Loudoun County, Virginia, known by some as “Data Center Alley,” is home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers, mostly clustered around Ashburn. Roughly 70% of global internet traffic passes through its fiber backbone at some point, attracting hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, and making any remaining land zoned for massive data-center development among some of the most valuable real estate on Earth.
Local media outlet Loudon Now has put a price tag on a 97-acre parcel east of Leesburg that sold earlier this month for a whopping $615 million, setting a new per-acre record in the county at over $6 million.
The seller, JK Land Holdings, had purchased the Twin Creeks site for $57 million four years ago and secured approval for five two-story data centers. The buyer, an affiliate of SDC Capital Partners, recently acquired a separate portion of the property, previously sold to Dominion Energy for $45 million, to build a substation.
JK Land Holdings manager Chuck Kuhn declined to comment about the transaction but noted, “This transaction brought $4 million of transfer taxes alone into Loudoun County—right this week.”
“This one project alone will create between 150 and 200 full-time jobs in the county. It’s going to create hundreds of construction jobs for years in the county. … When you think about the construction workers utilizing hotel rooms, restaurants, gas stations, stores, etc., it’s really going to be a financial shot in the arm to the county and the town,” Kuhn said.
Kuhn said that limited industrial-zoned parcels in the county and new zoning curbs are fueling record land values, and warned that Loudoun is “getting to the end of data in the county as we know it.”
“It’s supply and demand. We’re getting into very, very limited supply in the Northern Virginia area. You’re seeing sizable transactions,” he said. “With the new zoning regulations, we’re getting to the end of data in Loudoun County as we know it, and it’s driving up values. And that’s unfortunate to see. I don’t think data is right everywhere, but areas away from residential, away from schools, away from parks, certainly areas zoned for heavy industrial and quarry operations can be perfect locations.”
Beyond driving up data center-zoned land values across the county, the AI infrastructure boom across the Mid-Atlantic has strained grids, sending electricity prices soaring.
Years of misguided green energy policies by Democrats led to premature retirements of fossil-fuel plants, stripping grids of much-needed spare capacity. Instead of focusing on producing new stable power generation, Democrats went all-in on unreliable solar and wind.
“Price-Spikes & Blackouts”: America’s Power Crisis Is Just Getting Started https://t.co/vb51PEwHnb
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier launched a state investigation Monday into JP Morganafter the bank abruptly closed the accounts of President Donald Trump’s media company in 2024.
Uthmeier announced the probe in a video statement on X and in a letter to JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, affirming the financial institution may have violated multiple criminal and civil anti-fraud laws as well as prohibitions against de-banking.
“Rest assured, this office will be investigating to ascertain the nature of these secret and suspicious circumstances,” Uthmeier wrote in the letter, confirming that the Office of Statewide Prosecution and Enforcement Division would handle the matter “immediately.”
— Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) November 10, 2025
The state investigation follows revelations from declassified FBI documents revealing that JP Morgan began scrutinizing Trump Media & Technology Group Corp, a Florida corporation, in 2023.
The timing coincided with subpoenas from then-Special Counsel Jack Smith, who had been directed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Trump after the 2020 election.
JPMorgan then reportedly pressed TMTG for transaction details dating back years, raising concerns that the bank’s inquiries were “pretextual,” Uthmeier wrote.
JPMorgan “insisted this fact-gathering was merely ‘due diligence,’” the Florida attorney general added. “These inquiries, however, appear to be pretextual and unrelated to their stated purpose.”
Shortly after TMTG closed a merger in March 2024, JPMorgan terminated the corporation’s bank accounts.
“The timing of this activity and JPMC’s termination of its business relationships with TMTG raise obvious, troubling questions,” Uthmeier stated.
He also ordered JPMorgan to “initiate a litigation hold to preserve all documents and records (in all formats) that may be relevant to this matter.”
Debanking became a common tactic for major financial institutions targeting Republicans, particularly those tied to Trump after the 2020 election.
