'I Know Its Gonna Blow!' - Denninger - (AI gonna go poof! - CL)

 Seriously folks, the OpenAI "investment" into AMD is arguably the most-ridiculous example of this I've ever seen.

OpenAI has never made a single nickel in net profit.  Not one.  They are, thus far, nothing more than a circular money-funneling machine taking "investments" from various places and spending it -- or worse, committing to do so at a scale they cannot actually fund in the present tense.......

Full text:

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=254178 

.....Without power an electrically-operated thing is a worthless brick.

As an example the capital cost for a 1GW nuclear plant in the United States is currently estimated to run in the neighborhood of $10 billion cash.  This in turn means that if you're going to build "5 GW" of data center you need to add to the capital expense another $50 billion and that does not include the operating cost, just the construction and presumes you can fund it with cash and do not have to pay interest on the money.

To be able to build that of course you need the revenue and I've seen projections that $2 trillion in revenue would be a reasonable expectation to fund these projects on the board not including the capital cost of the power required for them since nobody is adding that in.  This is some 20 times the current revenue of all AI products combined and roughly 7% of US GDP with all of it spent "on the come" without meaningful contribution to the bottom line.

If you actually believe any of this and are "investing" based on it you deserve to lose every penny you put in -- and further, no firm should be able to claim to be planning to install gigawatt draws on the power grid without also including the capital cost and time to deliver said power generation and transmission within their projections and at their expense.

To do so should be considered securities fraud.

A perfect example of what Karl Denninger has been fuming about on DaMedicalMafia!

Why We Need Transparency in Health Care Costs

By Harriet Green

Ten years ago, my daughter asked me “Why do we have health insurance if we aren’t allowed to see the doctor?” I had a three-day rule where my premise -- most non-serious conditions resolve in 72 hours -- so no need to waste my time or money going to urgent care. Besides, rising premiums pushed me into high-deductible health insurance.

More than a year ago I rushed my younger child to urgent care and the bill remains unresolved. After a heavy object was inadvertently dropped on his finger, causing it to swell 2X its original size, we headed to urgent care the next day when swelling, pain, and movement ballooned.

The visit was brief. Though the front desk clerks were inefficient, the nurse whisked him quickly to the exam room. The doctor’s exam was thorough -- he was judged unlikely to have broken bones or require surgery, yet a plain x-ray was ordered to confirm. 

So I summarize: time spent included a 10-minute doctor visit, 10-minute x-ray, and 1 hour check-in. The bill arrived a few months later: doctor visit was $426.07 and plain x-ray was $501.38 for the facility and $78 for the radiologist. The $1000+ bill was crazy expensive. My outpatient kidney CT scan a few years ago was under $500, and despite my rule, my son saw the same urgent care doctor the month prior with a lower visit cost ($240.86) and a longer visit time (30 minutes). A friend seen at the same urgent care with a swollen ankle was also billed the lower cost visit.

I assumed they made a mistake. I called Stanford Healthcare to dispute my bill and was told only procedure codes can be disputed. So the rep gave me the procedure codes responsible for each item on my bill. The procedure code matched finger x-ray and the visit code was billed moderate versus low complexity. 

Perhaps the x-ray procedure code was billed incorrectly. To find out, I called Aetna, my medical insurance provider, to obtain an estimate for the x-ray procedure code billed. Aetna’s rep called back a week later with my estimate: the finger x-ray code billed by Stanford Healthcare in Palo Alto with no deductible paid would cost $124.12. Much more reasonable, I thought. She had a caveat -- the number was an estimate and my bill may be higher or lower. Knowing the actual cost, I asked if my bill might be double or quadruple the estimate and was given a definitive “no.”

Read it all:

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/10/why_we_need_transparency_in_health_care_costs.html

Congress And The Executive AGAIN Act To SCREW You - (Repeat - DaWhiteHouse and Congress DO NOT WANT TO SOLVE the problem which DaMedicalMafia has created for THEIR BENEFIT! PERIOD! - CL)

 https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=254192 

So why isn't either party, in either the House or Senate, interested in something like this?  Hell, how about just three simple ones to start:

• All prices must be publicly posted and everyone pays the same price no matter how they pay and who they are for the same thing -- drug, procedure, whatever.  No exceptions other than a cost-based discount for cash-on-the-table (e.g. 3% discount for cash with service as opposed to a credit card or sending an invoice) and no indirect billing is permitted at all under any circumstance -- you get the bill, not an insurance company, Medicare, Medicaid or whatever.  What the insurance company (whether traditional Medicare, Advantage, private party insurance, etc.) pays and on what terms is between you and the insurance company.  Differential pricing as a means of restraint of trade or damaging competition (including extortion to buy "insurance") is a 10 year in prison felony under 15 USC Chapter 1.  Demand that this crap stop right now or start throwing every single medical provider, drug company executive and hospital administrator in prison until they cut that crap out.
  
