Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been languishing in a Russian jail since March of last year after his arrest on allegations of espionage. Soon after his detention the US formally designated him “wrongfully detained”.

Former President Donald Trump in last night’s debate with President Joe Biden hammered the administration on the lack of action on freeing the journalist. Trump vowed that if re-elected he would secure Gershkovich’s release very quickly upon entering office.

“I will have him out very quickly, as soon as I take office, before I take office,” Trump said from the CNN debate stage, and continued: “As soon as I win the election, I will have that reporter out.”

Trump sought to paint a general picture of the world “laughing” at us, especially leaders like Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin. Trump also said the only way Biden has gotten Americans released from foreign prisons is by handing overseas despots billions of dollars upon their demanding it.

The Republican frontrunner specifically referenced $6 billion ‘given’ to gain the release of five detained Americans in Iran in 2023, in reference to freeing up frozen Iranian assets that had been held primarily in South Korea.

Trump claimed that Putin is now demanding “billions of dollars” for Gershkovich’s release and that Putin “is laughing at this guy” – in reference to Biden.

This week, starting Wednesday, Gershkovich’s trial began in secret in Ekaterinburg, which is the city some 900 miles away from Moscow where Russia’s FSB arrested him last year. He appeared in court behind the typical defendant’s glass cage.

Watch Trump go after Biden on the issue of the journalist’s detention:

Trump says he will free WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich detained in Russia as soon as he wins election pic.twitter.com/boMelquqKt

— Horizon News (@Horizonnews07) June 28, 2024

WSJ’s Editor in Chief Emma Tucker has stated: “This bogus accusation of espionage will inevitably lead to a bogus conviction for an innocent man who would then face up to 20 years in prison for simply doing his job. And an excellent job he was doing, at that.” Trump on Thursday night hailed him as a “good guy”.

Authored by Law Ka-chung via The Epoch Times,

Financial markets generally show no clear direction these days. Accordingly, relatively small movements cause market noise. A few examples happened in the currency market where non-U.S. dollar exchange rates depreciated. While Euro depreciation had its back story of extreme right-wing parties rising in election polls, Japanese Yen depreciation had its story of the central bank (Bank of Japan) not managing market expectations well, Chinese Yuan depreciation had its story of bad outlook, the ultimate result was a strong U.S. dollar, against all.

Many views have listed so many reasons that the U.S. dollar should decline, if not collapse. However, the “cruel” fact is the U.S. dollar is still trading near its historical high.

Based on the well-known dollar index (DXY) compiled by Bloomberg, it has been over 100 for two years already, where most of the time in its history (from 1967 to now), it has ranged between 80 and 100. Directionally speaking, it has been trending up from 2008 to now.

Even in terms of world trade invoicing, central bank reserves, and financial denominations, the U.S. dollar share remains stable.

The strength of U.S. dollar is neither solely political nor solely economic.

U.S. interest rate higher than the others is one force making the U.S. dollar stronger, but a mega wave of inflation and interest rates is generally a global phenomenon that all non-U.S. central banks would act similarly.

It follows that any interest rate differentials are more likely the results of time lag and technical factors than global divergence.

More importantly, the U.S. Dollar is widely used in so many countries that it might not reflect only the U.S. economy and policies but also some global boom-bust factors.

Does the U.S. prefer a strong dollar?

Of course, the U.S. would like to maintain the existing U.S. dollar status, but given the current situation, it might prefer a weaker currency, which would be good for the U.S. economy.

As the accompanying chart shows, whether over the medium to long-run (from 2000 to now) or shorter-run cyclical term, GDP YoY growth moves oppositely to DXY YoY growth.

DXY and U.S. GDP YoY. (Courtesy of Law Ka-chung)

That said, a weaker dollar favours economic growth in both cyclical and decadal terms.

Thus, the U.S. should have no incentive to maintain a strong dollar, which might be a market outcome.

As most financial assets are denominated in U.S. dollars, risk-on/off has been the key factor of weak/strong dollar (at least over the past two to three decades). The recent strong U.S. dollar might reflect a certain reluctance to comprehensive global risk-on. That said, we do see some countries (like the U.S.) and some sectors (like tech) performing well, but this is far from a general phenomenon happening everywhere and at all times. Central banks like the Federal Reserve, Bank of Japan, and the People’s Bank of China have tried hard to intervene, but the effects were short-lived.

