Month: November 2024

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

• China’s weak oil demand has already thrown OPEC+ off track in its supply-management policies.

• Trump’s energy policies could create a new challenge for OPEC in 2025.

• Amidst further uncertainties about global oil supply and demand with President Trump, OPEC+ may have to tweak their production policy more often than they have intended.

The OPEC+ group has struggled to manage oil supply and prices this year.

First, there was overproduction from several members, undermining the cuts from the other producers in the pact.

Then came the summer and the first actual consumption data for the first and second quarters of the year, showing that China’s oil demand growth is nowhere near OPEC’s expectations.     

Toward the end of the year, just as the cartel and its allies announced they would postpone the start of the easing of the production cuts to January 2025, they now have the wildest card on the market of all—President-elect Donald Trump.

China’s weak oil demand has already thrown OPEC+ off track in its supply-management policies and continues to defy OPEC forecasts with underwhelming crude consumption and imports.

The group now has to contend with some policies President-elect Trump has promised to introduce, including easier permitting for fossil fuel projects, import tariffs, and a more rigid stance toward Iran.

China Weakness

China has already undermined the OPEC+ alliance’s policy. The group is cutting production, but demand has been weaker than expected amid slower Chinese economic growth, the property crisis undermining construction activities and diesel consumption, and the surge in electric vehicle (EV) sales and registrations of LNG-fueled trucks.

OPEC has been wrong-footed by the surge in electric mobility in China, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its World Energy Outlook 2024 report last month.

In October, OPEC cut its 2024 global oil demand forecast in the third consecutive monthly report, citing actual consumption data so far this year and expectations of slightly lower demand in some regions, including China.

In each report since August, OPEC has signaled that its estimates of Chinese oil demand growth were too optimistic when it published the first outlook for 2024 in July 2023.

Despite the optimistic long-term view, OPEC’s short-term demand outlook on China has been revised down, again.

Weaker-than-expected oil consumption in China and rising electric vehicle sales will continue to weigh on the world’s oil demand growth going forward, according to the IEA’s Executive Director, Fatih Birol.

“This year, global oil demand is very weak, much weaker than previous years, and we expect this will continue because of one word — China,” Birol told Bloomberg in an interview last month.

China’s official crude oil import data hasn’t been encouraging for OPEC, either. Although imports are not all the crude China consumes, the import trends in the world’s top crude importer have weighed on oil prices.

The latest Chinese data showed another month of lower crude oil imports compared to the same month of 2023.

In October, China imported 10.53 million bpd of crude oil, per data from the General Administration of Customs. This was the sixth consecutive month in which crude cargo arrivals have lagged behind the imports in the same months of 2023. And imports were 9% lower compared to October 2023 and 2% below the import level of 11.07 million bpd in September 2024.

Trump Uncertainties

Apart from China, OPEC+ will now have to navigate uncertainties and risks to oil demand and supply with the incoming American president.

President-elect Trump is expected to step up sanctions on Iran, an OPEC member exempted from the production cuts, which earlier this year saw its exports hitting a six-year high.

Lower Iranian supply could be bullish for oil prices if demand holds.

But other policies Trump has floated, such as 10% tariffs on all U.S. imports and a 60% tariff on imports from China, could undermine global economic growth, leading to lower global oil demand overall.

OPEC+ can ill-afford weak global oil demand growth if it wants to return 2.2 million bpd of supply to the market next year.

Tariffs could slow U.S. and global economic growth, reducing oil demand by as much as 500,000 bpd in 2025 – one-third of Wood Mackenzie’s current projection for global oil demand growth next year.

“This has the potential to soften oil prices by US$5 to US$7/bbl from current levels, assuming no other risks such as an escalation in Israel-Iran hostilities,” Simon Flowers, chairman and chief analyst at WoodMac wrote last week.

Despite the fact that the U.S. oil and gas industry got what it had wanted for four years – a president supportive of the sector – American production is unlikely to grow by much more than the current growth trajectory, analysts say.

That’s because the big public companies that dominate shale supply will continue to prefer returns to shareholders and capital discipline to “drill, baby, drill,” according to Wood Mackenzie and Rystad Energy.

Moreover, WoodMac’s Flowers said tariffs would likely expose U.S. producers and services companies to cost inflation.

“While the incoming administration will hold a more favourable view towards the oil and gas industry, ultimately the potential for production growth is going to be largely dictated by price,” Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at ING, says.

Amidst further uncertainties about global oil supply and demand with President Trump, OPEC+ may have to tweak their production policy more often than they have intended.

Republicans will maintain control of the House of Representatives by the thinnest of margins, NBC News projected Wednesday, handing President-elect Donald Trump and his party all the levers of power in Washington.

