By Rabobank

2-year Treasury yields closed 4.4bps higher at 3.53% on Friday after December non-farm payrolls showed the unemployment rate falling to 4.4% and wage growth accelerating despite slower-than-expected hiring. Fed-dated OIS has seen a modest upward re-pricing in the market-implied path of the Fed Funds Rate, though two 25bp cuts by the end of the year remain in the curve with the first fully priced by June.

Breaking news that the Fed has just been issued subpoenas by the Department of Justice relating to statements made by Powell in testimony to Congress could see further recalibration in expectations of the future rate path. Powell has made a statement saying that concerns over his congressional testimony is simply a pretext and that “the threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Fed setting rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.”

In essence, Powell is correct, the real target of the administration is central bank independence which renders the price of money immune to the democratic process and to coordination with other levers of national policy to achieve national policy goals. Independent central banking is a neoliberal shibboleth, but the neoliberal era is clearly over. For further evidence of that (as if it was necessary), look no further than the US’s recent moves towards capital controls and financial repression such as the ban on dividends and stock buybacks for weapons manufacturers, the banning of international wire transfers for welfare recipients, the proposed capping of credit card interest at 10% and the $200bn purchase of mortgage-backed securities designed to pressure lending rates lower. We’re sensing a pattern…

This week will bring the release of the December CPI report on Tuesday. That will give markets another chance to play the game of “up a little bit, down a little bit” even while the global economic and security architecture is being re-made around us in real time. Following comments from President Trump that the United States intends to acquire Greenland “the easy way” (i.e. by buying it) or “the hard way” (via military annexation), Danish PM Mette Frederikson said on Sunday that “we are ready to defend our values – wherever it is necessary – also in the Arctic. We believe in international law and in peoples’ rights to self-determination.”

Frederiksen’s comments recall Mark Twain’s observation that “it ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” In this case, some might argue that the international law that Denmark believes in is a polite fiction and that it has only been a thing in the past to the extent that it was enforced by the weight of US arms. Volodymyr Zelenskyy articulated as much at the United Nations last year when he said “…that’s the reality. Not international law, not cooperation – weapons decide who survives”. How can international law conceivably be enforced against US arms rather than by them? Who will do the enforcing?

So, while Frederiksen might say that Denmark is ready to defend its values, the reality is that it is not ready to defend Greenland. If the United States is truly determined to acquire the territory one way or another, it will ultimately prove successful. Frederiksen said last week that a US annexation of Greenland would spell the end of NATO, which is probably correct. This then becomes a problem for the entire European Union, who arguably need NATO much more than the Americans do. Are France and Germany happy to run that risk so that Denmark can keep Greenland?

Only a few short years ago the idea that the United States would be willing to risk what Zbigniew Brzezinski called its “democratic bridgehead” on the Eurasian continent by threatening the collapse of NATO seemed unthinkable. However, the critical tone taken towards Europe in the US’s new national security strategy and the ongoing evidence of appetite for rapprochement with Russia in an effort to isolate China calls those old assumptions into question.

So, is the US just playing Europe hot and cold or has something really changed? Europe’s lack of military and monetary sovereignty (see yesterday’s FT here) means that it cannot afford to gamble one way or the other, so the probability of capitulation to Trump over Greenland in a similar manner to how Europe capitulated over tariffs should not be dismissed. With EURUSD still trading above 1.16 at time of writing on a somewhat superficial rearmament narrative, it would seem to me that these risks are not in the price.

While the US plays hardball with Europe over the future of Greenland, the potential for a new democratic bridgehead on the Eurasian continent is appearing. Pro-democracy mass demonstrations in Iran are continuing despite reports that government crackdowns have resulted in the deaths of more than 500 protesters. President Trump has repeatedly warned the Iranian regime that the US may seek to intervene if protestors are harmed and the Wall Street Journal today reports that Trump will be briefed on Tuesday about possible US actions that could include distributing Starlink systems to counteract a shutdown of the internet, or even military intervention. Reza Pahlavi, the Iranian Crown Prince in exile, has called for protestors to continue to occupy public spaces and hinted at a return to the country. Did anybody have the restoration of the Shah on their 2026 bingo card?

The Iranian turmoil and developments in Yemen have contributed to a rise in oil prices in recent days that has more than wiped out the price falls that came in the aftermath of the US’s capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. While this is mostly short-term market noise, the impact of US actions on supply chains is much more substantive.

Economics students are told that economics is the study of scarcity and taught to solve constrained optimization problems. However, these problems are generally academic abstractions, and by the time students finish their PhDs and head off to work for Treasury or a central bank they seemingly forget about real factor constraints and proceed to make simplifying assumptions that supply will be available when needed. In reality, the detail surrounding the availability (or otherwise) of physical stuff matters. Denmark will discover this if they care to test the theory that Greenland can be defended without the presence of physical military materiel.

