India Races To Replace Russian Oil With US, Iraqi, & UAE Crude

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

Two Indian refiners bought a total of 5 million barrels of crude oil from the United States, Iraq, and the UAE on the spot market as they seek alternatives to Russian crude.

Reuters reported, citing unnamed industry sources, that Hindustan Petroleum Corp. had bought 2 million barrels of West Texas Intermediate and 2 million barrels of Murban crude for delivery in January.

The other refiner, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals, bought 1 million barrels of Basra Medium, also to be delivered in January, the Reuters sources said.

The search for alternative oil supplies follows the Trump administration’s decision last month to sanction Rosneft and Lukoil, which together account for half of Russia’s oil exports and a significant portion of Indian imports from the country.

The sanctions ignited a rush to secure supplies ahead of the entry into effect of the sanctions, on November 21, while oil buyers look for loopholes to keep their access to discounted Russian crude.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported an unusual move by two tankers, both sanctioned by the European Union and the UK, which performed a ship-to-ship transfer off the Indian coast last week.

One of the tankers, the Ailana, had been idling for a couple of weeks prior to the transfer, Bloomberg wrote, noting that after the transfer, the receiving tanker, Fortis, continued to the Indian port of Kochi, while the Ailana set off for Russia.

In separate but related news, India’s president, Droupadi Murmu, said Indian oil and gas companies were seeking long-term relationships with Angolan energy entities, interested in investing both in energy commodities and in critical minerals.

“Angola's role in India's energy security is very important. India is a major buyer of Angola's oil and gas. Our oil and gas companies are desirous of entering into a long-term purchase contract with Angola,” Murmu said during a state visit to the West African country.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/11/2025 - 05:00

India Races To Replace Russian Oil With US, Iraqi, & UAE Crude

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

Two Indian refiners bought a total of 5 million barrels of crude oil from the United States, Iraq, and the UAE on the spot market as they seek alternatives to Russian crude.

Reuters reported, citing unnamed industry sources, that Hindustan Petroleum Corp. had bought 2 million barrels of West Texas Intermediate and 2 million barrels of Murban crude for delivery in January.

The other refiner, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals, bought 1 million barrels of Basra Medium, also to be delivered in January, the Reuters sources said.

The search for alternative oil supplies follows the Trump administration’s decision last month to sanction Rosneft and Lukoil, which together account for half of Russia’s oil exports and a significant portion of Indian imports from the country.

The sanctions ignited a rush to secure supplies ahead of the entry into effect of the sanctions, on November 21, while oil buyers look for loopholes to keep their access to discounted Russian crude.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported an unusual move by two tankers, both sanctioned by the European Union and the UK, which performed a ship-to-ship transfer off the Indian coast last week.

One of the tankers, the Ailana, had been idling for a couple of weeks prior to the transfer, Bloomberg wrote, noting that after the transfer, the receiving tanker, Fortis, continued to the Indian port of Kochi, while the Ailana set off for Russia.

In separate but related news, India’s president, Droupadi Murmu, said Indian oil and gas companies were seeking long-term relationships with Angolan energy entities, interested in investing both in energy commodities and in critical minerals.

“Angola's role in India's energy security is very important. India is a major buyer of Angola's oil and gas. Our oil and gas companies are desirous of entering into a long-term purchase contract with Angola,” Murmu said during a state visit to the West African country.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/11/2025 - 05:00

"We May Have To Evacuate Tehran": Iranian President's Remarks Stun Amid Water Crisis

Coming off a very 'hot' geopolitical summer which saw Israel and the US attack Tehran and the Islamic Republic's nuclear energy facilities, Iran is now facing yet another immensely threatening crisis amid historic drought: lack of water for the population of 90+ million.

Rainfall has been at record lows, causing reservoirs to be nearly empty, in an already arid Middle East climate. The situation has grown so acute that President Masoud Pezeshkian has warned that if the drought persists for another month, Tehran's water would have to be rationed. But this appears to be happening currently, as no rain is expected for at least the next ten days.

Via Iran News Update

Already Iranians are being urged to conserve water and only use what's available for the most pressing needs. Pezeshkian has actually said something stunning and unprecedented on Monday, though some are describing it as obvious hyperbole: 

"If rationing doesn't work," Pezeshkian said, "we may have to evacuate Tehran."

The alarming statement resulted in an avalanche of criticism in Iranian media, also with former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi dismissing the idea as "a joke" and saying that "evacuating Tehran makes no sense at all".

Some regional analysts and officials report an over 90% decrease in rainfall compared with last year. The NY Times summarizes of how dire the situation is:

Iran’s officials have begun rationing water in the capital, Tehran, amid a drought so severe that the president has warned the capital may need to be evacuated.

The country is facing the worst drought in six decades, and major dams are at critically low levels. Water authorities this week said the main dams feeding Tehran, on which more than 10 million people depend, were at 5 percent capacity.

On Sunday, the spokesman for Iran’s water industry, Isa Bozorgzadeh, told reporters that water pressure would be lowered from midnight until the morning “so that we can both reduce urban leakage and create an opportunity for city reservoirs to refill.”

People have in some cases taken to TikTok and other social media to show that faucets in their homes have stopped producing water for hours at a time.

The macro problems of mismanagement and over-consumption are why Iran faces a general water crisis, but this current crunch has a very important climate element.

There has been basically no rainfall in the central Iranian plateau for six months. https://t.co/kBWTojpZ7P pic.twitter.com/WMq3GqNkS4

— Gregory Brew (@gbrew24) November 6, 2025

Iranian officials are mulling extreme measures and outside-the-box approaches:

This fall, the Ministry of Energy announced the practice of “cloud seeding,” a weather modification technique that involves dispersing particles like silver iodide into existing clouds to encourage rainfall. However, for it to work, clouds need to contain at least 50 percent moisture, which experts say is not currently the case in Iran.

BBC writes of one vital reservoir, "The manager of the Latian Dam, one of Tehran's main water sources, says it now holds less than 10% of its capacity. The nearby Karaj Dam — which supplies water to both Tehran and Alborz provinces — is in a similarly dire condition."

"I have never seen this dam so empty since I was born," one area resident told Iranian state TV.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/11/2025 - 04:15

"We May Have To Evacuate Tehran": Iranian President's Remarks Stun Amid Water Crisis

Coming off a very 'hot' geopolitical summer which saw Israel and the US attack Tehran and the Islamic Republic's nuclear energy facilities, Iran is now facing yet another immensely threatening crisis amid historic drought: lack of water for the population of 90+ million.

Rainfall has been at record lows, causing reservoirs to be nearly empty, in an already arid Middle East climate. The situation has grown so acute that President Masoud Pezeshkian has warned that if the drought persists for another month, Tehran's water would have to be rationed. But this appears to be happening currently, as no rain is expected for at least the next ten days.

Via Iran News Update

Already Iranians are being urged to conserve water and only use what's available for the most pressing needs. Pezeshkian has actually said something stunning and unprecedented on Monday, though some are describing it as obvious hyperbole: 

"If rationing doesn't work," Pezeshkian said, "we may have to evacuate Tehran."

The alarming statement resulted in an avalanche of criticism in Iranian media, also with former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi dismissing the idea as "a joke" and saying that "evacuating Tehran makes no sense at all".

Some regional analysts and officials report an over 90% decrease in rainfall compared with last year. The NY Times summarizes of how dire the situation is:

Iran’s officials have begun rationing water in the capital, Tehran, amid a drought so severe that the president has warned the capital may need to be evacuated.

The country is facing the worst drought in six decades, and major dams are at critically low levels. Water authorities this week said the main dams feeding Tehran, on which more than 10 million people depend, were at 5 percent capacity.

On Sunday, the spokesman for Iran’s water industry, Isa Bozorgzadeh, told reporters that water pressure would be lowered from midnight until the morning “so that we can both reduce urban leakage and create an opportunity for city reservoirs to refill.”

People have in some cases taken to TikTok and other social media to show that faucets in their homes have stopped producing water for hours at a time.

The macro problems of mismanagement and over-consumption are why Iran faces a general water crisis, but this current crunch has a very important climate element.

There has been basically no rainfall in the central Iranian plateau for six months. https://t.co/kBWTojpZ7P pic.twitter.com/WMq3GqNkS4

— Gregory Brew (@gbrew24) November 6, 2025

Iranian officials are mulling extreme measures and outside-the-box approaches:

This fall, the Ministry of Energy announced the practice of “cloud seeding,” a weather modification technique that involves dispersing particles like silver iodide into existing clouds to encourage rainfall. However, for it to work, clouds need to contain at least 50 percent moisture, which experts say is not currently the case in Iran.

