Individual Economists

NRA, Gun Owners of America Vow To Sue California For Passing Glock Gun Ban

Zero Hedge -

NRA, Gun Owners of America Vow To Sue California For Passing Glock Gun Ban

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The National Rifle Association (NRA) vowed to sue California after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law on Oct. 10 a ban on the sale of one of the most popular gun brands in the state.

Luke Saiz of Albuquerque, N.M., holsters a Glock 9mm handgun at a local gun shop on Sept. 12, 2023. Allan Stein/The Epoch Times

California’s Assembly Bill 1127 doesn’t name Glock Inc. in the legislation but directly applies to the company’s firearms by prohibiting the sale of semi-automatic handguns that can be easily converted to fully automatic. That ban covers models, such as Glocks, that use a cruciform trigger bar.

The ban, which will go into effect on July 1, 2026, applies to several pistols but will have an outsized effect on Glocks.

John Commerford, NRA-Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) executive director, stated the gun-rights group would file litigation against Newsom’s decision, calling it a violation of civil rights.

Our message to Governor Newsom is simple: we will see you in court,“ Commerford said in a statement, ”Gavin Newsom and his gang of progressive politicians in California are continuing their crusade against constitutional rights. Once again, they are attempting to violate landmark Supreme Court decisions and disarm law-abiding citizens by banning some of the most commonly owned handguns in America. This flagrant violation of rights cannot, and will not, go unchecked.”

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, a California resident and former attorney general of the state, was the most recent high-profile person to admit to owning a Glock when she revealed the information in October 2024 while running for president.

“I have a Glock and I’ve had it for quite some time. My background is in law enforcement, so there you go,” Harris said during an interview, adding she had fired it at a shooting range.

The Gun Owners of California organization, a statewide Second Amendment-rights group, also promised litigation over the law.

“Gavin Newsom just signed AB 1127, banning the most popular handgun in America, and the same one Kamala Harris bragged about carrying. You couldn’t make this hypocrisy up if you tried. Lawsuit time, again,” the group wrote on Facebook hours after Newsom signed the measure.

The law, authored by Assemblymembers Jesse Gabriel and Catherine Stefani, both Democrats, allows the state to fine anyone selling, transferring, delivering, or offering the firearms up to $1,000 for a first offense and up to $5,000 and suspension or revocation of a dealer’s license for a second offense. It also allows for a dealer to be cited with a misdemeanor and mandatory revocation for a third offense.

The bill does not apply to police, sheriffs’ departments, marshals’ offices, district attorneys, highway patrol, justice or corrections departments, or military or naval forces in the state.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks in Los Angeles on Sep. 25, 2024. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

“The increased prevalence of automatic weapons across the nation is deeply concerning,” the bill’s authors stated in a legislative analysis.

The new law will seek to protect communities from mass shootings and gun violence by preventing the easy conversions, they stated.

Vet Voice Foundation, which supported the bill, said that what it regards as do-it-yourself machine guns are a growing threat to public safety.

Fully automatic machine guns have been illegal under federal and state law for decades, but they can be made at home by attaching a tiny piece of plastic commonly known as a ‘Glock switch’ to a convertible pistol,” the group stated in the legislative analysis. “Glock has known about this problem for years, but has not taken responsibility for its easily convertible products and instead has refused to take serious action to fix its design.”

The California chapters of Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, both members of Everytown for Gun Safety, applauded Newsom’s decision to sign the bill, saying he and lawmakers are putting the safety of California communities above gun industry profits.

“For decades, reckless gun makers have profited off our tragedies. Today, California forces these gun makers to decide: fix your pistols or don’t sell in this state,” the group stated in a social media post.

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 17:40

2025 Best Investment Books of the Year: Stock Traders Almanac

The Big Picture -

I just learned that “How Not to Invst” was named one of the best investment books of 2025 by Stock Traders Almanac.

Here is an excerpt (full list below)

 

BEST INVESTMENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Stock Trader’s Almanac 2026

Back by popular demand. After a five-year hiatus and countless requests from readers we present our picks for the Best Investment Books of the Year. This collection represents a broad range of approaches and asset classes. It also runs the gamut from sophisticated institutional level works and technical analysis trading manuals to books geared toward the retail investor. We hope you find these entertaining and beneficial.

#1: “How Not to Invest: The ideas, numbers, and behaviors that destroy wealth – and how to avoid them,” Barry Ritholtz, Harriman House, $32.99.

Ritholtz has done it again. Over the past decade, Barry has built one of the fastest-growing RIAs in America. The OG financial blogger and self-proclaimed Director of Cognitive Dissonance shares the master plan he used to grow and manage his firm and his clients’ assets. Irreverent, counterintuitive, insightful, engaging. Ritholtz illustrates how to avoid unforced errors, recognize fallacious data, and break bad habits that undermine investment success. The book lays out how to get rich in the markets through a simple, disciplined plan by focusing on what you can control that matters and how stick to it.

 

How delightful! I couldn’t be more pleased by this lovely recognition. I have been a fan of STA and its creator, Yale Hirsch, for a long time. I know Jeff Hirsch just as long, who took over the Almanac when his dad turned 90, and has taken it to even better places. (But at this moment, I lack any and all objectivity…)

Full disclosure: My first book, “Bailout Nation” was published by Wiley; they are also the publisher of Stock Trader’s Almanac.

The latest Stock Traders Almanac 2026 is now available at your favorite bookseller, or directly with a STA subscription.