  
• No forced-tied sales (they're illegal under 15 USC Chapter 1) (you can get your X-ray, MRI or whatever anywhere you want -- yes, including dental.)  Again, throw any who refuse in prison immediately for 10 years under that same 100+ year old law.
  
  
• All drugs, devices and medical items sold at wholesale must be on a "most-favored nation" basis in the United States.  No more forcing US citizens to bear the development costs for drugs that other nations' citizens then get to enjoy without paying for it.  Again, those who won't comply go to prison for 10 years.  All of them.

Do just those three things and the cost of medical care drops like a stone.

The law requiring those sentences has been on the books for 100 years and has twice been confirmed to apply by the US Supreme Court.

Further, I bet people will suddenly care a great deal about whether something works or not when they personally have to pay for it, no matter how much or little it costs.

PS: For now this article is pinned thus if you share the link non-contributors (including those without a login ID) can read the entire article.  For how long it remains pinned will be entirely dependent on its circulation.

Had Hitler Won the War, by Hans Vogel - The Unz Review

 Hitler’s and German popularity in Europe reached a pinnacle in the summer of 1941, when the German army invaded the Soviet Union. Since former East German army general Bernd Schwipper published his thoroughly documented monograph on Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion, there can be no doubt that by ordering it, Hitler beat Stalin to it. Interpreting a wealth of original sources from the perspective of military science, Schwipper proves beyond any doubt that Stalin was planning to invade Germany sometime in July, 1941. It would have meant a certain death for European culture if Stalin had been able to execute his plan. At the same time it explains why so many Europeans aligned with the Germans when they prevented this by invading first. They might have had second thoughts about National Socialism, but the last thing they wished for was to live under Communism.

Ever since the Bolsheviks staged their coup in 1917, in a first step towards the globalist plan for complete world domination, the Europeans were gripped with fear. In most historical treatises, this fear is said to emanate from petty bourgeois narrow-mindedness. The middle classes just rejected the legitimate demands of the working class. However, support in Europe for Germany after June 1941 was not limited to the middle class. In France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Baltic republics, the Balkans and Scandinavia, young men from across the social spectrum hurried to report for duty in the German army, especially the SS. There were more Europeans enlisting in the SS and Wehrmacht than there were who enrolled in similar units that were part of, or fought along with the US and British armed forces. Indeed, voluntary military service being the ultimate proof of loyalty, until 1945 Europeans were more pro-German than pro-American or pro-English.

Support for Germany broadened and became more solid in 1943 and 1944, when the RAF and the USAAF began bombing European cities. Not only German cities were targeted, but also cities in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Italy. It should not be forgotten that not only were millions of German civilians killed by allied aerial bombings, so were hundreds of thousands of French, Italian, Dutch and Belgian civilians. In other words, the allied air forces were waging war not just against the German people but against all Europeans within their radius of action....

....Standard postwar narratives generally misrepresent or distort some key historical facts, one of these being that Hitler was a warlike madman and that he was the one who started the Second World War. Hitler did not want war, least of all with England and hardly anybody today knows that after war had broken out, he reached some fifty times with offers for a peace settlement. Rather, Winston Churchill in London and FDR in Washington DC were hell-bent on having a war with Germany......

https://www.unz.com/article/had-hitler-won-the-war/ 

....With the globalist US government and big banks calling the shots in Europe after 1945, there was, of course no room whatsoever for the kind of economic policies first put in practice by Hitler. At the same time it meant that broadly beneficial social policies were anathema as well. However, during the so-called Cold War it was deemed necessary to throw some bones to the working class and set up what has come to be called a welfare state in the part of Europe under American occupation. If not, local workers might have become Communist and cause problems too complex and too expensive to solve. Not surprisingly, after the Iron Curtain finally came down in 1991, the European welfare state was dismantled piecemeal.

The economic, social and political situation in today’s Europe is diametrically opposite to what Adolf Hitler had in mind. He wanted a Europe consisting of autonomous, ethnically based political entities working together along parallel political lines and with common basic values, toward shared goals. Sort of what De Gaulle once called “L’Europe des patries,” stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals.

Of Two Minds - Look Out Below

 As I often note, making Plans B and C is free.