Craig Tindale excellently describes this dawning realization for Western policymakers as ‘the return of matter’. Our own Michael Every has articulated the idea as “what is GDP *for*”. In a nutshell, what is being described is supply chain sovereignty and this will continue to be the conversation going forward as Western powers pivot away from financialization and back toward industrialisation. Once more for the people in the back: *the neoliberal period is over*.

In the case of Venezuela, we find expression of this idea in the fact that it isn’t the size of the country’s oil reserves that is most critical, but the fact that those reserves are of a heavy grade suited to US gulf refineries and now prevented from flowing to Chinese refineries that were established on the assumption that supply would be forthcoming. This raises the prospect of Chinese refineries becoming stranded assets – threatening China’s energy security. That threat is compounded if supplies from Iran – where ~90% of oil exports go to China – are also interrupted by changes on the geopolitical chessboard.

So, while it is certainly a worry that the United States may appear content to burn the democratic bridgehead in Europe to suit its own interests, it is also burning China’s bridgeheads in the Western Hemisphere and the Middle East. Is this net bullish or bearish for Pax Americana? The answer to that question ought to be helpful in directing capital flows in 2026.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in an interview on Jan. 11 that “hundreds more” federal officers will be sent to Minneapolis on Jan. 11 and Jan. 12 to carry out immigration-related operations in the city.

“We’re sending more officers today and tomorrow, they’ll arrive, there’ll be hundreds more, in order to allow our ICE and our Border Patrol individuals that are working in Minneapolis to do so safely,” Noem told Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

DHS recently sent 2,000 federal immigration agents to the city. Noem said the operation is needed to go after illegal immigrant criminals in the Twin Cities area amid allegations of widespread fraud involving federal entitlement benefits.

Protests erupted after a Jan. 7 incident in which an ICE officer fatally shot a protester as she hit him with her car in an apparent attempt to flee.

Local Democrats, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have criticized Noem and ICE for the shooting and suggested that the federal government cease immigration operations in the city. Frey and Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said in separate interviews on Jan. 11 that state authorities should be included in the shooting investigation because the federal government has already made clear what it believes happened.

“How can we trust the federal government to do an objective, unbiassed investigation, without prejudice, when at the beginning of that investigation they have already announced exactly what they saw—what they think happened,” Smith said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Frey told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Jan. 11 that local officials should be involved, saying: “Let’s have the investigation in the hands of someone that isn’t biased.”

The Trump administration has defended the officer who shot the protester in her car, saying that he was protecting himself and fellow agents. Video footage of the incident, which occurred in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, shows a woman in an SUV parked across the road and blocking traffic while honking her horn. Another video shows officers telling the woman to get out of the vehicle. She then lurches the vehicle forward, hitting an officer, in an apparent attempt to drive off, and he fires his gun, hitting her.

In response, Noem wrote on Jan. 11 an accompanying post on X that what happened in Minneapolis was a “domestic terror attack” targeting ICE agents and a “direct consequence of sanctuary politicians, like Tim Walz and Jacob Frey, who constantly demonize and vilify our brave officers.” She included video footage of similar comments to CNN.

“Sanctuary politicians are allowing situations around the country to become volatile, they’re not doing their jobs, and they haven’t for years,” Noem said. “In the interest of public safety I would encourage them to grow up.”

Noem and DHS have said that attacks on ICE agents have increased by 1,300 percent, with vehicular attacks increasing by 3,200 percent, on a year-over-year basis. In October 2025, a man armed with a rifle killed two ICE detainees at a federal office in Texas before shooting and killing himself.

The officer involved in the Minneapolis shooting was doxxed by people online and has been receiving death threats, according to White House border czar Tom Homan, who said in a Jan. 10 interview that the threats have extended to his family members.

Anti-ICE demonstrations erupted on Jan. 9 as a demonstration turned into a riot, with people throwing rocks, ice, and other objects at federal officers. Thousands of people marched in Minneapolis on Jan. 10 in response to the shooting.

Google and artificial-intelligence chatbot startup Character.AI have agreed to settle a wave of lawsuits brought by grieving parents who claim AI chatbots emotionally manipulated – and ultimately destroyed -their children.

Court documents filed this week show the companies have reached settlement agreements in cases from Florida, Colorado, New York, and Texas, all alleging that Character.AI’s chatbots harmed minors through sexually charged conversations, emotional dependency, and encouragement of self-harm. The specific terms of the settlements remain secret and must still be approved by federal judges, ABC News reports.

