Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations,

America’s largest cities are increasing their spending at almost unprecedented rates.

A RealClearInvestigations (RCI) analysis of cities with at least 500,000 residents found they cumulatively raised their per-person spending by 18 percent over the last 10 budget cycles, accounting for inflation. The only equivalents on record are the spending surges ignited by the Great Society programs of the 1960s and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal during the 1930s.

But unlike those past eras, today’s cities do not have the revenue to support their heavy spending. State and federal funding have dropped off from their record highs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and local tax hikes have not kept pace with spending. Large tax increases or reductions in city services will eventually be required to address burgeoning structural deficits, placing a burden on future generations.

The tradeoff would be easier to explain if cities were making strides to improve life for their residents. Census data, however, shows that key quality of life metrics in major cities have mostly been stagnant during the spending spree.

Each of the 38 cities in RCI’s analysis of data from the Census Bureau, FBI, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and enacted local budgets increased their spending faster than inflation over the last decade. Yet the cities that boosted their spending the most were, on average, no more or less likely to see measurable progress in reducing homelessness, lowering violent crime rates, tackling income inequality, improving rent affordability, and more. That was the case for the 33 cities led by Democrats and the five cities led by Republicans.

San Jose, California, saw its violent crime rate increase by 50 percent from 2017 to 2024, even after it doubled its police budget. The city is now proposing cuts to police spending and creating new taxes to fund its rapid budget growth in other areas. Seattle is considering shutting down its homelessness agency after huge investments failed to stop homeless rates from reaching the worst level in city history.

Christopher Thornberg, founder of the policy consulting firm Beacon Economics, isn’t surprised that big spending hasn’t produced big results. He said that cities typically don’t have the financing, policy sophistication, and regulatory oversight to meaningfully improve the economic status of their residents.

But that hasn’t stopped some cities from thinking “you can be successful just fire-hosing money across the economy,” said Thornberg, former director of the University of California, Riverside Center for Economic Forecasting and Development. “It seems sufficient to brag about the money they spent without referring to whether that spending accomplished anything.”

The Tax Gap

In 2016, large cities collected $6,727 of revenue per resident from local, state, and federal sources, adjusted for inflation. They spent 14 percent more than that: $7,685 per person.

RCI

By 2025, revenues had increased to $7,063 per person, but outlays had skyrocketed to $8,827. The difference of 25 percent is the largest gap on record since at least 1940.

The gap was not caused by low revenues. Cities earned record amounts of sales and property taxes last year. Instead, the deficits were driven by expanded bureaucracy, rising payrolls, overtime costs, and pension liabilities.

From 2017 to 2026, the public workforces of large cities grew faster than their populations. There were at least 12 cities that added new municipal jobs even though their populations dropped (a handful of cities do not disclose their staff headcounts). In an extreme example, Memphis added more than 1,000 public jobs even though the city lost more than 40,000 residents.

Many of those new hires work desk jobs. Census data shows large cities increased their administrative expenses—mayor’s offices, human resources departments, accountants, zoning departments, and more—by 55 percent from 2016 to 2023, accounting for inflation.

But staff headcounts at core city agencies like police and corrections departments are generally decreasing, forcing cities to spend large amounts on overtime hours to keep their communities safe with the limited staff they have available.

Crucially, RCI found only a weak statistical link between increases in a city’s property tax collection and increases in its overall spending. Cities like Phoenix and Boston that boosted their per-resident spending by 88 percent and 75 percent, respectively, were not necessarily the ones with increased property tax revenue to support their outlays.

That suggests many cities have a “build it and we will fund it” mentality, enacting policies before figuring out how to pay for them.

Previous studies have shown that outside pressures from advocates for rent affordability and labor unions influence budgets, independently of what cities can actually afford to spend. Historically, that did not cause issues because city revenues were typically higher than expenses. That went out the window after the COVID-19 pandemic, when temporary federal grants expired, and cities did not make cuts to compensate for the lost funding.

“The problem is that when governments start to spend money, they find it hard to stop spending money,” said Thornberg. “And after a year and a half of partying, you can’t get back in those old pants. You have these bloated budgets in many cities, and now they’re struggling to get their budgets back in line with a reasonable amount of revenue that can be expected.”

More Spending, More Homelessness

To illustrate these budget dynamics in action, RCI took a look at how some representative cities have responded to major issues.

Homelessness in America’s largest cities jumped by 34 percent on average from 2017 to 2024, driven partly by increased housing costs and job losses during the pandemic. RCI’s analysis found no statistically significant association between increased public welfare spending and reduced homelessness.

While Los Angeles is the poster child for getting little bang for the bucks it’s spent to combat homelessness, it is not alone. Seattle and surrounding King County were among the biggest spenders, with money pouring into the Regional Homelessness Authority. It was created by former Mayor Jenny Durkan in 2019 to “significantly decrease the incidence of unsheltered homelessness.” Washington State has also lifted its spending on housing construction by six times since then. But homelessness in Seattle increased at a faster rate than in any other large city but one, and rent price increases were also among the nation’s highest.

It’s easy to see where things went wrong. A state audit released in April found that the Homelessness Authority overspent its $200 million annual budget by $45 million, with portions of the money completely unaccounted for or spent on administrative expenses the city never approved. The authority is also paying individual contractors close to $500,000 annually, an amount unlikely to be seen as reasonable for a salaried public servant.

To find leaders with the “lived experience” of homelessness and marginalization, the authority invited a convicted repeat sex offender to join its board in 2023. When another board member objected, alleging she had been molested by the man in the past, co-chair Shanéé Colston shouted her down. “I don’t care if they’re a sex offender!” Colston said, according to the Seattle Times. “This is an inclusive space, and we are equitable to all.”

Colston was later replaced. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has publicly said she’s not opposed to shutting down the authority for its failure to reduce homelessness.

