“They borrowed a lot more money than they should have for a company that isn’t growing — it’s a slow-melting ice cube,” said Tim Hynes, the global head of credit research at Debtwire. “If you have declining sales, you have to have a lot of cushion, and if you don’t … that’s how you wind up getting in trouble.”

The Saks-Neiman Marcus merger was meant to buoy both retailers as department stores continue to lose relevance and consumers are increasingly reticent to spend on nonessentials. During the holiday shopping season, transactions at high-end department stores from Black Friday to Cyber Monday fell 10 percent compared with the same four-day stretch a year earlier, according to Consumer Edge, which tracks transaction data on U.S. credit and debit cards. They also lagged those of their off-price peers.

But Saks, in particular, struggles to draw in customers, said Shawn Grain Carter, a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Saks Global posted second-quarter revenue of $1.6 billion in October, a more than 13 percent decline year-over-year.

It has also fallen behind on paying its vendors, leaving its stores with a limited assortment of products, according to Debtwire and other news reports. Several vendors have sued the company over the past two years, alleging it did not pay its bills for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of women’s apparel, winter accessories and jewelry.

~ Full article…

Moms who said their incomes were never enough also tended to have lower levels of income and education, more stressful life events, and higher overall stress. But even after the scientists accounted for these other factors, income insufficiency still showed a unique association to how well babies’ brains developed.

The scientists focused most closely on brain features that typically develop quickly in the first year of life, and show up on EEGs in alpha and beta ranges, linked in other research to later cognitive development in areas such as executive function, language, and attention. Babies whose moms said their incomes were rarely or never sufficient generally showed slower increases in alpha power, slower increases in alpha peak frequency—a classic marker of maturation in infancy—and consistently lower beta power. These differences were noticeable when the babies reached around 9 months of age.

~ Full article…

Alongside its strategic geopolitical position, Greenland is known for an abundance of untapped raw materials, from oil and gas reserves to critical mineral deposits and a treasure trove of rare earth elements.

These critical minerals and rare earth elements are vital components in emerging technologies, such as wind turbines, electric vehicles, energy storage technologies and national security applications. China repeatedly sought to leverage its near monopoly of rare earths to exert pressure on the U.S. last year.

“Trump is a real estate guy,” Clayton Allen, head of practice at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, told CNBC by video call.

“Greenland is sitting on some of the most valuable real estate in terms of economic advantage and strategic defense for the next three to five decades.”

~ Full article…

Many dismiss this as not a “real” world war because we have been conditioned to believe World War III must be nuclear. But we have drifted terrifyingly close to that precipice. In Gaza, the tonnage of conventional explosives rivals small nuclear devices. In Ukraine, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been a constant target and point of coercion. Furthermore, we have weaponized a new digital ideology: using artificial intelligence for mass surveillance and precision targeting, creating a chilling new paradigm of control.

Many dismiss this as not a “real” world war because we have been conditioned to believe World War III must be nuclear. But we have drifted terrifyingly close to that precipice. In Gaza, the tonnage of conventional explosives rivals small nuclear devices. In Ukraine, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been a constant target and point of coercion. Furthermore, we have weaponized a new digital ideology: using artificial intelligence for mass surveillance and precision targeting,
[…]
This is why I am beginning a campaign focused on the top five technology companies and their executives whose platforms and tools have enabled the genocide in Gaza. We need to stop the profit motive of tech executives in creating these weapons. I am asking for your support to petition the Spanish government to investigate and prosecute these big tech entities for complicity in atrocity and crimes against humanity.

As I’ve detailed previously, Spain’s judiciary, with its principle of universal jurisdiction, presents the most viable path for such a landmark prosecution.

~ Full article…

Baba Vanga, the blind Bulgarian mystic, known to have foreseen events such as 9/11 and the COVID-19 pandemic, predicted the outbreak of World War III for the year 2026. Among her most ominous forecasts was a warning that World War III would erupt in 2026, a prediction which comes amid rising geopolitical tensions. This includes a potential Chinese takeover of Taiwan and a direct confrontation between Russia and the United States.
[…]
“ARE WE ENTERING WORLD WAR 3? Big investors are quietly preparing for a complete regime change. They know that World Wars don’t start with a single missile…,” wrote one.

“Here is the footage of U.S. forces seizing a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the Atlantic. This is getting out of control. Trump and the U.S. are going to start World War 3,” wrote another.

~ Full article…

Cities without taxes nor regulations managed by businessmen as if it were a start-up with which to do business. This libertarian utopia that despises democracy is embraced by more and more technology tycoons and investors of Silicon Valley. Some of them are watching the illegal military operation of USA in Venezuelawith which Donald Trump has managed to decapitate the regime Nicolas Maduroas an opportunity to turn your vision into a reality.

