Month: September 2024

By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

First Fridays & Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

Last weekend’s Fog of War T-Report listed “lack of liquidity” as our number one fear, and even Friday’s “positive” price action was highly suspect! We remain incredibly concerned about liquidity and market structure (leveraged ETFs, momentum strategies masquerading as passive, 0DTE, etc.).

Much of the rest of last weekend’s report focused on jobs and the economy – which to us crystallized on Friday as – 25 bps in September. We think markets will struggle with a “plodding” Fed and that seemed to play out. This isn’t about what “we” think the Fed “should” do, but what the Fed “will” do. Maybe they will surprise us and come out with a 50 bp cut, but given all their messaging, and the preponderance of data, that doesn’t seem likely (yet).

Backtracking a touch, we went out early in the week with (More) Things to Watch – which focused on Bitcoin and Single Stock Leveraged ETFs. Both of which are still topical this weekend.

First Fridays

I remain bearish on equities (based on my economic outlook, the Fed response function, and some valuations). I’m also convinced that investors became overly bullish and overly complacent believing that the “worst was behind us” based on the VIX Hit 65 – Not so Much report.

While I suspect that we won’t get a repeat of Sunday August 4th or the morning of Monday August 5th (our jobs aren’t that easy), it is interesting to note that the Nasdaq 100 closed at 18,421, which was lower than the close of 18,441 on August 2nd (both days occurring with 400 or so point drops).

I know no one talks about the yen carry trade (and we do think that its importance is overstated), but the yen closed Friday at 142.30, lower than the close of 144.2 on August 5th, and just above its intraday low of 141.7 at 1am ET on August 5th.
The price of Bitcoin, with $1 trillion of market capitalization, encourages spending (the “HODLERS” may or may not sell, but they spend “fiat” based on their wealth). Bitcoin also closed near its price on Friday August 2nd and is at its lowest level since February.

The first Friday in August (and the trading leading up to it) is eerily similar to what we’ve just lived through in the first week of September.

While I doubt that we will see a similar trading pattern over the weekend, or on Monday (Bitcoin has bounced from Friday’s lows at the time of publication, for example), I do think that we did not have this capitalization on August 5th. The belief that we did has only reset the market to being aggressively long risk in all the ways possible (including those most susceptible to pain – leverage, vol selling, etc.).

I fully expect us to break through the August 5th lows (intraday and closing) in the coming days, or maybe weeks, but I’m leaning towards days.

One thing that I think is extremely important to highlight is that most of the extreme moves in early August occurred prior to U.S. stock markets officially being open. While that may sound “trite” or “naïve,” it is an important distinction. My experience tells me that it is much easier to ignore volatility (and not get stopped out) when markets are closed! The worst was behind us on August 5th by the time the U.S. markets officially opened (including the bogus, in my opinion, print on VIX, which then became a “buy the dip” rallying cry). This was a very different situation from seeing markets sell off as everyone is tuning into financial media to figure out what is going on.

Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

I provide a link to Epsilon Theory’s take on Gell-Mann Amnesia. It appears to be something coined by Michael Crichton, and all descriptions basically state:

“You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well and read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. It may get it so wrong that it reverses cause and effect. Then, after reading that article, in total frustration, you move on to the next article. An article where you are not a subject matter expert and accept the article as accurate.”

It is natural, and I’m probably overstating the errors in areas where we are subject matter experts (we aren’t tasked with writing to a novice client base, or being extremely limited on word count, etc.), but the effect rings with some degree of truth.

My postulation is that generative AI has hit this point for a lot of users.

The initial appeal of “this is so awesome” is wearing off! Mistakes are found. Facts aren’t always correct or presented correctly. The time to check something produced by generative AI is real. Worse (and my biggest frustration) has been that you didn’t learn anything from using some form of generative AI, unlike the process of researching your own piece, where you stumble down rabbit holes, make wrong turns, even waste some time, but come away more informed with sources to check for future pieces.

Then there is the cost side of the equation. No matter how good generative AI might become, it is only at a certain level today. But, because of the massive demand for it, the cost increased rapidly! The cost of chips, storage, implementers, and energy, etc. all rose far more rapidly than the improvements in the technology were occurring. If the cost benefit worked a year ago, does it work today? Heck, I’m told there are now jobs for “prompt engineers” which seems both cool, and weird at the same time.

Whatever the future of AI is, are we paying too much “here and now” for what it can deliver?

That is a huge question for the markets!

Spend some time with Google Trends. While it isn’t universal, and is more of a dip than a drop, search for phrases like “Gen AI” has been dropping off. Have we moved past the “peak” of what this current cycle of development can deliver? As companies have plowed money into the space for a year or so, and are now evaluating the results, are they finding out that it was money well spent? Or are they deciding that money spent elsewhere might have seen a better return on investment?