Full list of books after the jump…

~~~

 

 

 

 

 

The post 2025 Best Investment Books of the Year: Stock Traders Almanac appeared first on The Big Picture.

Trump Warns If Hamas Doesn't Disarm, 'We Will Disarm Them, Maybe Violently'

Zero Hedge -

Trump Warns If Hamas Doesn't Disarm, 'We Will Disarm Them, Maybe Violently'

With the Israeli hostages now released and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners being returned from Israeli prisons, officials look to the next phases of the Trump-brokered peace deal, which the consensus is will be the hardest. It involves the disarming of Hamas and establishing future governance of the Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday, President Trump made clear that Hamas would be required to disarm under the deal, warning that if the group refused to do so voluntarily, the US would intervene, possibly through force - though in characteristic fashion his comments were left ambiguous, and reporters were left wanting to know more.

"If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them, and it will happen quickly and maybe violently," he told reporters, emphasizing that Hamas would have no choice. When pressed on how he intended to carry out such action, Trump declined to provide details, saying, "I don’t have to explain that to you… They know I’m not playing games."

AFP/Getty Images

The Pentagon has already deployed up to 200 troops to Israel where they are assisting in terms of operational oversight of the ceasefire. Trump's words hint that it could be a short step to take some of these troops are embed them in Gaza, to assist the IDF in finally disarming Hamas.

Hamas has already reasserted control over areas previously vacated by Israeli forces and has gone on an execution campaign against alleged collaborators and criminals. Dozens have been reported killed in the last couple days.

President Trump noted that Israel had armed certain gangs and militias as part of its anti-Hamas strategy. "They took out some very bad gangs - really bad people - and that doesn’t bother me," Trump said, appearing to offer some rare positive commentary on Hamas. "That’s fine. Those were very bad gangs."

A day earlier, he said Hamas had received "approval" for such operations, adding that with nearly two million people returning to devastated neighborhoods, instability was a major concern. "We want it to be safe. I think it’s going to be fine. Who knows for sure," said Trump.

Hamas has been rounding up rival armed groups which sought to undermine the group's power...

Meanwhile, the future of the deal still has a high degree of uncertainty, given Hamas leaders have reiterated that their armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, will not surrender its weapons until an independent Palestinian state is established. However, this is a goal which the Netanyahu government has clearly rejected.

Hamas and Israel could yet further clash given the IDF has been ordered to destroy the miles and miles of tunnels which exist under Gaza, and which have formed key infrastructure for Hamas command bunkers and their foot soldiers' movements.

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 17:20

La Niña Is Here - Here's What It Could Mean For Winter In US

Zero Hedge -

La Niña Is Here - Here's What It Could Mean For Winter In US

Authored by T.J.Muscaro via The Epoch Times,

A La Niña advisory has officially been issued by the Climate Prediction Center, signaling a possible precedent for winter across the United States.

Conditions emerged at the end of September and were favored to persist through December 2025 into February 2026.

The opposite of the weather phenomenon called El Niño, La Niña refers to when the water temperatures of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean around the equator are cooler than average. That cooling can impact global weather patterns thousands of miles away.

While it is expected to remain relatively weak, this year it is expected to have an effect on winters in the United States, especially regarding this year’s snowfall.

Here’s what La Niña conditions could look like for the United States this year.

North-South Divide

One of the most noticeable effects that La Niña could have on the United States is a moisture divide between the northern and southern states of the Lower 48.

To the north, colder and wetter conditions are generally expected, while the southern states are expected to experience a warmer and drier winter.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) seasonal outlook showed most of the United States was predicted to face above-average or near-above-average temperatures through October, November, and December. An area of the southern Rocky Mountains, particularly New Mexico, and most of New England are expected to experience relatively warmer temperatures.

The northwest, meanwhile, was predicted to have near-average temperatures.

NOAA noted that those temperature changes have already begun to show up.

“From mid-August to mid-September, below-average heights and temperatures were evident over the eastern U.S. Starting in mid-September, above-average heights and temperatures dominated the eastern U.S.,” NOAA reported on Oct. 14. ”From early September to mid-October, below-average heights and temperatures prevailed over the eastern North Pacific Ocean and parts of the western U.S.”

Rain and Snowfall

La Niña is also expected to bring changes to precipitation across the country, particularly snowfall. Much of the northwest from the Cascades in Washington State across the upper Midwest through New England will tend to see an increase in snowfall.

NOAA’s seasonal outlook indicated that much of Washington, Oregon, Montana, and Idaho are expected to see above-average levels of precipitation, while states in the southern Rockies, like New Mexico and Colorado, are expected to see below-average precipitation.

Several areas of the Rocky Mountains, including the Salt Lake City Area, have already reported significant amounts of early snowfall, and more is reported to be on the way.

The Weather Prediction Center reported heavy snow was to develop over the Sierra Nevada Mountains on Oct. 14 and Oct. 15.

However, that snow is coming in as part of a low-pressure system coming off the ocean and into California. The Weather Prediction Center issued a slight risk of excessive rainfall over parts of Southern California, noting that urban areas, roads, small streams, and low-lying areas could be vulnerable to flash flooding. Additional showers and thunderstorms were also expected to hit parts of the Southern Rockies also bringing heavy rain and risks of flash flooding.

During La Niña, the Southern Rockies historically tend to get below-average amounts of snowfall, as well as parts of the Ohio Valley.

That being said, Michelle L’Hereux, lead scientist of NOAA’s team responsible for studying La Niña and El Niño, said that, based on multi-factor computer models from NOAA and Columbia University, this La Niña impact is not likely to be very strong at all, suggesting temperatures and precipitation levels should remain closer to average.

“There is a three-out-of-four chance it will remain a weak event,” L'Heureux said in an email. “A weaker event tends to exert less of an influence on the global circulation, so it’s possible there will be surprises ahead.”

The Climate Prediction Center publishes monthly statements on the status of La Niña. The next one will be posted around Nov. 13.

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Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 17:00

Overthrow: Trump Authorizes CIA Covert Ops Targeting Venezuela's Maduro

Zero Hedge -

Overthrow: Trump Authorizes CIA Covert Ops Targeting Venezuela's Maduro

It is easy to imagine that there's been CIA infiltration into Maduro's Venezuela for a long time, but covert operations there are now becoming an "open secret" - as fresh Wednesday reporting in the New York Times indicates. "The Trump administration has secretly authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials, stepping up a campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the country's authoritarian leader," the Times writes.

Already the Pentagon has been engaged in what could be interpreted as more overt acts of war in regional waters - the targeting of boats off Venezuela accused of being engaged in narco-smuggling operations. Clearly anti-Maduro operations are picking tempo, and ratcheting the temperature.

Trump's CIA Director John Ratcliffe, via LA Times/AP

At this point after five instances of drone attacks on these boats, at least 27 people have died. The Trump administration has alleged the drug traffickers are operating with the blessing and oversight of socialist strongman Nicolas Maduro, which Caracas vehemently rejects.

The US military has further maintained a significant military build-up in the Caribbean, including some 10,000 troops, over several weeks. According to more details from the new NY Times report:

The authorization is the latest step in the Trump administration’s intensifying pressure campaign against Venezuela. For weeks, the U.S. military has been targeting boats off the Venezuelan coast it says are transporting drugs, killing 27 people. American officials have been clear, privately, that the end goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power.

The new authority would allow the C.I.A. to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean.

But the below part is somewhat surprising and alarming, given the unpredictable and dangerous implications of the CIA acting "unilaterally":

The agency would be able to take covert action against Mr. Maduro or his government either unilaterally or in conjunction with a larger military operation. It is not known whether the C.I.A. is planning any operations in Venezuela or if the authorities are meant as a contingency.

But the development comes as the U.S. military is planning its own possible escalation, drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including strikes inside Venezuela.

What is the end-goal here? 

Many observers have speculated that it is nothing short of regime change in the Latin American nation known for having the world's largest proven oil reserves, estimated at over 300 billion barrels. 

The NYT actually provides a blunt answer in agreement with the regime change assessment:

The Trump administration’s strategy on Venezuela, developed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with help from John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, aims to oust Mr. Maduro from power.

Mr. Ratcliffe has said little about what his agency is doing in Venezuela. But he has promised that the C.I.A. under his leadership would become more aggressive. During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Ratcliffe said he would make the C.I.A. less averse to risk and more willing to conduct covert action when ordered by the president, “going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do.”

Below: F-16s reportedly scramble from Venezuela's El Libertador Air Base in response to US B-52 bombers nearby...

And yet it must be remembered that Trump has constantly touted himself as the "peace" president who solves wars and doesn't start them.

But now, as the NY Times says, there is a highly classified presidential finding which seems to authorize government overthrow in Caracas.

President Trump at the start of this month formally notified Congress this week that the US was entering a "non-international armed conflict" with drug cartels. Trump's rationale for the attacks on drug boats in his memo to Congress stated that the cartels are "non-state armed groups" whose actions smuggling drugs "constitute an armed attack against the United States".

In particular the administration has essentially declared war on the Tren de Aragua cartel, and says it is cooperating with the Maduro government, which Caracas has rejected, and so the presence of the cartel's members in the US is a "predatory incursion" by a foreign nation. In this way he's trying to cast this as an 'America First' policy, and yet if bombs start falling on yet another foreign country which has not militarily attacked the United States, few Americans are likely going to buy it.

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 16:40

Elizabeth Warren: Leftism For Thee But Not Me

Zero Hedge -

Elizabeth Warren: Leftism For Thee But Not Me

Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations,

When Sen. Elizabeth A. Warren recently traveled to the Big Apple to endorse New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, she was asked if overt socialism is really the best model for Democrats to adopt. “You bet,” she replied in her signature folksy style.

The Boston lawmaker wasn’t just jumping on the sudden trendiness of socialism three-and-a-half decades after its near-extinction. With fellow Senate traveler Bernie Sanders, Warren has been a catalyst for moving her party to the left since her first campaign in 2012. 

She and Sanders are, in many ways, the godparents of the self-avowed Democratic Socialists such as Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are providing the youthful energy for the Democrats in the Trump era.

As Warren’s attacks on Wall Street and the wealthy are gaining even wider traction among liberals – a recent Gallup poll found 66% of Democrats have a positive view of socialism – the apparent contradictions between her public economic positions and private financial decisions are receiving new scrutiny, particularly as the one-time presidential candidate appears to be testing those waters again. 

Charity Doesn’t Begin at Home

Financial records examined by RealClearInvestigations show that Warren has hardly followed the path of socialism in her personal finances. Start with the redistribution of wealth. Warren tirelessly bashes the “selfish” and “greedy” rich for not paying their “fair share,” and demands the government step in and redistribute their income to the poor. But charity does not always begin in the Warren home.

While Warren hauls in nearly $1 million a year, she donated less than 3% of her household income to charity in 2024, according to her tax returns. This is much less than the charity of the Obamas, for instance, who typically donate more than 20% of their earnings to the needy and philanthropic causes, and low for the average American in her income bracket, studies show. The average millionaire donates more than twice her share.

It also appears that Warren opens her pocketbook wider when she’s running for national office and under a bigger media microscope. 

The $26,669 in charitable deductions Warren reported on her tax returns last year pales in comparison to the $81,858, or 9% of income, she reported as she launched her campaign for the White House in 2020.

And the outspoken Democratic leader keeps her own tax burden down while calling for higher taxes on “millionaires and billionaires.”

