China's Caribbean Listening Post? Satellite Imagery Shows Cuba Spy Base Completed

Ed Dowd: The Fed Hiked Interest Rates Into A Supply Shock Authored by Ed Dowd: Beyond the Narrative via Substack, September FOMC Meeting: First Rate Hike Since July 2023 The FOMC did what the front end of the Treasury market (3-month T-bill) had been telegraphing for two weeks prior. On September 16 they voted unanimously to raise the fed funds rate 25 basis points to 3.75-4.00 percent. Kevin Warsh's press conference was short, blunt, and deliberately light on forward guidance. He said economic activity is expanding at a solid pace, job gains...

Detroit Gets Drafted: Ford And GM Head Back To The Battlefield One of the defining themes of the Trump administration's second term has been rebuilding America's industrial base—not just by bringing manufacturing back to U.S. soil, but by restoring domestic capacity in industries considered critical to national security. Defense production sits squarely at the center of that effort, with Washington increasingly looking to private industry to expand military manufacturing. The latest example is the Pentagon's push to enlist Detroit's automakers in building the Army's next generation of tactical vehicles. In that vein,...

Initial Jobless Claims Refuse To Blink Amid Increasingly Fragile Labor Market Signals Unchanged from near 1969 lows for the last five years... That's quite a statement amid the sound and fury of markets and macro over the same period, but sure enough, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the first time ticked up to 206k last week - the same level as they were back in 2001... Michigan was the standout state with the largest decline in initial jobless claims by far while Kentucky saw the biggest increase (albeit...