Repeat Speeders In Washington Could Soon Have Cars Electronically Restricted

Washington state has approved a new law targeting drivers with serious speeding violations by requiring them to use speed-limiting technology before regaining limited driving privileges, according to Slashgear. 

The measure, House Bill 1596 — also called the BEAM Act — was created in response to a fatal 2024 crash that killed Boyd Buster Brown, Eloise Wilcoxson, Andrea Smith Hudson, and Matilda Wilcoxson.

Beginning in January 2029, drivers whose licenses were suspended for reckless driving or excessive speeding will need to install an “intelligent speed assistance” device in their vehicles to qualify for a restricted license. Using GPS tracking, the system monitors a vehicle’s speed and prevents drivers from exceeding a programmed limit. The law allows only three manual overrides each month.

The bill classifies excessive speeding as driving at least 10 mph over the limit in areas posted at 40 mph or below, or 20 mph over the limit on faster roads. Washington is one of several states moving toward stricter enforcement measures for repeat dangerous drivers, following similar efforts in places like New York.

The article notes that the law also carries financial obligations. Unless a driver qualifies for assistance, they must pay for the installation, removal, and leasing of the device, along with a $21 monthly fee. That money will help fund a state program designed to assist lower-income drivers with the costs.

Tampering with the device is treated as a serious offense. Anyone caught removing, disabling, or altering the system without a legitimate repair or safety reason could face a gross misdemeanor charge, which may include up to one year in jail and fines reaching $5,000.

As more states experiment with new traffic enforcement strategies — including variable speed limits and automated monitoring systems — Washington’s approach reflects a growing push to reduce dangerous speeding through technology rather than traditional enforcement alone.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 22:10

Iranian Opposition News Outlet Got $800 Million In Debt Relief: Report

Via Middle East Eye

An $870m debt-relief deal suggests that Iran International, an Iranian opposition outlet, has ties to Saudi Arabian investors, according to a Financial Times report on Thursday. The links stem from documents related to a debt-for-equity swap that Iran International conducted in December to shore up its finances. Iran International has spent hundreds of millions of dollars since its founding in 2017 by British-Saudi investors, the FT reported.

According to the report, Iran International’s parent company, Volant Media UK, has lost more than $550m over the past five years, and it owes related entities about $645m. Those numbers came from documents that the FT reported as covering the financial year ending December 2024.

via AFP

Iran International says it is the “most popular Persian speaking foreign based news channel in Iran”.It employs 700 people and broadcasts into Iran from London via satellite, radio and social media outlets.

Iran International has been accused by critics of promoting “regime change” in Iran and advancing the position of the former shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, for a return to power. The outlet has long denied links to Israel or Saudi Arabia.

Iran International reported heavily on protests that struck Iran at the beginning of this year, sparked by a cost-of-living crisis brought on, in part, by US sanctions.

In January 2025, the news site reported that more than 36,500 people were killed in a crackdown on protests. Those numbers were significantly higher than those estimated by the US and other western-based human rights groups.

US President Donald Trump cited casualty numbers similar to those reported by Iran International days before launching a war on Iran on February 28, but did not disclose where he had gotten the death toll number.

Links

A New York Times report from April said that Israel also lobbied Trump to intervene in Iran, citing the protests that engulfed the country. Israel told the US that Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, could assist in "fomenting" further riots and rebellions to collapse the Islamic Republic.

According to the FT, Volant Media issued an allotment of 648 million shares, valued at about $870m, on December 13.

On that day, all of Volant’s original 50,000 shares were transferred from British-Saudi film executive Adel Abdulkarim Alabdulkarim, who is Volant’s company director and secretary, to Info-Cast Cayman Limited, an offshore company, the FT reported.

Alabdulkarim has “significant control” of Volant, the FT reported, citing his ability to appoint or remove the majority of the company’s board of directors. But Info-Cast Cayman was listed as the immediate parent company at year-end 2024.

Saleh Hussain Aldowais is the sole director of Info-Cast Cayman, the FT reported, citing Cayman corporate records. A person with that name is the chief operations officer at the Saudi Arabian state-backed Saudi Research and Media Group (SRMG).

SRMG is a publicly traded company in Saudi Arabia that operates over 30 media companies and news outlets, including ASharq Al-Awsat, Arab News and Asharq News, which has a partnership with Bloomberg.

A spokesperson for Iran International told the FT that no new funds were injected into the company as part of the debt-for-equity deal.

They said the network “has never received funding from any government or state entity - including Saudi Arabia or Israel - whether directly or indirectly”.

“Where individuals associated with the business hold other external commercial roles, those interests are entirely separate… held in a personal capacity and have no bearing on the editorial, operational or financial independence of the network,” the person added.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 21:45

Meet America’s Largest Doomsday Bunker Community

Vivos xPoint, a survivalist bunker community built on a former military munitions depot in South Dakota, was created as a refuge for people preparing for disasters such as nuclear war, pandemics, or societal collapse, according to a new report by the Wall Street Journal.

Marketed as “The Largest Survival Community on Earth,” the development offers long-term leases on converted concrete bunkers and promises a secure, self-sufficient lifestyle far from major population centers. While some residents use their bunkers as vacation homes or emergency shelters, the project has attracted significant controversy.

The Journal writes that instead of uniting residents around a common goal of preparedness, the community has become mired in disputes over property management and quality-of-life issues. Complaints have included malfunctioning septic systems, rising fees, property taxes, loose dogs, and an expanding list of community rules. Several residents have accused management of intimidation and unfair treatment, while the company maintains that only a small number of dissatisfied tenants are responsible for the conflicts.

