China ordered companies in the country not to comply with US sanctions on five domestic refiners linked to the Iranian oil trade, deploying for the first time a blocking measure introduced in 2021 that was aimed at protecting its firms from foreign laws it deemed unjustified. 

Refiners – including Hengli Petrochemical (Dalian) Refinery which was sanctioned last month and several other privately-owned processors – had been facing asset freezes and transaction bans. Hengli was the most ambitious target to date in China’s refining sector, and underscores US eagerness to push Iran to the negotiating table at all costs, even just weeks before an expected and long-awaited meeting between Trump and his counterpart Xi Jinping. 

The sanctions on Hengli Petrochemical triggered a $1.4 billion wipeout in the fortunes of Fan Hongwei and her husband Chen Jianhua, who together built Hengli Group into one of China’s biggest energy companies, after shares of the refiner tumbled 10%.

But if Trump was hoping Beijing would just let this creeping financial blockade slide, he was wrong: on Saturday, the country’s commerce ministry said in a statement that US measures unlawfully restrict normal trade with third countries and breach international norms. And, in a rare move, it issued an order banning recognition, enforcement, and compliance with the sanctions aimed at the five companies.

“The Chinese government has consistently opposed unilateral sanctions that lack authorization from the United Nations and a basis in international law,” the department said.

Still, banks working with Hengli and other private processors are scrambling to understand the decision and are seeking clarity from the banking regulator. Public holidays in China this week allow them some time, since business is on hold, as does the grace period provided by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The sanctions and Beijing’s response come just weeks before a highly-anticipated meeting between President Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. While the blocking measure is not likely to derail the summit, Washington’s reaction to it will indicate if the matter escalates, according to analysts from Eurasia Group.

“The refineries primarily work with Chinese banks that have not yet been directly sanctioned,” the analysts led by Dominic Chiu wrote in a note. “If the US extends secondary sanctions to those institutions, or major state-owned entities, Beijing would likely respond with more forceful countermeasures.”

The injunction “allows the refineries to seek compensation in Chinese courts from entities that comply with US sanctions, including domestic actors — such as banks, investors, and downstream customers that have ceased dealings — as well as foreign firms with a presence in China,” the Eurasia analysts said, adding the move signals Beijing is taking a more assertive approach to countering sanctions. 

“By activating its blocking measures for the first time since adopting the rule in 2021, China is demonstrating a lower threshold for deploying its legal and regulatory toolkit to counter US sanctions,” they said.

For the past decade, China has been the single largest buyer of Tehran’s sanctioned oil shipments, many of them arriving indirectly and through private refiners, and then turned into gasoline, diesel and other oil products. Chinese customs data do not reflect that trade, with the last official shipment recorded several years ago, and yet the only source of Iran state revenue are Chinese sanctions-busting teapot refiners.

Before Hengli, and wary of the economic and diplomatic fallout, Washington’s efforts to cut off Tehran’s oil revenue had targeted smaller Chinese companies and facilities. Hengli, by contrast, is representative of the most modern of China’s private refiners, with a sprawling oil-processing and chemicals complex in the northeastern province of Liaoning. 

While the country does still have an army of small independent players — the original so-called teapots — the larger entities are now giant operations. Altogether, the private sector accounts for as much as a third of refining capacity, in a country where energy security is an unchallenged priority.

China’s decision to activate blocking measures on Saturday, risks becoming what Bloomberg called “a watershed moment.” While China has often railed against unilateral sanctions, it has in the past quietly allowed companies to comply with them to avoid blowback on its own economy and preserve access to the US financial system.

Beijing is now signaling a far firmer stance against such restrictions by directing companies not to abide by US sanctions on five domestic refiners linked to the Iranian oil trade.

A commentary on the People’s Daily app, the Communist Party mouthpiece, called the announcement “a pivotal step in the transition of China’s foreign-related legal weapon from institutional reserves to practical application.”

What China just did with the blocking statutes against U.S. extraterritorial sanctions sets quite a major precedent, probably the financial equivalent of what happened with rare earths last year (in the sense that this is China taking a major step to push back against a U.S.… https://t.co/du85sL2lht

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) May 3, 2026

And while it may not matter to markets – which now ignore everything except some imaginary capex plans for a few billions quadruple-ordered DRAM chips which will never materialize – the concern is that now Trump, in addition to retaliating to whether Iran does next in the Gulf, and issuing new tariffs proclamations, will also likely announce – at any given moment – his response to China’s sanctions defiance, and since it is in Trump’s benefit to escalate ahead of the meeting with Xi, he will waste no time in doing just that. 

