China Envisions 'Dry Canal' To Compete With Panama Canal

Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In response to the Trump administration’s new U.S. policy of reasserting control over the Panama Canal, China and Brazil are exploring the possibility of building a transcontinental railway to provide an advantageous alternative to the Panama Canal. The proposed rail system would potentially run from Brazil’s Atlantic coast, perhaps Ilhéus, Bahia, to Peru’s Pacific coast at Chancay.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (L) talks to Chinese Ambassador to Brazil Zhu Qingqiao at the Palacio do Planalto in Brasilia on Feb. 3, 2023. Sergio Lima/AFP via Getty Images

The project, known as the Central Bi-Oceanic Railway Corridor (CRBC), has been in consideration since at least 2017. Other proposed projects of a similar nature and objectives have been considered since at least 2013. There are other terms applied to the transoceanic railway project, but essentially, the system would cut across the Amazon rainforest and go over—and likely tunnel through—the Andes mountain range, linking Atlantic and Pacific port facilities.

Many Obstacles and Risks to Overcome

Of course, there’s often a wide gap between planning a project and actually doing it successfully. There are certainly formidable obstacles that would have to be overcome for the project to move forward to completion. The geographic and topographic challenges are considerable. Clearing a path through the Amazon rainforest or tunneling through the Andes mountains aren’t easy engineering feats.

There would also be legal challenges over land rights and environmental resistance to the project and against the development of the necessary supporting infrastructure along the way. The initial costs incurred by each country would also be a significant challenge, as would be establishing a sustainable debt service and maintaining the political will to stick to the plan when these and other obstacles arise.

The Trade Advantages Would Be Significant

Although it would be a complex, multi-year project with significant costs and engineering challenges, there would also be several advantages in doing so. For one, proponents estimate that it would cut shipping time to Asia by 10 to 12 days. With shipping costs rising and economies struggling, those factors aren’t easily ignored.

View of the Chancay "megaport" in the small town of Chancay, 78 kilometers north of the Peruvian capital Lima, on Oct. 29, 2024. The port will be inaugurated on Nov. 14, 2024, by Peruvian President Dina Boluarte and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima. Cris Bouroncle/AFP via Getty Images

But it’s not just a railway system that would be built. The system will be a key addition to the deep-water port that China is building in Chancay, Peru, on the Pacific Ocean. Deep-water ports enable the largest cargo ships and container vessels to dock and transfer their goods quickly and easily, without the complications of moving through various locks and channels that come with relying on the passage through a very crowded and slow Panama Canal transit.

A similar deep-water port would be constructed on Brazil’s Atlantic coast, with both ports providing a much smoother and more economical way to move goods around the world.

Much More Than Just a Railroad

Chinese planners envision the CRBC as a comprehensive project that serves the entire trade and transportation cycle. This “dual-track” logistics corridor—combining port infrastructure, rail links, logistics hubs, and industrial zones to permit transit from Pacific to Atlantic (or vice versa)—could well prove to reimagine and redirect global and regional trade flows.

It would also reduce the canal’s chokepoint dependencies and potential vulnerabilities. Compared to all of the benefits the proposed railway, the Panama Canal would become seen as more burdensome—not less—to global trade, rendering it a less-desirable, more costly and time-consuming option.

The transformative potential of the CRBC project cannot be overstated. It would be a continuation of China’s role as a major player in ports, dams, energy, and other infrastructure in the region.

Gaining Strategic Regional Leverage While Avoiding US Control

From China’s perspective, the proposed transcontinental rail system is a way to minimize or even eliminate U.S. dominance of interoceanic trading in the region. The proposed overland route would significantly reduce Beijing’s vulnerability to U.S. control, blockades, and trade leverage over canal access.

That alone is a compelling reason to pursue the project.

But developing an economically superior alternative to the Panama Canal also gives Beijing more leverage and influence over their Latin American trading partners. That influence would largely come at the expense of U.S. influence, thereby diminishing American power in the region. It would also add proof of concept and gravitas to China’s Global South initiative and help expand the BRICS currency influence and use in the Americas.

All of these factors would give China added leverage over its Latin American partners. Those countries helping to build and host parts of the railway system will certainly gain strategic importance. At the same time, their dependency on Chinese capital, products, and technical assistance would expand, allowing Beijing to embed itself into those regional governments and economies more deeply.

Furthermore, the development of deep-water ports in both Brazil and Peru will give the Chinese regime safe havens to park its rapidly expanding navy, and the pretext to establish and maintain a large and adversarial naval warship presence in America’s backyard. A regional threat on such a scale would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. It could reasonably be compared to the re-colonization of the region.

A Multidimensional, Long-Term Impact

Beijing’s plans for the CRBC are as expansive as they are threatening to U.S. regional hegemony and beyond. The resulting impact of the CRBC would be transformational in a multidimensional context, and for the long term. Beijing would reasonably be able to shape trade terms, shipping standards, customs operations, and logistics norms in the region, and much of the rest of the world.

If Beijing succeeds in its CBRC plans, it could elevate the blighted Belt and Road Initiative up to a new level and lift China to the pinnacle of global power. The United States, on the other hand, would find itself out-hustled, out-traded, out-funded, and out-gunned by China in the Americas.

Let’s hope that the United States has plans to preempt or prevent China’s big move in America’s backyard.

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 Fri, 10/24/2025 - 22:35

Political Protests Have Tripled Since Trump 1.0

The number of political protests held during Trump’s first nine months in office this year have more than tripled compared to the same period in his first term.

As Statista's Anna Fleck details below, using data collected and analyzed by Harvard University and University of Connecticut titled the Crowd Counting Consortium, there had been 29,138 political protests as of September 30, 2025, compared to just 8,314 on September 30, 2017.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The organization includes a wide range of protest types within its scope including, but not limited to, rallies, counter protests, marches, civil disobedience, vigils, student-led walkouts, encampments and banner drops. These cover a range of issues, from calls for a ceasefire in Gaza to justice for police brutality.

Saturday October 18, 2025 saw anti-Trump protests across the United States, under the “No Kings” movement. The Crowd Counting Consortium is yet to add the data for the total number of protests and events held across the country on that day. However, according to G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers, the median estimate for protester figures, based on local officials, protest organizers and attendees, stands at 5.2 million.

According to the Harvard data platform, as of September 30, the biggest day for protests in 2025 was June 14. Coinciding with Trump’s birthday, this was when the first nation-wide No Kings rallies were held, with a total of 2,363 protests counted in one day. The next biggest day for protests was April 5, when the Hands Off wave of demonstrations took place. These were also against the Trump administration’s policies, including decrying newly imposed global tariffs, cuts to government agencies and the federal workforce, as well as broader concerns such as democratic backsliding.

In 2017, the biggest day of protests was January 21, which was one day after Trump entered office for the first time and marked the Women's March.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 22:10

Civilian Casualties Reported As US Conducts Record Number Of Somali Drone Strikes

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

A drone strike that hit southern Somalia on Tuesday may have caused civilian casualties, according to Somali media reports.

Garowe Online reported that the strike hit the Lower Shabelle Region, which neighbors Mogadishu, in an area controlled by al-Shabaab militants. The report did not say how many civilian casualties were caused by the strike, which was likely carried out by US Africa Command.

Source: US Air Force

So far, AFRICOM hasn’t said it launched an airstrike in the area that day, but the command typically reports airstrikes a few days after they occur. Turkish drones are also known to carry out strikes against al-Shabaab in Somalia, but on a much less frequent basis.

Garowe Online also reported that the US-backed Somali government claimed it killed seven al-Shabaab fighters in an operation with support from AFRICOM, though it was conducted further north in the central Hiraan Region.

If the drone strike in Lower Shabelle is confirmed to have been carried out by the US, it would mark at least the 84th US airstrike launched in Somalia this year, as the Trump administration has been bombing the country at a record pace.

The current administration has shattered the record for total US airstrikes in Somalia in a single year, which President Trump previously set at 63 during his first term in 2019.

Last month, AFRICOM took credit for an airstrike in the northern Sanag region that killed a prominent clan elder. AFRICOM claimed he was an al-Shabaab weapons dealer, but that was strongly denied by family members and locals who say the victim, Abdullahi Omar Abdi, was known as a peacemaker.

The US has also been bombing the ISIS affiliate in northeastern Somalia’s Puntland region, where it is backing local forces. AFRICOM said this week that it launched a strike in Puntland on October 20.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 21:45

Duffy Threatens To Strip California Of Ability To Issue Commercial Driver's Licenses

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned on Oct. 23 that California could lose its ability to issue commercial driver’s licenses and risk losing more funding if it fails to comply with federal transportation rules.

