Month: September 2024

Since the start of 2023, UK-based OnlyFans, a major hub for porn content-creators, has paid more than $630 million in dividends to its owner Leonid Radvinsky, the company announced. 

The firm also said the number of content creators and fan accounts has leapt by almost a third over 2022 levels, to 4.1 million and 305 million, respectively. Pretax profits grew from $525 million to $658 million in the year ending November 2023. The enterprise has a lean structure, with only 41 employees a director. Though best known for its voluminous sex content, the site does has some other types of content, such as wellness, sports and music. 

Radvinsky bought 75% of OnlyFans in 2018, from Guy and Tim Stokely, a father-son duo who launched the platform in 2016 with $12,500. His purchase price is unknown, but thought to be in the millions. In its original form under the Stokelys’ ownership, the platform was family-friendly, but Radvinsky quickly mutated it into a “hive of pornography,” as Indy100 called it. 

OnlyFans is just the tip of 41-year-old Radvinsky‘s sprawling porn empire, which dates back before his 2002 graduation from Northwestern University, where he studied economics. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Radvnisky ran a group of websites offering access to porn sites via “illegal” and “hacked” passwords, Forbes has reported.

Some of the promoted sites dangled a promise of links to underage performers. One of them, Password Universe, promoted a link to a site supposedly catering to pedophiles with 10,000 “illegal pre-teen passwords.” Another site, Working Passes, included in its smutty universe a supposed link to “the hottest underaged hardcore” that featured 16-year-olds. Still another linked to “the hottest bestiality site on the web,” according to Forbes. 

The magazine noted that “there’s no evidence that any of Radvinsky’s sites actually linked to child pornography or bestiality.” Apparently, the business model was all about being paid for clicks that led to other porn sites, and the taboo links on Radvinsky’s sites seemingly led to other sites promoting still more links. His next known steps into porn profit came via sites promoting links to celebrity sex tapes, and the launch of MyFreeCams, a major porn-webcam platform.   

News of Radvinsky’s enormous cash haul comes months after UK regulators announced they were investigating “whether OnlyFans has contravened its duties to implement appropriate measures…to protect under-18s from encountering restricted material such as pornography.” 

In February, Radvinsky and his wife Katie Chudnovsky reportedly pledged to contribute $11 million to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the highly-influential political group promoting the agenda of the State of Israel in the United States. 

Since October 7th, Leonid Radvinsky has contributed more than any other individual to the Israel lobby group AIPAC, according to internal donor records.

The UK-based wealthy owner of OnlyFans contributed over five times the amount to AIPAC compared to the second-largest donor. pic.twitter.com/uYqbQoMcbO

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) May 14, 2024

While The Lever identified him as a donor via an internal donor list the outlet had obtained, Radvinksy denied it, saying, “I didn’t donate or pledge $11M” and adding that his statement “appl[ies] to me / my foundation / my family.” When The Lever asked Radvinsky to explain documentation of a wire transfer from Chudnovsky to AIPAC, he stopped responding.  

Born in Odesa, Ukraine, the low-profile Radvinsky now reportedly lives somewhere in Florida and has a Forbes-estimated net worth of $3.8 billion. 

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Markets are manipulated, yes, but they’re still structures of tightly bound, self-organizing complexity which lend themselves to sudden non-linear collapses.

Just as thunderstorms scent the air before their arrival, market crashes often announce themselves in the autumn zephyrs. Markets don’t crash when everyone’s in full-blown panic? they crash when the headlines and data are reassuring, analysts are confident in ever-higher profits, and complacency reigns supreme, evidenced by record-high household allocation in stocks and bullish sentiment readings.

Markets crash after a brief bit of panic selling is immediately bought and markets are returned to a permanently high plateau of valuation as we saw in August, as the S&P 500 shot back up within a whisker or two of all-time highs. Punters buy every dip because this quick reaction to any drop has been richly rewarded for 15 years, and everyone has confidence in the Fed Put , ie the belief that the Fed will move Heaven and Earth to restore “market confidence” and the wealth effect .

