Month: August 2024

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are in a tightly matched race, with political donations now leaning in the Democratic party’s favor.

Since President Joe Biden withdrew his nomination in July, a flood of donations have poured in to support Harris’s bid for the White House. The vice president erased Trump’s fundraising advantage in under a month, with 66% of contributions coming from first-time donors.

But what can we learn about political donations when looking at it from a corporate angle?

This graphic shows the top companies by employee election contributions in 2024, based on data from Quiver Quantitative.

The 10 Highest Corporate Employee Contributions

Here are the companies with the most political donations among employees so far this year:

As of August 8, 2024.

Employees at News Corp, the parent company to Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, have contributed overwhelmingly to the Democratic party, despite it being a conservative-leaning conglomerate.

Altogether, political donations stand at over $8.3 million, the highest in corporate America. The corporate entity itself has split donations evenly between both parties in recent years, allowing employees to contribute to political associations as they choose.

Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of private equity giant, Blackstone, is one of Donald Trump’s largest corporate backers. Like their CEO, Blackstone employees are throwing their weight behind the former president, likely due to Trump’s pro-business policies and proposed tax cuts.

Meanwhile, employees at big tech companies and other large financial firms are donating substantially to 2024 election campaigns. Netflix, Alphabet, and Microsoft employees heavily lean Democratic, while employees at Charles Schwab and First Bank favor Trump. Over the summer, former chief executive of Alphabet, Eric Schmidt, made a six-figure contribution to the Democrat campaign.

As we can see, software giant Palantir is the most evenly divided, with employees slightly favoring the Republican party. Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale is a major supporter of Donald Trump, contributing to Elon Musk’s America PAC, alongside the Winklevoss twins and other tech titans.

To learn more about this topic from a corporate perspective, check out this graphic on the companies with the most PAC donations in 2024.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Massachusetts Supreme Court on Aug. 27 struck down the state’s ban on carrying switchblade knives, finding the prohibition violates the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.

The case was brought by David Canjura, who was arrested in 2020 after a domestic dispute and charged with carrying a dangerous weapon in violation of the switchblade ban following a search by officers.

Canjura said he knew that carrying the knife violated the law but filed a motion to dismiss the charge, arguing that the ban violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms. A judge denied the motion, leading to an appeal that reached the state’s high court.

Massachusetts officials did not identify any historical bans on switchblades or their historical analogue, pocketknives, justices said on Tuesday. That means the ban is not allowed under a test outlined in a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.

“The commonwealth does not identify any laws regulating bladed weapons akin to folding pocketknives generally, or switchblades particularly, in place at the time of the founding or ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice Serge Georges wrote for the unanimous court. “Accordingly, the commonwealth has not met its burden of demonstrating a historical tradition justifying the regulation of switchblade knives.”

The Second Amendment states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has also found that the right to bear arms includes items such as stun guns. In one decision, District of Columbia v. Heller, justices said that “arms” refers to “weapons of offense, or armor of defense” and “any thing that a man wears for his defense, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another.”

The Massachusetts Supreme Court said that the Second Amendment covers knives, citing the historical use of knives for defense throughout U.S. history.

“In short, folding pocketknives not only fit within contemporaneous dictionary definitions of arms—which would encompass a broader category of knives that today includes switchblades—but they also were commonly possessed by lawabiding citizens for lawful purposes around the time of the founding,” Georges said. “Setting aside any question whether switchblades are in common use today for lawful purposes, we conclude switchblades are ‘arms’ for Second Amendment purposes. Therefore, the carrying of switchblades is presumptively protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment.”

Under the U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, government officials must, when facing a challenge to a regulation implicating the Second Amendment, provide proof the regulation is consistent with the nation’s history of restrictions.

Massachusetts officials pointed to three cases from the 1800s that found restrictions on certain types of knives lawful, including a ruling in Tennessee that upheld a prohibition on bowie knives. However, none of those cases involved pocketknives, which the justices said are the closest historical analog to switchblades.

The Bruen test does contain exceptions for weapons that are not in common use in the modern day or are dangerous and unusual. Switchblades are both, according to Massachusetts lawyers.

Justices said that based on the fact only seven states ban switchblades, they inferred switchblades are in common use today. There’s also nothing “uniquely dangerous” about the knives, Georges said.

“The commonwealth has not presented any evidence as to why a spring-operated mechanism that allows users to open switchblades with one hand makes switchblades uniquely dangerous when compared to a broader category of manual folding pocketknives,” he wrote.

