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22 EU Leaders Demand “Immediate Action” As Migrant Invasion Raises Fear Of Hybrid Warfare

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22 EU Leaders Demand “Immediate Action” As Migrant Invasion Raises Fear Of Hybrid Warfare

Summary:

  • 22 EU Leaders Demand “Immediate Action“
  • Italy Suspends Schengen Travel Agreement With Spain After Horrifying Ceuta Invasion
  • Spain’s Border Invasion Is An Optics Disaster For Open-Border Democrats
  • Crazy Footage Shows Migrants Rampaging, Breaking Into Homes After Invading Spain

22 EU Leaders Demand “Immediate Action” To Spanish Enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla Invasion 

European leaders criticized Madrid’s socialist government as its open-border policies unraveled for the world to see.

The invasion of the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla by 50,000 military-aged men from Morocco exposed the dire consequences of nation-killing mass-migration policies promoted by socialist regimes, which have long eroded national sovereignty across the entire continent. 

For Europe, the latest border breach represents one of the clearest warnings yet that uncontrolled mass migration has evolved from a political dispute into a full-blown national security crisis.

Hours after the invasion, Italy’s Interior Ministry suspended Schengen free-movement rules with Spain and ordered the closure of air and maritime borders between the two countries, citing national security concerns.

The list of European leaders criticizing Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is growing on Saturday, as 22 EU leaders have now signed on to a demand for an “immediate and coordinated European response” to the invasion into Ceuta and Melilla.

“We cannot allow uncontrolled mass crossings, the instrumentalization of migration or other hybrid threats to create the perception that illegal entry into the European Union is possible,” EU leaders, including Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Germany’s Friedrich Merz, wrote in a letter published on X by Denmark’s Ministry of State.

Sánchez and Spain’s socialists are already feeling the impact of a negative information campaign that has spread across the West. The Trump administration is using the crisis as a warning to American voters ahead of the midterms that socialists gaining power would risk reopening the US border crisis. Political pressure on Sánchez will intensify further if illegal crossings resume or illegals reach mainland Europe.

The most likely pathway is, therefore, containment followed by political blowback against socialist parties in Madrid and across the bloc, rather than an immediate collapse of Schengen. Any second mass surge, however, would only suggest the weaponization of migration against Europe; in other words, asymmetric warfare. 

The open-ended question is who, if anyone, on the Moroccan side financed, organized, and facilitated the invasion.

Crazy Footage Shows Migrants Rampaging, Breaking Into Homes After Invading Spain

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Nearly 50,000 military-aged men stormed the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla from Morocco in a single day. What followed was not “asylum-seeking.” It was open looting, home invasions, vehicle burnings, and street chaos while Spanish authorities largely stood aside.

Spain’s socialist government under Pedro Sánchez had already rolled out mass regularisation schemes and refused to treat the border as a national emergency.

The result played out in real time across the North African territories that form the European Union’s only land borders with Africa.

Estimates from Spain’s Interior Ministry and local sources put the number who crossed into Ceuta alone at around 49,000 in 24 hours – roughly equivalent to the U.S. troop presence in the Middle East.

Ceuta’s president Juan Jesús Vivas described the situation as “absolutely unsustainable” and a “total humanitarian and social emergency,” noting reception centres were already saturated and more than 200 arrivals a day had become routine in the preceding period.

Reports have also suggested that the influx was so severe that at least 19 to 34 migrants died in the waters or in stampedes at the Tarajal breakwater.

Footage from the ground shows columns of young men pouring through streets, scaling fences, and swimming around coastal barriers.

In Melilla the scenes turned violent just as quickly. Migrants set vehicles ablaze after breaching the border fence.

There is obviously no processing of these arrivals anywhere for them to go. Further videos captured groups breaking into residential buildings, looting stores, and occupying private property.

Some clips show African migrants forcing entry into Spanish homes in Ceuta while residents look on helplessly.

News footage highlighted crowds ofmilitary-agedd migrant men surrounding a Spanish woman who was visibly distressed as the men laughed and closed in around her – an image that has circulated widely as a symbol of the total collapse of order.

Local residents did not simply accept the invasion. In Ceuta, Spanish patriots took to the streets themselves to protect their neighborhoods and homes when official forces proved insufficient.

Groups of men formed ad-hoc patrols, confronting the influx directly.

The Spanish response was a deployment of roughly 100 to 150 military personnel and additional police.

Orders, according to on-the-ground reports, were to hold position rather than aggressively close the border or remove the entrants. Armored vehicles appeared, yet the fence remained open in places, and the flow continued through the night.

One reporter on the scene at 4:30 a.m. described 100 people crossing every minute while the military presence did little to stem it.

The scale and coordination point beyond spontaneous movement. Moroccan authorities were filmed emptying trucks full of young men near the Ceuta border.

Separate videos show convoys of trucks and buses ferrying thousands toward the frontier from towns an hour away.

Facebook groups with tens of thousands of members openly shared routes, maps, equipment lists, and contact numbers, framing the crossing as a “liberation.”

One widely shared clip asks the obvious questions: who feeds them, who sets the date and route, and who benefits?

Observers have noted the timing – coming after a Spanish Supreme Court ruling that limited immediate pushbacks for sea arrivals and against the backdrop of long-running territorial disputes over the enclaves.

Some speculate Morocco is testing Spain’s resolve or seeking leverage. One analysis framed the surge as a potential path to forcing Spanish evacuation of the territories it has held for centuries.

