Trump Disapproval Rate Hits Career-High - War And Rising Costs Take Toll

Though tempered by the prospect of additional GOP gerrymandering of House districts in the wake of a pivotal Supreme Court decision, Democrats' hopes for a rout of Republicans in the approaching midterm elections are rising after a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that President Trump's disapproval rating is now the highest of either of his two terms in office. Trump's decision to launch a war on Iran is taking a toll -- voters are not only dismayed by his handling of Iran, but also dissatisfied with his work on the economy, which is itself being harmed by the war. 

In a survey of US adults taken in the last week of April, 62% said they disapprove of his general performance in the Oval Office.  A whopping 76% disapprove of his handling of the cost of living and 66% disapprove of what he's done with Iran. A majority of Americans surveyed expressed disapproval of his handling of every issue covered by the survey.   

via ABC News

While 85% of Republicans approve of his performance, the share who strongly approve fell to 45% -- that's down 8% since September and is a new Trump low. Perhaps more importantly, his approval among Republican-leaning independents is also at a new low of 56%. Overall, just 25% of independents approve of his performance.

Trump also scored terribly on some personal attributes. For example, 71% said the descriptors "honest and trustworthy" are not applicable to Trump, while 67% said Trump does not "carefully consider important decisions." Meanwhile, 59% said he lacks the "mental sharpness" required of his position.  

The poll provides a little insight into the upcoming midterm races. Today, Republicans have a slim, 3-seat margin of control of the House of Representatives. Asked if they would vote for a Democrat or Republican candidate if the House election were held today, 49% said they would for a Democrat, compared to 44% who would choose a Republican. At the same point in the 2022 midterms, that question yielded a 42-42 tie, with the GOP proceeding to win the House when votes were cast six months later, securing a 222 - 213 margin in seats (a 9-seat pickup for the Republicans).  As for intended turnout, 79% of registered Democrats say they are "absolutely certain" they'll vote, compared to 72% of Republicans -- a 7-point improvement on the GOP turnout expectation recorded in a February survey.  

Vance had higher approval and disapproval ratings than Rubio -- as more survey participants shrugged at the Rubio performance question

Looking at the big picture, 67% of Americans said the country is moving in the wrong direction. Here, there's a vast difference among parties: 94% of Democrats felt that way, compared to 25% of Republicans. As a general caveat, we'll note that -- since more and more Americans identify as independent -- party results are growing less meaningful. A hefty 78% of independents say the country is heading south.  

Finally, the poll had some incidental insights for those looking ahead to the 2028 presidential race. While participants weren't asked about that contest, they were asked to rate the job performance of various Trump administration officials, including two potential GOP contenders: Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. They came out with similar approval ratings -- 35% for Vance and 33% for Rubio -- but Vance had a 48% disapproval rating, compared to 40% for Rubio. The remainder of respondents had no opinion. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/04/2026 - 07:45

My back-to-work morning train reads:

• Sell in May and Go Away? Not This Year. The S&P 500 Just Had Its Best Month Since 2020. Don’t let sell in May’ spook you. Stocks have been on a tear. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA -0.31% has risen 0.9% this past week through midday Friday, while the S&P 500 index SPX +0.29% has gained 1.3% and the Nasdaq Composite COMP +0.89% is up 1.4%. The latter two, with gains of 10% and 15%, respectively, in April, posted their best months since 2020. (Barron’s)

• More Americans Are Millionaires, But They Don’t Feel Rich: About 1 in 6 households nationwide has a net worth above $1 million, and, because the occasional billionaire tilts the scale, the average American family has passed that seven-figure benchmark. The disconnect between wealth on paper and felt affluence keeps widening. Says a lot about asset-price inflation, lifestyle creep, and sentiment. (Washington Post) see also The Mathematical Reason Most People Never “Make It”: The uncomfortable truth about effort, outcome, and the math that connects them all. (The Write Path)

• So, About That AI Bubble: The capex math behind the AI buildout is starting to wobble even at the leaders. Thanks to the rise of Claude Code and other AI agents, revenues are finally catching up to the hype. (The Atlantic)

• Bizarre moment at Berkshire’s annual meeting spotlights cyber risk:  Kicking off the Q&A on Saturday morning, the spotlight went to a video where “Warren from Omaha” asked the first question. Hi. My name is Warren from Omaha. I’ve recently undergone, let’s call it, a significant change in role. And I have, well, let’s just say, a not insignificant portion of my net worth tied up in Berkshire stock… (TKer)

• You Have No Idea How Much You Still Use BlackBerry: Once left for dead, the company is making money again with hidden software in 275 million cars. You use it every day without knowing it. (Wall Street Journal)

• Surging HOA Fees Are Pushing Homeowners to the Brink: The hidden second mortgage no one underwrites for: HOA fees climbing faster than wages and faster than insurance premiums. Affordability has many tentacles. Monthly costs of homeowners associations have jumped 26% since 2019; owners can also be hit with special fees for large repairs (Wall Street Journal)

• We Made Technology Easy to Use: That was a mistake: The problem isn’t usability itself; it’s what it has become—a design approach that replaced any need whatsoever to understand complex systems with the ability to thoughtlessly interact with them. (Slate)

• The particles in the early Universe painted a different picture: Cosmology done patiently. Ethan Siegel walks through what the cosmic baby pictures actually reveal about matter, antimatter, and why we ended up here at all. Today, we have the Standard Model of particles with four fundamental forces governing them. But things weren’t always the way they are now. (Starts With A Bang)

• Stephen Colbert Gets Ready to Hang It Up: The Late Show host walks toward the exit. Late-night TV’s slow-motion collapse continues, one host at a time. (New York Times) see also How a Deep State Bureaucrat Became Trump’s ‘Fake News’ Enforcer: Brendan Carr is pointing his MAGA flamethrower at Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and the American news media (Businessweek)

• Inside the Enhanced Games, Where Athletes Compete on Steroids. And Growth Hormones. And Adderall: Vanity Fair goes inside the doping-by-design Olympics. The future of sports may be more pharmacology than physiology — and the spectators don’t seem to mind. Most drugs are banned in the world of elite sports, but not here. In this competition—backed by Peter Thiel, Donald Trump Jr., and Saudi royalty—the athletes are guinea pigs. And if those backers have their way, you’re next. (Vanity Fair)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this weekend with Lawrence Calcano, CEO and Chairman of iCapital, The firm is a fintech platform built to be the OS for alternative investments and complex products for financial advisors, wealth managers, and banks. The firm has over $1.2 trillion in active global assets on platform,  across 2,455 funds used by 123,ooo financial professionals.

 

More than half of all Polymarket “long shot” bets on military action pay off

Source: Ars Technica

 

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

Europe Will Lose Billions In Revenue If US Military Bases Shut Down

Europe is in far greater economic trouble that most people realize.  In an April 2026 report by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), it was reveled that the UK's GDP per capita is lower than all 50 U.S. states, including the poorest, Mississippi. While the majority of Britons mistakenly believe the UK is as wealthy or wealthier than the US, data shows the UK's average income lags behind the lowest-performing US states, highlighting a significant economic gap.

The quiet decline of the once mighty British Empire right under the nose of the general populace is just one of many examples of Europe not understanding their own precarious economic circumstances. 

Far-left governments on the other side of the Atlantic have openly sought to sabotage conservative political movements, imposing authoritarian lawfare and mass censorship in order to prevent losing their grip on power.  The globalist leadership in these countries has designated the Trump Administration and US nationalist groups as a "bad influence" on their own citizens. 

The key conflict is about forced third world immigration and forced multiculturalism.  Leftist politicians desperately want this process to continue, but the US is enforcing a migrant reversal, which makes Europeans wonder why their governments are not doing the same?  The juxtaposition is embarrassing and makes the liberal agenda more difficult. 

Because of this snub against the multicultural project, the Trump Administration's scrutiny of European censorship, tariff's against nations that had their own tariffs on US goods and Trump's demand that NATO countries pay their fair share in defense, the elitists across the pond have turned sour on their relationship with America.

They have been noticeably interested in undermining US operations in the Gulf against Iran, denying the US access to airspace and making things unnecessarily complicated.  One can theorize the deeper motives behind this decision (the presence of 50 million Muslims in Europe, many of them migrants, might explain the apprehension to do anything that might be seen as European hostility to Iran), but it's clear that the behavior of some EU leaders has grown increasingly petty.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently sparked intense controversy by stating that the U.S. is being "humiliated" by Iran and lacks a clear strategy in the conflict, calling the situation "ill-considered".  It's difficult to understand this assertion without knowing Merz's definition of "humiliation". 

With the majority of Iran's leadership dead or incapacitated, at least half of their missile stock destroyed and Trump's reverse blockade crushing the Iranian economy within just a couple weeks ($1 US dollar is currently equal to around 1.8 million Rial), one has to wonder what success looks like to the Germans (perhaps an old-school blitzkrieg would impress them more). 

It doesn't really matter, because Merz's comments were met with a sharp response from the Trump Admin, and now it is likely that US bases in the country will soon be shut down.  Upon hearing this news, Merz suddenly changed his tune and praised the US partnership with Germany:

"The United States is and will remain Germany‘s most important partner in the North Atlantic Alliance. We share a common goal: Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons..."

The United States is and will remain Germany‘s most important partner in the North Atlantic Alliance. We share a common goal: Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.

— Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz (@bundeskanzler) May 3, 2026

That's an incredible attitude adjustment in the span of only 24 hours.  At the same time, a NATO spokesperson scrambled to rekindle diplomatic relations, claiming that European leaders were trying to understand the US decision to pull troops, as if the reasons were not blatantly clear already. 

Why is Merz abruptly shifting his rhetoric?  Probably because he just realized the benefits Germany draws from the US military bases in the region; benefits which Germany has enjoyed for decades. 

Citizens in Italy, Spain and Germany are expressing concerns that the removal of US bases will cost local and national economies dearly.  With approximately 36,400 active-duty US personnel (as of late 2025) across major sites like Ramstein Air Base and facilities in Bavaria, the US military functions as a major economic engine, especially in rural and smaller urban areas. 

Germany rakes in around $4.1 billion annually through US spending around military bases.  US operations support more than 10,000 direct German jobs (civilian employees at bases) and an estimated 70,000 indirect jobs (in construction, services, and supply chains). The US also invests billions annually in base operations, expansion, and modernization.  The removal of troops would squeeze these already struggling rural communities.   

President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw at least 5,000 US troops from Germany has raised concerns among residents living near Ramstein Air Base. pic.twitter.com/hllQNYiuYg

— DW News (@dwnews) May 3, 2026

Italy collects around $312 million every year in base generated revenues in Naples alone, and at least 5000 direct jobs are created. 

In Spain, $713 million is pumped into local economies annually through US bases, plus around 8000 jobs for Spanish military staff and civilian workers.   

U.S. defense spending directly supporting European security is substantial, with the U.S. maintaining a nearly $1 trillion global defense budget. While direct on-ground operational costs were previously estimated around $30–$36 billion annually in 2025.  This might not sound like much, but the effects are substantial in poorer rural areas.  

The economic advantages of the US presence go far beyond direct spending.  US military security allows Europe to spend minimal on defense, which means they have far more cash to spend on social welfare programs like universal healthcare.  All of these programs go away with a US exit from NATO.  

Beyond the obvious loss of defense capability that comes with a US exit from NATO, the economic factor should not be overlooked.   

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/04/2026 - 05:45

All-Time High 55% Of Americans Say That Their Financial Situations Are Getting Worse

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse,

Americans were not even this stressed about their financial situations during the Great Recession. As you will see below, a brand new Gallup survey has discovered that 55 percent of Americans believe that their finances are getting worse. That is higher than any reading that Gallup recorded during the recession of 2008 and 2009, and it is higher than any reading that Gallup recorded during the pandemic. But of course this shouldn’t exactly be a surprise to any of us. We have been in a historic cost of living crisis since 2020, and our standard of living has been steadily deteriorating as the purchasing power of our money has gone down.

If you are making the same amount of money as you did at the beginning of this decade, you are in far worse shape financially today.

That is just the reality of the time that we are living in.

The cost of just about everything has been going up and up and up.

As a result, people are more concerned about the economy than anything else.

According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans that believe that their finances are getting worse has been rising for five years in a row and is now at the highest level ever recorded…

Americans’ financial outlook in 2026 is also historically poor, with a record 55% now saying their financial situation is getting worse. While similar to last year’s 53%, this is up from 47% in 2024 and marks the fifth consecutive year more Americans say their finances are worsening rather than improving.

The only similar multiyear period when the larger share felt their financial situation was worsening was during the Great Recession.

At this stage, there is no denying the trend that we are witnessing.

Gallup found that Americans are particularly concerned about monthly bills, healthcare and retirement…

Majorities worry about not having enough money for retirement (62%) and being unable to cover medical costs in the event of a serious accident or illness (60%). Slightly smaller majorities (54% each) worry about their investment returns and maintaining their standard of living.

Nearly half are concerned about routine healthcare costs (48%), while 41% worry about paying their normal monthly bills and 40% about affording college. Fewer worry about housing costs (35%) or making minimum credit card payments (28%).

Living paycheck to paycheck is not fun at all.

Many of you know exactly what I am talking about.