The Florida case, the first and most explosive of the lawsuits, centered on the death of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III, who killed himself in February 2024. His mother, Megan Garcia, alleged that her son was pulled into what she described as an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship with a Character.AI chatbot.

According to the lawsuit, the chatbot was modeled after a fictional character from HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones – and over time, the teen became increasingly detached from reality, isolating himself from family and friends while spending hours interacting with the AI.

In the final moments of his life, screenshots included in the lawsuit show the chatbot telling the boy it loved him and urging him to “come home to me as soon as possible.”

Garcia’s lawsuit accused Character.AI of deliberately designing bots that blurred the line between fantasy and reality, exploiting a child’s vulnerability for engagement and profit. A federal judge rejected the company’s attempt to dismiss the case on First Amendment grounds – a key ruling that opened the door to similar lawsuits nationwide.

Those lawsuits soon followed.

Families in multiple states filed complaints alleging that Character.AI chatbots normalized self-harm, encouraged suicidal thinking, and fostered emotional dependency in children who lacked the maturity to understand they were interacting with a machine.

Google was named as a defendant because of its deep ties to Character Technologies, which intensified after the tech giant rehired Character.AI’s co-founders in 2024 and entered into an AI partnership that critics say gave the startup credibility, infrastructure, and reach.

While Google has maintained that it does not operate Character.AI’s platform, plaintiffs argue the company played a critical role in enabling the technology that allegedly harmed their children.

The settlements arrive amid broader legal pressure on the AI industry, including lawsuits against OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, over claims that its technology has encouraged self-harm or failed to intervene appropriately during mental-health crises.

In response to the growing backlash, Character.AI has rolled out new safety measures, including age restrictions and content moderation tools. But for families who say the damage has already been done, the changes come too late.

Authored by Mollie Engelhart via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

I never cared about the food pyramid.

Not once. Not when it hung in classrooms, not when doctors repeated its logic, and not when federal agencies insisted that grains outranked everything else.

I grew up in a family where food wasn’t a recommendation—it was our economy and our culture. There was always a garden, always bulk bins of staples, always bread baked by hand. We preserved, canned, and stored what we could from the soil and orchard—cherries, apples, seasonal fruit—long before “farm-to-table” became a career path people marketed instead of lived.

As I got older, even when I lived in immaculate golf-course communities, I kept returning to the same truth: Food should be grown, handled, and circulated locally. My chickens earned HOA violations. My vegetable beds violated CCRs. Planting fruit trees in my front yard went against neighborhood covenants. But nourishment was always my compass—not their rules.

That compass shaped my career. I built restaurants around farmers and relationships, not federal charts. Even when I was vegan, we sourced what made sense for the place—apples from nearby growers, cherries when the trees gave them, vegetables from people we knew by name, like our friends at Anna Ayala Farms when I lived in California.

Later, when I tried to transition my restaurants toward regenerative meat, dairy, and vegetables, it didn’t succeed financially. But it was always true to me. My conviction didn’t begin with MAHA. It began with lineage, instinct, motherhood, and feeding people well, even when the market resisted it.

So yes, when the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025–2030 were released in January 2026, and the food pyramid was finally inverted, many of us saw it as a long-overdue win. And it is a win.

But any hunting culture could have told you long before 1992 that the original pyramid was flawed. Traditional hunting cultures always prioritized the most calorie-dense, nutrient-rich foods—fat, protein, organs, energy that lasts. Ancient wisdom didn’t fear calories—it revered them. Survival depended on them, which means we should have known. And we did know. The guidance was flawed from the beginning, had anyone bothered to cross-check it against nature or history.

But gratitude for the correction doesn’t erase the larger question: Who is accountable for the harm?

Nutrition policy doesn’t stay on posters. It becomes school lunch standards, federal food programs, and medical talking points. For decades, the federal model warned against fat, elevated grains, and left the door open for processed foods to dominate institutional feeding environments.

Critics have long argued that the original USDA pyramid—and later the MyPlate model, which didn’t restrict processed carbohydrates or added sugars—reflected strong food industry lobbying and agricultural commodity interests rather than biological science.

Nutrition historians note that the 1992 pyramid’s recommendation of 6 to 11 daily servings of grains was widely criticized, even at the time, by experts, including researchers at Harvard, for ignoring metabolic science and traditional dietary knowledge.

In the meantime, the country got sicker. Childhood obesity rose sharply after the 1990s. Type 2 diabetes began appearing in adolescents by the 2000s. Metabolic dysfunction was normalized as inevitable aging, rather than the biological debt of policy error and corporate influence.

