US-Iran Tit-For-Tat Spirals Towards Broader Conflict

DOJ Probes BlackRock Private Credit Fund Valuations After Dramatic Repricings It all started in late January, just before the Blue Owl debacle and the SAAS-palcypse sparked a historic crash in private credit.  It was then that in a rare off-cycle disclosure, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp., a publicly traded private-credit fund structured as a business development company (BDC), disclosed a 19% markdown in net asset value as troubled loans weighed on performance. The news not only sent shares of the fund plunging 13% on Jan. 26, the most since March 2020 but market...

US Housing Starts Plummet In July, Near COVID Lows After Housing Starts exploded higher in June (driven by a massive rebound in multi-family units), July was expected to see a reflexive decline of 5.9% MoM... ...things were considerably worse, with US Housing Starts plunging 12.4% MoM (the third major monthly drop in four months)... On the other hand, the more forward-looking Building Permits (preliminary for July) rose 5.0% MoM (well above the 0.6% MoM expected), after two months in a row of declines. On a SAAR basis, Starts at back near post-COVID lows...

Swedish Police Veteran Warns Islamization Is Replacing Gang Violence As Country's Defining Threat Via Remix News, A veteran Swedish police officer says tougher criminal laws have sharply improved security in Uppsala, but warns that Islamization and parallel social structures now pose a deeper long-term threat. Maria Rosander, a police officer of 17 years and Sweden Democrat group leader in Uppsala, told Samnytt that conditions for officers had changed dramatically since shootings and explosions reached crisis levels. “From a police point of view, it’s like night and day,” she said. Rosander credited tougher sentences, expanded surveillance, better...