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Leaked Messages Reveal Andreessen’s Fury: ‘Universities Declared War On 70% Of The Country’

Leaked Messages Reveal Andreessen’s Fury: ‘Universities Declared War On 70% Of The Country’

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen warned that universities engaging in discriminatory practices against students and faculty will face significant consequences, according to leaked screenshots obtained by the Washington Post.

In the private group chat with AI scientists and Trump administration officials, Andreessen stated that universities “declared war on 70% of the country and now they’re going to pay the price.” He criticized DEI and immigration policies, describing them as “two forms of discrimination” that are “politically lethal.”

(Washington Post illustration; Obtained by The Post)

Andreessen further claimed that Stanford University and MIT are operating as “mainly political lobbying operations fighting American innovation.”

The billionaire tech investor also addressed Stanford’s decision to remove his wife, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, as chair of its Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, noting it was done “without a second thought, a decision that will cost them something like $5 billion in future donations.”

This isn’t the first time Andreessen has called out what he perceives as a broken university system.

In a recent interview with billionaire venture capitalist and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Andreessen raised concerns about access to elite education.

“If you’re the parents of a smart kid where I grew up [rural Wisconsin] and you think you’re going to get them into a top university in this country, you’re fooling yourself,” Andreessen said. “What level of untapped talent exists in this country that a combination of DEI and immigration have basically cut out of the loop for the last 50 years?”

Andreessen argued that the intersection of DEI policies and high-skilled immigration has “warped” perceptions of who gets access to elite education. “Nobody wants to talk about, but I’ve started to talk about the intersection of DEI and immigration that has really warped our perceptions on high-skilled immigration over the last 50 years,” he said.

Andreessen also pointed to the sharp rise in foreign enrollment at top universities, noting, “You look at the foreign enrollment rates at the top universities, which went from 2 or 3 or 4 percent 50 years ago or whatever to 27% or 30% or 50%.”

“There’s been this massive transformation of who gets admitted through affirmative action, as we now know it, DEI,” the tech billionaire continued. “This goes straight to the political divide in the country. If you’re parents of a kid where I grew up [rural Wisconsin] and you’ve got a smart kid and you think you’re going to get them into, you know, a top university in this country, like you’re fooling yourself.”

Andreessen drove the point home, adding, “There is this really fundamental question which is, what level of untapped talent exists in this country that a combination of DEI and immigration have basically cut out of the loop for the last 50 years? And how long can we have this story to everybody in the Midwest and in the South that says, sorry, because of historical oppression, your kids are shit out of luck.”

Andreessen made headlines last year when he and his business partner, Ben Horowitz, endorsed President Donald Trump’s third campaign for the White House.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/14/2025 – 18:50

China-Linked Tech Tycoon Neville Roy Singham’s Niece Backs NYC’s Next Marxist Mayor

China-Linked Tech Tycoon Neville Roy Singham’s Niece Backs NYC’s Next Marxist Mayor

Submitted by Jason Curtis Anderson of One City Rising

There’s a new political trend sweeping New York City, and it’s as cynical as it is surreal. For over a decade, we’ve seen a parade of political campaigns proudly brandishing their tokenized Jewish support: “Jews for Jamaal,” “Jews for Rashida,” “Jews for Shahana.”

Now, we’re treated to the latest iteration: Jews for Zohran.”

The irony? None of these candidates are Jewish. All of them, however, are staunchly anti-Israel. And the newest addition to this cast of characters has a direct tie to one of the world’s most prolific spreaders of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda.

A New York Post investigation revealed this week that the “Jews for Zohran” campaign is spearheaded by Alicia Singham Goodwin, a prominent Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) organizer and, notably, the niece of Neville Roy Singham. Yes, that Neville Roy Singham—the shadowy billionaire with deep ties to the CCP who has spent hundreds of millions bankrolling anti-American, anti-Israel, and pro-CCP activism across the globe.

 Alicia Singham Goodwin- CURBED

For those who need a refresher: 2017 was a pivotal year for Neville Roy Singham. First, the U.S.-born tech mogul sold his company ThoughtWorks to Apax Partners, a sovereign wealth fund entangled with nearly $1 billion in Chinese government money via the China Investment Corporation. Next, he married CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans, cementing a personal and political alliance that would bankroll global leftist activism. Finally, Singham relocated to Shanghai, where he began operating hand-in-glove with CCP’s propaganda apparatus.

The New York Times profiled Singham in August 2023, exposing how his vast web of nonprofits and media outlets has since been weaponized to funnel CCP talking points into American political discourse. From their Shanghai base, Singham and Evans became the Bonnie and Clyde of the progressive activist world—directing over $160 million into Evans’ “People’s Support Foundation” and another $98.8 million into a constellation of anti-Israel, anti-ICE, and anti-American protest groups. 

They are the same groups that led Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and the House Oversight Committee into launching an investigation into Singham after learning that his organizations played a leading role in anti-ICE riots across California—riots that left over $20 million in damages, torched police vehicles, and racked up more than 650 arrests.

Singham, unsurprisingly, has not responded.

In India, his media arm Newsclick was raided by authorities after investigations revealed a coordinated effort to destabilize Prime Minister Modi’s government. The Indian government accused Newsclick of terror financing, election interference, and money launderingall bankrolled by Singham. Internal emails unearthed during legal discovery detailed plans to emulate Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood by establishing “partisan popular media centres” and offering community services to radicalize Indian Muslims.

