Singapore iron ore futures have perked up over the past week, extending gains into a sixth straight session and approaching a six-month high as signs of revived Chinese demand emerge into the tail end of summer. 

Prices have held steady, hovering around $100 a ton for more than a year, as the gloom from China’s vicious property market downturn and debt crisis, coupled with accelerating deglobalization and the absence of robust stimulus in the world’s second-largest economy, has given investors little incentive to pile into futures of the steelmaking ingredient. 

As Bloomberg noted, Singapore futures briefly surpassed $107 a ton to begin the week – the highest intraday level since February. Futures are on track for the longest winning streak since January. 

CITIC Securities analysts wrote in a note to clients that downstream demand rebounded after China’s military parade earlier this month, fueling peak-season restocking. Expectations of a 25bps interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve also buoyed sentiment, while temporary steel mill curbs in northern China during the parade further tightened supply. These are some of the key drivers, as explained by the analysts. 

“Downstream demand rebounded significantly after the military parade, reinforcing the need for peak-season inventory restocking and supporting prices for the sector,” CITIC Securities analysts said, adding that the market is getting a boost from hopes that the Fed will cut later this month. 

Still, iron ore has muted sentiment across major commodity desks.

UBS Catherine Gordon told clients, “I would flag that the team has seen strong demand for the UBS Gold Miners Basket {UBXXGOLD} amid the frenzy. Iron Ore remains the least discussed with investors on the sidelines.” 

In another note, Goldman analyst James McGeoch asked clients: “The big question is why has Iron Ore PX been so strong over the weaker summer period?”

Answering his own question, McGeoch said: “Your coming into the pre-golden week restock (Golden week October 1), the onshore feedback is positive, August imports at 105mt is impressive. The range $100-105 is still where the traders see it, consumer buying at $100, and producer hedging at $105. Of note the story Friday on the CMRG (China group) selling to calm prices down, they are not going away… “

. . . 

Via The Cradle

Lebanese Foreign Minister Youssef Rajji said Tuesday that the first stage of “fully disarming” Hezbollah will take three months. 

Rajji also said that army chief Rudolphe Haikal presented the government with a five-stage plan last week to restrict arms to the Lebanese state. The first stage should take “three months … during which the removal of weapons will be completed south of the Litani River.” The other phases include other parts of Lebanon.

The first stage has already been underway since the ceasefire was reached in November last year. As part of the agreement based partly on UN Resolution 1701, Lebanese troops have been dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure south of the Litani River. 

Yet the Lebanese army’s work has been hindered by Israel’s continued occupation of several positions along the border, in violation of the deal. Israel also continues to bomb east and south Lebanon almost every day. Several Lebanese army soldiers were recently killed by an Israeli drone.

Haikal presented his plan to the government last week after being tasked to draft a strategy following the August 5 disarmament decision, which Hezbollah has rejected. Hezbollah and its allies withdrew from the cabinet session before the army chief presented the plan. 

Deliberations have been kept confidential, and the army has been ordered to present monthly updates about the implementation. Given the confidentiality, the timelines of the plan remain unclear. 

According to Saudi media outlet Al Hadath and other reports, Lebanon is “awaiting a practical step from Israel in exchange for arms control.”

“With the blessings of the Virgin Mary, everything is good,” said Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Monday, after a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun. The outcome of the latest cabinet session was reportedly a “compromise” following a deal between Berri and Aoun, according to Al-Akhbar newspaper.

Lebanese journalist Hassan Illaik from the Mahatta platform said the government “backtracked” from the August 5 decision to disarm Hezbollah fully by the end of this year. 

Hanin Ghaddar of the Washington Institute think tank said the US should make clear that the “vagueness is unacceptable” and that Lebanon should “face repercussions” if it does not provide “a clear and viable timeline for implementation.”

Hezbollah says it is open to discussing a national defense strategy, which would see its weapons incorporated into the Lebanese army and be available for use in defending the country if needed. 

Told @AnaKasparian that Lebanon is in a very unenviable position: On one hand, Hezbollah offered Lebanon some deterrence against Israel while contributing to the weakness of the Lebanese state.

On the other hand, the US wants the Lebanese army to be strong enough to disarm… pic.twitter.com/j270b0MFpt

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) September 8, 2025

Yet the resistance group has emphasized that these talks cannot take place as Israel continues to attack Lebanon and occupy its territory in the south. Over 240 people have been killed by Israeli attacks on Lebanon since November 2024. 

For years there have been extreme tensions along the Belarus-Poland border, given especially that Belarus has long been a ‘union state’ with Russia, and Poland is deemed a core component of NATO’s ‘eastern flank’.

