The global race to rebuild depleted oil inventories will not be enough to offset a massive glut that’s coming to the market next year, as traffic through the Strait of Hormuz appears to be headed toward normalization, according to Goldman Sachs commodity strategists.  

First, arguing the bullish side, stockpiles of crude and refined petroleum products in many parts of the world have been depleted to multi-decade lows after governments raced to release strategic stockpiles in March after the Middle East crisis trapped millions of barrels of daily crude and product flows in the Persian Gulf. These inventories will now have to be rebuilt – a process that’s likely to put a floor under oil prices, Oilprice reports..

In the United States alone, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) has been depleted to a 1983 low, while stocks at Cushing, the delivery point of WTI, have crumbled to operational-stress levels.

In addition, many countries, especially in Asia Pacific, are looking to build new reserve capacity to boost their energy security and never again be caught off-guard by a massive supply disruption like the one triggered by the closure of the most important oil and LNG chokepoint.

But Goldman Sachs takes the bearish side, and says that all these demand-supportive factors cannot erase the major glut coming next year. 

The investment bank expects the global oil surplus to be about 3 million barrels per day (bpd) next year, Samantha Dart, co-head of global commodities research at Goldman, told Bloomberg Television in an interview on Wednesday.

“We do expect a little over 1 million barrels a day just of SPR rebuilding globally, but still, that would leave us close to 2 million barrels a day of a surplus,” Dart added.

Other Wall Street banks have also started to predict a glut next year after the U.S. and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding in mid-June to negotiate a peace deal.

Morgan Stanley, for example, has slashed its oil price forecasts for the next 18 months as it expects the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to accelerate a new supply glut.

More in Dart’s latest note available to pro subscribers.

Authored by Adam Sharp via DailyReckoning.com,

For years, Elon Musk has dreamed of turning X (formerly Twitter) into the “everything app”.

Now that X is part of SpaceX (SPCX), and the combined company just raised $112 billion, the time looks ripe.

Elon envisions X as a single place where you can bank, chat, earn, advertise, use AI, shop, and more.

X Money is a key part of that vision. And we just got the first idea of what it will look like.

The program just launched to a small group of users. To attract deposits, X is offering some pretty crazy (and likely temporary) perks:

• 6% APY on cash, no deposit limit

• 3% cash back on purchases (with exceptions)

• $10 million FDIC insurance (by splitting deposits up between banks)

A 6% yield is not sustainable long-term (at current interest rates). It’s a teaser rate to get people to switch to X Money. Same goes for 3% cash back. That’s 3x higher than the industry average, and will almost certainly not last long.

These teasers may get a lot of people to switch. But it’s unclear how long the perks will last, and it’s currently only available to a small group.

X is not a bank. At least not yet. It’s more like a “neobank”, which manages the marketing and customer relationship, while licensed banks handle the deposits.

But for the user, it feels like a bank account and debit card. Deposits, yield, wire transfers, autopay, P2P payments, etc.

The WeChat Model

Musk’s desire to build the “everything app” may have been inspired by China’s WeChat.

WeChat is owned by Chinese tech firm Tencent. It started out as a simple messaging app. But Tencent rapidly expanded its utility, and today it is basically a digital operating system for the country.

In China, WeChat is used for payment, invoices, government interactions, making appointments, videos, shopping, games, chatting on social media, and much more.

WeChat Pay holds a massive 38% share of payments in China. More than a billion people use the app. It’s so ubiquitous that many Chinese people essentially run their lives through the app.

Largely as a result of WeChat’s success, Tencent has become a $488 billion tech giant.

This is what Musk is aiming for. If X Money succeeds, it could help justify SpaceX’s lofty valuation of $2.2 trillion.

SpaceX’s Huge Ambitions

X (formerly Twitter) has been the least-discussed part of SpaceX.

All the attention has been on rockets and AI. For good reason. Those are both very exciting areas.