A Republican-controlled Congress will allow Trump to quickly fill out his Cabinet and other top administration roles and advance his agenda for at least the next two years.

Last week, Republicans flipped three Democratic Senate seats to win control of the upper chamber.

NBC News lays out how Republicans won the House…

Democrats had believed they were in a good position to win back the majority they lost just two years ago. They needed a net gain of only four seats to flip control of the House given that Republicans now hold 220 seats to the Democrats’ 212 – one of the smallest majorities in modern history.

But the two parties basically have fought to a draw in the House, preserving a status quo that favored Republicans.

In New York, Democrats were able to knock off a trio of vulnerable freshman GOP incumbents: Rep. Brandon Williams in the Syracuse region, Rep. Anthony D’Esposito on Long Island, and Rep. Marc Molinaro, whose district includes parts of the Hudson Valley and the Catskills. They were among the 18 GOP House districts that President Joe Biden carried in 2020.

Democratic challenger George Whitesides also ousted vulnerable GOP Rep. Mike Garcia in Southern California.

But Trump’s triumph – including wins in battlegrounds like Pennsylvania and Michigan where there were key House races – helped buoy GOP incumbents and new candidates in the places that mattered.

Two of the biggest GOP prizes came in the Keystone State.

Republicans unseated two vulnerable, veteran Democrats in neighboring districts in eastern Pennsylvania. GOP businessman Rob Bresnahan ousted six-term Rep. Matt Cartwright, a former member of leadership, in the 8th District, which Trump carried in 2020. In the neighboring 7th District based in Allentown, GOP state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie upset Democratic Rep. Susan Wild, the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee.

Meanwhile, In the capital of Harrisburg, Democrats believed they had a good chance to knock off former Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry, a Trump ally who played a role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. But the six-term incumbent beat back a strong challenge from former local TV anchor Janelle Stelson, who attacked Perry on everything from the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and abortion rights to his votes on veterans issues.

Republicans also captured a Michigan seat that had been held by Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who successfully ran for an open Senate seat.

And GOP challenger Gabe Evans narrowly defeated freshman Rep. Yadira Caraveo, D-Colo., by less than 1 percentage point in a heavily Hispanic district north of Denver.

There are still six uncalled races:

“It is a beautiful morning in Washington. It is a new day in America,” a celebratory Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said on the steps of the Capitol, flanked by his leadership team, as the House returned to Washington on Tuesday.

“The sun is shining, and that is a reflection about how we all feel.”

So Trump takes the trifecta: A Popular (and Electoral) Vote victory for The White House, taking back the Senate, and holding The House.

A defeated special counsel Jack Smith and his team are planning to resign before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the NY Times reports, citing a source familiar with the matter.

The news comes days after Smith moved to pause his J6 case against Donald Trump and vacate all remaining deadlines. According to the new report, Smith’s office has been looking at the best path forward in winding down its work on the two outstanding federal criminal cases against Trump – as the DOJ has a longstanding policy not to charge or prosecute a sitting president with a crime.

Smith’s departure is more of a “you can’t fire me, I quit!” after Trump vowed to fire him within “two seconds” of being sworn in.

“We got immunity at the Supreme Court. It’s so easy. I would fire him within two seconds. He’ll be one of the first things addressed,” Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt last month.

Department regulations require Smith to file a report summarizing his investigation and decisions – though it’s not clear how quickly he can finish his work – or whether it could be made public before President Biden leaves office – however several officials told the NY Times that he has no intention of lingering any longer than he has to, and has told career prosecutors and FBI agents who are not directly involved in the case that they can start planning their departures over the next few weeks.

On Friday, GOP lawmakers told DOJ officials to preserve all of their communications for investigators – who view Smith and crew as the embodiment of a Democratic effort to use lawfare as part of a weaponized Justice Department.

According to Smith, he needs until Dec. 2 to figure out how exactly to wind down his J6 case, as well as another case in which he charged Trump with mishandling classified national security documents after leaving office. The latter case was dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon of the Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, FL – a decision which is currently under appeal in federal court in Atlanta.

Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Veteran homelessness in the United States has reached a record low, decreasing by 7.5 percent since 2023, according to an announcement by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH).

The 2024 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count revealed that 32,882 veterans were experiencing homelessness in January, a record since records began being kept in 2009. Last year’s count was the first time the percentage had risen in 12 years, with a rise of 7.4 percent to 35,574.

This year’s data, released on Nov. 12, represents an 11.7 percent reduction in veterans experiencing homelessness since 2020 and a 55.6 percent decrease since 2010.

The PIT Count, an annual assessment conducted every January, measures both sheltered and unsheltered individuals without stable housing across the nation.

