Former AI SPAC Executives Indicted For Fabricating "Virtually All" Revenue And Customers

What looked like a booming AI company was, prosecutors say, an audacious house of cards built on deception.

iLearningEngines (former stock symbol AILE) executives allegedly fabricated virtually every pillar of their business—customers, revenues, and contracts—to cash in on the AI hype and dupe both everyday investors and major institutions.

The scheme involved creating entire fake client ecosystems: shell companies with polished websites, insiders or relatives posing as corporate executives, and bogus multimillion-dollar agreements designed to withstand scrutiny, according to a DOJ press release. As U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella put it, the company’s pitch of AI innovation masked something far more fraudulent: “the truly artificial part of the defendants’ story was iLearning’s customers and revenues.”

The scale of the alleged deception was staggering. The company reported soaring growth—claiming revenues that reached hundreds of millions—while prosecutors say those figures were largely invented. According to the indictment, executives inflated results through an “intricate web of sham contracts,” many supposedly worth tens of millions annually, all designed to convince investors the business was thriving.

In reality, the operation functioned less like a tech company and more like a carefully staged illusion meant to unlock funding and drive up valuation.

Behind the scenes, the mechanics of the fraud were brazen. Prosecutors say executives orchestrated “round-trip” transactions exceeding $144 million, secretly funneling investor and lender funds through fake customer accounts and then back into the company to simulate real revenue.

According to the DOJ press release, associates even opened bank accounts in the names of nonexistent clients to keep the money moving and the illusion alive. This circular flow of cash allowed the company to falsely appear profitable while relying entirely on outside funding.

When scrutiny finally intensified, the alleged response was not to come clean—but to double down. Executives allegedly lied repeatedly to auditors, investors, and lenders, and even coached others to back up the false story. “Our Office is committed to protecting investors and holding accountable corporate executives who undermine the integrity of our financial markets for personal gain,” Nocella said.

The scheme ultimately unraveled after a critical report by Hindenburg Research triggered a stock collapse, erasing massive value and pushing the company into bankruptcy—by which point insiders had already walked away with millions, leaving investors with devastating losses.

Back in 2024, Hindenburg Research alleged that the artificial intelligence company had "artificial partners and artificial revenue". The firm headed by Nathan Anderson said that iLearningEngines "was borderline insolvent when it merged with a desperate SPAC sponsor that was quickly running out of time to get a deal done."

The report focuses on an unnamed "Technology Partner" crucial to AILE's business, stating "nearly all of company’s revenue and expenses (~96% of revenue and ~100% of CoGs in 2022) seem to be run through an undisclosed related party, an unnamed 'Technology Partner'."

The company then told the SEC the technology partner was not a related party in a comment letter, Hindenburg says. It alleges that it "unmasked" the partner to be a related party...one which, at one point, shared a listed address with AILE's CEO's home residence. 

"We believe the majority of iLearningEngines’ revenue doesn’t exist, and that its relationship with the mystery 'Technology Partner' is merely a conduit for falsifying its financials. We do not expect it will remain a public company for long," the short seller wrote.

Hindenburg published the AILE report the same week it wrote on Super Micro Computer, which saw its co-founder arrested last month. It looks like even though the short seller is now defunct, its work is still having an impact.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/18/2026 - 11:05

 

 

This week, I speak with Philippe Bouchaud, co‑founder, chair & head of research/chief scientist at Capital Fund Management (CFM). The $20 billion firm specializes in managed futures. He began his career in theoretical physics, was awarded the IBM Young Scientist Prize (1990) and the C.N.R.S. Silver Medal (1996), and has published over 300 scientific papers and several books in physics and finance.

A list of his current reading is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday.

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.

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Joe McLean, Managing Partner at MAI Capital Management, where he leads firm’s Sports & Entertainment division, serving 100s of pro athletes/entertainers across NBA, NFL, MLB, PGA + NASCAR. His path to finance runs directly through the locker room as a 4-year NCAA Division 1 player at U of Arizona. Dubbed the athlete’s “Money Whisperer” by the New York Times, he is known for his non-negotiable 60% savings mandate for clients.

 

 

 

 

Current Reading/Favorite Books

 

 

 

The post MiB: Philippe Bouchaud, Founder/Chief Scientist, Capital Fund Management appeared first on The Big Picture.

The post A $600 Billion Increase for the Military is a Ton of Money appeared first on CEPR.

The Architecture Of Abundance: How Bitcoin Reveals The Truth Of Time And Technology

Authored by Sylvain Saurel via 'In Bitcoin We Trust' Substack,

How escaping the fiat illusion and holding the world's hardest money turns the relentless march of technology into unprecedented purchasing power.

Look closely at the image below:

On the left, two standard Papa John’s pizzas, purchased in 2010 for the seemingly arbitrary sum of 10,000 Bitcoin. On the right, a colossal supertanker cutting through the ocean, a leviathan of modern engineering carrying millions of barrels of crude oil - the literal lifeblood of the global industrial economy. Today, a mere 26 Bitcoin commands this staggering vessel of kinetic energy.