Many people are familiar with the “blue state exodus” over the past several years, but are they aware of the blue city business exodus? 

It might be one of the biggest economic stories in modern US history, and Democrats are trying to keep it as quiet as possible.  There is a blood letting going on in blue cities; a financial disaster in the making.  And, like most financial disasters, it will probably be ignored until the house of cards comes crashing down completely. 

For this examination let’s look at three very different examples, all facing similar crises.  We start in New York City, where taxes have been consistently increased in order to offset the loss of billions in public revenues due to citizens leaving.  NYC has experienced a net loss of around 220,000 residents since 2021, but it’s not the number of residents that is most important.  Rather, it is the wealth of those residents that matters.

In the past two years alone, NYC has lost around 6000 businesses to closure or relocation, and the region is suffering from significant wealth decline.  These losses represent tens of billions of dollars in tax revenues, erased from NYC coffers.  And what did New Yorkers do?  They elected Zohran Mamdani, doubling down on the far-left policies that caused the crisis in the first place. 

Today, Mamdani is launching his much hyped “wealth tax” with the intention of funding the many socialist programs he promised to implement during his campaign.  Sadly for the new Mayor, he is only now starting to realize that the more he taxes successful residents the more they will simply leave. 

Companies including Apollo Management, JP Morgan Chase, ARK Investment, Wells Fargo and Citadel are all establishing primary corporate offices in Texas and Florida with rumors swirling that many other corporations are planning to leave NYC entirely.  While Democrats deny this is a threat, the real test will be the wealth tax – Companies have been waiting to see if Mamdani will actually be stupid enough to follow through, and yes, we now know he is.

A microcosm of the blue city taxation problem is readily available in Seattle, where the business exodus is crushing city revenues and expanding the debt crisis. 

Washington State has one of the higher business failure rates nationally. Surveys show rising concern, with 17% of businesses considering leaving the state (up from 9% in 2025) due to taxes, costs, and regulations. Small businesses report worse conditions than during the pandemic peak.   

Seattle is leading the way, with a net loss of 13,000 jobs in 2025 in the downtown area alone.  Multiple corporation have reduced their footprint and moved HQ in recent years, including Amazon and Starbucks.  Coffee giant Starbucks, which got its start in Seattle, is now leaving.  They have recently announced a new corporate office in Nashville, TN and it is likely that they will relocate out of WA in the near future.

Voters in Seattle also elected a far-left activist mayor, Katie Wilson, who famously claimed she was going to “Trump-proof” Seattle.  She currently faces a budget crisis with a projected $250 million shortfall and tax revenues in decline.  Wilson (as of early 2026) directed departments to prepare 5% to10% budget cut plans for 2027.  Like Mamdani, she is also calling for her own brand of “wealth tax” as a means to cover deficits; this will only cause more businesses to leave the area.

Finally, we get to the most Democrat of all blue cities, Hollywood.  Tinsel Town is experiencing mass layoffs from Paramount, Warner Bros., Discovery, CNN, Disney, Sony, Bad Robot, etc.  Tens-of-thousands of jobs are on the chopping block going into 2027.  Productions plummeted by 16% in 2025 alone. 

In the case of Hollywood, tax incentives have actually been increased and the film industry is being protected by California, but it does not seem to matter.  The leftist hives in the greater Los Angeles area committed suicide by ideology, refusing to listen to the public and hammering the US with woke propaganda at the behest of Democrats.  

By extension, DEI initiatives have driven out top talent and replaced creative workhorses with mediocre minds in order to increase minority representation.  Hollywood apologists argue that “tech and AI” is the cause of their distress, but just like Seattle and New York, Hollywood’s misery is of their own making.  

Recent efforts to save the industry by catering to what audiences actually want might be too little to late.  Insiders are suggesting that people seeking jobs in film and TV will have to search outside Hollywood.  Like most blue towns, the economy is dying.     

Elon Musk’s business empire is becoming increasingly intertwined — and if SpaceX eventually goes public, Wall Street will likely take a much harder look at how money moves across his companies.

A newly disclosed filing shows Tesla booked more than $570 million last year from transactions with Musk-controlled companies, according to Insider. That included roughly $430 million from selling Megapack battery systems to xAI and another $143 million — primarily vehicle sales — to SpaceX. Some of those purchases included Cybertrucks, which have reportedly become a significant part of SpaceX’s vehicle fleet.

The relationship goes both ways. Insider writes that Tesla also disclosed that it put $2 billion into SpaceX and xAI last year and paid the companies a combined $15 million+ for various commercial and consulting services.