Nor has Portland, another big spender on homelessness, been able to reduce its soaring rate. It created a Supportive Housing Services tax in 2020 that funded Sunstone Way, a nonprofit set up by the city that collapsed in March.

Sunstone Way’s former finance director recently alleged in a whistleblower complaint that she was barred from board meetings for trying to tell county officials about the nonprofit’s “severe cash flow pressures.” She claims that when she flagged a $210,000 overpayment to a food vendor, Sunstone Way’s CEO told her to ignore it because he had “made a deal” with the vendor, who was allegedly a personal friend.

Local auditor Jennifer McGuirk warned Portland’s Homeless Services Department in 2022 that it needed to monitor Sunstone Way’s spending more carefully after it billed the government for the payroll expenses of duplicate employees. McGuirk claims she was ignored.

Homelessness decreased in 13 of the 38 cities RCI examined, but the success stories related more to policy than spending. Detroit embraced advanced data modeling systems to share information between various nonprofits, avoiding duplicated efforts and creating a real-time list of homeless individuals rather than a single annual count like most cities conduct. Homelessness dropped by 17 percent from 2017 to 2024. Milwaukee provided free lawyers to low-income tenants facing eviction and now claims to have zero people living on the street.

“Cities that have had success in battling homelessness, it turns out, it’s not just that they’re spending money, but how they’re spending money,” Thornberg said.

Although many big cities explicitly state that their budgets are designed to reduce inequality, large cities’ Gini index—a measurement of how evenly wealth is distributed—was virtually unchanged from 2017 to 2024. So was the percentage of the population with health insurance. Poverty rates improved by 1 percent on average. Cities that increased their overall budgets at a faster rate were no more or less likely to see improvement in any of those three categories.

The 10 cities with the smallest topline budget increases since 2017 all saw their poverty rates drop or remain unchanged. Those 10 cities, including Minneapolis and Long Beach, now have an average poverty rate of 13.8 percent, lower than most of their peers.

Police Spending Up, Crime Down a Bit

Violent crime rates in large cities improved slightly from 2017 to 2024, with an average decrease of 50 violent crimes per 100,000 people. The average police budget increased slightly faster than inflation.

But again, there was no statistically significant association between spending levels and violent crime rates. Cities that increased their police budgets were just as likely to see crime rates rise as cities that decreased theirs.

The negligible improvement in crime rates is especially worrisome given that other city services are being sacrificed to fund police departments. In 2022, 40 percent of America’s largest cities said public safety needs were so high that it was difficult to balance their budgets. The burden grew even higher in the following years, as police funding increased as a percentage of total city spending in both 2024 and 2025, according to the National League of Cities.

Higher spending does not always mean more police officers. Even though budgets are up, police staffing levels dropped by roughly 7 percent from 2013 to 2023, according to the Council on Criminal Justice.

That’s unsurprising given how much difficulty police departments are having recruiting new officers. Thaddeus Johnson, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice who has been teaching at Georgia State University since 2014, said college students do not view public service as “glamorous” as they did just a few years ago. “I used to ask in every class, ‘Who wants to be a cop?’ and a quarter to half of the room would raise their hands. Since the pandemic, nobody has raised their hand in class, and I’m not exaggerating. There’s no interest among criminal justice majors in policing.”

In Phoenix, where spending and violent crime rates are both up, the police department has 650 vacancies. When the department does attract workers, they don’t always stay. Thirty percent of new recruits from 2023 to 2025 have already left.

The city can’t offer higher salaries to boost its retention rate because one-third of its police budget is spent funding future pensions for officers already on the force (payments to current retirees are funded by past years’ appropriations). Arizona’s pension investments lost most of their value during the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s, and the effects still linger.

It’s a similar situation in San Jose, where 40 percent of police recruits leave the force before they become sworn officers, compared to only 6 percent in 2017. The staffing shortages force officers to work long overtime hours, driving up payroll costs.

A San Jose city audit released this April found that one quarter of all the hours police officers worked in 2025 were overtime—twice as much as in 2015. Many overtime hours were spent on report writing by officers who never obtained the required approval from their superiors to work extra hours.

Johnson said low staff headcounts are not an excuse for rising violent crime. “If there’s a million officers on the street, crime will still happen,” he said. “It’s really about how you use those officers. What is your supervisor to officer ratio? The type of training the officers are receiving? The type of technology that’s available?”

San Jose increased its per-resident police spending by 66 percent above inflation from 2016 to 2023—far more than any other city with at least 500,000 residents. But it also saw its violent crime rate per 100,000 people increase by 50 percent from 2017 to 2024, again much more than any other large city.

The crime rate did improve significantly in 2025, but remained well above pre-pandemic levels. And while San Jose’s crime rate is not necessarily higher than other comparable cities, its rapid increase despite a spending boost highlights the challenges cities face when trying to improve quality of life through budgetary means.

There are several success stories like Dallas and San Francisco, which have seen violent crime rates improve after police budgets were increased. Others, like Boston, saw crime rates improve even though police budgets did not keep pace with inflation.

Johnson cited San Antonio as an example of efficient spending. He said the city smartly deployed its officers by assigning patrols to specific places and times when crime was more likely to occur, improving public safety without breaking the bank. San Antonio’s per-resident spending on police is lower than almost any other large city, yet its violent crime rate sank by 16 percent from 2017 to 2024.

Kicking the Budget Can Down the Road

Cities will eventually have to balance their budgets, but they may face difficulty raising taxes to do so. Katherine Loughead, a vice president at the nonprofit Tax Foundation, claimed the recent upward trend in taxation is already causing “widespread unrest” among voters.

Almost every major city has a law stating that its outlays and revenues must be equal, but that does not apply to capital spending on infrastructure and city-owned property like buildings and cars. Many cities also overestimate their revenues and underestimate their spending on paper, allowing deficits to develop.