I do not know the answers to these questions, but I suspect that many are also confused, which could lead to pullbacks. I am old enough to remember when anyone who announced a “China Strategy” saw their stock pop, which didn’t always work out well.

While I’ve been arguing that we should take out the August lows, all you have to do is look at the “First Friday” graph and see that there is a lot more downside left if we just get back to the April lows, or even to where we were at the start of the year.
Is positioning so aggressive that these levels are attainable?

My poor compliance department (and corporate coverage team) cringes every time I bring up NVDL because it has nothing to do with my views on NVDA, but everything to do with my views on froth and the insanity of approving single name stock ETFs (which don’t help investors, or the companies included in this relatively new breed of ETFs).

If you invested in NVDA on May 23rd, you are basically breakeven. The $100 is still $100 (or close enough).

But if you bought NVDL, your $100 is only worth $83. My math isn’t great, but a 0% return times any amount of leverage is still 0%. But the path dependent nature of daily leveraged ETFs (they need to buy shares on up days and sell shares on down days) means that “investors” in NVDL have lost 17% while true NVDA investors have broken even! Yet, this ETF, with all this drag, continues to get inflows and see its share count rise – which I cannot help but view as a sign of froth below the surface of the market as a whole and why positioning is still too aggressive and is fraught with danger.

Bottom Line

Too many Fed cuts are still priced in, but the data is declining fast enough that they may yet prove to be right, though for now I’d fight the number of cuts.

2s vs 10s closed the week positive (5.7 bps) and I think that 20 bps is the next major target. With 10s and 30s auctioning this week, expect weakness in Treasuries!

Credit spreads, my old friend. I still think the market is largely pricing in that the “soft” landing scenario is no longer the base case. The market is getting to our “bumpy landing” scenario but is a long way off from pricing in a recession (though commodities have caught my eye on that front). I think that spreads will drift wider from here. Well supported and far more stable than equities, but wider, nonetheless. If I was worried about recession risk and felt that private credit and banks weren’t still looking to put money to work, I’d worry more about high yield and leveraged loans, but I think that the selloff will be more of a general widening, appropriately distributed across ratings/products, and not a serious repricing of recession risk, which would cause high yield/leveraged loans to widen far faster.

Equities. I’m looking to take out the August lows, and while I think we could see outperformance in small caps, value, etc., the fact that indices are so heavily weighted to so few stocks and have become the weapon of choice for traders, means that it will be difficult to get positive performance out of those sectors and I think there will be better times to buy!

Now all I can think of is how many people experience the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect when reading T-Reports? Talk about a depressing way, at least from my perspective, to end this report!

Maybe we’ll get some smooth sailing, but I suspect more bumps and lower lows, because I really think there has been a major disconnect between people believing that we had capitulation (hence they are good to go), versus having seen any actual capitulation!

Authored by Justin Murray via The Mises Institute,

Since early 2022, the big buzz in the tech industry, and among laymen in the general public, has been “artificial intelligence.” While the concept isn’t new – AI has been the term used to describe how computers play games since at least the 1980s – it’s once again captured the public’s imagination.

Before getting into the meat of the article, a brief primer is necessary. When talking about AI, it’s important to understand what is meant. AI can be broken down into seven broad categories. Most of the seven are, at best, hypothetical and do not exist. The type of AI everyone is interested in falls under the category of Limited Memory AI. These are where large language models (LLMs) reside. Since this isn’t a paper on the details, think of LLMs as complex statistical guessing machines. You type in a sentence and it will output something based on the loaded training data that statistically lines up with what you requested.

Based on this technology, LLMs can produce (at least on the surface) impressive results. For example, ask ChatGPT 4.0 (the latest version at the time of writing) the following logic puzzle:

This is a party: {}

This is a jumping bean: B

The jumping bean wants to go to the party.

It will output, with some word flair, {B}. Impressive, right? It can do this same thing no matter what two characters you use in the party and whatever character you desire to go to the party. This has been used as a demonstration of the power of artificial intelligence.

However, do this:

This is a party: B

This is a jumping bean: {}

The jumping bean wants to go to the party.

When I asked this, I was expecting the system to, at minimum, give me a similar answer as above, however, what I got was two answers: B{} and {}B. This is not the correct answer since the logic puzzle is unsolvable, at least in terms of how computers operate. The correct answer, to a human, would be I{}3.

To understand what’s going on under the hood, here’s the next example:

Dis be ah pahtah: []

Messa wanna boogie woogie: M

Meesa be da boom chicka boom.