Records show Warren is not averse to taking maximum advantage of provisions in a tax code she denounces as unfair. She has, for example, written off used articles of clothing on her taxes and has had to correct past returns for inflating the value of those items. She’s also written off thousands of dollars in used books – and even in-flight WiFi to expense down business income. And she would exempt herself from her proposed “Ultra-Millionaire Tax,” which levies a surtax on those with a net worth above $50 million.

With a net worth of at least $8 million (with estimates as high as $12 million), Warren has benefited handsomely from free market capitalism – even as she has spent most of her career in the public and educational sectors.

Fat Cat Investments

Despite her frequent complaints that “the wealthiest 10% of U.S. households own 84% of American-held shares” of stock, she has invested the bulk of her money in stocks and bonds managed by Wall Street investment funds. These accounts are valued at between $1.9 million and $6.8 million, according to her most recent Senate financial disclosures, filed in April. (Values are given as ranges in the disclosure reports that members of Congress are required to file each year.) 

Although Warren has rarely traded individual stocks, records show the mutual funds where she has parked her millions – Vanguard and TIAA-CREF – hold a number of companies in industries that Warren has demonized, including Big Oil, Big Tech, and Big Pharma. Through these funds, for example, Warren has invested in Apple, Amazon, and NVIDIA; Exxon and Shell; Wells Fargo; Goldman Sachs; Monsanto; Johnson & Johnson; and even NewsCorp – the owner of conservative Fox News and the New York Post.

Nevertheless, Warren has ripped “fat cat bankers” at Wells Fargo for preying on minority homebuyers and customers with “predatory” rates and “junk” fees, and also for “screwing” their own employees. She even demanded the Federal Reserve revoke Wells Fargo’s status as a financial holding company over “abusive and unlawful” practices. 

Warren has called for regulators to break up tech giants Amazon and Apple, which she claims are running monopolies. “I’m sick of freeloading [tech] billionaires” who “roll over everyone,” she recently said. 

Warren has described Exxon as a “bad actor” that contributes to global warming. She’s even accused the energy giant of “corporate perjury” by publicly denying its alleged role in warming and producing “fake research” to “mislead the American people about climate change.”

The senator has also slammed Exxon for “imposing massive price increases on Americans [sic] families,” arguing “this corporate greed is inexcusable.”

Environmental activist groups have called on her chosen retirement fund, TIAA, to divest from Exxon, along with the rest of its more than $78 billion in oil, gas, and coal assets, according to a recent estimate by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. They argue the fund is using contributions from investors like Warren to “destroy communities and the environment.”

Last year, Warren bashed Donald Trump for capitulating to the oil industry. “Donald Trump has a deal for Big Oil: if they raise $1 billion and send him back to the White House, he’ll gut environmental protections and roll back Joe Biden’s progress in fighting climate change,” she asserted on X. “It’s corruption, pure and simple. And it would be a disaster for our planet.”

Exempting Some Millionaires

Slamming the president’s “Big Beautiful Bill” earlier this year, Warren complained, “Trump’s tax cuts stand to benefit (the) highest income earners.”

She would know – she’s one of them. The $919,583 in household income Warren reported on her 2024 tax return she filed jointly with her husband puts her in the top 1% of highest-earning Americans. The year before she entered the Senate, Warren reported earning $616,181.

The lawmaker’s base Senate salary of $174,000 accounts for just one-fifth of the total income she reported to the IRS. The rest comes from book royalties, dividends, capital gains, earned interest, retirement income, and her husband Bruce Mann’s salary as a tenured Harvard professor.

The Senate is often described as a Millionaire’s Club, and she fits right in: Her $8 million net worth would rank her as the 18th wealthiest member of the Senate, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Warren’s net worth has risen each year since she was first elected to the Senate in 2012, while the median wealth of senators overall has declined, according to the think tank.

Although Warren is just one of many millionaires in Congress, government watchdogs note her wealth is at odds with the stridency of her class-warfare rhetoric.

Elizabeth Warren poses as the champion of the underdog, but her policies strip middle- and lower-income Americans of opportunities to advance their lot and build wealth,” said John Berlau, director of finance policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, referring to her calls for more taxes and financial red tape. “By pursuing policies that keep others from moving up, Sen. Warren has emerged as an unlikely champion of the existing 1%.”

Warren did not reply to requests for comment.

Critics note that several of Warren’s former staff members have moved on to positions in the sectors she decries. In 2023, she declared, “The abuse of the revolving door is appalling,” particularly in the financial sector, which she claims is “rigged to help the wealthy and well-connected.”

But records show her own office has served as a revolving door for the banks. For example, Wally Adeyemo, who served as her chief of staff when she was standing up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, went on to work as a senior adviser at investment giant BlackRock. At least six other Warren staffers who worked in her Senate office have worked as lobbyists, records show. In addition, several of her senior campaign aides have worked on K Street.

There is a history of a revolving door of Warren staffers and protégés at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau taking jobs at big Wall Street firms, such as BlackRock,” Berlau said.

Restrictive Neighborhoods

Home ownership is also key to wealth-building, but zoning restrictions often price the working class out of homes. Warren has fought against so-called NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) rules and has fiercely advocated for building more affordable housing in cities.

She even backs Mamdani’s “social housing” proposal to let the New York state government seize private properties and convert them into public housing.

However, Warren has chosen to live in affluent neighborhoods in Boston and D.C. that are heavily zoned to exclude the construction of new housing units and price out the average homebuyer.

Public financial statements do not disclose the 76-year-old legislator’s real estate holdings, but other records show she owns at least two homes valued at more than $5 million. Her primary residence is located in the leafy Avon Hill section of Cambridge, Mass., which has enforced a century-old zoning system of minimum lot sizes, minimum parking requirements, floor area ratios, limits on units per building, and height restrictions.

The restrictions have yielded a housing shortage in the city that has driven up the value of existing homes – including Warren’s 1876 Victorian mansion, which has risen eightfold to an estimated $4 million since she bought it in 1995. Records show she and her husband owe no mortgage on their nearly 4,000-square-foot home, which features three stories, high ceilings, marble mantels, hardwood floors, and a four-car garage. 

The median price for a home in Cambridge now tops $2.2 million.

“The astronomical increase in the value of Warren’s home, and home prices in Cambridge more generally, has not happened in a vacuum,” said Scott Van Voorhis, a Boston real estate analyst. “The city’s special blend of upscale NIMBYism and restrictive zoning laws and regulations kept new house, condo and apartment construction to a trickle at best, even as demand for living in the city increased leaps and bounds.”

Though the Cambridge city council earlier this year loosened its zoning ordinances to permit more housing across the city, Warren’s neighborhood remains largely exempt from reforms.

That’s because Avon Hill is a conservation district further regulated by the Cambridge Historical CommissionRecords show Warren’s street and home are located within the historic district, which protects old Victorians from being torn down for multifamily housing. That makes her neighborhood the ultimate safe NIMBY zone.

“Nothing has been built [in her neighborhood] for decades beyond the occasional mansion upgrade,” Van Voorhis noted.

Warren clearly understands there is a housing supply problem in Boston. In July, she helped shepherd the ROAD to Housing Act through the Senate, which, among other things, would provide grants to communities that change their land-use rules to make it easier to build new housing units.

“We have a real problem here in Massachusetts that we simply don’t have enough housing,” Warren explained to the Boston Globe, noting the state is about 200,000 units short of what is needed. “If we don’t start building more housing here, the housing crisis will continue to intensify.”

But when it comes to her own neighborhood – one of the least affordable in the state – she remains silent. Cambridge council members noted they didn’t hear “a peep” from Warren when they were recently debating zoning reforms to deal with the city’s growing housing affordability crisis.

In 2013, when Warren bought her home in Washington, D.C., she also happened to select an area of the capital city where zoning restrictions have entrenched the status quo. Valued at more than $1 million, her condo is in the trendy Penn Quarter section of D.C., which is a historic area protected by land-use rules.

Dubious Identity Politics

Most famously, Warren’s personal decisions seem at odds with the left’s leavening of traditional socialist positions with identity politics. Before moving to the Senate, Warren was a tenured professor at Harvard with a lucrative salary. Although the school denies that her claims to Native American ancestry influenced their decision to hire her, she and the administration trumpeted her diverse background.  

Warren also listed herself as a racial minority in a legal directory distributed by the Association of American Law Schools and was listed as a Native American in federal forms filed by Harvard Law School.

When she launched her political career in 2012 and released a memoir, “A Fighting Chance,” Warren described her alleged “Native American roots” as a Cherokee. Henry Holt & Company paid her a $525,000 advance for the book, which became a national bestseller that still earns her royalties.

She also helped publish a cookbook, “Pow Wow Chow,” exploiting the myth of her native American lineage.

Warren took in $430,000 a year as a tenured Harvard Law professor by claiming a Native American heritage – even as she has railed against whites appropriating minority culture or pretending to understand minority experiences. But, as she ramped up her run for the White House, Warren responded to persistent challenges of this claim by taking a DNA test. In late 2018, her campaign maintained it showed “strong evidence” of Native American ancestry dating back generations. 

When that failed to quiet her critics, Warren basically had to acknowledge that the test revealed that she is as little as 1/1024th Native American, making her less of that ancestry than the average white American. She also eventually apologized to the Cherokee Nation in 2019. The year before that admission, however, she lectured others during her Senate campaign about stolen valor: “It is wrong and cowardly for people to make fraudulent statements in order to receive distinctions that they have not earned. We need to ensure that no one can benefit from making false claims and steal the true valor of the courageous.”

If there ever were a genuine case of cultural appropriation, Sen. Warren is guilty of it,” said Gad Saad, a business professor at Concordia University. “She literally appropriated Native American culture as her own by constructing a false narrative about her ancestry.”

“And yet,” he added, “she benefited for several decades from this false narrative both in her academic and political career.” 

Saad and others who have closely followed her career suggest the progressive senator appears to have a “good for me, but not for thee” ethic when it comes to her own personal ambitions. Though she’s carefully groomed a reputation as a fighter for the “have-nots” against the “haves,” the record shows that, outside the spotlight, she has often pursued her own interests and followed the path of the haves.

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 16:20

Quantifying The Benefits Of Capitalism

Zero Hedge -

Quantifying The Benefits Of Capitalism

Authored by Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

The graph below presents another opportunity to revisit how capitalism and the economic freedom it entails lead to prosperity.

The scatter plot below shows the intersection of The Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index with per capita GDP for 102 of the largest economies. Before analyzing the graph and what it implies for capitalism, let’s gain a better understanding of its X-axis—the Economic Freedom Index.

The Freedom Index

All countries’ economic and political policies, laws, and regulations exist on spectrums. In turn, where a country lies on these spectrums helps define its level of economic and political freedom.

  • The economic spectrum spans from market-driven capitalism to centrally planned communism, with socialism positioned somewhere in between.

  • The political spectrum ranges from libertarian to authoritarian.

Measuring a country’s position on each spectrum is a very difficult task. Although not perfect, the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index is a highly regarded source for this measurement. Their index is based on five factors of economic and political freedom as listed below.

  • Size of government

  • Legal system and property rights

  • Sound money

  • Freedom to trade internationally

  • Regulation

Underlying these five broad categories are 60 subcomponents. For example, tax rates fall under the size of government, while the legal enforcement of contracts is a part of the legal system and property rights.

With that, let’s review a few graphs to see the relationship between the Economic Freedom Index and GDP, income, and income equality.

GDP & Income

The first scatter plot below is the one we led with. It illustrates the relationship between each country’s Freedom Index and its GDP per capita. The second, involving income per capita and the Freedom Index, provides a more precise measure of how citizens’ wealth relates to economic freedom. Labeling every dot with the corresponding country name would clutter the graph. Accordingly, we only label a limited number of nations across the plot. The Freedom Index is calculated for 165 countries. However, our graphs below include only the 102 nations that also have reliable GDP and income data.