But X deserves attention as well. Musk aims to turn the social network into a super-app, much like WeChat. Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion. If he succeeds, it could be worth much more over the long term.

But running what is essentially a combination bank and social network is no easy matter. For one thing, it makes security far more important (and challenging). It’s going to require a massive customer support team. And that’s one area where Elon’s X has struggled.

X Money is going to be a critical part of building the “everything app”. And the team is going big on the launch.

Think about the 6% APYs X is offering on deposits. Let’s say that X Money attracts $10 billion in deposits over the first year.

Paying a 6% yield on that much cash could cost SpaceX $240 million a year in losses. That’s assuming their own internal return on cash is around 3.5%, plus bank fees and other transaction costs. This is why I assume the 6% APY is temporary.

And the 3% cash back? That appears to be on a debit card, which doesn’t have the same fee support as a credit card. So that could be another very expensive tool to attract users.

But the losses could be worth it. The market they’re targeting is massive. Payments, banking, and eventually – everything.

So will X succeed in becoming a “super app”? Honestly? I think it’s a long shot.

X Money would probably need to be wildly successful and run away with the market.

One problem is that Meta/Facebook (META) will copy anything that looks to be working. The company is notorious for it. And they have a much larger user base. Meta also already has WhatsApp pay and several payment integrations with Facebook.

Another problem is that American banks are extremely profitable, and in some ways act like a cartel. They won’t appreciate X stepping onto their turf, and may fight back. With lawfare, lobbying, or other means.

A Beautiful But Difficult Model

The “everything app”, or the WeChat model has been the dream of every social media company in the world for a while. But it’s going to be very difficult to pull off at this stage of the game.

Then again, we should never count Elon out. If he’s going to go hard after this market, SpaceX certainly has a shot at winning it.

SpaceX just raised $87 billion in its IPO, then another $25 billion in bond sales. That is a massive war chest.

SPCX has big aspirations. And with a $2.2 trillion market cap, it has a lot of growing to do in order to justify that lofty price.

X Money is a calculated risk by SpaceX. One that could pay off big.

I don’t have a position in SpaceX, but it’s going to be fascinating to watch.

Authored by Simon Duff via BondVigilantes.com,

SpaceX’s IPO was a gargantuan event by any measure: US$75 billion proceeds raised, over US$2 trillion enterprise value, and an almost US$29 trillion total addressable market to feast on.  Few other companies can rival its industrial span and potential seismic impact on consumers and competitors.  SpaceX’s valuation is driven by its sci-fi AI segment replete with space-based data centres and moon bases.  However, its more immediate impact maybe felt in the more down to earth world of telecom.

SpaceX’s cash cow is the Connectivity segment where it operates a constellation of 9,600 low earth orbit (“LEO”) satellites under the Starlink brand. 

These provide broadband and in-fill mobile voice & data services to consumers in predominantly remote areas where terrestrial broadband and mobile networks are patchy or absent. 

In addition, Starlink offers broadband services to ships and aircraft where terrestrial networks are entirely absent. 

In 2025, the Connectivity unit generated US$3 billion free cash flow (EBITDA less capex) from almost 9 million broadband and over 6 million mobile global subscribers and from its corporate contracts with airlines and ship operators.  

By way of comparison, the 5 largest US telecom & cable players generated almost US$111bn free cash flow (EBITDA less capex) and had approximately 95m broadband subscribers and 275m mobile postpaid subscribers.  

Looking at those stats you would be forgiven for thinking that US telecom & cable operators don’t have all that much to worry about.  The problem is that this is just the beginning for controlling shareholder and CEO Musk who has proved himself a visionary with Olympian levels of ambition and matching access to capital.  