This silly Jar Jar Binks-phrased statement, if given to a human, makes no sense since the three statements aren’t related and there isn’t a logic puzzle present. Yet, GPT4 went through the motions and said that I’m now the party. This is because—for all its complexity—the system is still algorithmically driven. It sees the phrasing, looks in its database, sees what a ton of people previously typed with similar phrasing (because OpenAI prompted a ton of people to try), and pumps out the same format. It’s a similar result that a first year programming student could produce.

Major Limitations

The above silly example proves there are tremendous limitations in the AI industry space. It works great if you ask it something simple and predictable, while it falls apart when you ask for something only slightly more complex, like trying to get an image generator to give you the image you wanted out of a simple four-sentence paragraph. There is, as the industry admits, a lot of work to be done while advancements are being made.

The problem? The whole AI experiment is ludicrously expensive and the cost accelerates well beyond the advancements in utility. OpenAI—the current leader in LLMs—is on track to lose $5 billion this year, representing half of its total capital investment. The losses only expand with the more customers the company signs up and the better their model gets.

There is a surprising lack of viable applications for which this technology can be used. Attempts to implement this technology in substantive ways have backfired badly. Air Canada’s AI assisted customer service and gave away discounted airfare. The Canadian court stated the company is liable for anything an AI assistant provides to a customer. The legal profession is—piecemeal—being forbidden from using AI in court cases across the U.S. after a string of high-profile events of AI programs fabricating documents. Major demonstrations were later to be discovered as heavily faked. Google’s new AI summary at the top of the search page takes roughly 10 times more energy to produce than the search itself and has near zero end-user utility. Revenues in the AI space are almost exclusively concentrated in hardware, with little end-user money in sight. There’s also the shocking energy requirements needed to operate it all.

To make matters worse, further development will likely only get more expensive, not cheaper. The hardware industry is at the tail-end of its advancement potential. Processor designers ran out of the clock speed lever to pull nearly two decades ago while single thread performance peaked in 2015. Processor design has been mostly getting by on increasing logic core count via shrinking transistors. Though this particular lever is expected to be exhausted next year when the 2nm process comes online. What this means is that, starting as early as next year, AI can’t rely on hardware efficiency gains to close the cost gap since we’re already close to the maximum theoretical limit without radically redesigning how processors work. New customers require new capacity, so every time another business signs on, the costs go up, making it questionable if there will ever be a volume inflection point.

With these revelations, a prudent businessman would cut his losses in the AI space. The rapidly expanding costs, along with the questionable utility, of the technology makes it look like a major money-losing enterprise.

Yet AI investments have only expanded. What is going on?

Big Tech Easy Money

What we’re seeing is a significant repercussion of the long easy-money era, which, despite the formal Fed interest rate hikes, is still ongoing. The tech industry in particular has been a major beneficiary of the easy-money phenomenon. Easy money has been going on for so long that entire industries, tech in particular, are built and designed around it. This is how food delivery apps, which have never posted a profit and are on track to lose an eye-watering $20 billion just in 2024, keep going. The tech industry will pile in billions to invest in questionable business plans just because it has the veneer of software somewhere in the background.

I’m seeing a lot of the same patterns in the AI boom as I saw years ago with the WeWork fiasco. Both are attempting to address mundane solutions. Neither of them scale well to the customer base. Both, despite being formally capital-driven, are highly subject to variable costs of operation that can’t be easily unwound. Both apply an extra layer of expense to do little more than the exact same thing as done before.

Despite this, companies like Google and Microsoft are willing to pour tremendous amounts of resources into the project. The main reason is because, to them, the resources are relatively trivial. The major tech firms—flushed with decades of cheap money—have enough cash on hand to outright buy the entire global AI industry. A $5 billion loss is a drop in the bucket for a company like Microsoft. The fear of missing out is greater than the cost of a few dollars in the war chest.

However, easy money has its limits. Estimates put the 2025 investment at $200 billion which—even for juggernauts like Alphabet—isn’t chump change. Even this pales in comparison to some of the more ludicrous estimates like global AI revenues reaching $1.3 trillion by 2032. The easy money today doesn’t care about where that revenue is supposed to manifest from. The easy money will, however, give out when the realities hit and the revenues don’t show up. How much is the market willing to pay for what AI does? The recent wave of AI phones hasn’t exactly arrested the long-run decline in smartphones, for example.

At some point, investors will start asking why these major tech firms are blowing giant wads of cash on dead-end projects and not giving it back as dividends. Losses can’t be sustained indefinitely.

