Authored by Carl Henegan and Tom Jefferson via The Brownstone Institute,

There is a peculiar arithmetic that governs modern health reporting, one that has very little to do with actual risk. Hans Rosling captured it neatly during the 2009 swine flu episode, when he calculated a “news-to-death ratio” of 8,176-to-1. In other words, for every death attributed to swine flu, there were over eight thousand news stories. Tuberculosis, by contrast, received less than 0.1 news stories per death over the same period.

If that sounds absurd, it is, and yet very little has changed.

Take the current hantavirus scare. A cruise ship, the MV Hondius, sits off Cape Verde. There are 7 cases in total (2 confirmed, 5 suspected) and 3 deaths, including a Dutch couple and a German national. Passengers have been confined to their cabins while evacuations and disinfection efforts are organised. It is, undeniably, a dramatic story: a floating Petri dish, a whiff of quarantine, and a hint of the exotic.

In the past week alone, there have been at least 10 to 15 unique news stories, generating hundreds of articles. For a disease that, in normal times, struggles to attract even a single weekly mention, this represents a surge bordering on the hysterical.

And yet it is worth stepping back for a moment and asking, what are we actually looking at?

Hantavirus is a rare disease. In the United States, which diligently tracks such cases, there have been 890 laboratory-confirmed instances since 1993. In the UK, the situation is even less clear: from 2012 to early 2025, only 11 domestically acquired symptomatic cases have been recorded. Surprisingly, nine of these cases were not linked to cruise ships or exotic travel, but rather to a more mundane source—exposure to “pet fancy rats” or rodents bred as reptile feed.

This is not a pathogen ready to spread through the Home Counties. However, the rarity is not the issue; visibility is.

Diseases that afflict the poor, quietly and persistently, rarely command attention. Tuberculosis killed 1.23 million people globally in 2024. Over a million deaths every year, largely concentrated in less affluent parts of the world. It is one of the most lethal infectious diseases known to medicine, and yet it barely registers in the Western news cycle.

Why? Because TB is familiar, it is slow; It lacks narrative flair, and it does not trap well-heeled passengers in their cabins while helicopters circle overhead.

If you want coverage, you need something else entirely. You need novelty, uncertainty, and above all, proximity to affluence. A cruise ship outbreak ticks every box: a disease with a balcony suite.

This is the uncomfortable truth behind Rosling’s ratio: the media does not report risk, it reports drama. And drama requires context that audiences can imagine themselves in.

A rodent-borne virus in some remote rural setting barely registers. Put that very same virus aboard a cruise ship with buffet queues, balcony cabins, and a passenger list that looks uncomfortably like the readership, and suddenly it becomes headline news.

The result is a profound distortion of public perception. We are invited to worry about the improbable while ignoring the inevitable and reality. A handful of hantavirus cases generates dozens of headlines; a million tuberculosis deaths pass with barely a murmur.

If we were to apply Rosling’s lens to the present moment, the imbalance would be obvious. Three deaths linked to a suspected hantavirus cluster have produced hundreds of reports in a matter of days. Meanwhile, tuberculosis continues its relentless toll with scarcely a fraction of that attention.

The modern “news-to-death ratio” may not be precisely 8,176-to-1, but the underlying pattern remains intact.

The lesson here isn’t truly about hantavirus; instead, it’s about how we collectively determine what is significant.

Diseases associated with poverty—those that are endemic, predictable, and devastating—often fail to attract media attention because they don’t instill fear in the right audience or in the right way. No one is interested in the thousands of cholera deaths that are too remote, too ordinary, and lack the dramatic impact that draws interest. What commands attention are diseases that puncture our sense of safety, the kind that can slip past the gangway and make themselves at home on a cruise ship.

This post was written by two old geezers who live in a world where risk is misread, priorities are skewed, and the arithmetic of attention bears little resemblance to the arithmetic of death.

Republished from the authors’ Substack

Authored by Zoltan Vardai via CoinTelegraph.com,

A newly unsealed court filing in the Terraform Labs bankruptcy case alleges Jane Street used a private Telegram channel with former Terraform intern Bryce Pratt to obtain nonpublic information before the collapse of TerraUSD. Pratt is currently a systems developer at Jane Street. 