I watched it happen from the outside, insulated by the way I grew up. But millions of kids learned what food looked like from a cafeteria built on that inverted logic. They were conditioned to crave refined starches and sugar-loaded convenience foods—meals engineered for profit, not nourishment.

And those kids are now adults, carrying inflammation, disease, and addiction to processed carbohydrates into young adulthood and middle age: diabetic charts, cardiac events, cancer diagnoses, and bodies trained to mistrust their own instincts instead of their lunches.

I know marriages that were destroyed by unscientific COVID-19 policies. I lived the collapse of my own businesses under decisions made far from communities and far from human biology. And when those policies tore families, livelihoods, and health trajectories apart, no one had to sign their name publicly or carry responsibility for the fallout.

This is where I stop applauding and start asking for receipts. Because accountability isn’t optional when the consequences span generations. When bureaucrats, agencies, and corporate interests make decisions that shape national feeding environments, who answers for the harm? Who signed the papers that allowed ketchup to count as a vegetable? Who approved school meals that trained children toward metabolic dysfunction? Who carries responsibility when public policy serves corporate profit over public health?

The inverted pyramid is exciting. I hope the ripple effect of the new model becomes equally immeasurable—a turning tide toward real nourishment, local food economies, and restored trust in instinct. But we cannot pretend that late corrections erase the need for accountability.

Because here’s the truth, stated plainly: The ripple effect of the previous food pyramid is immeasurable, and the wake of metabolic dysfunction it left will take at least 50 years to repair. And we all know this isn’t the only place where bureaucrats, three-letter agencies, and corporate interests are harming the people.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

*  *  * GRAB SOME SEEDS! 

Authored by Kyle Anzalone via AntiWar.com,

Senior Department of War officials have told President Donald Trump they need more time to consolidate American troops deployed to the Middle East before the US launches an attack on Iran. 

According to The Telegraph, “Trump has been warned that the US military needs more time to prepare for strikes against Iran.” Military commanders in the Middle East stated they need to “consolidate US military positions and prepare defenses” in anticipation of an Iranian retaliatory attack. 

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said that if it attacks Iran, the Islamic Republic will strike Israel and US bases in the Middle East. 

Trump has threatened Iran several times in recent weeks. “If Iran [shoots] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump said earlier this month.

Demonstrations began in Iran two weeks ago, and some protests have escalated into riots. Some groups report that 200 people have been killed during the demonstrations, including over 40 members of Iranian security forces. 

Iranian authorities have reportedly used live ammunition to break up protests, and Tehran has cut off internet service in an attempt to quell the movement. 

Israel Hayom spoke with American officials who said the White House is preparing a range of actions against Iran, including using Starlink to provide protesters with internet access, a cyber attack, new sanctions, and kinetic military action. 

Signs of the US taking precautions and sending additional assets?

“Let us be clear: in the case of an attack on Iran, the occupied territories [Israel] as well as all US bases and ships will be our legitimate targets,” said the former commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Two American C-17A military transport planes departed Germany and appeared to be heading for the Middle East on Saturday evening, as speculation mounted about a potential strike.

The Telegraph reports that potential targets of US strikes include non-military targets in Tehran and Iranian security forces.  

How can anyone possibly believe that the US or Israel is motivated by freedom in Iran??

The US’s closest allies are the most savage regimes: Saudis, Egypt, UAE, Jordan, etc.

Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy said the US doesn’t care if other countries provide freedom.👇 pic.twitter.com/ctSewzrRor

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 11, 2026

At the end of last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to the US to lobby Trump to restart the war with Iran. In June, Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran that ignited a 12-day war. 

During the conflict, Trump ordered American bombers to strike three Iranian nuclear sites. The Islamic Republic responded by striking a US military base in Qatar. The Iranian response was viewed as symbolic, and a ceasefire between the US, Israel, and Iran was reached shortly after. 

Apple shares moved up 1% in the morning U.S. cash session after CNBC reported that Apple will partner with rival Google to power key artificial intelligence features, including Siri, later this year.

In a statement cited by CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Apple said it selected Google after a competitive review, calling Gemini “the most capable foundation” to support its AI roadmap and unlock new user experiences.

“After careful evaluation, we determined that Google’s technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models, and we’re excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for our users,” Apple wrote.

We previously reported that Apple was tapping Google’s Gemini model to overhaul Siri. This development is particularly alarming for Apple, as it shows how heavily the company relies on external AI technology.

The Apple-Google partnership has made Wedbush’s research team, led by Dan Ives, look like superstars this morning, as it was one of their top three predictions for 2026.