These actions followed widespread Big Tech censorship, including efforts aimed at shutting down Trump, some of which later resulted in multi-million-dollar settlements.
China Bars U.S. Military From Access To Rare Earths, Increasing Risk Of “Derailing” Trade Truce
China plans to ease exports of rare earths and other restricted materials to the U.S. through a “validated end-user” (VEU) system that would bar firms linked to the U.S. military while fast-tracking approvals for others, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.
The VEU would let Xi Jinping honor his pledge to President Trump to facilitate exports while ensuring materials don’t reach military suppliers. If enforced strictly, the system could complicate imports for U.S. automotive and aerospace companies with both civilian and defense contracts. The plan remains subject to change, sources said.
WSJ writes that rare-earth magnets and similar materials are used in both civilian products—like electric vehicles and jets—and military hardware such as fighters and drones. The proposed VEU mirrors the U.S. version, active since 2007, which allows pre-approved firms to import sensitive goods without individual licenses but requires compliance inspections.
Since April, China has limited rare-earth exports to gain leverage in the trade war. After the Oct. 30 Trump–Xi truce, Beijing pledged to issue general licenses to “ease the flow of controlled materials,” though it appears to be maintaining some restrictions.
Beijing has not specified which companies will qualify or how long VEU approvals will last. Under the U.S. model, similar clearances have been revoked—an issue that has unsettled Beijing. As uncertainty persists, many firms continue to seek non-Chinese sources.
U.S. and European companies have reported reduced access to rare-earth magnets; Chinese exports to the U.S. fell 29% in September despite Beijing’s promises to relax curbs.
Elsewhere, Bloomberg noted that while the U.S. may resume receiving rare earths, added limits on military access “may increase the risk of derailing the current ‘trade truce,’” said Vey-Sern Ling, senior equity adviser at Union Bancaire Privée.
Recall just days ago we noted that China’s deal with the U.S. on rare earths may have “hit a snag”, writing that China was developing a new rare earth licensing system that could speed up exports, though it’s unlikely to fully reverse restrictions as hoped by Washington, according to industry sources cited by Reuters.
Reuters wrote last week that the new regime would simplify approvals compared to the rules introduced in April and expanded in October, which require a license for each shipment and have caused significant delays and shortages. Beijing’s curbs—covering over 90% of the world’s processed rare earths and magnets—have become a key point of leverage in its trade dispute with Washington.
Despite a recent U.S.-China agreement pausing some restrictions for a year, insiders say broader export controls remain in place. General licenses are expected to be harder to obtain for buyers linked to defense or sensitive sectors. Since April, EU firms have filed roughly 2,000 applications, with just over half approved.
We had speculated about how close the deal could be to collapse as recently as last week, and we said that it felt like “‘the cracks in this latest trade deal are already starting to show…”
We concluded that “the game of export whack-a-mole in the second World Trade War continues: today the US is getting rare earths (at least until Trump has another Truth Social meltdown), but just got stopped out on other, just as important materials. This export control rotation will continue until the day the US is self-sufficient, which however due to the abovementioned environmental limitations, will take a very long time…”
Academics and cybersecurity professionals warn that a wave of fake scientific research created with artificial intelligence (AI) is quietly slipping past plagiarism checks and into the scholarly record. This phenomenon puts the future credibility of scientific research at risk by amplifying the long-running industry of “paper-mill” fraud, experts say.
Academic paper mills—fake organizations that profit from falsified studies and authorship—have plagued scholars for years and AI is now acting as a force multiplier.
Some experts believe structural changes are needed, not just better plagiarism checkers, to solve the problem.
The scope of the problem is staggering, with more than 10,000 research papers retracted globally in 2023, according to Nature Portfolio.
Manuscripts fabricated using large language models (LLMs) are proliferating across multiple academic disciplines and platforms, including Google Scholar, the University of Borås found. A recent analysis published in Nature Portfolio observed that LLM tools including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude can generate plausible research that passes standard plagiarism checks.
