Individual Economists

10 Thursday AM Reads

The Big Picture -

My morning train WFH reads:

Here’s Fidelity Contrafund’s Will Danoff’s Secret Sauce: Fidelity Contrafund’s retiring manager showed how long-term stock-picking success is still possible. After decades running one of the biggest mutual funds on the planet, Danoff’s edge comes down to something surprisingly old-school: talking to management teams. (Morningstar)

200 lines of markdown just triggered a $285 billion sell-off — here’s what actually broke + what it means for your workflow: A deep dive into what actually broke when a model spec document rattled the markets, and what it means for your AI workflow. Here’s what actually died, what didn’t, and what you should do about it. https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/p/200-lines-of-markdown-just-triggered. (Substack) see also The $285 Billion Crash Wall Street Won’t Explain Honestly. Here’s What Everyone Missed. (YouTube)

Drug Cartels Are Shifting Their Money Laundering to Crypto. Cops Can’t Keep Up: A vast ecosystem supported by the gig economy has sprung up to clean all that cash. Cartels are moving their dirty money through crypto and the gig economy, and law enforcement is struggling to keep pace with the evolving playbook. (Bloomberg free)

Your stocks have been slumping, but you probably can’t blame Trump: The recent market pullback has more to do with valuations and earnings than politics — even if it’s more satisfying to blame the guy in the Oval Office. (Los Angeles Times)

Bitcoin’s Binary Endgame: Why the Security Model Cannot Stabilize and Must Collapse to Functional Zero. (BiggerPocketsMoney)

Soft clubbing is a late-stage capitalist fever dream: The monetization of connection continues — now even going out at night has been repackaged as a wellness experience with a cover charge. Let’s all pay to feel something, shall we? (Your Brain on Money)

It Turns Out That When Waymos Are Stumped, They Get Intervention From Workers in the Philippines. That “self-driving” may be due for some extra scrutiny, though. During a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, Waymo’s chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, was grilled over the company’s use of Chinese-made vehicles and reliance on overseas workers, as Business Insider reports. (Futurism)

These Young Voters Are Starting to Regret Their Vote for Trump: After nearly winning the group in 2024, president losing support among voters ages 18-29. (Wall Street Journal)

Scientists thought they understood global warming. Then the past three years happened. The last 30 years are the fastest warming period since 1880, according to a Washington Post analysis of NASA data. (Washington Post) see also Scientists record coldest ocean temperature ever in Earth’s history—and wonder how life survived: Ancient rocks once beneath the ocean hold clues of severe conditions unimaginable on today’s planet. (Nat Geo)

Wasserman Fallout: Every Artist Who Has Spoken Out Over Founder’s Epstein Ties: Clients of Casey Wasserman’s namesake agency have begun defecting after his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell came to light. A running list of musicians distancing themselves from the talent agency.(Billboard)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Heather & Doug Bonaparthe, a married couple who work together and wrote a book on the financial challenges couples face: “Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team.” Our discussion sits somewhere in between financial planning and couples therapy, built around real stories that try to help couples find a healthier approach to money.

 

US Consumer Delinquencies Jump to Highest in Almost a Decade

Source: Bloomberg

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

 

 

The post 10 Thursday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

Meet The Meta Supplier Behind Ray-Ban Smart Glasses

Zero Hedge -

Meet The Meta Supplier Behind Ray-Ban Smart Glasses

For some time, we've been on the right side of this call: Meta's smart glasses are the clear winner versus Apple Vision Pro for one simple reason: they're built for daily life. The value proposition is obvious too. They're priced only a notch above high-end Ray-Bans, yet drastically cheaper than the goofy-looking $3,500 Vision Pro headset.

Let's take a step back to December 2024:

One of our focuses has been Meta's smart glasses supply chain. That work highlighted how Meta reportedly took a nearly 3% stake in EssilorLuxottica, the world's largest eyewear maker and the parent of Ray-Ban and Oakley, in a deal valued at around $3.5 billion last summer.

The investment only made sense at the time, with research firm Sensor Data showing increased downloads of the Meta app that implied surging demand for the smart glasses, while Apple Vision Pro slid into the abyss.

Fast forward to today. EssilorLuxottica reported fourth-quarter sales rose 18% (constant currency) to 7.6 billion euros, well above the roughly 11% increase Wall Street analysts tracked by Bloomberg expected.

Growth was driven by surging demand for Meta's Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and Oakley smart glasses. The company sold more than 7 million units last year.  

Full-year 2024 adjusted operating income rose 6.8% to 4.5 billion euros, but the adjusted margin was 16%, about 70 basis points lower than 2023 (constant exchange rates), with pressure intensifying in the second half.

"Looking ahead to the next five years, we are committed to delivering solid revenue growth, with the adjusted operating profit's pace broadly aligned," CEO Francesco Milleri and Deputy CEO Paul Du Saillant wrote in a statement.

Since the Meta Ray-Bans launched in September 2023, shares of EssilorLuxottica in Europe have nearly doubled, though they've more recently pulled back about 21% from the high reached in late 2025.

Last month, smart glasses took center stage at CES 2026 in Las Vegas.

Goldman analyst Jerry Shen recently published a detailed view of the AI and AR glasses supply chain, breaking it down by the companies that supply the critical components behind these devices (read report).

Vision Pro can't do this...

Tim Cook blew it with Vision Pro ... Meta takes the win.

Apple cooked.

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/12/2026 - 04:15

Erik Prince, Israeli Advisers Operated With Congolese Special Forces

Zero Hedge -

Erik Prince, Israeli Advisers Operated With Congolese Special Forces

Via The Libertarian Institute

American mercenary Erik Price and Israeli soldiers operated with Congolese special forces battalions. Congo has been fighting against multiple rebel groups. 

According to Reuters, the Israeli advisors' role is limited to training, and Erik Prince is providing drone support. The outlet reports that the assistance helped Congo take a city back from two rebel groups, the Congo River Alliance (AFC) and the March 23 Movement (M23).

Reuters: Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, attends a police and military presentation, in Guayaquil, Ecuador on April 5, 2025.

A senior Congolese defense official explained that Kinshasa "needed help recapturing Uvira and pulled in every resource they could."

They added that the presence of Americans on the frontlines is keeping the AFC and M23 from launching new attacks.

Prince's firm is also helping to secure Kinshasa and improve tax revenue collection. Sources told Reuters that Americans have been pulled off the frontlines, but could return

Prince is a notorious American mercenary. His first firm, Blackwater, is responsible for the Nisour Square massacre, which left 17 Iraqis dead.

Prince later rebranded and sold Blackwater. He is a long-time ally of the US president, and the men responsible for murdering the Iraqi civilians were ultimately pardoned by Trump during his first term.

However, Prince has formed other private security firms that have conducted operations around the globe. His company, Vectus Global, has a contract with the Haitian government to conduct anti-drone operations

Several civilians have been killed by drones in Haiti, including eight children at a birthday party. According to the scant details in The Guardian on the last September strike:

At least eight children were killed and six others seriously injured in a drone attack on a birthday party in Haiti’s capital where an alleged gang leader was distributing gifts, according to relatives and activists.

The explosions happened Saturday night in Cité Soleil, which is controlled by Viv Ansanm, a powerful gang coalition which the US has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

One of its leaders, Jimmy Chérizier , best known as Barbecue, vowed to avenge the attacks, with a total of at least 13 people killed, according to residents.

Although it’s unclear if those strikes were conducted by Prince or the US-installed in Port-au-Prince.

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/12/2026 - 03:30

Japan Restarts World's Largest Nuclear Plant, 15 Years After Fukushima Shutdown

Zero Hedge -

Japan Restarts World's Largest Nuclear Plant, 15 Years After Fukushima Shutdown

Japan resumed operations at the world’s largest nuclear power plant this week, marking a key development in the country’s return to nuclear energy almost 15 years after the Fukushima disaster.

The reactor is located at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, in Japan’s Niigata Prefecture.

It is the world’s first nuclear power plant to use an advanced boiling water reactor.

