UMich Sentiment ‘Expectations’ Plunge Near Record Lows As Republicans Lose Faith, Inflation Fears Rebound
After July’s rebound to pre-war levels, a re-escalation in the MidEast (and soaring fuel costs) sent confidence back towards YTD lows. Preliminary September data was expected to show UMich headline sentiment sliding further.
‘Slide’ is not exactly how we would describe preliminary September confidence data’s collapse (headline from 51.7 to 47.8 vs 51.0 exp). The current conditions gauge fell to 50.9 from 51.9 in the previous month, while the expectations index plunged to 45.8 from 51.5 – just off record lows.
Democrats and Republicans alike posted sizable declines, while independents were little changed from August.
“Opinions of the government’s economic policy worsened about 10% this month and remain substantially below February 2026, just prior to the Iran conflict,’’ Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, said in a statement.
“Notably, even Republicans, who generally supported economic policy under the current administration, have exhibited a marked decline in favorability.’’
Year-ahead inflation expectations jumped from 4.0% last month to 4.6% this month, the highest reading since June.
BUT… umm… How is this possible: Democrat inflation expectations dropped, Republican and Independent inflation expectations unchanged… yet overall inflation expectations jumped the most since May 2026!?
With a resurgence in fuel prices and trade tensions, consumers anticipate greater pressures on their pocketbooks to come.
Five-year expected business conditions remained stable at readings well below their historical average, suggesting that consumers believe that emerging risks this month may not have further worsened the long-run outlook.
Finally, as we noted earlier, real wage growth has now been negative for five straight months…
Jeff Currie Warns Odds Of $5 Gas By Midterms Are “Extremely High”
Jeff Currie Featured on BBG TV
Veteran commodities strategist Jeff Currie has spent the summer warning that scarcity in physical commodity markets is becoming a persistent source of inflationary pressure and giving way to a commodities supercycle.
After appearing on CNBC on Thursday, he joined Bloomberg Television on Friday morning to amp up that message, warning that tightening crude products supplies make $5-a-gallon US gasoline highly likely by November.
“Crude is the signal, and now we think about products … they are the noise,” Currie said.
Currie, the founder and chief executive of Real Macro and former Goldman commodities head, also warned that scarcity and currency debasement were driving the next phase of the energy shock, with shortages spreading from refined products into crude oil.
Currie described the probability of average US gasoline prices reaching $5 a gallon by the midterm elections as “extremely high.”
Currie warned that refiners shifting production between diesel and gasoline would eventually exhaust their operational flexibility, limiting their ability to relieve shortages. US diesel prices could reach $7 to $9 a gallon, he added.
The latest AAA data show the national average price of diesel in the US has topped $6 a gallon.
Former Goldman Sachs commodities chief and current Real Macro head Jeff Currie joined CNBC earlier Thursday to discuss all things commodities, warning that the latest Brent crude rally above $107 a barrel is becoming harder to dismiss as a temporary shock, with renewed Chinese buying and soaring refining margins (US diesel crack spread now $110 a barrel) signaling deeper pressure across physical commodity markets.
Currie warned that traders are underestimating an inflation cycle driven by years of underinvestment in the capacity to produce and deliver essential raw materials, echoing his summer warnings about scarcity in physical markets.
“The old economy is taking its revenge,” Currie said. “You see it in the rates markets. You see it in the commodity markets.”
Asked whether the latest flare-up in the Gulf conflict explained the jump in Brent crude this week, Currie pointed first to demand returning from Asia (read here).
“Actually, I put a bigger weight on China coming back to the market,” he said, citing strong buying interest after returning from Singapore and Hong Kong.
China had contributed to the refined-product squeeze by reducing refinery operations and exports as access to crude tightened earlier this summer, Currie explained. But exceptionally high diesel margins created a massive incentive to restart those refineries, bringing renewed crude demand into an already strained market.
He cited diesel crack spreads of $110 a barrel, exceeding the price of crude itself. That figure refers to the refining spread, rather than the outright diesel price.
“That’s a pretty big profit,” Currie said. “They start chasing it, brought those refineries back online, and it was just like an earthquake going through here.”
The rally in Brent is showing signs of greater staying power, he pointed out, with equities and longer-dated oil prices beginning to reflect a more persistent disruption.
“People are starting to go, ‘This is not transient,'” Currie said. “It has a different flavor to it.”
Complementing Currie’s bull thesis on commodities, HSBC chief economist for global commodities Paul Bloxh warned in a note this week that a “super-squeeze” has begun (read report).
MbS Begs Trump For Bigger Anti-Houthi Intervention, As Over 100 US Advisers On Ground
We’ve been documenting the Houthi rapid advance along Yemen’s western coast, as the Iran-aligned rebel group closes in on owning more vital Red Sea chokepoint coastal real estate.