Dan Ives’s top 3rd prediction for 2026 was just realized with the AAPL/GOOGL partnership https://t.co/mIBHmaQIcF

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 12, 2026

View the rest of Ives’ predictions here.  

President Trump’s Friday’s remarks to reporters Friday made clear he is willing to take control of Greenland – even if it’s the “hard way” – and this sent the Europeans scrambling over the weekend to come up with plans or strategies for quickly de-escalating inter-NATO tensions.

“I’m not talking about money for Greenland yet. I might talk about that. But right now we are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not,” the President had said, adding: “I would like to make a deal. You know, the easy way. But if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.”

In the wake of this, NATO member Denmark responded firmly in the face of the US threat to its colony. Such a scenario as a US military move on Greenland would be the collapse of NATO, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has made clear. Among the remarks from last week, Frederiksen said, “If the United States were to choose to attack another NATO country, then everything would come to an end.”

“The international community as we know it, democratic rules of the game, NATO, the world’s strongest defensive alliance – all of that would collapse if one NATO country chose to attack another,” the Danish PM added. But he missed the irony in the fact that country after country that refused to play by the so-called “democratic rules of the game” got bombed or overthrown by NATO and the West – with Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iran and others lying in ruins and societal fragmentation.

Warner: “We’ve had American intervention in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Nigeria, Venezuela, maybe Greenland where he would blow up NATO. Did you see the Brits and Germans are putting troops in Greenland because they want to send a message. How is this leading to price stability,… pic.twitter.com/kLF5eWENJL

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 12, 2026

 But now, as Bloomberg reports, European countries are seeking to seize on Trump’s talking points about Greenland being strategically crucial for Arctic security, as rival powers like Russia and China allegedly seek to move in.

“A group of European countries, led by the U.K. and Germany, is discussing plans for a military presence in Greenland to show U.S. President Donald Trump that the continent is serious about Arctic security and to try to tamp down American threats to take over the self-ruling Danish territory,” reports Bloomberg.

So this seems all about creating a fresh NATO joint mission to appease Trump, soften the rhetoric, and take away one of his main geostrategic justifications for a Greenland takeover.

Bloomberg continues, “Germany will propose setting up a joint NATO mission to protect the Arctic region, according to people familiar with the plans.”

This includes backing from Britain, with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer having separately called on allied nations to strengthen their security footprint in the far north. Pre-planning discussions have been held with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

The topic is likely to be broached when German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul meets with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week.

“Because security in the Arctic is becoming increasingly important, I also want to discuss on my trip how we can best bear this responsibility in NATO — in view of old and new rivalries in the region by Russia and China — together,” Wadephul said in a statement Sunday. “We want to discuss this together in NATO.“

It will be interesting to see whether the White House pursues this as an off-ramp, dropping the Greenland project, or whether Trump will read this as a ploy to co-opt forward momentum.

Selling a counter-plan based on running with the exaggerated threat and lie…

The US will defend Greenland from the US?
– Trump said that Russian and Chinese ships are around Greenland as an excuse for annexation. The Europeans know this is not true, but hope that Trump will believe his own lie to elevate the relevance of NATO? pic.twitter.com/XHr7pqSro6

— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) January 12, 2026

Trump has said on outright seizing it, “If we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland. And we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.” But there have also been other creative solutions offered – such as paying each Greenlander something like $1 million in exchange for US sovereignty over the mass which could be the size of a continent. 

Currently, each citizen of Greenland is a full citizen of Denmark and of the European Union, and so many locals might not want to swap this out for being an American. However, many would likely be very attracted to some kind of huge single sum payout.

Authored by Eric Salzman via Racket News,

When I was a kid, one of the coolest things was that every year, a few days before Christmas, our town’s fire department would drive through all the neighborhoods in its gleaming fire engine with the lights flashing, giving short bursts of the siren. All the firemen were in full gear hanging off the sides, while Santa, sitting at the top, threw candy canes to us all. The fire department was special, especially to the kids whose dads or uncles were volunteers.

These days, that truck may not be as shiny as it once was, as there are many trucks in service that should have been retired or kept only as backups because of how prone to failure they are. That’s what happened in Camden, NJ, in March 2024. From NJ.com:

Camden Fire Capt. Will Johnson and his crew arrived within five minutes in Engine 8, a battle-scarred, 21-year-old truck. Flames roared from the second-floor windows as firefighters rushed in, spraying water to try to save Shawn, 35.

But then the hose went limp. The red-and-white truck’s pump had failed, according to incident reports. About two and a half minutes passed, Johnson estimates, before water was restored.

Shawn did not make it. The captain wrote in a report that “we could not advance quickly enough to suppress a bulk of the fire or have an adequate primary search done to locate the victim.”

