In what could be an effort to legitimize its ongoing occupation of southern Russian territory, the Ukrainian government has issued formal invitations for the United Nations and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to come to the Kursk region and verify the situation on the ground.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha revealed the request on Monday, saying it has been issued for the international organizations to “prove [Ukraine’s] adherence to international humanitarian law”.

The Kremlin has accused the invading Ukraine forces, which have held territory since Aug.6th, of committing atrocities and abuses against civilians.

The Zelensky government still says its forces control some 100 settlements on the Russian side near the border, but days ago also acknowledged there is a large Russian counteroffensive underway.

Sybiha has claimed Ukraine forces are overseeing “humanitarian assistance” and “safe passage” to Russian civilians still in the Kursk region.

The UN and Red Cross have yet to issue formal response to Ukraine’s request for them to send teams to assess the situation; however, Moscow has slammed it as a provocation.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov blasted the invitations as a “pure provocation” but also said he expects “a sober assessment” from the international bodies.

Already, Russia has issued legal cases against Western journalists who have crossed into Kursk while embedded with the Ukrainian army. This includes a CNN team and some European correspondents.

Russia sees any and all international presence on its territory as a violation of Russian law and as part of an ‘illegal’ occupation.

Yesterday, while on a visit to our warriors in the Sumy region, I instructed @MFA_Ukraine to officially invite the UN and ICRC to join humanitarian efforts in the Kursk region. Ukraine is ready to facilitate their work and prove its adherence to international humanitarian law.

— Andrii Sybiha 🇺🇦 (@andrii_sybiha) September 16, 2024

From Ukraine’s perspective the Kursk operation is a legitimate tit-for-tat invasion, however risky and sure to fail it remains. Kiev’s hope is that Russia is forced to divert manpower from Ukraine’s east, where the front lines of fighting are, to Kursk.

But that doesn’t appear to have happened yet on any kind of large scale. Instead, President Putin appears to be patiently waiting while Ukraine’s own manpower and resources continue to be depleted both in Donetzk and Kursk.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”

That famous line from Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) remains a virtual mantra for politicians and pundits. Yet, judging from the presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, we have officially entered the post-truth political era.

ABC News has been widely criticized for the bias of the two moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir. Even liberal outlets acknowledged that the two journalists seemed inclined to “fact check” only Trump. In the meantime, they allowed clearly false statements from Harris to go unchallenged.

Three of the unchecked claims are being widely disseminated by supporters, including some in the media. Here are three legal “facts” that are being repeated despite being clearly untrue.

“Crime is down under the Biden-Harris administration.“

One of the most notable slap downs by ABC followed Trump commenting that crime rates have drastically risen during the Biden-Harris administration. Muir immediately balked and declared: “As you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.”

Harris and her allies have been repeating the claim by ABC. But the actual statistics show that Trump was right. The Justice Department’s released survey found that, under the Biden administration, there has been a significant increase in crime. Violent crime was up 37 percent from 2020 to 2023, rape is up 42 percent, robbery is up 63 percent and stranger violence is up 61 percent. Other reports had shown startling increases such as a doubling of carjackings in D.C. in 2023.

“Harris has not supported transgender operations for undocumented migrants.”

Some of the greatest mocking in the media concerned Trump’s statement that Harris has supported transgender conversion treatment for undocumented persons. New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser immediately wrote “What the hell was he talking about? No one knows, which was, of course, exactly Harris’s point.”

On CNN, Wolf Blitzer declared how “outlandish” it was for Trump to make such a claim.

But it’s true.

In 2019, Harris told the ACLU that she not only supported such operations but actively worked for at least one such procedure to take place. When it was reported by Andrew Kaczynski on CNN, host Erin Burnett was gobsmacked by the notion of taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for detained migrants. “She actually supported that?” Burnett exclaimed.

Even the New York Times later admitted that the “wildest sounding attack line” from Trump was “basically true.”

Harris does not support the right to abortion in the final three months of a pregnancy.  

Trump also hit Harris on her no-limits position on abortion rights, allowing women the right to abort a baby up to the moment of birth. Trump said Harris supports laws allowing abortions in “the seventh month, the eighth month, [and] the ninth month,” to which Harris retorted: “C’mon,” “no,” and “that’s not true.”

The hosts again said that Trump was making up his criticism of late-term abortions, including the risk of babies being born but allowed to die.

