Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

I think I’ve identified the four horsemen of the next stock market apocalypse — each one manageable in isolation, but collectively large enough to reshape a financial system priced for perfection.

Subprime auto, commercial real estate, private credit, and crypto all scratch me where I itch when thinking about precarious pockets of today’s stock market.

None of these areas is as systemically concentrated as subprime mortgages were before 2008, but each contains hidden leverage, murky valuations, and exposures lurking in balance sheets that investors prefer not to scrutinize until they absolutely have to — sometimes done by a bankruptcy court.

When assets across multiple pockets of the market are simultaneously stressed — and markets are trading at historic highs — even smaller shocks can cascade.

The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse painting by George Lightfoot

The strains showing up in today’s subprime auto market feel like a replay of the early stages of the 2008 crisis — where deterioration was obvious in the underlying data but somehow absent from valuations. This was the scene in The Big Short where the defaults are rampant, but the price of their swaps hasn’t been marked appropriately.

It’s amazing how well assets perform when you simply refuse to value them. And when major banks are complicit in pumping them…

Bloomberg recently noted that more than 1.7 million cars were repossessed in 2024, the most since the post-crisis period. That’s more than a 40% jump from 2022, driven by the end of pandemic forbearance, persistent inflation, and sharply higher interest rates. A typical monthly payment now sits in the mid-$700s (this is almost my mortgage payment on my studio apartment in Philadelphia), and many subprime borrowers are paying rates above 10%. What used to be a manageable necessity has become a financial wedge.

Among borrowers with weaker credit, more than 6% are over two months behind — worse than during prior recessions — and nearly one in ten is sliding into default. People generally sacrifice everything else other than their house before they lose their cars. When transportation — the thing that gets you to work and keeps life functioning — becomes unaffordable, that’s not a marginal data point. That’s financial strain turning into lifestyle disruption.

The pressures extend well beyond driveways and impound lots. Consumer credit balances are at record highs, and delinquencies are trending up. Meanwhile, a parallel stress is building in commercial real estate. Office buildings financed under pre-COVID occupancy assumptions now face empty floors and refinancing costs that defy the original business plans. Declining property values remain largely unacknowledged on lender balance sheets, but everyone in the system knows the math is getting worse.

A recent report from the Financial Stability Board highlighted why this is more than just a property-market story. Non-bank real estate investors — REITs and private funds — often rely on short-term funding to finance long-duration assets, creating run-risk if investors demand liquidity. Leverage is high across portions of the sector, and valuations are opaque because assets don’t trade frequently. When banks respond by rolling loans forward to avoid recognizing losses, it doesn’t make the losses disappear — it just delays the moment the world has to notice them.

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With more than $5,000,000,000,000 of U.S. bank exposure tied to commercial property through direct loans, securities holdings, credit lines, and developer financing, the risk doesn’t sit in one corner — it interlocks throughout the system.

And all four of these stress points — autos, CRE, private credit, and crypto — disproportionately sit on or flow through U.S. regional banks. I’ve already written about ties like the ones between Carvana and Ally Bank. Smaller and midsize banks have historically been key lenders to offices, apartments, and other income-producing properties, leaving a larger portion of their balance sheets tied to property performance than the biggest national institutions.

With valuations under pressure and a wave of loan maturities approaching by 2026, according to Cohen & Steers, lenders will likely face rising delinquencies and the need to boost reserves—especially where office loans or recently underwritten, higher-leverage deals are concentrated.

That could leave these banks vulnerable as fundamentals worsen. The result could very well look like a slow-motion replay of 2023’s bank failures: liquidity strains, forced mergers, and emergency weekend interventions. The ultimate outcome seems pre-scripted — a cycle where stress first hits regionals and ends, once again, with a federal backstop and the largest banks adding a new set of subsidiaries to their collection. One can already imagine JPMorgan’s future earnings calls: “We’re pleased to welcome ten more institutions into the JPMorgan Chase family.”

To be clear, subprime auto and CRE are smaller exposures than the subprime housing market was pre-2008. On their own, they wouldn’t be expected to topple the system. But in today’s market, they aren’t on their own. Add in the trillions of dollars of “no-bid” air embedded in thin-liquidity crypto markets where punters play with 25x leverage routinely, plus another trillion or more in private credit that has yet to face a true downturn, and suddenly you could have enough fragility to send shockwaves through an equity market priced for perfection. By almost any valuation metric — price to earnings, cash flow, sales, enterprise value — broad asset prices sit near or at all-time highs, quietly assuming that everything will keep going right.

It’s hard not to see the parallels to the run-up to the financial crisis, when losses were visible everywhere except in official marks. We’ve reached that eerie pause where risks are acknowledged in theory but not reflected in pricing. The eye of the (shit) storm. Volatility measures imply serenity. The underlying data points to something very different.

The playbook hasn’t changed much since 2008: delay the markdowns, hope the cycle bails you out, and treat denial as a risk-management strategy. But the stresses building in auto lending, consumer credit, commercial real estate, crypto, and private credit suggest we are once again in the quiet center of the storm — the part where the outcomes are predictable, but the recognition hasn’t yet hit the tape.