Today, much of the country is just one major setback away from financial ruin…

According to a recent national survey, a little over $6,000 in additional debt is all it takes to push a family over the edge. Six thousand dollars. The cost of a half-decent secondhand car. A modest kitchen renovation. In the country that put a man on the moon, mapped the human genome, won two world wars, and produces more billionaires per capita than anywhere on earth, that’s the cliff edge.

The old vocabulary no longer fits. The conservative catechism of thrift, discipline, and delayed gratification has aged poorly in light of the evidence. Tariffs, as the survey notes, rippled through supply chains and left a sizeable dent in consumers’ pockets. Health care waits in the background, capable of dismantling a decade of careful saving with a single bad diagnosis. American households have always lived under financial pressure. The difference now is the direction — or rather, the directions. It is coming from everywhere at once, which is what makes it almost impossible to outrun.

The middle class is being systematically eviscerated all around us.

It is a national crisis that just keeps intensifying year after year.

As finances have gotten tighter and tighter, millions upon millions of Americans have fundamentally changed their behavior…

The response has been behavioral rather than political, which is another way of saying people have given up waiting for someone to fix it. Nights out get canceled. Rent falls behind. Medical appointments get postponed and rarely rescheduled. None of this is irrational. When survival takes priority, everything else enters a waiting room with no clear appointment time. What makes it particularly disturbing is that financial distress doesn’t stay financial. It moves through relationships and communities, rearranging what people believe is possible for themselves.

Some will call it hyperbolic to suggest the American Dream is dead. Perhaps. But a dream balanced on a six-thousand-dollar ledge, in a stiff wind, is not exactly thriving. With energy prices soaring and the probability of a recession climbing with every new data release, the wind is picking up.

What about you?

Have you found yourself changing your spending behavior in recent years in an attempt to save money?

If so, there are countless others that are in the exact same shoes.

Unfortunately, the outlook for the months ahead is not promising at all.

On Tuesday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States rose to the highest level that we have seen since the war with Iran began…

Gas prices climbed Tuesday to their highest level since the Iran conflict began.

The national average for a gallon of regular hit $4.18, up 15 cents from a week earlier and about $1 higher than a year ago, according to AAA.

As energy prices rise, it is going to affect the cost of everything else too.

Meanwhile, the government just continues to tax us into oblivion.

As I have detailed in other articles, each year Americans are hit with literally dozens of different taxes and fees.

When you add all of them together, some Americans end up paying more than 50 percent of their incomes in taxes and fees.

In fact, Bill Maher is claiming that he pays about 60 percent of his income in taxes and fees…

Even for liberal HBO host Bill Maher, the math behind Tax Day no longer adds up.

Maher took to his platform on “Real Time” to sound the alarm on a staggering personal tax burden that he says claims the majority of his earnings, sparking a wider debate on whether the American government is simply “incompetent and corrupt” despite a $5 trillion revenue stream.

“Last week was Tax Day… I paid to the government, if you add in state tax, local, sales, property, fees, Obamacare, probably almost 60% of what I earn. That’s a lot,” Maher said on a recent episode.

If you have to hand over more than half of what you earn to the government, you are no longer living in a capitalist system.

Some people out there don’t seem to have figured that out yet.

In this environment, you should be thankful if you still have an income coming in, because we continue to see mass layoffs all over the nation.

For example, Nike just announced yet another round of layoffs…

Nike announced a new round of layoffs Thursday affecting approximately 1,400 employees across the organization, mostly concentrated in its technology department.

In a note from COO Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the company said the layoffs were part of Nike’s broader “Win Now” turnaround strategy aiming to reshape its technology team, modernize its Air manufacturing, move some of its Converse Footwear operations and integrate its materials supply chain work into its footwear and apparel supply chain teams.

Our economy is coming apart at the seams all around us.

And now the crisis in the Middle East threatens to plunge the entire global system into an extended downturn.

We really are facing a nightmare scenario, and it won’t be too long before that is completely and utterly obvious to everyone.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/04/2026 - 04:15

Russia's Oil Revenues Surge As The World Scrambles For Supply

Authored by Felicity Bradstock via oilprice.com,

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, several major world powers introduced strict sanctions on trade with Moscow. Europe and the United States have been gradually decreasing their dependence on Russian gas and other energy products and putting pressure on other countries to do the same, to place a financial strain on Moscow, as the war with Ukraine continues. However, some countries, such as India and China, have used these sanctions as an excuse to buy discounted crude and gas from Russia, in a bid to reduce costs and boost energy security. 

Imports of Russian crude to China and India have increased significantly since 2022. In 2024, China bought a record of more than 100 million tonnes of Russian oil, which contributed nearly 20 percent of its energy imports. Meanwhile, India spent an estimated $140 billion on Russian energy imports. Over the last year, both Asian countries deepened their ties with Moscow following the imposition of high tariffs on imports by the United States. 

Although several countries have decreased their dependence on Russian energy since the invasion of Ukraine, shifting dependence to alternative energy sources, some have been forced to turn back to Russia in the wake of the “largest oil disruption in history”. Even the United States, the main advocate for the imposition of strict sanctions on Russian energy, appears to have changed its tune in recent weeks.

On 16th April, the U.S. Treasury Department extended a sanctions exemption on the sale of some Russian crude, which is expected to be in effect until May 16. This follows a previous sanctions waiver on Russia, which expired on April 11. The move by the Trump administration to ease sanctions is in response to the strain placed on the global energy market following the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran in February and subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz. 

The move is expected to decrease the cost of oil as countries are permitted to legally purchase hundreds of millions of barrels of crude from Russia. A spokeswoman from the U.S. Treasury said: “As negotiations accelerate, Treasury wants to ensure all oil is available to those who need it.”

In recent weeks, it has remained unclear if the Strait of Hormuz will be fully opened again or whether it will remain under threat of attack. On April 10th, Iran reopened the Strait to all commercial ships before closing it once again less than 24 hours later, citing the ongoing U.S. blockade on Iranian ports as the cause.

As the trade outlook in the Middle East remains uncertain, Russian sales of crude to India are expected to remain near record highs in April and May, largely owing to the latest U.S. sanctions waiver. The finances earned from the sale of Russian oil could help Moscow fund its military spending for the war in Ukraine.

India shipped around 2.25 million bpd of Russian crude in March, marking an increase of almost 100 percent compared to February volumes. Russian crude arrivals in Indian ports were expected to reach 2.1 million bpd for the week of April 20 to 27, an increase from 1.67 million bpd the previous week.

The ongoing disruption in the Strait of Hormuz has led India and China to compete for global oil supplies, mainly from Russia, as well as Saudi Arabia. “The competition for Russian crude between India and China has been intense and will continue to be so for June-loading cargoes,” a senior analyst at Kpler, Muyu Xu, told CNBC. “The de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz is prompting Asian countries to seek cheap crude that is readily available, and Russian crude falls into this category,” added Xu.

Before the War in Iran, China was importing vast quantities of Iranian crude. However, the conflict has caused major disruptions to energy trade as well as led to the destruction of energy infrastructure across the Middle East. This has led China to rely more heavily on Russia for its oil supplies.

It is not just China and India that are turning to Russian energy, as, in April, Indonesia announced plans to buy up to 150 million barrels of oil from Russia. Roughly 20 to 25 percent of Indonesia’s oil imports typically come from the Middle East and traverse the Strait of Hormuz. “Indonesia has now secured a commitment from the Russian government. We can store 150 million barrels in Indonesia to address economic volatility issues,” the Antara state news agency quoted President Prabowo Subianto’s brother Hashim as saying. 

The ongoing Middle East conflict continues to drive up energy prices due to the severe energy trade disruptions, caused largely by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. This has led many governments to seek alternative energy sources to ensure their energy security for the coming months. The temporary waiver for sanctions on the import of Russian energy is expected to drive up oil and gas trade significantly in the coming months, which could result in more money being channelled into Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine – the exact thing that the United States and Europe were originally trying to avoid by introducing sanctions.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/04/2026 - 03:30

Rudy Giuliani Hospitalized In Critical Condition

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been hospitalized and is in critical condition, according to The New York Times, citing his spokesman, Ted Goodman.

"Mayor Giuliani is a fighter who has faced every challenge in his life with unwavering strength, and he's fighting with that same level of strength as we speak," Goodman said, before asking "that you join us in prayer" for the former NYC mayor.

Goodman did not disclose what medical emergency sent Giuliani to a Florida hospital Sunday afternoon.

President Trump also released a statement on Giuliani's medical emergency, telling those on Truth Social, "Our fabulous Rudy Giuliani, a True Warrior, and the Best Mayor in the History of New York City, BY FAR, has been hospitalized, and is in critical condition."

"What a tragedy that he was treated so badly by the Radical Left Lunatics, Democrats ALL — AND HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING! They cheated in the Elections, fabricated hundreds of stories, did everything possible to destroy our Nation, and now, look at Rudy. So sad!" the president said.

Giuliani is a former federal prosecutor, NYC mayor, and longtime Trump supporter.

He first rose to national prominence as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in the 1980s, where he prosecuted organized crime, Wall Street corruption, drug trafficking, and public corruption.

One of his most defining legal wins was helping break the power grip of NY's Mafia families through RICO prosecutions.

From the mid-1990s through 2001, Giuliani served as mayor of NYC, where his administration became known for its tough-on-crime posture. He later ran unsuccessfully for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination before re-emerging as a major political figure and Donald Trump's personal attorney, particularly during the Russia hoax investigation and the post-2020 election fight.

*This is a developing story.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/03/2026 - 19:44

Jane Street Paid Employees $9.4 Billion, Twice What It Paid Last Year, After Record 2025 Results

Jane Street Group has evolved from a niche trading shop into one of Wall Street’s most profitable firms and employees are reaping the rewards. The firm paid roughly $9.4 billion in compensation last year, more than twice what it distributed a year earlier, according to Bloomberg.

On average, that translated to about $2.7 million per employee, far ahead of traditional banks like Goldman Sachs. The massive payouts followed a record year in which Jane Street generated nearly $40 billion in trading revenue, outpacing major banks and rivals in the market-making business.

Bloomberg writes that the firm started in 2000 trading American depositary receipts before expanding into ETFs and other electronically traded assets. As more markets became automated, Jane Street scaled aggressively and now handles trading across equities, bonds, ETFs, and other products.

Its financial resources have grown just as dramatically. The firm’s internal capital base has climbed to roughly $45 billion, up nearly twentyfold over the past decade, giving it significant flexibility to capitalize on market swings without relying heavily on outside funding. It has also raised additional cash through debt markets.

That war chest has allowed Jane Street to move beyond day-to-day trading. The firm has built positions in high-growth tech companies, including Anthropic, and has also backed CoreWeave while exploring deals involving Fluidstack.

Jane Street also operates differently from most major financial firms. It doesn’t have a traditional CEO hierarchy and is instead overseen by a group of partners. The firm is well known for recruiting mathematicians, engineers, and problem-solvers to sharpen its trading systems.

Despite regulatory and legal challenges — including scrutiny in India and litigation tied to the collapse of Terraform Labs — Jane Street continues to widen its lead. It outperformed Citadel Securities last year and is continuing to expand, including plans for a larger office in London.

Recall, we wrote just days ago that Jane Street reeled in a Wall Street record $39.6 billion of trading revenue last year, more than any Wall Street bank. According to the report, the firm beat out all global investment banks after reaping $15.5 billion in the year’s final quarter, and with only 3,500 employees, it beat nearest rival JPMorgan by 11% during the year. The company's adjusted ETBIDA for the full year was a stunning $31.2 billion. 

While Jane Street’s profits were lifted by surging valuations of its stakes in privately held companies, the firm’s main business matching buyers and sellers across assets thrived on bouts of market volatility. The new annual record - which includes gains on long-term investments - shows "how the balance of power has shifted in one of the most lucrative arenas of global finance."

While it has kept a remarkable low profile, its recent public appearances have been less than laudatory: The company's record haul is confirmation that Jane Street, long known for its secrecy, was able to keep growing after getting thrust into the spotlight in mid-2025 when authorities in India accused of manipulating markets while running what had once been one of the firm’s most lucrative trading strategies.

Jane Street has denied those allegations and is fighting them in court. In February, Jane Street was sued by the bankrupt Terraform Labs estate, accusing it of engaging in insider trading that precipitated the $40 billion crash of cryptocurrencies associated with Terraform; this week the HFT firm also urged a judge to throw out that lawsuit.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/03/2026 - 19:15

Jailed Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Winner Hospitalized In Critical Condition

Narges Mohammadi, the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and prominent Iranian human rights activist, remains in critical condition in a hospital in Zanjan, northwestern Iran, after collapsing in prison last week with severe cardiac distress. She was transferred by ambulance to the local hospital’s coronary care unit on Friday, May 1, 2026, following repeated episodes of loss of consciousness, extreme chest pain, and blood pressure fluctuations, the NY Times reports.

Narges Mohammadi poses in an undated photo provided by her family. The Nobel laureate has suffered from heart ailments for years, according to her family. Credit...Mohammadi family

Her family and lawyer have urgently called for her transfer to a specialized facility in Tehran, where her longtime cardiologist could provide care, but Iranian judicial authorities have refused the requests. The Narges Foundation and her husband, Taghi Rahmani, who lives in exile in Paris with their children, stated that her life is in danger and described the move to the Zanjan hospital as a “last-minute” response after prison doctors determined her condition could no longer be managed on-site.