Using the latest and largest Starship rockets, Musk plans to launch 10,000 next generation V3 satellites from late 2026.  Each of these satellites will have 1 terabit of capacity, which is 10x the capacity of the current V2 satellites.  This ramped capacity will boost current median download speeds (225Mbps) to levels on a par with fibre and cable terrestrial alternatives.  It will also allow pricing to come down (vs the current US$66 average cost per month).  True, there are issues around the need for “line of sight” from the dish to the satellite in dense urban areas and practical difficulties around installation in multi dwelling unit (MDU) housing blocks.  But these are portions of the market and hence a break rather than a block on roll out and uptake. 

Obviously, the incumbent operators will not sit there like lemons waiting to be squeezed. Instead they can try to lock in their bases via converged broadband and mobile bundles, often at a discount (as both AT&T and Verizon’s recent offers implied).  Or they can simply cut their standalone broadband pricing.  Either way, the risk is broadband subscriber losses, or revenue per subscriber decline, or a combination of both.  And this would be in a market that no longer benefits from immigration or housing build tailwinds that historically increased the total available economic pie in the US.  Most exposed to this risk are the US’s dominant broadband providers: the cable operators. Both Comcast and Charter equity have fallen approx. 30% & 70% in the last year, respectively, with the pace of decline picking up notably as the SpaceX IPO bandwagon rolled into town. 

However, does Musk stop there? 

If we can think of an incumbent bundled defensive play then we are pretty darned sure that Musk can too. So how would he counter the incumbents’ counter?  In short, by going mobile. At present, the party line from the telecom operators is that Starlink’s “direct to device” (D2D) service is a pure complementary in-fill service to supplement mobile operators’ existing coverage and nothing more. However, their behaviour suggests otherwise.  All three players (Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile) have been clear that they will not offer Starlink a “virtual network” agreement enabling Musk to re-badge and re-sell their mobile service.

Similarly, all three were swift to announce a D2D JV that would enable them to present a united front to Starlink on future negotiations.

Assuming the US mobile players hold this line and are allowed to do so by regulators, then Starlink has two options if it’s serious about offering mobile beyond remote areas: build or buy a terrestrial network.  To build its own mobile network Starlink would need spectrum and terrestrial infrastructure (towers, fibre backhaul, network radios).  Starlink already has access to 65 Mhz of terrestrial spectrum (different from the spectrum it uses to offer broadband) that was acquired from Echostar.  Although dwarfed by the incumbents’ spectrum holdings, Starlink’s network would be relatively empty and upcoming auctions offer the chance to supplement these holdings.   Furthermore, Echostar (a 3% SpaceX shareholder) could play a complementary role as either an acquisition target or partner that brings with it a range of network related assets/agreements that could facilitate a Starlink mobile network roll out. Not least of which is a multi-year AT&T national roaming deal that AT&T has been tight-lipped on confirming or denying a change of control break clause to prevent Starlink exploiting this valuable contract.   

And Echostar is not the only option.  When Musk was recently asked if he could consider buying Verizon he said that “it was not out of the question”.  To be clear, Verizon’s market capitalisation is less than 10% of SpaceX’s and also brings with it valuable FCF (YE25: US$20bn).  Lastly, we don’t think it is any co-incidence that the rumour mill has been spinning with regard to German incumbent Deutsche Telekom buying out its 54% owned subsidiary, T-Mobile USA.  If Musk is going to be on a shopping spree you probably want to own 100% of what he might want to buy and T-Mobile USA offers the best mobile network, deepest mobile spectrum portfolio and the least “redundant” broadband exposure of all the US players.  Unfortunately AT&T is probably overly endowed in this latter area with 38m fibre homes passed and hence unlikely to be of interest to SpaceX.   All in all, we see the potential for a single mobile player being acquired as cold comfort to the US telcos relative to the potential step change in the competitive dynamic across the broader ecosystem. 

And who is best insulated from all this potential disruption? 

From an industrial perspective, towers look well positioned. 

If the US goes to four networks, demand for space on the towers will increase whilst, if SpaceX acquires an incumbent, tower demand should at least remain steady no matter how squeezed the incumbent operators’ margins become.

