index rising from 48.9 flash and 44.8 prior to 49.5 (but that was below the 50.0 expectation)...

Both Current Conditions and the Expectations Index also rebounded with the former outperforming...

Consumer sentiment confirmed its early-month reading, rising about 10% above May as gas prices moderated.

"Increases were seen across income, wealth, and political affiliation," Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, said in a statement.

Expected business conditions over the next five years surged 16% as consumers’ worries over long-term consequences of the Iran conflict appear to be easing.

"Still, sentiment remains in unfavorable territory at 13% below the February 2026 reading prior to the start of the Iran conflict, and nearly 20% less than a year ago."

Year-ahead inflation expectations inched down from 4.8% in May to a still-elevated 4.6% this month.

The current reading substantially exceeds the 3.4% reading seen in February before the Iran conflict began, along with all 2024 readings.

Long-run inflation expectations fell back from 3.9% last month to 3.3% in June, remaining a bit higher than the 2.8% to 3.2% range seen in 2024.

A gauge of consumers’ perceptions of their personal finances also improved from May, though remained close to the lowest since 2009.

Even so, US household demand has proved resilient. 

However, “the cost of living remains at the forefront of consumers’ minds,” Hsu concludes.

“Over half of consumers spontaneously mentioned that high prices are weighing down their personal finances.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 10:08

UAE Retracts Warning About "Potential Missile Threat"

Update: it appears the earlier warning by the UAE was a false alarm:

• UAE SENDS ALERT SAYING 'PLEASE DISREGARD THE PREVIOUS WARNING'
• UAE ASKS PEOPLE TO IGNORE PREVIOUS WARNING

* * * 

Earlier

Is the ceasefire over (again)?

Moments ago stocks hit session lows and oil jumped from post-war lows after the UAE issued a phone alert warning of potential missile strikes.

Iran's Tasnim promptly followed up, saying that according to news sources, there were explosions heard in Dubai.

And while the initial report sent futures to session lows...

... , and oil bounced...

... a subsequent report from UAE indicated that the situation is "currently safe" after a potential threat alert.

• *UAE SAYS SITUATION CURRENTLY SAFE AFTER POTENTIAL THREAT ALERT

While it is unclear what may have prompted the escalation, especially since the UAE and Iran are now aggressively backchanneling, moments earlier the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said that Iran's military capabilities guarantee its right to self-defense. And now we wait to see if more fireworks are coming. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 09:27

The post The Fast-Food Spending Index is Falling Fast appeared first on CEPR.

Vance: Iran Agreed To Establish A Direct Line Between IRGC & US Military

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Vice President JD Vance has said that during talks in Switzerland, Iranian officials agreed to establish a direct line of communication between Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the US military.

Vance told Sohrab Ahmari, the US editor for UnHerd, that one of the things the US wanted to "come out" of the talks with was a "channel on the Iranian side" for reducing conflict.

Reuters/Pool

"Which we did. They were like, 'OK, fine, we’ll send somebody from the IRGC to go hang out in Doha with somebody from CENTCOM,' and that’s how we’re going to settle a lot of these disputes," the US vice president said during an interview conducted aboard Air Force Two on the flight home from Switzerland.

Flare-ups between the US and Iran remain possible, as the US hasn't reduced its forces in the region and there appear to be differences between the two sides’ views on the situation in the Strait of Hormuz.

A direct communication channel between the two militaries, if implemented, could help de-escalate tensions after any flare-up to prevent the region from plunging back into full-scale war.

Vance also told Ahmari that Arab states like the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding "because of the conversations they’re having with the Iranians."

"The Emiratis — by far the most hawkish, by far the most pro-Israel country in the [Gulf Cooperation Council] — they’re having conversations with the Iranians that have never happened before, including with the IRGC, about various types of economic incentives — ‘Here’s what we’d need to see to make your country investable’ — and the Iranians come back and say, ‘Okay, yeah, we’re willing to do all those things,'" Vance said.

The UAE had taken a much more offensive role in the US-Israeli war against Iran than the other Gulf Arab states, and as a result, it was pounded by Iranian missiles and drones.