They close the gap by issuing bonds, digging into reserve funds, selling municipal property, and ignoring obligations to fund public employees’ future pension and healthcare plans.

It’s why New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s highly-touted “balanced” budget proposal for 2027 is not really balanced at all. Unable to avoid reductions to city services by taxing the rich and increasing property taxes, Mamdani escaped spending cuts by shoving pension liabilities into the future for another mayor to deal with. Fifty-four of America’s 75 largest cities did the same in 2025 with either pensions or retiree healthcare costs, according to Truth in Accounting.

Chicago is already feeling the effects of that approach. After underfunding its pensions for years, Chicago now has a pension debt larger than most state governments. More than 15 percent of its budget in 2025 was spent trying to fix it, rather than being used to support taxpayers.

This summer’s budget hearings in cities across the country will likely represent a new high-water mark in structural imbalances. If past practices prevail, rather than slash services or raise taxes, most city leaders will find clever ways to once again kick the can down the road.

It started off with a bang: SpaceX IPOed on June 12 with an opening price of $150 on their first day of trade, well above the offering price of $135, and within two days, enterprising traders were ravenously bidding up 380 calls (expiring in just days) in hopes of sending the stock soaring in hopes of orchestrating a gamma squeeze. 

They are going for it https://t.co/tT4cJns9nv pic.twitter.com/P6NTzq4tx2

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 16, 2026

In a note out this morning, Canaccord described the “new level of optimism” that accompanied the SpaceX IPO as follows:

SPCX dynamics indicate new level of frenzy: prior to this historic IPO, we felt AI optimism was robust and certainly at times overdone, but largely funded by rational (if not exuberant) institutions including large, well capitalized public companies and PE investors. In our view, SPCX has marked a new chapter in this saga, ushering in a greater level of retail involvement and driving the stock into the top 6 market cap companies in the world, and in its first week of trading, adding the equivalent of ~1/2 the value of META, with a market value much greater than sister company TSLA despite generating only ~20% of its revenue base. Despite the company name, revenues are skewed towards connectivity (Starlink contributing $11.39 billion), with launch services generating only $4.1 billion (AI compute was $3.2 billion in 2025).

Vanda Track was even more effusive, and in a retrospective published earlier on Monday wrote that “SpaceX’s first week of trading was one for the record books. Retail investors bought a net $405mn of SPCX during its first 5 trading sessions, comfortably the strongest retail IPO debut in recent history. Retail buying was extreme during the first few sessions before moderating later in the week. The flow profile increasingly resembles a retail investor that is building long-term positions rather than chasing a short-term meme stock.“

The scale of retail buying in SPCX last week becomes even more remarkable when put into context. Retail investors bought more SPCX last week than they bought across all other Mag 7 stocks combined (total activity of the last 5 days in NVDA, MSFT, AMZN, META, GOOGL and GOOG was $278mn combined). They also bought more SpaceX than the combined retail buying of SPY & QQQ over the past week ($352mn). For a stock that only started trading last week, SpaceX is already competing with the market’s biggest stocks and ETFs for retail capital.

As has become the norm, while buying of the stock was off the charts, retail investors quickly congregated to various leveraged SpaceX products, which also attracted strong demand. Retail investors bought $65.8mn of the Leverage Shares 2x Long SPCX Daily ETF during its first few trading sessions (while a sizeable number, but it remains well below the type of activity normally seen during speculative retail frenzies). It still dwarfs recent thematic launches – the Roundhill Memory ETF DRAM attracted just $5.6mn during its first four trading days, and it took 22 sessions for cumulative retail buying in DRAM to exceed the amount already allocated to the leveraged SpaceX ETF.

Yet after bursting out of the gate, momentum has fizzled and hopes that the stock would gamma squeeze into orbit (on a reusable rocket, of course), quickly faded. The result: after peaking on June 16 – the day SPCX stock hit a record $225 and briefly topped Microsoft in market cap – daily retail flows have collapsed, and the retail turnover has become virtually nonexistent. 

This brings us back to what Canaccord said: while the bank concluded that based on the early performance of SpaceX, “Tech can likely keep its momentum in the short term”, it warned that “a new, more dangerous layer of air is now underneath these stocks.“

Sure enough, with the momentum gone, and the realization that trillions of shares are about to be unlocked, the stock has slumped for 3 straight days, culminating with Monday’s plunge when, with SpaceX rushing to take advantage of the bond market euphoria to sell over $20 billion in investment-grade bonds for the first time before the bond window shuts in order to refinance an existing bridge loan with much higher interest, SPCX shares plunged 16.4%, shedding a record $600 billion in market value, and following a 5% drop on Wednesday and a 3.5% slide on Thursday, the stock is now just barely above where it broke for trading at $150 two weeks ago. 

Worse, the stock tagged its post-IPO opening price of $150 after hours, and should the stock open below that tomorrow, then everyone who bought in the open market (and held) will be underwater.

What is especially notable, or perhaps expected, is that the pump and dump is taking place with only 5% of SPCX float available for trading: 95% of the stock is still locked-up for trading. But that will change soon:

22V Research strategist Jeff Jacobson said that there is a 20% insider share unlock after Space’s earnings announcement in early to mid-August. In addition, there is a 10% share unlock if the stock trades 30% above the IPO price, as well as 7% share unlocks set for around Aug. 21 and then again on Sept. 10.

Jacobson said insiders could potentially sell 44% of SpaceX shares by early September, increasing the current float by about 900%.

In other words, it’s only going to get more difficult to lift the stock from here, and meanwhile, Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading said that “sellers are back in control,” adding that “anyone in the world who wanted to buy this has bought it already.”

In its take on today’s move, Bloomberg wrote that today’s drop in SpaceX “managed to bring much of the market down with it.” 