Witnesses testified that Newsclick staff were ordered to incite violence during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), distribute Chinese-funded cash to demonstrators, and even supply weapons for riots and arson. The result? The 2020 Delhi riots, which left 53 dead, over 200 injured, and entire neighborhoods reduced to ash.

Singham also never responded to India’s legal summons. 

Now, Singham’s niece is helping to run Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign.

Singham’s network operates like a political virus, infecting vulnerable democracies, seeding chaos, and eroding support for America and its allies from within. It has successfully embedded itself in grassroots movements, NGOs, and now electoral campaigns.

The nexus of Neville Roy Singham’s global operation and New York’s Democratic machine is no laughing matter. The same tactics that fueled violence in Delhi and sowed unrest in California are now knocking on Gracie Mansion’s door.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/14/2025 – 18:25

Adobe Digital Price Index Torpedoes Democrats’ Inflationary Tariff Storm Propaganda 

Adobe Digital Price Index Torpedoes Democrats’ Inflationary Tariff Storm Propaganda 

Ahead of Tuesday’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) print—which could determine whether rate traders price in a September cut—new data from one of the most comprehensive gauges of digital inflation shows deflation in June, with no indication that tariffs are filtering through just yet. That’s a far cry from the inflation apocalypse narrative pushed by leftist corporate media and Michigan sentiment surveys

The Adobe Digital Price Index—an Adobe Analytics–powered inflation gauge that tracks online prices, similar to the CPI but focused on digital commerce—printed at -2.09% year-over-year in June. Categories such as apparel (-7.68%), electronics (-2.66% YoY), and groceries (-2.04% YoY) all experienced deflation.

Looking at subcategories within electronics, computer prices fell 10.73% YoY in June. Given that much of the global computer supply chain is based in China, one might have expected prices to surge amid the ongoing U.S.-China trade war—but that hasn’t materialized (yet). 

Meanwhile, the UMich survey of deranged Democrats… 

Looking ahead, Goldman analyst Giulio Esposito expects tomorrow’s CPI print around .23% month-over-month increase in June core CPI, vs consensus at +.3%, corresponding to a YoY rate of 2.93% (vs 3.% cons).

“Going forward, the team does expect tariffs to provide a somewhat larger boost to monthly inflation, expecting monthly core CPI between 0.3% and 0.4% over the next few months,” Esposito noted. 

Back to the Adobe data—either demand for electronics is sliding, or vendors are cutting their margins to absorb tariffs. Remember what we said earlier this month about Toyotas and Nissans (read here)… 

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/14/2025 – 18:00

What Seinfeld Teaches Us About Memecoins

What Seinfeld Teaches Us About Memecoins

Authored by Omid Malekan,

The 90s TV show Seinfeld — which is widely considered one of the greatest comedies of all time — was famously “a show about nothing.” Unlike most other sitcoms of that era, there was no overarching story across 9 seasons. It wasn’t about friendship or love or family, and the characters never grew or changed. This was such a core part of the show that it became one of the few continuous plotlines as a show within the show.

Being about nothing was a great setup to highlight the absurdities of daily life and an effective way of questioning social mores. This is also why it’s one of the most quotable shows of all time.

Memecoins, to me, are “an asset class about nothing.” Unlike Bitcoin, which is a powerful form of money insurance, or the native coins of PoS chains, which secure a smart contract platform, or DePIN utility coins, which empower a useful service, or DeFi governance coins, which underwrite a financial product, memecoins have no purpose other than being a thing to buy and sell.

They are speculation for speculation’s sake.

Speculation is also part of the appeal of every other kind of cryptocoin, not to mention stocks, bonds, land, and countless other financial products. But speculation in those assets has a point: it enables price discovery and capital formation in the hope of someday achieving utility. If a chain like Ethereum hopes to one day become the global settlement layer — which I think it can — then we need speculation in ETH. The more valuable ETH becomes, the more secure the underlying platform, so the more activity it can attract, speculative and otherwise.

Speculation in every other kind of asset has a north star. There are still scams, booms and busts, and asset-specific controversies, but the market will ultimately reward the people who ignore the shenanigans — as opposed to the ones who embrace them. The people who bought Bitcoin a decade ago and simply held know this. As do the ones who bought Nvidia and didn’t get shaken out by the Covid crash, or anyone who bought a house in Austin in 2009.

Memecoins have no north star. Their supporters talk about “tokenizing attention” and “a new way to monetize content” but this is nonsense. Attention is by definition fleeting, particularly on the internet, and specifically for memes. Remember Peanut the Squirrel? Its memecoin is down 90% from peak.

The content claim is also comical, because the unit economics of content has always been low — your Instagram feed is borderline worthless. Memecoins have almost no content, they are often just a name and a picture. People create all sorts of content to manipulate the price higher, but content that exists to pump a coin is very different from content that is in and of itself useful. It’s self-referential bullshit whose entertainment value is tied to the value of a coin that will likely end up worthless.

Like Seinfeld, part of the appeal of memecoins is as a form of satire. Memecoins are effective at highlighting the rest of crypto’s tendency to overpromise and underdeliver. They are a nice contrast to the vapid seriousness of the hard-money-Bitcoin-will-cure-cancer crowd (not to mention most of Wall Street, which has its own hypocrisies). Memecoins are often funny, and in my essay attempting to steelman them I covered how comedy is society’s way of preparing itself for change. (Seinfeld was really good at this).

So it would be one thing if memecoins were just random assets that went benignly up and down, with some people making money while others lost. Then they’d just be like a casino, or fantasy football. Part gambling, part community, part fun. I think I wrote a blog post somewhere many years ago explaining Dogecoin as just that. But there is a sinister side to memecoins.