If we run the mathematics of this evolution, the implications are paradigm-shattering. In a span of roughly a decade and a half, the purchasing power of that original 10,000 Bitcoins has metamorphosed from two boxes of delivered fast food into the equivalent of 384 supertankers of oil.

This image is not merely a meme or a historical curiosity; it is the most perfect, succinct encapsulation of what Bitcoin actually is. It is a visual representation of economic truth. Yet, when the world discusses Bitcoin, the conversation is almost universally dominated by the chaotic noise of short-term price action. Pundits obsess over hourly charts, quarterly earnings, regulatory whispers, and the cyclical volatility of a nascent asset finding its sea legs. But zooming out to observe the macroeconomic horizon across sixteen years reveals a profound narrative about time, technology, and the very nature of human energy.

To understand Bitcoin, we must stop looking at what it does in a week and start looking at what it does across an epoch. We must understand why patience is the ultimate economic virtue, why technology demands abundance, and why our current fiat money system is fundamentally designed to steal that abundance from us.

The Tyranny of the Short-Term and the Power of 2042

Human beings are biologically wired for high time preference. Our evolutionary ancestors survived by prioritizing immediate caloric intake and immediate safety over abstract, long-term planning. Today, this biological vestige manifests in our financial behaviors. We want immediate returns. We want the “get rich quick” button. Nobody wants to wait; nobody wants to endure the discomfort of delayed gratification.

When you look at the leap from two pizzas to 384 supertankers, you are looking at the unparalleled reward of a low time preference. You are witnessing the mathematics of holding the hardest money ever engineered by humanity.

Imagine, for a moment, the year 2042. If the purchasing power of this decentralized network can scale from melted cheese and pepperoni to global energy armadas in a mere 16 years, what will a single Bitcoin command in another two decades? What entire industries, infrastructures, or technological marvels will be priced in fractions of a single coin?

Most people cannot fathom this reality because their economic worldview is constrained by the immediate present. The volatility of the short-term timeframe shakes out those who lack conviction. But the fundamental point of Bitcoin is intrinsically linked to time: the longer you hold it, the more you gain from it. This is not a speculative guarantee based on finding a “greater fool” to buy your bags; it is a mathematical inevitability aligned with the deepest truths of technological advancement.

Technology’s Unyielding Mandate: The Deflation of Marginal Cost

To grasp why Bitcoin’s purchasing power aggressively expands over time, we must first understand the fundamental nature of technology.

What is technology, at its core? It is the process of doing more with less. From the invention of the wheel to the printing press, the steam engine, the microchip, and now artificial intelligence, every technological leap shares a singular, unifying characteristic: it drives the marginal cost of production toward zero.

When a farmer transitions from a horse-drawn plow to a mechanized tractor, the caloric energy and time required to harvest a field plummet, while the yield skyrockets. When telecommunications shifted from laying copper cables across oceans to bouncing signals off satellites and routing data through fiber optics, the cost of communicating with someone on the other side of the planet fell from dollars per minute to fractions of a cent. Today, software and AI are eating the world, automating cognitive labor and optimizing supply chains with ruthless efficiency.

The natural consequence of this technological march is abundance. As it becomes cheaper, faster, and easier to produce food, energy, housing, information, and manufactured goods, the prices of these goods should fall dramatically. Deflation—the decrease in the general price level of goods and services—is the natural, logical, and inevitable byproduct of a technologically advancing civilization.

As time elapses, technology advances. As technology advances, it births abundance. And that abundance should rightfully be delivered to humanity in the form of consistently lower prices, requiring us to work less to secure our basic needs, thereby freeing human time and capital for higher-order pursuits.

This is exactly what has happened when we measure the global economy in Bitcoin. The price of everything in the economy is significantly lower in BTC terms than it was a decade ago. Whether you are pricing real estate, the S&P 500, a gallon of milk, or a supertanker of oil, the chart denominating these assets in Bitcoin trends aggressively downward. Bitcoin accurately captures the deflationary dividend of technological progress.

So, if technology is making everything cheaper to produce, why does life feel more expensive than ever?

The Fiat Illusion: Manufacturing the Energy of Scarcity

The reason our grocery bills are soaring, housing has become unaffordable for a younger generation, and the cost of living feels like an ever-accelerating treadmill is not because technology has failed us. It is because our money is broken.

We operate on a fiat currency standard—money decreed by governments, backed by nothing but the threat of force and the promise of future taxation. More importantly, it is a debt-based monetary system. In a fiat system, money is created when debt is issued. In order for this colossal architecture of global debt to survive without collapsing into a deflationary depression, central banks and governments are mathematically forced to constantly expand the money supply. They must inflate.

Inflation is not a bug of the fiat system; it is its foundational feature. The fiat system requires the continuous debasement of currency to service ever-expanding sovereign debts.