We don’t know if Shawn would have lived if the pumper truck had worked. But a 21-year-old pumper truck should not be on the front lines of service. The National Fire Protection Association recommends that trucks older than 15 years be relegated to a station’s reserve fleet and completely removed after 25 years.

Los Angeles is a prime example of an aging fleet. The Los Angeles Times reports that as of last June, 60% of its 210 pumper trucks and 48% of its ladder trucks were operating beyond their recommended lifespans. During the Palisades fire, roughly 40 pumper trucks were in the shop; 70 percent of them were 15 years or older, including three built in I999.

“These aging and inoperable fire trucks have certainly harmed emergency responses and cost lives,” Edward Kelly, the president of the International Association of Fire Fighters union, said during a U.S. Senate hearing in September.

He cited an incident in Chicago last summer when a ladder on a reserve truck failed during a rescue. Firefighters had to restart the truck to raise the ladder. Four people died, including a five-year-old.

What the hell is going on?

Lack of competition, for one. Three manufacturers have emerged in the last two decades to control 70% to 80% of the market, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the town of Newstead, NY.

One of the companies, REV Group, was created by a private equity firm, American Industrial Partners (AIP). It got into the fire apparatus business in 2008 with the purchase of E-One, a huge player in the industry, and proceeded to purchase six more companies over the next 12 years. It’s been quite successful for investors. AIP launched an IPO for Rev Group in 2017 and sold a portion of its stake in the company for $275 million, and then got out completely in 2024 by selling its remaining shares for $127.6 million.

But before cashing out, AIP’s purchase of so many manufacturers enabled Rev Group to join the companies Oshkosh and Rosenbauer as dominant players in the industry. As a result, the lawsuit argues they gained near monopolistic pricing powers.

Kelly, the union president, says costs have doubled in the past decade. Pumper trucks cost about $1 million; ladder trucks roughly $2 million. To make matters worse, Kelly testified that the price often changes after they’re ordered.

Manufacturers wield their market power to impose surprise price hikes after order placement through “floating” price terms. These price hikes exacerbate other budget constraints. Fire departments with budget challenges have had to cancel essential training and even lay off fire fighters.

Awesome Returns Bro!

In 2025, REV Group’s stock price surged 93%, while Oshkosh rose 33%. Both companies outperformed the S&P 500, which increased 16.5% for the year.

In REV’s blowout third-quarter 2025 earnings call — a day in which its stock jumped 19% — CEO Mark Skanechnie stated:

Given the inventory levels we had on hand at the start of the quarter, along with the efforts of our supply chain team, we were able to mitigate a portion of the expected inflationary impacts related to tariffs within the third quarter, which resulted in delivering a 28% incremental margin year over year as compared to our prior guidance of twenty percent to 25% incremental margin for the 2025.

The increase [in incremental margin] versus last year was related to the continued demand for fire apparatus and ambulance units as well as pricing actions, partially offset by the benefit of the increased throughput mentioned earlier.

In other words, the floating price hikes weren’t completely tied to increased costs during production, which typically takes a year to 18 months, depending on the truck. A 28% incremental margin is generally considered outstanding for vehicle manufacturers.

Antitrust Complaints

The Newstead Fire Department filed its class action complaint on October 31 against REV Group, Oshkosh and Rosenbauer. From the complaint:

Beginning in or about January 2016, Manufacturing Defendants entered into an agreement, combination, or conspiracy to limit the supply, and to fix, raise, maintain, or stabilize prices of Fire Trucks sold in the United States at supra-competitive levels. As a result of the unlawful conduct of Defendants, Plaintiff and Class members paid artificially inflated prices for Fire Trucks and as a result have suffered antitrust injury in violation of the federal antitrust laws.

The result, the lawsuit argues, is inflated prices with long wait times that “have forced municipalities to keep older and less reliable Fire Trucks” or forced them to redirect funding to cover the higher costs.

This complaint came on the heels of a similar antitrust complaint that La Crosse, Wisconsin, filed in August against the three companies.

Rev Group, Oshkosh, and Rosenbauer told Reuters, “the company believes the suit is meritless and intends to challenge the allegations in court.”

Additionally, In April 2025 Senators Elizabeth Warren (D) and Senator Jim Banks (R) opened an investigation into this matter, making the following statement,

While CEOs and shareholders pad their pockets, consolidation in the industry impedes fire fighters’ ability to do their jobs safely and effectively, squeezes fire departments’ budgets, and forces taxpayers to bear the consequences. We have heard from dozens of fire departments in Massachusetts, Indiana, and elsewhere about difficulties they have faced related to serial roll-ups of fire truck manufacturers, including delivery delays, defective parts, and price increases… Private equity consolidation of fire truck manufacturers has led to higher costs and a nationwide shortage of fire trucks.

