Recession Signal As Consumers Struggle To Pay Bills

Trump Pulling 5,000 US Troops From Germany In Punitive Move Amid Merz Spat In a huge late in the day Friday development, the Trump administration plans to pull some 5,000 troops from NATO member Germany, CBS is reporting. Citing senior defense officials, the Pentagon expects the troop draw down will happen over a six to twelve month period, Reuters has also separately reported, in what clearly appears a punitive measure aimed at Berlin by the Trump White House. Over several years, and stretching back decades, the US has maintained the most...

WTI Holds Rebound Gains As US Fuel Exports Hit Record High, Production Dips, Huge SPR Drain Oil prices are lower overnight (but dramatically off their lows) amid on-again, off-again optimism of an imminent US-Iran peace deal. Benchmark Brent fell as much as 12% to $96.75 a barrel in London, while West Texas Intermediate dropped up to 13%. European natural gas plunged as much as 14%. Oil and gas later pared about half of those losses after Trump said in a Truth Social post on Wednesday that if Iran doesn’t agree, “the bombing...

Google's New Quantum Research Reignites Push To Harden Bitcoin Authored by Micah Zimmerman via BitcoinMagazine.com, A new research paper from Google has intensified debate over whether Bitcoin can adapt in time to withstand advances in quantum computing, pushing developers and investors to confront a risk long treated as theoretical. Google’s quantum division said this week in a new whitepaper that future machines could break widely used encryption far more efficiently than previously estimated, including the elliptic curve cryptography that underpins Bitcoin wallets.  The research suggests attacks that once appeared decades away may arrive sooner, with some...