But the Polish government announced this week it will imminently seal the whole border starting September 11, in anticipation of the Zapad 2025 exercise involving the Russian and Belarusian militaries.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced Tuesday, “Taking state security issues into account, we will close the border with Belarus, including the rail border crossing point, on Thursday night over the Zapad 2025 maneuvers,” according to TVP Info.

Earlier this month, Warsaw warned of “special measures” in response to potential “provocations” during the upcoming joint exercises.

The Zapad drills have of late been happening every two years, and this year it is expected to comprise nuclear weapons and Russian-made hypersonic missiles. Anti-sabotage warfare will also be a focus.

Politico notes that Lithuania is on high alert too, and that the ‘eastern flank’ is bracing for unpredictable events:

The drills, running Sept. 12–16, will have some maneuvers taking place close to Poland and Lithuania as the Kremlin practices for a possible clash with NATO forces.

“We must take the exercises near NATO and EU borders seriously; both the bordering countries and NATO itself are treating them with the utmost seriousness,” said Lithuanian Deputy Defense Minister Tomas Godliauskas. “Lithuania and our allies are prepared, united, and will closely monitor developments, ready to respond if necessary.”

Poland will actually host drills which mirror the Belarus-hosted war games, holding Iron Defender-25 joint military exercise with NATO, including an estimated 34,000 troops and 600 units of military hardware.

Major crossings were already scenes of immense tensions as Polish border guards clashed with migrants being facilitated through Belarus and into the EU…

Prior to the planned total border closure this week, just two out of six vehicle crossings have remained open, after recent years of a running political spat over accusations that Belarusian Alexander Lukashenko has been ‘weaponizing’ migrants against the EU and Poland.

Neighboring NATO states worry about the possibility of errant drones or aircraft violating their airspace – which has actually already happened on several occasions, typically resulting in Polish jets being scrambled in response.

Authored by Michael Talbot via BondVigilantes.com,

The US dollar has long held its position as the world’s dominant reserve currency, underpinning global trade and serving as a safe haven during periods of financial stress. This stability provided emerging markets (EM) with a reliable anchor for external borrowing, with the modern EM debt market beginning to take shape following the introduction of Brady bonds in 1989.

Named after then US Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, these instruments were initially designed to help Latin American countries restructure defaulted loans into tradable securities backed by US Treasury collateral. By transforming illiquid bonds into standardised, marketable instruments, the Brady Plan not only resolved a major debt crisis but also laid the foundation for a broader, more liquid EM debt market.

Emerging market economies that issue debt in US dollars (USD) remain heavily tethered to the policy decisions of the US Federal Reserve (the Fed), often at the expense of their own financial autonomy. This dependency, at times, has meant that when the Fed adjusts interest rates to manage domestic inflation and other matters, EMs can experience significant capital outflows, leading to currency depreciation and heightened financial instability.

While issuing in USD has granted EMs access to deeper capital pools and helped reduce borrowing costs, it has also exposed them to external shocks beyond their control. The reliance on dollar-denominated debt has eroded the agency of local governments, leaving them vulnerable to decisions being made in the US.

The 2013 Taper Tantrum remains one of the clearest illustrations of how vulnerable EMs can be to shifts in US monetary policy. When Fed Chair Ben Bernanke signalled plans to taper the Fed’s easing program, it triggered a sharp rise in US Treasury yields. Investors rapidly reallocated capital away from EMs, leading to widespread capital outflows and financial stress.

The impact was particularly severe for the so-called “Fragile Five”, India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, and Turkey, whose economies were exposed due to high levels of foreign currency debt and relatively low foreign exchange reserves. As currencies depreciated, EM central banks were forced to intervene, often by raising interest rates to defend their currencies and stem further outflows. These defensive measures tightened domestic financial conditions and slowed economic growth, despite conflicting with local economic priorities.

This episode highlighted the structural vulnerability of EMs borrowing in USD as when US rates rise and local currencies weaken, the cost of servicing external debt increases sharply. In some cases, this dynamic contributed to debt crises. More broadly, it underscored the reduction in sovereign monetary agency, as EM central banks were compelled to respond to US policy decisions rather than domestic needs.

Changing Tides

To reduce this vulnerability, policymakers have been shifting their attention towards local currency markets, whereby they issue debt in their own currency rather than in USD, in an attempt to give back powers in dictating their own policies. This, in turn, will give countries more say in their economic outcomes. To that extent, the local currency market has grown significantly in recent periods.