Taken together, the filings offer a clearer picture of how frequently Musk’s companies now rely on one another. xAI has been absorbed into SpaceX, engineers from Tesla have previously worked on projects at X, Grok is being built into Tesla products, and Musk has publicly discussed future collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX on the Roadster.

George Orwell’s prognostications about the future of authoritarianism have proven consistently accurate.  They have only been limited by his inability to foresee the creation of certain technologies which make the future look even more bleak.  The reason his books, like 1984 and Animal Farm, are considered classics of literature is because they are timeless. 

Their warnings and messages still apply today and will probably apply centuries from now. 

Animal Farm, first published in 1945, is a tale specifically written as an allegory for the Bolshevik Revolution and the rise of Soviet Communism.  Despite the characters being talking animals, the themes are dark and disturbing.  It is a story about the naivety of the “underclass”, the exploitation of the “have-nots” by communists seeking to use gullible people as weapons against their “imperialist” and capitalist enemies. 

It is a grotesque tragedy composed like a children’s novel, which makes it all the more effective.  It destroys the notion of “equity” and exposes the truth:  There is no such thing as a socialist Utopia, there can only ever be socialist dystopia.  And to get it, leftists are happy to sacrifice you and everything you love.  Not only that, but they expect you to applaud them for it.

The message is made iconic in the book’s famous phrase:  “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others…”

This is the epitome of woke ideology and how progressives behave today.  It’s no surprise that Hollywood is incapable of telling this story properly.  In order to do that, they would have to put their own warped beliefs under a microscope, and that’s simply not going to happen.  

The new animated adaptation of Animal Farm is being billed as a kid-friendly foray into concepts of “authoritarianism”; but it perverts Orwell’s message about communism and demonizes capitalism instead.  

Audiences across the board are not happy.  The movie is distributed by Angel Studios, which bills itself as a Christian and conservative leaning company.  However, the makers of the film (director Andy Serkis and The Imaginarium Studios) are entirely left wing.  Given the people involved, Angel Studios should have know what kind of disaster they would have on their hands.

Andy Serkis is a former member of the Socialist Workers Party, a Troskyist Group in England in the 1990s.  Though he is no longer involved, he still considers himself left wing, and his exit from political provocation was largely because of conflicts with his acting career.  Enlisting a hardcore socialist to direct Animal Farm feels like a deliberate middle finger to conservatives who see the story as a cautionary battle cry against leftist movements. 

The film was even released on May Day (International Workers Day), which is a communist holiday.

In developing the film as far back as 2013, Serkis (still riding the high of his successful role as “Gollum” in the Lord Of The Rings movies) admitted that he had no intention of sticking to the critique of communism.  Rather, he believed that if Orwell wrote Animal Farm today, he would obviously compose a takedown of capitalism. 

“First and foremost, we are not making a film about Communism and Stalinism because if Orwell was writing the story today, he would be talking about other relevant topics like globalisation and corporate greed…”

In other words, Andy Serkis, like most communists, wants to rewrite history in favor of his ideology. 

This is exactly what he did in the new Angel Studios film.  Many of the characters from the book are the same, and some of the plot points remain.  The animals revolt against the farmers and seek to build their Utopia of fairness.  But, the pigs (who represent the communist manipulators in the book) are not evil in the film.  Rather, they are corrupted into doing bad things by a new character – Ruthless billionaire Frieda Pilkington and her corporation.

Frieda is the typical evil rich white person common in leftist mythology.  Some critics have argued that the character looks strikingly similar to Elon Musk’s mother, May Musk, and she even drives a vehicle that looks like a pink Cybertruck. 

Rather than the pigs being conniving and malicious from the beginning, Frieda corrupts them into evil with the promise of riches.  Her plan is to use the pigs as a means to get control of the farm.  In the end, the animals realize their mistake and their solution is yet another communist revolution. 

The message being, communism only goes wrong when evil capitalists influence the outcome.  Collectivist ideology is inherently good.  Leftists are not psychotic ideologues thirsting for power and control.  They are just led astray sometimes.   

There are numerous hatchet job films denigrating capitalism out of Hollywood.  There are few if any that explore the nightmares of communism and left-wing collectivism.  Orwell’s Animal Farm is one of the few stories that captures the insidious nature of “equity” and suicidal empathy that permeate communist societies.  It is about the tools that communists use to lead the population astray, not about capitalism leading communists astray.  

Even worse is the marketing strategy of Angel Studios, which has tapped into the pockets of conservative and libertarian influencers (including Tucker Carlson) to sell the movie.  It is likely that most of these influencers never watched the film before they promoted it, and if they did, it might be time to question their motives. 