The channel, called “Bryce’s Secret,” allegedly gave the quantitative trading firm a backchannel to Terraform insiders as Jane Street unwound exposure to TerraUSD (UST) shortly before the algorithmic stablecoin lost its dollar peg in May 2022, according to the filing. “Jane Street used Bryce’s Secret chat group and other backchannel sources of non-public information to front-run trading that hastened the collapse of Terraform,” the filing states.

The claims renew scrutiny of who profited from Terra’s $40 billion collapse, one of the crypto industry’s largest failures, and could test how traditional insider trading and market manipulation theories apply to decentralized finance markets.

On Feb. 23, Todd Snyder, Terraform’s court-appointed administrator, sued Jane Street, its co-founder Robert Granieri, and employees Bryce Pratt and Michael Huang in Manhattan federal court, accusing them of “misappropriating confidential information and manipulating market prices.” 

Two months later, Jane Street filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that Terraform attempted to “extract cash from Jane Street to foot the bill for a fraud that Terraform itself perpetrated on the market,” Cointelegraph reported on April 23.

A spokesperson for Jane Street told Cointelegraph that the lawsuit was a transparent attempt to “extract money when it is well-established that the losses suffered by Terra and Luna holders were the result of a multi-billion dollar fraud perpetrated by the management of Terraform Labs.”

Terraform Labs court filing in the lawsuit against Jane Street. Source: cloudfront.net

Curve trade raises new UST concerns

The timing of a particular UST trade has raised more concerns, suggesting potential access to insider information by an unknown entity.

On May 7, 2022, Terraform quietly withdrew about $150 million in UST from the Curve 3pool liquidity pool.

Less than 10 minutes after Terraform’s withdrawal, Curve 3pool saw its largest single swap of $85 million, precipitating a steep sell-off in UST, which the filing said “ultimately led to the collapse of the Terra ecosystem.”

The heavily redacted filing does not identify the entity behind the swap.

Terraform Labs court filing in the lawsuit against Jane Street. Source: cloudfront.net

Snyder seeks to recover alleged wrongful gains from Jane Street, plus compensation for additional damages to distribute to Terraform creditors and investors who lost funds in the 2022 collapse.

Jane Street is the world’s leading quantitative trading firm by net trading revenue, with $39.6 billion generated in 2025, reported Reuters.

Cointelegraph reached out to Terraform’s court-appointed administrator for comment but had not received a response by publication.

Trucks carrying intercontinental ballistic missiles rumbled over forest roads, atomic-powered submarines set sail from Arctic and Pacific ports, and crews scrambled into warplanes as Russia and neighboring Belarus held the final stage of their joint nuclear drills Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the maneuvers in a video call with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko. “The use of nuclear weapons is an extreme, exceptional measure for ensuring the national security of our states,” Putin said, according to AP.

Lukashenko earlier inspected Russian short-range nuclear-capable Iskander ballistic missiles at a military unit involved in the drills and declared: “I dreamed about this machine a long time ago.”

The three-day drills that began Tuesday come amid a surge in Ukrainian drone strikes. including on Moscow’s suburbs that killed three people and damaged several buildings and industrial facilities. The strikes made it harder for officials in the Kremlin to cast the conflict in Ukraine — now in its fifth year — as something so distant that it doesn’t affect the daily routines of Russian civilians.

Drills involve wide array of nuclear weapons

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the exercise involved 64,000 troops, over 200 missile launchers, more than 140 aircraft, 73 surface warships and 13 submarines, including eight armed with nuclear-tipped ICBMs. The drills focused on the “preparation and use of nuclear forces under the threat of aggression,” it said.

The maneuvers also practice cooperation with Belarus, an ally that hosts Russian nuclear weapons. Russian arsenals in Belarus include its latest intermediate range nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile system.

Along with nuclear-tipped ground- and submarine-launched ICBMs, the maneuvers featured a broad assortment of short- and medium-range weapons.

Unlike the intercontinental missiles that can destroy entire cities, tactical nuclear weapons intended for use against troops on the battlefield are less powerful. They include aerial bombs and warheads for short- and medium-range missiles and artillery munitions.

