Cuba Ready To Negotiate With Trump, But Urges Dialing Down Of Pressure

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has offered to enter negotiations with Washington, but has made clear that this must happen "without pressure" - at a moment the Trump administration is seeking to economically strangle Cuba - even going so far as to openly tout the desire to see regime change.

"Cuba is willing to engage in dialogue with the United States," the Cuban leader announced Thursday. He made clear this can be a "dialogue on any topic... but without pressure or precondition."

via Associated Press

But his key caveat is that for dialogue to take place, it must happen "from a position of equals, with respect for our sovereignty, our independence and our self-determination" and without "interference in our internal affairs."

Díaz-Canel added that Cuba has long been subjected to "intense media campaigns of slander, hatred, and psychological warfare."

President Trump has been seeking to end oil imports to Cuba, and after the Maduro overthrow, this has become a real possibility, given that the United States can now demand that the interim government in Caracas end its oil exports to Havana. Venezuela has always been Cuba's number one supplier. 

Mexico too has recently halted oil sales to Cuba so that it can avoid coming under a White House pressure campaign.

But there's still a lifeline: "Russian oil has been supplied to Cuba on numerous occasions in recent years. We expect this practice to continue," Moscow's ambassador to Cuba, Viktor Koronelli, has explained. 

In the background, Cuban immigrants in the US dread the possibility of being sent back to Cuba, especially with its economy in a sanctions-induced tailspin:

“It’s been brutal,” said Estévez. “Imagine Dylan hugging his phone every night when he sees his dad. I wouldn’t wish this on any mother.”

As the US government heaps pressure on Cuba, cutting off access to its oil shipments, Donald Trump has framed the campaign as an effort to make the island safe for Cuban Americans.

“A lot of people that live in our country are treated very badly by Cuba,” Trump said recently. “They all voted for me, and we want them to be treated well. We’d like to be able to have them go back to a home in their country, where they haven’t seen their family, their country for many, many decades.”

Last weekend, Trump said "We’re starting to talk to Cuba" and explained his view that "It doesn’t have to be a humanitarian crisis. I think they probably would come to us and want to make a deal. So Cuba would be free again."

But there's some clear regime change activity happening behind the scenes, with The Wall Street Journal reporting last week that the White House is "searching for Cuban government insiders who can help cut a deal to push out the Communist regime by the end of the year."

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/06/2026 - 17:20

If You're Free To Complain about Fascism, You Don't Live In A Fascist Country

Authored by Jenna McCarthy via Jenna's Side,

Many, many years ago—we’re talking decades—I got into a fight with a boy I’d been dating for (thankfully) not very long. I can’t even recall what the argument was about, but I’ll never forget his very last words to me:

“God, you’re so stupid.”

“There are plenty of insults you could fling at me that would be accurate,” I informed him by way of a breakup. “Hot-headed, demanding, defensive, defiant, opinionated, unfiltered, gets hangry if not fed every four hours—let me help you out—but make no mistake, stupid isn’t one of them.”

I think of that moment every once in a while, for instance when I hear celebrities, Facebook “friends,” or the coven of professional scolds over at The View whining about the “fascist dictator” in the White House. And not because my reaction is “God, you’re so stupid”—although it one hundred percent is—but because they’re obviously just reaching for the nastiest insult in the bag and hoping it sticks. It’s basically the “your mom is so ugly, she made an onion cry” of political attacks.

Trump is arguably bombastic. He is egomaniacal. He can be rude and misogynistic and childish. He fires off 3 A.M. Twitter tantrums like a drunk raccoon, insults world leaders to their faces, and was busted bragging about grabbing women by the… lady parts. If he were your uncle, no one would blame you for not inviting him to your wedding.

But a dictator he is not.

Let me prove it: In America, the worst thing that happens when you stream a boy band is that Spotify recommends more boy bands. Do you know what happens in North Korea? If you’re lucky, you’re sent to a labor camp. If you’re not so lucky, you could face the death penalty. That is not hyperbole.

According to a new Amnesty International report, North Koreans—including children—are being publicly executed for watching South Korean dramas or listening to music by groups like BTS. (Rich families can sometimes bribe officials to escape elimination, so apparently corruption is universal—although the price tag is often too high for many.) Thanks to Kim Jong Un’s 2020 Law on Rejecting Reactionary Thought and Culture, consequences for consuming or distributing unapproved entertainment range from five to fifteen years of forced labor and a public shaming to being brutally unalived in front of an audience as a gruesome cautionary tale.

But please, Joy Behar, tell me again how you’re living under a fascist regime.

North Korean escapees describe being lined up and marched to public executions as part of their “ideological education,” designed expressly to terrorize citizens into compliance. Tens of thousands of people dragged to a field to watch someone die for enjoying an unapproved TV show. Meanwhile, over here, “ideological education” means attending a corporate DEI seminar with lukewarm coffee, sitting through a required HR video about tone in the workplace, or getting lectured by a celebrity who listened to one podcast and now identifies as a constitutional scholar.

You poor, tortured souls. Please reward yourselves with a matcha latte; your activism must be exhausting.

Here’s a little reality check: if your fascist dictator allows you to tweet “FASCIST DICTATOR!!!” in all caps directly from your couch while wearing pajama pants you bought from the TikTok shop, you are not, in fact, living under a fascist dictator. If your most humiliating public moment is the time you accidentally replied-all to an office-wide email and called your boss an insufferable twatwaffle, you are not a victim of political oppression. And if the most hazardous consequence of your entertainment consumption is Hulu finding out you’re logged into your ex’s account and booting you off the platform, you do not live in an authoritarian state. You live in America, where the biggest threats to your freedoms are TSA confiscating your tweezers or Trader Joe’s discontinuing your favorite spicy peanut salad dressing.

“This country is an authoritarian hellscape,” the liberal left loves to lament. I know, it feels cool to say. It’s dramatic. It gets likes and comments and retweets. But if your alleged authoritarian hellscape permits you to organize protests against it, pen songs decrying it, record podcasts objecting to it, and sell merch mocking it, then maybe “authoritarian hellscape” isn’t the right term. Maybe it’s more like “stable, open society with Wi-Fi and too many microphones.” (Also, if it’s so dystopian, feel free to expatriate yourself. No, really. Flights leave hourly.)

These are the same Defenders of Democracy™, I’ll remind the class, who cheered when the unvaccinated were barred from restaurants, fired from their jobs, and banished from polite society altogether. The same hall-monitor brigade that applauded mask mandates, school closures, travel bans, curfews, capacity limits, and the glorious era of “Show Me Your Papers” vaccine passports. And now they want to style themselves as freedom fighters living under an iron-fisted despot? Please. These people didn’t just tolerate tyranny—they demanded it. They celebrated it. They literally couldn’t get enough of it.