According to the agency, sheltered persons are those living in emergency shelters and transitional housing, while unsheltered are those living on the street or in another place not meant for human habitation.

Of the Veterans counted, 13,851 were unsheltered—a 10.7 percent decrease in unsheltered veteran homelessness nationwide compared to last year.

“No Veteran should experience homelessness in this country they swore to defend,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in a statement, adding that the agency was making “real progress” in the fight to end Veteran homelessness.

“We still have a long way to go, but we will not stop until every veteran has a safe, stable place to call home,” McDonough said.

Last month, the VA announced it had permanently housed nearly 48,000 homeless veterans during fiscal year 2024, surpassing its goal by over 16 percent and marking the largest number of veterans housed in a single year since 2019.

Since 2022, the VA has housed nearly 134,000 veterans nationwide.

“Far too many of our nation’s veterans experience homelessness each year, and that is why HUD is laser-focused on ensuring that every Veteran has a home,” said HUD Deputy Secretary Adrianne Todman in a statement, according to a Nov. 12 press release.

USICH Director Jeff Olivet emphasized the effectiveness of coordinated efforts.

“This data show that with the right investments in housing and health care, and with strong leadership and coordination across government, homelessness is solvable,” Olivet said in the release. “The challenge now is to end veteran homelessness and use the lessons we learn to help all people without a home.”

The VA awarded more than $800 million in grants this year to assist veterans experiencing homelessness, according to the release.

USICH also released the federal government’s first-ever framework for homelessness prevention, and the HUD and the VA announced policy changes to help more veterans receive housing assistance under the HUD-VA Supportive Housing program.

The VA said their strategy is rooted in a “Housing First” approach, which prioritizes providing veterans with permanent housing before offering additional support services such as health care, job training, legal assistance, and education to ensure long-term stability.

The agency said this method has been instrumental in reducing the number of homeless veterans and preventing a return to homelessness for those who have been housed.

Significant progress has also been made in the Greater Los Angeles area, where the VA permanently housed 1,854 homeless veterans this fiscal year—the most of any city in the United States for the third consecutive year.

The PIT Count indicated a 22.9 percent reduction in veterans experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles between 2023 and 2024, exceeding the VA’s fiscal year goals for the region by 15.5 percent.

Veterans experiencing homelessness or at risk can call the National Call Center for Homeless Veterans at 877-4AID-VET (877-424-3838) or visit VA.gov/homeless for assistance. These resources provide support and information on housing initiatives and programs designed to help veterans exit homelessness.

Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

Former D.C. Metropolitan police officer Michael Fanone is not handling President-Elect Donald Trump’s resounding victory Tuesday night very well.

According to a sympathetic Washington Post report Thursday, the notorious J6 celebrity cop is holed up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, chugging beers, and preparing for a potential shootout with the Trump agents he believes are coming for him.

“Better f—ing arm yourselves,” Fanone told WaPo reporter Kara Voght, as he slammed down his fifth or sixth Sapporo.

“I didn’t vote for that motherf—er,” he added, “and I fought tooth and nail to prevent this day from f—ing coming.”

Fanone, 44, has indeed been extremely vocal about his experiences at the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, and the injuries he allegedly suffered.

Fanone is part of a quartet of celebrity cops juicing every second of their involvement in the four-hour disturbance nearly two years ago, earning lucrative book deals, congressional awards, and cable news gigs in the process.

Fanone has lots to say in his memoir – heavily sprinkled with obscenities – while ranting about Donald Trump and his supporters.

(Fanone begins with a brazen lie that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died of “wounds” sustained on January 6.)

In December 2022, he told Washington Post reporter Peter Hermann that he had been “ostracized for being outspoken about the Capitol riot” by those who want to “play down the violence that day.”

He lamented that members of the MPD’s Special Operations Division had called him “a piece of sh-t,” after he told everyone that he suffered a heart attack, a concussion and a traumatic brain injury during the riot.

Fanone told the Post he’d left the police force not long after he’d testified to Congress in July 2021.

He published his book, “Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul,” and went on tour with a left-wing J6 activist group called “Courage For America.”

The group – run by Zac Petkanas, a Democratic strategist who previously worked for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) – ”supports abortion, LGBT interests, liberal immigration-expansion policies, and increased government spending,” according to Influence Watch.

Courage For America’s main goal was to “Make sure the MAGA agenda doesn’t get passed without strenuous opposition.”

Eventually, the J6 grifts wound down and Fanone had trouble finding another source of income.

“When he came back, he’d tried to get a job—at Walmart, at Costco, at Cabela’s—and nothing came through,” the Post reported.