By Friday morning, a curious reverse movement also appeared. Hundreds of the same men began heading back toward Morocco on their own, citing hunger and the fact that the city was largely shut down.

“We are hungry, we are going home,” some said on camera.

The political fallout has already crossed the Mediterranean. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called the images from Ceuta proof that uncontrolled illegal immigration poses a concrete threat to Europe’s borders and said Italy was prepared to take extraordinary measures, including suspension of Schengen with Spain.

Matteo Salvini demanded the same.

In France, Marine Le Pen insisted on immediate reinforcement of border controls and, if she wins power, restriction of free movement to EU nationals only.

Marion Maréchal described the events as a genuine migrant invasion that requires ending the current Schengen framework.

Finland, Sweden and Denmark also announced Support for the move.

Some think it’s too little too late, however.

Sánchez’s government has spoken of “solutions” and “cooperation” while deploying limited forces and rejecting a formal national emergency declaration.

The footage from Ceuta and Melilla shows what that approach produces: overwhelmed police, residents forced to defend their own streets, homes occupied, and a clear message to the next wave that the door remains open.

Europe’s external border has been tested in the most public way possible. The question now is whether any government still willing to enforce it remains.

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.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2026 – 14:10

The Real Threat To Young Americans’ Jobs Isn’t AI. It’s The National Debt…

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The Real Threat To Young Americans’ Jobs Isn’t AI. It’s The National Debt…

Authored by Ken Buck via The Epoch Times,

The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence and supercomputing technologies has many Americans worried about the future of their careers. In a survey last month, more than half of U.S. workers expressed concern that AI could take their job or the job of a family member. Another survey in December found that almost 60 percent of young people believe AI poses a threat to their job prospects.

Americans are not naive. They realize that fast-evolving technologies will disrupt how we do business, just like the Industrial Revolution replaced blacksmiths and the horse and buggy. Many young people, particularly, are already pivoting toward “AI-proof” career fields that promise long-term stability.

However, while concerns about AI automation have dominated headlines and sucked the oxygen out of the room, a bigger, more immediate threat to Americans’ job prospects and wages continues to go virtually ignored: That is the crowding-out effect of the rising federal debt on private investment.

Our national debt is not a theoretical boogeyman. It’s a bona fide job-killer that is impeding economic growth and driving up costs on everyday families. And it will only get worse the longer it is ignored.

An analysis by Ernst & Young projects that on the 2025 debt path, which has accelerated in the current fiscal year, the United States will lose over 1 million jobs by 2035, 2.7 million by 2055, and 3.6 million by 2075. These losses will disproportionately impact young people, who are more sensitive to labor market conditions.

At the same time, evidence indicates that the “crowding-out” effect of the national debt—whereby the high cost of servicing the debt pushes investment into Treasury bonds instead of private, job-creating capital—will reduce income growth by 16 percent between now and 2055.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office pegs that number even higher. A 2023 report estimates that the rising debt will cut income growth by a third, or more than $14,000, over the next three decades. It notes that every dollar of federal borrowing causes a 33-cent reduction in private investment.

In other words, our national debt and the interest costs that accompany it are stifling job creation and wage growth, and the situation will only get increasingly worse as our federal debt load continues to balloon.

What’s more, the interest on our national debt—which costs about $2.8 billion per day and is projected to grow to nearly $6 billion per day by 2036—is driving up borrowing costs for consumers, exacerbating the affordability crisis. A Yale Budget Lab report found that every 1-point increase in the permanent deficit relative to GDP adds between $600 and $1,240 per year in loan costs for the median U.S. home.

Sadly, young people bear the worst of these job losses, wage stagnation and borrowing cost increases. Last August unemployment among 20- to 24-year-olds peaked at over 9 percent, more than double the general rate of 4.3 percent. Since 2023, younger Americans’ job-market optimism has fallen 23 points, similar to the Great Recession—which caused millennials to earn about 20 percent less over their careers, with roughly half the wealth of their parents at the same age.

Coupled with Social Security’s 2032 depletion date, all these factors are squeezing young workers from every angle: disappearing jobs and lower wages today, and a shrinking safety net tomorrow.

Our massive national debt and the significant costs it imposes on ordinary Americans is a problem of Washington’s own making. It will take leaders with political courage to address it—leaders who are willing to say no to reckless spending our country can’t afford, even when it may cost them their job.

Government spending builds dependence on the welfare state and obstructs private-sector growth, consolidating power. A powerful government that “provides” for all, picks winners and losers, and usurps personal liberties.

There’s only one problem: This socialist vision doesn’t work. It never has. That’s because government doesn’t create wealth; private enterprise does. As Winston Churchill famously explained, “The inherent vice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Young people are not wrong to worry about the economic disruptions AI could bring about, but our out-of-control national debt is the bigger, more pressing elephant in the room. And we cannot afford for lawmakers to kick the can down the road.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2026 – 13:25

Verizon Blames ‘Human Error’ For Burying A Jack Smith Subpoena From Congress

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Verizon Blames ‘Human Error’ For Burying A Jack Smith Subpoena From Congress

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and fifteen colleagues sent a letter to Verizon on Thursday demanding the telecom giant explain how a 2023 grand jury subpoena tied to Jack Smith’s “Arctic Frost” investigation vanished from its own paperwork for more than two years – only to resurface after the company chalked the omission up to “human error.”