BBC writes of one vital reservoir, "The manager of the Latian Dam, one of Tehran's main water sources, says it now holds less than 10% of its capacity. The nearby Karaj Dam — which supplies water to both Tehran and Alborz provinces — is in a similarly dire condition."

"I have never seen this dam so empty since I was born," one area resident told Iranian state TV.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/11/2025 - 04:15

Epoch Of Change

Authored by T.L.Davis via Substack,

I hope people are recognizing that they live in a very volatile world.

Growing up in the 60s-70s it was pretty tame. There was the Vietnam war and war protesters, there was the free-love movement, feminism and other cultural changes taking place, but the whole world was not aflame as it is now. This could only be brought about by a worldwide effort to throw it into chaos.

Chaos is the enemy of the capitalist and friend of the communist. It’s during chaos that communism can provide answers to the problems they’ve caused. But back in the 70s and 80s a lot could go on without notice. A person just working their job might not know it was happening. Today, every shiver and shrug of culture is noted, recorded and broadcast over the internet. To be ignorant of the issues today takes an intentional willingness, a refusal to be shoved out of their bliss. There is something to be said for that, even.

One of the things we advocated in the documentary Deconstruction is taking place right before our eyes. Anti-immigration countries are banding together into a solid block within the EU and the stronger they get, the more will want to join.

It’s a civil war that’s taking place, but not with weapons, with common sense and rational thinking challenging the tyrannical rule of a small group of communist bureaucrats in the EU.

I’m proud of our documentary for raising the important issues at such a crucial time. But this isn’t the end. There are only 4 or 5 of the 27 EU nations signing on to this, so there’s plenty of work to do.

Why is it important to me, or you, that this is taking place a world away? It has to do with national security, cultural restoration and the survival of civilization. The great works of art, of progress and a sense of building something for the future rests on the nations from whence we all came at some time or another.

What’s happening in the EU is the product of the globalists and the stronger they get, the weaker we are as a nation. The US is already suffering from the effects of a declining power. Its ability to produce a functional weapons system has been destroyed by the weapons bureaucracy. One might even think, through the woke military of so many years, even decades, that it’s actually sabotage that’s taken place.

The economy is a whisp of smoke and the arrangement of mirrors, the climbing GDP and such merely an inverted down-stepping chart. During Biden’s years government spending topped the GDP, trillions of printed dollars, suggesting that the GDP was keeping pace with debt, but one was fueling the other.

The point is, the focus of America was lost sometime back in the 1970s, when Nixon took the dollar off of the gold standard. It may not seem connected, but from that point onward, wages have declined while the amount paid in fiat dollars might rise, the standard of living decreases. How it’s connected, at least in my own thoughts, is that once the dollar was taken off of the gold standard, the nation became, especially in the upper echelons, focused on wealth retention rather than wealth building. Crypto is nothing less than a means to achieve that, though its dependence on electricity to make it work bothers me.

Inventions almost literally stopped about the same time and wringing more dollars out of the same technology became the intent of manufacturing. Cell phones are just radios, computers are now smaller and faster, but still work off of the original concept in the 1950s. Aircraft are still aircraft, drones are still aircraft, missiles, even the hypersonic ones, are not new technology. Automobiles, no matter how advanced or cool are no different, not even the self-driving ones. In fact, a lot of the things we find in our cars are not there for any other reason than to track the vehicle and bug it for meanspeak that will be important later after the social credit score kicks in. I prefer my 1996 F-150 to any of them and my 1985 diesel to it.

Is it any wonder that it seems like a reckoning must take place?

That allowing industries and government to control our lives is a bad idea?

That is fascism, by definition, unless they’ve changed the definition to mean anything “right,” which I think they have.

This is an epoch of change, some very drastic changes.

It’s a moment of revolution against the system on a global scale; a system that has taken whole populations and subjected them to cruel and malevolent punishment for being white, or European, or Christian. And that’s where this finally boils down to a civilizational battle.

In a world flooded by Islamists, who naturally reject the host nations and establish islands of Islam in seas of Christianity, it has to come down to a religious battle.

Right now, it’s a battle of driving more troops into Europe, or driving them out of the UK, France and Germany, in Sweden and Denmark. Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic are pushing back against the experiment that has gone awry in Western Europe and attempting to keep the migrants out to start with, not because they hate migrants, but because, unlike Western Europe, they value their culture and religion.

America can draw strength from the Central and Eastern European bloc that has rejected illegal immigration rather than build a complete apparatus to deport those already there. One can understand it either as a religious battle, or a battle against communists, it works either way, because the Islamists are communists in drag. They are the communist shock troops and once the worldwide caliphate is established communism will simply slip away into the darkness of history, morphed into a religious, patriarchal tyranny.

It is the duty, in my mind, to stop it; to stop communism, Islam and anything that threatens the freedoms we’ve had in the past. I thought that would have been done by technology, that the advance of technology would create a world of individualists and it has that power to do so, but it has been coopted to become a weapon against the individual, promising security.

Anything is possible in this world, anything. All it takes is a concerted effort to achieve it. Focusing that intent is the hard part, but the lines are being drawn more definitively every day. This is the time to do it.

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

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/11/2025 - 03:30

Epoch Of Change

Authored by T.L.Davis via Substack,

I hope people are recognizing that they live in a very volatile world.

Growing up in the 60s-70s it was pretty tame. There was the Vietnam war and war protesters, there was the free-love movement, feminism and other cultural changes taking place, but the whole world was not aflame as it is now. This could only be brought about by a worldwide effort to throw it into chaos.

Chaos is the enemy of the capitalist and friend of the communist. It’s during chaos that communism can provide answers to the problems they’ve caused. But back in the 70s and 80s a lot could go on without notice. A person just working their job might not know it was happening. Today, every shiver and shrug of culture is noted, recorded and broadcast over the internet. To be ignorant of the issues today takes an intentional willingness, a refusal to be shoved out of their bliss. There is something to be said for that, even.

One of the things we advocated in the documentary Deconstruction is taking place right before our eyes. Anti-immigration countries are banding together into a solid block within the EU and the stronger they get, the more will want to join.

It’s a civil war that’s taking place, but not with weapons, with common sense and rational thinking challenging the tyrannical rule of a small group of communist bureaucrats in the EU.

I’m proud of our documentary for raising the important issues at such a crucial time. But this isn’t the end. There are only 4 or 5 of the 27 EU nations signing on to this, so there’s plenty of work to do.

Why is it important to me, or you, that this is taking place a world away? It has to do with national security, cultural restoration and the survival of civilization. The great works of art, of progress and a sense of building something for the future rests on the nations from whence we all came at some time or another.

What’s happening in the EU is the product of the globalists and the stronger they get, the weaker we are as a nation. The US is already suffering from the effects of a declining power. Its ability to produce a functional weapons system has been destroyed by the weapons bureaucracy. One might even think, through the woke military of so many years, even decades, that it’s actually sabotage that’s taken place.

The economy is a whisp of smoke and the arrangement of mirrors, the climbing GDP and such merely an inverted down-stepping chart. During Biden’s years government spending topped the GDP, trillions of printed dollars, suggesting that the GDP was keeping pace with debt, but one was fueling the other.

The point is, the focus of America was lost sometime back in the 1970s, when Nixon took the dollar off of the gold standard. It may not seem connected, but from that point onward, wages have declined while the amount paid in fiat dollars might rise, the standard of living decreases. How it’s connected, at least in my own thoughts, is that once the dollar was taken off of the gold standard, the nation became, especially in the upper echelons, focused on wealth retention rather than wealth building. Crypto is nothing less than a means to achieve that, though its dependence on electricity to make it work bothers me.

Inventions almost literally stopped about the same time and wringing more dollars out of the same technology became the intent of manufacturing. Cell phones are just radios, computers are now smaller and faster, but still work off of the original concept in the 1950s. Aircraft are still aircraft, drones are still aircraft, missiles, even the hypersonic ones, are not new technology. Automobiles, no matter how advanced or cool are no different, not even the self-driving ones. In fact, a lot of the things we find in our cars are not there for any other reason than to track the vehicle and bug it for meanspeak that will be important later after the social credit score kicks in. I prefer my 1996 F-150 to any of them and my 1985 diesel to it.

Is it any wonder that it seems like a reckoning must take place?