The Transportation Department has already withheld more than $40 million in funding from California after an investigation found that the state had not met federal English-language proficiency standards for truck drivers, Duffy said in a post on X.

Harjinder Singh is escorted onto an airplane by Florida Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and law enforcement in Stockton, Calif., on Aug. 21, 2025. AP Photo/Benjamin Fanjoy

In an interview with Fox News aired on Oct. 23, Duffy threatened to pull another $160 million from California if it refused to adhere to federal regulations governing the issuance of commercial driver’s licenses.

“I’m doing a quick review of [the state’s] lack of compliance for our rules. I have the ability and I’m going to pull almost another $160 million,” Duffy said.

“And then I have the ability for California to say, listen, you don’t follow any of these rules that keep Americans safe, we’re going to revoke your ability to issue a commercial driver’s license.”

As The Epoch Times' Aldgra Fredly reports below, in a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom dated Sept. 26, the department’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) stated that its investigation found that California had issued commercial driver’s licenses to nondomiciled drivers that were valid beyond the expiration of their work authorization in the country.

The agency required that California implement corrective measures, warning that failure to do so could result in the loss of certain federal highway funds and the decertification of the state’s commercial driver’s licensing program.

The state was ordered to pause issuance of commercial driver’s licenses to nondomiciled drivers, identify all unexpired nondomiciled drivers who failed to comply with federal regulations, and conduct an internal audit to identify procedural and programming errors in the issuance of commercial driver’s licenses, among other requirements.

The Epoch Times reached out to Newsom’s office for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time.

The department initiated an investigation into California’s compliance with federal safety rules following a fatal crash in Florida on Aug. 12 that involved a semi-truck driver who illegally entered the United States in 2018 through the southern border.

The truck driver, identified as Harjinder Singh, an Indian national, allegedly made an illegal U-turn on the Florida Turnpike on Aug. 12, causing a minivan to collide with his commercial semi-truck. All three of the minivan’s occupants were killed in the crash.

Singh was issued a commercial driver’s license in July 2024 by California, despite being in the country illegally. He had also obtained a full-term commercial driver’s license in Washington state in July 2023. Singh also did not pass English-language and road tests, according to officials.

On Oct.23, federal immigration authorities filed an arrest order for an Indian national who is alleged to have killed three people in California while driving a semi-truck under the influence of drugs. The incident occurred on Oct. 21.

Three people died instantly in the accident, and several others were injured, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said in a statement.

ICE lodged an arrest detainer on Oct. 22 for Jashanpreet Singh, 21, who they said is “a criminal illegal alien from India.”

The Trump administration paused the issuance of all worker visas for commercial truck drivers on Aug. 21, stating that the increasing number of foreign drivers was “endangering American lives” and undercutting jobs for American truckers.

California’s Department of Transportation issued an emergency ruling last month that prohibits the state from issuing or renewing limited-term legal commercial driver’s licenses to noncitizens.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 21:20

Prominent Personalities Sign Letter Seeking Ban On 'Development Of Superintelligence'

Authored by Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times,

Hundreds of people, from conservative commentators to prominent tech executives, have signed a letter seeking a ban on “the development of superintelligence.”

This year, leading technology firms such as Google, Meta Platforms, and OpenAI have accelerated efforts to build artificial intelligence (AI) systems capable of outperforming humans across a broad spectrum of elementary and complex tasks.

A growing chorus of prominent people thinks that it is time to hit the brakes—at least temporarily.

The letter, put together by the Future of Life Institute, calls for a ban on advancing superintelligent AI until there is public demand and science charts a safe path for the technology.

“We call for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and strong public buy-in,” reads the brief statement, released on Oct. 22.

The Future of Life Institute has spent the past decade sounding the alarm over the existential risks posed by advanced AI. Its petition has drawn thousands of signatures and support from hundreds of high-profile figures aligned with the group’s mission, including AI pioneers Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton.

Bengio said AI systems could outperform most individuals in various cognitive tasks in the next few years. While they will bring advancements, they could also “carry significant risks,” Bengio wrote in a personal note released with the letter.

“To safely advance toward superintelligence, we must scientifically determine how to design AI systems that are fundamentally incapable of harming people, whether through misalignment or malicious use,” he wrote.

“We also need to make sure the public has a much stronger say in decisions that will shape our collective future.”

The letter warns of increasing threats to the world, including the loss of freedom, civil liberties, and “human economic obsolescence and disempowerment.”

Among the other signatories are conservative media personality Glenn Beck, Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, former national security adviser Susan Rice, and political commentator Steve Bannon.

The letter expresses consternation over the rapid development and deployment of AI across a wide array of industries, political ideologies, and religious sects.

“The future of AI should serve humanity, not replace it,“ Prince Harry, one of many signatories alongside his wife, Meghan, said in a personal note released with the letter. ”The true test of progress will be not how fast we move, but how wisely we steer.”

Stuart Russell, an AI pioneer and computer science professor at the University of California–Berkeley, said that the statement is not a prohibition or moratorium “in the usual sense.” Instead, he wrote, it is a proposal to install the necessary safeguards for a technology that “has a significant chance to cause human extinction.”

“Is that too much to ask?” Russell wrote.

In a 2015 blog post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote that the rise of “superhuman machine intelligence (SMI) is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the Building a Legacy: Remembering Charlie Kirk memorial event at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., on Sept. 21, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, told podcast host Joe Rogan earlier this year that there is “only a 20 percent chance of annihilation.”

“The probability of a good outcome is like 80 percent,” the billionaire entrepreneur said.

It is not only experts and famous individuals who voice caution.

The Future of Life Institute cited a recent national survey of 2,000 adults that found only 5 percent support for “the status quo of fast, unregulated development.” Close to two-thirds (64 percent) think that superhuman AI either should not be created until it is proven safe and controllable or “should never be developed.”

AI on the Street and at Work

For the past three years, Wall Street has been immersed in the rise of AI, with many market watchers comparing it to the dot-com bubble 25 years ago.

Others say it is very different from the exuberance of the late 1990s, when investors poured billions of dollars into companies with “dot-com” in their names.

“Overall, there are some similarities (increasing market concentration in tech stocks; aggressive capital investment ahead of revenues),” John Belton, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, said in a note emailed to The Epoch Times.

“But I think it is oversimplifying things to say we are in a ‘bubble’ (almost certainly not in a valuation bubble; but an argument to be made that there is some recent froth in earnings streams).”

Whether the AI bubble is real or not, companies are pressing ahead with AI, and U.S. workers are worried.

According to June data from FactSet Insights, during the second quarter, more than 40 percent of S&P 500 firms commented on “AI” during earnings calls. This is the fifth consecutive quarter in which more than 200 S&P 500 firms have done so.

A Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted this past summer found that 71 percent of respondents were worried about AI “putting too many people out of work permanently.”

While AI has yet to spur widespread job displacement, member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors Christopher Waller said last week that more companies are preparing for the new technology in their day-to-day operations.

“Retailers in particular are cutting back on employment for call centers and IT-related occupations,” Waller said at an Oct. 15 DC Fintech Week event. “So far, most say this is being handled through attrition, but a number of retailers say that there is the potential for downsizing next year.”

Even employees working in the AI field are facing job cuts.

Meta announced on Oct. 22 that it is eliminating about 600 positions in its Superintelligence Labs, which will affect Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research and other AI and AI-related products and infrastructure.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 20:55

Pentagon Orders Carrier Strike Group To Join SOUTHCOM Operations Near Venezuela

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has on Friday ordered the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the US Southern Command area of responsibility, joining what is already an unprecedented US military build-up in the southern Caribbean off Venezuela. 

And so after nine attacks on alleged narco-smuggling boats, it looks as if the strikes on cartels will only intensify, also after President Trump suggested that "land" operations could commence against the Maduro government.

US Navy file image

"The enhanced U.S. force presence in the USSOUTHCOM AOR will bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere," the Pentagon says.

"These forces will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle TCOs," the statement adds.

Below is the list of assets which will join at least eight warships already deployed to the waters, led by the SS Gerald R. Ford:

• Arleigh Burke-Class Guided-Missile Destroyers
• USS Mahan (DDG-72)
• USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG-81)
• USS Bainbridge (DDG-96)

These are being redirected from the Mediterranean Sea to the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) Area-of-Responsibility near Venezuela.

Already the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and several other air and naval assets are currently operating off Puerto Rico with an eye on Venezuela. 