When Barack Obama was droning American citizens overseas without trial, the left went mute. When Bill Clinton endorsed the assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, no celebrity declared we were living under a dictatorship. When Joe Biden tried to impose sweeping vaccine mandates through OSHA and attempted a massive student-loan bribery “forgiveness” plan via emergency powers—both slapped down as unconstitutional—the same people now screaming “authoritarian takeover!” were too busy knitting vagina beanies to notice. Funny how the outrage only kicks in when authoritarianism strolls in wearing a red hat.

So when the likes of Cher and Jim Carrey and John Legend and Bette Midler and George Clooney and Kathy Griffin and Bruce Springsteen use their public platforms to call out Trump’s fascist takeover of America, their claims collapse under their own weight. Because real authoritarianism doesn’t let you complain about authoritarianism. That’s sort of the whole point.

It would almost be funny if it weren’t so… stupid.

A dictatorship, for the record, is somewhere people cannot complain. Where they cannot consume outside media. Where the government can kill you for pressing play on the wrong USB drive. Where state power and fear control every aspect of life—not where a disliked political figure exercises lawful constitutional authority and triggers a tantrum.

And it’s not just North Korea. Zooming out even slightly reveals an entire planet of governments behaving in ways that make America’s “fascism” discourse look like a middle-school slam contest. (“Your mom’s so dumb, she studied for her Covid test!”). In China, people are disappeared for practicing the wrong religion, posting the wrong sentence, or attending the wrong protest; an entire ethnic minority has been shoved into “re-education” camps large enough to be visible from space. In Iran, teenagers are executed for chanting slogans, women are beaten for a strand of visible hair, and the government turns off the internet whenever it gets even a faint whiff of protest. In Russia, critics are jailed, poisoned, or randomly “fall out of windows.” In Afghanistan, girls are banned from school and public executions are a weekly event. These are governments that don’t merely dislike dissent—they annihilate it.

We, on the other hand, live in a country where we can march in the streets chanting “No Kings!” and not a single king will try to stop us.

Seeing the internet teeming with rants about America being one executive order away from total collapse feels like watching a Babylon Bee meme come to life. Because when people are free to say what they think, vocally dislike who they please, and watch anything they want without fear of a firing squad and somehow label that fascism, they’re not oppressed—they’re just spelling freedom wrong.

The next time a celebrity relaunches their “We are literally living under Mussolini” monologue while sipping an $8 iced coffee and documenting themselves flipping off their president, feel free to drop a reminder in the comments that there are places where people are dying because they downloaded the TV show those same celebrities binge-watched on their way to the Save Democracy Brunch.

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/06/2026 - 17:00

"Are We A Nation... Or A Market?" Heritage And Cato Square-Off In Right-Wing Think-Tank Infighting

In last night’s ZeroHedge immigration debate, Simon Hankinson of the Heritage Foundation and David Bier of the Cato Institute offered sharply different policy prescriptions on the border, ICE, and H1B visas.

A proponent of net subzero immigration, Hankinson emphasized national cohesion and first-world culture while warning against treating people as interchangeable labor inputs. Bier, by contrast, defended the increasingly unpopular position of loosening immigration restrictions to allow a freer flow of individuals across the border. 

To Bier, who penned the above NYT op-ed late in Biden’s term, immigration is a question of individual liberty and voluntary association. Taking the pure libertarian perspective, he believes the government ought not have a role in job protectionism nor prohibiting an individual's movement.

Below were the key exchanges for those short on time and listen to the full think tank v. think tank debate here:

“Humans are not just labor units”

Hankinson rejected the idea that immigration can be evaluated purely through economic efficiency or aggregate fiscal outcomes, arguing that such an approach strips the concept of nationhood of any substantive meaning. 

As he put it, “humans are not just work units…. If we don't care if it's, you know, Gustav or Jerry or Carlos or Charlie or Mohammed or Melvin, it's just how many widgets can you make in a day? How many cars can you make in a week?” and instead emphasized that immigrants ought to “know the language, the culture, the history, if you love the country, if you fight for it, if you'd send your kids to fight for it, or if you'd volunteer for the fire department.”

“If none of that matters, if we're just labor units, then we should have unlimited immigration and there should be a free market.”

pic.twitter.com/Yg0FwAsQAP

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) February 6, 2026

Immigrants are not assaulting the Constitution; government is

Bier pointed the finger inwards, at the U.S. government, as the greatest threat to the liberties of Americans.

Referencing the high-profile visa revocations for anti-Israel opinions, Bier said, “It’s not immigrants who are arresting people for writing op-eds in student newspapers.” Bier went on to say immigrants are not behind the assault on the Bill of Rights:

“The repudiation of the First Amendment, with the Second Amendment’s under assault by this administration, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment—you go down the list,” Bier said. In his view, “this administration is the most hostile to constitutional democracy in my lifetime,” and “it has nothing to do with immigrants.”

pic.twitter.com/eitydfdgWA

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) February 6, 2026

Watch the full debate below (or on YouTube) or listen on Spotify.

https://t.co/nQbAlgfyqj

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 5, 2026

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/06/2026 - 16:40

"This Bread & Circuses Routine Is Looking Pretty Played Out..."

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

Blood In The Water

“Subversion works by importing an inverted moral frame and getting the target population to install it as its own conscience.”

- Yuri Bezmenov’s Ghost on X

Even in the deep-frozen fastness of midwinter, events and tensions surge, and America awaits . . . Bad Bunny!

You perceive that there is some message in the genderfluid Puerto Rican songster’s upcoming Superbowl halftime gig, but what is the message?

A 180-degree counterpoint to the earnest bashing and mashing of giants on the field?

The official annunciation of Reconquesta?

A thumb in the eye of President Donald Trump and the white supremacist horse he rode in on?

This bread and circuses routine is looking pretty played out.

The bread, of course, is pizza, the Soylent Green of these seeming end-times, underwriting the nation’s romance with morbid obesity (and perhaps with degenerate sex).

The circuses - last week’s Grammy Awards, the Winter Olympics tonight, Sunday’s looming Superbowl — give off an odor of utter cultural exhaustion.

What will it finally take for Western Civ, and its avatar, the USA, to stop embarrassing itself before God and history, and find better things to do?

Big Bad Bunnies Toy with Baby Bunny

You have been following the Epstein papers, no doubt.

The sordidness grows like a yeast infection in the body politic, and yet to date hardly one prosecutable crime? What gives with that? Last week’s release of the final super-batch of Epstein papers brought on a harvest of reputations, at least.

The docs revealed Microsoft zillionaire Bill Gates conniving with the late (possibly) Jeffrey Epstein to turn pandemics and vaccines into a profitable enterprise, with a spate of email discussions years before Covid got sprung on the world.

Then, it just happened that Mr. Gates sponsored the Event 201 pandemic exercise in October 2019 (with Johns Hopkins and the World Economic Forum), around the same time that the first outbreaks of Covid-19 occurred in Wuhan China with the World Military Games, a sort of Olympics for soldiers. Many athletes from various countries (including the U.S., France, Germany, and others) fell ill with a respiratory infection.