That allowing industries and government to control our lives is a bad idea?

That is fascism, by definition, unless they’ve changed the definition to mean anything “right,” which I think they have.

This is an epoch of change, some very drastic changes.

It’s a moment of revolution against the system on a global scale; a system that has taken whole populations and subjected them to cruel and malevolent punishment for being white, or European, or Christian. And that’s where this finally boils down to a civilizational battle.

In a world flooded by Islamists, who naturally reject the host nations and establish islands of Islam in seas of Christianity, it has to come down to a religious battle.

Right now, it’s a battle of driving more troops into Europe, or driving them out of the UK, France and Germany, in Sweden and Denmark. Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic are pushing back against the experiment that has gone awry in Western Europe and attempting to keep the migrants out to start with, not because they hate migrants, but because, unlike Western Europe, they value their culture and religion.

America can draw strength from the Central and Eastern European bloc that has rejected illegal immigration rather than build a complete apparatus to deport those already there. One can understand it either as a religious battle, or a battle against communists, it works either way, because the Islamists are communists in drag. They are the communist shock troops and once the worldwide caliphate is established communism will simply slip away into the darkness of history, morphed into a religious, patriarchal tyranny.

It is the duty, in my mind, to stop it; to stop communism, Islam and anything that threatens the freedoms we’ve had in the past. I thought that would have been done by technology, that the advance of technology would create a world of individualists and it has that power to do so, but it has been coopted to become a weapon against the individual, promising security.

Anything is possible in this world, anything. All it takes is a concerted effort to achieve it. Focusing that intent is the hard part, but the lines are being drawn more definitively every day. This is the time to do it.

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

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/11/2025 - 03:30

Not Married, No Kids

While Chinese Singles‘ Day (today) was originally conceived as a celebration of people who are not in a relationship, the growing popularity of a lifestyle that prioritizes personal independence and self-discovery over traditional societal expectations has not come without side effects.

One such side effect has been a steep decline in marriage rates in China.

As Statista's Felix Richter details below, young adults in particular are increasingly likely to delay or forgo marriage altogether, breaking away from the longstanding societal pressure to marry early.

You will find more infographics at Statista

While 47 percent of newly married people in China were 24 or younger in 2005, that number dropped to just 13 percent in 2024, with more than 50 percent of newlyweds older than 30, compared to less than 20 percent in 2005. The reasons behind this shift are multifaceted, encompassing factors such as changing gender roles, increased educational and career opportunities for women and a desire for personal fulfillment outside the confines of a traditional family structure. As our chart shows, the marriage rate in China dropped to a historic low of 4.3 new marriages per 1,000 people in 2024, down from more than double that a decade earlier.

Accompanying the decline in marriages has been the concerning trend of a falling birth rate in China, which fell to an all-time low in 2023 before rebounding slightly in 2024. Despite the small rebound, the country’s population continued to decline in 2024 after 2022 had marked the first annual population drop in over 60 years. The choice to remain single or delay marriage often translates into delayed parenthood or even a decision to remain childless. Economic considerations, career aspirations and the high cost of raising children in urban areas further contribute to this decline. The Chinese government's efforts to encourage childbirth, such as the relaxation of the one-child policy, have yet to yield a substantial reversal of the declining birth rate.

So while the rise of the single culture in China is emblematic of evolving social attitudes and individual aspirations, it also raises questions about the long-term demographic and economic implications for the nation. As the number of single individuals continues to rise, policymakers are grappling with the need to adapt to this changing landscape, addressing challenges such as an aging population and potential strains on social welfare systems.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/11/2025 - 02:45

Not Married, No Kids

While Chinese Singles‘ Day (today) was originally conceived as a celebration of people who are not in a relationship, the growing popularity of a lifestyle that prioritizes personal independence and self-discovery over traditional societal expectations has not come without side effects.

One such side effect has been a steep decline in marriage rates in China.

As Statista's Felix Richter details below, young adults in particular are increasingly likely to delay or forgo marriage altogether, breaking away from the longstanding societal pressure to marry early.

You will find more infographics at Statista

While 47 percent of newly married people in China were 24 or younger in 2005, that number dropped to just 13 percent in 2024, with more than 50 percent of newlyweds older than 30, compared to less than 20 percent in 2005. The reasons behind this shift are multifaceted, encompassing factors such as changing gender roles, increased educational and career opportunities for women and a desire for personal fulfillment outside the confines of a traditional family structure. As our chart shows, the marriage rate in China dropped to a historic low of 4.3 new marriages per 1,000 people in 2024, down from more than double that a decade earlier.

Accompanying the decline in marriages has been the concerning trend of a falling birth rate in China, which fell to an all-time low in 2023 before rebounding slightly in 2024. Despite the small rebound, the country’s population continued to decline in 2024 after 2022 had marked the first annual population drop in over 60 years. The choice to remain single or delay marriage often translates into delayed parenthood or even a decision to remain childless. Economic considerations, career aspirations and the high cost of raising children in urban areas further contribute to this decline. The Chinese government's efforts to encourage childbirth, such as the relaxation of the one-child policy, have yet to yield a substantial reversal of the declining birth rate.

So while the rise of the single culture in China is emblematic of evolving social attitudes and individual aspirations, it also raises questions about the long-term demographic and economic implications for the nation. As the number of single individuals continues to rise, policymakers are grappling with the need to adapt to this changing landscape, addressing challenges such as an aging population and potential strains on social welfare systems.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/11/2025 - 02:45

Poland Might Impede The EU's Push To Speedily Grant Ukraine Membership

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Poland has more to lose from this than Hungary does, but it’s happy to let Hungary feel the heat for impeding Ukraine’s plans, unless Orban is ousted next spring and Poland is then compelled to replace its role.

The EU is making a renewed push to speedily grant Ukraine membership as suggested by two recent news items.

The first relates to Politico’s report about a proposal for granting countries membership without veto rights till after the bloc overhauls its functions, which Ukraine hopes will be agreed to by December, while the second involves Bloomberg’s report about the bloc’s plans to include a rapid path to membership for Ukraine a part of its 12-point peace proposal. Poland might impede all of this though.

Observers should remember that Poland and Ukraine were embroiled in a fierce grain dispute throughout most of 2023. It was caused by the bloc temporarily removing tariffs on a number of Ukrainian exports after the start of the special operation. The influx of cheap grain into the Polish market threatened to ruin the livelihoods of Polish farmers, who began blocking the border in protest. The state then imposed an embargo on Ukrainian grain in defiance of the EU that still remains in place to this day.

The dispute has abated since then, with the latest EU-Ukrainian trade agreement imposing a tariff-rate quota on the latter’s wheat exports that’s 80% lower than what the former imported last year (1.3 million metric tons vs. 6.4 million metric tons), with tariffs beyond that being prohibitively expensive. Nevertheless, just as the influx of cheap grain from Ukraine ended, there’s now an influx of cheap steel into the Polish market that Warsaw recently declared that it also wants to ban or severely regulate.

The abovementioned concerns would reach crisis proportions with far-reaching socio-economic and political consequences for Poland if Ukraine were to speedily join the EU’s single market even without veto rights. It’s due in large part to growing public awareness of the aforesaid that only 35% of Poles support Ukrainian membership in the bloc as of a credible poll conducted in their country over the summer, which is less than the 85% who were in favor of this shortly after the special operation began.

Hungary has hitherto been portrayed by Western media as the main stumbling block to Ukraine’s plans, a role that Poland’s ruling duopoly has been all too happy to let it play for self-serving political reasons even though their country is arguably a much greater stumbling block for the reasons explained above. Moreover, there’s a chance that the EU- and Ukrainian-backed efforts to meddle in Hungary’s next elections in April could finally oust Prime Minister Viktor Orban, thus removing him from the equation.

In that scenario, all eyes would then be on Poland, but neither half of its ruling duopoly wants to be blamed for the domestic consequences of Ukraine joining the EU, especially not ahead of fall 2027’s next parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling liberal-globalist coalition is already facing an uphill battle and would torpedo any hope of keeping control if they supported this, while President Karol Nawrocki from the conservative-nationalist opposition would betray his base if he went along with them.