Having said that, the long-term real effect on the global economy is largely contained as long as the DXY movement is within plus or minus 10 percent (such as the range of 80-100). At the sovereign level, short-term currency movements are never of any concern.

The median age is a single indicator of the age distribution of a population – where half the population is older and half is younger than the listed age.

It can help government and private companies plan for age-specific demand for goods and services from the resident population.

In the chart below, Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao visualizes the world’s oldest and youngest countries by median age, based on 2024 estimates from the CIA World Factbook.

Ranked: Countries by Median Age in 2024

Monaco and Japan – two countries with high life expectancies and low birth rates -`have some of the highest median ages (50+) in the world.

A high median age is indicative of an aging population. Without policy support, this can lead to economic ramifications.

Here are the median ages of 200+ countries and territories in the world.

Note: Figures rounded.

Meanwhile, the presence of six European nations on the oldest countries list is a quick insight into the continent’s changing demographic. The UN estimates that one in four Europeans are currently aged 60 and over.

Conversely, many countries in Africa have low life expectancies and high birth rates. This results in the opposite phenomenon: lower median ages.

A low median age also has its own concerns. A higher proportion of children and adolescents can strain the education infrastructure. Without enough job growth, underemployment and unemployment can rise.

However, if managed well, low median ages can lead to a demographic dividend, where the workforce temporarily grows faster than the dependent population, increasing per capita income.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Nearly eleven months ago, in August 2023, the New York Times reported that U.S. officials had estimated that some 500,000 Russians and Ukrainians had been killed, wounded, or missing in the then 18-month Ukrainian War.

Both Russia and Ukraine underreport their losses. Hundreds of thousands of additional casualties have followed in the 28 months of fighting.

In the West, the mere mention of a negotiated settlement is considered a dangerous appeasement of Russia’s flagrant aggression. In Russia, anything short of victory would be seen as synonymous with the collapse of the Putin regime.

Yet as the war nears two and a half years this summer, some facts are no longer much in dispute.

Controversy still arises over the circumstances of the 2014 overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Russia charges that the West engineered the “Revolution of Dignity” – an effort to westernize the former Soviet republic, to expand the borders of Europe right to the doorstep of Russia, and eventually to fully arm Ukraine as a member of NATO.

Westerners counter that most Ukrainians wished to be part of Europe and independent from Russian bullying – and they had a perfect right to ask to join either NATO or the EU or both despite anticipated escalating tensions.

After the heroic Ukrainian defeat of the 2022 Russian bid to take Kyiv, there have been few significant territorial gains by either side.

Like the seesaw bloodbath on the Western Front of World War I, neither side has developed the momentum to force the other to negotiate or grant concessions.

As nuclear Russian threats against Europe mount, NATO is seeking to regain deterrence capabilities by boosting defense budgets, incorporating robust frontline nations Sweden and Finland, and uniting over shared concerns about Russian aggression.

Many in the U.S. cheer on the conflict as a necessary proxy war to check Russian aggression and bolster NATO’s resistance.

But unlike third-party wars during the Cold War, now the Western client, Ukraine, is fighting directly against the chief antagonist of European NATO members.

Arming a proxy in a war waged against the homeland of a nuclear adversary is a new and dangerous phenomenon.

The West counts on supplying Ukraine with more and better weapons than a richer, larger, and more populous Russia.

But Ukraine’s problem is not so much weapons as manpower. Nearly a fourth of Ukraine’s population has fled the country.

Ukraine may have suffered some 300,000 causalities. The average age of its soldiers is over 40 years. It already lacks sufficient forces to replay the failed 2023 counter-offensive. The Russian plan of attrition is to wear down and bleed out the Ukrainian people.

In a geostrategic sense, the new alignment of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea is starting to gain opportunistic support from illiberal Middle East regimes, Turkey, and the Islamic world in general.

The Biden administration’s respective approaches to the Ukraine and Gaza wars continue to be utterly incoherent.

It lectures our strongest ally Israel on the need for a ceasefire, proportionality, a coalition wartime cabinet, and the avoidance of collateral damage. The administration considers the terrorist Hamas almost a legitimate state.

However, Biden and the American diplomatic establishment urge Ukraine to keep fighting without negotiations. They urge Kyiv to seek critical disproportionality through superior weaponry, including hitting strategic targets inside Russia.

