The post Trump Hits a Home Run for the Green Transition appeared first on CEPR.

Democratic Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick Resigns Ahead of Ethics Committee Sanctions Hearing

Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times,

Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) resigned from Congress on Tuesday, stepping down hours before the House Ethics Committee was set to recommend a punishment for the 25 violations of campaign finance law and House rules it found her guilty of last month.

The third-term Florida Democrat announced her resignation in a written statement, calling the ethics process a “witch hunt” and saying the committee had denied her new attorney’s request for time to prepare a defense while a federal criminal case against her remains pending.

“I will not stand by and pretend that this has been anything other than a witch hunt,” Cherfilus-McCormick said.

“I simply cannot stand by and allow my due process rights to be trampled on, and my good name to be tarnished.”

“I hereby resign from the 119th Congress, effective immediately,” she said.

In a brief hearing Tuesday afternoon, Ethics Committee Chairman Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.) confirmed the panel had lost jurisdiction following the resignation and would not recommend a sanction.

He read the resignation letter to the committee into the record, in which Cherfilus-McCormick called it “the honor of my lifetime to serve the people of my district.”

“After careful reflection and prayer, I have concluded that it is in my best interest and the interest of my constituents and the institution that I set aside at this time,” she wrote, making her resignation effective at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Guest defended the 2 1/2-year investigation against what he called claims it had been “a rush to judgment.”

“This was a very deliberate process to gather information into allegations that were extremely serious and extremely complicated,” he said, noting the committee interviewed multiple witnesses over two years and reviewed tens of thousands of subpoenaed documents.

He said Cherfilus-McCormick had been given “multiple ample opportunities to present exculpatory evidence” and to comply with the committee’s subpoena.

Ranking Member Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Calif.) echoed the chairman’s remarks.

“Nobody’s happy. I don’t think any of us are happy at what we’ve gone through,” he said.

“But I am extremely proud of being associated with all of you, and I’m grateful for the hard work and the diligence of the staff.”

Ethics Investigation

Cherfilus-McCormick’s resignation ends a two-year ethics investigation before the committee could formally recommend a sanction. The panel had been scheduled to meet at 2 p.m. Tuesday to decide whether to recommend expulsion, censure, reprimand, a fine, or other penalties.

Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) had said he would file a motion on the House floor to expel Cherfilus-McCormick once the committee issued its recommendation. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters last week that “the facts are indisputable at this point” and predicted the full chamber would have moved to expel her.

Expelling a member requires a two-thirds vote of members present, meaning Republicans would have needed roughly 70 Democrats to join them, assuming full attendance. Only six House members have been expelled in U.S. history: three for disloyalty during the Civil War, two after criminal convictions, and former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) in 2023.

The third-term Florida Democrat was accused of routing more than $3.6 million from Trinity Health Care Services, her family’s company, into her 2022 special election campaign through family members, allied political action committees, and shell entities. Investigators have said much of that money stemmed from a roughly $5 million overpayment Florida mistakenly sent Trinity for COVID-19 vaccination work in 2021.

The committee’s adjudicatory subcommittee announced on March 27 that it had found 25 of 27 counts against her proven by clear and convincing evidence. The counts include accepting improper campaign contributions, filing false reports with the Federal Election Commission, failing to file required House financial disclosure reports on time, and providing special favors in connection with Community Project Funding requests.

In a memorandum filed ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, committee counsel wrote that the 25 violations were “very serious standing on their own,” citing the scope and continuous nature of her conduct and her refusal to accept responsibility as aggravating factors.

Counsel compared her case to Santos, who was expelled following a committee report detailing hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign finance violations. Cherfilus-McCormick’s case, counsel wrote, stands apart because the funds involved total in the millions.

During a hearing last month, Cherfilus-McCormick declined to testify, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Her federal trial is currently scheduled for February 2027.

Her attorney, William Barzee, has argued the committee should have held a full evidentiary trial at which he could have called witnesses and presented evidence.

Ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, Cherfilus-McCormick submitted letters of support from faith leaders, union officials, and community organizations in Florida’s 20th Congressional District.

The Palm Beach County Democratic Black Caucus and the nonprofit Women of Veteran Affairs both urged the committee to reject expulsion, arguing it would leave hundreds of thousands of Floridians without representation during an upcoming redistricting fight in the state.

“Our district is currently navigating a high-stakes redistricting period, during which continued representation is essential,” the Palm Beach group wrote.

“The loss of a sitting Member would weaken the district’s ability to advocate for itself and protect its interests when those interests are most vulnerable.”

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis had called a special session in Florida for late April to redraw maps in the Republican-dominated legislature.

Before Tuesday, a small number of Democrats had publicly called on her to resign, including Reps. Jim Himes of Connecticut, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, and Becca Balint of Vermont.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 18:25

A Reckoning Is Underway At The FDA

Authored by Maryanne Demasi via The Brownstone Institute,

For months, a quiet battle has been unfolding inside the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

It began with an analysis of child deaths after Covid vaccination, followed by strategic leaks to major media outlets, and has now erupted into the open with a memo from the regulator’s own vaccine chief.

In September, it was reported that FDA officials had privately investigated 25 paediatric deaths following Covid vaccination — the first systematic review of such cases since the rollout began.

The findings were meant to be presented to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). But the presentation never came. The meeting passed without a word. Something had happened behind closed doors.

Now we know what.

On 13 November 2025, STAT published an extraordinary insider account describing a tense internal meeting in which FDA scientist Dr Tracy Beth Høeg presented evidence of young people who had died after Covid vaccination.

According to STAT, her findings triggered pushback from career FDA regulators who feared the implications of acknowledging fatal cases.

Now, comes the explosive memo from FDA vaccine chief Dr Vinay Prasad, confirming — for the first time — that US regulators have formally attributed at least 10 of these children’s deaths to Covid vaccination.

Prasad called it “a profound revelation” with far-reaching implications for American vaccine policy, adding that the true number is “certainly an underestimate.”

Here, I’ll take you through the memo, the leaks, the internal rebellion at FDA, and what this means — not just for Covid vaccines, but for all vaccine approvals going forward.

This story marks a turning point in US vaccine regulation.

The Story That Divided the Regulator

In early September, insiders at the FDA and CDC quietly told the New York Times and the Washington Post that the agency had begun investigating child deaths reported to VAERS.

My reporting confirmed that Dr Tracy Beth Høeg, a senior adviser within the FDA’s vaccine division, had led the review — contacting families, gathering medical records, and obtaining autopsy findings.

click image for story

It was the first case-by-case evaluation of paediatric deaths conducted since the vaccines were authorised.

The review identified twenty-five children whose deaths occurred following vaccination. Those findings were expected to be presented to ACIP on 18–19 September. Instead, without explanation, the discussion disappeared from the agenda.

Even FDA Commissioner Dr Marty Makary had hinted at the findings on CNN, saying, “We’ve been looking into the VAERS database self-reports, [and] there have been children that have died from the Covid vaccine.”

He described an “intense” investigation involving doctors, autopsies, and family interviews. Yet ACIP heard nothing.

Had the FDA reversed course — or had internal forces blocked disclosure?

STAT’s reporting offered the first real clues.

Inside the FDA: The Meeting That Changed Everything

STAT described a confidential gathering of FDA vaccine scientists in which Høeg presented slides listing roughly two dozen deaths of young people following vaccination.

One slide reportedly read: “Timing fits. Diagnosis fits. No better explanation found. Sufficient information provided.”

According to STAT, some career regulators reacted with “quiet horror” — not at the deaths themselves, but at the policy implications of acknowledging them.

The article portrayed Høeg as pushing to bring the findings to ACIP and to amend vaccine labels for younger males, while longtime staff resisted, describing the evidence as “thin” and worrying about restricting vaccine access.

STAT reported that “no career regulator would stand by the decision,” and Høeg backed away from presenting the cases to ACIP.

It was a rare glimpse of a regulator divided against itself: career staff trying to contain the findings, and FDA leadership apparently trying to surface them.

Nothing more was said publicly — until Prasad’s memo detonated inside the agency.

Prasad’s Explosive Memo

The memo from Dr Vinay Prasad, Director of the FDA’s Centre for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), is unlike anything ever issued by a senior US vaccine regulator.

Addressed to all CBER staff, it confirmed what STAT only implied: FDA scientists had determined that “at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving Covid-19 vaccination.”

Prasad wrote that the true number is “certainly an underestimate” and that “the real number is higher.”

He wrote that “deaths were reported between 2021 and 2024, and ignored for years,” calling it a systemic failure that “requires humility and introspection.”

“It is horrifying to consider that the US vaccine regulation, including our actions, may have harmed more children than we saved,” he wrote.

