Zero Hedge

Bitcoin Market Fundamentals "Couldn't Be Better", Says Strategy CEO

Bitcoin Market Fundamentals "Couldn't Be Better", Says Strategy CEO

Authored by Ciaran Lyons via CoinTelegraph.com,

Bitcoin’s market fundamentals have stayed strong in 2025, despite the asset’s price and sentiment declining toward the end of the year, says Strategy CEO Phong Le.

“The fundamentals of the market this year for Bitcoin couldn’t be better,” Le told the “Coin Stories” podcast on Tuesday, emphasizing that he doesn’t care too much about its short-term performance. 

Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $125,100 on Oct. 5, but has since declined nearly 30%, trading at $87,687 at the time of publication, according to CoinMarketCap.

Meanwhile, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which measures overall market sentiment, has shown “Extreme Fear” since Dec. 12.

Le acknowledged that Bitcoin’s price “does what it does” and isn’t always easy to explain. 

“When you’re an investor, you think about the long term of the asset class,” he said. 

Bitcoiners should be “fairly methodical” about short-term price

Le stressed that short-term price action is often unpredictable and Bitcoiners should be “fairly methodical and mathematical about it.” 

“Which is why we focus on things like mNAV, why we built out the Bitcoin treasury and why we built out the US dollar treasury,” he said.

Strategy CEO Phong Le spoke to Natalie Brunell on the Coin Stories podcast. Source: Coin Stories

Alongside Bitcoin’s price decline, Strategy’s (MSTR) mNAV, the company’s market value compared to the value of its Bitcoin holdings, has fallen below 1, trading at 0.93, according to Saylor Tracker. The company holds 671,268 Bitcoin worth around $58.63 billion.

Looking at the long-term fundamentals, he pointed to the US government being “fully supportive of Bitcoin like it’s never been before.” 

TradFi is trying to “figure out” how to catch up

Le said that he and Strategy’s executive chairman, Michael Saylor, have been meeting with traditional banks across the US and UAE, where institutions are trying to figure out how to catch up.

“If you think about what’s happening with traditional powers of the world. The US government, the US banking system, they are all getting on board with Bitcoin,” Le said.

“That’s extremely bullish for this year and 2026,” Le added. While US President Trump signed the executive order officially establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and US Digital Asset Stockpile in March, a formalized strategic plan has not been confirmed yet. 

Some analysts had forecasted it coming to fruition this year.

Galaxy Digital’s head of firmwide research, Alex Thorn, said in September that “there’s a strong chance the US government will announce this year that it has formed the strategic Bitcoin reserve.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 12/26/2025 - 10:30

Joe Biden's Family Christmas Photo Is So Awkward And Wrong

Joe Biden's Family Christmas Photo Is So Awkward And Wrong

Authored by Matt Margolis via PJMedia.com,

Yet another Biden family photo has become a punch line on social media, and trust me, this one is a doozy.

Biden shared the image around 9 p.m. on December 24, accompanied by a fairly boilerplate message: “Wishing you a peaceful and joyful Christmas Eve filled with love.

The strange part? You kinda had to play a game of Where's Waldo just to spot him.

Hunter Biden and his adult daughter, Maisy, grabbed the prime spots front and center in front of the Christmas tree, whereas Biden is shoved to the back, his face partially hidden behind his wife, Jill Biden. Seven family members made it into the shot, including Joe’s daughter and former showering partner, Ashley—I had to say it—and Hunter’s current wife, Melissa.

Now, one thing is clear from this photo: there was ample room for them to spread out. There was simply no reason for Biden to be pushed to the background. Frankly, it’s bizarre that the supposed patriarch of the family, and, you know, the former president-ish of the United States, ended up tucked in a corner like an afterthought, or like he was being deliberately hidden.

At least Hunter is fully clothed in this photo.

Social media users had a field day with the awkward composition.

This Christmas photo follows an unfortunate pattern of Biden appearing lost or hidden in group settings. Back in April 2022, Barack Obama visited the White House when Biden signed yet another Obamacare fix. After the signing, Biden found himself standing alone on stage, practically invisible as Democrats swarmed Obama as if he, not Biden, were the star of the event. Video showed Biden raising his hands in apparent frustration as the crowd ignored him completely.

Then came the April 2025 Easter family photo that sparked its own controversy. Biden appeared awkwardly positioned and formally dressed in a navy suit while everyone else wore casual clothing. His stiff pose and mismatched lighting prompted widespread speculation that he'd been photoshopped into the image.

Hunter was notably absent from that particular family portrait.

But, back to the Christmas photo.

As Andy Ngo noted, setting aside Biden’s status as the former sort-of president, putting the eldest member of the family in the back of a photo like this is quite disrespectful. I mean, this is the guy whose influence in Washington, D.C. helped enrich the Biden family for years. Put the guy in a chair and have everyone stand around him for crying out loud. That said, Biden has never seemed to command respect from people, whether it’s his own party or, now, apparently, his own family. It’s sad, really.

If this is how Joe Biden is treated for a photo meant to be posted on social media, how badly is he treated in private?

Tyler Durden Fri, 12/26/2025 - 09:40

Peace Deal On Horizon? Trump & Zelensky To Meet Sunday

Peace Deal On Horizon? Trump & Zelensky To Meet Sunday

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet with US President Donald Trump on Sunday in Mar-a-Lago to talk peace with Russia, Zelensky's top officials have confirmed. Ukraine is touting that a deal is close - and yet outside observers might easily note that huge hurdles remain.

Zelensky also stated on Telegram that "Many things can be decided before the new year." And yet he is still rejecting Russia's main sticking point - the demand to control the entirety of the Donbas region under any final peace settlement. Moscow also wants international legal recognition (and so, from Washington) of the eastern territories as being part of the Russian Federation.

via Associated Press

Some level of progress must have been made in negotiations over the draft - at least from the US point of view - given that Trump said previously he would only meet Zelensky if he felt a deal was close.

Zelensky said Friday morning, "We are not losing a single day. We have agreed on a meeting at the highest level — with President Trump in the near future. A lot can be decided before the New Year."

At the same time, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia had received and reviewed information shared by Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev following his recent talks with the Witkoff-Kushner delegation in Miami. Crucially the latest talks included top negotiators from both Russia and Ukraine directly engaging

A senior US official characterized the talks involving envoys Rustem Umerov and Kirill Dmitriev as "positive and constructive."

"We've gone as far as possible with the Russians and the Ukrainians. We've made more progress in the last two weeks than the last year. We want to push the ball into the goal. We're heading in the right direction," the official was quoted in Axios as saying.

Another point of contention between Moscow and Kiev is expected to be the strong security guarantees for Ukraine backed by the West. Zelensky has been pushing that they are akin to NATO's Article 5 - but it's unlikely the Kremlin would go for anything approaching this language. 

Breakthrough on the territory issue? Not likely from Russia's point of view, given that what Zelensky is proposing still sounds like a temporary solution, and not the kind of full, legal, and permanent recognition the Kremlin seeks. Russia has emphasized many times it won't contemplate a merely temporary truce.

"The U.S. and Europe will provide Ukraine with security guarantees. If Russia invades Ukraine there will be a military response and sanctions will be reinstated," Zelensky told reporters earlier this week.

As for the still open question of territorial concessions, Zelensky has maintained that if land is given up, then this must be decided by the Ukrainian people in a popular referendum. But of course, the country still hasn't had a single parliamentary or presidential vote since the war began, so it's hard to see how such a referendum would actually happen anytime soon.

Tyler Durden Fri, 12/26/2025 - 09:15

S&P Futures Trade At Record High As Precious Metal Surge Accelerates

S&P Futures Trade At Record High As Precious Metal Surge Accelerates

US equity futures are little changed in thin trading with most traders away from the screens, while the bulk of overnight actions was once again in gold and silver as precious metals soared to a new record high driven by feverish Chinese demand. As of 8:15am, S&P futures were flat after closing Wednesday's session at a new record high, while Nasdaq 100 futs were fractionally in the green. Asian markets were mostly higher while European bourses are closed. The dollar was unchanged as were treasuries, with the benchmark 10-year yield at 4.13%. There is no macro on today's calendar. 

In premarket trading, Mah 7 stocks were mixed (Nvidia +0.7%, Tesla +0.2%, Alphabet +0.1%, Apple little changed, Amazon -0.1%, Meta Platforms -0.1%, Microsoft -0.2%).

  • Miners including Coeur (CDE) and Freeport (FCX) are higher as gold, silver and platinum jumped to all-time highs and copper surged to a record in Shanghai and rallied in New York.
  • Biohaven (BHVN) drops 14% after a mid-stage study of the company’s experimental drug BHV-7000 for the treatment of major depressive disorder missed the primary endpoint.
  • Coupang (CPNG) gains 6.3% after Yonhap News reported the e-commerce company has identified the former employee who allegedly accessed personal data of 33 million customers; the company has retrieved all hard disk drives and devices that the ex-worker used.

As the Santa Rally accelerates, the MSCI All Country World Index gained 0.1%, rising for a seventh day, while a gauge of Asian stocks climbed 0.2%; Australia, Hong Kong and markets in Europe remain for holidays. Bloomberg’s index of the dollar held near the lowest since October. Treasuries were little changed, with the benchmark 10-year yield at 4.13%. 

Once again, the bulk of the overnight action was in gold and silver, which jumped as escalating geopolitical tensions and dollar weakness helped extend a historic rally for precious metals. Spot silver advanced for a fifth day, climbing as much as 5.2% to cross $75 an ounce for the first time. Gold, set for its best annual advance since 1979, rose as much as 1.2% to above $4,500 an ounce.

Copper surged to a record in Shanghai and rallied in New York, adding to substantial annual gains as investors bet on tighter global supplies in 2026, while also pricing in the impact of a weaker US dollar.

Meanwhile, the “Santa Claus Rally” which we said would be unleashed by Abu Dhabi's bailout of OpenAI's funding plans last week, is set to push stocks to fresh records even as exuberance over artificial intelligence and the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate path are being questioned. The rally is traditionally seen as taking place on the final five trading sessions of a year and the first two of the new one. Of course, the rally can well start early, and it did just that with the S&P 500 rising Wednesday for a fifth day in a shortened session ahead of the Christmas holiday. 