A material part of the local currency market expansion has come from Asian issuance, with China driving a significant portion of this. Notwithstanding this, even on an ex-Asia basis, the trend very much remains. The below chart highlights the change in market sizes of emerging market debt across hard and local currency.

Source: M&G, Bank of America. December 2024

As already alluded today, the additional autonomy helps countries stabilise their inflationary trajectory, economic growth, and employment levels. It also comes with the rather significant benefit of being better placed to manage global shocks.

A fairly recent example highlighting this comes from central bank behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic, whereby several central banks around the world acted swiftly to tame inflation, implementing measures well ahead of the Federal Reserve (Brazil’s central bank raised rates a full 12 months before the Fed did).

Source: M&G, Bloomberg, as at 31 July 2025

Their proactive and successful interventions have demonstrated increased credibility and independence, showing that they no longer wait for the Fed’s lead to address economic challenges. This increase in autonomy has not gone unnoticed and has given strength to the argument that EM central banks now have more credible monetary policy.

Recent trends also underscore this shift. Central banks in countries like India and Indonesia have exercised greater independence, cutting rates even as the Fed has paused throughout 2025 so far. Indonesia’s flexibility, for example, stems from its decades-long transition away from hard currency borrowing toward local currency financing, which has empowered its central bank to respond more nimbly to domestic needs.

It would be wrong to suggest that this trend equates to the USD’s status of the global reserve currency coming under pressure. But as more EMs build credible local currency markets, we’re moving toward a more balanced global financial system, one that is less dollar-dominant and more regionally diverse. Arguably, this should make the global system more resilient.

Furthermore, the relationship with the dollar is still complicated. Many EMs still need to hold enough USD reserves to service external debt. And printing local currency to buy dollars can quickly spiral into inflation, just ask Argentina and Bolivia, who are recent case studies highlighting how quickly reserves can vanish when hard currency obligations mount. So while local markets offer more autonomy, exchange rate management remains a critical piece of the puzzle.

The Price of Autonomy?

This autonomy does come with a cost, however. We would typically expect debt issued in local currency to yield more relative to its hard currency counterparts, so that investors are appropriately compensated for currency risk and the inflationary background within the issuing country. But the reality can be more nuanced than that, as highlighted by the chart below, which highlights the current yield on a country’s debt issued in either hard, or local, currency.

Source: M&G, Bloomberg, JP Morgan as 17 August 2025

The yields on Poland’s hard and local currency bonds offer an exception to what we would expect, insofar as local currency bonds actually yield less. One of the reasons for this is Poland’s economic strength, with its macro stability, moderate inflation, and institutional alignment with the EU building enough credibility to compress local yields. Furthermore, on a more technical related note, local currency bonds are often issued with shorter maturities than their hard currency counterparts. This, in turn, also reduces the yield on local debt as investors price bonds over a shorter time-frame, minimising the potential impact of inflationary and currency-related noise.

Brazil sits at the other end of the spectrum in this regard, with the spread of local currency over hard currency standing at around 8%. That premium, despite there being a shorter tenor, reflects the higher levels of inflation, FX risk, and lower credit rating. For an investor, however, it offers a notable yield pick-up.

China offers an even more unique situation. Local currency bonds yield less, but actually have a longer weighted average life than their hard currency equivalents. The reason for this is driven by the incredibly strong domestic demand and tight policy control designed to anchor local yields, whereas global investors price hard currency debt based on their perceived risk.

Notwithstanding some of the nuances, the higher yields on local currency debt typically appear more costly, but when weighed up with the benefits, it is a fairly savvy move. When issuing in their own currencies, EMs reduce their external vulnerabilities, particularly relative to the US dollar and Fed monetary cycles, which, as mentioned, has been a significant driver of financial stress in the past.

Moreover, developing a deep and liquid local bond market fosters financial stability and resilience over the long term. It broadens the domestic investor base, and encourages institutional development, whilst increasing reliable funding channels during periods when access to hard currency markets may be constrained.

And so, whilst the upfront cost of higher yields can seem significant, the structural benefits to economies within EM make local currency issuance a critical part of fiscal management for many emerging economies.

A local pivot

Ultimately, the evolution of EMs moving away from being largely dependent on the dollar to being able to better utilise local currency markets highlights a pivotal shift. Initially, hard currency debt opened doors to global capital but came with the cost of anchoring EM policy to external monetary cycles. the growing depth of the market reflects a growing confidence in domestic matters, but there is still a long way to go, with foreign ownership of these bonds still being relatively low.