Prosecutors and a lawyer representing Canjura did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and US Representative John Moolenaar (R-MI) penned a letter to US Department of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to “immediately place” Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL) on Section 1260H List (blacklist) of the National Defense Authorization Act. 

The GOP lawmakers wrote in a press release that the Chinese battery manufacturer and technology company has “deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party and its armed wing, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). ” 

“Reliance on, and use of, CATL batteries threatens US national security as it makes our nation dependent on Communist China for energy infrastructure,” they said, adding the DoD understands “the threat CATL poses to our nation” yet DoD has done nothing to place CATL on the “1260H list, which exposes Chinese entities operating in the US.” 

A statement from Rubio: 

“US policymakers have a duty to stand in resolute opposition to any effort by America’s adversaries that threaten our national and economic security. By including CATL on the Section 1260H List, the DoD would not only safeguard America’s military infrastructure from exposure to the PLA, it would also send a powerful signal to US companies who are currently weighing partnerships with CATL.”

CATL battery company has deep ties to Communist China. Our country shouldn’t install these batteries anywhere in our nation because of the national security threat it poses.

With @RepMoolenaar, urged @DeptofDefense to blacklist CATL.https://t.co/FE1XuHmFQu

— Senator Marco Rubio (@SenMarcoRubio) August 28, 2024

A Bloomberg supply chain analysis reveals that CATL’s top customers include Tesla, Stellantis, Geely, Nio, Volkswagen, Nissan, Honda, and Volvo.

Digging deeper into CATL’s complex global supply chain, risk management technology firm Sayari Labs shows the Chinese company’s top buyers over the last 12 months. 

One major red flag is that Tesla received 376 shipments from the Chinese firm over the past 12 months, accounting for approximately 8.63% of all shipments.

About half of CATL’s shipments over the last 12 months have ended up in the US, and about 27.5% have ended up in Germany. 

As of July 29, CATL’s US shipments included lithium-ion batteries to several buyers, including Geodis and Mercedes, Benz Vans. 

As of the latest trade data, CATL’s shipments primarily include storage batteries (54.7%) and primary cells and batteries (41.47%). 

Let’s take a step back because data from Sayari shows that CATL’s supply chain has several risk factors, including forced labor concerns. 

The lingering question is whether Rubio’s push to blacklist CATL over its “deep ties to Communist China” will gain traction with the DoD. What will that mean for Tesla’s battery supply chain and its reliance on CATL if DoD blacklists CATL? It should be known that Tesla works with other battery makers, including Panasonic. 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.” Those words from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg came this week with an admission in a letter that his company, Facebook, did yield to pressure from the Biden-Harris administration to censor American citizens on a wide array of subjects.

For those of us who have criticized Facebook for years for its role in the massive censorship system, Zuckerberg’s belated contrition was more insulting than inspiring. It had all of the genuine regret of a stalker found hiding under the bed of a victim.

Zuckerberg’s sudden regret only came after his company fought for years to conceal the evidence of its work with the government to censor opposing views. Zuckerberg was finally compelled to release the documents by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and the House Judiciary Committee.

Now forced to admit what many of us have long alleged, Zuckerberg is really, really sorry.

In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss Facebook’s record at length as a critical player in the anti-free speech alliance of government, corporate, academic, and media forces.

In prior testimony before the House Judiciary Committee and other congressional committees, I noted that Zuckerberg continued to refuse to release this information after Elon Musk exposed this system in his release of the “Twitter Files.”

Zuckerberg stayed silent as Musk was viciously attacked by anti-free speech figures in Congress and the media. He was fully aware of his own company’s similar conduct but stayed silent.

When the White House and President Joe Biden repeatedly claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, Facebook continued to withhold evidence that they too were pressured to suppress the story before the election.

When the censorship system was recently put before the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri and the justices asked about evidence of coordination and pressure from the government. In Murthy, states successfully showed lower courts that there was coercion from the government in securing an injunction. The Biden administration denied such pressure and the Court rejected the standing of plaintiffs, blocked an order to stop the censorship, and sent the case back down to the lower court.

Zuckerberg still remained silent.

But Facebook was not silent when it came to censorship, or “content moderation” as the company prefers to call it. While Zuckerberg now expresses “regret” at not speaking out sooner, his company previously sought to sell Americans on censorship.