Naturally, you wonder how long, exactly, was the Covid prank in the works and among whom? If Mr. Gates was involved with Johns Hopkins planning Event 201, wouldn’t you suppose he was also in contact with US NIAID, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s agency, and with Dr. Fauci himself? Dr. Fauci had a special talent for augmenting taxpayer funding of his activities with money from outside government, and Bill Gates certainly had a lot of it, plus an obsessive drive equal to Dr. Fauci’s for messing around with viruses. And 2019 was exactly the time that scientists at the Wuhan Virology Institute happened to be experimenting with corona viruses associated with bats. Whoops.

It happens that Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Oversight Committee now looking into the Epstein matter, indicated this week that he was interested in calling Bill Gates to testify about his activities with Jeffrey Epstein. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear from Bill about his adventures in virology? Bill Gates is not a doctor or an accredited medical researcher, by the way. Virology is his hobby.

As a sort of tail on the donkey, an email written by Jeffrey Epstein in 2013 surfaced this week stating that Bill Gates said he caught a sexually transmitted disease from Russian girls and sought help from Epstein getting antibiotics to secretly dose his then-wife Melinda with. It blew up the Internet, but do you detect a whiff of a cockamamie story (no pun intended)? Bill Gates surely had the resources to virtually buy a doctor and have him prescribe whatever Mr. Gates wanted. In any case, Bill Gates’s long-running consort with Jeffrey Epstein has apparently sunk his reputation as a medical philanthropist, so expect him to look for another hobby as he skulks off into the gloaming of ignominy.

Then, there is the case over in the UK of Lord Peter Mandelson (Baron Mandelson of Foy), erstwhile UK ambassador to the USA, lately cashiered out of the job for his relations with Jeffrey Epstein.

Photos emerged of Lord M less than fully clothed with others in Jeffrey Epstein’s troupe, also less than fully clothed. In the notorious 2003 birthday book, he wrote that Epstein was “my best pal.” He received payments from JE over the years and, in return, it appears, Mandelson, then working as a senior minister after the 2008 financial crisis, allegedly forwarded to JE confidential UK government emails, market-sensitive details (e.g., on EU bailouts for Greece, banker bonus taxes, and notes from meetings with US officials in Britain for JE’s investment purposes. Bottom line: Mandelson ruined. Ambassadorship terminated. . .resigned from the House of Lords. . .King Charles III reportedly looking to revoke his title (Baron of Foy), leaving him a mere commoner in ruin.

Lord Peter Mandelson, Baron of Foy, in Briefs, with Epstein Girl

Next up (looks like): Bill and Hillary Clinton are called by subpoena to testify before Mr. Comer’s House Oversight Committee on Feb 26 and 27. They’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do about how Jeffrey Epstein helped them construct the fabulous engine of wealth known as the Clinton Foundation and its various spinoffs such as the Clinton Global Initiative, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, the Clinton Family Foundation, and the Clinton Presidential Library.

This followed a months-long tussle to get the Clinton’s to submit to in-person interviews under oath in closed session. The Clintons wanted to just hand in some written bullshit of their own and leave it at that. They were on the verge of being voted in contempt of Congress — like other political luminaries, Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon recently were, with months of jail time — when they gave in. Hillary got all snippy about it yesterday, demanding the hearing go pubic on TV so she could grandstand. Denied. Curiously, no one is rushing to the Clintons’ defense. You might suspect their many friends and associates smell blood in the water and nobody wants to get wet.

Speaking of things wet and bloody, the final super-batch of Epstein papers has revived rumors of a dastardly Satanic child abuse cult among the anointed... all kinds of horrifying activities, such as those represented in Tony Podesta’s art collection.

Even the cuckoo story of PizzaGate is back up for review. I can’t state that I actually believe any of it, but the chatter is deafening so you are advised to stand by and see what turns up.

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/06/2026 - 16:20

Consumer Credit Smashes All Estimates As Monthly Credit Card Debt Unexpectedly Surges By Most In 2 Years

2025 closed with a surprising surge in consumer spending and retail sales, one which was unexpected since personal savings at the end of the year had just ground to a 3 year low...

... which when coupled with stagnant earnings prompted the question just where did consumers get the money for December's spending spree. 

We now have the answer: at 3pm today, the Fed published the latest consumer credit data, and boy was it a doozy. After November's tepid $4.2 billion increase in total consumer credit (which came in below estimates even after today's revision to $4.7 billion), consensus was looking for a modest bounce to $8 billion, or well below the post-covid average. Instead, what the Fed reported was a stunner: consumer credit soared by a whopping $24.045 billion, the biggest monthly increase of 2025 by a wide margin (only Dec. 2024 was bigger going back all the way to 2023),..

... and not only was the number 3x higher than the median forecast, it came in above the highest economist forecast, in this case from RBC's Michael Reid at $22.7 billion.

The breakdown shows that while the increase in non-revolving credit, or auto and student loans, was a bit more than recent monthly prints at $10.2 or the highest since May '25...

... it was the surge in credit card debt (i.e. revolving credit) that was the big delta in the December numbers: at $13.8 billion, a huge jump from the $1.7 billion drop in November, this was the biggest monthly increase since 2023!

In other words, the unexpectedly strong close to the end of the year was funded by the same old source: credit cards, and as in all previous credit card fueled surges, this one too will have to be repaid, pulling from future spending at some point, although it very well may not if credit card companies just tacitly approve some more dry powder and instead just bury the average American under even more debt. 

As for student and auto loans, it was a surprisingly tame quarter because even though nonrevolving credit closed 2026 at a new record high of $3.780 trillion (with the two largest components student and car loans at $1.856 trillion and $1.562 trillion, respectively), the increase in the quarter was modest at best, up just $2.6 billion for student loans, and $0.8 billion for auto loans. What is remarkable is that auto loans actually declined in 2025 which may explain why the car industry has been so bad in 2025.

Finally, and this will come as a surprise to nobody, despite 1.75% in rate cuts by the Fed since last September, we can now confirm that rates on credit cards have gone... nowhere as banks continue to bleed US consumers dry: at the middle of 2023 the average rate on credit card accounts was 22.16%... and on Dec 31, 2025 - and a half years years later, the number was higher at 22.30%, just barely below the all time high of 23.37% set one year ago. And all thise despite 6 rate cuts by the Fed. 

One almost wonders: if it's not the Fed setting rates on consumer credit, what's the point of having a central banks?

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/06/2026 - 15:58

Trump Says He's Still Looking 'Seriously' At Sending $2,000 Tariff Rebate Payments

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump has said in a recent interview that his administration is still considering sending out $2,000 payments to Americans derived from his tariffs.

During an interview with Trump on NBC News published on Feb. 4, host Tom Llamas noted that the president “floated the idea of $2,000 rebate checks for Americans from tariff revenue” and asked him, “Who’s going to get that and—when is that going to happen?”