This requirement for inflation is a silent, insidious thief. It systematically robs humanity of the lower prices that should rightfully be ours due to technological advancement. Imagine a world where human ingenuity reduces the cost to produce a good by 5%, but the central bank inflates the money supply by 7%. The price on the shelf goes up by 2%. The consumer falsely believes the good has become more expensive to create, completely blind to the fact that their money has simply become vastly weaker. The technological dividend—the 5% savings—was siphoned away by the creators of the currency.

Because fiat money relentlessly loses its purchasing power, it traps humanity in a perpetual rat race. We are forced to sprint at full capacity simply to maintain our current standard of living. Instead of receiving the abundance our technology produces, we are force-fed the energy of scarcity. We are alienated from the fruits of our collective innovation, living in a hyper-financialized world where citizens must become amateur hedge fund managers just to protect their life savings from melting away.

Bitcoin: The Denominator of Truth

Bitcoin stands in stark defiance of this systemic theft. It is an incorruptible ledger, a closed thermodynamic system of money with an absolutely scarce, unforgeable supply cap of 21 million coins. No central bank can print more to bail out failing institutions. No politician can expand their supply to fund a war. No committee can alter its monetary policy to service unpayable debts.

Because its supply is fixed and immune to manipulation, Bitcoin acts as a perfect measuring stick for the global economy. It is simply money that accurately prices the truth of technological advancement.

When you hold fiat currency, you are holding a leaky bucket. When you hold Bitcoin, you are holding an asset that acts as a sponge, eagerly absorbing the deflationary abundance generated by human innovation. As technological advances lower the cost of producing goods and services, and the supply of Bitcoin remains immutably fixed, the purchasing power of your Bitcoin inevitably rises.

As Bitcoin holders, we cease to be the victims of hidden inflation taxes. Instead, we become the direct beneficiaries of technological abundance. We capture that abundance in the form of exponentially greater purchasing power. The transformation of a 10,000 BTC stack from two pizzas to a fleet of supertankers is not a glitch; it is the correct mathematical repricing of the world against a true, unmanipulated denominator.

The Long-Term Horizon: Where Truth Resides

Both of these realities—the magnificent deflationary power of technology and the absolute scarcity of Bitcoin—take time to fully manifest.

In the short term, markets are emotional. They are driven by leverage, news cycles, panic, greed, regulatory saber-rattling, and the sheer noise of human behavioral psychology. Over a timeframe of weeks or months, Bitcoin’s price in fiat terms can fluctuate wildly, leading critics to dismiss it as a volatile speculative toy.

But true economic reality cannot be judged in the span of a fiscal quarter. The truth of money, value, and human progress is only revealed over longer time horizons. Time acts as a filter, stripping away the irrational noise of the day-to-day market and leaving only the undeniable, structural signal. Over a 16-year timeframe, the volatility smooths out, and the undeniable truth emerges: fiat money trends toward zero, while structurally sound money trends toward infinity in purchasing power.

We rely on money to communicate value across space and time. When our money is manipulated, the communication is corrupted. It lies to us about what is scarce, what is valuable, and what our time is worth. Bitcoin is money that reflects reality. It provides perfect information. We cannot ask for anything more from our money than to tell us the truth.

And the truth, eventually, is unstoppable.

As the Buddha profoundly observed:

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”

The fiat system relies on obscurity, complexity, and a lack of public understanding to maintain its illusion. Bitcoin relies on open-source code, verifiable math, and total transparency. Every ten minutes, a new block is mined, and the network shouts its truth to the world.

It takes time for society to recognize this shift. It takes time for the legacy systems to crack under the weight of their own debt and for the populace to seek a lifeboat. But time is the ultimate ally of the honest ledger. As Leonardo da Vinci wisely noted:

“Time is the daughter of truth.”

The longer Bitcoin survives, the longer it processes blocks without fail, the deeper its roots grow into the global financial infrastructure. Every passing year is a testament to its resilience and its necessity.

In the end, the transition from a debt-based system of manufactured scarcity to a mathematically sound system of technological abundance is not just an economic imperative; it is a moral one. The legacy financial world may fight it, central bankers may scoff at it, and the impatience of the masses may momentarily dismiss it. But the historical trajectory is set.

To borrow the words of Winston Churchill:

“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”

There it is: 10,000 Bitcoin for two pizzas in 2010. 26 Bitcoin for a supertanker today. A world of infinite technological abundance is waiting for us in 2042. The only question that remains is whether you have the patience, the conviction, and the low time preference to step out of the illusion of scarcity and hold the truth.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/18/2026 - 10:30

Here's What Happened Inside Gas Stations When Gas Hit $4

In Goldman's first-quarter "Nicotine Nuggets" survey of retailers and wholesalers covering roughly 44,000 U.S. stores, or about 28% of all tobacco outlets nationwide, analysts observed that once the national average for regular 87-octane gasoline hit the politically sensitive $4-a-gallon level, the squeeze on consumers began to emerge. One of the clearest signs of stress was a downshift in purchases as budget-conscious consumers started pulling back on tobacco purchases or, in some cases, trading down. 