“No one gives you a reason, but it’s pretty obvious,” Fanone said.

That reason, according to the Post is “his belief that half the country thinks he’s a traitor.”

Fanone now runs a private security business.

His woes were compounded earlier this year when Raw Story reported that “Trump surrogate” Ivan Raiklin, a retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency employee, had appointed himself  “secretary of retribution” and had compiled an enemies list of 300 “deep state” bad actors that included Fanone.

Some of these “deep state” actors are reportedly making plans to retire after Trump is sworn in.

“Moles inside the FBI are telling us that DOZENS of senior executives at HQ are preparing their retirement papers in anticipation of what’s to come,” FBI whistleblower Steve Friend posted on X Thursday.

Meanwhile, Trump’s former Department of Defense Chief of Staff Kash Patel revealed on Thursday that Trump plans a bombshell declassification operation in his second term.

“He’s going to come in there and maybe give them the Epstein list, maybe give them the P Diddy list and they are terrified,” Patel told conservative podcast host Benny Johnson.

The Democrats’  hysteria about an alleged “enemies list” was stirred up after Trump had declared himself to be “justice and retribution” for those who “have been wronged and betrayed.”

As the election returns came in Tuesday night, spelling doom for Democrats, Fanone told Voght “it’s the end of the f—ing world!” as he smiled “with a kind of crazed glee.”

Fanone said he’d rather be killed in a shootout than be imprisoned by Trump.

“I’ll die right here on my f—ing house,” he said. “I’m not going to be in some ‘Apprentice’ f—ing military tribunal.”

Fanone insisted that he was not some “prepper weirdo,” ‘just someone who understands how law enforcement can be weaponized against people”

He added:

“I fully expect that to happen.”

The third time was the charm as Bitcoin finally surpassed the $90,000 Maginot Line this morning…

Source: Bloomberg

…now up over 32% since before the election night results started to pile in favor of Trump…

Source: Bloomberg

BTC ETF flows have been incredible…

Source: Bloomberg

Ethereum is also rallying, back above $3300…

Source: Bloomberg

But it has given back its relative outperformance gains against bitcoin since the election…

Source: Bloomberg

While bitcoin is at a record high in USDollars, it remains a little shy of its record high against the barbarous relic…

Source: Bloomberg

Where next?

Source: Bloomberg

Here’s nine analysts’ expectations that were shared with Cointelegraph. 

Lennix Lai — OKX: Beyond $100,000

Lennix Lai, the global chief commercial officer of crypto exchange OKX, says he expects Bitcoin to reach a price of “beyond $100,000” by the last day of trading for 2024. 

“We’re seeing signals of a potential paradigm shift into the next growth phase for crypto, which I think has the potential to push BTC beyond 100k before the end of the year,” said Lai. 

However, Lai warned that the market had already priced in several bullish catalysts — namely the election results and rising traditional equities markets — and much of Bitcoin’s recent spike upward could be traced back to short-term euphoria.

“It’s important to bear in mind that considerable macroeconomic uncertainty exists.”

“The post-election landscape may include drastic government spending cuts and tariff reforms that could be a shock to markets. I believe that these factors could exacerbate inflation — potentially slowing the anticipated pace of Fed rate cuts,” he added. 

He said these factors, combined with geopolitical risks, including the tensions in the Middle East and the US stance on active conflicts, may add further complexity to the market outlook and contribute to short-term volatility.

Tony Sycamore — IG Markets: Low-to-mid $90,000 region

IG Markets analyst Tony Sycamore told Cointelegraph he expects Bitcoin to end the year somewhere in the “low to mid $90,000” region. He said a lot of the “good news” following Trump’s election had already been priced in as BTC staged a surprise rally to over $90,000 on Nov. 11.

“The other reason is that it’s probably getting close to that time when some of the altcoins should start to play some catch-up,” he added.

“Ethereum, for example, is trading 20% below its year-to-date high, so I suspect that switching out of Bitcoin and into alts is a theme we will see play out into year-end.”

Josh Gilbert — eToro: $100,000

Market analyst Josh Gilbert of eToro said Bitcoin’s recent run of record highs is far from over and predicted that BTC will notch a new six-figure all-time high of $100,00 by year’s end. 

In line with several other analysts, Gilbert cited Trump’s presidential victory, cooling interest rates, a robust US economy and a growing institutional appetite that saw record daily inflows into Bitcoin ETFs last week as key catalysts for future growth. “This run is yet to exhibit the ‘euphoria’ levels from retail that we’ve seen in previous cycles,” said Gilbert. 

Despite the overarching bullish sentiment, Gilbert warned that there’s a strong chance BTC “takes a breather” in the next few weeks but conceded that overall, the trend was too strong to be ignored. 