As of Friday, after having the day prior entered the strategic port of Mocha, it is being widely reported including in Al Jazeera that the Houthis have taken control of Yemen’s entire Red Sea coastline. This gives the group, and by extension Tehran, immensely greater leverage over the Bab al-Mandab Strait and vital global energy chokepoint.
The Saudis are said to be in a panic as the front lines of the Sanaa-based government they’ve long backed and weaponized collapse. In some cases Saudi coalition fighters are simply abandoning their armored vehicles and convoys.
Seeking more Washington support from the air and on the ground, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) has already made two urgent phone calls to President Trump.
Axios is reporting that in the Thursday calls MbS urged his American counterpart to launch strikes against the Houthis before they solidify control of the vital Red Sea chokepoint.
The report indicates that “Trump declined, and US officials stressed the administration has no plans to intervene directly against the Houthis for now.”
But also, “Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S. Central Command, traveled to Saudi Arabia on Thursday for urgent coordination meetings, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.” So the Iran war is has now officially gone regional.
I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the American taxpayer for their generous and apparently ongoing sponsorship of Ansar’s expanding toy collection. Your contributions are greatly appreciated. pic.twitter.com/GHVGHExmaI
Of course, Washington and Riyadh been through all of this before but to no effect, given the brutal air war and intermittent ground campaign of the Saudi-UAE-US coalition in Yemen from 2015 to 2022. In more recent years amid the Gaza conflict, major US Navy actions in the Red Sea did nothing to push back the Houthi threat. Repeat Israeli bombings have also done little.
But the Pentagon is still intervening in what can be called a long-running proxy war in southern Arabia, as CNN reported Thursday that over 100 US military advisers are on the ground in Saudi Arabia assisting Riyadh with intelligence and targeting support.
One unnamed official even put the number at more around 200, as part of a new Yemen-focused task force amid the ongoing escalation. A huge worry remains the safety of Hormuz crude transit ‘bypass’ routes.
New Houthi military announcement via Telegram:
Yemen’s armed forces say maritime navigation is safe for all companies except Saudi vessels, which are subject to a blockade, and vow to continue striking Saudi troop buildups and escalating until the aggression and blockade on Yemen end.
The big news overnight was a report that Ansar Allah claimed to have hit Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, which feeds an export terminal on the Red Sea and effectively bypasses the Hormuz chokepoint.
Sometimes a short clip says more than pages of analysis. Here, a Houthi commander who was previously detained by government forces explains why the Bab el-Mandeb Strait matters so much strategically. He tells his soldiers that they no longer need drones or missiles. They could… pic.twitter.com/ZpxHOjfGpJ
The Gulf crisis shows no signs of slowing as US forces took out several Iranian tankers this week and Tehran warns of further escalation. But Trump doesn’t appear to be any closer to articulating, much less seriously contemplating, an offramp to this war of his own making – which is also becoming increasingly unpopular at home.
Following fuel-driven jump in Producer Prices, consensus was for a concomitant jump MoM in Consumer prices this morning, after last month’s decline as energy prices have rebounded (though we warned that amid all the interventionist-y chatter, nothing would surprise us less than ‘cool’ print to offset the PPI scare).
And analysts were right with headline CPI rising 0.4% MoM (exactly as expected) – biggest MoM since May – but prices rose 3.5% YoY (in line with expectations and flat to the prir month)…
Core Services accelerated…
…BUT Fuel prices dominated the rise in headline CPI…
Headline CPI rose 0.4% MoM in August, after rising 0.1% in July. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.4%.
The index for energy increased 2.1 percent over the month: The index for gasoline rose 3.9% in August, accounting for over one third of the monthly all items increase.
The shelter index rose 0.3 percent in August after rising 0.1 percent in July.
The index for food increased 0.1 percent over the month, as the index for food away from home increased 0.3 percent.
Just like we saw yesterday with PPI, the rebound in crude (and refined product) prices snapped CPI’s Energy component notably higher…
Energy helping on a 6m annualized basis but hurting on a 3m annualized basis…
Core CPI rose 0.3% (0.29% rounded up) MoM (hotter than the 0.2% exp) but on a YoY basis it decline from 2.5% to 2.4% – the lowest since March 2021…
Core CPI rose 0.3% after increasing 0.2% in July. Core CPI rose 2.4% over the year, following a 2.5% increase over the 12 months ending July.
Indexes that increased over the month include communication, lodging away from home, airline fares, education, and used cars and trucks.
Conversely, the index for medical care and the index for motor vehicle insurance were among the major indexes that decreased in August.
MoM Core CPI (0.3%) Details
The shelter index increased 0.3% over the month after rising 0.1% in July.
The index for owners’ equivalent rent rose 0.2% in August as did the index for rent.