In 2021, I wrote about the Facebook commercial campaign in which the company attempted to rally young people to embrace censorship.

The commercials show people like “Joshan” who says that he “grew up with the internet.” Joshan mocks how much computers have changed and then objects how privacy and censorship has not evolved as much as our technology. As Joshan calls for “the blending of the real world and the internet world,” content moderation is presented as part of this not-so-brave new world.

Joshan and his equally eager colleagues Chava and Adam were presented by Facebook as the shiny happy faces of young people longing to be content modified.  They were all born in 1996 — the sweet spot for censors who saw young people as allies to reduce free speech.

For years, young people have been taught that free speech is harmful and triggering. We are raising of a generation of speech-phobics and Zuckerberg and Facebook wanted to tap into that generation to get people to stop fearing the censor and love “content modification.”  It was time, as Joshan and his friends told us, to “change” with our computers.

Now, Zuckerberg and Meta want people to know that they were “pressured” to censor and really regret their role in silencing opposing voices.

It is the feigned regret that comes with forced exposure.

The Facebook files now put the lie to past claims of the Biden administration and many Democrats in Congress. For years, members attacked some of us who testified that we had no evidence of coordination or pressure from the government. At the same time, they opposed any effort to investigate and release such evidence.

The evidence is now undeniable.

The Biden administration has long demanded the removal of opposing views on a wide array of subjects and Democrats in Congress pushed Zuckerberg to expand the scope of censorship to include areas like climate change denial.

Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is an example of the chilling scope of this effort.  Her agency was created to work on our critical infrastructure but Easterly declared that the mandate would now include policing “our cognitive infrastructure.” That includes combating “malinformation,” or information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

Consider that for a second: true facts are censorable if the government views them as misleading.

As I write in my book, President Joe Biden is arguably the most anti-free speech president since John Adams. His administration helped create a censorship system that was described by one federal judge as “Orwellian.” Vice President Kamala Harris has been entirely supportive of that effort.

In 1800, Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams in the only election where free speech was one of the principal campaign issues. It should be so again. Harris should have to take ownership of the censorship system maintained by the administration.

In my book, I propose a federal law that would bar the government from using any federal funds to support efforts to censor, blacklist, or suppress individuals or groups. It would take the government out of the censorship business. Harris should be asked if she would oppose such a law and dismantle the current censorship apparatus in the federal government.

Democracy is not on the ballot in 2024, as many have claimed, but free speech is.

*  *  *

Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).

China’s imports of Iranian oil are poised to reach a record 1.75m b/d this month, data from Kpler show.

That will surpass the previous peak of 1.66m b/d set in October 2023, according to Kpler data that extends back to January 2013, and is almost 50% higher compared with 1.24m b/d last month.

Shipments into Rizhao and Dalian significantly higher m/m, said Muyu Xu, an analyst with Kpler

“Chinese teapots see refining margins slightly improving, they now have stronger motivation to ramp up production and therefore need more feedstock,” she said

Flows into Lanqiao/Rizhao and Dalian almost doubled m/m to 342k b/d and 132k b/d, respectively

We got an advance look at China’s record appetite for Iranian oil last week when Bloomberg reported that China imported a record volume of crude from Malaysia last month, pointing to a renewed appetite for cheaper Iranian oil as refiners grapple with lower margins due to an economic slowdown.

The world’s biggest crude importer took 6.21 million tons from Malaysia in July, the equivalent to 1.47 million barrels a day, or almost triple the average daily production from the Southeast Asian nation over the course of 2023.

Why is this a key leading indicator? Because the seas off Malaysia have long been a hub for transferring crude and oil products from one tanker to another, meant to mask the country of origin, especially from Iran. Officially, China hasn’t purchased Iranian barrels since June 2022, according to government data. Unofficially, it is buying record amounts.

Oil from Iran – which once upon a time the US pretended to sanction – has become the cheapest option for Chinese buyers, even more than Russia, and more independent refiners are seeking barrels from the OPEC producer to boost their margins, said traders who participate in the market. Iranian Light was last offered at a discount of $6 a barrel to ICE Brent, they added, compared with a discount of less than a $1 for comparable crude from Russia.

Importers registered in China’s Shandong province were the biggest buyers of Iranian crude – masking as Malaysian – accounting for over 70% of the volume, according to customs data. Overall, eight Chinese regions including Liaoning and Henan took oil from the Southeast Asian nation, the most since October 2023.