Tensions have occasionally escalated into serious confrontations. In one highly publicized incident, resident David Streeter became involved in a dispute with a contractor that ended in a shooting after an alleged physical altercation. Streeter claimed self-defense, and a grand jury declined to indict him. Other residents have also faced eviction proceedings following disputes involving firearms or violations of rules that some argue were added after they signed their leases. These incidents have fueled ongoing legal battles between residents and Vivos.

A major source of frustration has been the gap between the community’s marketing and reality. Vivos promoted plans for shared amenities such as a restaurant, gym, store, medical clinic, community center, and other facilities. However, many of these projects have not been completed, leading residents to accuse the company of misrepresentation. A class-action lawsuit seeks refunds for tenants and alleges that Vivos failed to provide the livable conditions and amenities it promised.

Despite the disputes, some residents continue to value the location’s isolation, security, and peaceful environment. Supporters argue that the bunker complex still offers a unique option for those concerned about future disasters. Critics, however, contend that ongoing litigation, management conflicts, and unmet expectations have overshadowed the original vision, turning what was meant to be a haven from catastrophe into a community struggling with its own internal challenges.

Ultimately, the story of Vivos xPoint highlights a central irony of survivalist communities: preparing for external threats does not eliminate internal challenges. While the bunker complex was designed to protect residents from worst-case scenarios such as war, pandemics, or societal collapse, many of its biggest problems have stemmed from ordinary human conflicts over rules, property, and expectations.

Whether Vivos ultimately fulfills its promises remains to be seen, but its experience demonstrates that building a resilient community requires more than just a physical shelter...

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 21:20

Maryland's Glock Ban Aims At The Gun, Not The Criminal

Authored by David Manney via PJ Media,

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed SB 334 into law Tuesday, putting the state on a collision course with gun owners, firearm dealers, and 2nd Amendment groups.

The law targets "machine gun convertible pistols," mainly Glock-style semiauto handguns that use a cruciform trigger bar. Maryland lawmakers argue criminals can convert those firearms into fully auto with illegal devices called Glock switches.

The question remains: Why is Maryland banning future sales of common handguns because criminals already break the law with illegal conversion devices?

SB 334 bars manufacturing, selling, offering for sale, purchasing, receiving, or transferring covered pistols after January 1, 2027. Current owners won't have to surrender their firearms, and like hell they should. Active and retired law enforcement officers receive exemptions, and the law also allows immediate family transfers, inheritances, and certain gunsmith repairs.

State Sen. Sara Love (D-Montgomery County) sponsored SB 334. Del. Nicole Williams (D-Prince George's County) sponsored HB 557, the companion bill in the House of Delegates. The Senate passed SB 334 by a 28-16 vote on March 19. The House passed it 91-40 on April 9 before Moore approved the bill as Chapter 771.

Supporters frame the law as a public safety measure. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, and other officials have also pursued Glock through litigation, arguing Glock pistols can be converted too easily with auto sears.

Police officials have warned about converted weapons appearing in crimes and threatening officers. A fully automatic weapon in criminal hands can turn a street dispute into a massacre in seconds.

Yet the constitutional problem remains. Glock switches are already illegal under federal law and Maryland law. The new law burdens future lawful buyers because criminals misuse illegal parts. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearm industry trade association, warned the measure would prohibit an entire class of lawfully made and lawfully sold handguns. The NRA also prepared a legal challenge after Moore approved the law. From the NSSF:

"To borrow on a line from James Carville, whom Democrats revere, 'it's the criminal, stupid,'" said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF's Senior Vice President & General Counsel. "These bills, and similar laws passed in other states, punish law-abiding citizens by infringing on their Second Amendment rights to legally obtain the firearms they choose to protect themselves and their families against criminals who, by definition, have no respect for life or law. Instead of enforcing the law and holding these criminals accountable, Maryland's lawmakers pander to gun control donors and antigun special interests to ban an entire class of firearms, which the U.S. Supreme Court's Heller decision clearly holds violates the U.S. Constitution. Should Governor Moore sign these bills into law, NSSF intends to have Maryland's Attorney General Anthony Brown explain in court why Maryland willfully violates the rights of her citizens and ignores its responsibility to hold criminals accountable."

Mark Pennak, president of Maryland Shall Issue, has called the bill unconstitutional and signaled a lawsuit. Maryland House Republicans also urged Moore to veto the bill, arguing the law bans the most popular handgun in the state because of conduct already forbidden by law.

The United States Supreme Court has said the 2nd Amendment protects weapons "in common use" for lawful purposes, and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen requires modern gun laws to fit the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.

Maryland didn't solve the Glock switch problem by signing SB 334; it shifted pressure from criminals with illegal conversion devices to lawful buyers who want ordinary self-defense handguns.

Courts will decide whether the state can make that leap. Until then, Moore has given Maryland a gun law with a messy constitutional foundation and a lawsuit almost certain to follow.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 20:55

'We Outright Grabbed The Wallets': Bessent Boasts $1BN In Iran State Crypto Seized To Date

Washington's economic war on Iran and its 'shadow' banking network continues, as on Friday Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the US has seized $1 billion in Iranian cryptocurrency assets as part of the economic component of President Trump's Operation Epic Fury.

The billion dollar figure represents the running total seized to date, building on prior milestones in the conflict, particularly a recent major April 2026 freeze of $344 million in USDT on the Tron blockchain. By close of April, $500 million total had been seized.