Trump’s Venezuela task-force counts 140,200 tons of ships. That’s more than the UK’s only carrier strike group. The deployment’s firepower is about equal to half of the entire Royal Navy’s warship and attack submarine displacement. pic.twitter.com/dDVLsKUYEo

— barry with the NED (@bonzerbarry) September 8, 2025

President Trump has insisted he doesn't need a formal war authorization from Congress to conduct anti-Venezuela operations aimed at 'terrorists' and 'narco-traffickers' and has at various times threatened regime change in Caracas.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 20:30

Gen Z's Grim Economic Prospects

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

The generation of young people just starting out in their careers faces an uphill battle unlike anything confronted by their parents and grandparents.

For them, the promise of the American Dream is elusive at best.

Everything is more expensive. The job market is frozen for pay for which they were hoping. Industry is changing so fast that educational credentials are ever less valuable.

There is real panic in the air among them, which is why so many have turned to substance abuse and far-flung hopes of making it rich in crypto or the influencer economy.

A new survey on the expenses faced by this generation has appeared that frames it up in alarming terms.

Over 20 years from 2005 to 2025, the cost of all essentials has soared:

• Housing (rent) is up 120 percent.

• Transportation is up 86 percent.

• Education is up 133 percent.

• Groceries are up 79 percent.

• Entertainment is up 100 percent.

• Utilities are up 53 percent.

• Time to save for house down payment has gone from 8 to 14 years.

• The average student debt burden has moved from $20K to $30K.

• The real increase in salaries is 12 percent.

• Health insurance these days is a killer of living standards, averaging $27,000 from the business side and that’s without using it.

• Housing ownership seems largely out of the question.

In general, this whole generation has a delayed wealth curve that is 7 to 10 years relative to prior generations. In other words, it’s a lost generation, with a financial challenge that is matched by the trauma of pandemic lockdowns, ill-education, and digital addiction.

Behind all this is a hidden force at work, the dramatic devaluation of the currency over five years. During this time, the dollar lost 25-35 percent of its value, depending on the service or good in question. Salaries simply are not keeping up.

All this began to unfold in 2020 when the Federal Reserve accommodated the wildest spending binge by Congress in American history. The result was debt, which the Fed purchased with newly printed cash, which was then dispersed to the public in the form of stimulus payments.

Anyone with a modicum of economic knowledge could foresee the problem. This was not like the quantitative easing of 2008 which deployed an accounting trick to keep the new money locked up in bank vaults. The monetary expansion of 2020-2023 resulted in hot money on the street, which translates directly to higher prices and a lower purchasing power.

There are many ways to represent the impact on income but consider what has happened in the world center of markets for a century, New York City. What we see is a picture of massive disruption over five years, to the point of absolute calamity. Real median household income is lower now than five years ago. Many businesses were driven out or died completely. Some of the most productive residents left.

The reality on the ground is worse than it seems. The city is unaffordable for any regular income earned by a young person. Even worse, the physical conditions of the city have deteriorated dramatically. If you haven’t visited in 20 years, you will likely find the place unrecognizable. The same can be said of many U.S. cities, the very places where young people once depended upon for career starts.

All the political winds in D.C. right now are demanding lower and lower interest rates so as to make servicing the new debt more affordable. The problem with this strategy is that artificially lowered rates send distorted signals to industry. The message is borrow, expand, build in leverage or get wiped out by the competition. At some uncertain point in the future, the pattern breaks as consumers are completely tapped out.

The economy cannot operate as a perpetual motion machine. Prosperity cannot be maintained by endless cycles of fakery, with fresh money fueling higher financials and rewarding people on the other side of the divide. Anyone with a million in the bank can sit back and live off the proceeds forever while young workers just starting out can hardly pay the bills.

This is combustible, politically and culturally.

What is the solution? As with every inflation in history, the first step is to stop the money printers. That is easier said than done simply because the entire financial system today is addicted to debt finance which in turn depends on a Fed forever cranking out the fiat. The fear here is that the fix will be worse than the disease.

Today, it is widely accepted that inflation should run hotter than it has normally been in the entire postwar period, so between 2 and 3 percent. Many suspect that the Fed has quietly changed the target to 2.5 percent. There is plenty of evidence that this is true, in which case there will be no real solution forthcoming.

The latest CPI data is running hot at 3 percent, further suggesting the possibility of a second wave. This would be a disaster, sealing the fate of a generation. Meanwhile, there is no mystery about the cause: it’s the money printing!

It was four decades ago when I graduated from college without a thought about a job, debt, or paying the bills. I wasn’t irresponsible. These were not issues my generation confronted. We just assumed that if you had skill and will, everything else would fall into place. You found a place to live, worked hard, and everything worked out.

We had no idea at the time that we were living in a rare moment of history. Low inflation, low unemployment, high growth, freedom and ebullience all around. Now that moment is entirely gone, replaced with anxiety that is mutating to panic and despair. Old people don’t care much because they are doing just fine—perhaps the last American generation that can count on being comfortably well off.

The only way that Gen Z can battle this problem is by a big change in spending habits. The same survey cited above reports that young workers are spending on average $300 per month on restaurants and bars. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much but simply changing that habit—cooking at home instead of throwing away money on expensive dining—would make a big difference.

A major problem here is that Gen Z needs to change its expectations, all of which are rooted in class fears fueled by social media nonsense. They have to be at the right spots, wear the right clothes, live in the best places, and drive fashionable cars. These are extremely powerful psychological pulls. Corporate finance is there to seem to make it all possible for a while.

In the last three years, myriad companies have sprung up to give cash advances by linking one’s bank account on the spot while shopping. The fees are high because they are not classified as interest, and they evade regulatory controls. What these companies are doing is exploiting class insecurity and pillaging the people who can least afford it.

The only real solution here is the traditional value of frugality. It’s possible to buy groceries from less-fashionable places, dial back amenities in apartment living, buy used clothing from online marketplaces, and forgo vacations and entertainment. You can cut the bills, with the goal of having zero debt. This is the only way to live as a young person if you have any hope of building a secure future.

Economic headwinds are leaning hard against Gen Z and this has produced a kind of demoralization. Nothing works as it once did. Policymakers and parents can help but the ultimate solution is going to come down to a change of priorities.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 20:05

Atlanta At The Center Of Nationwide Boom In Rental Application Fraud

Atlanta has become the center of a nationwide boom in rental-application fraud, according to a new Wall Street Journal report.

With average rents for two-bedroom apartments nearing $2,000 a month—well above what many locals can afford—some renters are turning to fake documents and fabricated financial details to qualify for luxury apartments.

Social media has fueled the trend. TikTok influencers promote “rental packages” with doctored pay stubs, false employment letters, or fake Social Security numbers. One influencer bragged, “When that apartment package got you approved for your luxury apartment in two weeks even though you had two evictions and a 500 credit score.”

Source: WSJ

Greystar, the nation’s largest apartment landlord, says up to half of its applications in some Atlanta buildings are fraudulent. “Anybody that says they want to move in today or move in tomorrow, it’s fraud,” warned Kori Sewell, an Atlanta apartment manager.

The WSJ writes that the rise stems from a mix of factors: a glut of high-end apartments after Atlanta’s building boom, shrinking affordable housing, and advancing technology that makes falsifying documents easy. Between 2018 and 2023, the region lost more than 230,000 affordable rental units.

Nationally, nearly three-quarters of landlords reported a 40% increase in rental fraud last year. “It’s becoming a bigger and bigger problem coast to coast,” said Damon McCall, CEO of ApproveShield, a fraud-detection software firm.

Source: WSJ

Fraud carries legal risks but is rarely prosecuted; landlords usually focus on evictions. Some scammers pay rent for a few months before defaulting, forcing landlords to absorb losses and write off bad debt. Others never pay at all—like one Atlanta tenant who said, “Basically, the entire building was filled with people who got in fraudulently.”

To combat the issue, many landlords now use verification software. As fraudsters adopt AI tools to fake documents, detection firms are responding in kind. “We fight fire with fire,” said Kyle Nelson of Snappt.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 18:50

Congress Takes A Page From Louisiana: The Case For An American Energy Renaissance

Authored by Cameron Sholty via RealClearEnergy,

When Louisiana enacted Act 462 earlier this year, it did more than redefine “green energy.” It redefined leadership. Under Governor Jeff Landry’s direction, Louisiana became the first state in the nation to recognize natural gas and nuclear power as a clean, affordable, and reliable energy source – cementing its place as a model for states and, now, for the nation.

Last Friday, Congressman Troy Balderson introduced federal legislation building on Louisiana’s landmark law. The measure takes the same common-sense approach: prioritizing American-made energy, reducing reliance on adversarial nations, and ensuring that “green” energy policy reflects economic and scientific reality.