The calm feels less like stability and more like suspense, as it did when I saw Covid happening before the market crashed. I’ve found suspense eventually gives way to resolution, but what do I know?

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.

This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions. All positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. If you see numbers and calculations of any sort, assume they are wrong and double check them. I failed Algebra in 8th grade and topped off my high school math accolades by getting a D- in remedial Calculus my senior year, before becoming an English major in college so I could bullshit my way through things easier.

The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

Consumer products company Kimberly-Clark Corporation announced it will acquire Tylenol maker Kenvue in a cash-and-stock transaction valued at nearly $49 billion, marking one of the largest consumer health mergers in history. 

Kimberly-Clark revealed in a press release that the deal values Kenvue at 14.3x its latest twelve months (LTM) adjusted EBITDA. In return, Kenvue shareholders will receive $3.50 in cash and .14625 Kimberly-Clark shares per Kenvue share, for a total of about $ 21.01 per share. The deal is valued at $48.7 billion. 

The deal is expected to close in 2H 2026. Upon completion, Kimberly-Clark shareholders will own 54% of the combined company, while Kenvue shareholders will own 46%. Both boards have unanimously approved the acquisition. JPMorgan Chase is providing committed financing for the deal. 

The merger unites two mega consumer-product giants, creating a global health and wellness powerhouse with top brands, including Kleenex, Huggies, Tylenol, Neutrogena, Listerine, and Band-Aid, that reach consumers worldwide. 

Here’s the justification for the merger:

• Combines Kimberly-Clark’s commercial execution and digital marketing capabilities with Kenvue’s science-backed innovation and healthcare professional networks.

• Expands global footprint across key growth categories in personal care and health.

• Enhanced R&D and quality investments to accelerate product innovation and address evolving consumer health needs.

• Kimberly-Clark CEO Mike Hsu will continue leading the merged company, supported by senior executives from both firms.

Based on Kimberly-Clark’s current projections, the merger would generate 2025 annual net revenues of about $32 billion and adjusted EBITDA of about $7 billion. 

All sounds great, but this comes at a time when Tylenol faces political scrutiny via the Trump administration, warning mothers to avoid giving their newborns acetaminophen.

Related:

• “Don’t Take It”: Trump Warns Pregnant Women To Avoid Tylenol Over Autism Concerns

• Tylenol Manufacturer Resists Proposed Label Changes

In markets, Kimberly-Clark shares tumbled 15%, while Kenvue shares jumped 20%. 

The question now is whether government regulators will approve the deal, especially given President Trump’s recent comments surrounding Tylenol.

Russia says it is closely monitoring the situation in Venezuela at a moment of unprecedented build-up of military assets threatening the country which possesses the world’s largest crude oil reserves.

Responding to a weekend Washington Post report saying that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has requested military assistance from Moscow, especially missiles and radars, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said simply: “We are closely monitoring the situation in Venezuela.”

WaPo has indicated that the American military build-up in the southern Caribbean includes 10,000 soldiers and 6,000 sailors, making the total force posture a whopping 16,000 troops.

The publication describes, “U.S. forces in the Caribbean include eight Navy warships, a special operations vessel and a nuclear-powered attack submarine. When the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford arrives in the Caribbean next week, it will bring with it three more warships and more than 4,000 additional troops.”

Prior to the carrier group’s arrival, these are the warships currently patrolling waters near Venezuela:

• USS Iwo Jima
• USS San Antonio
• USS Stockdale
• USS Jason Dunham
• USS Gravely
• USS Lake Erie
• USS Wichita
• USS Gettysburg

It is not known whether Moscow is actually following through in any way based on Maduro’s urgent request – but any extra assistance is likely too little, too late at this point – as it would require significant logistics at a moment Caracas is under direct threat by the Pentagon.

Island-nations off Venezuela have been some large Air Force toys dropped on them in the last days and weeks…

The U.S. Air Force deployed an AN/TPS-75 tactical air defense radar late last month at Henry E. Rohlsen Airport on St. Croix, roughly 450 miles north of Venezuela. The radar offers 240 NM coverage and supports the Theater Air Control System with azimuth, range, height, and IFF… pic.twitter.com/K4KeHRmmVB

— OSINTWarfare (@OSINTWarfare) November 2, 2025

TASS reviews of Moscow’s defense ties with the Maduro government, “On October 21, the Russian State Duma ratified the strategic partnership and cooperation treaty between Russia and Venezuela.”

The report says further, “According to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, this ratification is very important given the unprecedented forceful pressure, including direct military pressure, that the US is exerting on Venezuela.”

And Trump might waste these expensive Tomahawks on regime change in a Third World country…why?

#Venezuela: The arrival of the Ford Carrier Strike Group puts the number of available Tomahawks near 200–comparable to those seen in other conflicts of limited duration and scope.

BLUF: Strikes on the @NicolasMaduro regime could come at any moment.

