Economy & Finance

US Core Durable Goods Orders Surge For 11th Straight Month After recent string ‘soft’ survey data, this morning we get some ‘hard’ data and it’s mixed…ish… Preliminary headline durable goods orders for February fell 1.4% MoM (worse than the -1.2% MoM exp). That is the third monthly decline in a row (the first 3-month decline

Futures Slide, Oil Jumps After US Attacks Kharg Island Ahead Of Trump’s 8pm Iran Deadline US futures reversed earlier gains and oil advanced following reports that Iran’s Kharg island was targeted earlier on Tuesday, while the market was largely paralyzed ahead of Trump’s 8pm ET deadline for Iran to agree to a ceasefire or face

Polymarket Unveils Exchange Overhaul, Native Stablecoin As US Expansion Looms Authored by Micah Zimmerman via Bitcoin Magazine, Bitcoin and crypto focused prediction market platform Polymarket is preparing its most significant infrastructure upgrade to date, rolling out a rebuilt trading system alongside a new native stablecoin designed to replace bridged collateral and streamline on-chain activity. The overhaul, described by the

US Already Spent Over $42 Billion & Counting On Iran War This week will see the Iran war reach 40 days of fighting, which is a far cry from the mere “four days” some US administration officials offered as a possible ‘optimistic’ timeline at the very opening of Trump’s Operation Epic Fury. According to the

75 Gulf Energy Assets Damaged In U.S.-Iran War As Supply Shock Intensifies International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol was interviewed by the French newspaper Le Figaro earlier on Tuesday and warned that the Gulf energy shock “is more severe than those of 1973, 1979, and 2022 combined” because it is affecting oil, gas,

Marc Andreessen Calls AI Job-Loss Fears ‘Fake’, Expects Employment Gains It is not the first time that the venture capital guru has questioned some of the fundamentally dystopian scenarios being proposition in an AI world.  In February, we noted that amid an armada of dystopian futurists, projecting linear thoughts into a future of ‘AI uber alles’,

Germany’s Debt Spiral: Bundesbank Chief Breaks Silence Submitted by Thomas Kolbe It’s not every day that top officials of the German Bundesbank take an explicit stance on daily politics. Nagel’s stark warnings about Germany’s debt and the government’s creative accounting were surely met with grim recognition in Berlin’s corridors of power. Open criticism is rare

Death Of Hollywood In Two Charts The nightmare story for Hollywood is playing out in real time for the world to see, as a century-old entertainment economy implodes and bears all the hallmarks of what happened to Detroit after the auto industry went bust. A new Wall Street Journal report describes the Hollywood job market

Iranian Kurdish Groups Deny Receiving US Arms After Trump’s ‘Guns For Protesters’ Remark Via The Cradle Several Iranian Kurdish opposition groups on Monday denied reports that the US had armed them during anti-government protests and riots that erupted in January, leaving over 3,000 Iranians dead. Mohammed Nazif Qaderi, a senior official from the opposition Kurdistan Democratic Party