The lodging away from home index rose 2.4% in August after falling 2.8 percent the previous month.
The index for communication increased 2.3% over the month after rising 0.6% in July.
The airline fares index rose 2.7% in August, and the education index increased 0.8%.
The index for used cars and trucks increased 0.4% in August, and the index for new vehicles rose 0.3%
The personal care index and the household furnishings and operations index also increased over the month.
The medical care index decreased 0.2 percent in August after rising 0.4 percent in July.
The index for dental services fell 0.6 percent over the month.
The hospital services index, physicians’ services index, and prescription drugs index were all unchanged in August.
The motor vehicle insurance index declined 0.8 percent in August after falling 0.3 percent in July.
The index for apparel was unchanged in August as was the index for recreation.
YoY Core CPI (2.4%) Details
The shelter index increased 3.0 percent over the last year.
Other indexes with notable increases over the last year include airline fares (+23.4 percent), recreation (+2.7 percent), medical care (+1.6 percent), and personal care (+3.8 percent).
Shelter dropped…
Shelter Inflation rose 0.26% MoM, and up 2.75% YoY, down from 2.86% YoY in July and the lowest since March
Rent inflation rose 0.23% MoM, same as July, and up 3.04% YoY, down from 3.18% in July and the lowest since March
The much-watched SuperCore CPI (Services ex-shelter) rose notably on a YoY basis…
…with a big spike in Education & Comms costs…
Driven by a record jump in Telephone Services…
Which was all Wireless Telephone price hikes…
Here’s JPMorgan with an explainer:
Education and communication goods: This category posted a near-record 1.3% rise in July, led by computer prices, as Apple repriced its Mac and iPad products.
Memory prices should continue to put upward pressure on computers and phones, which sometimes takes the form of new features being combined with price increases.
One more thing…
Bloomberg’s Simon White notes that the fastest-changing input in the CPI report betrays signs that AI spending is leaking into consumer prices via the information and information processing sector.
The chart below shows the change in each CPI component’s contribution (based on its weight in the basket) to the year-on-year headline number between July and August.
The information processing sector is contributing only 0.03 percentage points to the headline rate of 3.4% at the moment, but this has risen faster than any other sector.
It includes IT hardware, where prices are starting to rise for semiconductor and memory chips, as data centers are massively fueling demand.
Apple recently announced a rise in the price of its iPhone.
If the impact from data-center spend continues, then it’s clearly an upside risk for CPI, but it should be borne in mind along with leading indicators for inflation, which are rolling over and anticipate a more subdued backdrop for price pressures over the next few months.
As an aside, real average hourly earnings growth was negative for the 5th month in a row (is it any wonder consumer confidence is low)…
On the bright-side, we are decoupling from the 19070s CPI analog…
Understandably, a lower CPI print is better for markets, and JPM’s market scenario analysis affirms that:
For now, rate-hike odds soared to over 90%, almost certain pricing for a 25bps move higher by Warsh and his pals next week…
Rate-change expectations for 2026 has swung wildly this year from over 60bps of cuts in Feb to now 47bps of hikes (the highest of the cycle)…
Wall Street is now convinced Warsh is cornered…
Top Goldman short-term macro trader, Brian Bingham, noted that:
“The Fed is now in the most paradoxical of all positions, beholden to a single data print and potentially reactive to the rounding on the ECO screen…
Warsh told the market in his first press conference that he didn’t want to focus on the number to the right of the decimal point, but now it’s the number to the right of that one that will be the determinant. Waller’s speech on Thursday was surprisingly and overtly dovish, confirming our view that the Board skews heavily if not unanimously dovish relative to the regional presidents, but offered little new information beyond implicitly confirming a 30bp core CPI will merit a hike.
The market appears to be penciling the over/under at 25, but we struggle to see a meaningful rally on an in-line 20bp core print following this week’s jobs report; in a world where the meeting goes in pricing greater than 50% chance of a hike, the risk of the bond market interpreting a hold as a policy error seem far greater than the harm of hiking into above-target inflation.”
UBS FX team noted a somewhat muted reaction in currencies (dollar spiked then slipped lower)…
Warsh painted himself in a corner here. Well, we’ve gotten the hard language tough guy speech at Jackson Hole.
His remarks were prepared and his messaging was intentional.
Now, we’ve gotten the data – labor market print more robust, inflation still supported.
September FOMC pricing goes to just under 23bp immediately, so the market is pretty much fully expecting a hike to come.
At this point, it would be a massive blow to credibility if they fumble the football on following through with the adjustment, but the market seems to have been correct to lean into this data with a long USD gamma bias.
Interestingly, the yield curve is flattening rapidly (Fed credibility at the long-end? locked in hike will slow growth?)…
So while the world and his pet rabbit was watching for 0.2% or 0.3% – knowing energy would be a driver – it turns out it was cellphone carriers hiking prices that had forced Warsh into a corner.