However, as central banks demonstrate greater independence and credibility, and as investors continue to seek new opportunities, local currency debt should stand to benefit and become more widely used within global portfolios. This doesn’t signal the end of dollar dominance, but it does show that EMs are increasingly able to set their own rules.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has issued an ‘alternate’ EU plan for offering Ukraine security guarantees as part of a post-war settlement.

He has stated this week that dividing Ukraine into Russian and Western spheres of influence is likely the most realistic outcome and the only dependable way to ensure the European Union’s security. The ‘pro-Ukraine’ and ‘pro-Russian’ spheres would be separated by a buffer zone.

Kiev has of course, with the backing of the Europeans, proposed the deployment of peacekeepers or establishing a buffer zone with Western military presence. The Kremlin has condemned this prospect as a non-starter, saying it would never allow NATO or Western troops on its border, even under the guise of ‘peacekeeping’. 

Russia has further demanded that any final peace must center on Ukraine’s neutrality, demilitarization, and recognition of Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye as part of Russia. These were annexed in 2014 and 2022, in what Russia deemed popular referendums.

Orban’s words were issued Sunday at an event to guests at the annual Civic Picnic in the southern resort town of Kotcse, Hungary – and were translated and featured in Russian media Tuesday.

“Europeans all so elegantly talk around security guarantees, but the security guarantee actually means the division of Ukraine,” Orban began. “The first step has already been taken – the Westerners have accepted that a Russian zone exists.”

This appeared to be a reference to earlier remarks of President Trump admitting that Ukraine ever regaining Crimea was “impossible.”

“The result would be a Russian zone, a demilitarized zone and, eventually, a Western zone…The only question is how many kilometers away from the border of the Russian zone a demilitarized zone should be established,” Orban continued.

‘Ukraine is being divided into parts right now. One part will be controlled by the Russians, the second will be a ‘demilitarized zone,’ and the third part will be controlled by the West’ – Orban.

‘The Europeans elegantly talk about ‘security guarantees.’ But ‘security… pic.twitter.com/cWZK1S1jjj

— Zlatti71 (@Zlatti_71) September 8, 2025

The Hungarian leader has long come under severe criticism from the rest of the EU, and he’s responded by calling them ‘warmongers’ who want to fuel the conflict, though he has said Europe is fast running out of the necessary weapons and funding to keep the war going.

Ukraine is likely to firmly reject his ‘alternate’ vision for an EU plan, given it would involve the ceding of significant territory to the Russians, something Zelensky has ruled out. Ukraine’s eastern portion has always been Russian-speaking, with up to one-third of the country’s total population speaking Russian as their first language.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

The city of Rome has launched a call for proposals to find families willing to host migrants with valid residence permits in their homes for the next three years.

The tender, valued at €399,000 and open until Sept. 22, seeks an operator to manage the program on behalf of the municipality.

The initiative, announced by the city council, is aimed at “single migrants or single-parent families” who would be welcomed into private homes.

The chosen operator will be responsible for raising awareness, recruiting, and supporting host families, mentors, or social workers, as well as identifying suitable beneficiaries.

The program’s objectives go beyond temporary accommodation.

Over its 36-month duration, it is designed to foster integration, promote independence through employment opportunities, and ultimately guide participants toward securing their own housing.

Officials say the service is intended to provide “a welcoming environment geared toward inclusion and autonomy,” helping young adults in particular to gain independence.

But a key detail in the tender notes that families who host migrants will not receive financial compensation. The city’s Department of Social Policies clarified that “social inclusion expenditures refer exclusively to interventions and measures aimed at service beneficiaries,” meaning migrants themselves. “It follows that reimbursements to families cannot be attributed to this item or to any other type of expenditure and are therefore not eligible,” the department stated.

In practical terms, families who open their doors will have to cover all costs themselves, including food and energy.

While the city insists the program is about solidarity and innovative social inclusion, observers warn that the lack of material support may make it difficult to attract enough host families willing to take part.

Read more here…

Authored by Peter Koenig via GlobalResearch.ca,

“No mountain or ocean can distance people who have shared aspirations,” China’s President Xi Jinping said in July 2024, addressing leaders from fellow Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states and a few other nations in Astana, Kazakhstan.

It is not reaching too far, saying that this year’s 25th SCO Summit (SCO) in Tianjin, China, from 31 August to 1 September 2025, fulfilled – and more – President Xi’s vision of 2024.

The summit caused a tectonic shift in the conventional world order.

China’s Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Bin told a news conference in Beijing, shortly before the SCO summit, that the 2025 SCO event be

“One of China’s most important head-of-state and home-court diplomatic events this year”.