The big difference in the current easy-money wave is who feels the pain when the bust happens won’t be the usual suspects. Big players like Microsoft and Nvidia will still be around, but they’ll show lower profits as the AI hype dies down. They siphoned up the easy money, spent it on a prestige project, and will not face the repercussions of the failure. There likely won’t be a spectacular company collapse like we saw in the 2009 era, however, what we will see are substantial layoffs in the previously prestigious tech space, and the bust will litter the landscape with small startups. In fact, the layoffs have already started.

Of course, I could always be wrong on this. Maybe AI really is legitimate and there will be $1.3 trillion in consumer dollars chasing AI products and services in the next five years. Maybe AI will end up succeeding where 3D televisions, home delivery meal kits, and AR glasses have failed.

I am, however, not terribly optimistic. The tech industry is in the midst of an easy-money-fueled party. My proof? The last truly big piece of disruptive technology the world experienced—the iPhone—turned 17 not all that long ago. The tech industry has been chasing that next disruptive product ever since and has turned up nothing. Without the easy money, it wouldn’t have been able to keep it up for this long.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said via X on Saturday evening that the Starship mega rocket will begin flying Mars missions in two years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens. The mission will be uncrewed and aim to test the rocket’s ability to land intact on Mars, as Musk’s dreams of occupying the Red Planet could become a reality within the next two decades. 

“The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens,” Musk wrote on X. 

He explained, “These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years,” adding, “Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet.” 

The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens.

These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years.

Flight rate will… https://t.co/ZuiM00dpe9

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 7, 2024

Musk’s post quoted his post about making life multi-planetary while quoting billionaire Bill Ackman’s post about ‘Making America Healthy Again.’ 

SpaceX created the first fully reusable rocket stage and, much more importantly, made the reuse economically viable.

Making life multiplanetary is fundamentally a cost per ton to Mars problem.

It currently costs about a billion dollars per ton of useful payload to the surface… https://t.co/bVQJL8JeV5

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 7, 2024

Here’s the new Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ ad… 

Let’a make America healthy again!

Without our health and that of our children, we have nothing. And for those who care about our economy, national debt, and deficits, there is no more important initiative. https://t.co/fgBJNv87hv

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) September 7, 2024

How occupying Mars overlaps with the dire need to reverse America’s imploding health trends could be explained by attorney and activist Tom Renz:

“Perhaps NASA funding would be better used working on projects like this rather than wasting time on nonsense like DEI and climate change. A settlement on mars would be an incredible step forward for humanity… DEI is a step backwards towards the racism and sexism of the past.”

Perhaps NASA funding would be better used working on projects like this rather than wasting time on nonsense like DEI and climate change. A settlement on mars would be an incredible step forward for humanity… DEI is a step backwards towards the racism and sexism of the past…

— Tom Renz (@RenzTom) September 7, 2024

Kids now versus kids in the 1960s… We’re sure there has never been morbidity obese astronauts. Spacecrafts have weight limits after all. 

One of the emerging themes from the Trump-RFK Jr.-Musk team could be the unification of America around proper health and the pursuit of becoming a multi-planetary species. 

Fix America’s health first before Starship makes life multi-planetary. 

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

Ever since I started writing about fishy government economic statistics, I’ve been flooded with a fun series of letters from current and retired bean counters. They are thrilled that I’ve taken up the topic and have added various insights. The most compelling point I’ve seen—one that had not occurred to me—comes down to the innumeracy of the employees themselves. They lack the basic intuition to see where their figures just don’t make sense.

My correspondent blames technology. Back when mathematicians and students used slide rules, they had to keep their wits about them, deducing the larger numbers from smaller digits and have the capacity to manipulate decimal points in a way that keeps them consistent. A numbers sense was always there to test the results against core rationality.

That ended once the calculator came along. The calculator did the work so that the human brain no longer had to, and that broke the intuitive skill that was necessary in the past. Having lived through this transition, I know precisely what he means. One day, people understood the logic of numbers; the next day, the skill was no longer required.

Then came the computer and all bets were off. Now people merely operate the tools without thinking, and have no idea what to do if it spits out the wrong answers, if the operator even recognizes that this is taking place. My correspondent assumes that most data collectors in government do routine jobs now, just as those reporting the data to the government do routine jobs too.

They all operate within a system. The system itself might be widely considered to be broken but no one has the incentive to fix it. It just keeps going on as is because no one in particular is held responsible. That is why the GDP figures are not fixed to zero out government spending even though we long ago realized that government spending makes no net contribution to output. And it is the same with many features of the inflation index and the jobs data. Everyone knows about the undercounting and the overcounting but no one is in charge of fixing the problem. So it never gets fixed.

