Vitalik Buterin Calls For Ethereum-Led Alternative To The ‘Race For AGI’ Authored by Vismaya V via Decrypt.co, The Ethereum co-founder has outlined a four-quadrant Ethereum-AI buildout spanning private AI use, agent markets, and governance. In brief Vitalik Buterin said Monday the very frame of “work on AGI” is flawed and called for AI development guided by decentralization, privacy, verification, and human empowerment. […]

California Power Bills Soar 39% As Wildfires and Policies Drive Costs California residents have experienced the steepest rise in electricity costs in the nation, with average bills climbing 39% over the past six years, according to UC Berkeley’s Haas Energy Institute. Researchers link the surge to wildfire-related expenses and long-standing policy decisions that shifted more costs onto consumers, according to the NY Post. “I […]

A Market Crash And Recession Are Bullish, Not Bearish Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, This isn’t “Capitalism,” it’s Model Collapse ushering in the inevitable conflagration. One of the most peculiar hyper-normalized hallucinations about “Capitalism” is that markets and the economy “should always go up” and if they don’t, something is terribly wrong and somebody better do something to fix it. Remarkably, this […]

Goldman Says Off-Price Retailers “Structurally Well-Positioned” To Benefit As Trade-Down Behavior Persists Building on Goldman analyst Scott Feiler’s note last week that consumer trends remain resilient despite ongoing K-shaped concerns, Brooke Roach, a Managing Director in Equity Research at Goldman covering the U.S. retail sector, published a consumer note on Tuesday analyzing recent store-traffic trends across income and […]

Fetterman Breaks Ranks With Democrats, Supports Federal Voter ID Measure Via American Greatness, Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) has broken ranks with Democratic leadership and has come out in favor of requiring photo ID for voting in elections across the nation. Fetterman appeared on the Fox News program “Sunday Morning Futures” yesterday and told host Maria Bartiromo that voter ID wasn’t an “unreasonable” requirement, […]

Surveillance Footage Of ‘Armed Individual’ At Nancy Guthrie’s Home Released The FBI on Tuesday released surveillance footage from a Nest camera showing an armed person at the southern Arizona home of Nancy Guthrie, mother of network TV news anchor Savannah Guthrie.  The Pima County Sheriff’s Department shared photos of an “armed individual” in relation to the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping case.(Pima County Sheriff’s Department) […]

Watch Live: House Committee Goes After America’s Dark-Money NGOs Watch Live: Full Committee Hearing on Foreign Influence in American Non-profits *   *   *  Update (1100ET):  Top takeaways and headlines from the hearing. The first witness to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee is Americans for Public Trust executive director Caitlin Sutherland.  Sutherland tells the committee that nonprofits have been […]

Indians Bought More Gold Than Stocks In January, Goldman Sees Pros Buying Long-Dated Calls The near-vertical surge in precious metals (arguably driven by speculative demand from China) came to a swift halt at the end of January, when silver suffered its biggest daily drop on record and gold plunged the most since 2013.  As Goldman’s top futures trader, Robert Quinn, points out (in a note available at out MarketDesk.ai portal to […]

Foreign Demand In 3Y Auction Drops As Direct Bid Hits Record High It is refunding week, which means we get the usual staple of 3, 10 and 30Y auctions. And moments ago, the Treasury just concluded the first of three coupon sales when it sold $58BN in 3 Year paper in a very strong auction. The auction stopped at a high yield of 3.518%, down from 3.609% in January and the lowest yield since Sept 2025; the auction also stopped through […]

US No Longer Wants To Pursue Its Own Ukraine Peace Proposal, Kremlin Charges Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said in an interview published on Monday that the US no longer wants to implement a Ukraine peace deal that it previously proposed, the latest sign that there’s little chance the grinding war will come to an end anytime soon. Lavrov claimed that the US and Russia came to an […]

‘Off The Charts’: Retail Is Buying-The-Dip In Software Stocks Like Never Before Starting on Friday, we have seen a sudden reversal from panic-selling to panic-buying in tech stocks, which has lifted Nasdaq back above its 100DMA… The headline-grabbing culprit for much of the pain to the downside was Software stocks (IGV as an example of an ETF that tracks the sector), which collapsed as specifically SaaS firms faced ‘existential […]

DHS Shutdown Talks Stall As Democrats Reject GOP Offer, Thune Signals Stopgap May Be Needed With Republicans demanding election integrity, and Democrats demanding ICE reform, it looks like the Department of Homeland Security may shut down again on Friday after Democratic leaders rejected a White House-backed GOP counterproposal to keep the lights on – which may require a short-term stopgap if they can’t agree on something by […]

