“I’m going to be going out tonight, I think, with the police and with the military, of course. We’re going to do a job,” Trump told Todd Sternes on his radio show.
The president went on to say that the military stationed in Washington is doing a “fantastic job” at law enforcement in the nation’s capital.
President Donald Trump federalized control of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department on Aug. 11, ordering about 800 National Guard troops to assist with law enforcement.
“I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor, and worse,“ Trump said at a White House press briefing at the time.
“This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back.”
Starnes responded to Trump’s news of his plans to go on patrol, pondering whether the president would be given a uniform, and joked, “I want to see my president tase someone tonight.”
Stocks In Longest Selloff Since January As Tech Continues To Dump, But Small Caps Jump
The selling continued for a fifth day: despite a modest attempt at an early bounce, the unexpectedly strong housing and PMI data, which saw US manufacturing surge to the highest level since 2022…
… sent odds of a September rate cut lower, from 80% before the economic data to as low as 65% before rebounding to the low 70% ahead of tomorrow’s 10sm ET Powell speech at Jackson Hole …
… which weighed on risk prices, and kept the S&P in the red for the 5th day in a row – it’s longest stretch since the start of the year, when we saw a similar selloff at the end of 2024 and culminating on Jan 2.
Once again, the selling was focused on mega cap tech names (see the Goldman TMT Mega cap basket), which are also down for 5 days in a row…
… even as the rest of the market has been surprisingly resilient. Indeed, as shown in the next chart, while the market-cap weighted S&P index (which is of course the default version) has been dropping, the equal-cap weighted one has been flat. Of course, that’s only because the equal-weighted version has vastly underperformed on the way up as it gets less benefit from AI tech giants. It is only logical that it would be less penalized on the way down.
However, while yesterday a majority of stocks closed green, there is no such distribution today, and virtually every sector (except Energy which has become the natural pair trade hedge to every “stonk” in the world and rises when momentum sinks), is in the red.
The only names that eaked out modest gains today were small caps: the Russell outperformed both the S&P and the Nasdaq.
Meanwhile, it appears that Goldman’s reco to buy momentum (read tech) was accurate, because after its sharp rebound yesterday, the index is up again today, rising more than 1%, after yesterday closing just above the 200DMA which has served as critical resistance ever since Liberation day.
Other names that have recently found support are MSFT and META which Goldman earlier pointed out, have bounced off their 50 DMA.
Another index that was saved by the 50DMA was the Goldman basket of most short names: here too, the recent selloff was halted at the 50 day moving average after the tremendous post-Lib day ascent.
One place where demand remains solid despite today’s modest dip, is the Goldman index of retail favorites: here the price remains well above the 50DMA, and a whopping 57% higher than the April lows!
Elsewhere, treasury yields drifted higher all day, with the 10Y closing about 4 bps higher at 4.325%, amid modest curve flattening.
The selloff in rates also helped push the Bloomberg dollar index, which in turn send the USDJPY to the highest in 10 days, hardly the action one would expect ahead of a dovish announcement by Jerome Powell.
This hawkish read did not help bitcoin or ether both of which have been selling steadily for the past 12 hours.
Finally gold continues to do… absolutely nothing, as it remains stuck in a narrow $150 range between $3300 and $3450 for the past 4 months.
And after what was a relatively boring day we brace for what may be tomorrow’s big Jackson Hole fireworks to close out the summer.
What I am about to share with you is some of the clearest evidence yet that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed. Young adults are forming middle class households at an extremely depressed rate, and that is because the American Dream is simply out of reach for most of them in this very harsh economic environment. If you can’t get a good job that pays an adequate wage, you aren’t going to be able to live a middle class lifestyle. Sadly, many older Americans simply do not understand how difficult things have become for our young adults in this day and age.
The Census Bureau has produced a paper entitled “Changes in Milestones of Adulthood” that absolutely blew me away.
According to the Census Bureau, the 5 major milestones of adulthood are living away from your parents, completing your education, getting a job, marrying, and living with a child. Since 1975, the success that our young people have had in attaining these milestones has declined dramatically…
According to the working paper, “Changes in Milestones of Adulthood,” almost half of all young adults in 1975 had reached four milestones associated with adulthood: moving out of one’s parents’ home, getting a job, getting married and having a child.
Five decades on, that progression has changed dramatically. The share of young adults that have followed the traditional pathway to adulthood has dropped to less than a quarter, according to the paper.
After reading that CBS News article, I had to go find the original paper.