The calls freedom cities (freedom cities) are a seemingly marginal movement whose influence is expanding around the world thanks to the money of technological billionaires like Peter Thiel o Marc Andreessenthe two most prolific investors in the valley. Both, allies of Trump and his authoritarian drift, are financing the creation of these experiments in countries like Honduras, Nigeria, Zambia o Greenlandwhose sovereignty is also being openly threatened by the Trump administration.

“Venezuela does not need to become another Irak. “You need a city of freedom,” tweeted yesterday sociologist Mark Lutter, founder and executive president of the Charter Cities Institute, an organization that promotes the creation of charter cities, cities that a developed country creates within a developing country and that are governed by the book market to theoretically boost the economic growth. In other words, so that its ‘citizens’ settlers can make money.

This organization has been asking for the creation of this project in Venezuela since 2019, reports analyst Jenny Cohn. In addition, it receives money from a network of venture capital funds supported by Thiel, promoter of the vice president J.D. Vance and the businessman Joe Lonsdale. They both co-founded Palantirthe controversial data analytics firm that White House used for the fight against terrorism and to deport thousands of migrants. In December, Lonsdale openly called for restoring public hangings in USA to show “male leadership.”

~ Full article…

~ Original source…

In retrospect, many now see Venezuela not as a turning point but as a warning. It is a glimpse of a more transactional, unpredictable US foreign policy, and a reminder that reliance carries risk, especially when Washington moves unilaterally.

Greenland, too, underscores Europe’s dependence, though the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, is now preparing Europe’s response to any military action on Greenland. As part of the Kingdom of Denmark, yet embedded in American defence planning, it shows just how Europe’s sovereignty blurs at the frontiers of great-power rivalry.

Venezuela may not have changed European capabilities, but it sharpened the argument. It reinforced the case for more autonomous decision-making. This is not because Europe wants to abandon the US alliance, but because it may not always have the choice.

That point was reinforced again this week when US forces intercepted two oil tankers in moves that were swift and consequential, though not on the oil tanker sanctioned by the US in 2024 for distributing illicit Russian oil and sailing only this week through the Channel. When rules are broken and escalation risk is real, who acts? Once more, it is Washington, though the UK provided military support such as RAF surveillance aircraft and naval backing. By and large, though, Europe just watched, assessed, and coordinated its language. It was not a failure of diplomacy so much as a reminder of capability and who still calls the shots.

~ Full article…

Law enforcement also became convinced that there was a link among the victims. Not just their wealth and the location of their homes—something more singular. Detectives in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Westchester County, New York, cross-referenced their cases. Did the victims belong to any clubs? Only the most exclusive yacht and country clubs in the country, but there wasn’t one they all belonged to. What about academic affiliations? Collectively, they’d been to every elite boarding school and Ivy League university, but they weren’t all, say, graduates of Yale. Did they use the same arborist? Was the same individual collecting their trash? No and no. The police did notice one thing: Many of the victims’ phone numbers were not publicly listed, which made the fifty-ring calls odd—to say nothing of the hang-up calls some targets had received prior to being robbed.

Two years into the crime wave, investigators were no closer to identifying the burglars, who were more prolific than ever. Over Memorial Day weekend in 1982, they hit five houses in Bedford alone. In Greenwich, they were returning to rob homes they’d previously struck. Police decided to cast a wider net via teletype, a messaging system used by law enforcement around the country, in the hope that someone, somewhere, knew something useful. According to Hirsch, the teletype spelled out the thieves’ methods and asked any department experiencing similar crimes in its jurisdiction to contact the Greenwich police.

The next morning, Hirsch got a call from a cop in Massachusetts who wanted to know: Had he ever heard of a book called the Social Register?

America’s aristocracy traces its lineage to a time between the end of the Civil War and the dawn of the twentieth century, in the Gilded Age. Think Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Robber barons built obscene fortunes, monopolies lined the pockets of corrupt politicians, and unchecked capitalism opened a permanent chasm between the very rich and everyone else. The upper crust loved to throw opulent balls and banquets, which allowed hosts to show off their money, power, and influence, and prominent socialites kept so-called visiting lists of well-connected friends, acquaintances, and business contacts.

Louis Keller was not part of the new aristocracy, but he recognized a business opportunity in these quasi-private lists. He collected them, consolidated them, and produced a master copy of high society, selling it only to those who’d made the cut. First published in 1886, the Social Register was a thin, elegantly bound book with pumpkin-colored lettering on a black background. When later editions featured a blue cover, it became known as the Blue Book.