As the Economist says, “A New Reality is Taking hold.” The “new reality” is not anti-US or anti-West; it is just separating the western unipolar aspirations from the newly created multi-polar, or perhaps better, multi-block, world, where countries aim at a peaceful cooperation towards a joint future with shared benefits.

The SCO was established in 2001 by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Today the SCO consists of ten member-states with headquarters in Beijing. In addition to the founding members, SCO members have increased by India, Iran, Belarus, and Pakistan. SCO members account for 23% of the world’s GDP and for 43% of the world’s population.

Further attendance included high-level government officials from Myanmar, Egypt, Cambodia, Nepal, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Maldives, Turkey, as well as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn, and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

This year’s summit made clearly the SCO the guiding light for the Global South which includes the 11 BRICS countries, plus the 10 BRICS partners, added at the 16th BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, in October 2024.

While even the UNSG, Mr. Guterres, was invited – while the UN was or still is (?) considered by the US and the West in general as the World Organization in the western camp – President Trump felt snubbed by China, “left out” from the world shifting SCO event in Tianjin.

So, Trump invented a last-minute opportunity to leave his mark on the meeting by requesting President Xi literally on the eve of the SCO summit for “military talks,” a phone call between the two defense ministers (in the US now called War Minister, as the Ministry of Defense has been re-christened by Trump as War Ministry).

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that Beijing rejected the proposal, reasoning “a lack of mutual understanding between the two countries”, asking a pertinent question:

“Is there any sincerity in and significance of any communication like this?”

Of course not. Trump just wanted to interfere in the SCO summit, showing his self-styled emperor head. But to no avail. The West was absent – the “naked emperor” as well as his European puppets, the (almost) defunct European Union, and especially the non-elected and every time more rejected European Commission (EC).

Imagine just a few weeks earlier, a delegation of the EC including Kaja Kallas, the Commission’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, the Commission’s top-diplomat so to speak, visited Beijing to discuss tariffs, but on the side they were insinuating that China should distance herself from Russia.

So much aggression, let alone undiplomatic thinking and acting – like at home spending taxpayers’ money destined for social programs, instead for a monster armament to go to war against Russia – aggression and a war philosophy that can only lead to a EU downfall which is accelerating by the day.

To add insult to injury, the symbolic leader of the EU, Germany, her Chancellor Friedrich Merz said recently:

 “Putin is a war criminal. He is perhaps the most serious war criminal of our time that we have seen on a large scale. We must be clear about how to deal with war criminals: There is no room for leniency.”

It is time for the Real World, the Global South, to distance themselves from the western warmongers and war-makers. This is just happening with the 25th SCO Summit – a new awakening for peace, cooperation, and togetherness in the spirit of working towards a future of shared benefits.

A future with shared benefits is not possible by western economic standards and principles, that followed since 1989 the so-called Washington Consensus, an un-stated agreement between the three most powerful western financial institutions, the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank – to “subdue” the “emerging and developing world” with debt, so as to get a hold of their natural resources.

This disequilibrium already started with the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference during which the World Bank and IMF were created, two institutions which were and still are veto-dominated by Washington. Real economic equality and development had and up to now has no chance under these circumstances. Instead, it is abusive exploitation and neocolonialism.

The SCO decision at their Summit to create an SCO Development Bank bodes well with a new future of togetherness and cooperation. It fits right in with the Chinese Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB). It is a vivid sign of pulling free from the neoliberal western financial institutions making their living by exploiting “socioeconomic development”, instead of enhancing it.

Narendra Modi with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping (GODL-India)

Together and perhaps with a newly furbished BRICS New Development Bank, they will allow the Global South to evolve and grow according to their sovereign and independent terms, using instead of an isolating “protective” tariff system – Trump-style – their comparative advantages to deal and trade with each other – tariff-free. No conflicts but cooperation.

See also this.

This SCO Summit was not a western-style aggression event of “The Willing”, but a China-initiated reorientation of the world order, in which long-term objectives were envisioned by real leaders who had seen and lived enough of western-dictated aggressions, wars and destruction, but instead opted for Peace and Cooperation – and it very much looks like they may succeed.

In his opening speech, President Xi made this point clear: 

“Humanity is again faced with a choice of peace or war, dialogue or confrontation, and win-win outcomes; or zero-sum games.”

This clearly creates a growing chasm between East and West. The former seeking peaceful constructive development, while the latter are still clinging to their destructive economic model, wars and killing for a growing military complex and a tech-world that goes hand in hand with the agenda of transhumanization and destruction of humanity.