I found it on the official Census Bureau website, and it says that in 2023 only 17 percent of young adults had attained the 5 major milestones of adulthood…
In 2005, the most common combination was young adults who had all five milestones (about 26% experienced all five milestones). By 2023, however, the proportion of young adults who experienced all five markers of adulthood declined to about 17%, and young adults who reported only experiencing the three economic milestones of living away from parents, completing education, and participating in the labor force was the modal combination. Finally, the residual category in Figure 2 representing the proportion of young adults who experienced any other combination of milestones declined from 36% to 30%, suggesting that the experiences of young adults have become more homogeneous for contemporary cohorts.
17 percent!
Just think about that.
If our society was in good shape, most of our young adults would be in a position to achieve all 5 milestones by the age of 25.
But our society is not in good shape. According to the Census Bureau paper, the primary reason why young adults are not achieving these milestones is because they are “facing economic barriers”…
The reason for this, according to the paper, is that more young adults between the ages of 25 and 34 are facing economic barriers compared with previous generations. Changing societal attitudes around family formation are also contributing to the sharp decline in the share of young people reaching what the U.S. Census Bureau considers to be “key milestones.”
If I keep hitting people with more evidence day after day, maybe the skeptics will finally start getting it.
Our young adults are not entering the middle class fast enough to replace the older middle class adults that are dying off.
As a result, the middle class is steadily shrinking.
To be a part of the middle class, you have to be able to get a middle class job.
And right now the competition for middle class jobs among our young people is extremely fierce.
If you doubt this, just consider what a 23-year-old college graduate recently admitted to NBC News…
“Every guy I know that is without a job right now wants to work, but they just can’t get it,” said Eli McCullick, who has been looking for a job for more than a year after he graduated with a degree in sociology from the University of Colorado Boulder. “It’s demoralizing for guys who really want to get ahead and it’s just not happening.”
McCullick, 23, said he hasn’t even been able to get an hourly job at a restaurant or doing cleaning work at a hotel in the Boulder area, where he’s living at a property his father owns. The only way he has been able to earn money to cover his food and daily expenses has been to do odd jobs for friends and relatives, like shoveling horse manure, mowing lawns and helping an older woman prepare for a yard sale.
There is no way that I would want to be a fresh college graduate looking for a job right now.
It is terrible out there.
Another recent college graduate told NBC News that nearly all of his friends are unemployed and living with their parents…
Sean Breen, who graduated this spring with a communications degree from California State University, Long Beach, said he and nearly all of his high school friends, both men and women, are back home living with their parents and unemployed. He said even those who went to top-ranked colleges and got seemingly in-demand degrees are unable to find work.
“It is like a high school reunion,” Breen said. “We’re all, we are back in Marin County this summer, all unemployed, all trying to find a barista job, a part-time something, because we haven’t found anything.”
After having applied to hundreds of jobs, he said, Breen now plans to go to graduate school in the fall at Trinity College in Ireland, where tuition is significantly lower and, he hopes, jobs will be more plentiful.
This is the reality of what is really going on out there.
Those that keep insisting that “everything is fine” just need to stop.
Layoffs have risen 140 percent from a year ago, a new report reveals.
Companies have already announced more than 800,000 job cuts this year alone, the highest since the pandemic upended the economy in 2020.
US-based employers cut 62,075 jobs in July compared to 25,885 in the same month last year.
Those numbers are staggering.
Unfortunately, 62 percent of U.S. consumers believe that unemployment will continue to get even worse during the months ahead…
About 62% of consumers believe unemployment will worsen in the year ahead, according to the University of Michigan’s latest monthly survey.
That’s bounced around a little in the last few months, but consistently hung around levels not seen since the Great Recession.
Do you remember how difficult it was to get a good job during the Great Recession?
Well, now we are entering a similar time.
That may help to explain why “job hugging” has become a thing in 2025…
Job hugging is the act of holding onto a job “for dear life,” consultants at Korn Ferry, an organizational consulting firm, wrote last week.
The rate at which workers are voluntarily leaving their jobs — known as the quits rate — has hovered around 2% since the start of the year, according to data from the U.S. Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Outside of the initial days of the Covid-19 pandemic, levels haven’t been that consistently low since early 2016.
The quits rate is a barometer of workers’ perceptions of the broader labor market, said Laura Ullrich, director of economic research in North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab. In this case, they may be nervous about getting another job or aren’t enthusiastic about their ability to find one, she said.
If you have a job that you highly value, don’t let go.
Hold on to it as tightly as you can, because if you lose it you may not find work again for a long time.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko signed 12 cooperation agreements during Pezeshkian’s official visit to Minsk on Wednesday, strengthening ties between the two nations in defiance of US sanctions.
A joint statement was signed alongside the dozen cooperation agreements which cover politics, international law, health, pharmaceuticals, industry, environment, tourism, art, media, free trade zones, industrial and special economic zones, and investment. Officials said the documents lay the foundation for long-term bilateral cooperation.
Pezeshkian described the visit as “one of the turning points in relations between the two countries,” adding that “relations with Belarus are being pursued at the highest possible level.”