It’s hardly a new problem. This issue has vexed government data collection for a very long time.

A quick story about a pioneering economist: his name was G. Warren Nutter of the Universities of Chicago and Virginia.

He had a sense that the Soviet Union’s economic data was suspect. So he did a deep dive. At the time, in the 1950s and ’60s, most economists predicted that the Soviet GDP would soon outpace the United States. They concluded this based on existing data and growth rules, using a ruler to see where things would land in 5 to 10 years.

Nutter had grave doubts and offered revised figures that covered the entire period. He concluded that there was real and astounding growth from 1925 through the Second World War—human and natural resources were newly deployed—then the problems began. The economy never recovered, and cheating on data began to replace truth and honesty. The system began to generate fake numbers. He concluded that the United States was far ahead in economic growth and that the Soviets were headed in the wrong direction.

This was already in 1962. Most economists rejected his thinking but he was proven correct after the end of the Cold War. Instead of mighty industrial collapses, what we saw instead was a decrepit illusion with broken and rusted everything, a place where nothing worked, a land of deprivation, black markets, lies, and general economic ruin. The reality was even worse than anything Nutter could have imagined.

Keep in mind that Nutter was a huge outsider. The predictions that the Soviet Union would outperform the United States were in every mainstream textbook—I recall this from the one I first used!—and this was true all the way through 1988 or so, if you can believe it. For this reason, the whole of mainstream economics put down Nutter’s work, never taking it seriously and dismissing it as the work of a crank.

He has been proven correct on every point, but of course still not really given any credit.

I’ve been thinking of this often simply because I’ve wondered to what extent the United States today might be subject to some similar forces. Bureaucracies do this: they generate the answer that the politicians want. And the more complex the system, the fewer checks there are on the system that generates results for which no one in particular is responsible.

If it could happen there, why not here? So I pulled out Nutter’s old book and reread it. I was not disappointed. Here is a passage to share:

“Fault can be found with the economic statistics of every country. They represent, in the first place, a mere sampling of the unbounded volume of data that might be recorded. They have been collected with specific objectives in mind—more varied and far-reaching in some countries than in others—and will therefore be of varying use depending on the purposes they are made to serve. They contain, in the second place, errors introduced at different stages of observation and assemblage. These will depend on the state of statistical literacy among the collectors and suppliers of data, on the effort expended on record-keeping, and on the degree of active competition in gathering and analyzing data. They are, finally, subject to manipulation and distortion by parties with a stake in the figures, checked only to the extent that there are independent factseekers and fact-gatherers with competing interests. No government or other statistical agency can be relied upon to resist the temptation to stretch figures to its own account if it feels it can get away with it.”

That last sentence strikes me very hard. Obviously the Biden administration has had an extremely strong incentive to generate good-looking data. We’ve known for a long time that the results have contradicted all alternative sources. We can see grocery prices and we know for sure that they are up more than 20 percent over four years, and it is the same with housing and insurance and health-care insurance. In many cases, the private sector is generating results that are twice as high than is being reported.

We know for sure that the jobs data is not adding up. And so on it goes.

Who has the incentive to fix the data reporting? No one. Who has the incentive to tweak its collection, assembly, and distribution in ways that make it look better than it is? The party in power. We know for a fact that this went on for many decades in the Soviet Union. We know it happens in China now—if we can manage to get any data out of China at all. And we know it happens in every Latin American country plus North Korea and probably Russia right now.

Why not the United States? Of course it happens here and probably has been going on for a long time. I’m quite certain at this stage that a seriously realistic accounting of the last four years will show no recovery in real terms from March 2020 until now. But when will the revisions come? Very likely, the answer is never.

What is the old line? Data can be tortured until it confesses. I know from personal experience that this goes on in every science within academia every day, all in the interest of resume padding. Why would this not be going on at government agencies? Of course it goes on. With the great G. Warren Nutter as our guide, we do well to be deeply skeptical, no matter how official or how seemingly credible the source.

By Bernadette Giacomazzo of RetailWire

Macy’s has announced that it is closing a total of 55 stores by the end of 2024, in the faltering brand’s ongoing effort to revamp its business.

According to The Daily Mail, the company originally intended to close 50 underperforming stores by the end of the year, part of the 150 total locations it will close within three years. However, it now plans to close 55 before 2025.

The locations of the shuttering stores have not yet been announced, but speculation is abounding that the stores will include a location in Newington, New Hampshire, one in Traverse City, Michigan, and one in WestShore Plaza mall in Tampa, Florida. These stores are reportedly set to close after the winter holidays.