Source: @CSISDefense pic.twitter.com/MDZ6iTvt6S

— Ryan Berg, PhD (@RyanBergPhD) November 1, 2025

But with US sanctions on, and prior examples of interdictions on the high seas, even if Russia or China wanted to quickly assist Maduro as he’s under the US bullseye it could prove logistically impossible.

And the reality is that Moscow needs all the missiles in its arsenal as it continues facing down NATO and amid the grinding ‘special military operation’ inside Ukraine.

#Venezuela: The USS Gerald Ford is steaming toward the Caribbean. “The competition for these vessels is tremendous,” I told the @washingtonpost. Once the Ford arrives in the Caribbean, “It’s going to start a clock ticking” on strikes–use it or lose it.👇https://t.co/IhrSyf6KVG

— Ryan Berg, PhD (@RyanBergPhD) November 2, 2025

Russia is also unlikely to risk getting entangled in a new proxy conflict in America’s own backyard, and again with logistical lines that would likely prove a problem, especially now as the US Navy has Venezuela effectively blockaded.

By Joseph Trevithick of The War Zone

Anduril’s YFQ-44A ‘fighter drone’ prototype has now made its maiden flight. The YFQ-44A is one of two designs currently being developed under the first phase, or Increment 1, of the U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. The other is General Atomics’ YFQ-42A, which took to the skies for the first time earlier this year.

A TWZ reader has shared pictures with us of the YFQ-44A in flight, which were taken earlier today at Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, California. The drone was also seen accompanied by two L-29 Delfin trainer jets acting as chase planes. We have reached out to Anduril for more information.

Additional imagery of the YFQ-44A in flight is now beginning to circulate online.

Last year, the Air Force announced that it trimmed back the field of prospective Increment 1 CCA designs to the proposals from Anduril and General Atomics. However, Fury’s story traces back to the late 2010s and an aggressor drone concept from a company called Blue Force Technologies, which Anduril acquired in 2023, as you can read about in extensive detail in this past War Zone feature.

“This marks another major milestone for the CCA program, now with two new uncrewed fighter aircraft going from concept to flight in less than 2 years,” the Air Force has now said in a press release confirming the YFQ-44A’s first flight. “This flight testing expands the program’s knowledge base on flight performance, autonomous behaviors, and mission system integration. By advancing multiple designs in parallel, the Air Force is gaining broader insights and refining how uncrewed aircraft will complement crewed fifth-and sixth-generation platforms in future mission environments.”

“This milestone demonstrates how competition drives innovation and accelerates delivery,” Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink said in a statement. “These flights are giving us the hard data we need to shape requirements, reduce risk, and ensure the CCA program delivers combat capability on a pace and scale that keeps us ahead of the threat.”

Anduril and the Air Force had previously declined to provide a hard timeline for when the YFQ-44A would make its first flight.

“We have multiple vehicles at our test facility in ground testing right now, and we’re in the final stages before first flight,” Diem Salmon, Anduril’s Vice President of Air Dominance and Strike, had told TWZ and others at the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2025 Air, Space, and Cyber Conference back in September. “All in all, we’re still well ahead of the program schedule in terms of getting YFQ-44A into the air. [We] feel really confident in our ability to do so and still feel really good about the program schedule.”

At that time, Salmon, as well as Jason Levin, Anduril’s Senior Vice President of Engineering for Air Dominance and Strike, offered additional details about the plans for Fury’s first flight, including the level of autonomy the company was hoping to demonstrate, which was a key schedule driver. You can read more about that here.

“It was not a race to get to first flight as fast as humanly possible. It was, how do we field this really advanced and novel capability as fast as we can,” Salmon had said. “And with that comes the recognition that the autonomy is the hard part here, and so that’s the thing that you actually need to burn down from a technical development, testing, and risk perspective. And so that’s how we’ve approached our program.”

Secretary of the Air Force Meink had also told TWZ and others at a separate roundtable at the Air, Space, and Cyber Conference that his service was hoping to see the YFQ-44A fly by the middle of October. In a keynote address at the event, now-retired Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin described Fury’s first flight as “imminent,” as well.

“My engineers tell me that if we push the button … [the drone] will take off, it’ll fly around, and it’ll come back home,” Anduril founder Palmer Luckey had also told reporters earlier this month, according to Breaking Defense. “The Air Force is going through a process of evaluation that is very, very reasonable, I think.”

“Obviously, now the problem is we’re into the shutdown,” Luckey added at that time. “Certainly … a lot of stuff stops moving.”

The U.S. federal government remains in a shutdown. Efforts have been made to find continued funding for various priority efforts, especially within the U.S. military.

With the YFQ-42A and the YFQ-44A now flying, “developmental flight activities continue across both vendor and government test locations, including Edwards Air Force Base [AFB], where envelope expansion and integration work will inform future experimentation,” according to the Air Force’s press release today. “The Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit (EOU), located at Nellis AFB, will be instrumental in evaluating operational concepts as the program transitions from testing to fielding substantial operational capability for Increment 1 before the end of the decade.”