Critics and audiences alike have given Animal Farm a thunderous thumbs down.  Angel Studios is the same company that put Sound Of Freedom in theaters; a movie which was relentlessly (and suspiciously) attacked by the political left for putting a spotlight on child trafficking and pedophile rings.  It is unfortunate that they made placed this project in the hands of the same left wing community that tried to tear them down only a couple years ago.   

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

“This time it’s different” is supposed to be the dumbest phrase in investing.

It’s the phrase people use right before they get obliterated. It was the rallying cry of dot-com lunatics buying companies with no revenue in 1999. It was the intellectual foundation of housing perma-bulls in 2006 who believed home prices could only go up because, apparently, Americans had collectively decided real estate was immune mathematical reality.

It’s typically what people say when they’re trying to justify paying absurd prices for dogshit assets while pretending the laws of valuation have been permanently repealed: “this time it’s different”.

Which is why it’s deeply annoying and borderline humiliating for me to admit that this time, it actually may be different.

As someone who has spent years living in the world of fundamentals, valuation discipline, and the radical idea that cash flows should matter at least a little when valuing businesses, I hate where the evidence keeps leading me. I’ve spent years mocking the market as distorted.

Everyone in Austrian economics circles loves that word: distorted. Markets are distorted by central banks, distorted by artificially low interest rates, distorted by endless intervention. Distorted, distorted, distorted. Fine. But at some point, if a distortion lasts long enough, survives every crisis, and becomes embedded in how markets function, is it still a distortion? Or is it just the market now?

Look at this chart of the NASDAQ tripling off Covid lows just 5 years ago before you answer. An index. Tripling.

And in ten years, the index (read it again, index) is up 534%.

And now, back to the question: “if a distortion lasts long enough, survives every crisis, and becomes embedded in how markets function, is it still a distortion?”

That’s the uncomfortable question fundamental investors increasingly refuse to confront. We continue dragging out valuation charts that go back to 1900 as if they’re sacred scripture. We point to historical average P/E ratios and the Buffett Indicator and say things like “the market has always reverted.”

I’ve said such things on this blog for years.

But the market that existed in (throw a dart) 1952 has almost nothing in common with the one we have today. Back then there were no ETFs mechanically absorbing retirement contributions every two weeks regardless of valuation. There was no passive investing machine blindly funneling trillions into the largest companies simply because they’re already the largest companies. There were no options markets large enough to create absurd gamma-driven price movements detached from fundamentals. There were no retail armies weaponizing leverage from their phones while posting rocket ship emojis.

And there sure as hell was no widely accepted assumption that if markets fall hard enough (3%, give or take a percent?), the Federal Reserve will eventually arrive with fresh liquidity and soothing words about financial stability.

For fifteen years, investors have been trained like goddamn lab rats to expect intervention whenever things get ugly enough. In 2008, the financial system nearly collapsed and the response was unprecedented monetary intervention. In 2020, the world shut down and trillions appeared almost overnight. Every time markets experience genuine pain, policymakers magically “discover” yet another reason why extraordinary intervention is necessary.

The lab rats participating in this market have learned a very simple lesson: the adults will not tolerate prolonged asset deflation. They may talk tough about inflation. They may posture about financial discipline. But when enough things start breaking, they fold. They always fold.

Markets now operate with the deeply embedded belief that liquidity will always return when things get sufficiently bad. That belief alone changes behavior. It encourages risk-taking. It compresses risk premiums. It makes traditional valuation frameworks feel increasingly obsolete because those frameworks were built during periods when markets still had to fully purge excesses. Today, excesses are often interrupted, softened, or reflated before true cleansing can occur.

Meanwhile, people love pretending the stock market’s relentless rise is purely a reflection of corporate innovation and productivity gains. Some of it absolutely is. But a meaningful portion of what investors celebrate as “wealth creation” is simply the declining purchasing power of the currency in which those assets are priced. If you continually debase the measuring stick, asset prices are going to look fantastic. Stocks haven’t always become more valuable. Dollars have become less valuable.

If your denominator is quietly melting, your numerator tends to look heroic. It can even make the performance of an ex-bartender from Philadelphia writing a finance blog look great.

This forces an almost heretical conclusion I’ve been toying with for a year or two: maybe what we consider “expensive” is anchored to a market regime that no longer exists. Maybe 20x earnings is not expensive anymore because 20 years of future earnings are guaranteed in a way they weren’t 50 years ago. Maybe for dominant, cash-generating businesses, 20x is the new bargain bin. Maybe historical comparisons to decades that lacked passive flows, algorithmic trading, derivatives-fueled volatility, trillion-dollar buybacks, and perpetual monetary intervention are becoming less useful by the year.

