“…2 Student loan delinquencies have exploded to a level that we have never seen before…

Student loan delinquency has climbed to roughly 25 percent of borrowers with payments due during the first year of the current Trump administration, according to new analysis.

Researchers from The Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers said the sharp rise in missed payments, nearly triple the pre-coronavirus pandemic rate, has pushed millions into default risk and lowered credit scores, warning of broader financial fallout for households and colleges facing higher nonpayment rates.

3 The monthly cost of owning a home has risen to absurd heights…

All in, the median monthly housing payment for an owner — including mortgage principal and interest, taxes, homeowners insurance, and estimated maintenance expenses — has ballooned to more than $2,800, a staggering 72% jump from $1,635 six years earlier.

4 Foreclosure filings were way up in 2025, and so far in 2026 we are 26 percent above last year’s pace…

A fresh wave of foreclosures is sweeping across the United States, with more than 118,000 homes caught up in the crisis in just the first three months of 2026.

It is a grim omen – with echoes of the run up to the 2008 Great Recession – that financial pressure is mounting for thousands of families.

New Attom data shows 118,727 properties were hit with a foreclosure filing in the first quarter – up 26 percent on the same period last year.

5 The number of Americans that cannot pay their credit card bills in full each month has reached another record high…”

~ Full article…

“…The oil and gas companies that invested at least $75 million in Trump’s reelection are cashing in on this instability. A recent Financial Times analysis estimates that U.S. oil companies could collect an additional $63 billion in revenue this year if crude prices remain at these wartime levels. In March alone, the industry is expected to generate $5 billion in extra cash flow.

This type of windfall isn’t a fluke. We’ve seen this pattern for decades.

Oil has a way of appearing in the background of every chapter of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and beyond. Iran nationalized its oil industry in the 1950s and a CIA-backed coup followed. Iraq, sitting on some of the world’s largest reserves, was invaded in 2003. And earlier this year, the U.S. invaded Venezuela and immediately began plans for a taxpayer-backed oil industry takeover.
(…)
As oil executives profit off the war in Iran, Congress must once again push for a windfall profits tax on the largest oil companies. This isn’t an outlandish idea. Other countries have already done it. After the 2022 energy shock, the United Kingdom enacted a windfall tax on oil and gas companies, raising about $3.3 billion in its first year and roughly $4.5 billion the next — money used to help households pay their energy bills…”

~ Full article…

“…“Creepy CEO” Advocates Involuntary Servitude in “Service to the West”

“Alex Karp, the creepy CEO of creepy defense contractor Palantir, just can’t stop talking about killing people,” Lucas Ropek writes for Gizmodo. “During a recent call with investors, the billionaire let it slip that he doesn’t mind a little bloodshed, just so long as the money keeps pouring in.”

“Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them,” Karp said, with a smile on his face. The CEO added that he was very proud of the work his firm is doing and that he felt it was good for America. “I’m very happy to have you along for the journey,” he said. “We are crushing it. We are dedicating our company to the service of the West, and the United States of America, and we’re super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about.”

For Karp, “service to the West” includes conscription, that is to say involuntary servitude and the possibility of a violent and horrific death for an untold number of men and women drafted to fight the forever wars envisioned by the billionaire elite, including those within the “libertarian” tech sector.

However, forcing an individual against his or her will to kill and possibly be killed for the sake of the state (or foreign states, such as Israel), and in accordance with a “social contract” that demands submission and obedience, is not libertarian. In the case of Palantir, it is more accurately described as “techno-fascism,” an alliance between Silicon Valley and the state. Contrary to libertarian principles advocating against government intervention, leading tech companies frequently advocate for regulations that favor established AI companies benefiting from government funding and contracts.

Palantir, named after the “seeing stones” from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, may be characterized as a “merchant of death,” a term prominent in the 1930s regarding WWI profiteering. Alex Karp may be compared to Basil Zaharoff, a Greek arms dealer and industrialist, one of the wealthiest men of his time. Unlike Zaharoff, Karp is not selling rifles or munitions, he is selling something far worse—the ability, through artificial intelligence, to murder thousands, if not millions of people with the speed and efficiency of computer technology…”

~ Full article…

“…Tiny UAE, 1.4 million citizens, wields so much power that Saudi Arabia sees it as a serious threat. In December, Saudi Arabia bombed UAE surrogates in Yemen and told the emirates to exit the country. They didn’t. If the US and Israel hadn’t attacked Iran, more fireworks were in the offing.

Israel is the UAE’s close ally. They collaborate not just on the War on Iran but in many of these various “civil wars” that are both money-making ventures and a series of heartless state-destruction campaigns that give them greater geopolitical weight in the region.

We first need to understand what UAE really is. Comprising seven emirates – Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al-Quwain, Ras Al-Khaimah, and Fujairah – it is now the hub of an empire that both Iran and Saudi Arabia would like to knee-cap.

The powerhouse is actually Abu Dhabi, the oil giant which is the effective boss of the rest, including Dubai. Abu Dhabi is a family business, run by The Bani Fatima, the sons of Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak Al Ketbi who is the most influential of the wives of the late Sheikh. Today, ultimate power resides with MBZ (Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan) the eldest of her six sons.