But in fact, many states, including Minnesota under Gov. Tim Walz (D), protect the right of a woman to abort a baby into the ninth month. While it is often said that this is left to the mother and her doctor, the law gives the decision to the mother.

Late-term abortions are relatively rare, but they do occur. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report estimated in 2019 that about 4,882 abortions were performed that year at least 21 weeks or later into pregnancy.

More than a dozen states, in fact, allow on-demand abortions after a baby is viable and can even survive outside of the womb. Nine of those states permit abortions throughout the entirety of pregnancy. Harris has supported these state laws and certainly did not answer the question on what limits she would support, other than saying that she supports Roe v. Wade.

Clearly, many late-term abortions occur to protect the life of the mother. However, you can have (as both Trump and Harris support) exceptions to protect the life of the mother without allowing abortions up to the moment of birth.

To be sure, Trump did not help himself with his wilder claims.

These included debunked accounts of Haitian migrants eating people’s pets in Ohio, which Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike Dewine, has denied.

The issue is not fact-checking, but the failure to do so equally and accurately.

ABC actually disseminated false information under the mantle of fact-checking, and that’s a real problem.

Moderator Linsey Davis admitted later that ABC did not want a repeat of what had happened in the last debate, wherein Trump was given free rein and the moderators limited themselves to asking questions and enforcing time limits. CNN was praised in that debate across the political spectrum for being even-handed.

What is most striking about this election is that none of this seems to matter. Indeed, even the debate did not matter. While Trump can legitimately object to a three-against-one debate format, Harris’s victory was clearly not dependent on bad calls by the refs. However, there has been little overall movement in the polls, even though 67 million people were watching.

The era of post-truth politics is evident in Harris repeating false claims about Trump’s support for “Project 2025” and debunked claims regarding his comments about an extreme-right Charlottesville rally in 2017. Leading Democrats continue to make these false claims, in some cases despite knowing that they are false.

On the other side, Trump is making promises he has to know can never be fulfilled. For example, he has pledged to make flag-burning a federal crime with a penalty of two years’ incarceration. The Supreme Court, including conservatives like the late Justice Antonin Scalia, has ruled that flag burning is protected speech under the First Amendment. Neither a president nor Congress can change the meaning of the Constitution without amending it.

With the help of the media, we have reduced our election to a political Slurpee. It’s all sugar rush and no nutritional value. We now have pundits supporting the idea of no further debates and even arguing that Harris shouldn’t give any interviews because it’s too risky.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) explained that Harris should avoid one-on-one media interviews because “sometimes, you drill down into a question until there’s a word that’s uttered that can be used in a negative way.” I suppose, as president, she will need to insist on meeting foreign leaders only in CNN town hall events.

If you do not say anything, there are no facts to check. The election then becomes a vote over whether you are for or against “joy.”

What is clear from the ABC debate is that citizens are on their own in the election to find actual facts and substance in the super-sized Slurpee of the 2024 election.

*  *  *

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster).

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

Martin County Sheriff Will Snyder suggested there may be an “ominous” wider “conspiracy” at play regarding yesterday’s suspect in the attempted assassination of Trump given that the gunman appeared to know Trump’s private schedule.

Ryan Wesley Routh appeared to know that Trump was playing golf at a Florida resort despite this not being public knowledge and the decision to play being last minute.

“To my knowledge does he have any ties to Martin County? The answer is no…I think what we’re finding out is he’s not from this area, which of course raises the bigger question is how does a guy from not here get all the way to Trump International, realize that the former president of the United States is golfing and is able to get a rifle in that vicinity,” commented Snyder.

“Is this guy part of a conspiracy? Is he a lone gunman? If he’s a lone gunman, President Trump is that much safer because we have him. But if he’s part of a conspiracy then this whole thing really takes on a very ominous tone,” added the Sheriff.

Former FBI assistant director Chris Swecker also told Newsweek that Routh appeared to have insider knowledge of the former president’s movements.

JUST IN: Martin County Sheriff Will Snyder suggests would-be Trump assass*n Ryan Routh could be part of a bigger conspiracy during a press conference.

The comments mirror those made by former assistant FBI director Chris Swecker.

Reporter: Does Ryan Routh have any ties to… pic.twitter.com/nXBQAFyI3x

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 16, 2024

“The biggest question to answer is: ‘How did the would-be assassin know to be at that location at that time?’” he said.