In other words, market participants have embraced moral hazard : there is no real downside, there is only upside to buying every dip.

Markets crash when the rot beneath the surface is invisible or goes unnoticed. The few doom-and-gloomers who note extremes are immediately mocked off the stage, and the headlines tout the resilience of the economy, markets, employment, profits, and the techno-wonders heading our way.

After the crash nobody predicted, analysts swarm like ravenous locusts to the digital airwaves to lay claim to their prescience: look, look, I added a one-line disclaimer about “irrational exuberance” at the end of my report!

I’ll spare you the analog charts and go right to the chase: the Oasis Indicator , brought to our collective attention by Joe Sullivan-Bennett via BondVigilantes.com: The Peculiar Relationship Between Oasis & Periods Of Extreme Market Volatility (Zero Hedge). (Fun fact: Before Oasis Wonderwall , there was George Harrison’s 1968 soundtrack LP Wonderwall .)

Those turning up their nose at the Oasis Indicator might benefit from pondering these “jaws of death” charts. Everything is extreme and stays extreme until it doesn’t. Consider the gaping pearly teeth of the SPX (S&P 500) and JPY (Japanese yen).

Or the Mack the Knife of SPX and Fed reserves: You know when that shark bites with his teeth, Scarlet billows start to spread…

And last but not least, the 2-year Treasury yield and the Nasdaq Index:a loaded mousetrap if there ever was one.

There’s no convincing the complacent. You either sense what’s coming or you don’t. It’s like a sixth sense in a way, an intuitive awareness developed by absorbing huge losses in previous “unpredicted” crashes.

Markets are manipulated, yes, but they’re still structures of tightly bound, self-organizing complexity which lend themselves to sudden non-linear collapses.

But never mind, a little autumn shower never hurts anyone. And so nobody carries an umbrella on a day that starts out sunny and clouds over too quickly to respond.

*  *  *

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A late Sunday night apparent Israeli aerial attack on Syria has left at least 18 people dead and 36 injured, Syrian state SANA news agency reported Monday. 

This marks the highest death toll in Syria from an Israeli strike since the Gaza war began last October. Several explosions were witnessed shortly before midnight on Sunday impacting the Tartous and Hama governorates, particularly in the area of the Masyaf countryside. Israeli strikes in this coastal vicinity is somewhat rare.

The target appears to have been a secretive facility long eyed by the West as part of the Assad government’s chemical weapons program.

“About half an hour before midnight, multiple airstrikes targeted the Syrian Military Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) and several nearby buildings. I heard at least eight explosions, followed by the sound of ambulances,” a local resident who spoke to CNN described.

Some of the injured remain in critical condition, and the unusually high death toll suggests there may have been employees and staff inside the research center building when it was hit. 

Syrian Health Minister Hassan al-Ghabbash described the strikes as a “brutal and barbaric aggression” against a sovereign state.

In the aftermath of the strikes, large forest fires erupted along the nearby Wadi al-Uyun highway in Masyaf. Syrian media sources released the below photograph of fires raging in the area…

The Associated Press has cited a UK-based anti-Assad monitoring group to claim that Hezbollah operatives were among those killed in the attack:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, said 25 were killed, including at least five civilians, while the others included Syrian army soldiers and members of Hezbollah and other Iran-linked armed groups.

One strike targeted a scientific research center in Masyaf, and others struck sites where “Iranian militias and experts are stationed to develop weapons in Syria,” the observatory said. It said the research center was reportedly used for developing weapons, including short- and medium-range precision missiles and drones.

However, the reality is that these weapons program facilities have been targeted by Israel going back many years, in order to degrade the Syrian Army’s capabilities, also in the wake of Western allegations that Assad forces had deployed chemical weapons against ‘rebel’ strongholds.

However, Damascus has long rejected the accusations of Washington and its Western and Gulf allies, saying instead that West-backed jihadi insurgents have launched chemical weapons attacks and carried out mass atrocities.

At this moment, the region is still on edge bracing for a potential Iranian attack on Israel in response to recent major provocations. This fresh Israeli attack on Syria will certainly provoke Tehran and Damascus, and the escalation spiral might not be over.