Due to the openness and censorship-resistance of public blockchains, creating new memecoins is trivially easy and cheap. Not surprisingly, people create memecoins for no other reason than to extract a few hundred bucks from unsuspecting noobs before it goes to zero. They create websites and social media profiles to pretend like they are launching a new meme, one they’ll work to promote and “grow the community around”, but they have no intention of doing any of that. They’ll take the money and run.

When you have an asset class about nothing, it’s impossible to tell the difference between these disingenuous coins and the real ones — whatever that even means. I’m confident this type of industrial extraction is now the majority of meme activity. I’ve met people who do it for a living and VCs have shared tales of being pitched this as a business.

Next, new memecoins are prime targets for what crypto people call “sandwich attacks” and Wall Street calls front-running. This is a criminal activity that is easier to do on public blockchains, because everyone is pseudonymous, and best directed at memecoins, because they have no point. If I’m trying to buy land or a stock — or ETH — then I’m going to care where I buy it and how much I have to pay. Having a point means there’s a ceiling above which any asset is not worth owning.

But memecoins are pointless, so you could justify buying one that’s already doubled because you think it’ll quadruple. This helps explain why some can gain astronomical valuations in the short term. But that “I’ll pay anything” attitude makes memecoin traders more vulnerable to front-running.

Lastly, there are groups of people who routinely coordinate to execute pump and dump schemes on specific memecoins. They time their buys and sells, “paint” and “bang” the tape, and bribe influencers to promote their coin. Everyone in crypto knows people who do this (but shamefully look the other way).

This is criminal activity, and what I mean when I refer to the organized crime syndicates who really drive memecoin prices. If you don’t believe me, just listen to this interview where a key participant openly admits to it, or read up on how Dave Portnoy (a famous non-crypto person with 3.7m Twitter followers) routinely participated. There’s clear data of lone individuals making crazy profits from clearly disingenuous behavior.

This kind of illicit behavior is possible for any asset. People front-run stock trades and collusion to manipulate land prices is as old as time. But neither activity mattered to the long-term owners of Nvidia stock or Austin real estate because those investments had a point. Memecoins don’t, so they attract the worst kind of market participants. Tellingly, it’s often hard to tell the difference between the crooks and the idiots.

What, pray tell, does a good memecoin trader look like?

About the only thing that wasn’t universally beloved about Seinfeld was the ending. Spoiler alert, but the show ends with the protagonists being sent to jail for being bad people. Putting them literally on trial was mostly a device to bring back old characters and revisit previous hijinx, but it fell flat, possibly because it tried to give a moral ending to a show intended to not have any.

Memecoins receded to the background after the back-to-back embarrassments of the Trump coins and the Libra disaster but are now back in focus because Pump.fun, the most popular memecoin launch and trading platform, is about to issue its own token. Why? To cash out, drive more activity, and let others profit from the grift.

To me, this is a bit like the mob going public with a chain of fronts that cover up its illegal casino games. It’s bad form and — like the Seinfeld ending — contrary to what this whole movement was meant to present.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/14/2025 – 15:05

The Pentagon Just Took An Equity Stake In A Goldman Idea Dinner “Consensus Short”

The Pentagon Just Took An Equity Stake In A Goldman Idea Dinner “Consensus Short”

One month ago, when looking at the stocks most likely to benefit from the US government’s transition to realpolitik statecraft, we listed two companies which we were confident would be on the receiving end of the Trump administration generosity, largely due to their critical position in the domestic rare earth element supply chain: MP Materials (MP) and USA Rare Earth (USAR). 

Then just to underscore how vast the bullish case in the name is, we showed that the short interest in (the very illiquid) MP is a whopping 21% of the float…

… and the piece de resistance, was our lengthy report for subscribers The Coming Rare Earth Revolution And How To Profit: All You Need To Know About The “Ex-China Supply Chain detailing why MP stood to substantially outperform in the coming months and years as the critical rare earth supply chain was shifted domestically to exclude China, and to benefit domestic miners and producers such as MP. 

As luck would have it, literally hours later the US announced that in an extremely rare transaction, the Pentagon US State Department had taken a 15% stake in our sector favorite, MP Materials, making the US government the largest investor in MP.  

The stock promptly soared 50% as it shot up to top spot in best performing names in the mining sector in 2025, and covering the subscription cost for our premium readers many decades over. 

That was great news. But it was even better news that among the biggest shorts were Goldman’s hedge fund clients who, for months, had plotted and schemed how to unobtrusively short the name during the bank’s various idea dinner events. Here is an excerpt from the latest note by Goldman energy and natural resources specialist Adam Wijaya:

Rare Earths… how high… biggest move in the space yesterday came from Rare Earths complex… led by MP +51%… have hosted several Metals idea dinners over the last few weeks and this name has been a consensus short… pain yesterday was real…

Yes it was, and it will only get worse as all the sticky shorts realize they are now on the other side from the quite literally the one investor who prints money.  Good luck to them. As for Wijaya, who clearly did not push back against this “consensus” bearishness and was thus fielding some very angry client phone calls, he offers the following tidbits to ease the shorts pain: 

will there be continued follow through?… announcement from the AM clearly one of the biggest for the space, but if you blow out the MP model to 2030… have been hearing the stock trades at a very healthy premium to other base metals / precious / niche metals… is it warranted? Bulls saying yes if you comp to a uranium mining company – but isn’t uranium a structurally different story? There are still general questions around the supply chain for this space and “how this actually works”… there is clearly some work to be done on this theme / space – but after the run yesterday – what makes folks enter? (full note here for pro subs).