Prasad defended Høeg’s analysis, saying “Dr Hoeg was correct in her assessment,” and that disagreements reflected subjective coding — not differing facts.

He also noted that healthy children at extremely low risk from Covid had been “coerced” into vaccination under Biden-era mandates, some of which he said “were harmful.”

He added that it was “difficult to read cases where kids aged 7 to 16 may be dead as a result of covid vaccines.”

Prasad also challenged one of the most repeated claims in pandemic messaging — that Covid infection causes more myocarditis than vaccination.

He argued that these comparisons rely on faulty denominators, because they count only people sick enough to seek hospital care while ignoring the far larger number of infections that never present to clinics.

He underscored that vaccination does not prevent eventual infection, so the comparison cannot be framed as “virus versus vaccine.”

A vaccinated child still encounters the virus over their lifetime — but now carries the additional myocarditis risk from the vaccine itself.

The Leaks

Prasad’s memo contained another revelation — confirmation of internal sabotage inside the FDA.

He wrote that “slides she presented, emails she sent, and distorted firsthand reports” from Høeg’s meeting had been leaked to media outlets by staff who believed they were acting appropriately.

He condemned the behaviour as “unethical, illegal, and…factually incorrect,” a blunt repudiation of how the STAT narrative had framed events.

In Prasad’s telling, Høeg had not exaggerated the evidence at all. She had uncovered what the FDA had failed to recognise for nearly three years — that Covid vaccines had killed children.

Far from being the rogue figure depicted in selective leaks, she was doing precisely what the public assumes a regulator does: investigating deaths, contacting families, gathering records, and treating each case as a potential signal that demands scrutiny.

For Prasad, the leaks weren’t merely improper — they betrayed the core obligation of a scientific agency.

He said internal debates must remain inside the FDA until ready for public release, and that he would not “endorse selective reporting of our meetings and documents.” Anyone unwilling to follow that principle, he said, should resign.

It was an extraordinary directive — and a clear sign that the internal battle over whether to acknowledge children’s deaths had reached a breaking point.

A Reaction from Inside ACIP

When the memo surfaced, ACIP vice-chair Dr Robert Malone issued his own statement.

He wrote that he had been aware of the review through ACIP’s internal working group, and that the child deaths “have been known since this summer but not released to the public due to the need to validate the initial findings independently.”

Bound by confidentiality, he could only say, “I have seen the data and findings, and they are even more stunning than this strongly worded letter indicates.”

He said he was “stunned, gobsmacked,” adding: “The significance and importance of this letter in the context of US and global vaccine policy cannot be overestimated. This is a revolution, the likes of which I never expected to see in my lifetime.”

Malone then took aim at the Covid-19 mRNA products: “These products do not work. They do not prevent disease and death. And as Secretary Kennedy testified in the Senate, objective analysis cannot even demonstrate that, on balance, they saved lives.”

MIT professor Retsef Levi — who leads ACIP’s Covid-19 Vaccines Workgroup — issued a similarly forceful response.

He wrote, “the acknowledgement that at least 10 children died from COVID vaccination must be followed with disclosure to the parents,” and said regulators and media “have gaslighted the vaccine injured, including the parents who lost their precious child.”

He described disclosure as “a moral imperative” and essential for any hope of trustworthy vaccine programs.

Inside ACIP, the memo is being understood not only as a scientific shift — but an ethical reckoning.

Critics Rise Up

Predictably, the memo triggered pushback from establishment figures who have spent years defending the Covid vaccines from scrutiny.

Dr Paul Offit — a long-time industry-aligned vaccine promoter and a familiar voice deployed whenever safety concerns arise — dismissed the memo as “science by press-release.”

He argued that the memo lacked context and should not be treated as evidence, calling the memo “irresponsible” and “dangerous.”

But Prasad’s communication was never presented as a scientific publication. It was an internal memo to staff. Offit’s attempt to judge it by academic-paper standards is a tactic to avoid addressing what the memo actually says — that children died and regulators overlooked it.

Former CBER director Dr Peter Marks — whose tenure is explicitly criticised in the memo for failing to identify child deaths for years — said he was “taken aback by the clearly political tone of the communication.”

But Prasad’s memo details precisely why Marks’s era is under scrutiny, including his 2021 decision to push out senior FDA officials Marion Gruber and Philip Krause after they objected to the Biden administration’s rush toward booster approval.

If anything was political, it was that episode.

For years, figures like Offit and Marks insisted that VAERS was a robust early-warning system — and that anyone citing it without follow-up investigation “didn’t understand pharmacovigilance.”

Now that FDA investigators have actually done the follow-up — contacting families, obtaining medical records, and reviewing autopsies — these same voices suddenly claim VAERS can’t establish causality at all.

This is the core hypocrisy. You cannot praise VAERS as the backbone of vaccine safety, then declare its signals meaningless once they are properly investigated.

Critics also warned that stricter evidence requirements — such as randomised trials and rejection of surrogate endpoints — would “slow innovation” or “harm vaccine confidence.”

But vaccine confidence is already shattered. Fewer than 10% of American healthcare workers took last season’s Covid booster.

Trust collapsed not because regulators asked too many questions — but because they asked too few, dismissed safety concerns that later proved real, and insisted on messaging long after the data had shifted.

The problem for these critics is not that children have died after vaccination. The problem is that the regulators have finally acknowledged it.

The Future of Vaccine Regulation in the United States

Prasad’s memo goes far beyond confirming child deaths. It announces a structural overhaul of vaccine oversight.

He wrote that future vaccine approvals would require randomised trials for most new products; that immunogenicity studies would no longer be accepted as proof of effectiveness in new populations; and that vaccines for pregnant women would not be authorised on unproven surrogate markers.

He committed to rewriting the US influenza vaccine framework and overhauling assessments of concomitant vaccination.

Most strikingly, he declared that vaccines would be treated as “no better or worse” than any other medical product — ending decades of special regulatory leniency.

“Never again,” he wrote, “will the US FDA commissioner have to himself find deaths in children for staff to identify it.”

A Global Shift Begins

The ACIP meeting on 4–5 December will be the first held under these new realities — with the knowledge that the FDA has attributed paediatric deaths to Covid vaccination, that senior leadership has repudiated the previous regulatory approach, and that a revolution in evidentiary standards is underway.

Because many international regulators track the FDA, the acknowledgment that children died from the Covid-19 vaccine — and that the agency failed to detect it — marks a seismic moment in global vaccine policy.

For bereaved families, the acknowledgment is devastating but necessary. For the public, it signals that the institutional silence of the pandemic era is beginning to fracture.

The reckoning has begun.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 17:40

Whistleblower Says CIA Hid 2020 Election Threats To Help Biden

For years, Democrats and the mainstream media treated 2020 as settled history: the system worked, the election was secure, and accusations of fraud were conspiracy theories.

However, a newly declassified intelligence memo, paired with fresh whistleblower allegations, points in a less convenient direction. 

Behind the scenes, U.S. intelligence warned well before the 2020 election that core election systems were more exposed than the public was told, especially the vast digital repositories that hold voter registration data. Making matters worse, according to former senior cyber official Christopher Porter, intelligence leaders then kept those warnings from public view because airing them could have benefited President Donald Trump and complicated the push to portray Joe Biden’s eventual victory as unquestionable.

On January 15, 2020, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) produced an assessment warning that foreign adversaries could compromise U.S. election infrastructure in the coming presidential election, which has just been declassified. The memo specifically called out Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other non-state actors. Analysts did not claim they had evidence of a specific plot to alter votes nationwide, but they did say the threat was real, technically plausible, and serious enough that senior intelligence officials personally briefed President Trump at the White House in February 2020. 

What worried analysts most was not some Hollywood-style rewrite of every ballot cast in America. “We assess that centralized election-related data repositories, such as voter registration databases, pollbooks, and official election websites, are most vulnerable to exploitation, and adversaries could use access to these systems to disrupt election processes,” the NIC assessment warned. 

Intelligence analysts believed vote tabulators and reporting systems had weaknesses, especially machines without paper backups. Despite this, they judged it would be hard for foreign adversaries to change the certified national outcome through direct machine compromise alone. That was never the same as saying the systems were secure in any ordinary sense. It meant large-scale outcome manipulation looked difficult, while localized disruption and perception management looked much easier. 

Despite the warnings of threats, after the election, senior officials pushed the opposite narrative, assuring Americans that 2020 had been a model of resilience.

In mid-November 2020, the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council’s executive committee issued the now-famous statement declaring that “the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” Chris Krebs, then running the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), later testified that he approved the statement and regarded it as the consensus view of the election-security community. That tidy line proved politically useful. It also sat awkwardly beside an internal intelligence record showing that multiple foreign actors had the capacity to exploit the very systems officials were publicly celebrating.