The highly successful SCO Summit in Tianjin was deliberately staged just before China’s Grand Military Parade on Tiananmen Square, marking 80 years since the end of World War II. It was the culmination of a new “World Order”, one of Peace – demonstrating the West, silently but visibly, that a new epoch is about to begin.

The image of presenting the heads of China’s Xi Jinping; Russia’s Vladimir Putin; India’s Narendra Modi; Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian; and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, side by side speaks volumes. They embody a new power base – power for Peace and for a new world order of a common future with shared benefits.

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook has been granted a reprieve after her sorority-sister judge, Jia Cobb, temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from firing her – allowing Cook to remain on the job amid allegations of mortgage fraud.

Cobb granted Cook’s request to continue in her role, finding that the alleged mortgage misconduct likely didn’t amount to “cause” to fire her under the Federal Reserve Act. Cobb also found that the way Cook was fired likely violated her right to due process under the Constitution.

“The best reading of the ‘for cause’ provision is that the bases for removal of a member of the Board of Governors are limited to grounds concerning a Governor’s behavior in office and whether they have been faithfully and effectively executing their statutory duties,” Cobb wrote. 

🚨🚨🚨BREAKING: Judge grants fired member of fed, Cook, a preliminary injunction and orders Powell and others to keep Cook at fed & refuses to issue STAY. (corrected). pic.twitter.com/x7Jnau44k5

— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) September 10, 2025

The ruling means that Cook will likely be able to attend an anticipated Fed policy meeting Sept. 16-17 to vote on interest rates. 

The DOJ is expected to quickly appeal the ruling, leaving the final say to the US Supreme Court. 

Abbe Lowell, Cook’s lawyer, said in a statement that tonight’s ruling “recognizes and reaffirms” the Fed’s independence from political interference.

“Allowing the president to unlawfully remove Governor Cook on unsubstantiated and vague allegations would endanger the stability of our financial system and undermine the rule of law,” said Lowell. 

Judge Jia Cobb, of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, ruled that Lisa Cook, of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, should continue setting US monetary policy even though she doesn’t know how to fill out a mortgage application pic.twitter.com/hjnxm7NAYz

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 10, 2025

Cook was fired last month after FHFA Director Bill Pulte released evidence that Cook had fraudulently listed two homes as her “primary residence” within weeks of each other in 2021 in order to secure more favorable terms on her loans. Pulte also revealed a third mortgage Cook had listed as a ‘secondary residence’ while actually renting it out.

The fired ‘economist’ says that her ouster was politically motivated, while her lawyers claim that if there are any errors, they were accidental, and nobody was harmed – just nobody was harmed when NY AG Letitia James threw the kitchen sink at Trump over similar real estate malarkey. 

Earlier this week, following both the kangaroo court that was RFK Jr. congressional hearing and the news that the Trump admin may crack down on Tylenol (of all things), we wondered if there really wasn’t something more serious for MAHA to be focusing on… like making an actual impact and banning pharma ads on TV. After all, it’s just the US and New Zealand that still allow pharma ads to fund what are largely extremely liberal cable TV stations: why not help US health at the grass roots level by pulling back on the US addiction with, well, drug addiction. And if the Trump admin can put much of the liberal mainstream media out of business for selling snake oil – in some cases literally – even better.

Whatever happened to banning pharma ads on TV? https://t.co/QCdOOSefBV

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 5, 2025

And while we didn’t expect our lament to generate any traction, we were very surprised to learn that late on Tuesday, the Trump admin announced a crackdown on pharmaceutical advertising on television and social media platforms, potentially disrupting billions of dollars in annual ad spending.

President Trump signed a presidential memorandum on Tuesday that calls on federal health agencies to require pharmaceutical companies to disclose more side effects in their ads and enforce existing rules about misleading ads. The administration is pitching the moves as a way to increase transparency for patients, and while it is not an outright ban as many had hoped for, it is a start, and it will certainly had an adverse effect as drug makers scramble to avoid penalties and sanctions. 

President @realDonaldTrump signs the most significant action in a generation to rein in misleading pharmaceutical ads 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/Ds5tcIvMH8

— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) September 9, 2025

As noted above, the US is the only place, besides New Zealand, where pharma companies can directly advertise to consumers. Limiting pharmaceutical advertisements has been a longtime priority for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., though the new regulations would stop short of banning the ads entirely.

But, as Bloomberg notes, even adding stricter requirements to the ads will likely hit both pharmaceutical companies and the media companies that rely extensively on those advertising dollars. 

