Eleven Killed as Israel Pounds Christian-Majority Area of Beirut

2025 New Home Sales Highest Since 2021 US New Home Sales dipped 1.7% MoM in December (after a 15.5% MoM surge in November)... ...but ended the year at 745k - the highest SAAR since 2021... "New" home sales have notably decoupled from "used" home sales in the last few years as homebuilders incentivize buyers (reducing margins) and lower prices (reducing revenues)... Lower mortgage rates support modest further improvements in sales... Will this be Trump's lead on housing affordability? Tyler Durden Fri, 02/20/2026 - 10:24

Major US Shale Producer To Boost Output, And It Suggests One Thing Last month, roughly three weeks into the U.S.-Iran conflict, UBS chief economist Arend Kapteyn told clients that one reason this Middle East energy shock is "not like the 2011-2014 shale boom" is the lack of a comparable response from the U.S. shale patch. In other words, the oil shock was viewed as temporary by major shale players and not worth adding new drilling rigs to the mix. But now, on day 35 of Operation Epic Fury, that assumption about...

First Andreessen, Now Goldman CEO Shuts Down AI Job-Apocalypse Doomerism Narrative Amid the flood of AI doomerism, from Pope Leo XIV's Monday warning that AI and the digital transformation of the economy could unleash "new forms of slavery" and mass job losses, to Bernie Sanders and unhinged socialists calling for a halt to data centers buildouts, a move that would conveniently cede compute power to communists in Beijing, a growing and emerging chorus of dystopian futurists is now trying to frame the AI boom as an existential labor-market crisis rather...