Governor Landry had urged exactly this kind of action from Washington. When he signed Act 462, he called on Congress to adopt a national energy security strategy built around America’s abundant hydrocarbons – particularly natural gas and nuclear. His argument was simple: energy security is national security, and no country should be dependent on supply chains that run through Beijing, Moscow, or child-labor camps in the Congo.

The new federal bill answers that call.

A Return to Reality in Energy Policy

For too long, federal energy policy has been guided by slogans rather than science and economics. Policymakers in Washington have subsidized unreliable energy sources, ignored full life-cycle costs, and allowed critical infrastructure to depend on foreign materials produced under appalling labor and environmental standards.

Louisiana broke that mold. Act 462 directed state agencies to consider affordability, reliability, and domestic sourcing when evaluating energy projects. It mandated a new method to calculate the cost of energy that includes the hidden expenses of foreign supply chains – like child labor, environmental destruction, and geopolitical vulnerability. And it treated hydrocarbons such as natural gas not as an enemy of the environment, but as an ally of prosperity and innovation.

The federal legislation now mirrors those principles. It redefines “green” and “clean” energy to include not just intermittent renewables but also natural gas and nuclear power – resources that provide stable, dispatchable power without the economic and moral costs of dependence on foreign critical minerals.

An Abundance Waiting to Be Used

America’s natural gas reserves are among the largest in the world, yet federal policy has often treated them as a liability. Governor Landry challenged that mindset, arguing that America’s abundant hydrocarbons are a strategic advantage to be leveraged, not a problem to be managed.

By unlocking domestic production, the U.S. can achieve three vital goals: lower costs for consumers, greater resilience for the electric grid, and stronger national security. Every cubic foot of gas produced in Louisiana, Texas, or Ohio displaces energy that would otherwise come from countries that do not share our values. Every pipeline and LNG terminal built here strengthens our economy and weakens our adversaries.

The Louisiana model recognizes this interconnected truth. The federal version now before Congress brings that logic to the national stage.

Leading by Example

Louisiana’s success story demonstrates what happens when energy policy is grounded in reality. Since passing Act 462, the state has attracted new manufacturing investments, expanded LNG exports, and secured thousands of high-paying energy jobs. Businesses value predictability and affordability – two qualities that hydrocarbon energy delivers.

Governor Landry’s message to Congress was clear: Build energy policy around American resources, American workers, and American values. Representative Balderson’s introduction of this new federal legislation proves that message was heard.

A New Energy Consensus

The debate over energy is no longer between “green” and “dirty.” It’s between the real and the imaginary. The real path to clean, affordable, reliable energy lies in embracing the resources beneath our feet – using innovation, not ideology, to reduce emissions and expand opportunity.

By adopting a new framework, Congress is taking a crucial step toward restoring balance, security, and common sense to national energy policy. The era of energy dependence and self-inflicted scarcity can end – if Washington has the will.

Louisiana showed the way. Now it’s time for Congress to finish the job.

Cameron Sholty is the Executive Director of Heartland Impact, the advocacy arm of The Heartland Institute.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 18:25

'Chexican' Narco-Financier Ran New York Fentanyl Cell With Mexican Operatives, US Indictment Shows

Submitted by The Bureau's Sam Cooper, 

Newly unsealed U.S. government filings reveal that Zhi Dong Zhang — an alleged global fentanyl kingpin with reported ties to Chinese diplomats in Canada, accused of supplying precursor chemicals and laundering funds worldwide for Mexico's Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación cartels — commanded a New York–based fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine cell composed of Hispanic traffickers.

According to the Eastern District of New York indictment, Zhang coordinated a network including Lorena Solano Castro, Christian Alan Soto Espinoza, and Cosme Avendaño Soto, operating from Brooklyn to distribute synthetic narcotics, collect proceeds, and wash drug money via U.S. financial institutions and Chinese underground banking.

The New York indictment is separate from a broader case unsealed in Atlanta, but part of what filings depict as a globally integrated criminal enterprise under Zhang's direction. His network allegedly moved multi-ton quantities of fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine between 2016 and 2021, channeling proceeds through Brooklyn, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Michigan, and feeding a hemispheric supply chain linking Chinese chemical exporters, Mexican super-labs, and U.S. distribution hubs.

As The Bureau reported yesterday, Zhang was detained in Cuba after a spectacular escape from a Mexico City residence, where he had been under judicial supervision pending extradition to the United States. Mexican reports say he fled through a tunnel, attempted to reach Russia, and was arrested in Cuba recently. U.S. and Mexican authorities are now reportedly anticipating a swift extradition, as Washington intensifies counter-cartel military deployments and strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific regions.

A Canadian intelligence source told The Bureau that Zhang had direct contact with Canadian authorities while his organization was being probed across the United States—well before the charges became public. In February 2017, he was stopped at Vancouver International Airport carrying an illegally obtained Mexican passport, more than C$10,000 in cash, 14 bank-security fobs, and contact numbers for Chinese diplomatic offices. Agents—who nicknamed him "the Chexican"—questioned him about links to a money-laundering network in Mexico City and a parent company in China, but, due to what the source called "bungling" between the Canada Border Services Agency and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Zhang was released and allowed to leave Canada. A phone search, the source added, revealed numbers for diplomats at Chinese missions in Ottawa and Vancouver, as well as contacts for lawyers in Toronto and Vancouver.

As The Bureau reported exclusively, Canadian investigators later connected Zhang to Mexican mining firms cited in a U.S. FinCEN advisory. Records show that a China-based mining enterprise directed by Zhang controls tracts of land in Sonora, the Mexican state bordering Sinaloa and Arizona. Open-source corporate filings also point to a similarly named Vancouver company, linked to a Chinese investor who owns six B.C. properties and a Hong Kong–registered machine supplier.

Reporting from Mexico — where Zhang escaped house arrest in July 2025 shortly before his scheduled extradition to the United States — indicates that his networks extend across Asia, the Americas, and Europe, operating through multiple layers of money laundering and logistics fronts.

Zhang — known to his associates by several aliases, including "Brother Wang," "Kun Li Hernandez," and "Nelson Mandela" — allegedly oversaw bilingual command cells: Spanish-speaking couriers handled street-level cash collection and deposit structuring, while Chinese brokers managed offshore transfers, trade-based remittances, and layered currency conversions.

The EDNY indictment, which lay dormant for several years, saw renewed movement in recent weeks with new prosecutor appearances. The case signals Washington's intent to treat Zhang's syndicate as a top-priority transnational narcotics and money-laundering conspiracy.

Prosecutors in the Northern District of Georgia have also charged Zhang with narcotics-trafficking and money-laundering conspiracies.

Investigators linked his organization to roughly 150 shell companies and 170 bank accounts and uncovered more than $20 million in proceeds moved through major U.S. banks including JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Chase. Encrypted intercepts recovered on WeChat, DingTalk, and Signal show Zhang directing shipments of fentanyl ("coffee"), cocaine ("food"), and methamphetamine through U.S. distribution hubs.

A cooperating witness, Ruipeng Li, described a two-tier operation: a Mexican cell that collected street proceeds, and a Chinese cell that converted that cash into wire transfers and investments across the Pacific. Authorities estimate that, between 2020 and 2021, Zhang's organization moved more than 1,000 kilograms of cocaine, 1,800 kilograms of fentanyl, and 600 kilograms of methamphetamine.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 17:40

Passing $38 Trillion: Austrians Versus Keynesians On The Sovereign Debt Crisis

We’ve surpassed $38T in debt, and we’re still no closer to balancing the budget. Instead, Republicans want to add another $2T in deficit spending, while Democrats want to add $3T.

Where does it end? https://t.co/SMfFjMm3sJ

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 23, 2025

With U.S. debt blasting past $38 trillion, the question isn’t if the reckoning comes—it’s how to face it. In a fiery ZeroHedge Debate hosted by George Gammon of the Rebel Capitalist Show, Michael Green of Simplify Asset Management argued that “kicking the can” can buy innovation and growth, while Mises Institute's Patrick Newman countered that endless borrowing is “a moral and economic fraud” destined to collapse under its own weight. Keynesian optimism met Austrian discipline.

Here were the highlights for those who missed it:

But who will build the roads?

The good ol’ libertarian road construction debate emerged.

Newman argued that “the private sector can build it—and they have built infrastructure.” He warned that government projects may look impressive but hide unseen costs: “We’re not looking at what would have been built with those resources… would it have been a better quality road or a road with different types of branch lines?” State spending also distorts efficiency by the nature of how economists compute GDP: “The government's contribution [to GDP] is what it spends. The private sector's contribution is what other people spend on it.” 