Well, Adam, what makes folks enter is the fact that now that the Pentagon is in, it won’t leave and the US government will no do everything in its power to hand the company not only resources and infrastructure but also capital on a silver platter. And next time, maybe skim our twitter timeline to get some non-consensus actionable ideas, instead of drowning in the echo chamber of self-reinforcing “idea dinner” mediocrity.

Full Goldman note available to pro subs here.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/14/2025 – 14:45

Inflection Time?

Inflection Time?

Authored by Russell Clark via Capital Flows & Asset Markets,

A well spent youth travelling around the world in my early 20s meant that I was very old to join UBS as a graduate trainee at the age of 25. I was even older to start as a fund management research analyst at the age of 27. I was extremely hungry for success, and I would spend all my time studying what the successful fund managers at my firm were doing. At the time the most successful manager at my firm as a chap called Andrew Green. He came to work maybe two or three days a week, and when asked about his investment ideas or philosophy, his answers were positively cryptic. He was the first, and probably truly most successful “contrarian” investor I have ever seen. Below chart is taken from an article announcing his retirement.

What you should notice is that he really began to outperform during the dot com bust, after underperforming during the dot com boom. Assets under management collapsed during the dot com boom, but as soon as the bubble burst, his style took off. He never really spoke to me (why would you speak to young analyst working for a different team), but I got on well with his analyst, and I asked him how did Andrew found his investment ideas? He told me looked for assets that were basing out of long bear market in either relative or nominal basis, and would take a small position, and then ramp it up as they began to outperform. It was this line of thinking that led him to be long gold miner DeepRoot Durban in 2000.

It was also this type of thinking that led him to be long Thailand, and particularly Thai banks in 2000. These were very deep contrarian ideas at the time.

For me, I started to think about capital flows and asset markets (the title of this substack). Did the capital flows out of the US due to the bursting of the dot com bubble drive gold and Thai outperformance? Or was the improving outlook for Asia and commodities cause capital to be attracted to these assets? Or was the Truth somewhere in between? I never really got a definitive answer, but I do pay a lot respect to inflections are extreme points. It is why I put so much emphasis in the potential inflection of gold versus the S&P 500, which would be similar to an inflection 1929, 1970 and 2000.

Getting away from gold, it is hard not see inflection points everywhere. Michael Hartnett from BoA has shown that we have suddenly reached a new high in European equities versus bonds.

To go along with a similar move in Japan. From 1989 to 2013, you made more money in JGBs than you did in Japanese equities. 24 years of basically the complete opposite of modern money management theory.

This may seem to imply that it is time to get long bonds and short equity – as Andrew Green used to do, but that type of thinking would have made you bearish in 2016, 2020, and this year on US equities.

But it is hard to not get the feeling that equities have become extremely expensive versus bonds. The problem here is that I still rather like the look of gold versus US bonds. Or in other words, I don’t really like bonds here either.

And this is inline with a new cycle high in 10 year JGBS.

The most obvious story here is that makes sense to me is that government finances are in a mess – but the public will not accept any austerity. So at some point taxes on corporates and wealth or tariffs become the only option. And this creates a steady flow out of equities into gold, as we shift from wealth creation to wealth preservation. This seems inline with the Swiss Franc closing in on all time highs versus the US dollar. This graph is log scale.

That makes sense to me – but the question is what level of bond yield causes this political change? At what point do governments bow to the inevitable and move back from regressive taxation to progressive taxation? I find it odd to be a contrarian when record asset prices and record government deficits seem to scream out for some sort of progressive tax regime. I think this is what gold and Swiss Franc are telling you. Time will tell.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/14/2025 – 14:25

Pounce! Democrats Suddenly Care About Epstein Files, Move To Force Disclosure

Pounce! Democrats Suddenly Care About Epstein Files, Move To Force Disclosure

And just like that, Democrats suddenly care about the Jeffrey Epstein… with House reps. preparing to introduce measures this week aimed at mandating the release of documents related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The effort follows a recent Department of Justice memo claiming no official “ client list” of powerful individuals tied to Epstein exists – a statement the Trump administration appears eager to move past

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) announced Saturday he plans to introduce an amendment requiring a House vote on making the Epstein files fully public. The measure is intended to compel Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to bring the issue to the floor, forcing lawmakers to take a public position on the transparency initiative tied to Epstein’s network.

Why are the Epstein files still hidden? Who are the rich & powerful being protected?” Khanna asked in his announcement.

Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX) has also joined the push, announcing Saturday that he intends to introduce a parallel resolution aimed at securing the release of the documents.

Either [Trump] and his acolytes fueled the rumors of the significance of these Epstein files to help his campaign, or something is there!” Veasey said. “That’s why on Monday, I’ll introduce a resolution demanding the Trump Administration release all files related to the Epstein case. Put up or shut up!”

Of course, the Democrats are seeking the release of the documents to fracture the MAGA movement. If not, Democrats would have pushed for the release during President Joe Biden’s tenure.

The renewed scrutiny follows the release of a joint Department of Justice and FBI memo this week that declared an “exhaustive review” of evidence surrounding Epstein’s death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York ruled out foul play.

After a thorough investigation, FBI investigators concluded that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City on August 10, 2019,” the memo reads.

The agencies also denied the existence of a “client list” tied to Epstein—contradicting earlier comments made by former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who previously suggested on Fox News that such a list was “sitting on my desk,” fueling speculation about potential blackmail involving prominent global figures.