🔥 50% OFF FOR LIFE: Using this coupon entitles you to 50% off an annual subscription to Fringe Finance for life: Get 50% off forever

I can already hear the response. Shit like “this article really must mean the top is in” and “QTR has caved, we can crash now!” Look, of course valuation still matters. Gravity still exists too. But if central banks keep dropping trampolines underneath the market every time gravity starts doing its job, people should stop acting shocked when assets bounce higher than historical models suggest they should.

This doesn’t mean crashes disappear. Something will absolutely break eventually, and probably the moves lower will be sharper and faster, before they aren’t, because that’s what leveraged systems do. But each break seems to justify larger interventions, which creates even bigger distortions, which produce even larger asset bubbles, which eventually require even more intervention. It’s a magnificent ouroboros of financial engineering and moral hazard.

And that’s the truly infuriating part for people like me. I want old valuation frameworks to still work cleanly. I want patient fundamental analysis to feel like an advantage rather than a history hobby. I want “cheap” and “expensive” to retain actual meaning. But markets increasingly feel like they’re operating under a new regime where liquidity overwhelms nearly everything else over long enough time horizons.

“This time it’s different” remains a dangerous phrase because human beings are still perfectly capable of creating idiotic bubbles. But pretending this market functions like the one our grandparents invested in may be its own form of delusion.

If the Fed has effectively made permanent distortion the foundation of modern markets—and if it cannot stop until something truly catastrophic breaks—then maybe we need to admit the obvious: the market is no longer broken. It’s functioning exactly as designed: rigged.

But of course, now that I’ve penned and published this piece, a medieval-style return to the investing dark ages is probably right around the corner.

Now read:

• Congrats, Elizabeth Warren, On The Death Of Spirit Airlines
• Buying One Staple Stock That’s Been Crushed
• Stocks Now In “The Biggest Bubble Of Modern Times”
• Glowing Numbers…With Glaring Omissions

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.

This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions. All positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. If you see numbers and calculations of any sort, assume they are wrong and double check them. I failed Algebra in 8th grade and topped off my high school math accolades by getting a D- in remedial Calculus my senior year, before becoming an English major in college so I could bullshit my way through things easier.

The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

Historically speaking, crawling to communists for help has never been a good idea; there’s always a catch.  By extension, making trade deals with China and the CCP from a position of weakness usually ends with diplomatic concessions instead of mere economic concessions.  That is to say, the Chinese are less interested in economic benefits, and more interested in political submission. 

Canadians are about to speed run this lesson after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “new strategic partnership” formed with China early this year.   The announcement has been heralded as a pragmatic reset in Canada-China relations after years of tensions, aimed at diversifying Canada’s trade amid U.S. tariffs under Trump.  The goals of the deal include increased bilateral trade, agricultural agreements, currency swaps and energy exports. 

The problem is, Carney also wants Canada to maintain its relationship with Taiwan, which the CCP views as a violation of their “One China” policy.  Not surprisingly, China is already using their newfound economic leverage to pressure Canada to submit to their demands on Taiwan.

Chinese Ambassador to Canada, Wang Di, has warned that the new strategic partnership between Canada and China could be damaged if Canada continues sending parliamentarians (MPs and senators) to Taiwan, or if they continue transiting warships through the Taiwan Strait. 

Wang emphasized the One China principle, stating there is “only one China in the world, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory.” He described Taiwan as a core interest and political foundation for bilateral relations, warning that official engagements by Canadian parliamentarians with Taiwanese officials would be “hurtful.”

🚨CHINA ISSUES ULTIMATUM🚨

First, Carney pulls MPs out of Taiwan.

Now China is warning Canada not to go back – and not to send ships either.

Carney told Canadians he was dealing with China because the U.S. was “unreliable”.

So much for a “strategic partnership.” pic.twitter.com/HkxF0YFMrP

— Northern Perspective (@NorthrnPrspectv) May 1, 2026

Canadian MPs and senators have long visited Taiwan, including numerous meetings with the president and foreign minister.  But, this year their trips to Taiwan have been cut short, with Canada showing a quiet willingness to “de-conflict” high-profile visits when they overlap with China diplomacy. 

Taiwan’s envoy to Ottawa warned that Canada’s burgeoning attachment to China could put them in a vulnerable position and lead to “trade weaponization” by the CCP. 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has led his country into economic chaos as one of the few leaders unwilling to negotiate a basic trade deal with the Trump Administration.  He should have been the first to make a deal, given that around 75% of Canada’s export economy relies on US markets and there is no viable alternative that will bring anywhere close to the same trade revenues.

