The magnitude of Trump's personal corruption and the monetizing of the presidency by him and his family have no precedent in US history.
It takes a total peasant mentality, or some weird cultish devotion, to defend or excuse this, especially if you objected to corrupt Biden transactions (as I did). It's on a completely different scale.
Trump set up a crypto company (World Liberty Financial) 4 days before his inauguration, then had the UAE pour hundreds of millions into his pockets for 49% of it, then gave rewards to the UAE. Jared getting $2 billion from the Saudis. On and on and on.
TYT brings up a good point about Section 219 of the NDAA.
Would merging the US military with the IDF who ordered the murder of their own people under the Hannibal Directive, mean that one day our military will be used against Americans?
WATCH (especially the end of the clip)
Memory is one of our highest-conviction AI themes—but memory stocks are no longer the only way to play it. Here's where we're looking next 👇
There is little debate that the Agentic AI era will require multiples more memory and compute than the model training era.
We're already seeing the consequences:
▪️ Memory prices have surged. ▪️ HBM remains supply constrained. ▪️ Even consumer electronics companies like Apple are facing higher memory costs.
The only durable solution is more capacity.
$MU, @SKhynix , and @samsung are all investing aggressively to expand production over the next several years.
But here's the interesting part...
Every additional wafer of DRAM or NAND requires billions of dollars of semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
And there are only a handful of companies capable of supplying it.
That means one of the biggest beneficiaries
of the memory buildout may not be the memory manufacturers themselves—but the companies enabling them to solve the shortage.
Sometimes the best investment isn't selling the scarce product…
…but invest in companies that solve the challenge.
Loved sharing my thought with @cvpayne on @FoxBusiness
BREAKING: A source close to the IRGC says there is "growing satisfaction" inside the Revolutionary Guards over the deal, with IRGC Commander Ahmad Vahidi saying "first, we take the money" in reference to the $300 billion in reconstruction funds and $24 billion in frozen funds Iran is receiving, and then the IRGC takes over the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb after Hormuz, where it plans to "play exactly the same game."
The IRGC's internal assessment is that Iran preserved its ballistic missile program, full regional proxy network, complete control over Hormuz and ability to rebuild while extracting hundreds of billions of US dollars and recognition, with discussions already focused on "the day after the agreement, not the agreement itself."
"I don't want to see ETFs going back to the mutual fund dark ages where nobody knows what the fees are. It should be clear, transparent.. and not use the customer as negotiating tool." - @Perth_Tolle on Fidelity's (and Schwab) move to charge ETF issuers for shelf space and how that could stifle innovation and trigger the return of dreaded 12b-1 fee for ETFs w/ @kgreifeld@scarletfu
CONFIRMED: SECTION 224 WAS ISRAEL’S PLAN
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu confirms Section 224 of the NDAA was HIS PLAN in a letter to Congress, thanking them for doing his bidding.
TELL YOUR HOUSE REP TO REMOVE SECTION 224!
Note that the UK Government just banned entry of two American citizens -- @cenkuygur and @hasanthehun -- not because they criticized or worked against the interests of the UK.
It was solely because they criticize and oppose the one country deemed sacred and off-limits in the UK and so many other wester countires: Israel.
The UK under Labour is also regularly arresting its own citizens for peacefully protesting Israel's genocide in Gaza (including old British ladies and countless Jewish activists at these protests, though they remain free to protest *in favor* of Israel or against any other country).
This is all driven by the same dynamic that caused the Trump Admin -- as one of its very earliest top priorities last year -- to force US universities to expel American students protesting Israel, to deport others who merely criticized Israel, and to implement aggressive speech codes to protect Israel from common criticisms (even though one is free to say all the same things about any other country, including the US).
Why does this one small country command such special, elevated, supreme status and attention in so many western countries? It's way past time to give that question the attention it deserves and to finally put and end to it.
If the provision in the NDAA to integrate/synchronize the U.S. and Israeli militaries (section 224) makes it out of committee, I’ll offer an amendment to strip it from the bill on the floor.