How many Increment 1 CCAs the Air Force ultimately plans to acquire is not entirely clear. Air Force officials have said previously that between 100 and 150 drones could be ordered under the program’s first phase. It also remains to be seen whether the service buys YFQ-42As, YFQ-44As, or a mix of both.

“CCA is part of the Next Generation Air Dominance Family of Systems and leverages the Department’s Government Reference Architectures—enabling platform-agnostic autonomy development, streamlined integration across vendor systems, and more agile capability updates over time,” the Air Force’s release also noted. “The architecture is built to integrate with Allied and Joint partners, offering common autonomy and mission system standards that support seamless interoperability and teaming across Services and coalition forces.”

There are still plans for at least one more incremental CCA developmental cycle, the requirements for which have yet to be publicly disclosed. However, the submissions for Increment 2 are already expected to be significantly different from the ones for Increment 1. in September, Lockheed Martin unveiled a new CCA-type drone, called Vectis, which the company suggested could be proposed for Increment 2. This week, Aviation Week also disclosed the existence of a new drone design from Northrop Grumman subsidiary Scaled Composites, currently referred to just as Project Lotus, which that outlet described in terms of its similarities to Vectis.

Increment 2 has also long been expected to involve foreign participation. Earlier this month, authorities in the Netherlands notably announced they had signed the letter of intent about joining the CCA program.

The Air Force’s CCA effort is also directly intertwined with similar efforts underway within the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Navy. The Air Force still has many general questions to answer about how its future CCA fleets, whatever they are comprised of, will be deployed, launched, recovered, supported, and otherwise operated, not to mention employed tactically.

As such, in addition to being an important milestone in Fury’s development, the YFQ-44A’s first flight is also another step forward for the Air Force’s larger CCA plans.

Update:

Anduril has now put out its own release regarding the YFQ-44A’s first flight.

YFQ-44A took flight today. Anduril has launched a new age of airpower with the push of a button.

From clean-sheet design to one-click takeoff in 556 days. pic.twitter.com/hUxIZCP8Zz

— Anduril Industries (@anduriltech) October 31, 2025

“Flight testing is where we prove to ourselves, to the Air Force, to our allies, and to our adversaries that these proclamations about game-changing technology go beyond words. They’re real, and they are taking to the skies today,” Jason Levin, Senior Vice President of Engineering for Air Dominance and Strike at Anduril, writes. “The flight testing process is where we prove that our aircraft meets the mark in terms of speed, maneuverability, autonomy, stealth, range, weapons systems integration, and more. As YFQ-44A climbs higher, we’re proving that it doesn’t merely look like a fighter, but that it performs like one.”

“Flight testing for the CCA program is also about more than simply proving raw fighter performance in a vacuum. The real step change that autonomy is driving is enabling a team of robotic aircraft to collaborate to accomplish mission objectives,” he adds. We designed YFQ-44A for a specific Air Force mission: to enhance survivability, lethality, and mission effectiveness by teaming with crewed fighter aircraft or operating independently. Through flight testing, Anduril and the Air Force are developing those collaborative, manned-unmanned teaming concepts and tactics that will inform how we integrate, fight with, and sustain truly autonomous aircraft.”

Anduril’s release also includes details about the production plans for the YFQ-44A, which tie into a “hyperscale” production facility, called Arsenal-1, that the company is now building in Ohio.

“To achieve the scale we need at the speed that the threat demands, we are building and testing a new type of production system for YFQ-44A. Through the employment of a common software backbone called ArsenalOS, our production system multiplies the effects of the thousands of design-for-manufacturing decisions made during the development of YFQ-44A,” according to Levin. “That system is underpinned by a manufacturing philosophy focused on simple, mature, and low-risk production technologies, rather than relying on manufacturing miracles. YFQ-44A will be produced at rate by a broad labor pool, commoditized supply chain, and industry-standard manufacturing processes.”

“YFQ-44A is streaking through the skies, but its next chapter will be written on the factory floors of America’s heartland. Our investment in this aircraft is the driving force behind Arsenal-1, the 5 million square foot production facility that we’re building in Columbus, Ohio,” he adds. “YFQ-44A will be the first program to move into the factory when its doors open, and we are on track to begin production of prototype CCA at Arsenal-1 in the first half of 2026.”

“We’re not waiting for Arsenal-1 to start building, though. In the meantime, we have already more than doubled our manufacturing speed for YFQ-44A by rapidly optimizing our processes and workflows, and by making hundreds of tweaks to the design of the aircraft to further enhance producibility,” Levin also notes. “Making it this far has required herculean investments from the combined Anduril-USAF team measured in time and money.”

* * * 

During a press call today, Anduril’s Jason Levin provided TWZ and other outlets with additional information about today’s first flight and future testing plans. The company has so far declined to say how long the YFQ-44A’s first flight lasted or provide other, more specific details about what it entailed.