Trump responded by saying that he is “looking at it very seriously” and that he is “the only one” who can issue such payments because his administration is “taking in hundreds of billions of dollars of money from tariffs.”

When pressed by Llamas on whether he would “promise some Americans” could get the payments, Trump said, “I can do that. I haven’t made the commitment yet, but I may make the commitment,” without elaborating.

The president then pivoted to saying that his administration provided a $1,776 dividend payment to members of the military in a move that was detailed by the IRS and the Pentagon last month.

Dividend payments derived from the administration’s sweeping tariff regime were floated by Trump in November 2025.

While some White House officials have said the $2,000 payments would need an act of Congress, Trump signaled last month he can unilaterally issue them.

He and others in the administration have indicated there would be limits on income and said that the payments would be sent to non-wealthy Americans.

“I don’t think we would have to go to the Congress, but we’ll find out,” Trump told reporters on Jan. 20, adding that “the reason we’re even talking about it is that we have so much money coming in from tariffs.”

But he added that with the tariffs, the administration “will be able to make a very substantial dividend to the people of our country.”

Last year, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that Congress would need to pass legislation before the payments could be sent, while National Economic Council head Kevin Hassett made a similar comment in November that legislation would be needed first.

Some Republican lawmakers have said they would be willing to support legislation to send tariff rebate checks to people. Among them is Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who introduced a measure in 2025 that would send rebates to workers, although the payment appears to be lower—$600 per adult and $600 per dependent child, totaling $2,400 for a family of four—than the checks proposed by Trump.

Trump’s tariffs are still being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court, which has yet to issue a ruling on a lawsuit challenging the legality of the import taxes under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. It’s not clear when the high court is slated to rule on the tariffs.

Tariffs could still be imposed by the administration, said Trump and Bessent, under different authorities. However, Trump has warned that imposing them would be more cumbersome and a slower process without using the 1977 law.

Last April, Trump imposed tariffs on nearly every country in the world and has argued that the United States has been victimized by other nations for decades on trade. In other instances, he’s said the tariffs can be used to end wars and to put pressure on countries that aren’t aligned with U.S. national security interests.

Democratic lawmakers have been critical of the tariff policies. During a contentious House hearing this week, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) told Bessent that she believes the tariffs have increased “prices across the board,” including for housing and lumber, and claimed the administration has been “waging a war” against U.S. consumers.

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/06/2026 - 15:00

Pam Bondi's DOJ Is Sabotaging The Trump Coalition

Authored by John Velleco, Executive Vice President Gun Owners of America,

In November 2024, the American people decisively elected President Trump to a second term in office. After four intolerable years of controlled national demolition under the Biden autopen, the newly elected 47th President was poised to keep his promises and fulfill his mandate.

President Trump had the opportunity to stop the federal government’s leftward push, steer the government back in the right direction, and make significant and lasting progress in that new direction. That third point is the most critical. Indeed, without permanent change, President Trump’s historic election – and this nation’s generational opportunity to course-correct – will turn out to have been nothing more than a momentary pause in America’s long-term decline.

Yet inexplicably, the Trump Administration has failed to take even basic steps to effect permanent change. For example, the Administration often has taken the easy path of using temporary Executive Orders rather than insisting on permanent legislation. Of course, Executive Orders are temporary, and can be undone by any future President with the stroke of a pen.

The same dynamic exists in the world of litigation, where Pam Bondi’s DOJ has chosen the temporary fix over the permanent solution. In addition to having repeatedly bungled implementation of President Trump’s agenda, Bondi’s DOJ has deliberately avoided letting cases reach final judgment.

For example, DOJ has repeatedly attempted to moot litigation involving Biden-era policies, even after a judge seems on the verge of striking down those bad policies through a precedent-setting decision. Yet all this tactic does is ensure that a future Democrat administration will be able to put these Biden policies right back into effect.

But why would the Bondi DOJ work so hard to prevent lasting victories in court for Trump Coalition interests? Indeed, with DOJ friends like that, who needs enemies? If the Bondi DOJ’s hostility to the groups that made up the Trump Coalition in 2024 continues, it will seriously damage any chance of success in the 2026 midterms. This article will examine the Bondi DOJ’s infuriating pattern of obstruction, sabotage, and outright friendly fire against the Trump Coalition and ask one simple question: Why?

DOJ’s Failure to Implement the President’s Mandate

But first, let’s examine what DOJ could have done in service of the American people during this past year. As it turns out, DOJ has a number of legal tools available that it inexplicably has declined to use.

Consider the role litigation plays in shaping domestic policy. A court order can bind the government to a certain legal interpretation or specific course of conduct, and generally will survive a change in administrations. Thus, if the federal government is a party to a lawsuit, a court order against it can codify policy – good or bad.

So what happens when a new administration inherits an ongoing lawsuit that was originally brought by its political allies against the prior administration? Well, in the past, DOJ often has simply settled cases, either privately or via court-enforceable consent judgment. Perhaps to no one’s surprise, this tactic has been a favorite of Democrat administrations.   The Biden DOJ’s handling of a prior Trump-era lawsuit illustrates the point.

When Biden took office in 2021, his DOJ inherited a pending ACLU-led lawsuit against the first Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration enforcement policy. Rather than litigate the case any further, the Biden DOJ settled with its friends at the ACLU, barring the federal government “from reenacting the zero-tolerance policy” until 2031, and agreeing to pay the ACLU some $6 million in attorneys’ fees to boot.

In addition to settling cases, DOJ also can (and has) let its friends’ lawsuits play out. For example, if a judge appears poised to rule in favor of an outcome the administration wants, DOJ can simply wait for that ruling. Then, not only will the federal government be bound by that ruling, but also it will generate favorable legal precedent for use in future cases.

The same options would be available if new lawsuits were to be filed during the administration – settle with allies when they are right, or let the courts issue decisions on the merits. But we are not talking about using the Democrat tactic often dubbed “sue and settle.” Democrat administrations have abused this tactic to “compel government action that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve.”

In fact, During the Obama years, many of the administration’s environmental regulations came about from these sorts of “sue and settle” pre-arranged consent decrees. Although we are not urging the use of such sham lawsuits, it’s worth noting that this is the tactic the Democrats use to get what they want.

In stark contrast to the Democrats’ underhanded “sue and settle” tactics, Pam Bondi’s DOJ has refused to allow Trump Coalition victories even in legitimate litigation that has been ongoing for years. Instead, Pam Bondi’s DOJ has fought tooth and nail to make suits filed by Trump Coalition groups simply go away.

Gun Rights

We at Gun Owners of America (GOA) have experienced DOJ’s inexplicable resistance firsthand. Although our Second Amendment lawsuits are by no means the only Trump Coalition causes torpedoed by Pam Bondi’s Justice Department, they are quintessential examples of this worrying trend.

