Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Banning the AfD, more “statistically conspicuous” deaths of its candidates, and even a repeat of the Romanian scenario can’t be ruled out as the nationalist opposition continues growing in popularity…

A poll from publicly financed German media revealed that the AfD once again ties the ruling CDU in popularity at 26% each, which Euractiv evaluated as proving its staying power. They also assessed that their tripling of support in North Rhine-Westphalia’s latest elections, Germany’s most populous state, to 14.5% “emphasized the party’s increasingly national base.” This is in spite of media smears, namely that it’s backed by the Kremlin and extremist, and the “statistically conspicuous” death of seven candidates.

The AfD’s surging support across Germany can be attributed to the unofficial recession that Germany entered in 2022 after complying with US pressure to sanction Russia in solidarity with Ukraine and from which it’s still struggling to recover. Simply put, cutting off reliable access to low-cost energy raised prices across the board, which reduced the competitiveness of German companies and led to economic malaise. This unfolded in parallel with the government taking on more of a “liberal-totalitarian” form.

A growing number of Germans therefore naturally gravitated towards the only real alternative political force that had emerged in the country by then, which was made all the more attractive by its pragmatic approach to the Ukrainian Conflict. At this point, the West can no longer win (hitherto officially considered the restoration of Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders but recently described by Zelensky as Ukraine simply continuing to exist), all that it can do is reach a deal with Russia or risk its client state’s full defeat.

The AfD favors a compromise that paves the way for resuming Germany’s import of Russian gas while the ruling elite want to perpetuate the proxy war as proven by their latest pledge of €9 billion to Ukraine through 2026. The first’s policy would restore the strength of the German economy and consequently its pre-conflict social spending levels whereas the second would perpetuate economic malaise while enriching those who invest in the military-industrial complex and worsening corruption in Ukraine.

Circling back to Euractiv’s article, they concluded on the note that “Merz doesn’t face national elections until 2029, but the AfD are eyeing a number of regional elections next year, including votes in two eastern states where the far right have been holding clear leads in the polls.” While early elections are possible, just like the ones in February that brought Chancellor Friedrich Merz to power and in which the AfD shocked the establishment by coming second, the elite probably won’t risk them (at least not yet).

They won’t want to take the chance that the AfD wins and there’s still more work to be done in engineering the elections whenever they’re eventually held, whether in 2029 or earlier. This could take the form of banning the AfD on extremist pretexts or more of its candidates might fall victim to more “statistically conspicuous” deaths by then. A repeat of the Romanian scenario whereby politically inconvenient electoral results are annulled on unsubstantiated foreign meddling pretexts is also possible.

One way or another, the ruling elite are expected to continue resisting the winds of change that were unleashed by their own policies and are now sweeping across the country, especially those towards Russia that sabotaged the structural strength of the economy. Whether they succeed in keeping AfD leader Alice Weidel out of the chancellorship remains to be seen, but there’s no doubt that her party’s appeal will continue growing since it’s the only one that truly has Germany’s national interests in mind.

Authored by Sylvia Xu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Fertility rates have plummeted worldwide over the past six decades, leading experts to warn of dire consequences as the downward trend continues.

Continued low fertility rates will cause “a gradual implosion of the world’s economy as the population ages and dies,” Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, told The Epoch Times in an email. Mosher is an expert on population control, demography, and China.

“This will not occur overnight, of course, but once it is well underway it will be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse course,” he said.

Fertility rates (the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime) are different from birthrates (the number of live births per 1,000 people in a population over a given period), although the terms are related and often used interchangeably.

Countries with low fertility rates are also likely to have low birthrates.

Macroeconomist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde called low fertility rates “the true economic challenge of our time,” in a February report for the American Enterprise Institute.

In 1960, the average woman bore four or five children in her lifetime. By 2023, that number had halved to 2.2, approaching 2.1, the replacement level—or the level at which a population replaces itself from one generation to the next.

In July, the U.S. Census Bureau projected that the world’s population will reach 8.1 billion this year. Experts say although the figure has grown from 3 billion in 1960, the number to watch is the pace of population growth.

The bureau stated that “the rate of growth peaked decades ago in the 1960s and has been declining since and is projected to continue declining.”

Fernández-Villaverde warned that while the sagging rate of growth may not have immediate consequences, in less than half a century, declining fertility will impact the world economy. Countries with low or negative birthrates will contend with a shrinking workforce and the ballooning costs associated with an aging population.

Global Fertility Rates

Only about 4 percent of the world’s population reside in a country with a high fertility rate—more than five children per woman—and all of those nations are in Africa, the Census Bureau noted. Even in those countries, fertility rates are generally lower than they once were.

The bureau reported that nearly three-quarters of the world’s population live in countries where fertility rates are at or below the replacement level.

The fertility rate in India, the world’s most populous country, has steadily declined over the past six decades. In June, the UN Population Fund reported that India’s fertility rate stood at 1.9 children per woman, down from five or six children in 1960.

In 1990, China’s fertility rate was 2.51, despite its one child policy. By 2023, it had dropped to less than one birth per woman, according to the United Nation’s population division.

In the United States, fertility has undergone a persistent decline. It fell below the replacement level in 1972 and reached 1.62 in 2023, a historic low.

Asian and European countries have the lowest fertility rates in the world, and South Korea (0.72), Singapore (0.97), Ukraine (0.977), and China (0.999) all have rates below one.

Across much of Europe, North America, and Eastern Asia, fertility rates have fallen below replacement level.

Looking Back to the ‘60s

In the Western world, the decline in fertility rates that began in the 1960s coincided with the advent of oral contraception, the legalization of abortion, and the widespread adoption of no-fault divorce.