The U.S. has overlooked the cancellation of Ukrainian political parties and elections by the Zelensky administration. America does not seem to care about Ukrainian collateral damage to the borderlands. And it considers the Russian government a near-terrorist state.

No one in the West, at least prior to the Russian February 2022 invasion—neither the prior Obama, Trump, and current Biden administrations or the Ukrainian government itself—had considered it even possible to regain by force the Crimea and the Donbass absorbed by the Russian invasion of 2014.

Add up all these realities, and the only practicable way to avoid another near-one million dead and wounded would be a settlement, however unpopular.

It would entail the formalization of the 2014 Russian absorption of Crimea and Donbass.

Russia would then agree to withdraw all its forces to its pre-2022 borders. Ukraine would be fully armed but without NATO membership.

Both sides would agree to a demilitarized zone on both sides of the Russian-Ukrainian border. Russia would brag that it prevented its former province from joining NATO while finally institutionalizing its prior incorporation of the Donbass and Crimea.

Ukraine would be proud that, like heroic 1940 Finland, it miraculously stopped Russian aggression. It would remain far better armed than at any time in its history and soon enjoy a status similar to that of non-NATO Austria or Switzerland.

The deal would anger all parties. But it would make public what most concede privately—and stop the ongoing destruction of Ukraine and the further slaughter of an entire generation of Ukrainian and Russian youth.

In what’s likely messaging intended for both Israel and a potential incoming Trump administration in the US, Iranian officials are becoming more open about the possibility of building a nuclear bomb. Tehran’s official policy, backed by years of consistent statements by the Ayatollah, has been to insist its nuclear program is only for peaceful energy purposes, and that nukes go against Islamic morality. 

Currently, it is no secret that the Islamic Republic has been drastically increasing the quantity and purity of its enriched uranium – which has hastened over the last year, after an already upward trajectory since Trump pulled out of the JCPOA nuclear deal in 2018. 

The New York Times in a fresh report says an unprecedented trend is cause for serious alarm: “For the first time, some members of Iran’s ruling elite are dropping the country’s decades-old insistence that its nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes.” This comes just as Iran – which remains the archnemesis of Israel – is about to pick a new president after Ebrahim Raisi’s recent death in a helicopter crash.

“Instead, they are publicly beginning to embrace the logic of possessing the bomb, arguing that recent missile exchanges with Israel underscore the need for a far more powerful deterrent,” continues the NY Times.

Tehran is fully aware of its status as a ‘threshold state’ and is using this to project strength in its broader standoff with Israel in the region:

In interviews with a dozen American, European, Iranian and Israeli officials and with outside experts, the cumulative effect of this surge appears clear: Iran has cemented its role as a “threshold” nuclear state, walking right up to the line of building a weapon without stepping over it.

And yet Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has warned many times over the years that he will not allow Iran to achieve nuclear status. He has vowed to launch a preemptive attack should Tehran cross this line. 

But this has not stopped an official close to Iran’s supreme leader from recently explaining that if the country were to face an existential threat, it would “reconsider its nuclear doctrine” — as quoted in the Times report. 

Without doubt, Iranian leaders have in the back of their minds the examples of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Both gave up their WMD programs and nuclear aspirations, and soon after were invaded, overthrown, and executed (and in Gaddafi’s case he was killed on the street by NATO-backed rebels).

Below are some key sections from the lengthy NY Times investigative report…

* * *

How fast to achieve a bomb?

And they caution that while Iran could now produce the fuel for three or more bombs in days or weeks, it would still take considerable time — maybe 18 months — for Iran to fabricate that fuel into a warhead that could be delivered on missiles of the kind it launched at Israel in April.

Gaza tinderbox has raised the stakes

“Iran is sending a clear message that if the pressure of sanctions continues, if assassination of its commanders continues and if Washington or Israel decides to tighten the noose, it will then break all the chains,” said Hossein Alizadeh, a former Iranian diplomat who defected in 2010. He spoke from Britain, where he now lives.

Practicing preemptive strikes

While the U.S. and Israeli air forces often practiced what it would take to bomb Fordow, even building a mock-up of the site in the Nevada desert, military officials say it would take repeated, precise strikes by the United States’ largest “bunker buster” to reach down that deep.

Anti-nuke Fatwah still officially in place

Iran has insisted that it cannot manufacture or use nuclear weapons because of a 2003 “fatwa,” or religious edict, issued by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The country said the fatwa remained in effect even after Israel stole, and then made public, a huge archive of Iranian documents that made plain the country was trying to design a weapon.