We don’t know if that’s indeed the case yet, but in this market – which has been driven almost entirely by retail euphoria and momentum chasing from the March lows – should retail indeed get cold feet, first to SpaceX, then to the Memory bubble, and finally to Semi stocks which have become the main beneficiaries of the AI trade…

Divergence between Hyperscalers and Semis becoming untenable: massive capex spending is the key variable. pic.twitter.com/ifrtT9LJnR

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 22, 2026

… then it will be time to invert TS Eliot, as the selling whimper becomes a bang. 

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said on June 21 that three more cases of the flesh-eating New World screwworm have been detected in Texas, bringing the total in the United States to 15.

The latest cases involved a lamb in Crockett County and two calves in Edwards County, Texas. The USDA said in a post on X that it would immediately begin releasing sterile flies outside the affected areas in Crockett County following the new detection there.

According to the agency, the new cases in Edwards County were expected because they occurred within the current affected areas, where sterile flies were already being released.

“Because a fly’s life cycle is an average of 21 days, it takes multiple reproductive cycles for populations to die off following sterile fly releases,“ it stated.

”As such, we may continue to see cases occur in already affected zones—a sign that our surveillance is working.”

The USDA said it would continue carrying out “aggressive eradication efforts” alongside state partners, including deploying tens of millions of sterile flies each week in and around the infestation area.

On June 11, the Food and Drug Administration authorized the emergency use of generic nitenpyram for treating New World screwworm infestations in dogs and cats that weigh at least 2 pounds and are more than 3 weeks old. The drug is made by Felix Pharmaceuticals.

Acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas said in a June 11 statement that the agency has spent nearly a year preparing for the possible arrival of the screwworm in the country.

“As of today, under the Trump administration’s decisive leadership, the FDA has issued ten [emergency use authorizations] and three conditional approvals for drugs to combat this threat, and this count will continue to grow as we receive more animal drug submissions and unleash American regulatory speed,” Diamantas said.

New World screwworms are flesh-eating parasites that infect livestock, wildlife, and, in rarer cases, humans. Screwworm fly maggots burrow into the living tissue of animals, causing severe wounds that can be fatal.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least seven people had died from screwworm infections in Central America and Mexico as of Jan. 20.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also deployed all available state resources earlier this month to eradicate screwworms after the first confirmed case in South Texas on June 3.

The screwworm fly was officially eradicated from the United States in 1966 through a strategy primarily involving the release of sterile males, which mated with females, resulting in infertile eggs.

While other countries line up on either side of Hormuz, hoping for clarity whether they actually can cross this time, Iran isn’t wasting any time moving its oil out of the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz after the US lifted the naval blockade outside the chokepoint and the U.S. and Iran discuss a framework on a lasting peace deal.

Even as Western shippers and insurers remain wary of the conflicting signals about how open the Strait of Hormuz really is – after all it was opened once before just to close hours later and remain shut for over a month – Iran is rushing to evacuate barrels it wasn’t able to push past the U.S. blockade over the past two months.

At least three supertankers, carrying a total of 6 million barrels of Iranian crude, moved to transit the Strait of Hormuz early on Monday, in open AIS navigation showing Singaporean waters as a destination, vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg showed.

That’s the most Iranian crude openly making its way out the key Iranian oil port at Kharg Island and into the Strait of Hormuz in a day since the war began on February 28, according to Bloomberg.

The three tankers seen entering the Strait of Hormuz outbound on Monday were signaling destinations offshore Singapore, a known ship-to-ship (STS) transfer area for Iranian crude before loading on the tankers mostly bound for China’s independent refiners, the so-called teapots.

The surge in Iranian shipments out of the Gulf and into waters near the Malacca and Singapore Straits would give Iran a lifeline to boost its exports that had suffered from the US blockade in the past few weeks.

Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

Grid operators are concerned that the Chinese drive to hike the share of renewable electricity powering AI would raise the risks for power firms as peak demand at data centers is difficult to forecast.

Industry analysts and officials have told Reuters that the Chinese strategic priority of having renewables power the majority of electricity demand at data centers by 2030 may not be feasible.

“From what we understand, they (data centers) cannot really adjust power consumption load much,” Reuters quoted Pei Shanpeng, a director of Chinese power firm State Power Investment Corporation, as telling attendees at a recent industry conference in Beijing.

“GPUs are very expensive, so once they are purchased, operators want to use them as quickly and as intensively as possible,” the official added.

China plans to use massively its renewable energy boom to power the data centers.

The country has just launched the world’s first offshore wind-powered underwater data center, using seawater cooling and renewable electricity to reduce energy, water, and land requirements. The 24 MW-capacity Shanghai Lingang undersea data center demonstration was developed by HiCloud Technology and the state-owned China Communications Construction.

A report from last year by the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated that the data center electricity supply in China was dominated by coal with a near 70% share as of 2025, followed by renewables with nearly 20%, nuclear close to 10%, and natural gas accounting for the remainder.

Solar PV and wind would add nearly 90 TWh of additional electricity for data centers by 2030, “supported by an increase in the share of renewables in the grid electricity mix, provincial co-location mandates and policies to prioritise the construction of data centres in renewables-rich western China,” the IEA said.

However, analysts and industry officials say the data center sector isn’t a good fit for renewable energy because of the lack of visibility about peak demand from these power-sucking centers.

As soon as the national average for 87-octane gasoline at the pump dipped below the politically sensitive $4-a-gallon level early last week, we observed multiple institutional desks begin to forecast that the light at the end of the tunnel was beginning to materialize for consumers, especially working-class households that have been financially battered by surging fuel prices over the past several months.

UBS analyst Mark Paski told clients about “early signs of a turn in U.S. consumer discretionary.”