"The outlook remains cautious but retailers & wholesalers generally see the environment as stable despite ongoing concerns on the consumer and recent pressure from higher gas prices," Bonnie Herzog, managing director and senior consumer analyst at Goldman, wrote in a note on Friday morning. 

According to the survey, 58% of respondents said consumer behavior had noticeably changed once 87-octane gasoline prices at the pump crossed the $4 threshold, while another 26% said they have not seen changes yet but expect them if prices remain elevated.

The biggest changes cited were consumers downtrading in stores, buying less fuel, and purchasing less overall inside stores. Some retailers also reported fewer trips, weaker inside sales, and more "splash and go" visits at the pump, where customers buy smaller amounts of fuel and skip in-store purchases.

She said, "Downtrading was strong in Q1, as roughly 80% of respondents indicated that deep-discount cigarettes gained share."

Main points of the survey:

• Specific changes in behavior noted included consumers purchasing less in stores (indicated by 32% of respondents), downtrading in stores (47%), downtrading at the gas pump (11%), driving less (16%), and purchasing less fuel (37%).

• Multiple respondents noted seeing fewer customer trips to stores as a result of their higher retail fuel prices (with one noting higher basket sizes as a result of trip consolidation), along with overall lower levels for inside-store sales. One respondent pointed to considerable pressure on the consumer buying at budgeted dollar increments (a rapidly growing consumer segment), which naturally purchases less fuel as the price increases.

• Negatively, one retailer is witnessing more "splash and go" trips to the pump (fewer gallons and fewer people converting to inside sales). That said, the retailer also sees a shift in consumer behavior toward value, which has been a benefit to the nicotine pouch category in this regard, as higher engagement with fuel reward promos has led to category sales - with VELO Plus sales for the retailer up 20%+ in the last three weeks.

Herzog and her team "remain cautious on the U.S. tobacco/nicotine industry near-term given continued cig volume declines in Q1 and pressures on the tobacco consumer as a result of the inflationary backdrop and recently higher gas prices, although we see continued robust growth for the nicotine pouch category."

The "Nicotine Nuggets" report underscores just why politicians are so sensitive to surging gasoline prices: once fuel prices spike, cash-strapped consumers are forced into difficult trade-offs, whether that means buying less gas or diesel, cutting back elsewhere, or, in some cases, trading down in tobacco products.

Late last year, Herzog told clients, "Buy nicotine, energy drink, and candy stocks."

Professional subscribers can read the "Nicotine Nuggets" note on our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/18/2026 - 08:45

Spain Erupts: Patriots Attacked By Socialist Mob Over Mass Illegal Migrant Amnesty

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Violence broke out in the Spanish city of Granada when roughly 40 left-wing Antifa extremists tried to shut down a pre-election rally held by the nationalist party Vox in Plaza de las Pasiegas. Police had to form a cordon between the rival groups as fights broke out, delaying the event by around 30 minutes.

Vox leader Santiago Abascal refused to start the rally until the disruptors were removed. He stepped down from the platform, walked toward the rival group with supporters, and crowds chanted “Out, out!” as tensions spilled over. Abascal directly accused authorities of failing to protect free speech, stating: “They are preventing us from carrying out this act freely.”

He went further, blaming the unrest on the very politicians who enabled it: “They are the ones who put Sánchez in La Moncloa.”

Footage shows red paint thrown at attendees, shouting matches, and police struggling to keep the sides apart. Smaller groups of protesters reappeared near the square after the rally began, mobilized via social media.

Violence erupts in Spanish city days after controversial plan to grant amnesty to 500,000 migrants

Clashes broke out in Granada’s Plaza de las Pasiegas between right-wing Vox supporters and left-wing activists.

Around 40 left-wing protesters tried to disrupt a Vox rally,… pic.twitter.com/1VfeHsamIB

— G R I F T Y (@GriftReport) April 17, 2026

The clashes come just days after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s socialist government approved plans to grant legal status, jobs, and benefits to around 500,000 migrants — with analysts warning the real number could hit 800,000.

As we reported earlier, this triggered immediate chaos at consulates across Spain, where thousands of migrants swarmed to submit paperwork:

Endless queues snaked through streets in cities like Almería, Bilbao, and Madrid. Migrants clambered over security gates. Immigration offices are now threatening strikes, overwhelmed by the sudden flood with only a handful of staff handling applications that were farmed out to post offices and NGOs.

Vox has hammered the policy as an “invasion” accelerated by Sánchez. The Granada rally turned into a flashpoint for that anger, with party figures accusing the government of promoting demographic replacement while the opposition People’s Party offered little resistance.

This is the direct result of Sánchez’s open-borders experiment, which prioritizes globalist virtue-signaling over Spanish citizens’ safety and cohesion. While the left screams about “fascism,” it is their own policies that are turning Spanish streets into battlegrounds between patriots demanding borders and radicals defending unlimited migration.