Coordinated statements signaling policy change

If Israel threatened Iran’s nuclear facilities, General Haq Talab said in a speech in mid-April, “it’s entirely possible and imaginable that the Islamic Republic will reconsider its nuclear doctrine and policies and reverse its previously stated positions.”

A few weeks later, Mr. Kharazi told Al Jazeera that Iran had the capacity to produce a nuclear bomb, but that it has not decided to do so.

“If Iran’s existence is threatened, we will have no choice but to reverse our nuclear doctrine,” he said.

And in late May, Mr. Araghchi said at a conference in Doha, Qatar, that Israeli attacks “could force others to rethink their security calculations and their nuclear postures.”

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

You know the term “authoritarian.” You think you know what it means. 

An authoritarian dad, boss, or government says: my way or the highway. They are forever barking orders and see compliance as the answer to all human problems. There is no room for uncertainty, adaptation to time and place, or negotiation. It’s ruling by personal dictate while tolerating no dissent. 

To be authoritarian is to be inhumane, to rule with arbitrary and capricious imposition. It can also mean to be ruled impersonally by a machine regardless of the cost. 

Sounds like a conventional government bureaucracy, right? Indeed. Think of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Think of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy which are right now issuing edicts that will end in the ability of your washing machine to clean your clothes and your car to go the distance. 

They have been doing this to us for many decades, with or without the permission of Congress or the president. The agencies have become literally out of control in the sense that no one can control them. 

Any society managed by a large and intrusive bureaucratic machinery is necessarily authoritarian. A government that is not authoritarian is necessarily limited in size, scope, and range of power. 

Let’s say you have a political leader who has routinely called for less in the way of authoritarian rule by bureaucracies. He intends to use whatever power he has to curb the autonomous rule by administrative bureaucracies and subject them more to the wishes of the people, who should ideally be in charge of the regime under which they live. 

Such a leader would not be called an authoritarian. He would be called the opposite, an emancipator who is trying to dismantle authoritarian structures. 

If all of the above makes sense to you, try to make sense of this news story in the New York Times. It’s about the growing efforts on the part of many activists to resist a second term of Donald Trump. 

In passing, the story says: “If Mr. Trump returns to power, he is openly planning to impose radical changes — many with authoritarian overtones” including “making it easier to fire civil servants.”

The story quickly adds that he intends to replace the fired employees with “loyalists.” Maybe. But consider the alternative. The president is supposed to be ostensibly in charge of 2 million plus bureaucrats that are employed by 400-plus agencies in the executive branch — but they don’t actually have to carry out the policies of the elected president. They can in fact completely ignore him. 

How is this compatible with either democracy or freedom? It is not. There is nothing in the Constitution about a vast army of bureaucrats who rule behind the scenes that is in no way reachable or manageable by elected representatives. 

The attempt to pull back, rein in, and otherwise do something about this problem is not authoritarian. It is the opposite. Even if “loyalists” replaced the fired employees, that would be an improvement over a system of government in which the people truly have no control at all. 

Two years into Trump’s first term, the administration came to figure out that this was a problem. The administration intended some dramatic turns in policy in a number of areas. All they experienced was dogged resistance from people who believed they and not the elected president were in charge. Over the next two years, they undertook many efforts to at least solve this problem: namely, the president should be in charge of the government that falls under his jurisdiction. 

This only makes sense. Imagine you are the CEO of a company. You discover that the main divisions that actually run the company care nothing about what you say and cannot be fired even if you demand it, and yet you are personally held responsible for everything these divisions do. What are you going to do?

It is not “authoritarian” to unseat or otherwise attempt to gain control over that for which you are held responsible, professionally or politically. That is truly all that the Trump people are suggesting. This is nothing other than a Constitutional system: we are supposed to have a government by and for the people. That means that the people elect the administrator of the executive branch. At a minimum, the winner of the election needs to be able to have some influence over what the agencies in the executive branch do. 

And for suggesting this and trying to make it happen, Trump is called an authoritarian. Prepare yourself: this will be said millions of times between now and November and following. Can the mainstream media just flat-out change the meaning of a term like this? They can but there is also every reason to push back and not let it happen. 