“As equity markets enter the fourth year of a bull market, our underlying market call remains constructive,” Scott Chronert, head of US equities strategy at Citigroup Inc., wrote in a note this week. “The current fundamental backdrop clearly has the opportunity for an ongoing AI-related tailwind to large-cap growth.”

After earlier concerns over high valuations for tech stocks amid the AI boom, traders are regaining confidence that companies will deliver solid earnings growth in 2026.

European bourses are  closed; Asian stocks extended gains for the week, helped by advances in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.  The MSCI Asia Pacific Index climbed as much as 0.5%, putting the gauge on track for its best week since late November. Samsung Electronics, TSMC and SK Hynix were among the biggest boosts to the index’s gain. Markets in Hong Kong, Australia and Indonesia remained closed for a holiday. Markets fell in Vietnam, Thailand and India.

Tech shares traded higher, amid a year-end rally in US peers, with Samsung Electronics rising to an all-time high. Japanese stocks rose as tech shares and exporters bolstered the indexes, while buying in dividend names also lifted shares. Mainland China shares rose, with gains in stocks related to solar, precious metals, lithium batteries and new energy vehicles boosting the gauge.

“China equity markets enter 2026 with the wind at their back, and new momentum from advanced manufacturing and tech self-sufficiency drivers,” according to a note by UBS CIO. “With domestic investors on board and global investors adjusting their stance, we see more upside ahead, even if occasional volatility and geopolitical squalls lie on the horizon.”

“There were AI-related concerns earlier this month, but those seem to have been digested by the market,” said Tetsuo Seshimo, a portfolio manager at Saison Asset Management in Tokyo.

In FX, the yen weakened 0.4% to about 156.44 to the dollar after a report showed Tokyo’s inflation cooled more than expected as pressures from food and energy prices faded. That triggered weakness in the currency on bets the Bank of Japan may push back the timing of its next rate hike. Meanwhile, China set the yuan’s daily reference rate at a level that was below market estimates by a record margin, in the latest sign of policymakers’ intention to slow the currency’s appreciation.

The move came after the offshore yuan advanced past the psychological level of 7 per dollar on Thursday for the first time since September 2024. The PBOC has steered the yuan toward a path of appreciation to appease Beijing’s trading partners, but has sought to maintain a gradual pace of gains to avoid a surge of hot-money inflows.

In commodities, oil headed for the biggest weekly gain since October, as traders tracked a partial US blockade of crude shipments from Venezuela and a military strike by Washington against a terrorist group in Nigeria.

Tyler Durden Fri, 12/26/2025 - 08:53

China Sanctions 20 US Defense Firms, Issues 'Red Line' Warning Over Record Taiwan Arms Deal

China Sanctions 20 US Defense Firms, Issues 'Red Line' Warning Over Record Taiwan Arms Deal

After sounding the constant warning that Washington is "playing with fire" in continually arming and supporting self-ruled Taiwan, China's foreign ministry announced Friday new sanctions on ten individuals and 20 American defense companies, mostly notably among them Boeing, specifically in response to American arms sales to Taiwan.

The ministry described that the sanctions freeze any assets that the listed people and firms hold in China and prohibit Chinese organizations and citizens from conducting business with them, and singled out Boeing's St. Louis-based defense branch, Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation and L3Harris Maritime Services - among others.

Also on the list is Palmer Luckey, the founder of defense firm Anduril Industries. The sanctioned executives are barred from traveling to mainland China, as well as Hong Kong and Macau.

Anduril Industries

"In response to the latest US announcement of large-scale arms sales to China’s Taiwan region, China has decided to take countermeasures in accordance with the anti-foreign sanctions law against 20 US defense-related companies and 10 senior executives who have engaged in arming Taiwan in recent years," stated the Chinese foreign ministry.

"Anyone who attempts to cross the line and make provocations on the Taiwan question will be met with China’s firm response… No country or force shall ever underestimate the resolve, will, and ability of the Chinese government and people to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity," it added.

The ministry described that "movable and immovable properties, and other kinds of assets" of these American firms and individuals within China "shall be frozen."

The punitive measure follows the Trump administration's provocative announcement last week of an $11.1 billion arms package for Taiwan, which is record-setting, confirmed as the largest such US sale to the island to date.

Beijing has said "The Taiwan issue lies at the heart of China’s core interests and represents the first red line in China-U.S. relations that must not be crossed," according to a foreign ministry spokesperson.

The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said the major arms sales are intended to support Taipei's efforts to "modernize its armed forces and to maintain a credible defensive capability."

The biggest chunks of the package include some $4 billion of Himars truck-based missile launchers, enough for 82 of the advanced systems.

The Himars have enough range to be able to reach targets on China's east coast, which introduces a new level of 'deterrence' from Taipei's and Washington's perspectives.

Last week, soon on the heels of this, Beijing issued a blistering statement saying, "The 'Taiwan independence' forces on the island seek independence through force and resist reunification through force, squandering the hard-earned money of the people to purchase weapons at the cost of turning Taiwan into a powder keg."

That prior statement had added, "This cannot save the doomed fate of 'Taiwan independence' but will only accelerate the push of the Taiwan Strait toward a dangerous situation of military confrontation and war. The U.S. support for 'Taiwan Independence' through arms will only end up backfiring. Using Taiwan to contain China will not succeed."

Tyler Durden Fri, 12/26/2025 - 08:25

Gold Surges As Central Banks Brace For Global Debt Storm

Gold Surges As Central Banks Brace For Global Debt Storm

Submitted By Thomas Kolbe

The gold price is racing from one all-time high to the next. That’s good news for friends of the precious metal and bad news for anyone still hoping for a stabilization of global debt dynamics. 

Assuming the markets close out the year without major volatility, gold holders can look forward to an approximate 70 percent increase in value within a single year. This is remarkable—not least because 2024 already ended with a 26 percent gain for the otherwise conservative asset class of precious metals. That amounts to a doubling of value in just two years—a surge usually seen in the tech sector rather than gold.

A Store of Value in Turbulent Times 

For the most stable money humanity has ever known, which has served as a store of value in crises for millennia, this is no ordinary development. Quite the opposite. Among those who follow geopolitical developments and financial markets closely, such a compressed upward movement is an unmistakable signal: Danger is imminent. 

Whether it’s military conflicts—like the Ukraine crisis, which still carries dangerous escalation potential—or the global debt dynamics now affecting nearly every region, capital is visibly fleeing to the safe haven of gold. Gold has a key advantage over other assets: there is no counterparty risk. Physical ownership—not as an ETF held at a bank—represents a tangible value that, aside from the annual 1.6 percent mining increase, neither inflates nor can be arbitrarily frozen.

By comparison, the M2 money supply—which includes cash, deposits, short-term term deposits such as money market funds, and savings accounts—is expected to grow by seven to nine percent globally this year. Gold is becoming scarcer relative to circulating fiat money—a compelling argument, particularly in central bank circles. Banks are well aware that their interest rate policies, coupled with ongoing debt monetization, lead to planned currency devaluation. Hence, the precise move into gold—central bankers are essentially trying to secure themselves.

The size of the global gold stock is limited and fairly precisely measurable. Worldwide, there are 216,000 tons of gold, equating to a volume of 11,200 m³—forming a cube with a side length of 22.3 meters. 

Central Banks Scent Their Own Crisis 

Globally, it was again the central banks pushing gold prices higher this year. The Polish, Chinese, and Turkish central banks stand out. Combined, central banks are expected to add roughly 1,000 tons of gold to their vaults this year—a figure well above the long-term average of 400–500 tons. As mentioned: danger is imminent.

This massive buying suggests that central bankers know full well we are facing a global debt problem—or may already be in the eye of the storm. Interest rates are rising in almost every economy, prompting investors to demand higher risk premiums on sovereign bonds from highly indebted states. The U.S., with over 120 percent debt, joins France (~117 percent) and Italy (~136 percent). Even Germany, currently an exception at 65 percent debt, plans a significant buildup in the coming years. Overstretched welfare states and additional burdens from migration-related crises push public budgets further into deficit, only offset by continuously growing bond volumes.

When central banks step in and take on large parts of this new debt, the credit money supply grows alongside the actual credit process, driving inflation in both goods and asset prices. 

Subordinating monetary policy to fiscal mandates has created a powerful political unit. Debt policy becomes the norm, and the natural causality between deficit, higher taxes, and inflation is systematically stretched out over time. Who today links rising food prices or the precious metal boom to the Federal Reserve or the ECB?

Private investors feel the pressure, too: German households, for instance, bought about 9,000 tons of gold this year in the form of jewelry, goods, and coins.

Trust Crisis in the Global Financial System 

Growing private and institutional demand for safe assets, which shows no sign of abating and is expected to continue into 2026, points to a severe trust crisis. Rising sovereign bond yields—especially in Japan, with debt around 230 percent—have reached alarming levels, scaring investors and exposing the depth of the trust crisis. A storm is brewing—and Japan may well be where it begins. 

For years, Japan served as a carry trade hub: borrowing cheaply in yen and investing elsewhere for higher returns with limited currency risk. Rising rates there could abruptly make these long-standing financing models unprofitable.

The foundation of the international financial market, largely built on U.S. Treasuries, risks destabilization. Options to hedge against the monetary excess—central banks taking on massive state debts—are limited. 

Gold remains one of the safest havens. For those preferring more volatility, Bitcoin is digital gold: serving the same purpose, independent of state creditworthiness, and operating as a self-contained economic ecosystem. 

Italy and the Final Alarm Signal 

As if one more proof were needed that a storm might hit capital markets, Italy—one of the Eurozone’s three pillars—has gone on the offensive. The country is working to legally transfer gold stored at the Italian central bank to state ownership. 

Does Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni foresee that in a Euro crisis, the ECB might tap national gold reserves to stabilize the common currency?

How far has the trust crisis in capital markets already advanced? The new year may soon give us a clearer answer to this pressing question. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 12/26/2025 - 08:00

Escobar: Europe's Elites Pay For The Privilege Of Losing Conflict

Escobar: Europe's Elites Pay For The Privilege Of Losing Conflict

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

When in doubt, Europeans should always re-read Tacitus. As a true Roman, he considered that sacrifice was only worthy if conducted at the service of the motherland. In his time, the Roman Empire. In our time, that would be civilization-state Italy.

