Authored by Jack Hellner via AmericanThinker.com,

There has clearly been trillions of fraud over the last several decades, and politicians in both parties have shown very little interest in rooting out the fraud until Trump. Somehow, most of the media and other Democrats aren’t too concerned with saving taxpayer dollars—they spend their time attacking Trump.

The media and other Democrats were outraged when Trump spent $16 million dollars fixing the reflecting pool problems, and there was endless reporting, but there is virtually no outrage and minimal reporting on the endless fraud, no matter how many billions have been legitimately stolen from the taxpayers.

The following is a small sample of what crooks have gotten away with, which is only the tip of the iceberg.

Federal data revealed this:

In 2024, 35 percent of exchange enrollees and 40 percent of fully-subsidized low-income enrollees generated no medical claims….

Tens of billions went to big insurance companies to pay for many fake people. Yet, as Democrats shuttered the government, almost all the media spewed were intentional lies about how Republicans wanted to take health care away from the poor, and premiums would rise substantially for them.

The media didn’t have much interest when an enterprising young reporter found massive fraud in daycare centers in Minnesota. They also didn’t have any concern when we learned Governor Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison knew about the fraud for a long time and instead of going after the criminals, sought to destroy the whistleblowers.

Here is how PBS reported on the story:

This week, the Trump administration dispatched federal officers to Minnesota amid concerns over fraud. The deployment comes after a right-wing influencer posted a video claiming, without proof, that daycare centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had misappropriated more than $100 million.

Hospice fraud in California is massive. Where is the endless reporting by the media? Why aren’t they concerned that Governor Newsom and other officials did little to nothing about it? They also don’t seem interested in how many millions of taxpayer dollars flow to entities associated with Newsom’s wife. Instead, they attack the Justice Department for investigating the obvious.

A huge amount of fraud was found with a small sample of SNAP recipients, yet this news piece seems aggravated at the Trump administration for doing something about it:

The USDA says 700,000 were removed from SNAP. Here’s what counts as fraud.

Multiple studies have found that SNAP fraud is rare, yet the Trump administration continues to place heavy focus on the issue.

In May, Rollins told Fox News that her department had found around 700,000 people fraudulently using SNAP rolls since February 2025 and arrested 895 people in the past year for fraud. She said 244,000 fraudsters used dead people’s social security numbers and 500,000 collected benefits in multiple states.

Here is a story that got little coverage about health care fraud schemes. You would think that with all the worries about Medicare survival that an arrest of around 450 people in 45 states would get extensive coverage, but it doesn’t.

New: Record Healthcare Fraud Bust: 450 Defendants Now Charged by Trump DOJ

How often is this happening throughout the country?

What about this?

Michigan childcare provider collected $1.1M in taxpayer funds despite no visible signs of operating

Where are the administrators we pay for verifying that daycare providers do in fact qualify for the money?

The media clearly has little interest in reporting on fraud perpetrated by illegals:

Illegal Alien Gets 8 Years in Prison for $89 Million Payroll Scheme Employing Illegal Alien Construction Workers

I bet few people saw this story about all the money funneled out during COVID:

NC Tax Preparer Pleads Guilty in $13.9M COVID-19 Fraud Scheme

Seven other return preparers have already pleaded guilty to their roles in the same scheme. 

The media is working hard to avoid the story about how we chased down a Somalian fraudster after he fled the country:

$250 Million Minnesota Fraudster Finally Nabbed — in Mogadishu 

Every once in a while, the media and other Democrats claim to care about debts and deficits, but they clearly don’t when they refuse to help going after fraud and treat every cut or freeze in government spending programs as a disaster.

The only time they really care about deficits is when they falsely claim that Republican tax cuts cost the government trillions of dollars.

Here is the truth about federal income and spending:

Individual income taxes collected FY 2017 $1.5 trillion. By FY 2025, they were up to $2.66 trillion—up more than double the 35% inflation rate for that period. Corporate income taxes in FY 2017 were $297 billion and in FY 2025, they were $452 billion (or up 52%). 

Meanwhile, spending went up from $3.98 trillion to $7.20 trillion—up 77%, which is more than double the rate of inflation. Uncontrolled spending including massive fraud is clearly the problem.