Bottom line: surging cell phone prices (thanks to memory) were the deciding factor between the Core CPI printing 0.2% and 0.3%. https://t.co/KehMJOCgUj
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has ruled out a national moratorium on data centers.
Speaking in the UK parliament on Wednesday, Burnham said the government’s AI Growth Zone scheme would help ensure communities hosting new data centers would feel the economic benefits of developments.
Responding to a question from Labour MP Ian Lavery, who said three “vast” AI data centers are currently under construction in his constituency, Blyth and Ashington in north-east England, Burnham said: “At this point, I won’t go as far as a moratorium.”
He added that data centers “can be the magnet that clusters in other investment over time,” and said AI Growth Zones would help boost tax revenues for communities with data centers.
Burnham plans to devolve more power to local mayors, including allowing them to spend a greater proportion of tax raised in their areas on local projects.
Under Burnham’s predecessor, Keir Starmer, the UK government championed data centers as a vehicle for economic growth.
It set up AI Growth Zones as a way to attract digital infrastructure projects to specific areas, touting tax incentives and priority access to power.
Blyth and Ashington, Lavery’s constituency, is home to major projects including a £10 billion ($13bn) plan to convert a former power station into a 720MW AI data center, which is being developed by Blackstone-owned QTS.
A lot has changed in the past year and a half, with Starmer out and the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT), which oversaw the launch of AI Growth Zones, closed and merged into the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade when Burnham took office this summer.
After a period of uncertainty about the future of the growth zone program, government officials confirmed to DCD that the team now reports to UK AI minister Kanishka Narayan. However, the architect of the scheme, Matt Clifford, has left his role in government to join AI lab Anthropic.
Burnham’s backing of data centers contrasts with the stance of UK Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who has called for a national moratorium citing concerns over power and water usage.
In Scotland, lawmakers in the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Green Party have also backed a ban north of the border.
Brent Nears $110 Then Tumbles On IEA Demand Destruction Warning As Houthis Threaten Saudi Oil Escape Route, Diesel Shock Goes Global
Brent crude futures nearly topped $110 a barrel in the overnight hours but fell 3.5% to the $103 handle by 6 a.m. ET, after reports from the International Energy Agency that soaring fuel costs could spark global demand destruction.
The global benchmark remained on course for its biggest weekly advance since July. Prices have soared more than 70% this year as the Hormuz chokepoint remains disrupted, energy infrastructure attacks continue from the Gulf to the Russia-Ukraine theater, and renewed Chinese buying of crude in various global markets bids up local prices.
“A resumption of a full-blown Saudi-Houthi war would be a potential catalyst for our high oil price scenario coming to fruition,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Helima Croft wrote in a note.
The big news overnight was a report that Iran-backed Houthis claimed to have hit Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, which feeds an export terminal on the Red Sea and effectively bypasses the Hormuz chokepoint. There’s also news that the Houthis advanced toward coastal areas bordering the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait, gaining ground in their push to seize Mokha near the southern end of the Red Sea.
🔥🌏Just to put the sheer SCALE of this attack into perspective…
The smoke stretched more than 100 km across the Saudi desert and was visible from space even when zoomed all the way out to a global view of Earth.
The Gulf crisis shows no signs of slowing as US forces took out several Iranian tankers this week and Tehran warns of further escalation.
More bad news for global energy markets: Saudi Arabia’s oil production fell again last month to its lowest level since 1990.
CHART OF THE DAY: Saudi Arabia and Russia (the world’s 2nd and 3rd top oil producers) suffered significant output drops in August due to the Iran and Ukraine wars, respectively. Combined, Riyadh and Moscow pumped last month ~5.5m b/d less than they did in January (@IEA data). pic.twitter.com/YJNn0A9kg3
Capital Economics commodities expert Hamad Hussain warned that depleted inventories and early signs of recovering Chinese demand leave prices vulnerable to another interruption in Middle East flows.
Former Goldman Sachs commodities chief and current Real Macro head Jeff Currie joined CNBC TV on Thursday and said that it’s actually Chinese buyers who are bidding up crude: “Actually, I put a bigger weight on China coming back to the market,” he said, citing strong buying interest after returning from Singapore and Hong Kong.
The more consequential crisis isn’t necessarily about crude supply, because the global economy doesn’t run on that. Instead, it’s the diesel shortage rippling through the world. The US diesel crack spread currently trades around $110 a barrel. Prices at US pumps for the industrial fuel average $6 a gallon, a record high, while prices at some gas stations in California topped $9.99 per gallon.
“Brent holding above $105 with Houthi/Bab al-Mandab disruptions raising fears of a double chokepoint. 10y bunds yields highest since 2009, 10y US within reach of the 5% level,” UBS analyst Justinus Steinhorst wrote in a note.