In May, Diomidis Spinellis, a computer science academic and professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business, published an independent study of AI-generated content found in the Global International Journal of Innovative Research after discovering his name had been used in a false attribution.
Spinellis noted that just five of the 53 articles examined with the fewest in-text citations showed signs of human involvement. AI detection scores confirmed “high probabilities” of AI-created content in the remaining 48.
In an analysis of AI-generated “junk” science published on Google Scholar, Swedish university researchers identified more than 100 suspected AI-generated articles.
Google did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
The Swedish study authors said a key concern with AI-created research—human-assisted or otherwise—is that misinformation could be used for “strategic manipulation.”
“The risk of what we call ‘evidence hacking’ increases significantly when AI-generated research is spread in search engines. This can have tangible consequences as incorrect results can seep further into society and possibly also into more and more domains,” study author Björn Ekström said.
Moreover, the Swedish university team believes that even if the articles are withdrawn, AI papers create a burden for the already hard-pressed peer review system.
Far-Reaching Consequences
“The most damaging impact of a flood of AI-generated junk science will be on research areas that concern people,” Nishanshi Shukla, an AI ethicist at Western Governors University, told The Epoch Times.
Shukla said that when AI is used to analyze data, human oversight and analysis are critical.
“When the entirety of research is generated by AI, there is a risk of homogenization of knowledge,” she said.
“In [the] near term, this means that all research [that] follows similar paths and methods is corrupted by similar assumptions and biases, and caters to only certain groups of people,” she said. “In the long term, this means that there is no new knowledge, and knowledge production is a cyclic process devoid of human critical thinking.”
Michal Prywata, co-founder of AI research company Vertus, agrees that the AI fake science trend is problematic—and the effects are already visible.
“What we’re essentially seeing right now is the equivalent of a denial-of-service attack. Real researchers drowning in noise, peer reviewers are overwhelmed, and citations are being polluted with fabricated references. It’s making true scientific progress harder to identify and validate,” Prywata told The Epoch Times.
In his work with frontier AI systems, Prywata has seen the byproducts of mass-deployed LLMs up close, which he believes is at the heart of the issue.
“This is the predictable consequence of treating AI as a productivity tool rather than understanding what intelligence really is,” he said.“LLMs, as they are now, are not built like minds. These are sophisticated pattern-matching systems that are incredibly good at producing plausible-sounding text, and that’s exactly what fake research needs to look credible.”
Chief information security officer at Optiv, Nathan Wenzler, believes the future of public trust is at stake.
“As more incorrect or outright false AI-generated content is added into respectable journals and key scientific reviews, the near and long-term effects are the same: an erosion of trust,” Wenzler told The Epoch Times.
From the security end, Wenzler said universities now face a different kind of threat when it comes to the theft of intellectual property.
“We’ve seen cyberattacks from nation-state actors that specifically target the theft of research from universities and research institutes, and these same nation-states turn around and release the findings from their own universities as if they had performed the research themselves,” he said.
Ultimately, Wenzler said this stands to have a huge financial impact on the organizations counting on grants to advance legitimate scientific studies, technology, health care, and more.
Wenzler described a possible real-world example: “AI could easily be used to augment these cyberattacks, modify the content of the stolen research just enough to create the illusion that it is unique and separate content, or create a false narrative that existing research is flawed by creating fake counterpoint data to undermine the credibility of the original data and findings.
“The potential financial impact is massive, but the way it could impact advancements that benefit people across the globe is immeasurable,” he said.
Prywata pointed out that a large segment of the public already questions academia.
“What scares me is that this will accelerate people questioning scientific institutions,” he said. “People now have evidence that the system can be gamed at scale. I’d say that’s dangerous for society.”
The stream of fake AI-generated research papers is happening at a time when public trust in science remains lower than before the COVID-19 pandemic. A 2024 Pew Research Center analysis found just 26 percent of respondents have a great deal of confidence in scientists to act in the best interests of the public. Fifty-one percent stated they have a fair amount of confidence; by contrast, the number of respondents who expressed the same level of confidence in science in 2020 was 87 percent.