When the Freedom Index exceeds 7.0, a positive correlation exists between the Index, GDP, and income per capita. However, below 7.0, this relationship is absent. For example, in the income per capita graph, the R-squared value for points above 7.0 is statistically significant at 0.4731. In contrast, below 7.0, the R-squared drops to 0.1007, which is statistically insignificant.

We can’t explain why the economic advantages of economic freedom become apparent only once a country reaches a relatively high index score. However, the graphs confirm our beliefs. Countries with the most economic freedom tend to experience the greatest economic growth and have the highest incomes.

Interestingly, there isn’t much difference between some European countries that lean toward more socialist policies and those considered capitalist, like the United States, Japan, and Switzerland. Could our perceptions or definitions of how countries’ political and economic systems work be off?

Income Distribution

While wealth and GDP per capita are practical overall measures, they don’t reveal how wealth is distributed among citizens. The following set of graphs replaces income per capita with the shares of income held by the bottom 20%, the middle 20%, and the top 20% of society. 

As all three graphs indicate, there appears to be no correlation between income distribution and the Freedom Index. But we can use the data to see how economies balance income distribution.

For instance, the wealth gap in the United States shows up in these graphs. The top 20% of income earners in the US are above the average for countries with a Freedom Index of 7.0 or higher, while the middle and lowest groupings are below the average.

The “socialistic” European countries have a more even income distribution. In many of these nations, the top 20% of earners are below the average, the middle 20% are generally above the average, and the lowest are spread around the average.

Which Freedom Factors Matter Most?

As we wrote earlier, the Economic Freedom Index is divided into five main categories, which are comprised of 60 subcomponents. To better quantify the importance of these factors, we calculated the R-squared values (statistical significance) for all of them in relation to per capita income.

The first graph below shows that a nation’s legal system strength has the strongest link to wealth. Next is the level of business regulations and the freedom to trade and invest internationally. Sound money and government size have weaker correlations.

The subfactor with the most substantial impact on income is the impartiality of courts. Property rights and judicial independence follow. Among the least correlated to income per capita are those related to central bank policies, such as money growth and interest rate controls.

The graph below illustrates a strong correlation between the Freedom Index and its most significant relationship, impartial courts. Interestingly, the graph displays a consistent positive relationship between impartial courts and the Freedom Index across the entire range of the Index. As you may recall, our previous graphs show little correlation between the Freedom Index and income and GDP when the Freedom Index is below 7, and a positive correlation when it exceeds that level.

Global And USA Trends

Unfortunately, as we share below, courtesy of the Fraser Institute, the average economic freedom index for all nations has been declining since the Pandemic. Based on the relationships we established earlier, if this trend continues, we should expect global GDP and incomes for most of the largest developed countries to grow at slower rates or decline in some instances. 

In 2000, the USA ranked 4th on the Freedom Index. Only Hong Kong (1st), Switzerland (2nd), and New Zealand (3rd) ranked higher. The USA remains highly ranked at 5th, but as we detail below, its overall score has declined over the past 20 years. Singapore moved ahead of the US and into the top five.

Meanwhile, China, which is slowly shifting from communism toward capitalism, has seen its Freedom Index score steadily improve. Note that the graph uses two axes, which can be a little misleading. The US still has a much higher Freedom Index score than China.

Surprisingly, Hong Kong still has the highest Freedom Index score, despite China’s growing interference in its government’s affairs.

Does Economic Freedom Also Promote Happiness

Before we summarize this article, we would be negligent if we didn’t determine whether there is a relationship between happiness and economic freedom. The index we use to quantify happiness is from the World Happiness Report. The score is based on a single question as follows:

Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?

The report then assigns a score to six variables to better understand which ones have the most significant impact on happiness. The variables are:

  • Economic production

  • Social support

  • Life expectancy

  • Freedom

  • Absence of corruption

  • Generosity.

As the graph below illustrates, a strong correlation exists between economic freedom and happiness. Not only does economic freedom make a country more productive and wealthier, but it can also boost the happiness of its citizens. Statistically speaking, capitalism seems to be a win-win situation.

Summary

No country operates entirely under pure capitalism. Nor do they employ a strictly socialist or communist system. For instance, communist nations like China and Russia are gradually allowing capitalism to enter their economies. Therefore, while we have ideas about where countries might fall on the economic and political spectrums, this data helps us better quantify the accuracy of said ideas. From an investing perspective, the trends in a nation’s index help us appreciate its future growth potential.

Connecting the dots, we found that a nation’s court system and level of justice have the most significant impact on its Freedom Index, and therefore, by extension, on the wealth and happiness of its citizens.

Aristotle connected these ideas over 2000 years ago when he opined:

 A just life is inherently a happy one.

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 15:45

Another Judge Hijacks Oval Office, Halts Federal Firings During Shutdown

Zero Hedge -

Another Judge Hijacks Oval Office, Halts Federal Firings During Shutdown

The pattern is clear;

Trump does: anything

Democrats: sue

Democrat judge: sides with fellow Democrats suing

Supreme Court, six months later: 'What Trump did was fine'

And in today's case: 

Trump: Fires federal employees during shutdown

Democrats: sue

Democrat judge: Blocks path

The judge: Clinton-appointed San Francisco district judge Susan Yvonne Illston

Judge Susan Yvonne Illston circa Murphy Brown pilot episode

Federal judge Susan Illston on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from firing workers during the government shutdown - ruling that she believes the evidence would ultimately show that the firings were illegal and in excess of authority. 

Federal agencies began issuing layoff notices on Friday aimed at reducing the size of the federal government and pressure Democratic lawmakers while the government shutdown continues. 

According to Illston, the administration has been acting without thinking things through

"It's very much ready, fire, aim on most of these programs, and it has a human cost," she said, adding "It’s a human cost that cannot be tolerated."

In response to the layoffs, the American Federation of Government Employees and other federal labor unions filed suit, asking Illston for a temporary restraining order blocking the administration from issuing new layoff notices, calling the firings an abuse of power designed to punish workers and pressure Congress. 

The administration has already taken the first steps toward dismissing approximately 4,000 workers. 

Illston said she would detailer her ruling in writing later Wednesday. 

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Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 15:25

Unusual Appearance Of Armed 'Mystery' Russian Men On Estonia's Border Raises NATO Alarm

Zero Hedge -

Unusual Appearance Of Armed 'Mystery' Russian Men On Estonia's Border Raises NATO Alarm

The Estonian government and media are making noise among NATO allies about mysterious armed men which showed up on the Baltic country's border on the Russian side.

"Unidentified Russian troops spotted at Estonia's border have raised concern in Tallinn while Moscow has dismissed it as routine," European media reports, following several weeks of alleged drone incursions in European airspace, which have placed EU members on high alert.

"Russian troops with concealed faces and unmarked uniforms have appeared at Estonia's border, echoing tactics used at Ukraine's borders in 2014," the same report claims. Estonian officials are hyping the as yet undefined threat as a "clear danger". But it does seem that someone on the Russian side was sending a 'message'.

Screenshot of masked Russian men spotted on a key road at Estonia's border.

Some Western observers have claimed this is all part of a series of intentional provocations and 'distractions' to keep European allies from focusing on arming and aiding Ukraine. There's also been speculation these could be troops from PMC Wagner or another mercenary outfit. 

The "armed men at the border" incident happened last Friday, at what's called the Saatse Boot, which is a small protrusion of Russian territory surrounded by Estonia on three sides.

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur has indicated in fresh remarks that after an intelligence investigation the identities or purpose of the camouflaged men have not been uncovered

"Ask the Russians," Pevkur told a regional outlet. "Communicating with Russia means that you can never expect that they will tell the truth. They will just tell you what they want to say."

He then in the remarks tried to link the incident with alleged airspace violations by Russia. "It was the same also with the MiGs they said were not in their airspace," he added, referencing a September incident involving a pair of MiG fighter jets.

But in the meantime, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna has sought to calm public fears and tensions pointing out in a social media post that the threat level has not changed. 

"To be clear: nothing acute is happening on the border. The Russians are acting somewhat more assertively and visibly than before, but the situation remains under control," Tsahkna has stated on X.

The pro-NATO publication, Amsterdam-based Moscow Times has underscored that the location where the armed men were spotted has a unique and somewhat disputed history:

A remnant of the Soviet annexation of Estonia during World War II, the Saatse Boot is traversed by Estonia's Road 178, which connects the Estonian villages of Lutepaa and Sesniki. It is possible to drive along this road without a Russian entry visa as long as the traveler does not stop. 

A 2005 treaty sought to pre-empt problems by swapping the boot for two small parcels of Estonian land, but Moscow never ratified the treaty despite signing it and Tallinn has since ruled out territorial exchanges with Russia. Although Estonia closed the stretch of Road 178 that cuts through the Saatse Boot after the men were spotted...

As for the road closure, this came after Estonian Border Guard reported that its officers had "noticed a larger-than-usual unit" on Russian territory near the road.

The agency then closed the road "to prevent possible provocations and incidents," according to regional operational head Künter Pedosk. Over the weekend the border service published video of the seven men standing directly on the road.

"It’s not news that Russia is using its own territory for different activities," Estonia's defense minister had further described. "This time, they came very close to the Estonian border. They stepped out from the boot to the road."

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Pop one or two, chill, avoid crippling xanax addiction... Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 15:05

Beige Book Finds "Little Change" In Economic Activity, AI Gets Blamed For Weak Labor Market

Zero Hedge -

Beige Book Finds "Little Change" In Economic Activity, AI Gets Blamed For Weak Labor Market

With econ data indefinitely postponed as a result of what is rapidly shaping up as the longest government shutdown on record, today's otherwise sleepy Beige Book was sure to get abnormal attention as it was one of the few incremental economic data points in a calendar bereft of actual news. Alas, it proved to be a dud, if only because there was virtually nothing new there: as the report which looked at recent data across the Fed's 12 district notes, economic activity was little changed on balance since the previous report, with three Districts reporting slight to modest growth in activity, five reporting no change, and four noting a slight softening. The was a continuation of the boring update we got one month ago when the Beige Book again found "little change" in econ activity (although like today, it noted that wages grew while inflation mentions slumped).

The outlook for future economic growth varied by District and sector: sentiment reportedly improved in a few Districts, with some contacts expecting an uptick in demand over the next 6 to 12 months. However, many others continued to expect elevated uncertainty to weigh down activity. One District report highlighted the downside risk to growth from a prolonged government shutdown: that must be whatever district DC is in because the only people in America impacted from the government shutdown are life-long government bureaucrats. 

Here is what else today's report found, starting with overall activity

  • Overall consumer spending, particularly on retail goods, inched down in recent weeks, although auto sales were boosted in some Districts by strong demand for electric vehicles ahead of the expiration of a federal tax credit at the end of September.
  • Demand for leisure and hospitality services by international travelers fell further over the reporting period, while demand by domestic consumers was largely unchanged.
  • Spending by higher-income individuals on luxury travel and accommodation was reportedly strong.
  • Several reports highlighted that lower- and middle-income households continued to seek discounts and promotions in the face of rising prices and elevated economic uncertainty.
  • Manufacturing activity varied by District, and most reports noted challenging conditions due to higher tariffs and waning overall demand.
  • Activity in agriculture, energy, and transportation was generally down among reporting Districts.
  • Conditions in the financial services sector and other interest rate-sensitive sectors, such as residential and commercial real estate, were mixed;
  • Some reports noted improved business lending in recent weeks due to lower interest rates, while other reports continued to highlight muted activity.

In labor markets, the picture remains one of muted stability and rising wages (thanks to the collapse of labor supply from illegal aliens). One notable change was the discussion of Artificial Intelligence as potentially taking away from labor demand. Oh, just wait: it's only starting... and it ends with Universal Basic Income. Here are the details: 