Then, Piper Sandler Chief Global Economist Nancy Lazar told clients, “If inflation has indeed peaked, that will boost real incomes (nominal incomes have been solid), a positive for both real consumer spending and housing, but don’t expect robust growth in either.”

Gathering more ground-level intelligence about possible consumer sentiment shifts, or at least the early chapters of it, Wolfe Research polled 270 industry contacts on the consumer outlook this summer.

“Optimism has picked-up a bit relative to April/May, but there are persistent concerns about higher gas prices, inflation reaccelerating & price competition in the 2H,” Wolfe Research analyst Greg Badishkanian wrote.

Badishkanian continued, “Our checks occurred last week and at that point optimism hadn’t reached pre-war levels yet. They were still concerned that if the conflict dragged on, it would hurt their respective industries.”

He noted, “When we asked some of the operators within more discretionary segments about the impact of a potential lasting peace deal, they all thought it would boost sales and profitability in the coming quarter or two.”

Where has operator optimism changed the most versus two months ago?

The read-through: Consumer sentiment is stabilizing, but the improvement is uneven. The weakest categories are RV dealers, home improvement, boat dealers, beer, auto dealers, fast food, and casual dining, all of which remain negative.

However, the strongest categories are Harley dealers, powersports, ag dealers, short-term rentals, convenience stores, and lodging.

The Harley outperformance is an outlier.

Operators expected that if the US-Iran conflict persisted into July, the impact would only be slightly negative.

Badishkanian and his team spoke with operators across various industries. Here is what they had to say

Leisure

We met with Harley’s (HOG) investor relations to discuss trends in the business and conversation primarily focusing around retail sales, sustainability of the business, inventories, & new product launches. HOG highlighted that retail sales are accelerating, and dealer sentiment is improving for them, but there is still work to be done in order to maintain the momentum of the top-line. The team reiterated that inventories remain healthy worldwide, and mgm has prioritized destocking. The launches of the Sprint and Sportster models were brought up in the conversation as key initiatives for maintaining momentum into 2027. Mgmt highlighted that despite the newer, lower-priced bikes being lower margin they expect them to profitable and bring in a newer entry level customer to Harley.

We caught up with Norwegian’s (NCLH) VP of Investor Relations & Corporate Communications this week when we talked through the 3Q yields pressure, revenue management, marketing strategy, the Great Stirrup Cay initiatives, and shore side cost management. NCLH still expects 3Q yields to be under the most pressure for the full year, and the company has started to shift towards getting 2027 on the right trajectory. The Great Stirrup Cay Water Park and Pier are set to open on September 4th, with an expectation for 25bps of yield lift in 2026 and 75bps for the full year ’27. The team also highlighted a greater focus on marketing spend, & corporate costs shoreside.

Restaurants

Yum! Brands (YUM) has entered definitive agreements to sell Pizza Hut for $2.7B. Pizza Hut (excluding Pizza Hut China) will be acquired by LongRange capital for ~$1.5B. In addition, Pizza Hut China will be acquired by Yum! China for ~ $1.2B. The company will continue to provide Byte (its proprietary tech platform), as well as select corporate services to Pizza Hut ex-China. Yum! expects the fees from these services to offset corporate G&A expenses historically allocated to Pizza Hut. Both transactions are expected to close in 3Q26.

FAT Brands completed the final step of its bankruptcy restructuring, with FBG Bid Co. acquiring assets tied to 13 concepts for about $595 million and transferring more than 1,700 restaurants to a lender-backed group. The company filed for Chapter 11 in January under roughly $1.5 billion in debt. Twin Peaks was sold separately for $359.5 million, and Smokey Bones ceased operations after no buyer was found.

Food Retailers

Kroger (KR) reported roughly in-line 1Q results with expectations and reaffirmed its FY outlook. ID sales ex. fuel increased +1.0% (64bps headwind from egg deflation) vs consensus at +0.9% and decelerated 60bps on a 2-yr basis from the prior quarter. Adj EPS of $1.58 missed consensus at $1.59. Kroger continues to expect ID sales of +1.0-2.0% (including ~130 bps headwind from IRA) with the midpoint in line with consensus at +1.5%. Operating profit of $5.0-5.2bn is 3.4% above consensus of $4.93bn, as questions persist about the level of price investments to come. The EPS range of $5.10 to $5.30 is 3c below consensus.

Ahold Delhaize (Not Covered) announced the nomination of Claire Peters as the new CEO of Ahold Delhaize USA. Ahold Delhaize US operates Food Lion, Giant, Hannaford and Stop & Shop supermarket locations in the US. Claire most recently served as the VP fo Worldwide Fresh at Amazon, but has also held roles at Woolworth’s Group & Tesco.

Broadlines & Hardlines

The Joint Center for Housing Studies released their 2026 State of Nation’s Housing report this week. The report and webcast to follow were cautious as the affordability crisis continues to worsen, remodel spend is still above pre-COVID levels and pull forward remains a challenge for the industry. Median Home Prices remain elevated vs median household income, at nearly 2008 highs, and affordable units supply continues to be constrained. Click here for our full takeaways and data parsing.

Target (TGT) continues to accelerate the pace of change in the business. One of the best examples of this is fun 101, where Target is allowing merchants to have more runway in these categories to make changes. Recent announcements like the Issac Mizrahi partnership, Olivia Rodrigo’s exclusive music launch, and even increased focus on Trading Cards are driving customers back to TGT. We think further leaning into Fun 101 and these cultural events will be an important part of Target’s go-forward strategy and whether the business can maintain momentum. Read Spencer’s full takeaways here.