“There are only three possible answers:

He guessed and got very lucky; he conducted surveillance on Trump and followed him to the golf course or he had inside information about Trump’s schedule.”

Bodycam footage released by the Sheriff’s office shows Routh, who reportedly was hanging around the golf course for 12 hours, being apprehended.

BREAKING: Bodycam footage of Ryan Wesley Routh’s arrest has been released.

Routh was reportedly on the golf course for 12 hours leading up to the incident.

Martin County Sheriff Will Snyder suggested on Monday that Routh could be part of a conspiracy.

“How does a guy from not… pic.twitter.com/RWSjP3B411

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 16, 2024

Meanwhile, the legacy media is still claiming that Routh’s politics are “unclear,” despite him literally having a Biden/Harris sticker on his truck.

BREAKING: Ryan Routh had a Biden-Harris bumper sticker on his truck pic.twitter.com/7P1Y9tP6Uq

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 16, 2024

The media right now 👇 pic.twitter.com/l0i7TPbxs3

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) September 16, 2024

– https://t.co/iPweR4QVRG pic.twitter.com/pZQt0NZSIR

— The Right To Bear Memes (@grandoldmemes) September 16, 2024

“Unclear political ideology” https://t.co/nbuI2mni8B pic.twitter.com/NHL6B5sJe0

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 16, 2024

As we highlight in the video below, there are already a ton of unanswered questions surrounding the assassination attempt, although the shooter’s political leanings clearly isn’t one of them.

* * *

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

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

It appears that the Harris-Walz campaign to embrace “joy” has taken hold among educators in L.A. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) voted 4-3 to allow 10 schools to opt out of standardized tests and test preparation beginning in the 2025-26 school year. LAUSD President Jackie Goldberg declared the move was a blow to “corporate America” and would restore the “enjoyment of education.”

We have previously discussed how schools have been dropping the use of standardized tests to achieve diversity goals in admissions. That trend continued this month with Cal State dropping standardized testing “to level the playing field” for minority students. I have long been a critic of this movement given the overwhelming evidence that these tests allow an objective measure of academic merit and have great predictive value on the performance of students.

Many colleges and universities are returning to standardized testing after the much acclaimed abandonment of the tests for a more “holistic approach” to selection.

However, public educators have continued to lower proficiency requirements and cancel gifted programs to “even the playing field.” The result has been to further hide the dismal scores and educational standards of many public school districts.

Goldberg lashed out at the “testing industry” which tends to expose the continued failure of public education to give these students a fighting chance in society. Rather than look at their own failures over decades to significantly improve scores, Goldberg said that she “hoped” the resolution  would “begin to change how we look at student assessment.” In other words, students would be assessed without looking at how they actually perform on tests with other students.

Tests, it appears, are just a buzz kill for teachers and students alike:

“Because the whole goal of life became not the love of learning, not the enjoyment of education, not the exchange of ideas, but whether or not your school could move up on its test scores. For at least 20 years, I have found that repugnant.”

It shows, Ms. Goldberg, it shows.

The retiring Goldberg has always been more focused on increasing budgets than improving scores. Her website declares

“California is the world’s fifth richest economy. There are 157 billionaires here who pay almost nothing in taxes. There is no excuse for why New York spends $29k per pupil while we spend $16.5k. It’s time to tax the great wealth in this state and re-invest in our children!”

That appears to be one statistical score that Goldberg does find relevant as a measure of education.

Others at the meeting noted that they have failing enrollments and this will not help.

I previously wrote about how public educators and teacher unions are killing public education in America.Many of us have advocated for public education for decades. I sent my children to public schools, and I still hope we can turn this around without wholesale voucher systems.

Teachers and boards are killing the institution of public education by treating children and parents more like captives than consumers. They are force-feeding social and political priorities, including passes for engaging in approved protests.

As public schools continue to produce abysmal scores, particularly for minority students, board and union officials have called for lowering or suspending proficiency standards or declared meritocracy to be a form of “white supremacy.” Gifted and talented programs are being eliminated in the name of “equity.”

Once parents have a choice, these teachers lose a virtual monopoly over many families, and these districts could lose billions in states like Florida.

This is precisely why school systems are facing budget shortfalls as families vote with their feet. These families want a return to the educational mission that once defined our schools.