The memo’s release has ignited backlash from parts of Trump’s base. Conservative activist Laura Loomer blasted Bondi, calling for her resignation and accusing her of undermining the credibility of the Trump-aligned DOJ.

How come Blondi didn’t sign her name to her own memo about the Epstein Files? She needs to resign. This is going to suppress the vote in 2026,” Loomer wrote on X. “The American people and MAGA base will not tolerate being lied to. I hope President Trump fires Pam Blondi if she lacks the SHAME to resign. I called for her resignation the day of Binder Gate.”

Tucker Carlson issued an ominous warning of his own, calling the government’s handling of the Epstein case “very dangerous” and warning it could provoke civil unrest.

“That is so crazy. This is like—this is honestly one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen in my entire life. And I just think it’s very dangerous to play around with this stuff,” Carlson said on his show. “Like, very dangerous. I don’t want a revolution, but if you wanted a revolution this is how you would act.”

Last Tuesday, President Donald Trump dismissed questions about Epstein during a Cabinet meeting press exchange.

“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” Trump said. “You’re asking—we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things, and are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable. I mean, I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration.”

On Saturday, Trump returned to the topic on Truth Social, seeking to minimize the controversy and refocus attention on his administration’s record.

We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again,” Trump wrote.

Trump went on to cast doubt on the authenticity of the Epstein files, likening them to the Steele dossier and suggesting they were politically motivated.

Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 ‘Intelligence’ Agents, ‘THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,’ and more?” Trump wrote. “They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called ‘friends’ are playing right into their hands,” adding, “Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use it?”

Trump also called on the FBI to redirect its focus to election security and criminal enforcement.

“The FBI should be arresting Thugs and Criminals, instead of spending month after month looking at nothing but the same old, Radical Left inspired Documents on Jeffrey Epstein,” the president wrote. “One year ago our Country was DEAD, now it’s the ‘HOTTEST’ Country anywhere in the World. Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/14/2025 – 14:05

Will John Brennan Ever Tell The Truth?

Will John Brennan Ever Tell The Truth?

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

When asked why the current Department of Justice might be investigating him, former CIA Director John Brennan answered, as was his wont, with a complete lie: “I am clueless about what it is exactly that they may be investigating me for.”

Clueless? Hardly.

Brennan knows full well that his fingerprints are on some of the greatest scandals of the last decade.

These machinations have threatened the very integrity of our institutions and elections.

He has a record of serially lying to Congress, the public, and the media, and doing so emphatically.

In 2011, as the government’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan absurdly insisted that the Obama administration’s drone strikes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border had not killed a single civilian noncombatant. Yet multiple sources proved the claim was clearly false. In truth, the number of innocents killed was likely somewhere between 50 and 70.

In 2014, as director of the CIA, Brennan lied again, doubling down by denying that CIA operatives were hacking into U.S. Senate staffers’ computers.

“As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. . . . We wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the, you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we do.”

Here, too, he was caught lying and forced to apologize—but never charged with perjury.

But Brennan’s biggest fabrications came in 2017 when, as an ex-CIA director, he testified before a congressional committee that he neither knew who had commissioned the now-infamous bogus Steele dossier nor whether the CIA had relied on it for its intelligence assessments.

But Brennan knew well at the time that then NSA director Michael Rogers and James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, had both gone on record that the dossier did play a major role in the intelligence community’s interagency assessment. Indeed, the concocted dossier was delivered directly to President Obama. And John Brennan was one of its most ardent advocates, seeing in it a way to undermine the Trump campaign.

So, Brennan himself played a major role in disseminating the fake brief, more or less violating a cardinal CIA precept not to interfere in domestic surveillance and intelligence gathering. For example, Brennan approached the late Sen. Harry Reid to brief him in hopes that Reid would contact the FBI to help spread the lies of the dossier. And Reid did just that two days later, in a call to then-Director James Comey.

Brennan, against the advice of senior CIA Russian analysts, had insisted that the false dossier’s contents be made part of formal assessments presented to the president. He also must have known that Christopher Steele was also indirectly hired by the Clinton campaign, which had funneled his payments through three covert channels—the DNC, Perkins Coie law firm, and Fusion GPS—to hide the campaign’s tracks.

Remember that Brennan was one of the chief architects of the now-infamous “51 intelligence officials” rounded up on the eve of the last 2020 presidential debate by Antony Blinken, a Biden campaign operative.

Blinken had called former CIA interim director Mike Morrel to assemble dozens of supposedly retired intelligence experts to falsely claim to the public that Hunter Biden’s laptop—then in the possession of the FBI, which had insisted on silence about its own authentication of its lurid contents—was a product of Russian intelligence to help Trump.

Brennan and the supposedly retired “authorities” (many of whom were still working for the CIA as contractors, despite claiming to be retired) sought to hide their tracks by the weasel words “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” What they meant by that wink and nod was that their deceptive letter was aimed at tarnishing Trump as a beneficiary of a collusive Russian disinformation project on the eve of the last debate.

The trick worked like clockwork, as an equally lying Biden cited the signed letter to counter Trump during the presidential debate:

“There are 50 [sic] former [sic] national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. They have said that this has all the … five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend, Rudy Giuliani.”

Christopher Wray’s FBI also partnered with social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, to suppress any accurate news accounts about the genuine laptop, claiming it was “misinformation” or “disinformation.”

In other words, the FBI knew the laptop was real, kept that knowledge hidden, and then helped the media to suppress the truth—in ways that helped Joe Biden’s campaign win the election.

In retrospect, that colossal laptop lie likely affected the final 2020 debate and the news coverage that followed. A controversial post-election Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics poll found that some 79 percent of respondents said their vote might have changed had they known the incriminating laptop was authentic.