Panoramic view of units 5-7 of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant.

Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s total capacity is 8.2 GW, which is enough to power a few million homes.

The site is operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which also ran the Fukushima plant.

While the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility was not damaged by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, all seven of its reactors have remained offline since the accident amid tightened safety requirements and public scrutiny.

We noted back in December, Niigata prefecture’s assembly session vote revealed the community’s deep divisions over the restart, in spite of lawmakers giving their backing to Hanazumi.

“This is nothing other than a political settlement that does not take into account the will of the Niigata residents,” an assembly member told fellow lawmakers during the session.

Around 300 protesters gathered outside the assembly holding billboards with signs expressing their opposition to the resumption in operations, such as  “No Nukes” and “Support Fukushima.”

“I am truly angry from the bottom of my heart,” Kenichiro Ishiyama, a 77-year-old protester from Niigata city, told reporters after the vote.

“If something was to happen at the plant, we would be the ones to suffer the consequences.”

Brought back to life on February 9, the reactor had been shut down for more than a decade. 

“We will continue to conduct integrity checks of the plant equipment under actual steam operating conditions, while fully and sincerely responding to inspections by the Nuclear Regulation Authority,” Tepco officials stated.

As interestingengineering.com reports, the 1,356-megawatt (MW) advanced boiling water reactor (ABWR) was restarted at 2pm local time with criticality confirmed just over an hour later at 3:20pm.

For clarity, criticality refers to the condition when a nuclear reactor is maintaining a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

“We will continue to demonstrate through our actions and results that we are making safety our top priority at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant,” Tepco representatives pointed out.

The reactor was first restarted in the evening of January 21.

However, according to the company, shortly after midnight on January 22, an alarm in the control rod monitoring system halted the withdrawal of one control rod.

As a result, the unit’s restart was suspended while an investigation into the cause of the alarm was carried out. Tepco said it intends to gradually raise the pressure inside the reactor once operations resume.

It will resume power generation and transmission on February 16.

As we previously detailed, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has expressed her support for nuclear restarts to counter the cost of imported fossil fuels, which account for 60–70 percent of the country’s total electricity generation.

Last year, Japan spent 10.7 trillion yen ($68 billion) on imported liquefied natural gas and coal, representing a tenth of the country’s total import costs.

Despite its declining population, Japan expects energy demand to rise over the next decade, due to the power needs of artificial intelligence (AI) data processing centers.

The country has set a target of doubling the portion of nuclear power in its electricity mix to 20 percent by 2040.

Japan’s top nuclear power operator, Kansai Electric Power, said in July it would begin conducting surveys for a reactor in western Japan, in what is planned to be the country’s first new plant since the Fukushima disaster.

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/12/2026 - 02:45

German MPs Shoot-Down Idea Of Paying WWII Reparations To Poland With Weapons

Zero Hedge -

German MPs Shoot-Down Idea Of Paying WWII Reparations To Poland With Weapons

Via Remix News,

German politicians stress cooperation in the wake of the suggestion that Germany finance Polish armaments as reparations for World War II.

Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, had proposed that Germany provide Poland with military equipment, emphasizing that “Poland is a frontline state.”

Poland has been vocal in its demand for what it says amounts to €1.3 trillion in World War II reparations Germany must pay for the crimes, deaths, and massive property destruction caused by the 1939-1945 occupation. 

Despite some discussions, Germany has long maintained that Poland renounced all claims to reparations in 1953.

“From the Polish perspective, the issue of reparations remains unresolved,” he said in an interview for Die Welt, cited by wPolityce.

“What if Germany, recognizing Poland’s role as a frontline state, gave Warsaw a submarine, a frigate or a few tanks?” Ischinger asked.

German politicians and experts have since expressed their concerns with the idea.

Thomas Erndl, spokesman for the defense policy of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, told Die Welt that there was no need for this because a strong Bundeswehr protects not only Germany but also its allies.

“The brigade stationed in Lithuania is a visible sign of our solidarity as allies… If we all focus our efforts on rapidly expanding our military capabilities, and thus on guaranteeing our European security, historical sensitivity will play a subordinate role,” Erndl argued.

Adis Ahmetović, spokesman for foreign policy of the SPD parliamentary group, emphasized that gaining Poland’s trust can only come from a stronger foundation.

“Some of our partners, such as France and Poland, sometimes show reticence. Trust is not built through symbolic gestures like military donations, but through reliable and close cooperation. Therefore, it is essential to consistently deepen and further develop proven formats, such as the Weimar Triangle,” she said.

“We should not allow ourselves to be distracted, let alone exploited, in the process of building a common European defense, which all of Europe is waiting for,” added Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann from the Free Democratic Party, chairwoman of the European Parliament’s Defence Committee.

Agnieszka Brugger, spokeswoman for security policy of the Green Party parliamentary group in the Bundestag, seemed confused by the idea, stating, “Conflating such a strange idea with the very delicate and difficult issue of ‘reparations’ is not very helpful.”

“It seems a bit strange, and perhaps even paternalistic, to want to give weapons systems to a country that has been determinedly and successfully building one of NATO’s strongest conventional armed forces for years,” Professor Carlo Masala from the Bundeswehr University in Munich told Die Welt.

CDU foreign policy expert Roderich Kiesewetter noted: “We cannot buy ourselves out of our responsibility to defend Europe by simply giving up a few tanks.”

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/12/2026 - 02:00

FTC Probing Pediatrician Group, Non-Profit Over Gender Dysphoria Treatments For Kids

Zero Hedge -

FTC Probing Pediatrician Group, Non-Profit Over Gender Dysphoria Treatments For Kids

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is examining statements from several organizations that have promoted drugs and surgeries for minors who believe they are a different gender, according to documents made public on Feb. 10.

FTC officials sent civil demands for documents to the American Academy of Pediatrics and World Professional Association of Transgender Health, documents posted online by the FTC show.

In the demands, dated Jan. 15, the FTC said officials are probing whether groups have “made, or assisted others in making, false or unsubstantiated representations or engaged in unfair practices in connection with the marketing and advertising of Pediatric Gender Dysphoria Treatment” in violation of federal law that bars people from engaging in deceptive practices affecting commerce and disseminating false advertisements.

Officials asked for each type of pediatric gender dysphoria treatment that the organizations advertised or promoted and information on financial relationships between the organizations and pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, or doctors involved in treating gender dysphoria.

They also want to know about the process for how the American Academy of Pediatrics developed its 2018 statement outlining its position on care for youth labeled as “transgender,” and how the World Professional Association of Transgender Health came up with its Standards of Care Version 8, which contains guidance for doctors contemplating giving children puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, or performing surgeries on children questioning their gender.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in 2025 the agency would investigate whether the gender transition procedures were being offered under unfair or false claims.

The inquiry is looking into whether people, particularly children, were harmed by false or unsubstantiated claims about “gender-affirming care.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics said in a response to the civil demand, filed with the FTC, that the FTC was going beyond its scope in the probe and that the demand should be quashed.

Story continues below advertisement

The World Professional Association of Transgender Health issued a similar response in a petition to revoke the demand directed to it.

The FTC and the two groups did not respond to requests for comment by publication time. If the petitions are turned down, the groups could turn to the courts.

Several other organizations sued the FTC over a separate probe.

A federal judge said in 2025 that the FTC’s civil demands in that investigation likely violated the constitutional rights of the organizations.

The new developments came after two medical groups, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Medical Association, said that there is uncertainty regarding treatments for gender dysphoria and that doctors should largely steer clear of surgeries on children.

They also followed a jury in New York finding two doctors liable for the breast removal surgery they supported and performed on a 16-year-old girl.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 22:35

America's Top Restaurant Winner Slaps Diners With Mandatory Tip And Woke Lecture On Receipt

Zero Hedge -

America's Top Restaurant Winner Slaps Diners With Mandatory Tip And Woke Lecture On Receipt

The top-rated restaurant in America (at least according to Food & Wine's 2025 pick) is now buried under a pile of one-star reviews after deciding to lecture diners on receipts about the supposedly "racist" history of tipping, while auto-adding a non-negotiable 20% service charge to every bill, SFGate reports.