Authored by Luis Cornelio via HeadlineUSA.com,

The Biden-Harris administration appears to have intensified its efforts to block a potential return by President Donald Trump to the White House, according to a report from the Daily Caller on Tuesday. 

The current administration has resorted to using a “Schedule A” hiring rule to staff DOJ offices with individuals who may be shielded from potential termination by a new administration, including that of Trump if he wins the 2024 election.

Several hundred employees have been hired under this rule, bypassing merit-based qualifications and allowing them to keep their jobs even at the end of the current administration’s term. 

Put in practice, this means that if Trump is sworn in as president, he could find himself grappling with leftover Biden appointees. This follows several reports suggesting that President Joe Biden is implementing policies designed to undermine Trump if elected. 

According to documents released by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) and first reported by the Caller, the specific offices targeted include the powerful Environmental and Natural Resources (ENRD) and the Antitrust and Immigration Review departments. 

PPT Director Michael Chamberlain suggested that the use of “Schedule A” could be part of the Biden-Harris administration’s plan to hamstring their successor and block future presidents from reversing their agenda. 

“Exploiting non-competitive hiring authorities to fill career civil service positions could be just another component of this scheme,” Chamberlain said, as cited by the Caller. “It’s no wonder that the public’s trust in its government has all but disappeared.” 

Documents obtained by PPT reveal that the DOJ has hired over 100 immigration judges using this rule. These individuals are responsible for determining whether illegal aliens can remain in the U.S. while their cases are pending. 

“The administration is also using Schedule A to install immigration judges — again, outside of the normal merit-based system — who will rule on cases of those in a position to benefit from the administration’s immigration policies,” PPT stated in a press statement. 

The use of “Schedule A” has also been extended to ENRD, a DOJ division tasked with enforcing environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. 

PPT sounded the alarm that ENRD is a “vital office in advancing the Biden-Harris administration’s energy and climate policies, and the placement of Biden-Harris loyalists is a means to defend those policies even if a future Trump (or other) administration seeks to change them.” 

The DOJ’s antitrust division has also seen an increase in staff members hired through “Schedule A,” likely compromising the non-partisan nature of the federal department. 

“Until recently, antitrust enforcement was a relatively technical and non-partisan division. But the Biden-Harris administration’s increasingly aggressive implementation has sparked complaints of politicized enforcement,” PPT warned. 

Headline USA could not reach a DOJ spokesperson through its media mainline or after-hours hotline at 9:40 p.m. ET. A separate call to the operator’s hotline also prompted an automated message claiming the offices were closed.

See the appointees’ names here, as detailed in a document released by the Caller and PPT.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft-backed OpenAI is preparing to raise at least a billion dollars in a new funding round, which would value the artificial intelligence company at just north of $100 billion. 

Sam Altman’s chatbot startup company, established eight years ago as a competitor to Google’s DeepMind, plans to receive $1 billion from venture capital firm Thrive Capital in a new funding round. This would mark the largest funding round of outside capital since Microsoft plowed $10 billion into the chatbot startup in January 2023. 

Earlier this year, OpenAI finalized a deal to sell existing shares through a tender offer spearheaded by Thrive. This arrangement allowed employees to sell shares at a valuation of around $80 billion, up from $29 billion one year ago.

Here’s more from WSJ:

“For now, though, AI is a speculative business that isn’t generating nearly as much revenue as investors and tech companies are putting into it. Earlier this year, OpenAI’s revenue was $3.4 billion on an annualized basis, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Information earlier reported on OpenAI’s revenue.” 

WSJ noted:

“It couldn’t be determined what other investors are participating in the new funding round.” 

Besides Thrive, past OpenAI deals have included Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and K2 Global. 

WSJ obtained a document indicating that OpenAI stockholders have been negotiating to sell their shares in recent weeks at a price that would value the company at $103 billion. 

Microsoft has a 49% share of OpenAI’s profit after plowing $13 billion into the chatbot company since 2019. 

News of the funding round from WSJ comes about a month after OpenAI revealed it’s testing SearchGPT: a combination of AI tech and real-time search data that allows users to search the internet with ChatGPT. 

It appears that Altman may have sold off some shares…

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

Attorneys General in 24 states have asked the Supreme Court to block the federal government’s methane standards for the oil and gas sector, arguing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) overstepped its authority in issuing the final rule.

The EPA has said the new standards are part of efforts to sharply reduce emissions of methane and “other harmful air pollution from oil and natural gas operations.”

