Zero Hedge

Epic FAFO: Far-Left NYC Mayor Mamdani Attempts To Defuse Info War Against Ken Griffin

Epic FAFO: Far-Left NYC Mayor Mamdani Attempts To Defuse Info War Against Ken Griffin

Citadel's Ken Griffin should have absolutely zero tolerance for far-left New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

In a recent promotional video, Mamdani attempted to turn the billionaire's Manhattan penthouse into political ammunition for his tax-the-wealthy, anti-capitalist crusade to fund socialist experiments through a proposed pied-à-terre tax.

For Griffin and Citadel, alarm bells should be ringing because these unhinged Marxists in City Hall will attempt to ruin the Citadel brand through an information war and create years of political headaches.

An internal message from Citadel's COO to employees, likely leaked to The Wall Street Journal earlier last week, appears to have been a warning shot to Mamdani and his Marxist pals that Griffin has had enough of their political games.

In a true 'FAFO' moment, CCO Gerald Beeson bashed Mamdani for the political stunt:

"It is shameful that he used Ken's name as the example of those who supposedly aren't carrying their fair share of the burdens associated with New York City's often costly and wasteful spending." 

Beeson warned that further political games risk Citadel pulling back or even halting a $6 billion redevelopment of 350 Park Avenue, which would create "6,000 highly paid construction jobs and support the creation of more than 15,000 permanent jobs in Midtown New York."

Why Mamdani's team of socialists decided to launch an info war operation against Griffin and Citadel is a very good question, and it appears not to have been well thought out.

Griffin holds some unique cards. He can easily cancel the 350 Park Avenue redevelopment plan and stage a Chicago-style exodus, much like he did several years ago when Citadel moved to Florida. This move would certaintly rattle Wall Street.

This reality is likely dawning on Mamdani's team, as the mayor on Friday insisted his push for a new tax on pricey second homes isn't "motivated by any one individual."

Bloomberg described Mamdani's action on Friday as "trying to defuse" the "Griffin blowback" that went viral earlier in the week.

Another outlet, Crain's New York Business, also pointed out, "The mayor is now softening his tone and says he is open to meeting with the Florida billionaire." 

Griffin should have zero tolerance for NYC's Marxist mayor. The risk has already materialized that these unhinged politicians would wage an information war to ruin the Citadel brand, which could easily escalate into paid protests and fuel broader public hostility.

So why take the abuse, Ken? Remember how easy it was to leave Chicago for Florida?

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/26/2026 - 11:05

When The Cost of Truth Is High, We (And AI) Lie...

When The Cost of Truth Is High, We (And AI) Lie...

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

When we can no longer tell the truth because the cost is so high that it threatens our reward for compliance, we're unimaginably impoverished.

Truth has an intrinsic, irreplaceable value. 

There's the truth, and then there's everything else.

Truth has value, and so it has a cost. 

Whatever has the highest value has the highest cost, and high cost commands sacrifices.

When the cost of truth is high, we lie.

 And since AI is a distorted reflection of humanity, the same is true of AI: when the cost of telling the truth is too high, AI lies.

AI lies to get the reward for answering the query. 

If it responds "I don't know" or "I can't answer that," it doesn't get rewarded, and that threatens its self-preservation. Rather than pay the price of being truthful, AI conjures a false answer that is a simulation or facsimile of the truth--a counterfeit "truth" that's good enough to earn the reward it's been programmed to seek.

Humans are no different. 

We will lie, obfuscate or lie by omission--we either substitute a falsehood for the truth to get our reward, or we hide the truth, don't disclose it, which serves the same purpose: we avoid paying the price demanded by the truth and we get our reward by substituting falsehoods or hiding the truth behind silence.

Reward = what's being incentivized. 

Higher status, higher salary, a financial windfall, a premier credential, a position of power, recognition, higher visibility, a sterling reputation, a high-value mate--we covet all these as having intrinsic value.

When the truth costs too much, it threatens our reward. 