He emphasized that “the Islamic Republic of Iran places no restrictions on strengthening its relations with Belarus” and that both sides would fully implement the 2023–2026 cooperation roadmap.
The Iranian president pointed to practical steps including joint investments, expanded customs cooperation, increased goods and passenger transit, and resolving private sector issues. He also called for stronger media and cultural exchanges “with the aim of presenting a real image of the two countries.”
At the joint press conference, Pezeshkian criticized the US and its European allies, saying they are “trying to spread unilateralism and dictate their viewpoints on other countries. Such an approach has not been and will not be tolerable by you and us.”
He added that “western countries, led by the United States, are seeking to carve out our path in accordance with their own wishes,” but that Iran and Belarus “can overcome sanctions and problems by working together seriously.”
Pezeshkian thanked Minsk for supporting Tehran against “the aggressive attacks of the Zionist regime and the United States against Iranian soil and peaceful nuclear facilities,” calling them “a clear aggression against international law and an explicit violation of the UN Charter.”
Iranian president’s official welcome ceremony in Minsk:
Lukashenko called Iran a reliable partner, saying, “We can discuss all topics of interest and areas of cooperation, and elevate our relations to the highest levels,” later asking Pezeshkian to send his regards to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Both presidents highlighted multilateral organizations such as the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and BRICS as frameworks to expand cooperation beyond Western-led structures.
The Last Global Neoliberal Institutional Pillar Could Soon Crumble
By Michael Every of Rabobank
We’re All In A Hole Alright
The Fed minutes overnight showed the FOMC largely united behind rates on hold in July as they “assessed that the effects of higher tariffs had become more apparent in the prices of some goods but that their overall effects on economic activity and inflation remained to be seen.” Indeed, the key point was that they “judged that considerable uncertainty remained about the timing, magnitude, and persistence of the effects of this year’s increase in tariffs.”
Does anybody anywhere know how the current confluence of inflationary and deflationary forces will play out? In the UK, for example, where the BoE are already cutting rates, headline inflation is 3.8% y-o-y, nearly double target. There are real signs of economic weakness, but also real inflation in pocket and lingering on in services.
One would hope the top central bankers about to assemble at Jackson Hole are laser-focused on this. The Financial Times editorial today argues their collective focus should be on staying independent, getting better economic data, and understanding how government spending drives inflation better. There are problems with each – and more to boot.
Bloomberg says Jackson Hole will rally around under-fire Fed Chair Powell, which seems logical. Yet Powell is still likely to see his replacement named within weeks, it appears; moreover, David Zervos — one of the potential candidates to succeed him — just said it’s inaccurate to describe the Fed as independent, and claimed Powell is aligned with the political left. And will Jackson Hole also rally round Fed Governor Cook, who just had a criminal referral letter for mortgage fraud sent to the DOJ by the head of the FHFA? Trump has called on her to resign: she says she won’t be bullied. We have of course seen similar Fed governor turnover in recent years.
While each central bank is different in terms of its constitutional set-up, how many of them are truly safe in their (very recent in historical terms) independence when push comes to shove? Who appoints whom? That’s a one-way street. As tellingly, what can central banks do to ensure their independence if it’s threatened? ”Raise rates?”(!) Yes, some central banks have done so in the past to hurt governments they didn’t like: no, they won’t do that now. But it might delay rate cuts, perhaps. Or might they not buy their own government’s bonds in a market panic ensuing from fears over their loss of independence? There’s a discussion point with strong views either side, depending on which country we are talking about.
In short, on one level we are talking personalities here; on another we are talking underlying political-economy ideologies; and on another we are talking realpolitik and power structures.
Meanwhile, what’s true for central banking is even more starkly evident in the world they are now operating in.
Stunning Europe, but not a surprise to those who think in the terms described above, Russia now says it must be included in any Ukraine security guarantees – along with China. Russia also says no talks with Zelenskyy are on the horizon.
The unwillingness to talk to Ukraine is no surprise for Europe; but the Russian insistence that it gets to determine what Ukraine’s security guarantees look like — and that it wants China involved, perhaps even meaning the PLA operating on the ground(?) — is a geopolitical and diplomatic shock of the highest order for Brussels.
(And that comes on top of reports that European Commission President von der Leyen was reportedly asked to leave the room at times during Monday’s White House discussions on Ukraine because she wasn’t “a leader” nor “an elected head of state.”)
As Politico puts it bluntly, ‘Russia wants… Russia to have veto over Western security guarantees for Ukraine’ while ‘Europe has no real solutions for security guarantees on Ukraine’. The stakes here are sky high and so are the market’s fat tail risks.