Tacitus was a keen student of Resistance – reflecting on the worthiness of the heroic deaths of those condemned to suicide by Nero and Domitian. He followed all the legal battles, the condemnation of lay martyrs such as Seneca. He talks about them with veneration; but branded their sacrifice as sterile.

Tacitus refused the temptation of heroism – and asked himself if between the ardor of disdain and vile obsequiousness a path could be found exempt from vaingloriousness.

He certainly didn’t see this path in the future of Rome. He experienced life under absolute power – today that would be under the yoke of the European Union (EU) and European Commission (EC) – and noted that to exercise it or be submitted by it was equally degrading.

The questions he could not answer are eternal. Whether a people protagonist of History and enjoying domination is able to be worthy of it; whether it’s possible for those who govern to remain wise; and for those who are subjects, what to do to not humiliate themselves.

To History and politics, Tacitus posed only moral questions. For him, the only possible salvation will come via moral healing.

He quoted some verses of brilliant poet Lucan, who was also a victim of Nero – who wrote that considering “the most serious calamities” one “had proof that not towards our security are the gods solicitous, but of our punishment”.

All these questions apply now to Europeans being subjugated by appallingly mediocre warmongering elites – who are only speeding up a negative vortex way more serious than the decadence of Rome. While “the Gods” are Olympically oblivious of the punishment inflicted on mere – taxpaying – mortals.

Throwing Money Into a Black Void

Enter the latest European elite scam: the decision to hand over to the “criminal organization” in Kiev – President Putin’s terminology – a cool 90 billion euros joint loan for 2026-2027, at 0% interest rate. Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic officially refused to be part of the scam.

This joint EU borrowing – funds that they don’t have in the first place – automatically turns into EU debt. The onus will be on EU-wide taxpayers. Not only they will be stripped of 90 billion euros of their hard earned income coupled with high taxes; they will pay European banks for the “privilege”. Everyone in the corridors of the EC in Brussels knows that only in interest, EU member-states will have to pay over 3 billion euros a year.

The imperative corollary: funds for health services, education and social rights will go even more down the drain than at present.

It’s key to be reminded that this sweet loan will only cover two years to keep the Kiev gang on life support. Afterwards, it will be yet another scam. And even the sweet loan won’t be enough for 2026-2027 – covering only two-thirds of the black hole in Kiev.

The conditions for the loan are mind-boggling. Kiev will repay it if – and the operative word is an impossible “if” – receives “full reparations” from Russia. The EC in Brussels has stipulated the total amount at over half a trillion euros.

It gets even juicier. Before the loan, the EC had previously declared Ukraine insolvent; and announced that it could not provide loans to Kiev. Still, they forced themselves to come up with this latest sweet loan: direct financing, a de facto grant.

According to Ukraine’s lead negotiator Rustem Umerov:

there are two scenarios: 1 – if the conflict ends, the funds will go toward rebuilding the country; 2 – if aggression continues, Ukraine expects €40–45 billion annually for defense and security.”

Both scenarios are absurd. First: Moscow – as the victor in the conflict – will never agree to finance the rebuilding of Ukraine via its own sovereing wealth fund stolen by Europeans. Second: the Kiev gang is already positioning itself to be showered with more free money, as in “if aggression continues…”

This whole circus is in progress because the EU failed to steal the Russian sovereign wealth funds for good – no matter the tsunami of spin speculating on who finally “betrayed” who (arguably France’s Le Petit Roi dumped the German BlackRock chancellor at the final stage of the negotiations).

What matters in the end is that a few economists with an IQ above a Brussels room temperature warned their “leaders” that if the “robbery” (Putin’s terminology) of Russia would go on, nations holding sovereign wealth funds – from Asia to the Persian Gulf – would always regard them not as savings but as high risk investments, with catastrophic consequences.

There are no illusions in Moscow. Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitri Medvedev noted that “Brussels thieves” have not ditched their plans. Additionally, the toxic Medusa in charge of the EC had already stated that Russian assets can be unblocked only by a qualified majority vote – as in, for instance, two-thirds or three-quarters of the total number of member-state voters.

Tacitus would have approved Putin’s lapidary evaluation of the EU: “They [the previous US administration] believed Russia could be easily broken up and dismantled. European ‘swine underlings’ immediately joined the efforts of that previous American administration, hoping to profit from our country’s collapse: to reclaim what had been lost in earlier historical periods and to exact a form of revenge. As has now become evident to all, every one of those attempts, every destructive design against Russia, has ended in complete and total failure”.

Watch Those European Bonds

The 90 billion euro sweet loan is just the top of a deep, deep iceberg. Add to it the – still non-existent – funds to keep weaponizing Kiev as well as buying gas, fuel and electric energy, as Ukraine is totally dependent on the EU. In parallel, the EU lost the Russian market: in 2021, before the start of the SMO, the EU was exporting 90 billion euros a year to Russia.

The burning question of how much will it take to rebuild Ukraine has now reached forest fire territory. A 2024 World Bank study placed it at 600 bilion euros – to be paid in full by an EU locked in a Forever War mindset.

Considering how Russia is now on a roll bombing key Ukrainian military infrastructure, the final cost of the European adventure – after Napoleon and Hitler, now it’s the EU/NATO Coalition of Hell’s turn – may easily reach and surpass 1 trillion euros, complete with European-wide de-industrialization; loss of global competitivity; loss of the Russian market; an array of US tariffs; and total vassalization imposed by the Empire of Chaos.

As if all this concentric black void was not enough, German finance experts warn that the yield on European bonds is rising fast. After all, no one in his right mind will lend money to these Forever Wars “elites” at a low interest rate.

So the name of the game now is high risk – at the systemic level. This includes: governments refinancing debt at higher rates; corporations refinancing on even worse terms; banks tightening lending standards.

In a nutshell: Capital is flowing out of weak balance sheets. And bonds always move first, because they assess cash flows, not European warmongering narratives.

Every serious crisis starts with rising interest rates. 0% for Ukraine does not even qualify as a fairy tale. What matters, for starters, is what bank sharks will charge on that sweet 90 billion grant.

Don’t count on an European axis of sanity suddenly stepping up to save the former apex of civilization. That may take generations. Meanwhile, Tacitus applies. The Gods seem to be totally relishing the punishment inflicted on mere – taxpaying – mortals.

Tyler Durden Fri, 12/26/2025 - 07:00

World War And The Plan To Control Or Kill Young Western Men

World War And The Plan To Control Or Kill Young Western Men

Written by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

When I think of the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk I see the event as symbolic of the death of civil discourse in the west. The timeline split at that moment leaving two distinct groups: The conservatives and centrists who cling to the fantasy that progress through traditional politics is still possible, and the patriots who now realize that a peaceful resolution is unattainable.

I also see it as symbolic of a deeper element of the culture war – Specifically, the war on young white western men. Kirk was 31 at the time of his death. Not “young”, but almost 15 years younger than I am, and it has left me thinking about the future for the next generation of western males at a time when the system is obviously hellbent on destroying them.

They have been the subject of economic warfare through DEI: Corporations and colleges give first shot to any identity group other than white males regardless of merit.

They have been targeted by social warfare: Demonized as irredeemable monsters by woke cancel culture and labeled the cause of all the world’s ills.  Their ancestors built a civilization of unprecedented prosperity and so much material bounty even the poorest people are fat.  They created the middle class, a concept which had never existed before in history.  In 1890 the average global life expectancy was 42 years; by 1990 the average life expectancy was 73 years, all because of western civilization and the technology it created.  And now, white guys are being punished for it.

They have been selected for extermination: They’re the key demographic that leftist governments want to use as cannon fodder for a mindless geopolitical mess in Ukraine.

Charlie Kirk’s biggest mistake was believing that the system could be defeated through peaceful discourse. He was wrong. It’s not just the insanity of the political left that makes peace and reason impossible, there’s also the machinations of globalist controlled governments working tirelessly to conjure a perpetual meat grinder through domestic and foreign conflicts.

One indicator of a coming purge is the open call for young men (specifically conservative men) to accept the idea of future conscription. Multiple EU member states have threatened to institute a military draft if volunteer numbers do not dramatically increase (so much for “democracy”). The purpose of the draft? To construct an EU army large enough to go toe-to-toe with Russia.

As I predicted in my article “World War III Is Now Inevitable – Here’s Why It Can’t Be Avoided”, published in April of 2024, the globalists in Europe are doing everything in their power to stop a peace plan from moving forward in Ukraine. They have been actively sabotaging the Trump Administration’s efforts for a summit which actually includes Russia instead of cutting them out of the process.

At the same time that a greater war is being fomented, there has been a relentless gnawing crusade to demoralize young white men. One could rightly say that this campaign also affects some minority men in places like the US, but let’s not play games – The primary target is without a doubt white western males.

Why? It’s hard to say for certain, but when patriots are called to action it’s usually white conservative men that answer. Minorities (third world migrants in particular) are far more inclined to lean into socialism and view western civilization as a structure to be torn down rather than protected.

This attitude is changing in some areas of South America, for example, but the fact remains that if you visit a developing nation, chances are high that free markets and individual liberty are not common societal values. It’s not racial profiling, it’s simply statistical fact.

In Europe, the current goal of the establishment is to crush the spirits of western men while protecting migrants as a precious commodity. In the UK, the narrative is focused like a laser on white conservative males as public enemy #1, while simultaneously demanding that these same men “prove their patriotism” by fighting for the elites against Russia.

I was watching a news broadcast from the BBC a few months ago in which a male journalist of military age tried to argue rational points on why men in Britain are reticent to go to war for the existing government. He noted that they do not believe that the leftist politicians in power represent them anymore and they feel they are being rapidly replaced by third worlders with hostile ideologies. Why would they fight for such a government?

A black female journalist involved in the discussion sneered at the man’s argument, then grinned as she asserted that nothing he says matters because he could be drafted whether he likes it or not. It was the evil grin of a communist – She knows she’s part of the protected class. She knows that he can be sent to die no matter how logical and reasonable his position,  Meanwhile, she risks nothing in her support of continued war.