At the same time, Americans have grown distrustful of advancements in AI. A recent Brookings Institution study found that participants exposed to information about AI advancements became distrustful across different metrics, including linguistics, medicine, and dating, when compared to non-AI advancements in the same areas.
Rare ‘Cannibal CME’ Set To Slam Earth, Raising Risk Of Ground-Level Radiation Surge, Threats To Critical Infrastructure
Three coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that erupted from the sun in recent days are expected to merge into a powerful “cannibal CME” and smash into the Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday, triggering intense geomagnetic activity that could make the northern lights visible across much of the United States.
“As many as three CMEs are approaching Earth, including today’s fast-moving X5-class CME from sunspot 4274,” SpaceWeatherNews wrote in a report on its website.
Here’s a close-up movie of the X5.1 flare from AR 4274, followed by a stunning post-eruption arcade formation. One of the most eruptive events of this solar cycle. pic.twitter.com/VvT6kCeCBZ
The website that tracks solar flares continued, “There is a chance that the three CMEs will merge into a single ‘Cannibal CME,’ a potent type of storm cloud that could cause a severe G4-class geomagnetic storm when it arrives on Nov. 12.”
SpaceWeatherNews said if the geomagnetic storm develops, northern lights would descend to mid-latitudes and become visible in more than half of the Lower 48.
Now this is very alarming. The report continued:
A ‘GROUND LEVEL EVENT’ IS UNDERWAY: Today’s X5-class solar flare from sunspot 4274 hurled a fuisillade of energetic protons toward Earth. Some of the particles are so powerful, they are penetrating the atmosphere all the way to the ground. “This is a very significant event,” says Professor Clive Dyer of the Surrey Space Centre. “Neutron monitors around the world are detecting it.”
This is called a Ground Level Event (GLE). GLEs of this magnitude are rare; they happen only once or twice every solar cycle. “This one is comparable to the GLE of Dec. 13, 2006,” says Dyer. That makes it a ~20-year event.
For comparison, during the 2006 GLE, passengers on high-latitude air flights experienced a peak dose rate of 25-30 microSieverts per hour at cruising altitude. This translated to an estimated 20% increase in the total effective radiation dose. Something similar may be happening now.
“This is a very significant event and analysis will help us prepare for larger events such as a repeat of Feb. 23 1956, which is soon to have its 70th anniversary and gave a thousandfold increase in radiation at 40000 feet,” says Dyer.
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center ranks the incoming solar event a 4 out of 5 on NOAA’s space weather scale, meaning it’s classified as “Severe.”
SWPC warned, “Detrimental impacts to some of our critical infrastructure technology are possible, but mitigation is possible.”
A Carrington-class storm would be absolutely catastrophic for power grids and the AI infrastructure being installed at lightning pace. And there are others.
… Which US power grid is most at risk? Find out here.
Recently Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that New York was joining 14 other states in a “nonpartisan initiative” (though all 15 states have Democratic governors) called the Governors Public Health Alliance, a “coordinating hub for governors and their public health leaders and a unified, cross-state liaison with the global health community. The Alliance also provides a platform for governors to exchange best practices, align policies, and coordinate on issues like vaccine access, emergency response and health security.”
Despite claiming the GPHA is “nonpartisan,” Hochul’s press release is anything but: “From undermining vaccine access and abortion rights to slashing billions in Medicaid funding from those in need, the federal government is wreaking havoc on public health and the institutions we rely on.”
Hochul’s announcement also states: “This new Alliance builds on New York’s ongoing work to protect access to public health and scientific information amidst ongoing attacks from the federal government.”
Finally, the press release burnishes GPHA’s credentials by stating: “The Alliance is advised by leading public health experts, including former CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen,” as well as others.