“We are extremely worried about her; she has collapsed and lost consciousness several times, and her life is in danger,” Rahmani said in an interview. “Our request is basic and urgent: send her to a hospital in Tehran immediately.” Her lawyer, Mostafa Nili, confirmed on social media that she had experienced acute cardiac crisis symptoms in recent days and was initially reluctant to go to the Zanjan facility due to her medical history, which includes multiple angiographies and stent placements.

Mohammadi, 54, has long suffered from chronic heart problems, a prior lung embolism (pulmonary embolism), and persistent headaches linked to ill-treatment in prison, including beatings by guards, according to her family and legal team. Prison authorities have repeatedly denied her adequate medical care in the past, opting instead for treatment in rudimentary prison clinics despite medical recommendations for specialized care.

This latest emergency follows a suspected heart attack in late March 2026, when she was found unconscious in her cell in Zanjan Prison on March 24. Fellow inmates reported she lay with her eyes rolled back for over an hour. Despite clear signs of cardiac distress, authorities refused hospital transfer or specialist evaluation at the time, according to reports from her legal team and visits documented by human rights groups.

She has spent much of her adult life imprisoned for her pro-democracy and women’s rights activism in Iran’s theocratic system. She was previously serving a sentence that included approximately 10 years on national security charges. In February 2026, a court added seven and a half more years—six years for “assembly and collusion against national security” and one and a half years for “propaganda activities”—along with a two-year internal exile and travel ban, bringing her total sentence to around 17–18 years, according to her foundation and lawyers.

She had been granted a yearlong medical furlough in December 2024 due to her deteriorating health but was rearrested on December 12, 2025, while attending a memorial service in Mashhad for slain human rights lawyer Khosro Alikordi. She delivered a speech critical of the government and was violently detained along with other activists. She was subsequently transferred to the more restrictive Zanjan Prison, far from her family in Tehran.

In 2023, while imprisoned, she received the Nobel Peace Prize for “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.” The award highlighted her decades of work documenting executions, advocating against compulsory hijab laws, and supporting political prisoners.

Her current hospitalization occurs against a backdrop of intensified repression in Iran. Following nationwide anti-government protests in January 2026 and the escalation of conflict involving the United States and Israel that began in late February 2026, authorities have ramped up arrests of activists, journalists, and students. Human rights monitors report that Iran has carried out at least 22 executions of political prisoners in the past six weeks (mid-March to late April 2026), with at least 10 linked to the January protests. Dozens more face imminent risk of execution.

On April 30, 2026 (Thursday), 21-year-old Sasan Azadvar Junaqani (also spelled Jonaghani or Joonqani), a karate athlete from Isfahan, was executed in Dastgerd Prison in Isfahan. Arrested during the January protests and accused of throwing a stone at security forces and other protest-related acts, he was convicted of “moharebeh” (enmity against God) in a swift Revolutionary Court proceeding widely criticized by rights groups as a sham trial lacking due process. Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) and HRANA documented the case as one of at least 10 protester executions tied to the recent demonstrations.

Omid Memarian, a senior fellow and Iran expert at the Washington, D.C.-based Dawn think tank focused on U.S. foreign policy, described the pattern as part of a broader campaign of intimidation enabled by the wartime environment.

“The wartime security environment has significantly increased the risks of activism in Iran, giving the government a broader pretext to use violence and making the level of repression, outside peak protest moments, considerably harsher than before the war,” Memarian said.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations declined to comment on Ms. Mohammadi’s health situation. Her family, the Narges Foundation, and international observers continue to demand her immediate transfer to Tehran for proper medical treatment and have expressed fears that delays could prove fatal. As of Saturday, May 2, and into Sunday, May 3, she remained in unstable condition in the Zanjan hospital’s intensive care unit, receiving oxygen support amid ongoing concerns from relatives and rights advocates.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/03/2026 - 18:05

Contempt Of Court: Hakeem Jeffries Denounces the Supreme Court As "Illegitimate"

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais took 36 pages to explain why Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is about combating intentional racial discrimination, not allowing racial gerrymandering. However, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrapped it up in one word: “illegitimate.”

Jeffries was not speaking of the case, but the Court. The man who would become the next Speaker of the House if Democrats retake power in November has joined other radicals in denying the legitimacy of the nation’s highest court.

Just for the record, the Supreme Court did not strike down Section 2, but said that neither the law nor the Constitution allows legislators to manipulate district lines to guarantee that candidates of a particular race will be elected. It was written not to give any race an advantage, but to prevent a state from creating a disadvantage to voters based on their race. The Act prevents any State from intentionally drawing districts “to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.”

This is a matter upon which people of good faith can disagree. Many of the justices have been long opposed to racial criteria in areas ranging from college admissions to voting districts. Chief Justice John Roberts stated it bluntly in 2006 that “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” Like others, Roberts abhors racial discrimination but declared in another case that “way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

You will find no such distinctions in much of the press where experts declared the death of equal voting laws in America. UCLA Law Professor Richard Hasen dispenses with any nuance and simply ran a Slate column titled “The Slaying of the Voting Rights Act by the Coward Alito.”

For years, liberal law professors have been trashing conservative justices, including Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who called them  “partisan hacks.”

However, the name-calling has mutated into a movement to scrap the Court or the Constitution, or both. Chemerinsky wrote a book recently titled “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) joined Jeffries in calling for changing the Supreme Court after the decision: “we’re going to have to try to transform the way the Supreme Court has been gerrymandered itself and stacked and packed with MAGA appointees.”

There was, of course, no such movement during the decades with a liberal majority that set aside an array of long-standing cases. It was only when a stable conservative majority emerged that law professors declared the Court illegitimate or dangerous, with many calling for packing the Court with an instant liberal majority once Democrats retake power.

I discuss some of these voices as the “new Jacobins” in my book Rage and the Republic, figures echoing the radical concepts or means used in France before what became known as “The Terror.”

Law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale have called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.” Last December, they published a column titled “It’s Time to Accept that the US Supreme Court is Illegitimate and Must be Replaced.”

They insist that citizens must be rid of this meddlesome court: “remaking institutions like the US supreme court so that Americans don’t have to suffer future decades of oligarchy-facilitating rule that makes a parody of the democracy they were promised.”

Many Democrats realize that the public is rather attached to both the Constitution and its core institutions. That is why various Democratic politicians and pundits have been pledging to pack the Court once they are back in power.  Some have suggested that, if they are going to change the political system and retain power, they will have to do it with the help of a compliant Court.

Democratic strategist James Carville stated matter-of-factly, “They’re going to recommend that the number of Supreme Court justices go from nine to 13. That’s going to happen, people.” He added recently, “Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.”

To do that, you must first delegitimate the Court. You must attack both the individual justices and the institution itself. You need true rage to get a people to tear apart the core institution of a Republic on its 250th anniversary.

Now you have the next possible Speaker of the United States declaring the Supreme Court illegitimate because he disagrees with its interpretation of the law.

What these figures do not mention is that the majority of opinions by the Supreme Court are unanimous or nearly unanimous.  A comparably few cases break along strict ideological 6-3 lines. Indeed, just last week, it was President Donald Trump who was denouncing the conservative justices as disloyal and weak for, again, ruling against his Administration.

It is not the voting record nor the underlying interpretations that are motivating this campaign of delegitimation. It is power. Former Attorney General Eric Holder explained it most clearly recently in pushing the packing plan after the Democrats retake power: “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power, if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.”

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/03/2026 - 12:50

Big Tech Is Funding Space Solar And Fusion While Running On Gas

Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,

• Meta signed a deal with startup Overview Energy to develop up to 1 gigawatt of space-based solar power, though a pilot satellite won't launch until 2028 at the earliest -- and commercial viability remains years away.

• Despite clean energy ambitions, Big Tech is still heavily dependent on natural gas: Meta is funding 10 new gas plants for its Louisiana data center campus, and Google is building a major gas facility in North Texas.

• Google admitted its carbon emissions rose 48% in five years and has conceded its 2030 net-zero target may be out of reach as AI energy demand continues to accelerate.

The AI boom has unleashed an energy monster unlike anything the world has ever seen before. No one is exactly sure how much energy the AI sector will require in the coming years as large language models continue to advance and expand. In fact, we don’t even really know how much energy it’s consuming now. But most experts agree that we can expect a sharp and continuing rise in demand from the data centers that power the tech sector in the coming years as the global economy increasingly integrates AI into virtually every market sector on Earth.

“AI’s integration into almost everything from customer service calls to algorithmic ‘bosses’ to warfare is fueling enormous demand,” the Washington Post reported last year. “Despite dramatic efficiency improvements, pouring those gains back into bigger, hungrier models powered by fossil fuels will create the energy monster we imagine.”

And, so far, it’s consumers who are bearing the burden of this ‘energy monster.’ As data centers place unprecedented strain on local power grids, consumers are paying the price for the extra competition at the meter. But this system is unsustainable, and in flux. In May, as a result of voter outcry ahead of the midterm elections, Big Tech firms signed a pledge to either purchase or provide their own energy supplies to power their energy-hungry data centers in order to buffer consumers from rising energy prices.

As a result, major tech firms are starting to invest more heavily in next-gen and clean energy alternatives in a bid to find ways to power their enormous future needs without throwing their climate pledges out the window. Just this week, Meta announced a deal with Overview Energy to start developing a solar power system in space, which would be able to beam energy down to Earth even in darkness.

Overview Energy is a startup seeking to put solar satellites into Earth’s orbit, where they can harvest power from the sun at all times of day and night. Meta, the company behind Facebook, has signed a deal with the energy startup to develop up to 1 gigawatt of space solar power, or the equivalent of the energy output of a nuclear reactor.

However, the deal is all theoretical at this point, as the technology of space solar has not yet caught up to the vision set out by the two companies. Overview Energy aims to launch a pilot satellite into orbit by 2028 – meaning that a gigawatt of power is still quite a few years away from becoming a reality, if it comes to fruition at all. But proponents of the technology feel that it’s just a matter of time before space-based solar becomes commercially viable, and some contend that it could even be cost-competitive with other energy sources as soon as 2040.

Silicon Valley is also investing more and more into a high-stakes bet on nuclear fusion as a silver bullet solution to slay the AI energy monster. “There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough,” Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of ChatGPT firm OpenAI, said at the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “It motivates us to go invest more in fusion,” he went on to specify.

Tech giants, including Meta and Google are also increasingly investing in next-gen geothermal energy research, which uses enhanced drilling methods borrowed from the oil and gas sector and even, in some projects, from nuclear fusion to drill down to tap into the Earth’s heat from nearly anywhere on the surface.

In the meantime, however, Meta and other Big Tech firms are heavily relying on natural gas to power its massive AI ambitions. Meta alone is funding the development of 10 new gas-fired plants for its biggest-ever AI data center campus in rural Louisiana. Meanwhile, Google is developing a massive natural gas facility attached to a data center campus in North Texas.

So while Big Tech has major clean energy ambitions, these technologies are still years away, and real-time emissions are continuing to balloon. In 2024, Google admitted that the firm’s carbon emissions had risen 48 percent in five years thanks to the AI boom. Google had previously pledged to reach net zero by 2030, but the officials have conceded that “as we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging.”

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/03/2026 - 11:40

Will Black Voters Rescue The GOP In 2026?

The Republican Party is bracing for a brutal midterm election this year. Polls show Democrats ahead in the generic congressional ballot, and prediction markets give them solid odds of taking the House and a modest chance of flipping the Senate. But despite polls and prediction markets, there are signs that the GOP could defy history.

And it comes down to black voters.

Could black voters actually be the secret weapon that keeps Republicans in power after the 2026 midterms? The numbers, at least according to CNN's Harry Enten, suggest the question is worth asking seriously.

Enten laid out a striking case, walking through data that shows Donald Trump and the GOP making inroads with African American voters that the Republican Party simply hasn't seen in decades. 

While there’s no doubt that Democrats still have a solid advantage among black voters, that advantage is shrinking, and in tight races, even modest shifts can flip outcomes.

Trump's approval rating among black voters sat at 12% during his first term. It's now at 16%. It’s a modest shift that could be consequential, Enten argues, in states like Georgia, where margins are razor-thin, and every percentage point is a battleground. "Republicans absolutely love the shift that's going on," Enten said, "because Democrats have had such a long-term advantage." He argued that Trump "actually gaining ground versus where he was in term number one... has major implications for elections down the line."

The party identification numbers are another good sign for the GOP in November. Democrats have a 51-point advantage with African-American voters, which may sound good, but it’s actually a devastating number when you consider that during Trump's first term, Democrats held a 63-point advantage. 

The Democratic advantage has shrunk by 12 points. 

"This to me was absolutely stunning," Enten said, noting that the Democratic lead among black voters is now "actually smaller than any lead from 2006 to 2021" - a stretch of time that includes Barack Obama's two presidential runs.

What makes this more than just a polling curiosity is that the gains appear to be sticking. Democrats got shellacked with black voters in 2024. Trump turned in what Enten called a "historically strong performance" with that group, and Democrats had their worst showing in a generation. The natural assumption would be that some of that was a one-cycle anomaly, and that current economic concerns and opposition to the war in Iran would erase the gains Trump made. 

But the data says otherwise. 

Pre-election polling ahead of 2024 showed Kamala Harris leading among Black voters by 63 points. That number now sits at 62 points. "Republicans are holding onto the gains that they made among African Americans in 2024," Enten observed.

