Zero Hedge

These Are The World's Biggest Gold Mines

These Are The World's Biggest Gold Mines

Driven by geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty and sustained central bank buying, the price of gold reached record levels, gaining nearly 60 percent this year to pass the $,4,000-per-ounce mark this month (closing price average from October 1st to 27th) before falling back to find support around $4000.

The level of demand for gold is now prompting questions about whether reserves of the commodity are being exhausted and if humanity has reached "peak gold".

Indeed, some analysts believe that global mining production has already reached or is close to its peak, having stagnated between 3,000 and 3,300 metric tons annually over the last decade.

While new gold deposits are still being discovered, as recently reported by CNBC in the Hunan province of China (Wangu gold field), large reserves are gradually becoming scarce, with the majority of production still happening in older mines that have been in use for decades.

So which mines are producing the most gold every year?

As Statista's Tristan Gaudiat shows below, using data from company reports published by the website Mining.com, gold mines in Nevada produced 2.70 million ounces (76.5 metric tons) of the precious metal in 2024, which is a similar output to the estimated production of the Muruntau gold deposit (2.68 million ounces that year), which has been exploited since the late 1960s in Uzbekistan.

 The World's Biggest Gold Mines | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

Discovered in the 1980s, the Grasberg gold mine, located in the Indonesian province of West Papua, is the world's third largest supplier (1.86 million ounces or 59 tons in 2024), followed by the Olimpiada deposit (1.44 million ounces or 40 tons), discovered in 1975 in the Severo-Yeniseysky district of Russia.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 20:35

Germany's Debt Cannon Fails: Special Fund Fuels Bureaucracy, Not Growth

Germany's Debt Cannon Fails: Special Fund Fuels Bureaucracy, Not Growth

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The German federal government is firing its big debt cannon at the ongoing recession. So far, with zero effect. Berlin is about to learn the hard way that you cannot create prosperity with a money printer.

In March, the federal government launched its major investment offensive – starting with the first bond tranche meant to fuel the so-called “special fund” with fresh credit.

Credit Pump Running Hot

Every year, new bonds with maturities of five to thirty years are to be issued in volumes of €50 billion. With broad support from the Bundestag and Bundesrat, the government is going all in. Half a trillion euros are to be pumped into infrastructure projects over the next decade – and naturally, everything that can be booked under “climate neutrality.”

That a significant part of this credit volume will be diverted to cover gaping deficits in social funds is almost beside the point. The verdict remains unchanged: German policymakers have fully committed to a brute-force Keynesianism – maximum artificial state demand, now coupled with the ECB’s again negative real interest rates.

A textbook of the central bank era, repeatedly seen in the 20th century – always leaving the same trail: growing mountains of debt and the systematic crowding out of private investment from the capital markets.

A vacuum effect. Price guarantees, subsidies, and electricity cost allowances keep this artificial economy liquid – even attracting private capital with guaranteed returns – capital that would be far more productive elsewhere. A fatal vicious cycle.

Scarce resources are diverted into unproductive sectors of the economy. A poverty program hailed by state-aligned media, NGOs, and government economic institutes as some magical potion that is supposed to breathe new life into a bloodless economy.

Zero Growth Despite Debt Spree

In Berlin, hope was last pinned on firing the “Big Bertha” to buy some breathing room. With polling numbers for the Union and SPD plummeting, the goal was to spark a temporary boom to carry them over the finish line of the upcoming state elections. That is the real purpose of the special fund – an expensive political trick that will plunge children and grandchildren into even deeper debt.

Even the Chancellor counts among those dazzled by artificially created credit. Once a champion of a lean state, he switched immediately after taking office to full-blown state expansion.

A weather vane in Berlin, blown by Brussels, carrying the unmistakable siren song of socialism.

The creation of the special fund was, according to Merz in spring, a state-politically necessary step, marking a significant new economic policy beginning amid the debt orgy of the Federal Republic.

Classic “road construction” is meant to ignite economic growth. Stone-age economic thinking from a long-gone era, when governments could still afford such short-lived fiscal fires – though that hardly made it better socially.

For this economic acrobatics, taxpayers will bleed for decades. Irresponsible. Unethical. Inadequate economic policy.

The news from the Federal Statistical Office that growth again came to a standstill in Q3 hit even harder.

Never forget: with net new public debt at 4.7% and a state share of GDP over 50%, private business collapses in practice. That is the only way to mathematically explain a zero growth outcome.

This is the real message from Wiesbaden’s disaster report.

Offloading State Bureaucracy

In German politics, fatal economic illiteracy combines with a dangerous drive to expand the political apparatus – with every intervention in the free economy, every new debt package, every climate-policy justification. This excess shrinks Germany’s future economic potential in favor of an ever more powerful bureaucracy.

Employer president Rainer Dulger’s urgent warning should be taken seriously. He called it a “scandal for the business location,” highlighting that in the past three years alone, 325,000 new employees had to be hired just to manage growing bureaucratic demands.

Biggest cost drivers include GDPR, with its endless documentation and reporting obligations, as well as EU IT security regulations. Add the ever-expanding Supply Chain Due Diligence Act and a flood of new hospitality reporting requirements.

Politics is increasingly outsourcing its bureaucratic monsters to the private economy. A reality not reflected in GDP calculations. In truth, Germany’s state share has long exceeded 50%, possibly already 55%. The state balloons – and German productivity continues to suffer.

Like a Chain Letter

Ideological statism persists like a chain letter. Olaf Scholz’s “double whammy” ultimately became the special fund – bureaucratically less infantile in appearance but essentially the same. State bureaucracy continues to grow to centrally manage this massive debt mountain.

The drying financing channels of the green patronage economy are being flooded again with fresh money. The party goes on. A few fill their pockets while future generations pay via higher taxes and inflation. That part of the new credit is now going to the military economy shows one thing: internally, there is no longer belief that the climate economy is the saving haven.

With the military economy, an old Keynesian classic returns: production above all else – regardless of what is being produced. Even if goods and services benefit only a small, select group of economic profiteers.

China Caught in the Intervention Trap

Europeans are not alone. China, which grants the private sector broad free-market space, repeatedly resorts to Keynesian emergency measures in crises. The creation of massive real estate overcapacity is one example.

The crisis that peaked with the Evergrande collapse is far from over. Millions of apartments were built solely to artificially maintain a short-term economic fire and prevent labor market collapse after the 2008 financial shock. Today, China’s export engine, fueled by high subsidies, serves a similar function – feeding a true mercantilist machine.

Wherever one looks, German politics exists in a fatal echo chamber, where every ideological misstep amplifies itself – the rhetoric grotesquely magnified. In its seven-year planning, the EU Commission under Ursula von der Leyen inflates the central Brussels budget to about €2 trillion.

This provides fiscal cover for the EU’s debt kings. One wonders: wasn’t the EU Commission originally meant to enforce the Maastricht debt rules?

Centralizer Headquarters

In Brussels centralism, the illusion of controlling the economy thrives within a self-reinforcing bureaucratic dynamic. Every new law, every additional regulation may harm the economy, but simultaneously expands the influence of Brussels.

It was only a matter of time before the last inhibition fell and the EU Commission’s borrowing ban was circumvented. This step came with the establishment of the “NextGenerationEU” fund.

In Brussels, the motto is clear: never let a good crisis go to waste. The result is always a new agency, whose archives fill with the latest regulatory ideas of bored civil servants – always financed by new Ponzi-style debt.

Debt piles on debt in an inverted pyramid structure. It cannot end well – and it will not.

The ideological contrast Americans are demonstrating – with massive deregulation – finds no reception in German politics, media, or philosophical debate. All focus is on the combative figure of US President Donald Trump, who thus secures America’s competitive advantage in the media spotlight for the long term.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 20:00

Almost Half Of Humanity Is Gen Z Or Gen Alpha

Almost Half Of Humanity Is Gen Z Or Gen Alpha

As of December 2024, the global population has reached 8.2 billion. For the first time in history, nearly half of humanity belongs to Generation Z and Generation Alpha—the digital-native generations.

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti, ranks the world’s population by generation, showing how age cohorts are distributed across the planet.

The data for this graphic comes from We Are SocialIntelPoint, and the United Nations World Population Prospects 2024. Generation Beta (born 2025–2039), representing less than 1% of the population, is not shown in the graphic because of limited data.

Gen Alpha Becomes the Largest Generation

Generation Alpha, born between 2013 and 2025, now includes roughly 2.0 billion people, or 24.4% of the world’s population. Many of them are still in primary school, but they already outnumber every other generation.

Their demographic weight will increasingly shape consumer markets, education systems, and technology trends in the coming decades. The countries driving this growth are concentrated in Africa and South Asia, where birth rates remain high.

Gen Z and Millennials Dominate the Workforce

Gen Z (ages 13–28) and Millennials (ages 29–44) together account for 44% of all people—and most of the world’s workers. Millennials alone make up 1.7 billion people.

The Aging Populations of Boomers and the Silent Generation

At the upper end of the age spectrum, Baby Boomers (ages 61–79) represent about 12.8% of the population, while those 80 or older—the Silent Generation and older cohorts—make up just 2%.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out Visualizing America’s Wealth Distribution by Generation on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 19:25

Annual Sales Of New Vehicles Expected To Hit Only 15.7 Million Units: Cox

Annual Sales Of New Vehicles Expected To Hit Only 15.7 Million Units: Cox

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The number of new vehicles sold annually in the United States is expected to hit 15.7 million units according to October estimations, industry expert Cox Automotive said in an Oct. 27 statement.

Vehicles for sale at a Toyota dealership in Houston on Jan. 4, 2022. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

The seasonally adjusted annual rate is down from 16.4 million in September and 16.1 million a year back, said the company, attributing the slowdown to auto tariffs and the end of electric vehicle (EV) incentives.

The new-vehicle sales pace was surprisingly strong this summer despite ongoing tariff uncertainty,” Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist at Cox, said in the statement.

“However, as more tariffed products replace non-tariffed inventory, prices are tracking higher, which should lead to slower sales through the remainder of the year. With the expiration of EV tax credits and a decline in alternative powertrain sales, the sales pace is anticipated to decrease as we move into a new season.”

Sales volume is forecast to be 1.3 million units in October, down by more than 3 percent from last year. While this figure is 2.7 percent higher than September, October had three more selling days than last month, Cox stated.

The federal government instituted 25 percent tariffs on auto imports in April, followed by 25 percent tariffs on the imports of auto parts. The rates have been adjusted for certain nations based on their negotiations with Washington.

Until Sept. 30, Americans who bought EVs could get a $7,500 tax credit. This incentive ended in line with the requirement of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump in July.

Cox stated that EV sales had accelerated after the passage of the Act, with Q3 EV sales volume hitting an all-time high.

“Sales of EVs and PHEVs are expected to collapse in October as tax credits expire,” Chesbrough said.

PHEV refers to a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.

“In addition, market conditions for other vehicles are expected to become more challenging in future months as prices increase,” he said.