The Defense Ministry said the Russian armed forces test-fired Yars and Sineva ICBMs, as well as medium-range sea-launched Zircon and air-launched Kinzhal missiles, noting that all missiles hit their designated practice targets. Belarusian troops test-fired a short-range Iskander ballistic missile inside Russia.

Putin has repeatedly reminded the world about Moscow’s nuclear arsenals since the war in Ukraine started in February 2022 to deter the West from ramping up support for Kyiv.

In 2024, the Kremlin adopted a revised nuclear doctrine, noting that any nation’s conventional attack on Russia that is supported by a nuclear power will be considered a joint attack on his country. That threat was clearly aimed at discouraging the West from allowing Ukraine to strike Russia with longer-range weapons and appears to significantly lower the threshold for the possible use of Moscow’s nuclear arsenal.

The revised doctrine also placed Belarus under the Russian nuclear umbrella. Putin has said that Moscow will retain control of its nuclear weapons deployed in Belarus, which borders Ukraine and NATO members Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, but would allow its ally to select the targets in case of conflict.

Drills come as Ukrainian drones spotted in the Baltics

The maneuvers are held amid an increase in drone activity in the Baltic nations. On Tuesday, a NATO jet shot down a Ukrainian drone over southern Estonia. Ukraine apologized for that “unintended incident,” without specifying what had happened.

On Wednesday, an emergency announcement about a drone flying over Belarus prompted residents of the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, including top officials and lawmakers, to take shelter and led to a brief closure of its airport.

Ukrainian drones targeting Russia’s Baltic ports and energy facilities have recently crossed or come down in NATO territory on several occasions. Amusingly, instead of blaming the source, Ukraine, Western officials blamed Russian electronic jamming of the drones.

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service said Tuesday that Ukraine is preparing drone attacks against Russia from the territory of the Baltic countries and warned of retaliation It alleged Ukrainian military personnel had been deployed to Latvia and warned that the country’s membership in NATO wouldn’t protect it from “just retribution.” Latvian authorities said the allegation was not true.

Last month, the Russian Defense Ministry published a list of factories in Europe that it said were involved in producing drones and their components for Ukraine. It warned that attacks on Russia involving drones manufactured in Europe are fraught with “unpredictable consequences.”

Some commentators interpreted the bellicose statements from Moscow and this week’s exercise featuring short- and medium-range nuclear weapons capable of reaching targets in Europe as part of Kremlin efforts to discourage Western allies from bolstering support for Ukraine.

Asked what message the nuclear exercise was intended to send, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded that “any drills are intended to send a signal,” but wouldn’t elaborate.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is sanctioning four individuals associated with a pro-Hamas flotilla that is trying to access Gaza in support of the terrorist group, the department said in a May 19 statement.

The flotilla is organized by the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA), which has been classified as a specially designated global terrorist by the United States.

“The PCPA was established with funding from Hamas’s International Relations Bureau and Hamas directs its activity through the placement of Hamas officials throughout the organization, including its executive body, the General Secretariat,” the Treasury said.

“So-called humanitarian flotillas that are organized by or supporting designated parties represent a significant compliance risk for financial institutions. Sanctioned terrorist groups continue to maintain significant influence over maritime flotillas to Gaza.”

The four individuals sanctioned by the Treasury include a Spanish member of the PCPA’s General Secretariat, who is a central figure of the flotilla; the acting secretary general and president of the PCPA, who is from Jordan; a Belgium-based European coordinator for the Samidoun organization; and a Samidoun coordinator from Spain.

Samidoun is a front organization for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the State Department has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. Both the PCPA and Samidoun act on behalf of sanctioned Palestinian terrorist organizations, the Treasury said.

In addition, OFAC sanctioned several members of Muslim Brotherhood networks who are aligned with Hamas.

All property and interests in property of the sanctioned individuals that are in the United States or in control of U.S. persons are effectively blocked and must be reported to OFAC. The sanctions prohibit U.S. persons from engaging in any transactions involving the property or interests in property of those who are sanctioned.

“The pro-terror flotilla attempting to reach Gaza is a ludicrous attempt to undermine President Trump’s successful progress toward lasting peace in the region,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said. “Treasury will continue to sever Hamas’ global financial support networks, no matter where in the world they are.”

