Category: It’s Probably Nothing

“The Age of Disclosure”

NY Post;

Eric Davis, an astrophysicist who was a scientific advisor on the since-disbanded Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, created by Congress in 2007 by late Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), claimed that Bush confirmed to him in a private conversation details of contact between the military and an alien creature at Holloman Air Force Base in Otero County.

Bush told him that three spaceships were seen approaching the base and that an interstellar being emerged from one ship and had a face-to-face encounter with military and CIA officials, Davis said during an interview in “The Age of Disclosure,” a documentary by filmmaker Dan Farah that went live on Amazon Prime on Friday.

I did check it out at Amazon, but it’s kind of expensive.

Talkin’ Bout My Generation…

The more pressing question is: can most retirement funds generate sufficient capital to sustain themselves for such a long period? I’ll hazard a guess that most government plans don’t have nearly enough. Speaking from personal experience, I’d go crazy if I stopped working completely.

Not only is retirement coming faster, Canadians are also living longer. Since 2023, life expectancy in Canada has risen two years to 83, and since 2001 the number of people over 100 has doubled, said the study. Globally, the number of centenarians is expected to grow by 800 per cent by 2050.

Instead of the 20 to 30 “golden years” of earlier generations, workers today are potentially looking at retirements that span 40 years or more.

 

The Cheque Is In The Mail

I’m suspicious about the impact of these measures for a few reasons: voluntary departures come with severance; government retirement plans often require funding out of general revenue so early retirement just means more losses to cover; many eliminated jobs are potential positions as opposed to actual ones, and the timeline is an entire decade.

He said the company will use “attrition first” to downsize from the roughly 62,000 people it employed at the end of last year.

The company expects to shed 16,000 employees through retirement or voluntary departures by 2030, with an additional 14,000 leaving by 2035.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble…

Hello, my friends. Have you been feeling too sane lately? Have I got something for you! It is a company called CoreWeave.

You may not have heard of it because it’s not doing the consumer-facing part of AI. It’s a data center company, the kind people talk about when they say they want to invest in the “picks and shovels” of the AI gold rush. At first glance, it looks impressive: it’s selling compute, the hottest resource in the industry; it’s landed a bunch of big-name customers such as Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta; and its revenue is huge — $1.4 billion in the third quarter this year, double what it was in the third quarter of 2024. The company has almost doubled in share price since its IPO earlier this year, which was the biggest in tech since 2021. So much money!

But as I began to look more closely at the company, I began feeling like I’d accidentally stumbled on an eldritch horror. CoreWeave is saddled with massive debt and, except in the absolute best-case scenario of fast AI adoption, has no obvious path toward profitability. There are some eyebrow-raising accounting choices. And then, naturally, there are the huge insider sales of CoreWeave stock.

Money For Nothing

That’s 600 billion, with a ‘B’. How much of the melt-up was driven by leverage, and who’s left holding the bag for those loans?

After topping $126,000 in October, Bitcoin has fallen sharply, briefly wiping out its 2025 gains before stabilizing on Monday.

With gold and stocks near all-time highs, Bitcoin is the “tip of the risk-assets iceberg and melting,” said Mike McGlone, senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence. “I expect Bitcoin and most cryptos to keep falling.”

Nothing Burgers

When the marginal consumer can no longer afford Wendy’s, you just know things are going downhill.

There are currently about 6,000 Wendy’s locations in the U.S. Locations that are “consistently underperforming” will close in late 2025 or at some point in 2026. The number of stores affected could be up to around 350. Nation’s Restaurant News noted that Cook indicated they were “acting with urgency” to reverse the negative trend.

As CNN detailed, Wendy’s sales in the last quarter were down nearly 5 percent.

Elbows Down!

Generally speaking, the leadership cadre of large Canadian businesses tend to carry water for the Liberals no matter what. It’s refreshing to see at least one of them speaking out about the Canadian economy’s appalling lack of productivity.

“The business sector (has) grown productivity about 50 per cent since roughly 2000 (but) the non business sector — this is government and not-for-profit businesses and workers — in those areas … productivity has been absolutely flat, zero growth, not one bit of productivity,” she said at the University of Waterloo’s Tech Horizons conference.

“I find it kind of frustrating because those people were telling us in business that we’re not productive when they’re the ones who are flat like pancakes.”

 

New Governor, Same As The Old Governor

Fitch ain’t having any of it.

Persistent Fiscal Expansion Underscores Canada Rating Pressures

Canada’s (AA+/Stable) proposed budget, announced in Parliament on Nov. 4, underscores the erosion of the federal government’s finances, says Fitch Ratings. While Canada’s rating is broadly stable, persistent fiscal expansion and a rising debt burden have weakened its credit profile and could increase rating pressure over the medium term. This may be exacerbated by persistent economic underperformance caused by tariff risks and structural challenges, including low productivity. […]

Combined with sizable non-budgetary financing needs (mainly support of enterprise crown corporations), the higher deficits will substantially increase general government gross debt (GGGD), which we forecast to reach 91.8% of GDP in 2025 from 88.6% in 2024, before accelerating to 98.5% by 2027, nearly double the forecast ‘AA’ median of 49.6%.

Another Zero Percent Interest Miracle!

The purpose of interest rates is to align the supply of capital with the demand for it. When they fall to zero, that sends a false signal that capital practically self-replicates and that no one really needs to care about where capital gets invested. These “malinvestments” are starting to show up more and more these days.

Among other things, authorities are trying to determine whether Tricolor double-pledged—using the same set of subprime loans as collateral against multiple warehouse loans. This would be akin to a homeowner with a $500K mortgage on a $600K house taking a second mortgage for $500K without notifying—in fact, intentionally withholding relevant information from—the lender about the first mortgage.

Smelter Skelter

Reuters;

Glencore is planning to close its Horne smelter, Canada’s largest copper metal-producing operation, due to environmental issues and the millions of dollars needed to upgrade the facility, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.

The London-listed miner does not disclose copper metal production figures for its Canadian operation, but industry sources estimate annual output at more than 300,000 metric tons.

Meanwhile… REGULATORY RELIEF FOR CERTAIN STATIONARY SOURCES TO PROMOTE AMERICAN MINERAL SECURITY

Oil’s Well

An economy in recession doesn’t need as much oil as one that grows. Who knew? More evidence that the marginal consumer is throwing in the towel.

Investors and analysts have spent much of the year embracing the view that the oil market, which has been in oversupply mode, is heading straight for a glut through 2026 — and that glut could reach as high as 4 million barrels per day (b/d) and depress global prices even further along the way.

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