And so clearly with the addition since then of some half-billion dollars more in seized digital assets, the US Treasury program has only greatly accelerated in the last several weeks.

During his Friday speech before the Reagan National Economic Forum, Bessent stated:

"Just outright grabbed the wallets. Some of them may be typing in right now and might not realize their wallet had been grabbed."

Assets are held "on behalf of the Iranian people" - he described, while framing that the Iranian government had 'stolen' the money from the Iranian populace.

Bessent on Iran:

We have seized about $1 billion of Iran's crypto — just outright grabbed the wallets.

Some of them may be typing in right now and might not realize their wallet has been grabbed.

This is money that's stolen from the Iranian people. pic.twitter.com/h3ycrJn1Jy

— Clash Report (@clashreport) May 29, 2026

Bessent is signaling further relentless waves of OFAC wallet designations and aggressive asset forfeitures coming in the next months, as highly sanctioned Iran continues to seek alternative means of conducting financial transactions.

As we've featured before, for ordinary Iranians - roughly one in six of the population - crypto served as a vital lifeline. Facing relentless rial depreciation (down nearly 90 percent since 2018), chronic inflation of 40 to 50 percent, and frequent power blackouts or internet shutdowns during protests, citizens turned to Bitcoin and stablecoins like U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins (USDT) on the Tron network to hedge savings, facilitate remittances, and move value when traditional banking failed. Spikes in Bitcoin withdrawals to personal wallets often coincided with domestic unrest and regional conflicts.

Yet this parallel financial system has also become a powerful tool for the state. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) steadily tightened its grip on Iran’s crypto flows. IRGC-linked addresses received more than $3 billion in 2025—up from over $2 billion in 2024—with their share rising to more than 50 percent of total Iranian crypto inflows by the end of 2025. These figures represent conservative lower bounds based only on identified and sanctioned wallets.

Washington in the meantime is still entertaining dreams of sparking some kind of anti-regime uprising based on applying the economic squeeze to the Iranian system, but apart from unrest back in January, this has utterly failed to materialize. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 20:30

Why Stable Systems Fail: The Illusion Of Institutional Control

Authored by Luc Lelièvre via The Mises Institute,

There is a persistent belief in modern political life that systems fail because they become fragile. Institutions, it is assumed, weaken under pressure and eventually break down. This intuition is not just incomplete—it is backward.

Systems do not fail when they become fragile; they become fragile because they have already lost contact with the realities they claim to govern. What appears as stability is not strength, but the final illusion of a structure that can no longer correct itself. This is not a matter of conspiracy or intent, it is structural. 

When institutions become more responsive to their own internal logic than to the world they were created to manage, this dynamic begins to unfold. As James C. Scott observed in Seeing Like a State, modern administrative systems must simplify in order to function. They translate complex, local, and context-dependent realities into legible categories, procedures, and metrics. This makes governance at scale possible—but it also creates systematic blind spots.

At first, the displacement of reality is subtle. Signals are filtered, anomalies are treated as exceptions, friction is absorbed. From within the system, nothing appears fundamentally wrong: Processes continue, reports are generated, decisions are made. This is the phase most observers mistake for stability.

In reality, the system becomes less responsive—not because it lacks information, but because it can no longer recognize what falls outside its categories. It does not consciously ignore reality; it simply ceases to register parts of it. As its categories harden, the system becomes more coherent, outputs are more consistent, procedures are more standardized. Language is more uniform, however, this coherence is achieved by exclusion, not mastery.

Rigidity is not strength, it is the loss of adjustment. At this point, fragility appears to emerge under pressure. However, this is misleading. A system becomes fragile because it must prevent itself from recognizing its own failure. Any signal requiring fundamental revision threatens not just a policy, but the system’s internal logic. The cost of recognition becomes prohibitive.

This is the knowledge problem identified by Friedrich Hayek: knowledge in society is dispersed, tacit, and often inarticulable. No centralized system can fully integrate it. As argued in The Fatal Conceit, attempts to do so inevitably distort or suppress what cannot be processed.

A contemporary illustration is the bureaucratic handling of the covid pandemic in Canada and Quebec. Centralized directives frequently overrode local realities and visible human costs. Once the framework was fixed, admitting significant errors became too costly. Criticism was absorbed through procedure rather than leading to meaningful revision—an instance of administrative rigidity that sustained the appearance of control.

At this point, the problem is no longer ignorance but overreach. Systems do not merely fail to process dispersed knowledge; they restructure reality so that corrective feedback no longer enters. What replaces it is not coordination, but representation. Under these conditions, power does not respond, it absorbs.

Demands are acknowledged but redirected. Critiques are translated into procedural adjustments. Pressure accumulates without producing structural change. It is dispersed, reformulated, or deferred. This creates a second illusion: that pressure leads to correction; it does not.

Pressure can be absorbed indefinitely—so long as it does not align. Fragmented demands rarely threaten a system. Even widespread dissatisfaction can coexist with institutional continuity if it lacks coordination and timing. Saturation is not mobilization.

As Mancur Olson argued in The Rise and Decline of Nations, mature systems accumulate organized interests that resist adaptation. Over time, this produces rigidity while preserving the appearance of order. What appears to be stability is closer to inertia than to equilibrium. Feedback loops become captured. Signals are no longer responses to reality, but to negotiated representations of it. The system ceases to adjust and begins to persist.

History repeatedly illustrates this pattern.