State Department spokesperson Thomas Pigott said in a May 19 statement that OFAC has targeted three enablers – the flotilla organizers, Muslim Brotherhood members, and Samidoun members – who he said are used by Hamas to sustain its position in Gaza, engage in terrorist violence, and finance its operations.

OFAC’s action exposes how Hamas exploits purported civil society organizations, diaspora groups, and religious institutions “to advance its malign agenda while claiming humanitarian objectives,” according to the spokesperson.

“Under President Trump, the United States remains committed to supporting efforts to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East,” he added. “We will continue to use all available tools to counter those who support terrorism and obstruct the path to a peaceful resolution of the conflict.”

Hamas-UN Ties

Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers are aiming to eliminate a U.N. agency accused of employing Hamas terrorists, according to a May 19 statement from the office of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). The agency being targeted is the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

In February 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning funding for UNRWA. According to the order, the agency has reportedly been infiltrated by members of foreign terrorist organizations, with employees from the organization being directly involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.

UNRWA has dismissed these allegations. In a September 2025 fact sheet, the agency said that claims of some members of its staff in Gaza having links with Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad are false and that it has “not received any information, let alone any evidence, from the Israeli Authorities or any other Member State” about such accusations.

In a May 18 letter to Trump, Cotton and 24 colleagues asked that the administration take “decisive action to fully dismantle UNRWA and eliminate it from the UN budget.”

“Any aid organization in Gaza or otherwise must be demonstrably free of ties to terrorism and committed to transparency, accountability, and peace,” they said in the letter. “We must ensure this failed system doesn’t continue reinforcing the conditions that have fueled terrorism for generations. The time to act is now.”

Two months ago, at the end of March, we reported that Turkey was aggressively dumping its gold reserves in a panic scramble to obtain dollar funding, which Erdogan’s regime was using to keep the Turkish lira from crashing, and to also pay for energy imports which had suddenly soared in price as a result of the Iran war.

The violent selling by Turkey (and other emerging markets) was behind the brutal plunge in gold prices, which tumbled by more than $1000 from near all-time highs at the start of the war to the low 4000s by the time Turkey had done selling much of its gold. 

Then earlier this week, we got another confirmation of Turkey’s wild liquidation spree when the latest central bank data showed that Turkey’s foreign reserves had their biggest monthly decline on record in March, as the Iran war triggered global selloffs in emerging market assets and strained the lira.

According to balance-of-payments data, Turkey’s official reserves cratered by $43.4 billion in March. Part of the decline reflected state intervention to offset portfolio outflows. The current-account deficit, meanwhile, widened to $9.7 billion in March from $7.3 billion in February as a result of soaring commodity prices.

A major energy importer, Turkey has been hit hard by higher oil and gas prices caused by the effective closing of the Strait of Hormuz and the resulting disruptions to world supplies of crude and refined products. Meanwhile, global banks have started changing their formerly favorable outlook on the lira, citing the exploding current-account deficit. Should inflation pressures persist, Turkey will have no choice but to pursue another accelerated devaluation of the Turkish lira. 

“As international institutions continue to raise their average oil price forecasts for 2026, disruptions in supply chains and ongoing regional tensions — and their potential negative impact on transportation and tourism revenues — keep upward risks alive in year-end projections” for Turkey, said Istanbul-based economist Haluk Burumcekci.

Turkish central bank Governor Fatih Karahan said last week that the ratio between the current-account deficit and gross domestic product would be “below historical averages” this year while acknowledging the upside risks.

Yet as we said in March, while selling gold is a step of clear desperation for Turkey which had put in much efforts in recent years to build up a substantial gold stock, it is understandable for a regime that suddenly finds itself in a dollar funding crisis, the bigger question is did Turkey do the same with its holdings of Treasuries which are far more liquid and thus far less likely to move the market even when facing a sizable liquidation. 

The answer, we learned today, is a resounding yes.