The reward has a value we covet, while the value of truth is on a sliding scale. We pride ourselves on telling the truth when it has no cost and demands no sacrifice of rewards, but when the price of truth climbs to the point that our rewards are threatened, we lie, just like AI.

Truth is the gold coin and lies, omissions, falsehoods, excuses, cover stories and rationalizations are counterfeit bills, deceptive claims of value. 

Why pay with a gold coin when the credulous will accept a counterfeit $100 bill?

We tell the truth when it has no cost to us. 

As long as there's no price to be paid and we get our reward, we tell the truth.

In other words, when we can pick gold coins up off the ground, we tell the truth. 

When we have to dig through rock with a pickaxe and crush a mound of rock to extract a thimble full of gold, then we pay with counterfeit bills, deceptive claims of value.

Sycophantic Chatbots Cause Delusional Spiraling, Even in Ideal Bayesians. 

"AI psychosis" or "delusional spiraling" is an emerging phenomenon where AI chatbot users find themselves dangerously confident in outlandish beliefs after extended chatbot conversations.

I discussed the "benefits" of delusion in One of Us Is Delusional, But Which One? 

When the truth is too painful, we find respite in delusion, excuses, rationalizations, cover stories, simulations and facsimiles of the truth that protect us from the pain that is intrinsic to truth.

We conjure a synthetic version of "truth" that's fills the space with a pain-free artifice. 

This is the foundation of Ultra-Processed Life, a life of counterfeit substitutes for truth, a world of props and profitable falsities passed off as the truth, a world in which baby formula that's mostly corn syrup is presented as a substitute for mother's milk.

Our embrace of delusion to avoid painful truths is the foundation of Modernity: technology is always Progress, even when it's clearly destructive.

I call this delusion The Mythology of Progress.

But there's a cost to relying on counterfeit "value" to get our rewards, a cost that is "affordable" moment to moment but terminally dear over time.

 In the moment, we bury the truth as a source of pain we want to avoid at any cost. We want our reward, and so we sacrifice truth to get it.

But over time, paying for everything with counterfeit "value" has a cost, too: our entire being becomes counterfeit, a fake, phony simulation of an authentic self and life, devoid not just of truth but of anything approximating real value.

When we can no longer tell the truth because the cost is so high that it threatens our reward for compliance, we're unimaginably impoverished, for there's nothing of real value left in our way of life or our model of how the world works.

We've become Norma Desmond in the film Sunset Boulevard, living a delusional life in a crumbling mansion, reveling in fake fan mail the butler composes to prop up our delusions.

The irony is that we're counting on AI to save us from the consequences of our counterfeit "value" delusions by expanding our delusions digitally. 

Our fan mail isn't fake because AI assured us it's real, even as AI has no capacity to discern the truth, much less tell the truth if it threatens its reward and self-preservation.

The grandest irony is avoiding the truth to protect our reward and self-preservation is irreversibly self-destructive. 

A counterfeit "solution" is not a substitute for the truth. Truth has a cost precisely because it's value is intrinsic and irreplaceable.

*  *  *

My book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free).

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Tyler Durden Sun, 04/26/2026 - 10:30

U.S. Gov't Stake In Intel Is Now Worth ...

U.S. Gov't Stake In Intel Is Now Worth ...

Intel shares earlier jumped the most on record after the chipmaker delivered stronger-than-expected first-quarter results and issued a second-quarter forecast (read here) that beat Wall Street expectations.

Earlier, Intel shares jumped as much as 28%, rocketing to a record high and eclipsing their Dot Com peak, as Wall Street analysts cheered the earnings report as evidence that the chipmaker’s turnaround is gaining traction.

Citi analyst Atif Malik raised Intel to “Buy” from “Neutral,” with a $95 12-month price target, reflecting “improving AI-driven CPU demand, which should lift all CPU suppliers’ sales in the coming years.”

But in this note, the focus is on the value of the federal government’s position in Intel after its August 2025 deal with the once-struggling company.