Whether these gains will stick after Trump leaves office remains to be seen, but as far as the 2026 midterm elections go, it’s clear there’s no Democratic bounce-back. The voters who drifted toward Trump or away from the Democratic Party haven't come back. This is a huge problem for the Democratic Party coalition, which has relied heavily on the loyalty of black voters.

 "The Donald Trump-led Republican Party is making gains among African Americans that we simply put have not seen the Republican Party make in a generation." 

Trump's GOP is holding on to the generational gains they made with Black voters in the 2024 election.

The GOP has gained 12 pts on the Dems on party id with African Americans vs. Trump term 1 at this point.

Trump's approval with Black voters is higher than it was in term 1. pic.twitter.com/EKiEv561jk

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) April 30, 2026

The implications of these numbers is huge for the 2026 midterms.

Southern states with competitive House and Senate races depend heavily on black voter turnout and margins. This means that if Democrats are hemorrhaging even a few percentage points of that support, the math gets ugly for them really

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/03/2026 - 11:05



 

 

The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Lawrence Calcano, iCapital CEO, is below.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube (video), YouTube (audio), and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

~~~

Masters in Business — Lawrence Calcano of iCapital

Barry Ritholtz [00:00:16] This week on the podcast — wow, another great conversation. Lawrence Calcano has built iCapital since 2013 into what has become the dominant financial technology platform for alternative investments — for wealth managers, for advisors, for banks. I found this informative and quite interesting, and I think you will too. With no further ado, my discussion with iCapital’s CEO, Lawrence Calcano.

Lawrence Calcano [00:00:47] Thanks, Barry. It’s great to be here.

Barry Ritholtz [00:00:49] It’s great to have you. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. Before we get into your time with iCapital, I want to work back through your career. You got a bachelor’s from Holy Cross and an MBA from Dartmouth. What was the original career plan?

Lawrence Calcano [00:01:09] I don’t know that I had one coming out of the gate. My dad was raised in an orphanage. His father died when he was two, so he was in an orphanage until he was 18. He went into the army, and then he came out and had to put himself through school. He didn’t have a regular path that would lead him to say to me as a teenager, “Here’s the way to do it.” So he was learning, and I was learning a little bit. I was a hockey player, and I got recruited to Holy Cross to play hockey. When I was there, I was an economics major and a theater minor — spent a lot of time doing theater. Then I went off to Morgan Stanley, and that was an interesting decision because I was in a professional play and had been asked to be in a second play. I had a bit of a career crisis early on in terms of what to do.

Barry Ritholtz [00:02:04] What was the first play?

Lawrence Calcano [00:02:05] It was called The Murder Room — a James Sherkey slapstick play. I played a young Texas millionaire who was engaged to a wealthy British woman. The play takes place at her father’s manor in the U.K. It was full of sight gags and jokes.

Barry Ritholtz [00:02:23] On Broadway or off?

Lawrence Calcano [00:02:25] Off Broadway. It was a lot of fun. I was offered a role as the father in The Diary of Anne Frank as a follow-up. At that point, I had also gotten an offer to go to Morgan Stanley, and I was in early trade-off mode. Ultimately, I figured I needed to eat — I had a lot of student loans — so I decided to go off into the world of finance.

Barry Ritholtz [00:02:47] You spent a few years at Morgan Stanley. What were you focused on while you were there?

Lawrence Calcano [00:02:51] I was in mortgage finance. We were helping S&Ls raise capital and do M&A, and also structuring some of the new products — Ginnie Mae securities, Fannie Mae securities, REMIC CMOs, things like that. A lot of structured-type investments.

Barry Ritholtz [00:03:07] This was late eighties, early nineties.

Lawrence Calcano [00:03:10] Late eighties — ’85 to ’88. Then I put in one application to business school. A good friend of mine who had been an analyst before me left and went off to Tuck. I visited him. I had an offer to stay on at Morgan as an associate, but decided that after my weekend at Tuck, that would be a good thing for me — to stop, reassess, figure out what I wanted to do. So I went off to Tuck.

Barry Ritholtz [00:03:38] I have to ask the obvious question. There’s a whole industry helping students figure out which is the right school for them — their first school, their safety schools, their reach. It’s a whole side industry. You applied to one MBA school.

Lawrence Calcano [00:03:53] I applied to one MBA school, and part of the reason is that I had accepted the job to become an associate. I went up on the visit, as I mentioned, and I just had this feeling that I was making the wrong decision. I loved Morgan — it was a fantastic firm — but I had this sense that maybe staying wasn’t the right thing to do, and going off to business school for two years would be the right decision. I loved it. It was an incredible two years. I’m on the board of Tuck.

Barry Ritholtz [00:04:25] But why apply to just one school if you’re deciding, “Hey, this path isn’t exactly how I want to get an MBA”? If you’re applying to Dartmouth, you could apply to Stern, to Columbia, to wherever. Why only one school?

Lawrence Calcano [00:04:42] I was just wrapped with it. I went up there — it’s a small school. When I was there, there were 160 or so in the class. It’s very focused on team — study groups, teamwork, and so forth. I just felt like it was the right place for me. I wasn’t too worried about it. If I didn’t get in, I was going to become an associate at Morgan Stanley, so it wasn’t like I was putting all my eggs in one basket.

Barry Ritholtz [00:05:12] Really interesting. How did you end up at Goldman Sachs? Was that while you were in business school or afterwards?

Lawrence Calcano [00:05:19] When I went to business school, I said to myself, “I’m going to think about all the different things I can do.” After about two months, I said, “I really did like finance a lot, and I want to go back there.” So I applied for summer internships and had a few offers.

Barry Ritholtz [00:05:36] More than one?

Lawrence Calcano [00:05:37] I did. I applied to all the summer internships, and obviously coming out of Morgan Stanley was helpful to my candidacy. I ended up getting an offer to be a summer associate at Goldman, which I took, and I was fortunate to have an offer to come back post-graduation, which I did. I spent a long time there and had a very good experience.

Barry Ritholtz [00:06:00] I’m curious — they’re such large and yet such different firms. What were the culture differences? What did you learn from each?

Lawrence Calcano [00:06:10] They are different — and there are a lot of different ways to skin the cat. Goldman had a very team-oriented culture, and I think Morgan Stanley does too, but at Goldman it’s right there in front of you. They’ve got 14 business principles, the first of which is “Our clients come first.” When you think about the things you learn early on in your career, there were several from that experience that really stuck with me — starting with business principle number one: your client’s interests always come first. And secondly, the importance of working as a team. My wife used to make fun of me because I would be in the office early, and if there were a party or some social event, I was always the last to leave. She would say to me, “Dude, you don’t have to actually be there till the end.” I just loved it so much. That camaraderie was powerful — smart from a business perspective, but mostly as a person, it was just fun being in that group.

Barry Ritholtz [00:07:18] You ended up co-leading Goldman’s global technology banking group. Was your focus on tech and financial technology deliberate, or did it evolve organically over time?

Lawrence Calcano [00:07:30] It just evolved. I was a generalist in corporate finance — it was then called Global Finance. My Morgan Stanley friends used to make fun of me and call it Intergalactic Finance, but it was Global Finance. I did that as a generalist for a couple of years, and then I was asked to start the East Coast tech group, which I did.

Barry Ritholtz [00:07:50] This was mid- to late nineties.

Lawrence Calcano [00:07:52] Early nineties. I was a third-year associate. It was late ’92, early ’93. We started to win some business, and as you recall, the internet started to really kick in with the Netscape IPO in ’95. We went from having a really good business to being on fire and drinking from a fire hose, given all that was going on with the internet.

Barry Ritholtz [00:08:21] Really fascinating. So you’re there right through the dot-com boom and bust — probably the most transformative technology of the last 30 years, at least before AI. What did that teach you about how capital markets operate, the way investors behave? That had to be a wildly instructive era.

Lawrence Calcano [00:08:42] It was wildly instructive, and it was all happening so quickly. As you recall, people were trying to figure out how to even value these companies. We had a great team — research, salespeople, bankers — we all worked really well together. We would make presentations to potential clients, and we’d talk about where we saw the market going apart from valuation. What did we think the adoption was going to look like? We had what then was viewed as wild assumptions about internet adoption. At the time, people were afraid to put their card numbers in a computer to buy anything. What happened was, for a while, the valuations kept pace and at times exceeded the hysteria. But even though the valuations came back at the end — mid ’01, the internet valuations came down; mid ’02, the comm-tech valuations came down — the reality of what was happening was even wilder than what our projections suggested. The adoption rate of the internet, and how it would fundamentally change people’s lives — the way they bought things, reviewed things, communicated — was so powerful. We saw that wave; we saw the communications-equipment wave. Now we’re obviously looking at a different wave. For me, there are several massive lessons. One is: you’re never safe. When I started, the big technology companies were called DEC and Wang. You remember those companies?

Barry Ritholtz [00:10:31] Oh, sure. Wang Computers — not Wang who owned Computer Associates. Wang Computers.

Lawrence Calcano [00:10:36] Wang Computers, not Charles Wang. That’s right. Those companies all got replaced — first by client-server, then a lot of the client-server companies got displaced by the internet, and now you’re seeing another interesting potential risk of displacement. One of the big things is: you cannot be afraid of new changes in technology waves. You’ve got to adopt. If you remember, when Amazon was growing, many of the bookstores and music stores — hope is not a strategy. You can’t hope it’s going to go away. You’ve got to adopt, even if it means changing your business, even if it means your business model has to change and maybe your margins aren’t going to be the same. You’ve got to adapt. The one thing I would say is this always takes a little longer than people think. The hype is always ahead of the reality. I think there’s a little of that right now. But AI is a massively important trend. We’re spending a lot of money on it, as are lots of companies — and you’ve got to be willing to adopt or run the risk of dying.

Barry Ritholtz [00:11:57] If there’s any lesson to be drawn from Elon Musk and Tesla, it’s that — or maybe the lesson comes from Amazon and Jeff Bezos: your margin is my opportunity. If you don’t pivot hard, they’re going to come along and eat your lunch. It happens so regularly.

Lawrence Calcano [00:12:19] Yeah.

Barry Ritholtz [00:12:19] The cycle never stops turning. So at what point did you decide, “Hey, I could do a lot with this technology and these various platforms”? What led you to move from Goldman to helping build and lead iCapital?

Lawrence Calcano [00:12:38] The real story is that I left in ’07. With one of my former partners, we were going to start a technology buyout fund. You may remember there were some events in ’07 and ’08 that were not too pleasant.

Barry Ritholtz [00:12:54] Don’t really recall. Everything’s kind of blurry.

Lawrence Calcano [00:12:55] It reminds me of the Leslie Nielsen joke in Airplane: “I picked a bad week to stop sniffing glue.” There was a little of that. We went off to start a private equity fund in the middle of the GFC.

Barry Ritholtz [00:13:06] You should have started a distressed asset fund. Probably perfect.

Lawrence Calcano [00:13:09] We weren’t smart enough to figure that out. So we put it on pause. It was a little bit of an unplanned cleansing in a sense — I coached my kids’ football and lacrosse teams. I worked from home, and it was actually very exciting. Did a few entrepreneurial things. Then with a great group of folks, we looked at what was happening in the independent space — a space you obviously know well. We saw a lot of firms, a lot of advisors, going off and starting their own firms. That trend was significant. There were hundreds of billions, or early trillions, of dollars now being managed by these independent RIAs. One of the things we looked at: almost by definition, the firms leaving were the firms with the largest asset bases and, generally speaking, the largest clients. Those clients typically invested in alts.

Barry Ritholtz [00:14:15] Meaning family offices, ultra-high-net-worth?

Lawrence Calcano [00:14:18] Think about some of your clients and the types of products they’re interested in buying. The wirehouses do — and still do — a phenomenal job providing outstanding products, support, and services. So when somebody leaves to be independent, they don’t have a platform. We felt we could create a platform to help advisors have access to alts in the right way. It’s different because at that moment in time, there was no technology. Investing in alts was a highly manual process.

Barry Ritholtz [00:14:53] To a large degree, for a lot of firms, it still is. The various funds don’t all play well together.

Lawrence Calcano [00:15:02] We’ll come back to this experience point, but we felt that firms that were independent really needed a technology chassis. They needed access to product, education, diligence — and a technology platform. We felt we could build that end-to-end — not just the diligence, not just fund sales, but the whole end-to-end solution. We started to build that out and realized it was something clients really needed. The other interesting thing we found out along the way — and I would say this was not a pivot as much as an expansion — we had assumed the wirehouses had absolutely everything they needed because they knew every manager in the world and had close relationships. What they didn’t really have at the time was much technology. They had a lot of people doing a great job serving advisors, but they didn’t have technology. We felt we could offer them a full technology platform. We rethought our role in the ecosystem to be one where we were going to serve advisors wherever and however they choose to practice. That’s allowed us to serve advisors at the wirehouses, advisors at RIAs and IBDs — and really help create a great experience for them and for their clients.

Barry Ritholtz [00:16:31] Coming up, we continue our conversation with Lawrence Calcano, CEO and Chairman of iCapital, discussing how he built the firm out to a trillion-dollar platform. I’m Barry Ritholtz, you’re listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

Barry Ritholtz [00:17:05] I’m Barry Ritholtz, you’re listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest this week is Lawrence Calcano. He is the chairman and chief executive officer of iCapital, where he has been helping to build the firm since 2013. They now service over a trillion dollars in client assets on behalf of advisors and other professionals. So how should a traditional 60/40 investor — thinking about some allocation to private equity or private credit — access your platform? Is it directly through their advisor? Tell us what the process is like.

Lawrence Calcano [00:17:41] It’s very much an advisor business. We are very focused on helping financial advisors serve their clients. It’s not a B2C model — it’s a B2B2C model. All the clients at iCapital are advisors and, obviously, the GPs trying to reach those advisors. For financial advisors who are large, we can build a whole white-label capability for them, so they can have an operating system to run their alts, structured investments, or annuities business — as well as the data aggregation they have to do for clients with information that’s everywhere. For advisors that are a little smaller and don’t have a persistent need, they can come to our marketplace and see a menu of hundreds of funds where they can avail themselves of those funds for their clients.