However, there is some good diplomatic news from the Gulf: Bloomberg reports that the six-member bloc of Gulf states is considering meeting with Iranian officials next week to discuss the Hormuz chokepoint.
US Agencies Accuse China-Based AI Firms Of ‘Malicious’ Copying Of American Models
Federal cybersecurity and intelligence agencies on Tuesday accused six China-based artificial intelligence companies of running industrial-scale campaigns to extract proprietary features from leading U.S. models.
DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI were all named in the joint advisory.
Officials alleged the companies, “likely with Chinese government awareness,” pulled billions of tokens across millions of requests from U.S. AI systems. The list included variants of Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok. The activity dates back to at least late 2024.
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Acting Director Nick Andersen said that CISA is committed to promoting the secure use of AI.
“We strongly urge AI companies to take immediate steps to safeguard their platforms against knowledge distillation campaigns that threaten to close the gap in advancements made by American companies,” Andersen said.
The three agencies – CISA, the National Security Agency, and the FBI – differentiated legitimate research from “aggressive, malicious, and targeted distillation activities at an industrial scale.”
The advisory said the firms routed traffic through native application programming interfaces (API), remote cloud providers, and third-party aggregators that strip user metadata. A gray market of proxies, referred to as “transfer stations,” helped them dodge geographic blocks, break terms of use, and muddy the trail. Bulk premium subscriptions, shared across developer teams, kept the bills down.
DeepSeek, formally Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Basic Technology Research Co. Ltd., has run an organized campaign since at least late 2024, according to the agency, to feed synthetic training data into its R1 and V3 models.
Targets included Claude 3.7, Claude Sonnet 4 and 4.5, Claude Opus 4.1, Gemini 2.5 Pro and Flash previews, GPT-4, GPT-4o, GPT-5, and Grok 4.
Officials called DeepSeek’s widely cited $5.6 million training figure misleading, saying it leaves out the cost of data taken through distillation.
Moonshot AI, or Beijing Moonshot Technology Co. Ltd., was accused of a broad campaign since at least mid-2025. The advisory said the firm pulled substantial Claude Fable 5 data for its Kimi-K3 model and GPT-4o data for Kimi-K2.
The new advisory recommends three steps for U.S. model providers, including hunting anomalous prompts, accounts, and usage spikes; quietly degrading answers when a distillation campaign is suspected; and sharing intelligence across companies, clouds, and API aggregators.
In July, Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios said his office had reason to believe Moonshot AI “distilled Anthropic’s Fable for the development of its K3 model.”
“Large-scale, covert industrial distillation aimed at stealing proprietary U.S. technology and undermining American research is unacceptable,” Kratsios said.
Alibaba, the agencies contended, distilled Claude-4, Claude Opus, Claude Sonnet, and GPT-5 in late 2025 to hasten software engineering, customer-service dialogue, and image creation for its Qwen family of models. MiniMax, or Shanghai MiniMax Co. Ltd., used Claude Code, Claude Sonnet 4, Claude Opus, and several Gemini versions to improve its M2 model. Officials said MiniMax even attempted prompt injections to convince Claude Code it was actually a MiniMax product.
StepFun distilled a string of Claude and GPT-5 variants between late 2025 and early 2026 for its Step 4 model. By mid-2026, Z.AI had taken billions of tokens of GPT-5.5 and Claude Opus 4.8 data for chain-of-thought reasoning, the advisory said.
On April 23, a White House memo warned of “industrial-scale campaigns” employing “tens of thousands of proxy accounts” and jailbreaking tricks.
“There is nothing innovative about systematically extracting and copying the innovations of American industry,” Kratsios wrote at the time. “And there is nothing open about supposedly open models that are derived from acts of malicious exploitation.”
The memo also said the campaigns “allow those actors to deliberately strip away security protocols from the resulting models and undo mechanisms that ensure those AI models are ideologically neutral and truth-seeking.”
Anthropic, the maker of Claude, said in February that DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax created about 24,000 fraudulent accounts and sent more than 16 million prompts to Claude. MiniMax accounted for more than 13 million, Moonshot AI more than 3.4 million, and DeepSeek about 150,000, according to the company.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he is open to sanctioning Chinese AI developers over alleged model theft.
“This administration supports open-source models, but what we do not support is IP theft,” Bessent said in July. “If we see, especially, that overseas models are stealing from our great companies, we have the ability to sanction them because of this theft.”
“There’s a very technical AI word for it called distillation, but you and I would call it theft.”
CISA, the National Security Agency, and the FBI said the effort sits at the center of those firms’ development plans.
How desperate must a government become before it considers taxing pornography to purchase drones for a war it cannot win?