VP signals there is now an IRGC-CENTCOM channel as part of US-Iran talks https://t.co/3X3MTN1hlV

— Alex Ward (@alexbward) June 25, 2026

While more hawkish than other regional countries, Abu Dhabi, like the other Gulf countries, would likely prefer a diplomatic solution to a return to full-scale war since it would likely involve an escalation of Iranian attacks on oil infrastructure in the region.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 09:20

Mamdani's Rent-Freeze Approved By NYC Guidelines Board

The New York City Rent Guidelines Board voted 7–1 to freeze rents on about 1 million rent-stabilized apartments for up to two years, giving tenants a win on a central campaign promise from Mayor Zohran Mamdani while revealing tensions over the board’s independence.

The board set the annual increase at zero percent for both one-year and two-year leases starting in October. The affected apartments house roughly 2.5 million residents. The board’s 2025 study found the average monthly rent in regulated units was $1,599 last year, far below the $3,950 that listings agency StreetEasy said was the median for new market-rate leases citywide.

As Kimberley Hayek reports for The Epoch Times, the decision comes after the board’s usual review of wages, inflation, maintenance costs, taxes, and landlord incomes. Tenants at public hearings called for a freeze or outright reduction, citing stagnant pay and higher living costs. Landlord representatives argued that a zero percent increase would hurt building upkeep and mortgage payments. Some owners have offset losses by raising rents on unregulated apartments, the board was told.

Mamdani, who took office in January, appointed six of the nine board members. Hours ahead of the vote, landlord representative Christina Smyth, appointed by the prior mayor, resigned. She said the panel had been rebuilt to produce this outcome.

“This rebuilt board was required to deliver a rent freeze,” Smyth said. “Everything since has been theater.”

Board Chair Chantella Mitchell, a Mamdani appointee, maintained that the board and its staff served with full independence and integrity. The other landlord representative, Maksim Wynn, also a Mamdani appointee, drew boos from tenant advocates at the Manhattan proceedings but voted for the freeze. The crowd erupted with cheers and whistles when the outcome was announced.

Ann Korchak, board president of Small Property Owners of New York, called the vote a farce.

“Defunding rent-stabilized housing when the [Rent Guidelines Board’s] own data showed a 5.3 percent increase in operational costs and expenses is setting up already financially distressed small owners for failure, which plays into Mamdani’s sinister plan to illegally take private property and convert it into socialized housing,” she told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Mamdani called the vote a breakthrough.

“This is a historic victory for New York City tenants,” he said in a statement. “This is the relief that working people across our city deserve.”

The action marks the first major delivery on Mamdani’s housing agenda. The democratic socialist mayor campaigned explicitly on freezing rents for regulated apartments and holds sole authority to appoint the Rent Guidelines Board’s members. In May, Mamdani unveiled a broader “Block by Block” housing plan that calls for building 200,000 new units over 10 years while preserving another 200,000 through subsidies or other measures, including potential property interventions.

Previous rent freezes under former Mayor Bill de Blasio covered only one-year leases. Thursday’s vote applies to both lease terms and follows weeks of hearings and a rally outside El Museo Del Barrio that drew hundreds of tenants.

The board’s action applies only to rent-stabilized units, primarily in pre-1974 buildings or those that received certain tax benefits. Market-rate apartments remain unaffected.

Mamdani, whose campaign promised to pursue affordability, moved into the mayor’s official residence after his election. Before that, he lived in a rent-regulated one-bedroom apartment in Queens.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 09:00

OpenAI Plans Delaying IPO Until 2027, Blames SpaceX

One month ago, during the height of the tokenmaxxing craze - when companies were spending ridiculous amounts of money, in many cases without knowing they were even doing so, just to test out the latest agentic craze - first OpenAI and then Anthropic rushed to announce they will follow in the footsteps of the SpaceX IPO, and were planning (or rather hoping) to go public in the next quarter or two. To validate its euphoric IPO dreams, Anthropic even trotted out a lafughable ARR of $47 billion, a number which besides being laughably incoherent and a non-GAAP mish-mash of adjustments and double counting, also took advantage of said tokenmaxxing frenzy.

Then following a furious blowback against said tokenmaxxing which has seen a collapse in agentic spending and an aggressive shift to much cheaper Chinese models, we said two weeks ago that we are eagerly awaiting Anthropic's new ARR, one which reflects the revulsion to Claude's stratospheric token costs.

Meanwhile, Anthropic quietly annualized the one-time bumper revenue from Feb-May on the agentic splurge when nobody had any idea what they were paying, to come up with the ludicrous $47BN ARR.

Let's see what ARR is next month after clients finally checked their token bills.