Porter, who prepared the January 2020 memo in his role overseeing cyber intelligence, says the contradiction was not an accident. “What is shocking is how uncontroversial some of these findings are to professionals—it is no secret that China and Iran compromise election equipment for a variety of intelligence purposes, nor was it controversial at the time that these systems had technical vulnerabilities,” he said. He goes further, alleging that bureaucratic and political considerations shaped what the public was allowed to know. “Every agency concurred on these findings, but because it was seen as potentially aiding the President’s reelection campaign, there was an active effort to damage him politically by refusing to share the declassified report with the public.”

Another way to put it was that the truth would have undermined faith in Joe Biden’s eventual victory. That is the heart of the whistleblower claim. 

According to Porter, Trump personally ordered the information declassified because he believed election integrity demanded it. But Porter said that CIA leadership refused to release it.

“The President of the United States personally ordered this information declassified and shared with the public because he thought election integrity was so important to our country. Despite this, CIA leaders at the time refused to release the declassified report,” he said. He also alleges the resistance did not end there. “Years later, when he was reelected, CIA went so far as to claim that the report had never been declassified. Even the record of its declassification had been removed from the system,” he said. Porter describes that as an extraordinary breach of normal intelligence practice, adding, “It is important for people to recognize that this is not normal behavior by the Intelligence Community—most officers would never do something like this.”

 Intelligence reports later concluded that China gained access to voter registration databases in multiple states before the election. A confidential FBI counterintelligence source also reported in summer 2020 that Beijing was attempting to interfere to aid Biden, including through a scheme involving fake U.S. driver’s licenses shipped into the country. Those reports did not become part of the public understanding in real time. Iranian hackers were not indicted until November 2021. Chinese penetration of voter data emerged publicly only after documents surfaced in March 2026. By then, the “most secure in history” line had already hardened into civic catechism.

The intelligence community’s inspector general, Christopher Fox, has opened a full investigation into whether Porter’s warnings were buried and whether he faced retaliation for pressing agencies to follow Trump’s declassification order. That review arrives alongside earlier findings from the intelligence community’s analytic ombudsman, who concluded in January 2021 that some analysts downplayed China’s role because of their disdain for Trump and reluctance to bolster his China policy.

None of this proves that foreign actors changed the 2020 outcome through hacked machines. But it tells us that senior officials knew election systems had meaningful vulnerabilities, but went out of their way to sell to the public a more politically convenient story.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 17:20

Gold Vs An Erupting Financial Volcano

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold,

Below, we look soberly at the historical case of gold in the backdrop of current headlines and a global financial system nearing an eruption moment. 

Although the catalysts of oil, war, bond dysfunction, and bloated stocks may seem modern and unique, the current case for gold is as timeless and constant as nature itself.

Volcanic Parallels…

In May of 1980, David Alexander Johnston, a volcanologist for the United States Geological Survey, was manning an observation post 10 kilometers from the percolating volcano of Mount St. Helens in the state of Washington. 

On May 18th, he would be the first to report the volcano’s sudden eruption. 

Within in minutes, however, Johnston would be killed by the volcano’s “lateral blasts.” his body was never recovered, and 56 others would also perish—along with 7,000 big game animals, 12 million fish, 200 homes, 300 kilometers of highway and 15 kilometers of railway.

Although monitoring volcanos may seem entirely removed from monitoring economic shocks, there are volcanic rumblings beneath our global oil, credit, equity and currency markets which are about to erupt. 

Like Johnston, few realize just how quickly observation can suddenly turn to extreme danger.

In fact, the current “calm before the financial eruption” feels almost surreal when one compares the hard facts of the global oil, bond and Main Street indicators against a topping stock market and a completely indecipherable “conflict narrative” coming out of DC.

To make this “eruption announcement” economically clear and soberly real as opposed to just sensational, all we need is a moment of silence to consider simple math, the rhyming cadence of history and a modicum of realism (and common sense).

Let’s start with oil.

Oil’s Warning Meters

History reminds us that the last great “oil shocks” of 1973 and 1990 had massive ripple effects on U.S. markets and Main Street economies.

What is coming, however, will be far worse.

During the oil embargo period of 1973, for example, the world experienced a 7% deficit of oil supply. This resulted in a 300% oil price surge, a 52% fall in U.S. stocks (over 2 years) and a peak inflation level of over 12%.

Seventeen years later, during the Gulf War, the world saw a similar global oil deficit (7%), a 75% spike in oil prices and a 21% fall in U.S. stocks.

Fast forward to today, however, and we see an almost surreal moment of total disregard for such warnings as well as blindness to the financial volcano growling on the horizon.

Since the last oil tanker squeezed past the Strait of Hormuz in late February, global oil usage of 100 million barrels per day has fallen by 13%, as 13 million barrels per day have been delayed by the fog of war.

This marks a global oil deficit in 2026 of nearly twice the levels seen in 1973 and 1990, yet the U.S. stock market (always the last to get the memo) is trading at nearly all-time highs as of this writing.

This Is Crazy…

Globally, oil reserves are running out, including within the U.S., whose Strategic Petroleum Reserves are at half their 400M barrel level. 

The situation is far worse in Asia, India and Africa, whose last oil deliveries from the Hormuz Strait ended days ago. 

This explains why hotels are closed in Mumbai, and fishing trawlers are out of gas off the coast of Thailand.

As for Australia, the EU and the UK, their last deliveries out of Hormuz came on April 10th. 

Now their leaders are nervously trying to limit demand while hoping for a true and lasting cease-fire for an Iranian conflict driven by a Truth-Social account rather than professional diplomacy or even a rudimentary understanding of global finance.

Even if this conflict ended right now, the delayed economic effects from these record-breaking energy deficits are and will be extraordinary. 

This is not a fable but a fact.

Oil, which fuels the world, also transports the goods which feed and move the world. 

When oil prices rise, the cost of everything rises, including the food transported on ships running on oil, and which food is grown from fertilizers made from oil. 

Within the next few weeks, we could be looking at a humanitarian food crisis in the developing economies.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the University of Michigan’s Consumer Confidence Index is near the bottom as the S&P nears its peak—marking a total (and tragi-comical) disconnect from Main Street indicators and Wall Street mania, the likes of which we’ve never seen before.

Also never seen before in history is the surreal disconnect between the paper (Brent futures) price for oil and the actual sales (“dated Brent”) price for the commodity in real time – a gap of over $35 dollars.

This delta between real oil pricing and paper oil pricing represents a pathetic attempt by policy makers to psychologically suppress panic via the help of well – pure dishonesty.

But then again, dishonesty as a matter of policy is nothing new to broken financial regimes, a fact proven by inflation misreporting, recession denial or the latest frauds legalized on the COMEX.

(By the way, those governmental proxies front-running the fake futures oil price gambit are looking down the barrel of one heck of a short-squeeze unless this war – and spiking oil price – is not immediately resolved…)

In sum, what we are experiencing as of now is the worst oil supply deficit in history, about to humiliate a U.S. stock bubble at all-time highs, which is totally disconnected from Main Street at the same time a fertilizer/food crisis is about to erupt in the world’s most vulnerable economies.

And Then There’s the Bond Market…

But even such appalling conditions pale in comparison to what our global bond markets are telling us.

As I’ve repeated for years: “The bond market is the thing.” 

Boring? Perhaps. But bonds are absolutely critical. As sovereign bond demand tanks and hence bond yields rise, the cost of debt/borrowing rises. 

This is fatal to economies that now operate almost entirely on debt.

And there is no better measure of debt costs than the yield on 10-Year sovereign bonds, almost all of which are rising like shark fins around drowning (and debt-soaked) nations like the UK, Germany, the U.S. and Japan.

But what is even more remarkable in the global bond market is what we are seeing out of China, whose yields are falling, not rising. 

This means Chinese bonds have more demand than U.S. Treasuries, British Gilts, Japanese JGB’s and German Bunds, which also means the days of Western bond hegemony in general, and U.S. Treasury hegemony in particular, are witnessing an historical turning point, one which we have been forewarning for years. 

In the case of the U.S., the yield on the U.S. 10Y is creeping dangerously close toward its “Uh-Oh” recession-inducing red line of 4.6% to 4.8%.

At $40T in U.S. public debt, Uncle Sam simply cannot survive such rising yields. 

Regardless of who sits at the Federal Reserve Bank (which is neither “federal,” nor a “reserve” nor even a “bank”), trillions will need to be printed to buy America’s otherwise unloved, unwanted and weaponized IOUs.

Bessent may try a “soft default” of UST’s by illegally (yet in the name of “national security”) fixing yields lower and extending bond durations further out. 