A customer enters during a soft opening at Burdell in Oakland, Calif., on Sept. 6, 2023. The Michelin Guide restaurant recently received an onslaught of poor reviews following a viral Reddit post.  Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

The fury began with a now-deleted Reddit post of the woke note tacked onto receipts at Burdell, the Oakland soul-food spot that's become a progressive darling with Michelin nods and critical acclaim.

Tipping in the US has an ugly past, allowing the continuation of underpaid labor,” the receipt lectured. “We don’t like that history. Included on your check is a 20% Service Charge which we use to pay hourly staff a consistent and livable wage, not dependent on archaic tipping customs or chance. No need to add anything else. Thank you!”

Predictably, the internet did what it does best by review-bombing the place on Yelp with complaints about everything from terrible food to claims of hidden fees, despite the restaurant insisting the charge is disclosed on menus and its website. Some diners felt ambushed by the mandatory add-on and the moralizing footnote.

Chef-owner Geoff Davis has since scrambled to find an excuse for all the hate, landing on claiming that mainly non-locals are simply jumping on a culture-war bandwagon.

Most of the people who left reviews are from outside our region and community,” Davis told SFGate. “They’re using this as a crusade against Oakland, DEI, and the moment that we’re in. People are upset about a lot of things in America right now.”

It blows my mind that there are so many restaurants that employ this model, and we’ve been doing it for so long with no surprise for the most part,” he added.

Davis previously faced backlash over his sky-high prices, saying that it's an “uphill fight” to operate a soul-food restaurant because of America's past, according to SFGate.

“It is what it is, and as Americans, we have to understand that racism is part of our core identity as a country. All we can do is do the best work that we can,” Davis told the news outlet.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 22:10

Local Police Are Finally Arresting Anti-ICE Agitators In Minnesota

Zero Hedge -

Local Police Are Finally Arresting Anti-ICE Agitators In Minnesota

Something changed in Minneapolis, and fast.

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told lawmakers during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday that local police arrested 54 anti-ICE protesters overnight, a development that would have been almost unthinkable just a few weeks ago. During his testimony, Lyons described a noticeable shift on the ground as immigration enforcement operations continue in the city.

Minneapolis Police officer William Martin stands outside burning buildings near Lake Street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, following protests and property damage surrounding the police killing of George Floyd. Photo by Tony Webster/Minnesota Reformer. 

For weeks, Minneapolis had been a flashpoint. Demonstrators swarmed federal agents. Officers were filmed, heckled, and in some cases assaulted while trying to carry out what Lyons described as “targeted, intelligence-driven enforcement operation[s].” Instead of focusing on apprehending criminal illegal aliens, agents were stuck navigating angry crowds, something they weren’t trained to do.

That appears to be changing.

Under questioning from Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Lyons confirmed that protests have cooled and ICE agents are once again able to concentrate on their core mission. “We’ve seen a de-escalation in the fact that the protests, while they still go on, have subsided, and ICE has been allowed to do their targeted, intelligence-driven enforcement operation,” Lyons said.

The key detail was who made the arrests. According to Lyons, the 54 protesters were taken into custody by local authorities. “ICE officers did not have to be engaged in that,” he told the committee.

That line spoke volumes.

For much of the recent unrest, ICE agents were left in a precarious position. McCaul pointed to what he described as a surge in hostility fueled by overheated rhetoric from Democrats about ICE. He noted “rhetoric on the left led to over a thousand percent increase in assaults on ICE officers” and “an increase of over eight thousand death threats to them.”

Those numbers help explain why federal agents found themselves pulled into crowd-control situations they were never meant to handle.

Your officers are not trained to effectuate crowd control,” McCaul pointed out. “They are trained to move in surgically, go in and remove these dangerous, violent criminals from the United States of America.”

McCaul argued that former Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino’s leadership was the problem. He noted that under his watch, the situation deteriorated to the point where two shooting deaths occurred amid the chaos, and coordination between federal and local authorities broke down, which McCaul described as “a perfect storm.”

McCaul described Homan as “a consummate professional, law enforcement professional,” and made it very clear he supports President Trump’s move to replace Bovino with Homan. And based on Lyons’ testimony, the impact of the change has been immediate.

McCaul outlined what he sees as a return to basics: targeted enforcement actions, better coordination with state and local law enforcement on crowd control, renewed emphasis on ICE detainers, body cameras for agents, and an end to roving interior patrols in major cities. McCaul argued that patrol-style tactics belong at the border, and that Homan is “returning to the original mission of ICE.”

The 54 arrests in Minneapolis mark a turning point. Local authorities are finally stepping in to handle protesters who try to obstruct federal operations. That shift lets ICE agents focus on apprehending violent offenders instead of fending off crowds. 

Last week, Homan revealed that, thanks to cooperation with local law enforcement, he was pulling 700 federal agents out of Minnesota.

"We currently have an unprecedented number of [Minnesota] counties communicating with us now and allowing ICE to take custody of illegal aliens before they hit the streets," Homan said.

The change in leadership and tactics is clearly paying off. There are fewer clashes, fewer distractions, and a clearer chain of responsibility between federal officers and local police.

If this trajectory holds, Minneapolis may offer a preview of how the administration intends to carry out immigration enforcement nationwide: tightly focused operations, visible coordination, and a firm line against interference.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 19:40

India's Coal Use Could Double By 2050

Zero Hedge -

India's Coal Use Could Double By 2050

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

India’s coal demand could more than double by 2050 from current levels under current policies, a new report by NITI Aayog, the policy think tank of the Indian government, showed on Tuesday.

Under the Current Policy Scenario (CPS), coal demand in India is forecast to rise even through 2070, according to the projections.

In this scenario, long-term demand could more than double to 2.615 billion tons by 2050, up from 1.256 billion tons in 2025, the think tank’s analysis found.

If India keeps the current policies, coal demand will be higher even in 2070 compared to 2025 levels.  

The share of coal is set to drop from 73% in 2025 to 47% in 2070, thanks to the rise of renewable energy.

This suggests that coal will still be king in India if current policies are kept.  

Even in the net-zero scenario (for India, the net-zero goal is 2070), coal demand will rise to 1.827 billion tons by 2050, up from 1.256 billion tons in 2025. But then demand will collapse to only 161 million tons by 2070.

Despite the fact that renewables now dominate new power additions, India needs coal to continue to provide “dependable, cost-effective baseload power, anchoring system reliability as cleaner sources expand,” the government think tank said in the report. 

To manage the transition, India needs to scale up rapidly energy storage, flexible generation, and stronger transmission and distribution networks, the report noted.

Despite booming renewable capacity additions, India continues to rely on coal to meet most of its power demand as authorities also look to avoid blackouts in cases of severe heat waves.

Coal will still be a key part of India’s power system for the next two decades, Rajnath Ram, adviser for energy at NITI Aayog, said in September 2025. 

“We cannot be subjective about coal. The question is how sustainably we can use it,” the official noted.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 19:15

Trump Pushes To End Senate 'Blue Slips' As GOP Confirms Judges At Record Pace

Zero Hedge -

Trump Pushes To End Senate 'Blue Slips' As GOP Confirms Judges At Record Pace

In just the past week, the Senate confirmed half a dozen of Trump’s judicial nominees, continuing a streak that’s left Democrats visibly frustrated.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, 33 judges have sailed through confirmation — already eclipsing his entire first-term total. By comparison, during Trump’s first year in office, the Senate confirmed 19 Article III judges, including Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. 

While Senate Republicans are moving fast and confirming judges at a blistering pace, there are mounting calls to scrap one of the Senate’s oldest customs — the “blue slip.” 

The century-old practice has long allowed home-state senators to weigh in on judicial nominations before they advance, but Democrats have been abusing it, turning it into a de facto veto on nominees they don’t like.

Trump has wanted the tradition gone because of the way Democrats have abused it.