Amid slowing sales, car buyers are faced with high acquisition costs. The typical monthly payment for a new vehicle has jumped by 1.9 percent to hit $766, the highest monthly payment level in 15 months, Cox said in an Oct. 15 statement.

Meanwhile, 28.1 percent of cars traded in for new vehicles in the third quarter this year had negative equity, a situation where the car value is less than the loan amount, industry resource Edmunds said in an Oct. 15 statement.

“The sheer amount of debt consumers are carrying in their trade-ins should be a wake-up call,” Ivan Drury, Edmunds’ director of insights, said in the statement.

Auto Loan Burden

According to an Oct. 30 report by financial tech company WalletHub, the average American household owed roughly $13,800 in auto loans as of Q2 2025, just a few hundred dollars shy of the record high. The total auto loan debt has gone up to nearly $1.7 trillion.

Auto debt is rising the most in Vermont, followed by Delaware, New Mexico, Idaho, and Utah, it said. In contrast, it is rising the least in Ohio, South Dakota, Hawaii, Oregon, and Arkansas.

John Kiernan, editor at WalletHub, said that residents in some states saw average auto loan balances rise by almost 2.4 percent between Q1 and Q2, which he called “dramatic increases.”

This “suggests that people in some states are more affected by inflation in car prices or are biting off more than they can chew when it comes to loans,” he said.

Meanwhile, despite rising prices, auto demand from middle-income Americans is trending higher, according to an Oct. 16 statement from financial institution Santander US.

A survey of middle-income Americans showed that 54 percent were considering buying a vehicle in the year ahead, up from 43 percent a year back, it stated.

More than seven in 10 said they were willing to sacrifice other items in their budgets to ensure access to vehicles, which Santander said was the highest level in two years.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 18:40

Ukraine Accuses Cuba Of Sending Thousands To Fight In Russian Army, Shutters Havana Embassy

Ukraine Accuses Cuba Of Sending Thousands To Fight In Russian Army, Shutters Havana Embassy

Ukraine has announced the closure of its embassy in Havana amid escalating diplomatic tensions, especially over the accusation that Cuba has turned a blind eye recruitment of its citizens to fight for Russia in the ongoing war.

The decision followed Ukraine's vote against a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for an end to the US embargo on Cuba, in a pattern which is reminiscent of Cold War-era global politics (America-aligned nations seeking to punish the 20th c. Soviet-aligned bloc).

Ukrainian Embassy in Cuba, file image

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has formally alleged thousands of Cubans had "signed contracts, joining the ranks of soldiers directly engaged in combat operations on Ukrainian soil."

Kiev is essentially accusing Cuba of inaction and pro-Moscow sympathies, describing that "its unwillingness to halt the large-scale deployment of Cuban nationals in Russia’s war against Ukraine amounts to complicity in aggression."

Ukrainian military intelligence has tallied at least 1,076 Cuban citizens fighting on the side of Russian forces, and surprisingly it claims that close to a hundred Cubans are reported missing and presumed dead.

Interestingly, Ukrainian intelligence says Russia has in some cases lured Cubans to join its military ranks by promising construction jobs online, facilitated by agents and middle-men.

European security officials have also of late been warning of potential fraudulent actors working with Russian intelligence to recruit unsuspecting young men from the West.

The biggest number of foreign fighters on Russia's side are believed to be North Korean - at over 10,000 since reports of the phenomenon started being made public - with possibly hundreds having died on the battlefield.

In total there could be 20,000 North Koreans currently assisting Russia's defense sector, and most of the actual fighting men were said to be active in defending Russia's southern borders.

Other foreign fighters are believed to be from impoverished African nations, with men lured by the promise of good pay, acting essentially as mercenaries.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 18:05

Artic Frost And Financial "Crimes"

Artic Frost And Financial "Crimes"

Authored by Technofog via The Reactionary,

Thanks to releases by FBI Director Kash Patel and Senate Republicans (here and here and here), we are finally getting sunlight into the FBI’s overarching investigation of not only President Trump but of nearly everyone in his orbit - the investigation assigned the name “Artic Frost.”

The Artic Frost opening document, dated April 13, 2022, provides a number of potential statutory violations that justified its opening. Here is the exact text.

“By conspiring, attempting to submit, and/or submitting allegedly fraudulent elector certificates, subjects, both known and unknown, may have violated one or more of the following federal statutes of which the FBI has enforcement responsibility:

  • Attempt or conspiracy to corruptly obstruct, influence, and impede the certification of the Electoral College vote (18 USC § 1512(c)(2) and (k)).

  • Obstruction of certain proceedings (18 USC § 1505).

  • Falsification of records (18 USC § 1519).

  • Conspiracy to defraud the United States (18 USC § 371).

  • Mail Fraud (18 USC § 1341).

  • Seditious Conspiracy (18 USC § 2384).”

Now, that April 13, 2022 document wasn’t the original Artic Frost opening communication. Rather, from the records that have been published, the original was dated March 22, 2022. And if you look into the alleged statutory violations (which we outlined above), the March 22, 2022 document omits “Mail Fraud.” That’s an important addition for the reasons we’ve outlined below.

By the time Artic Frost commenced, a related grand jury investigation had been opened “with federal law enforcement agencies on January 31, 2022.” Those other agencies were identified as the US Postal Inspection Service and the Investigative Unit of the Office of the Inspector General for the National Archives. The subjects of Artic Frost included: Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. (and those involved in the campaign); attorney John Eastman, who helped lead some of the challenges to the 2020 election; Rudy Giuliani; and Trump advisor (and campaign attorney) Boris Epshteyn. The subjects also included the electors – 60+ persons from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsing who were part of the election challenge efforts.

As we have known for a while, Artic Frost was expansive. Previous filings in Trump’s DC criminal case (which we discussed here) showed that discovery included hundreds of witnesses, 8.5 terabits of data, hundreds (if not thousands) hours of audio and video, and over 11.5 million pages of documents.

Now, thanks to releases from the FBI and Republicans in Congress, we have more details on the specifics of the investigation. It was sweeping, and included:

  • Phone records from not only targets of the investigation – Trump, et al., but of Republican members of Congress (which we also covered).

  • Search warrants for digital conduct.

  • A full grand jury investigation of the alleged criminal activity.

What has been lost is also that the FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO), back in October 2020, assessed that “the use of American Made Media Consultants (AMMC) as a clearinghouse for Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. (the Trump campaign) spending is likely vulnerable to campaign finance crimes by campaign-connected sub-vendors.”

This campaign finance investigation – which was opened by the FBI’s New York Field Office – stemmed from an AMMC member’s potential gambling activities, his efforts to allegedly evade federal $10,000 reporting requirements when cashing-in his winnings, and the alleged pay-off of a Senegalese government official. The FBI’s thought was that the party (the gambler) potentially used Trump campaign funds distributed through AMMC “for personal or unauthorized use.” It should be noted that the FBI’s October 2020 “Tactical Intelligence Report” made its assessment with “low confidence.”

In June 2022, the FBI re-assessed the financial investigation (or at least had renewed interest in the financial investigation), citing to the House January 6th Committee’s “investigation” into the Trump Campaign’s post-2020 election fundraising, which was promoted as the “Election Defense Fund.” See the FBI email below.

We mention campaign finance and the use of funds to challenge the 2020 election because of Senator Grassley’s recent release of 1700+ pages of grand jury subpoenas requesting financial records from a number of individuals and entities, including:

  • Donald J. Trump for President

  • Jeff Clark

  • American Voting Rights Foundation (which helped fund the Arizona audit)

  • Conservative Partnership Institute (which assists Republicans in training and educating staff, builds coalitions, and helps with staffing)

  • A large number of vendors and contractors involved with the Trump Campaign

  • Cyber Ninjas (who were involved in the Arizona election audit)

  • Sidney Powell

  • Individuals and attorneys who assisted with fundraising for, or distributing funds concerning, election audits.

  • MyPillow

  • Representation or legal fee agreements between fundraising committees and their attorneys

  • Dan Scavino

  • Mark Meadows

Some of these subpoenas were issued by the grand jury before Jack Smith was appointed Special Counsel. But most of them were came after Smith’s November 18, 2022 appointment – some just days after.

It’s pretty clear what happened.

By April 2022 (at the latest), the Biden DOJ wasn’t just pursuing “election interference” charges against Trump, et al. They were going after conservative fundraising and groups promoting conservative causes, as well as the individuals associated with those groups and entities.

That’s why you see mail fraud – a statute used by federal authorities to charge fundraising-related crimes – in the April 2022 Artic Frost opening communication. (We’re fairly certain they also looked at wire fraud.) And through the use of the grand jury, the Biden Administration was able to reach every single group and individual that pursued truth in the 2020 presidential election.

But it’s not only that. The Biden Administration also targeted those groups formed after the 2020 election – such those groups who weren’t involved in “alternative electors” but who assisted and conducted audits.

The predicate for an expansive financial crimes investigation is not addressed in the Artic Frost opening communication. Nor is it addressed in Special Counsel Smith’s final report. It’s telling that a prosecutor as aggressive as Jack Smith found no financial crimes after receiving the records – an indication of just how weak the predicate was.

This wasn’t just about 2020. It was about 2024 and a plan to not only indict the former President and Republican frontrunner, but to kneecap his support and financial infrastructure.

It’s not like the FBI is immune to advancing conspiracy theories. The agency never learned its lesson from Crossfire Hurricane. In September 2022, there was this email from an agent with the Seattle Field Office that relayed “intelligence” from one of their sources regarding Ed Corrigan (bio here), the President and CEO of Conservative Partnership Institute. Corrigan is as harmless as they come - and here we have internal FBI documents discussing him being “pro-Putin and anti-Biden”, that he is engaged with Mark Meadows “in willful criminal activity”, that Corrigan has “properties at which he wants to build up infrastructure to train people for civil war”, and that Corrigan “has plans that are not good for the FBI.”

One of the key questions remaining is what the FBI did with that information - whether that source was trusted, and whether investigations were opened into Corrigan or Kushner based on that obviously false intelligence. We’ll see.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 17:30

'Breathtaking' Fraud: Blackrock Ripped Off For $500 Million In Curious Case Of Bankim Brahmbhatt

'Breathtaking' Fraud: Blackrock Ripped Off For $500 Million In Curious Case Of Bankim Brahmbhatt
  • BlackRock’s HPS Investment Partners has written off roughly $150 million after discovering allegedly falsified collateral behind loans to telecom entrepreneur Bankim Brahmbhatt.
  • The financing, arranged with BNP Paribas, was backed by what turned out to be fabricated accounts receivable and forged customer emails, lawsuits show.
  • Brahmbhatt’s companies - Broadband Telecom, Bridgevoice, and Carriox Capital - have filed for bankruptcy; lenders say total exposure exceeds $500 million.
  • BNP Paribas took a €190 million ($220 million) provision for a “specific credit situation,” without naming the borrower.