During both his 2024 election campaign and when taking office in January of 2025, President Trump made a number of promises to gun owners, a massive contingent of his voters. First, President Trump promised that Biden-era ATF regulations – what he called “disasters” for gun owners – would be “ripped up and torn out” his “first week … in office.”

GOA applauded this news, since we were the only Second Amendment advocacy group to have challenged every one of Biden’s anti-gun rules in court. But we knew that merely rolling back existing infringements would do little to regain the miles of ground lost during the left’s decades-long war of attrition against the Second Amendment.

And so, much to his credit, President Trump went on offense, announcing a comprehensive Department of Justice-wide initiative to review all federal actions for consistency with the Second Amendment. Once again, GOA applauded this historic undertaking, and looked forward to working with DOJ to end unconstitutional gun restrictions for good. Key words – for good.

But sadly, DOJ has taken precisely the opposite approach. At almost at every turn, elements within the Bondi DOJ have resisted permanent victories in GOA’s cases. And without something permanent like a settlement, consent judgment, or a court order on the merits, any future leftist administration can simply reimplement Biden’s infringements at will.

Take GOA’s challenge to the Biden ATF’s “Engaged in the Business” rule. After Democrats promulgated this rule to criminalize all private gun sales, GOA secured a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the rule. But after taking power, rather than allow the district court to finalize its preliminary pro-gun ruling into a permanent one, the Bondi DOJ worked to undermine our pro-gun victory. For more than a year, DOJ stalled progress in our litigation, both in the district court and on appeal. Thankfully, the Fifth Circuit recently denied DOJ’s most recent request to stall the case even further.

DOJ also aggressively sought to moot GOA’s challenge to ATF’s 2020 refusal to allow Michigan Concealed Pistol Licensees to avoid redundant federal background checks. DOJ could have allowed GOA to obtain a binding ruling in court.   Instead, DOJ had ATF simply rescind its policy, and then immediately sought dismissal of GOA’s case as moot. By taking this “nothing to see here” approach, and avoiding a permanent judicial ruling or settlement, DOJ’s actions have ensured that a future Democrat administration is free to simply reimplement ATF’s old policy.

The same is true for GOA’s challenges to ATF’s Biden-era “zero tolerance” license revocation policy for gun dealers. As the Trump White House acknowledged, this policy “undermine[d] the Second Amendment” by “shut[ting] down small businesses across the Nation” over inadvertent and inconsequential paperwork errors. But rather than recognizing the need to permanently block “zero tolerance” now and in the future, DOJ just rescinded the policy and moved to dismiss. Again, this leaves a future Democrat administration free to reimplement this Biden policy at will.

But what about GOA’s challenge to the federal ban on mailing pistols using the U.S. Postal Service?   After GOA moved for summary judgment in December 2025, DOJ actually agreed in an Office of Legal Counsel memorandum that the statute violates the Second Amendment.

So, DOJ settled with GOA, right?

Wrong.

Instead, DOJ once again moved to dismiss, on the curious theory that its brand-new OLC memo meant that GOA lacked standing to challenge the statute’s constitutionality in the first place. Of course, all this tactic does is reserve the right of a future Democrat DOJ to reverse course. OLC memos are not set in stone, and many have been reversed by subsequent administrations. And left without any permanent victory, when (not if) a future Democrat administration simply rescinds OLC’s memo, GOA will have to challenge the statute all over again.

DOJ’s pattern is clear:

• First – avoid siding with gun owners even when they are clearly right.
• Second – delay, deny, and avoid pro-gun rulings.
• Third – don’t settle meritorious cases – in fact, work to prevent pro-gun decisions by mooting challenges so that gun owners can’t get permanent relief, thus preventing lasting victory for gun owners.

This begs the question: Who is the Bondi DOJ working for? It’s doesn’t appear to be the current President, and it certainly isn’t the tens of millions of gun owners who elected him. Rather, it must be the “swamp,” the “deep state,” or Permanent D.C. – whatever you want to call it.

Under Pam Bondi’s DOJ, it is the interests of the federal government – not the people – that are being protected at all costs.

That would explain why DOJ even sought to moot GOA’s First Amendment appeal of an unprecedented Biden-era gag order blocking GOA’s First Amendment right to print the news – with DOJ “intentionally” breaking the law in the process.   And it may also explain why GOA can’t even get a fraction of the attorney’s fees that Biden’s DOJ was thrilled to award its friends at the ACLU – in a case we won fair and square.

Speaking privately with GOA in recent months, the Attorneys General of two deep red states – as pro-Trump as they come – have told us that they have observed a similar pattern of Bondi DOJ resistance to litigation brought by their states and other Republican Attorneys General.

So it is not just pro-gun cases that this Bondi DOJ has resisted tooth and nail. Rather, her DOJ is actively opposing many of the groups that formed the Trump Coalition that elected her boss.   The following examples are only illustrative of the broader problems that have been shared with us, in matters where GOA does not lobby.

Undermining Trump Coalition Causes

Just last month, DOJ sought to pause the State of Louisiana’s challenge to Biden-era regulatory rollbacks on mifepristone, an abortion drug. Rather than agree with Louisiana that this abortion drug should not be accessible via mail order, DOJ sought to wait for the FDA to reverse itself, which DOJ claims will make Louisiana’s requested relief “unnecessary” and moot the case. Once again, DOJ is hoping to undermine a challenge by the President’s political allies, reserving the right of future Democrats to reverse and reimplement.

The same is true for another lawsuit led by Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri against the telehealth prescription of this same drug. In May 2025, DOJ sought to deprive plaintiffs of access to a judge who previously had ruled against the pro-choice cause. In that case, DOJ attorneys “stayed the legal course charted by [the] Biden administration,” arguing that the deep red states should sue in other, less favorable jurisdictions.

DOJ also has undermined the President’s energy agenda, defending a pretextual Biden-era national-monument designation that blocked uranium mining in Arizona. Rather than come to the aid of Republican plaintiffs challenging Biden’s designation, DOJ has argued they lack standing to sue.

Making matters worse, DOJ allowed Democrats to take a victory lap against President Trump’s order to freeze approvals of costly and unreliable wind energy projects.   When a district court ruled the President’s wind order “unlawful,” vacating it nationwide, left-wing Attorneys General from states like Connecticut and Washington celebrated.   DOJ never appealed this final ruling, allowing the Democrats to continue implementing their anti-energy agenda.

Conclusion

The pattern is clear. And it appears that gun owners are not the only group from the 2024 Trump Presidential Coalition that Pam Bondi’s DOJ has been working to undermine in court. In fact, the Bondi DOJ is resisting litigation by Trump Coalition groups almost as much as the Biden DOJ did.

This is no way for Pam Bondi’s DOJ to treat the voters who elected the same President who appointed her to office. And something needs to change.   Like a ratchet gear and pawl, this country for decades has moved to the left. By preventing rightward movement, this DOJ appears to be the pawl.