Last year, he reportedly told Senate Republicans to “get rid of blue slips, because, as a Republican President, I am unable to put anybody in office having to do with U.S. attorneys or having to do with judges."

Some Republicans sympathize with Trump’s view, seeing the blue slip as an outdated relic that slows confirmations.

But others see danger in dismantling another institutional guardrail.

“Nuking the blue slip would be a huge mistake,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told Fox News Digital, joining several colleagues warning that a short-term rules victory could backfire the next time Democrats control the Senate.

For them, the issue isn’t about speed — it’s about reciprocity.

They argue the GOP will one day need the same courtesy they’re now being pressured to destroy.

While that is certainly true, like the filibuster, it is likely to be nuked by Democrats the next time they’re in power if they feel this guardrail hampers their ability to get what they want. In fact, that’s exactly why the blue slip started to get abused in the first place. In 2017, Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley was forced to reshape the practice after Democrats used it as a veto on Trump’s judicial nominees during his first term. 

Grassley noted at the time that the blue slip began as a “courtesy to get insights on federal court nominees from home-state senators in an era when such information was hard to come by.” It was never, he argued, meant to give senators “veto power over the president’s judicial nominations.” Grassley also reminded Democrats that their predicament was self-inflicted. “Democratic senators’ recent calls for an ahistorical interpretation of the blue slip courtesy stem from a decision they made in 2013 to end the 60-vote filibuster for lower court nominees. This move, often referred to as the ‘nuclear option,’ effectively silenced half of the Senate during confirmation votes.

At the time, many Democratic senators argued it was unfair for a minority of senators to block nominees with majority support.” he wrote.

“Now that they are in the minority, Democrats are scrambling to cope with the fallout from their decision.”

That history lesson seems lost on much of Washington. For now, the tension within the GOP shows no signs of easing, and despite his earlier move, Grassley remains a proponent of blue slips in theory.

"Because it's a question of 110 years, and everybody in the Senate wants to maintain the blue slip," Grassley said.

That is likely wishful thinking. During the Biden years, Senate Democrats ignored the spirit of the tradition whenever it suited them, confirming 42 judges in the first year of Biden’s presidency — a pace even faster than Trump’s current term.

 Trump’s allies argue that the President’s judicial agenda is too critical to be slowed by Senate traditions that Democrats themselves long abandoned.

Others, however, believe that retaliating by erasing every trace of procedural courtesy risks making future confirmations impossible when Democrats are back in power.

 

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 18:50

What It Means To Be A Former Liberal

Zero Hedge -

What It Means To Be A Former Liberal

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

I’ve never liked the word liberal applied in the way it is today.

The word itself has a noble heritage.

It meant being for freedom generally and opposed to despotism and dictatorship by church or state.

Our Founding Fathers were considered liberals in a classical sense.

They wanted free speech, free elections, free enterprise, free formation of community, and so on, and wanted government restricted in its power.

That meaning of the word—which has translations in every language—lasted mostly until the Great War.

Many of the most liberal intellectuals and venues threw themselves into that conflagration with great enthusiasm. Matters got worse during the New Deal when even more “liberals” threw their weight behind industrial planning and corporatism.

Emerging out of World War II, there was nothing much remaining to the term. It had been completely co-opted by its enemies.

That presented genuine liberals with a problem. They needed a new term. Russell Kirk suggested conservative, which was odd because that term recalls monarchies of old, Tory traditionalists, and blood-and-soil revanchism.

Not everyone liked that term. The former and thoroughly reformed communist Max Eastman suggested “liberal conservative” or “conservative liberal,” all of which was too confusing. Then he finally proposed “new liberalism,” which didn’t quite catch on.

The writer Dean Russell in 1956 suggested reviving the word libertarian, which rather stuck for some people.

My mentor Murray Rothbard liked it but turned against it later in life. It became too barren of granular content to provide moorings in a political storm.

Indeed, these days, reading the libertarians is like attending a concert of a promised piano concerto, only to hear the pianist play scales and some arpeggios on stage. There’s just not a lot of depth or understanding there.

Meanwhile, I’m surrounded by people who call themselves “former liberals.”

From what I gather from that designation, it refers to a legacy bias on one side versus the other.

They weren’t fans of the Cold War and really didn’t like the War on Terror.

They still champion civil liberties but gagged at woke ideology and especially the transgender agenda.

“Liberalism” became way too ill-liberal for them to stomach.

It was the COVID experience that really shattered them.

All their friends in media, academia, and the corporate world went nuts. They were demanding that everyone lock themselves indoors, make the working class deliver food, cover the faces of children, close schools, censor speech, and then let medical workers inject the entire population with an untested substance of uncertain origin.

There was nothing liberal about any of that. So my liberal friends felt a great sense of alienation. It was not just that their communities abandoned their values. They began to wonder if their whole ideological outlook was wrong.

Maybe government won’t save us from corporatism after all. Maybe the media is not really a check on power. Maybe all these people are working together to create a machinery of oppression that is targeting not just the middle class but the working class too. If that is so, it is surely not new. Maybe this has been going on for a long time and no one knew it.

It did not help that the heroes of liberalism seemed to cave completely. Even Noam Chomsky called for the arrest and jailing of people who refused the wrongly named vaccine, even those with natural immunity. There was never a more principled liberal than Chomsky. Something is very wrong here.

As a result, many of these people feel homeless both intellectually and politically. They are warmer to Trump than they ever thought they would be but not uncritical. They still browse their old media venues with interest but often it turns to disgust. They dread faculty parties and social occasions because the prattle about the pathology of various -isms they once accepted as doctrine now sounds barren and performative.

They have become, in popular parlance, red-pilled. It’s a funny phrase drawn from the movie “The Matrix.” A guy is offered a blue pill to proceed in ignorance, or a red pill to see the world anew, replete with fakes and fiat.

I was speaking with a person the other day who referred to a friend of mine as having been red-pilled on some subject. It made me laugh because, so far as I know, the person in question pretty much held far-left views all his life. He even travelled with Sandinistas in the late 1980s—hardly a conservative in any sense. Today, he is hoping the Trump administration will save the nation from his former tribe.

My point is this. We live in very unusual times when the terms left and right have become enormously scrambled. I depart from the views of many when I say that we don’t really need a new term. Terms are always subject to mischaracterization and capture, as we see with the word liberal (and the word conservative actually).

What we need instead is open minds, the courage to look at facts and reality, and the willingness to say in public what we believe to be true. We can do all that without carrying the baggage of legacy ideologies. There is nothing wrong with reading grand treatises attempting to parse all this out and create taxonomies of belief. Burrowing in and becoming a preacher of them is another matter.

These times offer all of us tremendous opportunities. We know who the dissidents are from woke ideology, from Covidianism, from NPRism, from the matrix of mainstream media. Their legacy commitments are all over the map. We can encounter and learn from each other. This is what I find most intellectually stimulating. I’m thrilled to figure out the contours of the public mind today and in the past and excited to explore all these realms with my newfound friends.

Still, my heart also breaks for those people who thought that they had found their tribe until it turned out that their tribe is dominated by crazy people. It’s a bit like losing a beloved pet or even a spouse. The comforts of familiarity have been taken away and we are left to fend for ourselves.

Now no thoughtful person is in a position to outsource his worldview to any leader or institution. Perhaps that is a good thing.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 18:25

NYU Prof: Trump's Whole Milk Push Is 'Dog Whistle To Far-Right'

Zero Hedge -

NYU Prof: Trump's Whole Milk Push Is 'Dog Whistle To Far-Right'

Authored by Matt Lamb via The College Fix,

When President Donald Trump signed a law that allowed for the National School Lunch Program to distribute whole milk again, he was actually sending out a signal to neo-Nazis, so says a New York University professor.

In January, President Trump celebrated the bipartisan “Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act of 2025,” which will allow the federally subsidized school lunch program to offer the higher-fat content dairy once against.

President Obama removed the option in 2010 over fears it was contributing to childhood obesity.

The legislation passed by a voice vote in the U.S. House and unanimously in the U.S. Senate, according to Roll Call.