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 11, 2026

And while we wait, Anthropic's biggest competitor, OpenAI - which unlike its peer has been far less vocal about its latest annualized revenue numbers - appears to have realized that going public at a time when agentic spending is suddenly in freefall (Goldman's best "efforts" to predict 120 quadrillion monthly tokens by 2030 notwithstanding) may not be the best idea, and according to the NYT is now leaning toward punting its IPO until next year in hopes that the AI bubble will be even bigger next year.

OpenIA's odds of a 2026 IPO promptly tumbled on Polymarket, and were last below 30% from over 50% before the report.

So what is going on, and how did OpenAI - which earlier this month said it had filed confidential paperwork with securities regulators to kick off the process for going public, but it did not commit publicly to any time window - frame the delay so it doesn't sounds like it rushed out its plans to IPO on a one-time bumper revenue burst, only to reverse them as the overpaid agentic euphoria has fizzled? 

Why blame Elon of course.

The NYT reports that when the ChatGPT maker hired bankers and lawyers with an eye toward IPOing as soon as the third or fourth quarter of this year, Sam Altman pushed those advisers to find a way for the start-up to be valued at $1 trillion, up from the company’s last private valuation of $730 billion. 

OpenAI’s advisers presented company executives with the option of waiting until 2027 to go public with a $1 trillion valuation, or lower the targeted valuation for a quicker IPO, which would be a disaster as the IPO would effectively admit that OpenAI can't keep up with the growth rate of Anthropic which a month ago raised $65 billion in a $965 billion private funding round. Altman responded that any change to the trillion-dollar valuation was a nonstarter.

But, the report goes on, "a cascade of recent developments has caused OpenAI’s executives to shift away from their most aggressive aspirations" and the primary scapegoat is Elon Musk’s, and specifically the performance of SpaceX after its I.P.O. this month. "It was the largest ever, raising more than $85 billion and reaching a valuation of $1.77 trillion on its debut. Since then, SpaceX’s stock has been on a downward slide, as shares slumped to $153 at the end of the trading day on Thursday after reaching a high of $202 last week."

Realizing it would look very stupid if it just blamed the very same company that prompted it to rush its IPO in the first place, the NYT also blamed global markets which "have also been choppy in recent weeks, with tech stocks dragging down indexes as investors question whether AI companies will live up to their sky-high promises."

Nowhere in this above is there a mention of the only thing that actually does matter to investors: the financials, and one can only imagine what is going on there after the early Q2 "tokenmaxxing" agentic burst which has now fizzled. OpenAI said this year that it was generating $2 billion in revenue each month but we are patiently waiting for an update now that the latest series of open Chinese models offer 95% of the US frontier performance for 10% of the price (as discussed in "Answering The "Trillion Dollar Question": Are China's AI Models A Better Value Than US Models"). 

It's not just China: OpenAI faces acute pressures at home too. Anthropic, which offers a Claude Code tool for creating sophisticated software code, has been far more successful in selling its service to enterprises (at least until the tokenmaxxing fiasco). At the same time, Google’s Gemini, the tech giant’s flagship consumer AI product, has become popular with users.

The NYT however is correct that OpenAI’s postponing its IPO plans - for whatever reason - will disappoint Wall Street and Silicon Valley, especially not if but when its main rival Anthropic, which has been in very hot water with the Trump admin for months, does the same. 

There's more.

Besides creating SpaceX strawmen, OpenAI is also grappling with other issues. Late last year, CFO Sarah Friar said it was not pursuing an I.P.O. at the time and was focusing on shoring up its finances. However, since then the company has done just the opposite as it has continued to pour money into data centers and computing power, with no indications of slowing down. 

Some OpenAI executives appeared to have changed their minds about an IPO just a few months after Friar said the company was not looking to go public. The Wall Street Journal reported that the company planned to go public by the end of 2026. That surprised some employees because they thought the company was not on a strong enough financial footing.

The company has also been spending like a drunken sailor on marketing and recruiting high-profile engineering talent from companies like Meta and Google. Realizing that it is losing market share to both Anthropic and Chinese open-sourced models, ChatGPT is also searching for other lines of revenue, including dabbling with placing ads inside ChatGPT and striking e-commerce deals with companies like Shopify and Stripe that would allow people to buy things from online stores directly inside ChatGPT.

The biggest problem facing OpenAI, however, is that growth has plateaued: after years of surging downloads of ChatGPT’s consumer app, those numbers have slowed and continue to hover around 900 million users, surprising investors who believed the company would easily hit one billion.