Authored by Brenda Lebsack & Rebecca Friedrichs via RealClearPolitics,

The “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” according to Catholic Vote, is “a vile anti-Catholic organization.” Their motto is “Go and sin some more” and they use the cross for pole dances. The group satirizes Catholic beliefs for the sake of activism. They mock Easter Sunday with a Hunky Jesus/Foxy Mary contest. According to the Catholic League, they hold “Midnight Confessional Contests” awarding the “hottest confessions.”

So it makes sense that Dodgers fans came unglued when they heard their team would be rewarding the anti-Catholic, anti-Christian group. The Dodgers withdrew their award in response to customer outrage and disinvited the “Sisters,” but the California Teachers Association stepped in and strong-armed the Dodgers into standing with perverts against the will of their paying customers. CTA’s May 2023 New Business Item states, “CTA shall release a public statement condemning the Dodgers’ recent decision to rescind the Community Hero Award for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.”

As veteran California teachers who’ve served within the unions and personally witnessed the radical agenda CTA imposes upon teachers, we find it suspicious that while the Dodgers are taking so much rightful heat for their June 16 celebration of the offensive “Sisters,” the CTA is getting away scot-free. CTA’s offensive intrusion into America’s national pastime and its endorsement of drag queens mocking nuns is scandalous. That’s why discerning Americans have had enough and are rising up in protest against teacher unions.

As Father Sebastian Walshe of St. Michael’s Abbey in the Diocese of Orange expresses, “The statement of the CTA should alarm every Catholic parent who sends their children to California public schools. No school should be a place where children are sexualized or taught anti-Catholic prejudice.”

The CTA rationalizes its stance with: “The Dodgers decision is rooted in the same bigotry that’s led to the LGBTQIA+ books being banned, drag shows being criminalized, and life-saving medical care being taken away from minors.” But this is a deceptive statement. Americans are pushing back on pornographic books, drag queen events, and sex transition surgeries on children because these things are destructive to children and an affront to families and American values.

Catholics are not the only Americans offended by the CTA’s endorsement. Jews, Muslims, Protestants and teachers like us are outraged as well.

Rabbi Dov Fischer, a senior congregational rabbi and law professor in California comments in his EdSource article, “The state’s school system, established to provide a safe learning climate for all students regardless of their ethnicity, race, language or religious affiliation, is now [thanks to unions] a social laboratory where students and families from devout faiths feel ostracized.”

Dr. Ahmed Soboh, the Chairman of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella organization of 67 mosques throughout California, agreed with the rabbi: “Making fun of religious symbols or mocking religious figures should not be celebrated, especially by those who have the honorable job of educating our children.”

Most teachers would agree with the reasonable statements of Father Walshe, Rabbi Fischer, and Imam Soboh. However, the CTA does not represent the majority of teachers. CTA’s endorsement of the “Sisters” is offensive to most teachers, and it demonstrates the radical, out-of-touch views of CTA leadership.

Families of faith have good reason to be appalled since CTA – and its national arm NEA – misrepresent most teachers while controlling the trajectory of public education. Sahara Medrano, a dedicated veteran teacher and a minority representative of the California Teachers’ Union State Council, sees the red flags: “It’s becoming increasingly clear that a politically charged anti-Christian culture of religious intolerance is spreading throughout public school districts across our nation. If this trend continues, our public school system will break confidence with the religious community they are entrusted to serve. Students of faith are starting to boldly speak out saying they don’t feel safe in public schools.”

Teachers don’t feel safe either. And we have to ask, what does forcing the Dodgers into submission to a political agenda that harms children have to do with representing us as educators?

As public school teachers who’ve also served in Christian ministry for years, we commend Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and Protestants for collectively taking a stand for true religious tolerance, by standing against the religious intolerance of CTA. And we’re calling on teachers to join in protest too.