But even such desperate measures will not stop the inevitable “mouse-clicking” of trillions in M0 Fed Balance Sheet dollars and M2 money supply expansion to save our bond markets at the expense of our currency.

In short, Uncle Sam will have no choice but to create bad money out of thin air to pay his own criminally negligent bar tab.

Even if peace were somehow declared today in the Middle East, the debt and currency damage was already fatally ill long before the conflict in Iran acted to accelerate the dying process.

Which brings us, of course, to real money vs. fake money…

All Roads Lead to Gold

The now undeniable destruction of the dollar’s absolute purchasing power and the desperate yet failed measures to somehow reclaim dollar hegemony are beyond debate. 

The USA and its dollar will not end, but their hegemony is already (and will continue) declining. Regardless of whatever happens next in Iran or elsewhere, the die for U.S. debt, and hence the USD, was cast long ago.

Yes, there is so much change everywhere and every day, especially now. We all see this. 

But such blunt-speak is not anti-American. It is financial realism and simple pattern recognition, for despite all speculations, squawking pundits, changing headlines, tweets, and armchair military guessing, nothing has really changed at all…

History reminds us again and again that broken nations over their skis in failed and extended wars, extreme deficit spending and political mismanagement have always debased their currencies to temporarily save their political optics and near-term legacies.

This has always meant “temporary prosperity followed by permanent ruin” created by a handful of “political and economic opportunists,” who, as Hemingway warned, take their nations toward currency destruction and war – the very scenario in which we now openly find ourselves.

As the world reserve currency slowly loses its trust, faith, credibility and purchasing power in such a classic yet historically familiar backdrop, gold, as it has done for thousands of years, will continue to honestly rise in a setting of now almost comical dishonesty.

Like David Johnston, many of us have been watching the financial debt volcano rumble in the distance. 

As of 2026, that volcano is now erupting. It is now up to each of us to avoid being swept away by its “lateral blasts” of paper currency destruction.

In other words, it’s up to each of us to own honest and real money to protect ourselves from the financial lava flowing our way.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 15:00

No Protection From Gulf Shock: World's Biggest Condom Maker Warns Of Price Hikes

The first-order effect of the U.S.-Iran conflict and the resulting shutdown of the Hormuz chokepoint was the disruption of global energy flows, from LNG to crude to refined products. The second-order effect was a spike in petrochemical prices and a widening shortage of key industrial inputs. Now the third-order effects are beginning to hit everyday goods, with Malaysia-based Karex, the world's largest condom maker, warning that prices are about to explode.

Karex CEO Goh Miah Kiat spoke with Reuters in an exclusive interview about his plan to hike condom prices by 20% to 30%, and possibly more, as the war in Iran continues to disrupt supply chains and drive up critical input and shipping costs.

"The situation is definitely very fragile, prices are expensive... We have no choice but to transfer the costs right now to the customers," Goh said.

He said costs have increased for everything from synthetic rubber and nitrile used in manufacturing condoms to packaging materials and lubricants such as aluminum foil and silicone oil.

Earlier this month, Goldman analyst Georgina Fraser warned clients about petrochemical shock worsening across Asia, with textile and packaging plants emerging as the first major downstream casualties. 

"The supply shock is transmitting faster and at a greater magnitude than we had anticipated," Fraser warned in the note. 

Reuters noted, "The condom maker joins a growing list of companies, including medical glove makers, bracing for supply chain bottlenecks as the Iran war strains energy ​and petrochemical flows from the Middle East, disrupting procurement of raw materials." 

At the same time, Kiat said condom demand has surged 30% so far this year, with shipping disruptions further exacerbating shortages. He noted that shipping times to the U.S. and Europe are now two months, up from one month previously.

"We're seeing a lot more condoms actually sitting on vessels that have not arrived at their destination but are highly required," Goh added. He noted that many developing countries do not have large condom supplies.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 14:40

The Latest AI Developments In 60 Seconds

As the tempo of AI newsflow approached the frenzied rollercoaster pace of geopolitical headlines during the biggest oil shock in decades, it's becoming easy to get lost in all the latest developments and drama surrounding OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, government blacklists, the AI circle jerk, sentinent killer robots, and so on...

To help readers keep on top of things, we are launching a brief AI news roundup, which should help you get up to speed in under 60 seconds. 

Here are the four main things you need to know: 

• And just like that, Anthropic goes from Pentagon supply chain risk to $13B anchor tenant of AWS: Amazon’s fresh $5B investment brings its total Anthropic commitment to $13B – with Anthropic pledging $100B+ in AWS cloud spend over 10 years in return, securing 5GW of compute capacity across Tranium2 through Tranium4. On the government track, NSA is reportedly deploying Anthropic’s Mythos model despite the DoD designation – a contradiction that speaks to how deeply embedded Claude has become in mission critical workflows. And perhaps the clearest signal of where employees think this is going: Anthropic’s recent tender offer fell short of the $5-6B investors had lined up – not because demand was weak, but employees choosing to hold, perhaps betting the public listing will price meaningfully higher.
   
• OpenAI, meanwhile, is cutting… not expanding. Kevin Weil and Bill Peebles both departed as OpenAI pivots away from compute heavy side quests towards enterprise monetization and a forthcoming superapp. The Codex revamp signals the same thesis: agentic workflow ownership over model novelty. Both companies are refining narrative and product surface, and capital structure simultaneously – the ARR accounting dispute where OpenAI internally accused Anthropic of overstating revenue metrics signals the positioning war is intensifying.
   
• But the most consequential bet of the week may not be in software at all. Jeff Bezos is close to finalizing a $10B funding round for Project Prometheus – his physical AI lab valued at $28B, with JPM and Blackrock among investors per the Financial Times. While Anthropic and OpenAI race to own the enterprise workflow layer, Bezos is making a different wager: that the next frontier of AI Value Creation is in the physical world – manufacturing, aerospace, robotics, logistics – where the training data isn’t scraped from the internet but locked inside the factory floor. Not to mention, this is the first time Bezos has held an operational role since leaving Amazon in 2021.
   
• And zooming out, the Private Capital machine isn’t slowing. Sequoia raised $7B under new co-stewards Alfred Lin and Pat Grady, nearly double its prior $3.4B comparable fund – for late stage AI expansion. Accel followed with $5B, deploying $4B into a Leaders Fund targeting at least 20 checks averaging $200M each, explicitly naming robotics and defense alongside AI software. Taken together: $12B+ of late stage conviction in a single week, with physical AI now sitting at the center of both mandates. With Capital is concentrating, Manger Selection now matters more than vintage year timing.

Source: UBS

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 14:00

California School Excludes White Kids From Segregated 'Social Justice' Field Trip

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

In a stunning display of racial exclusion dressed up as “equity,” a California school district barred white students from a taxpayer-funded field trip centered on “social justice.”

Albany Unified School District (AUSD) organized the overnight trip to Virginia exclusively for “young men and women of color” from Albany High School. White kids stayed home while their non-white classmates toured Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), visited civil rights sites, and held discussions on social justice, leadership, and self-awareness.

The trip was officially approved by the board of education and cost the district $42,845. Documents obtained by the parental rights group Defending Education and shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation lay bare the full scope of this race-based program.

EXCLUSIVE: California School Sent Kids On Segregated Field Trip For 'Social Justice': 'Organizing programs and initiatives around racial categories' https://t.co/hxkfukWnkn

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 20, 2026

“This unique mentoring program encourages Albany High School young men and women of color to develop social, personal, and academic success skills,” the board document states. “Students gather in a safe, supportive, and empowering environment to voice their needs and challenges. The students engage in enriching discussions on social justice, education, leadership, mental well-being, and self-awareness. This mentoring program is transforming the lives of young men and women of color to make a significant global impact in society.”

Along with HBCU tours, participants visited the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, and the Black Heritage Trail.

This is not an isolated incident. AUSD maintains a host of other race-specific initiatives. Its 2025-2026 Local Control and Accountability Plan includes “Young Men of Color and Young Women of Color Programs” aimed at providing “social emotional supports to most underserved students” as part of a $1,257,234 budget line for mental health efforts. The district also pushes “professional development” for staff on “culturally responsive/anti-racist pedagogy” to support “student groups who are persistently and historically underserved.”

Hiring practices follow the same pattern. A 2026 superintendent report outlines goals to “Recruit and Retain a Diverse, High Quality Staff” through “equitable recruitment pipelines,” “affinity-based supports,” and a “Black Teacher Project.” The district even tracks staff demographics as a measure of success.

AUSD’s website further details a protocol for any potential ICE activity on campus, instructing staff “NOT to provide any information” and declaring the district a “safe haven” for immigrant families. It also openly states its aim of “Recruiting and retaining excellent, diverse teachers.”

The district did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Paul Runko, senior director of strategic initiatives at Defending Education, condemned the approach.