While many would see this as a triumph of partisan gridlock, Professor Arthur Caplan sees something much darker.

“As a student of and writer on the history of science and public health under fascist regimes, I am suspicious,” he said.

“Milk drinking is political. Drinking whole white milk has played a big role in racist and far-right thinking.”

Here we go.

“Fascists have used the beverage as a rallying cry for white supremacy since the days of Il Duce’s (Benito Mussolini’s) public health campaigns in Italy,” Caplan wrote in The American Journal of Bioethics.

“The Nazis were enamored of whole milk as well…In America, drinking whole milk has for years been a part of alt-right, white nationalist messaging in tweets, memes, and videos.”

“Alt-right?” 2018 called, it wants its boogeyman back.

(Also, whenever Caplan accuses someone else of being authoritarian, remember he supported barring individuals from flying on planes and eating in restaurants unless they showed their vaccine papers).

Caplan cited examples, now nearly a decade old, and from the anti-Trump website The Conversation, to justify his argument. Instead of saying “for years,” Caplan should have said, “for a year.”

He concluded:

Racism and eugenics, sadly, may be playing a role in the sudden drive to fetishize drinking whole milk. Drinking whole milk is a dog whistle to far right, white nationalists. The campaign to promote whole milk may have many factors behind it, but at a time when eugenics, racism, and white nationalism fuel too much of our political rhetoric, the whole milk campaign must be swallowed with care.

Caplan’s argument is a shift from some sage advice he offered in 2005, when he warned people against being quick to invoke the “Nazi analogy” in debates.

“Sixty years after the fall of the Third Reich, we owe it to those who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis to insist that those who invoke the Nazi analogy do so with care,” he warned.

Meanwhile, well-respected bioethicist Wesley Smith called Caplan’s argument “idiotic.”

He wrote in National Review:

One of the honored guests at the Oval Office signing ceremony of the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act — mentioned in passing by Caplan, which put whole milk back on school menus — was that notorious white supremacist Dr. Ben Carson. One of the early sponsors was Senator John Fetterman, a famous KKK sympathizer.

As Smith said, drinking milk is about health, not “bigotry.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 17:00

Epstein's Island And The Gateway To The Psychology Of Evil

Zero Hedge -

Epstein's Island And The Gateway To The Psychology Of Evil

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Conspiracy theorists are almost always right. We have been proved right time and time again and we will continue to be right about many things that the corporate media used to call “fringe.” For those out there who are like me; people who have been trying to warn the public about these threats for 20 years or more, I just want to say: We have won a resounding victory. We brought the dark secrets of the elites into the mainstream and there’s nothing that can stop this train now.

However, the fight is far from over and don’t expect anyone to give you any awards or even recognition. It’s the nature of our work, and frankly, the best thing that can happen in the long run is that researchers and analysts like us eventually become obsolete. In the meantime, the infowar to save civilization continues.

One issue I have spearheaded in my career (along with a handful of other liberty writers) is delving into the psychology and ideology of the globalists. I find their existence to be fascinating. Revolting to be sure, but also fascinating.

The theory which I have held for two decades is that the globalists are first and foremost an occult network of organized psychopaths. Meaning, they seek out people with psychopathic traits (latent or otherwise) in order to recruit and grow their numbers. The common assumption in the general public is that psychopaths are supposed to operate in isolation; that they do not work together because they are too self absorbed to organize.

History shows us that this is simply not so.

From the Mafia, to violent drug cartels, to religious cults, to authoritarian governments, we have seen psychopaths congregate together and cooperate in the worst moments of our timeline.

They do it for mutual gain, but I believe there is an agenda that goes well beyond that.

It’s a far reaching conspiracy which the recent release of the Epstein Files seems to support.

To be clear, I think the information presented so far in the files barely scratches the surface of the evil we are dealing with. I also think it’s important to point out that people being “named” in the Epstein Files is meaningless without context.

Some public figures like Donald Trump or Elon Musk are “named” as interacting with Epstein but there is zero evidence that they participated in anything nefarious (Epstein approached ANYONE with power or influence and tried to recruit them). Furthermore, anonymous FBI tips from random weirdos do not make a criminal case. Others are named in the files and the context suggests that they have done some pretty disgusting things.

The files represent enough evidence to justify a massive international investigation, they do not represent proof of crimes that would hold up in a court of law (at least, not so far).

We may actually never see indictments of any Epstein Island regulars. As I noted in my article “Governmental Self-Preservation: Why We’ll Never See The Real Epstein List”, published last year, I do think there are many people in the Trump Administration that want to see the Epstein case lead to arrests. However, I also predicted that the revelations within the files could trigger even darker discoveries that might cause total collapse.

The people handling this info are faced with a conundrum: Pursue the light of truth, dump it all on the internet and risk full blown societal chaos, or, drip feed info to the public and try to keep the system from imploding. Forget about aliens from outer space – The disclosure of concrete proof that a luciferian cult of baby eating bankers, CEOs, politicians and bureaucrats controls the planet is the real Black Swan event.

One cannot have a meaningful discussion about the nature of power in modern civilization (post-industrial revolution) without accepting the cold hard reality that most of the key events in our recent history have been manipulated by a hidden consortium of elites. We also can’t have any legitimate debate about how to solve the problem without accepting the fact that “evil” is an undeniable constant.

It’s the common denominator, the key to the equation.

Evil is a tangible and autonomous entity that the wields influence over human society, often using people with inherent weaknesses of the soul as vessels for achieving its machinations. Yes, that sounds rather biblical, but I would argue that our religious ancestors might have had a much better grasp on the nature of evil than we do today given our futurist propensity to deny anything we can’t immediately explain with science.

The Epstein Files suggests an evil that’s beyond reckoning for many people who have never been exposed to research on globalism, and even those who have been exposed might find themselves shocked by the discoveries.

To summarize, Jeffery Epstein was not the top of the pyramid. He was also not some self serving flim-flam man selling sex and depravity just to gain access to the halls of power. Rather, Epstein was a middle-man, a drug dealer selling dopamine experiences as a reward for members of the cabal (while collecting blackmail materials). But the cabal is far bigger than what we see in the Epstein files and it supersedes any one nation or government.

There are strange mentions of “cloning”, baby farming for black market sales, and the creation of a “superior race” in the files. In other words, the interests of Epstein and his associates went well beyond sexual fetishes.

Some of the Epstein emails openly discuss sexual abuse and torture of victims brought to the island. The victimization of teens is less protected and easier to prove. Then, there’s the creepier elements of the files. Coded language is rampant within the Epstein emails, using food as symbols for clearly illicit contraband.

From the Pizzagate information (the John Podesta emails) released by Wikileaks in 2016, we can see that food code words are common for the globalists and seem to be tied to the abuse of young children. Pizza symbolism has been common within pedophilia networks for many years leading up to the exposure of Pizzagate, and it’s also common within the pages of the Epstein Files (the word “pizza” is used as code at least 900 times in the emails).

The use of “beef jerky” in the Epstein emails (also mentioned hundreds of times) is specifically disconcerting, including talk of keeping the “jerky on ice”, a strange obsession with jerky portion weights, lab testing of “jerky” to prevent sickness, etc. Whatever they are talking about, it’s not beef jerky. You have to ask yourself, what kind of edible product would be so criminal that it has to be hidden behind elaborate code-speak?

The obvious conclusion would be that “jerky” is code for human meat. Some might argue that there’s no benefits to eating human meat so why would the elites do it? These critics are operating from a logical perspective and not an occultist perspective. One cannot separate Epstein Island from occultism and still understand what happened there.

For the elites who link themselves back to the pagan practices of ancient Babylonian times, from the era of Molech worshipers (Bohemian Grove) and beyond, the ritual of cannibalism is integral to their religion. They believe that human sacrifice gives them power and this is a common thread within most pagan systems including satanism.

Luciferianism/satanism is an integral element of globalism. The evidence of its practice within globalist circles is immense and cannot be ignored. Some skeptics would denote a separation between “satanism” and “luciferianism”, but for all intents and purposes they are intertwined belief systems.

