ZeroHedge
A week after Bill Gates abruptly pulled out as a keynote speaker at a high-profile global AI summit in India, the left-wing billionaire finally mustered enough nerve to "take responsibility for his actions" over his ties to late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a town hall meeting with Gates Foundation employees.
It's not just Trump who is stacking his central bank with uberdoves.
After plunging yesterday following a Mainichi report that Japanese Prime Minister expressed concerns at more BOJ rate hikes, the yen has tumbled more, sending the USDJPY as high as 156.80 this morning, the highest since Feb 9, after the Takaichi administration announced two nominees to succeed the outgoing BoJ Policy Board members later this year, both of whom have a history of dovish commentary.
After yesterday's 2 Year auction, moments ago the Treasury sold its second coupon for the week when it auctioned off $70BN in 5 Year paper in a rather lackluster auction.
The auction priced at a high yield of 3.615%, down from 3.823% a month ago, and the lowest since November; it also tailed the When Issued 3.608% by 0.7bps, the biggest tail since last July.
By Michael Every of Rabobank
The tendency for the rate of things to fall
Markets are trying to get past a report on how devastating AI could be for employment. There are push-backs: it ignores resource constraints and Schumpeterian creative destruction, and echoes Marx’s Tendency for the Rate of Profits to Fall. Yet Anthropic just released desk-top plug-ins plugins aimed at HR, design, engineering, ops, financial analysis, investment banking, equity research, private equity, and wealth management, e.g., it can do all the analysis in a spreadsheet, write the report on it, and make the presentation. It seems illogical this won’t see a surge in unemployment even if AI still makes key errors that require experience to spot – the youngest cohort of workers will miss out, meaning they don’t get the experience needed to be useful later.
Who could have seen this coming?
Aug 2019: Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers Rode On Epstein's 'Lolita Express'
The former Harvard President and Clinton-era Treasury Secretary has been cited four times on the flight logs of Jeffrey Epstein's 'Lolita Express'. During his first trip, he was still working in the Clinton administration. And during his most recent - in 2005 - he and his wife accompanied Epstein to Epstein's private island just days after their wedding.
During his first trip on Sept. 19, 1998, (while he was Treasury Secretary) Summers flew from the airport in Aspen, Colo. to Dulles international.
His second trip didn't take place until April 15, 2004, when Summers flew from JFK to Bedford, Mass., an airport not far from Harvard, where he was president of the university at the time.
On his third trip, Summers flew from Bedford to White Plains for reasons that are unclear.
And during his fourth trip, Larry and Lisa Summers flew from Bedford to Epstein’s Island, and were accompanied by Epstein’s close confidant and alleged Madam Ghislaine Maxwell.
Authored by Christina Comben via CoinTelegraph.com,
The Ethereum Foundation has begun staking part of its treasury, turning one of Ethereum’s most influential entities into a direct economic participant in network consensus.
1/ The Ethereum Foundation has begun staking a portion of its treasury, in line with its Treasury Policy announced last year.
— Ethereum Foundation (@ethereumfndn) February 24, 2026
Today, the EF made a 2016 ETH deposit. Approximately 70,000 ETH will be staked with rewards directed back to the EF treasury.
Among the most important foreign policy statements of President Trump's during his annual State of the Union address to a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives Tuesday night came in discussing his Iran red lines.
"We are in negotiations with them. They want to make a deal, but we haven't heard those secret words: 'We will never have a nuclear weapon.'" This 'challenge' underscores that at this point it may not matter at all what Iran actually says or does, as Washington is on the war path. See the words of Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi issued before Trump's speech - he laid out precisely this pledge using the "secret words" several hours before the world knew what Trump would say...
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
Ponder a $44,000 insurance bill. This does not count as inflation in the CPI.
Dysfunction in California’s Insurance Market
The Wall Street Journal reports A $44,000 Bill Shows the Dysfunction in California’s Home-Insurance Market
Billionaire natural resources investor Rick Rule, legendary short-seller Bill Fleckenstein, and veteran oil trader Erik Townsend join ZeroHedge this evening at 7PM ET to give their outlooks on three key commodities sectors: Gold, Oil, and Uranium.
Authored by Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,
The recent rotation from growth to value is well documented. While the return divergences between, for instance, technology stocks and materials or industrials stocks are significant, they do not tell the whole story. There are also extreme return differentials between broad industries and their sub-industries.
As usual, the opposing party was ready with a rebuttal to the President's State of the Union address last night.