As an “expert” MSNBC analyst (relying on his security clearance to monetize his on-screen credibility) and social media gadfly, Brennan did his best to cover his tracks by periodically smearing then-President Trump with incoherent rants like the following:

“When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You will not destroy America . . . America will triumph over you.”

Brennan’s perfidy and lying are in addition to his adaptability, going from a Bush-era promoter of “enhanced integration” (i.e.,waterboarding at Guantanamo?) to a sudden Obama convert who lectured the nation about the good intentions of jihadists: “Nor do we describe our enemy as ‘jihadists’ or ‘Islamists’ because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community.”

But mostly, Brennan shouted on the air or tweeted his furor at Trump in increasingly unhinged fashion, “Your kakistocracy is collapsing after its lamentable journey… we have the opportunity to emerge from this nightmare stronger & more committed to ensuring a better life for all Americans, including those you have so tragically deceived.”

Given that Brennan was one of the founders of the Russian collusion hoax, he not only never apologized for the lie but continued to advance the falsehood of Trump-Russian collusion.

In 2018, Brennan called the president a veritable traitor:

“Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to and exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of ‘treasonous.’ Not only were Trump’s comments ‘imbecilic,’ but he is also wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you?”

For a former CIA director, Brennan proved strangely clueless about why Putin had invaded his neighbors during three of the last four American administrations—except Trump’s. When he called Trump treasonous, Trump had already lifted the Obama sanctions on providing offensive weapons to Ukraine. Trump would soon pull out of a disadvantageous missile deal with Russia. Trump would also lecture the Germans on the folly of cutting a natural gas pipeline deal with Putin. He sanctioned Russian oligarchs and ordered the destruction of a cohort of attacking Wagner Group Russian mercenaries in Syria.

Brennan was at the center of three of the greatest scandals in recent history that may well have changed American history. His promotion of the fake Steele dossier sought to destroy the Trump campaign and sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.

That continual false charge of Russian collusion in 2017-8 consumed 22 months of Trump’s first term, forcing the president to spend every day defending himself from the truly weaponized Mueller legal team vainly trying to concoct a collusion charge. Often on MSNBC, Brennan lied to the American people that President Trump was all but a traitor in league with Putin.

Not yet done, in 2020, Brennan and his associates likely changed the course of the last presidential debate by spreading a fantasy letter. Thereby, he helped turn a potentially disastrous Biden scandal into a false charge that Trump was once again “colluding” with the Russians to promote a supposedly fake Biden laptop. And those lies may well have swung the close 2020 election.

Now, Brennan thinks Trump has weaponized the Justice Department to investigate Brennan’s many lies and efforts to warp domestic elections. In truth, John Brennan, along with former FBI Director James Comey and James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence, more or less destroyed the reputation of our investigative and intelligence bureaus by chronically lying, leaking, and weaponizing the government.

After all that, who would ever believe anything Brennan says—as he still projects his own past sins onto others?

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/14/2025 – 13:45

Relative Returns Or Absolute. What’s More Important?

Relative Returns Or Absolute. What’s More Important?

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

A couple of years ago, I wrote about absolute versus relative returns. Given the latest market run, I am getting a lot of questions about chasing returns, and individuals comparing themselves to the S&P 500 index. Historically, trying to beat a benchmark index leads to poor outcomes. However, understanding absolute and relative returns can help solve this issue. Notably, while most investors say they want relative returnsthey want absolute returns. The problem, as we discussed in “Benchmarking Has More Risk Than You Think,” is that investors are often unaware of how much risk they are taking. To wit:

“There are many reasons why you shouldn’t chase an index over time and why you see statistics such as ‘80% of all funds underperform the S&P 500’ in any given year. The impact of share buybacks, substitutions, lack of taxes, no trading costs, and replacement all contribute to the index’s outperformance over those investing real dollars who do not receive the same advantages. More importantly, any portfolio allocated differently than the benchmark to provide for lower volatility, income, or long-term financial planning and capital preservation will also underperform the index. Therefore, comparing your portfolio to the S&P 500 is inherently ‘apples to oranges’ and will always lead to disappointing outcomes.

But here is the only question that matters in the relative versus absolute returns debate:

“What’s more important – matching an index during a bull cycle, or protecting capital during a bear cycle?”  

You can’t have both.

I have had many discussions with clients, prospects, and listeners about “absolute returns” in portfolio management versus “relative returns.” The most common response to the debate generally begins with:

“I understood the part up to where you started speaking.”

Kidding aside, the importance of the concept of absolute returns should not be dismissed. This is particularly true since Wall Street has trained most investors to believe that relative performance is all that matters.

  • Relative performance is the comparison of your portfolio’s returns to those of some benchmark index.

  • Absolute performance is the return of the portfolio itself on a year-over-year basis.

Wall Street wants you to focus on “relative returns” because Wall Street needs you to continually “comparison shop.”

Why Wall Street Wants You To Compare

If comparing absolute vs. relative returns, consider the following: “Comparison is the root cause of more unhappiness in the world than anything else.” 

Perhaps it is inevitable that human beings, given that we are social animals, have an urge to compare ourselves with one another. Such is particularly the case since the rise of social media, where we are constantly bombarded by images of how well “everyone” else seems to be doing. Here is an example.

Assume your boss gave you a new Mercedes as a yearly bonus. You would be thrilled until you learned everyone in the office got two. Now you are upset because on a “relative” basis, you got less than everyone else. However, are you deprived on an absolute basis by getting a Mercedes?