Late-stage regimes often display surface stability. Their structures remain intact, their procedures continue. Their authority is formally unchallenged. However, beneath this lies a growing disconnect between institutional representation and lived reality. The system persists—but as a closed loop.

When change occurs, it is rarely gradual. It emerges when multiple conditions converge—economic strain, political disillusionment, social fragmentation. Only then does accumulated pressure become transformative. Until that point, stability can appear indefinite.

This is why a crisis is often misread as the beginning of failure. By the time fragility becomes visible, it has long been present; what changes is not instability itself, but its expression. The real danger is not that systems fail, but that they continue to function after losing the capacity for correction.

As Ludwig von Mises emphasized in Bureaucracy, administrative systems can operate according to rules even when those rules no longer achieve their intended ends. The mechanism continues—but without effective steering.

Markets, by contrast, reveal what bureaucracies suppress. Price signals communicate information about scarcity, preference, and misallocation that no centralized structure can replicate. Coordination emerges not from design, but from dispersed knowledge. Correction rarely comes from within closed systems.

Stability, in this sense, is not evidence of health, it is often the final stage of a system that has lost the ability to adapt. Modern systems do not fail when they become fragile. They become fragile because they have already failed—structurally and long before that failure becomes visible.

The more decision-making is centralized, the more lived knowledge is replaced by abstract representations detached from reality. What follows is not reform, but substitution. At that point, the system no longer responds in any meaningful sense, it simulates a response.

Its stability is an illusion produced by abstraction, rigidity, and the suppression of signals it cannot process. It endures not because it is strong, but because it no longer registers what would force it to change.

The question is not when the system will fail, it is how long it can continue after failure has already occurred. History suggests the answer is uncomfortable: Systems do not collapse when they finally become unstable; they appear stable until the moment their failure can no longer be ignored.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 20:05

US Service Members Targeted Via Commercial Location Data, Pentagon Tells Senators

Adversaries have used commercially-available location data to attack individual US service members in war zones, according to a report furnished by the Department of Defense to Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, and first reported by Reuters. Wyden is a Democratic member of the Senate intelligence committee. 

Responding to four questions Wyden had posed about this potential avenue of vulnerability for service members deployed to the Middle East, the Pentagon said that US Central Command "has received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil US personnel in theater. The Threat Fusion Cell identified, tracked, and disseminated these threats through the USCENTCOM Threat Working Group and to component force protection personnel." 

A US Army soldier takes an iPhone selfie at a base in Qayyara, Iraq in 2016 (Reuters - Alaa Al-Marjani)

Elaborating on the nature of the threat, the Pentagon noted that: 

"Commercial location data can be used to identify where U.S. troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries ​to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs, as well as for counterintelligence purposes." 

The Pentagon's brief set of responses did not provide details on any specific incidents. Early in the US-Israeli war on Iran, two DOD officials were wounded in an Iranian drone strike on a Crowne Plaza hotel in Bahrain. After the strike, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site that Iran had built a "target bank" of both American and Israeli personnel.  “The fact that they’ve now pinpointed the residences/locations of some of these forces has really caught the Americans and Israelis off guard," the official said, without detailing Iran's methodology. He did say the building of the target bank began after the 2025 12-Day War.   

⭕️ NEW: Iranian Hotel Strike in Bahrain Injured U.S. Defense Personnel, Diplomatic Cable Comfirms

U.S. lawmakers and mainstream media have described Iranian strikes on Gulf hotels as indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets. But The Washington Post reports that two U.S.… https://t.co/ch17xmxHdb pic.twitter.com/A18A4jd7BK

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) March 2, 2026

The Pentagon response to Wyden was dated April 14. On Thursday, Wyden and a bipartisan group of 13 other senators sent a letter to the Defense department's chief information officer, expressing "serious concern that the [DOD] has not taken basic steps to protect U.S. military personnel from the serious counterintelligence and force protection threat posed by the collection and sale of personal information, including cell phone location data, by data brokers."

This vulnerability was identified at least 10 years ago, when tech contractor Mike Yeagley briefed the Joint Special Operations Command on how enemies could exploit commercially available phone location data to create "pattern of life" profiles of individual service members. The contractor, who first publicized the nature of his 2016 briefing in a 2024 Wired article, showed JSOC's senior officers how he'd tracked phones from US bases that house special ops soldiers to an abandoned cement factory in Syria, which they were using as a forward operating base near an ISIS stronghold in Kobane. The rattled JSOC officers immediately relocated the briefing to a better-secured room. 

For that same article, Wired journalists teamed up with German investigative reporters to acquire a free sample of 3.6 billion coordinates -- some separated by mere milliseconds -- on upwards of 11 million mobile advertising IDs in Germany, covering a two-month period. "Our analysis revealed granular location data from up to 12,313 devices that appeared to spend time at or near at least 11 military and intelligence sites, potentially exposing crucial details like entry points, security practices, and guard schedules," the journalists reported.  

Journalists used commercial data to pinpoint location signals from 800 devices at the US Army's European headquarters at Lucius D. Clay Kaserne (Wired)

In their letter sent Thursday, the Democratic and Republican senators scolded the Pentagon for leaving troops vulnerable:

"DoD officials have not treated this counterintelligence and force protection threat as a five-alarm fire... DoD has known about this threat for over a decade, yet have failed to take meaningful steps to protect our men and women in uniform. That is simply unacceptable."

They urged the Defense Department to take several specific actions, including the disabling of advertising ID on all DOD-issued smartphones, and ordering service members to disable the advertising ID on personal phones taken onto military installations or on overseas deployments. They also called for the Pentagon to remove browsers  "designed to facilitate data collection by Google and other advertising companies, such as Google Chrome, from DOD unclassified computers and smartphones." They concluded their letter by posing five follow-up questions, with a due date of June 26. 