  • Employment levels were largely stable in recent weeks, and demand for labor was generally muted across Districts and sectors.
  • In most Districts, more employers reported lowering head counts through layoffs and attrition, with contacts citing weaker demand, elevated economic uncertainty, and, in some cases, increased investment in artificial intelligence technologies.
  • Employers that reported hiring generally noted improved labor availability, and some favored hiring temporary and part-time workers over offering full-time employment opportunities.
  • Nevertheless, labor supply in the hospitality, agriculture, construction, and manufacturing sectors was reportedly strained in several Districts due to recent changes to immigration policies.

And the logical consequence of slamming shut the pathway for illegals to get jobs: Wages grew across all reporting Districts, generally at a modest to moderate pace. A rare victory for ordinary, working Americans.

Last we look at prices which according to the Beige Book "rose further during the reporting period. Several District reports indicated that input costs increased at a faster pace due to higher import costs and the higher cost of services such as insurance, health care, and technology solutions." None of those, however, are the result of higher tariffs.

  • Tariff-induced input cost increases were reported across many Districts, but the extent of those higher costs passing through to final prices varied.
  • Some firms facing tariff-induced cost pressures kept their selling prices largely unchanged to preserve market share and in response to pushback from price-sensitive clients.
  • However, there were also reports of firms in manufacturing and retail trades fully passing higher import costs along to their customers.
  • Waning demand in some markets reportedly pushed prices down for some materials, such as steel in the Sixth District and lumber in the Twelfth District.

In short, for yet another month, and despite the constant fearmongering of liberal economists, the sky is not falling and in fact the economy continues to grow at a solid pace. 

Here is a snapshot of highlights by Fed District:

  • Boston: Economic activity expanded slightly, with modest growth in consumer spending. Employment was flat, as both hiring and layoffs increased modestly. Prices increased at a moderate pace, although certain cost pressures intensified. Home sales were flat from a year earlier. The outlook was neutral to cautiously  optimistic, but contacts saw mostly downside risks.
  • New York: Economic activity continued to decline slightly. Employment held steady, and wage growth remained modest. The pace of price increases remained elevated but was little changed. Manufacturing activity held steady after a summer uptick. Consumer spending increased modestly, buoyed by mid- to upper-income households. Businesses did not expect activity to increase much in the months ahead.
  • Philadelphia: Business activity increased slightly in the current Beige Book period. Employment levels increased slightly, and wages again rose at modest pre-pandemic rates. Prices continued to rise moderately.  Activity increased slightly for nonmanufacturers and moderately for manufacturers. Generally, firms expect modest growth over the next six months, but heightened economic uncertainty remains.
  • Cleveland: Fourth District business activity was flat in recent weeks, but contacts expected activity to increase modestly in months ahead. Commercial construction and financial services contacts noted an uptick in demand because of lower interest rates. Contacts said that cost growth remained robust, while their selling prices increased modestly.
  • Richmond: The regional economy grew modestly in recent weeks. Consumer spending continued to grow modestly and import activity rose. Manufacturing activity declined slightly and growth in the remaining industries was largely flat. Employment levels were largely unchanged and wage growth remained moderate. Price growth remained moderate, overall, despite some pickup in price growth in the manufacturing sector.
  • Atlanta: The Sixth District economy was unchanged. Employment levels were steady, and wages grew modestly. Prices increased moderately. Consumer spending fell, and leisure travel softened. Home sales declined, and commercial real estate was unchanged. Transportation declined. Manufacturing grew slightly. Energy grew moderately, and agriculture was healthy.
  • Chicago: Economic activity in the Seventh District was flat. Consumer spending increased modestly; construction and real estate activity increased slightly; employment was flat; nonbusiness contacts saw no change in activity; business spending declined slightly; and manufacturing activity declined modestly. Prices rose moderately, wages were up modestly, and financial conditions loosened slightly. Prospects for 2025 farm income were unchanged.
  • St. Louis: Economic activity and employment levels have remained unchanged since our previous report. Contacts continue to report that immigration policies have been resulting in labor shortages. Prices have increased moderately, with contacts reporting that inflation is eroding consumer purchasing power. Banking activity has remained unchanged since our previous report, with overall credit conditions remaining strong. Agriculture conditions are strained and have further deteriorated. The outlook remains slightly pessimistic.
  • Minneapolis: District economic activity contracted slightly. Labor demand softened, according to firms and job seekers, though wage growth remained moderate. Price increases remained modest, but input price pressures increased. Manufacturing and commercial real estate were flat, but most other sectors contracted. Agricultural contacts were concerned about China's elimination of soybean purchases.
  • Kansas City: Economic activity in the Tenth District fell slightly over the past month. Employment levels declined slightly, and bankers noted consumer loan portfolios deteriorated moderately. Though activity fell recently, expectations for sales and employment in 2026 were broadly optimistic. Expectations for the pace of price growth in 2026 were similarly above 2025 levels.
  • Dallas: Economic activity was flat. Service sector activity contracted mildly. Retail sales fell, while the pace of manufacturing output growth moderated. Loan demand grew, but the housing market remained weak, and drilling and well completion activity was flat. Employment dipped, and wage growth was modest. Price pressures were subdued in services but remained elevated in the manufacturing sector. Outlooks deteriorated with slowing demand, policy uncertainty, and inflation highlighted as the top concerns for businesses.
  • San Francisco: Economic activity edged down slightly. Employment levels were little changed. Wages grew slightly, and prices rose modestly. Activity in retail trade, agriculture, and residential real estate decreased somewhat while commercial real estate activity was unchanged. Manufacturing and lending activity remained stable. Conditions in consumer and business services were mixed.

And finally, confirming that contrary to conventional wisdom the economic picture appears to have improved notably since April, the latest Beige Book found that despite media narratives to the contrary, mentions of inflation remained near a 4 year lows, at just 10 in September, and up from the cycle low of 5 in July (effectively before the Biden inflationary explosion period) while mentions of "slow" tumbled from a two year high of 56 in July to just 31, a new 2025 low, indicating that according to the Fed respondents, neither inflation nor an economic slowdown are major concerns 

All of which suggests that the US economy - while hardly on fire as it was during the hyperinflationary period of Biden's admin - continues to chug along and is hardly collapsing as so many Trump foes would like to see; and it certainly is not seeing prices explode higher.

 

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 14:51

Mexican Cartels Placing Bounties On Federal Agents, DHS Says

Zero Hedge -

Mexican Cartels Placing Bounties On Federal Agents, DHS Says

Authored by Melanie Sun via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Oct. 14 that it has obtained “credible intelligence” that cartels in Mexico have placed bounties on U.S. law enforcement officers and officials.

Mexican cartels—which have used Chicago, along with other major U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, New York, and Atlanta, as drug distribution hubs for years—are now being confronted with targeted law enforcement operations and have put out calls to sympathetic domestic groups for acts of violence and intimidation against authorities in the United States, the DHS said.

“These criminal networks have issued explicit instructions to U.S.-based sympathetics, including street gangs in Chicago, to monitor, harass, and assassinate federal agents,” the department said.

The department noted several federal investigations, which are still active, that have uncovered intelligence showing the cartels have advertised a tiered bounty system of renumeration for various actions escalating in violence and ambition.

Intelligence gathering or doxxing of federal agents, including taking photos and gathering information about their families, could receive a payout of $2,000, and kidnapping or non-lethal assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents could see up to $10,000 payment.

The assassination of high-ranking U.S. officials could see payments of up to $50,000, the DHS said.

The investigations also uncovered that criminal groups, including members of Chicago’s street gangs with ties to the Latin Kings, have developed networks of armed rooftop “spotters” who track ICE and CBP officers and communicate their coordinates.

“This surveillance has enabled ambushes and disruptions during routine enforcement actions, including recent raids under Operation Midway Blitz,” the DHS said.

Led by ICE, “Operation Midway Blitz” was launched in early September 2025 in Chicago and the surrounding areas under the ICE Chicago field office, including Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky, and Kansas, to remove illegal immigrants and enforce immigration law.

The intelligence comes as federal and state authorities are at loggerheads over how to approach law enforcement in the state.

Federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection walk north on North Clark Street in the River North neighborhood in Chicago on Sept. 28, 2025. Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have criticized the Trump administration for seeking to send in the National Guard to protect ICE agents and facilities from a rebellion. Pritzker says the city and its residents are safe and there is no evidence of a rebellion, only constitutionally protected protests in front of ICE facilities.

Pritzker said on Oct. 5 that the ICE operations were creating a “war zone” and leaving ordinary residents terrorised. He said that agents were going after a few gang members, but that in at least one of the raids, elderly people and children were held for a few hours.

“If they’re not going to focus on the worst of the worst, which is what the president said they were going to do, they need to get the heck out,” he told CNN’s State of the Union.

President Donald Trump called for Brandon and Pritzker to be jailed for allegedly failing to protect ICE officers in Chicago. Pritzker responded by saying that the 25th Amendment should be invoked to remove Trump from office.

Brandon, on Oct. 6, signed an executive order prohibiting federal immigration agents from using city-owned property during their law enforcement operations.

“We will not tolerate ICE agents violating our residents’ constitutional rights nor will we allow the federal government to disregard our local authority. ICE agents are detaining elected officials, tear-gassing protestors, children, and Chicago police officers, and abusing Chicago residents. We will not stand for that in our city,” he said in a statement.

Support From Antifa

The DHS also laid blame on Antifa for aiding and abetting these criminal groups by organizing protests to block federal operations in Portland and Chicago. This has shielded cartel-linked individuals from deportation, the DHS said.

The department urged state and local leaders to support the federal law enforcement efforts and “cease policies that embolden criminals.”

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with a reporter on her plane while in the air en route from Quito, Ecuador, to Joint Base Andrews, Md., on July 31, 2025. Alex Brandon/AP Photo

“These criminal networks are not just resisting the rule of law, they are waging an organized campaign of terror against the brave men and women who protect our borders and communities,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said.

“Our agents are facing ambushes, drone surveillance, and death threats, all because they dare to enforce the laws passed by Congress. We will not back down from these threats, and every criminal, terrorist, and illegal alien will face American justice.”

The department said members of the public can report suspicious activities, such as rooftop surveillance or organized protests blocking federal operations, to the DHS Tip Line at 1-866-DHS-2-ICE or via the ICE website.

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 14:30

U.S. Soybean Exports Show Signs Of Recovery - Even As China Pivots Elsewhere

Zero Hedge -

U.S. Soybean Exports Show Signs Of Recovery - Even As China Pivots Elsewhere

Soybean farmers across the U.S. Midwest have found themselves caught in the middle of an expanding trade war storm between President Trump and Beijing.

Overnight, Trump threatened to halt trade in cooking oil with China, warning of an “Economically Hostile Act” that he said is deliberately “causing difficulty for our soybean farmers.” The tensions follow reports from weeks earlier showing that China had abandoned U.S. suppliers in favor of growers in Brazil and Argentina.

UBS analyst Simon Penn noted to clients earlier:

U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that China’s decision to stop importing U.S. soybean was an “Economically Hostile Act”. He said he was prepared to retaliate by refusing to allow the U.S. to import Chinese cooking oil. Note – Trump is referring to used cooking oil. China exports it to the U.S., who in turn, turn it into bio-fuel. But cooking oil is a side-show relative to soybean. U.S. cooking oil imports from China were a record $1.2 bn last year; China soybean purchases from the U.S. were worth $12.6 bn.

The last several days have been a rollercoaster of headlines from the Trump administration, sparking turmoil across global markets, especially at the end of last week when Trump threatened China with 100% tariffs in response to Beijing imposing strict export controls on rare earth minerals. 

By the start of this week, rhetoric from the White House was dialed back, and by Wednesday morning...