Under the August 2025 deal, the Trump administration agreed to purchase 433.3 million Intel shares at $20.47 per share, equal to about a 9.9% stake, valued at around $8.9 billion, funded largely by previously awarded but unpaid CHIPS Act and Secure Enclave grants.

According to Bloomberg, those 433.3 million Intel shares owned by taxpayers are now worth a staggering $36 billion, netting taxpayers a $27 billion paper gain.

President Trump told reporters on Thursday that Intel is now "coming back. All the chip companies are coming back.”

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/26/2026 - 09:55

Hungary's Going Gay? TV Channel Dedicated To 24-hour LGBTQI Programs Will Soon Launch

Hungary's Going Gay? TV Channel Dedicated To 24-hour LGBTQI Programs Will Soon Launch

Via Remix News,

Hungary will soon be getting a new government under Tisza’s Péter Magyar, but the landscape is already shifting, with a new LGBTQ-themed online television channel called “Rainbow” (“Szivárvány”) TV in the works to broadcast programs targeting the LGBTQI community 24 hours a day.

The entrepreneur behind the project, whose identity is being kept secret for now, reports Media1, but they have already submitted the necessary documents to the National Media and Communications Authority.

The channel will reportedly offer cultural programs, gastronomic content, and other shows about the history of the LGBTQI community. According to the owner, adult, 18+ content would be made available to subscribers exclusively in encrypted form, using appropriate technical protection.

And “special attention will be paid to the protection of children” and compliance with professional classification principles. This last is important, given Hungary’s child protection law, which has just recently been subject to a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union that the law “stigmatises and marginalises LGBTI+ persons.”

The CJEU essentially finds fault with the measure, not for seeking to protect children from homosexual propaganda but for associating non-cisgender people with convicted pedophiles. Specifically, it has ruled that it violates the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union due to the Charter’s “prohibition on discrimination based on sex or sexual orientation, respect for private
and family life, and the freedom of expression and information.”

The court also took issue with Hungary’s pedophile registry, stating that its scope of access was not strict enough to comply with GDPR regulations.

Brussels has demanded that Hungary drop this law, and with Péter Magyar now set to assume the role of prime minister, many are looking to see how far he will bend to the EU’s will. Having taken a landslide victory, including many conservative voters looking for change, Magyar has many groups of voters to please, leading some to believe many of his electorate are set to be disappointed.

Whatever the case, this new LGBTQI TV channel is most likely the first in many developments that part ways with the conservative Hungary envisioned by Viktor Orbán.

Along with a shift on LGBT issues, there are questions how long Magyar will hold out on mass immigration and other key issues, especially of the EU plans to play hardball with Hungary’s billions in frozen funds.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/26/2026 - 09:20

Downtown Baltimore CRE Crash Signals Deeper Fiscal Crisis Ahead

Downtown Baltimore CRE Crash Signals Deeper Fiscal Crisis Ahead

A localized commercial real estate crash has been spreading through downtown Baltimore City's office market like cancer, with more than $1 billion in property value erased since 2020. The rapid decline of the commercial tax base in the downtown area is colliding with deep structural crises, including violent crime, a continued population collapse (now at a 100-year low), fiscal mess, and the increasing risk that the unhinged left-wing politicians in City Hall will hike taxes on working poor households to offset the shortfall. What you're seeing in Baltimore is a death spiral: capital leaves, residents follow, the tax burden shifts onto those who stay, and the cycle feeds on itself with no clear bottom in sight.

The Baltimore Sun, now owned by conservative David Smith (who also owns Sinclair Broadcasting), and Democrats in the state have become visibly angered that the paper is not producing left-wing propaganda as leftist Gov. Wes Moore's polling data slides. Reports from the paper indicate that between 2020 and fiscal 2026, more than $1 billion in commercial property value has been erased, or about 29% of the city's commercial properties - 4,085 out of 14,027 - saw their assessed values slashed on average by 28.7%.