L.A. will pursue a program under which they appoint a “lead teacher” for additional professional development from Community School Coaches and the University of California Los Angeles Center for Community Schooling. They will focus on an effort to “integrate culturally relevant curriculum, community- and project-based learning, and civic engagement” into their programs. The “relevant” curriculum would not include actual standardized testing.

It promises more the same. Bringing “joy” back to schools will come without the accountability of standardized testing.

For teachers, such tests are decidedly not joyful since they expose their own failures and set goals for improvement. Now they can just “assess” students as successful and send them along their way.

Public schools across the country will continue to fail inner city children and leave them in the same crushing patterns of poverty.  In Baltimore, a survey found that forty percent of schools did not have a single student proficient in math. Rather than reverse that trend, the schools are just waiving the tests and graduating the students.

What is so frustrating is reading about failing school systems lowering proficiency standards and claiming that it is better for minority students.

American education faces the perfect storm. Despite record expenditures on public schools, we are still effectively abandoning students, particularly minority students, in teaching the basic subjects needed to succeed in life. We will then graduate the students by removing testing barriers for graduation. Then some may go to colleges and universities that have eliminated standardized testing for admission.

At every stage in their education, they have been pushed through by educators without objective proof that they are minimally educated. That certainly guarantees high graduation rates or improved diversity admissions. However, these students are still left at a sub-proficient state as they enter an increasingly competitive job market and economy.

Any failures will come down the road when they will be asked to write, read, or add by someone who is looking for actual work product. They will then be outside of the educational system and any failures will not be attributed to public educators.

As I have previously written, if we truly care for these students, we cannot rig the system to just kick them down the road toward failure. It is like declaring patients healthy by just looking at them and sending them on their way. We have the ability to measure proficiency and we have the moral obligation to face our own failures in helping these kids achieve it.

*  *  *

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage”

A week ago, Boeing executives thought they had secured a new labor contract for approximately 33,000 unionized workers in Washington state. However, on Thursday night, 94.6% of union members rejected Boeing’s contract offer, while 96% voted for a strike. Boeing’s last major labor action occurred in 2008 and persisted for eight weeks. 

CNBC reported Monday that Boeing announced a hiring freeze on nonessential staff travel and reduced supplier spending to preserve cash piles. This could be a troubling sign that executives at the struggling planemaker forecast the strike might last weeks, if not longer.

Boeing CFO Brian West told employees via an internal memo that “significant reductions” to supplier spending are imminent. He said purchase orders for 737 Max, 767, and 777 jetliners must be halted. 

“We are working in good faith to reach a new contract agreement that reflects their feedback and enables operations to resume,” West wrote in the note, adding, “However, our business is in a difficult period. This strike jeopardizes our recovery in a significant way and we must take necessary actions to preserve cash and safeguard our shared future.”

Credit rating agencies Fitch and Moody’s warned Friday that a downgrade of Boeing’s credit rating into junk bond status is just ahead. Standard & Poor’s had already warned that a downgrade would likely occur after the strike materialized. 

Moody’s noted that prolonged labor disruptions could undermine Boeing’s commercial airplanes recovery, complicating liquidity as $12 billion in debt matures through 2026. The strike may lead to a downgrade if Boeing’s liquidity deteriorates significantly or if it fails to generate sufficient free cash flow, which remains constrained through 2025 due to production challenges and cost pressures.

The last time Boeing machinists went on strike was September 7, 2008. At the time, the strike was over job security, outsourcing, pay, and benefits. This caused a $1.2 billion hit to the company’s net income. This could be much more costly today. 

“The strike will impact production and deliveries and operations and will jeopardize our recovery,” CEO Brian West told investors at a Morgan Stanley conference Friday. 

Boeing is set to lose its prized investment-grade rating, which has been cited in every quarterly earnings presentation. 

West said, “We are also considering the difficult step of temporary furloughs for many employees, managers and executives in the coming weeks.”

What’s emerging for Boeing is the downstream effects of strikes. That includes a reduction in spending on suppliers, and by the way, Boeing’s website says there are 11,000 active suppliers worldwide, which could trigger layoffs and disruptions across its supplier network. 

Using Bloomberg data, here are some of Boeing’s top suppliers:

According to risk management firm Sayari Labs, the latest Boeing shipments primarily come from India, Turkey, South Korea, Mexico, and China. Suppliers in these regions are likely to be the most impacted.