Let’s follow the lead of fed-up Americans who are using their enormous power of the purse to deliver a financial sting to the Dodgers and companies like Bud Light and Target who cave to pressure from special interest groups instead of serving their customers. Teachers can stop the power of the intolerant CTA by refusing to pay union dues, but we need your help educating teachers that they no longer have to pay unions as a condition of employment. If we help teachers empty the purses of union overlords, Americans can restore childhood innocence and freedom of speech and religion, and get back to enjoying baseball.

Brenda Lebsack is a veteran teacher, former school board member, and founder of Interfaith Statewide Coalition.

In the latest $250 million weapons package for Ukraine approved and released by the Biden administration, noticeably absent were the longer range missiles which Zelensky has long been pleading for.

The package did include the typical HIMARS ammunition, air defenses, artillery rounds, and even some Stinger missiles, among other items, and was pulled through the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which draws from American military stockpiles. It is part of the $61 billion for Ukraine (out of the total $95 billion foreign military aid bill) singed into law by President Biden last April.

On the same day the $250 million weapons package was released (Friday), Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin offered some rare pushed back against Kiev’s desperate requests to use US and Western weaponry to launch long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory.

Austin while at Ramstein airbase in Germany, where he met with officials representing states backing Ukraine, was asked if the US would allow long-range strikes on Russia. He responded by saying no one capability would be a game changer

“I don’t believe that one specific capability is going to be decisive,” he argued. “Our approach to integrating things and to making sure that they have the right skill sets to employ those capabilities and those capabilities are linked to specific objectives.”

“I think Ukraine has a pretty significant capability of its own to address targets that are well beyond the range of ATACMS or even Storm Shadow for that matter,” Austin continued, while also explaining that the Russian army has of late pulled back much of its military assets, leaving them out of range of the ATACMS systems, which can strike at a distance of about 190 miles.

“There are a lot of targets in Russia, a big country, obviously. And there’s a lot of capability that Ukraine has in terms of UAVs and other things to address those targets,” the US defense chief explained.

Still, at the Ramstein base meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Zelensky made the appeal: 

“We need to have this long-range capability, not only on the divided territory of Ukraine, but also on the Russian territory, so that Russia is motivated to seek peace,” the Ukrainian leader said.

“We need to make Russian cities and even Russian soldiers think about what they need: peace or Putin.“

But the reality is that despite the Kursk incursion which has precisely sought to make ordinary Russians ‘think twice’ – nothing strategically has changed in the battlefield along the front lines in Donetsk. Weekend headlines were filled with accounts of Russian forces’ ongoing rapid advance in the east.

We will present a detailed plan for victory in the war to Biden, Trump and Harris, – Zelensky.

“We are very much looking forward to the results of the conversation with US Defense Minister Austin”, he added. pic.twitter.com/YwDOZXQFL0

— The Russian Invasion of Ukraine (@wogoa1) September 8, 2024

It appears that for now, no matter how loudly Kiev lobbies Washington, the consensus is that hitting deeper inside Russia has little or no upside and is full of downside, specifically of drawing NATO and Russia into a direct shooting war.

With the Fed now supposedly only focused on the jobs part of its mandate, as inflation has supposedly been tamed (even if it hasn’t as we explained in “Powell Vows To Cut Rates With Stocks, Home Prices, Rents And Food At All Time Highs“), there is a growing risk that the Fed will be caught pants down launching an easing cycle just as inflation ramps up. An early warning of that eventuality came moments ago, when the NY Fed reported that in the month of August, while median inflation expectations at the one- and five-year horizons remained unchanged in August at 3.0% and 2.8%, respectively, the inflation expectations at the three-year horizon rebounded somewhat from the low July reading, increasing from 2.3% to 2.5%.

The survey also showed a growing amount of uncertainty in consumers’ inflation expectations. A measure of disagreement across respondents — the difference between the 25th and 75th percentile — increased at all time horizons, according to the report as those on the lower income scale are once again perceiving (correctly) that prices are rising.

Looking ahead five years, a quarter of consumers expect inflation to drop to zero or lower while another subset of respondents think inflation will double to 6% or higher. And at the one-year horizon, the 25th and 75th percentile spread has widened to the most in 15 months.