“Students and teachers are best served when opportunities are based on merit and individual need, not immutable characteristics like race and ethnicity,” Runko noted.

He added, “Schools should focus their limited time and resources on challenging high-achieving students, supporting those who are struggling, and ensuring all students receive a high-quality education, rather than organizing programs and initiatives around racial categories. Great, hard-working teachers should be supported, mentored, and retained for their effectiveness in the classroom, not based on race or any other characteristic.”

The story ignited immediate backlash on X. Defending Education president Nicki Neily posted details of the affinity groups and district-funded trip, highlighting how AUSD maintains these race-based programs.

The district plans also include staffing goals tied to racial composition, including recruitment and retention programs for teachers of color and district benchmarks for increasing workforce diversity. https://t.co/EzD3gnex1n

— Nicki Neily (@nickineily) April 20, 2026

Other users quickly labeled it revived segregation. One commenter noted the broader pattern, pointing out that districts like LAUSD run identical race-exclusive trips for Black students to visit HBCUs.

Posts sharing the development described it as “no whites allowed” programming and accused the left of teaching minority children to view race through a lens of division rather than unity.

No whites allowed: School district sends kids 'of color' on cross-country 'social justice' field trip https://t.co/yMN9BGqdWN via @worldnetdaily

— Deborah Toppings (@karas13133) April 21, 2026

This episode exposes the core contradiction in today’s woke education machine. The same activists who lecture endlessly about dismantling “systemic racism” have no problem erecting racial barriers when it suits their narrative. In California, where open-border policies and sanctuary rules already strain public resources, school districts like Albany Unified double down on identity politics instead of delivering color-blind excellence.

Taxpayers are left footing the bill for programs that sort children by skin color, train staff in ‘anti-racist’ (racist) ideology, and prioritize demographic quotas over classroom results. Meanwhile, every student—regardless of background—loses out when schools abandon merit for grievance.

The push for “social justice” has produced the very segregation civil rights leaders once fought to end. Districts chasing racial affinity groups and exclusive trips are not healing divides; they are widening them at public expense.

Public schools exist to educate children, not to engineer racial outcomes or indulge activist fantasies. Until districts like Albany Unified face real accountability, this taxpayer-funded racial sorting will only accelerate.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 13:00

 

 

Everybody’s attention has been focused on the Iran War,1 but I want to draw your attention back to a different war — the prior Trade War.

Eighteen months ago, the Trump administration was elected to its second term. After November 2024, there was a lot of noise about what people thought would happen. When Liberation Day rolled around in 2025, many observers, including long-standing Wall Street supporters, were shocked.

The first tariffs were on Canada and Mexico, voiding the deal the president himself had renegotiated; then came 100% tariffs on China, then a long list of other tariffs.

There was a problem with this executive-branch muscle-flexing: It was (obviously) unconstitutional. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution specifically delegates the power to lay and collect duties, taxes, and excises to Congress.2 This was an unambiguously executive-branch overreach—arguably done in bad faith.3

The U.S. Court of International Trade found the tariffs unconstitutional; the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals (en banc, with every judge in the district participating) overwhelmingly affirmed that finding. It was fast-tracked to the Supreme Court, which ruled 6–3 against the administration.4

The President, when pushing the tariffs, promised four things: 1) Creation of industrial jobs, 2) Lower inflation, 3) Reduction of the trade deficit,  and 4) Reduction in the federal budget deficit.

None of those things happened.

All of them are now worse than before the tariffs were introduced (before the Iran assault began).

Making it worse was the sheer chaos of how the policy was implemented. According to the Cato Institute, there were 50 separate reversals, new policies, changes, pauses, and exemptions (traders called it “TACO”). The chaos froze CFOs and CEOs in place. They stopped hiring. They stopped building new factories and plants. They cut capital expenditures.  “Until we know what the policy is, how can we commit hundreds of millions (or billions) of dollars?”

 

As the chart at top shows, only a few agreements were actually negotiated; normally, trade agreements take years to be hammered out, especially when more than two parties are involved. But even that small handful is now void. No counterparty is going to stick with promises based on a policy the highest court in the land has declared unconstitutional.

But what about those promised benefits of the Tariffs over the year it was in effect? Let’s consider the data, to see how the reasons for implementing tariffs have fared:

Employment: roughly 100,000 manufacturing jobs were lost over the past year:

 

Inflation: As soon as the IEEPA tariffs were announced on Canada and Mexico, prices shot up substantially. After April 2nd, prices continued higher. Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell specifically said that part of the reason the Fed is on hold is the higher prices consumers are paying because of tariffs.

In fact, about 90% of companies that import or retail goods said they were forced to raise prices because of tariffs. At the same time, about 75% of those companies said their margins were compressed.

 

Trade deficit: Reached an all-time high. The promised reduction of U.S. imports never happened, and angry allies boycotted U.S. goods.

Budget Deficit: The craziest data point of the whole tariff episode: we collected about $156 billion in tariff revenue, but we already owe back roughly $166 billion—and that figure is estimated to grow to close to $200 billion by 2029. How is that possible?

The law is that if you take money that isn’t yours—money you’re not entitled to, either legally or constitutionally — when you eventually lose that litigation, you don’t just have to return that money; you must return that money plus interest.

 

~~~

~~~

Tariffs were the signature economic policy of Trump’s second term; he not only campaigned on them (the 10% universal tariff floor, 60%+ on Chinese goods, reciprocal tariffs), but also insisted that the revenue source would fund tax cuts and close the deficit, create manufacturing jobs, end the trade deficit, and reduce inflation.

None of the promised benefits occurred over the year when tariffs were in effect. The data shows the exact opposite happened.

This did not come as a surprise to students of economic history. We have studied the Tariff regime in the 1930s, which more or less had the exact same results. They may not have caused the Great Depression, but they certainly made it much worse.

After losing the SCOTUS case, the president lashed out with a different series of tariffs. CATO, the conservative think tank in DC,  responded by observing that the New Tariffs Are Just as Illegal as the Old Ones.5 Look for those to be overturned eventually, also.6

I suspect the war in Iran prevented us from fully digesting what it means for the Tariffs to be overturned.7 That will come about eventually…

 

 

 

 

 

See also:
Trump Administration to Begin Refunding $166 Billion in Tariffs (NY Times, April 20, 2026)

Businesses start applying for US tariff refunds (Semafor, April 20 2026)

Section 122 Is an Anachronism, Not a License for New Tariffs (CATO, April 14, 2026)

 

 

 

Previously:
Winners of SCOTUS Decision Striking Down Tariffs (February 20, 2026)

IEEPA Tariff Ruling’s Losers (February 23, 2026)

IEEPA Tariffs Update (January 27, 2026)

It’s Tariff Week! * (January 12, 2026)

Tariffs Likely To Be Overturned (November 5, 2025)

Might Tariffs Get “Overturned”? (July 31, 2025)

The Muted Impact of Tariffs on Inflation So Far (July 17, 2025)

Are Tariffs a New US VAT Tax? (March 31, 2025)

MiB: Special Edition: Neal Katyal on Challenging Trump’s Global Tariffs (September 3, 2025)

Neal Katyal on Challenging Trump’s Global Tariffs (September 8, 2025)

Which States Could Suffer the Most From Trade War Tariffs? (September 16, 2019)

 

 

__________

1. Whether it was authorized by Congress or not, ~10 weeks later, with three carrier groups, and 100,000 troops, countless missiles, drones and bombs, it is hard to call this anything other than a “War.”

2, Article I, Section 8, Enumerated Powers:

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

The same issue exists with spending money appropriated by Congress as well.

3. In his first term, with a less pliable House Speaker and a more assertive legislative branch, the administration’s desire to use tariffs as a negotiation tool had been informally rejected by Congress.

4. An embarrassing dissent opinion came from Kavanaugh, joined by Alito and Thomas. (See this for more)

5. SCOTUS has given POTUS the ability to enact unconstitutional actions for about a year at a time. I wish Justice Roberts understood that “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

6. Hopefully, the judicial system won’t take another year to locate and constitution to figure out what it actually says…7. “Why are so obsessed with Tariffs?” a few emailers have asked. I am reminded of similar emails pre-GFC: “Why do you care so much about Derivatives and CDS?

7. That too, requires Congressional approval, which may or may not be forthcoming. You may be detecting a pattern here…

 

The post Tariff War, Post-SCOTUS Update appeared first on The Big Picture.

US Senator Urges Delay Of CLARITY Act Senate Markup Until May: Report

Authored by Brayden Lindrea via CoinTelegraph.com,

A US senator has reportedly urged Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott to delay the markup for the crypto market structure bill until May, as banking and crypto representatives need more time to resolve disagreements over stablecoin yield provisions.