The hour grows late for President Trump to deliver on the promises he made to voters. So long as Pam Bondi’s DOJ continues to actively undermine litigation by Trump Coalition groups nationwide, there will be no permanent victories to cement the President’s agenda.  And all the next Democrat administration will have to do is reimplement old policies.  On many fronts, Bondi’s DOJ is fighting hard to empower the next Democrat to do just that.

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/06/2026 - 14:55

HGP Partners With Shaw To Deploy Navy's Nuclear Reactors On Land

HGP Intelligent Energy is partnering with the Shaw Group to deploy U.S. Navy submarine and aircraft carrier nuclear reactors at the DOE's Paducah, Kentucky facility.

Back in December, we covered their initial proposal to the U.S. government to utilize reactors from the Navy in an effort to find the quickest means of deploying new nuclear energy to support AI demand for government efforts like Project Genesis.

The U.S. Navy has operated the most successful nuclear program in history with over 7,500 reactor years of safe operation. It is abundantly clear that if there is a way to bring their technology and operational success to other efforts and venues, these possibilities should be pursued.

Shaw will be utilizing its previous experience with nuclear projects, including their involvement at Vogtle Units 3 and 4, to advance HGP’s CoreHeld Project through engineering, procurement, and fabrication services. Shaw's potential scope of work includes “balance-of-plant module fabrication, piping systems, structural components, pressure vessels, and related nuclear-grade equipment.”

The Paducah, Kentucky, site has been a hotspot of nuclear fuel chain activity over the past couple years. Formerly the site of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, the last commercial-scale, American uranium enrichment facility that closed in 2013, is being utilized by multiple companies. 

General Matter, led by Founders Fund's Scott Nolan, is developing one of the newest uranium enrichment facilities in Paducah after being awarded $900 million from the DOE in an effort to increase domestic production capacity. Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) is also working on uranium enrichment, but with a next-generation laser technology that hopes to provide lower-cost enrichment and a smaller footprint. GLE additionally looks to re-enrich some of the byproduct of previous enrichment processes with enough material stored on-site in Kentucky for GLE to become one of the largest uranium producers in the world. 

With naval nuclear reactors now potentially being deployed at Paducah, it creates the perfect recipe for Kentucky to participate in the recently announced Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses program. This program aims to create mega-campuses and partnerships between state and federal governments to house the entire nuclear lifecycle within a single fence line. Considering the only uranium conversion facility in the United States is located just across the river from Paducah and owned by Solstice Materials, Kentucky appears to be taking shape as one of the leading candidates for the first campus. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/06/2026 - 14:20

White House Says Trump Has No Plans To Deploy ICE At Polls, Won't Rule Out Federal Presence

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

The White House said on Feb. 5 that President Donald Trump has not discussed any “formal plans” to deploy U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at polling locations during November’s midterm elections, while declining to guarantee that federal agents would not be present near voting sites.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made the remarks during a press briefing in response to a question referencing a comment from former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

A reporter asked Leavitt for comment on Bannon’s recent remark that ICE agents would “surround the polls come November,” and whether the president was considering such action. Bannon made the remarks during an episode of his “War Room” podcast released Feb. 3.

“That’s not something I’ve ever heard the president consider. No,” Leavitt replied.

Pressed on whether she can “guarantee to the American public” that ICE will not have any presence near polling locations in the November mid-term election, the press secretary declined to offer such blanket assurances.

“I can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November. I mean, that’s frankly a very silly hypothetical question,” Leavitt said. “But what I can tell you is I haven’t heard the president discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside of polling locations. It’s a disingenuous question.”

Earlier this week, Trump suggested that Republicans should assert greater control over elections in areas the president has claimed are affected by fraud.

Speaking on Feb. 2, Trump said Republicans should “nationalize” and “take over” voting in at least 15 unspecified locations, repeating claims that U.S. elections suffer from widespread illegal voting.

Trump has long argued that noncitizens vote illegally in U.S. elections.

A 2014 academic study found evidence of noncitizen participation—“less than fifteen percent, but significantly greater than zero” in the 2008 presidential election and “more than three percent” in 2010. By contrast, a research review by the Brennan Center for Justice found that verified cases are “vanishingly rare.”

Voting booths are set up at a polling place in Newtown, Pa., on April 23, 2024. Matt Rourke/AP Photo

Federal law prohibits the president from deploying military troops at locations holding general or special elections “unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States,” according to 18 U.S. Code § 592, and bars any sort of interference in elections by armed forces. ICE agents are civilian law-enforcement officers and are not covered by the same prohibitions that apply to the armed forces, although other laws still limit intimidation or interference at polling places.

Lawmakers from the Democratic Party and some voting-rights groups have said that any visible presence of federal immigration enforcement near polling locations—especially in communities of color—could intimidate lawful voters and deter turnout.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), for instance, said in November 2025 that any deployment of federal immigration agents in or around polling places on Election Day would amount to “illegal voter intimidation” and an attempt to “suppress voting.”

Trump administration officials have rejected such characterizations, saying federal involvement is aimed at protecting election integrity rather than suppressing turnout.

“Interference in U.S. elections is a threat to our republic and a national security threat,” National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard said in a recent letter to Congress.

She said the administration is committed to ensuring that “neither foreign nor domestic powers undermine the American people’s right to determine who our elected leaders are.”

Democrats in Virginia have advanced legislation that would bar federal immigration enforcement activity near polling places.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said he is not in favor of federalizing elections and that he believes Trump’s remarks were limited to expressing support for the SAVE Act.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) noted that administering elections has historically been the responsibility of the states.

The SAVE Act, which Trump and congressional Republicans have cited as a priority, would impose nationwide requirements for voter identification and proof of citizenship, steps supporters describe as critical election-integrity safeguards.

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/06/2026 - 13:40

Homebuilders Tumble On Report White House May Launch Antitrust Probe Into House Affordability

Homebuilder stocks are tumbling after Bloomberg reported that Trump administration officials are exploring opening an antitrust investigation into US homebuilders as the White House focuses on tackling the country’s housing affordability crisis.

The Department of Justice could open the probe in the coming weeks Bloomberg reported, quoting people familiar with the discussions. It adds that so far no decision has been made and the administration may abandon the effort without launching an investigation.

One potential focus is on how information is shared through an industry trade group called Leading Builders of America, according to the people. Officials have grown concerned that the trade group - whose members include Lennar and DR Horton - could be used to restrict housing supply or coordinate pricing.

The administration’s interest in homebuilders comes during a period where the cost of buying a home is at its most expensive in decades, with the Covid-era housing boom and subsequent interest rate hikes weighing heavily on buyers. It’s also a precarious time for the builders themselves, with the inventory of unsold homes hovering at high levels.

President Donald Trump put the industry on alert in October, when he used a social media post to compare big homebuilders to OPEC, a cartel which control the oil market.