That’s a lot of suppliers. 

If Boeing’s supplier network was to experience throttling and or shutdowns on a prolonged strike, then how long would it take to get the supplier network back to full capacity? 

“This is mastery,” says @Overton in a post on X, “The perfect articulation of what is currently transpiring in America.”

In just over three brief minutes, Vivek Ramaswamy delivered what might be the most incisive explanation of the forces shaping the 2024 election and what Americans are truly facing.

“You hear a lot of fellow Republicans refer to Kamala Harris as a far-left ideologue or a Marxist or a communist. You won’t generally hear me levelling that critique against her because I think it gives her too much credit.“

“Kamala Harris isn’t ideological particularly. I think last night [the debate] demonstrated this too.”

Ramaswamy argues that the real adversary is not a singular candidate, but rather a pervasive interconnected system;

“We’re not even up against a candidate. We’re up against a machine. It’s a perverted upside down version, hellish version of the San Antonio Spurs under Gregg Popovich or something like that in the sphere of American politics.”

“You could replace the individual person who’s playing in the position, but it’s the machine that ultimately achieves its objective, and that’s what’s really going on in this race.”

“This isn’t about Republicans vs. Democrats. Not quite. It’s not about Black vs. White. It’s not about man vs. woman. The media, the powers that be will try to train you. Divide and conquer. Pit groups against one another. Identity politics. Vote bank politics. Don’t fall for that trick.”

According to Ramaswamy, the true divide is between the managerial class and everyday citizens.

“It is about the managerial class, the bureaucratic class and the everyday citizen. That’s the real divide in this country.”

“You’ve seen many former Democrats, even iconoclastic Democrats that have criticized candidate like Kamala Harris or Joe Biden, even from a progressive vantage point, now shifting over to support Donald Trump.”

“So,” Ramaswamy asks (and answers): “what’s going on there?”

“I think it is evidence of the fact of the real divide is not really between the traditional Republican and the Democrat, but between this managerial class, the people who were never elected to exercise political power.”

“Be they in the media, be they in certain parts of the corporate capture machine or especially be they in the administrative state, the unelected bureaucrats who are writing more laws and setting more policies than even Congress which was elected to actually carry out that function, that’s who’s actually running the country.”

The clear-speaking and clear-thinking tech executive turned political operative summed it all up perfectly:

“It’s not Joe Biden – it’s not even really Kamala Harris, it’s not their ideology because I don’t think they have one.”

“It is the permanent state.”

“The fourth branch of government.”

“The leviathan.”

“The swamp.”

“The managerial class.”

“The committee class.”

“The bureaucrats.”

“That’s who’s running the show today. And that’s what we’re really up against. We’re not just running to defeat a candidate, we are running to dismantle a system.”

And that’s why Ramaswamy says we need Donald Trump…

“That’s what Donald Trump meant the first time around when he said he wanted to go in there and drain the swamp, and I think this time more than ever, he has the toolkit to actually do it.”

Watch Vivek’s ‘drop the mic’ moment in full below:

WATCH: Vivek Ramaswamy Delivers The Greatest Breakdown of the 2024 Election in Under Three Minutes — ‘We Are Running to Dismantle a System’ | @VivekGRamaswamy

This is mastery. The perfect articulation of what is currently transpiring in America.

Vivek Ramaswamy just delivered… pic.twitter.com/LsPHttvnZM

— Overton (@overton_news) September 14, 2024

Authored by Luis Cornelio via HeadlineUSA.com,

President Joe Biden threw his pledge of decency out of the window on Sunday when a British reporter asked about Russian threats of a potential war with the U.S. 

Biden – about to converse with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer – showed no interest in the question and told the reporter to hush. 

“I say you be quiet when I speak, okay? That’s what I say. Good idea?” Biden rudely said while sitting in front of Starmer and next to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. 

The reporter, presumably a member of the British press corps traveling with Starmer, reiterated his question despite Biden’s berating. 

“But what do you say to Vladimir Putin’s threat of war, sir? It’s a serious threat,” the journalist pressed, referring to Putin’s warning that any U.S. approval of long-range weapons for Ukraine could lead to war with Russia.

“You gotta be quiet and I’m going to make a statement, okay?” Biden responded, turning back to Starmer and welcoming him to the White House. 

Crooked Joe Biden freaks out on a reporter for asking him a question.