“The biggest things that have gone wrong at Macy’s are the quality of the stores and the product assortment,” GlobalData Retail analyst Neil Saunders said to the outlet.

“And so over the years customers have deserted it, sales have tumbled and store productivity has gone down. All the metrics have gone in the wrong direction.”

News of these closures comes shortly after Macy’s announced that it was diverting funds to its in-house brands in yet another effort to turn the proverbial ship around.

According to TheStreet, the shop has resurrected or introduced a number of other brands, including On 34th and State of Day, as part of its rehabilitation drive. It plans to launch a men’s collection before the end of the year, and a new kids’ brand will follow next.

But Macy’s significant rebrand goes beyond simply bringing back well-known brands. The mall mainstay is purportedly concentrating more on its well-known high-margin luxury products in an attempt to attract customers with a little more disposable income.

The company has said that it will focus its efforts on designer fragrances, which are more affordable than high-end handbags, for example, yet feature coveted brands like Chanel and Dior.

Some Macy’s stores already carry high-end fragrances from brands like Tom Ford, Creed, and Cartier. The company did, however, declare that it will have 42 outlets by the end of 2024 that would sell its high-end cosmetic products, with a focus on scent, as part of its aim to expand the availability of designer fragrances.

Additionally, Macy’s will soon offer store-in-store concepts that will mimic Target’s Ulta strategy and Kohl’s well-known and successful Sephora endeavor.

The city of Springfield, Ohio – population 60,000, has been overwhelmed by roughly 20,000 Haitian illegal migrants, who flocked to the city – exacerbating a ‘significant housing crisis’ according to city officials, and eating pets and wildlife according to locals.

During an Aug. 27 City Commission meeting, one local resident said that Haitians were “in the park grabbing ducks, cutting the heads off, and eating them.”

“Haitians are in the park grabbing ducks, cutting the heads off, and eating them”

Springfield resident to City Council: pic.twitter.com/aZLsOT8v2b

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 8, 2024

Another local resident posted to a Facebook group that their neighbor had a cat go missing – only to see it “hanging from a branch, like you’d do a deer for butchering, & they [the Haitians] were carving it up to eat.” 

Springfield is a small town in Ohio.

4 years ago, they had 60k residents.

Under Harris and Biden, 20,000 Haitian immigrants were shipped to the town.

Now ducks and pets are disappearing. pic.twitter.com/OOFq3ZdTiA

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 6, 2024

While the cat claim has been refuted by as racist fear-mongering, others have provided receipts showing that cats are indeed part of Haitian cuisine.

Another local told the city that she “can’t take it anymore,” as Haitian migrants are littering on her yard and harassing she and her husband.

Absolutely HEARTBREAKING moment Springfield, Ohio, resident tells mayor that she “can’t take it anymore” as Haitian migrants squat on her lawn, litter in her yard and harass her and elderly husband daily.

The mayor of Springfield does NOT want people to see this: pic.twitter.com/OJtAy7LSXX

— captive dreamer (@captivedreamer7) September 7, 2024

Resident Glenda Bailey told the city “They have become the occupiers. What they’ve done is they’ve replaced the population in Springfield.”

Tensions came to a boil last year after a illegal immigrant from Haiti caused a school bus crash last August, killing 11-year-old Aiden Clark after the child was thrown out of the emergency exit as the bus rolled off the road. Another 20 students were injured.

In July, city manager Bryan Heck wrote to leaders of the Senate Banking Committee asking for more federal funding.

“Springfield has seen a surge in population through immigration that has significantly impacted our ability as a community to produce enough housing opportunities for all,” he wrote.

Authored by Ciaran Lyons via CoinTelegraph.com,

The United States regulator has urgently filed an emergency motion to block Kalshi, a US prediction market, from offering election betting contracts. The submission comes just hours after the judge’s decision to overturn a previous order halting Kalshi’s election markets.

According to a Sept. 6 court filing, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) requested an “emergency stay” of the court’s decision that overturned its order to prohibit Kalshi from listing its election contracts for trading.

CFTC unable to make informed decision without court’s reasoning

The regulator requested that the court “stay the vacatur” for 14 days following the issuance of its detailed opinion explaining why it overruled the order.

The CFTC argued that without the “benefit of the Court’s reasoning,” it is unable to make an informed decision “whether to appeal, nor is it able to fully brief a motion for stay pending any forthcoming appeal.”

“Time is of the essence in the issuance of a stay. The CFTC expects that Plaintiff Kalshi will immediately list the relevant election contracts and that trading will begin as soon as the contracts list,” the CFTC explained.

It supported its reasoning by pointing out that Kalshi has already announced on its homepage, “Election Markets are Coming to Kalshi!”