She was reveling in the idea of white conservative men being expendable. It’s the leftist dream, is it not? To turn their political opponents into beasts of burden and fuel for the fire of their Utopian fantasy. They don’t care about being correct, or moral; they just want to crush the life out of people who disagree with them.

Progressives in Europe have taken to social media asserting that conservative men should BE SENT FIRST to war; because they are better mentally suited to combat (because conservatives are violent monsters, remember?). They are also easy to sacrifice in the name of the grand progressive experiment. There is, of course, no talk of sending the millions of military age migrant men in Europe to the front lines in Ukraine.

Again, I predicted this exact scenario in my article “Europe Goes Full Totalitarian And Puts The Entire Western World At Risk”, published in March. I stated:

I would go even further and say that in the event of war with Russia native born citizens will be rounded up for conscription while most migrants are left behind to run the streets of London, Paris and Berlin. I believe the migrants are enforcers to keep any potentially defiant Europeans in line. Many empires and monarchs throughout history have used foreign mercenaries as muscle to prevent local rebellion. The politicians in the EU and UK are following a similar strategy…”

I’ve identified at least three separate propaganda narratives and political agendas that are working in tandem as a weapon against western men.  These mechanisms are highly coordinated across social media, with mainstream news platforms, politicians and influencers repeating the same talking points as if they all received the same script.

Lazy, Apathetic, Angry And Dangerous To Society

Social media is rife with this disinformation claim – Often perpetuated by female influencers, they assert that young men are no longer engaging with modern women and he liberal order because they are “porn addicted”, lack motivation and have no direction. They say that young males have abandoned society and that this makes them volatile and prone to unpredictable violence.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Young men are simply building their own separate society which preserves western values and protects their heritage from the ravages of deconstructionists. Feminists and establishment shills are worried about men walking away because then they can’t exploit those men for their labor and resources anymore. By extension, when men separate from the liberal herd, they have greater independence and a greater potential to rebel.

I would argue that the “incel” narrative widely promoted in the past decade by the political left has nothing to do with sincere concerns about the mental health of young men. Rather, it’s all about controlling those men before they go rogue against the establishment.

Using Economic Hardship And War To Weed Out The Strong

In George Orwell’s novel “Animal Farm”, the communist Pigs seek to dominate the other animals by keeping them busy with arduous (but empty) acts of labor. They use this aimless labor to break the backs of the strongest animals on the farm. The horse named “Boxer” is a true believer in the common good of the collective, but the Pigs see his strength as a potential threat to their long term rule.

They exploit Boxer’s patriotism and ultimately work him to death. They then sell his body to a slaughterhouse despite his faithful service to the farm.

If you are a young man and a patriot in the west and primarily in Europe, YOU are Boxer the horse. They will send you off to slaughter in the name of the collective because you represent potential opposition. They will use economic decline as a means to pressure you into conformity, or leave you no other option but to join the military. They will then celebrate your death, because they nullified your strength without ever having to fight you directly.

Young Men, The Warrior Class And The Weak Elites

Another story I’m often reminded of when contemplating the plight of young men is “The 47 Ronin”. The basic theme is one of justice vs. law and government corruption. When the benevolent lord of a samurai fiefdom is assassinated by another lord, his soldiers call for justice. However, the government intervenes and disrupts any investigation into the murder.

They know the opposing lord is a criminal, but he is also an elite valuable to the power structure. He is one of them, and to punish their own is to bring the entire feudal system into question in the eyes of the nation. They allow him to escape consequences for the sake of the “greater good.”

The samurai, though, do not share in this “enlightened” vision of gray morality. They see everything as black and white; honorable and dishonorable. They make a plan to kill the enemy lord who murdered their master.

I find this story to be the most profound when it comes to explaining the way in which men are treated by modern liberal society, specifically white men in the west. At the end of The 47 Ronin, the samurai succeed in killing the corrupt lord, but they are then required to commit mass suicide or face dishonorable execution as criminals.

They are warriors that have gone rogue; they have exited the societal reservation. They have become the most dangerous thing in existence: Honest men willing to act outside the law.  And so, they must die for the sake of the status quo.

What I see going on today is a perverse agenda to control western men and keep them subservient. The agenda stifles the next generation, through nihilist propaganda, through the apathy of the political circus, and by conditioning those men to see themselves as a dispensable utility. If the system can’t control these men, it will try to kill them by creating a war big enough to thin their ranks by attrition.

The elites view the warrior class as the ultimate danger, and young western men represent the best chance of a renewed warrior class. If these men ever realize their true power, the weakling elites would be wiped off the face of the Earth within moments. I hear the argument often that this kind of rebellion is meaningless without a detailed plan to rebuild.  This is another means of control – Demand a perfect solution before action is ever taken so that nothing ever gets done.

Warriors understand that reformation only comes from the will to take action; the will to create momentum. They understand that civil discourse has its place, but if all it does is maintain the status quo then it must be abandoned. Warriors understand that the worst thing one can do is debate the obvious while the world burns.

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

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 22:30

Number Of Centenarians Skyrockets In The US

Number Of Centenarians Skyrockets In The US

Between the 2010 and the 2020 Census, the number of centenarians in the United States grew by 50 percent to more than 80,000 as the realities of aging populations are catching up to a country that had previously outdone its peer when it came to fertility and demographic development.

As Statista's Katharins Buchholz reportsthe recently published Census Bureau report on centenarians shows that while they remain a very small part of the U.S. population at only two out of every 10,000 Americans, they are nevertheless emblematic of global changes that see increased life expectancy meet lower fertility rates.

 Number Of Centenarians Skyrockets In The U.S. | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

The country with the world’s most centenarians – Japan – has more than twice as many and has been plagued by the realities of demographic change for years.

In 2020, more than 60 percent of U.S. centenarians were aged 100 or 101, while only 10 percent were aged 105 or above.

Women, who have higher life expectancies, were hugely overrepresented among the group, with 79 percent of U.S. centenarians being female.

White Americans are also overrepresented in centenarian populations.

Black and Asian Americans made up somewhat smaller shares of them than their overall population shares would suggest.

Meanwhile Latinos were hugely underrepresented among centenarians, with only around 9 percent of those reaching the age of 100 currently part of the group despite 18.7 percent in the country now identifying as Hispanic. This could be due to the fact that Latino populations are among the fastest growing in the U.S. and therefor have many younger members. Puerto Rico was the place with the second-most centenarians in the country, only surpassed by Hawaii.

The changing realities of aging and fertility have caused demographic change to accelerate recently in the United States. Between the 2010 and the 2020 Census, the number of Americans aged 65 and over rose by 4 percentage points to 16.8% as Baby Boomers entered retirement. Between 1990 and 2000 as well as between 2000 and 2010, this number had held more or less steady.

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 21:45

Is A Paleoconservative 'New America First' Committee The Answer?

Is A Paleoconservative 'New America First' Committee The Answer?

Authored by J.D. Hester via AntiWar.com

With paleoconservatism currently ascendant in the United States, the slogan "America First" has risen to prominence in public discourse. However, this is not the first time that the phrase has been commonplace in American politics. While America First is currently associated with the right, the bipartisan America First Committee (AFC) united anti-war activists across the political spectrum around keeping the US out of the Second World War. With the Russo-Ukraine War raging on and the Israel lobby pushing for more US involvement in the Middle East, it is once again time for a big-tent alliance to oppose war and put America first.

"History is written by the victors" is a popular adage to describe the phenomenon in which the victorious side of a conflict mythologizes their exploits. Anti-war activists, especially for generally popular wars like WWII, are often vilified as bigots or sympathizers of foreign nations. In the modern era, opponents of U.S. support for Israel are often vilified as "Jihadists," "third-worldists," or "Islamists." Likewise, those skeptical of U.S. support for Ukraine are regularly smeared as Putin apologists. Similar slanderous claims have been made about the AFC, despite the principled motives of the vast majority of its members.

Chicago Herald-American

While some members of the America First Committee, like the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, made antisemitic statements, the organization itself fought antisemitism in its ranks. Nevertheless, historical revisionists have often fixated on the small minority of genuine antisemites. As one historian put it: "Thousands of sincere Americans of varied background and from both political parties joined and contributed to [the America First Committee]. It also attracted support from a number of fringe hate organizations, from anti-Semites, and from Nazi sympathizers. This minority support tarnished its reputation."

The efforts of critics to smear the organization have mostly concealed its successes. However, some prominent individuals have praised the organization for what it was able to accomplish in the short time it existed (about 15 months). Paleoconservative commentator Patrick Buchanan wrote,

"The achievements of [the America First Committee] are monumental. By keeping America out of World War II until Hitler attacked Stalin in June of 1941, Soviet Russia, not America, bore the brunt of the fighting, bleeding and dying to defeat Nazi Germany. Thanks to America First, no nation suffered less in the world’s worst war."

By resisting the efforts of war hawks to preemptively enter World War II, the AFC likely prevented the deaths of thousands of young American men and demonstrated the power of anti-war advocacy.

Now, the time is ripe for another coalition of anti-war activists from across the political spectrum to oppose the possibility of U.S. military entanglement in Venezuela, Ukraine, or the Middle East. Indeed, a new AFC might be closer than expected. In a previous article, I outlined how Tucker Carlson, a paleoconservative, has found common ground with progressives like Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian on opposing U.S. support for Israel.

While a new antiwar coalition would certainly look different than the original AFC, the modern geopolitics are radically different from the 1930s. The United States is now a nuclear-armed superpower capable of waging war anywhere on the globe. Additionally, the Israel lobby exerts a strong influence over numerous American politicians. A new antiwar coalition will have different goals and employ different strategies. Nevertheless, its core mission––putting America first by resisting unjust wars – would remain the same.

In the end, a new America First Committee might be even more necessary than it was in 1941. With the advent of nuclear weapons, military conflict is an existential threat to our world. In fact, the doomsday clock states that the world is a mere 89 seconds to midnight. Americans across the political spectrum are waking up to this reality. Opposing war is not a matter of ideology; it is a matter of survival. The simple idea that the American government should put the interests of the people it represents first is so obvious, yet often absent in practice.

A modern AFC could pressure the government to act according to the will of the people and prove that dissent is patriotic. The America First Committee offers a historical blueprint, but it is up to us to build the momentum and movement necessary to truly change U.S. foreign policy.