Also of note, the median home price growth expectations increased to 3.1% in August from 3.0% in July and the highest since May; expect this number to surge beyond its record highs in the low 6% if and when the Fed proceeds to slash rates over the coming years, sparking an even greater surge in home prices.

Elsewhere, median year-ahead expected price changes increased by 0.1 percentage point to 3.6% for gas, by 0.2 percentage point to 7.3% for rent, and 0.4 percentage point to 8.0% for medical care, but declined by 0.3 percentage point to 4.4% for food and 1.3 percentage points to 5.9% for the cost of a college education.

And while there was modest improvement in household income expectations, which rose by 0.1 percentage point to 3.1%, remaining within the narrow range of 3.0% to 3.1% the series has maintained for the past year, there was a very ominous increase in delinquency expectations which rose again, to the highest level since April 2020.

Perhaps tied to that, median household spending growth expectations increased by 0.1 percentage point to 5.0%. The series has moved within a narrow range of 4.9% to 5.2% since November 2023, remaining well above its February 2020 level of 3.1%.  The problem, as we noted previously, is that it is unclear what will suspend this level of spending at time when the savings rate is at the lowest on record, while credit card debt has never been higher. Hence: surging delinquencies.

Savings rate record low; Credit card debt record high pic.twitter.com/ggmRlCvGcW

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 30, 2024

Labor market expectations were mixed, but largely stable; here are the details:

• Median one-year-ahead expected earnings growth increased to 2.9% from 2.7%, just above its 12-month trailing average of 2.8%. The increase was most pronounced for respondents in households with less than $50,000 annual income.
• Mean unemployment expectations—or the mean probability that the U.S. unemployment rate will be higher one year from now—increased to 37.7% from 36.6% in July.
• Amusingly, the mean perceived probability of losing one’s job in the next 12 months decreased by 1.0 percentage point to 13.3%, falling below the 12-month trailing average of 13.7%. Boy are people about to be disappointed.
  • The mean probability of leaving one’s job voluntarily in the next 12 months also decreased, to 19.1% from 20.7%, falling slightly below the 12-month trailing average of 19.4%.
• The mean perceived probability of finding a job if one’s current job was lost decreased by 0.2 percentage point to 52.3%, remaining below the 12-month trailing average of 53.9% and well below its year-ago reading of 55.7%.

More in the full NY Fed report available to pro subs.

Authored by Jackson Richman, Joseph Lord, Stacy Robinson, Terri Wu, Arjun Singh, Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

WASHINGTON—Lawmakers are returning to Capitol Hill on Sept. 9 after a monthlong recess to work through an ambitious to-do list on a tight deadline.

Congress faces a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government by passing new spending bills or agreeing to an extension.

Lawmakers will also have other agenda items to address, including China, defense, and agriculture.

Hanging over all of this is the election, which will be 57 days away once lawmakers return and is likely to affect their actions and rhetoric.

Here are several things to watch for in September.

Spending

Congress’s top priority is to pass a bill by Sept. 30 that funds the government for fiscal year 2025, or it will shut down.

Congress is likely to miss the deadline and will need to resort to passing a “continuing resolution” (CR), which temporarily funds the government at levels set for the previous year without authorizing new spending.

The composition of the CR is what’s dividing Congress at present, leading to fears of a stalemate, and a shutdown. Republicans want to include in the CR a bill known as the SAVE Act, which Democrats oppose.

The SAVE Act would require voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship at the time of registration, which Republicans argue is necessary amid high levels of illegal immigration. Democrats argue the bill would disenfranchise American citizens for minor clerical errors during voter registration.

“Should Americans, and Americans alone, determine the outcome of American elections? Or should we allow foreigners and illegal aliens to decide who sits in the White House,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a debate on the bill, adding that Americans “refuse to hand over our country to illegal aliens, cartels, traffickers, and violent criminals and murderers. That’s what’s at stake.”

The House of Representatives passed the SAVE Act on July 10, with 216 Republicans and five Democrats voting in favor. Many Senate Democrats, who control the body, have not publicly opposed the SAVE Act, though they are unlikely to accept a CR that includes it.

