Crazy to think about how Trump could’ve had one of the most successful and popular presidential terms in modern American history… and they completely punted it.
He was elected by a historic coalition and was the first Republican to win the popular vote in decades because of two issues: inflation and illegal immigration.
Inflation was already falling after the Covid and Biden era spending. All he had to do was close the border, conduct mass deportations, and let the economy/AI cook while pushing through deregulation.
Instead, after explicitly running on ending foreign wars, he immediately started a war with Iran which has taken over the entire term. Inflation, energy prices and mortgage rates have all climbed and are heading in the wrong direction. His approval is at an all-time low. He sacrificed his own domestic agenda for a war in the Middle East alongside Israel.
Republicans are now going to lose the House, possibly the Senate, and the next 2 years will be nothing but DC gridlock and investigations. The odds of handing America to the far-left in 2028 have also dramatically increased.
Since the 1980s, the Sahara has shrunk by roughly 8%. Satellite data show widespread greening, a pattern that is playing out across the planet.
Around 50% of Earth's vegetated land has become significantly greener, an area roughly three times the size of the United States.
The dominant driver is not rainfall or land use change, it is rising atmospheric CO2. Higher CO2 lets plants photosynthesize more efficiently, they lose less water, they tolerate heat and dryness better.
The effect is strongest along desert margins - across the Sahel, the Middle East, Australia's interior and the southern edge of the Sahara.
Rising CO2 is making the deserts, and the planet as a whole, greener.
if youre ambitious but lazy, this is a must read
"Willpower is not a personality trait. It is a prefrontal cortex function. The same region that's been working all day - and is now flooded with glutamate - is the exact region you're asking to override your impulse to stay on the sofa.
You are asking the exhausted system to fix itself using the resource it already ran out of."
A 9/11 widow just rent rogue in NYC…
She read her husbands name and then called out Islamic terror and Saudi Arabia.
She called out Bush, Obama, Biden and JD Vance/Trump while they sat right in front of her. The entire crowd at ground zero cheered.
For those new to the buybacks and the calculations and wrongly focused on the the amount of dollars the repurchase cost
The repurchases are primarily for bonds that were issued at a low interest rate over the past 20 years. They were at discounts before Bessent changed the buyback and were at discount today.
The duration of these bonds is particularly long relative to Par bonds so in terms of duration reduction they have high bang for buck
But more to the point the program was doubled or more and it turns out based on today's results was 2.55Xed vs the prior program. The bonds bought haven't changed.
Focus on whether this program has ever been duration neutral (the recent increase has absolutely NOT been duration neutral).
That said. Respect for those focused on price vs notional. Buying discount bonds at say 5% yield and 2% coupon for say 60 and funding it (they aren't doing this but if they were) with par bonds would have a slight change to two things. One the new bond issuance would only need to be 60% of the notional of the bond repurchased which changes the amount of debt outstanding. Two the par bond sold would pay 5% on 60 notional or 3% and the old bond which paid 2% would be retired. That means the repurchase increase the interest expense of the national debt
While this second section is largely irrelevant from any sort of market force it's interesting to folks with limited experience in bond trading
The big thing is the treasury has more than doubled the duration retired and is funding that repurchase with bills
Democrats: “You can’t just rename Lake Ontario to Lake America. That’s not how reality works!”
Also Democrats: “Anyway, this is Jessica. She used to be Steve.”
Major private equity/credit firm obfuscated its affiliated transactions and leaned heavily on suspicious ratings issued by a single rating agency. That agency rated 3200 deals in a year with a staff of 25 analysts. Deal documents are hundreds of pages.
The storm that battered the Balearics last night recorded wind gusts of 121 kmph at Menorca Airport, reaching hurricane status.
In the marina of #ibiza port, crew raced to limit the damage to luxury yachts. #ibiza2026
Since April 2020, the United States has spent $1.5 trillion on wind and solar.
All that money for just 17% of the nation's energy mix.
For the same cost, America could have built around 40 nuclear power plants. They'd run for 80 years, not 15 or 20 like wind and solar, and would generate at least three times more power each year.
That's the real cost of believing the climate fantasy: enormous waste, destabilized grids, and spiraling energy costs.