Here’s What’s Happening Inside Convenience Stores As Gas And Diesel Spike We continue to track convenience store trends as an indicator of working-class sentiment, building on our coverage of the spending pullback that emerged early in the US-Iran conflict. That weakness persisted into late summer as August’s fuel-price spike put further pressure on household budgets. The Gulf conflict and a global refining squeeze pushed regular […]

NATO Vows More Ukraine Support After Boris Johnson & David Petraeus Train Attack Near-Miss More escalation, NATO says. The Western military alliance’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Monday that Russian drone strikes near the Ukraine-Poland border hit “close to NATO territory”. He said the Sunday attack, which occurred merely hundreds of meters from Poland’s border, smacked of Putin’s “desperation and also his desire to sow […]

Jeffries Refuses To Rule Out Trump Impeachment If Democrats Win House Authored by AG News Staff via American Greatness, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday that Democrats have not ruled out another impeachment of President Donald Trump if they capture control of the House in November’s midterm elections. During an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” host George Stephanopoulos asked the New York Democrat whether his […]

Tehran Says US Seeks Step-by-Step Agreement After Trump Claims ‘Iran Wants To Make A Deal’ Summary ‘Deal’ headlines return: US seeks “Step-by-Step” agreement with Iran, reports state media. Houthis seized more Red Sea territory, including Perim Island near the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Shipping risks are rising, with vessels avoiding the Red Sea and taking longer routes around Africa. Iran-Gulf diplomacy was postponed, delaying […]

Trump Says Meeting With Chinese Leader Will Cover ‘Almost Everything’ Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sept. 13 that he would discuss almost everything with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a planned meeting at the White House later this month. Trump did not provide specifics but said his tariffs had kept Chinese vehicles out of the U.S. market. “The tariff kept them out. I have […]

Trump Says US Could Remain In Iran And Keep Oil, Similar To Deal With Venezuela Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times, President Donald Trump on Sept. 13 said the United States could ultimately remain in Iran and “keep the oil” in a similar manner to his administration’s move to control some of Venezuela’s oil reserves. “We’ll ultimately get out [of Iran], unless we decide to stay and keep the oil like Venezuela,” Trump […]

Ukraine Pummels Black Sea Resort Near Putin’s Villa With Air & Sea Drones Ukraine sent some 400 drones across various parts of Russia and Crimea overnight, with UAV attacks having long been a nightly thing. In this latest instance, the Black Sea resort city of Sochi suffered the most casualties, with five people – including a child – wounded in a drone attack. Several homes were also damaged in the assault. The injuries in […]

Willy Wonka And The Compute Factories By Benjamin Picton, Senior Market Strategist at Rabobank Oil prices are rising again on news of the shutdown of Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline following drone strikes, and the Houthis’ seizure of strategic locations on the Red Sea coast. Bond yields surged late last week on rising oil and inflation (and debt) concerns, while Asian equity indices and US equity futures are broadly in […]

Costco Begins Rationing Kirkland Signature Motor Oil As Refined Crisis Spreads Costco’s Kirkland Signature motor oil has doubled in price, and customers now reportedly face a purchase limit as the Gulf energy conflict, combined with the Russia-Ukraine war, has sent the global refining market into a tailspin. Auto news website The Auto Wire reports that a 10-quart package of Kirkland full-synthetic oil now costs about $58, up from […]

Trump Declares Ukraine, Russia Have Agreed To Halt All Attacks On Energy Targets Update(11:19)ET: Amid soaring national diesel products and painfully high prices at the pump, President Trump on Monday announced the Zelensky government has acceded to the US president’s prior call to abstain from attacking diesel infrastructure in Russia. He has unveiled what he’s presenting as a new Russia-Ukraine energy ceasefire. Trump says […]

Beijing Rejects Pause, Slams Dario’s ‘Fearmongering, Cold War Playbook’ China’s Foreign Ministry and state press had rejected the China provisions of Dario Amodei’s essay calling for a ‘pause’ in AI development, while state security minister and President Xi Jinping laid out what Beijing wants instead. On Saturday morning, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published We Must Pace the Frontier, an essay arguing that the industry must slow […]

Another Judge Blocks USPS From Implementing New Mail-In Ballot Rule Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times, A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction on Sept. 13 that blocks the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) from enforcing its requirements to tighten mail-in voting rules. Under the rule, states must supply the agency with lists of mail ballot recipients, and all outbound and return ballot envelopes must bear unique […]

Trump Slams “Perfect Little Angel” Dario, Demands Full Steam Ahead For AI Update (1045ET): President Trump on Monday slammed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei over his call to ‘pause’ AI and hand governance over to an Anthropic-adjacent cult.  © LUDOVIC MARIN via Gizmodo “The Trump Administration has stopped AI “people” from doing bad, or potentially bad, “things,” like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a “perfect little […]