Satanists are occupied with the pursuit of pleasure at the expense of morality, while luciferians are occupied with the pursuit of power and godhood at the expense of morality. For adherents of both practices, their motto is “Do What Thou Wilt.”

As I outlined in my article “Luciferianism: A Secular Look At A Destructive Globalist Belief System”, published in 2019, global elitists derive their spiritual ecstasy from the worship of the material and the corruption of the pure. They seek to deconstruct creation and human nature, to prove that all people are as depraved as they are and that morality is an artificial limitation on power and pleasure.

Their system is rife with psychopathic indicators and I assert that luciferienism is a religion designed specifically to affirm the destructive tendencies of psychopaths and narcopaths. But what are these tendencies?

Psychopaths lack any sense of empathy and function only as parasites who feed on the rest of humanity. This is actually one of the reasons I’m fascinated by them. Not because they are particularly interesting as individuals, but because their existence seems to be a dangerous anomaly. They are less than 1% of the total human population but they cause the vast majority of human tragedies.

The average person has the capacity for evil, there’s no doubt.

People can be driven to all kinds of horrors depending on their circumstances.

But, the majority of us have a mechanism called “conscience” which stops us from committing evil most of the time. It also causes us to feel guilt when we know we have acted in a destructive manner.

If the majority of the population did not have a universal experience of conscience and morality, we would have gone extinct as a species thousands of years ago.

Globalists (psychopaths) do not have this mechanism. In fact, they view conscience as a hindrance, a trait of the weak and the easily victimized. They are a predatory class of human. I would even suggest that they are not human at all, but a mutation or a cancerous intrusion.

When psychopaths achieve overt material wealth they then have easy access to the resources they need to satisfy their impulses at will. At this stage in the evolution of a psychopath they have a tendency to become bored. They begin to chase increasing depravity and darkness in search of a greater dopamine fix. The more degenerate and taboo the activity, the more exciting it is.

But these are nothing but individual motivations and personal addictions. What are the ambitions and drives of the organized cabal?

Part of the allure of occultism is the glee some people feel when they believe they are “superior” to their common man. Occult groups sell their members on the notion that they will be set apart as “elite” when they join with the keepers of secrets.

When we read the numerous emails tied to Epstein as well as his island and his ranch in New Mexico, the people who correspond with him seem childish and giddy. They snicker like adolescent brats when they engage in codes and riddles. They’re committing atrocities beyond the comprehension of the average man, and they feel joy because they’re basking in the “cloak and dagger” of it all.

I think this might be a hard thing to reconcile for many people in the conspiracy field, but the cabal is not made up of darkly brilliant minds imposing cold and calculating will. Rather, it is mostly made up of egomaniacal narcissists giggling like retards as they revel in their delusions of grandeur. If you saw how these people behave behind the scenes, you would probably feel embarrassed for them and feel like an idiot for imagining them to be cunning or untouchable masterminds.

Without their money and the collective protection of their coven, they are tiny people without merit living a meaningless existence. That said, make no mistake – It’s the putrid sociopathy of their childishness that makes them exceedingly dangerous. To be infantile while rejoicing in the blood of innocence requires a diabolical and demonic mind.

From my research Epstein’s Island might have been tame in comparison to some of the other meeting places of the elites. His island was not the end destination but a gateway for initiates. I believe the island was a test, a venue where evil is concentrated and people with apprehensions are filtered away.

The worst of the worst likely moved on to even more vile nesting grounds hidden in plain site around the world. The reason the Epstein Files matter is because they open the door to a wider investigation of the globalist networks and their horrific playgrounds.

I suggest that we need to bring back the concept of “witch hunters”; people who are able to think like occultists while using modern investigative methods in order to track down these networks and erase them from the Earth. If government officials refuse to do this, then vigilantism is inevitable.

Unfortunately, it’s no mistake that globalist NGOs have flooded the west with third world migrants and mobilized armies of far left insurgents in the past few years. After the pandemic they know that the public is reaching information saturation and that their agenda is coming to light. They will seek to overthrow conservative movements, exploit useful idiots to destroy their enemies and cause general mayhem in order to sabotage any organized resistance.

If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

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

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 16:20

Historic Negative Jobs Revisions: 1 Million Fewer Jobs Added In 2025, Only 15,000 Avg Jobs Monthly

Zero Hedge -

Historic Negative Jobs Revisions: 1 Million Fewer Jobs Added In 2025, Only 15,000 Avg Jobs Monthly

Ahead of today's jobs report, we warned that (another) massive negative revision was coming to the US labor market, predicting it would be "1 million plus." We were right.

Recall that alongside today's jobs report, the BLS would release its annual benchmark revision to the establishment survey and a methodological update to the birth-death model (as a reminder, the BLS’s preliminary estimate of the benchmark payrolls revision indicated that cumulative payroll growth between April 2024 and March 2025 would be revised 911k lower).

More importantly, the BLS would also update the net birth-death forecasts in the post-benchmark period (April 2025-December 2025) to incorporate information from the QCEW and the monthly payrolls survey. We said that a sharp downward revision to the post-benchmark period "appears likely", reflecting the continued slowdown in the job growth measured by the QCEW and weak private payroll growth measured by the establishment survey during post-benchmark period, something we had been warning about for years. 

Sure enough, in its report today, the BLS announced that "the establishment survey data released today have been benchmarked to reflect comprehensive counts of payroll jobs for March 2025. These counts are derived principally from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), which counts jobs covered by the Unemployment Insurance (UI) tax system. The benchmark process results in revisions to not seasonally adjusted data from April 2024 forward. Seasonally adjusted data from January 2021 forward are subject to revision. In addition, data for some series prior to 2021, both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted, incorporate other revisions."

And here is the summary table the BLS published to adjust for the revised Birth-Death model (there is much more data to today's revisions which we summarize below).

With that introduction aside, this is how the revised payrolls numbers looked. 

Starting at the top, total US payrolls were revised dramatically lower starting with the Jan 2021 data and every month since, and net of the cumulative changes December 31, 2025 total nonfarm employment was revised lower by 1.029 million from 159.546 million to 158.497 million.

As expected, the bulk of the negative revisions took place in 2025, with negative revisions to 2024 amounting to -413K, 2023 was just -73K while 2021 and 2021 were revised modestly higher. 

Focusing on 2025, the negative revisions to both the year and previous years, meant that the change in total jobs for 2025 was revised from an already low +584,000 to a shockingly low +181,000. 

Finally, net of the aggressive revisions to 2025 monthly payrolls, what was previously an average increase of 48.7K jobs in 2025, has now been revised to just 15.1K!

Of course, this is not the first time the Dept of Labor confirmed it has massively revised jobs lower due to erroneous adjustment factors and birth-death additions. Recall, it was last September when we first warned the April 2024 - March 2025 period would be revised massively lower (we now know it was). But it followed another huge revision for 2024 which subtracted 818K jobs and also a 306K revision to 2023.

Putting it all together, we now know with certainty that the flawed Birth-Death model (as well as other smaller seasonal adjustments), led to 2.5 million jobs being revised away since 2019, with negative revisions in 6 of the past 7 years (only 2022 saw a modest positive adjustment)

Last but not least, more revisions are coming: while the January jobs report usually incorporates new population estimates from the Census Bureau into the household survey, those figures were delayed by one month due to last year’s record-long government shutdown. Officials from the Trump administration in recent days have tried to reset expectations for upcoming jobs numbers due to deportations and slower population growth. As a result, expect even more negative revisions next month.

Appendix: 

Those curious how the BLS changed its entire birth-death model methodology to incorporate current sample information each month (which follows the same methodology applied to the April through October 2024 forecasts during the 2024 post-benchmark period) should read question 9 in the CES Birth-Death Model Frequently Asked Questions

Additionally, a BLS article that discusses the benchmark and post-benchmark revisions and other technical issues is available here.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 16:15

NonFarm Payrolls, Confirmation Bias edition

The Big Picture -

 

 

Today’s (belated) nonfarm payroll report had a little something for everyone. Whether you are bullish or bearish, recession or expansion, MAGA or Never Trump, there were nuggets of data in the report for you.