Unlike Hungary, Poland hasn’t been smeared as a Russian puppet, the claim of which would fall flat anyhow since it spent 4.9% of its GDP on Ukraine (mostly for its refugees), donated its entire stockpile to it, and spends more of its GDP on defense than any NATO member. It’s happy to let Hungary feel the heat for now when it comes to impeding Ukraine’s speedy membership in the EU, but if Orban is ousted next spring, then Poland will likely step up and replace its role since failing to do so would be disastrous.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/11/2025 - 02:00

Poland Might Impede The EU's Push To Speedily Grant Ukraine Membership

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Poland has more to lose from this than Hungary does, but it’s happy to let Hungary feel the heat for impeding Ukraine’s plans, unless Orban is ousted next spring and Poland is then compelled to replace its role.

The EU is making a renewed push to speedily grant Ukraine membership as suggested by two recent news items.

The first relates to Politico’s report about a proposal for granting countries membership without veto rights till after the bloc overhauls its functions, which Ukraine hopes will be agreed to by December, while the second involves Bloomberg’s report about the bloc’s plans to include a rapid path to membership for Ukraine a part of its 12-point peace proposal. Poland might impede all of this though.

Observers should remember that Poland and Ukraine were embroiled in a fierce grain dispute throughout most of 2023. It was caused by the bloc temporarily removing tariffs on a number of Ukrainian exports after the start of the special operation. The influx of cheap grain into the Polish market threatened to ruin the livelihoods of Polish farmers, who began blocking the border in protest. The state then imposed an embargo on Ukrainian grain in defiance of the EU that still remains in place to this day.

The dispute has abated since then, with the latest EU-Ukrainian trade agreement imposing a tariff-rate quota on the latter’s wheat exports that’s 80% lower than what the former imported last year (1.3 million metric tons vs. 6.4 million metric tons), with tariffs beyond that being prohibitively expensive. Nevertheless, just as the influx of cheap grain from Ukraine ended, there’s now an influx of cheap steel into the Polish market that Warsaw recently declared that it also wants to ban or severely regulate.

The abovementioned concerns would reach crisis proportions with far-reaching socio-economic and political consequences for Poland if Ukraine were to speedily join the EU’s single market even without veto rights. It’s due in large part to growing public awareness of the aforesaid that only 35% of Poles support Ukrainian membership in the bloc as of a credible poll conducted in their country over the summer, which is less than the 85% who were in favor of this shortly after the special operation began.

Hungary has hitherto been portrayed by Western media as the main stumbling block to Ukraine’s plans, a role that Poland’s ruling duopoly has been all too happy to let it play for self-serving political reasons even though their country is arguably a much greater stumbling block for the reasons explained above. Moreover, there’s a chance that the EU- and Ukrainian-backed efforts to meddle in Hungary’s next elections in April could finally oust Prime Minister Viktor Orban, thus removing him from the equation.

In that scenario, all eyes would then be on Poland, but neither half of its ruling duopoly wants to be blamed for the domestic consequences of Ukraine joining the EU, especially not ahead of fall 2027’s next parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling liberal-globalist coalition is already facing an uphill battle and would torpedo any hope of keeping control if they supported this, while President Karol Nawrocki from the conservative-nationalist opposition would betray his base if he went along with them.

Unlike Hungary, Poland hasn’t been smeared as a Russian puppet, the claim of which would fall flat anyhow since it spent 4.9% of its GDP on Ukraine (mostly for its refugees), donated its entire stockpile to it, and spends more of its GDP on defense than any NATO member. It’s happy to let Hungary feel the heat for now when it comes to impeding Ukraine’s speedy membership in the EU, but if Orban is ousted next spring, then Poland will likely step up and replace its role since failing to do so would be disastrous.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/11/2025 - 02:00

The Hidden World War

Authored by Chris Macintosh via InternationalMan.com,

World War III is already underway, but most people don’t recognize it because they’re conditioned to expect war to look like traditional physical violence with bombs, guns, and battlefield confrontations.

This bias stems from centuries of warfare taking a particular form, similar to how people once couldn’t conceive of light without fire until electricity was invented.

Redefining War

At its core, war is conflict where parties use tools to increase their power and achieve outcomes that oppose others’ interests.

Think strategically about modern warfare: what would be the most effective weapons and tactics today? The answer is that physical violence — while still available as a tool — is no longer the smartest or most effective approach.

Modern Warfare Arsenal

Today’s war employs sophisticated, often invisible weapons including. Here is a list to consider. Think about experiences you’ve been having and consider where these have been used against you.

• Information warfare: Cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns, flooding people with conflicting information to create confusion and cognitive dissonance.

• Economic weapons: Sanctions, cryptocurrency manipulation, making populations dependent on controlled resources.

• Political subversion: Election interference, undermining government legitimacy, bribing officials and influencers.

• Psychological operations: Creating crises then positioning as the savior, exploiting social media platforms that control public discourse.

• Biological and resource warfare: Famine, deprivation disguised as natural events.

• Social manipulation: Fueling ideological divides, inflaming nationalism, targeting masculinity to prevent resistance.

Why Silent War?

Modern warfare operates covertly because war’s reputation is “ruined.” People no longer see it as noble or necessary. Public support has evaporated, in large part because politicians are now seen largely as lying scoundrels.

This is making it strategically better to gaslight populations, deny war is happening, and paint a picture that “everything’s okay.” Furthermore, leaders no longer need masses of men for physical combat, so there’s no benefit to declaring war openly.

Current War Symptoms

People are experiencing classic wartime symptoms without understanding the cause:

• Loss of hope and inability to plan for the future

• Widespread dread, numbness, and sense of unreality

• Increased nationalism and “us vs. them” thinking

• Fear of government and authority figures

• Financial stress from inflation

• Young people avoiding starting families

• Supply chain disruptions and stockpiling behavior

• Feeling like danger is everywhere

• Limiting news consumption due to overwhelming negativity

• Escalating protests and militarized police

• People fleeing their countries or considering it

• Fear of speaking out or losing rights

• Rapid, “temporary” legal changes justified by public safety

• Daily exposure to propaganda and radical content

• Using basic needs (food, energy, money) as weapons

• Fear that personal identity could make one an “enemy of the state”

Interconnected Global Conflict

What appear to be isolated regional conflicts are actually interconnected proxy wars within a larger global struggle. This breaks down boundaries between local and global conflict – a hallmark of world wars. Nations and alliances are being drawn into broader struggles for dominance and survival.

People must navigate constantly shifting geopolitical relationships, never knowing which countries or leaders are allies or enemies. This creates exhaustion, overwhelm, and a sense that nothing is safe or trustworthy.

Individual Experiences Vary

Wartime experiences differ dramatically based on location, identity, and circumstances.

This has been the case in previous world wars. It is what we are experiencing now.

The Reality Check

The key insight is that people are experiencing genuine wartime symptoms and stress, but because no formal war has been declared and it doesn’t look like traditional warfare, they fail to understand why they feel this way.

This leads to self-blame and thinking something is wrong with them personally.

Conclusion

Recognizing this “silent war” is crucial for understanding current global confusion and personal distress. Modern warfare is more sophisticated and potentially more abusive than traditional physical violence. The confusion and decision paralysis people feel is a normal response to an abnormal situation — a world war being fought with psychological, economic, and information weapons rather than conventional military force.

Realise that your feelings and experiences make perfect sense within this context, and it is, I believe, important to remove the self-blame that comes from not understanding why the world feels so chaotic and threatening.

Physical violence may still occur, but only as one tool among many in this new form of warfare that prioritizes psychological manipulation and systemic control over traditional battlefield tactics.

*  *  *

If you recognize the signs of this silent war and want to better understand the economic, political, and cultural forces shaping our future, we invite you to go deeper. We’ve prepared a free PDF report, Clash of the Systems: Thoughts on Investing at a Unique Point in Time, which unpacks the risks ahead and what they could mean for your money and personal freedom. Inside, contrarian money manager Chris MacIntosh shares insights on how to navigate these shifting dynamics and position yourself to stay one step ahead. You can access your free copy by clicking here.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/10/2025 - 23:25

The Hidden World War

Authored by Chris Macintosh via InternationalMan.com,

World War III is already underway, but most people don’t recognize it because they’re conditioned to expect war to look like traditional physical violence with bombs, guns, and battlefield confrontations.

This bias stems from centuries of warfare taking a particular form, similar to how people once couldn’t conceive of light without fire until electricity was invented.

Redefining War

At its core, war is conflict where parties use tools to increase their power and achieve outcomes that oppose others’ interests.

Think strategically about modern warfare: what would be the most effective weapons and tactics today? The answer is that physical violence — while still available as a tool — is no longer the smartest or most effective approach.