We are a sovereign country.
https://t.co/HwvSXXxKlW
There was only one thing that surprised me about the Jubilee with MAGA die-hards.
It wasn't that some people scream and refuse to stop talking. It wasn't that these were mostly young people cheering and finding purpose in wars but never fighting in them. It wasn't that their politics is more of a cult of personality. All expected and found in all factions.
It was that, despite being political junkies, they had no idea about Trump's enormous corruption scandals because the corporate and independent media they consume doesn't mention it. They had no idea it existed:
I can't think of a more glaring and revealing political irony than a politician who called his ideology "America First" proudly *boasting* that he's far more popular in Israel than in his own country: in fact, so popular there that he could be elected Prime Minister of Israel.
🚨 NOW: Thomas Massie just wrapped up his concession speech, hinting at a possible 2028 PRESIDENTIAL RUN
MASSIE: "What was God's purpose? What is he showing us tonight?
MASSIE: "We're just getting started."
CROWD: "28! 28!"
MASSIE: "Well, you've made a compelling argument!"
The latest polls showing Ed Gallrein ahead of Massie assume that 50% of those voting will be over the age of 62, because that’s what it was in 2024.
It’s so important the under 50 crowd go to the polls in massive numbers this election. That will make the biggest difference.
Whether Massie wins will determine if there's any room in the GOP for someone who questions US funding and devotion to Israel.
Trump forced one out by calling her a traitor (MTG). John Hostettler (R-IN) lost his primary to an AIPAC-funded opponent.
Massie is the only one left.
THE SEC JUST BETRAYED EVERY RETAIL INVESTOR IN AMERICA
They formally proposed ELIMINATING mandatory quarterly reporting. Companies would file 2x a year instead of 4.
Trump championed it and SEC Chair Atkins fast-tracked it. The Republican majority on the commission means it will almost certainly pass.
The stated reason: quarterly reporting creates "short-term thinking."
But the REAL beneficiaries are CEOs who don't want investors asking questions every 90 days.
This isn't a new idea either.
Trump mentioned it during his first term in 2018 and the SEC studied it. But their own economists concluded that quarterly reporting increases transparency and reduces the cost of capital for companies raising funds.
They ignored it because the evidence said it was a BAD idea.
Now it's back. And this time the votes are there to push it through.
The argument that quarterly reporting encourages short-termism sounds reasonable until you really think about it:
Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett wrote a joint op-ed in 2018 calling for the end of quarterly guidance. But guidance and mandatory disclosure are two completely different things. You can stop giving guidance tomorrow - nobody's stopping you.
What this proposal does is let companies stop SHOWING YOU THE NUMBERS.
Think about what that means in practice.
Right now if a company's margins are collapsing or cash is hemorrhaging or debt is quietly ballooning, you find out within 90 days. Under this proposal you might not see those numbers for half a year.
That's 6 months where insiders know the business is deteriorating and you don't. 6 months where management can keep selling you a story while the fundamentals rot underneath it.
America's capital markets became the envy of the world BECAUSE of disclosure requirements, not in spite of them. The quarterly reporting mandate has been in place since the 1970s. Every major economy that weakened its disclosure regime saw transparency deteriorate.
When the European Commission dropped quarterly reporting requirements in 2013, research found that information asymmetry between insiders and outside investors widened almost immediately.
Now ask yourself:
Who benefits from cutting financial disclosure in half?
Not retail investors who already have less information than the institutions trading against them.
Not analysts trying to hold management teams accountable.
The beneficiaries are executives who would rather go 6 months without an earnings call than answer uncomfortable questions about where the money is going. Companies where the gap between the story and the numbers gets wider every quarter. Companies where the CEO's compensation is tied to stock prices that require narratives nobody is allowed to question.
In 45 years on Wall Street I've learned ONE thing about transparency:
Companies that want you to see less are ALWAYS the ones you need to watch most closely.
The SEC is proposing to give them exactly what they want. In the most leveraged, most narrative-driven, most accountability-free market since 1999.
THIS NEEDS TO STOP