His cognitive decline (which Kamala covered up) has turned him even angrier. pic.twitter.com/6fXMo9PPGZ

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 14, 2024

This incident – first reported by the New York Post – is part of Biden’s pattern of berating reporters who ask pointed questions. 

He previously referred to Peter Doocy, a White House correspondent for Fox News, as a “stupid son of a b*tch.” Doocy’s question about whether inflation was a “political liability” for the 2022 midterms triggered Biden’s anger.

In February 2024, Biden lashed out at Doocy during a press conference discussing Special Counsel Robert Hur’s findings on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. Hur cited Biden’s weak memory as a factor in recommending against criminal prosecution. 

“How bad is your memory and can you continue as president,” Doocy asked, referencing Hur’s findings. 

Biden then retorted, “My memory is so bad I let you speak.” 

Seemingly taking cues from her boss, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday berated Newsmax’s James Rosen for challenging her on Haitian nationals.

“Not everybody wants to hear the sound of your voice, sir,” she rudely told Rosen.

This behavior, though unsurprising, contradicts Biden’s purported pledge to restore “decency” and “respect” to the White House if elected in 2020.

Hedge funds and other asset managers have never been more pessimistic about the outlook for petroleum prices, as signs multiply that the major industrial economies are losing momentum according to energy analyst John Kemp. Investors have also concluded Saudi Arabia and its OPEC+ allies have run out of options and either cannot or will not restrict their own production further to offset the slowdown in consumption growth and slide in prices.

Hedge funds and other money managers sold the equivalent of 128 million barrels in the six most important futures and options contracts over the seven days ending on September 10. Fund managers have sold petroleum in eight of the most recent ten weeks, cutting their combined position by a total of 558 million barrels since the start of July.

And for the first time on record, funds held a net short position of 34 million barrels down from a net long position of 524 million barrels on July 2.

The most recent week saw heavy sales across the board, led by Brent (-54 million barrels), but including NYMEX and ICE WTI (-27 million), European gas oil (-20 million), U.S. diesel (-15 million) and U.S. gasoline (-11 million). 

Fund managers have sold Brent in seven of the most recent nine weeks, slashing their position by a total of 213 million barrels since July 9.  For the first time on record, funds held a net short position in Brent of 13 million barrels down from a net long position of 200 million nine weeks earlier.

 
Fund managers also held a record net short position of 48 million barrels in European gas oil and a near-record net short position of 39 million barrels in U.S. diesel.

Even in WTI and gasoline, where sentiment was not quite as gloomy, positions were only a few million barrels above record lows.

In the premier NYMEX WTI contract, fund managers have boosted short positions by a total of 61 million barrels in the last four weeks.

Bearish petroleum positions have become very crowded and the accumulation of short positions is creating conditions for a sharp jump in prices if and when the news flow becomes less negative.

For now, however, investors are focused on the limited options available to OPEC⁺ to counter the deteriorating economic outlook.

DEPTHS OF DESPAIR

Investors are extraordinarily pessimistic even though benchmark Brent futures prices have already fallen to their lowest in real terms since early 2021.

After adjusting for inflation, crude prices have retreated to levels last seen when the major economies were still in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic and the first successful vaccines had only recently been announced.

Inflation-adjusted Brent prices have averaged $72 per barrel so far in September, putting them in the 35th percentile for all months since the turn of the century, down from a recent high of $90 (57th percentile) in April.

The price slide is sending an increasingly strong signal about the need for a further deceleration in production growth to match the deteriorating macroeconomic environment and worsening outlook for consumption.

Since October 2022, Saudi Arabia and its OPEC⁺ partners have announced production cuts totalling 5.66 million barrels per day (b/d) to reduce excess inventories and drive prices higher.

Recently the group has been trying to unwind some of those cuts but has been forced to postpone planned output increases by the slowdown in consumption and renewed slump in prices.

Investors have concluded the group does not have an appetite to cut production further in the short or medium term.

The burden of adjustment must therefore fall on rival producers in the United States, Brazil, Canada and Guyana, which have accounted for nearly all output growth in recent years

Prices will decline until they enforce a further slowdown in drilling and production growth by U.S. shale producers, the most price-sensitive suppliers in the short term.