“It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in Federal elections—it is a Federal crime punishable by prison and fines,” the Biden administration wrote in a statement opposing the bill. “The alleged justification for this bill is based on easily disproven falsehoods.”

Only five of the regular 12 appropriations bills—which allocate money to different parts of the federal government and set conditions for how it is spent—have passed the House. The Senate has advanced 11 of the bills to the floor, though none have been passed yet. Senate versions differ from the House’s, requiring further negotiations to reach compromise versions that can pass Congress.

Moreover, Republican lawmakers are seeking a long CR that would run into the next president’s term. Then, if former President Donald Trump wins the election and the GOP gains control of Congress, they would be able to enact more conservative funding bills. This is likely to be another area of disagreement with Democrats, who may seek a shorter CR that ends after the election.

Republicans and Democrats often disagree about funding priorities, and Congress has routinely been unable to pass all 12 bills in time. Fiscal Year 1997 was the last time Congress completed the budgeting and appropriations process before the Sept. 30 deadline.

The House plans to address a series of bills aimed at curbing the existential threat from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as part of Republican leadership’s “China Week” initiative.

More than 30 China-related bills under consideration cover a wide range of topics, including protecting U.S. farmland, trade secrets, critical infrastructure, and advanced technology.

“From economic and academic espionage to intellectual property theft, unfair trade practices, and U.S. land grabs, the threats posed by Communist China must be confronted with strength,” said Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) of the planned blitz of counter-CCP bills.

“This week’s legislation aims to bolster our national security, protect American economic interests, defend our sovereignty, and secure our future,” he said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

Tiffany’s legislation would counter a proposed pandemic treaty that critics say would give the World Health Organization (WHO) too much control over U.S. domestic affairs.

Tiffany’s bill would require a Senate vote before the United States adopts any proposed measures under the treaty, which he said “will protect our sovereignty and ensure that the safety of our citizens remains in the hands of the U.S., not a corrupt international organization.”

Several of these bills simply order studies into an issue, with some matters requiring more action—like restricting outbound investment to China and ending the de minimis privilege (which exempts shipments under $800 from tariffs) on Chinese goods—left out entirely.

With the Republicans’ four-seat majority, it’s unclear how these bills will fare in the House.

The House passed several China-focused bills earlier this year, most notably a bill forcing TikTok’s divestiture from its Chinese parent company or face a ban in the United States. That bill became law in April.

Other bills passed by the lower chamber include banning sales of crude oil from America’s strategic petroleum reserves to China, and prohibiting Chinese entities from taking contracts on building U.S. diplomatic posts.

The House passed a bill requiring sanctions on perpetrators of forced organ harvesting in China and supporting practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual group persecuted by the communist regime for more than two decades. Detained Falun Gong practitioners are likely the main body of victims of Beijing’s killing of prisoners of conscience for their organs, according to an independent expert panel. A companion bill was since introduced in the Senate.

Defense Funding

Congress is also expected to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual Pentagon blueprint.

Partisan riders attached to the wide-ranging bill, including measures addressing abortion and gender transitioning, could fuel debates slowing the bill’s passage. The divided House and Senate will also have to reconcile their different NDAA proposals before they can send a final bill to the president’s desk.

Read the rest here…

By Benjamin Picton, senior macro strategist at Rabobank

Cheney Reaction

Friday’s US payrolls report was supposed to settle the question of whether the Fed would be cutting by 25bps next week, or 50. On Thursday of last week the OIS futures had 33.8bps of cuts priced in for the September meeting. Today, it has 33.2bps of cuts priced in. Clearly the signal wasn’t as clear as many would have been hoping.

The reaction in market pricing might come as a surprise to many who took the time to read through the numbers. Employment growth in August of 142,000 exceeded the originally-reported 114,000 figure for July – which helped to precipitate a mini crash in markets – but was a long way shy of the 165,000 median estimate on the Bloomberg survey.