Ukraine is now reportedly considering legalizing parts of its adult entertainment industry to generate additional tax revenue for the war against Russia. Ukrainian lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak estimates legalization could bring around $25 million annually into the government’s coffers, enough, he claims, to purchase up to 30,000 drones. The legislation has already passed its first reading in parliament and awaits further consideration.
Zelensky has agreed that parliament should consider the proposal after a petition supporting reform attracted more than 25,000 signatures.
You cannot make this stuff up.
Ukraine requires around $120 billion annually for defense, according to reporting on the proposal, and the government is scrambling everywhere it can for money. Its budget deficit exceeds $32 billion as Kyiv simultaneously negotiates with the IMF over additional financial assistance and new taxes. Europe and the United States have poured hundreds of billions into keeping this war machine operating, yet five years into the conflict Kyiv remains financially dependent upon outsiders.
The situation is even more outrageous because the government created this absurdity itself. Producing and distributing pornography remains illegal in Ukraine and can carry years in prison, yet tax authorities began demanding money from Ukrainians earning income through adult platforms. Pay the taxes and you effectively provide the government with evidence that you participated in an activity it criminalized. Refuse to pay and they can prosecute you for tax evasion. Zhelezniak himself described it as a “tragicomic situation.”
You cannot legislate human nature out of existence.
Prostitution has survived emperors, kings, dictators, democracies, communism, religious prohibitions, and every law politicians have invented. The Romans tried regulating how prostitutes could be paid and people simply devised ways around the restrictions. Make an activity illegal and government frequently creates an underground market with multiple exploiters.
That is government in its purest form.
First it declares something immoral and sends the police after you. Then it discovers you are making money, demands its percentage, and eventually considers changing the law because it desperately needs the revenue. Ukraine has simply added the insanity of war to the equation.
There is only desperation in reaching the point where politicians are calculating how many battlefield drones can be purchased from taxes on sex work. Every additional scheme to extract another dollar, euro, or hryvnia demonstrates the same underlying reality: this war has consumed Ukraine economically, financially, demographically, and socially. At some point, someone has to admit that destroying what remains of the country to finance an unwinnable war is not defending Ukraine.
US Home Delistings Decline As Sellers Become More Willing To Make Deals
Property delistings nationwide recorded a year-over-year decline toward the end of this summer, as sellers showed more patience than they did a year ago and a larger share were willing to cut prices, according to Realtor.com.
By contrast, the December 2025 Realtor.com report showed that delistings in June and July 2025 jumped by 48 percent and 57 percent, respectively, from the same months in 2024.
The average interest rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was around 6.6 percent to 6.8 percent during summer 2025, according to Freddie Mac.
“With buyers and sellers far apart, the sellers’ solution is to pull that trump card and delist, rather than cut prices,” Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel said at the time.
While the group’s September 2026 data showed a year-over-year drop in delistings this summer, it also noted there were 10 consecutive months of annual list-price drops.
In August, 20.4 percent of active listings had price reductions, a 0.4 percentage-point increase from July and unchanged from August 2025.
Listings in pending status declined 0.2 percent from a year earlier, following eight months of gains, which peaked at 4.1 percent in May, according to the report. Contract signings also decreased 3.7 percent compared with August 2025.
Nationally, the median list price stood at $424,500 in August, a 1.0 percent decline from July and a 1.3 percent decline from August 2025.
“August brings a mixed reading: buyer demand softened and price cuts rose modestly above last year’s pace, but sellers are still showing more patience than they did during last year’s late-summer delisting wave,” Krimmel said in a Sept. 3 statement.
“Price cuts, pending sales and delistings together can tell you whether sellers are satisfied, panicking, or somewhere in between.”
Regionally, the West and South recorded the largest share of active listings with price reductions in August, at 22 percent and 21.4 percent, respectively. The Northeast had the lowest share, at 14.1 percent, while the share in the Midwest was 19.6 percent.
Meanwhile, 1.14 million active listings across the country were reported in August, including 401,760 new listings – a 5.2 percent dip from July. The report indicates that inventory grew across all four regions, with the Midwest leading by 10.5 percent.
“August’s data shows a housing market entering its seasonal cool-down with less momentum than it had earlier this year,” Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale added in the report.
“Higher mortgage rates are meeting a point in the calendar when activity typically slows, and buyers appear to be responding more selectively.”
As of Sept. 3, Freddie Mac reported an average 6.71 percent interest rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage, and 5.98 percent for a 15-year fixed loan.
Only the years 2000 and 2023 had higher rates at this time of year in the last 26 years…
Looking ahead to the fall, Realtor.com said the gap in delistings compared with last year could either persist or reverse, depending on market conditions and whether sellers will continue to rely on price reductions.
“Sellers may start to get more desperate in September and subsequent months when mortgage rates are likely to remain higher than they were at this time in 2025,” the report noted.