“This asset’s run over the last two weeks has been like a freight train — it’s going to take something big to slow it down.”

Ki Young Ju — CryptoQuant: $58,000

CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju offered a more bearish outlook on price action for Bitcoin in the next few months. 

In a Nov. 9 post to X, Ki said he expects Bitcoin to close the year at $58,974, citing overheated derivatives activity as the reason for an imminent correction.

Source: Ki Young Ji

“I expected corrections as BTC futures market indicators overheated, but we’re entering price discovery, and the market is heating up even more,” Ki said.

“If correction and consolidation occur, the bull run may extend; however, a strong year-end rally could set up 2025 for a bear market.”

Bitcoin is currently showing a record $55 billion in open interest, a measure of how many active positions are open on Bitcoin derivatives like futures and options, per CoinGlass data. 

Open interest on Bitcoin is sitting at record levels. Source: CoinGlass

Pav Hundal — SwyftX: $103,000

SwyftX lead market analyst Pav Hundal told Cointelegraph that while it’s difficult to place an exact target for the end of the year, he expects BTC to close out 2024 trading just above $100,000.

“If you apply a common Fibonacci extension to the last cycle’s high and low points, it points to $103,000 by the end of the year,” he said

Guy Armoni — HDI Fund: Around $100,000

Guy Armoni, managing partner at HDI Fund, told Cointelegraph that Bitcoin has yet to reach its peak value for the cycle and expects Bitcoin to be trading higher, given a continuation of the current trend. 

Armoni looked to the growing adoption of crypto worldwide and a more friendly policy environment for crypto assets and companies in the United States as the key price drivers for Bitcoin heading into the remainder of the year and onward into 2025. ‘If this trend continues, not only will we see Bitcoin at $100,000 this year, but I anticipate the bull market will extend into 2025, with Bitcoin potentially surprising us by reaching as high as $250,000,” Armoni said. 

Matti Greenspan — Quantum Economics: Higher

Mati Greenspan, the founder and CEO of Quantum Economics, said Bitcoin had been “shrugging off” extremely bullish fundamentals and consolidating — rather than climbing — for most of this year, predicting continued outperformance for the asset heading into the end of 2024. 

Source: Mati Greenspan

Arguing against the commonly held sentiment that this bull run could be over in a matter of months, Greenspan said he expects crypto’s upward trajectory to last a “long time.”

“Stock bull runs have been known to build over the course of a decade or more. People out there are acting like this will all be over in a month and they need to eat as much as they can while the food’s on the table or they’ll be left with scraps,” he said. 

Ben Simpson — Collective Shift: $100,000 

Collective Shift CEO Ben Simpson told Cointelegraph that while short-term pullbacks and corrections are likely, he predicts Bitcoin to finish this year trading at the $100,000 mark. 

“With the Trump election, interest rates coming down, the potential for quantitative easing starting up in the future, and getting relatively consistent days of a billion dollars Bitcoin ETF volume, more people are catching on,” he said. 

“When you’ve got a limited supply asset like Bitcoin and the amount of demand that’s coming in, the space is only going one way.”

Tom Wan — Independent analyst: $80,000-$95,000

“I believe Bitcoin would cross the $95,000-100,000 mark before the end of 2024. However, it is important to note that $100k is a key psychological zone, and we could see a significant selling wall near that range,” independent analyst Tom Wan told Cointelegraph. 

Wan said investors are currently pricing in the expected pro-crypto regulations of a Trump administration and spiking inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs but cited record open interest on Bitcoin as a potential headwind for the short term. 

Much like many other crypto industry pundits, Wan shares a highly optimistic outlook for prices in the longer term. 

“With the anticipation of crypto-friendly regulation, I believe we should see more institutional investors like pensions, RIAs, state governments and public companies start allocating to crypto, which could fuel BTC to rise above important price levels,” Wan added.

Finally, does this seem under-priced?

Overall, the consensus among analysts is that Bitcoin will end the year trading at above or around the $100,000 mark. And despite the overarching bullish sentiment, most analysts warned of outsized volatility and major corrections for Bitcoin in the coming months.

Authored by James Lalino via The Epoch Times,

In an effort to shield California from anticipated major policy changes from the incoming Trump administration, Gov. Gavin Newsom visited Washington this week to discuss zero-emissions policy and disaster relief with Biden administration officials.

Newsom also met with the California Democratic congressional delegation.

The governor is seeking federal approval for his state’s climate regulations, which he anticipates will be threatened under President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration. Newsom is also aiming for a $5.2 billion reimbursement for emergency COVID-19 funding and updates to the state’s Medicaid program.