The stock market is always looking past "bad news" to front-run "good news." Once it became clear that the Titanic was indeed going to sink, the stock market would rally on the prospect of sharp growth in lifeboat shares. In other words, never mind the bad news, let's look beyond that and find some reason to rally.

This is a pattern that's easily visible in the past two decades. When it became clear that Covid was becoming a global pandemic, the US stock market rallied for weeks, something that struck sober analysts as completely disconnected from reality. Eventually reality intruded and the market crashed.

The same dynamic was also apparent in the run-up to the 2000 dot-com implosion--stocks rallied right up to March 6, 2000, before starting a two-year long controlled demolition--and the 2008-09 stock market crash, when shares of visible doomed General Motors and Fannie Mae both maintained lofty valuations that were completely disconnected from a painfully visible reality. (Fannie Mae shares went to near-zero in the subsequent crash.)

And so here we are again. The stock market is rallying despite overwhelming evidence that the US economy and global economy are heading for a deep recession. The justifications are either 1) the AI boom is changing everything or 2) the Federal Reserve will continue lowering interest rates and flood the market with liquidity, i.e. "The Fed Put" will save the stock market, just as its done for the past 25 years......

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct25/look-out10-25.html?fullweb=1 

....There are also less easily measured trends at work. One factor that is not tracked and therefore poorly understood is how close to the edge many small businesses are. Those that survived the Covid lockdown have had to raise prices just to cover the sharp increases in their own costs. Small business isn't making big margins; rather, they're absorbing costs to keep the doors open. As some costs decline, they won't drop prices, as they need to finally make a profit.
Many owners are hovering on the edge of burnout, having compensated for higher costs by working longer hours themselves.
Any decline in consumer spending will push many of these business owners to finally give up. As for selling the business to new owners: few young people have the capital, appetite for risk and willingness to work long hours for uncertain returns to buy a small business. So the businesses close and there are no replacements: those enterprises, commercial spaces, employment and taxes paid all disappear, and they won't come back.
Those who operate small businesses themselves know that small business owners are viewed by local government as tax donkeys : they're business owners so they're doing well, let's jack up business license fees, etc.
Another factor is the change in speculative psychology once "investors" (i.e. gamblers) finally accept that the Titanic is in fact going to sink, that is, the Fed is not going to bail out the stock market with newly issued trillions. We can anticipate the stair-step down as confidence slips to denial, then anger, then grief and finally, acceptance.
As I often note, making Plans B and C is free. Making plans for how you'll respond to recession and/or a protracted stock market decline takes nothing but time. It's very difficult to act decisively before the herd turns and panics, which is why so few manage to do so.
We cannot anticipate every impact a recession and stock market free-fall will have on our household , but we can anticipate the possibility our income and wealth will be negatively affected and belt-tightening may be prudent. If the happy-crowd is right and there is no recession, having a plan didn't cost anything. But if the happy-crowd is wrong, those without a plan to act decisively before the herd panics will suffer more than those who had a plan and acted on it.

Opinion | He Believes America Should Be a Theocracy. He Says His Influence Is Growing. - The New York Times

 Wilson: Christian nationalism is the conviction that secularism is a failed experiment, that societies require a transcendent grounding in order to be able to function at all. And as a Christian, I believe that that transcendent ground should be the living God and not an idol.

That would be my short-form definition of Christian nationalism. Even shorter would be: Christian nationalism is the conviction that we should stop making God angry.

Full text:

https://.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/opinion/doug-wilson-america-religion-theocracy.html 

The Lesson of Lepanto - Vox Popoli

 A reminder that God loves His warriors and helps those who help themselves:

https://voxday.net/2025/10/08/the-lesson-of-lepanto/ 

That’s the pattern of every important battle in Christian history. One man, alone, often betrayed by his Christian brothers, under resourced, with only a small band of bedragged warriors, standing in victory against the pagan hordes.

No Crusader victory was ever a triumph of Christian unity. Most of Christendom sat Lepanto out. France stayed home. Protestant Europe stayed home. Even most of Italy stayed home. The Holy League was a minority of the willing. A handful of ships and a handful of men who made the decision to go. And that’s the truth.

History turns on the ones who go. Not on the ones who wait for orders. Not on the ones who whine about the hierarchy. The ones who go. Western man today stands on another shore. The pagan fleets are at pur shores again.  Our clergy are cautious, our politicians are compromised, our institutions asleep.

So what now?

The Churchians aren’t going to save the civilization they despise. The foreigners, immigrants, migrants, and refugees aren’t going to save the nations they hate. The governments aren’t going to defend the peoples they have betrayed. The priests and pastors aren’t going to defend the faith they subverted.

And yet, all we need are twelve.