The private-credit arm of BlackRock Inc. and other lenders are racing to recover hundreds of millions of dollars after falling victim to what they’ve described as a “breathtaking” fraud - the latest sign of weakness in an opaque corner of the U.S. debt markets.

The lenders, led by HPS Investment Partners, which BlackRock acquired earlier this year, accused businessman Bankim Brahmbhatt of fabricating invoices and accounts receivable that he used as collateral for loans totaling more than $500 million to his telecom-services firms, Broadband Telecom and Bridgevoice.  The alleged scheme is now the subject of an August lawsuit and multiple bankruptcies.

Brahmbhatt, through his attorney, has denied the fraud allegations to the Wall Street Journal

A Familiar Pattern of Trouble

The dispute centers on asset-based financing, a type of private credit deal where lenders extend funds secured by cash flows or receivables from the borrower’s business. The market has ballooned alongside the broader private-credit boom, now topping $1.7 trillion globally, as nonbank lenders rush to fill a void left by traditional banks.

But a series of collapses, which include the headline-grabbing bankruptcies of First Brands and Tricolor Auto Group, both accused of pledging questionable assets - has raised concerns that private lenders’ due-diligence standards are being stretched thin.

The unraveling of those companies has stoked warnings from finance industry titans including JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon, who cautioned that one “cockroach” likely portends more. Private credit executives such as Blue Owl Capital Inc.’s Marc Lipschultz pushed back, saying that the firm isn’t seeing rising defaults and noting that the highest-profile issues were in lending that banks led. -Bloomberg

According to public records, Brahmbhatt founded Bankai Group in 1989 in Ahmedabad, India, initially manufacturing push-button telephones before expanding into telecom software and infrastructure. His firm later created technology subsidiary Panamax Inc. and, in 2017, launched Carriox Capital, a non-bank lender offering invoice financing and working-capital loans to telecom carriers.

HPS began financing Carriox Capital in late 2020, later expanding the facility to about $430 million by mid-2024, according to the Journal, while Bloomberg notes that HPS has "since written off its roughly $150 million exposure to zero." 

BNP Paribas helped fund nearly half of that exposure, the people said, though the French bank has declined to comment publicly. In its most recent earnings filing, BNP disclosed a €190 million ($220 million) loan-loss provision tied to a “specific credit situation.”

Bankim Brahmbhatt Bankai Group

The loans were held in two HPS-managed funds. A person close to BlackRock said the exposure represents a small portion of the firm’s $179 billion in assets under management and won’t materially affect fund performance.

Still, the incident underscores how even the largest asset managers are struggling to contain risks as they pour billions into direct lending.

A Trail of Fake Emails and Empty Offices

The unraveling began this summer, when an HPS employee spotted suspicious email addresses supposedly belonging to Carriox customers. The domains mimicked legitimate telecom firms but were slightly altered — a red flag suggesting someone was fabricating customer correspondence.

When confronted, Brahmbhatt assured HPS there was nothing to worry about, then abruptly stopped answering calls, people familiar with the matter said.

A building housing the offices of Brahmbhatt’s companies in Garden City, N.Y.

An HPS representative visiting the company’s Garden City, N.Y. offices found them shuttered. Neighbors said the office had appeared empty for weeks.

The lenders’ subsequent investigation, led by accounting firm CBIZ and law firm Quinn Emanuel, allegedly revealed that every customer email provided by Brahmbhatt’s companies to verify invoices over the previous two years was fake. One supposed customer, Belgium’s BICS, confirmed in writing that the invoices were “a fraud attempt.”

“Brahmbhatt created an elaborate balance sheet of assets that existed only on paper,” lawyers for the lenders wrote in their complaint.

Bankruptcy Filings and Vanishing Collateral

Brahmbhatt’s companies filed for Chapter 11 protection in August, alongside Carriox Capital II and related entities. The lenders allege that millions in pledged assets were quietly transferred to offshore accounts in India and Mauritius before the defaults.

On the same day the corporate bankruptcies were filed, Brahmbhatt himself sought personal bankruptcy protection, despite having previously provided a personal guarantee to his lenders.

HPS and its partners believe Brahmbhatt has since traveled to India, according to people briefed on the matter. His lawyer has not commented on his whereabouts.

For BlackRock and HPS, the direct financial hit appears modest. But for the broader private-credit industry - now rivaling the leveraged-loan market in size - the reputational damage could prove more lasting.

*  *  * CLICK HERE!

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 16:55

Universal Basic Income - Making Slavery Great Again

Universal Basic Income - Making Slavery Great Again

Authored by Dr David Bell via DailySceptic.org,

I once worked in communities supported mainly through a form of Universal Basic Income (UBI). Most money was received from the government for no (or token) work, or from mining royalties where others worked digging on the communities’ lands. There were walls black and heaving with cockroaches while children slept with dogs on stained mattresses below, and babies covered head to toe in pustular scabies while the mother complained about a sore back.

This was not universal, but not uncommon.

Other communities that stood out as strong and healthy had people working hard for a living – particularly in roles that reflected their culture – a very different economy.

Men who once worked hard to support families lose the reason to do so when it makes no real difference, when basics of life and leisure are equally available to those who work for them and those who do nothing. It is not a political issue, just a human behavioural and psychological one. Removing the need to work and the dignity that striving and succeeding brings, especially for one’s family, leads to inaction, loss of interest in the world, a loss of role, loss of dignity and depression. This is dampened by alcohol or drugs. Wives and children suffer by being beaten up by drunk, frustrated and drug-addled men. Having two frequently drunk parents ensures children are malnourished and aimless.

This is not theoretical – it is seen all over the world where people of one culture are overrun by those of another and confined to subservience, economic and societal irrelevance, and handouts. Some people and communities break out of it, usually by finding ways to grow their local economy and achieve some form of self-governance and self-reliance. Breaking out is not common and requires an opportunity, the possibility, to do so.

Our brave new technocratic world

The road much of the ‘developed’ world is currently on is towards UBI, but without that potential for escape. I use this term ‘developed’ in a technological sense – not a human sense – as it denotes technology rather than awareness. UBI will be introduced as a panacea to the problem of artificial intelligence replacing a lot of jobs. The use of AI is increasing because it can accumulate wealth for investors more reliably than employees can. Amazon’s plans to replace humans with robots will not only mean a few hundred thousand human jobs gone at Amazon, but lots more high-street shops boarded up and their employees and owners gone. AI may be overplayed or not, but what Amazon is doing will be widely repeated.

The people out of work, by and large, will be city and town dwellers who must obtain their food from shops (or Amazon). They will need to be given money or food vouchers to do this. Governments will provide these, because they cannot afford responsibility for abject poverty on a mass scale, and many in government also mean well. People will increasingly rent their housing from Blackstone or a similar corporate entity rather than own it, further increasing their dependence. For a while, some people will play online games or draw pictures and grow token lettuces on their balconies, but knowing this is just window dressing on life. Then they will go the way of the communities at the top of this piece, taking families and communities with them.

Government UBI will happen – it already does to some extent in the widespread use of welfare payments, but the future will see it on a far, far larger scale. It will not be cash handouts but digital currency. This will be a tightly controlled version, as in a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), because the government will claim responsibility to control the money it dispenses. CBDC is essentially food vouchers, and intended to be. Your UBI will be yours as long as you use it for what the government allows, within the time it allows.

Well-meaning people are already building the social acceptability for this. Those suggesting now that a virtuous society should prevent food vouchers or unemployment benefits being used for sugar-based drinks or tobacco believe already that dependent people have lost the right to autonomy. Again, this is not at all theoretical.  It is exactly what this form of money is intended for. Most people in society will see its introduction as a good thing, as they are fine limiting the freedom of others if they beileve it serves a greater good.

Living as safe as slaves

In countries like Canada, if you protest against the government you can already lose your right to buy or sell. If you need permission to obtain the basics of life and cannot make your own choices on the pursuit of happiness, and you are punished for questioning those who restrict you, then you are in a master-slave relationship. In time, most people will become essentially a slave of the UBI provider, the government. This is the design behind UBI and CBDCs. It is why very rich people, the people who own the AI and robotics that are going to make so much human labour superfluous, see this as an excellent path.

All the above will not seem at all dystopian. Governments will control their populations as part of ‘saving the world’ and will readily convince a majority of the population that being saved is a good idea. We need governments to save us from climate catastrophe by stopping us travelling, as our children are already told. We need large corporations to save us from pandemics, including those the same corporations’ laboratories may develop. We need ever more expensive pharmaceuticals injected into us to save us from the scourge of obesity – to save us from our own inability to control our eating. We will certainly need saving from mass unemployment and the inability of a large part of the population to earn their own keep.

Saving people is, after all, the government’s job. As the last few years have shown, convincing populations to indulge in self-harm on the pretext of being saved is much easier than we thought. We will slip back into slavery, into a feudal system, because most people will choose it.

A conversation we are unlikely to have

So, we need to talk about UBI because a lot of people think it is a harbinger of a great future, but it is something else. They think people will somehow flourish when they have nothing much useful to do, when they get money for being idle and compliant and there is no compelling incentive to get out of bed in the morning. A temporary social welfare net is what society should do to protect its members and act with decency. UBI – permanent free money for the majority – is something else entirely. It will ensure that the vast majority can never break out of their lot and recover any semblance of the real economic autonomy necessary for societal flourishing.

The UBI future is simply a return to the default of human societies through the ages – feudalism – but without even the relative purpose found in walking behind a plough. Human nature leads us to want to stay on top if we are already there, or wallow in depression if there is no potential for improvement. Depression, drugs, violence, neglect – this is the UBI and CBDC future.

Over the past few hundred years many societies broke free of feudalism. This freedom has been a brief time in the sun. Accepting or rejecting Universal Basic Income as a basis for fixing the rapidly approaching decimation of useful employment will determine whether the sun keeps shining or we return to the oppressive societal default. Slavery for many will seem easier than struggling, and far safer. Once dependent, the luxury of struggling may be gone. We need a real conversation before we turn irretrievably down that road.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 16:20

Berkshire's Cash Pile Hits A Record $382 Billion Amid Continued Stock Sales As T-Bill Purchases Soar

Berkshire's Cash Pile Hits A Record $382 Billion Amid Continued Stock Sales As T-Bill Purchases Soar

With just two months left until Warren Buffett, 95, departs as CEO of the iconic conglomerate he made into one of the world's largest investment companies over the past 60 years, earlier today Berkshire reported in its latest 10Q filings that its cash pile soared to a new all time high of $381.7 billion in the third quarter, an increase of $37.6 billion for the quarter, which translate to $420 million per day, and $17 million per hour.

At the same time operating earnings jumped 34% to $13.5 billion from $10.1 billion, as the firm’s insurance underwriting profit more than tripled in the third quarter boosted by lower insurance losses, offsetting declines in the Insurance-investment income and Berkshire's Energy company.

The $13.49 billion quarterly operating profit, or $9,376 per Class A share, grew from $10.09 billion a year earlier. Currency fluctuations accounted for more than two-fifths of the increase.