At least 13 American service members have been killed in the undeclared war on Iran, and approximately 400 have been wounded in action. It will likely take further probing by Wyden and others to determine whether it's likely that commercially-available data was used to pinpoint any of their locations. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 19:40

The Loophole That Put Drunk Truckers Back On The Road

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

A federal database built to flag and remove drunk and drugged truckers from U.S. highways used the equivalent of an "honor system" as its last line of defense between a family in a minivan and a substance addict steering an 80,000-pound mass of steel.

Trucks fuel up at the Love's Truck Stop in Springville, Utah, on Dec. 1, 2021. George Frey/AFP via Getty Images

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) launched its Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse in early 2020 to improve road safety by providing employers, law enforcement, and state agencies with real-time information on substance-use violations by commercial drivers.

Truckers caught driving while under the influence, or violating the Transportation Department's alcohol and substance regulations, are flagged in the system with a "prohibited" status and must complete a return-to-duty process to reinstate their commercial driver's licenses.

But what if a current alcoholic or drug addict could immediately get back behind the wheel by paying a third party to simply check off a box inside the database, rather than complete and pass follow-up drug or alcohol testing?

That's how Brandon Blackburn, 34, was able to get back on the road, he told The Epoch Times. Blackburn was arrested last year on charges of driving while impaired in a construction zone with cocaine in his possession, according to the Prentiss County Sheriff's Department.

Blackburn said his "prohibited" status was cleared by another man who simultaneously runs a trucking company and advertises his "substance abuse professional" services across a network of trucking-related Facebook groups.

According to Blackburn and evidence reviewed by The Epoch Times, Blackburn and others appear to operate within a network of actors who have been exploiting loopholes in federal rules to illegitimately clear "prohibited" commercial drivers in the federal Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse.

This was revealed by evidence presented in a multiseries investigation by Rob Carpenter of FreightWaves, a news outlet focused on the global supply chain. The Epoch Times reviewed the evidence collected by FreightWaves, independently verified each facet of the story, and interviewed Blackburn, who confirmed that the scheme worked for him and others.

Blackburn admitted to The Epoch Times that he cleared drivers who had been flagged with drug or alcohol violations even though he didn't have the necessary certification to do so. He claimed some of the people he helped had their licenses incorrectly flagged in the system, and said he was trying to help truckers and veterans in need.

Blackburn describes himself as a small player across a network of actors that operates like a multilevel marketing scheme. He claimed that several others are much more prolific and are still operating.

"We've never seen anything like this before. It sent shockwaves through our industry," Jo McGuire, executive director of the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association, told The Epoch Times.

The implications are not just grave for road safety, but also for employers who rely on the clearinghouse to avoid hiring drivers who may be at a higher risk of bringing on a multimillion-dollar court settlement in the event of a serious highway accident.

This is how the scheme proliferated in plain sight, and why, despite new and upcoming rule changes to the certification process in the clearinghouse, employers may be unaware they're hiring a potentially dangerous driver.

The Scheme Explained

Once a driver is caught driving under the influence, or is flagged after testing positive for drugs or alcohol, his or her license receives a "prohibited" status from the clearinghouse.

Examples of drug and alcohol violations include having a blood alcohol level of 0.04 or greater while on duty for "safety-sensitive" operations and using any prohibited drugs.

Even driving with sealed alcohol containers in the cab, as long as they are not part of the driver's shipment, counts as an alcohol violation.

In late 2024, the FMCSA updated the clearinghouse to immediately downgrade a commercial driver's license once the driver received a "prohibited" flag, forcing him to start the return-to-duty process to get back on the road.

As part of the return-to-duty process, a driver typically works with his employer to select a substance abuse professional who provides an initial assessment and offers education and treatment recommendations. The process involves six steps, with the driver needing to pass a drug or alcohol test on step five before completing a follow-up testing plan in step six.

The way the federal agency designed the database was critical for how the scheme unfolded. Step five only requires a testing date, rather than a copy of a negative drug or alcohol test. The driver's employer is responsible for verifying the results and entering the date of the negative test.

However, drivers without current or prospective employers may register accounts in the clearinghouse as owner-operators and can designate third-party administrators to complete that part of the process.

This is how the scheme proliferated, based on the evidence reviewed by The Epoch Times. Employers, substance abuse professionals, and third-party administrators were only required to self-certify in the clearinghouse database. No identity verification was involved in the process.

By law, a substance abuse professional must be a licensed physician, social worker, psychologist, certified employee assistance professional, certified drug and alcohol counselor, or state-licensed or certified marriage and family therapist.

But since the clearinghouse allowed users to self-certify, anyone could check the box without having the credentials. The same was true for third-party administrators.

Based on evidence reviewed by The Epoch Times, Blackburn and others appear to have been operating in the clearinghouse with multirole accounts, including as substance abuse professionals, third-party administrators, and employers.

Some Facebook users who publicly advertised Blackburn's services mentioned being out of work when they began the return-to-duty process, meaning they would have had to use a third-party administrator to verify and submit the date for a negative test result.

Several online databases exist for legitimate substance abuse professionals who work with the Transportation Department, including NAADAC's directory and SAPList.com. Blackburn could not be found on either database.

Blackburn said it's easy to circumvent the prescribed clearinghouse process from a basic Google search. He told The Epoch Times that he got involved after seeing the scheme persist from the moment the clearinghouse was launched.