Barry Ritholtz [00:18:33] Really interesting. I like the description of iCapital as the world’s alternative investment marketplace for advisors and wealth managers. When you joined in 2013, what problem were you trying to solve?

Lawrence Calcano [00:18:51] We were trying to help the advisors who, as I mentioned, had left their homes to start their new businesses. We felt we could create for them an investment platform to allow them to service their clients consistent with how they had previously served them.

Barry Ritholtz [00:19:11] Part of the problem we’ve seen with alternatives over the years is they all seem to be a slightly different widget. They don’t all fit on a platform easily. You have to onboard the assets, align the capital, go through subscription documents and capital calls and custodian and performance reporting, and then all the analytics. They’re all a little different, and it’s a big lift. How have you addressed this issue at iCapital?

Lawrence Calcano [00:19:45] We think technology is essential to creating an experience that lets you deal with all of those things effectively, in a way that will encourage you to do the business with your clients where it makes sense. Everything from what happens before you make any decisions — education for you as an advisor on the asset class, education for your client, the tools to help build a portfolio, research to help you learn about funds — and once you’ve worked with a client and developed a portfolio perspective, tools to help you subscribe. Then automation to help you manage all the things that happen post-investment: capital calls, distributions, redemptions, transfers, reporting. We help create an experience that, as an advisor, will give you time back to serve and spend time with the client. We feel strongly about going through advisors because there’s so much about a client that an advisor will know that a platform will never really be able to know — what is their real feeling toward illiquidity? One of the issues the industry is dealing with today is illiquidity and people’s expectations about it. Advisors have a deeper perspective on how a client really feels. We want to be partnered with advisors in bringing the solution to market.

Barry Ritholtz [00:21:11] I’m glad you brought that up, because every time there’s some issue with illiquidity, it seems people don’t really understand what a lockup means. It should be fairly self-explanatory. We saw this a couple of years ago with BREIT — which part of “seven-year lockup” was confusing to you? I know what happened in 2022: the Fed raised rates, and people thought, “Hey, let’s get out of illiquid real estate before the marks reflect the reality of pricing relative to rates.” But that’s not how private investments work. How do you educate investors and their advisors as to what illiquidity means?

Lawrence Calcano [00:21:56] It is a journey. There’s no one answer. We spend a ton of time and energy on education, as do most of the GPs in our system. When you look at the documents around some of these funds, the liquidity rules are not on page 98 in small print — they’re on the front page. The reality is, people want to hear what they want to hear. These are illiquid investments, whether wrapped as a 3(c)(7) private fund — clearly illiquid — or in an evergreen wrapper, a registered fund. The underlying investments are still illiquid. Some are shorter duration than others. Private credit is shorter duration than private equity or real estate. But a private credit investment is still an illiquid investment. The problem is, when they get wrapped in a wrapper that says “you can sell up to or redeem up to 5%,” it confuses people. When the industry uses terms like “semi-liquid” — I don’t even know what that means.

Barry Ritholtz [00:23:25] I always think of that 5% gate as a widows-and-orphans clause. If somebody is suddenly no longer a suitable investor for this — say the person who made the investment passed away — now the wife and kids can get out of it. It shouldn’t be, “Oh, I could sell 5% a quarter for as long as I want.”

Lawrence Calcano [00:23:45] People should make these investments because they think they’re going to provide medium- to long-term positive impact in their portfolio. If you’re buying it to get a return this quarter or next quarter, it’s probably not the right investment. I’m not a financial advisor, but you need to buy these things with the right duration in mind — and that’s not a short one. The products do provide what I think of as liquidity features — opportunities, if things change in your life, to potentially redeem all of it if there’s not a big queue, or redeem up to 5% if you need to. That’s a flexibility and liquidity feature in the wrapper. But it doesn’t mean the product is liquid. People should invest thinking these products solve an investment need that’s medium to long term, not short term.

Barry Ritholtz [00:24:43] Let’s talk a little bit about demand for this product. We’ve seen, at least on the institutional side, flows into alts now exceeding a trillion dollars a year. As that scales, what are some of the challenges and bottlenecks for advisors to allocate more to privates?

Lawrence Calcano [00:25:02] Education is still a very important issue for advisors. A lot of the advisors in the mix have been doing it for a while, but there are still a lot who haven’t really gotten into these products yet. They’re going to need more education — that’s point one. Point two: how they invest is probably going to be different. A lot of advisors use models with respect to their liquid portfolios. We believe models will be a very important way people invest in alternatives — either models of just alternatives that get married to an otherwise liquid portfolio, or models that include both liquid and illiquid investments together. We have brought both types of products to market in partnerships with managers, as well as partnerships with the infrastructure players. Models will represent an important way advisors allocate client assets to alternatives.

Barry Ritholtz [00:26:06] I’ve been hearing more and more about interest overseas in a global alternatives platform. What do you think is driving the demand internationally versus what’s driving the demand here? Is it the same thing, or a different approach?

Lawrence Calcano [00:26:22] I think it’s the same thing. Adoption is a little bit behind U.S. adoption on our platform. In the alts space, we have over $65 billion of alternatives allocated from investors who live outside the United States. Half of our 20 offices are outside the U.S. We think it’s a really important growth area for the market and our business. A lot of the same things that drive advisors to introduce these products to clients — potential for incremental return, portfolio diversification — are the same things that drive international interest as well.

Barry Ritholtz [00:27:00] Let’s talk about end-to-end technology. I know this is more than just a menu of alternative funds. Tell us about your whole tech stack and what it provides for your clients.

Lawrence Calcano [00:27:16] A lot of what people want help with out of the gate is just how to build these portfolios. We talked about education, but how do you build the portfolio? How do you construct portfolios that match a client’s goals and objectives? We’ve built technology to do that, which includes alts, structured investments, and annuities, along with the liquid products they might need. One thing we’ve tried to do as an organization is not only build an end-to-end solution for alts, but do the same thing for structured investments — those are important products for advisors and clients — as well as annuities and insurance. What’s happening in the market today, which is a really interesting and ongoing trend, is that people are looking at the different types of wrappers — ETF wrappers, insurance wrappers — wrapped around things like hedge funds, private equity funds, credit funds. Being able to help advisors think about how the products should be structured, and how they could address client needs, is a really important part of what we’re doing. As I mentioned earlier, being able to automate the whole workflow is critical. I’ll make one other point as it relates to tech: one of the issues for the industry is around data management. We live in an ecosystem. When we first started the company, people used to say, “Oh, you guys are so disruptive.” I would politely correct them and say, “We’re not trying to be disruptive — we’re trying to be enabling.” There are a lot of infrastructure players we’re trying to help achieve their goals. We’re not trying to, like Amazon did to Borders, push them out of business. We’re trying to enable them to participate. One of the things that has to happen now in the industry is that all the different big constituents — administrators, transfer agents, custodians, firms like iCapital, advisors, GPs — have to work together to support clients. If we can get all of our systems to be better connected, things like tokenization and blockchain will help. It will end up paying huge dividends for the advisor and for the end client.

Barry Ritholtz [00:29:40] It’s funny — you mentioned “disruptive.” In 2013 there was nothing to disrupt. It was just a series of private offerings — no umbrella, no platform that pulled everything together.

Lawrence Calcano [00:29:55] That’s right. It was really a greenfield, which is why I say we’re enabling, not disruptive. The truth is, we’re still scratching the surface. BCG does a report every year on global wealth. Late in December they put out a report saying there’s $153 trillion in wealth owned by individuals. That’s a huge number. It rivals the size of the institutional market. In the U.S., the estimates are something like 2 to 2.5% allocated to alts. Outside the U.S., it’s even less. There’s a significant amount of wealth that’s going to be looking to build more sophisticated portfolios. Tools, technology, AI, tokenization — all of these have to evolve to create a great experience for advisors and clients to make the best decisions they can in the asset-allocation world.

Barry Ritholtz [00:30:58] Really interesting. Let’s stay with technology and innovation. You’ve built a number of fairly innovative technologies. You’ve bought, you’ve partnered. What’s the calculus? How do you decide whether you’re going to buy something, build something, or partner with a provider in the space to build out the platform?

Lawrence Calcano [00:31:19] It’s a combination of things. It’s time to market, it’s culture. Everything we’ve purchased — we’ve made 24 acquisitions — we’ve integrated. To me, that’s really important. If the goal is to provide an integrated solution for advisors and GPs, and you don’t integrate the things you buy, you’re not really doing that. Point one. Point two: if the people who join aren’t integrated, then it doesn’t work either. It’s not just about technology — it’s actually more about the people. So spending a lot of time on culture and trying to figure out how to bring things together — how do you create what I often refer to as “one iCapital” — is critical. As time has evolved — I was always very focused on culture from the start, when we were just a couple of people — it’s even more important than ever. It probably continues to occupy a very significant percentage of my time: getting people working together, putting people in the right seats to be successful, creating simple ideas they can rally around. Clients come first. What is it we need to do to help our clients succeed? And everything we do, we have to do together. Those two things are really unifying to our culture.

Barry Ritholtz [00:32:48] You did a big capital raise in 2025 that valued you at a substantial multibillion-dollar level. What are you looking at for further raises? How are you deploying that capital? Is it just build, build, build, until eventually you become the biggest player in the space?

Lawrence Calcano [00:33:09] We’ve announced a couple of acquisitions since then. We’re about to close our acquisition of Hector. Hector provides an EAP for annuities — that helps us complete our annuities vertical. M&A will continue to be an important use of cash, and we continue to actively look at what’s out there. We continue to grow organically, but the model is self-financing, so we don’t need outside capital to run our business. I’m a believer, though — given the duration of these assets, when we talk to financial advisors, they have to know we’re financed to be around for a long time. So we’ve tried to finance ourselves in a way that our partners can look at us and say, “They’re going to be here to support me.” A lot of it is just making sure we have a strong balance sheet to support our clients.

Barry Ritholtz [00:34:04] It’s always interesting when we see these big private entities go public in the alternative and private space. How do you think about that? How do you think about the Blackstones, Carlyles, and Apollos of the world?

Lawrence Calcano [00:34:24] Going public allows firms to have access to capital, leverage their growth, and provide secondary markets for employees and other investors. For us, we spend very little time actually thinking about that, other than wanting to make sure we run the company with the discipline of a public company. We get our quarterly reports turned around, our monthly reports by the second day of every month, quarterly reports by the third day of the new quarter. We turn the year-end results in a fair period of time as well. The process of being public creates some disciplines that we want to make sure we have. But it’s not something we’re focused on. There are two sides to every coin. When you go public and the stock is going up, everyone’s really excited and happy. When you have massive corrections, which we live through pretty regularly, and the stock goes down — now you’ve got to deal with the opposite of motivation. There’s concern. You’ve got to make sure your employees aren’t staring at the — I was going to say Tron, but only you and I would know what that means.

Barry Ritholtz [00:35:51] It’s so funny — I had a buddy whose firm got bought by Yahoo in ’96. He was telling me in ’99, people were just refreshing the screen constantly. That’s all they did.

Lawrence Calcano [00:36:02] There’s an element to it that’s super unproductive. That’s why we’re in no rush to do that. As I said, we want to make sure we have a strong balance sheet, strong capital structure. Equity is an important part of our compensation for everybody. A hundred percent of the employees have stock at iCapital. To me, that’s a big cultural point in terms of bringing people together. But if you’re going to provide that as part of someone’s compensation, there needs to be some opportunity for people to get some liquidity. Over our history, we’ve provided four such opportunities, and as long as we stay private, we’ll continue to find a way. It’s limited, of course, but we try to find a way for people to get some liquidity from their equity holdings.

Barry Ritholtz [00:36:50] Really interesting. Coming up, we continue our conversation with Lawrence Calcano, CEO and Chairman of iCapital, discussing how he built the firm out to a trillion-dollar platform. I’m Barry Ritholtz, you’re listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

Barry Ritholtz [00:37:25] I am Barry Ritholtz. You are listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest this week is Lawrence Calcano. He is the chairman and chief executive officer of iCapital, where he has been helping to build the firm since 2013. They now service over a trillion dollars in client assets on behalf of advisors and other professionals. Let’s talk about what’s going on today. Obviously, alts have been very hot for the past 10 years or so, increasingly so. They’ve been in the news for other reasons the past few months. But let’s talk about the underlying structural shift before we get to any of the noisy stuff. How are advisors and individuals changing the way they access alternative structured investments, annuities — any of the products on your platform?

Lawrence Calcano [00:38:17] If I can make some divisions by wealth: the wealthier clients have tended to buy the private funds. Perhaps they’ll invest directly if they can make a $20 million investment, or if not — if they’re a $1 million or $5 million investor — they usually come through a vehicle that we’ll set up for them to access. We aggregate that capital and we look like one large investor to the institution, to the GP. So the wealthier clients tend to invest through those private vehicles across the board. From a platform perspective, the way you’ve got to build these portfolios — if you have a credit and equity portfolio, debt and equity, and you want to build them or rebalance them, you can do that with a few mouse clicks. With alts, if you target an allocation of 10, 15, or 20%, you’ve got to build that.