While results benefited in part from an absence of major catastrophes such as hurricanes, Berkshire auto insurer Geico’s pretax underwriting profit fell 13% amid higher claims and a 40% increase in underwriting costs, which the firm said is due to “increased policy acquisition-related expenses" i.e., advertising, to acquire new policies in a period of soaring insurance costs. Additionally, insurance will likely face headwinds as falling interest rates reduce income from Berkshire's cash holdings, which also occurred in the third quarter.

Meanwhile, Berkshire’s utilities business, which runs PacifiCorp, MidAmerican and NV Energy, posted a 9% decline in operating earnings, to $1.5 billion over the period, and reflected legal bills from wildfires, and higher costs from natural gas pipelines and Northern Powergrid in Britain. Berkshire is still evaluating how U.S. President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed in July might affect the viability of its renewable energy projects.

One especially sore point was Pilot, which posted a $17 million loss in the third quarter. Berkshire said the decline is driven by lower wholesale fuel and retail margins, as well as higher expenses. “The Pilot business is not really doing very well,” Shanahan said. “I’m interested to see what the plan might be to turn that around.”

On the positive side, the BNSF railroad boosted operating earnings rose 6% to $1.4 billion, on lower fuel costs and "improved employee productivity" while revenue from the transportation of agricultural and energy products grew, driven in part by slightly higher grain exports.

Berkshire's $30.8 billion of net income, or $21,413 per Class A share, rose from $26.25 billion a year earlier. Net results include gains and losses on stocks Berkshire is not selling. This adds volatility, and Buffett believes such results are useless in understanding his company.

Also of note: revenue for Berkshire, which is seen by many as a mini model of the broader US economy due to its extensive diversification, grew just 2%, slower than the overall U.S. economy's growth rate. 

Economic uncertainty and waning consumer confidence have been drags, Berkshire said, stalling sales growth at the Clayton Homes homebuilder and reducing revenue from Duracell batteries, Fruit of the Loom apparel and Squishmallows toymaker Jazwares.

"Berkshire, which is often considered a microcosm of the U.S. economy, isn't even keeping up," said Cathy Seifert, a CFRA Research analyst with a "hold" rating on Berkshire. "Investors will struggle to find a catalyst for this stock."

Turning to the company's investment activities, for the 12th straight quarter, Berkshire sold more stocks than it bought for its $283.2 billion equity portfolio...

... whose largest holdings are Apple, American Express and Bank of America.

In fact, at $13.7BN in sales in Q3, this was the most aggressive purging of risk since the same quarter in 2024. 

“There isn’t much opportunity in Buffett’s eyes right now,” said Jim Shanahan, an analyst for Edward Jones.

For Berkshire's bulls this may be vexing, since earlier this year, Buffett appeared to be back on the hunt for deals, with the acquisition of a $1.6 billion stake in UnitedHealth Group and a $9.7 billion deal to buy OxyChem last month. But the famed billionaire remained on the sidelines in the third quarter. Berkshire Hathaway offloaded $6.1 billion of shares during the period. 

Also notable: after a burst of stock buybacks in the aftermath of the covid crash, Berkshire has not repurchased any of its own stock since Q2 2024...

.... which may explain why Berkshire's stock price has significantly lagged the broader market, and is now trading where it was last August 

“I think that sends a very powerful message to shareholders,” said Cathy Seifert, an analyst at CFRA Research. “If they’re not buying back their shares, why should you?”

And since Berkshire isn't buying either others shares, or its own, it had to park all this record cash somewhere; and once again it did so by buying a record $183 billion (net) in treasuries in the quarter, bringing total purchases during the past 12 months to a record $540 billion. 

Berkshire's massive holdings of T-Bills is also why the firm’s net investment income declined 13% to $3.2 billion amid lower short-term interest rates.

As previously reported, Buffett, 95, is set to end his six-decade tenure as chief executive at the end of the year. Vice Chairman Greg Abel, 63, will succeed the legendary investor, though Buffett will remain chairman. Abel is known as a more hands-on manager than Buffett.

It is unclear what he will do with Berkshire's record cash, with options including paying the $1.03 trillion conglomerate's first dividend since 1967. Berkshire is planning to use $9.7 billion of cash to buy Occidental Petroleum's chemicals business, a transaction announced on October 2. James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst who upgraded his Berkshire rating to "buy" in September, said the company's resistance to spending more cash during this year's market rally has been disappointing.

"If you feel like stocks are expensive, including your own shares, you're eventually going to be right, but you can be wrong for a long time, and that's what happened here," he said.

And indeed, it's not just Berkshire that has not been buying back its own stock: investors have voted their apprehension about Berkshire's outlook and pending management change by selling its stock. Since Buffett announced on May 3 he would step down, Berkshire's stock price has fallen 12%, and trailed the S&P by 32%. For all of 2025, Berkshire is 11% points behind the index.

"Impatient investors feel an urgent need for Berkshire to deploy its cash, and have been casting their nets elsewhere," said Tom Russo, a partner at Gardner Russo & Quinn in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which invests $10 billion.

Russo has owned Berkshire stock since 1982 and said Berkshire remains "extremely well-positioned" for the long term. "Berkshire isn't going to deploy capital that won't increase intrinsic value on a per share basis," he said. "Knowing that guides Berkshire means investors won't have to second-guess it."

The conglomerate owns close to 200 businesses that also include chemical and industrial companies, and familiar consumer brands such as Dairy Queen and See's Candies. As noted yesterday, many US businesses which rely on the strength of the consumer has been hammered in recent weeks because while the AI trade continue to soar, the US consumer has hit a brick wall and even Goldman Sachs is warning that the deterioration in K-Shaped economy is starting to spread from the lower income class to America's otherwise unstoppable middle class. 

Berkshire has not made a huge acquisition since paying $32.1 billion for aerospace parts maker Precision Castparts in 2016, a deal which ended up being a disaster. 

"Abel has a tremendous opportunity," Shanahan said. "He has a lot of available cash and by all accounts he is an excellent operator, so he may want to deploy capital in Berkshire's operating businesses to improve their performance."

Still, despite the earnings gains and massive cash pile, the firm’s tepid revenue growth in the period is not going to help investor sentiment, according to CFRA's Seifert.

“I’m struggling to find a catalyst” for an increase in the stock price, she said.

*  *  * CLICK HERE!

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 15:41

Controversial Democratic Lawyer Argues Republican Majorities Are Evidence Of Racism Under The Voting Rights Act

Controversial Democratic Lawyer Argues Republican Majorities Are Evidence Of Racism Under The Voting Rights Act

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

There is another bizarre filing from Mark Elias, the controversial Democratic lawyer who helped to secretly fund the infamous Steele Dossier. In a new filing, Elias is challenging the district in New York City with the lone Republican member as violating the state voting rights act. Elias is effectively arguing that voting Republican is evidence of racism.

In the petition, voters bring a New York Voting Rights Act challenge, arguing that the Eleventh District “provides Black and Latino Staten Islanders “less opportunity than other members of the electorate to elect a representative of their choice and influence elections in New York’s 11th Congressional District (“CD-11”), in violation of the prohibition against racial vote dilution in Article III, Section 4(c)(1) of the New York Constitution.”

The filing occurs after New York moved to further gerrymander the state, aiming to eliminate more Republican members of Congress. Across the country, Democrats have pushed for such gerrymandering, but in New York, the efforts are particularly extreme.

Trump received 45 percent of the vote. Republicans are confined to a small handful of districts. It is still too much for Elias.

Elias has not only been sanctioned in past litigation, but past courts have also criticized his group. In Maryland,  Elias filed in support of an abusive gerrymandering of the election districts that a court found violated not only Maryland law but the state constitution’s equal protection, free speech, and free elections clauses. The court found that the map pushed by Elias “subverts the will of those governed.”

It was Elias who made the key funding available to Fusion GPS, which in turn enlisted Steele to produce his now discredited dossier on Trump and his campaign.

During the campaign, reporters did ask about the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement. Weeks after the election, journalists discovered that the Clinton campaign hid payments for the Steele dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie.

New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said at the time that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”

*  *  *

*  *  * CLICK HERE

It was not just reporters who inquired about the Clinton campaign’s role in the Steele dossier. John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress and categorically denied any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.

Back to the latest Elias filing. There is a pending case before the Supreme Court in Louisiana v. Callais that could curtail or end the use of race to set voting districts to favor black voters under the federal Voting Rights Act.

However, this is a novel claim that, even a gerrymandering state striving to reduce Republican members, a district is racist because it favors the election of a Republican  Thus, as Professor Josh Blackman noted “in a district where Democratic voters cannot elect a Democrat, they can bring a VRA claim, even in an overwhelmingly democratic state where there is not even a scintilla of evidence of racial discrimination.” However, the opposite is not true. In a red state with overwhelming Republican majorities, a district that effectively bars the election of a Republican could not be grounds for a VRA claim.

The filing proclaims that the heavily Democratic gerrymandered state shows that “New York has become a national leader in protecting voting rights.” It emphasizes that the state goes further than the federal VRA:

“the NY VRA does not require the plaintiff to show that a district could have been drawn that would have a majority of residents of a single protected class. A plaintiff need only show that the current district map is responsible for the protected class’s lack of electoral influence based on the existence of racially polarized voting or the totality of the circumstances.”

The filing makes clear that Black and Latino voters support democrats and thus a Republican member favoring the GOP dilutes their votes:

“Black and Latino voters on Staten Island are politically cohesive and consistently and overwhelmingly support the same candidates, which the rest of the electorate consistently opposes. At the same time, the white majority on Staten Island overwhelmingly supports the same candidates and votes as a bloc to usually defeat Black and Latino voters’ candidates of choice.”

In other words (with translation):

“Black and Latino voters on Staten Island are politically cohesive and consistently and overwhelmingly support [Democrats], which the rest of the [District] opposes. At the same time, the white majority on Staten Island overwhelmingly supports [Republicans] and votes as a bloc to usually defeat Black and Latino voters’ [Democratic] candidates of choice.”

So, even in a state that has artificially reduced Republican members and is claimed as a model of districting to enhance minority voters, any district that favors Republicans is still evidence of racist discrimination in voting. Presumably, the only way to truly guarantee the protection of minority voters in New York City is the effective elimination of any Republican member.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 15:10

Luxury Watch Market SITREP For October 

Luxury Watch Market SITREP For October 

Via Watches Of Espionage,

It's Halloween, which means it's time for a special spooky edition of the W.O.E. SITREP, or Situation Report, our monthly compilation of news and events related to watches, intelligence, national security, and the military, all paired with our riveting commentary. 

From a high-profile heist targeting literal crown jewels in Paris to Vice President JD Vance returning to his Apple Watch-wearing ways to a French politician accused of hiding his luxury watch, to a major slowdown in Swiss watch exports to the US, it's been a big few weeks for the broader Watches of Espionage community. 