US Republican Thom Tillis of North Carolina told reporters Monday that he does not expect the Senate Banking Committee to mark up the legislation, also known as the CLARITY Act, in April and has recommended that Scott schedule it for next month, according to Punchbowl News.

Tillis, who has been leading discussions between crypto and banking members, reportedly told Scott: “It’s very important to me not to accelerate things, to hear everybody, and give them a rational basis for what we do accept.”

Continued delays have sparked concern that the CLARITY Act may not pass before the US midterms in November, an event that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said could reverse momentum of the bill.

Source: Brendan Pedersen

“I think if the Democrats were to take the House, which is far from my best case, then the prospects of getting a deal done will just fall apart,” Bessent said in March.

CLARITY Act cannot wait any longer, crypto group says

It comes the same day crypto advocacy group The Digital Chamber sent a letter to the Senate Banking Committee asking it to move the crypto market structure legislation forward to a Senate markup “as soon as the calendar allows.”

The banking industry has raised concerns that allowing stablecoin yield could trigger significant deposit outflows from the traditional banking system, particularly at community banks. 

It argues that those banks may not have enough balance-sheet flexibility to absorb such outflows without relying on higher-cost wholesale funding.

Meanwhile, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and others have pushed for more favorable stablecoin provisions. 

Last month, members of the banking and crypto industries were reportedly close to agreeing on enabling stablecoin rewards tied to crypto activity on third-party crypto platforms, but not for passive balances.

The Digital Chamber noted that it has now been more than 270 days since the House passed the CLARITY Act with bipartisan support.

“Clarity cannot wait,” The Digital Chamber’s government affairs director, Taylor Barr, said, adding: “More than 70 million Americans who have embraced digital assets deserve the regulatory clarity they have waited far too long for.”

Source: The Digital Chamber

Other members of the crypto industry have argued that moving the bill forward is more important than holding out for perfect terms.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 12:20

Trump Cryptically References US Intercepted Chinese 'Gift' To Iran

President Trump made an interesting and somewhat cryptic China reference in a series of Tuesday morning Iran-related statements, given to CNBC.

He stated that US forces recently intercepted a vessel carrying what he described as a "gift" from China to Iran as Tehran seeks to rebuild its military during a ceasefire.

via Flickr

The ship had "a gift from China" which "wasn’t very nice," Trump told CNBC. "I was a little surprised," he said, adding that he believed he had an "understanding" with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

He had asserted: "We caught a ship yesterday that had some things on it, which wasn’t very nice, a gift from China."

However, he didn't specify further what the precise nature of the intercepted shipment was, and provided no other details, leaving the public merely guessing and speculating.

It was only a week ago that Trump said Xi had assured him there would be no Chinese weapons shipments to Iran, which is a longstanding partner of Beijing. Trump and Xi are set to hold a historic meeting May 14-15.

But a further clue is Trump's contextual explanation wherein he said Iran had "probably done a little bit of restocking" while implying that Beijing had been helping its efforts. As South China Morning Post further reviews:

The claim was first made by former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, and Trump then injected a note of doubt, saying: "Perhaps, I don’t know, but I was a little surprised … but I thought I had an understanding with President Xi [Jinping], but that’s all right. That’s the way war goes."

China's foreign ministry was quick to reject and deny the allegation, with spokesman Guo Jiakun saying, "To my knowledge, this is a foreign-flagged container ship. China opposes any malicious links and hype."

Amb. Haley made the allegation about the ship which was seized by the US Navy on Sunday in a social media post, saying it had "refused repeated orders to stop" and was "linked to chemical shipments for missiles"...

The ship the U.S. seized in the Strait of Hormuz this weekend was headed from China to Iran and is linked to chemical shipments for missiles.

It refused repeated orders to stop.

Another reminder that China is helping prop up Iran’s regime—a reality that can’t be ignored.

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) April 20, 2026

Just prior to this high seas interdiction, Trump had last Saturday struck a very positive and cordial tone when discussing relations with Xi: "President Xi is very happy ​that the Strait ​of Hormuz is open and/or ‌rapidly ⁠opening. Our meeting in China ​will ​be ⁠a special one and, potentially, ​Historic. I ​look ⁠forward to being with President Xi — Much ⁠will ​be accomplished!" he wrote.

But he also said the US Navy's blockade would continue "until such time as our transaction with Iran is 100 per cent complete." Without doubt, the blockade hurts Iran and China, but it is also a high-risk game of chicken, given the longer this goes and the more pain that gets inflicted on the global economy - and so the US taxpayer at the pump - it would spell political trouble for Republicans, especially ahead of the Congressional midterms.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 11:20

Oil Spikes, Stocks Suddenly Dump During Warsh Hearing

It's unclear what exactly is driving but the markets are reverting back to old habits this morning with oil spiking...

...dragging Treasury yields higher...

Stocks are tanking...

And so is gold...

There were no obvious geopolitical headline catalysts for the move - though uncertainty remains high about the next 24-48 hours in the Middle East.

Some have suggested the following comment from Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh may have helped (or hindered): “There’s probably no more pressing question than the cost of living.”

Though that does seem like fitting a narrative after the move, the odds of a rate-cut have deteriorated rapidly...

Developing...

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 11:09

Wheat Spread Blows Out As Drought Chaos Plagues America's Breadbasket

Hard red winter wheat (HRW) futures widened to their largest premium over soft red wheat (SRW) in more than two years as severe drought intensified across key breadbasket regions in the Great Plains and Midwest. This means traders are pricing in weather impacts and tightening expectations for higher-protein wheat supplies.

It is important to note that HRW is a more valuable protein and is primarily used in bread, rolls, and all-purpose flour. It is grown in the U.S. Plains (Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas), while SRW is used in cakes, cookies, crackers, and pastries, and is grown in the Eastern U.S. (Ohio Valley, Midwest, Southeast).

The blowout in the HRW-SRW spread, the biggest premium in two years, is mainly due to weather stress as drought grips the central U.S. The market is currently pricing in possible supply imbalances and quality concerns for HRW.

As of mid-April, 61% of the Lower 48 is in drought as the Northern Hemisphere growing season begins and farmers start plantings, according to NOAA. This equates to nearly 149 million people across the Lower 48 affected by drought. About 45 states were experiencing moderate drought conditions as of last week.

US Drought Map:

The drought also complicates matters for ranchers, as the nation's cattle herd is already at its lowest level since the 1950s. As a result, some ranchers may further reduce their herds, which would only push USDA ground beef prices to new record highs.

Related:

• Meteorologists Warn About Super El Nino Event

• Washington, D.C. Will Feel Like June. Cue MSM Climate Doom Propaganda

• Drought Engulfs 60% Of U.S. As Farmers Begin Spring Planting

The drought spreading across America's breadbasket is colliding with a secondary effect sparked by the disruption of energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz, raising the risk of fertilizer shortages that could translate into lower crop yields later this year. Reuters has reported that the UN's food agency warned a prolonged Hormuz crisis could destabilize fertilizer shipments and drive food inflation higher. Time to hedge with a backyard garden.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 10:40

The High Man In The Castle

By Michael Every of Rabobank

The world is again waiting to see what comes out of US-Iran peace talks in Pakistan as the two-week ceasefire deadline looms. Again, it’s a binary outcome: war, with threatened strikes on bridges and power plants in Iran, then perhaps regionally, and an extended closure of Hormuz; or peace, and energy and key goods flowing again.

The markets have decided peace will be the outcome. Because markets. Yes, there are times when bad news logically justifies a rally, e.g., in a real threat of nuclear war, go long: it may not happen, and it can’t hurt if it did. However, when the threat is painful and potentially long-lasting, but not existential, does that logic hold? If so, why bother with geopolitical analysis (and many market participants don’t)? Everything works out in the end, you can’t afford to be the only fund manager who misses the inevitable rally, so just ‘buy all the things.’

Philip K. Dick’s ‘The Man in the High Castle’ is set in a 1962 where the Axis won WW2 and an occupied-US underground shares that on another plane of existence, things worked out differently. They are led by the ancient Chinese Book of Changes, the ‘I Ching’; today, markets view all existence as led by ‘I kerching!’ Yet both views can be flawed. The ‘reality’ where the Axis lost WW2 is also not our world - rather, the British Empire under Churchill is gaining the upper hand in a global struggle with the US. Nobody knows what happens next with Iran.

Is Mr Market ‘The High Man in the Castle’ in thinking everything always works out for him? Is whomever the actual Iranian decision maker the same if thinking the US won’t pull the trigger again if there is no deal, and that Iran wins from that pummeling? Is President Trump if supposing the Iranians are rational rather than theological? We may not have long to find out.