From a geographical perspective, a combination of Europe’s lower pricing from years of fierce competition & regulation, SpaceX’s lack of terrestrial spectrum, and Europe’s higher urban and MDU density make it a much harder market to attack.

Ironically, European telcos that have long played second fiddle to their US counterparts on competitive dynamics, growth rates and FCF generation might now heave a sigh of relief and actually be thankful for the harsh regulation and competitive dynamics they previously railed against.

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Hormuz traffic is climbing, but refined product prices are lagging, and crack spreads are blowing out: one can’t just look at the oil price to understand the overall energy dynamic.

On the geopolitical front, things are also still mixed. Talks about the US-Iran MoU in Doha, without either side speaking to the other, went well according to the US, who are staying on for what could be indirect talks today. However, the Wall Street Journal reports Iran is split, with political leadership focused on getting assets unfrozen and the IRGC on keeping Hormuz more frozen. Tehran has now rejected third-party offers to help demine the water way; they are in no hurry to see things return to normal as this removes their energy leverage. Iran is also opposed to allowing the southern passage via Oman, which the US favours, to become established – and there are still reports Oman wants to charge for access to this channel.

A WSJ headline is that Trump has been briefed on ‘all-out war options’ to finish the job but is sticking with talks while making clear that —as expected in our base case— the 60-day MoU deadline ending 18 August will be extended. Until November at least, as we posit?

Meanwhile, Israeli PM Netanyahu visited south Lebanon and reiterated that as long as Hezbollah is armed, they won’t leave, as the US announced coordinated sanctions with Gulf countries against the Iranian terror proxy. So, Tehran reads the MoU as “peace, where Hezbollah wins the war though it lost the battle”, and the US reads it as “peace, where Hezbollah loses by Israel staying or by being disarmed.” That can easily lead to more conflict with Iran, who doesn’t care about the US midterm timetable.

Neither does Israel, perhaps: Defence Minister Katz warned yesterday Israel could resume war with Iran “within two days” if missiles are fired at it, presumably as Tehran’s response to what is transpiring against its wishes in Lebanon. There is an element of pre-election rah-rah in his statement, but the threat is serious. However, on balance the likelihood is that Iran won’t trigger a new phase of the war… yet. That said, the tail risks are clear and the weak foundations of the current ‘peacefire’ should be well noted.

On conflict and timetables, departing UK PM Starmer has handed his successor Burnham a £5bn defence black hole, pledging new, smaller systems (and far less than what the military says it needs, and many arriving after 2030 rather than in this parliament) without having a plan for where the money will come from. In the EU, while Macron wants higher taxes on foreigners to fund a €2 trillion EC budget, but Germany wants a €400bn spending cut to balance things: who will win, and what does that say about Europe’s trajectory?

Russia is meanwhile reported to be about to start importing gasoline as Ukrainian strikes have so damaged the local fuel system.

In geoeconomics, the Hong Kong press reports that the US is interested in using a hollowed out G20 in Miami for a Trump-Xi meeting. That’s as, in line with what the US has long wanted, the World Bank is to phase out lending to China, and the White House is looking to ban Chinese solar inverters for national security reasons.

The US has lifted national security restrictions on the export of Anthropic’s Fable 5 Model after a review; and Japan has announced a $2.3 trillion startup tech strategy just after South Korea’s $1.3 trillion pledge. The cash being splashed here is not small.

Closer to home, the US is also reportedly to declare that it wishes to trigger a decade-long countdown to exiting the USMCA trade pact. The Canadian press notes this opens the door to a reworking of the agreement into a ‘Fortress North America’, logically with a common external tariff set by the US, as long flagged as the only logical US economic statecraft target by us. Where would that leave EU and Australian plans to deal more with Canada rather than the US? And, by contrast, where would it leave a Donroe Doctrine bloc replete with energy, commodities, consumers, technology, and military vis-à-vis others? The NAFTA > NAPHTHA (North American Petroleum and Hydrocarbons Trading Hub Association) pun about potential realpolitik springs to mind.