Drug companies spent $10.8 billion in 2024 on direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising in total, according to a report from the advertising data firm MediaRadar. AbbVie, Glaxo and Pfizer were particularly big spenders. AbbVie alone spent $2 billion on direct-to-consumer drug ads last year, primarily on advertising for the company’s anti-inflammatory drugs Skyrizi and Rinvoq. The medicines brought in more than $6.5 billion for AbbVie in the second quarter of 2025.

Aside from new regulations, the agencies also plan to more strictly enforce existing rules around misleading advertising. 

“The FDA is sending approximately 100 enforcement action letters today and thousands of letters warning the industry, including online pharmacies, who have increasingly been promoting drugs with no mention of side effects at all,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said in a video posted on social media Tuesday. 

A senior administration official confirmed that the new Trump administration regulations may require broadcast ads to be longer to ensure they disclose the full risk profile of medications. Another official clarified that the goal is not to reduce the number of ads, but ensure patients have full information about side effects.

“They’re going to have to report all their side effects,” Kennedy said in an interview with Fox News Tuesday evening. “In some cases that might create an advertisement that’s four minutes long.”

Before the loosening of advertising regulations by the FDA in 1997, US pharma companies had to list all possible side effects for a medication if they wanted to mention which condition the drug being advertised was intended to treat. Reading out the long lists drove up costs for air time, making the ads less practical. 

That FDA change in 1997 allowed ads to disclose fewer side effects and also allowed companies to direct customers to talk to their doctors, call a telephone number or visit a website to get more information on the advertised drugs. Realizing that the new regulations meant a much higher return on investment, TV pharma ad spending surged, and so did chronic diseases, autism, and mental disorders. Last year, 59% of the pharmaceutical industry’s expenditures were on TV advertising, making pharma the third-highest spending industry, according to MediaRadar.

Administration officials said they’d also be taking a closer look at advertisements from telehealth companies, which operate differently from traditional pharma companies. They declined to mention specific companies, but noted a Super Bowl advertisement from a telehealth company that received criticism from senators.

The Trump administration is also planning to ensure drug ads made by influencers and other social media posts abide by the same standards applied to TV, an administration official said.

Research firm Emarketer projected that the pharmaceutical industry would spend more than $19 billion on online marketing in 2024. The spending was driven largely by ads for weight-loss and diabetes medications, which makes sense: the US is the world’s most obese nation by a very fat margin.

Authored by Alex Berenson via Substack,

You’ve seen the photo.

A man stands behind a woman, his arms raised in a frenzy. She sits, focused on her phone, oblivious to the danger behind her. He is about to slash her neck and leave her to bleed to death.

The man is black. The woman is white.

And their races are no coincidence.

*  *  *

(The truth, even when it hurts.)

Black men commit a huge amount of violent crime in the United States.

Every statistic confirms this fact. Black people made up almost 47,000 of the 81,000 murder suspects whose race was known to police in the last five years, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.1 Most of those killers are men.

Put another way, black men, who make up about one-fourteenth of the American population, commit over half of the homicides.

In some cities, the disparities are so stunning as to nearly defy belief. St. Louis has about the same number of black and white people, about 130,000, along with 40,000 Asians and Latinos. So far this year, St. Louis police have identified 83 murder suspects. None are Asian or Latino. Three are white.

The other 80 are black, 73 men and seven women.

(See for yourself.)

SOURCE

I wish this racial gap didn’t exist.

Every American suffers from it. Black people suffer more than white, because most crime is intra-racial, a fact that shouldn’t surprise anyone. People usually commit violence against family members, friends, or people in their neighborhoods. So black people are far more likely to be the victims of violent crime, as well as its perpetrators.

Nonetheless, the crime gap is real, and has been for generations. Whether violent crime is rising or falling, black people are far more likely to commit it.

For a long time, we simply didn’t discuss this fact. Everyone knew it. Maybe people didn’t know the exact statistics, but everyone broadly knew the overall trends.

No one talked about it.

Guess what?

I think that silence was probably the right move.

I know, probably not what you expected from Mr. Unreported Truths.

But who gains from highlighting black criminality? Obviously, police departments must deal with reality, by focusing their officers and detectives on the neighborhoods where most crime happens. But focusing on the racial disparities in crime seems… unlikely to help race relations. And although rates of black criminality are higher, the vast majority of black people — like the vast majority of white people — do not commit violent crime.

Better, then, to arrest and incarcerate and simply ignore the intersection of race and crime whenever possible.

Except the left wouldn’t agree.