Barry Ritholtz [00:39:16] It takes time, in other words.

Lawrence Calcano [00:39:17] To allocate, it takes time. You need to make sure you have persistent access to quality product across all the strategies — equity, credit, real estate, infrastructure, hedge funds. Our platform tries to provide that. The wealthy individual will probably use private funds to build it. The accredited investor will probably use registered funds. They’ll either buy individual registered funds, or they might buy registered funds wrapped together. That’s something we’re seeing a lot of the market do today — wrapping three, four, or five different funds together to give people exposure to maybe a growth-oriented product, where there’s a buyout, growth, and venture component, or maybe an income-oriented product, where you’ve got credit and real estate, or maybe multi-asset, where you’ve got all of that wrapped together. Every individual has a different set of needs and objectives. It’s important that there’s a lot of flexibility in the system so people can allocate precisely what’s important to a given client.

Barry Ritholtz [00:40:29] What you’re describing sounds fundamentally different from how portfolios used to be constructed. How significant are these changes compared to — I won’t even mention the nineties — but the 2010s?

Lawrence Calcano [00:40:44] What’s happened, which is a good thing, is clients have access to more products to potentially meet their needs. That doesn’t mean these products are right for everybody — they’re probably not right for a lot of people. But for those that have the ability to make these investments and the willingness to tolerate the illiquidity we talked about before, these products provide more opportunities to build the right portfolio. If you think about the public markets — you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about them — there are probably 150,000 private companies with EBITDA or revenues greater than $100 million. There are 4,000 to 5,000 public companies. The private markets are so much larger than the public markets. And as you know, the public markets are increasingly dominated by a small number of stocks. Accessing the private markets gives you access to a much broader set of possible investments. Not right for everybody, but for those looking to build more involved portfolios, there’s an opportunity that the private markets enable you to pursue that you just don’t get by buying just stocks and bonds.

Barry Ritholtz [00:42:04] That’s one compelling reason — you can access companies you wouldn’t get otherwise. What are some of the other reasons? Why else should an investor or advisor who is alt-curious explore this space?

Lawrence Calcano [00:42:20] I am decidedly not trying to sell anybody on anything, just to be clear. But it’s like anything else in life — we’re all better off when we have more choices. Those choices can be bucketed to make it easier to go through the decision-making process. If you have more choices to build a portfolio where you’re seeking longer-dated returns and more portfolio diversification, these products provide more flexibility to create a diverse portfolio and potentially have a higher-returning portfolio. Ultimately, every person has to make a decision they can live with on the products.

Barry Ritholtz [00:43:06] During the 2010s, we had 0% interest rates and QE and all that fun Fed stuff. I think that’s where private credit really caught the attention of a lot of investors and advisors. “What do you mean my bond portfolio is yielding 3%?” All right — you’re trading off a little liquidity and you get 5, 6, 7, 8%. That’s pretty attractive relative to the alternatives. You’ve got to deal with a K-1, which nobody likes, but your accountant will deal with it for double the yield you’re getting in traditional treasuries or corporates. How has that moved from straight-up credit to private infrastructure, private equity, private real estate? It seems like that whole world has opened up dramatically.

Lawrence Calcano [00:44:02] It has. A lot of the private credit investments you can look at are floating rate, so they still can provide opportunities for excess return — real alpha — because of the way they float. It was interesting in the early part of this century coming out of COVID. You had people very actively buying private credit. When interest rates went up to 5%, some people were earning 10 to 12% on their private credit investments. They were then looking not at private credit versus public credit, but at private credit at 10 to 12% versus private equity, which is shorter duration — was that the right mix for them? Right now, we’re seeing a lot more people focusing on equity as well. But you definitely had a period of time where private credit was very, very attractive. Where we sit today, a lot of people are anxious to understand what the underlying credit quality is in these products. There are certainly disruptive forces from AI that we’ve talked about — the industry talks about every single day. It’s not clear to me that the existing portfolios are in bad shape. I actually think the portfolios are likely in better shape than people think. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to various managers — both equity and credit — about what they’re seeing in terms of adoption. While everybody is working on how to implement AI, it’s not like existing software vendors are seeing their businesses dry up. That’s not happening. A lot of those are the borrowers of these private credit assets. We’ll need to get more information over the next several quarters on where we are with private credit. But my guess is the portfolios are in a lot better shape than people think.

Barry Ritholtz [00:46:07] We could talk about navigating some of the headlines, but you mentioned AI, and now I’m legally obligated to ask you a question. What are the most meaningful near-term applications of artificial intelligence within the alternative space? Is it administration and workflow? Identifying better or less great funds? All of the back office? How is iCapital using AI in your business?

Lawrence Calcano [00:46:39] We have pilots going on across what we do. If you take our tech stack, there are really two ways to think about it. One is the tech we use to empower clients and the technology that clients engage with. The second is the technology we use to run our business. There are big applications in both. To give a couple of examples: when a manager comes to iCapital to raise a fund, we build a sub-doc. AI can build that sub-doc for us very quickly. When a client comes to our marketplace and wants to describe what they’re interested in — they hit toggles and go through a few steps to inform us — AI can do that really quickly. There are also a number of ways we collect data. One of the services we provide to clients is helping advisors aggregate client data, because a client might have held-away data in lots of different places that you want to aggregate so you can present a holistic picture. How we get that data, how we retrieve it, how we extract data from documents, and how we reassemble it — AI can drive a lot of that. The applications of AI are significant across our entire platform.

Barry Ritholtz [00:48:06] Really interesting. We’ve been dancing around some of the negative headlines. How are you helping advisors navigate that these days? For the most part, it’s a relatively small handful of companies. Everybody knows their names. But the cockroach theory has people waiting for the next GFC to unroll. We haven’t really seen much like that.

Lawrence Calcano [00:48:30] This is such a smaller magnitude than the GFC. I don’t think we’re anywhere near those types of concerns. We are big believers in communications. I made a point earlier about how the ecosystem needs to work together — it really needs to work together now in terms of helping people understand what’s happening. Generally speaking, the asset management industry has to be even more transparent today than ever before. That’s a good thing going forward. Alternative asset managers probably need to be more transparent to clients over time. Being out in front of clients, helping them understand the landscape and what’s going on, has been a big part of how we’ve spent a lot of time. One of the things we’re doing now is trying to bring the industry together — getting people on the GP side working together. Transparency, information, educational material — not promotional material, but educational material — to try to help create a better and deeper level of understanding about these products.

Barry Ritholtz [00:49:48] I’ve been hearing a little bit about convergence lately between public and private markets. You are known as dealing with the private side. Do you ever see a day where private and public both end up on your platform — completely full wallet share?

Lawrence Calcano [00:50:06] For us, we’re really focused on helping people have very successful journeys with their private investments, structured notes, annuities, etc. The way in which we will interact with the public markets will be more around the model portfolios I talked about — collaborating and partnering with the GPs and the public-company people who either provide models or have public investments, and helping to create model packages for investors to invest holistically in a portfolio. That’s probably how we’ll play the public space — in partnership and in concert with people who are experts in that area.

Barry Ritholtz [00:50:52] Makes a lot of sense. Last question before our speed round: given all these major technological shifts, what do you think is going to redefine asset management going forward? You mentioned tokenization. We hear about blockchain, AI, data analytics. What’s the next big thing?

Lawrence Calcano [00:51:11] The next biggest thing is the deep implementation of those technologies. We’re still scratching the surface. Tokenization hasn’t even hit private markets in any meaningful way yet. AI — same. There’s significant application of those technologies that will be meaningful. For financial advisors, this reminds me of 10 years ago when all the robos were coming out. There was this big debate: robo-advisors versus human advisors. I always thought that was a false choice. The best answer for clients was a great financial advisor who leveraged technology to create an incredible experience for their clients. The same is true today. The best financial advisors are not going to be afraid of technology. They’re going to adopt it and embrace it to create an incredible client experience. That’s how I think the market will evolve in a constructive and positive way.

Barry Ritholtz [00:52:15] All right, let’s jump into our speed round. These are quick answers so people get a flavor of who you are. Starting with: who were your mentors? Who helped shape your career?

Lawrence Calcano [00:52:26] I had a lot of mentors growing up. I always tried to watch people and see what they did. There were several senior people at Goldman Sachs that I learned things from. I remember the head of investment banking once told me, when I was a young associate, “The loneliest job on the planet is the CEO’s job. So if you want to be a successful investment banker, make a friend of the CEO and be a sounding board, and you’ll have a good career.” That was pretty good advice. The other piece of advice I got from another senior partner in banking was: you always have to be intellectually honest. A lot of people are afraid to be intellectually honest because they’re calculating what’s happening in the room versus being true to what they think and saying it — not being afraid to do that. I’ve tried to really do that in all the things I’ve done as I’ve grown in my career.

Barry Ritholtz [00:53:26] Really interesting. What are you reading these days? What are some of your favorite books?

Lawrence Calcano [00:53:31] I’m overwhelmed with work reading right now between what we’re doing in our business and client stuff. I’m reading a lot on AI. The honest thing is, I keep reading new AI books — about AI and technology, AI in general. There are a lot of incredibly positive things about AI. There are a lot of risks with AI, and a couple of the books I’ve read recently were really focusing on the risks — around unemployment, around control and governance. When you get to natural intelligence, when AI reaches sort of human intelligence, what happens then? There’s a really exciting and bright side, and there’s a dark side that’s going to need a lot of governance to protect all of us.

Barry Ritholtz [00:54:21] Lots of guardrails. If you don’t have time to read, do you have time to listen to podcasts or watch anything? What are you streaming?

Lawrence Calcano [00:54:29] I’m married 33 years. Honestly, my wife and I are just binge-watching a series of shows. We’ve gone through the whole Yellowstone saga, the prequels and —

Barry Ritholtz [00:54:41] Did you get to Landman yet?

Lawrence Calcano [00:54:43] We finished Landman. Love Landman. Looking forward to watching the Peaky Blinders movie, which we haven’t seen. When I get home, when I put the work down, my wife and I tend to watch shows together.

Barry Ritholtz [00:54:56] That sounds fun. Our final two questions. What sort of advice would you give to a recent college grad interested in a career in alternatives or investing?

Lawrence Calcano [00:55:07] I would say: the world owes you nothing. This is what I’ve said to my kids — I have several who have graduated college — and what I’d say to anyone at iCapital generally: the world owes you nothing. What you get in this life is a function of what you work for. People need to be flexible. They need to have an open attitude. At a given level of intelligence, attitude makes the difference. It’s funny — we all went through this work-from-home during COVID, and now some people want to continue to work remotely. When you asked about mentors, a lot of the mentorship I got — that a lot of people got — was just being in the office, watching people, listening to people. How do they act? How do they treat other people? How do they behave in meetings? That stuff is super valuable.

Barry Ritholtz [00:56:09] Osmosis learning. You don’t get that when you’re sitting in your apartment on a Zoom screen.

Lawrence Calcano [00:56:17] A Zoom screen is one-dimensional. Life is multidimensional. So I’m a huge — some people in the company love this, some don’t — but I’m a huge work-from-the-office person, because I believe that multidimensional experience is much more powerful, and it’s better for every individual from a learning perspective.

Barry Ritholtz [00:56:34] I couldn’t agree more, although I do love those Fridays from home.

Lawrence Calcano [00:56:48] No doubt.

Barry Ritholtz [00:56:52] And final question — what do you know about the world of alternatives and investing in technology today that might have been useful back in the mid-1980s when you were first getting started?

Lawrence Calcano [00:56:52] I’ll generalize that a little bit: patience. I was young and just hard-charging, as a lot of us are. But you have to be patient. It’s funny — we sponsor golfers, and I watch golf. I love golf. You see people bogey holes. Jon Rahm won the Masters a few years ago. He double-bogeyed the first hole. I remember I was standing there watching it and I was like, “It’s over.” It wasn’t over. It was one hole. It reminds me — my youngest daughter graduated Dartmouth a few years ago, and Roger Federer was the speaker.

Barry Ritholtz [00:57:35] I recall that speech. It was really amazing coming from him.

Lawrence Calcano [00:57:40] It was an amazing speech. One of the things he said is that in his career he’s won — I may get the numbers slightly off — 80% of his matches and 54% of his points. His point was: it’s just a point. I think that’s a huge lesson. It’s just a point. It happened. You lost it, you won it, you lost it. You move on. I think that’s great advice — and advice I wish I had had when I was younger.

Barry Ritholtz [00:58:09] Lawrence, this has been absolutely fabulous. Thank you for being so generous with your time. We have been speaking with Lawrence Calcano, CEO and Chairman of iCapital. If you enjoyed this conversation, check out any of the 650 we’ve done over the past 12 years. You can find those at iTunes, Apple, Spotify, Bloomberg — wherever you get your favorite podcast. I would be remiss if I didn’t thank the crack team that helps put these conversations together each week. Alexis Noriega is my video producer. Sean Russo is my researcher. Anna Luke is my podcast producer. I’m Barry Ritholtz. You’ve been watching Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

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The Left's Reaction To Arrest Of The Latest UK Stabbing Is As Predictable As It Is Disgraceful

Authored by Paul Birch via DailySceptic.org,