As ever, all of that is in addition to a satisfying smattering of watch crime, including the heartwarming story of a would-be luxury watch thief targeting exactly the wrong guy. So please, lean back, check the buckles on your five-point harness, and let's dive into the SITREP. 

$102M in Jewels Stolen From the Louvre in Brazen Heist - Are the Pink Panthers Back?

On Sunday, 19 October, a team of highly choreographed thieves disguised as construction workers carried out one of history's most daring robberies at one of the world's most high-profile locations, the Musée du Louvre in Paris. Arriving shortly after the famous museum's opening, four thieves entered the Louvre with a vehicle-mounted lift, wielding power tools that they would use to open display cases containing jewels with direct connections to French royalty, including Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. 

Even more important culturally than for their considerable material value, which has been estimated at 88 million Euros (approximately 102 million freedom dollars), the stolen jewels accompanied the thieves on a pair of awaiting scooters, making good their escape. While I am not as dedicated a student (fan) of criminal activity as W.O.E., the heist bears all the hallmarks of the Pink Panthers, a Balkan-based criminal organization responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen jewels and luxury watches in the early 2000s. 

It's too soon to say whether this is an actual Panthers heist, as the group appears largely disbanded, or Panthers-inspired, but we will be eagerly monitoring any developments going forward. 

Swiss Watch Exports to the US Plummet by 56%

Over the past few months, we've done our best to follow the rapidly evolving global tariff situation, particularly as it relates to Switzerland, the birthplace of so many of the great watches at the center of our Use Your Tools ethos. The current tariff for Swiss watches entering the United States stands at 39%. Established back in August, the weighty figure has cast a long shadow over export statistics. In September, Swiss watch exports to the US dropped by over 55.6% to 157.7M Swiss francs (approximately $198.5M), according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry. Even more surprisingly, the United States is no longer the number one market for Swiss watches, with the UK taking over the top spot for the first time in a long time.

If you appreciate Swiss watches and don't want the inevitable price hike brands will likely be forced to implement, this is not great news. As we've speculated before, the 39% figure is likely intended to apply pressure to the Swiss government for bargaining purposes, which appears to be working. However, how this will shake down is anyone's guess. I think everyone on both sides of the aisle can agree we don't want a $10,000 Rolex to suddenly become a $14,000 Rolex, which seems to be where we're headed. Only time will tell. 

JD Vance is Wearing His Apple Watch Again 

In a move eliciting deep sighs among intelligence professionals everywhere, Vice President JD Vance was once again spotted wearing an Apple Watch while en route to the 250th anniversary US Marine Corps celebration at Camp Pendleton in California. After W.O.E. penned an open letter to the VP earlier this year, warning him of the CI risks of the Apple Watch and other connected devices, we had hoped Vance got the message. However, nine months later, I guess we have to take this ride one more time. 

As VP, Vance is a priority intelligence target for bad actors around the world. His Apple Watch constantly transmits data, GPS, audio, heart rate, location, and movement, all potential entry points for foreign intelligence services. Even with Apple's security, any connected device can be hacked, period. For these reasons, CIA and NSA both warn against wearing connected devices during sensitive discussions for a reason. A smartwatch isn't just a gadget to track your Zumba class; it's a live sensor platform on your body.

For Vance, the fix is simple: go analog. A mechanical watch doesn't upload your heartbeat to the cloud or broadcast your location to adversaries. When the time is right, we have plenty of ideas for watches that honor the VP's personal history without placing his personal information and even his safety in jeopardy. 

Bill Clinton & Dubya Wear Watches While Celebrating the Navy's 250th 

Along with the US Marine Corps, the US Navy also celebrated its 250th anniversary with a series of ceremonies and international military exercises. Former presidents Bill Clinton (42) and George W. Bush (43) also got in on the action, penning letters in front of the press honoring the Navy's history. If there's one thing we love about a letter-writing photo op, it is that watches are often front and center, with Clinton wearing his Panerai Radiomir Black Seal PAM00292 for the occasion. An established watch nerd, Clinton has worn watches from Panerai, Cartier, JLC, Audemars Piguet, and other brands. 

Bush, who is historically loyal to his modest white dial Timex Indiglo with an American flag at 12 o'clock, has broken our hearts by wearing an Apple Watch. Sure, he's not the priority intelligence target he would have been while in office, but it still hurts to see an important political figure give up the analog life in favor of monitoring their heart rate or knowing how many theoretical flights of stairs they have climbed. That detour aside, the history of watches and US Presidents is deep, bipartisan, and intriguing. Read our article on the subject HERE

Former Cyber Security Exec Accused of Selling Secrets to Russia & Buying Watches with the Proceeds 

In a developing story that we intend to cover with a dedicated Dispatch, a tech executive at a defense contractor has been accused of selling trade secrets to a buyer in Russia to the tune of $1.3 million. The accused, Peter Williams, is the former general manager at Trenchant, a division of a company called L3Harris that develops hacking and surveillance tools, typically for Western government organizations. Between 2022 and 2025, Williams is accused of stealing and selling eight trade secrets to an unnamed Russian party. 

This appears to be espionage, but where it falls under the purview of W.O.E. is in DOJ documents that call for the forfeiture of Williams' home and assets, allegedly purchased with his misbegotten funds. Among the goods ordered forfeited were twenty-two watches, including several replica Rolex models, as well as an authentic Grand Seiko, a couple of Tag Heuers, and several Apple Watches. It's a wild story. Stay tuned for more. 

French Politician Accused Of Hiding Luxury Wristwatch

Diving deep into international politics, Louis Boyard, a prominent member of France's far-left Unbowed party, was accused of removing his watch before a television interview. After being filmed in the act, many online had words for Boyard, including Argentina's radical right-wing President Javier Milei. Boyard is famously critical of the ultra-rich, which led Argentina's president and the rest of the internet Illuminati to accuse the French politician of hypocrisy, assuming the watch he was hiding was a Rolex, Patek Philippe, or something else ostentatious.

All was not as it seemed, however, and Boyard quickly clapped back with a video where he reveals the watch in question was, in fact, a modest Tissot, stating, "Sorry to disappoint you, but I don't have a Rolex, I have this watch, which costs €295. My friends bought it for my 25th birthday, thanks, guys!" While the narrative here didn't play out as intended for Boyard's critics, the situation emphasizes the power of watches as tools of communication in political scenarios. Boyard could be shining us on, but whether it was in fact a $10,000 Rolex or an affordable Tissot PR 100, we can agree that his watch is doing a lot more than simply telling the time. 

Man Robbed of Rolex, Jewelry, & Cash While Pumping Gas

Delving into watch crime, a man in Memphis, TN, was robbed of his $7,000 Rolex, $17,000 in jewelry, and $4,000 in cash while pumping gas at a Circle K. Details are sparse, but the victim told investigators he was getting gas when a man approached from behind, brandished a firearm, and demanded he "empty his pockets" before absconding in a black sedan with tinted windows. Surveillance cameras captured the perpetrator, but no arrests have been made. Given the value of the stolen goods, we can't help but wonder whether this was a targeted crime, but the incident still serves as a reminder to be aware of your surroundings at all times, and maybe, just maybe, don't carry $28k worth of stuff on your person. 

We have discussed the most common modalities for luxury watch theft in a separate article, and this is another reminder that even your local gas station may be unsafe. If you're flexing your AP at an upscale bar in Mayfair or going out in Miami looking for paid evening company with a GMT-Master II on your wrist, you've made yourself a target, but apparently, you will also need your head on a swivel just to wear your Richard Mille to gas up the ride. What is the world coming to? 

Would-be Rolex Thief Targets the Wrong Guy

In a heartwarming case of mistaken identity, an armed man jumped out of a car in West Hollywood, California, hell bent on stealing a Rolex he spotted on the wrist of a pedestrian. Proof that the Uno Reverse Card is a real thing, the intended target turned out to be a former professional fighter who proved reluctant to surrender his timepiece, instead peeling back the lid on a can of whoopass that, despite his assailant's loaded gun, ended with the freshly-pummeled thief pinned to the ground awaiting the arrival of law enforcement. According to eyewitnesses, the man's girlfriend, with whom he had been walking, also got a few licks in. And they say no news is good news. 

Final Thoughts 

As October winds down, the kids go trick-or-treating, and we collectively transition into soup mode, this month's SITREP proves that the broader world of Watches of Espionage remains as unpredictable and entertaining as ever. From jewel thieves channeling Ocean's Eleven in Paris to politicians fumbling their horological optics to a former professional fighter serving a would-be thief his comeuppance and VP Vance once again tempting the SIGINT gods, there's never a dull moment when timepieces intersect with power, crime, and culture. 

Remember, whether you're wearing a $300 Tissot or a $30,000 Rolex, your watch says something about you, sometimes more than you intend. We'll see you next month. 

If you enjoyed this article, please consider signing up for our weekly free newsletter for further updates HERE.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 14:00

These Are The States Where Most Americans Need Housing Assistance

These Are The States Where Most Americans Need Housing Assistance

Housing costs keep climbing faster than wages in many parts of the U.S., putting extra pressure on low-income renters.

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist's Pallavi Rao, maps all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico by how many low-income renters receive federal housing assistance relative to their population.

Data is sourced from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Policy Development and Research (HUD).

HUD’s 2024 estimates count more than 9 million Americans (27 per 1,000) currently receiving vouchers, public-housing units, or other subsidies.

Households typically pay 30% of their adjusted income (i.e. after taxes) as rent, and the government covers the rest.

Ranked: Americans Needing Rental Assistance, by State

D.C. stands out with 72 assisted renters per 1,000 residents.

That’s more than double the U.S. average of 27 and reflects both DC’s high housing costs, its population growth since 2000, and the limited growth in housing in the same time period.