La-Z-Boy (LZB; not covered), a furniture manufacturer, reported F’4Q results which beat Street estimates, with F’1Q guidance also ahead of consensus. Management believes they have levers to drive growth in their business, while the timing of a return to growth in the broader industry remains uncertain, but remain optimistic about an eventual rebound in furniture and home furnishings, which historically grew +3% to +4%

CarMax (KMX; not covered) posted F’1Q (ending May 31st) results ahead of expectations with EPS of $1.31 vs FC 97c. Sales were up +6.2% to $8.01bn vs FC for $7.42bn, led by higher wholesale revenue, which grew +14% (units: +8.4%; avg selling price: +5.1%). Used unit comps were also better than feared at -0.8% vs FC -2.7%

A consumer inflection point appears to be approaching, but the timing still largely hinges on fuel prices staying well below the $4 national average.

Authored by Patti Johnson via The Burning Platform blog,

That “black pill moment” is arriving faster than many realize. Not primarily through sweeping new government mandates, but through private companies quietly normalizing biometric data collection under the banners of “security,” “fraud prevention,” and “child protection.” They are erecting the infrastructure for a world where you cannot easily participate in daily life, commerce, or even basic online access without surrendering your face, your license scan, or other biometrics. Once the systems exist and the data flows, laws can simply ratify what private actors have already made routine.

In a recent commentary “Digital ID Black Pill Moment”, I highlighted a sobering reality: 186 out of 198 countries already have digital ID systems in place. Only a shrinking handful of nations lack foundational national digital IDs. As I wrote, “the global push for digital IDs is far advanced, likely past the point of no return, aligning with the UN’s 2030 goal of universal legal identity and enabling a globalist digital currency system that could control access to everything.”

Facebook/Meta: Selfie or Stay Locked Out

Government mandates are not required to finish building the digital surveillance prison. Citizens are willingly submitting their biometrics to access social media sites. For example, I am no longer on Facebook. They banned me during the Covid era after I began sharing information about the true contents of the shots and alternative treatments. A friend just sent me a Facebook post and I could not view it without taking a selfie and sending it to FB. No way was I going to comply.

Try viewing certain Facebook posts or recovering a flagged account, and you may hit this wall. Users are increasingly prompted to submit a video selfie turning their head in different directions so the system can map facial geometry to “prove you’re a real person” or restore access. The company states it uses this to combat scams and compromised accounts, and claims the video is deleted after verification.

Here is what the prompt looks like:

blogger.googleusercontent.com

about.fb.com

This is not a rare case. It is quickly becoming the normal way companies handle account recovery, new account setup, suspected suspicious activity, or even basic access to articles and information on many websites. Your facial biometric data is sent to a private company that already holds huge amounts of user information and is under constant pressure and often partners with governments and international standards organizations.

Uber: Selfie + Driver’s License Scan Just to Ride

My husband recently tried to order an Uber ride and was required to submit a selfie plus front and back photos of his driver’s license before the app would proceed. Uber’s official materials describe identity verification (including selfies matched via facial recognition) primarily for drivers to prevent account sharing, and for riders it is often framed as optional for a “verified badge.” Yet real users are encountering these hard prompts in practice.

Here are examples of the verification flows Uber and similar platforms use:

ktla.com

i.ytimg.com

The stated reason is safety and trust on the platform. The practical effect is another private company harvesting and cross-referencing your facial biometrics and government ID data.

Banking, Finance, Telecom, and Beyond

Major banks now routinely use facial recognition or selfie verification for mobile app logins, high-value transfers, account opening (a process known as KYC, or “Know Your Customer” identity verification required by banking regulations), and fraud checks. Telecom providers require selfies for SIM card swaps (replacing your phone’s Subscriber Identity Module card) or account modifications. Gig economy platforms (such as ride-sharing or delivery services like Uber, DoorDash, or similar) use third-party services that demand selfie plus ID document verification. Some retail and payment systems are piloting biometric checkout.

Here is the kind of selfie/biometric prompt users see in identity verification flows used by banks and fintechs:

veriff.com

verifynow.co.za

Proponents say this reduces identity theft, speeds up processes, and improves security compared to passwords or one-time codes. The result, however, is the same: your face becomes the key to your money and services.

Driver’s Licenses Already Contain Biometric Data

Every U.S. state requires a facial photograph on driver’s licenses and state IDs.

That photo is biometric data. Many states’ DMV databases feed into facial recognition systems used by law enforcement. REAL ID standards and emerging mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs) are digitizing and enhancing this further. Eighteen states already have biometric-enabled digital driver’s licenses.

Age Verification Laws Accelerate the Trend

Florida’s HB 3 (Online Protections for Minors) restricts social media access for children under 14 and requires parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds. To comply, platforms must verify ages using government ID or biometric data. The result is that adults, too, will need to submit ID or facial biometrics simply to access platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and others. Similar requirements are advancing under the UK’s Online Safety Act, which mandates robust age verification, including facial age estimation, for sites hosting potentially harmful or pornographic content, with ripple effects across social media.

Parents Should be the Gatekeepers Not the Government

Proponents argue these measures protect children from predators, explicit content, and addictive algorithms, while giving parents better tools to manage access. I believe the real solution lies with parents themselves. Parents should be the primary gatekeepers, setting firm limits and supervising where their children go online.

Today’s children, immersed in cell phones from a young age, are losing the ability to communicate effectively on a normal, personal level. If I were raising children now, I would not give them a cell phone. We grew up with perfectly fulfilling childhoods without them. Instead of relying on government-mandated biometric checkpoints, we should return responsibility to families. Yet the architecture being built creates a universal biometric gateway for internet participation: one that affects everyone, not just minors.

The Bigger Picture: Agenda 2030 and the “Cannot Buy or Sell” Infrastructure

This is not happening in a vacuum. It aligns with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 push for universal legal identity by 2030 and the broader frameworks of the Great Reset / Agenda 2030. Private companies are doing the expensive, politically risky work of normalizing biometric surrender and building interoperable databases. Once the data exists at scale, faces linked to licenses, accounts, transactions, and online activity, adding legal requirements for purchases, services, or internet access becomes trivial.