U.S. NATURAL GAS

Investors are cautiously building a bullish position in U.S. natural gas as ultra-low prices and record consumption by gas-fired generators whittle away excess inventories inherited from the exceptionally mild winter of 2023/24.

Hedge funds purchased the equivalent of 192 billion cubic feet (bcf) in the two major futures and options contracts tied to prices at Henry Hub in Louisiana over the seven days ending on September 10.

Funds have purchased a total of 290 bcf over the last two weeks taking their net long position to 507 bcf (45th percentile for all weeks since 2010) though the position is still far below the recent high of 1,170 bcf (60th percentile) in mid-June.

Inventories have been normalising rapidly as ultra-low prices have encouraged maximum consumption by power generators in the last stages of the summer airconditioning season.

Working inventories increased by a total of just 188 bcf over the nine weeks ending on September 6, the smallest seasonal accumulation for more than a decade, and less than half the average of 441 bcf in the past ten years.

As a result, in early September stocks were still high but back within the normal range of ± 1 standard deviations away from the average for the first time since early February.

With the main airconditioning season almost over, inventories will soon start rising faster, and are likely still to be above average when the main winter heating season starts on November 1.

But the surplus will be much smaller than a few months ago, and prices have begun to climb, reflecting the more balanced outlook for winter 2024/25.

In more bad news for the Netanyahu government amid large protests led by hostage victims’ families, Israel’s military has belatedly issued the damning results of a formal probe into the deaths of three Israeli hostages whose bodies were recovered back in December.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) now admit the three were “most likely” killed as a result of an Israeli airstrike. This comes after months of prior denials and is sure to fuel the anti-Netanyahu protests movement further. The IDF issued its findings with a ‘high probability’. 

Two soldiers – Corporal Nick Beiser and Sergeant Ron Sherman – and and civilian man, Eliya Toledano, had been kidnapped by the Hamas raids into southern Israel on Oct. 7.

They were being held in tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip when on November 10, 2023 airstrikes conducted by Israeli Air Force jets resulted in their deaths, the IDF has described.

The military says it was unaware of their presence in the vicinity during the bombing raid. “It is estimated that the three were most likely killed as a by-product of an IDF airstrike, during the assassination of the commander of the northern division of Hamas, Ahmed Andor, on November 10, 2023,” an official statement said.

“This is an estimate with a high probability in view of all the data, but it is not possible to determine with certainty the circumstances of their death,” the IDF continued. “This determination is based on the location where their bodies were found in relation to the impact of the attack,” as well as intelligence assessments. The families of the victims were informed of the internal military investigations findings on Sunday.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera, which is banned by Israel, has pointed out that the findings will prove deeply embarrassing for the Israeli government and military at a tense time of domestic turmoil and division:

“There have been a series of significant intelligence and security failures that the military has gone through throughout this war, the most notable of them back in December when the Israeli army shot and killed three captives in the Gaza Strip,” she said.

Salhut said the latest admission by the military “is not being received quite well because there are families of captives calling for a deal, fearing this exact type of thing.“

“It is certainly an embarrassment on all scales, not just politically but security-wise as well, that the army made this admission so many months later.”

There are some 100 captives still believed to be in the Strip, but many of them are feared dead. Families also fear that a number of captives have been killed by Israeli ‘friendly fire’ in the chaos of urban fighting – and are angered that a second-round major hostage deal with Hamas has not been achieved. 

Earlier this month Hamas warned that it would execute hostages if IDF forces get close to their locations. This appears to have happened in the case of six deceased recovered earlier in September. Before they were shot multiple times by Palestinian militants, the six were held in horrific underground conditions and in small confines.

By Benjamin Picton, Senior strategist at Rabobank

Just when you thought that the US election couldn’t get any more nuts, we’re onto Trump assassination attempt #2. The FBI detained suspect Ryan Routh, a 58-year-old Hawaiian, who allegedly pointed an AK-47 at the former President while he was playing a round of golf in Florida. The Secret Service is reported to have fired shots at the suspect before he fled the scene in an SUV. Trump is reportedly unharmed.

After the first attempt on Trump’s life back in July, the former President saw a significant improvement in his polling numbers. The media half-life on that assassination attempt was remarkably short given the gravity of its implications, but Joe Biden quit the race just over a week later as poll pressure and Biden’s poor performance in the June debate combined to convince senior Democrats that switching horses mid-stream might be the least-worst alternative.