Rank State Code # of People on
Housing Assistance
(2024) State Population # of People on
Housing Assistance
per 1,000 Residents 1 District of Columbia DC 50,389 702,250 72 2 Puerto Rico PR 196,165 3,203,295 61 3 Rhode Island RI 58,640 1,112,308 53 4 New York NY 1,000,730 19,867,248 50 5 Massachusetts MA 346,968 7,136,171 49 6 Connecticut CT 148,989 3,675,069 41 7 Mississippi MS 115,391 2,943,045 39 8 Louisiana LA 178,836 4,597,740 39 9 Alabama AL 175,759 5,157,699 34 10 Ohio OH 392,408 11,883,304 33 11 Vermont VT 21,313 648,493 33 12 Kentucky KY 150,525 4,588,372 33 13 Hawaii HI 47,342 1,446,146 33 14 Illinois IL 392,302 12,710,158 31 15 New Jersey NJ 289,801 9,500,851 31 16 Maryland MD 187,764 6,263,220 30 17 West Virginia WV 52,826 1,769,979 30 18 Maine ME 41,698 1,405,012 30 19 Minnesota MN 165,434 5,793,151 29 20 Pennsylvania PA 366,433 13,078,751 28 21 Arkansas AR 82,678 3,088,354 27 22 Tennessee TN 193,490 7,227,750 27 23 North Dakota ND 19,271 796,568 24 24 New Hampshire NH 33,811 1,409,032 24 25 Michigan MI 242,304 10,140,459 24 26 Missouri MO 147,635 6,245,466 24 27 California CA 918,612 39,431,263 23 28 Georgia GA 259,256 11,180,878 23 29 Oklahoma OK 92,093 4,095,393 22 30 South Carolina SC 122,225 5,478,831 22 31 Nebraska NE 44,628 2,005,465 22 32 Virginia VA 194,664 8,811,195 22 33 Oregon OR 93,896 4,272,371 22 34 Delaware DE 22,865 1,051,917 22 35 South Dakota SD 19,928 924,669 22 36 Washington WA 170,021 7,958,180 21 37 North Carolina NC 223,353 11,046,024 20 38 Indiana IN 137,552 6,924,275 20 39 Wisconsin WI 118,308 5,960,975 20 40 New Mexico NM 40,853 2,130,256 19 41 Alaska AK 14,146 740,133 19 42 Texas TX 595,361 31,290,831 19 43 Colorado CO 113,116 5,957,493 19 44 Iowa IA 60,330 3,241,488 19 45 Montana MT 20,172 1,137,233 18 46 Florida FL 405,398 23,372,215 17 47 Kansas KS 49,535 2,970,606 17 48 Nevada NV 50,441 3,267,467 15 49 Wyoming WY 8,663 587,618 15 50 Arizona AZ 85,458 7,582,384 11 51 Idaho ID 20,902 2,001,619 10 52 Utah UT 32,862 3,503,613 9 N/A U.S. USA 9,039,779 340,110,988 27

Puerto Rico places second at 61 per 1,000—a legacy of limited job opportunities and post-hurricane rebuilding needs—while Rhode Island rounds out the top three at 53.

One study found that a minimum wage worker in Rhode Island must work an 85-hour workweek to afford a standard two-bedroom apartment.

ℹ️ Related: Puerto Rico also has the highest share of residents on welfare. Rhode Island is 10th and DC is 12th.

States With the Fewest Americans on Housing Assistance

Roughly half of U.S. states cluster between 20 and 30 assisted renters per 1,000 residents.

This middle group includes Midwestern states like Minnesota (29) and Michigan (24) as well as fast-growing Sun Belt hubs such as Georgia (23).

At the lower end, Western states Idaho (10) and Utah (9) report the fewest recipients per 1,000 residents. Part of that gap reflects younger demographics and higher home-ownership rates.

ℹ️ Related: Idaho ranks 16th and Utah 18th by home ownership rates, both higher than 70%.

But the eligibility to qualify for federal rental assistance varies by county and household size. Low numbers can also signal unmet needs or where waitlists run long.

Americans On Housing Assistance by Pure Numbers

When we shift from per-capita rates to raw counts, America’s largest states unsurprisingly dominate.

New York alone supports one million low-income renters, roughly equal to the combined totals of the bottom 10 states.

California follows closely with 919,000 recipients, reflecting the state’s chronic affordability crunch. Texas (595,000) and Florida (405,000) also rank high—even though their per-capita rates sit near the national average.

Wondering how much money the HUD is paying out on average per renter? Check out Where Rent Subsidies Are Highest, by U.S. State on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

credittrader Sat, 11/01/2025 - 13:25

Democratic Party Base Has Been "Overtaken By Angry Women"

Democratic Party Base Has Been "Overtaken By Angry Women"

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

As we’ve previously highlighted, Democrats have lost culture.

With that comes another massive problem for them. The kind of people they attract.

Conservative pundit Mollie Hemingway provided Democrats with a simple home truth Wednesday, that once again explains why they’re doomed.

During an appearance on Fox News, Hemingway was asked to explain why extreme left Rep. AOC has been so intent on verbally attacking former swimmer turned gender ideology critic Riley Gaines.

Hemingway noted that “the base of the Democrat party really has become angry women.”

“And women who are angry tend to be very mean to other women who are smarter or prettier or more successful or braver than they are, and that’s what we’re seeing here,” she added.

“The idea that any member of Congress would claim that anyone in the country doesn’t have a real job, which was her, you know, insult most recently against Riley Gaines, it’s just laughable,” Hemingway asserted.

“Particularly laughable when we’re dealing with a government shutdown caused by AOC and her buddies deciding that they don’t want to do any work right now,” the pundit further stressed.

“But it’s a situation where the entire party has kind of been overtaken by angry women, and that is going to cause a little bit of a political challenge for them,” she outlined.

The Democrats are the Party of Karens.

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 Sat, 11/01/2025 - 12:50

​​​​​​​America's Power Bill Crisis Rages In Democrat-Run States

​​​​​​​America's Power Bill Crisis Rages In Democrat-Run States

The epicenter of America's power bill inflation crisis stretches across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, where far-left state and city leaders have swallowed the globalist "climate crisis" pill, which even Bill Gates admitted last week that the climate crisis narrative was fake news.

The result of these leftist extremist "green" policies has been the systematic degradation of regional power grids in Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states, as reliable fossil-fuel generation was prematurely retired in favor of unreliable, intermittent solar and wind. These nation-destroying green policies have gutted spare grid capacity (read here) just as demand surges from data centers, onshoring, and the broader electrification push (read here), culminating in today's power bill crisis. 

A recent Goldman Sachs report by analyst Carly Davenport found that "higher power bill inflation has been the most pronounced in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and California in the past three years."

It's no secret that the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and California are governed primarily by Democratic leaders who have pushed at least a decade of climate crisis hoax narratives to justify massive "green" funding, some of which was funneled into NGOs, and to advance the progressive utopia narrative that solar and wind power would deliver clean skies and save, most importantly, planet Earth from immient climate catastrophe. Yet this fantasy was far from reality. There was never going to be a green utopia, only what millions of Americans across these states are now realizing: unaccountable Democrats have left them with a power bill crisis.

Davenport told clients:

Residential utility bill inflation has accelerated in certain regions, raising concerns about customer affordability. A few states in the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic such as MD, CT, DE and DC, as well as California, have seen accumulated bill inflation of 29% in the past three years (20pp above CPI), while other states such as MI, ND, AR, SD and LA had bill growth of only 5% in the same period (Exhibit 2). Interestingly, the states with higher bill inflation during this period have deregulated or competitive power markets, and those with lower inflation are in traditional regulated markets. We provide more details on power market fundamentals and utility bills within.

Northeast/Mid-Atlantic States Hit Hardest by Power Bill Crisis 

The topic of power bills is beginning to dominate local political discussions across these states. In the New Jersey governor's race, power bill ads seen by Republicans were criticizing the Democratic Party's failed green energy policies. And the Maryland Freedom Caucus of lawmakers joined forces with other conservatives in surrounding states to combat and break the far-left's stranglehold on the region.

"Politicians and special interest groups have traded energy independence for a delusional climate cultist ideology, and every Maryland family is paying the price with skyrocketing bills and a rapidly dwindling energy supply," Maryland Delegate Brian Chisholm told local TV station Fox Baltimore.

Chisholm continued, "We stand firmly united with our colleagues in neighboring states to deliver real, adult solutions and finally put an end to the childish nonsense impacting our state."

We've told readers. 

Related:

What's entirely clear is that the power bill crisis began with green policies that have now backfired in an epic way, and it will continue to drive power bills higher. Ahead of the Midterms, Republicans are likely to seize on this topic as they seek to break the Democratic Party's stranglehold over the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions, which have been transformed into unaffordable living, elevated violent crime, and illegal alien safe havens.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 11:05

Are Democrats Trying To Start A Civil War?

Are Democrats Trying To Start A Civil War?

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

Whenever you delve into the modern history of internal national conflict you’re bound to come across post-crisis accounts from people who said “We never saw it coming…” or “The violence hit us from nowhere…” Generally speaking, these were the people who weren’t paying attention and they just happened to survive by sheer luck.

I think of this dynamic a lot these days. I see a large contingent of American society (perhaps 25% of the population) which has been radicalized or brainwashed beyond all reason or repair. These people (leftists) operate deep within a protective bubble of propaganda and zealotry; they function within a hive mind that does not deviate from the demands of their gatekeepers. They cannot be reasoned with, nor can they be satiated. They lust for power and the suffering of anyone who opposes them.

One can see an immediate difference between the sides. Conservatives are so independent we in-fight constantly. We might agree on basic values (even in this we sometimes argue), but in terms of policy and action we rarely shake hands.

For the political left, any disagreement with the majority leads to immediate ostracism. The hive mind does not tolerate individual rebellion. Only the gatekeepers can change the mindset or the mission of the mob.

It is strange then that this dichotomy has resulted in conservatives, with their values of liberty and independence, seeking order. Meanwhile leftists, in their Orwellian uniformity of thought, seek chaos and the deconstruction of civilization. You would think the relationship would be reversed, but this is the way it has always been.

Looking back on the events of the Bolshevik Revolution and the long list of Marxist disruptions in Europe following WWI, it should not have been at all surprising to Europeans that domestic conflict would erupt. It should not have been surprising that people would follow their natural inclination to rally around their founding heritage rather than submit to the cultural and moral relativism of the radical left.

Fascism was popular exactly because it offered shelter from the chaos and degeneracy of communism. The war and brutality that followed was seen as a balancing of the scales. Europeans wanted to ensure that the communists would never get a chance to wreak havoc again.

To be clear, both systems of governance are authoritarian and can lead to monstrous outcomes, but communism’s love for economic sabotage, mob actions and political violence are almost always a precursor to a fascist crackdown. The public does not embrace fascism in a vacuum, they must be compelled by an existential threat.

The question is, can communist subversion be defeated without using “authoritarian” measures? Is a constitutional republic equipped to deal with this kind of threat? When someone wages war on your society internally, is there a way to fight them while remaining civic minded? Probably not.

What we are witnessing in the US and Europe today is, in every way, a Marxist/Communist insurgency. It’s difficult to determine what stage we are at in this war. We have moved well beyond the stage of propaganda and mob influence into the realm of political violence, with multiple assassination attempts and terror attacks against civilian targets.

The gatekeepers for the woke communist movement are obviously Democrat politicians and media influencers. They have been consistently and actively encouraging mass hysteria and violence. They have used media spin to protect activist groups like Antifa, pretending that such organizations don’t exist. Whenever activists cause harm or death, the media and political leaders immediately move to defend that action as if it was justified.

When asked why Democrats are continuing down the path of militancy, their response is that Donald Trump is a “dictator and a fascist.” Yet, these same people can’t seem to come up with a single legitimate example of HOW Trump is acting like a dictator.

Deportations of illegal immigrants? Most countries on Earth have basic immigration laws and enforce them much more harshly than the Trump Administration does. Cuts to federal programs and employees? The President is perfectly within his power of office to reduce waste in the federal government. How about using the National Guard in US cities? Democrat leaders in those cities have aided violent activists, helping to disrupt ICE operations while threatening the lives of agents. If they don’t want the National Guard in their cities they should stop waging war on immigration officials.