It operates like a multilevel marketing, or "pyramid," scheme, Blackburn said. If you see a user in one of several related Facebook groups advertise helping drivers with the return-to-duty process, and they mention a particular person they worked with, that person is taking a cut.

Multiple users advertising return-to-duty services mentioned Blackburn and others based on hundreds of public Facebook comments that were reviewed for this story.

Blackburn insists he has stopped, but claims the others have not. He said he was struggling with a drug problem, relapsed last year, and that was the reason for his arrest.

Scale

Blackburn said he charged around $100 for his services and never more than $150. The entire return-to-duty program with a legitimate substance abuse professional can cost between $1,000 and $3,000 when evaluations, education, treatment, and tests are included.

A total of 368,984 violations have been reported to the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse since its launch, according to its most recent monthly summary report.

That tally includes 360,107 drug violations and 8,877 alcohol violations. The drug violations include the use of marijuana (206,394), cocaine (57,075), methamphetamine (29,017), and a long list of synthetic opioids.

As of Jan. 2, 328,431 drivers had been reported to the database with at least one drug or alcohol violation. Of those, 202,345 remain in "prohibited" status with their licenses still downgraded.

Trucks drive away from the Port of Long Beach, Calif., on May 15, 2026. Under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse, truckers flagged as “prohibited” after impaired driving must complete a return-to-duty process to regain their commercial licenses, but some can reportedly get back behind the wheel by paying a third party to check a box in the database. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 19:15

662 Billion Reasons To Worry: Moody's Raises AI Data-Center Funding Fears As Apollo Shops Huge Anthropic Debt Deal

Unless you have lived under a rock for the last year (or month), you will know that the explosive growth of artificial intelligence is fueling a massive infrastructure buildout.

In a chart book published nearly simultaneously with Moody’s report, Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok worked to put the enormity of data center spending into perspective.

With total capital expenditure on data centers estimated at roughly $646 billion, or about 2% of U.S. GDP, Slok noted that is roughly equivalent to the GDP for Singapore, Sweden, and Argentina. Defense spending in 2025, meanwhile, was around $917 billion.

However, as Moody's warned this week, the aggressive financing structures supporting this explosive growth are creating significant systemic risks that could ripple across global credit markets and the broader economy.

The most recent example of this buildout - and its coincident debt-funding - is the $36 billion debt financing package currently being shopped by Apollo Global Management and Blackstone to enable Anthropic’s large-scale acquisition of Google’s custom TPU chips.

As Bloomberg reports, this complex, high-leverage deal - partially backed by Broadcom - underscores how private equity and specialized financiers are channeling enormous capital into AI hardware and data centers through layered debt instruments.

The move would mark one of the largest-ever private credit deals and also the biggest chip-financing debt transaction.

It aims to tap Broadcom’s credit quality to provide computing-power access to Anthropic, which just eclipsed rival OpenAI in valuation (and its ecosystem has been dramatically outperforming)...

While such deals accelerate AI capacity, they also concentrate risk.

More concerning is the scale of hidden liabilities across the industry.

According to Moody’s Ratings, the five major U.S. hyperscalers (Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Oracle) have accumulated approximately $662 billion in future data center lease commitments that have not yet commenced.

Combined with other commitments, the total undiscounted future lease exposure reaches $969 billion.

To put the scale of this hidden obligation into perspective, Moody’s accounting analysts David Gonzales and Alastair Drake calculated that the unrecorded $662 billion is equivalent to 113% of these five hyperscalers’ most recent adjusted debt.

These obligations remain entirely off-balance-sheet under current accounting rules, despite representing binding long-term liabilities.

But as Gonzales told Fortune in a statement that it’s “not as if [these hyperscalers] have have avoided a liability through structuring,” characterizing the $662 billion at issue as “yet to be on the balance sheet,” rather than missing.

“More accurately,” he added, “they have not yet received the services to trigger this liability as of this time, but they will.”

This accounting deferral masks the true leverage in the system.

As these leases activate over the next decade, they will migrate onto balance sheets, potentially weakening credit profiles, elevating leverage ratios, and increasing refinancing pressures.

While the AI infrastructure boom promises transformative productivity gains, Moody's is basically highlighting that the current funding model - reliant on massive off-balance-sheet debt and complex private financing - builds hidden vulnerabilities into the financial system.

Regulators, investors, and policymakers should closely monitor these exposures.

Heightened Systemic Concerns

• Contagion Risk: Heavy interdependence among hyperscalers, private credit funds, and infrastructure investors means distress at a few large players could rapidly spread through debt markets and counterparty exposures.

• Concentration & Interconnectedness: A small group of tech giants and a limited pool of specialized financiers dominate this financing. Any material setback in AI monetization or power availability could create correlated losses across the sector.

• Broader Market Impact: The $662 billion in off-balance-sheet exposure represents a delayed but massive claim on capital markets. In an economic downturn, forced deleveraging or asset fire sales could amplify volatility, tighten credit conditions, and affect investor confidence well beyond technology.

• External Amplifiers: Power grid constraints, regulatory hurdles, and geopolitical supply chain risks further compound the fragility of these highly leveraged bets.

In a stressed scenario - such as slower-than-expected AI revenue growth (the end of tokenmaxxing), rising energy costs, or higher interest rates - the simultaneous activation of these liabilities could trigger widespread credit rating downgrades and liquidity strains.