“I don’t think I can say any specifics, but the team is very excited,” Levin said in response to a question about whether the first flight went as planned. He did say that the YFQ-44A flew today with an Anduril flight autonomy mission package, but declined to speak to what additional mission autonomy capabilities might be integrated into the drone in future test flights.

pic.twitter.com/W65ir6NRSS

— Anduril Industries (@anduriltech) October 31, 2025

“I think it’s kind of the standard buildup that you would have in in in aviation. So I think it’s just checking out subsystems, continue to burn down risk, continue to prove that systems are flight worthy and things are working as expected, matching up the simulation, and then just to continue to start to push the envelope,” he added when asked about potential hurdles to further expanding Fury’s flight envelope. “So, I don’t see any specific risk. We’ve kind of designed Fury to be a simple, low-risk, producible system on purpose, so that we didn’t have to clear any huge hurdles while progressing through the flight test program.”

“We still have a lot to do. So, we’ve shown the airplane works. We’ve shown the autonomy works. The software brain that powers it works. We have a lot to do in terms of proving out the speed, maneuverability, autonomy, stealth, weapon systems integration, and more. And that’s when we’re going to start developing the tactics with experimentation with the Air Force,” he also said. “We’ve already begun integrating weapons with YFQ-44A, and we’ll execute our first live shot next year. And then over the next year, we’ll execute multi-ship mission autonomy, deploy weapons from YFQ-44A, fly in conjunction with crewed fighters, and operate outside of test locations.”

“I can’t talk to the specific build-up to firing a missile, but you can kind of imagine it’s not going to be too dissimilar from any aircraft doing a first shot. So we’re just going to build up in terms of flying, integrating systems, and testing them out,” he added when asked to elaborate on the weapon testing plans. “We have a test planning collaboration with the Air Force for things like that.”

It also gives us the hard data we need to shape requirements, reduce risk, and ensure the CCA program delivers combat capability on a pace and scale that keeps us ahead of the threat (2/2). https://t.co/qoCd9PY3do

— Office of the Secretary of the Air Force (@SecAFOfficial) October 31, 2025

He offered a similar response when asked about the plans for multi-ship flight testing, which is set to be conducted in coordination with crewed fighters.

“We have a flight test kind of procedure that I think is going to move quite rapidly, because we’ve built out a lot of the autonomy, so we can start hitting the other test points and showing the capability of the aircraft much quicker,” Levin said, speaking more generally. “And so we feel confident that’ll get us pretty quickly into the live shot, multi-ship autonomous flight, and then autonomous flight with crewed aircraft.”

“We’ve [got] currently multiple Fury fully-built aircraft in testing, as well as multiple aircraft in various stages of the manufacturing process,” he also noted. Anduril had previously disclosed this at the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2025 Air, Space, and Cyber Conference in September.

“Arsenal-1, it is going to open next year, and it can support the increment one demand that the U.S. Air Force has for CCA,” he added. “And so we’re scaling up that facility to build hundreds of aircraft.”

“>

Gas prices are falling across much of the United States, but Seattle drivers are still paying a premium, according to Fox 13 Seattle.

The national average for a gallon of gas is $3.066. In Washington state, the average jumps to $4.388 per gallon. In the Seattle–Bellevue–Everett metro area, the price is $4.648 per gallon, and in King County it reaches $4.732 per gallon.

AAA says some Seattleites are paying as much as 53% above the U.S. norm for gasoline.

Fox writes that the national average continues a slow decline, heading toward the $3-a-gallon mark for the first time in nearly four years. Lower demand, cheaper crude oil, and the switch to less-expensive winter-blend gasoline are helping drive that trend. A year ago, the national average was $3.163 per gallon, while Washington’s statewide average was $4.068 — a gap of just 32 cents that has now widened dramatically.

In other words: while the gasoline might be a little cheaper soon for some, in Seattle the pain at the pump is still real — and the cost of owning a home here keeps climbing or at best holding steady high.

Gas prices in Seattle are far higher than the national average mainly because Washington imposes some of the highest fuel taxes and climate-related fees in the country.

The state’s carbon pricing policy increases the cost per gallon before it ever reaches a pump. Seattle is also geographically distant from major oil production regions and relies on a limited number of local refineries and tanker deliveries, meaning there’s less competition and higher transportation and production costs.

On top of that, the region’s overall cost of doing business is elevated, with pricier labor, logistics, and real estate all filtering into what drivers pay. Even when national fuel prices drop, these structural factors keep Seattle’s gas among the most expensive in the U.S., leaving local motorists paying a premium simply to stay on the road.

Via Thehub.ca,

Welcome immigrants. Many, but not too many. Mostly educated and skilled. Always legal.

That is the answer. Or at least a short version of an answer. What’s the question? I’m coming to that.

For decades, Canada enjoyed all-party, across-the-spectrum support for immigration. The arrival of new people at consistently higher rates than in Western Europe or the United States did not drive political polarization. This country took in far more immigrants than America relative to the size of its population, and had been doing so for decades, without signs of backlash. Instead of a Left-Right clash on immigration, there was a boring all-party consensus.

When Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency for the first time, visceral anger over immigration was central to his campaign. Perhaps his success with so many voters should not have surprised. By 2016, the share of the American population born outside the country was 13.5 percent, the highest level in more than a century. Maybe a backlash was inevitable.

In Canada, however, it has been well over a century since immigrants were that low a share of the population. In 2016, immigrants were 22 percent of Canadians and rising. That was higher than the U.S. at any time since the Civil War.

Yet in Canada in the mid-2010s, there wasn’t much evidence of a groundswell of popular opposition to immigration, nor were there signs of a political crackup over the issue. Between the Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, there hadn’t been much daylight on immigration—not in the shared positive attitude toward legal immigration, nor in their common concern to limit illegal and irregular immigration, nor in the actual numbers of immigrants accepted each year. Governments of different ideological stripes struck roughly the same course for a quarter of a century. The broad strokes of Canadian immigration policy did not whipsaw when the party in power changed.

Immigration sparked conflict in other lands, but something about this nation, or how it did immigration, had delivered a different outcome.

From the start of the century until the early 2020s, the statement “there is too much immigration” was agreed with by only around a third of Canadians, versus two-thirds in disagreement.

A 2018 Pew poll found that 68 percent of Canadians said that immigrants “make our country stronger”—the highest level in the developed world. Just 27 percent said that immigrants “are a burden”—the lowest level in the developed world.

A 2019 Gallup survey found that Canada had the world’s most welcoming and positive attitude toward immigrants. In the U.S., the survey found support for immigration declined with age; in Canada, Gallup found no differences by age group. The most pro-immigration Americans were those in their teens and twenties, but even they were not as pro-immigration as Canadian seniors.

A country that tends to humblebrag about its modest successes had a not-so modest success. The ultimate mark of achievement was that Canadians were not preoccupied with immigration. Public disinterest was a sign of public trust. The subject was usually as newsworthy as functioning plumbing.

Until, that is, everything changed.

The italicized credo that I opened with is the short answer to this question: What is the recipe for a successful immigration system?

Or to flesh it out a bit more: What is the recipe for an immigration system that is likely to deliver long-term and widely shared economic benefits to the receiving country; offers immigrants good odds of success; is genuinely welcoming; is seen as fair and meritocratic; is likely to produce more benefits than costs; builds solidarity and citizenship between native-born and newcomers; and is likely to earn a high level of public acceptance?

Read the rest here…

Just as US-Russia talks related to Ukraine have recently hit a stoppage and potential breaking point – with the cancelation of the Budapest summit – Russia has been significantly upping its missile and drone strikes across Ukraine.

The fact that Ukraine’s energy grid is long struggling to keep up with power demand, also as vital infrastructure keeps getting pummeled amid rolling blackouts, means the country is in for a very tough winter. Fresh data demonstrates that October represented a high point in terms of the rate of Russian missile attacks on Ukraine.

“Russia fired more missiles at Ukraine in October than in any month since at least the start of 2023, an AFP analysis of Ukrainian data showed,” the outlet has found.

That record shows that “Russia’s army fired 270 missiles in October, up 46% on the previous month, according to an AFP analysis of daily data published by Ukraine’s air force.”

The Ukrainian government had only started publishing detailed statistics of these strikes at the beginning of 2023, and 270 strikes marks the highest-one month tally since.

President Zelensky has commented, “Russia’s task is to create chaos and apply psychological pressure on the population through strikes on energy facilities and railways.”

As for drone attacks, this number is in the thousands – with many of these likely being decoy drones, but also highly destructive suicide drones which often come in waves, overwhelming Ukraine’s air defenses.

“Russia also fired 5,298 long-range drones at Ukraine in October, the same data showed, down by around six percent on the number it fired in September but still close to record highs,” AFP found.

The number of Ukrainian drones sent on Russian territory is also likely in the thousands. These have actually been highly effective in damaging dozens of Russian oil refineries and defense sector factories in the last several months – with some of the same oil sites having been hit more than once.

More attacks into the weekend…

BREAKING:

Major blackouts in the suburbs of Moscow after Ukraine largest one of the largest drone swarm attack of this war against Russian energy infrastructure in thr Moscow region pic.twitter.com/MeWz1iwjeX

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 31, 2025

Kiev’s strategy is to attempt to cripple Putin’s military machine by impacting cash flow to the defense ministry via oil exports – though so far this has appeared limited in its effect, also as Moscow keeps finding ways to also circumvent Western sanctions.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe 

Automotive giant Stellantis is expanding its U.S. operations. Any sign of an investment turnaround in Germany, which Chancellor Friedrich Merz touted just weeks ago, is nowhere to be seen.

Investment Freeze at Stellantis – in Germany at Least 

The European carmaker, home to brands like Opel, Peugeot, and Citroën, is turning away from its European sites. On Monday, Stellantis announced it will invest $13 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, increasing American production by 50%. The expansion will create 5,000 new jobs across plants in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana.