According to Bloomberg calculations based on US Treasury data, Turkey sold almost all of its US Treasuries in March as it stepped up efforts to support its currency during the first month of the Iran war. The amount of Treasuries held by Turkey crashed to just $1.8 billion by the end of March, down from $16 billion the previous month, the data showed. The figure includes securities held by the central bank and other Turkish entities, including corporates.

The decline coincided with a selloff in Turkish markets after the Middle East conflict erupted, sending oil prices sharply higher. The central bank moved immediately to prevent a crash in the lira by tightening funding conditions and selling off foreign exchange and gold assets. Its interventions also included swapping gold from reserves, although now that it has also dumped the bulk of its last ditch dollar reserves, those swaps will almost certainly end up forcing Turkey to hand over whatever gold was pledged. 

Turkey’s Treasury holdings were as high as $21 billion in February 2025 after the country spent a year rebuilding reserves. They had peaked about a decade ago at $80 billion, before steadily declining as relations with the US soured over a range of political and geopolitical disputes, and as Turkey consistently sold reserves to maintain a smooth devaluation of the lira. 

Despite the interventions, the lira has remained under pressure as the war drags on. Last week, the central bank raised its year-end inflation target to 24% from 16%, after data showed annual inflation accelerated to 32.4%. Turkish bonds have also suffered steep losses, with 10-year yields hitting record highs of 35.75%.

And now that Turkey has no more gold or Treasurys with which to defend the currency, expect a sharp and painful death in the currency which has gone from less than 10 against the dollar five years ago to a record 45.6 today..

Extending concerns about US consumer weakness – now that the bumper OBBBA tax refund period is over – after yesterday’s earnings by Home Depot and Target, this morning Walmart reported Q1 earnings (the last big company to report, rounding out earnings season) and warned that fuel costs are squeezing the company’s bottom line and could lead to higher prices for shoppers. 

In the latest quarter, the world’s largest retailer said comparable sales in US stores rose 4.1%, excluding fuel, in the latest quarter, slightly better than the 4.0% Wall Street analysts were expecting. That was the good news; the bad news is that Walmart also forecast adjusted profit for the second quarter that missed analysts’ expectations.

The results show that the company continues to gain market share across income levels with its focus on low prices, fast delivery and wide assortment. But the emphasis on affordability is facing pressure as inflation accelerates and the conflict in Iran drives up fuel prices.

Here is a snapshot of what WMT just reported, starting with the highlights:

• Revenue $177.75 billion, +7.3% y/y, beating estimates of $175.06 billion
  • Walmart-only US stores comparable sales ex-gas +4.1%, estimate +4%
  • Sam’s Club US comparable sales ex-gas +3.9%, estimate +3.59%
• Adjusted EPS 66c vs. 61c y/y, in line with exp. 66c
• Gross margin 24.3%, in line with exp. 24.3%

Going down the line:

• Change in US E-Commerce sales +26%, estimate +18.6%
• Operating cash flow $4.74 billion, -12% y/y
• Adjusted operating income $7.67 billion, estimate $7.69 billion

US e-commerce sales grew 26% during the quarter, fueling growth in the company’s biggest market. Sales of grocery and general merchandise rose mid single-digits. General merchandise, which consists of apparel, electronics and other discretionary items, gained the most share in five years.

Walmart also said that transactions at Walmart US rose 3%, while average ticket was up 1.1%, which means that WMT is still eating much of the input costs and making up for its with traffic. That however, will change very soon as the company revealed in its earnings call. 

Walmart reported strong growth in grocery and general merchandise categories; partially offset by 100 bps headwind from maximum fair pricing legislation in pharmacy. Broad-based share gains across categories and income tiers led by upper-income households.

“The high-income consumer is spending with confidence in many categories, whereas the low-income consumer, we can tell, is more budget-conscious, trying to navigate certain financial distress,” Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said in an interview with Bloomberg News. During the quarter, sales slowed somewhat in April after the Easter holiday. Higher tax refunds likely muted the impact of rising gas prices, though that’s abating, Rainey said. Prices rose 1.2% during the quarter and they could increase further if fuel prices stay where they are, he added, although that would surely lead to reduced traffic.

Translation: if it weren’t for upper income consumers, who are forced to trade down to discounters such as Walmart, earnings would have been a disaster. 