The letter, addressed to Verizon CEO Dan Schulman, is the latest turn in Grassley’s monthslong excavation of Arctic Frost – the Biden-era FBI/DOJ probe-turned-Trump-prosecution that has already produced a House criminal referral for Smith himself, revelations that his team accessed the actual text messages of 44 lawmakers, and now a fight over what one of the country’s largest phone companies knew and sat on.

What Subpoena?

Back in October 2023, Grassley asked Verizon to search its files for every DOJ or federal law enforcement request touching Senate devices between January 2016 and October 2023, part of his long-running Crossfire Hurricane oversight. Verizon wrote back that it generally keeps legal process on file for four years and had no records predating October 2019.

What it didn’t mention: a May 25, 2023 grand jury subpoena issued by Smith’s Arctic Frost team for senators’ phone toll records, including two numbers belonging to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms.

Congress didn’t learn the subpoena existed until 2025, when Verizon told Grassley’s office the 2023 omission came down to “human error.” Grassley isn’t satisfied with that. His new letter wants to know whether Verizon actually found the subpoena during its 2023 search and stayed quiet, or genuinely missed a live federal legal demand sitting in its own compliance files for two years.

Two of the numbers swept up in that May 2023 subpoena weren’t just any senators’ lines – they belonged to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms. Under a contract Verizon signed with the Senate in May 2022, that’s supposed to trigger automatic notice to the SAA any time a Senate device or line gets subpoenaed. Grassley’s letter effectively asks how a contractually mandated notification simply never happened.

There’s also a significant timing gap to explain. The gag orders that typically accompany these subpoenas run about a year. If a standard gag applied here, it would have lifted by mid-2024 – well over a year before Verizon finally volunteered the “human error” explanation in 2025. Once free to speak, nothing stopped Verizon from coming forward. It didn’t, until Grassley’s office came asking.

What Grassley wants – and by when

The letter, co-signed by Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) and fourteen other senators, demands Verizon:

  • Disclose the exact dates Schulman, Hans Vestberg, Craig Silliman, and Vandana Venkatesh were first told about the May 2023 subpoena
  • Turn over internal records from May 2023 through October 2025 discussing whether Verizon believed it had a duty to notify Congress or the SAA
  • Explain, in more than two words, what “human error” actually means

Verizon has until August 13 to respond. (Schulman only took over as CEO in October 2025, meaning he wasn’t at the helm for either the original subpoena or Verizon’s flawed 2023 response – which is exactly why senators want to know precisely when he was personally briefed.)

Twelve of the sixteen senators who signed the letter – Grassley included – had their own phone toll records or text messages swept up by Smith’s investigators. For most of the people demanding answers here, this isn’t abstract oversight.

Other Carriers In The Crosshairs

Verizon isn’t the only carrier under scrutiny. Grassley and Johnson’s joint oversight has identified more than 400 Republican individuals and organizations swept into the broader Arctic Frost dragnet – including, per Grassley’s disclosures, Turning Point USA, founded by the late Charlie Kirk. Separately, the two chairmen have tallied 84 Arctic Frost-related subpoenas sent specifically to Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, ten of which sought toll records for 20 sitting or former GOP members of Congress.

Notably, Verizon complied with Smith’s subpoenas while AT&T pushed back – a contrast Senate Judiciary Republicans have highlighted approvingly. The subpoenas were accompanied by gag orders signed by Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee who has repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration on unrelated matters. The House Judiciary Committee, under Chairman Jim Jordan, has opened its own parallel probe into the telecoms.

Smith, for his part, has called the entire controversy overblown, maintaining his office’s collection was lawful and noting that special counsel Robert Hur similarly obtained President Biden’s toll records, and that DOJ under Trump’s first term seized phone records belonging to Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.

Last month we reported on DOJ records showing Smith’s team bypassed the department’s own privilege-screening “filter team” and directly accessed text messages between 44 members of Congress – from both parties – and Trump White House officials including Mark Meadows and Kash Patel, in apparent tension with Smith’s own sworn testimony that his office sought “just toll records.” Weeks later, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan escalated matters further, referring Smith to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution over the same records dispute.

Verizon’s August 13 deadline will determine whether this becomes another entry on Grassley’s growing pile of unanswered questions, or the start of the same reckoning AT&T and T-Mobile executives already faced before the Judiciary Subcommittee earlier this year. Either way, sixteen senators – a dozen of whom found their own names in Jack Smith’s files – aren’t inclined to let it drop.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2026 – 12:50

Leftists Now Claim US And Israel Behind The Migrant Invasion Of Spain

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Leftists Now Claim US And Israel Behind The Migrant Invasion Of Spain

A clear pattern is emerging:  When the political left or their favorite pet migrants wreak havoc and commit heinous crimes, the immediate canned response from the activist fold is to blame the “right wing” or blame those devious Israelis.  Why do they do this?  Because it works. 

Progressive politicians and third world invaders always seem to dodge accountability while conservative movements in-fight over the source of the problem. 

There a people on both sides of the aisle that maintain a distaste for Israel, sometimes to the point that they attribute almost godlike abilities to the Israeli government.  They seem to be downright omnipresent; everywhere all at once and always ten steps ahead.  It’s positively astounding.  