We are told it is all for safety, convenience, fraud prevention, and protecting the vulnerable. Yet the cumulative effect is a world in which opting out becomes increasingly difficult, anonymity erodes, and every interaction can be tracked, verified, and potentially scored or restricted through biometric identifiers.

The infrastructure for systems in which you “cannot buy or sell without an ID” is being assembled one prompted selfie at a time by Meta, Uber, banks, app developers, and verification vendors. This often happens before governments even pass the final laws.

We have been warned. The question now is whether we will continue feeding the system our most personal biometric data in the name of convenience, or whether we will recognize the trap while there is still room to resist, opt out where possible, demand real privacy protections, and support alternatives that do not require surrendering our faces to participate in society.

A Biden-appointed federal judge – who quit her previous job as partner at the Jones Day law firm because they did work for the 1st Trump administration – just ruled against the administration’s plan to create a database to verify citizenship to be able to vote in US elections. 

Judge Sparkle Sooknanan ruled on Monday that officials across several government agencies “haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable,” in order to comply with the Trump administration’s attempts to implement election integrity measures. 

A March executive order directed the Social Security Administration (SSA) to create a “State Citizenship List” derived from its data, naturalization records and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, an existing database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that is used to determine eligibility for federal programs.

Since the EO, said Sooknanan, “states have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information,” she wrote in her 75-page ruling. 

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote. This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens,” she continued. 

According to Sooknanan – ruling in favor of the League of Women voters, efforts to establish the database were unlawful – and violated the Social Security Act, Privacy Act and Administrative Procedure Act.

BREAKING: We just won a court order blocking the Trump-Vance admin’s attempt to haphazardly consolidate Americans’ sensitive data into a massive government database.

This protects millions from baseless investigations and unlawful voter roll purges – a critical win for voting… pic.twitter.com/cZxduqtqRi

— Democracy Forward (@DemocracyFwd) June 22, 2026

Reacting to the ruling, far-left organization Democracy Now wrote “This protects millions from baseless investigations and unlawful voter roll purges – a critical win for voting rights.” 

Meanwhile, DHS general counsel James Percival said on X: “t’s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist. Judge Sparkle Soknanan’s latest ruling preventing DHS from addressing alien voting is just the latest example.” 

It’s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist. Judge Sparkle Soknanan’s latest ruling preventing DHS from addressing alien voting is just the latest example!

— James Percival (@DHSGenCounsel) June 22, 2026

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

Waymo has recalled its entire fleet of vehicles after some of its driverless cars were caught speeding into freeway construction zones.

The voluntary recall on June 13 of the California-based tech company’s 3,871 vehicles is to fix its 5th-generation Automated Driving System (ADS) software so that it will recognize and avoid construction zones.

“Waymo’s mission is to be the world’s most trusted driver, and the data shows that we’re making roads safer in the communities in which we operate,” a Waymo spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) estimates that the entire fleet carries the software defect, according to the agency’s safety report.

“Under certain circumstances the [autonomous vehicles] may enter and drive at speed in freeway construction zones due to inappropriately prioritizing the avoidance of other freeway hazards and/or failing to recognize the construction zone,” NHTSA stated in the report.

Waymo investigated one such incident on April 11 and five on April 19 in which Waymo cars autonomously drove past ramp closure signs into freeway construction zones in Phoenix, Arizona, according to the report.

The company’s field safety committee implemented driving restrictions on April 20 until more improvements could be made, according to the report.

On May 18, seven Waymo vehicles in the San Francisco Bay Area entered freeway lanes in construction zones by driving between cones designating the lane’s closure. In this case, the software did not prioritize avoiding the other freeway hazards or failed to recognize the construction zone.

The safety committee put restrictions in place after the May incident, Waymo reported.

The recall is a notice of the company’s intent to improve its software and address the problems.

Waymo voluntarily restricted freeway operations in May while making improvements to the software to avoid other freeway hazards.

No collisions or injuries were reported as a result of the construction zone incidents. The company started offering public riders trips using freeways last November in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix areas.

The 5th-generation Waymo Driver on the all-electric Jaguar I-PACE. Waymo

This is Waymo’s second full-fleet recall this year.

In May, the U.S. Transportation Department issued a recall of Waymo’s 3,791 vehicles after one of its vehicles drove into a flooded and impassable road in San Antonio, Texas, and was swept away despite the car detecting that the road might be impassable.

The company notified federal and state regulators before filing a voluntary federal software recall that was published by the NHTSA, according to a company spokesperson.

New Ojai Rides

On May 28, Waymo rolled out its newest vehicle—the Ojai—featuring its 6th-generation technology serving riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.

The boxy, baby blue robotaxi is a fully electric and designed to be fully autonomous. The vehicle is designed for full accessibility with braille and screen readers.

The 6th-generation Waymo Driver is integrated into the all-electric Ojai. Waymo

The doors open like an elevator and the cabin is meant to feel like a “living room on wheels” with large LED screens and customizable temperatures and music, Waymo said.

Waymo plans to expand Ojai’s service area to include Denver, Las Vegas, and San Diego before opening it to more cities later this year, according to the company.

China’s monthly gold imports reached their highest in more than two years in May, showing the world’s biggest buyer’s appetite for bullion remained resilient as prices remained under pressure; the number prompted some to scratch their heads as to where all this gold is going in light of tepid official central bank purchases, coupled with the lowest gold withdrawals from the Shanghai Gold Exchange since the covid outbreak. 

As Bloomberg reports, imports were around 163 tons last month, the highest since March 2024, according to customs data released on Saturday. Volumes for the first five months of 2026 were about 692 tons, up by about 76% from a year earlier. 