In the United States, the first oral contraceptive was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960. Within five years, the birth rate in the United States had already declined “substantially,” a report from the National Fertility Study indicated. By 1976, the U.S. fertility rate had fallen to a record low of 1.7.

In 1973, abortion became legal in the United States following the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. At the time, a handful of other countries had also legalized abortion, including the UK, Norway, and Singapore.

The United States’ decision was followed by several countries including Denmark, South Korea, France, West Germany, New Zealand, Italy, and the Netherlands. Today, only 22 countries completely ban abortion.

Read the rest here…

Oh, and…

Submitted by Brent Johnson, courtesy of MacroAlchemist.com

Investor Euphoria & The Anatomy of a Market Crash

Executive Summary

Markets move in cycles of innovation and speculation, and the present surge in artificial intelligence is no exception.

Today’s AI boom displays nearly all the features that have defined past bubbles—soaring valuations, concentrated flows of capital, euphoric investor sentiment, and media narratives that reinforce expectations of unstoppable growth. By most measures, the parallels extend beyond resemblance: the speculative fervor around AI rivals and in many ways exceeds the South Sea Bubble, the 1840s railway mania, the 1920s boom, the dot-com era, and the subprime mortgage frenzy.

At the center of the storm lies a combustible mix of genuine technological promise, abundant liquidity, and human psychology. Investors see the potential for world-changing transformation, credit remains accessible enough to fuel risk-taking, and fear of missing out drives behavior to extremes.

The result is an environment where both startups and established firms are valued as though flawless execution, relentless hypergrowth, and immediate mass adoption were inevitable.

Such assumptions are unsustainable.

Every historical bubble has revealed the danger of expectations drifting too far from reality. In the late 1990s, the mantra was that profits no longer mattered; today, many AI firms are projecting revenues and margins based on unproven scenarios.

When the gap between projections and actual results grows wide, the risks compound. Financial losses are the most visible outcome, but history shows that misconduct often follows. From the railway booms of the 19th century to Enron, WorldCom, and the more recent mortgage excesses, periods of extreme optimism have created fertile ground for creative accounting, misrepresentation, and fraud.

The warning signs are well known.

Extreme valuations relative to tangible earnings, heavy concentration of capital in a handful of celebrated winners, and the easy availability of venture funding or leverage all raise systemic risk. The proliferation of complex financial products magnifies fragility, turning small disruptions into cascading stress events.

And as always, the insistence that “this time is different” echoes loudly in the background, emboldening herd behavior while discouraging sober analysis.

When both retail and institutional investors chase momentum trades rather than fundamentals, the system edges closer to its breaking point.

History also offers a guide to navigating these environments.

Investors who wish to participate in innovation without being consumed by its excesses must apply a disciplined, historically informed framework. This means challenging assumptions behind valuations, scrutinizing profit projections, monitoring leverage and liquidity conditions, and examining whether business models are robust enough to withstand shocks.

It also means cultivating behavioral awareness—recognizing that FOMO, herd instincts, and narrative intoxication can overwhelm even the most seasoned decision-makers.

Perhaps most critically, vigilance against aggressive accounting or unrealistic guidance is essential, since the incentives for embellishment grow strongest in speculative peaks.

This study is not written from a position of permanent pessimism. It is a general exploration of the anatomy of market crashes, designed to provide a framework for understanding why speculative cycles form and how they unwind.

At the same time, it is timely. The conditions we observe today suggest that a sharp correction is not a distant possibility but a near-term risk.

And our goal is not to preach fear.

Rather, it is to help prepare readers for the rogue waves that history tells us appear just when the waters seem calmest. We believe extraordinary opportunities will emerge once excesses are flushed from the system, but to capture them, investors must first survive the volatility that lies ahead.

The sections that follow build upon this foundation, beginning with the AI boom itself. As the most vivid present-day example of innovation colliding with speculation, it provides a live case study of how opportunity and risk entwine, setting the stage for both painful collapse and enduring renewal.

Background

Financial markets have always swung between fear & greed, moments of stability & episodes of mania.

Crashes are rarely a product of truly unforeseen shocks; more often, they are the inevitable outcome of long stretches of investor euphoria. These euphoric phases are characterized by an intoxicating mix of extreme optimism, soaring valuations, the easy availability of credit, and the conviction that some new technological or economic paradigm justifies abandoning the lessons of history.

In hindsight, signals of excess usually appear glaring. But in the moment, investors, institutions, and even regulators are lulled by persuasive narratives and the apparent reliability of ever-rising prices.

This paper examines the anatomy of such euphoric cycles. It explores the conditions that allow optimism to grow unchecked, the signals that can be seen in real time, the distortions that only reveal themselves after collapse, and the enduring lessons investors can carry forward.

Historical examples ranging from tulip mania to the dot-com boom to the SPAC frenzy of 2021, paired with data on valuations, leverage, IPOs, and liquidity, provide the lens through which we analyze how manias build, why they unravel, and how disciplined investors can prepare for their aftermath.

Conditions That Breed Euphoria

Euphoria tends to be powered by three main elements:

1. Inflated valuations.
2. Abundant credit.
3. And a compelling narrative of progress.

Valuation is the most immediate signal. Robert Shiller’s CAPE ratio offers a century-long view of how earnings multiples expand during speculative eras.

In 1929, CAPE rose above 32 before collapsing to 5 in the depths of the Depression. In 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble, it touched 44—a record that stood until today’s era, when CAPE once again surged into the high-30s.
Each peak was followed by years, even decades, of muted returns.

Elevated valuations may not trigger an instant collapse, but they reliably compress long-run forward returns, leaving markets vulnerable to sudden shifts in sentiment.

Credit availability provides the second engine.