Kalshi published an announcement on its website shortly after the judge’s ruling. Source: Kalshi

The filing comes on the same day as Judge Jia Cobb of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruling in favor of Kalshi offering products that allow people to bet on who will win the US election on Nov. 4.

Lawyers say ruling was a ‘huge win’ for Kalshi

Variant Fund chief legal officer Jake Chervinsky stated in a Sept. 7 X post that Kalshi had a “HUGE win,” but similarly, he would like to see the judicial opinion first.

“I want to see the opinion before I start dancing on the grave of the administrative state, but this is even more evidence that the best way to deal with regulatory overreach is to FILE MORE LAWSUITS,” Chervinsky added.

The CFTC initially submitted the order in September 2023 arguing that “the CFTC determined the contracts involve gaming and activity that is unlawful under state law and are contrary to the public interest.”

Among the most frequented land border crossings to get into Israel and the Palestinian territories used by tourists, backpackers, and religious pilgrims alike is the Allenby Bridge Crossing between Jordan and the West Bank.

The crossing sees foot and vehicle traffic of thousands of entrances and exits each day, and has long been among the safer and more stable border areas, especially when compared to Israel’s southern border with Gaza. But that all changed on Sunday with a blaze of gunfire by a Jordanian national after approaching the Israeli side of the crossing.

A Jordanian truck driver reportedly arrived at Allenby Bridge Crossing, or what’s officially known in Jordan as the King Hussein Bridge (and is the sole crossing with Jordan), emerged from his truck and opened fire on Israeli crossing workers.

Three Israeli border officials were struck and killed, and the victims have been identified as Yohanan Shchori from the West Bank Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Efraim, Yuri Birnbaum, 65, from Na’ama, and Adrian Marcelo Podzamczer, from Ariel.

Israeli media details of the attack:

According to the military and Israel Airports Authority officials — the latter of which manages the land crossing — the gunman got out of the truck he was driving during an inspection at the terminal and opened fire at several of the crossing’s workers, killing three.

IAA security guards returned fire at the terrorist, killing him.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) condemned the incident as a terror attack while Hamas issued a statement hailing the gunman as “one of Jordan’s brave men.”

Security serves later identified him as 39-year old Jordanian citizen Maher Dhiab Hussein al-Jazi, from the Petra area. At least one handgun was recovered from the scene.

Hamas claimed that it was revenge for provocations happening by Jewish settler groups at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Hamas statement said it was a “natural response to the holocaust carried out by the Nazi Zionist enemy against our people in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and its plans for the Judaization of the Al Aqsa mosque.”

Purported footage from the attack:

תיעוד | פיגוע הירי במעבר אלנבי@bokeralmog

צילום: סעיף 27 א’ לחוק זכויות יוצרים pic.twitter.com/9KW4WUsXZx

— החדשות – N12 (@N12News) September 8, 2024

“This heroic attack and similar ones are the only response that the American administration understands,” the statement added,” calling the US an “accomplice” to Israel.

The Allenby Bridge Crossing has been temporarily closed as a result. Currently the IDF is still engaged in operations in the West Bank. The past week-and-a-half has witnessed the biggest IDF incursion in the West Bank in years, which has sent tensions with Palestinians there soaring. There are fears that a crisis similar to what’s happening in the Gaza Strip could be unleashed if fighting grows.

Authored by Steve Watsom via Modernity.news,

The Harris campaign declared Thursday that they don’t have time to think about why the economy is the way it is right now with high inflation and poor job numbers.

Harris-Walz spokesman Ian Sams stated:

“We’ve got 60 days until the election. You know, we don’t have time to sit around and think about why, over the last few years, certain things may have happened or may not have happened.”

Harris-Walz Spokesman: We Don’t Have Time To Think About Why Certain Things Happened Over The Last Few Years pic.twitter.com/m9IpZrDYP1

— RCP Video (@rcpvideo) September 5, 2024

Oof, “certain things.”

The backlash was swift.

“Causation? Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

— John Tammes (@john_tammes) September 5, 2024

There’s no time for actual substance and trying to correct the roll call of failures.

“We have no time to discuss policies and programs. We have to elect Harris to find out what she is going to do.”

— Exposer of Donkey Fazoo (@Ionoclast50) September 5, 2024

There’s actually plenty of time.

I have time.

— FreeRaccoon (@QRatioed) September 5, 2024

He wants to be unburdened by time.

— Flying Gman (@flygriz) September 5, 2024

The real reason they don’t want to think about it is that it’s been a complete shit show for four years while Harris was in office.