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

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 21:00

US Northeast Set For Post-Christmas Winter Storm

US Northeast Set For Post-Christmas Winter Storm

A post-Christmas Day winter blast is expected for parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast for the end of the week, with some of the heaviest snowfall expected in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the New York City area.

Meteorologist Steven DiMartino of private forecaster NY NJ PA Weather wrote in a new report Thursday that the winter storm will dump accumulating snow across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast from Friday afternoon through Saturday.

Here is DiMartino's forecast, which suggests that travel disruptions could occur up and down the I-95 corridor from Philadelphia to Boston:

  • Timing: Snow develops Friday between 3-6 PM, becomes steady after 6 PM. Mixed precipitation develops after midnight in several zones, with a change back to all snow by early Saturday morning. Snow showers may linger through late Saturday morning.

  • Heaviest impacts: Interior parts of New York and nearby areas could see 6-10 inches of snow or sleet.

  • Moderate snow: Portions of southern New England and nearby regions may receive 3-6 inches.

  • Mixed precipitation zones: Areas around Philadelphia and central Pennsylvania face snow changing to sleet or rain, with 1-4 inches of snow and up to .05-.25 inches of ice, raising the risk of slick roads and power issues.

  • Farther south: Snow may briefly change to rain, with lighter accumulations.

  • Coastal New England: Lighter snow showers, generally 1-3 inches.

Forecast Map:

Related:

Meanwhile, on the US West Coast:

The latest warmup has been a welcome relief following a first half of December marked by polar vortex mayhem across the eastern half of the Lower 48.

We expect cold air to return in the coming weeks, as peak winter is between mid- and late January.

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 20:15

All We Want For Christmas Is A Return To Civility

All We Want For Christmas Is A Return To Civility

Authored by William Brooks via The Epoch Times,

For many folks raised in the northern United States and Canada, the Christmas season evokes vivid childhood memories: fresh snowfalls, frosted windowpanes, the scent of a pine tree in a warm living room, and neighbourhoods aglow with coloured lights against the early evening darkness.

We recall midnight carol services followed by exciting Christmas mornings, the thrill of unwrapping a new pair of skates, and the delicious aroma of a roasting turkey.

For almost everyone, Christmas was a season of goodwill—a time when families reunited, neighbours dropped by for eggnog, and communities felt briefly stitched together by shared customs rather than pulled apart by grievance. Those memories help explain why Andy Williams’s early 1960s hit could so confidently proclaim, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

Such fond recollections now sit in sharp contrast to the Decembers we inhabit today.

What was once a broadly shared cultural moment increasingly feels caught in a vortex of political resentment, culture-war skirmishes, and competing claims over the public space. The season that once wrapped communities in a common warmth now exposes society’s fault lines. Christmas has not disappeared—its lights still shines—but the bonds that once united us are harder to distinguish amid the confusion of post-modern diversity.

During the Christmas season, expressions of hostility toward people of faith have become a familiar part of our present-day ideological battles. Scholars have long documented the opposition of adversarial intellectual movements toward the influence of Christian values in public life. In the United States, organizations such as the Satanic Temple and the Freedom From Religion Foundation openly work to challenge the presence of Christian symbols and traditions in civic settings. Legal arguments invoking the Constitution’s Establishment Clause are routinely used to confine Christmas displays and pageants to private spaces.

In Canada, grievances have taken a more troubling turn. Over the past several years, specious allegations related to the history of indigenous residential schools contributed to an atmosphere in which more than 100 Christian churches have been vandalized or burned, from Kamloops, British Columbia, to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

One cannot ignore that the Judeo-Christian traditions, which once healed social divisions, have become a target for discord. Even the most familiar religious symbols provoke dispute. What used to be shared feelings of peace and joy are now pulled into broader conflicts over identity and power. Sentiments that were once widely shared appear sharply divided, and scores of young people are being conscripted into the pathological legions of a troubled age.

Restoring the Spirit of Christmas

Whatever one’s views on history or accountability, the globalization of violence against people of faith and places of worship reveals how deeply polarized our cultural landscape has become.

In an era when division dominates headlines, restoring the spirit of Christmas will require something countercultural: a deliberate return to civility. As we approach 2026—a year likely to bring continued economic, political, and global uncertainty—individuals and communities still have an opportunity to reclaim the season by prioritizing goodwill over conflict.

One practical step is to revive social gatherings that bridge divides. Local get-togethers, informal open houses, or even virtual reunions can create spaces where politics are set aside in favour of conversation, laughter, and shared experiences. As CBS World War II correspondent Eric Sevareid once observed: “Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we’re here for something else besides ourselves.” Such simple messages can soften resentment, much like the Christmas parties of years gone by.

Another way to restore the season’s spirit is through acts of service. With economic pressures and social isolation still prevalent, volunteering at shelters, donating to food banks, or organizing gift drives can reconnect Christmas to its traditional message of charity and hope. U.S. President Calvin Coolidge captured this well when he wrote: “Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. … To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.” Charitable acts can shift the human focus from self-indulgence to generosity.

Personal reflection is also useful. Attending a carol service, rereading traditional works like Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” or Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” can restore the virtues of empathy and humility that contribute to the true spirit of Christmas. In a world that is so quick to weaponize differences, reflection reminds us of what we share. Writer and clergyman Norman Vincent Peale once asserted that “Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.”

Finally, we can choose to engage more prudently with modern technology: using it to connect with distant loved ones or share words of encouragement, while stepping back from the outrage-driven algorithms that profit from division.

As the iconic American humorist Mark Twain once noted: “It is my heart-warmed and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage (every man and brother of us all throughout the whole earth), may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss, except” he joked, “the inventor of the telephone.”

If Christmas feels diminished today, it is not because its message has failed, but because we have allowed civility to erode.

Choosing goodwill over resentment will not end every conflict—but it can restore the warmth that once made this season truly wonderful.

In that choice lies a quiet but powerful act of hope.

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

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 19:30

Ex-Netanyahu Aide Says 1st Post-Oct 7 Tasking From 'Panicked' PM Was Helping Him Dodge Responsibility

Ex-Netanyahu Aide Says 1st Post-Oct 7 Tasking From 'Panicked' PM Was Helping Him Dodge Responsibility

A former top aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that, in the wake of the Oct 7 Hamas invasion on Israel, the first assignment he received from a "panicked" prime minister was figuring out how he could avoid being held responsible for an attack that was as humiliating for Netanyahu as it was devastating for the country. He also said Netanyahu was personally involved in orchestrating the leak of classified information to foreign media in a bid to dodge criticism over a failure to reach a ceasefire agreement.  

Eli Feldstein says Prime Minister Netanyahu was part of a scheme to leak classified information to foreign media to bolster his standing 

The accusations from former Netanyahu spokesman Eli Feldstein came in an extensive interview with Israel's Kan news network that aired Monday and Tuesday nights. While there were many communication needs in the wake of mass bloodshed that brought 1,200 deaths and saw hundreds taken captive, Feldstein said Netanyahu's first priority was avoiding blame. Describing Netanyahu as appearing "panicked" at the time, Feldstein told Kan

“He asked me, ‘What are they talking about in the news? Are they still talking about responsibility? He wanted me to think of something that could be said that would offset the media storm surrounding the question of whether the prime minister had taken responsibility or not...The first and biggest task that I had after October 7 was erasing the concept of [Netanyahu’s] responsibility from the public discourse.”  

Further hammering the point, Feldstein said that close Netanyahu associates even advised Feldstein to ensure the word "responsibility" never appeared in statements that he was preparing. “They told me to take the word 'responsibility' out of the lexicon and formulate something without the word 'responsibility' ... it won’t go in,” he said.

His account is certain to strike a nerve in Israel, where Netanyahu has faced steady criticism for accepting responsibility for the massive security failure that took place under his government's watch -- and has also been accused of extending the war in Gaza so as to forestall a comprehensive, post-war inquiry, even if extending the war meant keeping hostages lives in peril.

Responding to the broadcast, the prime minister's office was dismissive of what it called a "long series of mendacious and recycled allegations made by a man with clear personal interests who is trying to deflect responsibility from himself." Feldstein has been charged with leaking classified information to the media in a bid to shield Netanyahu from criticism at a time when Gaza ceasefire negotiations had come to a halt.

In his Kan interview, Feldstein said Netanyahu was very much a part of that scheme: “In order to [publicize] such a document, the prime minister must be in the picture – from beginning to end..He is the one who ultimately was behind the leak.” He said Netanyahu is lying when he denies his own involvement. 

Netanyahu recently hosted Sen. Lindsey Graham in Israel 

Feldstein, who'd previously worked for far-right Netanyahu coalition member and current national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, was accused of planting bogus narratives that Hamas was scheming to smuggle Israeli hostages into Egypt, and that Hamas was prolonging negotiations in a form of psychological warfare on the Israeli people. At least one of the outlets that relied on Feldstein's leaks -- the Jewish Chronicle of London -- went on to withdraw their report, with prominent columnists resigning over the scandal. Feldstein has also been accused of accepting money from Qatar as part of a foreign influence operation.  

The leaked document was an internal Hamas communication that was supposed to reveal the group was insincere in reaching a compromise that would bring about a ceasefire. However, one of the recipients of the document, the German tabloid Bild, reportedly distorted the document's content for the benefit of Netanyahu. In Tuesday's second installment of the interview, Feldstein said that, after the misleading Bild story ran, Netanyahu adviser Jonathan Urich texted him and said, "The boss is thrilled."  

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 18:45

Treasury Targets Money Services Businesses In Crackdown On Cartel Money Flows

Treasury Targets Money Services Businesses In Crackdown On Cartel Money Flows

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Treasury Department has announced a wide-scale enforcement operation targeting more than 100 money services businesses operating along the U.S.–Mexico border, as part of the Trump administration’s campaign to disrupt cartel money laundering through America’s financial system.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in the Oval Office of the White House on Nov. 21, 2025. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

The operation, announced on Dec. 22 by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), focuses on examining money services businesses, or MSBs, operating along the southwest border for potential noncompliance with rules meant to detect money laundering and disrupt illicit finance.