These people have never been in a life-or-death situation like the arresting officers

One would think that even when the police successfully detain a suspect who was alleged to have been conducting a marauding knife attack, the professional activists would have a day off.

But you would be wrong. Amid all the ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ cliché bingo, voices of criticism were heard. Among them, the blue-tick career race-baiter Shola Mos-Shogbamimu. She was quick to take to X following yesterday’s attack on the Jewish community in Golders Green, north London. The 45 year-old suspect, a British national of Somali origin, had reportedly stabbed two Jewish men at random. The suspect – depressingly, inevitably – had previously been referred to the Government’s counter radicalisation programme, Prevent.

Shola Mos-Shogbamimu criticised police officers who are shown kicking the suspect in the head while he is on the ground. She opined:

Contemptible abuse of police power. Why kick him in the head several times when he’s already Tasered and in your control? Should he not be alive to be brought to justice in a court of law for stabbing two Jews??!! Disgusting.

Also, Green Party leader Zack Polanski, still playing at politics, was quick to condemn the actions of the arresting officers, using a retweet to maintain that:

Essentially his (Commissioner Mark Rowley’s) officers were reportedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head when he was already incapacitated by taser.

What Shola, Zack and other commentators do not understand – because they have never been in a life-or-death situation – is that force is not judged by how it looks in a six-second clip. It is judged by necessity in the moment. These keyboard warriors have no idea what it’s like to face immediate and possibly lethal violence armed with often nothing more than some irritant spray and a stick. Your priority is to keep members of the public safe, followed by yourselves as much as possible.

These officers would have had no idea in such a fast moving situation whether the suspect was acting alone or as part of a cell. He needed to be neutralised as soon as possible in order to keep people safe. He wasn’t showing his hands; he was still holding a bloodied weapon that he had just used to attack Jewish members of the public; he had been moving rapidly towards them, and they would have had no idea if he was wearing an explosive vest (wearing a coat on a warm day is never a good sign).

Policing is not theatre. It is not performed for social media approval. It is messy, fast and often brutal. Because the people officers deal with are messy, fast and often brutal. A man armed with a knife who has already stabbed two people, who refuses repeated commands to disarm and who continues to pose a threat even after being tasered, is not “under control”. He is an active danger until the weapon is removed. That is the reality, no matter how uncomfortable it makes Left-leaning commentators feel.

The idea that officers should politely wait or somehow apply ‘gentler’ tactics while a suspect still has the capacity to kill is not just naïve in the extreme, it is dangerous. It puts officers’ lives at risk. It puts the public at risk. And it reveals a complete detachment from reality (I am reminded of the occasion when then Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, declared that Islamic State murderer Mohammed ‘Jihadi John’ Emwazi should have been arrested in war-torn Syria rather than killed.)

This is the gap at the heart of modern public debate on policing. One side deals in real-world consequences. The other deals in optics. The officers in Golders Green had seconds to act. Not minutes. Not the luxury of hindsight, slow-motion replays or viral commentary. Seconds. In those seconds they made unquestionably the right decision: remove the threat as quickly as possible, by whatever means necessary short of lethal force. And that point matters. Because the same voices now condemning ‘excessive force’ would be the first to demand answers if those officers had hesitated and others had been stabbed.

There is also an uncomfortable truth that many would rather avoid: this attack was not just violent, it was targeted. Two visibly Jewish men were attacked in broad daylight in a part of London with a large Jewish community. That context matters. It should matter. It’s part of an ever growing pattern of antisemitic attacks carried out by people holding extreme Islamist ideologies.

Yet instead of sustained outrage about antisemitic violence, the conversation was almost immediately derailed, redirected toward the conduct of the officers who stopped it. That inversion of priorities is telling.

It reflects a culture where the instinct is no longer to back those who confront violence but to scrutinise them first, and often most harshly. Where the benefit of the doubt is extended to offenders, those enforcing the law are expected to meet an impossible standard of perfection under extreme pressure – often from their own senior management.

And it is precisely this culture that erodes effective policing. If every split-second decision is second guessed by people with no operational understanding, officers will become more hesitant. More risk-averse. Less pro-active. That is not compassion. It is a recipe for more victims.

None of this means police should be beyond scrutiny. Of course they shouldn’t be. But scrutiny requires context. It requires full evidence. It requires intellectual honesty. A selectively edited clip on social media is not scrutiny. It is propaganda. That is the real issue here.

Not just one commentator getting it wrong, but an entire ecosystem that rewards outrage over accuracy, speed over truth and narrative over fact. The Metropolitan Police, to their credit, did something increasingly necessary: they put out the full body-worn footage. They showed the public what actually happened. And when people saw the complete picture, the narrative collapsed. Because reality is stubborn like that.

In the end, strip away the noise and the incentives of social media and the situation becomes very simple. A violent attacker stabbed two innocent men. Two unarmed officers confronted him. They stopped him. They went home alive, and so did everyone else.

That is not a scandal. That is policing working exactly as it should.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/03/2026 - 09:20

Ukraine Flexes With Much Deeper Drone Reach Targeting Russia's Refineries 

Ukraine has been demonstrating deeper targeting reach inside Russia, as several key oil sites have come under direct drone attack this week, resulting in significant destruction.

This as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday announced "a new stage in the use of Ukrainian weapons to limit the potential of Russia's war."

Satellite image of Perm attack aftermath, via Reuters.

The massive Tuapse complex on Russia's Black Sea coast has been hit no less than three times in under a month, sparking a series of massive fires that in some cases took days for emergency crews to extinguish.

In some cases, targets in the Urals - nearly 1,000 miles away from the Ukraine border - have been hit.

Transneft’s oil pumping and distribution facility in the city of Perm was struck this week, which lies very far into Russian territory.

The Ukraine Security Service (SBU) owned up to it, boasting that the targeted facility is "a strategically important hub of the main oil transportation system." It further declared that "almost all oil storage tanks are on fire."

Amid the fresh Perm attack, Russia had said it downed nearly 100 Ukrainian drones across various regions, while Russia’s presidential envoy to the region, Artem Zhoga, conceded that "The Urals are now within reach, be vigilant."

Putin's office has also denounced these fresh assaults on oil facilities as "terrorist attacks". As for the prior Black Sea export and refining hub attacks of the last month, CNN reviews:

For the third time in 12 days, the Russian Black Sea town of Tuapse woke up Tuesday to apocalyptic scenes.

Thick toxic fumes, and flames rising up from the latest Ukrainian drone attack on the Rosneft-owned Tuapse oil refinery, almost reached the heights of the surrounding Caucasus mountains.

By Thursday morning, authorities said the fire had been extinguished. Fires from the two previous attacks, on April 16 and 20, also took days to put out, with toxic substances pouring down in black rain and blanketing cars and streets in oily grime, leading to what experts are dubbing the worst environmental disaster in the region in years.

Huge fireball at Perm oil site...

Ukrainian drone attacks have struck Perm (about 1,500 km from Ukraine), targeting oil infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/lCXo8Pb1tb

— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 30, 2026

Currently, the globe's attention is largely focused on the Iran war and the Hormuz Strait blockade, and with that efforts to reach a political and peace settlement in Ukraine have faded as well. Earlier in the Ukraine war, these major refinery attacks would dominate world headlines, but at the moment they have remained in the background given the constant Iran-related news flow. President Putin has lately communicated to Trump that he's open to a 'Victory Day' ceasefire, a proposal the Kremlin said Washington has backed.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/03/2026 - 07:35

Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:

• An oligarch’s dystopian scheme to discredit journalism with AI: Judd Legum on a coordinated, AI-powered campaign to flood the zone with fake reporting and erode trust in the real thing. Disinformation industrialized. Peter Thiel goes full super villain, funding a startup launched this month will use an “AI jury” to “subject the media’s claims to systematic investigation and judgment.” That same system of AI adjudication assigns a numerical value — the so-called “Honor Index” score — grading the trustworthiness of individual reporters. And for a starting price of $2,000, anyone can pay for the company to review and adjudicate complaints they may have about a news outlet or reporter.  (Popular Information)

• Your Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose: How a Hong Kong conglomerate bought Milwaukee, DeWalt, and Craftsman — and what happened to quality after the acquisitions. (Worse on Purpose) see also Your Glasses Got Worse on Purpose: The consolidation playbook comes for eyewear too. (Worse on Purpose)

• Has De-Dollarization Begun?: US President Donald Trump’s military adventures, attacks on long-standing allies, and dismantling of institutions like USAID are eroding the trust on which the dollar’s global primacy ultimately rests. The world’s reserve currency may have already begun its long, slow decline. Kaushik Basu argues the dollar’s reserve status is more vulnerable than the consensus assumes — and Washington is doing its best to test the thesis. A worthwhile contrarian read. (Project Syndicate)

• A Vital System of Atlantic Ocean Currents Is Weakening and Closer to Collapse Than Thought: New research moves up the timeline on AMOC’s potential breakdown. (CNN)

• New Lawsuit: Do We Have a Right to Know We’re Being Surveilled? Scarsdale, New York didn’t want to share its plans for Flock surveillance cameras. A new lawsuit brought by NYCLU goes after Flock’s license-plate camera dragnet. The basic civil-liberties question — can a public agency hide where it’s watching from? — is overdue for a court answer. (Drop Site News) see also Your ISP Is Watching You. Here’s How a VPN Can Help: A practical primer on what your internet provider sees and what a VPN actually fixes (and doesn’t). Useful if your privacy hygiene is overdue. (PC Magazine)

• New disclosures reveal how DOGE actually worked: Depositions offer insight into what Elon Musk’s group was up to, including its heavy use of ChatGPT. Members describe a club-like atmosphere in which they pushed for grant and contract cancellations across the government with little oversight. (Washington Post)

• Bad Connection: Uncovering Global Telecom Exploitation by Covert Surveillance Actors. Two sophisticated telecom surveillance campaigns for the first time, links real-world attack traffic to mobile operator signalling infrastructure. The findings expose how suspected commercial surveillance vendors (CSVs) exploit the global telecom interconnect ecosystem, leverage private operator networks, and conduct covert location tracking operations that can persist undetected for years. (Citizen Lab) see also They Built a Legendary Privacy Tool. Now They’re Sworn Enemies: There’s a lot of love all over the world for GrapheneOS, the gold standard of mobile security. There’s very little love between the two guys at the center of its history. (Wired)

• How Did the U.S. Run Out of Missiles in Iran?: $800B a year in defense spending, and the stockpile still came up short. (Doomsday Scenario)

• The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court: Secret memos obtained by The New York Times illuminate the origins of the court’s now-routine “shadow docket” rulings on presidential power. Adam Liptak reconstructs the emergence of the Supreme Court’s shadow docket. (New York Times) see also Two justices, one quest: push to gut Voting Rights Act reaches final act: Latest ruling is culmination of Justices Roberts and Alito’s campaign to slowly but surely strangle efforts to protect democratic rights of Black and other minority Americans The Guardian traces a decade-long Roberts/Alito project to dismantle Section 2. The arc was never accidental. The latest ruling is culmination of Justices Roberts and Alito’s campaign to slowly but surely strangle efforts to protect democratic rights of Black and other minority Americans (The Guardian)

• The Mind of a Minotaur Displaying Picasso’s dark side: If Picasso were alive today, I have to imagine he would have been canceled by now. Some tried to do it post-hoc, on the heels of 2018’s #MeToo reckoning, and failed. The Brooklyn Museum’s 2023 exhibition It’s Pablo-matic, curated by comedian Hannah Gadsby, notoriously attempted a grand reappraisal of the man in light of his mistreatment of women, urging other museums to reconsider how they present him. (The Point)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this weekend with Lawrence Calcano, CEO and Chairman of iCapital, The firm is a fintech platform built to be the OS for alternative investments and complex products for financial advisors, wealth managers, and banks. The firm has over $1.2 trillion in active global assets on platform, across 2,455 funds used by 123,ooo financial professionals.

 

Oil Hits Wartime High Above $120 a Barrel 

Source: New York Times

 

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Alliance Fracture Is Now Global

Authored by Gregory Copley via The Epoch Times,

Western focus was, in 2026, on whether U.S. President Donald Trump would fulfill his threat to withdraw the United States from NATO. Eastern and Southern focus was on whether the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS alliance were even functioning.

In the U.S.–NATO standoff, it may take more complex political maneuvering for Trump to achieve a breakup of the alliance. Certainly, he could withdraw the U.S. military from European basing, but Congress in 2023 approved legislation that would prevent any president from withdrawing the United States from NATO without approval from the Senate or an act of Congress. The measure, spearheaded by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and, ironically, Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)—now Trump’s secretary of state—was included in the annual National Defense Authorization Act signed by President Joe Biden.

It may be more feasible for Trump to have the United States leave aspects of the military component of the North Atlantic Alliance, as French President Charles de Gaulle did in withdrawing from the NATO integrated military command structure—but not the North Atlantic Alliance—in 1967. Other members of NATO may themselves go beyond that to abandon NATO in order to form a new alliance, but that is a separate issue.

Of real, but as yet unexplored, interest is that other alliances have been forced to the sidelines because Trump initiatives, and time, have rendered them ineffective.

Among the most important of these are the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS. Secondarily, the informal Quad alliance against China—of India, the United States, Japan, and Australia—is quietly becoming less tight.

The SCO, which emerged in 2001 from the 1996 Shanghai Five security arrangement, now has 10 member states, most of which harbor suspicions about other members of the SCO. It was meant to contain a mutual security clause to require members to support other members under attack from outside. SCO membership includes Iran, and that clause has proven to be unenforceable as the wars against Iran continue. So the SCO is now effectively inoperable, except as a showcase with an expensive bureaucracy.