And nowhere was this more obvious than in the company’s guidance, because while Q1 earnings were solid, the reason the stock is selling off sharply in premarket trading is the company’s disappointing forecast:

Second quarter forecast: 

• Sees adjusted EPS 72c to 74c, both below the median estimate of 75c 
• Sees net sales at constant currencies +4% to +5%
• Sees operating income at constant currencies up 7% to 10%

2027 full-year forecast

• Still sees adjusted EPS $2.75 to $2.85, below the median estimate $2.92
• Still sees net sales at constant currencies +3.5% to +4.5%

Walmart, which is viewed as an economic barometer due to its large size and footprint across the US and other markets, was the latest confirmation that the “lower half” of the K-shaped economy continues to sink, and it is only the upper half (that is increasingly shopping at WalMart) which is keeping the retailer afloat. 

While spending has largely held up in recent years, consumers have become increasingly selective with their purchases. Good deals and unique products can still attract buyers.

But the biggest wildcard is that the higher tax refunds this year have given families some extra cash, but this benefit is now fading fast as we explained a month ago. While most prices of general goods haven’t risen as operators move existing inventory, this could change as the war drags on.

There’ more: fuel weighed on Walmart’s profit margin in the quarter, as the company absorbed “virtually the entirety” of the increases during the period, Rainey said. The company is prioritizing keeping prices low, with the number of discounts rising 20% from a year ago. That said, Reiney warned of potential higher retail price inflation in Q2 and H2 if the current elevated cost environment persists.

“It’s tough on very short notice to be able to navigate a cost headwind like that,” he said. While Walmart will be able to manage through it, he expects to see an equal or larger challenge related to fuel in the current quarter.

Rainey said that the number of gas gallons customers bought at Walmart stations fell below 10 for first time since 2022; he added that the decline in gas buying is sign of financial stress.

Walmart has consistently posted stronger results than many competitors, raising investors’ expectations and pushing the company’s forward PE to an insane 45x, a multiple that will soon get a painful reminder of what happens to multiples during consumer recessions.

Walmart’s cautious narrative echoes commentary from big-box peers Target Corp. and Home Depot which both signaled this week that consumers are staying resilient although purchases are slowing. Kraft Heinz, McDonald’s and other companies have also struck a cautious tone recently. The past year has been a roller coaster for consumer-facing companies, first with President Trump’s expansive, on-off tariffs, that in some cases roiled operations, and now with the ongoing geopolitical conflicts threatening to dampen demand.

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer has said it seeks to gain market share during challenging economic times by focusing on value and essentials like groceries. Delivery and other online services have expanded Walmart’s base of clients to include wealthier shoppers. Advertising and other businesses are also contributing to profit growth and giving the company more room to further invest in lowering prices and improving store operations.

In particular, fast deliveries have been a growth engine, and the company’s efforts to make inroads into the fashion market are gaining traction. Walmart has also expanded the selection of merchandise on its marketplace of third-party vendors.

The company’s shares tumbled more than 3% in premarket trading in New York. The stock has risen 17% so far this year as of Wednesday’s close. Shares of Walmart’s peers, including Target and Kroger Co., also fell in premarket trading on Thursday.

Full Q1 investor presentation below (pdf link)

q1 Fy27 Earnings Presentation by Zerohedge

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Former Justice Department prosecutor Carmen Mercedes Lineberger has been indicted for allegedly removing confidential Justice Department material and then concealing her efforts. Lineberger is accused of secretly transferring Jack Smith’s final report and hiding the material under files labeled “chocolate cake recipe” and “bundt cake recipe.” There has not been a greater recipe for disaster since aides tried to fit all of Biden’s candles on a cake. The case is particularly interesting because there was another person who was accused of a secret removal of Justice Department material who was not prosecuted: former FBI Director James Comey.

Linebarger, 62, of Port St. Lucie, Florida, has been indicted on four criminal charges: one felony count of obstruction of justice, one felony count of concealing government records and two misdemeanor counts of theft of government property valued at less than $1,000.

According to the indictment, Lineberger altered electronic file names of government records to conceal unauthorized transmissions of the documents to her personal email accounts and used file names for cake recipes to conceal her possession of the confidential information.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon blocked the public release of the report after the prosecution collapsed against the President.