Strategists within leftist and elitist movements understand very well that many conservatives and independents are suspicious of Israeli influence and they use this built-in paranoia as a weapon to divert attention away from their own machinations.  While there are plenty of valid criticisms to be made against Israel, some claims dive deep into the absurd.

For example, the political left is spreading a new narrative across social media asserting that the migrant invasion of Spain’s Ceuta enclave is part of a vast US/Israeli conspiracy to destroy the country.  In other words, they believe that tens-of-thousands of Muslim migrants are taking marching orders from a Jewish-run government. 

Truly, this is an unprecedented level of progress in Islamic/Israeli relations.

Spain’s Transportation Minister supported the theory on social media while Gabriel Rufián, a spokesperson from the Spanish Congress, asserted that it was the US and Israel flooding Europe with migrants to “blackmail” the country.  Meanwhile, Hollywood actor Javier Barden took to Instagram to claim that the Israelis and the “far right” in the US were “turning migration into a weapon” to harm Spain and to make Muslim migrants look bad. 

It should be noted that the level of projection here is off the charts, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

The “evidence” used to support this theory is based on two incidents:  A speech by Benjamin Netenyahu from April in which he accused Spain of waging a “diplomatic war” against Israel. He concluded with words to the effect:

“I am not prepared to tolerate this hypocrisy and this hostility. I do not intend to allow any country to wage a diplomatic war against us without paying an immediate price.” 

The fact that Morocco is a member of the Abraham Accords is also used to play up the theory that Morocco is taking orders from the Israelis.  However, Netanyahu’s statements were in direct reference to ambassador recalls and lawsuits waged by Spain.  The “immediate price” was the removal of Spanish representatives from the Civil-Military Coordination Center which is working to secure a ceasefire in Gaza. 

There is zero evidence that the US or Israel is working with Morocco to organize a Muslim invasion of Spain, though such a feat of cooperation with Islamic migrants would be quite impressive.  

Another piece of evidence used to support the idea of an Israeli engineered migration event is a post on Twitter from 2019 by Netenyahu’s son (Yair Netanyahu) in which he specifically cites Ceuta as a place Muslims should invade.  Surely, this is damning evidence…

Context matters, however, and correlation is not causation.  This post was made as a rhetorical jab in direct response to a debate with Spanish officials over the West Bank and the accusation that Israel is a “colonial power” that should leave the region.  Yair, in a bid to expose Spain’s hypocrisy, pointed out that their definition of “colonialism” also applied to their lands held in Northern Africa, including Ceuta. 

In other words, he was arguing that if it’s okay to demand that the Israelis give up lands in the West Bank to Muslims, then it’s fair to demand that Spain give up their land holdings in Ceuta to Muslims.  One can disagree with the comparison made in the post, but it’s not some genius attack plan laid out seven years in advance to destroy Spain.  

It’s important to set aside biases in geopolitics if one is to understand why things happen the way they do.  Understanding the truth requires evidence, not feelings and knee-jerk reactions.  

For anyone looking for the real culprits behind the mass third world invasion of Spain, they need look no further than Spain’s own political leaders and their socialist policies.  It was the Spanish government that passed two separate amnesty measures that would give citizenship over half-a-million illegal migrants starting in 2026.  When you reward criminality en masse, more and more criminals are going to show up to abuse you.

Third world migrants will now pour into Spain under the assumption that the far-left government will simply pass another amnesty in the near future.

Another problem is a Spanish Supreme Court ruling from June which restricted “hot returns” (forced and immediate deportations) of migrants who arrive by sea.  If you’re wondering why so many thousands of migrants were swimming to Ceuta instead of simply crossing the border, this is why.  Spanish courts created a loophole which migrants falsely assumed they could exploit by swimming to Spanish territory. 

To drive the point home, Spanish Primer Minister Pedro Sánchez condemned the migration event while at the same time calling for “coexistence” with the invaders.  He enthusiastically supported more open immigration standards only months ago.

    

The reason why Spanish leftists are taking opposition to the Ceuta incident is because it garnered far too much international attention and exposed the greater multiculturalist left as destructive.  Head of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, was more concerned about how the event “looked” in the media than the dangers that naturally come with third world immigration.  

Again, the political left happily encourages open borders, they just don’t want to take responsibility for what happens after the foreign invaders start pillaging and raping.  Hence, the blame game with the US and Israel.  By extension, no one forced these migrants to act the way they did in Ceuta.  No one made them attack locals, loot stores and homes, or burn down buildings.  They did all that on their own. 

Maybe it’s time for socialists and third worlders to start taking the blame for a change.  No more excuses.  No more scapegoats.  

Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2026 – 12:15

Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Short Seller Fairy Tale

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Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Short Seller Fairy Tale

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

Leopold Aschenbrenner’s hedge fund, stuffed like the ass of a Thanksgiving turkey with every trendy AI name you could throw a dart at, reportedly suffered one of the most spectacular drawdowns of recent memory, losing roughly 67% in July after a series of heavily leveraged bets went violently against it.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the losses became severe enough to trigger margin calls, forcing the firm into emergency asset sales. Public positions were reportedly sold to Citadel to raise liquidity, and the fund even negotiated a multibillion-dollar sale of its prized Anthropic stake before apparently changing its mind the following morning.

It is, in every sense of the word, the kind of month that reminds people leverage is not just a way to make returns bigger…it’s a way to make your mistakes arrive all at once.