Newman’s conclusion: “I don’t think you need taxes to pay for various goods and services that only the government can pay.”

Green fired back that “the simple reality is that they [private sector] don’t” build such projects where it really matters. Conceding that private efforts are more efficient, he emphasized that “the hurdle cost for the private sector is much higher,” meaning fewer roads would ever get built—especially those connecting “a small rural community with a larger city.” Green defended the public role as one of necessary subsidy: “Subsidies create more of a good than you would otherwise have. The private sector would benefit from scarcity. That’s antithetical to the idea of developing a resource that doesn’t accrue the benefits to the private sector naturally.”

Newman countered with history, invoking the railroad boom: “Most of railroad infrastructure was privately funded… about 75% of the funds used to build railroads during the Second Industrial Revolution came from the private sector.” He cited historian Richard White to claim that “government subsidies caused railroads to be built ahead of demand,” leading to bankruptcies and inefficiency—proof, in his view, that the state’s heavy hand “built inefficiently” while “private sector lines were built basically around it.”

pic.twitter.com/SeN0map59Q

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) October 24, 2025
 

Stagflation… an Austrian lie?

Green challenged the popular “stagflation” narrative of the 1970s, arguing that it’s “a fundamental misunderstanding that continues to haunt the debate today.” While Austrians like Newman frame the decade as proof that government mismanagement and monetary expansion produced both high inflation and stagnation, Green countered that the data tell a different story. “The rate of job growth in the 1970s was 2.4%,” he said, “while the labor force grew at 3.6%. In other words, demand grew far more rapidly than supply. It was not stagflation.”

He attributed the inflation not to failed policy but to rapid demographic change—“baby boomers and women entering the labor force and minorities being able to participate in the regulated economy.” The result, he said, was “one of extraordinary growth” in which new workers needed “cars, apartments, dishwashers, suits—all in short supply relative to demand.”

Austrians like Newman, however, would view that very inflation as evidence that the Fed lost control of prices and eroded real wages—classic symptoms of stagflation. Green rejected that framing, arguing that “the celebrated Volcker period” that followed did more harm than good by “raising the cost of capital so high” it helped deindustrialize America. In short, while Austrians see the 1970s as a cautionary tale of government excess, Green sees it as an overheated boom misread as failure.

pic.twitter.com/INiKoal4Cx

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) October 24, 2025

Check out the full debate below for more deep dives into economic history as the timeless Austrian-Keynsian battle wages on:

Tonight's ZeroHedge Debate: Michael Green vs Patrick Newman on Solving the Debt Crisis https://t.co/mvAU4PVDcM

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 23, 2025
 

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 17:20

Let's Shut Down The IRS

Authored by J.B.Shurck via AmericanThinker.com,

What if the federal government shut down and nobody cared?  

I know what you’re thinking: How can we possibly survive without millions of government bureaucrats micromanaging our lives?  Is life even worth living if some self-important cubicle king isn’t putting me on hold before demanding that I resubmit the revised Form K-12.6.2 of the updated rules and regulations regarding how I may and may not use my private property on odd-numbered days within calendar months that include Hindu holidays?  

As a descendant of those who crossed the American wilderness and settled the frontier, I like to think that my ancestors weren’t risking their lives for the sake of bureaucracy.  If anything, they were most likely running from bureaucracy.  They left Europe to escape monarchs who restricted how they could pray and what they could own.  They explored the American frontier to build lives beholden to none.  I’ve never found a diary entry in the family records that moaned, “If only the federal government would establish an Internal Revenue Service to take half of everything we have so that it can pay the salaries of an army of Environmental Protection Agency know-nothings willing to instruct us on how we can legally use our land.”  

When you think about it, the people who built this country did so to get away from the very thing that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries insist we must fund: Big Government.  You don’t venture out into no man’s land to build a whole new world from scratch unless the old world’s rules and regulations are so oppressive that risking death each day is preferable to living under the yoke of government.  

The Democrats shut down the federal government because they want American taxpayers to continue paying for “free” health care for illegal aliens.  They have bet that Americans will cry “uncle” and agree to subsidize Democrats’ destructive open border policies in exchange for bringing the rest of the bureaucracy back online.  This kind of extortion makes no sense to me.  It’s like a robber telling me that if I don’t give him what’s in my wallet today, he’s going to rob me tomorrow.  Oh, well, good luck.  See you tomorrow, I guess.

In my mind, we have been headed for ruin ever since the Sixteenth Amendment legalized a federal income tax in 1913.  An income tax is a cancer on society that discourages hard work and self-sufficiency and gives authorities a free hand to steal from some Americans and buy the votes of others.  It was birthed as all Big Government monstrosities are birthed: with false promises that its powers would never be abused.  In 1913, less than 1% of the population paid income taxes, and the rate was 1%.  A century later, the most productive members of society hand over a third or more of their earnings to federal bureaucrats who routinely get caught using government-issued credit cards to go boozing in strip clubs.  

Once state income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, regulatory burdens, and dozens of other government fees are added to the tab, hardworking Americans are lucky to keep half of what they earn.  That might seem like a bargain if you live in socialist France, but to the descendants of Americans who chucked the British redcoats back across the pond over a relatively low tax imposed without their permission, the effective tax rate for working Americans today is obscene.  If General George Washington were still around, he would already be marching on the city that cloaks its ignominy under the public’s respect for his name.

Have you ever read the Internal Revenue Code?  It’s roughly ten thousand pages long!  

When you include regulations and official tax guidance, it’s over seventy-five thousand pages long!  

An average reader would require four months to page through all the different ways the federal government legalizes its theft of what you thought you owned.  

Within a labyrinth of chapters, subchapters, parts, sections, revisions, and the steady growth of additional regulations and guidances that sprout like weeds, the federal government makes it almost impossible for a layperson to understand his legal obligations to the Internal Revenue Service.  

That leaves most people three choices:

(1) pay whatever the government demands,

(2) pay a professional to figure out what is owed, or

(3) say a quiet prayer to avoid an audit.  

It’s a system designed to keep the public confused.  Backed by threats of fines and imprisonment, it empowers the federal bureaucracy to snoop into every American’s private affairs.  “No taxation without representation” used to mean that a person has no obligation to pay a tax if he’s denied a representative voice in government.  Now it means that most people have no idea how much they “owe” the government without at least a lawyer and an accountant representing their interests.

As long as the federal government is shut down, let’s disband the IRS.  It is nothing more than a bureaucratic weapon that allows government agents to spy on Americans’ private transactions while keeping them in a permanent state of legal jeopardy.  Democrats want to use this shutdown to coerce taxpayers to fund an even bigger government.  It makes much more sense to take advantage of the government’s “time out” by slashing the bureaucracy and returning a little freedom to the people.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 17:00

"Suitcases Filled With Dollars": Venezuela Reportedly Propped Up America's Radical Left To Sow Chaos

U.S. military developments in the Caribbean Sea, off the coast of Venezuela, are ramping up this week. Two additional narco-terror drug boats were destroyed with guided missiles, and there was news overnight that two Rockwell B-1 Lancer supersonic bombers entered Venezuela's ADIZ before switching off their transponders in what appears to have been a simulated strike mission - a posturing maneuver that President Trump denies. 

Venezuela's socialist regime is coming under intense pressure from the Trump administration for using cartel networks it controls to smuggle drugs into the U.S., contributing to the worst drug death crisis in American history, with more than 100,000 deaths per year. Some have described the drug death crisis as a "reverse Opium War." Last week, President Trump authorized covert CIA operations inside the country, an escalation that only suggests command and control structures of drug cartels will be targeted. He noted, "No to CIA-orchestrated coups d'état."

While the mainstream narrative is that these military efforts are aimed at dismantling cartel-linked drug trafficking networks, there may be another objective for the Trump administration, one that would certainly interest Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

As Washington Examiner reporter Mike Gonzalez reveals, Venezuela has been exporting left-wing political influence operations, some of which may be linked to dark-money-funded NGO networks. If accurate, the report suggests that stopping the radical left from destabilizing the U.S. and attempting to collapse capitalism to install a socialist or Marxist system may require scrutinizing foreign-linked networks. And perhaps that's why Venezuela is front and center with the Trump administration. 

But Caracas's transgressions extend to other areas. It has also long backed efforts to sow political division on U.S. streets. First, it supported Black Lives Matter and its founders. Now, it's antifa.

. . . 

Indeed, you can tell a lot about which domestic anti-U.S. groups are rising by the support they get from our enemies overseas, especially Venezuela, but also Iran, Cuba, and China. That Venezuela is diversifying into "anti-fascism" is yet another sign of how diminished BLM has become.