Liquidity supplied by banks, shadow lenders, or central banks amplifies speculation. Margin debt offers a stark illustration: it reached $278 billion in March 2000, $381 billion in July 2007, and $935 billion in October 2021, before topping $1 trillion in the current cycle. Each surge coincided with a wave of risk-taking; each retracement magnified losses as forced selling cascaded through the system.

The third element is narrative.

Bubbles are rarely built on nothing; they are anchored in genuine shifts. Railroads in the nineteenth century, electrification and automobiles in the early twentieth, the internet in the 1990s, and AI and cryptocurrencies in the 2020s all provided credible visions of boundless growth. Yet markets consistently priced these innovations with unrealistic speed and scale.

The phrase “this time is different” echoes across every euphoric episode, deployed to rationalize valuations and leverage levels that in calmer times would be dismissed as reckless.

Signals Visible in Real Time

Even at the height of mania, warning signs are visible to those willing to look.

Retail investor surges are a common marker. The 1920s saw households speculating in bucket shops with leveraged stock bets. The 1990s featured day traders armed with online brokerages and chat-room tips. In the 2020s, commission-free apps fueled meme-stock frenzies as millions piled into GameStop, AMC, and other speculative trades.

When investing turns into cultural entertainment, markets are already deep in the euphoric phase.

Issuance is another signal.

Nearly 500 IPOs flooded markets in 1999, many from unprofitable firms. In 2021, more than 1,000 listings, dominated by SPACs, eclipsed even that surge. Such waves demonstrate not only investor appetite but also opportunism by issuers exploiting inflated valuations.

Price patterns often provide confirmation. Parabolic moves—where prices accelerate beyond sustainability—are the classic tell. The NASDAQ between 1998 and 2000, Bitcoin in 2017 and 2021, and certain AI stocks in 2023–2025 all displayed this behavior. Media coverage follows suit, shifting to unrelenting positivity, with stories of overnight millionaires and celebrity endorsements reinforcing the frenzy.

Speculative mania reaches full bloom once it enters the mainstream cultural consciousness.

Liquidity measures add further evidence.

In 2020, U.S. M2 money supply expanded nearly 25% year-on-year—the fastest pace since World War II—fueled by stimulus checks, ultra-low rates, and massive asset purchases. That surge powered booms in equities, crypto, and collectibles. When M2 contracted in 2022, risk assets fell sharply, revealing how dependent euphoria is on the tide of liquidity.

Signals Clearer Only in Hindsight

Other distortions only emerge after collapse.

Cheap capital enables malinvestment: dot-com firms burning through cash on marketing in the late 1990s, SPAC startups of 2020–2021 collapsing once easy funding evaporated. Hidden leverage is another revelation. In 2008, mortgage-backed securities and CDOs concealed systemic exposures; in 2022, crypto lenders failed for similar reasons.
Narratives, too, undergo a dramatic pivot.

During booms, the focus is boundless growth. After crashes, scrutiny shifts to governance, unit economics, and sustainability. The shift from “how big can this get?” to “can this survive?” is the hallmark of reversal.

Accounting misrepresentation is another thread.

Enron remains the archetype: vendor financing, premature revenue recognition, and other tricks prolonged the illusion, until collapse became unavoidable. When Enron fell, it dragged down Arthur Andersen, one of the world’s most prestigious accounting firms, underscoring how far the damage can spread.

Behavioral Dynamics

Beneath these financial patterns lie recurring psychological forces.

Herding compels investors to follow the crowd, reinforcing momentum. Overconfidence convinces traders they will exit before the downturn, even as exposure builds. Narrative bias gives stories of transformation primacy over sober analysis. Risk perception erodes as practices once considered reckless become normalized.

This cycle of behavior repeats with uncanny consistency.

Case Studies in Euphoria

Speculative manias arise when optimism, innovation, and sudden wealth converge to fire the collective imagination — and when easy credit provides the means for everyone to participate.

Each instance has its own cultural markers: tulips in 17th-century Holland, the South Sea schemes in Enlightenment England, radio and automobiles in 1920s America, internet startups at the turn of the millennium, securitized mortgages in the 2000s, and meme stocks during the pandemic era.

Beneath these surface differences lies a common emotional cycle: excitement, enthusiasm, greed, and, eventually, panic.

Tulip Mania (1637)

The Tulip Mania of 1637 is often remembered as the first great financial bubble.

It was never simply about a flower. In the Dutch Golden Age, Amsterdam had become the center of world trade, and merchants, craftsmen, and artisans were enriched by global commerce. Tulips, newly imported from the Ottoman Empire, were prized as luxury goods, their vivid colors and striking patterns caused by mosaic viruses.

To own rare bulbs was to signal both taste and social standing.

Demand soon transformed tulips from status symbols into speculative assets. What made the episode remarkable was how deeply it penetrated Dutch society. Farmers, artisans, and small merchants speculated, often through futures contracts that allowed wagers on bulbs never actually exchanged.

At the peak, a single bulb could trade for more than ten times the annual wage of a skilled worker, with anecdotes of prices rivaling canal-side mansions.

When an ordinary auction failed to draw expected bids, confidence evaporated almost instantly. Prices collapsed, contracts went worthless, and while the Dutch economy absorbed the shock, the episode left an enduring lesson: when prestige and speculation merge, markets can detach from reality.

South Sea Bubble (1720)

The South Sea Bubble of 1720 followed a similar trajectory but with greater institutional weight.

Early-eighteenth-century England was encumbered with war debts, and the South Sea Company proposed an elegant solution: it would assume the national debt in exchange for shares and monopoly rights to trade with Spanish South America. Promoted by politicians and endorsed as virtually risk-free, the scheme sent shares soaring.

Investors ranged from the aristocracy to common citizens, with even the royal family participating. The age of Enlightenment optimism encouraged faith in boundless opportunities, and opportunists launched dozens of copycat ventures — some laughably vague, such as “a company for carrying out an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.”

