The left's ability to rapidly stage highly organized 'pop-up' protests in response to just about any political incident is uncanny (remember

President Donald Trump’s push for U.S. oil companies to commit at least $100 billion toward rebuilding Venezuela’s energy industry is meeting significant resistance from the very executives he is courting, according to Bloomberg.

Authored by Sam Bourgi via CoinTelegraph.com,

Big banks aren’t debating crypto anymore — they’re building it. From tokenized cash to ETFs, Wall Street is quietly going onchain.

After nearly three decades of working together, Amazon is ending its delivery relationship with the United States Postal Service, a move that significantly alters how packages are moved across the country, according to MSN.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The US economy managed to drastically reduce its trade deficit in October of last year. Data delayed due to the government shutdown highlight structural shifts in the global trade landscape.

The latest iteration of the Democratic Party's color-revolution-style operation was on full display in recent days as tensions erupted following the fatal shooting of a left-wing activist by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent during a federal enforcement sweep in Minnesota. This incident demonstrates that the protest industrial complex, funded by left-wing billionaires, has been on standby, waiting for a catalyzing event to ignite mass mobilization.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The UK’s Labour government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer has escalated its war on online expression, now openly threatening to ban Elon Musk’s X platform entirely. Using the pretext of Grok AI’s image generation capabilities, Starmer’s regime is pushing for total control over what Brits can see and say online, exposing the thin veil over their authoritarian impulses.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Moritz Schularick, makes no secret in an interview with the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung that the signs are pointing toward a war economy. It is bizarre to witness how economists succumb to the intellectual mediocrity of central planning.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday repeated its long-standing objection to troops from NATO countries deploying to Ukrainian territory as part of a potential future peace deal, as Ukraine and its Western backers continue to push the idea.

Authored by Roger Bate via the Brownstone Institute,

The Trump administration has mulled sending lump sum payments to Greenlanders of up to $100,000 in exchange for their vote to secede from Denmark and join the United States, Reuters reports, citing four sources familiar with the matter.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

U.S. economic growth prospects received a fresh boost this week as the Atlanta Federal Reserve nearly doubled its estimate for fourth-quarter output after a raft of strong data, while Fitch Ratings lifted its projections for full-year 2025 and 2026 growth after delayed government releases showed firmer economic momentum.

Upate (0710ET):

Shares of LoanDepot, Rocket Companies, and Opendoor Technologies surged in premarket trading after President Trump signaled plans to push Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to purchase $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities, a move aimed at driving down mortgage rates and improving affordability ahead of the midterm election cycle.

The foreign policy move to dismantle the so-called "dark fleet" of crude oil tankers moving Venezuela's oil around the world, through President Trump's gunboat diplomacy to secure the Western Hemisphere, was once again on full display on Friday morning.

Russia launched another massive overnight strike on Ukraine using its hypersonic Oreshnik missile as part of a large-scale assault said to be retaliation for the alleged Ukrainian attempt to drone strike Putin's residence last month.

Kiev was hit hard in the fresh missile and drone attack which set apartment buildings on fire and killed at least four people. Importantly, Ukrainian officials said a ballistic missile traveling at hypersonic speed hit an "infrastructure facility" near the far western city of Lviv.

Meta revealed this morning a slew of new agreements with key players in the nuclear power industry, in an urgent bid to provide clean energy for its rapidly expanding data center empire.

Ahead of today's jobs report, expectations were that the NFP number would show another rebound from the terrible Sept/Oct prints, but remain muted (or else spark fears about reheating and an end to the Fed's easing cycle). Well, that's precisely what we got moments ago when the BLS reported that in December the US gained 50K jobs, a modest miss to estimates of 50K, but smack in the middle of JPM's sweet spot range of 35K-75K (as previewed earlier) which would be best for the market.

Longtime Tulsi Gabbard supporters have wondered why she has seemed to be missing in action in terms of weighing in on Trump's militarily invading Venezuela to oust longtime socialist leader Nicolás Maduro, given that as a prior member of Congress before taking up the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) position, she had been quite vocal against any move on Venezuela.