Recession Signal As Consumers Struggle To Pay Bills

Visualizing Iran's Vast Size & Why Any Ground Invasion Means Years-Long Quagmire Most Americans have little understanding or concept of Iran's size in terms of geography or population. The ethno-religious make-up of the sprawling Mideast/West Asian nation is also deeply important, given the US is already talking about arming and supporting some kind of Kurdish-led anti-Tehran ground operation.  Suffice it to say, Iran's population is more than double (over 90 million people) that of neighboring Iraq's. Iran is also the size of almost half the European continent. All of this is...

Germany's Pension Time Bomb: $2+ Billion In CRE Losses Expose Cracks In The Fiat Era Submitted by Thomas Kolbe, A shock for the insured members of the Versorgungswerk Zahnärzte Berlin-Brandenburg (VZB). According to a report this week by Bloomberg, losses at the private pension fund total €1.1 billion. Roughly 50 percent of its invested capital has effectively been wiped out—channeled into private loans to non-listed companies, including rPlanet Earth in California, a shrimp farm in northern Germany, and, repeatedly featured on the investment menus of German pension funds, U.S. commercial real...

AI Surveillance Should Scare Both Democrats And Republicans Authored by Brendan Steinhauser via RealClearPolitics, In a country desperate for unifying issues, there is growing consensus on one: surveillance of American citizens. From progressives who want to hold ICE accountable to conservatives who fear Big Government, an ever-expanding federal government has put many Americans on high alert, and artificial intelligence is only making matters worse. To quote New York Times columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom, “ICE is watching you.” It is true: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement saw its 2025 budget triple to nearly $30...