Newsom’s press secretary Izzy Gardon told NTD in a statement that “the Governor will advocate for key priorities that advance the health and well-being of all Californians,” and that they are “building on the progress made since President Biden took office.”

Newsom is trying to move as quickly as he can before Democrats no longer control the executive branch after Jan. 20. He traveled to the nation’s capital on Monday and will be returning to Sacramento on Wednesday.

Following Trump’s victory last week over Vice President Kamala Harris, Newsom ordered an emergency special session of the California state legislature to begin Dec. 2, a move which, according to his X account, is intended “to safeguard the fundamental freedoms we all hold dear.”

California Assemblyman James Gallagher, the Republican Minority Leader in the state’s lower house, is critical of Newsom’s Washington trip, saying he thinks that the governor should be working to improve the state instead of seeking help from what he views as a failed federal administration.

“It would be nice if Newsom focused on improving things for Californians instead of doubling down on the same failed policies that cost Harris the election,” Gallagher told NTD News in a text message.

Commenting on Newsom’s responses to his election victory, Trump wrote on Nov. 8 on Truth Social that the governor was “stopping all of the GREAT things that can be done to ‘Make California Great Again.’”

Despite losing the Golden State to Harris, Trump earned 38 percent of the vote in the state this time around, his highest total in the state out of three presidential contests.

Harris, who will be out of public office for the first time in decades come January, is a potential candidate to succeed Newsom, who is term-limited and will not be eligible for reelection when the next gubernatorial election is held in 2026. She was formerly the state’s attorney general and served as its junior U.S. Senator before she became Biden’s running mate in 2020.

If Harris decides to run, it would not be the first time a former vice president ran for California governor after losing a presidential election.

Then-Vice President Richard Nixon lost the 1962 race for California governor just 2 years after he was defeated by John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election. Nixon went on to mount a historic political comeback by winning the presidency in 1968. He was reelected in 1972, winning 49 out of 50 states.

Nixon resigned before his second term was finished, after his Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill signaled that they would no longer support him when it became apparent that his administration covered up illegal activity related to the infamous Watergate break-in.

Nearly a month ago highly classified US intelligence detailing Israeli plans for a retaliation attack against Iran appeared online. The pair of documents were prepared by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the leak immediately kicked off a massive federal investigation and hunt for the leaker.

On Wednesday federal prosecutors have revealed an arrest, with the NY Times reporting that “The man, Asif W. Rahman, was indicted last week in federal court in Virginia with two counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information.” He had worked for the US government overseas, and is being charged with two counts of violating the Espionage Act. The Times has followed with an update identifying him as a CIA official.

Rahman was apprehended by the FBI in Cambodia on Tuesday, and has been brought to federal court in Guam where he’ll get charged in the case.

“Court documents said Mr. Rahman held a top secret security clearance with access to sensitive compartmentalized information, which is typical for many C.I.A. employees who handle classified materials.,” the Times continues.

It also remains unclear what he was doing in Cambodia at the time of this arrest – whether on the run or perhaps merely traveling abroad, or possibly for work.

The FBI previously said it was “working closely with our partners in the Department of Defense and intelligence community” to track down the leaker. From the start, federal investigators made clear that they believed it to be the result of an intelligence insider, and not the result of a foreign hacking operation.

More than a week after the leaks first appeared Israeli media indicated that national decision-makers had delayed the timing of the planned retaliatory attack on Iran due to the leak incident, given one of the docs detailed Israeli placements and movements of missiles and defensive assets.

“Israel is concerned the leak could help Iran predict certain patterns of attack,” The Times had written. “It has been forced to develop an alternative plan, one that requires detailed war gaming before any order is given, The Times understands.”

“The leak of the American documents delayed the attack due to the need to change certain strategies and components,” an intelligence source described as having knowledge of Israeli deliberations said.

Additionally there appeared in the leaks confirmation of Israel’s highly secretive nuclear weapons program, which on an official level it is not supposed to have.

Oh dear. Did someone at NGA leak Top Secret TALENT KEYHOLE FIVE EYES NO FOREIGN EYES intelligence about Israel’s nuclear weapons…on Twitter? pic.twitter.com/3lyKWFCmUw

— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) October 20, 2024

The pair of documents were classified TOP SECRET, with both marked NOFORN – which is among the highest classifications – given it indicates the specific intelligence cannot be shared with allied foreign intelligence agencies. But markings indicated they could be shared only among “Five Eyes” allies: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The investigation to find the leaker focused heavily on these Five Eyes allies, but the NY Times report is saying that the leak occurred in-house, via a US government employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

There’s a great moment in Mad Max: Fury Road where they roll up to a naked woman chained to a tower and Max utters one of his, like, fourteen lines in the movie, “That’s bait.”