$6 Diesel Flashes 2008 Warning As Energy Shock, AI Slowdown Fears Fuel Perfect Storm As of Monday morning, AAA’s national average retail diesel price topped $6.23 a gallon as a global refining crisis sparked by the Russia-Ukraine war and compounded by the Gulf conflict sent the price of the most critical fuel powering the industrial world skyrocketing. Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone warned Monday […]

Trump Says He Might Release More 9/11 Records Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times, President Donald Trump said on Sept. 13 he might release records related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. “I’m going to look at it when I get back,” he told reporters in Ireland, after being asked about recent requests from families of people who perished in the attacks. A nephew of Lisa Marie Terry, who was in the North Tower […]

Key Events This Week: Fed, BOJ And BOE; Also Retail Sales, Import Prices And Bessent It’s a bumper week for central bank decisions, with the Fed (Wednesday), BoE (Thursday) and BoJ (Friday) all meeting. Central banks aside, key data releases include US retail sales (Wednesday) and industrial production (Friday), UK inflation (Wednesday) and labor market data (Tuesday), economic activity in China (tomorrow), and inflation and trade […]

We Can’t Afford $5,000 “Dividend” Checks Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance While the stock market implodes on or ahead of schedule, as predicted, I had another revelation last night that anyone with a first-grade understanding of math could have also arrived yet. We can’t afford this $5,000 dividend check idea. I mean, we can’t really afford anything as a country right now, but it is arguably the worst moment in history to […]

US Energy Sec. Wright Says Saudi’s Critical East-West Oil Pipeline Will Restart “Very Soon” Summary: AP News Says East-West Pipeline Fix 3-5 Weeks  US Energy Sec. Wright Tells BBG TV East-West Pipeline Will Be Online “Very Soon” Oil Surges As Saudi Pipeline Crisis Puts 4% Of Global Supply At Risk; Bernstein Warns Of $150 Crude Wright Tries To Calm Energy Markets  US Energy Secretary Chris Wright joined Bloomberg TV to calm […]

“Politically, There’s No Viable Way Out Of This”: Schiff Warns Of “Dangerous Feedback Loop” Authored by SchiffGold via SchiffGold, On Thursday, Peter joined host Danny on CapitalCosm to unpack the deepening cracks in the US debt market and what they mean for the dollar, oil, and the political landscape heading into 2026. He walks through weak Treasury demand, the fragile yen carry trade, and why “growing our way out of debt” […]

Futures Slide As Tech Tumbles On Fears Of AI Slowdown, Oil Jumps US futures are sliding, dragged by fears of a possible AI development slowdown as well as higher oil prices (Brent > 108), though bond yields are not reacting yet (10Y yield still under 5%). As of 8:00am ET, S&P futures are down 0.6%, and potentially facing their first down 1% day since late July; Nasdaq futures plunging 1.5% as AI-linked stocks like chipmakers […]

EU NatGas Hits Highest Since 2022 As Low Storage Sets Stage For Winter Cold-Snap Price Shock European natural gas futures hit their highest level since December 2022 (early days of the Russia-Ukraine conflict) as domestic supplies remain well below the 15-year average. With the Northern Hemisphere winter approaching, the restocking phase may be jeopardized by maritime chokepoint madness across the Gulf and Red Sea, with the Strait […]

US Miner Almonty Strikes Major Deal With Africa’s Largest Tungsten-Producing Country Almonty Industries is positioning itself to “become the leading Western producer of tungsten,” potentially as early as 2027, as Western buyers confront a severe supply shortage sparked by China and, more broadly, what we’ve described as “resource nationalism.” Bloomberg reports that Almonty has partnered with Rwanda’s government, securing a […]

Bank Of England Spends £85k Researching How Best To Erase Churchill Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News, The Bank of England has spent more than £85,000 of research money to justify wiping Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, J.M.W. Turner and Alan Turing off Britain’s banknotes and swapping them for hedgehogs, foxes and puffins. A Freedom of Information trail shows Savanta was paid £49,000 to run focus groups that told […]

Fed Rate Hikes Will Increase US Interest Costs By $50 Billion The biggest problem with the “short-terming” of the US Treasury stock, which under Bessent’s extension of Yellen’s Activist Treasury Issuance playbook, which pushed the percentage of T-Bills as a percentage of total debt to 23% – the highest since 2010 excluding the emergency surge during the covid crisis which relied entirely on Bills for government funding and briefly […]

Unfair Gains? Let’s Talk About A European Windfall Tax Authored by Mark Nayler via FEE, After another summer of heatwaves and wildfires, Spain is petitioning the EU to create a climate adaptation fund. In a letter sent to the EU’s climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, the Spanish minister for the ecological transition Sara Aagesen Muñoz said that Europe needs a blanket strategy to help its member states cope with climate change, […]