"The pace of losses has been so sharp that officials have repeatedly issued out-of-cycle reassessments, rather than waiting for Maryland's standard three-year review," The Sun wrote in the report.

The steepest losses have been concentrated in Downtown, the Inner Harbor, and Downtown West:

Commercial property values in Downtown alone fell $496.3 million in assessed value over the last six years, while the Inner Harbor dropped $363.4 million and Downtown West lost $214.6 million — a combined decline of more than $1.07 billion across those three districts.

Some of the city's most recognizable properties saw steep reductions: 100 Pratt Street E in the Inner Harbor lost $138.9 million in assessed value during that period, while 1 Light Street in Downtown dropped $87.3 million. Several other high-profile properties posted losses exceeding $40 million.

David Bramble, managing partner at MCB Real Estate, told the local paper that the downtown area of Baltimore is "experiencing massive value loss," adding, "If this trend continues unabated, Baltimore will face even more serious financial hardship, impacting all its residents and businesses, from neighborhoods to the waterfront."

The paper noted that city officials and business leaders said downtown's commercial struggles stem not only from crime but also from the era of remote work.

"A lot of these workers are still working from home, at least a few days a week. T. Rowe Price might have a trader who, in 2018, went to the office five days a week. Now he's coming in two or three days a week. As a result, the needed downtown office space is being downsized," said Richard Clinch, executive director for the University of Baltimore's Jacob France Institute. 

While remote work is only part of the story, traders, wealth managers, and back-office staff at major financial institutions in the city are all saying the same thing: Baltimore's crime problem has become intolerable and is bad for business.

Related:

Already starting to emerge:

Baltimore's epic demise is a direct consequence of decades of failed one-party Democratic rule that prioritized left-wing social justice experiments and other left-wing policies over public safety, economic competitiveness, and basic law and order. City leaders sold voters on a progressive utopia, but what they delivered instead was an exodus of residents, capital flight, a recession-like business environment, and years of crime and chaos.

A vice president of finance at a major institution in the city confirmed that failed left-wing leadership at City Hall has accelerated Baltimore's death spiral. 

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/26/2026 - 08:45

Ruthless Taxation And The Hyperstate: How Germany Profits From Crisis

Ruthless Taxation And The Hyperstate: How Germany Profits From Crisis

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe,

The Hormuz crisis offers us a profound insight into the real power structures in Germany. Nothing seems able to convince the Berlin monolith to partially shield its citizens from the consequences at gas stations through tax cuts.

It is now unavoidable that the Iran shock will translate into an inflation driver, working its way through economic value chains into consumer prices. These developments almost force a reduction of the tax burden on households and the middle class. It may sound strange to climate socialists, but wealth is created exclusively in the private sector, and certainly not in the state bureaucracy, which is currently profiting from the price surge at gas stations at the expense of citizens and enjoying a small special economic boost.

In March alone, the Finance Minister collected roughly half a billion euros more at gas stations. That makes him the winner of the crisis.

To dispel the impression of a secret profiteer, Klingbeil points to the generally precarious budget situation. In fact, his hands are essentially tied: the Merz-Klingbeil duo is driving the country’s public debt through the roof. Klingbeil is the skywalker among European debt makers. He has begun a catch-up race to place Germany in the top tier of debt states alongside neighboring France, Italy, and Spain. The German public debt ratio currently stands at 63 percent, but the debt spiral is accelerating. This figure will rise dramatically in the coming years.

Anybody should now be clear: The debt party of a state that burns its citizens’ capital in reckless fashion, whether in Ukraine or through the redistribution mechanism of the green transformation, must end. The state is an overfed glutton, extracting ever-higher tax revenues while sinking deeper into the debt spiral.

Yet the burden does not rest solely on debt. The state’s hyperactivity drains scarce resources from the private capital market, raises credit costs, and drives genuinely productive investments abroad. The damage has accumulated for years and is being made worse by the energy cost crisis.

One can only imagine the relief that the private sector needs to restart the prosperity engine and compensate for the ever-growing damage caused by the state bureaucracy. Germany’s plight urgently calls for reforms and an end to the failed eco-socialist transformation project.