From Trump’s remodeling of the White House ballroom to the US troops countering drug smugglers, everything Trump does is blown out of proportion by Democrats into an “end of democracy” scenario. Their useful-idiot followers then take these claims as permission to create even more turmoil.

The government shutdown in particular is becoming a nexus point for this agenda. The Senate needs only five Democrat votes to reopen the government with a clean funding bill, but Democrats refuse to see reason. Meanwhile, they are blaming Republicans for the consequences of the shutdown, specifically seeking public pain as leverage over conservatives.

Trump is already being held accountable for a prolonged shutdown of EBT. The Democrats know their audience well. They know that the free-stuff army is entitled, vicious and easy to manipulate.

I warned about this outcome at the beginning of the month; Democrats are fighting hard for the shutdown to continue because it creates greater fear in their constituency. However, if Republicans fold then Democrats will use the same threat of civil unrest over and over again. The government will be under their control even though they lost the elections.

Democrat rhetoric has been even worse than usual.  DNC Chair Ken Martin recently argued on MSNBC that:

“The Democratic Party’s job right now is to win elections. That’s our focus. But we may be nearing the moment where we are truly in a dictatorship and an authoritarian regime here has completely shredded the Constitution. Then elections don’t matter, and then the resistance looks completely different. And we may be nearing that moment.”

Senator Chuck Schumer also made provocative statements calling for “resistance” against Trump:

“This is tyranny. This is what happens in dictatorships… I don’t care if you’re Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, moderate – people should be forcefully rising up against this…”

In an odd and obviously inciting discussion on MSNBC, Joy Reid and Jasmine Crockett sent out multiple signals to leftists, barely disguising their intent:

Joy Reid: “We’re in a moment where the MAGA crowd is armed to the teeth, and they’re not shy about it. So, everybody needs to pick up a weapon – whether it’s a vote, a protest sign, or whatever it takes – because this isn’t just politics anymore; it’s survival.”

Jasmine Crockett: “Absolutely, Joy. This is a war, this isn’t a battle. We’re talking about the soul of this country, about whether democracy survives or gets crushed under fascism. And yeah, we need to arm ourselves with everything we’ve got—truth, turnout, and tenacity. The other side declared war on us long ago.”

Numerous Democrats across social media are announcing, in no uncertain terms, that they want conservatives dead and Trump allies humiliated or eliminated. When they return to a government majority and get power back, they say conservatives are going to pay a terrible price for daring to oppose them.

But if we’re living under a fascist regime as they assert, then how could they possibly expect to return to government power? If elections are still an option, then leftists must not be too serious about their claims of fascism.

A perfect example is the New York mayor’s race, which is is going much like I predicted months ago.  Zohran Mamdani (a champagne socialist/communist with wealthy parents) is holding a steep lead in polling over all other candidates. As I noted when the race began, Mamdani is the natural end game of the political left – A combination of all the groups that hate western civilization, concentrated into a single man.

Democrats are doubling down.  Mamdani proudly mentioned this in a recent campaign speech, arguing that the correct path of Democrats is to blindly charge forward. In other words, they should not self reflect on their long list of failures, but dive headfirst into radical chaos.

Prominent Democrats like AOC and Bernie Sanders are openly endorsing Mamdani. Like it or not, this is the course that their party is taking, which means violent conflict is inevitable.  If Dems are being honest in their rhetoric to “get revenge” on conservatives once they return to power (there’s no reason to think they are joking), then the rules of survival dictate that leftists can never be allowed to return to power.

If Democrat leaders continue on the path of disrupting deportations of illegals and threatening immigration officials, then Americans will increasingly support National Guard intervention. The public may even support the arrest of those same politicians.

If leftists incite mass violence over the loss of SNAP benefits, the gatekeepers will have to be arrested or removed from the country. One can question the constitutionality of the reaction, but the path that led us to this is undeniable. Leftists are provoking these responses; they are making peaceful resolution impossible.

They have gone so far over the top in their behavior, I have to ask: Are they doing this on purpose to trigger a civil war, or an authoritarian response? Do they really believe they will be able to use national instability as a weapon to get what they want?

My long running theory ever since Trump ran for office in 2016 is that he represents a perfect scapegoat for a leftist/globalist induced collapse of the US. In fact, for many years I have posited that if real conservatives and patriots (not Neo-Cons) ever gained legitimate government power, the elites would simply crash the system around our ears and make it look like it was our fault.

This plan seems to be unfolding right now. Progressive gatekeepers are using far-left activists as cannon fodder to induce a crisis, or a domestic war.

Think about the Bolshevik Revolution: The gatekeepers spurred a revolution of the poor and the working class, yet Lenin and Trotsky both came from upper-middle class wealth (like Mamdani). Hell, Karl Marx came from an upper middle-class family and married into his wife’s riches. When his debts and refusal to work a steady job caught up with him, he lived off the money of rich benefactors.

The gatekeepers of the left rarely share the struggles of the downtrodden workers they purport to represent, they only use the working class and the poor as tools to gain power and destroy their ideological enemies.

This is what Democrat leaders are doing with the mentally ill rabble they have accumulated. They are aiming the naive and unhinged horde at the guts of the country and they are hoping to create enough mayhem that Trump, conservatives, nationalists, all of us get blamed for the uncompromising response that follows.

Maybe they are hoping that in the process, conservatives will haphazardly jump on the bandwagon of totalitarianism; that we will look like the villains. I think the progressives are underestimating the average American’s resolve to see order restored. Playing the victim may not help them garner much public empathy this time.

It’s hard to say what the end result will be, but I’m finding it difficult to see an outcome that doesn’t include considerable conflict and, unfortunately, bloodshed. And, to be frank, most of it is likely to befall the leftist side. For the sake of their own self preservation, I hope they realize they’re only being used to further an agenda, and their gatekeepers don’t actually care what happens to them in the end.

 

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 10:30

Starbucks Can't Get Customers to Stay, Despite Costly Cafe Makeovers

Starbucks Can't Get Customers to Stay, Despite Costly Cafe Makeovers

Starbucks is struggling to keep customers in its cafes, even after spending heavily to make stores more inviting. New data from Placer.ai shows the share of visits lasting more than 10 minutes has dropped from over 40% in 2023 to roughly one-third today, according to Bloomberg.

CEO Brian Niccol made longer in-store visits a core piece of his turnaround plan when he took over in September 2024, promising better service, faster drinks and a return to the “warm, cozy, comfortable environment” Starbucks once championed.

Yet foot traffic has fallen for four straight quarters, while profits have slid by double digits over the last four and same-store sales have declined for six. Shares are down 6.4% this year.

“They’ve trained their customer to use this brand as a convenience channel, not as a place where you sit down and linger,” said Citi analyst Jon Tower. Still, he noted that if shops look and feel better, customers may at least come in more often: “They just want more people to come in and walk in and say, ‘wow, this feels like a great place.’”

Bloomberg writes that Starbucks has been adding seating, more electrical outlets and ceramic mugs, effectively reversing years of redesigns that prioritized speed over comfort.

The company says remodeled locations are seeing visitors stay longer and return more frequently. “Early results from uplifted coffeehouses in New York City and Southern California are already showing promise,” a spokesperson said. “Customers are staying longer, visiting more often, and sharing positive feedback.”

Renovations have also gotten cheaper, with some now costing about $150,000 instead of up to $1 million. Starbucks plans to refresh 1,000 North American stores in fiscal 2026. The chain has also sped up service — 80% of drinks are now served in under four minutes — and simplified the menu by 25%, cutting back on seasonal excesses. “We streamlined our menu to clear the way for innovation and focus on what customers love most,” the company said.

But the company is also closing older and to-go-focused locations as part of a $1 billion restructuring meant to align operations with Niccol’s more café-centric vision.

Some customers say the shops still aren’t conducive to lingering. At a Manhattan location, Dennis O’Leary noticed design updates but complained the music was too “tinny” and loud to make him stick around. Most seats were filled with customers waiting for orders rather than relaxing or working.

Analysts expect Starbucks to report flat same-store sales in North America when it announces earnings Wednesday — signaling the company’s push to make Starbucks a place to stay, not just stop, still has a long way to go.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 09:55

The EU's Two-Tier Encryption Vision Is Digital Feudalism

The EU's Two-Tier Encryption Vision Is Digital Feudalism

Authored by Bill Laboon via CoinTelegraph.com,

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently showed a moment of humanity in a tech world that often promises too much, too fast. He urged users not to share anything with ChatGPT that they wouldn’t want a human to see. The Department of Homeland Security in the United States has already started to take notice. 

His caution strikes at a more profound truth that underpins our entire digital world. In a realm where we can no longer be certain whether we’re dealing with a personit is clear that software is often the agent communicating, not people. This growing uncertainty is more than just a technical challenge. It strikes at the very foundation of trust that holds society together. 

This should cause us to reflect not just on AI, but on something even more fundamental, far older, quieter and more critical in the digital realm: encryption.

In a world increasingly shaped by algorithms and autonomous systems, trust is more important than ever. 

Encryption is our foundation

Encryption isn’t just a technical layer; it is the foundation of our digital lives. It protects everything from private conversations to global financial systems, authenticates identity and enables trust to scale across borders and institutions.

Crucially, it’s not something that can be recreated through regulation or substituted with policy. When trust breaks down, when institutions fail or power is misused, encryption is what remains. It’s the safety net that ensures our most private information stays protected, even in the absence of trust.

A cryptographic system isn’t like a house with doors and windows. It is a mathematical contract; precise, strict and meant to be unbreakable. Here, a “backdoor” is not just a secret entry but a flaw embedded in the logic of the contract, and one flaw is all it takes to destroy the entire agreement. Any weakness introduced for one purpose could become an opening for everyone, from cybercriminals to authoritarian regimes. Built entirely on trust through strong, unbreakable code, the entire structure begins to collapse once that trust is broken. And right now, that trust is under threat. 

A blueprint for digital feudalism

The European Commission’s ProtectEU initiative proposes a mechanism that compels service providers to scan private communications directly on users’ devices before encryption is applied. This effectively turns personal devices into surveillance tools and breaks the integrity of end-to-end encryption. While state actors would never permit such a vulnerability in their own secure systems, this mandate creates a separate, weaker standard of security for the public.

On the surface, it sounds like a reasonable compromise: stronger encryption for governments, with so-called “lawful access” to citizens’ data. However, what it proposes is a hardcoded imbalance, one in which the state encrypts, and the public is decrypted.


This isn’t a security policy. It’s a blueprint for digital feudalism — a future where privacy becomes a privilege reserved for the powerful, not a right guaranteed to everyone. Two-tier encryption shifts the balance of trust from democratic accountability and cements a structure of control no free society should accept. Make no mistake: This debate isn’t about safety. It’s about control. 

We shouldn’t live in a world where only the powerful get to be private.