. . .

Venezuela played more than a supportive role in this attempt. Last week, I spoke with a former senior Venezuelan official who was very close to the dead dictator Hugo Chavez and who has now defected. He told me he was in the room in late 2012 when Chavez gave Opal Tometi — who the following year helped to found BLM — suitcases stuffed with dollars.

"Chavez ordered his people to hand the suitcases to them, suitcases filled with dollars, at least $20 million," the defector told me, adding that Tometi was accompanied by three other African American women and the actor Danny Glover, a huge supporter of the Marxist regimes in Venezuela and Cuba. "Chavez told them that the money was to project the Bolivarian revolutionary project on U.S. streets," he said, using Chavez's term for Venezuelan Marxism.

. . . 

All this networking, at Chavez's behest, happened years before BLM was founded in 2013 and helped create momentum for it. Garza pretty much revealed that the USSF was created at the request of America's enemies overseas at a speech she gave in Oakland in 2010.

So the mayhem we had on our streets, and all the stress it brought, was carried out by people who networked and carried out street organizing to help Marxist dictators in Caracas, at the very least, and may have received outright financial backing from them. Revolutionary Venezuela continued its relationship after BLM's founding by, for example, inviting representatives to gatherings of the Foro de Sao Paulo, the Hemispheric Marxist network Venezuela promoted.

. . .

Then, on January 9 to 11 this year, to coincide with Maduro's inauguration after actually losing elections last year, Caracas hosted an International Anti-Fascist Festival, which organizers said had over 2,000 attendees from 125 countries.

At the most recent one, last January, the Party for Socialism and Liberation was an attendee from the U.S. The U.K. Revolutionary Communist Group, another antifa group, also sent Sam McGill to four of the Venezuelan anti-fascist events.

And Code Pink, another antifa adjacent group, which has to boot connections to the Chinese Communist Party, has also sent members to visit Caracas and Havana.

What this all suggests, if the Washington Examiner report is correct, is that some of the nonprofits that helped sow chaos on America's streets in what can only be described as a color-revolution-style operation to undermine President Trump and conspired against the U.S. may have been influenced by foreign adversaries. These left-wing groups may also have direct links to broader NGO networks in the U.S. connected to the Democratic Party and their donor class of radical leftist billionaires.

The question, if this reporting is accurate, is whether the proper way, as the White House stated last month, to "dismantle" the radical left is through enforcement actions across the nonprofit world. This all aligns with Trump's recent claim that the Soros network "should be charged under RICO for supporting violent protests."

Civil terrorism expert Jason Curtis Anderson of One City Rising adds more color... 

If the Trump Administration wants to target South American influence operations, they should look no further than the People's Forum in NYC. While the People's Forum catches a lot of flak for its Shanghai-based benefactor, Neville Roy Singham, one could easily argue that they also help Venezuela and Cuba's agendas as well. 

In July of 2024, Manolo De Los Santos and fellow Singham operatives traveled to Caracas to do "election observing" and PR for Maduro. The Singham network also hosted Bruno Rodríguez, Foreign Minister of Cuba, and Yván Gil Pinto, Foreign Minister of Venezuela, at an event last year in Harlem. 

Match these with the constant pro-Venezuela protests held by the People's Forum in NYC, displaying clear signs of political pressure on behalf of a foreign government, and this should meet the qualifications for FARA, which does not require financial payments to meet the threshold of violation. 

. . . 

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 16:40

Reality Vs Garbage: Has AI Already Lost The 'I' Part

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

"The business incentives driving consumer AI development remain fundamentally misaligned with reducing hallucinations."

- The Singularity Hub on "X"

Which is to say, there is Reality, and then there is every other cockamamie aggregate of simulation pretending to represent Reality, i.e. garbage.

How many millions among us already subscribe to the latter?

Apparently, lots, and they are not evenly distributed these days.

You surely know where to look for the un-Reality. The party of men can get pregnant, and all the rest...

Enter A-I to make things worse. Probably a lot worse. We have failed to learn the chief lesson of the computer age, which is that the virtual is not an acceptable substitute for the authentic. So, we plunge deeper into realms of the un-real and the inauthentic. This turns into a quest to get something-for-nothing, and the unfortunate result of that old dodge is that you will end up with nothing, and that is exactly why we are at such a hazardous pass in the human project.

I apologize if the above seems too metaphysical. But that’s the scenery en route when a civilization flies up its own wazoo. Novelist Cory Doctorow has nicely labeled this the enshitification of daily life.

First of all, get this: A-I has already quit operating as-advertised.

It has lost the “I” part. A-I does its thing by rapidly combing through the Internet to evaluate and seize information that you request. Increasingly, A-I colonizes the Internet with second-hand, third-hand, and so forth A-I-generated information. The more territory A-I seizes on the Web, and the more it trains itself on recursive feedbacks of its own garbage, the more distorted the output gets. As that occurs, A-I becomes increasingly abstracted from Reality, which is exactly what happens when a person goes insane. So, expect an exponential rise in incorrect content that would, in theory, become a pretty serious problem when you ask A-I to run things like systems we depend on, the electric grid, harvesting crops, warfare. . . .

Secondly, as that process runs, and probably before it gets very far, A-I looks like it will wreck the financial system, which, in turn, would crater the economy of everyday life — the ability of people to earn a living, buy stuff, support children, get food, and stay out of the rain.

Zillions of dollars are being invested in A-I now and lately it is mainly what drives the capital markets. So far, alas, return on that investment is scant — actually, negative. The situation might never improve, and as the recognition hits, look out below. The only question is whether that happens before the central banks destroy the world’s currencies with money-printing.

One A-I application, robotaxi services such as Waymo, have never turned a profit. Will they ever? Doesn’t look good. Notice, too, that the elimination of cab-drivers means X-number fewer humans making a living to buy stuff (presumably made by other people in other jobs soon to be replaced by robots). Of course, that’s the self-replicating problem with all applied A-I in every field of employment. The more jobs eliminated, the fewer customers for anything. Please don’t tell me that guaranteed basic income fixes that problem.

In desperation — and due to certain weaknesses of human nature — another early attempt to monetize applied A-I turns out to be pornography: create your own personalized sex fantasy to-order. Companies are already producing the first rudimentary A-I sex robots, which, let’s face it, amounts to a masturbation industry. Why bother cultivating a real-live girlfriend when you can fall into the pre-heated silicone embrace of a Jennifer Lawrence simulation that will never talk back or ask for anything? You can easily see how that would result in a whole lot less human reproduction — of which there is already a signal shortage in Western Civ — meaning even fewer people to work at anything or buy anything or do anything, or simply be here in the pageant of Planet Earth.

The A-I pioneers managed to make the situation worse from the get-go.

The Open A-I company’s Chat GPT, Google’s Gemini and Bard A-Is, and Facebook’s Meta A-I are all trained-up to be politically Woke-to-the-max, meaning on any given issue in the public arena their output is one patent absurdity or another.

Note: last April, conservative activist Robby Starbuck sued Facebook when its chatbot reported out falsely that he had been on-the-scene for the Jan 6, 2021 US Capitol protest (he was in Tennessee that day).

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, settled the case with Starbuck in August, 2025, for undisclosed terms and the company apologized publicly.

Two days ago, Mr. Starbuck sued Google for defamation (with malice and negligence) when it’s Bard A-I output alleged that he was a “child rapist,” a “serial sexual abuser,” that he abused and stalked his ex-wife (Starbuck states in his lawsuit that he has no ex-wife). It accused him further of fraud, embezzlement, drug charges, stalking business partners, and being a “shooter” or “person of interest” in a 1991 murder case (Starbuck was two years old at the time), of appearing in Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs (untrue), working as a porn actor, and voicing support for the Ku Klux Klan.

The A-I cited non-existent news articles from outlets such as Newsweek, The New York Post, Rolling Stone, Mediaite, The Daily Beast, and Salon, along with fake URLs and headlines (e.g., “Robby Starbuck Responds to Murder Accusations”). 

Starbuck demonstrated this in a podcast episode on October 22–23, 2025, where he queried the A-I live.

Google spokesman José Castañeda attributed the issues to its A-I “hallucinating” — which tells you that the recursive feedback of garbage content in A-I is already well-advanced.

Prepare for ever more interesting mischief, while you watch your portfolio of index stocks go up in a vapor.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 16:20

From Intercontinental Exchange: ICE First Look at Mortgage Performance: Mortgage Performance Remains Strong as FHA Foreclosures Emerge

Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE:ICE) ... today released the September 2025 ICE First Look at mortgage delinquency, foreclosure and prepayment trends.