Modern Warfare Arsenal

Today’s war employs sophisticated, often invisible weapons including. Here is a list to consider. Think about experiences you’ve been having and consider where these have been used against you.

• Information warfare: Cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns, flooding people with conflicting information to create confusion and cognitive dissonance.

• Economic weapons: Sanctions, cryptocurrency manipulation, making populations dependent on controlled resources.

• Political subversion: Election interference, undermining government legitimacy, bribing officials and influencers.

• Psychological operations: Creating crises then positioning as the savior, exploiting social media platforms that control public discourse.

• Biological and resource warfare: Famine, deprivation disguised as natural events.

• Social manipulation: Fueling ideological divides, inflaming nationalism, targeting masculinity to prevent resistance.

Why Silent War?

Modern warfare operates covertly because war’s reputation is “ruined.” People no longer see it as noble or necessary. Public support has evaporated, in large part because politicians are now seen largely as lying scoundrels.

This is making it strategically better to gaslight populations, deny war is happening, and paint a picture that “everything’s okay.” Furthermore, leaders no longer need masses of men for physical combat, so there’s no benefit to declaring war openly.

Current War Symptoms

People are experiencing classic wartime symptoms without understanding the cause:

• Loss of hope and inability to plan for the future

• Widespread dread, numbness, and sense of unreality

• Increased nationalism and “us vs. them” thinking

• Fear of government and authority figures

• Financial stress from inflation

• Young people avoiding starting families

• Supply chain disruptions and stockpiling behavior

• Feeling like danger is everywhere

• Limiting news consumption due to overwhelming negativity

• Escalating protests and militarized police

• People fleeing their countries or considering it

• Fear of speaking out or losing rights

• Rapid, “temporary” legal changes justified by public safety

• Daily exposure to propaganda and radical content

• Using basic needs (food, energy, money) as weapons

• Fear that personal identity could make one an “enemy of the state”

Interconnected Global Conflict

What appear to be isolated regional conflicts are actually interconnected proxy wars within a larger global struggle. This breaks down boundaries between local and global conflict – a hallmark of world wars. Nations and alliances are being drawn into broader struggles for dominance and survival.

People must navigate constantly shifting geopolitical relationships, never knowing which countries or leaders are allies or enemies. This creates exhaustion, overwhelm, and a sense that nothing is safe or trustworthy.

Individual Experiences Vary

Wartime experiences differ dramatically based on location, identity, and circumstances.

This has been the case in previous world wars. It is what we are experiencing now.

The Reality Check

The key insight is that people are experiencing genuine wartime symptoms and stress, but because no formal war has been declared and it doesn’t look like traditional warfare, they fail to understand why they feel this way.

This leads to self-blame and thinking something is wrong with them personally.

Conclusion

Recognizing this “silent war” is crucial for understanding current global confusion and personal distress. Modern warfare is more sophisticated and potentially more abusive than traditional physical violence. The confusion and decision paralysis people feel is a normal response to an abnormal situation — a world war being fought with psychological, economic, and information weapons rather than conventional military force.

Realise that your feelings and experiences make perfect sense within this context, and it is, I believe, important to remove the self-blame that comes from not understanding why the world feels so chaotic and threatening.

Physical violence may still occur, but only as one tool among many in this new form of warfare that prioritizes psychological manipulation and systemic control over traditional battlefield tactics.

*  *  *

If you recognize the signs of this silent war and want to better understand the economic, political, and cultural forces shaping our future, we invite you to go deeper. We’ve prepared a free PDF report, Clash of the Systems: Thoughts on Investing at a Unique Point in Time, which unpacks the risks ahead and what they could mean for your money and personal freedom. Inside, contrarian money manager Chris MacIntosh shares insights on how to navigate these shifting dynamics and position yourself to stay one step ahead. You can access your free copy by clicking here.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/10/2025 - 23:25

Latest US Attacks On Drug Boats Brings Total To 19, As Conservatives Urge Trump Stop Foreign Distractions

At a moment that more and more conservative voices are calling on President Trump to drop the distraction of entangling foreign policy issues and instead work on setting domestic issues in order after a lengthy government shutdown, the Pentagon has announced yet more strikes on alleged drug boats off the coast of South America.

It's hard to keep track at this point, but the latest action takes the number of boats blown up near Venezuela to 19, resulting in over 70 suspected traffickers killed.

Via Reuters

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth announced two more strikes which happened Sunday. He wrote on X Monday, "Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, two lethal kinetic strikes were conducted on two vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations."

He added, "Both strikes were conducted in international waters and 3 male narco-terrorists were aboard each vessel. All 6 were killed. No US forces were harmed. Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people."

Still, Washington has yet to provide specific evidence that those targeted were involved in drug smuggling or posed any direct threat to the United States, and some critics have questioned why these boast aren't subject to conventional interdicts by agencies like the Coast Guard or DEA.

Instead, the boast are without warning just blown out of the water, typically via drone strike.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has meanwhile accused Donald Trump of trying to overthrow his government. One driving motive of US action might be the fact that the Venezuela sits on the world's largest proven crude reserves, but getting it out of the ground utilizing the socialist country's derelict and broken infrastructure is another problem.

Meanwhile, The Federalist's Sean Davis recently sounded off...

Trump needs to ditch the foreign policy crap and focus all his attention on the domestic economy, which is still not working for the majority of people. Right now he looks weak and rudderless. Be mad all you want, but it’s the truth.

Newly minted college grads can’t find work and are saddled with debt. Where is their path to the American dream right now? Who is giving them a vision of a future worth fighting for?

I don’t know who is advising congressional Republicans on strategy right now, but it is whoever it is has an IQ barely approaching room temperature.

Republicans right now have no accomplishments, no plans, and no vision. Why on earth would anyone be excited to go vote for them…

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) November 9, 2025

Davis continued, "You cannot have a viable country or future when half your country and all its young people are locked out of the economy and locked out of ever owning a home or much of anything beyond next month’s streaming subscription. Does anyone in Washington care about this? Anyone at all?"

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/10/2025 - 23:00

Trump Admin To Lend "Hundreds Of Billions" To Build Nuclear Power Plants

While the market is finally starting to grapple with the most unpleasant question of who will plug the funding gap needed to build out all the data centers required to make the AI dream a reality, a gap which Morgan Stanley recently calculated would be as large as $2.9 trillion in capex funding needs, of which at least $1 trillion will come in the form of debt (and mostly private debt)...

... there is another, just as critical question: who will fund the energy buildout that powers these data centers? 

Recall, last December Morgan Stanley calculated that the US would need at least 36GW in new power to be brought online by 2028 to energize all the (yet to be built) data centers, a number which one year later is surely far higher. 

And at a cost of $50-60BN per GW of power, we can quickly add several more trillion dollar that will be needed in the next several years: money, which as this Bloomberg article makes painfully clear, is simply not available right now.

So where will this missing funding come from? Why the US government of course. 

By now it should be clear to all but the most purple-haired libs that the US will need nuclear power plants - both conventional and modular - and lots of them, to have even a remote chance of ever catching up to the ever growing energy needs... and as we said recently, one can print money, but one can't print energy. 

The money is not the problem: AI is the new global arms race, and capex will eventually be funded by governments (US and China). If you want to know why gold/silver/bitcoin is soaring, it's the "debasement" to fund the AI arms race.

But you can't print energy https://t.co/qwdD8QbVON

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 14, 2025

But they sure can try.... and according to Secretary Chris Wright, nuclear power will receive most of the money from the Energy Department's Loan Programs Office (LPO) as the Trump administration pushes to quickly break ground on new reactors. According to Reuters, The LPO has hundreds of billions of dollars in financing aid, including loan guarantees for projects that struggle to get bank loans.

"We have significant lending authority at the loan program office," the Secretary of Energy said at a conference hosted by the American Nuclear Society in Washington D.C. "By far the biggest use of those dollars will be for nuclear power plants, to get those first plants built. The U.S. currently has no commercial nuclear reactors being built, though several intend to reverse their permanent shutdown status and open again, and there are other plans to build new large and small reactors."

During Trump's first term in the White House, the only use he made of the LPO was for financing reactors at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia. Expect a flood of debt deals in the coming weeks and months as the clock is ticking for the US to catch up to China, which currently has 29 reactors under construction to America's zero.

As we reported at the time, President Trump signed an executive order in May that called for the US to break ground on 10 large nuclear reactors by 2030, while Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Microsoft have been investing billions of dollars to restart old nuclear plants, upgrade existing ones, and deploy new reactor technology to meet the electricity demand from artificial intelligence data centers. Others are also joining the fray, but as Sam Altman made clear, everyone is expecting the US government to the be the "insurer of last resort." 