What’s remarkable isn’t that the fund blew up just weeks after everyone in the media started slobbering over Aschenbrenner as if he was some visionary for figuring out the “strategy” of buying crap featured daily on CNBC using leverage. Markets have been humbling overconfident investors since the Dutch were trading tulips. What’s remarkable is that, according to reports describing the investor letter, Aschenbrenner partially blamed short sellers for accelerating the collapse, likening the experience to a bank run:

Aschenbrenner partially blamed short sellers who targeted the firm’s positions for exacerbating the fund’s losses, the letter said. The letter compared Situational’s experience to a bank run. Aschenbrenner told investors that the firm had removed all leverage from the portfolio.

And that is where this story stops being about investing and starts becoming about accountability. There is perhaps no bigger bitch move in finance than levering yourself to the eyeballs into the most crowded, most euphoric, most narratively beloved sector on Earth, riding the momentum all the way to the top tick of a genuinely pornographic stock bubble, detonating your own portfolio when the inevitable correction arrives, and then looking around the room for someone else to blame.

That’s not what investors pay hedge fund fees for. They don’t wire you billions so you can discover, after the fact, that markets occasionally go down and that other participants are allowed to disagree with your positioning.

Let’s clear something up, because this myth refuses to die every goddamn market cycle: short sellers do not possess mystical powers to force stocks lower simply because they dislike them.

A short sale is not the financial equivalent of Voldemort casting a spell over the tape. A short seller borrows shares, sells them into the market, and eventually has to buy those same shares back. That’s the entire trade. If enough genuine buyers exist who are willing to absorb that selling pressure, the stock doesn’t go down, it goes up and the short seller gets obliterated. Ask me how I know.

We’ve watched this movie countless times. Tesla. GameStop. Nvidia. Countless biotech squeezes. The market has an extensive history of taking arrogant short sellers, introducing them to the concept of unlimited losses, and escorting them directly into bankruptcy.

The reason stocks collapse isn’t because shorts are somehow overpowering reality. Stocks collapse because the marginal buyer disappears. They collapse because valuations become impossible to justify. They collapse because the people who spent months insisting they would “buy every dip” suddenly become strangely unavailable once the dips become serious.

Shorts don’t create that dynamic. They participate in it. If they could simply dictate prices through force of will, every dedicated short seller would be richer than Warren Buffett, and every bubble in history would have ended before it began. Clearly that’s not how markets work.

What’s especially rich about blaming shorts is that leverage itself creates vastly more selling pressure than shorts ever could. Once your lenders start calling, you don’t get the luxury of diamond hands or inspirational letters about long-term conviction. Your positions get sold because they have to be sold. Every forced liquidation pushes prices lower, which triggers more margin calls, which produces more forced liquidations. It’s an ugly feedback loop that has existed for as long as people have borrowed money to speculate. That’s not market manipulation. That’s mathematics meeting risk management.

Or, in this case, mathematics meeting the complete absence of adequate risk management.

This wasn’t some unforeseeable meteor strike. AI stocks had become the most crowded trade in global markets. Valuations had detached from anything remotely resembling traditional fundamentals because everyone wanted exposure to “the future.” That doesn’t necessarily mean the companies are bad businesses. It does mean that expectations become impossibly high and positioning becomes dangerously one-sided. Every competent portfolio manager understands that crowded trades can reverse with astonishing violence precisely because everyone owns the same thing at the same time, often financed with borrowed money.

That’s supposed to be the point of risk management. You’re supposed to ask yourself, “What happens if I’m wrong?” You’re supposed to ask, “What happens if liquidity disappears?” You’re supposed to ask, “What happens if this correction is twice as bad as consensus expects?”

If the honest answer is, “My prime broker starts liquidating me,” then perhaps the position size deserved another look before the market did it for you.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the reported letter is the instinct to externalize responsibility. Every market participant, CEO, investor and analyst deals with short sellers. Every market participant deals with volatility. Every market participant deals with critics, momentum reversals, liquidity squeezes, and crowded positioning. Those aren’t extraordinary circumstances. They’re literally the job description.

Professional portfolio management is not about predicting a future where nobody ever sells your favorite stock. It’s about constructing a portfolio that survives the future where they do.

Blaming shorts after a catastrophic drawdown is a bit like blaming gravity after jumping off a roof. Gravity was never hiding its intentions. It has behaved exactly the same way every single day since the beginning of time. The only surprise is that someone apparently built an investment strategy around the assumption that this time it would be different.

Markets are ruthless teachers because they don’t care how compelling your narrative is, how luxurious your head of hair is, how much CNBC worships you, or how impressive your reputation has become. They don’t care whether you’ve become an AI celebrity, whether Silicon Valley hangs on your every word, or whether investors think you’ve cracked the code. They simply tally the gains and losses. When the leverage becomes excessive, the bill always arrives. Sometimes it arrives all at once.

Welcome to reality, young man.

—

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. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of all facts and figures included in this article though I made my best effort to get them right. I have been wrong before and will be wrong again, and encourage you to always double check, do your own research and speak to a licensed financial professional.

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.