The data shows that overall mortgage performance remains historically strong, with both delinquencies and foreclosure activity remaining below long-term averages. While some shifts are emerging among government-backed loan segments, these trends largely represent a normalization of market dynamics rather than broad-based weakness.

“The mortgage market remains remarkably resilient, with mortgage performance continuing to hold up well,” said Andy Walden, Head of Mortgage and Housing Market Research at ICE. “Delinquency rates improved in September, and even as we see increases in activity among FHA loans, we’re largely returning to more typical levels following several years of artificially low foreclosure volumes.”

Key takeaways from this month’s findings include:

• Delinquencies remain well below pre-pandemic norms: The national delinquency rate fell by 2 basis points (bps) in September to 3.42%, down 6 bps from the same time last year and 58 bps below its September 2019 pre-pandemic level.

• Strength across delinquency bands in September: Both early-stage (30-day) and late-stage (90+ day) delinquencies improved month-over-month, as the vast majority of borrowers remain current on their mortgage payments.

• Non-current rates improved for most investors: The non-current rate (delinquencies plus active foreclosures) declined year-over-year among GSE (-3 bps), VA (-4 bps) and portfolio-held loans (-17 bps). FHA loans were the notable exception, rising by 44 bps from last year’s levels.

• Foreclosure activity is returning to normal ranges: There were 103,000 foreclosure starts in Q3 2025, a 23% increase from the same period last year, but 18% below Q3 2019’s pre-pandemic levels.

• Improving efficiency in resolution: The number of loans in active foreclosure rose modestly year-over-year (18%), yet overall foreclosure volume remains historically low, with Q3 foreclosure sales (21,000) at roughly half of 2019 levels. FHA loans account for the majority of that rise, making up 38% of active foreclosures, roughly half of the annual rise in foreclosure starts and 80% of the rise in active foreclosures. The resumption of VA foreclosure activity following last year’s moratorium is largely responsible for the remainder.

• Prepayments are edging higher: Prepayments rose by 8 bps in September to a 0.74% single month mortality (SMM) rate, a 15% increase from the prior year, as interest rates began to ease in August.
emphasis added

Click on graph for larger image.

Here is a table from ICE.

Shocking Moment U-Haul Truck Attempts To Ram California Coast Guard Checkpoint Hours After Anti-ICE Protests

A dramatic video surfaced on X overnight showing what appears to be an attempted ramming attack by a deranged driver in a U-Haul truck at a military checkpoint at Coast Guard Base Alameda in California.

KPIX photojournalist Rick Villaroman captured the moment when a man dressed in all black, wearing safety glasses and a respirator mask...

... backed the box truck up to the military checkpoint, then floored it, only to be met with a hail of gunfire by base police, causing him to retreat in the opposite direction.

#BREAKING: Video from KPIX photojournalist Rick Villaroman shows a U-Haul driver backing up toward a line of officers outside US Coast Guard base Alameda before officers opened fire. This was hours after almost all protesters dispersed. Awaiting an update from police @KPIXtv pic.twitter.com/UPrc3CDT3l

— Sara Donchey (@SaraDonchey) October 24, 2025

A Coast Guard spokesperson said the U-Haul truck "was driving erratically and attempting to back into Coast Guard Base Alameda" at around 10 p.m. Thursday.

Officers at the entrance "discharged several rounds of live fire" after the masked driver ignored "multiple verbal commands" to stop and then proceeded to back in toward the base's entrance, according to the spokesperson. 

"When the vehicle's actions posed a direct threat to the safety of Coast Guard and security personnel, law enforcement officers discharged several rounds of live fire," the spokesperson concluded. 

Earlier, anti-ICE agitators blocked the entrance to the base. This appears to be the next staging area of protests by the Democratic Party's activist network, targeting what seems to be the next major federal deportation operation of criminal illegal aliens.

HAPPENING NOW: Protesters in standoff with law enforcement at Coast Guard Island in Alameda, Calif.

Border Patrol agents have been arriving there to assist in the federal immigration crackdown. pic.twitter.com/vC5OZr06a6

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) October 23, 2025

Some highlights from the ground as we monitored the protests and action outside the Alameda Coast Guard Island where they housed US Customs and Border Patrol and ICE agents inside. In the afternoon, California Highway Patrol showed up with heavy riot gear. @MotherJones pic.twitter.com/TvMt9V3kTQ

— Dani (@DaniellaJ_) October 24, 2025

Protesters and vehicles blocked the entrance to Coast Guard Base Alameda shortly after a caravan of U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel arrived on Thursday. The CHP called unlawful assembly and moved to disperse the crowds in the afternoon. Powerful photos show what the… pic.twitter.com/GpvdEpJYwF

— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) October 23, 2025

Getting tense. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 15:25

Latest Harvard Enrollment Data Show Drop In Black Students, Uptick In Asians

Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times,

Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision prohibiting racial preference in higher education admissions, the nation’s oldest university is reporting a decline in undergraduate black student enrollment.

Harvard University, in a profile of the Class of 2029 released today, noted that black American students make up 11.5 percent of the freshman class. That’s a decrease of 2.5 percent from last year, 2.6 percent from 2023, and 5.1 percent from 2020, according to undergraduate data released by the school each year.

In 2023, the Supreme Court sided with plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admissions, which sued Harvard on the grounds that the university denied applicants of Asian descent because that group overrepresented the undergraduate student body, violating Civil Rights laws.

Asian students, meanwhile, make up 41 percent of Harvard’s undergraduate Class of 2029, up from 37 percent in last year’s freshman class and 29.8 percent in 2023.

“The class of 2029 was drawn from big cities and small towns, suburbs, and farms; and from nations around the world,” William Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions and financial aid, said in the Oct. 23 announcement on the university website.

“No matter where they’re from and what their personal circumstance might be, they were admitted to Harvard because they share the extraordinary potential to change the world.”

According to The Harvard Gazette, the class of 2029 also includes 11 percent self-identified Hispanic or Latino and nearly 2 percent Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.

Students for Fair Admissions also recently took action against the U.S. service academies, reaching a settlement with the Department of Defense to end race-based admissions at West Point and the Air Force Academy, and filing a lawsuit against the Coast Guard Academy over racial preferences in its commissioning program, according to the organization’s website.

President Donald Trump issued executive orders affirming Civil Rights laws that prohibit racial preferences in university hiring and student admissions and, following investigations, sanctioned Harvard and several other elite institutions.

In August, he issued a directive requiring colleges and universities to publicize acceptance rates, enrollment figures, and average applicant grade point averages and SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores by race and gender.

In recent years, many competitive higher education institutions have eliminated SAT requirements and instead mandated personal statements or essays from student applicants, raising concerns that they are being used to ideologically screen applicants for entry.

Matthew Beienburg, education policy director at the Goldwater Institute, said those changes are an attempt to preserve racial preferences in admissions.

“The left believes standardized testing promotes racial inequality,” he previously told The Epoch Times. “They pushed [for substituting tests with personal essays] very hard.”

Harvard’s Class of 2029 also noted that 2,003 undergraduate applicants out of 47,893 applicants were accepted, and that nearly half of the 1,675 first-year students won’t be required to pay tuition.

International students make up 15 percent of the freshman class, which also represents 92 nations and all 50 states, the profile report stated.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 15:05

Hegseth Announces Another 'Narco-Boat' Attack After Trump Insists No Declaration Of War Needed

The US military's strikes on alleged drug boats near Venezuela are growing, and War Secretary Pete Hegseth has just announced another one Friday morning, which marks the third such attack this week, after two boats were destroyed on the Pacific side of Latin America earlier this week.

"Overnight, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Tren de Aragua (TdA), a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO), trafficking narcotics in the Caribbean Sea," Hegseth announced on social media. He said that "all six terrorists" were killed and no American forces were harmed in the new operation. This appears to be at least the ninth such attack - and at least third in less than a week.

Via Associated Press

Big questions have persisted over just how the US knows it is attacking drug smuggling boats, and not mere fishing vessels. Journalists have been turning up the pressure on the White House to provide evidence.

Hegseth tried to preempt such inquiries in his Friday statement, which continued, "The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics."

Interestingly, the Pentagon chief noted it was the first strike conducted at night since the anti-Venezuela and anti-drug operations started.

He then reiterated the following message: "If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat Al-Qaeda. Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you."

President Trump in fielding questions from reporters the day before talked about just 'killing' drug smugglers and that no declaration of war or any kind of legal process for that matter is needed...