Language is a human construct. The more vibrant and fast-moving society is, the more the language changes. That can be a wonderful thing. In fact, one of my favorite books to read in off-hours is H.L. Mencken’s The American Language, written by this genius when he was otherwise censored for his views in wartime. 

It’s a marvelous chronicling of the evolution of American usage, published in 1919, but oddly pertinent even today, applicable to the dwindling number of people who can still form coherent sentences. 

When it comes to vocabulary, there are two schools of thought broadly speaking: prescriptivist and descriptivist. The prescriptivist view is that words have embedded meanings that you can trace from other languages and should be used as intended. The descriptivist approach sees language as more a living experience, a tool of utility to make communication possible, in which case anything goes. 

As Americans, we mostly accept the descriptivist outlook but this can go too far. Words cannot mean literally anything, much less the opposite. But this is exactly what is happening. It’s the same with the word “democracy,” which is supposed to mean the people’s choice, not whatever elites dish out to us. If Trump is the choice, so be it. That is the unfolding of democracy. 

If we want the president to be the CEO of the executive branch of government — and that’s a pretty good description of what the US Constitution establishes — then the administration ought to have that managerial authority. If you don’t like it, take it up with the Founders. 

Again, any society managed by a large and intrusive bureaucratic machinery is necessarily authoritarian. A government that is not authoritarian is necessarily limited in size, scope, and range of power. 

Any one president who takes action to curb the power and reach of arbitrary authority is not an authoritarian, but rather one who seeks to give authority back to the people. Such a man would be an emancipator, even if everyone said otherwise. 

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Joe Biden Catches Cold

“Biden’s entire closing statement is the political equivalent of the blue screen of death. It’s just one long frozen glitch.”

-Sean Davis, the Federalist

Maybe ninety-seconds into last night’s long-awaited debate spectacle, the consensus must have jelled among the woke-and-broken news media mavens that their champion, “Joe Biden,” was not quite killing it out there at the podium. CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash acted like witnesses at a ritual sacrifice. And afterward, the CNN post-mortem panel seemed genuinely shocked that months of playing pretend had skidded to such an ignominious finish.

Which raises a great many questions, starting with: why on earth did the Democratic Party and its media handmaidens persist in pretending month-after-month that “Joe Biden” was a fit candidate for another four-year term?  Last night, he didn’t appear capable of even finishing the current term. Why did they usher him so jauntily into the nomination? And what are they going to do about that now? And what were their motives for all that pretending? “Joe Biden” circulates among scores of astute officials every day. Did they all fail to notice his incapacity? Or has the whole thing been a sham and a lie all along? Was this just the culminating hoax by the Party of Hoaxes of a long string of hoaxes against the nation going back to 2015?

To the question of motives, the answer is obvious: the news networks have worked tirelessly (and with stunning dishonor) to hide their collusion with the government in gaslighting the public. More to the point, they’ve concealed the appalling truth that the CIA, DARPA, and their many intel blob subsidiaries conducted a silent coup over the USA and have been running our country’s affairs disastrously behind the “Joe Biden” façade — and that the coup actually started well before Mr. Trump’s 2016 inauguration. You know it, and they know that you know it.

More acutely, now that “Joe Biden” has been revealed as a hoax president, whole legions of public officials appear liable to criminal charges of the most serious degree: sedition, treason, mass murder, fraud, malfeasance, and in the case of the president himself, influence peddling and bribery.

They must be desperate to avoid accounting for all that, losing their accrued fortunes to legal fees and going to prison (or worse). For example, outed just this week: news that then-CIA Director in 2020, Gina Haspel, knew about and participated in the infamous operation using 51 former Intel officers to cover up the veracity of Hunter Biden’s laptop days before the election.

They knew the laptop was real. Their colleagues over at the FBI knew it was real. They all knew it was stuffed with deal memos, legal memoranda, and emails that clearly laid out a long-running bribery operation among Biden family members and their lawyers. They knew it in 2019 when the Democratic Party moved to impeach Mr. Trump for inquiring about the Biden family’s money-grubbing activities in Ukraine — where, by the way, we may have fomented the war with Russia in part to cover up the culpability of all involved, including especially the State Department and their embassy staff in Kiev. The FBI and its bosses in the DOJ also withheld the laptop from Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers during the 2020 impeachment, though it contained massive exculpatory evidence to explain just why he made that fateful phone call to the newly elected Zelensky.