And the wildcard is now that the US government is actively throttling the latest frontier models over concerns they may hack sensitive government agencies, today the Information reported that OpenAI is releasing its latest GPT-5.6 model only as a limited preview to a small group of partners. The reason, according to Sam Altman: the U.S. government asked it to. Altman reportedly told staff that the government will be "approving access customer by customer" during the preview period, with a broader release potentially following a couple of weeks later. This comes after Anthropic took a similar path with Mythos, and after the White House forced Anthropic to withdraw Fable and Mythos over national security concerns. 

And now that the "uncorruptible" Trump admin is actively involved in picking winners and losers in the frontier model race, both OpenAI and Anthropic will watch their ARR collapse as most enterprise clients realize they will have better productivity gains by going with the latest Chinese models which, paradoxcially, are now easier to access in the US than domestic made versions. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 07:25

Boiling Frog Nation

Authored by Kevin Finn via AmericanThinker.com,

I almost feel sorry for leftists. Almost. But I don’t. The reason is simple: so much of what they say and do runs counter to the core principles on which this country was founded.

Over the years, I’ve challenged dozens of left-leaning friends and acquaintances to name the top ten things the political left has done in the last quarter-century to make America safer, stronger, more prosperous, or more united. I have yet to receive a substantive answer. One person offered a list that included ObamaCare and the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA). A quick review shows that, like many Democrat initiatives, these created more problems than they solved.

What makes me almost pity the left is that most leftists I know personally are decent, pleasant people -- so long as the conversation stays light: weather, movies, or sports. Venture into politics or culture, however, and the discussion turns surreal, like chatting with the Mad Hatter.

These individuals consider themselves well-informed.

They read the daily papers, watch network news, and never miss 60 Minutes. They speak of Rachel Maddow as if she were a close friend and dismiss Fox News out of hand. Yet they’ve never heard of journalists like John Solomon nor outlets like the Epoch Times. It rarely occurs to them to seek out differing perspectives. “Garbage in, garbage out,” as the old saying goes.

Søren Kierkegaard observed that there are two ways to err: to believe what is not true, and to refuse to believe what is true. Leftists frequently demonstrate both. They linger on stories long after those stories have been debunked, while major developments that threaten our country and culture receive little or no attention.

Consider a recent example. Legacy media devoted intense coverage to algae growing in the reflecting pool on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

One might think it was a national emergency. The reporting largely blamed the new blue liner and warm, shallow water. What it downplayed were the reports of vandalism that damaged the recently restored pool in the first place.

Meanwhile, far more consequential stories are ignored.

Tulsi Gabbard’s declassification of documents credibly alleging that Anthony Fauci’s agency helped fund the Wuhan lab, misled Congress about COVID-19’s origins, and overstated the effectiveness of vaccines, masks, lockdowns, and social distancing drew almost no mainstream coverage.

Conservatives have repeatedly labeled certain events “the scandal of our time,” only to watch legacy media minimize, distort, or bury them. The list is long: Benghazi, the Skolkovo technology transfer, Hillary Clinton’s emails, ObamaCare’s structural failures, the Russia collusion narrative, the surge of illegal immigration under Biden-Harris-Mayorkas policies, the murders of American citizens by illegal immigrants, the trafficking of hundreds of thousands of children, the rise of Islamism and socialism in American institutions, routine urban violence, questionable election irregularities, politically motivated prosecutions, and repeated calls for violence that have contributed to an emerging assassination culture.

These stories surface in conservative outlets, receive brief attention, then fade as the next crisis erupts. The public’s attention is constantly reset.

The kettle is simmering. The frog is growing restless.

In much of Western Europe and the United Kingdom, citizens have watched their cultural foundations erode with little effective resistance. America still has time to choose a different path.

True justice demands accountability. When the guilty face no consequences and the innocent continue to suffer, trust in institutions collapses. A nation cannot endure indefinitely if a large portion of its citizens -- perhaps a third to half -- work actively against its founding ideals.

The solution is not despair, but renewed commitment: to demand transparency, support independent journalism, engage in civil debate, and vote for leaders who uphold the Constitution and the rule of law.