The official line is that 1,256 single adult males will be placed at the old MoD depot on the edge of the Oxfordshire hamlet. Yet the document villagers pulled out of the consultation pack talks about “accommodation for 3,510 service users.”
That is not a rounding error. In a place of 350 people and 46 children, it is a demographic wrecking ball.
Home Office sparks fresh outrage in Piddington as surfaced document reveals plan to house over 3,000 asylum seekers in village https://t.co/T4AmKxtZQN
The Home Office calls the figure an “outdated estimate” and “categorically untrue.” But the document has not been withdrawn.
The village has no pub, no shop, no pavement on the approach road and no street lighting worth the name. Men of fighting age would be free to come and go from a site that backs onto the children’s playing field. That is the plan they are being told to accept as “fairness.”
This is the same village that first exploded in July when the 1,250 figure landed with almost no consultation.
Children from the parish wrote to the Prime Minister asking him not to take the only home they had known. Seven-year-old Rex Perkin, whose family has lived there more than a century, worried he would no longer be able to walk to his sister’s grave. On 4 July – American Independence Day – 96 percent of those who voted backed a referendum on leaving the United Kingdom. The second vote is now days away.
The new row began when residents working through the planning papers found an Unexploded Ordnance risk assessment for Bicester Site A. It states that “the proposed scheme” relates to “accommodation for 3,510 service users.” The assessment is dated March this year. It is still online. It has not been amended.
The official planning application seeks a ten-year “temporary” change of use for “non-detained asylum accommodation,” open 24 hours, for up to 1,256 single males aged 18 to 65. Consultation closes on 17 September. The village’s symbolic independence referendum is two days earlier, on 15 September – Battle of Britain Day.
Parish council chairman Tim McNally put the contradiction in plain English.
“Although the proposal states 1,256 single males between the ages of 18 and 65, the service users focuses on 3,510,” he said. “That is ten times the size of the village of Piddington. Now if that is an error, correct it. This is more than alarming. It is either deception at the greatest level or incompetence at the highest.”
‘Prime Minister…look what you are doing to 46 kids, who will basically lose their childhood.’
Chairman of Piddington Parish Council Tim McNally explains the impact that placing thousands of migrants in the local area would have on his community. pic.twitter.com/SrDt2ZPeU9
Resident campaigner Ian Darby told GB News the same suspicion is now general.
“Clearly we’re concerned and it’s slightly beggars belief that if there was some original thinking at sort of 3,500 people, that they’d still be daft enough to include an old report that is no longer relevant in this consultation,” he said.
He added, “Some of us are a little bit more suspicious and worry that that is potentially their ultimate plan, which for this village, just to remind everybody, would be ten times the size of this village. It’s a takeover. It’s a complete destruction of a beautiful little village.”
‘Ten times the size of this village, it’s a takeover and complete destruction of a beautiful village.’
Ian Daeby says he is concerned that documents relating to the Piddington asylum site reference a capacity of 3,510, while the Home Office insists the limit is 1,256 migrants. pic.twitter.com/OzLVZqLZhY
A Home Office spokesman replied: “It is categorically untrue to suggest we are seeking to house 3,510 people at the MOD Bicester. As our planning application clearly states, we are considering the site to accommodate up to 1,256 asylum seekers.”
They added that community concerns are “central to our immigration reforms” and that hotels are being emptied in favour of former military sites.
Villagers note the 3,510 figure was never pulled from the file. They also note the application arrived after a 56-day wait with 11 sections redacted, including material on suicide and self-harm, health and safety, and handling a death on site.
‘It is a symbol of a country whose rulers and politicians keep demanding public trust, whilst giving fewer and fewer reasons to offer it.’ @GoodwinMJ analyses the significance of thousands of migrants being set to be housed in Piddington, a small village in Oxfordshire. pic.twitter.com/hExJQ6oXxM
Piddington is a single-lane hamlet of thatched and brick cottages, a 13th-century Grade II-listed church, and a parish playing field. The nearest amenities are miles away down an unlit B-road with no pavement. Gardens sit close to the depot fence. The site is about 750 metres from family homes.
Resident Melise Witkin, 59, told the Mail the argument is not class and never was.
“This is not about being rich or poor, this is about safety,” she said. “We are 356 people in the village with 46 children and 1,250 men turning up is a recipe for disaster. People walk their dogs, children play, I just think it is madness. This is about safety, nothing more. Even for them [the asylum seekers], along that road there is no pavement, there are no street lights. We don’t have a pub, we don’t have a shop, what are the asylum seekers going to do here.”
Karen Joy said the fear is already in the houses.
“We feel we have been ignored,” she said. “We are a very small village and there is nothing for the people in the asylum camp to do. Our worry is that they will wander into our village and the security is nil. We feel scared. That is all I feel, to be honest.”