“I’m not going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war,” he said. “I think we’re just doing to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay? We’re going to kill them, you know, they’re going to be like, dead.”

JUST IN: President Trump fires back after reporter asks him why he doesn't get approval from Congress for taking out narco-terrorists.

Reporter: Why not just ask for a declaration of war?

Trump: I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country.… pic.twitter.com/N1owgnvt6V

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 23, 2025

Geopolitical commentator Arnaud Bertrand has pointed out that Trump just honestly and openly reveals the face of US Empire:

People are in shock over this but Trump, as per his habit, is only putting in blunt terms what all US presidents have been doing for decades. "Nobel Peace Prize Obama" is the one who industrialized extrajudicial killings, officially ordering 540 drone strikes during his presidency (https://cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data), so 1 to 2 a week on average, killing thousands of people with no due process whatsoever.

Indeed, Obama even one time killed a 16-year old American citizen and resident of Colorado by drone strike in Yemen, and he and his press secretary merely shrugged it off.

Still, Trump has some serious questions to answer, and a handful of Congressmen including Sen. Rand Paul try to reel in these latest foreign adventures off Latin America.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 14:45

Pavlovian Bidding Up Of Equities

By Michael Every of Rabobank

High Hopes

US and European equities closed higher yesterday, oil prices rose more than 5%, the Dollar gained, 10-year Treasury yields lifted by 5bps and Bitcoin rose slightly following news that President Trump will pardon Binance founder Changpeng Zhao. Equity markets were buoyed by an announcement from the White House that Presidents Trump and Xi will meet next Thursday on the sidelines of the APEC conference in South Korea.

The Pavlovian bidding up of equities comes as a response to hopes that the trade détente agreed between the US and China in May, and extended in August, will again be kicked down the road past the November 10th expiry date. Both sides accuse the other of cheating on previous trade agreements. The USA points to China’s restrictions on rare earths and refusal to buy US soybeans, while China points to ongoing restrictions on the sale of high-end AI chips, fresh tariff threats and revocation of Chinese student visas as evidence of US violations.

President Trump has been striking an optimistic tone in recent days about the potential for trade agreement with China, but his optimism may reflect his own assessment of the US’s relative bargaining position rather than an expectation of mutual cooperation between the two parties. Moves overnight to open investigations into China’s compliance with the Phase One deal struck in Trump’s first term don’t fill one with confidence that the US is approaching the meeting in a spirit of collaboration, but is instead bolstering his bargaining position by building a case against legal challenges to his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs.

Recent agreements between the US and Australia to collaborate on breaking China’s stranglehold on rare earths mining and processing went down like a lead balloon in Beijing, where officials chided the Western countries for politicizing trade. That admonishment of the West stands awkwardly alongside an outline of China’s latest five-year-plan released overnight, emphasising an even more autarchic approach to trade and technology, as well as incorporating military capabilities into the country’s development blueprint for the first time. Clearly, neither of the major belligerents in the trade war expect anything other than more self-reliance and less mutual exchange in the future.

Higher oil prices are a likely culprit for lifts in inflation breakevens that saw nominal yields rise across major sovereign curves yesterday. Fresh US sanctions on Russia’s Rosneft and Lukoil has seen a sharp price response over the last two days, which may have been helped along by a vote in the Israeli parliament orchestrated by far right parties calling for the annexation of the West Bank. J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio condemned the latter as an unhelpful stunt that threatens to undermine the fragile peace in the region. That has broader implications for US foreign policy objectives, which are concerned with normalizing relations between Israel and Gulf states to counter Chinese, Russian and Iranian ambitions in the region.

Chinese and Indian energy firms have reportedly curtailed seaborne purchases of Russian oil in attempt to avoid being hit with secondary sanctions, while trade negotiations between the USA and India have seen headlines around India cutting purchases of Russian crude in return for more favourable tariff treatment by the USA. Mysterious explosions in recent days at refineries in Hungary and Romania that have links to the Russian energy complex perhaps played a part in seeing active European gasoil futures rally for four straight days after being reported on Monday.

Vladimir Putin criticized the latest round of sanctions as an “unfriendly act” that he said will set back Russia-US relations that had just begun to improve, while conceding that the measures will have a substantial impact on Russia’s oil revenue dependent war economy. President Trump is seeking to use the harsher sanctions in conjunction with greater materiel support for Ukraine to force Putin to the negotiating table to end the war.

In other market news, Ford Motor Company surprised market analysts yesterday by recording a more than doubling in quarterly profit and topline revenue of $50bn - $7bn above analyst expectations. The company said that strong consumer demand for SUVs propelled the result, but downgraded future guidance due to revenue impacts from an aluminium supply squeeze caused by a fire at a plant in New York. Ford also said that it now expects the tariff impact on the bottom line to be $1bn this year, down from a previous estimate of $2bn following the introduction of relief measures by the Trump administration.

Ford’s result holds some similarities to what we saw from Tesla earlier in the week. Tesla recorded strong topline growth on record vehicle sales figures (helped along by the expiry of tax credits at the end of September), but unlike Ford saw profits squeezed by rising operating costs related to AI R&D. With an official data drought still underway in the US due to the government shutdown the strong topline performance of both automakers is an interesting suggestion that consumption of durable goods in the USA remains resilient and that tariff impacts are perhaps less severe than initially thought – at least for the time being.

Markets will get a further read on the state of the US economy today when official CPI figures for September are (belatedly) released. The consensus estimate on the Bloomberg survey is for a 0.4% MoM lift in headline inflation and a 0.3% lift in the core rate. That should be sufficient to see headline CPI accelerate to 3.1% YoY, but OIS futures nevertheless still have ~2 more Fed cuts priced in before the end of the year. High hopes indeed.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 14:25

Mamdani Scores 11th Hour Endorsement From Hakeem Jeffries

Despite Democrats repeatedly blaming progressives for hijacking the 2024 election and swinging the party too far to the left, it seems they're unwilling to learn from their mistakes, since they never make any (according to Democrats with knowledge of their infallibility).

On Friday, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) gave a last minute endorsement to Zohran Mamdani for New York City Mayor - a significant reversal of his prior criticism of the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Mamdani is a member. 

Jeffries told the NY Times that while the two men have "areas of principled disagreement," Mamdani had won "a free and fair election" in the Democratic primary - and that the party needs to do whatever it can against the "existential" threat [to their grifts] posed by President Trump. 

"Zohran Mamdani has relentlessly focused on addressing the affordability crisis and explicitly committed to being a mayor for all New Yorkers, including those who do not support his candidacy," said Jeffries, adding "In that spirit, I support him and the entire citywide Democratic ticket in the general election."

Jeffries' statement came just one day before early voting was set to begin, joining a list of other notable Democrats who've endorsed the socialist which include Gov. Kathy Hochul and state assembly speaker Carl Heastie. 

The 11th hour endorsement from Jeffries comes amid intense competing pressures; House Democrats and local leaders who are fully behind a socialist agenda, and others (mostly swing district candidates and donors), who think Mamdani's economy-killing mandates will give Republicans ammunition in next year's midterm elections. 

Of note, neither of New York's senators, Schumer or Gillibrand, have made an endorsement in the NYC mayor's race, while state party chairman Jay Jacobs has outright said he would not endorse Mamdani due to the candidate's democratic socialist beliefs and criticism of Israel. 

According to the report, two aides to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who's running against Mamdani as a third-party candidate, attempted to convince Jeffries not to endorse Mamdani. 

Don't Gloat Just Yet, Republicans

As the Wall Street Journal editorial board notes... 

Some Republicans welcome a Mamdani victory because they think it will help them in the 2026 midterms. They may be right, especially in New York state. President Trump and the GOP will try to elevate “Commie Mamdani,” as Mr. Trump calls him, as the Democratic spokesman. Elise Stefanik, the likely GOP candidate for New York Governor, is already hammering Gov. Hochul for endorsing the socialist.

But GOP glee is short-sighted. The demise of New York as a financial center wouldn’t be good for the country, no matter how much Texas and Florida benefit. If the city heads toward bankruptcy, the pressure for a bailout from Washington will build.

The biggest risk is a socialist takeover of the Democratic Party. Sooner or later the party will retake the White House, as inevitably there will be a recession or voters will simply tire of the incumbents. Remember how Jonathan Chait and other left-wingers hoped the GOP would nominate Mr. Trump in 2016 because he’d be easy to beat? The country needs a sane and centrist Democratic Party as an alternative to the GOP in the post-Trump era.

Mr. Cuomo argues that if the November electorate expands with more traditional Democrats, he can still win. The stakes are larger than who will run the city that never sleeps.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/24/2025 - 14:05