Air Canada CEO Out After Admitting In PR Video That He Can’t Speak French Michael Rousseau is on his way out as head of Air Canada, after a crisis response that somehow made a bad situation worse – and then kept digging. The backdrop: a fatal March 22 crash at LaGuardia Airport involving a flight from Montreal to New York City. Two pilots were killed. Rousseau responded with a video offering his “deepest sorrow for everyone […]

Rubio Issues Veiled Threat After France, Italy Are Latest NATO Allies To Block US Military Flights For Iran War Update(1320ET): We detailed earlier that more and more EU and NATO countries are moving to block US military flights operating in Iran. This includes Spain, Switzerland, Italy and now France.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio has declared “without the United States there is no NATO.” In a fresh Al Jazeera interview Rubio […]

Oracle Firing Tens Of Thousands As CDS Explodes To Financial Crisis Record Two months ago, when ORCL announced it would raise $50 billion in a combination of stock and bonds to ease market fears about its soaring funding costs and lack of actual revenues and “to build additional capacity to meet the contracted demand from the company’s largest cloud customers, including Advanced Micro Devices, Meta Platforms, Nvidia, OpenAI, […]

Iran President Says ‘Prepared To End War’ If Security Guarantees Offered, Oil Plunges Summary President Pezeshkian: prepared to end war with guarantees against further attacks. IRGC warns it will hit 18 US tech companies in region, says Siemens in Israel already attack China, Pakistan issue broad five-point framework for peace (document below); France, Italy begin to block airspace for Iran-related US ops WarSec […]

Pentagon Weighs Anti-Drone Laser Weapon Deployment In DC To Fortify Airspace We outlined a glaring security gap in U.S. counter-drone defenses well before the U.S.-Iran conflict erupted one month ago. At the time, we specifically pointed out that data centers are largely unprepared for drone threats. We believe the Gulf conflict – after Iran bombed multiple data centers and military bases – has likely pushed the federal government […]

Treasury Unveils Whistleblower Portal To Combat Transnational Medicare, Medicaid Fraud Rings Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Whistleblowers are encouraged to report abuse of Medicare, Medicaid, and other government health benefit programs, the Department of the Treasury announced on March 30, while warning that sophisticated fraud schemes are siphoning billions from them. The White House and the U.S. […]

Ukraine’s Backers Want Reduction In Long-Range Strikes On Russian Oil, Zelensky Says We’ve been highlighting the significant impact of the Iran war on developments in Ukraine, where the over four-year long war is showing no end in sight. Ukraine’s President Zelensky has made clear his view that the current global focus on the Iran conflict has put Kiev in a weakened position. Already, Ukraine’s international partners are […]

Google’s New Quantum Research Reignites Push To Harden Bitcoin Authored by Micah Zimmerman via BitcoinMagazine.com, A new research paper from Google has intensified debate over whether Bitcoin can adapt in time to withstand advances in quantum computing, pushing developers and investors to confront a risk long treated as theoretical. Google’s quantum division said this week in a new whitepaper that future machines could […]

Supreme Court Sides With Christian Counselor, Strikes Down Colorado ‘Conversion Therapy’ Ban In a landmark 8-1 decision issued today, the Supreme Court sided with a Christian mental health counselor – ruling that Colorado’s law banning “conversion therapy” violates the First Amendment.  A transgender rights supporter takes part in a rally outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in December. The court on Tuesday heard arguments in a […]

European Inflation Jumps Most Since 2022 On Soaring Energy Prices Even As Core CPI Unexpectedly Shrinks In an early preview of the coming inflation spike, the euro area saw its steepest jump in inflation since 2022 as the Iran war pushed energy costs sharply higher, backing expectations that the ECB will have to raise interest rates. In March, European consumer prices rose 2.5% from a year ago in March – and up a whopping 1.9% […]

Solar Stocks Surge As Energy Shock Revives Renewables Trade Goldman analyst Adam Wijaya asked clients whether this year’s surge in SolarEdge, Enphase Energy, and other solar stocks is reviving a familiar trade: higher crude oil and natural gas prices in Europe and globally, strengthening the case for renewables as the energy shock sparks a return to coal switching. “Are we back to running the 2022 playbook?” Wijaya asked in a note […]

“Price Collapse” Hits Memory Sticks As Hoarded Inventory Floods Market After Google’s DeepSeek Moment Following our “Google’s DeepSeek Moment” report last week, which detailed how TurboQuant, a compression algorithm for large language models and vector search engines, could sharply reduce AI memory requirements and sparked a selloff in top memory stocks, a Taiwanese financial outlet is now reporting a plunge in memory stick prices […]