For the last 20 years, the left has spun two demonstrably false narratives on this issue.

The first is that large numbers of black men are in prison for nonviolent drug crimes. I examined this argument closely for Tell Your Children, and it is almost totally a myth.

It exploded after the publication in 2010 of a book called “The New Jim Crow,” by civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander. It has been repeated ever since, even though criminal justice professor John Pfaff exploded it in a book called “Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration – and How to Achieve Real Reform” in 2017.

Pfaff — who is a liberal — pointed out that any serious cuts in prison populations would have to include the release of many violent offenders (a tack he favors). Depending on the criteria, many if most of those offenders would be black.

Now, one can argue that prisons are inhumane and expensive and that a country as wealthy as the United States should have better alternatives even for violent criminals and that no one should be defined by their worst day. Those are honest arguments. I generally don’t agree with them, but they are honest.

But pretending that our prisons are filled with black men in there for smoking pot is not an honest argument.

The second myth, even more maddening, is that the police are constantly shooting black men, and unarmed black men in particular.

In reality, between 2015 and 2024, American police shot and killed about 180 unarmed black people (and 222 white people), according to a database from the Washington Post. Obviously, any police shootings need to be investigated, and if there is evidence officers acted without justification, they should be prosecuted.

But the context here is important. Over the same period, close to 100,000 black people died of homicide — and, again, the vast majority died at the hands of other black people. The statistics could not be clearer: Police officers of any race present a far smaller threat to black men than other black men do.

Unfortunately, the left will not simply acknowledge that fact. Instead, the legacy media, has spent the last decade offering saturation coverage of every case it can find in which police officers, particularly white officers, have killed black men.

These demonstrably false narratives were central to the broader effort to “reform” the criminal justice system, a goal the left justified by arguing that violent crime had fallen so much from its 1980s peak we ought to close the prisons and replace police with social workers.

In reality, at least four big factors seem to have led to the fall in crime.

• First, we did lengthen sentences and put a lot of violent people in prison in the late 1980s and 1990s. This may come as a shock to progressives, but incarcerating criminals keeps them from committing more crimes.

• Second, cell phones and apps made drug dealing a delivery business. When you don’t have to sell on corners, you don’t have to fight for them.

• Third, opioids replaced stimulants as America’s preferred drug class. Opioids cause many, many problems, but their users are generally too zonked (the preferred clinical term) to commit violent crime.

• Fourth, investigative technology improved. It’s tough to be a serial killer these days. Watch that DNA!

Still, throughout the 2010s, the “Black Lives Matter” anti-incarceration and -police stories gained momentum. To the left, falling crime didn’t signal longer prison sentences had worked. It signaled they were unnecessary.

Then, following George Floyd’s death, calls to “defund the police” exploded. Democratic politicians and prosecutors in cities like Chicago and Philadelphia signaled they would not routinely enforce a wide range of laws or back police who used force in arrests. Many police officers retreated from their work, knowing that they might face lawsuits or worse if they were forced to fight with a suspect.

Within months crime exploded. Murders in the United States rose 30 percent in 2020, the biggest one-year spike ever. Big sections of downtowns in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles became almost impassible, filled with open-air drug use, aggressive panhandling, and street crime.

The post-Floyd crime wave ended the open calls to defund the police, but it didn’t end the left’s general dishonesty about race, crime, and policing.

But the left doesn’t control what we see and hear anymore.

The center of gravity is on social media, and social media, particularly X, has moved increasingly to the right.

Now the right is responding to the left’s misleading arguments about crime and race in the most inflammatory possible way. Commentators with huge audiences are highlighting cases in which black men have committed unprovoked crimes against white people, especially white women, especially young white women.

Thus the image of Decarlos Brown Jr standing behind Iryna Zarutska, about to strike, now viewed hundreds of millions of times — if not billions — on X.

I don’t know how to put this genie back in the bottle.

These images are powerful because they’re real.

They cut to a truth about crime in the United States that the left will not acknowledge.

But they cannot help but inflame anger about race. At least some people posting are using them for just that reason.

Would greater honesty from the left stop them?

Of course not.

We need strict laws against recidivist violent criminals, and we need to enforce those laws. We need to give police more tools to get floridly psychotic people off the streets, particularly when drugs are fueling their psychosis. Those people are almost by definition dangerous to themselves and others. Ideally, we’d send them to civil confinement for treatment. But if they’re breaking laws against, say, public nudity or harassment, we should not be afraid to send them to jail.

The left needs to accept that a lot of those people are going to be black.

But I wish the right wouldn’t say so out loud.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.