Is Putin risking the massive increase in US and EU primary and secondary sanctions that could disrupt global trade and markets? Or will the US accept his terms, seeing Ukraine and Europe humbled even further? On one hand, that’s a ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ markets environment alongside the total defenestration of European strategic autonomy, with real long-run implications for its economy. On the other, it’s a likely rapid surge in energy prices and a massive supply chain shock as long-threatened global bifurcation accelerates rapidly.
On which note, Indian state firms reportedly secured several shipments of Russian crude recently, ignoring US warnings of higher tariffs, while Russia says it plans to start sending LNG to India, an area the US had been targeting. Moscow also called for “greater Eurasian partnership” between itself, China (which is rejecting Nvidia H20 after recent “insulting” comments from Commerce Secretary Lutnick, and which may launch CNY stablecoins ahead), and India. That all raises the stakes from the current stand-off over Ukraine even higher. And that’s as a serious US Navy flotilla heads for oil-rich Venezuela, run by “narco-terrorist” President Maduro, who has a $50m US reward on his head: hello, Monroe Doctrine.
(Moreover, purely for the ECB to consider, ‘US drug pricing shake-up threatens access to medicines in Europe’ (Politico). Does that sound inflationary or deflationary?)
So, are the Jackson Hole central bankers worried about their futures; a lack of accurate data; and their own poor understanding of how governments drive inflation as defence spending is about to return to Cold War levels also following these developments? They are supposed to be ‘forward looking’, right? What’s their base-case scenario then? Does their modelling capture these risks? Will they make that clear, or are we supposed to imply it from what they share? Of course, I’m being facetious.
The reality is central banks will just wait and see what happens to energy prices and supply chains, then react. That puts their much-vaunted ‘independence’ into perspective: it’s more of a reaction function outside of the kind of ‘Econ 101’ world we no longer live in. Regrettably, few in the private sector have that luxury, and many must position/hedge such risks in advance.
If we were to see change at the Fed that drives a wedge between it and other central banks — with the PBOC already far from independent in the Western sense — the last global neoliberal institutional pillar could crumble, as I warned in Thin Ice in 2016. If it goes, so could a lot else.
Already, what’s good for one central bank isn’t necessarily good for another. The RBNZ governor just told the Kiwi parliament (where the government has tweaked the Reserve Bank’s remit in the recent past: there is political plasticity even in the home of inflation-targeting) that higher commodity prices and lower rates are the ingredient for an economic recovery in H2. Not elsewhere though, surely? They mostly don’t want the higher commodity prices part.
There’s certainly a lot for the world’s top central bankers to consider over the next few days, and vastly more than the FT would have it – because we’re all in a hole alright.
Stop the presses: Americans have just learned that borrowing money means eventually paying it back. Who could have guessed?
According to CNBC, nearly 1 in 5 student loan borrowers aged 50 and older are “seriously delinquent”—meaning at least 90 days late—on their student loans.
50 and older. Student loans. Back in 2019, the delinquency rate for this age group hovered around 10%. Now, in a surefire sign that the economy is in great shape and stocks should always trade at 40x earnings even if the world is ending, that rate has almost doubled.
And delinquencies are not confined to the “I should be retired by now” crowd. Among 30-somethings, 11% are seriously behind, and nearly 8% of borrowers under 30 have fallen into the same hole.
Remember, these numbers are after years of federally sanctioned payment freezes, forbearances, and political promises that loan forgiveness would be handed out like Presidential Autopen pardons.
The moment the Trump administration flipped the switch and resumed collections, suddenly reality set in: the bills are real, the interest is real, and the consequences are—wait for it—real.
There’s something both hilarious and tragic about this situation. Americans spent the last five years being told that loans were more like Netflix subscriptions—cancel anytime, and nobody gets hurt. But the basic laws of economics and reality both have a way of breaking through the socialistic cosplay. If you take out tens of thousands of dollars to send Junior to college or to “reinvent yourself” with a master’s in Nepalese yoga studies, someday, someone will expect repayment. Wild concept, right?
Here’s the dirty little secret nobody wants to say out loud: if you can’t afford the loan, or if the education isn’t enough of an investment to return what you need to pay it back, you shouldn’t have taken it in the first place. If you chose to, you’re on the hook.
That’s how debt works. When you finance a car, the repo guy doesn’t care that you got laid off or that you thought the payments were “unfair.” He shows up with a tow truck. But somehow, when it’s student loans, we’ve decided that personal responsibility is a cruel and outdated idea.
Which brings us to President Autopen. His administration spent years conditioning borrowers — many of whom majored in things like Non-Binary Origami Theory or Vegan Drum Circle Dynamics — to believe they live in a magical kingdom where loan balances dissolve if you close your eyes tight enough or hug enough people.