For those who pay attention to geopolitics, there are some potentially optimistic signs. In the Middle East, China’s Xi held talks with Saudi’s MBS and made clear Hormuz needs to reopen. At the same time, Pakistan was told not to send a $1.5bn order of weapons to Sudan, which the Saudis were paying for, and a $4bn deal for the Libyan National Army is also on hold. Likewise, another round of Israel-Lebanon talks are set for Thursday to try to extend their ceasefire, which Iran links to its own, as Syria is cracking down on Hezbollah. Even the European envoy to the Gaza Board of Peace is publicly optimistic about Hamas disarmament talks.

In Europe, Ukraine may be seeing a ‘Second Miracle Year’ and “For the first time in years, outright victory seems possible” via its drone strikes. That’s as the EU hopes to realise its €90bn Ukraine loan within 48 hours following the new government in Budapest. However, the new pro-Russian Bulgarian PM may see things differently alongside the Czech and Slovak leaders, while Romania’s government looks about to fall.

Moreover, the EU is bracing for delays to promised US weapons shipments due to the Iran war, as The Times says the UK isn’t seizing Russian shadow fleet tankers in its waters because berthing and maintaining them could cost too much(!) Meanwhile, France and Germany are said to be considering proposals to give Ukraine only "symbolic" benefits during a normal EU accession process, without granting Kyiv access to the EU's common budget or voting rights. In the same way there may be only symbolic weaponry if the US isn’t able to step up? That’s as the Wall Street Journal notes, ‘In Germany, Everyone Is a Defence Manufacturer Now’ as firms “scramble to reinvent themselves as military vendors to tap into the country’s accelerated rearmament.”

There are also further US-Europe tensions. The US just signed a military defense agreement with Morocco, which some suspect may soon host US military bases now located in Spain, which has been a loud anti-US voice under its current PM; that might suggest the US ability to threaten the Strait of Gibraltar in line with its other recent agreement with Indonesia vis-à-vis the Strait of Malacca. The White House is reportedly also looking at a report that backs Spain having to hand back Ceuta and Melilla, territories it holds in Morocco. German Chancellor Merz has also stated that Cuba poses no risk to third countries, and he does not see on what basis an intervention should take place – which will infuriate the Americans and do nothing to stop them if they intend to act on that front. (Which seems likely.)

There are tensions in the Americas with Canada too, whose PM just stated that close economic ties with US are “a weakness that must be corrected.” He is also talking about boosting his armed forces – though the scale of the imbalance there should be clear when a headline today boasts, “Canadian military beats recruitment target after 1,400 permanent residents sign up.”

By contrast, as Trump pushes a $1.5trn Pentagon budget, he just invoked the Cold War Defence Production Act to force the private sector to move on coal supply chains, domestic petroleum production, natural gas transmission and LNG capacity, and power grid infrastructure. None of that is a quick fix in this crisis, but it is a fix the market won’t provide by itself.

There are additional tensions in Asia as China sends warships to the Pacific while Japanese forces take part in exercises with the US and Philippines. Meanwhile, the crisis in Hormuz has seen Thailand’s government to push ahead with its Landbridge project to connect the Andaman Sea to the Gulf of Thailand via new ports on each side connected by a railway and highway, in order to circumvent the Strait of Malacca. The project is seen as making little economic sense by the logistics industry, but that doesn’t mean it might not make geopolitical sense to some players – and then draw the attention of others.

On the trade front, China has released new regulations to counter the "unjustified" extraterritorial use of foreign laws, aimed at protecting its interests. This is seen as clashing with the EU’s proposed regulations in this area, placing European firms in China in potential conflict with either one or the other. The European Chamber of Commerce in China has raised concern that the "broad scope, vague language and wide discretion" of the new Chinese rules goes far beyond similar statutes in the West.

Yet if you are all about Mr Market then none of the above matters; all that does is today’s Senate confirmation hearing for FOMC Chair nominee Kevin Warsh. Then again, once upon a time, these were dry affairs for dry men and women, but not in our present reality. Even the Financial Times is carrying an op-ed arguing that the Fed needs to reinvent itself and its mission; but they are thinking more along the lines of ‘how much dot plot’ rather than ‘how do you finance a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget?’, ‘How do you force dollar stablecoins on the world to boost fiscal space?’, and ‘What are central banks *for*?’

More narrowly, Warsh’s finances, which he has lots of, are seen as a potential line of attack for those opposed to his appointment: it’s not so much that he’s very rich, which is the assumed norm for Fed Chairs, but that some of those holdings might be opaque. Because we couldn’t have any vested interests represented in Washington D.C., obviously. That would be unthinkable.

Ask yourself what the version of you would have thought of these headlines in April 2016. Then ask yourself what you think they will read like in April 2036. Only then decide what to do.

“Can anyone alter fate? All of us combined... or one great figure... or someone strategically placed, who happens to be in the right spot. Chance. Accident. And our lives, our world, hanging on it.” - The Man in the High Castle.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 10:20

US Pending Home Sales Rebound Off Record Lows, Despite Rising Mortgage Rates

After rising in February, US Pending Home Sales were expected to continue to improve in March (+0.5% MoM) but - despite apparently rising mortgage rates - sales rose 1.5% MoM (even with February revised up to +2.5% MoM). This dragged pending home sales up to +1.8% YoY (to the highest level since Nov 2024)...

Source: Bloomberg

...extending its bounce off record lows...

Source: Bloomberg

“Contract signings rose in March despite higher mortgage rates, pointing to pent-up housing demand,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement.

“A greater supply of inventory will help translate that demand into more home sales.”

Pending home sales in the South, the biggest home-selling region in the country, increased 3.9% in March.

They rose 4.4% in the Northeast but decreased in the Midwest and West.

While mortgage rates did pick up at the start of March (Iran War), pending home sales have been disconnected from improving 'affordability' in recent months...

Source: Bloomberg

As a reminder, because houses typically go under contract a month or two before they’re sold, the pending home sales data tend to be a leading indicator of closings that are captured in the monthly previously owned home sales reports.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 10:08

Texas Electricity Demand Could Quadruple Due To Soaring Data Center Demand: ERCOT

Peak demand in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) territory could more than quadruple to 367,790 MW by 2032, driven primarily by data centers as well as other large load customers, the grid operator said in a preliminary forecast published Wednesday and noted by Utility Dive.

Source: ERCOT

ERCOT, which serves most of Texas, set its current peak demand record of 85,508 MW in August 2023. 

The forecast is based on ERCOT’s economic forecasts as well as information provided by utilities working with medium and large load customers, including data centers, cryptocurrency mining, industrial and oil and gas processes.

Large-load demand data from utilities was included at the direction of state lawmakers as part of SB 6, which was passed last year, but ERCOT officials told the Public Utility Commission of Texas that it may seek revisions to the forecast.

Source: ERCOT

The grid operator “has concerns with using the preliminary load forecast values for the Reliability Assessment and any other transmission and resource adequacy analysis,” Chad Seely, ERCOT senior vice president of regulatory policy, general counsel and chief compliance officer, told the PUCT in comments on the forecast filed Wednesday.

“ERCOT would prefer to consult with Commission Staff to evaluate whether it is appropriate to seek adjustment of the forecast.”

“Texas is experiencing exceptional growth and development, which is reshaping how large load demand is identified, verified, and incorporated into long-term planning,” ERCOT President and CEO Pablo Vegas said in a statement. “As a result of a changing landscape, we believe this forecast to be higher than expected future load growth.” 

Source: ERCOT

ERCOT’s comments on the forecast noted that the grid operator is currently projecting summer 2026 peak load to range between 90,500 MW and 98,000 MW — significantly more modest than the 112,000 MW forecasted peak demand in the preliminary long-term load forecast.

“We look forward to working with the PUCT on potential adjustments to refine how ERCOT ascertains the most accurate information for load forecasting and ensuring the system reliably and efficiently serves Texans,” Vegas said.

ERCOT staff will discuss the forecast at tomorrow’s PUCT open meeting and at the ERCOT board of directors meeting on April 21.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 09:45

Scammers Demand Crypto From Stranded Ships In Strait Of Hormuz: Report

Authored by Amin Haqshanas via CoinTelegraph.com,

Fraudulent actors posing as Iranian authorities have reportedly sent messages to shipping companies whose vessels remain stranded west of the Strait of Hormuz, demanding payment in cryptocurrency for safe passage.

On Monday, maritime risk company Marisks issued a warning saying unknown groups had contacted shipowners claiming to represent Iranian security services and requesting transit “fees” in Bitcoin or USDt in exchange for clearance through the strait, according to Reuters.

“These specific messages are a scam,” Marisks reportedly said, adding that they do not originate from Iranian authorities. Tehran has not publicly commented on the claims.