At home, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of birthright citizenship, so anyone physically in the US gives birth to a US citizen regardless of whether they are there legally or illegally, or permanently or as a tourist. No change for the US trajectory on that front, but there is informed talk that this issue could be as energizing for the Republican base in the midterms as Roe vs Wade was for the Democrats when that was overturned. The Court notably also removed limits on election spending, handing the cash-rich Republicans a boost.

In data, today’s strong Japanese Tankan survey was much better than expected for large manufacturers in particular. The 10-Y JGB yield is now slightly lower at 2.70%, still near the highest since 1997, while USD/JPY is at 162.7, the highest since 1986.

Indeed, the dollar is again on a roll, catching out markets who had been expecting the opposite. Gold just had its worst quarter in more than a decade, as the Great Debasement suddenly isn’t; and despite crypto falling, it’s reported that Trump and his family made either $1bn, $1.4bn, or $2bn from crypto deals in 2025.

Moreover, as the Australian Financial Review puts it, 2026 is ‘The year the global markets got physical’, as “Until this year, investors sought solace in capital-light companies with reliable earnings. Now, in the age of disruption, nothing is safe.”

That remains our (military) base case.

With ‘hard data’ having deteriorated recently (except in the labor market), ‘soft’ survey data has been surprisingly strong (especially in the Manufacturing side of the economy).

• S&P Global’s US Manufacturing PMI dipped from multi-year highs at 55.1 to 53.9 final in June (below the 55.7 expected).

• ISM Manufacturing also dipped from 54.0 to 53.3 (slightly below the 53.9 exp).

Both solidly above the ’50’ line suggesting growth…

Source: Bloomberg

Put simply: US manufacturing activity expanded for a sixth straight month in June as a war-driven surge in input costs eased.

Prices paid for raw materials, meanwhile, rose at a much slower pace in June.

The group’s price measure dropped 9.1 points to 73, the largest single-month drop since July 2022, as an interim agreement between the US and Iran sent oil prices tumbling.

New orders growth moderated, but remained solid, while ISM’s production gauge dropped to a six-month low.

Source: Bloomberg

“US manufacturers reported a further marked improvement in growth of output and order books in June, according to S&P Global’s PMI data,” said Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Despite the slight decline from the flash print, the final June data is extending the growth spurt that has been reported since the outbreak of the war in the Middle East.

“Employment was nevertheless cut sharply as firms often sought to offset the rising cost of energy and raw materials.

“Supply chain delays and upward price pressures continued to be widely reported, albeit moderating thanks to recent news of an improving situation in the Middle East.”

On the bright side, while still elevated, Input and Output prices are falling back, according to S&P Global survey respondents.

Some prices are up – can you guess which? Yep – AI supplier commodities…

However, Williamson concludes that despite the recent drop in energy prices and brighter outlook for shipping, business confidence has fallen sharply, “in part reflecting concerns that an end to war-related inventory building could start to act as a drag on sales.”

The manhunt continues, chiefly focused in France or also nearby Italy, for the culprit who committed a Monday parcel bomb attack on an exiled Ukrainian oligarch and his family at their luxury apartment building in Monaco.

The victims – Vadym Iermolaiev, his ‘partner’ (or wife, according to contradictory reports) and his 13-year-old child, all survived the bombing, with Iermolaiev and his partner having sustained serious injuries and in critical condition. The suspected would-be assassin was seen fleeing to the French border, after which “Dozens of officers were deployed in Monaco, while two helicopters and some 30 gendarmes scoured neighboring France for a man who left a package in a residential building near the border, according to the police and gendarmerie.”

Given that Iermolaiev had long ago been declared an enemy of the Ukrainian state, and has been under sanctions for years for his extensive business dealings in Crimea, Ukrainian intelligence is coming under the spotlight for possible involvement in the Monaco bomb attack – a first of its kind in the small, wealthy principality.