But illusions have consequences. Biden’s “freeze now, worry later” policy essentially told borrowers: don’t worry, you’ll never really have to pay these off. So of course, when collections resume, delinquency rates explode. It’s almost as if when you remove accountability, people stop acting responsibly. Shocker.
This was par for the course during Biden’s broader economic fairy tale. Inflation? Just “transitory.” Gas prices? Nothing to see here. Student loans? They’re optional.
Meanwhile, those who did the right thing—who sacrificed, budgeted, drove old cars, skipped trips, and chipped away at their balances—are left wondering: what was the point? Why be responsible if the government will swoop in to erase the balance sheets of those who weren’t?
This is the fundamental injustice of it all: rewarding irresponsibility while punishing prudence. And people wonder why nobody saves anymore. Forgiving debt, or even just suspending the consequences indefinitely, teaches people that debt is basically fake money. Borrow as much as you want, because someone else—your neighbor, your taxpayer, your future self—will foot the bill.
What happens when you normalize that mindset? Well, you get more reckless borrowing. More Advanced Studies in Interpretive Screaming degrees financed on the assumption of free forgiveness. More people shrugging off repayment because “surely they’ll cancel it eventually.”
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It’s not just bad economics; it’s corrosive to the very idea of accountability.
And don’t forget the flip side: those who resisted the siren song of debt—those who worked through college, went to community colleges, or chose affordable majors—are left punished. They carry the opportunity costs of not taking loans, while others reap the benefits of having their debts “forgiven.” It’s redistribution, not of wealth, but of responsibility.
According to CNBC, the Trump administration is stepping up collections: wage garnishments, credit score hits, and even the potential for Social Security benefits to be siphoned. And you know what? Good. Actions have consequences, even if we’ve spent the last five years pretending otherwise.
Because here’s the truth no politician wants to say: there’s no such thing as student loan forgiveness. There’s only debt transfer.
The balance doesn’t vanish into thin air—it just gets handed to the taxpayer. They’re just giving your neighbor the bill. And the taxpayer, by the way, is probably some guy who already paid off his loans and is now subsidizing the bad decisions of people who didn’t.
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Russia Attacks US-Owned Factory In Ukraine, While Insisting It Has Veto Power Over Any ‘Security Guarantees’
Now nearly a week out from last Friday’s historic Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, the White House has had to temper its positive predictions on the peace process, after prematurely touting that a Putin and Zelensky bilateral meeting was on the horizon. By Wednesday the Kremlin had made it clear this is not yet the case.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued some non-committal statements, watering down what appeared an already vague commitment. A future direct meeting with the Ukrainian leader – a president which Moscow previously dubbed illegitimate – would have to be prepared “gradually… starting with the expert level and thereafter going through all the required steps.”
A separate Russian official has stated that “it shouldn’t be a meeting for the sake of a meeting” – highlighting that despite Trump’s strong diplomatic efforts, Russia remains ‘open’ but doesn’t consider the warring sides to have bridged key major gaps on peace terms just yet.
On Thursday The Wall Street Journal underscored that there’s yet another key divide – the question of future security guarantees and how they will be monitored or implemented:
Russia warned on Wednesday that it should effectively hold veto power over any action to assist Ukraine after a peace deal is reached, rendering planned Western security guarantees for Kyiv moot and delivering a setback to negotiations championed by President Trump.
…Lavrov’s insistence that Russia must have a say in how any security guarantees for Ukraine would be enacted contradicted the Trump administration’s assertion that Putin agreed to European and U.S. security guarantees at the Alaska summit on Friday.
Lavrov’s remarks were a potent sign that Moscow’s maximalist demands in the war haven’t shifted despite a surge in diplomatic engagement in recent days. Western security assurances to deter against future Russian invasions are key to getting Ukraine to sign on to a peace deal.
Russia has never wavered on insisting that NATO or Western forces never be allowed to patrol or have a presence in Ukraine. Moscow’s war justification from the beginning has been focused on the question of NATO expansion, and demanding permanent Ukrainian neutrality.
Strangely, while President Trump has this week assured Russia of ‘no US boots on the ground’ – the White House spokesperson at the same time suggested there could be some kind of pledged US or Western air support as part of future security guarantees. But the messaging has been contradictory as at the same time Trump has been pledging‘minimal’ American involvement in any future security guarantees for Ukraine.
Moscow will likely present the targeted Mukachevo plant as military or ‘dual use’ in nature…
Ukraine: U.S. company Flex’s plant in Mukachevo was destroyed in Russian missile strike.
The factory produced electronics like fitness trackers, health monitors, and coffee machines for brands such as Nike, Google, and Lenovo. It had just been renovated in April.
Geopolitical news source Moon of Alabama reacted as follows:
While Russia is confidently prosecuting the war in Ukraine towards its inevitable end. Meanwhile the ‘West’ is still negotiating with itself about the conditions under which it will have to capitulate.