It’s obvious that the ruling blob now has to deep-six “Joe Biden.” The problem is they must induce him to renounce the nomination of his own will. The party’s nominating process is so bizarrely complex that it would very difficult to just shove him out. Another problem is that the party had to peremptorily declare “JB” their legal nominee before the August convention in order to keep him on the ballot in Ohio with its 17 electoral votes (due to some arcane machinery in the state’s election laws).

As per above, the debate fiasco calls into serious question whether “Joe Biden” is competent to even serve out this term. He (or shadowy figures pulling strings behind him) are making profoundly hazardous decisions right now, such as last week’s missile attack that killed and wounded civilians on the beach in Crimea. Are you seeing how easily “Joe Biden” might start World War Three? All of which is to say that pressure will soon rise to use the 25th amendment to relieve him of duty, leaving you-know-who in the oval office. If Joe Biden actually has to resign as president, he also loses the ability to pardon his son, Hunter, and peremptorily his other family members who shared bribery money received from China, Ukraine, and elsewhere.

If he won’t resign, and the party can’t force him off the ticket, the blob could have no choice except to bump him off. I imagine they would get it done humanely, say late at night sometime, in bed, using the same method as for putting down an old dog who has peed on the carpet one too many times. Or, if that can’t be managed and he clings to his position, maybe the party could cobble up some new nominating rules impromptu. And then, who could they slot in from the bench?

The usual suspects are like the cast of a freak show, each one displaying one grotesque deformity after another.

Gavin Newsom we understand: the party’s base of batshit-crazy women may all want to bear his child, but that limbic instinct to mate with a six-foot-three haircut-in-search-of-a-brain might not work with any other voter demographic — and Newsom has the failed state of California hanging around his neck. All Mr. Trump would have to do is broadcast the scene from a San Francisco street-cam on “X” (Twitter) 24/7.

Hillary has been stealthily flapping her leathery wings overhead for weeks as this debacle approached. She may still own the actual machinery of the Democratic Party — having purchased it through the Clinton Foundation some years back when the party was broke and needed a bailout. She could just command the nomination by screeching “Caw Caw” from the convention rostrum. Whatever happens, it will look terrible.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan? An inveterate and notorious intel blob tool, Whitmer has allowed herself to be used repeatedly by the FBI to frame and persecute conservatives in her state as well as using her state AG Dana Nessel to go after political enemies there, especially poll workers who cried fraud in the sketchiest Michigan voting districts.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. Like Dreamboat Newsom in California, Mr. Pritzker is busily running Illinois (and especially Chicago) into bankruptcy and chaos. Looks aren’t everything, but if Dreamboat gives the vapors to Karens across the land, the Illinois governor will get them shrieking in terror as from the sight of King Kong on Skull Island

Who else is there? Michelle O, of course, who will be instantly branded as a catspaw for her husband seeking a fifth term — as Barack himself has averred in so many words: just hanging out in the background, managing things in his jogging suit. That would be the ultimate Banana Republic set-up for us and I don’t think the voters will go for it. It all boils down to the Party of Chaos being thrust into chaos. Can it even survive “Joe Biden?”

Then there is Mr. Trump himself. He remains the object of widespread rabid loathing, yet more and more Americans are coming to appreciate his opposition to Woke Marxist chaos and intel blobbery-gone-wild in our land. His performance last night featured his usual jumpy locutions and incomplete sentences, but in contrast to the current president, he looked neither senile nor an agent of sinister forces dedicated to bringing our country to its knees.

Had Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. been present both of the others would have been badly outclassed verbally and intellectually.

If Mr. Trump survives the blob’s efforts to delete him before November, I’m sure Mr. Kennedy will play a prominent role in another Trump administration. He knows exactly where the rot is and how to roust it out.