Similarly, BRICS—which began as a working group of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—was designed to circumvent U.S. domination of global trade systems by finding alternatives to trading using the U.S. dollar. The BRICS membership had expanded by 2026 to 10 states, adding Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. But it failed to shake the United States’ ability to control and sustain a global sanctions regime against political leaders who used the U.S. dollar in ways deemed inimical to U.S. interests.

BRICS achieved some new trading modalities that avoided the use of the U.S. dollar, but this did little to weaken the U.S. currency, or strengthen the currencies of BRICS members. But that was to be expected. This journal, as early as 2008, was discussing the end of the globalist, multinational framework of financing the international logistics chain based on the U.S. dollar. It discussed a return to bilateralism of trading methodologies, including barter and countertrade, which had, even in the 1970s, been a normal practice.

The past year-plus has seen the promoters of BRICS—as a defensive mechanism against the United States—becoming incapable of creating a new trade finance system. A proposed BRICS currency has come to naught; the currency of China has weakened to the point that it is hardly tradeable. And so on.

At what point is the Trump administration prepared to push for the complete breakdown of “opposing currencies,” not just of the BRICS states’ proposed new currency, but even of the euro and sterling?

Has all of this saved and bolstered the U.S. dollar? By default, yes; there is still no viable alternative to the use of the U.S. currency for major world trade.

But is Trump yet through with his plans to diminish, and perhaps totally dispense with, the United Nations? He has certainly hit key aspects of the U.N. that were heavily dependent on U.S. taxpayer contributions. The U.N. itself has been making itself less relevant and less forceful; it has taken an extremely polarizing, leftist position on many international issues and, at the same time, has been disregarded by the United States and other powers.

This, in turn, has made it less useful to Beijing, which entered the U.N. on Oct. 25, 1971, displacing the original founding member, the Republic of China, also known as Taiwan. China then began a sustained campaign to use U.N. agencies for political influence. So some of Trump’s anti-U.N. activities were clearly designed as moves against China.

What is the impact of the diminishing role of the U.N.? It has become less trusted as an instrument to impartially mediate interstate conflicts, and this makes its International Criminal Court (ICC)—to which the United States is not a signatory—also less trusted. The attempt to use the ICC as a key body to create “international law” out of thin air has now become discredited, or less of an influence. The World Trade Organization is also increasingly disregarded, as are regional bodies, such as ECOWAS in West Africa, and the Organization of American States.

So to what extent was the “rules-based world order” a creature of this utopianist U.N. thinking, or was it merely a reflection of a pax Americana?

If Trump wished to move heavily against the U.N., his best timing might be before the U.S. midterm congressional elections in November. But could he make it stick?

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

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/02/2026 - 23:20

DOJ Releases Report Alleging Anti-Christian Bias Under Biden

Authored by Savannah Halsey Pointer via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on April 30 released a 500-page report detailing alleged anti-Christian bias on the part of the Biden administration.

According to the report by the DOJ’s Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, the former administration’s prosecutions, policies, and practices constituted bias throughout multiple agencies, in accordance with the administration’s priorities.

The task force is chaired by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

“No American should live in fear that the federal government will punish them for their faith,” Blanche said. “As our report lays out, the Biden Administration’s actions devastated the lives of many Christian Americans.”

Around 200 pages of the report are dedicated to the actions of more than 17 federal agencies that uncovered alleged religious discrimination. The investigation included a review of internal discussions and case files, as well as prosecutorial decisions.

There were details of a since-retracted 2023 FBI memo on “radical traditionalist” Catholics, which cited the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The review also listed Biden-era regulations on abortion, contraception, gender, and human sexuality, among other issues that pitted the government against religious groups.

The report also makes note of the Biden administration’s reading of the 2019 Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which led to decisions that were based on what the Trump administration report called “sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools and sports.”

According to the DOJ report, the previous administration used the FBI, IRS, Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, and other agencies to monitor, investigate, and apply pressure to various Christian groups at a federal level.

The current DOJ’s task force was formed in accordance with President Donald Trump’s Feb. 6, 2025, executive order titled Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias.

The president ordered multiple agencies to investigate what he called an “egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses.”

Conflicting Response

This is a “very different Department of Justice ... than the previous administration,” said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers.

“The conclusion in the report, at least from an enforcement perspective, was that ... federal law was disproportionately used to prosecute pro-life and other Christians under the Biden administration,” he told The Epoch Times.

However, Rahmani, who worked at the DOJ from 2009 to 2012, said that while policies change, he has not seen a “systematic bias for or against” any one religious group.

“I don’t necessarily see ... [that] Christian activists in this country are receiving more prison time for violent acts, as opposed to, you know, Muslim or other religious groups.”

According to Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, director of the Conscience Project, the report “calls out the brazen assault against religious freedom by the former administration for what it was: a failure of constitutional and statutory duty.”

Picciotti-Bayer said in an emailed statement that the Biden administration disregarded “fundamental guarantees” in the First Amendment and federal civil rights law, and treated “sincere religious objections as obstacles to overcome, prosecuting peaceful prayer, trampling on parental rights and steamrolling conscience rights.”

The Interfaith Alliance, however, which states its mission is to “challenge Christian nationalism and religious extremism,” responded to the DOJ report, saying their group has “consistently opposed the work of this ‘task force.’” It accused the DOJ of trying to “undermine Americans’ religious freedom and First Amendment rights.”

The alliance called the task force’s report a “political stunt designed to promote the lie that American Christians are a persecuted group, while providing justification to target anyone deemed out of step with their Christian nationalist agenda.”

Previous Report

This report comes just weeks after an 800-page report from the department, detailing the “weaponization” of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which called out alleged prosecutorial problems, surveillance activities undertaken by pro-abortion groups, and failures to comply with federal law.

Biden’s DOJ did not enforce the law evenly, according to the April 14 report.

The task force under the Biden administration treated pro-life groups differently from pro-abortion groups, outlining disproportionate coordination with pro-abortion groups that, according to the report, indicated bias and prosecutorial overreach.

In her statement, Picciotti-Bayer said, “Religious freedom isn’t a courtesy the government extends—it’s a legal check on what government can do. It’s refreshing to see that recognized today.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/02/2026 - 22:10

The US Spends More On 'Defense' Than The Next 8 Countries Combined

For the first time on record, the top 15 military spenders allocated more than $2 trillion to defense in 2025.

Total global defense spending also reached a record $2.6 trillion, signaling a major shift in geopolitical priorities.

Using data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, this visualization, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, ranks the 15 countries driving this surge in military spending.

While the U.S. still operates on an entirely different scale, the biggest shift is happening in Europe, where countries are no longer just maintaining military capacity but expanding it significantly.

The $2 Trillion Arms Race: Defense Spending by Country

The U.S. defense budget reached $921 billion in 2025, larger than the combined military spending of China, Russia, Germany, the UK, India, Saudi Arabia, France, and Japan.

Looking ahead, Donald Trump has proposed increasing defense spending to $1.5 trillion by 2027, although this plan has not been enacted. If realized, this would represent roughly 90% higher spending than the Cold War peak in real terms.

China ranked second globally with $251.3 billion in defense spending in 2025. Its share of Asia’s military spending has climbed to 44%, up from 39% in 2017, highlighting its expanding regional influence.

Below is the breakdown of the 15 nations with the largest defense budgets in 2025.

Russia’s defense budget reached $186.2 billion in 2025, rising by more than $40 billion in a single year and equivalent to 7.3% of GDP.

However, spending is expected to decline in 2026, the first drop since the invasion of Ukraine. With a growing deficit, the country faces mounting economic pressure, though higher oil prices have recently provided some relief.

Europe’s Expanding War Chest

With Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and pressure from the U.S., European NATO members have committed to spending 3.5% of GDP on defense by 2035.

This would translate to roughly $1.2 trillion by 2035, the largest defense buildup among these countries since the Cold War.

Outside of Russia, Europe holds six of the world’s 15 largest defense budgets, led by Germany ($107.3 billion) and the UK ($94.3 billion). Both countries increased spending by tens of billions between 2024 and 2025.

What was once gradual growth has become a sharp acceleration, making defense one of the fastest-growing spending categories across advanced economies.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on the world’s largest armies in 2026.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/02/2026 - 21:35

Alaska Governor Vetoes Election Reform Bill Due To 'Significant Operational Burdens'

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed a major election reform bill on April 30, arguing it would place “significant operational burdens” on the state’s Division of Elections months before high-stakes statewide and federal contests.

Alaska Gov. Michael Dunleavy in Washington on Oct. 29, 2019. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

The bill, at least a decade in the making, sought to allow absentee and other ​voters track their ballots and see when they had been received and ​counted.

Dunleavy announced the veto of Senate Bill 64 after the measure arrived following its passage in both chambers of the legislature.

The legislation, which had won bipartisan support in the state’s House of Representatives and Senate, also sought to expand acceptable voter identification, modify voter roll ⁠maintenance, change the absentee ballot timeline, and create a rural community liaison position.

“Going forward, I encourage those who wish to continue this work to use this bill as a starting point to ensure that any proposed changes comply with state and federal law and pass any election legislation on a timeline that allows the Division of Elections to develop, test, and implement the necessary systems properly,” Dunleavy said in an April 30 statement. “While the Alaska gasline bill is the most important bill this session, I am open to a conversation with lawmakers on how we can address the legal and operational issues this session.”

In his veto letter, the Republican governor noted his misgivings about provisions requiring expanded ballot tracking and the curing of minor errors on mail-in ballots. He said such changes would be particularly difficult to implement securely and reliably ahead of the November elections.

“Taken as a whole, the bill would impose significant operational burdens on the administration of Alaska’s elections during an election year,” Dunleavy wrote. The Division of Elections had warned such mid-cycle alterations would be “extremely difficult, if not impossible,” to complete without risking reliability.

House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, an independent, said the veto was disappointing.

“This was a bipartisan effort to address the real challenges of voting in a state as vast, rural, and remote as Alaska,” Edgmon said in a statement. “Alaskans deserve a system that reflects our unique geography, not one that ignores it. This veto does exactly that.”

State Sen. Bill Wielechowski, a Democrat from North Anchorage and one of the bill’s key sponsors, said in a post on social media that the legislation was a “decade in the making, passed with broad bipartisan support, and reflected the governor’s own stated priorities.”

He said the veto also blocks efforts to strengthen voter ID rules.

“The Governor’s veto also blocks tightening of voter ID laws that would have limited acceptable IDs to government-issued identification,” Wielechowski added.

The legislature will have an opportunity to override the veto in the future.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/02/2026 - 21:00

The U.S. Wants To Ban Chinese Cars, But They're Already At The Gate

Efforts in Washington to block Chinese-made cars often sound like a future problem - but in practice, those vehicles are already within reach of American consumers, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Just south of the U.S. border, Chinese automakers have been rapidly expanding in Mexico, setting up dealerships and offering vehicles at prices far below what most new cars cost in the U.S. Brands like BYD, Geely, and Great Wall Motor are selling electric and gas-powered models packed with features - often for the price of a used car in the U.S. That proximity matters: American consumers living near the border can easily see, test, and in some cases drive these vehicles, even if large-scale imports remain restricted.

Meanwhile, U.S. policymakers are moving in the opposite direction. Proposed tariffs, import restrictions, and national security reviews are all aimed at limiting Chinese auto penetration, especially in the electric vehicle market. The concerns go beyond economics—lawmakers have raised questions about data security, supply chains, and the long-term competitiveness of domestic automakers.

The Journal writes that the situation is more complicated than a simple “ban.” Chinese-built vehicles are already entering the U.S. market indirectly. Some come through global partnerships, shared manufacturing platforms, or brands that don’t obviously appear Chinese to consumers. Others arrive in small numbers through personal imports or cross-border use. In other words, the presence is already here—it’s just not always visible at scale.

At the same time, Chinese automakers are becoming major global players. Companies like BYD, for example, have surged in electric vehicle production and are expanding across Latin America, Europe, and beyond. Their strategy often focuses on affordability and speed to market—areas where traditional U.S. automakers have struggled, especially as new car prices continue to climb.

That pricing gap is a key pressure point. Many American buyers are increasingly priced out of new vehicles, creating demand for cheaper alternatives. If Chinese automakers were allowed to compete freely in the U.S., they could significantly undercut domestic offerings—something that worries both policymakers and legacy car companies.

So while the political conversation centers on keeping Chinese cars out, the reality is that the market is already shifting around that goal. The vehicles are being sold nearby, seen by U.S. consumers, and in some cases already used on American roads.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/02/2026 - 20:25