Is our media on it? Hardly.

TikTok has reached a settlement with a Florida teenager who blamed the platform and other social media companies for fueling his addiction, leading to depression, anxiety, and sleep loss, just ahead of a trial to determine the industry’s part in the youth mental health crisis.

The settlement, made public Tuesday, lays to rest claims against ByteDance’s TikTok related to the lawsuit filed by the boy.

Details of the settlement were not disclosed.

Trials against Meta’s Instagram and Snap’s Snapchat remain scheduled for July in California.

According to court filings, the plaintiff argues he began using social media at approximately age 8 and became addicted.

As Kimberley Hayek reports for The Epoch Times, the case is one of many taking aim at social media companies, accusing them of designing the platforms to addict young users.

Earlier this month, YouTube settled with the same plaintiff.

“YouTube’s decision to resolve this case before having to face a jury speaks for itself,” the plaintiff’s attorneys from Morgan & Morgan stated in that settlement.

“We will continue fighting on behalf of all those affected by social media addiction to bring these companies to justice and compel them to prioritize the safety of their young users over their bottom lines.”

In March, a jury in Los Angeles found Meta and Google liable for harms to a young woman, awarding damages after findings of negligence tied to addictive design features.

Jurors found the platforms contributed to addiction and mental health issues, leading to millions in compensatory and punitive damages. A judge upheld the verdict this month.

More than 3,300 addiction-related lawsuits remain pending in California state court, with thousands more pending in federal court. School districts and states have also pursued claims, with some settlements reached, such as a Kentucky district’s agreement with several platforms.

The TikTok settlement allows the company to avoid what would have been only the second individual trial of its kind in California over social media’s impact on minors.

Plaintiffs in these cases argue that features, such as endless scrolling, personalized algorithms, and notifications create a “vicious cycle” of engagement that does harm to young brains.

Tech companies argue they have implemented parental controls, age-appropriate tools, and other safeguards for young users. Google, for instance, has underscored its safety efforts in statements regarding the YouTube settlement.

“Our focus remains on building age-appropriate products and parental controls that deliver on that promise,” Google spokesman José Castañeda said in a statement. 

Prolonged social media use has increased risks of depression and self-harm among young people, according to a recent study by the Medical Journal of Australia.

The global race to rebuild depleted oil inventories will not be enough to offset a massive glut that’s coming to the market next year, as traffic through the Strait of Hormuz appears to be headed toward normalization, according to Goldman Sachs commodity strategists.  

First, arguing the bullish side, stockpiles of crude and refined petroleum products in many parts of the world have been depleted to multi-decade lows after governments raced to release strategic stockpiles in March after the Middle East crisis trapped millions of barrels of daily crude and product flows in the Persian Gulf. These inventories will now have to be rebuilt – a process that’s likely to put a floor under oil prices, Oilprice reports..

In the United States alone, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) has been depleted to a 1983 low, while stocks at Cushing, the delivery point of WTI, have crumbled to operational-stress levels.

In addition, many countries, especially in Asia Pacific, are looking to build new reserve capacity to boost their energy security and never again be caught off-guard by a massive supply disruption like the one triggered by the closure of the most important oil and LNG chokepoint.

But Goldman Sachs takes the bearish side, and says that all these demand-supportive factors cannot erase the major glut coming next year. 

The investment bank expects the global oil surplus to be about 3 million barrels per day (bpd) next year, Samantha Dart, co-head of global commodities research at Goldman, told Bloomberg Television in an interview on Wednesday.

“We do expect a little over 1 million barrels a day just of SPR rebuilding globally, but still, that would leave us close to 2 million barrels a day of a surplus,” Dart added.

Other Wall Street banks have also started to predict a glut next year after the U.S. and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding in mid-June to negotiate a peace deal.

Morgan Stanley, for example, has slashed its oil price forecasts for the next 18 months as it expects the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to accelerate a new supply glut.

More in Dart’s latest note available to pro subscribers.

Authored by Adam Sharp via DailyReckoning.com,

For years, Elon Musk has dreamed of turning X (formerly Twitter) into the “everything app”.

Now that X is part of SpaceX (SPCX), and the combined company just raised $112 billion, the time looks ripe.