With soybeans at the center of the trade spat, the latest trade data of U.S. soybean exports shows somewhat of a surprising trend: Although the ongoing government shutdown has paused many of the USDA’s reports, the agency managed to release its weekly export inspections one day late due to Monday’s holiday, which shows U.S. exports of soybeans hit their highest levels since Feburary. 

U.S. exports shipped 994,000 tons of soybeans last week, with major destinations including Bangladesh, Italy, Spain, and South Korea. This comes as the top buyer, China, remained absent from the market. 

Even with soybean purchases now trending in the right direction, top buyer China remains removed, and this is due to Beijing having leverage over Trump in upcoming trade talks. As a result, the Trump admin has proposed a $14 billion farm bailout using tariff funds collected to cushion farmers.

The game between Trump and Xi is all about leverage. Both leaders are expected to meet at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in South Korea in late October. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed on Tuesday the meeting was still on despite trade tensions.  

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 14:10

The Free Market May Sack Kimmel Again

Zero Hedge -

The Free Market May Sack Kimmel Again

Authored by Alex Rosado via RealClearPolitics.com,

Last month, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” reemerged from cancellation with a ratings jump and social momentum. His midnight honeymoon, however, is already over.

Kimmel made incendiary comments over free speech champion Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September, slamming President Trump’s leadership and comparing his grief to “a four-year-old mourning a goldfish.” With his ratings nosediving for months, what little audience remained turned off their TV sets, prompting Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcasting to pull him from ABC station affiliates. Jimmy raged and threatened to cut ties with ABC forever. But just days later, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” returned, and the late-night host issued an apology that attracted over 6 million viewers, the most in series history, even if many felt it was insincere.

Kimmel had renewed interest and lightning in a bottle. But he squandered it by refusing to change the same act that got him booted in the first place. 

By continuing to politicize every current event, Kimmel has impressively lost 85% of his post-suspension bounce in just a few weeks among key demographics. With ratings hovering around 1.7 million viewers, his collapse in viewership is now lower than it was pre-suspension.

“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” wasn’t cancelled because of government “crackdowns” on free speech, as some proclaimed, but because consumers stopped valuing Kimmel’s program. His show was incongruous with their viewing habits and the national conversation, and it may face similar and necessary repercussions again.

American politics has long been fused with entertainment, and people are getting tired of it. The abundance of television shows like “South Park,” popular music, and celebrities lampooning or critiquing current events has made politics inescapable. Pew Research Center (PRC) found that almost two-thirds of Americans feel exhausted when thinking about politics. More in Common’s Hidden Tribe report found that most Americans are frustrated by division and tribalism, wanting officials to heal, not inflame, culture wars.

Yet, there’s political incentive among news outlets and commentary shows to feed viewers ideologically driven content. In 2024, Stanford University found that consumers, regardless of their educational or political background, are more likely to engage with media that aligns with their ideology rather than factual reporting. Ten percent of Americans got their news from “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Twenty-one percent of young Americans got it from “The Daily Show.”

Viewers may say they want these programs’ priorities to change, but traditional media thrives on the mass confirmation bias they ingrain in consumers. 

It’s a vicious cycle that polarized the American populace while leaving elitist and leftist “comedians” untouched – until recently.

In July, Stephen Colbert announced his tenured and politically charged show would leave the airwaves in 2026. CBS explained that production expenses were costing the company tens of millions of dollars annually, and competition from social media and streaming has pulled customer bases away from television. Kimmel and Hollywood dashed these claims, but the evidence counters their disbelief. 

Deloitte’s 2025 media consumption survey revealed only 49% of consumers have cable or satellite TV subscriptions – down from 63% three years ago – a mass departure partially driven by a market oversaturated with political content. An observed desire for hosts to separate politics from programming has skyrocketed the demand and consumption for alternative media, which they find more trustworthy. After being infested with grievance and division for years, the media consumer base shifted its preferences, and Colbert’s rating consequently tanked. Nixing Colbert was a business response to a format and an ideology that failed to captivate audiences.

Kimmel has no respect for the new public sentiment and is doubling down on a losing formula. Quickly reprising his role as an instigator, he’s bashing the president’s intelligence, blasting Trump’s hardline approach to crime and Antifa, and blaming critics for “mischaractiz[ing]” his Kirk comments. He hailed himself as “more popular than the president of the United States” after the release of a recent YouGov poll, turning an earnest compliment into another desperate zinger. Kimmel has no interest in comforting the public interest or maintaining the illusion that his show is political entertainment, and the general consensus is that he hasn’t changed. No wonder audiences are fleeing.

Who knows how long “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will stay on air. He survived what many believe was a top-down political mandate, but one thing is certain: Local broadcasters and network owners are responsive to community standards, tastes, and free-market realities. The potent and corrective capacity of everyday consumers is what drives TV. Creators can offer their content, but nobody is entitled to consumers. In an industry of communication and credibility, Kimmel willingly strayed from both, and that’s at least part of what cost him his job the first time. The free market may strike twice if Kimmel’s convictions continue to define his program.

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 13:50

Stocks Erase Gains As Trade Tensions Resurface; Bessent Blames 'Lone Wolf Warrior' Beijing Diplomat

Zero Hedge -

Stocks Erase Gains As Trade Tensions Resurface; Bessent Blames 'Lone Wolf Warrior' Beijing Diplomat

Update (1300ET): As we noted earlier, stocks jumped around the US cash open on optimistic headlines about possible tariff delays by Bessent and Greer: "*GREER: EXPECT CHINA RARE EARTHS MOVE DOESN'T GO INTO EFFECT,*BESSENT SUGGESTS POSSIBILITY OF LONGER CHINA TARIFF TRUCE".

The realization that what they actually said was a nothing-burger took a while for the over-excited market to recognize and by the European close, stocks were fading once again. 

Gains then quickly faded as the good-cop/bad-cop routine fell apart after Greer and Bessent also noted China's hostility in global trade (and blamed a lone wolf Chinese diplomat for the shitshow). 

“Perhaps the vice minister who showed up here with very incendiary language on August 28 has gone rogue,” Bessent said during the press conference at Treasury. “This individual was very disrespectful,” he said, after earlier calling him “unhinged” in the CNBC event.

Li had warned China would “cause global chaos” if the US went ahead with plans for port fees for Chinese ships, Bessent said.

“Maybe he thinks he’s a wolf warrior,” he said, referring to a term used for aggressive Chinese diplomats.

Bessent later added the following which did not help: 

“If China wants to be an unreliable partner to the world, then the world will have to decouple,” Bessent said.

“The world does not want to decouple; we want to derisk. But signals like this are signs of decoupling, which we don’t believe China wants. And again, we do not want to decouple. We should work together to derisk and diversify supply chains away from China as quickly as possible.”

Desk chatter was that the weakness was triggered by a WSJ article "China, Betting It Can Win a Trade War, Is Playing Hardball With Trump" that suggested Chinese leader Xi Jinping thinks president Trump will fold before launching new tariffs that would roil markets.

In other words, equity weakness is 'required' to stop Trump's escalation and so the market tests that thesis.

Additionally, Bessent was reported as "urging The World Bank to end support for China," and Fed Governor Miran stated the obvious by highlighting the fact that China's rare-earths move reintroduces trade uncertainty.

Around 1300ET, stocks legged lower still as Fed's Waller noted: "LAYOFFS, LOWER HIRING DUE TO AI EXPECTED TO INCREASE".

All of which dragged stocks back down into the red...

*  *  *

US equity markets are surging again this morning following comments by Treasury Secretary Bessent (and USTR Greer) that appeared to suggest the possibility of a tariff truce with China.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent condemned China's decision last week to step up curbs on its exports of rare-earth metals, calling the actions part of a broader plan by Beijing to control the world's supply chains.

"China's announcement is nothing more than a global supply chain power grab," Greer said.

"This move is not proportional retaliation. It is an exercise in economic coercion on every country in the world."

So that was Bad Cop.

And then Bessent played Good Cop...

But while Bessent said China's "highly provocative move" comes after the U.S. has made significant efforts to de-escalate tensions, he said that the U.S. would rather not take action against Beijing.

"I believe China is open to discussion, and I am optimistic that this can be de-escalated ultimately.

We are confident in the strong relationship between President Trump and President Xi.

We've had substantial communication with the Chinese over the past few days, and we believe that there will be more forthcoming this week," Bessent said.

It is possible that “we could go to a longer roll in return for a delay” on rare earths export controls, Bessent said when asked if US would delay implementation of additional 100% tariffs on China.

“All that’s going to be negotiated in the coming weeks” before Chinese and US leaders meet in South Korea, he says.

None of that sounded particularly new or different to us, but no matter the confusion, the market ran with it...

But US-listed rare earth stocks tumbled on the possible delay: Critical Metals -20.5%, USA Rare Earth -13.6%, MP Materials -7.3%, Ramaco Resources -9.5%

Will the market's strength prompt a response from Trump, using that hubris to take another shot at Beijing?

 

 

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 13:15

Binance Rolls Out $400M Program For Traders Hit By Friday's Downturn

Zero Hedge -

Binance Rolls Out $400M Program For Traders Hit By Friday's Downturn

Authored by Nate Kostar via CoinTelegraph.com,

Binance is launching a $400 million relief program for traders hurt by losses across its ecosystem during Friday’s crypto sell-off, despite saying it does not accept liability for user losses.

According to a Tuesday post by the exchange, the initiative will distribute $300 million worth of token vouchers, ranging in value from $4 to $6,000, to eligible users.

To qualify, traders must have incurred forced liquidations on futures or margin positions between Friday 00:00 UTC and Saturday 23:59 UTC. Users must have lost at least $50 in crypto, and those losses must account for at least 30% of their total net assets, based on a snapshot taken on Thursday at 23:59 UTC. The distribution is expected to be completed within 96 hours. 

Source: cz_binance

The plan will also establish a $100 million “low-interest loan fund” for ecosystem and institutional users impacted by the market turbulence, seeking to “alleviate liquidity pressures.”

Binance clarified that the exchange does not “accept liability for users’ losses,” saying the move is designed to “rebuild industry confidence.”

Source: Binance.com

The move comes after BNB Chain announced on Monday that it launched a $45 million “reload airdrop” to compensate users who lost money trading memecoins during Friday’s crash.

Binance reacts to crypto crash

Crypto markets slumped on Friday after US President Donald Trump threatened 100% tariffs on Chinese imports, with over $19 billion in leveraged positions liquidated in 24 hours — the largest single liquidation event in crypto history.

In the aftermath, Binance has been criticized on several fronts. 

Some traders reported technical glitches that prevented them from closing positions during the sell-off, while others pointed to discrepancies in stablecoin pricing.

Several altcoins, including Enjin, Cosmos, and IoTeX, temporarily showed prices of $0 on the exchange due to issues with data from oracles.

On Sunday, Binance published a statement addressing the concerns, saying that its core futures systems continued operating normally throughout the sell-off.

Source: Binance.com

Since Friday’s crash, Binance and BNB Chain have announced a combined $728 million in recovery measures, including $45 million in airdrops, $283 million in immediate post-crash compensation, and today’s newly launched $400 million industry fund.

Some users are not impressed 

Binance’s Tuesday announcement has received mixed reactions on X. While some users, like SeedliCapital, praised the exchange for rebuilding “confidence” by taking action, others were less charitable.

Source: SeedliCapital

In contrast, user Curb.sol wrote that Binance’s “mispriced internal price oracles are directly at fault for the $400 billion in liquidations and corresponding market crash.” Adding, “everyone needs to get their funds off Binance immediately.

Source: CryptoCurb

Others said the reimbursements were welcome but fell short of covering the weekend’s losses. “While better than nothing, a ‘voucher’ for $4 to $6k  on users who got wiped for everything is kinda a joke,” LeveragedDegen wrote.

Source: LeveragedDegen_

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 13:05

At The Money: Don’t Underperform Your Own Investments

The Big Picture -

 

 

At The Money: Underperforming Your Own Investments with Jeffrey Ptak, Morningstar (October 15, 2025)

Are you underperforming our own investments? Did you know that many, maybe even most, investors do worse than the ETFs and Mutual Funds they hold do? The annual Morningstar study “Mind the Gap” has found a substantial difference between returns generated by investment funds and the actual returns investors experience.

Full transcript below.