*  *  *

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

First things first, the market is starting to aggressively price in a Republican/Trump victory in November after last night’s farce

Goldman’s ‘Republican / Democrat’ stock baskets massively outperformed today…

Source: Bloomberg

Overall activity levels today were “explosive” according to Goldman’s trading desk with volumes +32% vs. the trailing 2 weeks with market volumes up just +1% vs. the 10dma (mkt wide activity obv backloaded today)

Goldman said its floor is -3% better for sale, with both HFs and LOs tilted that way

• HFs are -2% better for sale with supply in Tech & Fins outweighing demand for Cons Disc & materials

• LOs are -14% better for sale with Cons Disc the outlier for supply following NKE’s miss.  Other pockets of supply include Staples, HCare & Industrials while Tech, Energy, Fins and REITs are all to buy

Treasury yields exploded higher intraday today with some suggesting this is also pricing in a Trump victory (and other pointing out that hedgies are record short the ultras). Of course, it’s just as likely some qtr-/mth-end rebalance flows…

Source: Bloomberg

Which is more likely TBH since we saw some late shenanigans in stocks too (and the annual Russell Rebalance sparked its normal frenzy)…

Source: Bloomberg

But away from politics (and today), US Macro data serially disappointed in the first half of the year, crashing to its ugliest since 2016. This was the worst start to a year for macro surprises since 2018 (and second worst since 2012)…

Source: Bloomberg

But, despite all this ‘bad news’, rate-cut expectations have plunged YTD, with 2024 starting the year with 160bps priced in and ending H1 with just 45bps priced in. 2025 expectations did pick up modestly, from around 70bps to 87bps…

Source: Bloomberg

The result of all that: stocks, gold, and crude (and crypto) all notably higher, bonds dumped and the dollar stronger in H1

Source: Bloomberg

Year-to-date, it has been all mega-cap tech all the time, dragging the S&P and Nasdaq up dramatically (decoupling from The Dow and Small Caps with Trannies in the red in H1)…

Source: Bloomberg

The S&P’s 15% gain is the best H1 in an election year since 1976, and was set against a very low volatility means Sharpes are through the roof.

June was extremely quiet with long gamma squelching all directional moves…

Source: Bloomberg

With realized vol for the month plunging to just 6.3…

Source: Bloomberg

Breadth remain dreadful – going nowhere at all as stocks melted up in June (thanks to Mag7)…

Source: Bloomberg

Tech stocks soared in H1 with financials and energy just behind. Real Estate was clubbed like a baby seal (which is no surprise given that home sales are plunging back to or near record lows)…

Source: Bloomberg

H1 and Q2 and June were all about AI stocks, which have massively outperformed…

Source: Bloomberg

The other massive winner was GLP-1 stocks…

Source: Bloomberg

Yields were up notably in H1 2024 (10Y +47bps), following a very similar path to 2018 and 2021, with only 2022 worse since 2009. What is also notable is just how uniform the rise in yields has been – the entire curve up around 46-50bps – as Q2 saw bonds bid as macro data disappointed…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar surged to its second strongest H1 since 2013, with a big surge in June as yen collapsed…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin had its 5th best start to a year on record (2016, 2017, 2019, 2022, 2023 were better) ending H1 up 40%. Solana and Ethereum also had a great start to the year…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold surged in H1, up over 13%, its second best year since 2016 (only 2020 was better). But the last six weeks have seen the precious metal coiling…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil also had a strong H1 thanks to a rebound in geopolitical risk premium in June…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, after such a strong H1, several bulge bracket bank traders are starting to sound a little nervous. Who can blame them?

Source: Bloomberg

Which happens first, 10Y yield hits 3.5% or S&P 500 hits 5,000?

…or 3,500?

Source: Bloomberg

How far would stocks have to fall before the liquidity machines ramp back up?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday claimed in words given to a visiting US delegation that Iran is seeking to conquer the broader Middle East which includes plans to topple the regimes of Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The delegation included US generals and admirals on a visit to Jerusalem. Netanyahu in raising the alarm of the Islamic Republic’s alleged ambitions went so far as to reference an ongoing “seven-front” conflict, of which Tehran is the puppet master. This is Israel is poised to launch a potential offensive against Hezbollah in south Lebanon.

“Their goal is to have a combined ground offensive from various fronts, coupled with a combined missile bombardment. We’ve been given an opportunity to scuttle it,” Netanyahu said. “The first requirement is to cut that hand, Hamas.”

“The people who did this thing to us are not going to be there,” he vowed in reference to the Oct.7 terror attack which kicked off the Gaza war. “We face a long battle — I don’t think it’s that long — but we’ll get rid of them.”

He then emphasized the broader Israeli security goal to “deter the other elements of the Iran terror axis” – which is widely seen as including Baghdad, Damascus, and Hezbollah. But in these new remarks he took it a big step further:

“But we have to deal with the axis,” he said, arguing that the Iran-backed alliance is “on a march to conquer the Middle East… to conquer Saudi Arabia, conquer the Arabian peninsula.”