Le Figaro is reporting that the investigation focuses on Zelensky’s secret police (SBU) in the Monaco bomb attack: “According to several concurring sources at Le Figaro, investigators are focusing on the possibility that the attack was orchestrated by the SBU, the Ukrainian intelligence service.”

The report continues, “Vadim Ermolaev, a wealthy businessman residing in Monaco since 2021, as the magistrate specified, had distanced himself from his native country, exchanging his Ukrainian citizenship for a Cypriot passport in 2019, before being targeted by personal sanctions imposed by Kyiv in December 2023.”

And Le Figaro notes further:

According to our information, the attack appears to have been more of a “warning” than a deliberate attempt at murder.

However, police did call it a “powerful explosion” – so significant that parts of Iermolaiev’s partner (or wife’s) legs were lost, reports said.

Wow! Le Figaro reports that investigation focuses on Zelensky’s secret police (SBU) in Monaco bomb attack that injured exiled Ukrainian oligarch and his family:

“According to several concurring sources at Le Figaro, investigators are focusing on the possibility that the attack… https://t.co/Pk9BUBiBba pic.twitter.com/TFdHk9sJPb

— Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski) June 30, 2026

According to more background of the Ukrainian tycoon’s past:

“Iermolaiev is a real estate developer who was born and raised in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. His company, the Alef Group, also has interests in agriculture and vodka production. In 2018 the oligarch gave up his Ukrainian passport and acquired EU citizenship from Cyprus. As well as Monaco, he is a frequent visitor to London and Paris.

In 2022, the newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda identified the oligarch as a member of the “Monaco battalion”, an ironic reference to wealthy Ukrainians who live in comfort abroad while their fellow citizens experience daily Russian drone and missile attacks. Iermolaiev enjoyed the high life and drove a £250,000 Bentley Flying Spur, it noted.

The following year, Ukraine imposed personal sanctions on Iermolaiev after an investigation by the country’s SBU security agency. It said the 58-year-old oligarch continued to trade alcohol in occupied Crimea and paid millions of dollars in taxes to the Russian treasury. His assets were frozen and he was prohibited from doing business.

While Russia has long been accused of deploying intelligence-linked assassin squads in Europe to hunt down political enemies, there’s lately been increasingly acknowledgement that Ukraine has been engaged in its own ‘dirty war’ of assassination hits, both within and outside of Russia.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

A convicted predator who helped destroy the lives of vulnerable girls as young as 13 is days away from freedom in Britain, while Pakistan refuses to take him and archaic rules shield him from removal.

Shabir Ahmed’s case lays bare how legal technicalities, political cowardice, and a refusal to enforce borders have turned the country into a revolving door for the most dangerous offenders.

Ahmed, now 73, arrived in the UK long before 1973 as a Commonwealth citizen. He was convicted in 2012 at Liverpool Crown Court on multiple counts of rape, aiding and abetting rape, sexual assault, and trafficking for sexual exploitation. He treated at least one victim as property, abusing her on an almost weekly basis. Part of a gang of nine men operating out of takeaways in the Heywood area of Rochdale, Ahmed and his associates targeted working-class girls from broken backgrounds.

A grooming gang leader cannot be deported back to Pakistan despite being stripped of his British citizenship due to a loophole in legislation. Shabir Ahmed is set to be released from prison on Thursday.

GB News National Reporter @CDP1882 has more. pic.twitter.com/Fdfv841Usm

— GB News (@GBNEWS) June 30, 2026

He received lengthy sentences that later expanded. His British citizenship was stripped. Yet, ludicrously, he cannot be deported. The barrier is a provision in the Immigration Act 1971 that exempts Commonwealth citizens who arrived before 1973 and have long residence from removal.