Elon envisions X as a single place where you can bank, chat, earn, advertise, use AI, shop, and more.

X Money is a key part of that vision. And we just got the first idea of what it will look like.

The program just launched to a small group of users. To attract deposits, X is offering some pretty crazy (and likely temporary) perks:

• 6% APY on cash, no deposit limit

• 3% cash back on purchases (with exceptions)

• $10 million FDIC insurance (by splitting deposits up between banks)

A 6% yield is not sustainable long-term (at current interest rates). It’s a teaser rate to get people to switch to X Money. Same goes for 3% cash back. That’s 3x higher than the industry average, and will almost certainly not last long.

These teasers may get a lot of people to switch. But it’s unclear how long the perks will last, and it’s currently only available to a small group.

X is not a bank. At least not yet. It’s more like a “neobank”, which manages the marketing and customer relationship, while licensed banks handle the deposits.

But for the user, it feels like a bank account and debit card. Deposits, yield, wire transfers, autopay, P2P payments, etc.

The WeChat Model

Musk’s desire to build the “everything app” may have been inspired by China’s WeChat.

WeChat is owned by Chinese tech firm Tencent. It started out as a simple messaging app. But Tencent rapidly expanded its utility, and today it is basically a digital operating system for the country.

In China, WeChat is used for payment, invoices, government interactions, making appointments, videos, shopping, games, chatting on social media, and much more.

WeChat Pay holds a massive 38% share of payments in China. More than a billion people use the app. It’s so ubiquitous that many Chinese people essentially run their lives through the app.

Largely as a result of WeChat’s success, Tencent has become a $488 billion tech giant.

This is what Musk is aiming for. If X Money succeeds, it could help justify SpaceX’s lofty valuation of $2.2 trillion.

SpaceX’s Huge Ambitions

X (formerly Twitter) has been the least-discussed part of SpaceX.

All the attention has been on rockets and AI. For good reason. Those are both very exciting areas.

But X deserves attention as well. Musk aims to turn the social network into a super-app, much like WeChat. Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion. If he succeeds, it could be worth much more over the long term.

But running what is essentially a combination bank and social network is no easy matter. For one thing, it makes security far more important (and challenging). It’s going to require a massive customer support team. And that’s one area where Elon’s X has struggled.

X Money is going to be a critical part of building the “everything app”. And the team is going big on the launch.

Think about the 6% APYs X is offering on deposits. Let’s say that X Money attracts $10 billion in deposits over the first year.

Paying a 6% yield on that much cash could cost SpaceX $240 million a year in losses. That’s assuming their own internal return on cash is around 3.5%, plus bank fees and other transaction costs. This is why I assume the 6% APY is temporary.

And the 3% cash back? That appears to be on a debit card, which doesn’t have the same fee support as a credit card. So that could be another very expensive tool to attract users.

But the losses could be worth it. The market they’re targeting is massive. Payments, banking, and eventually – everything.

So will X succeed in becoming a “super app”? Honestly? I think it’s a long shot.

X Money would probably need to be wildly successful and run away with the market.

One problem is that Meta/Facebook (META) will copy anything that looks to be working. The company is notorious for it. And they have a much larger user base. Meta also already has WhatsApp pay and several payment integrations with Facebook.

Another problem is that American banks are extremely profitable, and in some ways act like a cartel. They won’t appreciate X stepping onto their turf, and may fight back. With lawfare, lobbying, or other means.

A Beautiful But Difficult Model

The “everything app”, or the WeChat model has been the dream of every social media company in the world for a while. But it’s going to be very difficult to pull off at this stage of the game.

Then again, we should never count Elon out. If he’s going to go hard after this market, SpaceX certainly has a shot at winning it.

SpaceX just raised $87 billion in its IPO, then another $25 billion in bond sales. That is a massive war chest.

SPCX has big aspirations. And with a $2.2 trillion market cap, it has a lot of growing to do in order to justify that lofty price.

X Money is a calculated risk by SpaceX. One that could pay off big.

I don’t have a position in SpaceX, but it’s going to be fascinating to watch.