Canada’s housing market is currently in shambles with prices still skyrocketing.  Jobs losses are climbing.  Factories are shutting down.  Food prices are inflating.    

It’s a matter of simple math and basic geography:  The US is the largest consumer market by far with 30% of total global buying power.  China is around 12% of the global total and their consumer spending is far less liquid (and spread out over a much larger population).  Furthermore, shipping goods 6000 miles to China is a lot more expensive and inefficient than shipping goods right across the border to the US.  It’s not complicated – making a deal with the US is the superior option. 

However, Carney and his globalist ilk are not interested in common sense trade policies, they are engaged in an ideological war with the Trump Administration.  This is about an increasingly “woke” and socialist Canadian regime vs an increasingly nationalist and anti-woke US government.   

Carney has consistently painted the situation between the US and Canada as a war, and he has made it clear he intends to “win”.  This means cutting deals with traditional enemies like China; not because it makes sense financially, but because it’s a way to spite Trump and conservatives in America. 

In the end, it is a foolish plan which will only end up costing Canadians billions in export revenues and possibly enslave them to eastern geopolitical interests; further inflaming tensions with the US.       

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been hospitalized and is in critical condition, according to The New York Times, citing his spokesman, Ted Goodman.

“Mayor Giuliani is a fighter who has faced every challenge in his life with unwavering strength, and he’s fighting with that same level of strength as we speak,” Goodman said, before asking “that you join us in prayer” for the former NYC mayor.

Goodman did not disclose what medical emergency sent Giuliani to a Florida hospital Sunday afternoon.

President Trump also released a statement on Giuliani’s medical emergency, telling those on Truth Social, “Our fabulous Rudy Giuliani, a True Warrior, and the Best Mayor in the History of New York City, BY FAR, has been hospitalized, and is in critical condition.”

“What a tragedy that he was treated so badly by the Radical Left Lunatics, Democrats ALL — AND HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING! They cheated in the Elections, fabricated hundreds of stories, did everything possible to destroy our Nation, and now, look at Rudy. So sad!” the president said.

Giuliani is a former federal prosecutor, NYC mayor, and longtime Trump supporter.

He first rose to national prominence as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in the 1980s, where he prosecuted organized crime, Wall Street corruption, drug trafficking, and public corruption.

One of his most defining legal wins was helping break the power grip of NY’s Mafia families through RICO prosecutions.

From the mid-1990s through 2001, Giuliani served as mayor of NYC, where his administration became known for its tough-on-crime posture. He later ran unsuccessfully for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination before re-emerging as a major political figure and Donald Trump’s personal attorney, particularly during the Russia hoax investigation and the post-2020 election fight.

*This is a developing story.

Jane Street Group has evolved from a niche trading shop into one of Wall Street’s most profitable firms and employees are reaping the rewards. The firm paid roughly $9.4 billion in compensation last year, more than twice what it distributed a year earlier, according to Bloomberg.

On average, that translated to about $2.7 million per employee, far ahead of traditional banks like Goldman Sachs. The massive payouts followed a record year in which Jane Street generated nearly $40 billion in trading revenue, outpacing major banks and rivals in the market-making business.

Bloomberg writes that the firm started in 2000 trading American depositary receipts before expanding into ETFs and other electronically traded assets. As more markets became automated, Jane Street scaled aggressively and now handles trading across equities, bonds, ETFs, and other products.

Its financial resources have grown just as dramatically. The firm’s internal capital base has climbed to roughly $45 billion, up nearly twentyfold over the past decade, giving it significant flexibility to capitalize on market swings without relying heavily on outside funding. It has also raised additional cash through debt markets.

That war chest has allowed Jane Street to move beyond day-to-day trading. The firm has built positions in high-growth tech companies, including Anthropic, and has also backed CoreWeave while exploring deals involving Fluidstack.

Jane Street also operates differently from most major financial firms. It doesn’t have a traditional CEO hierarchy and is instead overseen by a group of partners. The firm is well known for recruiting mathematicians, engineers, and problem-solvers to sharpen its trading systems.

Despite regulatory and legal challenges — including scrutiny in India and litigation tied to the collapse of Terraform Labs — Jane Street continues to widen its lead. It outperformed Citadel Securities last year and is continuing to expand, including plans for a larger office in London.

Recall, we wrote just days ago that Jane Street reeled in a Wall Street record $39.6 billion of trading revenue last year, more than any Wall Street bank. According to the report, the firm beat out all global investment banks after reaping $15.5 billion in the year’s final quarter, and with only 3,500 employees, it beat nearest rival JPMorgan by 11% during the year. The company’s adjusted ETBIDA for the full year was a stunning $31.2 billion. 