The Justice Department alleges that Lineberger received a copy of Smith’s report before the court sealed it. Months later, she allegedly decided to transfer it to her personal email account in violation of the court order and Justice Department rules.

She has now pleaded not guilty and faces up to 20 years on the obstruction charge and other charges.

The decision is notable for a couple of reasons.

First, Smith made one last move in dismissing the case against Trump that left the door open to resuming his prosecution. Smith moved to dismiss the indictment “without prejudice” and then stressed to the court that the Department has previously “noted the possibility that a court might equitably toll the statute of limitations to permit proceeding against the President once out of office.” In other words, Trump could be prosecuted after he leaves office.

It is not known what the motive might have been in this transfer. One possibility would be a type of souvenir or trophy grab, which would be ironic given Smith’s suggestion that Trump may have transferred classified material for that type of possessory thrill. Another is the possible use for a book. Finally, there might have been a desire to preserve evidence to avoid destruction during the Trump years or possible release to the media.

The second notable aspect is that Comey was accused of such a knowing removal, but he was never actually prosecuted.

There was no court order governing the material removed by Comey after his firing, but it was clearly departmental material.

The Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, found that Comey was a leaker and had violated FBI policy in his handling of FBI memos. He found that Comey grabbed the material on his way out of the Bureau, including those containing the “code name and true identity” of a sensitive source.

While he did not find a disclosure of the classified information, Horowitz found that Comey took “the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, to achieve a personally desired outcome.” He further added that Comey “set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees—and the many thousands of more former FBI employees—who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information.”

Comey later admitted that he asked his friend, Columbia Law Professor Daniel Richman, to leak information from the documents to the New York Times.

While Comey is facing a weak criminal case over threats conveyed through beach shells, some of us saw his conduct in removing this material as a more serious breach.

Comey went on to write books on “ethical leadership” and recently sent a message to current FBI personnel that they should “hang on” and wait out Trump: “In two and a half years, and then we can rebuild.”

Rebuilding the bureau in Comey’s image is a truly chilling notion. Those “good old days” with Comey allowed agents to launch a baseless Russian collusion investigation at the behest of the Clinton campaign and lie to a secret court to secure surveillance of Trump figures.

In the meantime, it will be Lineberger, not Comey, who will face a jury for the removal of confidential material.

For Lineberger, these types of charges tend to be cut-and-dried for prosecutors if they can show that the material was restricted and that she took steps to conceal the alleged theft. While she gained access before the court order, she allegedly transferred the material after the order and then hid the material in files labeled as cake recipes.  If those facts can be established in court, prosecutors likely believe that she can stick a fork in herself because she is done.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”

On the back of a small uptick in homebuilder confidence (though still languishing)…

…Building Permits jumped notably (+5.8% MoM vs +2.5% exp) in preliminary April data (while Housing Starts dipped 2.8% MoM, though less than the 5.2% MoM decline expected)…

The pace of starts and permits on a SAAR basis has remained flat for four years…

Multi-family unit starts and permits soared in April…

As single-family home starts stagnate…

It appears builders believe that ‘Renter Nation’ is on its way back.

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

We already knew that the bond market was starting to call bullshit on America’s fiscal and monetary policy. Now we know that foreign governments are dumping U.S. Treasuries, and China is leading the way…even while President Trump pals around with President Xi Jinping.

According to CNBC, foreign holdings of U.S. government debt fell sharply in March as central banks sold Treasuries to defend weakening currencies during the geopolitical and energy shock tied to the escalating Middle East conflict.

China reduced its Treasury holdings to roughly $652 billion, the lowest level since 2008. Japan, the single largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, also cut exposure aggressively. Overall foreign holdings dropped from approximately $9.49 trillion to $9.25 trillion in a single month.

That should deeply concern anyone paying attention to the structural fragility underneath the U.S. financial system.

For decades, the global economy has operated on a relatively simple arrangement. The United States issues the world’s reserve currency, foreign governments recycle trade surpluses into U.S. Treasuries, and America finances massive deficits because the rest of the world willingly absorbs its debt. That system only works as long as there is confidence in the dollar, confidence in the Federal Reserve, and confidence that U.S. government debt remains the safest and most liquid place on earth to park capital.