What Good Is 15% Growth If It’s Matched With 15% Unemployment? By Michael Every of Rabobank Mr. 15%: Trump stated if Fed Chair Warsh does his job, US growth could be 15% or higher. It’s unclear if that’s annual, exceeding China’s early spurt, or over the remaining two-and-a-half years of his presidency, so higher than China today, or nominal or real. Yet the key signal for those who called Warsh a ‘hawk’ is that the Fed […]

Insurance Brokers Extend Monday’s Plunge On Fears AI Is Coming For Them Next The rolling AI disruption wave, which most recently crushed the software sector, slammed insurance brokers on Monday with losses extending on Tuesday, as most names in the space slumped following reports from Reinsurance News and others that OpenAI approved the first AI insurance app on ChatGPT, built by Spanish digital insurer Tuio. The insurance […]

Zuckerberg Follows Billionaire Exodus To Florida As California Pushes New Wealth Tax Once again, the pattern is familiar: raise taxes in California, and watch the private jets head east.  Mark Zuckerberg may soon be adding Miami to his ever-growing list of luxury addresses. According to people familiar with his plans, the Meta founder and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are exploring a home on Indian Creek Island—an ultra-exclusive, […]

Winter Storm Triggers $15 Billion Power Surge On Key U.S. Grid A brutal January cold snap sent electricity prices soaring across the largest U.S. power grid, as operators scrambled to meet surging heating demand and prevent outages, according to Bloomberg. On the PJM Interconnection system — which supplies power to roughly one-fifth of Americans — wholesale electricity costs reached $15.38 billion for the month, more than […]

Judge Blocks California’s Law Mandating Federal Agents Remove Masks Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times, A federal district court judge partially blocked a California law barring law enforcement officers from wearing masks in a Feb. 9 ruling, finding the law discriminated against federal officers. District Court Judge Christina Snyder ruled in favor of the Trump administration, prohibiting the state from enforcing […]

Watch: Lutnick Testifies He ‘Barely Had Anything’ To Do With Epstein Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is currently testifying in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee on broadband deployment funding – however the conversation quickly veered into his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.  Lutnick insisted he “barely had anything to do with that person,” referring to Epstein, though he admitted that he went to Epstein’s […]

Massie Exposes Les Wexner As Epstein Co-Conspirator, Opening Door To Criminal Charges Against Kash Patel Authored by blueapples, Although President Donald J. Trump has amplified his attacks against Kentucky representative Thomas Massie on the basis of deluded claims that he is a radical, un-American liberal who is hellbent on sabotaging his administration, it is the congressman’s continued crusade to expose the crimes of Jeffrey […]

US To Fund Free Speech Initiatives In Europe, Trump Official Reveals Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times, The Trump administration announced plans to direct funding toward promoting free speech in Western allied democracies, a senior State Department official said on Monday. The initiative bolsters efforts to counter European online regulations categorized by Washington as censorship. Under Secretary of State for […]

Macron Reopens Direct Channel With Putin As He Moves To Counter Trump The Kremlin has newly confirmed that France has restored “technical-level” contact and dialogue with Russia, after for years having stymied diplomacy related to the Ukraine war. “Yes, there have indeed been contacts, and we can confirm that,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “If there is the desire and the necessity, they could help fairly quickly […]

“Today, We Are Preparing For War”: French Defense Chief Says Europe Has Until 2030, Cites Russia As Biggest Threat Via Remix News, France and Europe have four years to prepare for war, said Fabien Mandon, chief of the defense staff of the French Armed Forces, who cited Russia as Europe’s biggest threat. His speech at a major naval conference outlined that France, as well as its allies, must take into account that this war will […]

Harley-Davidson Shares Plunge As Bike Demand Stalls Harley-Davidson shares plunged in premarket trading after the company reported an unexpected decline in motorcycle shipments and a far deeper-than-expected sales miss in the fourth quarter. The results suggest the company is still battling soft demand, with the brand having peaked with boomers and struggling to connect with younger riders. Global fourth-quarter bike deliveries […]

US Retail Sales Disappoint In December As Small Business Optimism Dips Today’s Retail Sales data is for December and so should be ‘clean’ from the perspective of the January storms which dramatically reduced consumers ability to spend year-to-date, as illustrated by BofA’s ‘rest of US’ spending indicator… After a big bounce in November, expectations were for a decent 0.4% MoM rise in retail sales to end the year (despite the […]

Futures Drop As Traders Brace For Flood Of Data And Earnings US equity futures are lower, reversing earlier gains and trading near session lows in a narrow, jitter overnight session as traders prepare for a heavy slate of earnings and readings of consumer sales and small-business due later. As of 8:15am ET, stock futures were muted, down 0.1% after earlier rising 0.2% and approaching last month’s record levels after an […]