~~~

About this week’s guest:

Jeffrey Patak is the managing director at Morningstar. Previously, he was the chief ratings officer. He oversees the firm’s “Mind The Gap” research.

For more info, see:

Personal Bio

Professional site

LinkedIn

~~~

 

Find all of the previous At the Money episodes here, and in the MiB feed on Apple PodcastsYouTubeSpotify, and Bloomberg. And find the entire musical playlist of all the songs I have used on At the Money on Spotify

 

APPLE EMBED

 

 

Transcript:

 

[Musical intro: Yearning For Your Love  The Gap Band)

What would you say if I told you that most investors underperform not only the benchmarks but their own investments? That’s the conclusion of an annual study by Morningstar titled Mind the Gap. It examines the differences between returns generated by investment funds and the actual returns investors experience. The difference between the two. It’s a substantial performance gap driven in large part by investor behavior.

I have the perfect person to discuss this with. Jeffrey Patak is the managing director at Morningstar. Previously, he was the chief ratings officer there. He joined Morningstar in 2002.

Jeffrey, let, let’s start with the basics.: What is the investor return gap and how large is it?

Jeffrey Patak: So the investor return gap is the difference between our estimate of the average return of a funder or a group of funds, and that funds its total return, it’s stated return.

What’s the difference between the two of those things the former takes into account the timing and magnitude. Of cash flows that have come and gone to and from the fund over time, whereas a total return, which most of us are familiar with from popping onto bloomberg.com or morningstar.com, assumes an initial lump sum investment.

When you compare the two of them, you can derive a sense of the impact of the timing and magnitude of buys and sells over time. To cut to the chase, when we estimated that for the trailing 10 years ended December 31st, 2024, we found that there’s a 1.2 percentage point annual return gap compared to the fund’s aggregate total return.

What that meant is that. The timing and magnitude of cash flows, it basically cost investors around 15% of their aggregate total returns.

Barry Ritholtz: That, that’s unbelievable. That’s a giant, giant shortfall. H how do you calculate that gap? It’s easy to figure out what a fund, an ETF, A mutual fund is actually generating. How do you figure out the shortfall that individual investors are suffering?

Jeffrey Patak: It it’s akin to an internal rate of return estimate. So we pool all US open-end fund and ETF assets together. That’s their beginning net assets, their monthly net flows. So that’s 120 monthly net flows. We impound into the calculation as well as their ending net asset.

We dump all of that into a calculation that derives essentially the constant return that would reconcile the beginning assets to the ending assets after taking those cash flows into account. All the data we use is data that Morningstar collects. So funds report their assets as well as their flows, and so we scoop that up and, and we plug it in.

Barry Ritholtz: What sort of funds does this include? I assume this is mutual funds and ETFs. Anything else in the, in the package?

Jeffrey Patak: You got it. It encompasses us open-end mutual funds as well as ETFs. It wouldn’t include things like closed-end funds in, in all. There were around 26,000 individual funds and ETFs that together held around $25 trillion in assets.

By the end of our study period. So it’s, it’s quite a comprehensive study.

Barry Ritholtz: I’m fascinated by the difference between time-weighted rate of returns for funds and asset-weighted returns. Explain the two ’cause really, that makes a giant difference, doesn’t it?

Jeffrey Patak: It does indeed. Yes. Your, your listeners are probably familiar with time weighted returns because that’s what they’d encounter in their normal affairs.

So I mentioned earlier if they where to pop onto bloomberg.com or morningstar.com, pull up a fund’s performance. Those are time-weighted return figures. The more popular power lens is total returns and, and a time weighted return. It assumes an initial lump sum investments that’s left untouched. Until the end of the period.

It’s sort of your classic buy and hold, whereas a dollar weighted return that takes the timing and magnitude of investors purchases and sales into account. It doesn’t assume people invest in initial lump sum and hold it to the end like a total return does. And so that’s essentially the difference between the two measures.

Barry Ritholtz: I’ve seen some interesting studies on hedge funds and on some ETFs. Where the time weighted return makes it look like a manager has done really well. And then when you see the dollar weighted return, most of the assets tend to flow in after they’ve had a big run up after the media has focused on them.

Some hedge fund managers look like they have great track records in terms of how well they’ve done for their investors are actually net losers over time. Do you see things that extreme when you’re looking at this data?

Jeffrey Patak: We do indeed. Unfortunately,  I will say, in aggregate on balance, investors have gotten better and we can talk about some of the reasons for that, about capturing more of their funds, total returns then was formerly the case.

But yes, we do see some of these vivid examples of investors; schematically, they’re buying high end selling low. Sometimes it’s chasing behavior where investors pile in, just as you described, after a fund goes on a strong run only for performance to roll over, at which point they bail out. You know, and that can work in reverse where they sell before performance improves. Both of those things would dent their dollar-weighted returns compared to the fund’s total return.

Barry Ritholtz: It sounds like behavioral factors are a cause for investors suffering actually lower returns than their funds total return.

What other behaviors do you see that are a net negative? I think that sometimes it can be quite mundane where you will see an investor or someone you know representing them decide that they want to change the asset mix, and so it might not be in response to a particular funds performance.

It could be that for whatever reason, they just decided they want to be positioned differently. And so maybe they put more exposure on in an area that’s outperformed and take some weight off in an area that’s underperformed, only to see that wrong foot them over subsequent periods. Those are the sorts of decisions, behaviors that can give rise to gaps.

Barry Ritholtz: Mean reversion is a cruel mistress.

What about different types of funds? When we look at. Um, market cap size or geography, US versus international, how, how does the gaps form in those types of things?

Jeffrey Patak: Those are some of the dimensions that we look at as part of the study.

Sector equity funds have chronically suffered the widest gaps in absolute terms. In our most recent study, the average dollar invested in sector equity funds lag the funds total returns by one and a half percentage points a year. Over the dec over the decade ended December 31st, 2020. Which meant that investors failed to capture around 20% of those funds aggregate returns.

By contrast, we’ve seen the narrowest gaps among allocation funds. The most popular example of which are target date strategies. Those funds barely had an investor return gap over those 10 years ended December 31st, 2024.

The other thing I would note that ETFs had wider gaps than traditional open-end funds. We include both in the study over the 10 years ended December 24. If the average seller invested in ETFs lag, the ETFs aggregate total return by around 1.7 percentage points annually. Which is equivalent to around 18% of the ETFs total returns open-end funds. By contrast data, a narrower 1.2 percentage point per year gap over that timeframe.

ETFs are great in a lot of different ways. We just wanna make sure that we use them in the most prudent fashion

Barry Ritholtz: That, that makes sense. ETFs are a trading vehicle for some people, and we know what the long-term results of most people’s active trading is like.

I’m curious, how do the international funds stack up against domestic funds in terms of the gap?

Jeffrey Patak: The gap was slightly wider for international funds than it was for domestic equity funds. We found that there was a 1.1 percentage point annual gap. Whereas for US equity, it was about half that, it was about half a percentage point, 0.6 percentage points to be precise.

Barry Ritholtz: What role does market volatility play in this gap widening? I recall earlier this year when the tasks were rolled out in April, we saw a lot of frenetic activity. You can’t help but look at that and imagine very few people got that right.

Jeffrey Patak: Right you are our research has found a correlation at a couple levels. At an overall market macro level, as you allude to market fluctuations do tend to push investors buttons.

They’re much likely to make changes to their holdings, and this can work to their detriment and dollar weighted terms. We also look at this at an asset class level, you know, so US equity, international equity, taxable bonds, and on and on.

We also find there that the more volatile funds of a particular type have been harder for investors to successfully use than less volatile funds. So there are wider gaps with those too hard to handle funds that you would find in say, US equity or taxable bond as compared to their more sedate counterparts within those asset classes.

That’s been another sort of perennial finding from the study is that volatility pushes investors buttons, and when it does so they tend to capture less of their fund’s total returns.

Barry Ritholtz: You mentioned target date funds. I tend to think of target date funds or balanced funds, typically in 401k or retirement plans, where most people have a tendency to set and forget and just dollar cost average on a regular basis with each paycheck. Generally speaking, do we see less of a gap in retirement funds? Is it because of the specific long-term nature of target date funds? Or the fact that it’s in a 401k or 403B, what? What’s the advantage balanced funds, target date funds have.

Jeffrey Patak: I would say there’s two principle advantages. One is contextual. The other is related to the attributes, the characteristics of those strategies.

Let’s talk context first. They’re most often used in the context of a retirement plan. It’s a gilded cage of sorts. It’s really meant for investors to go in and save and compound over time; not for them to wheel around as they might in a brokerage account.

Then let’s talk about the characteristics of those vehicles as you reference. They’re highly automated. They take care of rebalancing. They adjust the asset mix as time goes on, they are, as you put it, set it and forget it, and that has worked to investors benefit.

We found that investors and allocation funds, they captured essentially all of their funds, total returns. That is, there was almost no gap among allocation funds over the 10-year study period that we were focused on.

I think that’s one of the most heartening stories to come out of our research is the fact that it seems that investors in retirement plans, or specifically those who invest in allocation funds have enjoyed some of the greatest success and that’s crucial to their retirement security.

Barry Ritholtz: So give investors some practical advice: What sort of steps can they take to minimize the gap; capture more of their investing funds, long-term returns?

Jeffrey Patak: So it might sound a bit trite, but I would say have a plan and automate as much of it as you can. Investors, they tend to get themselves in trouble when they engage in, you know, off cycle discretionary, ad hoc type of trading.

One can surmise that might be more likely to occur when there’s some sort of market disruption or tumult or a meta mania.

But if you have a plan and, and you’ve appropriately allocated your assets based on that plan, you know, widely diversifying across asset, then you have an anchor or a point of orientation, whereas without it, you might feel like you’re at sea. You know, also because you’ve spread out per the plan, diversifying widely, you’re less likely to experience the full brunt of a selloff and experience the kind of ruinous outcome that might induce panic.

Automating is the other key. Uh, I would say, you know, what we know about target date funds is they’re held in retirement plans.

But also they obviate the need for investors to take action to rebalance or to adjust the asset mix as they were near the retirement date. And that’s because those features are built in. I think one of the other clear takeaways from the research is that automation narrows gaps.

Barry Ritholtz: Investors can avoid the investor gap. They can avoid underperforming their own mutual funds and ETFs by simply having a couple of common-sense steps put into place: Don’t let volatility distract you. Don’t try and buy or sell when markets get frothy. Don’t think you’re gonna be able to time the market. And perhaps most important of all, you have to have a plan, and you have to be able to keep your emotions at bay.  Otherwise, you’re gonna fall into the unfortunate fate of underperforming your own investments.

I’m Barry Ritholtz. You are listening to Bloomberg’s At the Money.

 

The post At The Money: Don’t Underperform Your Own Investments appeared first on The Big Picture.

Probably More 'Cockroaches': Finger-Pointing Begins In Private Credit As Managers Fear More 'Late-Cycle Accidents'

Zero Hedge -

Probably More 'Cockroaches': Finger-Pointing Begins In Private Credit As Managers Fear More 'Late-Cycle Accidents'

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has sparked controversy in banking and finance circles amid a number of high profile (and sudden) bankruptcies, saying during his earnings call yesterday that:

"My antenna goes up when things like that happen. I probably shouldn’t say this but when you see one cockroach there are probably more.”

The cockroaches (which we have covered extensively here, herehere, here, and here) include the spectacular implosion of subprime auto lender Tricolor, and last month's mega bankruptcy of First Brands, an auto parts supplier with $5.8 billion in outstanding leveraged loan debt...

Surprise!

Alternative Asset Managers have come under pressure (bouncing back with the market this week)...

...particularly those in the Private Credit space like Blue Owl...

And given Blue Owl's underperformance, it is no surprise that co-chief executive officer, Marc Lipschultz, came out swinging against Dimon's comments on Tuesday, standing in fierce defense of private credit.

Banks might want to look at their own books for any “cockroaches.”