As of May 20, 2026 I am attempting to no longer actively trade (read my story here). My investing/saving is mostly done by recurring contributions mostly to sector ETFs and a few select equities, trusted third parties who oversee my accounts, and advisors. Such advisors or funds, through individual equities, options, index funds, mutual funds, ETFs, or other securities, may have positions in, exposure to, or holdings of names mentioned herein that I know nothing about. Basically, via index funds, ETFs and individual equities it is possible I could own, have exposure to, or not own anything at any point. As of the same date, May 20, 2026, in an attempt to lead a healthier lifestyle, I’ve also excluded myself from fantasy sports, sports betting, online and in-person casinos and prediction markets.

And 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.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2026 – 11:40

Closed Borders Killing Western Union, Earnings Call Transcripts Reveal

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Closed Borders Killing Western Union, Earnings Call Transcripts Reveal

Western Union CFO Matt Cagwin quietly acknowledged in yesterday’s earnings call that fewer border crossings under the Trump admin are chipping away at the remittance behemoth’s profits:

“New migration is the lifeline of our retail business. With borders closed, it is difficult to offset natural attrition… as consumers return home to their native countries,” Cagwin said.

WU has long been the dominant vampire skimming absurd fees off international remittances while providing no technological convenience that Venmo hasn’t already surpassed. It’s instead maintained its now-dwindling market share through lobbying, which is why it can charge a 40% for a South Africa-to-Botswana cash transfer:

Western Union charges as high as 40,11% for a ~$84 USD remittance from South Africa to Botswana. Data from the World Bank, Q2 2021.

The firm’s decline is continuing a trend since President Trump took office for his second term, during which he’s been markedly more hawkish on immigration, with the United States seeing net negative migration last year for the first time in over half a century.

For 2025, it was reported that remittances from the U.S. to Mexico declined almost 5% for the year. Last year’s trend appears to be accelerating.

On yesterday’s earnings call, Western Union CEO Devin McGranahan said that remittances from “U.S. to Mexico declined a little over 3% on a transaction basis in the quarter [Q2, 2026].” 

WU’s stock was down 15% on the day, following the news. CEO McGranahan also acknowledged that immigration policy was the core driver behind the revenue loss: 

“As you know, remittances in the Americas have faced meaningful pressure that began in late 2024, driven by the changes in immigration policy… It just means it will be difficult to get the business back to true growth without a meaningful change in immigration policy…”

Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2026 – 09:55

Germany Builds AI ‘Racist Uncle’ Robot To Indoctrinate Kids In Schools

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Germany Builds AI ‘Racist Uncle’ Robot To Indoctrinate Kids In Schools

Authored by an ‘anonymous German teacher’ via dailysceptic.org,

Täteropferumkehr is the German term for “victim blaming” – often hyphenated as Täter-Opfer-Umkehr to make it look slightly less clunky. In recent times, our political and media establishment have turned it into a sharp tool, employed with reference to both foreign and domestic politics.

Unsurprisingly, Germany’s woke Left – always eager to champion the alleged plight of the “oppressed” – views Israel, the only functioning democracy in the Middle East, as the ultimate perpetrator, while framing bloodthirsty Arab aggressors as the true victims. In 2025, five Berlin-based “activists” (four of whom openly identify as “they/them”) ransacked an Elbit Systems facility in Ulm, causing over a million euros in damage. Now standing trial in Stuttgart, they naturally view themselves as the victims.

One wonders what would happen if “roller-skating” Daniel, “music-making” Crow, “poetry-writing” Leandra, “community-organising” Vi, and “nature-loving” Zo were dropped onto the shores of Gaza. Would “they/them” receive a warm welcome from Hamas? The non-binary inmates might have gleaned an inkling of what radical Islamists have in store for them following the Islamist attack on the Berlin Pride parade last Saturday.

On the domestic front, we see an equally Orwellian exercise in doublethink. The one political party that has been systematically cut off from public funding, denied committee chairs, pilloried behind a political Brandmauer (“firewall”), and whose members suffer the lion’s share of physical assaults is routinely portrayed as the sole perpetrator.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is ceaselessly accused of peddling racism, revisionism and Russophilia – to name just a few of the slurs slung its way by the goody-two-shoes gatekeepers of the moral high ground.

The siren song of establishment polity, legacy media and state-funded NGOs has increasingly been amplified in secondary schools.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, one in five schools belongs to the taxpayer-funded “School Without Racism” network, backed by a leftist teachers’ union. Where these funds actually go is often opaque, but the encouraged “activism” almost always targets “Right-wing extremism” – which, in modern German parlance, simply means campaigning against the AfD.

Currently, state and federal authorities are in a panic over the prospect of the AfD winning an outright majority in upcoming state elections. Polls show support for the maligned party hovering above 40% in Saxony-Anhalt, which could easily translate into a parliamentary majority. Reiner Haseloff, a former Minister-President of the state, even resorted to scaremongering, hinting that secondary school diplomas from Saxony-Anhalt might no longer be recognised in other parts of Germany if the “wrong” party wins.

Often, the anti-AfD machinery operates more subtly. Before the last local elections, municipal authorities displayed posters and information for all mayoral candidates in my school’s foyer – well, almost all. The AfD candidate was conspicuously missing. When I asked the election official about this glaring omission, I was told the local AfD had failed to respond to the municipality’s request for information. When a colleague followed up with the local AfD branch, they confirmed they had never been contacted in the first place.

But the most ludicrous example of state-sponsored indoctrination in my area is an AI robot named “Navel”.

Developed by a PhD student at the local university in cahoots with the largely taxpayer-funded “Active Museum South-Westphalia”, the robot was programmed to impersonate a “racist uncle” at a family reunion, spouting anti-immigrant talking points.