“It’s just a question of time,” he added. “What’s standing in the way?” he asked. “The ‘small Satans’ — that’s us,” he added, referencing Iran’s disparaging nickname for Israel.

But this assessment seems far from the reality, given that over a year ago Iran entered a Beijing-brokered peace and normalization deal with Saudi Arabia.

Following the March 10, 2023 signing of the deal, ambassadors were exchanged, and Saudi Arabia opened its embassy in Tehran for the first time in seven years.

However, historic tensions remain, given the long history of the Sunni vs. Shia rivalry in the region. While Saudi Arabia is the global center of hardline Sunni wahhabism, Iran is a Shia theocracy. 

The ten-year long Syria war can be seen as part of this broader rivalry, given President Bashar al-Assad is aligned with the ‘Shia axis’ – despite himself being a quasi-secular Baathist leader, and the Sunni Gulf states had partnered with the West in arming jihadists insurgents.

In his Thursday night debate with President Joe Biden, Trump vowed to get tougher on Tehran and accused Biden’s weakness of emboldening the Iranians. “Iran was broke. Anybody that did business with Iran, including China, they couldn’t do business with the United States. They all passed,” Trump said of his time in office and the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign. “Iran was broke. They had no money for Hamas, Hezbollah, for terror. No money whatsoever.”

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The New Scientist has posted a freaky video showing an experimental face intended for a robot that is made from living human skin cells, and is capable of smiling.

What?

Yes, you read that correctly.

This fleshy, pink smiling face is made from living human skin cells, and was created as part of an experiment to let robots show emotion.
Read more 👉 https://t.co/JiV1VDEA45 pic.twitter.com/KlLtYPvwS7

— New Scientist (@newscientist) June 25, 2024

The outlet writes “a smiling face made from living human skin could one day be attached to a humanoid robot, allowing machines to emote and communicate in a more life-like way, say researchers.”

What researchers are saying this now? Was Dr Evil not available for comment?

Imagine that pink nightmare smiling down at you as it announces it’s your new master.

“Hey, honey, I’ll be home a little late today. We just made a real breakthrough at the Nightmare Factory.” https://t.co/FABOapx5Ax

— DrewMcWeeny (@DrewMcWeeny) June 26, 2024

The article continues, “The living tissue is a cultured mix of human skin cells grown in a collagen scaffold and placed on top of a 3D-printed resin base.”

Of course it is. Wouldn’t expect anything less for Robot McSkin Face.

It continues, “Unlike previous similar experiments, the skin also contains the equivalent of the ligaments that, in humans and other animals, are buried in the layer of tissue beneath the skin, holding it in place and giving it incredible strength and flexibility.”

So you’ll struggle to rip it off as you desperately attempt to reveal to the world the true identity of the new overlord.

But seriously, why does it need to be made of living human skin?

“It’d be great to use cell research to create new organs for transplantation.”
*Puts a living face on a robot.*

— Firecrakcer (@firecrakcer001) June 26, 2024

Can’t we just have the future killer robots look like robots please?

You will live to see man-made made horrors beyond your comprehension

— Jared Vastine (@jared_vastine) June 25, 2024

Are they intent on recreating The Terminator movies exactly?

Me, a science fiction author known for writing about robots and skin: please, for the love of God, do not give the robots skin https://t.co/n6ZzszkyEi

— Regular Frog (@FrogCroakley) June 26, 2024

What is it with wanting to humanise robots ?

— Mark ⚒ Sullivan (@sullers45) June 25, 2024

Dystopian films and books are supposed to be warnings, not blueprints.

Once again I am begging people to make sci-fi required reading pic.twitter.com/t8hCR5sm4v

— Katie Roome (@RedHedgedragon) June 26, 2024

Remember They Live?

Oh look, they’re making politicians. https://t.co/Z6G1VF3tPM

— 𝓐𝓵𝓵𝓮𝓷 𝓡𝓪𝔂 42 (@2CynicAl65) June 27, 2024

I guess I don’t understand why they would make this out of living human skin cells? Were they hoping to avoid the uncanny valley by using human skin? Cause I gotta say a robot wearing human skin is way worse than a robot with an uncanny silicon face. https://t.co/0ez3n3qR16

— Matt, Wort Wizard (@mattwortwizard) June 26, 2024

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