Comparison-created unhappiness and insecurity are pervasive. Social media is full of images of people showing off their lavish lifestyles, giving you something to compare to. As noted, it is unsurprising that social media users are terminally unhappy.

The flaw of human nature is that whatever we have is enough, until we see someone else who has more.

Comparison in financial markets can lead to awful decisions, so investors have trouble being patient and letting whatever process they have work for them.

For example, you should be pleased if you made 12% on your investments but only needed 6%. However, you feel disappointed when you find out everyone else made 14%. But why? Does it make any difference?

Here is an ugly truth. Comparison-related unhappiness is for Wall Street’s benefit.

The financial services industry is predicated on upsetting people so they will move money around in a frenzy. Money in motion creates fees and commissions. Creating more benchmarks, products, and style boxes is nothing more than creating more things to compare with. The end result is that investors remain in a perpetual state of outrage.

Goal-Based Investing

Here’s an essential perspective on absolute vs. relative returns. Changing your view from “relative performance” to an “absolute” investment strategy can significantly increase your long-term results. This is because behavioral biases are controlled, leading to fewer emotionally driven investment decisions.

The first thing we do with every client is establish their investing goals. Often, investors have no idea what their money is supposed to be doing for them. Mostly, they think that if they buy stocks, those investments will ultimately increase and make them wealthy. However, without clear goals, investors tend to take on excessive risk, as investment decisions become based on emotions rather than a strategy.

The most significant contributor to long-term problems is comparing one’s portfolio to an all-equity index. This is hugely flawed, as there are many differences between an index and your portfolio.

  • The index contains no cash.

  • Indices have no life expectancy requirements, but you do.

  • An Index does not have to compensate for distributions to meet living requirements.

  • To match, much less beat, an index, you must take on an equivalent, or more, risk than the index.

  • Indexes have no taxes, costs, or other expenses associated with them.

  • An index can substitute at no penalty; you can’t.

Here is the point.

If you want to be happy, you first must eliminate what makes you unhappy, which is all of the comparisons.

Graphical Representation

Clients who have learned the wisdom of “enough” are significantly happier. Their benchmark is not an artificial one, but one based on their own goals and risk tolerance. They are comfortable that the risk they accept is within the range they can emotionally withstand. Crucially, they understand the game plan for getting from Point A (where they are now) to Point B (retirement, or wherever they want to get to). With that understanding, investing becomes a process to obtain their goals with as little risk as possible.

Let’s look at an example of what we are talking about. In the chart below, we look at some historical returns for the S&P 500 to predict what the next 20 years might look like. As you can see, there are quite a few up years and some down years.

What is essential for you to look at here is what the “Absolute Return” matrix looks like. We purposely made sure that in every up year the absolute return matrix underperformed the index, but in down years the absolute return model outperformed by not losing as much as the index. Were there down years in an absolute return portfolio – you bet! (More on the 80/20 rule of investing)

Slightly Better Than Average – Wins

Look at the return matrix chart above. Assume that we invested $1000 in the Random Index Return Matrix and $1000 in the Absolute Return Matrix. 

After the first year, most of you would be told that you need to move your money to another manager because he underperformed the index. The same is true in year two. However, in year three, you are feeling pretty good, but in every up year, you lag, so you chase another fund that beats the pants off the index the year before.

Here is another problem with relative return performance. In good years, you are happy because you are beating some index. However, when that index declines by 20%, and you are down 19%, Wall Street says you should be happy because you still beat the index. 

I haven’t personally met anyone who was happy with that, have you? Just remember how you felt in March and April of this year during the “Liberation Day” sell-off.

The 7th Deadly Sin

The lesson we want to drive home here is the danger of following Wall Street’s advice of beating some arbitrary index from one year to the next. Most investors are taught to measure portfolio performance over a twelve-month period. However, that is absolutely the worst thing you can do. It is the same as going on a diet and weighing yourself every day. (Read “Solving The Anchoring Problem” for a better solution.)

If you could see the whole future in front of you, as in the chart above, it is very easy to make an investment decision knowing your eventual outcome. However, we don’t have that luxury. Instead, Wall Street suggests that if your fund manager lags in one year, you should move your money elsewhere. This forces you to chase performance, creating fees and commissions for Wall Street, not better outcomes for you.

We chase performance because we all suffer from the 7th deadly sin – Greed. 

The problem with greed is that we can garner all the rewards without regard for the consequences. Instead, we should learn to “love what is enough.

Absolute return investing can beat average market returns with less risk and volatility over time. Why? You can utilize the power of compounding returns by not losing your principal investment in down years. The problem with market benchmarking, and what financial advisors won’t tell you, is that you compound losses when there are back-to-back losing years. When contemplating absolute vs. relative returns, consider that.

Conclusion

If you want to win at the long-term investing game, Financial Resource Corporation sums it up best; 

“For those who are not satisfied with simply beating the average over any given period, consider this: if an investor can consistently achieve slightly better than average returns each year over a 10-15 year period, then cumulatively over the full period they are likely to do better than roughly 80% or more of their peers. They may never have discovered a fund that ranked #1 over a subsequent one or three-year period. That ‘failure,’ however, is more than offset by their having avoided options that dramatically underperformed. Avoiding short-term under-performance is the key to long-term out-performance.

For those that are looking to find a new method of discerning the top ten funds for 2002, this study will prove frustrating. There are no magic short-cut solutions, and we urge our readers to abandon the illusive and ultimately counterproductive search for them. For those who are willing to restrain their short-term passions, embrace the virtue of being only slightly better than average, and wait for the benefits of this approach to compound into something much better…”

If you want to be a better investor, do what most investors don’t:

  • Look for stable returns, not the highest returns

  • Invest for a reasonable annual return to help you reach your investment goal.