It’s part of the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to combat cartels and other transnational criminal networks whose actions harm U.S. communities and threaten national security.

“At President Trump’s direction, the Treasury Department is utilizing all tools to stop terrorist cartels, drug traffickers, and human smugglers,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

“This sweeping operation will help root out potential cartel-related money laundering from the U.S. financial system.”

Money services businesses include non-bank financial providers such as currency exchanges, check-cashing firms, and money transmitters.

Treasury officials say those businesses face heightened exposure to illicit finance in border regions, where drug traffickers and smuggling networks seek to move proceeds in small, structured transactions designed to avoid detection.

The new data-driven operation—described by FinCEN as the “first-of-its kind”—was made possible by Treasury’s modernization efforts, including the use of advanced technology to transform fragmented financial information into investigative leads to fight financial crimes more effectively.

The agency said the operation is based on the analysis of more than 1 million currency transaction reports and roughly 87,000 suspicious activity reports submitted by financial institutions.

Using high-performance data processing, the agency is identifying potential compliance failures under the Bank Secrecy Act that could warrant civil penalties, injunctive actions, warning letters, or criminal referrals, it said.

The operation has already produced six notices of investigation, dozens of examination referrals to the IRS, and more than 50 compliance outreach letters, according to the agency.

The move marks an escalation in targeted enforcement of rules meant to combat financial crime, with FinCEN saying that advanced analytics are able generate “reliable decision-grade leads at scale” for regulators and law enforcement to act on.

The Trump administration has increasingly tied financial enforcement to national security, following President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this year to designate several major Mexico-based drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. That designation expanded the government’s authority to freeze assets and pursue sanctions linked to cartel financing.

Enforcement Follows Contested Border Reporting Rules

The latest enforcement sweep builds on a series of geographic targeting orders (GTO) issued earlier this year that lowered cash-transaction reporting thresholds for money service businesses in certain border areas.

In March, FinCEN imposed a temporary order requiring money service businesses in 30 ZIP codes in California and Texas to report cash transactions as small as $200, down from the long-standing $10,000 threshold under the Bank Secrecy Act. That move triggered lawsuits from border-area businesses, which argued the requirement was arbitrary, burdensome, and harmful to legitimate commerce.

In June, a federal judge in Texas granted a temporary restraining order shielding two El Paso-area businesses from enforcement, citing the rule’s geographic design and disproportionate compliance burden.

“The administrative record reflects that the government either failed to consider or offered an unsubstantiated conclusion on at least two important aspects of the problem: (1) there are simple measures that cartel members can take to render the Border GTO completely toothless, and (2) innocent businesses can be profoundly disadvantaged if they are located on the ‘wrong’ side of an El Paso street,” U.S. District Judge Leon Schydlower wrote in a June 24 ruling granting an injunction, which applied only to the plaintiffs and did not halt the policy nationwide.

The Trump administration later allowed the $200 threshold order to expire and replaced it with a modified GTO that raised the reporting floor to $1,000, expanded coverage to parts of Arizona, and extended filing deadlines to ease compliance pressures. That revised order remains in effect through March 2026.

“FinCEN is now issuing a new GTO to target illicit transactions, while mitigating burden on legitimate businesses,” the agency said on Sept. 8, adding that the reissued GTO “will continue to ensure law enforcement can deny individuals and entities associated with these groups access to the U.S. financial system.”

Some civil-liberties advocates and free-market groups have taken a dim view of what they describe as expanded warrantless financial surveillance introduced by the new rules.

“This takes a financial surveillance system that is already enormous and intrusive and burdensome, and it expands that system enormously,” Rob Johnson, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview.

Nicholas Anthony, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, said in a note that the $10,000 threshold for currency transaction reports is long overdue for reform. But he argued that it should be raised—not lowered—to account for inflation.

“Yet, instead, we are seeing a drastic increase in financial surveillance, making the problem even worse,” Anthony wrote.

“Whether it’s the mob or the cartel, organized crime is not an easy thing to deal with.

“However, this challenge does not mean Americans should have their rights stripped away in the pursuit of justice.”

The Treasury did not respond to an earlier request for comment on criticism of the GTO and its lowered reporting threshold. However, in response to one of the lawsuits, government attorneys argued that business-compliance-burden claims were “exaggerated” and that the rule is justified because money service businesses along the southwest border are “particularly vulnerable” to cartel-linked money-laundering abuses.

Kevin Stocklin contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 18:00

What Is Wall Street's Favorite Christmas Song

What Is Wall Street's Favorite Christmas Song

Every year-end, there are heated debates about what is the "best .... of Christmas", especially among those who work in finance. 

Last year, Home Alone, Die Hard, and Love Actually topped the Christmas movie rankings as polled by the 2025 Deutsche Bank Global Markets Survey. This year, the bank returned to the even more contentious topic of favorite Christmas songs.

At a global level, the bank's 2026 Year Ahead Global Markets Survey found that Wham! won again, while regionally, Mariah Carey took the crown in the US, Asia, and the Rest of the World with All I Want For Christmas is You. The full list is in the report.

For the record, Jim Reid - who compiled and published the survey - writes that his top three would have been Wham!, The Pogues, and Joni Mitchell’s River, a smooth progression from the tacky to the tasteful.

In his last note of the year, Reid also listed his favorite TV series, film, and album of 2025: we except it below (full report here)

  • 1. Slow Horses – The best TV series in the world at the moment. Well, until Rivals comes back! I try to model my management technique on Jackson Lamb, if not my personal hygiene.
  • 2. Dept Q – A bit like Slow Horses in that it involves a grumpy, rude police boss with a complicated past. He is of course a tortured genius and the show is gripping.
  • 3. Blue Lights – A brilliant Northern Ireland police drama on its third series with no drop off in quality and heart.
  • 4. Mobland - Helen Mirren and Piers Brosnan do terrible Irish accents in this trashy but fun mob drama. It proved a little light relief when we watched it as Liberation Day rolled through!
  • 5. SAS Rogue Heroes – Dramatised true story about an incredible bunch of elite soldiers who seemingly played a big part in the outcome of WW
  • 6. The White Lotus – I disliked series 1. Series 2 and now series 3 were great. Not at all like my holidays! Apart from the arguments.
  • 7. Karen Pirie – A Scottish police heroine who doesn’t play by the rules but gets results.
  • 8. The Newsreader – A homage to the 1980s. Clever Australian program that follows actual global news stories from the period with a fictitious news studio narrative in a period where TV hosts were the anchors of our lives.
  • 9. The Studio – Comedies tend not to be very good but this is an exception. Self-deprecating look at the life of a Hollywood studio boss. Seth Rogan plays the character you’d expect him to play. Cringeworthily funny.
  • 10. The Beast in Me – Clare Danes gives her usual tour de force and provides all the usual facial expressions to go along with it. A very tense psychological drama. I was a bit scared.
  • 11. All Her Fault – Sarah Snook is the magnetic force in this drama about a missing 6 year old boy.
  • 12. Black Doves - my wife is not a huge fan of Keira Knightley! So I watched while travelling. Enjoyable nonsense.
  • 13. The Diplomat - more enjoyable nonsense I watched while travelling as my wife believed the first series was too absurd to continue with.

Reid's favorite film of the year was "The Ballad of Wallis Island" which was "a life affirming, quirky movie, about a washed up folk pop star who gets booked to do a private gig on a small island at a house of a recluse who won the lottery and bought a place there. It's very good."

His favorite album was Florence and the Machine - Everybody Scream. A dramatic, orchestral, melodic, and confessional mini masterpiece

Finally, for those looking for some light Christmas reading (while escaping from kids or maybe in-laws), DB published its Ultimate Guide to Long-Term Investing (Available to pro subswhich is designed to help everyone put their long-term finances on the firmest footing, which should be a good New Year’s resolution.

More in the full  2026 Year Ahead Global Markets Survey

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 17:15

Waste Of The Day: Superintendent Resigns, Nets Over $900K

Waste Of The Day: Superintendent Resigns, Nets Over $900K

Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations,

Topline: A Long Island school district must pay its superintendent over $907,500 after he resigned without a public explanation this September, according to records obtained by Newsday through a Freedom of Information Law request.

Key facts: The Plainedge Union Free School District paid Edward Salina a $662,352 lump sum for 184 unused sick and personal days and 286.5 unused vacation days.

The district will also pay the remaining $245,185 of Salina’s salary for the 2025-26 school year. The salary is paid in bi-weekly installments, which will end if Salina takes a job at another school, Newsday reported.

Salina’s contract gave him 35 vacation days, 14 sick days and three personal days per year. Unused days were carried over to the next year with no limit.

Waste of the Day 12.23.25 Open the Books

He resigned abruptly on Sept. 12, two weeks into the current school year. The reason remains unknown. He had been superintendent since 2011, and his contract was set to expire in 2029.

What is paid is basically contractual,” school board president Joseph Beyrouty told Newsday. “There's nothing more to it than that.”

The school district is paying District Wise Search Consultants to lead the search for a new superintendent, according to Newsday. The dollar cost is unknown, but District Wise received $261,000 from several Long Island districts since 2020, including $23,000 each from four other Long Island school districts in 2023 for their superintendent searches, according to Open the Books’ data.

Interim Superintendent Carol Muscarella is earning $1,200 per day but will not hold the job permanently, according to Newsday.

It's just to basically keep the lights on and the employees paid. And I think she's done a phenomenal job with that,” Beyrouty said. “As a matter of fact, I think she's even gone above and beyond that and really helped tackle some issues that have come up along the way.”

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com

Background: The Plainedge school district had a $50.6 million payroll in 2024, according to Open the Books’ database. Seven employees, including Salina, made more than $200,000. An additional 292 people made $100,000 or more. 

Summary: It’s questionable whether any public employee should receive nearly $1 million in a single year, but paying one who is no longer working and gave no explanation for their departure is especially alarming.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 16:30

Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me About Christmas

Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me About Christmas

It's almost as much a Christmas tradition as eggnog and Rankin/Bass - The political left's propaganda disparaging Noel appears like clockwork every December.  The season inevitably triggers progressives into rantings and ravings about the "white supremacist" evils of western culture, Christianity and the need for a more "secular" or "multicultural" form of celebration.  In other words, Christians aren't allowed to have their own holidays. 