Wright said he expects electricity demand from AI to attract billions of dollars in equity capital to build new nuclear capacity from "very creditworthy providers." The Energy Department could match those private dollars by as much as four to one with low cost debt financing from the loan office, he said.

"When we leave office three years and three months from now, I want to see hopefully dozens of nuclear plants under construction," Wright said. Make that all hyperscaler CEOs too because without those dozens of nuclear plants, guess what: the AI bubble is going to burst in the most spectacular fashion. 

Cooling towers at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Middletown, Pennsylvania, Oct. 30, 2024

The Trump administration tipped its cards last month when it struck a deal with the owners of Westinghouse to invest $80 billion to build nuclear plants across the US. Westinghouse is owned by uranium miner Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management (both Canadian companies). 

Westinghouse has designed a modern reactor called the AP1000 that can power more than 750,000 homes. CEO Dan Sumner said in July that Westinghouse would meet Trump's call to build large new plants with the AP1000 design. But Westinghouse has struggled in the past to build the AP1000 on time and on budget. And as a stark indication of just how capital intensive building NPPs can be, Westinghouse went bankrupt in 2017 from cost overruns at big nuclear projects in Georgia and South Carolina.

Which, naturally, opens the door wide open to far cheaper projects from small modular reactor developers such as Oklo and Nano Nuclear.

Cameco Chief Operating Officer Grant Isaac said last week that the U.S. government has a number of options available to facilitate the financing of Westinghouse reactors, including the Energy Department's loan office.

"We're assured that there is a lot of interest in investing this minimum $80 billion in order to begin the process," Isaac told investors on Cameco's third-quarter earnings call.

Under the terms of the October deal, Westinghouse could spin out as a separate, publicly-traded company with the U.S. government as a shareholder.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/10/2025 - 22:46

Trump Admin To Lend "Hundreds Of Billions" To Build Nuclear Power Plants

While the market is finally starting to grapple with the most unpleasant question of who will plug the funding gap needed to build out all the data centers required to make the AI dream a reality, a gap which Morgan Stanley recently calculated would be as large as $2.9 trillion in capex funding needs, of which at least $1 trillion will come in the form of debt (and mostly private debt)...

... there is another, just as critical question: who will fund the energy buildout that powers these data centers? 

Recall, last December Morgan Stanley calculated that the US would need at least 36GW in new power to be brought online by 2028 to energize all the (yet to be built) data centers, a number which one year later is surely far higher. 

And at a cost of $50-60BN per GW of power, we can quickly add several more trillion dollar that will be needed in the next several years: money, which as this Bloomberg article makes painfully clear, is simply not available right now.

So where will this missing funding come from? Why the US government of course. 

By now it should be clear to all but the most purple-haired libs that the US will need nuclear power plants - both conventional and modular - and lots of them, to have even a remote chance of ever catching up to the ever growing energy needs... and as we said recently, one can print money, but one can't print energy. 

The money is not the problem: AI is the new global arms race, and capex will eventually be funded by governments (US and China). If you want to know why gold/silver/bitcoin is soaring, it's the "debasement" to fund the AI arms race.

But you can't print energy https://t.co/qwdD8QbVON

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 14, 2025

But they sure can try.... and according to Secretary Chris Wright, nuclear power will receive most of the money from the Energy Department's Loan Programs Office (LPO) as the Trump administration pushes to quickly break ground on new reactors. According to Reuters, The LPO has hundreds of billions of dollars in financing aid, including loan guarantees for projects that struggle to get bank loans.

"We have significant lending authority at the loan program office," the Secretary of Energy said at a conference hosted by the American Nuclear Society in Washington D.C. "By far the biggest use of those dollars will be for nuclear power plants, to get those first plants built. The U.S. currently has no commercial nuclear reactors being built, though several intend to reverse their permanent shutdown status and open again, and there are other plans to build new large and small reactors."

During Trump's first term in the White House, the only use he made of the LPO was for financing reactors at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia. Expect a flood of debt deals in the coming weeks and months as the clock is ticking for the US to catch up to China, which currently has 29 reactors under construction to America's zero.

As we reported at the time, President Trump signed an executive order in May that called for the US to break ground on 10 large nuclear reactors by 2030, while Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Microsoft have been investing billions of dollars to restart old nuclear plants, upgrade existing ones, and deploy new reactor technology to meet the electricity demand from artificial intelligence data centers. Others are also joining the fray, but as Sam Altman made clear, everyone is expecting the US government to the be the "insurer of last resort." 

Wright said he expects electricity demand from AI to attract billions of dollars in equity capital to build new nuclear capacity from "very creditworthy providers." The Energy Department could match those private dollars by as much as four to one with low cost debt financing from the loan office, he said.

"When we leave office three years and three months from now, I want to see hopefully dozens of nuclear plants under construction," Wright said. Make that all hyperscaler CEOs too because without those dozens of nuclear plants, guess what: the AI bubble is going to burst in the most spectacular fashion. 

Cooling towers at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Middletown, Pennsylvania, Oct. 30, 2024

The Trump administration tipped its cards last month when it struck a deal with the owners of Westinghouse to invest $80 billion to build nuclear plants across the US. Westinghouse is owned by uranium miner Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management (both Canadian companies). 

Westinghouse has designed a modern reactor called the AP1000 that can power more than 750,000 homes. CEO Dan Sumner said in July that Westinghouse would meet Trump's call to build large new plants with the AP1000 design. But Westinghouse has struggled in the past to build the AP1000 on time and on budget. And as a stark indication of just how capital intensive building NPPs can be, Westinghouse went bankrupt in 2017 from cost overruns at big nuclear projects in Georgia and South Carolina.

Which, naturally, opens the door wide open to far cheaper projects from small modular reactor developers such as Oklo and Nano Nuclear.

Cameco Chief Operating Officer Grant Isaac said last week that the U.S. government has a number of options available to facilitate the financing of Westinghouse reactors, including the Energy Department's loan office.

"We're assured that there is a lot of interest in investing this minimum $80 billion in order to begin the process," Isaac told investors on Cameco's third-quarter earnings call.

Under the terms of the October deal, Westinghouse could spin out as a separate, publicly-traded company with the U.S. government as a shareholder.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/10/2025 - 22:46

SNAP And The Growth Of The American Welfare State

Authored by Sylvia Xu and Lawrence Wilson via The Epoch Times,

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP, unexpectedly took center stage in debates over the federal government shutdown.

As funding for the program, formerly known as Food Stamps, ran out in October, Congress, President Donald Trump, and the federal courts have wrestled with what to do about feeding millions of Americans who depend on this benefit each month.

SNAP has grown in size and cost since its inception in 1964, as have many other social welfare programs.

Here’s a closer look at the program, what it costs, the participation rates in different states, and how it has come to top $100 billion per year.

Participation

Participation in SNAP has grown dramatically over the last 50 years.

About 2 percent of Americans received SNAP benefits in 1970, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Today, about 13 percent of Americans receive SNAP benefits—some 42 million people.

That’s a 650 percent increase in the number of Americans who are unable to provide adequate food for themselves.

Participation spiked by 69 percent between 2008 and 2013, reaching a high of more than 45 million monthly recipients, largely due to the nationwide recession, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Between 2007 and 2009, national unemployment averaged 9.3 percent, and nearly 15 percent of Americans lived in poverty.

Participation rates vary between New Mexico, the highest at 21.2 percent of the population, and Utah, the lowest at 4.8 percent.

The participation rate for many states mirrors their poverty rate. Some states have exceptionally high or low rates of SNAP participation compared to the rate of poverty.

Outliers on the high side are: Arkansas, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Wyoming.

On the low side, Georgia’s SNAP participation rate is 12.5 percent, while its poverty rate is 12.6 percent.

Spending

SNAP spending has undergone two surges, reaching annual costs of more than $100 billion in 2024.

Spending shot up 112 percent between 2008 and 2013, coinciding with the surge in enrollment. SNAP costs went up another 98 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic era, when personal benefit amounts increased by 77 percent, according to The Epoch Times’ analysis of Agriculture Department data.

That’s a 300 percent increase in 20 years compared to an overall 50 percent increase in enrollment.

States with higher populations generally receive a larger share of SNAP benefits. California tops the list, receiving more than $1 billion per month, followed by New York at $647 million, Texas at $614 million, and Florida at $535 million.