Specifically, Moody’s warned that these opaque accounting practices mask the true economic risk facing the tech industry. While leasing reduces upfront capital investments, carrying such massive future commitments severely limits a company’s financial and operating flexibility, especially if AI industry conditions change rapidly.

Because these liabilities are hidden, Moody’s concluded, in its own jargony way, that it is considering new ways to look at this issue.

“The accounting liability is unlikely to reflect certain plausible future scenarios … With this in mind, we will continue to assess cash exposures and debt-like adjustments as time progresses and the dates of new leases draw nearer. We may make a nonstandard adjustment to Moody’s adjusted debt based on our expectation of likely cash outflows.”

Without greater transparency and more resilient capital structures, the race for AI supremacy risks generating systemic stress that could undermine broader economic stability.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 18:50

Japan Crude Imports Fall 66% To Record Low

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Amid the supply disruption in the Middle East, Japan’s crude oil imports crashed by 66% in April from the same month last year, dropping to an all time low, official Japanese data showed on Friday.

Japan imported 4.07 million kilolitres, or about 850,000 barrels per day (bpd), of crude oil last month, down by 65.7% from the April 2025 levels, the monthly petroleum statistics of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) showed.

Crude imports from the Middle East region, which delivered more than 90% of Japan’s total crude imports before the war, plunged by 68% in April from a year earlier.

Japan’s imports from Saudi Arabia crashed by nearly 58%, and supply from the United Arab Emirate (UAE) to Japan plunged by 69.4%, the Japanese government data showed. Of the total severely reduced crude supply, the Middle East continued to account for more than 90% of Japanese crude imports, at 93.7% in April.

Japan in April imported the lowest volume of crude oil from the Middle East on record dating back to 1979 as the Iran war and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz choked supply from the region.

Japan’s crude imports from the Middle East plummeted by 67.2% in April compared to the same month of 2025, provisional trade data from Japan’s Finance Ministry showed last week. The April 2026 volume, estimated in Japan at 3.843 million kiloliters of crude oil, was the lowest since data collection began in 1979.

Japan has just welcomed the first shipment of Middle East crude via the Strait of Hormuz since the Iran war began on February 28.

Japan is also releasing crude from its strategic reserves as part of an IEA-coordinated global effort to release 400 million barrels of crude and oil products.

The ongoing oil stocks release, which is Japan’s biggest ever, is helping Japanese refiners increase throughput. So is alternative supply from producers outside the Middle East, including rare cargoes from Azerbaijan and Latin America.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 18:25

Anti-Trump Entertainers Bolt From Freedom 250 Celebration

Several entertainers abruptly backed out of President Donald Trump-linked Freedom 250 concerts this week after learning more details about the patriotic celebration planned for the National Mall.

As American Greatness reports, the cancellations add to the long-running tensions between Americans and the politically progressive entertainment industry.

Young MC, Morris Day, the Commodores, Bret Michaels, and country singer Martina McBride were among the performers who announced they would no longer appear at “The Great American State Fair,” a series of concerts and events scheduled for June 25 through July 10 in Washington, D.C.

The event is being organized by Freedom 250, a group launched by Trump late last year that describes itself as a “national, non-partisan organization leading the celebration of our Nation’s 250th birthday.”

Trump selected former State Department official Keith Krach to serve as the organization’s CEO.

The cancellations came just one day after organizers unveiled the first wave of performers.

McBride said on social media that she initially agreed to participate because she believed the event would remain politically neutral.

“Yesterday things started changing and what we were told is, in fact, not what is happening,” she wrote Thursday.

Young MC similarly suggested he was uncomfortable with the event’s political ties.

“The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event,” he wrote on Instagram, adding that he hoped to “perform in D.C. in the near future at an event that is not so politically charged.”

Morris Day also confirmed his departure in a brief Instagram statement.

“Contrary to rumor, Morris Day & The Time will not be performing at the ‘GREAT AMERICAN STATE FAIR,’” he posted.

C& C Music Factory issued a confusing statement, distancing themselves from the event:

"As the Creator of C&C MUSIC FACTORY, I can state that we stand for love of all people and races globally and neutrality in all beliefs, in freedom and justice for all humanity"

The greatest lip-syncers ever - Milli Vanilli - are also out:

"The original/real vocalists of Milli Vanilli, Jodie Rocco, Linda Rocco. Brad Howell, John Davis, and Charles Shaw will NOT be performing their hits live at The Great American State Fair. Others using the name 'Milli Vanilli' that appear on the advertisement should be considered a tribute band with no association vocally or musically to our sound or songs."

At least one “I Love the 90s” act will be there: Vanilla Ice.

“He is proud to help celebrate America’s 250th Anniversary!” a representative for the “Ice Ice Baby” rapper wrote in an email to the AP.

“Everyone is welcome to attend and celebrate USA’s Birthday and our Freedom!”

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 18:00

Obama-Nominated Judge Orders Trump's Name Removed From Kennedy Center Building

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

A federal district judge on May 29 ordered that President Donald Trump’s name be removed from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and blocked officials from shuttering the venue for two years for renovations.

Obama-nominated, Washington-based Judge Christopher R. Cooper issued an order temporarily halting the closure and preventing the name change.

“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” the judge said.

The new ruling came in response to litigation initiated in December 2025 by Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) who sued Trump and the Kennedy Center board of trustees over its renaming as the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Beatty is an ex officio member of the center’s board of trustees.

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) (C) and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) (C) arrive for an event on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 3, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

“Representative Beatty is entitled to summary judgment on the renaming issue,” Cooper wrote Friday.