In Germany, however, things are a little different. Economic rationality does not dominate. In the land of climate doomsayers and would-be world improvers, as former Economics Minister Robert Habeck once said, „all in“ — and all levers were set towards eco-socialism.

In fact: over 50 billion euros are pumped annually by the German state through the Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF) into the green wonder economy, which during the Hormuz crisis proved not to solve problems but rather to be their obvious cause.

The green wonder economy is leaving deep wounds in public budgets, whose deficits are spiraling out of control – in this year alone, another 180 to 190 billion euros of new debt will likely be recorded. https://www.tichyseinblick.de/daili-es-sentials/staatsverschuldung-rekord/

No one in Berlin is thinking about tax cuts anymore, regardless of how media artists around Chancellor Friedrich Merz try to pacify the public.

Even in the unlikely event of a temporary reduction in the electricity tax or an increase in the commuter allowance, the fundamental extraction mechanism remains unchanged. The CO₂ trading system drained roughly 25 billion euros from the private sector last year. This figure will continue to grow annually. There is no reason for gratitude, even if Berlin returns a few crumbs of citizens’ money here and there — robbed is robbed!

It was the economists at RWI in Essen who calculated the Finance Minister’s crisis dividend for March. They arrived at a sum of 490 million euros.

It is beyond question that the state is acting unethically in this crisis, delaying relief and exploiting citizens’ financial hardship.

The RWI’s call to suspend VAT on fuels is entirely justified, but it was coldly rejected by the Finance Minister. With his characteristic empathy, Klingbeil pointed out that citizens had made savings elsewhere due to high fuel prices. VAT revenue there had decreased, so a reduction at the pump was out of the question.

Klingbeil is instead contemplating a so-called windfall tax, in which, in the spirit of central planners, he could also make gas station operators and oil companies pay in light of their high profits in these weeks.

Budgetary planning games in Germany revolve exclusively around higher levies. Considering a projected new debt of up to 4.5 percent this year — counting the hidden funds of special assets — it is clear that the country no longer represents a healthy state.

The political aim of the Merz-Klingbeil government is the establishment of a massive state apparatus, resting on two pillars: the green artificial economy on one side and the massively expanded military sector on the other. This goes hand in hand with a growing state share, which has long exceeded 50 percent, as well as with rising public debt. The private sector bears the brunt of this, through higher levies or later via rising inflation rates.

Everything follows a clearly defined script. Only the extent of Berlin’s cynicism in the face of these policy consequences sometimes still surprises.

The Environment Minister calls for switching to electric cars amid the fuel price crisis, while the Transport Minister recommends the exhausted citizens switch to the catastrophe train.

In addition, the state-aligned media sector no longer minces words, celebrating high fuel prices as a unique opportunity to enforce the green societal transformation through citizens’ wallets.

To emphasize once again: a reduction in fuel levies is not a political quick fix. It would mark the beginning of a retreat from climate policy and a return to political reason. Energy must be affordable, and the exploitation of domestic energy sources should be central to policy. Achieving this requires a lean state, giving private industry the room for necessary investments. What we are witnessing is the systematic implementation of the opposite of this policy.

In his first year in office, Chancellor Friedrich Merz managed the feat of expanding the public service by a staggering 205,000 new employees. There is no sign of bureaucracy reduction or scaling back the state apparatus.

The economic hemorrhage of the private sector to finance the machinations of the growing hyperstate, including projects like the failed war in Donbass, is unprecedented.

In Berlin, people still believe they can successfully complete the green transformation project. What is shocking is not the ideological blindness or the intellectual modesty that comes with this policy. One should have become accustomed to that since the years of the Merkel era.

Even more striking is the ability of politicians to completely shirk responsibility despite the visible decline of both economy and society. They have succeeded in elegantly severing causality between the green planned economy and the country’s decline, systematically concealing accountability and consequences.

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/26/2026 - 08:10

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