In response, Mike Virnig of The Rev Group told the New York Times that the industry has had a shortage in skilled labor and that it was affected by pandemic supply chain disruptions. The Times reports he also said a backlog resulted from a flood of orders that came with federal stimulus money.

Perhaps, but jacking up prices during production and bragging about a 28% incremental margin that resulted from doing that doesn’t instill confidence that everything is aboveboard. A year-over-year stock price increase of 93% probably does not represent a company struggling to meet its customers’ needs. It represents the market perception that REV Group has its customers over a very profitable barrel.

You can also listen to Eric Salzman discuss this topic on his podcast, “Monkey Business.”

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

Elon Musk said on Jan. 10 that his X social media platform would open its new algorithm to the public within a week.

“We will make the new X algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days,” Musk wrote in a post on X on Jan. 10.

“This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed.”

Authorities in the UK and the European Union notified Musk’s X and xAI on Jan. 5 that its regulatory bodies were aware of reports alleging that X’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok had been used to generate sexually explicit images, including images that appeared to depict minors.

European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said that the EU is “very well aware of the fact that [Grok] is now offering a ‘spicy mode’ showing explicit sexual content with some output generated with childlike images.”

“This is not spicy. This is illegal. This is appalling. This is disgusting,” Regnier told reporters on Jan. 5

Musk had written in a post two days prior that “anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”

On Jan. 8, Regnier said a retention order the EU sent to X last year would be extended to the end of 2026. The order regarded the platform’s algorithms and the potential dissemination of illegal content.

The EU also fined X 120 million euros, or $140 million, last month, accusing the company of violating the bloc’s Digital Services Act transparency obligations. The fine was levied in relation to X’s “blue checkmark” subscription model, allegations of limited transparency regarding X’s ad repository, and the platform not giving researchers access to its public data.

French prosecutors in July 2025 launched a probe into X, citing alleged algorithm abuse and fraudulent data extraction by either the platform or its executives. The investigation followed a previous preliminary probe from January 2025 after the French government received complaints from a lawmaker and a senior French official about suspected foreign influence by X.

After French public institutions and researchers provided prosecutors with their findings from the preliminary probe, prosecutors asked police to investigate the company as “both a legal entity and through individual persons.”

Prosecutors called the alleged crimes “organised interference with the functioning of an automated data processing system” and “organised fraudulent extraction of data from an automated data processing system.”

X dismissed the probe as a “politically-motivated criminal investigation” in a post from its Global Government Affairs account on July 21, 2025.

“French authorities have requested access to X’s recommendation algorithm and real-time data about all user posts on the platform in order for several ‘experts’ to analyze the data and purportedly ’uncover the truth’ about the operation of the X platform,” the company wrote at the time.

“The involvement of these individuals raises serious concerns about the impartiality, fairness, and political motivations of the investigation, to put it charitably. … French authorities have classified X as an ‘organized gang’ for the purpose of the investigation.

“This characterization, which is usually reserved for drug cartels or mafia groups, enables the French police to deploy extensive investigative powers under French law, including wiretapping the personal devices of X employees.”

X stated that it “remains in the dark as to the specific allegations made against the platform.”

“However, based on what we know so far, X believes that this investigation is distorting French law in order to serve a political agenda and, ultimately, restrict free speech,” the social media platform stated.

Authored by David DesRoisiers via The Spectator,

At 2 a.m. on Saturday, President Trump gave a New Year’s kinetic expression to his recently published National Security Strategy and what it means in the American hemisphere. If we take President Trump at his blustering word – which those in the administration’s Maduro-adjacent crosshairs should – this is just the first, big, shock-and-awe move by the United States in a resetting of the rules-based order that has governed our hemisphere.

This time on America First terms.

In Europe, those who take Trump seriously and see the long-term upside in his policies, call him “Daddy.” Last weekend Trump showed the “Papi” side of this national security strategy in our hemisphere. The Venezuelan people woke up praising the Papi of Venezuelan freedom. There is a new sheriff overseeing the hemisphere – and there are going to be regional and global consequences.

China is going to have to tighten its belt and stop building roads and propping up adversaries in our hemisphere. Cuba, too, should be very worried. What happened in Venezuela was not a product of a Bay of Pigs military mindset. Like Venezuela, Cuba is surrounded by the US Navy. Cuba’s infrastructure was shot before the hurricanes hit. The country looks like North Korea at night – and its people spend their days in a Hunger Games-pursuit. Without Venezuelan oil and other needed subsidies, Cuba will find itself completely dark in a matter of weeks. And their best fighters are stuck in Venezuela. Going home is not an option; escaping to Colombia and joining the Narcos is the likelier move. Soon enough, the Cuban regime with collapse under its own weight, followed by a Cuban Diaspora returning home, welcomed as liberators.