In an age of ubiquitous AI, state-sponsored hacking and mass digital surveillance, weakening encryption isn’t just shortsighted but a systemic recklessness. For those of us in the decentralized world, this is not an abstract debate; it is a matter of practical concern. Strong, unbreakable encryption is far more than a technical feature; it’s the foundation upon which everything else rests.

Truth by verification

This is why the mission of Web3 must stay rooted in its core promise: truth. Not truth by authority, but truth by verification. This principle of a self-enforcing contract is why true decentralized systems are built with no key master or institution that holds the keys. Introducing a backdoor is a contradiction; it re-establishes a central point of failure, violating the very premise of a trustless system. Security is a binary state: it is either present for everyone, or it is guaranteed for no one.

Fortunately, these principles are not just theoretical. The cryptographic primitives emerging from this space — zero-knowledge proofs that can confirm facts without exposing data, and proof-of-personhood systems that resist Sybil attacks without compromising privacy — offer a real, working alternative, showing that we don’t have to choose between security and freedom.

The irony is stark: The same field now under threat holds the tools we need to build a more secure, more open digital future. One based not on surveillance or gatekeeping, but on permissionless innovation, cryptographic trust and individual dignity.

If we want a digital world that is safe, inclusive and resilient, then encryption must remain strong and universally standardized for everyone.

Not because we have something to hide, but because we all have something to protect.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 09:20

Kenyan Navy Intercepts Flagless Vessel Carrying $63 Million in Meth

Kenyan Navy Intercepts Flagless Vessel Carrying $63 Million in Meth

Kenyan authorities have seized more than a metric ton of methamphetamine in a major maritime drug bust coordinated with INTERPOL and international partners.

On 21 October 2025, the Kenyan Navy intercepted a flagless dhow roughly 340 nautical miles east of Mombasa after intelligence sharing between the Regional Narcotics Interagency Fusion Cell in Bahrain and the Regional Coordination Operations Centre in Seychelles, according to a release from Interpol.

The vessel was escorted to Mombasa three days later, where a multi-agency command center was established under the Deputy Commander of the Kenyan Navy. INTERPOL said it played a key advisory and oversight role, helping manage the search to ensure the evidence would stand up in court and coordinating support from the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which deployed personnel to assist.

Interpol writes that authorities discovered 769 packets containing 1,024 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine with a purity level of 98%. Kenyan experts value the seizure at more than KES 8 billion (USD 63 million).

Six crew members were arrested and now face drug-trafficking charges. Kenya’s Anti-Narcotics Unit is leading the ongoing investigation.

INTERPOL said the operation demonstrates how international coordination and real-time intelligence sharing are essential to counter the growing threat of maritime drug trafficking in the Indian Ocean.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 08:45

Moscow's "Root Causes" Memo Reportedly Angered White House, Which Then Nixed Budapest Summit

Moscow's "Root Causes" Memo Reportedly Angered White House, Which Then Nixed Budapest Summit

The Financial Times is out with more reporting Friday on why the United States canceled a planned summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest earlier this month. The FT report says Moscow issued sweeping demands on Ukraine, according to sources privy to the conversations, and that ultimately this 'annoyed' President Trump, who opted to listen to those admin officials calling for a firmer position in support of Ukraine.

Also, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly told Trump that Moscow was "showing no willingness to negotiate" after he held a phone call with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Russia has reportedly made clear that a precondition for lasting peace rests on significant territorial concessions in the east.

Getty Images

Trump "was not impressed with their position," FT quoted one source as saying, who also explained the president remains open to meeting Russian leaders only "when and where he thinks there can be progress."

However, the 'demands' from the Russian side shouldn't have come as any surprise, given also Russian forces have the initiative on the ground in the east. A "root causes" of the conflict memo laying out Moscow's position demanded Ukraine give up large parts of its territory, cut its troops and forever abandon plans to join NATO.

President Putin has meanwhile emphasized that the planned Russian-American summit in Budapest was postponed and not canceled.

Russia seems to want to keep dialogue with Washington as positive as possible, and wants to present 'progress' in bilateral relations, while downplaying ongoing disagreements.

The reality remains that President Trump is trying to negotiate in favor of the Zelensky government, while Zelensky's own forces have little to no leverage over the military situation. Russia knows it is in the driver's seat on the ground, despite Ukraine's unrelenting cross-border drone attacks on oil refineries. And yet the mainstream media still floats simplistic narratives and mythologies like the following:

Russian foreign ministry allegedly sent a memo to Washington outlining how Putin was still calling for the supposed “root causes” of his invasion to be addressed – even though the West widely believes he invaded Ukraine in a land grab.

President Putin has floated the idea of a "ceasefire for journalists" to allow them to reach the frontlines and report honestly on the situation.

Currently, the Kremlin is charging that Zelensky is seeking to hide the true state of the frontline situation in and around Pokrovsk, per state media:

Ukraine has effectively acknowledged the “catastrophic situation” faced by its troops in a Russian encirclement by banning journalists from reaching them, the Russian Defense Ministry has said.

On Thursday, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Georgy Tikhy warned media workers against accepting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer of safe passage to the front line in Donbass to report on thousands of Kiev’s troops surrounded by Russian forces. Traveling to the area without permission from Kiev would be “a violation of our legislation” that would have “long-term reputational and legal consequences,” Tikhy said.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement on Friday that Ukraine had banned local and foreign journalists from accessing the “cauldrons” in order to “conceal the real state of affairs on the front line and deceive the international community and the Ukrainian people.”

Looming large over all of this is more nuclear rhetoric and saber-rattling...

Moscow wants to especially signal to Washington that Ukrainian ground defenses are facing rapid collapse in key strategic locations; however, this is something the Zelensky government has been firmly rejecting. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 07:35

Will The AfD Party Be Banned In Germany?

Will The AfD Party Be Banned In Germany?

Via Remix News,

There are once again efforts to ban the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Bundestag, with the far-left Social Democrats (SPD) leading the way. However, there is some difficult math facing the proponents of an AfD ban, which makes it unlikely — but not impossible — for the party to be banned.

In order to understand why a ban is unlikely, let us first look at what would actually happen if a ban of the AfD went forward.

 

The AfD is currently the most popular party in the country, according to multiple polls, scoring between 25 and 27 percent of the vote. This alone makes a ban unthinkable to many, but the German establishment does not especially care what the electorate thinks on a number of key issues, so why not just ban the party?

For starters, and most importantly, a ban of the AfD would radically reshape the German electorate in favor of the left. This would translate into the Christian Democrats (CDU) losing a massive amount of power, and potentially being relegated to the political dustbin. Due to this cold, hard reality, a ban could be suicidal for the CDU.

How one local elections tells us about the federal election

What happened in the local mayoral election in Ludwigshafen tells us what the likely outcome of an AfD ban would be for the country at the federal level. In Ludwigshafen, the AfD’s Joachim Paul was leading the polls to become mayor before he was banned from running through backroom bureaucratic channels, a move later confirmed by judges during a number of appeals. The judges all argued Paul would have to challenge the ban after the election. Paul is still filing legal actions against the decision, but the outcome of the appeal could take months or even years.

Regardless of the outcome of Paul’s appeal, the election had some interesting outcomes.

First, the voter participation rate crashed to a record low of just 29.3 percent. In 2017’s mayoral election in Ludwigshafen, the then-SPD candidate Jutta Steinruck won with 60.2 percent participation. That means voter turnout was cut in half from that election.

That is not all. For those who did vote, many of them appear to have submitted “spoiled” ballots. A record-high number of ballots were ruled invalid, at 9.2 percent. Eight years ago, that number was just 2.6 percent. The number of “spoiled ballots” jumped by nearly 400 percent.

If this same outcome occurred at the federal level, including a dramatic crash in the voter participation rate as AfD supporters boycott the election, it would be a disaster for the CDU’s electoral chances.

The way the German system works means that the pool of right-wing voters would shrink dramatically, leaving CDU voters and the left as the only remaining voting pool. However, this remaining, much smaller pool, would then feature a dramatically larger share of left-wing voters consisting of the SPD, the Greens, and the Left Party.

These three parties would be looking at a potential supermajority.

Even with a CDU scoring 30 to 35 percent of the vote, the party could be easily sidelined by this new far-left coalition.

This is what the CDU fears.

To understand this, it is important to understand that the German left does not need to increase the number of votes it receives; it just needs to increase its share of the vote. Let us consider an imaginary scenario where only 35 percent of the population votes in the next German federal election. It would be a disaster for democracy, but it could still be a huge win for the left. If the right drops out of the voting process. Suddenly, the remaining voting pie looks more left-wing, and the left can win a bigger share of this smaller voting pie.

Voilà, the left now have a super majority with just a small fraction of voters coming out to vote.

The trouble for the left is that it still needs the CDU to vote for an AfD ban in the Bundestag, otherwise they would not have the majority needed to pass such a motion. However, the CDU has no incentive to do this.

Death of democracy, rise of the left

On top of this electoral math problem for the CDU, it would not only make the electoral map vastly more favorable to the left, but it could also tear a giant hole in the CDU party itself.

A plurality of voters are against a ban on the AfD. A new Insa poll shows that 43 percent of respondents are against a ban, while 35 percent are in favor. Another 10 percent were indifferent, and 12 percent refused to comment.

However, for CDU voters, the issue was evenly split, with 42 percent supporting a ban, while 41 percent were against it.

Many CDU voters have already switched their voting intentions towards the AfD. A ban could further fuel an exodus towards the AfD party while the ban works its way through the system, all the way to the Constitutional Court, which is the final arbiter of the ban process. That could take well over a year, plenty of time to enact massive damage on the CDU.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz already said that a ban of the AfD “smacks to much of the elimination of political rivals.” CDU voters all heard this statement. For him and his party to backtrack now on this issue would not sit well with many voters, many who are already dissatisfied with the economy and migration.

The Insa poll also shows that while a majority of supporters of left-wing parties back a ban, they are by no means in full agreement. Many Germans, even those on the left, believe a ban on the AfD would be a stake in the heart of democracy.

If a ban goes through, and a national vote is held featuring an abysmal voter participation rate due to mass boycotts, it would likely send the German system into chaos, leaving a massive democratic hole in the country’s landscape. It could even shake the entire foundation of the German state, calling into question the legitimacy of any government that is elected into power with an extremely low voter share and a ban on the most popular party.

What is the most likely scenario?

The left is likely to continue with its full-court press to proceed with a ban on the AfD. It would only benefit them, after all. The CDU is also likely to continue to talk of a ban, demonize the AfD, and try to snipe at the party using all the tools of the state, but is unlikely to actually back a ban. Doing so would be very foolish from a purely strategic point of view.

Of course, that is not a foregone conclusion. There are potential political realities, power struggles, and wild cards that could lead Merz and much of the CDU leadership to reverse course. However, the current risks of such a move outnumber the potential benefits by a clear margin.

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Tyler Durden Sat, 11/01/2025 - 07:00

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