This time the shoe might be on the other foot. Most commentators suggest that Trump lost the recent debate against Kamala Harris, but Harris certainly didn’t deliver a knockout blow. Harris appeared sharper and mostly avoided her trademark word salads, but the cut-through moment of the debate might have been Trump’s “they’re eating the dogs; they’re eating the cats.” If that’s the only thing that low-engagement voters who care about animal welfare remember, it might be advantage Trump.

Market reaction to assassination attempt #2 is minimal. The DXY index is slightly lower in early trade, high-beta currencies like the AUD and NZD are marginally higher, crude oil is up smalls and Asian stock indices have mostly opened a little lower (with the exception of the ASX200). The message seems to be that financial markets have quickly become desensitized to near-misses for Presidential candidates, despite genuinely paradigm-shifting economic realignment being on the ballot in this election.

On that score, Trump added to his policy platform over the weekend by pledging to eliminate income taxes on overtime pay should he be successful in regaining the Presidency. This comes on top of a prior commitment to remove income tax on tips (a pledge that the Harris campaign has also adopted), a pledge to remove taxes on social security benefits, the planned extension of the 2017 tax cuts and a proposed cut to the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%. Trump’s platform is aimed squarely at the American middle and working classes, with universal tariffs on imports the key revenue measure proposed to make up for (some) of the shortfall in the tax take, while also shielding American workers from competing with cheap imports and immigrant labor.

It has long been Rabobank’s house view that Trump’s economic platform is likely to induce a domestic inflationary boom, with attendant second-round effects internationally as jurisdictions like the EU, China and others seek to protect their own industry via protective tariffs and non-tariff barriers. The Harris platform is less inflationary (involving higher taxes on employment income, capital income and corporate profits), but don’t make the mistake of thinking that this means she represents a shot at fiscal conservatism. There is no deficit hawk in this race.

That makes life hard for Jerome Powell and his colleagues at the US Federal Reserve, who will almost certainly begin cutting the Fed Funds rate this week. The perception that a cut is a fait accompli means that the size of the cut is the only matter of debate at this week’s meeting. This time last week the futures market had ~33bps cut priced into the Fed Funds rate for September. That fell to ~29bps following the publication of the August CPI report on Wednesday as the core reading printed 1-tick higher than expected on a month-on-month basis.

Market pricing has since shot up to a cut of ~66bps following the publication of an article in the Wall Street Journal by Fed whisperer Nick Timiraos which suggested that inflation data might be sufficiently benign – and the starting point for Fed Funds sufficiently restrictive – for the FOMC to deliver a double-sized cut first up. This view is motivated by the Fed’s recent shift in focus from inflation to unemployment, and comments from Powell that further softening in the labor market would not be welcomed. Gold prices seem to have sensed the theme and are rallying to fresh all-time highs this morning.

Later this week we will also see labor market data for Australia. The RBA has been an something of an outlier for central banks recently as it admonishes markets not to expect a rate cut this side of Christmas. The local commentariat remains in a state of disbelief (despite briskly rising house prices, stock prices near all-time highs, tightening credit spreads, a fiscal stance shifting rapidly from restrictive to accommodative, accelerating private credit growth, low productivity growth, a low savings rate and stubborn core inflation) as rate cuts are an article of faith Down Under. The futures market is also ascribing little credibility to the RBA’s protestations, pricing in a 90% chance of a rate cut by December. Former RBA Governor Lowe’s wildly wrong “no rate rise until 2024 at the earliest” forward guidance lives long in the memory of traders who would also be looking at falling commodity prices and grim China data over the weekend as they place bets on earlier easing.

The RBA’s Chief Economist Sarah Hunter gave a speech last week unpacking the RBA’s view that the Aussie labor market remains tight (despite recent softening) and that the unemployment rate is still below estimates of the ‘full-employment’ level. That tightness in the labour market also feeds into the RBA’s view that Australia still has a positive output gap (aggregate demand exceeding aggregate supply), whereas peer economies who hiked rates further are now experiencing excess capacity and are beginning to cut.

Hunter’s RBA colleague Brad Jones will be speaking on Wednesday. He is responsible for financial stability and Governor Michele Bullock has recently hinted that he might unpack some good news about the resilience of Aussie households and business in the face of the recent hiking cycle. Could the Hunter and Jones double act be a one-two punch to knock out hopes of an Aussie rate cut before Christmas?