Chinese demand for physical bullion bars, as well as metal linked to gold accumulation plans (low-barrier products that allow investors to buy gold incrementally), have been among the main drivers of the surge, said Song Jiangzhen, a researcher at the Guangzhou Southern Gold Market Academy. 

China also started implementing a new import licensing regime for gold from June 1, with certain banks facing fewer restrictions. But the change may have prompted some banks to use up their existing quotas before the new system began, Song said.

Curiously, in its latest official monthly update, China’s central banb, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) only increased its gold reserves by nearly 10 tonnes last month, its 19th consecutive month of bullion purchases. The State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) announced on Sunday that China’s official gold reserves rose by 320,000 troy ounces or 9.95 tonnes in May to a total of 74.96 million troy ounces or 2331.52 tonnes.

China’s total foreign exchange reserves rose to $3.4422 trillion at the end of May, increasing by $31.7 billion or 0.93% from April. This is the highest level for China’s FX reserves since November 2015; they have remained above $3.3 trillion for the past 10 months.

SAFE attributed the growth of reserves to a number of factors, including a firmer US Dollar Index and rising global asset prices, adding that China’s sound economic momentum has underpinned the stability of its reserves.

Experts have noted that China’s rising foreign exchange reserves are closely linked to the country’s export performance.  China’s total foreign trade in the first four months of 2026 rose to $2.39 trillion, an increase of 14.9% year-on-year, with exports rising by 11.3% percent to $1.37 trillion and imports rising 20% percent to $1.01 trillion, according to the latest data from China’s General Administration of Customs

According to the latest central bank gold purchase tracker from Goldman, of the 59 tonnes of gold purchased by central bank in April, China’s PBOC was estimated to have bought 24 tonnes of gold, or well below the recent pace of imports which are about 5x greater. While the pace of central bank gold purchases has moderated to ~50 tonnes/month on a 3-month (seasonally adjusted) and 12-month moving average basis, Goldman views the ongoing diversification trend as structural.

Goldman remains bullish on gold, with continued central bank diversification the main structural driver of the bank’s constructive base case for gold prices, contributing 9% to its forecast for appreciation by Dec26. As we highlighted last week, a recent World Gold Council survey supports Goldman’s optimistic view: a record 45% of the 76 central banks surveyed between February and May expect to increase their own gold reserves over the next 12 months, while ~90% expect global reserves to rise with the remainder expecting broadly stable holdings. As a result, Goldman assumes continued central bank accumulation of 50t/month in 2026 and 40t/month in 2027.

Meanwhile, as Kitco notes, China’s domestic gold market has shown definite signs of cooling in recent weeks. 

“Amid heightened market uncertainty, gold ETFs have seen an overall reduction in assets under management, with several funds experiencing significant net outflows,” noted a report from Gelonghui Finance. “As of June 3, 14 gold ETFs recorded combined net outflows exceeding RMB 10 billion [$1.48 billion] over the past month.”

“The previously widely accepted investment view of ‘buying on dips amid falling gold prices’ has started to face divergence under current volatile market conditions,” they added.

Gold prices have retreated by about a quarter from the record highs reached in January, weighed down by EM selling (most notably Turkey in the early days of the Iran war), and global inflation fears amid the war in the Middle East which have pushed the US dollar sharply higher. While strong buying from Chinese consumers was a key catalyst for the January frenzy, domestic demand has since moderated, but without a major slump.

Adding to the mathematical mystery, the latest numbers from the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) showed that gold withdrawals in May totaled only 63.5 tonnes – the lowest level since February of 2020 during the first wave of the COVID-19 outbreak, and around half of what they were in March of this year. Industry professionals told Gelonghui Finance that “while short-term gold price volatility may persist, the core rationale supporting gold’s strategic allocation value remains intact over the medium to long term.”

In other words, there appears to be a gap between near record imports, tepid official central bank demand, and muted gold withdrawals from the SGE. 

This is not a new development: as we documented previously, China is well known for indicating just modest central bank purchases, even as total Chinese purchases of gold on the London OTC market are orders of magnitude higher. 

China reported 5 tonnes of gold purchases in February (160k oz per PBOC).
China actually bought 50 tonnes of gold in February (per GS) pic.twitter.com/oQifGszNcQ

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 13, 2025

Separately, Bloomberg also reported that at least four of the 11 banks participating in Hong Kong’s new gold clearing system are importing large bullion bars in preparation for the mechanism’s planned launch in July.

Traders are receiving orders from some of the clearing banks to move 400-ounce gold bars into the city, Bloomberg reported citing people familiar with the matter. The bars meet the London Good Delivery industry standard.

The 400-ounce bars are typically traded by banks and sovereign entities in London, the world’s largest bullion trading hub, but are less common in the Asian market, which is dominated by much smaller kilobars. The banks need to build up inventories to allow for physical delivery when clearing begins next month.

By launching its gold clearing system, Hong Kong is securing first-mover advantage in a push to become Asia’s preeminent hub for bullion trading. Last week, Singapore announced its own plans to launch a clearing mechanism by the end of the year.

Both cities are aiming to capitalize on strong demand in Asia, where many investors remain bullish about the long-term prospects for the precious metal as an alternative store of wealth despite the recent drop in price as the war in the Middle East fanned concerns around inflation and higher interest rates.

In an emailed response to questions, a spokesperson for the government agency behind the system, known as the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau, said the clearing company had been “working closely with the market to formulate the framework and rules of the clearing system” and that preparatory work had entered its final stage.

Eleven banks are on the board of the Hong Kong Precious Metals Central Clearing Company. Some of these lenders will become clearing banks from the launch, whereas others will take longer to build up their bullion capacity. While Hong Kong plans to start by using the London Good Delivery standard, its future plans are still to be decided, the people said.

In Singapore, the clearing system will be aligned with the London Good Delivery framework for large bars, as well as delivery and settlement standards for kilobars adopted by major exchanges in Chicago and Shanghai.