When it became clear that South Sea’s trading prospects were illusory and its debt-conversion model untenable, the bubble collapsed.

Families lost fortunes, public fury mounted, and Parliament was forced to investigate.

The lesson was broader than speculation: it underscored the dangerous interplay between state endorsement, finance, and public trust, a formative moment in British financial history.

1929 Crash

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 captured the euphoric mix of technological innovation, cultural exuberance, and financial leverage.

The 1920s were transformative: automobiles expanded mobility, radios connected homes, and electric appliances revolutionized daily life. Jazz, cinema, and the cultural energy of the decade reinforced the sense that a new era of prosperity was permanent. Corporate profits rose, stock ownership broadened, and margin loans enabled investors to buy shares with borrowed funds.

Newspapers and radio personalities celebrated the market as a one-way ticket to riches.

By 1929, valuations were stretched to extremes, but the cultural conviction in progress drowned out skepticism. When the downturn came, margin calls cascaded into panic selling. The crash marked the abrupt end of the Roaring Twenties, shattering faith in markets and ushering in the hardship of the Great Depression.

Dot-com Bubble (1999–2000)

The dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s provides one of the clearest modern parallels.

The internet represented a genuine technological revolution, but as in earlier eras, it was mythologized as the foundation of a “new economy” where old valuation rules no longer applied. Startups became cultural icons, showered with venture capital and ushered to market through a flood of IPOs.

Retail investors, empowered by online brokerages, joined the rush. Cultural artifacts of the time included Super Bowl ads from unprofitable firms and magazine covers proclaiming the death of brick-and-mortar business. Analysts argued that “eyeballs” and “clicks” mattered more than profits.

The Shiller CAPE ratio surged to 44, a historic extreme. When the bubble burst, the NASDAQ lost nearly 80% of its value over two years, erasing fortunes and careers. Yet, as in 1929, the underlying innovations endured: Amazon, Google, and eBay eventually thrived, just as autos and radios had before them.

The lesson was not that innovation lacked value but that speculation accelerates expectations far beyond what reality can deliver.

Global Financial Crisis (2008)

The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 extended the pattern of euphoria into credit markets.

Unlike the dot-com boom, this was not a mania of households buying internet stocks but of institutions building towers of leverage on the foundation of housing. The cultural backdrop was belief in homeownership as the cornerstone of the American dream, coupled with faith that housing prices never declined nationwide.

Banks extended credit to increasingly unqualified borrowers.

Wall Street packaged mortgages into securities and collateralized debt obligations, which rating agencies blessed with investment-grade status. Yield-hungry institutional investors bought them eagerly.

When home prices began to slip in 2006 and 2007, the illusion collapsed.

Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and other giants fell, credit markets froze, and the crisis cascaded into the worst global recession since the 1930s. The central narrative of stability and safety gave way to systemic fragility and mistrust.

SPAC and Meme-Stock Boom (2020–2021)

The SPAC and meme-stock boom of 2020–2021 showed how quickly euphoria adapts to new environments.

The COVID-19 pandemic initially sparked panic, but unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus soon reversed the collapse. With near-zero rates, trillions in government transfers, and record household savings, retail investors found themselves with capital to deploy.

Platforms such as Robinhood made trading free and gamified, while online communities on Reddit and Twitter forged a culture of collective speculation. Meme stocks like GameStop and AMC became cultural symbols, celebrated less for fundamentals than as vehicles of rebellion against Wall Street. At the same time, SPACs multiplied, providing fast-track listings for untested firms.

In 2021 alone, more than 600 SPACs raised capital, reflecting both investor enthusiasm and a cultural belief in disruption. By 2022, tightening monetary policy and inflation punctured the boom.

Meme stocks, SPACs, and even cryptocurrencies collapsed, leaving behind another lesson: liquidity, psychology, and culture can generate illusions of permanence that dissolve almost overnight.

Taken together, these various episodes show how societies repeatedly convince themselves they stand on the edge of transformation — whether through flowers, global trade, industry, technology, or digital platforms.

Credit expansion, cultural narrative, and mass participation provide the fuel.

Collapse brings destruction, reform, and reflection, but also resilience.

In nearly every case, the innovation at the core of the bubble — tulips aside — survived the washout.

What is left behind is both a cautionary tale and a foundation for the future.

* * * 

Continue reading at the Macro Alchemist or the pdf below.

Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

The White House press secretary on Monday shot down media reports accusing President Donald Trump’s border czar of accepting a $50,000 bribe from undercover FBI agents last year, telling reporters “the president stands by Tom Homan 100 percent.”

MSNBC reported on Saturday that Homan was caught on tape accepting a bag filled with the cash from federal agents as part of an undercover operation in Texas during the heat of the 2024 election.

According to the report, written by RussiaGate hoaxers Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian, Homan took the bribe in exchange for helping the agents win government contracts in a second Trump administration.

During the White House press briefing Monday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked if President Trump had asked the Justice Department to close the case, and whether Homan would be returning the alleged bribe.

“Mr. Homan never took the $50,000 you’re referring to so you should get your facts straight, number one,” Leavitt replied.

“Number two, this was another example of the weaponization by the Biden Department of Justice against one of President Trump’s strongest and most vocal supporters in the midst of a presidential campaign,” she continued. “You had FBI agents going undercover to try and entrap one of the president’s top allies and supporters, someone they knew very well would be taking a government position months later. Mr. Homan did absolutely nothing wrong.”

Leavitt said the Trump Department of Justice had FBI agents and prosecutors investigate the allegations and “they found zero evidence of illegal activity or criminal wrongdoing.”

“The White House and the president stand by Tom Homan 100 percent because he did absolutely nothing wrong and he is a brave public servant who has done a phenomenal job on helping the president shut down the border,” she declared.

FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement to the Hill Saturday that “this matter originated under the previous administration and was subjected to a full review by FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors. They found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing.”

Homan himself called the allegations “bullsh-t.”

Imagine hauling in enough platinum, gold, and rare earth metals to bankroll every American’s wildest dreams–or potentially tank the global economy overnight. That’s the high-stakes gamble NASA and a cadre of innovative U.S. startups are wagering on the untapped riches of asteroids.

As NASA’s Psyche spacecraft hurtles toward its 2029 mission toward the metal-rich asteroid that shares the same name as the mission, a cadre of U.S. startups is accelerating efforts to turn celestial rocks into a viable business, potentially reshaping global supply chains for critical minerals. Yet the venture carries risks of market disruption, echoing historical commodity booms and busts. Launched in October 2023 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, the Psyche mission is on course to orbit Asteroid 16 Psyche by late July 2029, where it will spend two years mapping the body’s composition.

Led by Arizona State University’s Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche targets what scientists believe is the exposed core of an ancient protoplanet, rich in iron, nickel and other metals potentially valued in the “quadrillions of dollars”—”15 zeros,” as Ms. Elkins-Tanton put it in a recent interview with Space. The economic allure is clear: The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter harbors vast deposits of platinum for catalysts, cobalt for batteries, iron for steel and gold for electronics. NASA’s estimates suggest mining just 10 such bodies could generate $100 million per Earth resident, totaling $1.5 trillion.

However, the mission, unsurprisingly, is no cake walk, as commercialization hinges on controlled extraction to avoid flooding markets. An oversupply of rare earths, which is vital for iPhones, electric vehicles and defense tech, could trigger price collapses akin to oil gluts, stranding terrestrial miners and suppliers.

The daunting potential consequences don’t scare companies like California-based TransAstra, which is refining optical mining, using concentrated solar energy to process water-laden asteroids. The technique encases targets in polyamide enclosures and vaporizes volatiles to yield pure metals, a process the company’s CEO, Joel Sercel, likens to wielding the sun as a blowtorch, according to Space.

TransAstra narrowly missed a test run last fall with mini-moon 2024 PT5, a fleeting orbital visitor that lingered for nearly two months; such opportunities arise sporadically, perhaps yearly or every decade, per former Tethers Unlimited co-founder Rob Hoyt. Hoyt’s Tethers Unlimited, inspired by NASA consultant and sci-fi author R.L. Forward, once pitched net-and-tether systems to capture and tow asteroids into Earth orbit for robotic disassembly, notes Space.

This crop of startups is the first to attempt to mine the cosmos.

Early attempts like Planetary Resources, founded in 2012 with backing from Hollywood director James Cameron, Google bigwigs Eric Schmidt and Larry Page and Virgin CEO Richard Branson, invested millions in probes for water and metals prospecting. The firm restructured amid financing woes but seeded the sector’s ambitions.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

America has a lot of built-in safety backups and redundancies.

But every once in a while, when tradition, science, time-tested protocols, and common sense are ignored, a fragile system utterly collapses.

Usually, an iconic event reveals how vulnerable the entire country has become, and predictably occurs when suicidal ideologies and nihilism, in perfect-storm fashion, wreak havoc.

The media, academia, the bureaucracy, and higher education can mask the dangers of their political agendas—at least until their sheer incompetence or toxicity can no longer be hidden or excused, and a predictable disaster ensues.

Take the January 4-5, 2025, Pacific Palisades fire that destroyed an entire historic neighborhood of Los Angeles. The embers had not even cooled when we were lectured that “climate change” was responsible for the historically predictable annual autumn and early winter Santa Ana winds that whip up horrific fires before the first winter rains arrive—a phenomenon documented for over two centuries.

The media, in reporting the conflagration, downplayed human culpability. But over the next few weeks, outraged former homeowners and independent journalists began cataloging the real symptoms of a total system failure that turned the normal end-of-year fire season into a catastrophic inferno.

A lot of things had to go wrong to utterly destroy an ancient, coveted neighborhood. But DEI managed to do all of that with ease.

First, we learned that the incompetent mayor, Karen Bass, had cut the fire budget. Then, despite warnings of dry hillsides, underfunded fire protection, and predicted high winds, Bass was nowhere to be seen during the most dangerous weeks of the year.

Why? She was junketing in Ghana, an African nation rarely considered vital to the running of the third-largest city in the United States.

The now-convicted felon, Deputy Mayor Brian Thompson, was under house arrest for phoning in a bomb threat to the city hall. So a mayoral apparatus did not exist.

Next, the clueless and vastly overpaid Janisse Quiñones, the CEO and Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, was likely hired based on diversity, equity, and inclusion criteria despite a prior uninspiring record in her administrative roles at PG&E. She was utterly unprepared for the fire.

When the fires swept in, a key reservoir that might have saved the community had been bone dry for months while under superficial repair. Dozens of fire hydrants were nonfunctional.

Unhinged environmental mandates had prevented homeowners from clearing nearby combustible brush on the hillside, the proverbial fuel of the Santa Ana wind-powered fires.

The chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, Kristin Crowley, had bragged about her diversity hiring but had done little to ensure her firefighters had enough water to put out the fires.

In other words, the wages of electing, appointing, or selecting officials on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation, or making policy on the basis of radical green orthodoxy, rather than proven meritocracy and empiricism, finally came due in a systems collapse of the city government, utilities, fire protection, and prevention.

There have been lots of Palisades events in the past. And there will be far more to come in the future, as our ever more complex society that requires meritocratic operators cannot afford social engineering and ideological agendas at the expense of lives and property.

Similar to the Palisades disaster was the train of events that led to the needless murder of a 23-year-old Ukrainian immigrant, Iryna Zarutska, on a light-rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina.