Secondary school students were encouraged to “spar” with the divisive Dalek to hone their skills in rebutting Right-wing thought. To make the exercise even more absurd, the robot is built to look like a toddler and wears a woolly cap to “humanise” it.

Yet, despite the vast sums of money, resources and personnel poured into this apparatus by governments and their ‘civil society’ allies, the desired outcome remains elusive.

Marcel Fratzscher, a favourite economist of the establishment Left, recently lamented in Die Zeit that young men in particular are turning to the populist right because they “feel like losers of modernisation”.

His grim conclusion: “There is little remedy.”

So what does it mean when the concerted effort of the righteous left cannot turn the tide of sustained AfD support? Perhaps the commentariat, the wokerati and the creator of the unwittingly ironically named AI uncle “Navel” should engage less in navel-gazing and doublethink and more in recognising reality. Israel – not Hamas – is our ally; the AfD is a party like all others, entitled to the same privileges; and children in school must not be indoctrinated.

Perhaps we should send “Navel” to the “they/them” lot in jail for some instructive lessons. But they might refuse to engage with him so long as he declines to share his pronouns.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2026 – 09:20

Crude Inventories Have Fallen To “Precariously Low” Levels

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Crude Inventories Have Fallen To “Precariously Low” Levels

U.S. crude inventories fell sharply last week as refineries ramped up production to capitalize on higher fuel prices following renewed conflict with Iran, according to Financial Times.

Commercial crude stockpiles declined by 7.2 million barrels, while the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) dropped another 3.8 million barrels. Refineries operated at 97% of capacity nationwide, with some Midwest facilities running at full capacity as exports to Asia and Europe increased.

FT writes that the drawdown comes as renewed fighting between the U.S. and Iran continues to disrupt oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, forcing the U.S. to help offset reduced Middle Eastern supplies. Analysts warn that America is increasingly carrying the burden of stabilizing global oil markets.

“US crude inventories, both commercial and the SPR, have drawn down by nearly 20 per cent since early April. The US accounts for about 70 per cent of global onshore crude inventory draws over the past four months,” said Matt Smith of Kpler.

“It has carried the burden of trying to keep oil prices in check over this period via SPR releases and higher exports, but stockpiles are rapidly depleting and this pace of draws cannot persist ad infinitum.”

The SPR has now fallen to 307.7 million barrels, its lowest level in more than 40 years. While still above its estimated operational minimum of 180 million to 200 million barrels, analysts warn that continued depletion leaves the U.S. increasingly exposed to future supply shocks.

Commodity Context founder Rory Johnston described current crude and gasoline inventories as “precariously low.”

Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2026 – 08:45

Britain’s Problems Didn’t Begin With Brexit

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Britain’s Problems Didn’t Begin With Brexit

Authored by Jason Sorens via  The Daily Economy,

Ten years ago, Britons voted to leave the European Union, launching three and a half years of tumultuous negotiations and domestic political ructions, only subsiding after the UK’s official withdrawal in January 2020.

It’s tempting to see Brexit as a watershed moment in Britain’s political economy. Britons themselves now tend to regret the choice rather than affirm it, with narrow majorities affirming that Brexit has been “more of a failure” and supporting restoring free movement with the EU in exchange for single-market access.

Contrary to some forecasts, Brexit has been closer to an economic blip than a disaster. Figure 1 shows net disposable household income per capita in the UK and comparable countries. While Ireland has rocketed ahead of this whole group, it’s difficult to see any worse economic performance in the UK compared to France and Germany since 2020.

Figure 1: Disposable Income Over Time in the UK and Comparable Countries.

But this low bar—no worse than France or Germany—reflects the deeper ailment in British politics. Brexit was merely one episode in a long series of abdications of responsibility by British leaders.

Free-market Brexiteers like Daniel Hannan assured us that Brexit would allow the UK to deregulate and improve competitiveness:

“It’s 24 June 2025 …. The years that followed the 2016 referendum didn’t just reinvigorate our economy, our democracy and our liberty. They improved relations with our neighbours,” he forecast on June 21, 2016. He went on:

“The United Kingdom is now the region’s foremost knowledge-based economy. We lead the world in biotech, law, education, the audio-visual sector, financial services and software. New industries, from 3D printing to driverless cars, have sprung up around the country. Older industries, too, have revived as energy prices have fallen back to global levels: steel, cement, paper, plastics and ceramics producers have become competitive again.”

None of that happened. The UK never undertook deregulation commensurate with the new barriers that Brexit imposed, such as new customs paperwork and inspections for goods traveling between the UK and the Continent, and strict limits on Britons and Europeans moving to each other’s countries for work. According to a research briefing from the House of Commons Library, “most regulations made under the [UK law authorizing repeal of EU regulations] have not led to substantive policy changes.”

So much for Brexit’s oversold transformative potential. The real story Britons must grapple with is a nearly 20-year narrative of decline.

Britain had once outperformed its closest Continental peers on the back of a market-friendly economic model created by Thatcher, preserved by Major, and adapted by Blair. Since the disastrous premiership of Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Britain has sickened itself with the same maladies that have since left most of Western Europe stagnating.