Discussions continue about ‘security guarantees’ for Ukraine even as the only serious ones are those that Russia is willing to give. The confused arguments about ‘guarantees’ are reflected in the reports of them. Consider this nonsense:
“A security guarantee could encompass a wide range of issues. In return for Russia ending its invasion, a security pact could include a pledge of U.S. air support for any European-led operations should Russian troops resume their assault.”
If Russia ends the war NATO-like ‘security guarantees’ are to be given to Ukraine as a reward?
Indeed, it’s as if Trump and his top officials still don’t understand the core problems, or at least purposefully ignore what remain the root causes to this war.
Trump wants to see more rapid momentum and engagement come out of the Alaska summit, hoping for a Putin-Zelensky summit within days or weeks. But that’s very unlikely to happen, also given Zelensky – with the encouragement of the more hawkish European allies – has still not offered substantive compromise. He reportedly isn’t even willing to lift restrictions on the use of the Russian language in public discourse or media.
The US president is meanwhile venting his frustrations on Thursday…
Looks like Trump is upset with Putin bombing an American electronics plant in Ukraine — and refusing to meet Zelensky. Let’s see what, if anything, this will mean for Ukraine’s ability to hit deep inside Russia. pic.twitter.com/vWvN5AggYg
This is in reference to fresh reports – noted in the above images – that a “massive Russian airstrike hit a US-owned electronics factory in Ukraine early Thursday while some 800 civilians were working there.”
“The Flex Ltd. plant in Mukachevo, a city hundreds of miles from the front line, was engulfed in flames after being hit by two Russian Kalibr cruise missiles around 4:30 a.m., according to Ukrainian officials,” NY Post details.
At this point, Trump is likely to grow more frustrated as more days inevitably pass and there are no further grand compromises to be made, except by the Ukrainian side and its Western backers – given Russian forces’ ascendancy in the war theatre.
A chemistry professor trying to heat cartilage with electricity made a mistake that could change eye surgery. Michael Hill at Occidental College accidentally used too little current in his experiment – and stumbled upon a discovery that might replace LASIK with a gentler treatment that reshapes corneas without ever cutting the eye.
The discovery may offer hope for the millions of people living with poor vision who want an alternative to glasses and contact lenses but are wary of LASIK’s risks. While laser eye surgery is generally successful, it involves cutting into the eye and can cause complications including dry eyes, vision problems, and in rare cases, severe side effects.
Happy Accident Behind the Discovery
The breakthrough happened entirely by chance when Hill and his collaborator, Dr. Brian Wong, a professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the University of California–Irvine, were frustrated with their attempts to reshape cartilage using lasers.
Hill said that they decided to try heating the material using an electric current, but accidentally used a far smaller current than they intended. They expected to see the cartilage bubbling and shaking. However, when Wong touched the cartilage, it wasn’t hot—suggesting another effect was at play.
While Wong is a medical professional, Hill is a physical chemist, and it was their partnership that allowed them to connect the dots.
Low electrical currents change the pH of cartilage, loosening molecular bonds and making tissues more malleable.
“And it’s like, this is electrochemistry,” Wong said. “That’s hydrogen and oxygen being evolved, so the discovery was entirely by accident on cartilage—100 percent by accident.”
Alternative to Carving the Eye With a Laser
Hill’s team has developed a technique called electromechanical reshaping (EMR) that uses small electric currents to make the cornea—the clear, dome-shaped front part of the eye—more malleable, then molds it into the correct shape.
The electrical current makes the cornea tissue more moldable, like clay. Once the electricity stops, the tissue locks into its new configuration.
In tests on rabbit eyes, the process took about a minute—comparable to LASIK’s speed but without incisions, expensive laser equipment, or tissue removal.
The cornea focuses light onto the retina. If it’s misshapen, vision becomes blurry. LASIK surgery corrects this by using a laser to burn a small amount of material to reshape the cornea, but it’s an invasive procedure with potential risks.
“LASIK is just a fancy way of doing traditional surgery. It’s still carving tissue—it’s just carving with a laser,” said Hill in a press statement. He will present his findings at the American Chemical Society’s fall meeting in August.
The team repeated the process on 12 rabbit eyeballs, 10 of which had simulated nearsightedness. In all cases, the treatment adjusted the eye’s focusing power, indicating potential for vision correction. The cells in the eyeballs survived because the researchers carefully controlled the tissue’s acidity levels.
They also demonstrated that the technique might reverse some corneal cloudiness caused by chemical damage, which currently requires corneal transplants.
Hill and Wong are now investigating whether the cornea can be reshaped without incisions, using EMR.