“It wasn’t right for them to do that but, in a different form, is being done again — This time by the Big Homebuilders of our Nation,” Trump wrote. “They’re my friends, and they’re very important to the SUCCESS of our Country, but now, they can get Financing, and they have to start building Homes.”

Builders have been seeking ways to work with the White House to improve housing affordability. One option being discussed is a massive program — dubbed “Trump Homes” — that would seek to add as many as 1 million units of new supply, Bloomberg previously reported.

Ironically, just a few days ago, we reported that the White House is working with some of the the same homebuilders (Lennar and Taylor Morrison) which Trump is now supposedly going after criminally, as the president is working on a massive rent-to-own program to build up to 1 million "Trump Homes" in a boost to affordability. As part of the program, and which would sell entry-level homes to Americans as part of a pathway-to-ownership program funded by private investors. The drawback of this program, we said, is that such a program would be complicated to implement, and may not gain enough support to move forward as it would require substantial capital commitment from the homebuilders. 

Well, what better way to convince homebuilders it's in their best interest to participate in the program than to threaten them with criminal charges on something totally separate...

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/06/2026 - 12:43

Peter Schiff: Printing Money Is Not the Cure for Cononavirus



In his most recent podcast, Peter Schiff talked about coronavirus and the impact that it is having on the markets. Earlier this month, Peter said he thought the virus was just an excuse for stock market woes. At the time he believed the market was poised to fall anyway. But as it turns out, coronavirus has actually helped the US stock market because it has led central banks to pump even more liquidity into the world financial system. All this means more liquidity — central banks easing. In fact, that is exactly what has already happened, except the new easing is taking place, for now, outside the United States, particularly in China.” Although the new money is primarily being created in China, it is flowing into dollars — the dollar index is up — and into US stocks. Last week, US stock markets once again made all-time record highs. In fact, I think but for the coronavirus, the US stock market would still be selling off. But because of the central bank stimulus that has been the result of fears over the coronavirus, that actually benefitted not only the US dollar, but the US stock market.” In the midst of all this, Peter raises a really good question. The primary economic concern is that coronavirus will slow down output and ultimately stunt economic growth. Practically speaking, the world would produce less stuff. If the virus continues to spread, there would be fewer goods and services produced in a market that is hunkered down. Why would the Federal Reserve respond, or why would any central bank respond to that by printing money? How does printing more money solve that problem? It doesn’t. In fact, it actually exacerbates it. But you know, everybody looks at central bankers as if they’ve got the solution to every problem. They don’t. They don’t have the magic wand. They just have a printing press. And all that creates is inflation.” Sometimes the illusion inflation creates can look like a magic wand. Printing money can paper over problems. But none of this is going to fundamentally fix the economy. In fact, if central bankers were really going to do the right thing, the appropriate response would be to drain liquidity from the markets, not supply even more.” Peter explained how the Fed was originally intended to create an “elastic” money supply that would expand or contract along with economic output. Today, the money supply only goes in one direction — that’s up. The economy is strong, print money. The economy is weak, print even more money.” Of course, the asset that’s doing the best right now is gold. The yellow metal pushed above $1,600 yesterday. Gold is up 5.5% on the year in dollar terms and has set record highs in other currencies. Because gold is rising even in an environment where the dollar is strengthening against other fiat currencies, that shows you that there is an underlying weakness in the dollar that is right now not being reflected in the Forex markets, but is being reflected in the gold markets. Because after all, why are people buying gold more aggressively than they’re buying dollars or more aggressively than they’re buying US Treasuries? Because they know that things are not as good for the dollar or the US economy as everybody likes to believe. So, more people are seeking out refuge in a better safe-haven and that is gold.” Peter also talked about the debate between Trump and Obama over who gets credit for the booming economy – which of course, is not booming.