While Jane Street’s profits were lifted by surging valuations of its stakes in privately held companies, the firm’s main business matching buyers and sellers across assets thrived on bouts of market volatility. The new annual record – which includes gains on long-term investments – shows “how the balance of power has shifted in one of the most lucrative arenas of global finance.”

While it has kept a remarkable low profile, its recent public appearances have been less than laudatory: The company’s record haul is confirmation that Jane Street, long known for its secrecy, was able to keep growing after getting thrust into the spotlight in mid-2025 when authorities in India accused of manipulating markets while running what had once been one of the firm’s most lucrative trading strategies.

Jane Street has denied those allegations and is fighting them in court. In February, Jane Street was sued by the bankrupt Terraform Labs estate, accusing it of engaging in insider trading that precipitated the $40 billion crash of cryptocurrencies associated with Terraform; this week the HFT firm also urged a judge to throw out that lawsuit.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joined Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo to discuss how the Trump administration is “suffocating” Iran with economic and financial pressure amid an ongoing U.S. military blockade of the Hormuz chokepoint.

“We are running a marathon over the past 12 months, and now we are sprinting toward the finish line”” Bessent told Bartiromo earlier this morning. 

Bessent explained how the U.S. maximum pressure campaign on Tehran has become “a real economic blockade,” claiming the regime is “not able to pay their soldiers” and that oil infrastructure is quickly deteriorating, as crude oil storage quickly rises while export channels remain shuttered.

Bessent warned that Iran may have to start shutting in oil wells within the next week as exports remain constrained.

Bessent on Iran:

“We are suffocating the regime. They are not able to pay their soldiers.” https://t.co/dX3LvhAPtl pic.twitter.com/3rICBw9nzL

— Adam Scott (@chefcascottccc) May 3, 2026

“Their oil infrastructure is starting to creak,” he said. “It hasn’t been maintained, again because of our decades-long sanctions against them.”

Bessent said no tankers are transiting the critical waterway from the Iranian side, “and we have increased the pressure on anyone trying to remit money into Iran to help the IRGC,” referring to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Amid the impact of Economic Fury, Iran’s currency has hit an all-time low.

The Iranian people deserve a new era, which the corrupt and shambolic Iranian regime cannot provide.

With their oil industry closing and their currency plummeting, it is past time for the Iranian regime… pic.twitter.com/k7QvKoWbl2

— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) April 30, 2026

Late last week, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on Chinese independent “teapot” refineries, particularly those in Shandong Province, for their continued purchase and refining of Iranian crude.

By Saturday morning, Beijing announced that companies in the country should ignore and not comply with U.S. sanctions targeting five domestic refineries.

“The Chinese government has consistently opposed unilateral sanctions that lack authorization from the United Nations and a basis in international law,” Beijing’s Commerce Ministry wrote in a statement. 

President Trump’s maximum pressure campaign on Tehran comes as the latest U.S. national average for 87-octane gasoline at the pump has topped $4.446 per gallon. Demand destruction starts around $5 per gallon, with numerous Goldman notes indicating that working-poor consumers are already dialing back purchases or trading down at gas stations and convenience stores due to the recent fuel price shock.

On Saturday, President Trump stated that he “can’t imagine” a new peace plan from Tehran that he will review would be acceptable. He added that Iran has not yet paid “a big enough price for what they have done.”

Axios reported earlier that the U.S. and Iran are “still exchanging drafts of a framework agreement to end the war.”

Last week, Iran delivered an updated 14-point proposal to the U.S. for a framework agreement. Sources told the outlet that the proposal sets a one-month deadline for reopening of the Hormuz chokepoint.

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

Elizabeth Warren has built an entire political career on presenting herself as the righteous defender of ordinary Americans against powerful corporations.

Every speech is some variation of the same script: she’s fighting for workers, fighting for consumers, fighting for families, and standing up to greedy executives and monopolistic corporations that are supposedly rigging the system against everyone else. It is a message carefully designed to make her sound like a populist champion of the middle class while putting a polish on inherently broken socialist ideas.

When her flawed ideology collides with reality, it repeatedly produces outcomes that hurt the exact people she claims to represent. Spirit Airlines may be one of the clearest examples yet.

When JetBlue moved to acquire Spirit in 2022, Warren treated the deal like it was Apple, Netflix, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and the Third Reich all merging into one new authoritarian Orwellian company called Dystopian Evil Holdings, LLC.

She aggressively pushed regulators to block it, warning that the merger would reduce competition and raise ticket prices. The Biden administration’s Department of Justice embraced that argument and sued to stop the acquisition, ultimately succeeding when a federal judge blocked the deal.