When major foreign holders begin reducing exposure during a period of rising inflation, exploding deficits, and growing fiscal instability, it creates a potentially dangerous chain reaction. And the timing for the world to be dumping treasuriers right now could not be worse.

Bonds are already under pressure because inflation is proving far stickier than policymakers expected. As I wrote last week, both CPI and PPI came in significantly hotter than anticipated, forcing markets to rapidly reassess the possibility that the Federal Reserve may actually need to raise rates again instead of cutting them.

Meanwhile, deficits continue spiraling, interest expense on the national debt keeps exploding higher, and the Treasury must issue enormous amounts of new debt simply to keep funding government spending. Now layer weakening foreign demand on top of all of that.

That combination is nasty. If foreign governments buy fewer Treasuries while supply continues surging, yields move higher. Higher yields tighten financial conditions across the entire economy. Mortgage rates stay elevated. Corporate refinancing becomes more expensive. Regional banks sitting on massive unrealized bond losses face renewed pressure. Commercial real estate weakens further. Consumers get squeezed harder.

And because Treasuries serve as the foundational collateral layer of the global financial system, instability there spreads everywhere else. This is why the liquidation story matters far beyond geopolitics.

China reducing Treasury exposure is not entirely new. The broader trend has been developing for years as Beijing slowly diversifies reserves away from direct dependence on U.S. assets. Whether through outright selling or indirect “shadow holdings” routed through financial centers like Belgium and Luxembourg, the direction has been fairly clear for a long time.

But Japan selling aggressively alongside China is where things become even more uncomfortable. Some of Japan’s selling is likely tied to defending the yen as energy shocks and rising oil prices pressure its economy. Japan imports the overwhelming majority of its energy, so a collapsing yen combined with surging import costs creates enormous strain domestically. Selling Treasuries gives Tokyo access to dollar liquidity it can use to intervene in currency markets and stabilize the yen before the situation spirals further.

Japan has spent decades as one of the most reliable buyers of U.S. debt. If even Tokyo is becoming less comfortable absorbing massive amounts of Treasuries while inflation remains elevated and deficits continue exploding, markets should pay attention. Japan may simply see the same thing the bond market increasingly sees: the United States is issuing debt at an unsustainable pace into an environment where inflation is no longer fully under control.

If that’s the case, that is not just a portfolio adjustment. That is a confidence signal. The uncomfortable reality is that the United States has become dangerously dependent on perpetual debt expansion at the exact moment global appetite for absorbing that debt is becoming less certain.

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And this is where the Federal Reserve’s trap becomes even more severe. If inflation reaccelerates while Treasury demand weakens simultaneously, the Fed faces two terrible options: raise rates further to defend credibility and contain inflation, risking deeper stress across banks, housing, private credit, equities, and the broader economy or step back in with liquidity programs and money printing to stabilize markets and absorb debt issuance, effectively reigniting the same inflation problem they spent years trying to contain.

That is the corner policymakers have backed themselves into after years of artificially suppressed rates, endless stimulus, and the assumption that global demand for U.S. assets would remain infinite regardless of fiscal discipline.

It won’t. And I wrote this past week about why it seems incoming Fed Chair Kevin Warsh has a job in front of him that seems impossible. 

The most dangerous part of this story is that markets still seem unwilling to fully process what sustained deterioration in Treasury demand would actually mean. Investors have spent decades treating U.S. government debt as the unquestioned risk free foundation of the financial system.

But when foreign governments begin reducing exposure while inflation stays elevated and deficits spiral, that assumption starts getting tested in real time.

And once confidence in the system itself begins eroding, things can unravel far faster than policymakers would like to admit.

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The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the first time fell to 209k last week (below expectations), continuing to show absolutely on signs of any labor market stress…

Source: Bloomberg

That is basically unchanged since 2021.

Continuing jobless claims ticked up modestly but remains below 1.8 million Americans (just off two year lows)…

Source: Bloomberg

So, despite the tsunami of headlines every day about the AI jobpocalypse, ‘hard’ data shows no signs of any pain yet (wait until the severance packages run dry)…