Brown’s premiership, spanning 2007 to 2010, saw the government debt-to-GDP ratio increase 76 percent in just three years. All of that increase came from government spending, not tax cuts (taxes were raised at the high end and on some middle-income households). While the Great Recession caused government spending and debt to rise everywhere, Britain’s increase was much larger than that of France and Germany (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Government Debt to GDP Ratios in the UK, France, and Germany.

Another long-term legacy of Brown’s premiership has been the Equality Act, which introduced the language of “rights” to economic contracts. It mandates detailed fair employment protections across a broad range of protected categories, including a Marxist-inspired concept of equal pay for equal “demands” or “effort.” It is the legal basis under which some courts are now ruling that it is unlawful to pay men and women different wages in a single company even if they do different jobs.

The Conservatives took power, in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, from Brown’s Labour, but to soothe voters worried about a return of Thatcherism, successive Tory Prime Ministers maintained the high-tax, high-spending, high-regulation equilibrium.

Brown’s tax hikes had increased tax revenues to GDP from 32 to 33 percent. Despite a small top marginal rate cut, Conservative-led governments raised VAT and eventually, under Rishi Sunak, reversed cuts to corporate income taxes. By 2022, tax revenues to GDP stood at 35 percent.

One of the UK’s main economic policy advantages over the Continent has been a flexible labor market, but that is now under threat. The Blair government introduced a largely symbolic minimum wage, but the Tories hiked it to new heights, from £5.52 in 2007 to £11.44 in 2024 when Labour won back power, with inflation-adjusted rates rising inexorably since 2015. The UK minimum wage is now two-thirds of the median wage; that ratio is one of the highest in the OECD.

An example of Britons’ growing obsession with getting free stuff from the government is the explosion of the Motability scheme, which is supposed to give mobility-impaired disabled people the right to allocate some of their disability benefits toward leasing new cars. Eligibility for and participation in the program have exploded, to the point that a fifth of all new cars in the UK—and reportedly a full half of those in Northern Ireland—are leased through Motability. Motability itself is an ostensibly private nonprofit, but its monopoly on managing this welfare scheme has enriched it to the point of dispensing multimillion-pound bonuses to its executives.

The overall disability caseload in the UK has grown by 57 percent since 2005, rising from 7.4 percent of the population in May 2005 to 10.8 percent in May 2025. Most of that growth has been in just the last five years.

Benefits for pensioners have also exploded. In coalition with the Lib Dems, the Tories enacted the “triple lock,” growing social security benefits at the highest of earnings growth, CPI inflation, or 2 percent.

But it is seen as not nice in mainstream British discourse to question the expansion of welfare and especially cornerstones of politically correct regulation like the Equality Act.

British governments have failed to level with the British people. The punchbowl is gone. The money is simply not there. The debt vigilantes are at the door, with the British benchmark 10-year rate among the highest in the developed world (Figure 3).

Figure 3: 10-Year Bond Yields, Selected Countries, June 22, 2026.

Is the United States faring any better? Not much. At least the U.S. has had some real deregulation, but the fantasy of debt-fueled free lunches still reigns supreme in the minds of politicians and many voters.

Still, Britain stands out as a country where politicians have waved away tradeoffs and legislated feel-good rules that grab a few days of good press at the expense of long-term economic pain. Brexit was fantasy politics, to be sure, but that is something it shares with the politically correct Regime of Nice that has ruled the country for the past 20 years.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2026 – 08:10

Xi Tells PLA TO Build ‘Intelligent Military System’ As Beijing Leans Into Drones And AI

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Xi Tells PLA TO Build ‘Intelligent Military System’ As Beijing Leans Into Drones And AI

China’s Xi Jinping told the People’s Liberation Army this week to intensify the military application of artificial intelligence and unmanned systems, telling a Politburo study session that the force should build toward what the official readout called an “intelligent military system.” The directive landed days before the PLA’s ninety-ninth anniversary and squarely on the modernization targets Beijing has set for its centenary in 2027.

President Xi Jinping reviews troops during a massive military parade that showcased the PLA’s latest arsenal, in Beijing on September 3, 2025. Photo: Xinhua

According to the state news agency Xinhua, as noted by Bloomberg, Xi told the session that the PLA should strengthen the military application of unmanned intelligent technologies, deepen the development of networked information systems, and gradually build an intelligent military. The report singles out autonomous and AI-enabled capability as the direction of travel and ties it to the “intelligentization” doctrine that has guided PLA planning for years. Xi paired the technology push with a renewed anti-corruption drive inside the military and the familiar insistence that the armed forces answer, always, to the Party.

The Race With Washington

Obviously this is about geopolitical dominance. Beijing’s public posture increasingly treats AI and unmanned platforms as the technologies that will reshape modern warfare, and Xi’s remarks land while the United States pours its own money into military AI and autonomous systems. Analysts who track the PLA describe intelligentization as a whole-of-nation effort, mobilizing not just the armed forces but the country’s scientific and industrial base, with the most ambitious version of the goal being to match or exceed US military capabilities by mid-century.

Meanwhile, reviews of Chinese research surfaced PLA-linked work using Western AI models, obtained through distillation, to train domestic defense tools, a reminder that the “intelligent military” Xi is describing is being assembled in part from the same frontier-model capabilities the West is trying to fence off through export controls.

It’s no secret that unmanned and AI-enabled systems are a key priority for Chinese military modernization, and it it comes as Washington’s own hawks are warning that permitting delays and data-center backlash could hand Beijing the edge in exactly this contest…

In short:

Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2026 – 07:35

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