My charge is to put this into a broader context minus the bias.

Let’s jump into the specifics: The Bureau of Labor Statistics saw upside surprises in Jobs, Wages, and Unemployment Rate, and downside surprises to hiring breadth1 and annual revisions.

– Total nonfarm payroll rose 130,000 in January (double consensus)

– Unemployment rate down to 4.3 percent to 7.4 million

– Average hourly earnings rose by 15 cents (0.4%) to $37.17

These figures are all higher than they were a year ago: the U3 jobless rate was 4.0%; the number of unemployed people was 6.9 million. Wages were also lower – $35.87 in January 2025.

The biggest surprise was the annual benchmark revision. 2025 was far worse than anyone previously thought. Total job creation for the year was slashed from 584,000 to just 181,000. That downward revision of 898,000 jobs (seasonally adjusted) was the second-largest negative adjustment on record, trailing only the 2009 financial crisis.

Here is what annual job revisions look like:

Average monthly revisions:
2025: -86k
2024: -94k
2023: -52k
2022: -8k
2021: +161k
2020: -29k

Totally revisions
2025: 1,208k to 181k (-1,027k overall)
2024: 2,589k to 1,459k (-1,130k)
2023: 3,140k to 2,515k (-625k)
2022: 4,619k to 4,526k (-93k)
2021: 5,331k to 7,268k (+1,973k)
2020: -8,893k to -9,246k (-353k)

The benchmark revisions also revealed that the labor market contracted in 2025 in four separate months—January, June, August, and October.

My confirmation bias?  It’s all about tariffs. They are the underlying reason the 2025 labor market is so weak.

If the chart at the top doesn’t seem to confirm that view, it only shows monthly changes in NFP — not the annual.My confirmation bias? The Tariffs are the underlying reason the 2025 labor market is so poor. If the chart at top does not seem to confirm that view, it only shows monthly changes in NFP — not the annual net gains. While 2025 and 2024 saw similar revisions, it was 2025 that was the had a weaker leabor economy.

Have a look at this chart via the Hiring Lab:

This chart inform us the further we get away from the giant 2020-21 fiscal stimulus, the more the economy softened. Not coincidentally, the weakening jobs market coincided with a decline in CPI inflation from its June 2022 peak.

While we have seen substantial revisions in each of the past 5 years, it’s telling that those were from much higher levels. This data confirms we are in a “low-hire, low-fire” environment; perhaps this is what’s contributing to the falling level of consumer sentiment.

But I am not in the recession camp (yet); I’d put the odds of a first-half 2026 contraction at about 25% and in the second-half of 2026 closer to 40%. Not a high probability of recession, but if we see further economic missteps, a recession might be the result. (I know, pretty wishy-washy).