The alerts come as the strategic waterway remains largely closed following the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for global energy flows, previously handled around one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas exports before hostilities escalated in the region.

Earlier this month, reports said Iran was considering charging ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz a tariff payable in Bitcoin, with empty tankers allowed free passage while others could be charged around $1 per barrel of oil.

Crypto “transit fee” scam demands verification docs

The reported scam messages instruct recipients to submit documentation for verification before being assigned a “fee” payable in cryptocurrency, after which safe transit would allegedly be granted at a pre-agreed time.

In one example cited by Marisks, the message stated that Iranian security services would assess eligibility before determining payment in BTC or USDt, framing crypto transfers as a condition for unimpeded passage.

Trump says he won’t allow Iran to impose tolls on ships. Source: The Middle East

The company also suggested that at least one vessel recently targeted by gunfire while attempting to exit the strait may have received such fraudulent instructions, though the information has not been independently verified.

Cointelegraph reached out to Marisks for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

Crypto payments to Iran could trigger sanctions risks: Chainalysis

Shipping companies considering paying transit fees in cryptocurrency to Iran could face serious sanctions exposure, according to Chainalysis senior intelligence analyst Kaitlin Martin.

She told Cointelegraph that any payments linked to Iranian-controlled waterways could be treated as “material support,” potentially violating US and international sanctions targeting entities such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 09:30

DHL CEO Warns Prolonged Energy Shock Could Push Global Economy To "Tipping Point"

DHL Group CEO Tobias Meyer warned Bloomberg TV earlier this morning that a persistent Gulf energy shock could morph into broader trouble for the global economy.

"Well we have seen this before, that you have recognized by consumers as having an impact that sparks broader discussion, the real economic implications for people. Now, this hasn't happened yet. We're trying to prevent that from happening. The 10, 12 million barrels of crude oil per day, it will come to that tipping point. Solutions are needed and political momentum is building up to resolve the situation in the Strait of Hormuz," Meyer said.

Meyer's reference to the "tipping point" is clear: if Gulf oil losses of 10 to 12 million barrels per day are not offset soon, global energy and product prices will stay elevated, causing significant knock-on effects throughout the world economy.

DHL CEO Tobias Meyer says we are in danger of reaching a "tipping point" if energy supply issues aren't resolved in the Middle East https://t.co/zTL9UKeCD7 pic.twitter.com/Rg9gj1QuyY

— Bloomberg (@business) April 21, 2026

DHL Group sits at the center of global trade. It operates parcel, express, air freight, ocean freight, and road freight, as well as supply chain services, across more than 220 countries and territories, suggesting that Meyer is a seasoned observer of what to look for ahead of inflection points in the global economy.

Meyer pointed out that the US-Iran conflict and the disruption of the Hormuz chokepoint are already affecting DHL operations, constraining transport routes, tightening freight markets, and pushing shipping rates higher, especially on Asia-Europe lanes.

He added that, with Western airlines avoiding Russian airspace and Gulf carriers operating below pre-war capacity, trade flows from India and Southeast Asia to Europe are becoming more strained.

Meyer is clear that failing to replace the loss of 10 million to 12 million barrels of crude oil per day in the Gulf would almost certainly push the global economy to a "tipping point" from which there is no return.

Separately, the International Energy Agency released a report early last week that stated, "The Iran war has thoroughly upended the global outlook for oil consumption. Demand destruction will spread as scarcity and higher prices persist."

JPMorgan's top commodity expert recently described how the demand destruction crisis would spread from the Gulf area, hitting Asia first, then Africa and Europe, before ultimately affecting the US, especially California.

Source

With the Strait of Hormuz still effectively shut by Iran, a U.S. naval blockade in place, and U.S.-Iran talks potentially set for later today ahead of Wednesday's ceasefire deadline, even an immediate diplomatic breakthrough would not restore energy flows overnight. Gulf-area export hubs would still take months to return to normal.

This shows that the Gulf energy shock threatens to push the global economy dangerously close to the tipping point Meyer describes.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 09:15

Trump Invokes Defense Production Act To Sign Energy-Related Directives

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump on April 20 invoked the Defense Production Act to issue a series of memorandums focused on strengthening coal supply chains, ​natural gas transmission, and ​liquefied natural gas capacity.

Trump also signed memos aimed at boosting domestic petroleum production, enhancing grid infrastructure, and expanding the deployment of “large-scale energy” and related infrastructure.

In a post on X, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said the memos would allow the Energy Department to use funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to strengthen the country’s “grid infrastructure and unleash reliable, affordable, secure energy.”

The Defense Production ​Act is ​a ⁠cold war-era legislation that grants the president authority to expand and expedite the supply of materials from the domestic industrial base for national security purposes.

In the memos, Trump cited his Jan. 20, 2025, executive order declaring a national energy emergency, noting that insufficient energy supply could expose the country to “hostile foreign actors” and risk national security.

“Consistent with that declaration, I find that ensuring the domestic capability for development, manufacturing, and deployment of large-scale energy and energy-related infrastructure is essential to United States national defense, yet due to financing risks, regulatory delays, and market barriers, these cannot be met in full under existing market conditions,” the president stated in one of his memos.

The memos direct the Energy Department to make “necessary purchases, commitments, and financial instruments” to support projects expanding oil production, coal supply chains, natural gas transmission, liquefied natural gas capacity, grid infrastructure, and other energy-related infrastructure.

The move came as the Trump administration worked to curb surging commodity prices fueled by the conflict with Iran, which has driven up oil ​and fertilizer costs.

Iran last week said it would open the Strait of Hormuz to all commercial vessels during a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, but started charging tolls and later reinstated “strict military oversight” over the strait due to the resulting U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports. The United States then imposed a blockade against vessels visiting Iranian ports on April 13 after the United States said that Iran was not allowing free passage through the strait, which was a condition for the ceasefire.

The situation heightened market uncertainty and pushed oil prices higher on April 20, with crude trading at about $94.75 on April 20.

To ease pressure on oil markets and ensure adequate supply, the Trump administration on April 17 renewed a sanctions waiver that allows nations to buy Russian oil stranded at sea, extending it through May 16 after the previous license expired on April 11.

In February, the Treasury Department issued a general license authorizing the exploration, development, and production of oil and gas in Venezuela as part of an effort to boost oil supply chains.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 09:01

"We're On Borrowed Time": Vitol LNG Chief Warns Of Coming Food Price Shock

Pablo Galante Escobar, the head of liquefied natural gas (LNG) at Vitol, warned the audience at the FT Commodities Summit earlier today that the "world is on borrowed time" and that the Gulf energy shock will develop into a food crisis unless LNG flows resume through the Hormuz chokepoint.

"We are on borrowed time. Every day this trade remains closed and every day production does not come back, we are building a problem for the future, and we are building a problem that, as I said, will be transferred from the energy side into many different sectors, with the food sector being a very important one," Escobar said, who works world's biggest independent energy trader.

Escobar continued, "This is not sustainable, or the energy crisis will become a food crisis. Only gas can supply the feed for fertilizers. We are building a problem for the future."

He added that even if the Hormuz chokepoint reopened today, it could still take three to five months for undamaged LNG production to fully recover.

Longer term, the Gulf market could lose about 20 million tons per year of global LNG supply growth in 2027 and 2028 because of damage to Qatari capacity and delays to new regional projects. 

Escobar is correct that the second- and third-order effects of Gulf-related LNG supply disruptions are already rippling through the global fertilizer chain, sending prices sharply higher and triggering shortages across critical agricultural belts.

The downstream risk has been very clear: reduced fertilizer availability and higher input costs threaten to dent crop harvest yields later this year. In other words, this potentially sets the stage for a food price inflation spike: 

• Fertilizer Crisis Worse Than Goldman Forecasted, Sees Two Clear Winners

• Why The Fertilizer Crisis May Spark Record Inflows Into Agri ETFs

• 70% Of US Farmers Say That They Won't Be Able To Buy All The Fertilizer They Need In 2026

• Countdown Begins: Former Central Bank Advisor Warns Food-Price Shock Could Hit "Within 6 To 9 Months"

Global food prices vs. US diesel prices at pump vs. US urea spot prices  

Also at the FT Commodities Summit, Julien Bourdeau, global head of LNG at Mercuria, said the previously expected global LNG glut that was expected to swamp the world has been postponed, with the 2026 market getting shorter. 

One month ago, we asked a very simple question: "Will QatarEnergy's LNG Fiasco Derail Goldman's Prewar View Of A Mega LNG Wave."

Facing a possible food inflation spike later this year suggests one thing: hedge now. Plant a backyard garden, buy a chicken coop, and become more self-sufficient on your own land.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/21/2026 - 08:45