The concrete impact on German production remains unclear. Stellantis offered no comments on potential layoffs, but it’s safe to assume significant parts of production will shift to the U.S. in the coming years. High energy costs and U.S. tariffs likely influenced this decision.

CEO Antonio Filosa emphasized that this largest investment in company history will create American jobs and systematically expand U.S. manufacturing. The U.S. will now be Stellantis’ top priority.

Germany Avoided 

Stellantis’ damning verdict, especially for its German production sites, is just the tip of the iceberg in an accelerated capital flight from Germany. Major German automakers are increasingly relocating production abroad: BMW to Debrecen, Hungary—and Mercedes-Benz to Kecskemét, Hungary.

Industry is abandoning Germany. The manufacture of energy-intensive products, electrical engineering, machinery, and raw materials is no longer profitable under current conditions. It seems almost comical—if it weren’t so tragic—when Minister of Economic Affairs Katherina Reiche, noting Germany’s lack of competitiveness, forms a task force to develop strategies out of the crisis.

A quick ten-second search on „Grok“ could illuminate the issues—the problems are already well known.

The Green Deal Remains the Golden Calf 

Meanwhile, Chancellor Merz made clear during the EU summit that all options are being considered—except tackling the root cause: the grotesque European climate policy that largely triggered this industrial collapse.

The reflexive defense of Brussels’ climate consensus under all circumstances shows Berlin fully understands what’s driving Germany’s economic collapse. Yet the government pins its last hope on a massive debt package that will pour roughly €50 billion in additional annual spending across the country. Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil expressed hope at the UN summit that private industry will invest now that the state is taking the lead.

The response should be: far from it, Mr. Minister. You misread economic reality. The fact that U.S. chipmaker Intel rejected a €10 billion subsidy to set up in Magdeburg shows the problems run much deeper—and cannot be fixed with handouts. Keynesian “voodoo economics” has reached its limits. Germany is on sale; industrial investors have already passed judgment.

Rust Belt on the Horizon 

Political ignorance will cost dearly. Losing the industrial base triggers massive societal distortions. Recent industrial history provides several illustrative examples: the decline of the English textile industry, Argentina’s machinery sector—or closer to home, the collapse of coal and steel in the Ruhr.

Left behind are true Rust Belts, as in the U.S. Detroit, once America’s wealthiest city, fell as its auto industry collapsed, allowing other hubs, particularly in Japan and China, to rise.

The industrial foundation is key to understanding economy and prosperity. Statistically, one industrial job creates four or five additional jobs in supply chains, services, and consumption. Industrial jobs are typically above-average paying; losing them sparks a chain reaction of social and economic decay.

UK as a Case Study 

The U.K. provides a textbook case. Once at the peak of global industrial output, the empire financed massive overseas infrastructure projects. Imperial overstretch followed, investments collapsed, and industrial decline set in. Other industrial centers, notably the U.S., rose.

Left behind was the City of London: a global financial hub surrounded by a powerful insurance architecture across former empire trade routes. A dual society emerged: the finance center exercising global influence, and “Little Britain,” trapped in poverty. Could Germany face the same fate, minus colonial flows of finance and power?

Time Window Closing 

Currently, around 5.4 million Germans still work in industry—autos, machinery, electrical engineering. Since 2018, their number has fallen by roughly 250,000. Industrial output has dropped by an average of 23%, representing at least €35 billion in lost annual value creation.

There is still time to counteract—so far, mostly lower-value production has been outsourced or shut. There is still time to preserve both Germany’s industrial and social foundations in urban regions.

Yet deindustrialization now shows on the municipal level. Regions dependent on autos are seeing local finances collapse amid the catastrophe facing German carmakers. Too much responsibility is centralized; now funds for schools, kindergartens, cultural institutions, and hospitals are missing. Cities like Stuttgart and Wolfsburg, once automotive strongholds, are fiscally drained.

With industry also disappears private patronage. Germany is losing its millionaires and economically successful elite faster than ever. This year, at least 400 wealthy individuals will likely leave, removing over €2 billion in private capital.

Last year, €64.5 billion in corporate direct investment was shifted abroad—much of it to the U.S. This is capital translating directly into economic activity, not stock market circulation.

History teaches: if elites lose faith in a society or business location, social crisis inevitably grows from that vacuum.

Authored by Gary Abernathy via The Empowerment Alliance,

The public “net zero” pledges by countless corporate and political entities in recent years were always baffling. How could the United States or much of the industrialized world reach “net zero” emissions without destroying modern living?

As a reminder, “net zero” is a term coined to illustrate a goal of “eliminating greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activities, which is accomplished by decreasing global emissions and abating them from the atmosphere,” as defined by Net0.com, a company that describes itself as “the market leader in AI-First Sustainability, enabling governments and enterprises worldwide to enhance their environmental performance and decarbonize profitably.”

Net0 posits that “the global scientific community agrees that to mitigate the most severe impacts of climate change, we must reduce worldwide net human-generated carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 45 percent from their 2010 levels by the year 2030 and achieve net zero emissions by around 2050.”