On release, expected imminently, Ahmed faces lifelong sex offender registration, exclusion zones around Rochdale, bans on contacting any child, strict curfews, and electronic tagging. Breaches mean immediate return to prison. Taxpayers will foot the bill for round-the-clock monitoring and staffed accommodation.

Criminal Lawyer Marcus Johnstone, who has handled grooming gang cases for nearly two decades, pointed out that outdated laws combined with excessive human rights legislation have made Britain the destination of choice for international sex criminals. The gangs are sophisticated. The system that should remove them is not.

‘When you think it can’t get any worse, it does.’

Criminal Lawyer Marcus Johnstone, reacts to a grooming gang leader who cannot be deported back to Pakistan after being released from prison despite being stripped of his British citizenship, due to a loophole in legislation. pic.twitter.com/4TH0VnJ6ZC

— GB News (@GBNEWS) June 30, 2026

Home Office statements emphasise thoughts with victims and the “darkest moments” of the grooming gangs scandal, insisting the full force of the law will apply through these conditions.

Labour MP Paul Waugh, whose Rochdale constituency was ground zero for the abuse, called Ahmed a “depraved paedophile” who should have been removed years ago. He said the people of Rochdale want him gone and urged ministers to amend the Citizenship Act if necessary.

This case fits a wider, years-long scandal of institutional failure and political cowardice.

Separate recent investigations laid bare mini-mart operations where vulnerable children were plied with alcohol and cigarettes in exchange for sexual abuse.

Illegal shops were caught handing out free vapes to kids in return for sexual favours.

And the weary response from parts of the establishment often boiled down to telling victims and the public to simply “get over it.”

The common thread is the same: authorities slow-walked or buried evidence, prioritised community relations over child safety, and treated any mention of ethnic or cultural patterns as radioactive.

Official files had ethnicity redacted. In two-thirds of cases, perpetrator background went unrecorded. Police in some areas told victims the Asian men who abused them were “probably not going to catch them.”

A 2020 Home Office report, relying on hopelessly incomplete data, pushed the false narrative that most grooming perpetrators were white – a claim parroted in Parliament and by broadcasters even after it was exposed as statistical sleight-of-hand.

The motivation was always the same: fear of “racism” accusations, dread of community tension, and the overriding imperative to protect the narrative that mass immigration and multiculturalism have been an unalloyed success. Working-class girls, often from broken homes or care systems, paid the price while officials and media looked the other way or actively smeared whistleblowers.

While Ahmed prepares for supervised release, London Mayor Sadiq Khan faces renewed scrutiny over his past claims. In January 2025 he told the London Assembly there were “no reported cases and also no indication of the grooming gangs” in the capital.

A Metropolitan Police review of roughly 12,000 potential child sexual exploitation reports since 2010 has since flagged more than 4,000 cases that may require reopening. Many had been closed without further action. These have been referred to the National Crime Agency under Operation Beaconport.

London’s current review notes a broader mix of offender backgrounds than the classic Pakistani-heritage networks documented in Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford and elsewhere. That distinction does not erase the scale of what was ignored or the political class that spent years insisting the problem did not exist in the capital.

This London revelation drops just days after the release of Rupert Lowe’s Rape Gang Inquiry Report, which documented a coordinated national campaign of rape, torture and abuse against up to 250,000 British girls by predominantly Muslim grooming gangs operating across 149 local authority districts.

Lowe’s findings laid bare the same pattern of police warnings to rapists, political interference and deliberate suppression of evidence that protected predators for decades while treating working-class girls as disposable.

Britain does not lack the power to change this. Parliament can amend citizenship and immigration rules to close loopholes for serious offenders. It can assert sovereignty over international obligations that shield threats.

Other countries manage deportation of convicted criminals without descending into chaos. The question is whether the political class has the will to put the safety of British girls ahead of globalist pieties and domestic sensitivities.

Ahmed walking free under licence is not justice. It is the predictable result of a system that has spent years protecting itself from hard truths rather than protecting its children. British girls deserve a country that removes foreign criminals who rape its children and never looks back.