  • Don’t compare yourself to some anomalous index.

  • Save, Save, Save!

  • Manage your money – after all, it is your money.

It’s not as hard as you think.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/14/2025 – 13:05

Trump Admin Cooking On Major Criminal Conspiracy Case Against Russiagate Plotters: Report

Trump Admin Cooking On Major Criminal Conspiracy Case Against Russiagate Plotters: Report

While President Donald Trump may have poured gasoline on the Epstein fire – calling it a Democrat psyop and telling MAGA ‘not to waste time and energy’ on such matters in a massive wall of text on Truth Social – something in his message may have hinted at what’s next on the DOJ’s agenda…

“Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 “Intelligence” Agents, “THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,” and more? They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me,” Trump wrote. 

And while his post didn’t exactly help the massive wedge in his base after spending the 2024 campaign promising to release the actual ‘Epstein Files’ – it appears that the administration is turning their attention to the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax” – and will launch a criminal conspiracy probe into its plotters

If you immediately thought ‘DISTRACT!’ – you wouldn’t be wrong, but let’s entertain this for a minute. As PJ Media reports;

In a bombshell revelation, investigative journalist John Solomon confirmed to Steve Bannon on Real America’s Voice that the Department of Justice and the FBI have been quietly building a major criminal conspiracy case targeting the Deep State’s decade-long effort to derail Donald Trump. According to Solomon, the scope of the investigation could finally deliver the accountability that many in the MAGA movement have long demanded.

I think next week, over the next 10 days… the base, who’s been wondering, ‘Where is all that accountability?’—they’re gonna get some big surprises,” Solomon said. He claimed the case reaches back to the summer of 2016, before Crossfire Hurricane was launched, and extends all the way through to 2024, encompassing “a large series of events” aimed at stopping Trump from winning the presidency.

Solomon said the massive case has been built largely out of the public eye, obscured by media theatrics and political infighting. “It’s been masked by a lot of this infighting and drama and soap opera stuff,” he said. “But the truth of the matter is, MAGA base Americans are gonna be happy when they see where this is all heading.”

I hope so!

Bannon pressed Solomon to clarify whether this was, in fact, a formal investigation by federal authorities. Solomon didn’t hesitate. “There is a conspiracy case that was opened that looks at this window as a very large window,” he confirmed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a special prosecutor named by Pam Bondi in the next week or two.”

This is the most interesting part of the revelation to me, especially in light of the blowback Bondi has received over the whole Epstein client list debacle that has FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino threatening to resign unless she is removed. Could Bondi be reassigned to be special prosecutor to keep Bongino and Patel at the FBI? 

The significance of appointing a special prosecutor, according to Solomon, would be to bypass the hyper-partisan D.C. courts. “You don’t have to necessarily then bring the grand jury or the indictment in Washington, D.C., where the 90% Democrat jury pool probably won’t convict even if they had a murder,” he said. He explained that an overt act of the conspiracy, such as the Mar-a-Lago raid, could allow the case to be brought in Florida instead. “Maybe several overt acts of the conspiracy occurred there.”

Solomon indicated that work has already been done on a scope memo, which would lay out the parameters for a special prosecutor’s authority. “There is an enormous opportunity for those of us who’ve been calling for accountability to see a path to it for the first time,” he said. “A legitimate path. Not smoke, not mirrors. A legitimate path to accountability.”

One of the potential focal points of the case, Solomon said, is the infamous meeting between then-CIA Director John Brennan and President Barack Obama in mid-July 2016. “That’s when Brennan walks into President Obama and says, ‘Hey, we have this intercepted information that Hillary Clinton has authorized a program to make it look like Donald Trump’s a Russian spy,’” Solomon recalled. “President Obama and Brennan knew before the FBI opened up on that information that this was a dirty trick by Hillary Clinton.”

From there, Solomon suggested, the conspiracy spanned multiple events, including the Trump-Russia hoax, the Ukraine impeachment, and even the FBI’s refusal to act on intelligence regarding Chinese interference in the 2020 election. “They didn’t want to help Donald Trump, so they ignored a potential counterintelligence threat,” he said. “It allows for a very large series of events to be wrapped into a single conspiracy.”

When asked whether this approach could overcome the statute of limitations for certain crimes, Solomon explained how conspiracy charges work. “You can charge a series of events into a larger conspiracy and go back beyond the window of time that the normal statute of limitations for any single crime occurred,” he said. He also noted that prosecutors could argue the statute was tolled if crimes were hidden from the public.

Bannon summed it up as a potential game-changer: “That means… we can go back in time 10 years and still get Brennan and still get all these guys for more serious charges of conspiracy to—of a coup d’état?”

“That’s how conspiracy cases can work,” Solomon replied.

If Solomon’s reporting proves correct, this could mark the most consequential legal development yet in Deep State’s war against Trump—and the first serious attempt by federal law enforcement to hold the the anti-Trump operation accountable.

Can you feel the tide turning? For years, the establishment mocked calls for accountability—now, the tables are turning. PJ Media is your trusted source for the truth behind the headlines, unafraid to challenge the narrative. Don’t miss out on what’s coming next. Use promo code FIGHT for 60% off your PJ Media VIP membership and enjoy exclusive content and ad-free browsing. The window for justice is finally opening. Stand with us—join the VIP team today!

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/14/2025 – 12:45