DeCarlos Brown, a 14-time felon, was out on cashless bail, despite his lengthy record of violent offenses that should have ensured imprisonment. He was homeless with a lifelong record of recidivism.

Who let him out? And why? A magistrate, Terese Stokes. She had never passed the bar but seemingly enjoyed impunity from apparent conflicts of interest by sentencing the convicted to an alternate treatment center in which she and her partner had financial interests.

Why would the state allow those with little legal certification to become de facto judges? Why would their records of freeing dangerous criminals not come under scrutiny?

The result of those unanswered questions was that DeCarlos Brown entered a train with a knife, silently jumped up, and lethally slashed the throat of Ms. Zarutska in the seat ahead. She had no idea she was sitting in front of a career, violent, and released felon from a family of violent felons—and was now to become the prey of a cold-blooded, racist killer.

Four passengers sitting adjacent to, ahead of, and behind Brown did nothing as he attacked Zarutska. Nor did they render her aid, as they callously sidestepped her in her death throes. He seemed to have muttered, “Got the white girl,” as he walked away from that lethal attack and got off the train.

The system was now breaking: why did riders not have to buy tickets to enter the train? Why was there no security on the train? Why did not one nearby passenger intervene either to stop the attack, render assistance to the dying Zarutska, or seek to apprehend Brown for the police?

And then the broken system utterly collapsed—as happened in Los Angeles, where fires raged, no official either cared or had any solution, and nine months later, the charred ruins sit mostly untouched.

Once disgraced Mayor Bass tried to restore her reputation by hogging TV microphones and blasting the Trump administration for arresting and deporting violent and criminal illegal aliens, living exempt and free in her city, as the ruins of an entire neighborhood sit mostly untouched.

Almost immediately after the Zarutska murder, the left-wing media nexus was confronted with a dilemma. The light rail video had already been released by the police. Yet left-wing mayor Vi Lyles immediately lectured the public not to blame the homeless Brown. She urged the video not be seen so it would not stir up animosities. She called the evil work of Brown a “tragedy” and pontificated that arresting people would not be a solution.

North Carolina Governor Josh Stein was silent too long about the murder, despite posting all sorts of extraneous news stories. In contrast, he had earlier been quick to editorialize upon the death of George Floyd.

Once popular rage forced his public statement, Stein blabbered about all the anti-crime bills he introduced, but the former Attorney General of North Carolina kept quiet about his state, which allows an incompetent Stokes, with zero legal training, to release lethal criminals onto the public.

Add up the systemic failures to find the common denominator.

An “honor system” that requires no paid ticket to ride the public train is a prescription for disaster, especially when there are no nocturnal security officers on it. No city official seemed concerned about it.

It does no good to bar passengers from carrying concealed weapons if they are never at least superficially searched as they enter the train or surveilled by guards while on it. No city official cared about that either. In a climate of defunding the police, cashless bail, and the ending of stop-and-frisk, no such preemptive action apparently was warranted.

Stokes should never have been a magistrate. She was untrained, unqualified, and had possible financial conflicts of interest that should be investigated. She will not be because she feels her DEI status got her a job without the requisite qualifications and will ensure it when evidence argues otherwise. Anyone who tries to fire her will be demonized as a racist, homophobic bigot.

Brown should have been in prison for the rest of his life for the string of felonies he had committed. He was not because university-spawned, foundation-funded, and politician-empowered “critical race theory” and “critical legal theory” argue, as the mayor alluded, that arrest, conviction, and incarceration do not work and are somehow unfair and not the answer to crime. His freedom can be seen as a symptom of reparatory justice, as was the fate of his inevitable future victims.

The four nearby passengers together might have stopped Brown from murdering Zarutska, or they could have at least rendered first aid, even if in vain. Yet they knew well the unpredictable nature of inner-city crime, and the recent demonization of the heroic Daniel Penny. The nearby passengers also represent a societal moral collapse. If they were fearful of their own safety in letting Brown murder Zarutska, then they had no such reasonable subsequent fear of the departed Brown when they got up and walked by the dying young woman.

Mayor Lyles does not care about innocent passengers murdered by career criminals. She is assured instead that she had been elected and reelected by DEI/woke/leftist orthodoxy. In this case, she accordingly on spec claimed arrests do not work, the homeless bear no culpability, and videos that show reality lead to politically incorrect conclusions. Those orthodoxies overrode any humane concern for the victim or future innocent victims to come.

She correctly understood that any moral outrage expressed against freed felons, the homeless epidemic, or racially based crime would entail political risks, since her constituents preferred to hear her therapeutic gobbledy-gook.

The dominant and left-wing legacy media suffocated the story because it judged Zarutska’s death as mere collateral damage that was acceptable as the price of maintaining a narrative that there is not really a Black inner-city crime problem. And to the extent such daily violence makes that narrative untenable, the media either must suppress the evidence or manipulate it, as did the mayor, to indict society at large for inordinate crime.

America’s inner cities are veritable war zones, as evidenced by a Ukrainian refugee fleeing her war-torn homeland only to be murdered in a supposedly safe and peaceful America. The crime rate is falling only because it has recently dipped from unsustainable highs of three years earlier and is thus seen in relative, not absolute, terms. In addition, big city police departments are under political pressure either not to report violent crimes to the FBI’s nationwide monitoring departments or to reclassify them as nonviolent offenses.

Very few columnists or opinion journalists dealt with the racial nature of the killings because to do so, despite the plethora of evidence, was seen as either career-ending or, in a cost-benefit analysis, not worth the smears of “racist!”