In a political atmosphere shaming anyone who didn’t join the climate cult – led in the U.S. by the Biden administration and globally by the U.N. – attempting to outdo each other for the most aggressive “net zero” policy was all the rage.

“As of June 2024, 107 countries… had adopted net-zero pledges either in law, in a policy document such as a national climate action plan or a long-term strategy, or in an announcement by a high-level government official,” boasted the United Nations. “More than 9,000 companies, over 1,000 cities, more than 1,000 educational institutions, and over 600 financial institutions have joined the Race to Zero, pledging to take rigorous, immediate action to halve global emissions by 2030.”

But as politicians know, promises and actions are often unrelated. Most people endowed with even a modicum of common sense and a grade-school understanding of basic science knew that meeting “net zero” goals would require a reduction in the use of our most affordable, effective and reliable energy sources to a degree that would devastate modern economies.

The fact that “net zero” pledges were nothing but a cruel joke was made clear last month in a story by NPR headlined, “Leaders promised to cut climate pollution, then doubled down on fossil fuels.” Most thinking people were as surprised by that headline as by discovering wet water, hot fire or flying birds. It was not necessary to read further. “Of course,” they said to themselves, moving on to the next story.

But there are, sadly, climate cult converts who, in their shock, likely needed more details.

They discovered: “The world is producing too much coal, oil and natural gas to meet the targets set 10 years ago under the Paris Agreement, in which countries agreed to limit climate pollution and avoid the worst effects of global warming,” NPR reported.

“A new report, led by the nonprofit research group Stockholm Environment Institute, shows countries plan to produce more than twice the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit),” the story said.

For the true believers, here’s the real punch to the gut: “The SEI report shows the 20 most polluting countries, including China, the U.S. and India, actually plan to produce even more fossil fuels than they did two years ago, when the report was last updated.”

Of course, as he did in his first term, President Trump is pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement as he unleashes American industry and works to ensure energy affordability, independence and security for the nation. Legislation to roll back taxpayer subsidies for “renewables” and return to “reliables” has already been passed or introduced in various states and is soon likely to be fortified at the federal level.

After wasting billions of tax dollars on wind and solar subsidies that could have been directed toward schools, healthcare or other real needs, the fever is finally breaking. The world is slowly but surely awakening from the delusions of climate zealots who insisted that we were on the verge of catastrophe with constantly worsening weather disasters.

Just last May, for example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted an “above-normal 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.” And just a few months earlier, PBS NewsHour reported on a study showing that “human-caused climate change made Atlantic hurricanes about 18 miles per hour (29 kilometers per hour) stronger in the last six years.”

The message was clear. More hurricanes. Stronger hurricanes. This year’s reality so far?

“The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season is the first time in 10 years that a hurricane has not made landfall in the United States through the end of September,” according to American Press. While “hurricane season” extends through November, September is usually the busiest month.

The weather is – and has always been – unpredictable. Severe weather events like hurricanes, tornadoes, monsoons, floods, blizzards and drought have always been with us, and always will. The attempt to demonize humankind for the frequency and severity of the weather has been politically motived and economically disastrous.

“Net zero” pledges are being revealed for the false promises they most often were, designed mainly to win plaudits from the Lecturing Left. For leaders grounded in facts, real-world needs have always meant that no one is easing off the gas.

Over the past 2 years, a huge disconnect has emerged between energy, in the conventional sense of power and electricity, and energy stocks, mostly associated with oil explorers and refiners. The former has exploded, as part of the “picks and shovles” thesis – after all, someone has to energize all those data centers – sending utilities, gas names, nuclear and uranium stocks to multi-year highs, while the latter have flatlined if not stagnated as the price of oil has continued to plumb new lows. 

But one US supermajor may be about to change all that. 

On Friday, Exxon CEO Darren Woods said he is holding advanced talks with power providers and technology companies to cut the emissions of AI data centers that rely on natural gas by deploying carbon capture technology.

“I’m hopeful that many of these hyperscalers are sincere when they talk about the desire to have low emission facilities, because certainly in the near to medium term we’re probably the only realistic game in town to accomplish that,” Woods said on Exxon’s earnings call.

Exxon, which is the largest US oil producer and refiner, and which went through its own personal hell as part of the ESG lunacy of the past 5 years, aims to capture 90% of the carbon dioxide emissions emitted by natural gas plants that power data centers, Woods said.

The oil major is talking with power companies to decarbonize their plants, he said adding that “we’re pretty advanced in the conversations.”

According to CNBC, the tech sector has mostly secured renewable energy to offset the emissions from their data centers, though they are now making major investments in nuclear power as well.

Separately, some companies are turning to natural gas as well as they search for reliable power. Meta, for example, signed an agreement with the utility Entergy in Louisiana to power a data center campus with natural gas.

“We secured locations. We’ve got the existing infrastructure, certainly have the know-how in terms of the technology of capturing, transporting and storing [carbon dioxide],” Woods said.