My main takeaway is the labor market is increasingly showing cracks and signs of stress; it looks increasingly fragile, even as equity markets hit all-time highs.

~~~

These revisions to 2025 are legitimately alarming. Hiring breadth remains way too narrow. And the data itself is arguably less reliable than it used to be. Interpreting NFP reports has become more challenging than ever…

 

 

 

Previously:
IEEPA Tariffs Update (January 27, 2026)

Where is the Tipping Point? (September 22, 2025)

NFP Disappoint; Revisions Worse (August 1, 2025)

7 Increasing Probabilities of Error (February 24, 2025)

Risks & Opportunities of the New Administration (February 3, 2025)

 

 

__________

1. Beneath the headlines, the breadth of hiring was very alarmingly narrow. Of those 130,000 new jobs, health care and social assistance accounted for 95% of the total.

 

 

The post NonFarm Payrolls, Confirmation Bias edition appeared first on The Big Picture.

FDA Refuses To Review Moderna's Application For Experimental Flu Shot

Zero Hedge -

FDA Refuses To Review Moderna's Application For Experimental Flu Shot

Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times,

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is refusing to review Moderna’s experimental flu shot, the company announced Tuesday.

Already submitted and accepted for review in the European Union, Canada, and Australia, the experimental shot’s application being denied by the FDA is another sign of President Donald Trump’s administration’s impact on U.S. pharmaceutical companies.

FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) Director Vinayak Prasad signed the refusal to review letter, objecting to Moderna’s study design and its lack of an “adequate and well-controlled” study.

Moderna’s CEO refuted to Prasad’s assessment.

“It should not be controversial to conduct a comprehensive review of a flu vaccine submission that uses an FDA-approved vaccine as a comparator in a study that was discussed and agreed on with CBER prior to starting,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in the news release.

According to the pharmaceutical company, the FDA did not identify any specific safety or efficacy concerns with the experimental flu shot, called mRNA-1010.

Health and Human Services (HHS), under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced its plan in August 2025 to begin winding down mRNA vaccine development, including the cancellation and de-scoping of contracts and solicitations. The decision came after a review of mRNA-related investments started during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu. We’re shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate,” Kennedy said in the news release.

The HHS secretary added that his agency will be investing in better solutions.

In the latest setback with Moderna’s experimental mRNA shot, the company called the move by the FDA “inconsistent” with prior feedback it has received from the agency.

In April 2024, Moderna submitted its phase three study to the FDA’s CBER for review. The agency sent written guidance back, which did not raise any objections about the phase three trial, Moderna said.

Following the completion of the experimental shot’s phase three efficacy trial in August 2025, Moderna held another meeting with the FDA agency for feedback. The Moderna news release said that at no time during the meeting or in written feedback did CBER hint that it would refuse to review the shot’s application.

“This decision by CBER, which did not identify any safety or efficacy concerns with our product, does not further our shared goal of enhancing America’s leadership in developing innovative medicines,” Bancel said.

With mRNA-1010’s acceptance for review in the European Union, Canada, and Australia, Moderna said it plans to file more submissions in additional countries this year.

Meanwhile, the drug company has requested a meeting with the FDA agency to understand the path forward.

“We look forward to engaging with CBER to understand the path forward as quickly as possible so that America’s seniors, and those with underlying conditions, continue to have access to American-made innovations,” the CEO said.

The refusal to review Moderna’s experimental flu vaccine comes as the Trump administration is making sweeping changes to the U.S. health complex, like inverting the food pyramid, narrowing the childhood vaccine schedule, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admitting vaccines may cause autism, and more.

RFK Jr. helped launch the Make America Healthy Again movement, which is advocating for healthier diets, safer farming practices, more awareness of store-bought foods laden with chemicals, and trying to identify the root causes of chronic disease.

The FDA refusing to review Moderna’s experimental flu shot becomes the latest setback for big pharmaceutical companies under the Trump administration.

The pharmaceutical company said it does not expect impacts to its 2026 financial guidance and forecasts the earliest approvals for its experimental flu shot to begin late 2026 or early 2027.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 15:45

Real Estate Services Stocks Crash In Latest "AI Scare Trade"

Zero Hedge -

Real Estate Services Stocks Crash In Latest "AI Scare Trade"

FIrst it was SaaS (in particular, and Software in general), then Private Credit, then Insurance Brokers, then it was financials/brokers that were hammered yesterday... and today's it's the turn of real estate service stocks to tumble as investors followed the bouncing AI disruption ball and freaked out over the sector’s vulnerability to the newest crop of artificial intelligence applications and tools that can disrupt countless industries.

As the latest daily AI scare - this time focusing on real estate - hit the market, shares of CBRE Group Inc. plunged as much as 15%, Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. slid 13% and Cushman & Wakefield Ltd. fell 15%. For all three firms, the moves mark the biggest drop since March 2020 in the midst of the Covid-driven market selloff.   

“We believe investors are rotating out of high-fee, labor-intensive business models viewed as potentially vulnerable to AI-driven disruption,” Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Jade Rahmani writes in a note on Wednesday adding that the selloff is “due to ‘AI Scare Trade’,” the analyst wrote.

Still, the analyst also noted that "while the threat of technology disintermediation is not new to the industry" the current sell-off "may overstate the immediate risk to complex deal-making, even as the long-term AI impact remains a ‘wait-and-see’." 

According to Goldman trader Christian deGrasse "while rates are up modestly post NFPs, price action in lower rated sensitive sectors (CRE Brokers; Mortgage originators & brokerages) are suggesting a more dramatic shift in positioning here."

The group is the latest to get caught up in what Rahmani calls the “AI scare trade,” after investors rushed to dump shares of software firms, private credit companies, wealth managers and insurance brokers within the span of just over a week. 

The fears emerged last week after AI startup Anthropic released tools aimed at automating work tasks in areas ranging from legal services to financial research to real estate. At the same time, analysts and investors have warned that some of this steep selling reflects a knee-jerk reaction and the market is wildly overestimating the risk inherent in hallucinating chatbots taking away millions of jobs.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 15:35

Apple Slides On Report Latest Attempt To Re-Launch Siri Runs Into "Snags"

Zero Hedge -

Apple Slides On Report Latest Attempt To Re-Launch Siri Runs Into "Snags"

Apple is sliding on a Bloomberg report that its long-planned upgrade to the Siri virtual assistant has run into new snags during testing in recent weeks, potentially pushing back the release of several highly anticipated functions.

After planning to include the new capabilities in iOS 26.4, an OS update slated for March, Apple is now working to spread them out over future versions. That would mean postponing at least some features until at least iOS 26.5, due in May, and iOS 27, which comes out in September. It wasn't immediately clear what the snags in question are. 

The latest hitches are part of a long saga for Apple, which first announced plans for the revamped Siri in June 2024. That year, the iPhone maker showed off capabilities that would let the assistant tap into personal data and on-screen content to better fulfill requests. The upgraded Siri also would let users precisely control apps from Apple and third parties via their voice. All the new features were due by early 2025.

In the spring of last year, Apple delayed the rollout, saying the new Siri would instead arrive in 2026. It never announced more specific timing. Internally, though, Apple settled on the March 2026 target - tying it to iOS 26.4 - a goal that remained in place as recently as last month. 

But testing has uncovered fresh problems with the software, prompting the latest postponements, Bloomberg reported citing sources. Siri doesn’t always properly process queries or can take too long to handle requests, they said.

In recent days, Apple instructed engineers to use the upcoming iOS 26.5 in order to test new Siri features, implying that the functionality may have been moved back by at least one release. Internal versions of that update now include a notice describing the addition of some Siri enhancements. 

One feature is especially likely to slip: the expanded ability for Siri to tap into personal data. That technology would let users ask the assistant to, say, search old text messages to locate a podcast shared by a friend and immediately play it.

Other features running behind include the most advanced commands for voice-based control of in-app actions, a system known as app intents. It would let people ask Siri to find an image, edit it and send it to a contact, all in a single command. Apple employees testing iOS 26.5 say early support for these features exists, but they don’t function reliably in all cases.

Another challenge: The new Siri sometimes falls back on its existing integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT instead of using Apple’s own technology. That can happen even when Siri should be capable of handling the request. 

Apple shares pared their gains on the news Wednesday. The stock was up 1.1% to $276.71 as of 2:52 p.m. in New York after earlier climbing as high as 2.4%.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 15:20

Public Trust In US Government Nears Historic Lows

Zero Hedge -

Public Trust In US Government Nears Historic Lows

The United States has fallen to its lowest-ever rank in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI), a leading global index that measures perception of corruption in the public sector among independent experts and business people.

In 2025, the U.S. fell down one spot to 29th place (out of 182) with a score of 64/100 on a 0 to 100 scale, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 completely clean.

This ranking puts the country on the same level as the Bahamas, and below Uruguay (17th place), Bhutan (18th) and the United Arab Emirates (21st). The United States had been on a slow decline in the index since 2017, when the country scored 75/100.

Several factors are blamed for the U.S.' poor score, including measures put in place last year by the Trump administration that have severely hindered the federal government's ability to fight public corruption, such as pausing investigations into corporate foreign bribery, weakening institutions or curtailing enforcement of a foreign agent registration law.

In a statement published yesterday, Transparency International wrote:

"Our data show that democracies, typically stronger on anti-corruption than autocracies or flawed democracies, are experiencing a worrying decline in performance. This trend spans countries such as the United States (64), Canada (75) and New Zealand (81), to various parts of Europe, like the United Kingdom (70), France (66) and Sweden (80). Another concerning pattern is increasing restrictions by many states on freedoms of expression, association and assembly."

On the United States, the anti-curruption coalition added: "Although 2025 developments are not yet fully reflected, actions targeting independent voices and undermining judicial independence raise serious concerns. Beyond the CPI findings, the temporary freeze and weakening of enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act signal tolerance for corrupt business practices, while cuts to US aid for overseas civil society have weakened global anti-corruption efforts. Political leaders elsewhere have taken this as a cue to further restrict NGOs, journalists and other independent voices."

According to recent aggregated data from the Pew Research Center based on series of national polls, trust in the government was nearing historic lows at the end of 2025, with only 17 percent of Americans trusting the government to do what is right just about always or most of the time.

As Statista's Valentine Fourreau shows in the infographic below, trust in the government has been on a slow decline since it peaked at 54 percent in October 2001, during George W. Bush's first term (such a high level of approval hadn't been recorded since the early 1970s, under President Nixon).

 Public Trust in U.S. Government Nears Historic Lows | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

The lowest level recorded since 2000 was in October 2011, under President Obama.

Trust in the government hit a low of 15 percent, which coincided with the announcement of the official withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of the year and the expansion of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 15:00

'No Privacy' CBDCs Will Come, Warns Billionaire Ray Dalio

Zero Hedge -

'No Privacy' CBDCs Will Come, Warns Billionaire Ray Dalio

Authored by Martin Young via CoinTelegraph.com,

American billionaire and hedge fund manager Ray Dalio has warned that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are coming, offering benefits but also potentially allowing governments to exert more control over people’s finances.

“I think it will be done,” said Dalio on CBDCs in a wide-ranging interview on the Tucker Carlson Show on Monday, which also included topics on the US debt crisis, gold prices, and even a potential civil war. 

Ray Dalio is a billionaire hedge fund manager who has been co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates since 1985, after founding the firm in 1975. 

During the interview, Dalio said CBDCs could be appealing due to the ease of transactions, likening them to money market funds in terms of functionality, but he also cautioned about their downsides.

He said there will be a debate, but CBDCs “probably won’t” offer interest, so they will not be “an effective vehicle to hold because you’ll have the depreciation [of the dollar].”

Dalio also cautioned that all CBDC transactions will be known to the government, which is good for controlling illegal activity, but also provides a great deal of control in other areas. 

“There will be no privacy, and it's a very effective controlling mechanism by the government.”

Ray Dalio talks CBDCs with Tucker Carlson. Source: YouTube

Taxation, forex controls and political debanking 

A programmable digital currency will enable the government to tax directly, “they can take your money,” and establish foreign exchange controls, he said. 

That will be an “increasing issue,” particularly for international holders of that currency, as the government can seize funds from nationals of sanctioned countries. 

Dalio also said that you could be “shut off” from a CBDC if you were “politically disfavored.” 

An American CBDC is unlikely to be deployed in the near future, as US President Donald Trump has been vocally opposed to them

Soon after taking office in January 2025, Trump signed an executive order prohibiting “the establishment, issuance, circulation, and use” of a US CBDC. 

Only three countries have launched a CBDC 

According to the Atlantic Council’s CBDC tracker, only three countries have officially launched a CBDC: Nigeria, Jamaica, and The Bahamas. 

Another 49 countries are testing CBDCs, including China, Russia, India and Brazil. Twenty nations have a CBDC in development, and 36 are still researching central bank digital currencies.

India’s central bank reportedly proposed an initiative in January linking BRICS CBDCs to facilitate cross-border trade and tourism payments. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 14:40

Pages