Job Openings Drop After Huge Upward Revision As Hires, Quits Unexpectedly Plunge To Six Year Low A few weeks ago, the BLS reported that January job openings unexpectedly soared by 400K, the biggest increase since November 2024, to 6.946MM, the highest since last October. Well, it turns out the jump was even higher than that because moments ago, the BLS published the latest February print, and while that number came in line with […]

Army Reviews Helicopter Flights Near Kid Rock’s Home, Anti-Trump Protests Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), The U.S. Army has opened an administrative review of two AH-64 Apache helicopters that flew low near musician Kid Rock’s home and above an anti-Trump protest in Nashville over the weekend. Two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters conduct flight operations in the U.S. Central Command area of […]

Conference Board Confidence Unexpectedly Jumped Amid War In March Despite war (and rising gas prices) now on respondents’ minds (the survey period for preliminary results was March 1 to 24), it is perhaps surprising that The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence rose more than expected in March (from 91.0 to 91.8), considerably better than the 87.9 expected. Even more intriguing, the Present Situation rose from 120.0 to 123.3 (118 […]

No THAC0 Tuesday By Michael Every of Rabobank No TACO And No THAC0 The Global Daily yesterday noted lots of reasons to worry about this Gulf War 3 – today there are far more. However, as made clear since the start of this crisis, there is no way to say, “This is silly,” or to ‘go home’ and return to ‘normality’. Everyone in the war except the US *is* at home. Israel is targeting Iran’s leaders and PM Netanyahu says the […]

Negative Equity Leaves 30% Of Car-Buyers Underwater On Trade‑Ins Authored by Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times, Almost one-third of American car buyers with a trade-in owe more than the vehicle is worth, new industry data show. About 30.5 percent of buyers trading in a car toward a new vehicle maintained negative equity, according to a JD Power report released on March 26. This is up 4.2 percentage points from a year ago and […]

Putin Winning, Ukraine’s Position Weakened, From Prolonged Iran War: Zelensky Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that a prolonged Iran war will be a net win for Moscow – and a significant setback for Kyiv. Speaking to Axios, he said bluntly: “I am sure Russia wants long war. They have benefits: The US is focusing on the Middle East and may decrease military help to Ukraine. Further he highlighted that “Sanctions are […]

Despite Tumbling Rates, US Home Price Acceleration Slowed In January US home price acceleration slowed significantly in January (according to the always lagged and smoothed Case-Shiller indices). After rising 0.50% MoM in December, the price of homes in America’s to 20 cities rose just 0.16% MoM in January (the lowest MoM rise since August and well below the 0.35% MoM expected)… Source: Bloomberg This left the 20-city […]

Futures Jump On Hopes Of War De-escalation, Korea Enters Bear Market On Memory Rout Futures are higher on a WSJ report that Trump is considering exiting the middle east conflict even if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened; but the market is deciding whether this is a genuine intent to leave or another feint given the previous US attacks during negotiations and that Trump has yet to adjust his Apr 6 deadline. As of 8:00am, S&P […]

U.S. Gasoline Prices Hit Politically Sensitive $4 Level As Trump Eyes Iran War Off-Ramp The overnight Wall Street Journal report that President Trump told aides he is willing to wind down the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted (and appeared to confirm this narrative in a social media post this morning) comes just as the national average gasoline price hit the politically sensitive […]

Judge Reassigns Elon Musk Cases After Accusations Of Bias Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times, A judge in Delaware on March 30 said she is reassigning cases involving Elon Musk after she was accused of being biased against him. Delaware Court of Chancery Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick said in a letter to lawyers that she was taking the step because “disproportionate media attention surrounding a judge’s handling […]

Unilever In “Advanced Discussions” To Sell Food Unit To Old Bay Maker Unilever Plc confirmed it is “now in advanced discussions” with Maryland-based spice maker McCormick & Company to sell its food business unit in a $15.7 billion transaction and said a final deal could be announced as soon as today.  “The Company is now in advanced discussions with McCormick & Company (“McCormick”) regarding a potential transaction,” the […]

AI Is “New Front Door To Commerce” As Consumers Ditch Google For Chatbots Shoptalk, one of the retail and e-commerce industry’s top U.S. conferences, took place in Las Vegas last week, where Goldman analysts had one key takeaway for clients on Monday morning: AI is beginning to reshape how consumers shop.  Analysts Brooke Roach and Kate McShane, among others, attended the conference and listened to retailers, consumer brands, and […]

China’s Quiet Gains During US-Israel War On Iran Authored by Hamza Zaman via RealClearDefense, The Iran conflict continues to protract despite President Trump’s assumption of a quick and easy victory. The goals of regime change and the decimation of the Iranian ballistic missile program remain unfulfilled, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz further adds to the strategic qualms of the Western powers. The GCC states are also […]