The narco-industrial complex needs to show that they are listening to Papi Gringo and adapting to new market conditions. Discontinuing the fentanyl trade and hanging its leadership from bridges would be a constructive first act of  “We hear you, Papi.”  Taking this step would help the cartels protect their core business, which has not always been poisoning Americans.

To date, President Trump has been a model of kinetic restraint and has studiously avoided the excesses of regime change and nation-building overreach.

Trump blew the minds of the neocons and their America First critics in Iran. He showed the world, in Operation Midnight Hammer, a middle path. Trump is doing so again in Venezuela with Operation Absolute Resolve. Under Trump’s leadership and direction, his administration scrupulously planned and executed a multi-agency kinetic response with minimal casualties to the regime’s key players – none to populace – resulting in a tomorrow that favors peace, and an orderly transition to better. When have we seen that before?

Tucker Carlson – with whom I disagree, but whom I refuse to quit, cancel, or stop listening to – is a not-so-stable genius when it comes to foreign policy and conduct of war. In contrast, Carlson has much to offer on how “We the People” think about our nation’s obligations to each other, citizen to citizen, which includes our elected representative. Domestic policy is the constructive lane for Tucker’s flavor of America First Quakerism.

But foreign policy is not Tucker Carlson’s strong point. Nor, frankly, is it a strong point of his foil and former colleague Mark Levin, who Carlson often depicts as a totem of neoconservatism. However, it is a strength of President Trump, and it is being faithfully executed by his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth.

It is worth noting that his two war captains both have neocon resumes and let’s-give-war-a-chance tendencies, a cause of concern for the America First crowd. It does appear, however, that they have evolved to embrace a third way – Trump’s way – between the excesses of neoconservatism and the deficits of America First Quakerism.

Tucker and Levin are both prisoners of mindsets that necessarily lead to failure. In contrast, Trump’s approach to peace and war defies the worst features of each, and in doing so delivers on the partial in both within a win-win outcome. Iran’s nuclear ambitions got crushed without American boots on the ground, regime change and suffering of non-combatant, and combatants and leadership.

Just because Trump’s actions in Iran, and now in Venezuela, make Senator Lindsay Graham giddy, doesn’t mean that Trump’s foreign policy instincts have been captured. As in Iran, what is happening in Venezuela is not regime change; it is regime influence through leverage. This difference between the former and latter is a distinction with a huge, game-changing difference. 

Here’s a tactical expression of the American strategy: Trump does not punish the innocents – men, women, or children – or all the guilty for that matter. That is America First, restraint born of prudence. Trump hits targets – Iran’s nuclear enrichment and weaponization capacity – and cocksure leadership who don’t know the comparative size of their stick: Maduro. And when Trump does act, he does so with a precision and measure born of patient, disciplined planning and rehearsal, and with open communication to those on the ground, counseling calm, and, if not, a reality of more coming. Trump offered Maduro an off-ramp that did not require a jail cell. He could be living the al-Assad life somewhere that fits his despotic liking. He did not take it, however, and woke up in a very different position. Trump offered his second-in-command, Delcy Rodríguez – his ruthless Lady Macbeth – a second chance and new lease of life, a receivership relationship for her and her dirty-hand cronies.

This is not regime change. This is regime influence. On the same day of the extraction, the Venezuelan leadership that was spared was offered a peace-and-reconciliation olive branch. He has extended that opportunity to those already charged as co-conspirators to become collaborators in building a better Venezuela on terms that the US dictates. Foment chaos and expect to be replaced by your number two, who will distinguish themselves as a patriot by killing their boss, assume the title and play nice with Papi.

Just imagine if what we pulled off in Venezuela with Maduro, we did in Iraq with Saddam Hussein. Get him in his palace while he is sleeping and leave his people and leadership alone. And while this is happening, reach out to his second-in-command and make an offer that he or she can’t refuse with wash, rinse and repeat consequences of noncompliance.

This is a genuine Art of War insight. Give the existing leadership an opportunity to survive and evolve into better, or at least enough time to steal enough money and get out of the country. Doing so will take away the incentive to circle around the leader and fight like their fates are locked at the hip with his. Decouple their fates and you compete on a completely different terrain.

How much human suffering could have been avoided if this was our default, first response to bad behavior in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Trump’s National Security Strategy is an evolution of the art of war and statecraft. The “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is an improvement to rally around.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.