The two-month net payrolls revision also looked grim. If markets thought that 114,000 new jobs in July was a bad result when those figures were first released, the revised figure of just 89,000 jobs must surely be a worry. It’s worth keeping in mind that the June payrolls report was revised down from 206,000 to 118,000, and the May report was revised down from 272,000 to 216,000. Are you sensing a trend here?

The one bright spot in the report might have been the 1-tick decline in the unemployment rate from 4.3% to 4.2%. That was as-expected by surveyed economists, but while the headline unemployment rate was improving the U6 rate rose to 7.9%, the worst result since October of 2021.

The indecisive reaction in OIS futures might have been influenced by the Wall Street Journal’s Fed-whisperer Nick Timiraos’ assessment that the August employment number wasn’t weak enough to justify a supersized cut, but that the 2-month revisions left the door open for such an outcome. Clear as mud.

Nevertheless, bond and equity markets reacted sharply to the employment figures. The NASDAQ shed more than 2.5%, the S&P500 was down more than 1.7%, and the US 2-year yield fell 9.5bps to continue the recent run of bull flattening that has seen the 2s10s Treasury curve un-invert for the first time since 2022.

Not to be outdone, commodity markets have also experience substantial volatility in recent days as markets confront a weakening demand picture in the United States and China. Active Brent crude futures fell by almost $6/bbl over the course of last week to close at $71.06/bbl on Friday evening. That was despite OPEC+ producers reaching an agreement to delay planned production increases that were due to take place in October and November. SGX iron ore active futures have also traded below $90/mt this morning for the first time since August 2023 as demand from Chinese steel mills continues to soften. This hasn’t gone unnoticed in Australia, where the Treasury coffers are filled by taxing iron ore bound for China.

China and trade are likely to be a lively topic of discussion on Tuesday when Donald Trump and Kamala Harris face off in the second Presidential debate (the first between these candidates). Readers will recall that Trump has promised tariffs of 100% or more on Chinese goods should he be elected President, and over the weekend he extended that promise to include any country that seeks to exit the Dollar-based global trade system. “You leave the dollar and you’re not doing business with the United States because we are going to put a 100% tariff on your goods”.

In an election cycle that has already made for strange political bedfellows – a Kennedy and a former DNC Vice Chair are openly supporting Donald Trump – the strangeness was amplified by news over the weekend Bush VP Dick Cheney will be supporting Kamala Harris. Tucker Carlson was quick to point out that this shouldn’t really surprise anyone, because we are witnessing a political re-alignment where the old lines of demarcation between Democrats and Republicans are being swept away and replaced by a delineating question of “are you a globalist, or a nationalist?”

In some respects, this is a throwback to an older style of American politics. Trump’s deployment of tariffs to “Make America Great Again” bears a strong resemblance to Abe Lincoln’s exclamation “give us a protective tariff and we will have the greatest nation on earth”, and his admiration for William McKinley’s protectionism is well known. Harris, almost by default, assumes the role of torchbearer for a multilateral approach to foreign affairs, free(er) trade and US military adventurism of the type that Cheney is notorious for.

Consequently, Harris is likely to attempt to use Tuesday’s debate as an opportunity to pitch for unity, urging voters to end to the divisive politics of the last 8 years by drawing a line under Donald Trump as a political figure. This is a risky strategy, because voters who have been energised by Trump’s nationalism are unlikely to be enthused by a message that treats their concerns as a political aberration and hints at returning to a pre-Trump uniparty paradigm as sold by some of the most unpopular figures of recent political history.

Besides, the mere fact that the Biden administration largely continued Trump’s mercantilist trade policies (indeed, extended them) should tell us that we are not in free-trade Kansas anymore, Toto. That world is now dead, and international trade relationships are being reshaped in a way that is creating new frictions with the potential to introduce substantial basis effects between markets, eliminate cross-market correlations altogether, or even eliminate exchange entirely in some circumstances. Hedging risk in cross-border trade is becoming something of an extreme sport.

The challenge for Harris will be to sell herself as the candidate best equipped to deal with these new economic and geopolitical realities over an opponent who has become emblematic of this changed environment. It’s Trump’s world, but Kamala is going to have to convince voters that she has the better plan for living in it.