Led by the state of Oklahoma, attorneys general from states including Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, and Virginia filed an emergency appeal to prevent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from enforcing the rule that went into effect this year.

In their Aug. 27 filing, the states argued that while the federal government has the authority to set emissions limits, the rule outlines specific technologies, processes, and methods that the agency believes states must employ to achieve certain emission-reduction targets, among other requirements. The “EPA did not limit itself to its statutory role for existing sources and then leave it to the States to adopt appropriate standards of performance,” they said.

Furthermore the “rule’s ‘presumptive standards’ are onerous, imposing costs on the oil and gas industries that will—as even EPA admits—inevitably be passed onto consumers across the country,” the states wrote.

The EPA’s rule gives states, along with tribes that wish to regulate existing sources, two years to develop and submit their plans for reducing methane from existing sources.

The rule is aimed at reducing “methane and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from new, modified, and reconstructed sources” and includes emissions guidelines for states to follow as they develop plans to limit methane emissions from existing sources, according to the agency.

The standards include a two-year phase-in period for eliminating routine flaring of natural gas from new oil wells and a one-year phase-in of zero-emissions standards for new process controllers and pumps outside of Alaska.

In the filing, the attorneys general said the agency “understood that, for many States, designing such plans from scratch in a two-year period would be impossible, given the sheer number and diversity of wells involved.”

“States need more than two years to complete this daunting regulatory task, otherwise they risk ’submittal of an inadequately prepared plan that EPA would have to review and reject, leading to unnecessary use of already limited resources.’”

The attorneys general argued that enforcing the rule would also limit the authority of states to establish their own standards for regulating methane and VOC emissions from existing facilities.

“That harms the public interest in the cooperative-federalism regime in the Clean Air Act, generally, and Section 111(d), specifically,” the states argued.

According to the EPA, oil and natural gas operations are the largest industrial source of methane pollution in the United States, and describe methane is a “super pollutant.”

Reducing methane emissions is a “crucial addition to cutting carbon dioxide in slowing the rate of warming of Earth’s atmosphere,” the agency has said.

The EPA’s rules will cut methane emissions from oil and gas operations by nearly 80 percent through 2038 and avoid 16 million tons of smog-forming VOC emissions and 590,000 tons of air toxics, according to the agency.

Additionally, the agency estimates the rules will result in “net climate and ozone health benefits” of $97 to $98 billion dollars from 2024-2038, or the equivalent of $7.3 to $7.6 billion a year, after accounting for the costs of compliance and savings from recovered natural gas.

An appeals court in Washington in July denied a request by the states to put the new methane regulations on hold while their legal challenge plays out in court, prompting them to ask the nation’s highest court.

The Epoch Times has contacted an EPA spokesperson for comment.

For the second year in a row, Nvidia has been the world’s most important company, rising more than 150% YTD to a staggering $3.1 trillion market cap, massively outperforming the Nasdaq, and putting it within spitting distance of becoming the world’s largest company (it is currently #2 behind AAPL).

And while the stock price gains have largely been driven by regular raises of the company’s forward earnings expectations…

… the question arises: how much more earnings growth is there? We already laid out Wall Street’s expectations for what to expect earlier, but with with whisper numbers at nosebleed levels relative to already euphoric guidance and estimates, it’s no surprise why the options market is expecting a 10% swing after hours.

A quick look at the past: the company’s second quarter wasn’t perfect – the company stopped short of completely denying reports that there are problems with its forthcoming Blackwell product lineup. Analyst reports have dismissed any issues as immaterial given the overall level of demand for existing products – the chip line called Hopper – but management will face questions on the topic.

As a reminder, this is what Nvidia said earlier this month: “As we’ve stated before, Hopper demand is very strong, broad Blackwell sampling has started, and production is on track to ramp in the second half. Beyond that, we don’t comment on rumors.”

And so, amid skyhigh expectations for the current quarter, even loftier expectations for the company’s guidance with questions about its main product line, here is what NVDA reported moments ago for the second quarter:

• Q2 Rev. $30.04B, up 122% YoY, beating estimates of $28.86B, and beating not only the upper end of the guidance ($27.44BN-$28.56BN) but also above the JPM whisper number of $29.85BN.
  • Q2 Data Center Revenue $26.3B, beating exp. $25.08B
• Q2 EPS $0.68, up 152% YoY, beating exp. $0.64
• Q2 Gross Margin 75.7%, up 4.5% YoY from 71.2, beating exp. 75.5%, but down from 78.9% in Q1. Peak margins?