MBZ was a long-time buddy of MBS (Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman) but those days are well behind us. In the words of a senior Saudi figure, Ahmed Altuwaijri, Abu Dhabi is Israel’s Trojan horse in the region. Along with Bahrain, UAE is a signatory to the Abraham Accords which is a US vehicle to bring Israel in from the cold. The other Gulf States oppose this “Israel First” policy and are clear that a resolution of the rights of the Palestinians must come first, although they do little about it.

The Bani Fatimid system works like this: identify a country that is experiencing instability, pick a side (preferably anti-political Islam) and offer not only to finance that militia or warlord of choice but provide the immense logistical support the UAE has, including air freighting weapons, supplies and soldiers, and the complex systems needed to convert, for example, stolen gold into arms or other assets. Time and again this has resulted in the creation of shadow economies that end up controlling significant resources (gold, oil, agriculture, ports) and creating parallel states. Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen have all been played in this way. It is textbook divide and rule: weakening a state from within to then exert ongoing influence and resource extraction…”

~ Full article…

“…Fox host Sean Hannity: “America is now benefitting financially because of the blockade” on Iranian ports. Hannity continued: “The price of natural gas is way up overseas, all while the price of American natural gas has actually gone down, making America’s natural gas more competitive, more desirable than ever.” Fox Business reporter Lauren Simonetti joined, bragging, “We are going to export more natural gas than ever before, with 60% of our gas supplying Europe this year.” Simonetti concluded: “In the meantime, as you note, the U.S. is strengthening its hand as an energy superpower. We are the gas station for the world. U.S. oil production now tops a record 13 million barrels per day, and we’re swimming in natural gas.” Four days later on his radio show, Hannity said: “It’s in America’s, frankly, unique interest if the strait was closed,” stating that it’s “actually a net plus for the U.S.” because the world now has to “come to America for all of their energy needs as we are a net exporter.”…”

~ Full article…

“…Trump and his family members appear to have adopted influence-dealing on a dramatically larger scale than the Biden family was ever accused of. And the Trumps’ sprawling set of business deals with Gulf state royals and the sovereign wealth funds they control cannot be disentangled from the president’s decision-making in launching and continuing a war of choice against Iran.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE reportedly urged Trump to launch the war against Iran, and both states reportedly pressed the U.S. to protect them by escalating the conflict “until Iran is decisively defeated.” Qatar, meanwhile, traditionally serves as the regional intermediary between the Iranian regime and Western governments, and has pushed for negotiations.

Those states aren’t just U.S. allies whose views must be weighed by American leaders — their leaders have spent the past few years enriching the president’s family.

In perhaps the most noxious of the myriad entanglements, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan — an Abu Dhabi prince known as the “spy sheikh” for his leadership of the UAE’s intelligence service — secretly agreed to buy a huge stake in a crypto company partially owned by the president and his family, paying $500 million in what The Wall Street Journal described as a “hugely profitable” deal for its founders.

The dealing is so egregious that it even raised eyebrows in Trump-friendly circles. “You know what the difference is between the Biden family business and the Trump family business?” Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy asked in a February piece for National Review. “You’d have to add two digits to the sum of Biden abuses of power, foreign entanglements, and corruption alleged in the report to get near what Trump has raked in just from the UAE.”

But that’s just one of numerous business deals in the Gulf involving the president’s family.

The Trump Organization, which the president owns and Eric and Don Jr. oversee, is partnering with a developer who has ties to the Saudi government on a series of Trump-branded real estate projects in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Oman — including a $7 billion development deal financed by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, whose board of directors is headed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Kushner’s private equity fund received a $2 billion investment from the Saudi PIF — reportedly forced through by bin Salman over the board’s objection — as well as $200 million from the UAE.

The Qatari royal family gave Trump a $400 million “super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet” to serve as Air Force One.

The Associated Press reports that Powerus, a Florida-based drone manufacturer partly owned by Don Jr. and Eric, is reportedly “trying to sell” defensive drone interceptors “to Gulf countries while they are under attack by Iran and dependent on the U.S. military led by their father.” (Powerus co-founder Brett Velicovich told the AP that the company “is doing many demos across the Middle East right now” but did not name the specific countries.)…”

~ Full article…

“…The French Jewish Union for Peace (UJFP) on Tuesday accused the French subsidiary of the American carrier of “having facilitated the transport, routing and delivery of essential components for fighter jets from the United States to Israel via France”.

They argued the equipment was used to “maintain and repair F-35 fighter jets used by the Israeli Air Force” in “bombing and surveillance missions in Gaza”.

The complaint described these as “acts that could be classified as complicity in war crimes, complicity in crimes against humanity and complicity in genocide”.
(…)
The complaint lists 117 shipments sent between early April and late October 2025 from the US to Israel, with a stopover at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle Airport, all handled by the company “FedEx Express FR”.

It says 22 of the shipments were directly transported to Israel from Paris, including at least three by FedEx aircraft registered in France.

FedEx “necessarily had knowledge of the contents of the shipments”, the complaint said…”

~ Full article…

“…From the coverage, it reads like the egg was underinsured (“Insurers paid out £106,700 for the loss to Dawson’s employers at the Craft Irish Whiskey Company”) and it was not recovered. Conticello dumped the bag’s contents, not knowing what they were…”

~ Full article…