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

Watch live here:

Today’s main event takes place in Sintra, Portugal and the ECB’s annual symposium, where Warsh joins President Christine Lagarde and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey at 9 a.m. New York time.  Bloomberg Economics expects Warsh to strike a carefully balanced tone after signaling different messages to hawks and doves at the June FOMC meeting

Courtesy of Newsquawk, here is a prime of what to expect at the Sintra panel featuring Fed’s Warsh, ECB’s Lagarde, BoE’s Bailey & BoC’s Macklem, at 14:00BST/09:00EDT.

The panel is a ‘policy panel”, lasting for one hour from 14:00BST/09:00EDT, with CNBC’s Eisen as moderator. Text releases are not expected.

Fed

Warsh has already become notorious in not wanting to provide forward guidance, so while traders will be looking to his appearance for clues on future policy, some analysts suggest that traders may be left disappointed. At his first policy meeting as Fed Chair, the FOMC held the FFR target range unchanged at 3.50-3.75%, via a unanimous vote. Warsh described the labour market as keeping pace with workforce growth, with unemployment little changed, while inflation remains elevated due to energy-related supply shocks tied to the Iran conflict. On the 2% target, Warsh reaffirmed the Fed’s “capability and commitment” to deliver price stability, calling the commitment “strong, unanimous, and unambiguous”. Notably, he declined to submit his own SEP projections (though nine of the other eighteen officials projected the FFR target will end 2026 above the current range, pointing to hike risk). On the balance sheet, the Committee reaffirmed its policy of maintaining ample reserves in the banking system, with a dedicated task force reviewing the balance sheet tool’s transmission. Warsh also abandoned forward guidance, shortening the policy statement significantly, and launched task forces covering data, communications, and the inflation framework.

ECB

Lagarde has spoken extensively recently, and will have an opportunity to speak again during the closing Sintra remarks once the panel ends. Lagarde’s remarks on the 22nd of June, alongside the post-MoU energy pullback, have driven much of the moderation in pricing seen in recent weeks, removing a back-to-back hike from the playbook ahead and instead placing focus almost entirely on September for the next potential move. To recap, Lagarde said they “see no evidence yet of de-anchoring of inflation expectations or second-round effects that would warrant a more forceful policy response at this stage” and, as it stood, the ‘current shock appears to be smaller in magnitude…” vs the last period of high inflation, i.e. when Russia’s war in Ukraine commenced. However, at the start of Sintra Lagarde was a touch more hawkish talking around inflation being “away” from target. Though, her commentary didn’t spark any real return towards a move in July. Since, the Flash EZ HICP for June came in cooler than expected, though Services remains above the April figure. While the PMIs are net-constructive, however, much uncertainty remains amid the Middle East situation.

BoE

Following the June meeting and despite the two hawkish dissenters, the narrative has shifted significantly to the BoE being on hold for the foreseeable future. Although Governor Bailey has expressed frustration that inflation is not back to target, he has continued to stick to the narrative that the BoE has time to judge the pass-through of higher energy prices onto the UK economy. There has not been anything to suggest that Bailey will deviate from this.

BoC

After the BoC’s June meeting, Governor Macklem said any decision on possible rate hikes would depend on conditions, not a specific timeline. He noted that core inflation has ticked down, while inflation expectations will remain a key consideration. Economic weakness tends to put downward pressure on prices, adding that higher oil prices have not yet spread significantly into other goods and services, though food inflation remains a concern. He also said little had changed since the previous meeting, with no major data surprises, and that Canada’s economy is not clearly in recession. On communications, Macklem warned that too much forward guidance can imply false precision and become confusing. Separately, speaking last week, he said widening global imbalances and rising non-bank lending increase the risk of economic disruption. He warned that large capital inflows into the US could be misallocated or reverse suddenly, spreading stress beyond US borders, and urged global officials to support higher US savings, Chinese consumption and European investment.