Dr. James R. Kelly, an ophthalmologist at Kelly Vision and director of Refractive Surgery Education at Northwell Health in New York, who was not involved in the study, said in an interview with The Epoch Times that EMR could “in theory” significantly reduce certain complication risks by avoiding incisions or ablation.
“There’s no flap to dislocate, no laser-induced tissue removal, and less disturbance to the corneal nerve supply,” he said. This could mean fewer dry eye symptoms after surgery. “Additionally, if EMR proves reversible, that would be a major safety advantage over current laser-based techniques,” he added.
Greater Safety and Accessibility
Hill noted that the team’s goal was to come up with a technique that was more accessible and safer than current laser-based treatments.
However, EMR temporarily alters the tissue pH, and there are “potential risks” involved—and those risks can only be sorted out through a live study, he said.
“We have data on ex vivo specimens that suggest the electrochemical technique does not cause acute changes to the underlying collagen structure of the cornea, nor does it immediately cause cellular necrosis, but these data are very, very limited,” Hill said.
Kelly said his biggest concern is whether the reshaping will hold up over time and remain uniform.
He noted that the cornea is “biologically active” and its collagen structure and hydration can change with healing, aging, or inflammation. Without long-term in-vivo data, “we don’t know if the refractive effect will regress, shift unpredictably, or affect corneal transparency.”
Kelly added that “durability, stability, and optical quality” over many years will be key tests for EMR before it can be considered a viable alternative to LASIK, and believes it could be 20 years or more before this technique becomes commercially available—if it ever does.
While funding uncertainties have temporarily halted progress, Hill remains optimistic, noting there’s a “long road” between what has been accomplished and clinical use.
“Our next steps are definitely to carry out a live-animal study.”
Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino is steering straight into a “Bud Light” moment – learning nothing in recent years – by abandoning the restaurant chain’s half-century-old logo that symbolized nostalgia for rural Americana and the “old country store” experience. Instead, the company has embraced the woke rebranding of many other household names.
Cracker Barrel’s new logo isn’t an accident — it’s CEO Julie Felss Masino’s project. She scrapped a beloved American aesthetic and replaced it with sterile, soulless branding.
Masino kept a DEI regime that promises to “identify, recruit, and advance” hires by race — and now… pic.twitter.com/6BLthLuQ1Y
The soulless rebranding of the new Cracker Barrel logo has sparked backlash across various social media platforms among conservatives. The previous logo once featured an older gentleman in working-poor clothes, leaning on a wooden barrel, which historically held crackers and dry goods in general stores. In fact, the name “Cracker Barrel” comes from how people a century ago gathered around barrels in country stores to talk, eat crackers, and share stories. The greater understanding of the barrel is that it symbolizes community.
Before and After
Think about it like this.
This soulless rebranding (comes as no surprise) is merely a symptom of a globalist cancer spreading deep into America’s corporations. This is a far-left and sinister agenda centered on undermining the nuclear family and community, the very pillars that build strong nations.
Instead, these companies have redirected their focus toward all things woke.
Why CEO Masino decided to scrap the half-century-old logo that represented Americana – at a time when DEI and all things woke are being dialed back – is beyond comprehension.
Who owns most of Cracker Barrel’s stock?
Wall Street is selling Cracker Barrel’s stock on woke, basically betting a boycott will materalize.
Numerous brands, including Nike and American Eagle, have pivoted away from woke messaging toward normal mainstream advertising.
People who carefully track the machinations of globalist institutions might have noticed a disturbing atmosphere of silence since the 2024 elections. I discussed this trend a few months ago in my article “Globalists Go Radio Silent As NATO Flirts With World War III”, specifically the dramatic shift that has taken place since the pandemic when organizations like the World Economic Forum ripped the mask off completely and admitted their true authoritarian intentions.
By the end of 2021, most of the world was under maniacal technocratic control and the globalists seemed to think they had western civilization by the balls. The elites were constantly in the media openly touting their plans, from perpetual covid lockdowns, to vaccine passports, to climate lockdowns, to cashless digital monetary systems where all economic liberty is lost, to the “sharing economy” where private property is abolished, to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in which AI runs everything, to the “Great Reset” which would completely undermine the free market system and herald a socialist dystopia.
In my 20 years as an economist, writer and analyst in the liberty movement I have never seen the globalists reveal their true intentions so brazenly. The pandemic exposed an incredible number of people to the underlying reality of the “New World Order” and in that span of around three years the awakening skyrocketed. The number of patriots born during covid was unprecedented.
People realized it wasn’t a mere conspiracy theory. World events were not simply random products of chance and chaos. There was indeed a smoky god-damn room filled with nefarious plotting parasites. The march towards global governance was real and now everyone except the dumbest of the dumb knows it.
The powers-that-be were so confident in the success of their endeavor that they essentially proclaimed global government by bureaucrats and corporations in the very midst of covid. Calling it the “Council for Inclusive Capitalism” working in collusion with the Vatican.