Alaska and Hawaii both receive nearly double the average SNAP benefit per person, at $364 and $361 per month, respectively. Beneficiaries in New York ($218), Massachusetts ($216), and Tennessee ($203) receive the highest monthly average among the contiguous states.

Incorrect Payments

As benefits have grown more generous, the error rate for payments increased, according to an October report from Alliance for Opportunity, a conservative public policy organisation.

The error rate—which measures how often states make mistakes in determining who gets SNAP benefits and how much they receive—hit 11 percent in 2022 and remained close to that level through 2024. That’s three times higher than the rate in 2013.

That spike in payment errors reversed 15 years of continuous improvement, according to Alliance for Opportunity.

SNAP incorrectly disbursed nearly $11 billion in 2024. This figure breaks down into $9 billion in overpayments and $2 billion in underpayments for a net overpayment of $7 billion.

Before the pandemic, annual SNAP erroneous payments never exceeded $4.2 billion.

The increase was due to increased flexibility granted to states in administering the program, according to Alliance for Opportunity. As states were allowed to let individuals self-attest income, simplify reporting, and take longer certification periods.

California led in the total amount of improper payments, with an estimated $1.4 billion–approximately one in every nine dollars was sent out incorrectly.

New York followed closely, tallying $1 billion in improper disbursements, with roughly one in every seven dollars being sent wrong.

Florida reported improper payments totaling $990.8 million, with an error rate of 15 percent.

Only payment errors greater than $56 per household were included in the error rate. However, all errors will be tallied in 2026 thanks to a provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Since the program’s establishment in 1964, the federal government has fully funded SNAP benefits. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, states with payment error rates above 6 percent will pay a cost share that covers 5 percent to 15 percent of benefits.

Most states will begin paying a state match if their error rates remain the same.

Fraud

SNAP has a significant amount of fraud, according to Robert Rector, senior researcher at The Heritage Foundation. “The [reported] error rates are false and ridiculously low,” he said.

In some cases, recipients don’t accurately report their income. There is an incentive to do so because the benefit is keyed to income level. Those who earn less receive higher amounts of aid.

Inaccurate counting of household members also contributes to fraudulent payments, according to Rector, who notes that the number of single mothers receiving SNAP benefits is about 35 percent higher than the number of single mothers in the country, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Work Requirements

“There are about 4 million people on food stamps that are called able-bodied adults without dependents,” Rector told The Epoch Times.

Congress changed the program’s work requirement rule in July. States are now implementing new guidelines to comply with the changes.

Able-bodied adults without dependents are required to work, volunteer, or take part in training at least 20 hours a week, or 80 hours per month, to maintain their SNAP benefits.

Older people are granted an exemption from this requirement, but the age limit for the exemption is increasing from 54 to 64.

Generally, people ages 18 through 64 must meet this requirement to receive SNAP benefits for more than three months in any 36-month period.

Work can be something done in exchange for money, goods, or services.

Growth of Social Programs

President Lyndon Johnson introduced his vision to build a Great Society for the American people in 1963.

Over the next several years, Congress passed landmark legislation to social welfare programs that are still in place, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Food Stamps.

Those programs have been expanded over the years, and others have been added, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Low Income Energy Assistance Program, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, federal housing assistance, student loans and grants, and many others.

Federal spending on all social welfare programs, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product, rose from 0.27 percent in 1962 to 3.8 percent in 2024. That’s an increase of more than 1,250 percent.

The federal poverty level fell by about 50 percent between 1962 and 2000, but remains about 11 percent today.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/10/2025 - 22:35

SNAP And The Growth Of The American Welfare State

Authored by Sylvia Xu and Lawrence Wilson via The Epoch Times,

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP, unexpectedly took center stage in debates over the federal government shutdown.

As funding for the program, formerly known as Food Stamps, ran out in October, Congress, President Donald Trump, and the federal courts have wrestled with what to do about feeding millions of Americans who depend on this benefit each month.

SNAP has grown in size and cost since its inception in 1964, as have many other social welfare programs.

Here’s a closer look at the program, what it costs, the participation rates in different states, and how it has come to top $100 billion per year.

Participation

Participation in SNAP has grown dramatically over the last 50 years.

About 2 percent of Americans received SNAP benefits in 1970, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Today, about 13 percent of Americans receive SNAP benefits—some 42 million people.

That’s a 650 percent increase in the number of Americans who are unable to provide adequate food for themselves.

Participation spiked by 69 percent between 2008 and 2013, reaching a high of more than 45 million monthly recipients, largely due to the nationwide recession, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Between 2007 and 2009, national unemployment averaged 9.3 percent, and nearly 15 percent of Americans lived in poverty.

Participation rates vary between New Mexico, the highest at 21.2 percent of the population, and Utah, the lowest at 4.8 percent.

The participation rate for many states mirrors their poverty rate. Some states have exceptionally high or low rates of SNAP participation compared to the rate of poverty.

Outliers on the high side are: Arkansas, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Wyoming.

On the low side, Georgia’s SNAP participation rate is 12.5 percent, while its poverty rate is 12.6 percent.

Spending

SNAP spending has undergone two surges, reaching annual costs of more than $100 billion in 2024.

Spending shot up 112 percent between 2008 and 2013, coinciding with the surge in enrollment. SNAP costs went up another 98 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic era, when personal benefit amounts increased by 77 percent, according to The Epoch Times’ analysis of Agriculture Department data.

That’s a 300 percent increase in 20 years compared to an overall 50 percent increase in enrollment.

States with higher populations generally receive a larger share of SNAP benefits. California tops the list, receiving more than $1 billion per month, followed by New York at $647 million, Texas at $614 million, and Florida at $535 million.

Alaska and Hawaii both receive nearly double the average SNAP benefit per person, at $364 and $361 per month, respectively. Beneficiaries in New York ($218), Massachusetts ($216), and Tennessee ($203) receive the highest monthly average among the contiguous states.

Incorrect Payments

As benefits have grown more generous, the error rate for payments increased, according to an October report from Alliance for Opportunity, a conservative public policy organisation.

The error rate—which measures how often states make mistakes in determining who gets SNAP benefits and how much they receive—hit 11 percent in 2022 and remained close to that level through 2024. That’s three times higher than the rate in 2013.

That spike in payment errors reversed 15 years of continuous improvement, according to Alliance for Opportunity.

SNAP incorrectly disbursed nearly $11 billion in 2024. This figure breaks down into $9 billion in overpayments and $2 billion in underpayments for a net overpayment of $7 billion.

Before the pandemic, annual SNAP erroneous payments never exceeded $4.2 billion.

The increase was due to increased flexibility granted to states in administering the program, according to Alliance for Opportunity. As states were allowed to let individuals self-attest income, simplify reporting, and take longer certification periods.

California led in the total amount of improper payments, with an estimated $1.4 billion–approximately one in every nine dollars was sent out incorrectly.

New York followed closely, tallying $1 billion in improper disbursements, with roughly one in every seven dollars being sent wrong.

Florida reported improper payments totaling $990.8 million, with an error rate of 15 percent.

Only payment errors greater than $56 per household were included in the error rate. However, all errors will be tallied in 2026 thanks to a provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Since the program’s establishment in 1964, the federal government has fully funded SNAP benefits. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, states with payment error rates above 6 percent will pay a cost share that covers 5 percent to 15 percent of benefits.

Most states will begin paying a state match if their error rates remain the same.

Fraud

SNAP has a significant amount of fraud, according to Robert Rector, senior researcher at The Heritage Foundation. “The [reported] error rates are false and ridiculously low,” he said.

In some cases, recipients don’t accurately report their income. There is an incentive to do so because the benefit is keyed to income level. Those who earn less receive higher amounts of aid.

Inaccurate counting of household members also contributes to fraudulent payments, according to Rector, who notes that the number of single mothers receiving SNAP benefits is about 35 percent higher than the number of single mothers in the country, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Work Requirements

“There are about 4 million people on food stamps that are called able-bodied adults without dependents,” Rector told The Epoch Times.

Congress changed the program’s work requirement rule in July. States are now implementing new guidelines to comply with the changes.

Able-bodied adults without dependents are required to work, volunteer, or take part in training at least 20 hours a week, or 80 hours per month, to maintain their SNAP benefits.

Older people are granted an exemption from this requirement, but the age limit for the exemption is increasing from 54 to 64.

Generally, people ages 18 through 64 must meet this requirement to receive SNAP benefits for more than three months in any 36-month period.