The commentator Van Jones’ postmortem blasted the late Charley Kirk as a racist for identifying racist elements in the killing. But to do so, Jones conveniently did not mention why the utterly unqualified Stokes was a judge in the first place, why she let Brown out, why she co-ran a treatment center to which she sentenced criminals, why African-American Brown attacked Zarutska and not any of the four male and female black adjacent passengers (80 percent of those passengers in his immediate vicinity), why he likely uttered, “I got that white girl” after he cut her throat, why the four black passengers simply sidestepped the dying Zarutska, why the mayor claimed arresting criminals was not the answer, and why the media smothered the story.

The one common denominator again was DEI, a toxic ideology that recalibrated accepted norms for purposes of race-based social engineering. It filters throughout society as a victim/victimizer binary in which professed victims believe they are either entitled to exemption from legal consequences or deserving of race-based preferences for perceived oppression.

In truth, the Charlotte systems’ collapse, like the Palisades fire, is a textbook case of ideology, chauvinism, and DEI destroying meritocratic norms and empiricism.

As such, it can turn anything from a fire season in Los Angeles to a nocturnal train ride in Charlotte into an utter collapse of civilizational norms.

Such landmines exist in the thousands nationwide, from the illegal alien truck driver who was given a special California license without knowing English and then dispassionately U-turned his truck and killed three innocents (and was supported by millions of signatures pleading for a special exemption for his felonious behavior) to the left-wing and media support of illegal alien Obregón Garcia. His antisocial crimes and harm he did to society at large were also seen as acceptable collateral damage to the greater crusade for open borders and mass illegal immigration.

That Garcia was a proven wife-beater, likely human trafficker, probable gang member, and certainly a serial illegal alien under suspended orders of deportation apparently matters little, given his DEI credentials of being a minority, illegal, and a deportee.

The final tragic irony is that all of the above derive from racial and ethnic essentialism and chauvinism, masked as victimhood, ensuring critics are recast as victimizers.

Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news,

Fired former CNN loser Don Lemon spent two hours complaining about Charlie Kirk’s memorial, arguing that it contained too much Christian messaging.

Lemon sounded angry about scriptures being quoted by the speakers at the event, suggesting that they were “demanding submission.”

“What we saw in that arena was not simply faith finding public expression, it was religious nationalism on full display,” Lemon blathered.

NEW: Don Lemon fumes over the Christian messaging at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, says speakers quoted scripture because they were “demanding submission”

“What we saw in that arena was not simply faith finding public expression, it was religious nationalism on full display”

They’re… pic.twitter.com/DbIPMb6p9Z

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 22, 2025

Yes Don.

What’s wrong with that?

I think America would much rather submit to Christ than submit to whatever the lefts religion is.

— Gentry Gevers (@gentrywgevers) September 22, 2025

Don Lemon calls scripture “demanding submission” because he has no clue what truth or freedom actually is. He looks at joy, faith, and unity and sees a threat, because misery can’t comprehend peace.

His bitterness leaks through every word — a man empty, angry, and rotting on…

— Radically Right (@RadicallyRight_) September 22, 2025

Lemon is so laughably pathetic and narcissistic. 

The modern left has no vision, no hope, no fulfilling message.

No wonder why yesterday’s service was so hard for them to watch.

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 22, 2025

He’s sitting in his own living room, wearing his own name on a t-shirt while broadcasting to absolutely no one.

So he admits to listening to the “little bit” he could and takes absolute judgement of the entire thing?

Don Lemon does more bad to the Democratic Party than he does good and that’s why he’s jobless.

— The Facts Dude 🤙🏽 (@The_Facts_Dude) September 22, 2025

It’s surprising that he wasn’t rolling his eyes at Kirk’s memorial.

Last week he was even humiliated by Piers Morgan, who played the atrocious clip that got Lemon fired from CNN, and then proceeded to call him a “dick.”

Piers Morgan had Don Lemon on his show in order to play a clip of him sounding like a total moron and getting fired from CNN, and then call him a “dick.” 👌🏻 pic.twitter.com/AXEpkzklFt

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) September 19, 2025

Hilarious.

Especially given the opportunity he had, but monumentally fucked up, a year ago.

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

You can’t make this up: just a couple weeks after the nation remembered the 24th anniversary of 9/11 attacks, Al Qaeda is back in New York, but this time its Syrian founder is getting the red carpet treatment.

Self-appointed Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, whose al-Qaeda and ISIS name is Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, will attend the meeting on the UN General Assembly (UNGA), the first Syrian president to do so since 1967.

“The visit marks a major diplomatic moment for Damascus as it returns to the UN stage at the head-of-state level for the first time after nearly six decades,” Syria’s state-run SANA stated.

Only a short time ago, Jolani had a $10 million bounty on his head for being founder of the Nusra Front, recognized a terrorist organization.

But soon after his rebranded AQ-affiliate group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), took Damascus and toppled Assad last December, that bounty was dropped by the US and President Trump later vowed to drop sanctions on Syria.

Former CIA Director David Patraeus to Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa:

We were on opposite sides in Iraq: I commanded the surge, you were detained.

Now you’re Syria’s President at the UNGA.

al-Sharaa:

We moved from war to discourse. pic.twitter.com/wdf6IOux2a

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 22, 2025

Jolani had fought American troops in Iraq, and dispatched suicide bombers, and later crossed over into Syria as the personal envoy of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Now he’s being hosted on a stage in New York by former CIA Director David Petraeus…

Former CIA Director David Petraeus said to President Ahmad Al-Sharaa: I was facing great difficulties in Iraq. How will you face the challenges in Syria?

President Ahmad Al-Sharaa replied: Surely my mission in Syria is harder than yours was in Iraq. You had the option to leave… pic.twitter.com/Ftqwuy4NqM

— Nedal Al-Amari 🇸🇾 (@nedalalamari) September 22, 2025

At one point in the conversation, there was this exchange:

Petraeus: We were on different sides when I was commanding the surge in Iraq… Please help us understand how you got from al Qaeda in Iraq 20 years ago to where you are today?