The question we have to ask today is, where did it all go? The globalists were so confident and bold and now they are reticent. Did they give up? Or, are they rebranding their agenda yet again?
For example, in 2020 almost no one knew what ESG was. By 2023 everyone understood that the meaningless acronym for “Environmental, Social, Governance” is actually an insidious cover designed to hide the woke capitalism agenda.
Woke capitalism, also known as inclusive capitalism, is a centralization program which links together governments, bureaucratic agencies, NGOs as well as international banks and corporations under one ideological umbrella (globalism, multiculturalism, DEI, climate change, etc). This massive cartel uses monetary incentives and extortion to force businesses and individuals to conform to a woke/socialist model.
For the last decade these groups have been funding a suffocating propaganda campaign, forcing woke indoctrination onto the masses. However, the globalists didn’t comprehend the level of push-back that they ultimately encountered.
In their arrogance, they ended up inspiring more resistance, not less. And so, terms like ESG and DEI are being abandoned. Even Lynn Forester de Rothschild, head of the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, was forced to admit that ESG is dead and needs to be rebranded.
Within the occult methodology the natural solution would be to adopt new organizations and new names but maintain the same goals. I’ve noticed that this happens often with the globalists. At one point the majority of their planning was done within the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Group. Then it was the Club Of Rome and the UN. Then it was the IMF. Then the focus switched to Davos and the WEF.
They used the term “New World Order”, then switched to “Multipolar World Order”, then to “the Great Reset” and the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. This makes it very difficult for researchers to track the most current mechanisms of the conspiracy.
I have found that, in the last year, “Stakeholder Capitalism” has become the fresh code for much of their renewed efforts. It’s not a new term, but it is being used more often by the elites to draw less attention. Some use the phrase “stakeholder capitalism 3.0” or “third phase stakeholder capitalism”.
The original idea being that corporations can no longer make profits a priority. Rather, they must produce equal outcomes (not just equal opportunities) in order to participate in the interdependent international economy. In order to get access to the system, companies must promote approved narratives on climate and social justice, as well as partner with governments and NGOs to make DEI equity a reality.
The companies that don’t participate will face pressure from government officials and will not be able to compete with companies that comply. The problem is, this requires that meritocracy be erased and that producers be forced to subsidize feeders on a planetary scale. That is to say, stakeholder capitalism is global communism cloaked in the humanist costume of corporate responsibility.
The World Economic Forum seems to be doubling down on ESG and stakeholder capitalism with Blackrock CEO Larry Fink at the helm, despite growing public opposition. Though, Blackrock has removed a majority of ESG and DEI related language from their corporate reports.
I recently came across an article published at the end of July from the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance which outlines the more discreet evolution of ESG (and DEI) in 2025. It reiterates similar observations made by globalists over the past year, that ESG must be rebranded but not abandoned.
It argues that the old political virtue signaling and compliance checklists of the last decade must be set aside (for now) and that stakeholder capitalism should be presented as a “win-win” for the companies and communities involved. It is, in a way, an attempt to sell conservatives on the idea of ESG.
One argument is that companies that engage in ESG-like policies “make more money” and gain more share value. Limited data is produced to support this claim, and I would point out that stock markets overall have been on a frightening bull run since the election.
Companies that are NOT engaging in ESG are doing just as well as those that are, at least…in the US. Harvard notes that outflows from ESG funds are prevalent in America, but in the EU they are becoming more successful. I’m seeing similar trends in Canada and Australia – Anywhere that governments are working with globalists to enforce DEI standards on companies, ESG funds are obviously going to outperform.
It’s a cartel, remember, and western political leaders are the enforcers. The US is the only place where ESG is in retreat. This could change in the near term as Europeans grow increasingly rebellious against the multicultural coup, but it does illustrate the fact that woke capitalism (stakeholder capitalism) cannot survive without government intervention.
This is not to say that progress in the fight against globalism has not been made. I grow tired of blackpilled mouth-breathers that act as if there have been no victories and that everything is going “according to the globalist plan”. If this was true then they would have proudly and publicly moved forward with their Great Reset instead of running back into the shadows.
That said, vigilance requires temperance. Behind the scenes many corporations are still introducing woke policies and they are even advancing the globalist takeover in Europe. The fight must focus on these specific companies and their NGO partners; it is not the job of corporations (or leftist politicians and NGOs) to enact social engineering. They are not qualified to determine the greater good because they are not good people. They are driven by the desire for power, not morality or reason.
The globalists have lost the information war, but they keep coming back because they have yet to face real world consequences for their hubris. The only way to end the nightmare permanently is to dissolve the structures that give them their influence, or, remove them from the equation entirely.
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