Authored by Simon Duff via BondVigilantes.com,

SpaceX’s IPO was a gargantuan event by any measure: US$75 billion proceeds raised, over US$2 trillion enterprise value, and an almost US$29 trillion total addressable market to feast on.  Few other companies can rival its industrial span and potential seismic impact on consumers and competitors.  SpaceX’s valuation is driven by its sci-fi AI segment replete with space-based data centres and moon bases.  However, its more immediate impact maybe felt in the more down to earth world of telecom.

SpaceX’s cash cow is the Connectivity segment where it operates a constellation of 9,600 low earth orbit (“LEO”) satellites under the Starlink brand. 

These provide broadband and in-fill mobile voice & data services to consumers in predominantly remote areas where terrestrial broadband and mobile networks are patchy or absent. 

In addition, Starlink offers broadband services to ships and aircraft where terrestrial networks are entirely absent. 

In 2025, the Connectivity unit generated US$3 billion free cash flow (EBITDA less capex) from almost 9 million broadband and over 6 million mobile global subscribers and from its corporate contracts with airlines and ship operators.  

By way of comparison, the 5 largest US telecom & cable players generated almost US$111bn free cash flow (EBITDA less capex) and had approximately 95m broadband subscribers and 275m mobile postpaid subscribers.  

Looking at those stats you would be forgiven for thinking that US telecom & cable operators don’t have all that much to worry about.  The problem is that this is just the beginning for controlling shareholder and CEO Musk who has proved himself a visionary with Olympian levels of ambition and matching access to capital.  

Using the latest and largest Starship rockets, Musk plans to launch 10,000 next generation V3 satellites from late 2026.  Each of these satellites will have 1 terabit of capacity, which is 10x the capacity of the current V2 satellites.  This ramped capacity will boost current median download speeds (225Mbps) to levels on a par with fibre and cable terrestrial alternatives.  It will also allow pricing to come down (vs the current US$66 average cost per month).  True, there are issues around the need for “line of sight” from the dish to the satellite in dense urban areas and practical difficulties around installation in multi dwelling unit (MDU) housing blocks.  But these are portions of the market and hence a break rather than a block on roll out and uptake. 

Obviously, the incumbent operators will not sit there like lemons waiting to be squeezed. Instead they can try to lock in their bases via converged broadband and mobile bundles, often at a discount (as both AT&T and Verizon’s recent offers implied).  Or they can simply cut their standalone broadband pricing.  Either way, the risk is broadband subscriber losses, or revenue per subscriber decline, or a combination of both.  And this would be in a market that no longer benefits from immigration or housing build tailwinds that historically increased the total available economic pie in the US.  Most exposed to this risk are the US’s dominant broadband providers: the cable operators. Both Comcast and Charter equity have fallen approx. 30% & 70% in the last year, respectively, with the pace of decline picking up notably as the SpaceX IPO bandwagon rolled into town. 

However, does Musk stop there? 

If we can think of an incumbent bundled defensive play then we are pretty darned sure that Musk can too. So how would he counter the incumbents’ counter?  In short, by going mobile. At present, the party line from the telecom operators is that Starlink’s “direct to device” (D2D) service is a pure complementary in-fill service to supplement mobile operators’ existing coverage and nothing more. However, their behaviour suggests otherwise.  All three players (Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile) have been clear that they will not offer Starlink a “virtual network” agreement enabling Musk to re-badge and re-sell their mobile service.

Similarly, all three were swift to announce a D2D JV that would enable them to present a united front to Starlink on future negotiations.

Assuming the US mobile players hold this line and are allowed to do so by regulators, then Starlink has two options if it’s serious about offering mobile beyond remote areas: build or buy a terrestrial network.  To build its own mobile network Starlink would need spectrum and terrestrial infrastructure (towers, fibre backhaul, network radios).  Starlink already has access to 65 Mhz of terrestrial spectrum (different from the spectrum it uses to offer broadband) that was acquired from Echostar.  Although dwarfed by the incumbents’ spectrum holdings, Starlink’s network would be relatively empty and upcoming auctions offer the chance to supplement these holdings.   Furthermore, Echostar (a 3% SpaceX shareholder) could play a complementary role as either an acquisition target or partner that brings with it a range of network related assets/agreements that could facilitate a Starlink mobile network roll out. Not least of which is a multi-year AT&T national roaming deal that AT&T has been tight-lipped on confirming or denying a change of control break clause to prevent Starlink exploiting this valuable contract.   