Sharaa: At a time, we were in combat and then we now move to the discourse… We cannot judge the past based on the rules of today, and cannot judge today based on the rules of the past

All smiles as Syria’s Ahmad al-Sharaa meets Marco Rubio

Once hunted with a $10 MILLION US bounty on his head

Set to deliver FIRST UN General Assembly address by a Syrian leader in decades pic.twitter.com/lkKUOdexZe

— RT (@RT_com) September 22, 2025

Al-Qaeda, the CIA, and the US Secretary of State in New York to hail the spread of “democracy” in the Middle East after toppling another secular government in the Middle East… more signs of the rapidly moving decline of American Empire.

Authored by Michael Kern via OilPricecom,

• The Trump Administration is advocating for the World Bank to increase its financing for oil and gas projects, a reversal of its previous policy to cease funding new fossil fuel ventures after 2019.

• This push prioritizes energy security, especially for upstream gas developments, and also extends to other development banks to finance fossil fuel projects.

• The article notes a trend of North American banks and asset managers withdrawing from net-zero alliances following President Trump’s election, indicating a shift away from climate-focused lending in some sectors.

The Trump Administration is pushing the World Bank to boost funding for oil and gas in what would be a U-turn in the lender’s policy not to finance new fossil fuel projects.

Back in 2017, the World Bank Group said it would no longer finance upstream oil and gas after 2019. But the group noted that “In exceptional circumstances, consideration will be given to financing upstream gas in the poorest countries where there is a clear benefit in terms of energy access for the poor and the project fits within the countries’ Paris Agreement commitments.”  

The U.S. Administration is now pushing for more developments, especially upstream gas, prioritizing energy security to any concerns about climate change, development officials have told the Financial Times.

The U.S. is also pushing other development banks to finance fossil fuels, including gas pipeline projects, according to FT’s sources. 

In recent years, the World Bank and many commercial banks have backed out of lending money to some fossil fuels, including coal, oil sands, and Arctic oil and gas. Banks were under intense shareholder and stakeholder pressure to cut their exposure to fossil fuels and align their lending portfolios to the Paris Agreement goals. 

But the tables have turned with the U.S. Administration strongly promoting fossil fuels and America’s dominance in oil and gas exports. 

“An all-of-the-above energy strategy that provides for the financing of upstream gas would be a positive step towards reconnecting the World Bank, and all other multilateral development banks, to their core missions of economic growth and poverty reduction,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Treasury Department told FT. 

After years of scrutiny and blacklisting from Republican states in the U.S. and lawsuits from Republican attorney generals, North American banks and asset managers began quitting net-zero alliances en masse following President Trump’s election victory. 

The top U.S. banks and four of Canada’s largest banks are no longer part of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), a group of leading global banks committed to aligning their lending, investment, and capital markets activities with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. 

Earlier this year we noted that emergency 401(k) early withdrawals are on the rise – with Empower CEO Ed Murphy telling Bloomberg that withdrawals have been running about 15% to 20% above historical averages. 

A WSJ analysis from June revealed that a record number of 401(k) holders made early withdrawals in 2024, with over 1/3 citing a foreclosure or eviction as the primary reason for tapping their retirement savings.

“I think we’re seeing it mainly because we’re still dealing with the effects of inflation over the past several years,” said Maureen Paley, a Sacramento-based financial advisor. “And now the current economic environment also includes a lot of uncertainty.”

Of note, early withdrawals – those dipping into savings before the age of 59 1/2 – incur a 10% penalty unless an exception applies. 

According to Transamerica, the percentage of workers who have ever taken a hardship or early withdrawal from a 401(k), similar plan, or IRA is highest among Generation Z at 26%. This is followed by Millennials at 24%, Generation X at 17%, and Baby Boomers at 12%.

In the UK, GenX is in a financial panic – with “those who have managed to save for retirement are taking it out again in droves.”

This risks making a bad situation worse for Generation X, the cohort aged 45 to 60, many of whom face a substantial pensions shortfall. Not only do they run the risk of a retirement with significantly lower financial security than their predecessors, but a new poll has evidenced a worrying lack of pensions knowhow. –FT

Perhaps this precarious financial situation that younger Americans find themselves in has something to do with data showing that GenZ – particularly men, are shifting towards conservatism. 

A report from Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) released this week suggested that “Gen Z appears to be charting a different political course than Millennials” and noted that multiple indicators “point to substantial Republican gains among Gen Z.” In particular, the report noted that Democratic registration among young men had shrunk compared with that among young women. –The Hill

“Right now, I’m very concerned that we’re not doing enough because we’re failing to listen to what voters want,” Democrat activist and former DNC chair David Hogg told The Hill (lol), citing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-NY) endorsement of NYC Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. 

According to the DDHQ report, Democrats lost major ground among young voters in voter registration in 2024, with Democratic registration falling from 49% to 29%, along with modest losses among nonwhite women. White women, however, are true blue – holding steady at 47%. 

Democratic pollster and strategist Celinda Lake noted that registration done around the 2024 election was happening when Gen Z trended more Republican, but she noted that attitudes have been shifting back toward Democrats since then. Lake characterized Gen Z voters as being particularly volatile.

“They’re dissatisfied. They’re anxious. They’re not attached really to either party,” Lake explained. -The Hill

In June, a poll by NexGen that surveyed 1,300 voters between the ages of 18 and 29 years old found that young women voting democrat on a generic ballot by a 66% to 24%, while young men are registering as Democrats at 48% to 42%. 

In closing, perhaps there’s something between the record number of people forced to tap into their savings to make ends meet, and young voters – particularly young men – leaving the Democrat party in droves.