All these platitudes of partisanship and self-promotion are par-for-the-course for a governor seeking reelection. However, for New York in general, and Hochul in particular, they are the height of hypocrisy.
By harping on being above politics, adhering to best health care practices, promoting vaccines, protecting public health, relying on scientific information, and following CDC expertise, Hochul’s announcement resurrects the ignominious role New York played during the pandemic: specifically, the Cuomo-Hochul administration’s decision to admit potentially COVID-positive patients into the state’s nursing homes – among the worst decisions made by any state during the pandemic.
In doing what it unconscionably did, the Cuomo-Hochul administration violated everything its press release on the GPHA is now touting. It did so in March 2020. Over the following months, it sought to cover up the number of deaths its horrendous policy caused. Then after Hochul became governor, following Cuomo’s resignation in disgrace (and looming conviction on sexual harassment), the Hochul administration stonewalled an investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic – doing so for months. Even after the Hochul administration delivered documents, it used every means to ensure it failed to deliver the real information the subcommittee sought.
For those who may have forgotten exactly how bad New York’s actions were regarding nursing homes during the pandemic, the Select Subcommittee summed it up in its Dec. 2, 2024, final report: “Age and comorbidities were the most important risk factor for predicting hospitalization and death from COVID-19. This fact was known by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the earliest days of the pandemic. Despite knowing the threat COVID-19 posed to the elderly, the Cuomo administration issued the March 25 directive that ordered potentially COVID-positive nursing home residents be admitted or readmitted to a nursing home and prohibited testing.”
Sadly, the predictable results from such a disastrous policy occurred: Well over 15,000 nursing home patients died in and out facilities. Of course, the Cuomo administration attempted to count far fewer. The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity found “A comprehensive new analysis indicates that the Cuomo administration undercounted nursing home deaths by 68%.”
The FREOPP report stated: “While New York was not counting the number of long-term care residents who died of COVID-19 in hospitals, the state appeared to be outperforming other states along the Acela Corridor. But after accounting for such residents who died in hospitals, New York experienced nursing home and assisted living fatalities comparable to states such as Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, who were among the hardest hit. This is in part due to policy decisions by those states that discharged seniors with active COVID-19 infections from hospitals to LTC facilities.”
Amazingly, Cuomo was touting New York’s low death rate in its nursing homes: “You look at the nursing home deaths in this state,” Cuomo said. “Do you know what number we are by percentage before you made that statement? We’re No. 46 out of 50 states, and we had the worst problem, and we’re 46th in terms of percentage of deaths in nursing homes.”
Bad as cause and outcome were, the Cuomo-Hochul administration compounded it, trying to hide the excessive deaths by fudging the numbers. Said the Select Committee report: “The Cuomo Administration sought to cover-up the impact of the March 25 Directive by continually altering the methodology of how nursing home fatalities were counted and by repeatedly asserting the March 25 Directive followed federal guidance …” Needless to say, the March 25 directive did not follow either CMS or CDC guidance.
Apologists wishing to sweep these actions to the past or to Cuomo alone should be aware that the story did not stop there.
After Hochul became governor following Cuomo’s August 2021 resignation, her administration was repeatedly asked for information regarding the March 25 Directive and its “cover-up.” According to the Select Subcommittee report, “Kathy Hochul promised to be ‘fully transparent’ regarding COVID-19 in nursing homes.”
In understatement, the Select Subcommittee’s report stated that Hochul’s administration “was not fully transparent regarding the former-Cuomo Administration’s failures.” Instead, it took three letters, eight months, and a subpoena before any information was delivered. Even then, the documents were “incomplete and substantially redacted – often, without apparent legal basis. Further, there are responsive documents the Select Subcommittee knows exist – through public reporting and witness testimony – that were not included…”
Hochul’s role in the initial New York nursing home directive and “cover-up” is unknown. Perhaps without the “substantial” redactions and with the “withheld thousands of pages of responsive documents pursuant to tenuous legal privileges,” things would be more clear. But her role since taking office is quite clear: to bury the past.