And Echostar is not the only option.  When Musk was recently asked if he could consider buying Verizon he said that “it was not out of the question”.  To be clear, Verizon’s market capitalisation is less than 10% of SpaceX’s and also brings with it valuable FCF (YE25: US$20bn).  Lastly, we don’t think it is any co-incidence that the rumour mill has been spinning with regard to German incumbent Deutsche Telekom buying out its 54% owned subsidiary, T-Mobile USA.  If Musk is going to be on a shopping spree you probably want to own 100% of what he might want to buy and T-Mobile USA offers the best mobile network, deepest mobile spectrum portfolio and the least “redundant” broadband exposure of all the US players.  Unfortunately AT&T is probably overly endowed in this latter area with 38m fibre homes passed and hence unlikely to be of interest to SpaceX.   All in all, we see the potential for a single mobile player being acquired as cold comfort to the US telcos relative to the potential step change in the competitive dynamic across the broader ecosystem. 

And who is best insulated from all this potential disruption? 

From an industrial perspective, towers look well positioned. 

If the US goes to four networks, demand for space on the towers will increase whilst, if SpaceX acquires an incumbent, tower demand should at least remain steady no matter how squeezed the incumbent operators’ margins become.

From a geographical perspective, a combination of Europe’s lower pricing from years of fierce competition & regulation, SpaceX’s lack of terrestrial spectrum, and Europe’s higher urban and MDU density make it a much harder market to attack.

Ironically, European telcos that have long played second fiddle to their US counterparts on competitive dynamics, growth rates and FCF generation might now heave a sigh of relief and actually be thankful for the harsh regulation and competitive dynamics they previously railed against.

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Hormuz traffic is climbing, but refined product prices are lagging, and crack spreads are blowing out: one can’t just look at the oil price to understand the overall energy dynamic.

On the geopolitical front, things are also still mixed. Talks about the US-Iran MoU in Doha, without either side speaking to the other, went well according to the US, who are staying on for what could be indirect talks today. However, the Wall Street Journal reports Iran is split, with political leadership focused on getting assets unfrozen and the IRGC on keeping Hormuz more frozen. Tehran has now rejected third-party offers to help demine the water way; they are in no hurry to see things return to normal as this removes their energy leverage. Iran is also opposed to allowing the southern passage via Oman, which the US favours, to become established – and there are still reports Oman wants to charge for access to this channel.

A WSJ headline is that Trump has been briefed on ‘all-out war options’ to finish the job but is sticking with talks while making clear that —as expected in our base case— the 60-day MoU deadline ending 18 August will be extended. Until November at least, as we posit?

Meanwhile, Israeli PM Netanyahu visited south Lebanon and reiterated that as long as Hezbollah is armed, they won’t leave, as the US announced coordinated sanctions with Gulf countries against the Iranian terror proxy. So, Tehran reads the MoU as “peace, where Hezbollah wins the war though it lost the battle”, and the US reads it as “peace, where Hezbollah loses by Israel staying or by being disarmed.” That can easily lead to more conflict with Iran, who doesn’t care about the US midterm timetable.

Neither does Israel, perhaps: Defence Minister Katz warned yesterday Israel could resume war with Iran “within two days” if missiles are fired at it, presumably as Tehran’s response to what is transpiring against its wishes in Lebanon. There is an element of pre-election rah-rah in his statement, but the threat is serious. However, on balance the likelihood is that Iran won’t trigger a new phase of the war… yet. That said, the tail risks are clear and the weak foundations of the current ‘peacefire’ should be well noted.

On conflict and timetables, departing UK PM Starmer has handed his successor Burnham a £5bn defence black hole, pledging new, smaller systems (and far less than what the military says it needs, and many arriving after 2030 rather than in this parliament) without having a plan for where the money will come from. In the EU, while Macron wants higher taxes on foreigners to fund a €2 trillion EC budget, but Germany wants a €400bn spending cut to balance things: who will win, and what does that say about Europe’s trajectory?