The amnesty is already facing a serious legal challenge that could freeze the entire process. The Spanish legal group Hazte Oír has taken the royal decree to the Supreme Court, which accepted the case and gave the government just 20 days to justify bypassing parliament:

Lawyers argue there was no “extraordinary and urgent need” for a decree instead of normal legislation, warning of irreversible damage to public services, housing, and social cohesion. A precautionary suspension is on the table — meaning the flood of new legal residents could be halted before it becomes impossible to reverse.

Abascal has been blunt about what comes next if the courts fail to act: “These are the lines to manage mass regularization in each municipality of Spain. Tomorrow this chaos will move to the health centers, to the social services, to the real estate agencies… It’s called thirdworldization. It’s already happening. Our priority is to reverse it, radically.”

Sánchez, meanwhile, calls the giveaway “an act of justice” and “a necessity,” claiming it simply recognizes migrants who “already form part of our everyday lives.” Critics point out Spain has run multiple amnesties since 1986 with over 1.75 million permits issued — yet illegal entries and integration failures continue unabated.

The left’s response to pushback is always the same: label patriots as extremists while their policies import the very tensions now exploding. Spain stands at a crossroads. Either the courts step in and the people demand sanity, or the socialist experiment will turn one of Europe’s great nations into a cautionary tale of what happens when globalism overrides national survival.

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

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Tyler Durden Sat, 04/18/2026 - 08:10

Ukraine Urges Israel To Act Against Russian Ship Carrying 'Stolen' Grain To Haifa Port

Ukraine is pushing Israel to seize a grain shipment it says was looted from Russian-occupied territory as the war persists in the east.

At the moment it does not appear that Israel complied with any interdict of the vessel, also as reports say the cargo is already offloaded and gone.

via MarineTraffic

Ukraine's government flagged the Russian vessel ABINSK, docking at Haifa, as part of Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet, alleging that it is tied to operations used to "illegally export, transport, and sell stolen Ukrainian grain" and bankroll Moscow's war effort.

The saga has been featured in Ukrainian media, which says that despite a formal government-to-government request, Israeli authorities didn't stop the shipment.

Some 43,765 tonnes of wheat - loaded at Russia’s Kavkaz port and believed to originate from Ukrainian regions controlled by the Russian military - was allowed to be unloaded.

Ukraine is still expressing hope for "fruitful and constructive interaction" between both sides, with its embassy in contact with Israeli officials, but Tel Aviv does not appear to be as eager to intervene.

According to some further details in Le Monde:

On April 12, it was permitted to dock in Haifa, where it may have unloaded its cargo, valued at about €8.5 million at current wheat prices. The Abinsk then left Haifa the same day, heading for the Dardanelles Strait with the Turkish port of Çanakkale listed as its next stop, according to Marinetraffic.com, a vessel-tracking website.

The Russian bulk carrier reportedly loaded its cargo at the port of Kavkaz on the Kerch Strait, which separates the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea and links the Russian Federation to Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, according to Ukrainian investigative journalist Kateryna Yaresko, who works for the SeaKrime project at Myrotvorets, an online collaborative platform listing "enemies of Ukraine."

At a moment the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively blocked, and global shipping is feeling the disruption, the Israelis are unlikely to get too trigger happy when it comes to further disrupting trade - even if it comes from Russia or is in a 'gray area'. 

As for Ukraine and Israel, the two countries' relations has lately improved given the two can find common cause in opposing Iran. President Zelensky has meanwhile been touting drone sales to US allies in the Gulf of late too.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/18/2026 - 07:50

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• What 1,000-year-old companies know about resilience: Long-lived companies show that resilience comes not from individual toughness, but from the strength of the systems around us. (Big Think)

• The $10 Billion Startup Training AI to Replace the White-Collar Workforce: Mercor is promising to replicate most professional work. It was also co-founded by twentysomethings who previously never held a real job. (Bloomberg free) see also • Mutually Automated Destruction: The Escalating Global A.I. Arms Race: The new arms race is algorithmic, not nuclear — and the guardrails are nowhere in sight. Autonomous weapons are the defining military story of the decade. (New York Times)

• Weight-loss drugs and Mars bars: Novo Nordisk’s comeback bid: The maker of Wegovy and Ozempic wants to learn lessons from consumer groups to crack the US market. After losing share to Lilly, Novo is reinventing itself — partly by partnering with the food companies whose products GLP-1s were supposed to replace. The irony is delicious. (Financial Times)

• A Pillar of the Economics Establishment Admits That It Was Wrong: The World Bank is quietly reversing decades of free-trade orthodoxy and endorsing industrial policy. A big intellectual concession with real consequences for global investing. (The Atlantic)

• The Death of the Basic American Car: The sub-$20k new car is effectively extinct. Automakers chased margins into luxury SUVs and left working Americans with no affordable option — the economic consequences are just starting to ripple out. (New York Times)

• How the Internet Broke Everyone’s Bullshit Detectors: Our cognitive defenses evolved for face-to-face lies, not algorithmic deception at scale. Wired on why even smart people are falling for dumb things in 2026. (Wired)