All of this is supremely hypocritical now that Hochul is using COVID, vaccines, and following federal guidance in her announcement for a transparently political stunt. For five years, two New York administrations have tried to hide what occurred in that state’s nursing homes – one of the pandemic’s worst scandals. And as a capper, “two other states … had orders similar to New York’s March 25 Directive.” Those states were New Jersey and Pennsylvania; both are also in the new GPHA.
In their haste to play politics, these governors should have taken a closer look at history – their own pandemic histories. Gov. Hochul should also be hoping New York voters do not take close look at a scandal that has still not been fully revealed.
Federal government agencies terminated and descoped 67 wasteful contracts over the past five days, which had a ceiling value of $1.4 billion, while saving $648 million in taxpayer funds, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced in an X post on Nov. 8.
The canceled contracts include “a $54k State Dept. training contract for ‘leader as a coach course’, a $456k USAGM broadcasting contract for ‘24/7 FM broadcast service in hosting, operations, technical, and maintenance support in Juba, South Sudan’, and a $1.3M State Dept. education contract for ‘Botswana MI curriculum,’” the post said.
In another Nov. 8 X post, DOGE praised the cross-agency coordination involved in tackling fraud related to the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program.
Businesses that partake in the 8(a) program are eligible to receive federal contracting as well as training and technical assistance.
According to DOGE, the General Services Administration has facilitated the nonrenewal or termination of 17 “wasteful” 8(a) contracts, generating a savings of $75.1 million. These contracts were active across four federal agencies—the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Energy, and the Department of War.
DOGE had responded to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s Nov. 7 X post about the crackdown on fraudulent use of government programs.
“President Trump has directed his administration to eliminate fraud and waste wherever it occurs, ensuring that each taxpayer dollar is spent as intended,” Bessent wrote.
“Treasury will not tolerate fraudulent misuse of federal contracting programs. These initiatives must benefit legitimate small businesses that deliver measurable value to the government and the public.”
Democrats have raised concerns about DOGE’s activities, particularly regarding the data privacy of Americans.
In September, Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) released a report suggesting that DOGE’s activities were likely violating federal privacy and security laws while putting the personal data of millions of Americans at risk, according to a Sept. 25 statement from the lawmaker’s office.
The report was based on investigations done by Peters’s staff and whistleblower statements.
At the Social Security Administration, DOGE employees had access to personal data of all Americans, including their Social Security Numbers (SSNs), the report said, adding that such access was made available in a cloud environment without “any verified security controls.”
“One whistleblower noted the possibility that the agency may need to re-issue SSNs to all who possess one. A compromised SSN can be personally devastating. That’s because SSNs are the backbone for accessing all kinds of public and private services, from acquiring a driver’s license to going to the doctor,” the report said.
“Unwinding the harm done by identity thieves can involve years of credit and identity monitoring, mountains of paperwork. If penetrated, this data vulnerability could result in the most significant data breach of Americans’ sensitive data in history.”
Meanwhile, during an Oct. 31 interview with Joe Rogan on his podcast, former DOGE head Elon Musk said the initiative continues to reduce government waste and fraud.
Musk said that since he left DOGE in May, the initiative has become less publicized because people who oppose DOGE now have no single person to target.
“You turn off the money spigot to fraudsters, they get very upset, to say the least,” he said.
“My death threat level went ballistic, you know, was like a rocket going to orbit. But now that I’m not in D.C., I guess they don’t really have a person to attack anymore.”
According to the DOGE website, the initiative has so far saved $214 billion in taxpayer funds as of Oct.4.
This comes to more than $1,329 saved per taxpayer, based on an estimate of 161 million individual federal taxpayers.
The savings were made through a combination of asset sales, interest savings, grant cancellations, minimizing fraud and improper payments, workforce reductions, and regulatory savings.
The Department of Health and Human Services ranks as the top agency that has registered the most savings under DOGE. This was followed by the General Services Administration, the Social Security Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Small Business Administration.