Protected holidays are only reserved for cultures with spicy foods and child marriage.

And, if you went to a public school in the west in the past few decades you probably dealt with multiple liberal teachers who regaled you with their "profound insights" on the "true history" of western holiday traditions.  The problem is, most of what these teachers tell their students is a lie based on generations of carefully crafted political narratives.

The disinformation campaigns against Christmas have been so effective in the past that there are even groups of Christians that actually believe the same nonsense and repeat it as if they have discovered some fantastic conspiratorial secrets that only "true Christians" know.

Let's examine some of these lies and why they are historically inaccurate...

Lie #1: Christmas Is A Pagan Holiday?

Utterly false in every way, but many western students have heard this claim thousands of times over and AI chatbots continue to spread the fallacy today.  The idea comes from the incorrect claim that Christmas is an artificial amalgamation of traditions stolen from pagan events like Saturnalia and the Roman Solis Festival as a way to convert the heathens centuries ago.

Saturnalia was held on Dec 17, not Dec 25, and focused on animal sacrifices and a loosening of moral rules. Christmas was started as a completely separate tradition with separate beliefs and a Christian message. 

The Roman Solis Festival was created a century after Christians began celebrating December 25th as the birth of Christ.  Surviving Roman records from Hyppolytus mention Christmas as early as 200AD.  Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170–235 AD) is widely regarded by modern scholars as the earliest known Christian writer to effectively calculate the birth of Jesus as December 25th.  

The earliest calendar record of the pagan Solis Festival was 354AD, over 150 years later.  It was created by Roman Emperor Aurelian, who was a pagan hostile to the spread of Christianity.  He sought to co-opt or compete with Christian celebrations, rather than Christians trying to co-opt paganism.

Lie #2:  The Birth Date Of December 25th For Jesus Is Completely Made Up?     

The date of December 25th for the birth of Jesus was a deduction from scripture, analyzed in conjunction with historical knowledge about those who worked in the temple.

St. Luke related the announcement of the birth of St. John the Baptist to his elderly parents, St. Zechariah and St. Elizabeth.  St. Zechariah was a priest of the class of Abijah (Lk 1:5), the eighth class of 24 priestly classes (Neh 12:17).  Each class served one week in the temple, twice a year.  Josef Heinrich Friedlieb has established that the priestly class of Abijah would have been on duty during the second week of the Jewish month Tishri, the week of the Day of Atonement or in our calendar, between Sept. 22 and 30.

While on duty, the Archangel Gabriel informed Zechariah that he and Elizabeth would have a son (Lk 1:5-24). Thereupon, they conceived John, who after presumably 40 weeks in the womb would have been born at the end of June.  For this reason, Christians celebrate the Nativity of St. John the Baptist June 24. 

St. Luke also recorded how the Archangel Gabriel told Mary that Elizabeth was six months pregnant with John (Lk 1:36), which means the Annunciation occurred March 25. Nine months from March 25, or six months from June 24, renders the birth of Christ at Dec. 25 - Christmas.

Modern scholars support Hippolytus in his calculations of December 25th.  Whether someone believes in the bible or not, the point remains that the date for Christmas was not pulled from thin air or adapted over time to "co-opt pagan traditions."

Lie #3:  Mary And Joseph Were "Illegal Immigrants"?

This false claim has resurfaced recently in the wake of mass deportations of illegals in the US, and it comes from people who apparently have no knowledge of biblical history.

Mary and Joseph fled Judea for Egypt at a time when both were controlled regions of the Roman Empire.  Therefore, they did not immigrate, let alone immigrate illegally.  They were both considered subjects of Rome and remained within the Roman Empire as they traveled.     

Lie #4:  St. Nicholas Was A Third Worlder? 

In the process of woke activists trying to make everything black and brown, Santa Claus seems to be one of their favorite targets for race swapping.  Leftists argue that St. Nicholas was born in Turkey, and thus, he must have been heavily melanated. 

St. Nicholas was born in Turkey, but he was born to wealthy Greek parents in 270 AD in a Greek colony at a time when the Levant was controlled by the Roman Empire.  The creation of Islam and the Muslim invasions did not happen for another 350 years, meaning, most of the region was fair skinned or "olive skinned".  By today's woke diversity totem pole standards, St. Nicholas would be considered a white guy with a tan. 

All records of Nicholas of Myra's life show widespread reverence for his charity, which led to his eventual sainthood (granted 100 years after his death) and the celebration of his achievements for centuries.   

Lie #5:  Jesus Was Not A Real Historic Person?

Historic accounts say otherwise, including records from the Romans who saw Jesus as a reactionary enemy.  Roman historian Tacitus (c. 116 AD) mentions "Christus" executed under Pilate, and Jewish historian Josephus (c. 93 AD) also refers to Jesus, both confirming Jesus's existence and execution by Romans for followers who called him Messiah, thus supporting the record of events described in the Bible.

Lie #6:  There Is No Leftist War On Christmas?

The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing people that he doesn't exist.  Yes, there absolutely is a war on Christmas.  One of the root foundations of Marxism/Communism is the crusade to erase religion as a competing ideological fount, and woke leftists are indeed communists.  Karl Marx particularly despised Christianity and argued that:

“The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille (lower class people).”

Of course, Christianity doesn't preach any of these things in the way Marx claimed, but communists see Christianity as an obstacle to their collectivist revolution because it preaches reverence to God above government and asserts that rights are inherent rather than being privileges granted by government.  In other words, erasing Christianity is an important step in building a communist empire where the state becomes god. 

The political left will argue that their incessant demands for more "secular" holiday celebrations are designed to make immigrants feel more included, but they don't make similar demands for any other religious traditions.  It is interesting that Christianity is the only religion that is consistently targeted and Christmas is the only religious celebration consistently forced to accommodate other belief systems. 

Liberal teachers have been training children for decades to hate Christianity and to view Christmas as a sham.  This is not the behavior of a political group at peace.  It is the behavior of a psy-op, a war campaign to demoralize their enemies.            

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 15:45

The Evolution Of The Candy Cane

The Evolution Of The Candy Cane

Authored by Dean George via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Candy canes have been associated with Christmas for centuries, but their origins and early history are shrouded in legend, folklore and fantasy.

The 2019 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade featured a candy cane float. Public Domain

The sweet and sticky candy first became associated with Christmas in Germany in the 17th century, though the name, color and flavor were markedly different from contemporary candy canes. Originally, they were called sugar sticks. They were pure white in color, had no peppermint flavor, and weren’t “J” shaped. 

The popularity of sugar sticks eventually spread to other European countries like France and England. Because sugar was often unavailable, sugar sticks were often flavored with sweet essences from plants. Sugar sticks were handmade in small batches and given as seasonal gifts to children, family, and friends. 

Candy canes were first made by hand out of sugar syrup using the same hammering and rolling methods that are used in glasswork. Belbury/CC BY-SA 2.0

European immigrants coming to America in the 19th century brought their old-world recipes with them. Eventually, sugar sticks became part of this country’s Christmas celebrations.

European Folklore and Religious Symbolism

A common but unsubstantiated legend says that around 1670, a German choirmaster in Cologne gave children performing in Nativity reenactments sugar sticks to keep them quiet and attentive. A similar tale says that when some church members objected to children eating candy in church, the choirmaster commissioned a confectioner to shape the sugar sticks like shepherd’s crooks to symbolize the Biblical shepherds tending their flocks near Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. 

Modern day legends attributed more to religious symbolism. Some tales say that when turned upside down, the candy crook is shaped like a “J” and stands for Jesus. Another tale implies the candied crook represents a shepherd’s crook and is symbolic of Jesus, the Good Shepherd.

One popular myth is that an Indiana candymaker crafted the Christmas candy cane to symbolize the birth, ministry, and death of Jesus Christ. The white color represents the purity of the Virgin Mary and Christ’s perfection. The thin red stripes denote Jesus’ scourging before he was crucified, and the large red stripe symbolizes the blood Christ shed on the cross. These anecdotes are intriguing but lack any historical documentation to prove their veracity. 

More likely is the idea that German families used the hook in the original candy stick to facilitate using it as a Christmas ornament alongside fruit, nuts, candies, cookies, and paper decorations.

Regardless of their varied origin stories, striped candy canes are now ubiquitous in the Christmas season. Anrie/CC BY-SA 2.0 When Sugar Sticks Became Candy Canes

German-Swedish immigrant August Imgard is the first documented case in North America of using the sweet treat as a tree ornament. On Christmas Day, 1847 he introduced this interesting “twist” on sugar sticks when he decorated a blue spruce tree in Wooster, Ohio as part of his family’s Christmas celebration. 

By the 1860s, the term “candy canes” was appearing in publications like Ballou’s Monthly Magazine. They were described as being hung up next to stockings. In 1871, German immigrant Claus Doscher founded Doscher’s Candies, America’s oldest candy cane maker, which was featured in American Essence magazine. Remarkably, the Doscher’s candy canes are still handmade. 

Each candy cane at Doscher’s Candies is hooked by hand. Courtesy of Greg Clark

The candy cane’s famous red stripes and peppermint flavoring were believed to be added sometime around the turn of the 20th century, according to the National Confectioners Association. 

In 1919, entrepreneur Bob McCormack founded the Famous Candy Company in Albany, Georgia. Within a few years, the company was producing thousands of handmade candy canes annually under the name Bob’s Candy Company (later changed to Bobs Candies). Later, in the 1950s, the Georgia company became the largest maker of candy canes and the first to wrap their candies in cellophane and mass distribute them.

In the 1950s, Gregory Keller, a Roman Catholic priest and McCormack’s brother-in-law, invented a machine that automated candy cane production, greatly reducing production time and labor costs. A patent request for the “Keller Machine” was submitted in 1957 and approved in 1960; it allowed Bobs Candies to produce millions of candy canes annually. Bobs candy canes are still made today, though the McCormack family sold the company to larger candy conglomerates in 2005.

Contemporary Candy Cane Options

The traditional red and white peppermint-flavored candy canes still dominate the market, but novel options in recent years have included fruit-based flavors and odder flavor choices for candies, like bacon, pickle and jalapeño. New textural options include chewy and liquid-filled canes with a juice-infused center.