• How to walk through walls: On hacker mindset. Henrik Karlsson on the hacker mindset and why the most productive people treat obstacles as puzzles rather than barriers. Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi is the 0pposterchild for yhis mindset. (Henrik Karlsson)

• When Flock Cameras Appear: Everything You Need to Know About This Surveillance Tech: Flock Safety is setting up cameras and drones across the country. I spoke to cities and privacy advocates fighting back against the AI surveillance, including Flock and others like it. A growing number of cities are quietly ripping out the license-plate-scanning cameras that blanketed their streets. Proof that surveillance overreach eventually meets local pushback. (CNET)

• The Shocking Secrets of Madison Square Garden’s Surveillance Machine: Famously vengeful Knicks owner Jim Dolan has long spied on people at his iconic arenas. He has turned MSG into one of the most aggressive private facial-recognition operations in the country, using it to ban critics and lawyers at the door. Private-sector dystopia that most fans never see coming. (Wired)

• The Guitar Sounds New Again: Every so often a player comes along who makes the guitar sound like something it’s never been. A look at the technology and artistry behind the instrument’s latest reinvention. The grungy, extraterrestrial “Mk.gee tone” is everywhere and depends on a decades-old device. (The Atlantic) see also Mk.gee, an Unlikely Guitar God, Chases the Promise of Pop: At 27, Mk.gee is rethinking how music is made with a confidence that belies his age. He’s not just playing guitar — he’s reimagining what it can be in a pop context. (New York Times)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Philippe Bouchaud, co‑founder, chair & head of research/chief scientist at Capital Fund Management (CFM) The $20 billion dollar fiorm specializes in managed futures). He beghan his career in theoretical physics, was awarded the IBM young scientist prize (1990) + C.N.R.S. Silver Medal (1996), and has published over 300 scientific papers and several books in physics & finance.

 

Historical data show it usually takes about 3 weeks (15 trading days) for markets to bottom after a geopolitical shock, followed by another 3-4 weeks to recover those losses

Source: Jim Reid, Deutsche Bank

 

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The post 10 Weekend Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

Peter Schiff: Printing Money Is Not the Cure for Cononavirus



In his most recent podcast, Peter Schiff talked about coronavirus and the impact that it is having on the markets. Earlier this month, Peter said he thought the virus was just an excuse for stock market woes. At the time he believed the market was poised to fall anyway. But as it turns out, coronavirus has actually helped the US stock market because it has led central banks to pump even more liquidity into the world financial system. All this means more liquidity — central banks easing. In fact, that is exactly what has already happened, except the new easing is taking place, for now, outside the United States, particularly in China.” Although the new money is primarily being created in China, it is flowing into dollars — the dollar index is up — and into US stocks. Last week, US stock markets once again made all-time record highs. In fact, I think but for the coronavirus, the US stock market would still be selling off. But because of the central bank stimulus that has been the result of fears over the coronavirus, that actually benefitted not only the US dollar, but the US stock market.” In the midst of all this, Peter raises a really good question. The primary economic concern is that coronavirus will slow down output and ultimately stunt economic growth. Practically speaking, the world would produce less stuff. If the virus continues to spread, there would be fewer goods and services produced in a market that is hunkered down. Why would the Federal Reserve respond, or why would any central bank respond to that by printing money? How does printing more money solve that problem? It doesn’t. In fact, it actually exacerbates it. But you know, everybody looks at central bankers as if they’ve got the solution to every problem. They don’t. They don’t have the magic wand. They just have a printing press. And all that creates is inflation.” Sometimes the illusion inflation creates can look like a magic wand. Printing money can paper over problems. But none of this is going to fundamentally fix the economy. In fact, if central bankers were really going to do the right thing, the appropriate response would be to drain liquidity from the markets, not supply even more.” Peter explained how the Fed was originally intended to create an “elastic” money supply that would expand or contract along with economic output. Today, the money supply only goes in one direction — that’s up. The economy is strong, print money. The economy is weak, print even more money.” Of course, the asset that’s doing the best right now is gold. The yellow metal pushed above $1,600 yesterday. Gold is up 5.5% on the year in dollar terms and has set record highs in other currencies. Because gold is rising even in an environment where the dollar is strengthening against other fiat currencies, that shows you that there is an underlying weakness in the dollar that is right now not being reflected in the Forex markets, but is being reflected in the gold markets. Because after all, why are people buying gold more aggressively than they’re buying dollars or more aggressively than they’re buying US Treasuries? Because they know that things are not as good for the dollar or the US economy as everybody likes to believe. So, more people are seeking out refuge in a better safe-haven and that is gold.” Peter also talked about the debate between Trump and Obama over who gets credit for the booming economy – which of course, is not booming.