This is a metaphor for literally the entire media landscape in the age of social media.

Since Trump’s victory last Tuesday the Usual Suspects have chummed the waters with every possible bad idea to dishearten and undermine that victory. It’s all bait.

We weren’t 24 hours removed from Kamala Harris’ concession speech, a carbon copy of the one Hillary Clinton gave in 2016, where she said, “Fight” 20 times, before the first big piece of red meat was thrown down in front of libertarians to virtue signal over… Ending the Fed.

FOMC Chair Jerome Powell was forced to field a question during the post-meeting presser about stepping down if asked to by President-Elect Trump.

Powell “closed the fucking door” on that with one word, “No.”

At which point everyone was shocked, shocked I say!, to find out that the Fed Chair cannot be removed because the President didn’t like him. The same goes for Supreme Court justices, for example. This is politics folks, not philosophy. I’m not endorsing this situation but I am pointing out that those who have been parroting “End the Fed” since Ron Paul ran in 2008 should have known this.

So, given this background, one has to conclude it’s the dirtiest of dirty politics designed to create divisions within the MAGA crowd at a time when we should be coming together on the right issues, staffing the new administration, discussing which departments to cut, how to finance the debt.

In other words, we should be setting the tempo, rather than responding to it by those most vulnerable to a US government and Federal Reserve in lock-step to defend US sovereignty.

For more than a year I told you there would be two big targets for the Democrats in this election cycle, Jerome Powell and Elon Musk.

Powell is Public Enemy #1 over his aggressively tight monetary policy which all Austrians should be rejoicing over rather than concocting ever more lurid arguments about ‘stealth QE.’ For systemic thinkers, having a one-level flow chart on something as important and germane as monetary policy is, frankly, a pretty lazy and pathetic look.

Musk has now challenged Powell for the top spot for exclusion from Davos’ Happy Holidays Card List because of how Twitter and Starlink have thrown sand in the gears of their narrative generation engine, as I wrote about last week.

Going back to Powell, since the March 2023 banking crisis, which he fomented for political reasons and raised interest rates in the middle of, just to make sure everyone who mattered got the fucking memo, I eventually stopped being sick of Elizabeth Warren’s HR nanny routine from atop the Senate Banking Committee and simply started laughing at her.

She issued stern letters demanding the Fed lower interest rates at seemingly every FOMC meeting, trying to gin up controversy over the Fed. And it wasn’t to give anyone relief, or for the children, it was to help Democrats win the election and loosen the death grip Powell’s ‘higher for longer’ policy had on European capital markets.

But thanks to this silly question by a junior staffer at Politico, now the ‘Woke Left’ and the ‘Woke Right’ are having their fee-fees stroked by the remnants of the old banking cartels they both believe they are fighting here.

If it wasn’t so gods-damned important I’d be chuckling in Collapsitarian.

A Buffett at the Waffle House

Next up was the bait thrown at trad conservatives over people like Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley. The biggest tell that Trump was likely to win in a landslide was the intelligence blob floating the rumor weeks ago that Trump still liked Pompeo and that Big Mike was sniffing around as either Secretary of State or Defense.

That’s chum, folks. And Trump put the hammer down on it after a couple of days letting it percolate. He should have quashed it sooner. But, who am I to give the Master of the Overton Window advice on such matters?

https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1855393067517559198

Haley was also a non-starter. He hates her. Her career now starts and ends every day with, “More Coffee?” and “Scattered, Smothered, and Chunked? Got it, hunny.”

In fact, you know Trump hates Marco Rubio as much as he does Haley because I believe the rumor about him becoming Secretary of State.

How else are you going to get RINO “Little Marco” and his really big Manila Envelope Quotient (MEQ) out of the Senate and replaced by someone who will actually work with Trump, rather than against him on the big legislation that needs to get passed in 2025?

Promote him, keep him on a short leash about reforming Foggy Bottom, and let him grandstand on CHY-Na. And if he doesn’t do what’s asked of him? “You’re Fired!”

And if I’m wrong and Rubio is just more Neocon bait, then Masal Tov! Oi vey.

That rumor about Mike Rogers to head the CIA and everything else you’ve seen… all bait. All lame attempts to flood the zone with bad information and drive wedges between Trump’s biggest supporters and him.

If you can’t pick up on crude attempts at British divide and rule at this stage of the game, maybe you just suck at the game.

It took the leaking of a secret ballot organized by outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to finally wake people up to the depths to which the bureaucratic immune system is fighting back against the chemotherapy Trump’s win represents.