Candy canes are now seen at other holidays also. There areheart-shaped candy canes for Valentine’s Day and orange and black candy canes at Halloween.

Traditionalists need not worry, though. The National Confectioners Association notes that 90 percent of candy canes are sold between Thanksgiving and Christmas; the second week of December is the biggest single week for candy cane sales annually; 1.76 billion candy canes are sold annually in the United States; candy canes are the number one-selling non-chocolate candy in December, and December 26th is National Candy Cane Day. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 15:00

Largest Acquisition In Nvidia History: Jensen Pays $20BN For AI Chip Startup In Bid For Google's TPU Tech

Largest Acquisition In Nvidia History: Jensen Pays $20BN For AI Chip Startup In Bid For Google's TPU Tech

Just before the market close on Friday, Nvidia unveiled its largest ever acquisition (which however was structured as a licensing deal to avoid anti-trust concerns) when it agreed to buy Groq - pardon license all of Grok's assets and acquire its entire executive team - a designer of high-performance artificial intelligence accelerator chips, for $20 billion in cash. In reality what the deal is really about is Grok's TPU expertise, and specifically the knowledge inside CEO Jonathan Ross' head, who helped launch Google's TPU, the search giant's custom Application-Specific Integrated Circuit. 

Jonathan Ross, chief executive officer of Groq 

The news was first reported by CNBC, citing Alex Davis, CEO of Disruptive, which led the startup’s latest financing round in September. Davis, whose firm has invested more than half a billion dollars in Groq since the company was founded in 2016, said the deal came together quickly (that part is true: the deal likely came together in the days following the recent dramatic ascent of Google's Gemini and TPU architecture, not to mention stock price, as explained below).

Groq raised $750 million at a valuation of about $6.9 billion in September. Investors in the round included Blackrock and Neuberger Berman, as well as Samsung, Cisco, Altimeter and 1789 Capital (where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner). Groq said at the time it would use the funds to expand its data center capacity. Instead, the participating funds are about to 3x their money in 3 months, an unprecedented venture return, thanks to Nvidia's massive cash hoard.

Groq said in a blog post on Wednesday that it’s “entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Nvidia for Groq’s inference technology,” without disclosing a price. Clearly, however, this is much more than just a licensing agreement since Groq founder and CEO Jonathan Ross along with Sunny Madra, the company’s president, and other senior leaders “will join Nvidia to help advance and scale the licensed technology,” the post said.

As Bloomberg explains, sharing a slightly different perspective on how the deal is structured or rather wants to be structured, the world’s largest publicly traded company paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and will integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the startup’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said.

Groq will continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, existing finance chief Simon Edwards as CEO, it said Wednesday in a post on its website, which of course it will only pretend to be for regulatory and anti-trust reasons: Nvidia will have stripped all the good stuff, i.e., the TPU IP. It’s data center business, which offers outsourced computing, will continue, the company said in the post. 

Davis told CNBC that Nvidia is getting all of Groq’s assets, though its nascent Groq cloud business is not part of the transaction. Groq said “GroqCloud will continue to operate without interruption.”

The deal represents by far Nvidia’s largest purchase ever. The chipmaker’s biggest acquisition to date came in 2019, when it bought Israeli chip designer Mellanox for close to $7 billion. At the end of October, Nvidia had $60.6 billion in cash and short-term investments, up from $13.3 billion in early 2023. 

In an email to employees that was obtained by CNBC, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the agreement will expand Nvidia’s capabilities.

“We plan to integrate Groq’s low-latency processors into the NVIDIA AI factory architecture, extending the platform to serve an even broader range of AI inference and real-time workloads,” Huang wrote, revealing the deal rationale. 

Groq has been targeting revenue of $500 million this year amid booming demand for AI accelerator chips used in speeding up the process for large language models to complete inference-related tasks. The company was not pursuing a sale when it was approached by Nvidia, Davis said. While it is unclear what is the actual LTM revenue, the acquisition represents a 40x multiple of its "targeted" sales... so do the math. 

So what is the reason for the deal? Well, as we explained in "The Google TPU: The Chip Made For The AI Inference Era", in recent months Nvidia and its GPU architecture has lost momentum to Google and its TPU, which as noted above, is the "chip made for the inference era." And so, instead of developing its own Tensor architecture, Nvidia decided to just buy it. Or rather, it pretends not to buy it as regulators may just kill the deal, which instead was structured as an asset-purchase/licensing deal. 

And the punchline: Groq was founded in 2016 by a group of former engineers, including CEO Ross. Ross is a former Google chip executive who helped start that company’s Tensor Processing Unit, or TPU, the search giant’s custom chip that’s being used by some companies as an alternative to Nvidia’s graphics processing units. As part of the deal, he and other top executives will join Nvidia “to help advance and scale the licensed technology,” Groq said in the statement. 

In its initial filing with the SEC, announcing a $10.3 million fundraising in late 2016, Groq listed as principals Ross and Douglas Wightman, an entrepreneur and former engineer at the Google X “moonshot factory.” Wightman left Groq in 2019, according to his LinkedIn profile

Huang added that, “While we are adding talented employees to our ranks and licensing Groq’s IP, we are not acquiring Groq as a company.” Narrator: you are.

Nvidia has ramped up its investments in chip startups and the broader ecosystem as its cash pile has mounted. The company has backed AI and energy infrastructure company Crusoe, AI model developer Cohere, and boosted its investment in CoreWeave as the AI-centric cloud provider was getting ready to go public this year.

In September, Nvidia said it intended to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, with the startup committed to deploying at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia products. The companies have yet to announce a formal deal. That same month, Nvidia said it would invest $5 billion in Intel as part of a partnership.

Nvidia has been making investments in companies across the AI infrastructure ecosystem and is trying to keep a large lead in the market for inference — running models once they have been developed. The company’s leadership has already pledged billions to a wide variety of projects that it believes will further the overall AI industry. Nvidia agreed to invest as much as $100 billion in OpenAI and has even bought a stake in erstwhile nemesis Intel Corp.

By incorporating a new type of design into what it sells, Nvidia is showing willingness to be flexible and add novel capabilities. That approach is likely aimed at keeping its biggest customers and new adopters focused on its technology at a time when in-house efforts from Google, Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. are gaining momentum as the industry rushes to install as much computing capacity as quickly as it can.

With today's purchase, pardon, "licensing deal", Nvidia has formally lobbed its response to Google's recent ascent with its Ironwood TPU and Gemini AI, which saw a dramatic divergence in the Google vs Nvidia ecosystems (chart below).  The question now is will Google issue its own "code red" and pull every string in its power to kill the deal, or will it respond even more forcefully. One thing is certain: if Nvidia has now successfully caught up to Google and its TPU technology, the alligator jaws of the Google vs OpenAI/Nvidia chart are about to slam shut.

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 14:54

'There Is Nothing To Celebrate': Gaza's Christians Mark Somber Christmas Amid Fragile Truce

'There Is Nothing To Celebrate': Gaza's Christians Mark Somber Christmas Amid Fragile Truce

Via Middle East Eye

Youssef Tarazi, a Palestinian Christian in Gaza, says the giant Christmas tree that once stood as a symbol of communal celebration will not be lit this year. For a third consecutive year, Gaza's Christian community says they will be observing Christmas without public celebrations, as Israel's alleged repeated ceasefire violations and restrictions on humanitarian aid entering the enclave continue to cast a shadow over the holiday.

"Churches have suspended all celebrations outside their walls because of the conditions Gaza is going through," Tarazi, 31, told Middle East Eye. "We are marking the birth of Jesus Christ through prayer inside the church only, but our joy remains incomplete".

Palestinian Orthodox Christians will observe Christmas on January 7 according to the pre-Gregorian calendar, while Catholics are celebrating on Dec. 25.

Before the war, churches across Gaza transformed their courtyards into gathering spaces, decorated streets with festive lights and hosted carols that brought families together. 

Muslims often joined Christian neighbors to mark the occasion, including the annual lighting of a large Christmas tree in Gaza City. "This year, we cannot celebrate while we are still grieving for those killed, including during attacks on churches," Tarazi said.

"Nothing feels the same anymore. Many members of our community will not be with us this Christmas".

George Anton, the director of operations at the Latin patriarchate in Gaza and head of its emergency committee, echoed those sentiments. "We cannot celebrate while Christians and Muslims alike are mourning devastating losses caused by the war," Anton told MEE. "For us, the war has not ended".

Anton said churches are limiting observances to prayers and a nativity scene inside church buildings. "In the past, we decorated our homes. Now, many homes are gone. We decorated the streets. Even the streets are gone," he said. "There is nothing to celebrate".

Since October 2023, Gaza's Christian homes, schools and churches have been damaged or destroyed during Israeli military operations. Three historic churches - Church of Saint Porphyrius, the Holy Family Church and the Gaza Baptist Church - have suffered severe damage.

Anton said at least 53 Christians have been killed directly or indirectly during the war, with many others injured. "Some were killed in air strikes, while others died because we could not reach hospitals or provide medicine, especially elderly people with chronic illnesses," he said.

Determined to stay

This Christmas comes amid what church leaders describe as the smallest Christian population Gaza has seen in decades.

More than 400 Christians have left Gaza during the war, fearing for their lives after relatives and friends were killed. Today, an estimated 220 Christian families - around 580 people - remain in the strip. "Those of us who remain are determined to stay," Anton said, while acknowledging that worsening humanitarian conditions may force more families to leave in search of medical care and stability.

Around 70 percent of Gaza's Christians belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, with the remainder Latin Catholics. "The situation affects everyone - Christians and Muslims alike," Anton said. "We are part of this society, and what happens to Gaza happens to us".

On October 20 2023, less than two weeks into the war, Israeli strikes hit the Church of Saint Porphyrius complex, killing at least 16 people who had sought refuge there. The church is one of the oldest in the world, built on a site used for Christian worship since the fifth century.

In another attack on 17 July, Israeli fire struck Gaza's only Catholic church, killing two women and injuring several others, including the parish priest. "All Palestinians, including the Christian community, are still living with the consequences of the war," Anton said. "We are grieving, frustrated and unstable. We cannot celebrate as if nothing has happened".

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 13:30

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