We are living in crazy times. I have a hard time believing that most of the general public is not awake, but in reality, they are. We've never seen anything like this; I mean not even under Obama during the worst part of the Great Recession." Now the Fed is desperately trying to keep interest rates from rising. The problem is that it's a much bigger debt bubble this time around , and the Fed is going to have to blow a lot more air into it to keep it inflated. The difference is this time it's not going to work." It looks like the Fed did another $104.15 billion of Not Q.E. in a single day. The Fed claims it's only temporary. But that is precisely what Bernanke claimed when the Fed started QE1. Milton Freedman once said, "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." The same applies to Q.E., or whatever the Fed wants to pretend it's doing. Except this is not QE4, according to Powell. Right. Pumping so much money out, and they are accusing China of currency manipulation ? Wow! Seriously! Amazing! Dump the U.S. dollar while you still have a chance. Welcome to The Atlantis Report. And it is even worse than that, In addition to the $104.15 billion of "Not Q.E." this past Thursday; the FED added another $56.65 billion in liquidity to financial markets the next day on Friday. That's $160.8 billion in two days!!!! in just 48 hours. That is more than 2 TIMES the highest amount the FED has ever injected on a monthly basis under a Q.E. program (which was $80 billion per month) Since this isn't QE....it will be really scary on what they are going to call Q.E. Will it twice, three times, four times, five times what this injection per month ! It is going to be explosive since it takes about 60 to 90 days for prices to react to this, January should see significant inflation as prices soak up the excess liquidity. The question is, where will the inflation occur first . The spike in the repo rate might have a technical explanation: a misjudgment was made in the Fed's money market operations. Even so, two conclusions can be drawn: managing the money markets is becoming harder, and from now on, banks will be studying each other's creditworthiness to a greater degree than before. Those people, who struggle with the minutiae of money markets, and that includes most professionals, should focus on the causes and not the symptoms. Financial markets have recovered from each downturn since 1980 because interest rates have been cut to new lows. Post-2008, they were cut to near zero or below zero in all major economies. In response to a new financial crisis, they cannot go any lower. Central banks will look for new ways to replicate or broaden Q.E. (At some point, governments will simply see repression as an easier option). Then there is the problem of 'risk-free' assets becoming risky assets. Financial markets assume that the probability of major governments such as the U.S. or U.K. defaulting is zero. These governments are entering the next downturn with debt roughly twice the levels proportionate to GDP that was seen in 2008. The belief that the policy worked was completely predicated on the fact that it was temporary and that it was reversible, that the Fed was going to be able to normalize interest rates and shrink its balance sheet back down to pre-crisis levels. Well, when the balance sheet is five-trillion, six-trillion, seven-trillion when we're back at zero, when we're back in a recession, nobody is going to believe it is temporary. Nobody is going to believe that the Fed has this under control, that they can reverse this policy. And the dollar is going to crash. And when the dollar crashes, it's going to take the bond market with it, and we're going to have stagflation. We're going to have a deep recession with rising interest rates, and this whole thing is going to come imploding down. everything is temporary with the fed including remaining off the gold standard temporary in the Fed's eyes could mean at least 50 years This liquidity problem is a signal that trading desks are loaded up on inventory and can't get rid of it. Repo is done out of a need for cash. If you own all of your securities (i.e., a long-only, no leverage mutual fund) you have no need to "repo" your securities - you're earning interest every night so why would you want to 'repo' your securities where you are paying interest for that overnight loan (securities lending is another animal). So, it is those that 'lever-up' and need the cash for settlement purposes on securities they've bought with borrowed money that needs to utilize the repo desk. With this in mind, as we continue to see this need to obtain cash (again, needed to settle other securities purchases), it shows these firms don't have the capital to add more inventory to, what appears to be, a bloated inventory. Now comes the fun part: the Treasury is about to auction 3's, 10's, and 30-year bonds. If I am correct (again, I could be wrong), the Fed realizes securities firms don't have the shelf space to take down a good portion of these auctions. If there isn't enough retail/institutional demand, it will lead to not only a crappy sale but major concerns to the street that there is now no backstop, at all, to any sell-off. At which point, everyone will want to be the first one through the door and sell immediately, but to whom? If there isn't enough liquidity in the repo market to finance their positions, the firms would be unable to increase their inventory. We all saw repo shut down on the 2008 crisis. Wall St runs on money. . OVERNIGHT money. They lever up to inventory securities for trading. If they can't get overnight money, they can't purchase securities. And if they can't unload what they have, it means the buy-side isn't taking on more either. Accounts settle overnight. This includes things like payrolls and bill pay settlements. If a bank doesn't have enough cash to payout what its customers need to pay out, it borrows. At least one and probably more than one banks are insolvent. That's what's going on. First, it can't be one or two banks that are short. They'd simply call around until they found someone to lend. But they did that, and even at markedly elevated rates, still, NO ONE would lend them the money. That tells me that it's not a problem of a couple of borrowers, it's a problem of no lenders. And that means that there's no bank in the world left with any real liquidity. They are ALL maxed out. But as bad as that is, and that alone could be catastrophic, what it really signals is even worse. The lending rates are just the flip side of the coin of the value of