The revenue trend, as expected, is impressive especially at the Data Center level where all the growth is.

And here is a full breakdown of recent results:

Commenting on the quarter, Robert Schiffman, senior credit analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, said free cash flow generation consistently growing: “That’s going to drive cash balances far in excess of operating needs, which may result in a bit of an anomaly — higher shareholder returns and a better credit profile.” Hence the new buyback authorization.

While the Q2 earnings were impressive, beating both estimates and the even loftier whisper numbers across the board, there was just a touch of weakness in the company’s guidance: NVDA projected Q3 revenue will be $32.5 million, +/- 2%. While this was above the average estimate was $31.9 billion, it was below JPM’s whisper of $32.95BN and certainly below the most optimistic sellside prediction of $37.9 billion.

Some other guidance:

• Gross margins are expected to be 74.4% and 75.0%, respectively, plus or minus 50 basis points. For the full year, gross margins are expected to be in the mid-70% range.
• Operating expenses are expected to be approximately $4.3 billion and $3.0 billion, respectively. Full-year operating expenses are expected to grow in the mid to upper 40% range.

Perhaps anticipating the potential market revulsion to the modest guidance disappointment, NVDA tried to appease investors by announcing a massive new $50 billion buyback .

The company also tried to preempt questions about its reportedly troubled Blackwell chips, saying “samples are shipping to our partners and customers” and says that it expects to ship several billion dollars of Blackwell revenue in Q4 even as it admits in its earnings release that it needs to improve Blackwell production, to wit:

We shipped customer samples of our Blackwell architecture in the second quarter. We executed a change to the Blackwell GPU mask to improve production yield. Blackwell production ramp is scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter and continue into fiscal 2026. In the fourth quarter, we expect to ship several billion dollars in Blackwell revenue. Hopper demand is strong, and shipments are expected to increase in the second half of fiscal 2025.

While initially NVDA shares bounced on the big beat, the since dipped on the disappointing guidance, sliding as much as 6% after hours, and have since whiplashed by the results as the stock is still fighting for direction, swinging between gains and losses as traders digest the earnings. As a reminder, options markets had priced in a swing of 10% after hours, so for now the reaction is positive tame relative to expectations.

The big question: are the results good enough for Jensen to keep signing tits? The answer – you bet.

For the call, which begins at 5pm ET, questions will zero in on how many billions of dollars in revenue Blackwell will generate in the fourth quarter. If management clarifies that and gives a projection on the high side, look for a positive reaction according to BBG. Absent that, analysts will ask if the conservative forecast is an indication that growth is suffering because of a significant delay.

Authored by Clark Barnes,

The US has always been a famously optimistic country. From our beginning, rebelling against the greatest empire the world has ever seen in a bold attempt to gain independence, we’ve always looked to a brighter future.

Through our history millions of people have come to what they see as a land of opportunity. The American Dream – the idea that if we work had we can succeed – is one of the key threads that runs through our culture.

How optimistic are you feeling now, though? Does it look as if the US is headed onward and upward to a brighter future? Or do you have an uneasy feeling that the American Dream is on the edge of collapsing into a nightmare?

If you do, and you’re looking for reassurance, I’m sorry to say I can’t give you any. We’re not past the point of no return yet, but there’s evidence all around us that points to this country being in a dangerously unstable condition.

We could manage to turn things around – but right now we’re heading in the wrong direction.

A House Divided

These states don’t feel very united right now. In fact this country might be more divided than it’s been at any time since Richmond fell to US troops in 1865. Our politics have become terrifyingly partisan.

Decades ago, in the golden age of the 1950s, the Republicans wanted to build a prosperous by cutting federal taxes and letting people keep more of their money.

The Democrats wanted to build a prosperous nation by using federal law to give people more rights at work.

OK, that’s simplifying it a little, but both parties wanted pretty much the same sort of country; they just had different ideas – and, really, not that different – about how to get there.

Look at things now. Some moderate politicians still exist (and they get elected, so some people still like what they’re saying) but overall political debate has swerved wildly towards the extremes.

We live in a society that’s financed by reckless borrowing, constantly kicking the can down the road and pretending the day the world won’t lend us money anymore is never going to arrive.