If Marjorie Taylor Greene helps stop John Cornyn from becoming our leader in the Senate, I’ll take back most of the mean things I’ve said about her.

Most of them.

Schadenfreude in Berlin

Trump’s win caused a political earthquake in Berlin as the German government collapsed after Chancellor Olaf Scholz tried to meet a cash call to his creditors on Ukraine. FDP Finance Minister Christian Lindner refused to approve another 6 billion euros to Ukraine. But Germany is out of money this fiscal year and it needed to go to the Bundestag. So Scholz fired him and Lindner pulled the FDP out of the coalition.

Now the situation in Germany is in the kind of flux we usually only see in places being color revolution’d.

They are so desperate to hold onto power we’re now being regaled with the latest fantasy of the “Saxony Separatists,” all 3 of them, as the latest reason to ban Alternative for Germany (AfD) and keep them from participating in the upcoming snap elections.

Again, that’s bait for the German Boomers. Even if the ban doesn’t work, it will knock a couple of points off AfD’s national totals. But, they are just doing tactical retreats here. It’s not winning, it’s more trying to not lose immediately.

Because the cultural and demographic shift against this globalist insanity has already occurred.

We’re watching the old political order in Germany, held together previously by the iron fist of Angela “Stasi” Merkel, come apart at the seams. The idea that Germans would simply vote themselves out of existence because of their collective guilt was never really a starter.

At some point the German industrialist class would make their presence felt. Trump’s victory likely catalyzed this.

Davos’ whole project depended on using the generational imprint of everyone post-WWII to manufacture political realities at odds with the self-interests of those people. But that puts a time limit on the project. It had to happen before the generations that fought WWII and grew up in the rebuilding phase died off.

For example, for Germans it was their collective shame over Hitler. For Japan, it was the shame of being bombed by the Americans. For America it was stoking our self-reliance into self-righteousness.

As Howard Lutnick pointed out on CNBC a few months ago, we rebuilt these people through our dominance and allowing them to put tariffs on our goods to regenerate their local economies. Those tariffs are still in place and it’s time to remove them by negotiating much better deals for everyone.

But the demographic shift has happened. We saw it in the state elections in Germany this September, where AfD saw huge gains among the 18-29 year olds. The same thing has been happening in Greece in the aftermath of the German/EU strip-mining of the country after their multiple sovereign debt crises.

In the US the kids are moving away from the libertine Boomers. Even the Millennials are finally fulfilling their desires for authenticity, after now surviving three national bankruptcies during their lifetimes — Y2K, Lehman Bros. and COVID-19.

This allowed for Gen-X to finally come into their own and deliver the result the world needed.

So, please folks. Take the wins. Jack out of the Twitter spew for a few days. They want you anxious and afraid. It’s all they have left. Because we just told them we don’t want what they are offering or need what they’ve sold us.

Trust in the result you delivered just a little. This isn’t the same story as 2016.

Trust in media has not only collapsed, it’s now reached its terminal phase. We just broke The Wire, why on earth would we want to repair it by giving their crudity credibility?

Donald Trump is set to return to the White House in January. Ahead of his return, the former president announced that Elon Musk would lead the new “Department of Government Efficiency” in his second administration. With Musk’s close ties to Trump, advertisers are expected to flock back to X to gain access to the administration.

The Financial Times recently spoke with media executives who revealed that some brands are preparing to advertise on X again, particularly due to Musk’s connections with the incoming administration.

Lou Paskalis, CEO of the marketing consultancy AJL Advisory and a former media executive at Bank of America, explained that marketers plan to reallocate spending dollars on X as a form of “political leverage.” He noted that some companies are seeking government contracts and trying to get in the “good graces of Elon.”

“It could be seen as an official channel for White House communications,” another advertising agency chief told FT, adding that Trump’s victory has shifted significant power and legitimacy into Musk’s hands.

However, only some are optimistic. One media director described X as a “mess,” questioning, “Which brand will take the risk?”

Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of X initially triggered chaos in ad monetization. Dark money-funded fact-checkers allegedly created false reports to discourage companies from advertising on the platform, attempting to starve it of ad revenue.

The problem for Soros-funded Media Matters and other far-left organizations was that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, could support X operations for a long time. Musk famously told brands that pulled their ads to “go f**k yourself” at the DealBook Conference and has since announced plans to sue the so-called advertising censorship cartel.

Richard Exon, founder of the ad agency Joint, said, “Trump’s victory may well mean brands give X a second chance in 2025,” though he cautioned that they “will be wise to proceed with extreme caution.”

Meanwhile, as X cements its role as a central hub for distributing news to Americans, legacy media outlets like CNN and MSNBC are imploding.