‘Mark It Zero’: BlackRock Hit With Sudden Total Loss On $150 Million Private Loan
Another cockroach crawls out of the woodwork…
In the grand tradition of Wall Street’s endless parade of “resilient” investments that evaporate faster than a hedge fund’s excuses, BlackRock – that $10 trillion behemoth masquerading as a fiduciary – has just discovered the hard way that private debt isn’t quite the “uncorrelated” panacea it’s been hawking to pension funds and the terminally optimistic.
Bloomberg reports that a mere month ago, the iShares overlords were marking Renovo Home Partners’ IOUs at a pristine 100 cents on the dollar, as if the Dallas-based kitchen-and-bathroom flipper was churning out profits like an OnlyFans ‘influencer’.
Fast-forward to last week, and poof: valuation revised to a resounding zero.
Because nothing says “diversification” like watching your balance sheet get torched in a single earnings call.
Renovo, a Frankenstein’s monster of a roll-up stitched together by private equity players at Audax Group back in 2022, didn’t just stumble – it plunged into Chapter 7 oblivion, signaling a full liquidation shutdown.
Bloomberg notes that while BlackRock, ever the glutton for yield, gobbled up the lion’s share of Renovo’s $150 million private debt buffet, it was not alone.
Apollo Global’s MidCap Financial and Oaktree Capital nibbled at the scraps, per whispers from those in the know who wouldn’t dare attach their names to this private equity horror show.
No one with a Bloomberg terminal needed a crystal ball to see the dumpster fire brewing.
Back in April, the lenders – those paragons of patience – took haircuts, swapped loans for equity confetti, and prayed a recap would resurrect the zombie.
By Q3, they even greenlit “payment-in-kind” interest deferrals.
Regulatory filings paint the picture: a desperate bid to keep the lights on while pretending the emperor had clothes.
Yet, as September wrapped, BlackRock and MidCap funds were still polishing their Renovo turds to a par-value shine, signaling to the world (or at least their NAV reports) that full repayment was as inevitable as the Fed’s next pivot.
Ah, the magic of private debt mark-to-model – where liquidity is whatever you say it is, until it’s not.
Enter Q4: the quarter where illusions go to die.
“Early in the fourth quarter, company-specific performance and liquidity issues led the Renovo board to determine that the best available path forward was a liquidation process,” Philip Tseng, chief executive officer of BlackRock TCP Capital Corp., said during an earnings call.
Tseng, in a tone-deaf earnings confessional, admitted the inevitable:
“We expect to fully write down this position in the fourth quarter of 2025.”
Because nothing screams confidence like pre-announcing a wipeout.
While the Renovo debt represents a mere sliver of total assets for the three lenders, Bloomberg concludes poignantly that its sudden collapse strikes at the heart of what critics see as a major vulnerability in the private credit market: the disconnect between the valuation of illiquid loans and the performance of the underlying companies.
Remember Zips Car Wash? Lenders marked it near-par for months before it imploded earlier this year. Or Tricolor Holdings and First Brands Group, those subprime auto and auto-parts cadavers that blindsided the Street, igniting a blame-game cage match over who peddled the shoddiest underwriting standards.
In private credit’s shadow banking circus, where yields are chased like molly at a rave, Renovo’s vaporization is less anomaly than canary in the coal mine… and to mix metaphors, we suspect more cockroaches are on their way, and the next one may not be a mere ‘fleshwound’.
President Donald Trump said on Nov. 10 that the United States was “pretty close” to reaching a trade deal with India that would be fair to both sides and indicated that he may lower tariffs on Indian goods.
“We’re making a deal with India, a much different deal than we had in the past,” he told reporters at the Oval Office. “We’re getting a fair deal, just a fair trade deal.”
Trump did not provide further details about the potential trade deal with India but said it would be “good for everybody.”
When asked whether the U.S. government would lower tariffs on imports from India, Trump suggested it is possible “at some point,” noting that India has recently reduced its purchases of Russian oil.