Along with crazy, extreme ideas comes a level of political hatred that’s hard to comprehend. Just a generation ago, we tended to think people who didn’t share our political views were wrong but basically well-meaning.

Now, if you don’t hold exactly the right set of constantly changing and ever more extreme opinions, you’re literally evil. You’re heartless, selfish. You’re not just someone that voted for the other party; you’re the enemy, and you must be destroyed. A society where a large number of people think that way is badly broken. And that’s where we are now.

Violence Is The New Protest

Protesters used to turn up with placards and maybe a bunch of flowers. Now they’re as likely to bring a bike lock, a knife or a gun. Almost any protest is liable to turn into a riot.

Any society will have the occasional outbreak of unrest, but doesn’t it seem like they’re happening a lot more now?

If the police shoot someone – even a violent criminal who was trying to stab an innocent victim – that’s an excuse for an orgy of looting and destruction.

If the Supreme Court makes a decision someone doesn’t like, justices find angry mobs outside their homes – and armed maniacs trying to kill them.

Far too many protesters are going armed. Carrying a gun to protect yourself and your family is a long and honorable American tradition. Carrying a gun to intimidate people you disagree with into silence is not.

The Country Is Falling Apart

In a literal way, America is disintegrating. Our infrastructure is suffering from decades of under-investment. Our power grid is so old and overloaded that it doesn’t need an EMP strike to collapse it; two hot weeks in June could be enough to do the job.

Even a simple blizzard can take down big chunks of it. We’ve been running power cables to homes for over a hundred years, and we haven’t figured out snow yet?

The current administration loves to talk about how it’s going to sort out our crumbling infrastructure, but its big idea is to make us all buy electric cars – then recharge them from the grid that already can’t cope with the load. Everyone knows our infrastructure is in a mess, but nobody has a serious plan to fix it.

Morals Are Decaying

Too many people want something for nothing – whether it’s cynical corporations that want a monopoly, or corrupt politicians that want to exploit their position for money.

Tens of millions of Americans still do believe in earning (or paying) an honest wage for honest work, but a terrifyingly large number don’t. Far too many people have rejected the idea that money is something you need to earn.

A lot of people just don’t seem to have any standards at all. Addicts buy, sell and use drugs in the streets of major cities, and local politicians just let it happen. District attorneys abolish cash bail and work to keep violent criminals out of prison.

There are 340 million people in this country. If we don’t have a shared idea of what’s right and wrong, a set of moral standards we all agree to live by, the US is going to become a very unpleasant place. Without a unifying morality, societies fall apart.

We’re Going Broke

The US is still the world’s biggest economy, and it’s still growing – but most Americans aren’t seeing the fruits of that growth. Wages are stagnating.

Instead of making our schools and colleges go back to teaching useful skills, and protecting workers from cheap illegal labor, our politicians are just trying to borrow and spend their way to re-election.

Look at the US national debt clock.

Right now we owe over $31.8 trillion, and that amount is increasing so fast that the last five digits on the clock are a blur.

Our government is burning through tens of thousands of dollars faster than you can keep track of the number changing.

A million dollars every 36 seconds – well, about that anyway; I couldn’t press the buttons on my stopwatch fast enough to get within $30,000 or so.- Watch video!

There are less than 128 million income tax payers in this country and there’s no way we can finance all the spending the government wants to do.

Yes, some people talk about taxing the rich or the one percent or the big corporations instead of regular taxpayers, but it doesn’t matter; the money always comes out of the pockets of ordinary working Americans in the end.

A big corporation might have legal personhood, but it isn’t really a person. It’s a collection of people that sells goods or services to other people – ordinary people – and if the corporation has to pay more tax, those ordinary people end up paying for it through higher prices or lower wages.

The government has to stop spending so much, but it won’t, because it’s scared of losing votes. So, instead, it borrows the money and hopes that somehow, by some miracle, the world will keep lending to us and we’ll never have to pay it back.

The problem is, the day when taxes won’t even cover the interest on our debt is coming over the horizon. In the next ten years we’ll spend $10.5 trillion on interest payments – while borrowing trillions more, that our government has no idea how to pay back.

Sooner or later the world will realize that we’re never going to repay the money we owe, and they’ll turn off the lending tap.

And, when that happens, the final collapse is just days away. When every federal employee doesn’t get paid, and every welfare check and Social Security payment fails to arrive, the US will be blown apart.

We’re not past the point of no return – yet. But we’re getting very, very close.