We are living in crazy times. I have a hard time believing that most of the general public is not awake, but in reality, they are. We've never seen anything like this; I mean not even under Obama during the worst part of the Great Recession." Now the Fed is desperately trying to keep interest rates from rising. The problem is that it's a much bigger debt bubble this time around , and the Fed is going to have to blow a lot more air into it to keep it inflated. The difference is this time it's not going to work." It looks like the Fed did another $104.15 billion of Not Q.E. in a single day. The Fed claims it's only temporary. But that is precisely what Bernanke claimed when the Fed started QE1. Milton Freedman once said, "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." The same applies to Q.E., or whatever the Fed wants to pretend it's doing. Except this is not QE4, according to Powell. Right. Pumping so much money out, and they are accusing China of currency manipulation ? Wow! Seriously! Amazing! Dump the U.S. dollar while you still have a chance. Welcome to The Atlantis Report. And it is even worse than that, In addition to the $104.15 billion of "Not Q.E." this past Thursday; the FED added another $56.65 billion in liquidity to financial markets the next day on Friday. That's $160.8 billion in two days!!!! in just 48 hours. That is more than 2 TIMES the highest amount the FED has ever injected on a monthly basis under a Q.E. program (which was $80 billion per month) Since this isn't QE....it will be really scary on what they are going to call Q.E. Will it twice, three times, four times, five times what this injection per month ! It is going to be explosive since it takes about 60 to 90 days for prices to react to this, January should see significant inflation as prices soak up the excess liquidity. The question is, where will the inflation occur first . The spike in the repo rate might have a technical explanation: a misjudgment was made in the Fed's money market operations. Even so, two conclusions can be drawn: managing the money markets is becoming harder, and from now on, banks will be studying each other's creditworthiness to a greater degree than before. Those people, who struggle with the minutiae of money markets, and that includes most professionals, should focus on the causes and not the symptoms. Financial markets have recovered from each downturn since 1980 because interest rates have been cut to new lows. Post-2008, they were cut to near zero or below zero in all major economies. In response to a new financial crisis, they cannot go any lower. Central banks will look for new ways to replicate or broaden Q.E. (At some point, governments will simply see repression as an easier option). Then there is the problem of 'risk-free' assets becoming risky assets. Financial markets assume that the probability of major governments such as the U.S. or U.K. defaulting is zero. These governments are entering the next downturn with debt roughly twice the levels proportionate to GDP that was seen in 2008. The belief that the policy worked was completely predicated on the fact that it was temporary and that it was reversible, that the Fed was going to be able to normalize interest rates and shrink its balance sheet back down to pre-crisis levels. Well, when the balance sheet is five-trillion, six-trillion, seven-trillion when we're back at zero, when we're back in a recession, nobody is going to believe it is temporary. Nobody is going to believe that the Fed has this under control, that they can reverse this policy. And the dollar is going to crash. And when the dollar crashes, it's going to take the bond market with it, and we're going to have stagflation. We're going to have a deep recession with rising interest rates, and this whole thing is going to come imploding down. everything is temporary with the fed including remaining off the gold standard temporary in the Fed's eyes could mean at least 50 years This liquidity problem is a signal that trading desks are loaded up on inventory and can't get rid of it. Repo is done out of a need for cash. If you own all of your securities (i.e., a long-only, no leverage mutual fund) you have no need to "repo" your securities - you're earning interest every night so why would you want to 'repo' your securities where you are paying interest for that overnight loan (securities lending is another animal). So, it is those that 'lever-up' and need the cash for settlement purposes on securities they've bought with borrowed money that needs to utilize the repo desk. With this in mind, as we continue to see this need to obtain cash (again, needed to settle other securities purchases), it shows these firms don't have the capital to add more inventory to, what appears to be, a bloated inventory. Now comes the fun part: the Treasury is about to auction 3's, 10's, and 30-year bonds. If I am correct (again, I could be wrong), the Fed realizes securities firms don't have the shelf space to take down a good portion of these auctions. If there isn't enough retail/institutional demand, it will lead to not only a crappy sale but major concerns to the street that there is now no backstop, at all, to any sell-off. At which point, everyone will want to be the first one through the door and sell immediately, but to whom? If there isn't enough liquidity in the repo market to finance their positions, the firms would be unable to increase their inventory. We all saw repo shut down on the 2008 crisis. Wall St runs on money. . OVERNIGHT money. They lever up to inventory securities for trading. If they can't get overnight money, they can't purchase securities. And if they can't unload what they have, it means the buy-side isn't taking on more either. Accounts settle overnight. This includes things like payrolls and bill pay settlements. If a bank doesn't have enough cash to payout what its customers need to pay out, it borrows. At least one and probably more than one banks are insolvent. That's what's going on. First, it can't be one or two banks that are short. They'd simply call around until they found someone to lend. But they did that, and even at markedly elevated rates, still, NO ONE would lend them the money. That tells me that it's not a problem of a couple of borrowers, it's a problem of no lenders. And that means that there's no bank in the world left with any real liquidity. They are ALL maxed out. But as bad as that is, and that alone could be catastrophic, what it really signals is even worse. The lending rates are just the flip side of the coin of the value of the assets lent against. If the rates go up, the value goes down. And with rates spiking to 10%, how far does the value fall? Enormously! And if banks had to actually mark down the value of the assets to reflect 10% interest rates, then my god, every bank in the world is insolvent overnight. Everyone's capital ratios are in the toilet, and they'd have to liquidate. We're talking about the simultaneous insolvency of every bank on the planet. Bank runs. No money in ATMs, Branches closed. Safe deposit boxes confiscated. The whole nine yards, It's actually here. The scenario has tended to guide toward for years and years is actually happening RIGHT NOW! And people are still trying to say it's under control. Every bank in the world is currently insolvent. The only thing keeping it going is printing billions of dollars every day. Financial Armageddon isn't some far off future risk. It's here. Prepare accordingly. This fiat system has reached the end of the line, and it's not correct that fiat currencies fail by design. The problem is corruption and manipulation. It is corruption and cheating that erodes trust and faith until the entire system becomes a gigantic fraud. Banks and governments everywhere ARE the problem and simply have to be removed. They have lost all trust and respect, and all they have left is war and mayhem. As long as we continue to have a majority of braindead asleep imbeciles following orders from these psychopaths, nothing will change. Fiat currency is not just thievery. Fiat currency is SLAVERY. Ultimately the most harmful effect of using debt of undefined value as money (i.e., fiat currencies) is the de facto legalization of a caste system based on voluntary slavery. The bankers have a charter, or the legal *right*, to create money out of nothing. You, you don't. Therefore you and the bankers do not have the same standing before the law. The law of the land says that you will go to jail if you do the same thing (creating money out of thin air) that the banker does in full legality. You and the banker are not equal before the law. ALL the countries of the world; Islamic or secular, Jewish or Arab, democracy or dictatorship; all of them place the bankers ABOVE you. And all of you accept that only whining about fiat money going down in exchange value over time (price inflation which is not the same as monetary inflation). Actually, price inflation itself is mainly due to the greed and stupidity of the bankers who could keep fiat money's exchange value reasonably stable, only if they wanted to. Witness the crash of silver and gold prices which the bankers of the world; Russian, American, Chinese, Jewish, Indian, Arab, all of them collaborated to engineer through the suppression and stagnation of precious metals' prices to levels around the metals' production costs, or what it costs to dig gold and silver out of the ground. The bankers of the world could also collaborate to keep nominal prices steady (as they do in the case of the suppression of precious metals prices). After all, the ability to create fiat money and force its usage is a far more excellent source of power and wealth than that which is afforded simply by stealing it through inflation. The bankers' greed and stupidity blind them to this fact. They want it all, and they want it now. In conclusion, The bankers can create money out of nothing and buy your goods and services with this worthless fiat money, effectively for free. You, you can't. You, you have to lead miserable existences for the most of you and WORK in order to obtain that effectively nonexistent, worthless credit money (whose purchasing/exchange value is not even DEFINED thus rendering all contracts based on the null and void!) that the banker effortlessly creates out of thin air with a few strokes of the computer keyboard, and which he doesn't even bother to print on paper anymore, electing to keep it in its pure quantum uncertain form instead, as electrons whizzing about inside computer chips which will become mute and turn silent refusing to tell you how many fiat dollars or euros there are in which account, in the absence of electricity. No electricity, no fiat, nor crypto money. It would appear that trust is deteriorating as it did when Lehman blew up . Something really big happened that set off this chain reaction in the repo markets. Whatever that something is, we aren't be informed. They're trying to cover it up, paper it over with conjured cash injections, play it cool in front of the cameras while sweating profusely under the 5 thousands dollar suits. I'm guessing that the final high-speed plunge into global economic collapse has begun. All we see here is the ripples and whitewater churning the surface, but beneath the surface, there is an enormous beast thrashing desperately in its death throws. Now is probably the time to start tying up loose ends with the long-running prep projects, just saying. In other words, prepare accordingly, and Get your money out of the banks. I don't care if you don't believe me about Bitcoin. Get your money out of the banks. Don't keep any more money in a bank than you need to pay your bills and can afford to lose.











The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more













The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more

The FBI released a summary of its file from the Hillary Clinton email investigation on Friday, showing details of Clinton's explanation of her use of a private email server to handle classified communications. The release comes nearly two months after FBI Director James Comey announced that although Clinton's handling of classified information was "extremely careless," it did not rise to the level of a prosecutable offense. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the next day that she would not pursue charges in the matter. "We are making these materials available to the public in the interest of transparency and in response to numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests," the FBI noted in a statement sent to reporters with links to the documents. The documents include notes from Clinton's July 2 interview with agents, as well as a "factual summary of the FBI's investigation into this matter," according to the FBI release. Throughout her interview with agents, Clinton repeatedly said she relied on the career professionals she worked with to handle classified information correctly. The agents asked about a series of specific emails, and in each case Clinton said she wasn't worried about the particular material being discussed on a nonclassified channel.