Russia is meanwhile reported to be about to start importing gasoline as Ukrainian strikes have so damaged the local fuel system.

In geoeconomics, the Hong Kong press reports that the US is interested in using a hollowed out G20 in Miami for a Trump-Xi meeting. That’s as, in line with what the US has long wanted, the World Bank is to phase out lending to China, and the White House is looking to ban Chinese solar inverters for national security reasons.

The US has lifted national security restrictions on the export of Anthropic’s Fable 5 Model after a review; and Japan has announced a $2.3 trillion startup tech strategy just after South Korea’s $1.3 trillion pledge. The cash being splashed here is not small.

Closer to home, the US is also reportedly to declare that it wishes to trigger a decade-long countdown to exiting the USMCA trade pact. The Canadian press notes this opens the door to a reworking of the agreement into a ‘Fortress North America’, logically with a common external tariff set by the US, as long flagged as the only logical US economic statecraft target by us. Where would that leave EU and Australian plans to deal more with Canada rather than the US? And, by contrast, where would it leave a Donroe Doctrine bloc replete with energy, commodities, consumers, technology, and military vis-à-vis others? The NAFTA > NAPHTHA (North American Petroleum and Hydrocarbons Trading Hub Association) pun about potential realpolitik springs to mind.

At home, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of birthright citizenship, so anyone physically in the US gives birth to a US citizen regardless of whether they are there legally or illegally, or permanently or as a tourist. No change for the US trajectory on that front, but there is informed talk that this issue could be as energizing for the Republican base in the midterms as Roe vs Wade was for the Democrats when that was overturned. The Court notably also removed limits on election spending, handing the cash-rich Republicans a boost.

In data, today’s strong Japanese Tankan survey was much better than expected for large manufacturers in particular. The 10-Y JGB yield is now slightly lower at 2.70%, still near the highest since 1997, while USD/JPY is at 162.7, the highest since 1986.

Indeed, the dollar is again on a roll, catching out markets who had been expecting the opposite. Gold just had its worst quarter in more than a decade, as the Great Debasement suddenly isn’t; and despite crypto falling, it’s reported that Trump and his family made either $1bn, $1.4bn, or $2bn from crypto deals in 2025.

Moreover, as the Australian Financial Review puts it, 2026 is ‘The year the global markets got physical’, as “Until this year, investors sought solace in capital-light companies with reliable earnings. Now, in the age of disruption, nothing is safe.”

That remains our (military) base case.

With ‘hard data’ having deteriorated recently (except in the labor market), ‘soft’ survey data has been surprisingly strong (especially in the Manufacturing side of the economy).

• S&P Global’s US Manufacturing PMI dipped from multi-year highs at 55.1 to 53.9 final in June (below the 55.7 expected).

• ISM Manufacturing also dipped from 54.0 to 53.3 (slightly below the 53.9 exp).

Both solidly above the ’50’ line suggesting growth…

Source: Bloomberg

Put simply: US manufacturing activity expanded for a sixth straight month in June as a war-driven surge in input costs eased.

Prices paid for raw materials, meanwhile, rose at a much slower pace in June.

The group’s price measure dropped 9.1 points to 73, the largest single-month drop since July 2022, as an interim agreement between the US and Iran sent oil prices tumbling.

New orders growth moderated, but remained solid, while ISM’s production gauge dropped to a six-month low.

Source: Bloomberg

“US manufacturers reported a further marked improvement in growth of output and order books in June, according to S&P Global’s PMI data,” said Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Despite the slight decline from the flash print, the final June data is extending the growth spurt that has been reported since the outbreak of the war in the Middle East.

“Employment was nevertheless cut sharply as firms often sought to offset the rising cost of energy and raw materials.

“Supply chain delays and upward price pressures continued to be widely reported, albeit moderating thanks to recent news of an improving situation in the Middle East.”

On the bright side, while still elevated, Input and Output prices are falling back, according to S&P Global survey respondents.

Some prices are up – can you guess which? Yep – AI supplier commodities…

However, Williamson concludes that despite the recent drop in energy prices and brighter outlook for shipping, business confidence has fallen sharply, “in part reflecting concerns that an end to war-related inventory building could start to act as a drag on sales.”