Warren and her allies framed the decision as a victory for competition, arguing they had protected budget-conscious travelers from corporate consolidation. It was a neat political story: another giant corporation had been stopped before it could crush the little guy. Spirit Airlines and JetBlue have had their boot on the neck of John Q. Consumer for just too damn long.

The problem was that Spirit itself was never some stable, healthy company that simply needed to remain independent for the good of consumers. It was a deeply troubled airline with serious structural problems, mounting financial pressure, operational issues, and a business model that had become increasingly difficult to sustain. Investors knew it. Employees knew it. Executives knew it. That is precisely why a sale made sense.

JetBlue wasn’t trying to acquire a thriving competitor at the height of its strength—it was purchasing a distressed company that many people believed would struggle to survive on its own. There is an enormous difference between stopping anti-competitive monopoly behavior and preventing a struggling business from being absorbed by a company willing to keep its assets operational.

That distinction appears to be completely lost on Warren because her worldview requires every transaction to be bourgeoisie vs. proletariat. This corporate merger, to her, fit into the same simplistic narrative. In that worldview, corporations are almost always villains, regulators are almost always heroes, and any transaction involving large sums of money must be treated with suspicion. It is an ideology built for campaign speeches and social media clips only — not for reality.

Markets are not morality plays. Companies fail, industries consolidate, assets change hands, and stronger operators often absorb weaker ones. That process is not inherently exploitative, it is often what prevents total collapse.

And that is what makes this situation so politically revealing. Warren constantly brands herself as a defender of workers, yet her preferred outcome here appears to have been the complete destruction of a company rather than allowing a private-sector solution that may have preserved jobs, routes, and infrastructure.

What exactly is pro-worker about that? What kind of politician claims to care deeply about labor while helping create an outcome that leaves thousands of workers unemployed? Pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, baggage handlers, gate agents, airport vendors, hotel workers, rental car companies, and countless businesses connected to Spirit’s network all now face the consequences of a collapse that regulators helped accelerate. These are not abstract numbers on an antitrust white paper. These are actual people whose livelihoods depend on functioning businesses.

Or, as Warren put it: “This is a Biden win for flyers!”

And consumers were supposedly the people being protected. That argument looks even weaker now. Spirit may not have been beloved, but it played an important role in many markets by forcing larger airlines to compete on price. Millions of travelers tolerated the stripped-down experience because the fares were significantly cheaper than alternatives. That pressure matters. When low-cost carriers disappear from routes, prices frequently rise because legacy airlines face less pressure to offer aggressive pricing. Warren blocked a merger over the fear of hypothetical future price increases while helping create a scenario where an entire low-cost competitor disappears altogether. Consumers now get fewer choices, less competition, and likely higher prices—the exact outcome regulators claimed they were preventing.

This reflects a broader flaw in modern progressive economic thinking: an almost religious belief that government officials are uniquely qualified to outsmart markets.

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The assumption is always that regulators can better allocate resources, predict outcomes, and manage industries than investors, executives, workers, and consumers operating within those markets. That belief has repeatedly failed in practice because markets are dynamic and often messy. Politicians frequently intervene with enormous confidence and then act surprised when unintended consequences emerge. The people making those decisions rarely bear the cost of being wrong.

That may be the most frustrating part of this story. Elizabeth Warren will not suffer from Spirit’s collapse. She will not lose a paycheck. She will not be explaining layoffs to families. She will not be dealing with reduced travel options in underserved markets. She will not face higher airfare costs. She will continue appearing on television and telling voters she fought greed and protected consumers. The workers and travelers dealing with the consequences of her policies are the ones who will absorb the damage.

To be clear, Spirit was not a perfect company. It had major flaws and serious operational challenges. Bad business models fail all the time, and capitalism requires that poorly run companies face consequences. But capitalism also includes mergers, acquisitions, restructurings, and private-sector rescue attempts. If another company sees value in preserving assets and maintaining operations, that is part of how markets correct themselves. Preventing that process simply because it conflicts with an ideological hostility toward corporate transactions is not economic justice. It is performative politics masquerading as consumer advocacy.

Elizabeth Warren wanted to stop a merger because it allowed her to posture as a warrior against corporate power. She got her headline. She got her applause from anti-corporate activists. She got to claim another victory over big business. What she did not get was a better outcome for workers or consumers. Instead, she helped create a scenario where an already struggling airline disappeared entirely, leaving employees without jobs and consumers with fewer affordable options.

For someone who constantly claims to fight for working Americans, that is a remarkable record of harming them in the name of helping them.

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