Work can be something done in exchange for money, goods, or services.

Growth of Social Programs

President Lyndon Johnson introduced his vision to build a Great Society for the American people in 1963.

Over the next several years, Congress passed landmark legislation to social welfare programs that are still in place, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Food Stamps.

Those programs have been expanded over the years, and others have been added, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Low Income Energy Assistance Program, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, federal housing assistance, student loans and grants, and many others.

Federal spending on all social welfare programs, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product, rose from 0.27 percent in 1962 to 3.8 percent in 2024. That’s an increase of more than 1,250 percent.

The federal poverty level fell by about 50 percent between 1962 and 2000, but remains about 11 percent today.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/10/2025 - 22:35

Wall Street Sees Hegseth's Pentagon Procurement Overhaul As "Wake-Up Call" For Prime Contractors

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's sweeping reforms to secure "drone domain dominance" by 2027 are accelerating, following a Reuters report last week that the U.S. Army plans to acquire at least one million drones in the coming years.

The initiative, driven by the Pentagon's DOGE modernization team, marks a major shift toward a new generation of lean, agile defense firms, breaking from the legacy industrial-military complex plagued by chronic cost overruns, schedule delays, and ballooning backlogs. Wall Street analysts are calling the pivot a watershed moment for the Pentagon's procurement system, signaling the most significant overhaul of U.S. defense acquisition strategy in decades.

According to a memo obtained by Bloomberg News, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is preparing to launch a new "economic defense unit" to issue updated contracting guidelines and a "playbook of modern commercial contract and agreement structures."

"These large defense primes need to change to focus on speed and volume, and invest their own capital to get there," Hegseth said in a recent speech, adding, "If they do not, those big ones will fade away."

Here's a roundup of the latest commentary from Wall Street analysts (courtesy of Bloomberg) offering their take on the Pentagon's sweeping procurement pivot:

Bernstein (Douglas S. Harned):

• Called the speech "the most aggressive yet" on defense-acquisition reform, warning that large, established primes may face challenges after years of tailoring their operations to legacy processes. Harned expects newer, commercially oriented defense firms to be near-term winners, given the department's bias toward off-the-shelf, agile solutions.

Melius Research (Scott Mikus):

• Said Hegseth's memo and remarks should serve as a wake-up call for both primes and suppliers. The planned drive to heighten competition threatens to erode the value of proprietary intellectual property that major contractors have long relied on for pricing power.

Truist Securities (Michael Ciarmoli):

• Observed that this time "feels different," citing urgency to field next-generation technology and avoid lagging adversaries. Legacy contractors are "in the crosshairs," while nimble entrants "sit in the catbird seat." The effort will dismantle rigid Pentagon bureaucracy and force the industry to overhaul its own business models.

TD Cowen (Roman Schweizer):

• Noted that Hegseth criticized big primes for cost overruns, schedule slips, and bloated backlogs, urging them to assume more risk and boost internal R&D and capital spending. He concluded that the remarks signal "significant and sweeping changes" to weapons development, procurement, and the broader defense-industrial landscape.

All the talk about modernizing the Pentagon’s procurement system is very encouraging, but it won’t mean much without a major reshoring or friendshoring of supply chains for critical semiconductors and rare earth minerals, the lifeblood of next-generation drones, fifth-generation attack aircraft, night vision, and the list goes on and on. Without securing these inputs, America’s odds of achieving true battlefield dominance in the 2030s remain up in the air. Time to put reshoring into hyperdrive. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/10/2025 - 22:10

Wall Street Sees Hegseth's Pentagon Procurement Overhaul As "Wake-Up Call" For Prime Contractors

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's sweeping reforms to secure "drone domain dominance" by 2027 are accelerating, following a Reuters report last week that the U.S. Army plans to acquire at least one million drones in the coming years.

The initiative, driven by the Pentagon's DOGE modernization team, marks a major shift toward a new generation of lean, agile defense firms, breaking from the legacy industrial-military complex plagued by chronic cost overruns, schedule delays, and ballooning backlogs. Wall Street analysts are calling the pivot a watershed moment for the Pentagon's procurement system, signaling the most significant overhaul of U.S. defense acquisition strategy in decades.

According to a memo obtained by Bloomberg News, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is preparing to launch a new "economic defense unit" to issue updated contracting guidelines and a "playbook of modern commercial contract and agreement structures."

"These large defense primes need to change to focus on speed and volume, and invest their own capital to get there," Hegseth said in a recent speech, adding, "If they do not, those big ones will fade away."

Here's a roundup of the latest commentary from Wall Street analysts (courtesy of Bloomberg) offering their take on the Pentagon's sweeping procurement pivot:

Bernstein (Douglas S. Harned):

• Called the speech "the most aggressive yet" on defense-acquisition reform, warning that large, established primes may face challenges after years of tailoring their operations to legacy processes. Harned expects newer, commercially oriented defense firms to be near-term winners, given the department's bias toward off-the-shelf, agile solutions.

Melius Research (Scott Mikus):

• Said Hegseth's memo and remarks should serve as a wake-up call for both primes and suppliers. The planned drive to heighten competition threatens to erode the value of proprietary intellectual property that major contractors have long relied on for pricing power.

Truist Securities (Michael Ciarmoli):

• Observed that this time "feels different," citing urgency to field next-generation technology and avoid lagging adversaries. Legacy contractors are "in the crosshairs," while nimble entrants "sit in the catbird seat." The effort will dismantle rigid Pentagon bureaucracy and force the industry to overhaul its own business models.

TD Cowen (Roman Schweizer):

• Noted that Hegseth criticized big primes for cost overruns, schedule slips, and bloated backlogs, urging them to assume more risk and boost internal R&D and capital spending. He concluded that the remarks signal "significant and sweeping changes" to weapons development, procurement, and the broader defense-industrial landscape.

All the talk about modernizing the Pentagon’s procurement system is very encouraging, but it won’t mean much without a major reshoring or friendshoring of supply chains for critical semiconductors and rare earth minerals, the lifeblood of next-generation drones, fifth-generation attack aircraft, night vision, and the list goes on and on. Without securing these inputs, America’s odds of achieving true battlefield dominance in the 2030s remain up in the air. Time to put reshoring into hyperdrive. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/10/2025 - 22:10

Lukoil Declares Force Majeure At Major Iraqi Oil Field Due To New US Sanctions

Via The Cradle

Russian energy corporation Lukoil has declared force majeure at Iraq's West Qurna-2 oil field as a result of US sanctions on the firm, four sources told Reuters on Monday. 

"Iraq has halted all cash and crude payments to Lukoil," the sources said. The Russian energy firm operated Iraq’s West Qurna-2 oil field, which produces 480,000 barrels per day (bpd). 

Image source: Reuters 

Lukoil holds a 75 percent stake in the field, one of the largest in the world. It also holds a 50 percent stake in Egypt’s West Esh El-Mallaha (WEEM) oil fields and a 10 percent stake in the UAE offshore Ghasha project, while maintaining a network across Europe and Central Asia.

The report comes as the energy firm has been suffering significant disruptions in its operations due to recent US sanctions. 

Romania and Bulgaria have been scrambling to protect Russian-owned oil refineries from shutdowns before the US sanctions take effect. 

Bulgaria has proposed a bill that would allow its government to appoint a manager of the Lukoil-owned Burgas refinery, granting them powers to take operational control of the facility, approve its sale, and potentially nationalize it.

The US Treasury Department announced the sanctions last month, targeting Lukoil and another major Russian oil company, Rosneft. The sanctions were imposed as part of a US bid to pressure Russia in Ukraine talks, which reached a stalemate earlier this year. 

This coincided with an announcement by Swiss commodity trader Gunvor that it has withdrawn a proposal to buy Lukoil’s foreign assets. The US Treasury had accused Gunvor of being a Russian “puppet,” and expressed Washington’s opposition to the deal. 

“We believe that all legitimate interests of a major international company, including a Russian one, like Lukoil, in terms of international trade and economic relations, must be respected,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in response to the move. 

Via Forbes

Lukoil was forced to sell many of its foreign assets after the US sanctions last month, which caused a surge in global oil prices. The sanctions froze all Rosneft and Lukoil assets in the US, while US companies and individuals will be barred from doing business with them.

Washington is also threatening secondary sanctions against foreign financial institutions that do business with the two Russian energy firms, including banks that facilitate sales of Russian oil in China, India, and Turkiye.

Tyler Durden Mon, 11/10/2025 - 21:45