Victoria Hubbocks described what the change does to ordinary life. She runs at 5am. Her 11-year-old walks the dog alone. The village currently switches street lights off overnight because everyone knows everyone.
“I go for runs at 5 o’clock in the morning and I don’t feel scared. I will have to change that,” she said. “I think it effectively takes away my children’s childhood.” On the Prime Minister’s demand that every area “step up,” she added: “Step up? Fair enough, but ten men to each woman in Piddington isn’t a fair proportion in any way, shape or form.”
Joe Marshall, on the parish council, said police who visited the site left a phrase behind that nobody in Whitehall wants to repeat.
“We’re sitting ducks,” he said. “The police have come and had a look and said that we’re sitting ducks, and we’ve not been given any reassurances.” He also said the application is “full of inconsistencies,” littered with typos, and missing “really crucial documents.”
Mario Terzino has an 18-year-old daughter who walks the dog alone. That stops if the camp opens. “We’ve got no public transport. There is nothing here,” he said. “It’s not about who’s going to the base. It’s about the scale. We’re talking about 1,250 people, or males, going into a site which is literally adjacent to our playing field. It’s just bonkers.”
Piddington is being sold as an isolated planning row. It is not. It is the same template stamped across rural Britain: take a high-trust village with no night-time economy, no spare police, and a children’s play area, then drop in a barracks-worth of single adult males and call it “equity.”
At RAF Linton-on-Ouse in North Yorkshire, a village of about 600 faces around 1,200 single adult males beside a primary school and nursery – six migrant men to every local woman.
In Gronant, North Wales, residents woke to find a former village hall, freshly turned into new-build homes, handed to asylum seekers with blacked-out vehicles and no warning. Locals called it an “absolute betrayal.”
Crowborough in East Sussex watched hundreds of single adult males arrive at a former army camp. Women reported feeling unsafe. Volunteer patrols followed. Barnham in Suffolk sits on the same list. Together the three English MoD sites were framed as housing about 3,750 people while hotels are emptied.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s answer to Piddington was not a pause. It was a doctrine. “All parts of the country need to play their part.” Middle-class and leafy places, he said, can no longer sit outside the map. Borders minister Anna Turley called it a “more fair and equitable system” and insisted the men would be “contained” on site – while also confirming they “will be allowed out.”
The cheerleaders for this policy tend to live nowhere near it. They praise “sharing the burden” until the burden is a lane with no pavement and 46 children. Then the enthusiasm thins out.
Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf, who visited the village, blasted the 3,510 assessment.
“It’s now been revealed the lying Labour Government had assessments carried out based on housing 3,510 migrants in the English village of Piddington, more than double the official figure of 1,256,” he said. “That would have been 10 illegal migrants for every one resident. Villagers’ lives will be ruined overnight. Ministers continue to conceal the true scale of what is coming, and the numbers keep rising before a single migrant has even arrived.”
Samantha Phillips, 61, a 26-year resident now helping organise self-defence classes for women and children, said: “If this was to happen, if we were to get 3,510 male migrants, then the entire population of Piddington represents less than one tenth of the size of the local male migrants.”
Andrea Owen, who grew up in the military community around Bicester, put the cultural point without a think-tank filter. “The British traditions and the British way of life are just being ripped away.”
Look at the map and the pattern stops looking like incompetence. Channel crossings continue. Hotels become a political embarrassment. The solution chosen is not detention and removal. It is dispersal into the least densely populated, least policed, most culturally intact corners of the country.
They could not have picked places more alien to a cohort of fighting-age men from the other side of the world if they had tried. No mosque. No late-night high street. No anonymity. A medieval church, a playing field, dog walkers, and children who still treat the lane as their own. Then the same officials express surprise when women book self-defence classes and a parish council talks about independence.
Darby’s warning is the one that matters if the 1,256 cap is even real. Once the site is open, it is the easy tap. “If I were sitting in their shoes and this was open even initially at sort of 1,200, and you did have a rush of new asylum seekers arriving, you’re going to come here first, aren’t you? Because you’ve already won the battle.”
McNally asked the question Whitehall will not answer. “How can a government do this to us? Our children – our children’s lives – are the ones that are being undermined.”
The consultation ends on 17 September. The village votes on the 15th. Legal options are being prepared. A petition against using MoD sites without proper local consultation has already passed the threshold that forces a government response. Activity on the ground has already been reported. Ecological, electrical, sewage and water documents, residents say, are still not properly in place.
A government that wanted the least disruption would not park thousands of unvetted men against a playground in a hamlet of 350. A government that wanted maximum cultural shock would do exactly that – then lecture the people living there about “playing their part.”
Piddington is not refusing to exist in modern Britain. It is refusing to be used as the demonstration site for a policy that treats English village life as surplus.