Only by insisting on truth over narrative can we repair what has been damaged and secure a stronger future for the next generation.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 07:20

My end-of-week morning train WFH reads:

• Hollywood and Big Tech Are Preparing for War: The studios and the platforms circle each other as AI scrambles the economics of content. The fight that will define the next decade of entertainment. (The Hollywood Reporter)

• Bitcoin hits 20-month low as market sentiment sours: Price of world’s most actively traded digital asset falls below $60,000 amid shift by retail investors to AI-related stock bets. The risk-off mood reaches crypto. Another reminder that bitcoin trades like the speculative asset it is, not the haven its boosters promised. (Financial Times) see also Gold has erased all its 2026 gains: Gold just took a round trip: Prices dropped below $4,000 a troy ounce Wednesday back to where they were in early November last year. Investors are losing their taste for the precious metal. The safe haven wobbles as risk appetite and Fed expectations shift. A neat snapshot of a jittery week in markets. (Axios)

• SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic: The S&P 500 Inclusion Question and Investment Consequences! Damodaran on the index-construction puzzle posed by the new wave of $1T-class privates. Pure index-mechanics nerdery, in the best way. (Musings On Markets)

• Heckling from app-wielding bettors is wrecking golf: Wyndham Clark won the US Open despite phone-toting gamblers heckling him over their live bets. The harassment at the U.S. Open was the ugliest thing yet. The sports-betting era’s ugliest side effect, on full display. (Washington Post)

• Trump’s Iran War: The Midwife To A Renewable Energy Future: Complex systems can engender the opposite outcome of intentions. A contrarian argument that Mideast conflict accelerates the energy transition. Whether or not you buy it, Noema does big-think provocations well. (Noema) see also Iran Estimates $40 Billion Windfall From Reopening Hormuz With Gulf States: Deal to unblock global energy funnel gives Iran say in its future management, and route to riches. Tehran reportedly sees a toll-booth opportunity in the world’s most important chokepoint. Geopolitics as a fee business. (Wall Street Journal)

• America’s Most Talented Nepo Baby Has Two Michelin Stars to Prove It: When E.J. Lagasse, son of Emeril, took over his father’s famed restaurant, it seemed like the ultimate privilege. Two Michelin stars later, E.J., just 23, has shocked New Orleans, the food world, and all of nepo-dom by being the unlikeliest of things: deliciously legit. (GQ)

• How Did M.C. Escher Develop His Mind-Bending, Paradoxical World? A new exhibition at London’s Somerset House explores the Dutch artist’s penchant for the visual illusion. On the obsessive geometry behind the impossible staircases, pegged to a London show. A nice detour into how the trick was actually done. Note: I saw this shopw in Montreal, and it was fantastic! (Artnet)

• Sagrada Família Is a Miracle of Structural Engineering: Still underway in Barcelona after more than 140 years, Antoni Gaudí’s vision for an otherworldly church was only made possible by modern construction methods. Bloomberg on the math behind Gaudí’s basilica finally nearing completion. The building is the rare modern monument that improves your faith in long-horizon projects. (CityLab)

• Why older people are happier and what we can learn from them. Around the world, happiness tends to peak later in life. It has more to do with balancing priorities than elderly wisdom. The U-shaped happiness curve, revisited: contentment tends to climb after midlife. The lesson isn’t to wait it out, but to borrow the perspective early. (Psyche) see also A Diehard Drinker Accidentally Quits: The cultural discourse around avoiding alcohol never convinced me—and why sober up when the world is burning? Then life intervened. A wry weekend essay on losing a habit you weren’t trying to lose. The kind of personal piece The New Yorker still does best. (New Yorker)

• It Was Her First-Ever Audition Tape. She Landed a Lead on ‘The White Lotus’ Marissa Long, a 26-year-old first-time actress from Tulsa, has a major role on HBO’s obsessively guarded prestige series. She just can’t tell you who she’s playing, what happens or if she survives it. The lottery-ticket version of a Hollywood break. A fun behind-the-scenes on getting discovered the hard-and-then-suddenly-easy way. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Video of the day: The Samurai Who Became A Roman Citizen

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this weekend with Carl Richards, a financial advisor who is also the creator of the Sketch Guy column, which ran weekly in New York Times for a decade. He hosts Behavior Gap Radio (1,300+ episodes) He co-hosts “Kitces & Carl — Real Talk for Real Financial Advisors” with Michael Kitces.” Richards latest book is Your Money: Reimagining Wealth in 101 Simple Sketches.”

 

Mistaking a Hiring Freeze for a Robot

Source: Apollo

 

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