the assets lent against. If the rates go up, the value goes down. And with rates spiking to 10%, how far does the value fall? Enormously! And if banks had to actually mark down the value of the assets to reflect 10% interest rates, then my god, every bank in the world is insolvent overnight. Everyone's capital ratios are in the toilet, and they'd have to liquidate. We're talking about the simultaneous insolvency of every bank on the planet. Bank runs. No money in ATMs, Branches closed. Safe deposit boxes confiscated. The whole nine yards, It's actually here. The scenario has tended to guide toward for years and years is actually happening RIGHT NOW! And people are still trying to say it's under control. Every bank in the world is currently insolvent. The only thing keeping it going is printing billions of dollars every day. Financial Armageddon isn't some far off future risk. It's here. Prepare accordingly. This fiat system has reached the end of the line, and it's not correct that fiat currencies fail by design. The problem is corruption and manipulation. It is corruption and cheating that erodes trust and faith until the entire system becomes a gigantic fraud. Banks and governments everywhere ARE the problem and simply have to be removed. They have lost all trust and respect, and all they have left is war and mayhem. As long as we continue to have a majority of braindead asleep imbeciles following orders from these psychopaths, nothing will change. Fiat currency is not just thievery. Fiat currency is SLAVERY. Ultimately the most harmful effect of using debt of undefined value as money (i.e., fiat currencies) is the de facto legalization of a caste system based on voluntary slavery. The bankers have a charter, or the legal *right*, to create money out of nothing. You, you don't. Therefore you and the bankers do not have the same standing before the law. The law of the land says that you will go to jail if you do the same thing (creating money out of thin air) that the banker does in full legality. You and the banker are not equal before the law. ALL the countries of the world; Islamic or secular, Jewish or Arab, democracy or dictatorship; all of them place the bankers ABOVE you. And all of you accept that only whining about fiat money going down in exchange value over time (price inflation which is not the same as monetary inflation). Actually, price inflation itself is mainly due to the greed and stupidity of the bankers who could keep fiat money's exchange value reasonably stable, only if they wanted to. Witness the crash of silver and gold prices which the bankers of the world; Russian, American, Chinese, Jewish, Indian, Arab, all of them collaborated to engineer through the suppression and stagnation of precious metals' prices to levels around the metals' production costs, or what it costs to dig gold and silver out of the ground. The bankers of the world could also collaborate to keep nominal prices steady (as they do in the case of the suppression of precious metals prices). After all, the ability to create fiat money and force its usage is a far more excellent source of power and wealth than that which is afforded simply by stealing it through inflation. The bankers' greed and stupidity blind them to this fact. They want it all, and they want it now. In conclusion, The bankers can create money out of nothing and buy your goods and services with this worthless fiat money, effectively for free. You, you can't. You, you have to lead miserable existences for the most of you and WORK in order to obtain that effectively nonexistent, worthless credit money (whose purchasing/exchange value is not even DEFINED thus rendering all contracts based on the null and void!) that the banker effortlessly creates out of thin air with a few strokes of the computer keyboard, and which he doesn't even bother to print on paper anymore, electing to keep it in its pure quantum uncertain form instead, as electrons whizzing about inside computer chips which will become mute and turn silent refusing to tell you how many fiat dollars or euros there are in which account, in the absence of electricity. No electricity, no fiat, nor crypto money. It would appear that trust is deteriorating as it did when Lehman blew up . Something really big happened that set off this chain reaction in the repo markets. Whatever that something is, we aren't be informed. They're trying to cover it up, paper it over with conjured cash injections, play it cool in front of the cameras while sweating profusely under the 5 thousands dollar suits. I'm guessing that the final high-speed plunge into global economic collapse has begun. All we see here is the ripples and whitewater churning the surface, but beneath the surface, there is an enormous beast thrashing desperately in its death throws. Now is probably the time to start tying up loose ends with the long-running prep projects, just saying. In other words, prepare accordingly, and Get your money out of the banks. I don't care if you don't believe me about Bitcoin. Get your money out of the banks. Don't keep any more money in a bank than you need to pay your bills and can afford to lose.











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The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more

The FBI released a summary of its file from the Hillary Clinton email investigation on Friday, showing details of Clinton's explanation of her use of a private email server to handle classified communications. The release comes nearly two months after FBI Director James Comey announced that although Clinton's handling of classified information was "extremely careless," it did not rise to the level of a prosecutable offense. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the next day that she would not pursue charges in the matter. "We are making these materials available to the public in the interest of transparency and in response to numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests," the FBI noted in a statement sent to reporters with links to the documents. The documents include notes from Clinton's July 2 interview with agents, as well as a "factual summary of the FBI's investigation into this matter," according to the FBI release. Throughout her interview with agents, Clinton repeatedly said she relied on the career professionals she worked with to handle classified information correctly. The agents asked about a series of specific emails, and in each case Clinton said she wasn't worried about the particular material being discussed on a nonclassified channel.