“Well, right now the tariffs are very high on India because of the Russian oil, and they’ve stopped doing the Russian oil,” he said. “It’s been reduced very substantially. Yeah, we’re going to be bringing the tariffs down.”
India currently faces a total U.S. tariff rate of 50 percent, including a 25 percent tariff that Trump imposed in August over the country’s purchases of Russian crude.
Trump made the comments during the swearing-in ceremony of his envoy to India, Sergio Gor, whose role will focus on strengthening U.S.–India ties, promoting investment in key U.S. industries and technology, increasing U.S. energy exports, and expanding security cooperation, the president said.
During a White House press conference last week, Trump hinted that he could visit India next year at the invitation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“[Modi] largely stopped buying oil from Russia, and he’s a friend of mine, and we speak, and he wants me to go there. We’ll figure that out, I’ll go,” he said. “Prime Minister Modi is a great man, and I’ll be going.”
The U.S. president has previously warned that his administration would maintain its massive tariffs on imports from India if it continued to buy Russian oil amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
While Trump had repeatedly said that India has largely reduced its imports of Russian oil, the Indian government has not publicly confirmed any such cutback.
India has become a major market for Russian oil as Russia faces sanctions and export controls from Western nations aimed at pressuring Moscow to end its war in Ukraine, which has been ongoing since 2022.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, India’s annual crude oil imports from Russia hovered at about $1 billion. Since the war began, imports have skyrocketed, reaching $25.5 billion in 2022, $48.6 billion in 2023, and $52.7 billion in 2024, according to the U.N. Comtrade database.
Trump signaled on Sept. 7 that his administration is ready to move forward with a second phase of sanctions against Russia, as negotiations to end Russia’s war in Ukraine stalled and Moscow intensified its attacks on Kyiv.
UK Cuts Intelligence Sharing With US Related To ‘Illegal’ Venezuela Action
Just as the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group entered Caribbean waters on Tuesday, it’s been revealed that the United Kingdom has made the unprecedented and provocative move of cutting off intelligence-sharing with the United States related to suspected drug trafficking vessels off Venezuela.
CNN reports Tuesday that Britain cited that it does not want to be complicit in ongoing US military strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats, as it believes the action is illegal, amounting to extrajudicial killings, also after recent criticisms from United Nations officials. However, it is said to be a cut-off in only “some” intel-sharing.
This is of immense importance from one of America’s closest allies – and part of the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence sharing nations – which has time and again enthusiastically joined in Washington’s military adventurism abroad, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya and Syria.
The fresh report details the UK’s prior role in assisting US agencies in the Caribbean, where Britain has small overseas territories:
For years, the UK, which controls a number of territories in the Caribbean where it bases intelligence assets, has helped the US locate vessels suspected of carrying drugs so that the US Coast Guard could interdict them, the sources said. That meant the ships would be stopped, boarded, its crew detained, and drugs seized.
The intelligence was typically sent to Joint Interagency Task Force South, a task force stationed in Florida that includes representatives from a number of partner nations and works to reduce the illicit drug trade.
The report confirms that the intelligence has actually been paused for over a month, which would have been soon after the Pentagon began attacking small boats off Latin America in September.
There is an irony in London suddenly discovering the moral high ground on the issue of Venezuela, given that for years the government has frozen more than $1.8bn worth of Venezuelan gold stored at the Bank of England. The Maduro government has sued to get it back, denouncing the move as brazen theft.
It could be that UK leaders sense that Trump is serious about pressing regime change in Caracas, and doesn’t want to be a direct part of it. Indeed the unprecedented numbers of US warships currently parked in SOUTHCOM waters does strongly point to imminent military action.
But clearly London is now saying it will sit on the sidelines on this particular military adventure in America’s backyard. At this point some 76 alleged drug-smugglers have been killed, and 19 boats destroyed, in the Trump-ordered Pentagon action.