The first edition drew exclusively from the social lists of people with homes in Newport, Rhode Island, a favorite vacation destination of the elite. In time there were Blue Books for almost every major U.S. city. A group called the Social Register Association became the gatekeeper of the Blue Book, and it created strict rules for new entries. A person could be listed because of marriage to someone already included in the book, if they were elected president of the United States, or if they were nominated by an existing member. For many years, the Social Register was classist as well as anti-Semitic and racist; excluded Jewish society members in Chicago created their own version of the Blue Book in 1918, and the Social Register did not include a Black member for nearly a century after its creation.

~ Full article…

Trump’s Economic Morass
Probability: High

Many economists have already sounded the alarm that all the preconditions are present for economic meltdown. Financial assets are massively overvalued with unbounded artificial intelligence fueling 40% of U.S. GDP growth and 80% of stock market growth even though productivity gains by companies experimenting with AI are so far elusive.

Some experts are beginning to doubt whether AI can really go beyond machine learning to the artificial general intelligence of Silicon Valley dreams, charging that current AI models can handle simple problems but “fundamentally break down on complex tasks,” thinking less, not more, as the difficulty rises. A stock market crash could wipe out $35 trillion in consumer wealth, according to former International Monetary Fund Deputy Director Gita Gopinath. Institutionalizing, yet lightly regulating, cryptocurrency adds risk uncertainty.

Adding to these risks is the growing role played by unregulated non-bank financial institutions or shadow banks in corporate finance, and in state finance in China, making it difficult to know how much companies are leveraged. An internal probe of First Brands, an auto parts maker that filed for bankruptcy in 2025, examined how it used money that was due from customers to borrow from lenders several times over. First Brands’s collapse was also spurred by the growing weakness of middle-class consumers no longer able to maintain or purchase new vehicles.

The situation is frighteningly reminiscent of what happened in 2007-08 when the holders of cheap mortgages could not keep up their payments. The K-shaped economy, with just the wealthiest 20% of U.S. households fueling consumption, is not sustainable. Tariffs are beginning to increase inflation, and low hiring levels have led to an affordability crisis. Trump has few solutions beyond eliminating his own tariffs on food items such as coffee, negotiating with Big Pharma to lower drug costs, and promising $2,000 checks for most Americans that would boost U.S. debt already equaling around 125% of GDP, a level unprecedented for peacetime.

A financial crisis this time around could be far more lethal for U.S. power in the world than in 2008. China and the G-20 are unlikely to help a second time. The U.S. dollar, already weakened, would not be the shield it has been without the U.S. taking drastic action to cut spending and raise taxes.
[…]
Third Nuclear Era
Probability: Medium-High

2026 begins with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock moved to just 89 seconds to midnight. Great-power competition is driving new nuclear risks, as existing powers such as the United States, Russia, and China seek to increase their stockpiles or carry out new tests, while at the same time, proliferation threats, from Iran to Japan, are unfolding in a third nuclear era.

AI, offensive cyber, and anti-satellite weapons are creating new vulnerabilities for nuclear powers. Gone is the Cold War-era balance of terror, as is the post-Cold War stasis and its aftermath when the U.S. and Russia pledged to reduce their nuclear weapons stockpiles by more than 80%. The architecture of arms control accords has unraveled. Its last vestige, the New START Treaty, which limits the United States and Russia to 1,550 deployed warheads, expires in February, its fate uncertain.

In a nascent triangular arms race, U.S. military strategists are thinking the unthinkable: to fight two nuclear wars simultaneously. The U.S. is modernizing all three legs (land, sea, air) of its nuclear triad at an estimated cost of $1.7 trillion. Russia is also modernizing its nuclear forces, deploying new short-range “non-strategic” nukes, as is China. The Pentagon says Beijing will have 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030. In response to Russian and Chinese tactical nukes, the U.S. has developed its own short-range nuclear cruise missiles.

Though the major nuclear powers have not tested nuclear weapons since 1996, Trump has ordered new nuclear tests if others such as Russia and China test. China is expanding its test site at Lop Nur. Moscow’s threats of tactical nuclear use in Ukraine, a lowering of the nuclear threshold, suggested the feasibility of limited nuclear war. This risk extends to lesser nuclear states — North Korea, which has massively built up its missile and nuclear force capabilities, and India and Pakistan, whose nuclear rivalry continues.

~ Full article…

But amid the uncertainty, some investors see the potential for lucrative, long-term opportunities in the South American nation that has long been closed to much international business.

At least Charles Myers, chairman of the consulting firm Signum Global Advisors, thinks so.

“This is a major infrastructure play, I think it could be as big as $500 billion over the next 10 years,” Myers said on Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”

“I think people are being far too pessimistic. This is a massive opportunity across multiple sectors,” said Myers, who is organizing a trip to Venezuela with “investors, multinationals, and asset managers” that is set for March.

~ Full article…