Because there’s nothing positive to say about the last few years.

— Don (@Ellington7Don) September 5, 2024

pic.twitter.com/q3yw1lguhC

— Deanie Carlstrom (@DeanBean1991) September 5, 2024

Did this guy lose a bet?

— Tim Kelley (@timkelley1521) September 5, 2024

@IanSams – “Kamala Harris has the experience to be president, but please don’t look at any of her experience…”

— DespeRobbo (@Desperobbo) September 5, 2024

Price gouging? Where?

— ADAMX (@GO_DAWGS_BOI) September 5, 2024

“We got to go win an election”

That’s it. Power over people is all these scandalous scums want.

— lemonice66 (@LefticlesLigma) September 5, 2024

It doesn’t get much worse than this.

This is an unbelievably bad answer.

Harris campaign: We don’t want to talk about what she’s been doing in the Biden-Harris administration for 3.5 years.

This is precisely her problem.

She can’t be who she really is.

She is a San Francisco liberal pretending not to be one. https://t.co/ONqPT4j11L

— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) September 5, 2024

* * *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

The US Department of Justice announced on Friday that a Pakistani citizen living in Canada has been arrested and charged with plotting a terror attack at a Jewish center in New York City, allegedly in support of ISIS.

Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, 20, also known as Shahzeb Jadoon, was arrested Wednesday about 12 miles from the US northern border near Ormstown, Quebec. 

“The defendant is alleged to have planned a terrorist attack in New York City around October 7th of this year with the stated goal of slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible,” US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland wrote in a statement. 

FBI Director Christopher Wray explained, “The defendant was allegedly determined to kill Jewish people here in the United States, nearly one year after Hamas’ horrific attack on Israel. This investigation was led by the FBI, and I am proud of the terrific work by the FBI team and our partners to disrupt Khan’s plan.” 

The DoJ said Khan attempted to travel to New York City and carry out the terror attack with assault rifles in support of ISIS at a Jewish center in Brooklyn, New York. 

“Khan began posting on social media and communicating with others on an encrypted messaging application about his support for ISIS in or about November 2023, when, among other things, Khan distributed ISIS propaganda videos and literature. Subsequently, Khan began communicating with two undercover law enforcement officers (collectively, the UCs),” the DoJ noted.

Federal officials said Khan told undercover officers about his terror plans, indicating he had been actively attempting to create “a real offline cell” of ISIS supporters to carry out a “coordinated assault” with assault rifles at Jewish Chabads in Brooklyn.  

The complaint alleges Khan emphasized that “Oct 7th and Oct 11th are the best days for targeting the Jews” because “Oct 7 they will surely have some protests and Oct 11 is Yom. Kippur.”

Khan was arrested 12 miles from the US-Canada border, where he paid a smuggler to help him traverse Biden-Harris’ open northern border. Recent data from the US Customs and Border Protection on the northern border sector shows 15,000 apprehensions in the ten months of fiscal year 2024, the largest volume ever recorded by the sector. 

During one communication, the DoJ noted that Khan emphasized, “If we succeed with our plan, this would be the largest Attack on US soil since 9/11.”

While the DOJ and federal government applaud themselves over this announcement, the radical leftists in the Biden administration have already collapsed the nation’s borders—both northern and southern. Open border policies under Border Czar Harris ushered in the largest illegal alien invasion, north of ten million, in US history. 

The reality is that the consequences of open borders are already materializing… 

• Venezuelan prison gangs running amok across Denver and other sanctuary cities managed by far-left Democrats.
• Migrant gangs are attacking critical energy infrastructure in West Texas.
• Municipalities such as New York City are overloaded by migrants and drained of resources. 

Thank you, Biden-Harris… 

• DHS Admits Border Has Been Open To Criminals And Terrorists

• House Intelligence Chair: US Facing ‘Highest Level’ Of Potential Terrorist Threat Thanks To Open Border

• 17 Individuals On FBI Terror Watch List Caught Attempting Entry At Southern Border

• Three Palestinian Terror Suspects Detained At Southern Border As Agents Lament Lack Of Resources

• US Special Ops Group Warns Of Domestic Terror Threat Due To Biden’s “Unsecured Southern Border”

• Report Finds Biden-Harris Released 99 Illegal Aliens On FBI Terror Watchlist Into American Communities

Let’s not forget that at least one Iranian assassin is roaming US soil, hunting for senior Trump Administration officials. 

The current threat climate of illegal aliens, migrant prison gangs, and terrorists running amok on American soil never had to be this way as the nation sleepwalks into a disaster thanks to Biden-Harris and radical Democrats who pushed open border policies that appear to be nation-killing.