“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President [John] Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” the judge wrote.

Cooper also ordered that Beatty have her voting rights restored as an ex officio trustee.

“The Center’s organic statute makes no distinction between the powers of general and ex officio trustees,” Cooper wrote.

“Nothing in the statute permits the Board to discriminate categorically between the two as to fundamental trustee rights,” the judge wrote.

“And stripping ex officio trustees of their voting rights runs afoul of common-law trust principles incorporated into the statute, principles which presumptively place trustees on equal footing when it comes to participating in the trust’s administration.”

Days before, the Kennedy Center board had unanimously voted to rename the institution the Trump-Kennedy Center.

That same day, new lettering was installed on the outside of the building along with digital rebranding.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 17:40

Japan Prepares To End Quantitative Tightening Amid Bond Market Turmoil

With Japanese bond yields recently hitting record highs and bond market volatility soaring, overnight Reuters floated a trial balloon that Japan's central bank may pause the unwinding of its massive debt holdings next fiscal ​year, which would give Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi some relief amid growing investor concerns about her growing spending plans.

A pause would mark a turning point in the Bank ‌of Japan's quantitative tightening plan - started in 2024 as part of Governor Kazuo Ueda's efforts to unwind a decade-long, massive stimulus which everyone said would result in failure. Well, there it is. The next step, of course, is more QE.

According to Reuters, which is well known for being the mouthpiece of BOJ insiders, at its June 15-16 meeting, the Japanese central bank will review its bond taper plan running through March next year and lay out a new plan for fiscal 2027. With no change expected to the existing taper plan, markets are focusing on whether the BOJ would keep reducing its monthly bond purchases in fiscal 2027 or maintain the current pace.

While ​there is no consensus yet within the BOJ on the final decision, a pause in taper is increasingly seen as the preferred option with uncertainty over the Iran war keeping ​bond markets jittery, said two sources familiar with the deliberations.

"Markets remain volatile, so there's no need to rush," one of them said on the BOJ's ⁠taper, adding that many market players appeared to favor maintaining the current pace of buying. Ironically, the market volatility is precisely the reason to rush. 

Political considerations may also push the BOJ to pause as rising bond yields threaten to confine Takaichi's spending plans. "What the ​administration wants to avoid most is rises in bond yields," said one of the sources. Of course, if the intention is to avoid bond yields from surging, it's far too late.

Japan's 20Y bond yield rises as high as 3.511%, highest since 1996 as global interest rates go vertical pic.twitter.com/Rc1gKjfGyo

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 13, 2026

Confirming the end of the QT is effectively a done deal, some investors are now calling on the BOJ to pause its bond taper plan, a central bank survey ​earlier this month showed, highlighting the challenge it faces in reducing its massive Japanese government bonds (JGB) holdings. 

Even before the Reuters report, there had already been some indications the BOJ might consider slowing its taper plan amid market uncertainty. A clearer signal on the BOJ's taper plan will come next week, when the central bank releases minutes of its meeting with bond market participants held on May 21-22.

"We've seen a pretty fast rise in bond yields, which makes it hard for investors to buy ​bonds. The finance ministry may be getting worried too," said former BOJ official Nobuyasu Atago. "Given the political headwinds, I see no reason for the BOJ to keep tapering next fiscal year," he said.

Concerns ​over Japan's worsening finances and rising inflation pushed up the 10-year JGB yield to a 30-year high of 2.8% last week, nearing the 3% estimate the finance ministry set in compiling its fiscal 2026 budget. A rise ‌above 3% ⁠would boost debt servicing costs and reduce scope for other spending.

The BOJ's rate-hike decision may also affect its taper plan with an increase in short-term rates to 1% from 0.75% seen as a strong possibility at the June meeting. While the central bank has said its taper program has no monetary policy implications, the case for slowing QT becomes stronger if it pushes through a hike, something it has been woefully unable to do so far despite a collapsing yen. 

"With the bond market so unstable, it would be natural for the BOJ to play it safe and avoid causing undue market turbulence," said Mari Iwashita, executive rates strategist at Nomura Securities, who projects a taper pause ​in fiscal 2027.

"A combination of a taper pause ​and rate hike would be a good ⁠one," as the former will ease upward pressure on yields, while the latter would alleviate concern the BOJ is behind the curve in addressing inflationary risks, she said.

It's not just Japan: rising debt and volatile yields have heightened challenges for central banks unwinding their balance sheets that ballooned from years of heavy asset ​purchases to reflate their economies. In the US, analysts doubt whether new Fed chief Kevin Warsh can push through his calls for a smaller balance ​sheet as U.S. Treasuries lose ⁠their luster.

The BOJ has also been cautious in its QT program which started in 2024, and under which the central bank gradually reduced purchases and currently trims monthly buying by 200 billion yen each quarter. 

Political hurdles for the BOJ's QT have heightened under Takaichi, who has vowed to cut tax and boost spending by issuing even more debt in the world's most indebted economy. 

Taper or not, a reduction in the BOJ's holdings, currently at around 500 trillion yen, will proceed steadily due ⁠to the runoff ​of maturing JGBs that already shaved 20% off its balance sheet from a peak in late 2023.

That's all the more ​reason for the BOJ to maintain the current pace of buying, said former BOJ executive Akira Otani, currently at Goldman Sachs Japan.

"When inflationary risks from the Middle East conflict and the government's proactive fiscal policy are putting upward pressure ​on bond yields, proceeding with further tapering could cause political friction by pushing up yields," he said.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 17:20

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.











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













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.