Tying private credit to the fallout from the bankruptcies of Tricolor and First Brands is an “odd kind of fear-mongering,” he said at the CAIS Alternative Investment Summit in Beverly Hills, California.

“We’re not seeing rising defaults, we’re not seeing companies struggling.”

Some, including Lipschultz, argue the blow-ups aren’t indicative of problems within the $1.7 trillion private debt market, but seem to signal issues within the syndicated markets.

“I guess he’s saying there might be a lot more cockroaches at JPMorgan, I’m not sure I know what he’s saying,” Lipschultz said.

“It’s not a private credit issue. It’s a liquid credit market.”

Specifically, JPMorgan took a hit from Tricolor, booking a $170 million charge-off in the third quarter, with Dimon describing the situation as “not our finest moment.”

The bank said it has no exposure to First Brands.

As we tweeted earlier, Lipschultz also made a very strong point that this was not illiquid private credits (which are practically untradable), these failures were syndicated loans (and JPM among other banks were primary originators of those):

These couple of bankruptcies, both of which are in the syndicated market, would seem to be the evidence of the problem away from the private credit market,” Lipschultz said.

“I understand people have their own business to run and some people are axed against the product class.”

Marc Lipschultz, co-chief executive officer of Blue Owl Capital

As Bloomberg reports, executives at other alternative asset managers have also tried to quell the presumption that borrowers at large are posing trouble for the credit markets.

“We’ve been a little surprised by the First Brands, Tricolor selloff and buzz because when we look at our credit portfolios, we actually see pretty healthy portfolios relative to almost any metric that you can look at,” Kipp deVeer, co-president of Ares Management Corp., said during a separate panel at CAIS on Tuesday.

However, other top US financiers have warned of an erosion in lending standards with The FT reporting that Apollo Global Management chief executive Marc Rowan said the unraveling of the two businesses followed years in which lenders had sought out riskier borrowers.

“It does not surprise me that we are seeing late-cycle accidents,” Rowan said on Tuesday.

“I think it’s a desire to win in a competitive market that sometimes leads to shortcuts.”

Both Rowan and Blackstone president Jonathan Gray pointed the finger at banks for having amassed exposure to First Brands and Tricolor, but said the collapses were not signs of a systemic issue.

“What’s interesting is both of those were bank-led processes,” Gray told the same FT conference, rejecting “100 per cent” the “idea that this was a canary in the coal mine” or a systemic problem.

Banks and private capital firms have been at odds in recent years as businesses have increasingly turned to private credit for their borrowing needs. Traditional lenders have labelled the shift regulatory arbitrage and complained that non-bank financial institutions are too lightly regulated.

“In some of these more levered credits, there’s been a willingness to cut corners,” Rowan told the Financial Times Private Capital Summit in London.

Meanwhile, the IMF on Tuesday called for regulators to focus on bank exposure to the sector, noting that “banks are increasingly lending to private credit funds because these loans often deliver higher returns on equity than traditional commercial and industrial lending”.

So, just how many more cockroaches are there?

As we concluded last week, this is just the start, and once the public euphoria with the AI bubble - which is soaking up all attention like the world's biggest mushroom - finally fades, watch out below as Second, Third, Fourth and so on instance of First Brands, shows just how hollow the current market all time high truly is.

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 11:05

Brink Of A "Humanitarian Disaster": 800 Migrant Families Set To Be Stranded In Pennsylvania Town Amid Factory Closure

Zero Hedge -

Brink Of A "Humanitarian Disaster": 800 Migrant Families Set To Be Stranded In Pennsylvania Town Amid Factory Closure

Before corporate media ever descended on the small Appalachia town of Charleroi, Pennsylvania, ZeroHedge had boots on the ground in the late summer of 2024, uncovering a network of labor mules, migrant workers (both legal and illegal), and a web of corruption and exploitation of poor migrants enabled by the Biden-Harris regime's open-border and lax immigration policies to replace native workers.

Many of these migrants were employed by a meatpacking plant known as Fourth Street Barbecue, also operating under the name Fourth Street Foods. They displaced native-born workers, drained local resources, and wired their paychecks overseas to third-world countries. The result: another small town gutted in real time by globalist policies for short-term profits. 

For the mainstream, Charleroi hit the radar in late September 2024, when President Trump warned that the small Pennsylvania town had been swamped by Haitians, with some reports suggesting the population was more than 50% Haitian, many of whom were employed at local factories, including the meatpacking plant. 

Last fall, at a Trump rally, a trucker from Charleroi warned the immigration policies the Biden-Harris regime pushed were "nation-killing"... 

Now, the consequences of open-border policies and lax immigration policies that enabled migrants to be funneled into the small town could be set to unleash what some folks at the local level are calling a "humanitarian disaster" in the making. This is because Fourth Street Barbecue is planning to shut down its plants at the end of the month after defaulting on more than $80 million in loans, according to local media outlet WTAE.

The plant's closure means that most of its workers, Haitian migrants under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), will soon be jobless and, once their TPS protections expire, reclassified as illegal. Imagine that - half a town full of illegals.

Related: 

Local immigration attorney Joseph Murphy warned about the humanitarian disaster that's about to unfold in the small town: 

"It's, among other things, just a plain old humanitarian disaster right here. Eight hundred families just like that, turned off, no legal status, no ability to work, thousands of miles from home in some foreign city in western Pennsylvania in February. This is just not a pretty picture." 

To the local politicians, nonprofits, churches, and everyone else involved in the funneling of migrants into Charleroi: Was it worth destroying a small town for short-term gain? Residents did not vote for Haitians to replace them at factories nor drive up housing costs. While the Haitians created an artificial revival of the small town, at the local pizza shop and second-hand shops, most of the paycheck money was sent overseas via a network of Western Unions in the town.

Charleroi was strip-mined, left with no long-term investment. Local politicians, companies, churches, and nonprofits that enabled this labor scheme chased short-term profits - or maybe even state and federal grants to support migrants - instead of building a sustainable community.

Trump adminstration needs to be ahead of the curve and correctly blame Democrats and their failed policies for this incoming mess. 

*  *  *

Click pic, buy knife, rock on. Free shipping above $500, so maybe grab a couple. Our personal favorite.

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 10:45

Bitdeer Surges 20% After Announcing Expansion Into AI Data Centers

Zero Hedge -

Bitdeer Surges 20% After Announcing Expansion Into AI Data Centers

As we noted several months ago, one of the key catalysts behind bitcoin miners is their potential conversion into AI data centers. Today, we are seeing just that...

Bitdeer Technologies Group’s shares are up almost 20% in premarket trading after the Bitcoin miner released its September production update and revealed a major strategic expansion into artificial intelligence data centers.

The company mined 452 Bitcoin during the month, a 20.5% increase from August, while its proprietary hashrate reached 35 exahashes per second (EH/s), with a goal of hitting 40 EH/s by the end of October. Bitdeer’s “Neo Cloud” business, which focuses on GPU and AI cloud services, reached $8 million in annual recurring revenue in September, with most of its GPUs already subscribed.

The company’s broader pivot into AI infrastructure is centered around converting several of its large-scale mining sites into data centers. Its Clarington, Ohio facility, designed with 570 MW of potential power capacity, will transition from Bitcoin mining to an AI data center. The site is expected to have power available by the third quarter of 2026 and become operational in the first half of 2027. Other conversions are planned at its Tydal Phase 2 site in Norway (175 MW), scheduled for completion by late 2026, and its 13 MW Wenatchee site in Washington State. In a best-case scenario, Bitdeer projects that its AI facilities could reach an annualized revenue run rate exceeding $2 billion by the end of 2026.

To support this shift, Bitdeer is securing procurement agreements for Nvidia’s next-generation GB300 and B300 systems. The company also continues to advance its mining hardware, recently launching the SEALMINER A3 series and testing its next-generation SEAL04 chip, which aims for sub-10 J/TH efficiency. Bitdeer now operates or is developing roughly 3 GW of total global power capacity across multiple sites in the U.S., Norway, Bhutan, and elsewhere.

Investors responded positively to the company’s dual-track strategy—expanding Bitcoin mining capacity while building out an AI-oriented infrastructure business. However, analysts caution that the shift from crypto mining to AI data centers is highly capital-intensive and dependent on execution, chip procurement, and energy availability. If successful, Bitdeer could transform from a traditional Bitcoin miner into a vertically integrated computing infrastructure company.

Matt Kong, Chief Business Officer at Bitdeer, said: "In September, we allowed our LOI with our development partner to expire. While we remain free to collaborate with this partner in the future, we have chosen to significantly expand our direct role in the HPC/AI data center market. Our expanded initiatives include negotiating directly with potential tenants, building relationships with EPCs specializing in data centers, developing proprietary AI data centers and hiring in-house experts across multiple AI data center disciplines."

He continued: "In parallel, we are accelerating the development of additional sites for HPC/AI data centers at our Clarington, Tydal, and Wenatchee sites. This push is driven by a marked increase in inbound interest in our power assets, which has become a strong catalyst for expanding our efforts."

“Our ASICs and self-mining operational team continued to execute. In September, our first SEAL04 chip tape out was completed and initial testing demonstrates significant efficiency improvements compared to existing chips. Further, we successfully launched our SEALMINER A3 series with our Pro versions boasting a power efficiency of 12.5 J/TH. Mass production began in September and initial shipments are expected in October. In addition, our self-mining hashrate grew to 35 EH/s and remain on track to achieve 40 EH/s by end of October. Over the coming quarters, we will continue expanding our SEALMINER fleet into our near-term global power capacity, putting us on track to become one of the largest vertically integrated miners in the world.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 10:00

DOGE Says $5.8 Billion Saved From 100 Terminated Federal Contracts

Zero Hedge -

DOGE Says $5.8 Billion Saved From 100 Terminated Federal Contracts

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced this past week that more than 100 federal contracts have been terminated with a value of nearly $6 billion.

Multiple agencies “terminated and descoped 108 wasteful contracts” that have a ceiling value of $5.8 billion and resulted in savings of $397 million,” DOGE wrote in an Oct. 10 post on X.

That includes a $3.1 million State Department contract titled, “Tanzania National Coordination Office Development,” it said, and a $46,500 U.S. Agency for Global Media lease for “office space for the Voice of America East Asia and Pacific Service.”

Other terminated items include a $5.8 million Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) contract for “organizational development, executive coaching, and leadership training” and a $44 million State Department contract for “professional services in Doha, Qatar.”

After being established by President Donald Trump on his first day in office, DOGE has slashed around $214 billion in estimated savings, or around $1,329.19 per taxpayer, according to an Oct. 4 update.

So far, 13,440 contract terminations totaling approximately $61 billion, 15,887 grant terminations worth around $49 billion, and 264 lease terminations totaling around $113 million have been posted on DOGE’s website.

In a Jan. 20 order, Trump reorganized the former U.S. Digital Service and renamed it the Department of Government Efficiency. He directed the heads of federal agencies to allow DOGE staffers to have “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.”

Trump signed another order in February directing the heads of agencies to “review all existing covered contracts and grants and, where appropriate and consistent with applicable law, terminate or modify ” contracts to reduce federal spending and slash fraud, waste, and abuse.

Before his departure in late May, former special government employee and Trump adviser Elon Musk had served as a leader of DOGE and the administration’s efforts to reduce federal spending.

While the number of layoffs is unclear, a group called the Partnership for Public Service says that more than 201,000 federal employees have left the government as of Sept. 23.

Earlier in the year, the Trump administration also had offered to pay federal workers who do not want to return to offices the option of a “deferred resignation,” meaning they would agree to resign but get paid through Sept. 30.

Efforts to lay off more employees, known as reductions-in-force, are ongoing in the midst of a nearly two-week-long government shutdown that started Oct. 1, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought confirmed this past week. Court papers that were later submitted by the administration said that around 4,100 workers across several agencies received layoff notices.

A memo released by the budget office stated that for federal programs that would have a funding lapse during a government shutdown, “such programs are no longer statutorily required to be carried out.”

It also directed all federal agencies to submit reduction-in-force plans to the budget office for review.

Tyler Durden Wed, 10/15/2025 - 09:45

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