Investigative reporter James O’Keefe published unclassified information from the US Army North Division on X, revealing that the Venezuelan prison gang wreaking havoc across the northern Denver suburb of Aurora has become a nationwide crisis. Law-abiding Americans will soon feel the growing consequences of the Biden-Harris administration’s failed open southern border policies (recall what’s happening in Springfield, Ohio) of importing the third world into the first world. 

“O’Keefe Media Group has obtained Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) from the US Army of the North Division, highlighting the growing presence of one of Venezuela’s largest criminal organizations in the US. The document states that Tren de Aragua “has established a presence in Brooklyn, Bronx, and Williamsburg, NY, “with “approximately 400 TdA members” living in these cities. The CUI also warns that TdA members in Denver “have been given a ‘green light’ to fire on or attack law enforcement,” with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in New York receiving a similar report.

The document details how the criminal organization is using advanced technology and surveillance, heightening the danger to US military personnel and law enforcement. It states, “Coordinated efforts between local, state, federal law enforcement, and the military are crucial” to protect against these expanding threats.

With National Guardsmen recently seen in subway stations across New York City, the situation is escalating as Venezuelan gang members, linked to the TdA, have been involved in violent incidents, including an attack on a Colorado apartment complex in late August.

LEAKED: U.S. Army CUI Documents Reveal Expanding Threat of Venezuelan Criminal Organization ‘Tren de Aragua’ Across NYC and Denver@OKeefeMedia has obtained Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) from the U.S. Army of the North Division, highlighting the growing presence of… pic.twitter.com/nX4hLKpllS

— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) September 6, 2024

You can see the documents below: 

Since January 2021, the Biden-Harris-Mayorkas trio destroyed whatever border security the Trump administration built and facilitated the greatest migrant invasion this nation has ever seen, flooding cities and counties with millions of unvetted migrants, some of which have been confirmed as criminals and terrorists.

The breadth and depth of the continuing damage are only beginning to be realized as once-peaceful neighborhoods across the US, from New York City to Chicago to Denver to some West Coast cities, are plagued with migrant crime. Some municipalities are being overrun by illegal aliens as local resources are quickly dwindling. 

A particularly alarming issue has been that the Permian Basin, America’s top oil-producing region, is now under threat from migrant gangs. This indicates that the nation’s critical energy infrastructure is at risk.

It’s Spreading: America’s Top Oil Field Terrorized By Armed Venezuelan Gangs https://t.co/F5Dk2leCob

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 5, 2024

Avoid Democrat-controlled sanctuary cities. 

Armed Venezuelan Prison Gang In Denver Highlights Map Of US Sanctuary Zones To Avoid Amid Migrant Crisis https://t.co/EzR9xqGDTp

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 3, 2024

Liar. 

OPEN BORDER: The Border Czar failed because she was told illegals don’t commit crimes – she was very wrong. pic.twitter.com/zqHO6dHetL

— @amuse (@amuse) September 7, 2024

What Border Czar Harris has created is an epic disaster of armed third-world prison gangs from Denver to New York terrorizing law-abiding Americans – this is the change Democrats promised. All this to get votes?

Here’s what X users are saying…

The Kamala Harris administration just admitted Venezuela’s prison and gang population. Now Venezuela crime is dropping like a rock. We have imported MILLIONS of criminals that are killing Americans so Democrats can get their votes

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) September 6, 2024

Biden/Harris sent an airplane to go pick up these gang members from Venezuela and bring them to your communities.

Don’t forget that you are paying their living expenses and now their legal bills.

What is wrong with this picture?

— SMHonk (@SMHonk1983) September 6, 2024

Those who push for and allow for open border policies understand that these are the consequences, they just don’t care…

— Klay Thompson (@Thompsonklay) September 6, 2024

When criminal organizations start spreading like this, it’s a sign the border crisis isn’t just at the border anymore.

— Dorian (@dorian_omi) September 6, 2024

We’re sleepwalking into a disaster.

It begins…