Zerohedge

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the ‘wrongly deported Maryland Dad’ that Democrats dropped everything to defend, was accused of being a gang member in a 2018 sworn affidavit by the father of his wife’s children.

“She is dating a gang member,” wrote Edwin Trejo Ramos of his ex, Jennifer Vasquez Sura in an affidavit filed in Prince George’s County Circuit Court in Maryland seeking an emergency court hearing to obtain custody of the couple’s two children. 

“She try to kill herself and she left the kids with 11 year [old] to take care of them. And I’m afraid my kids lives are in danger because she is dating a gang member,” reads the sworn affidavit, which was ultimately denied by a judge and later dismissed in 2019 over jurisdictional issues.

NEW: We @nypost have obtained court docs from 2018 showing
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was being accused of gang membership by his wife’s ex and the father of two of her kids.

“She is dating a gang member,” Jennifer Vasquez Sura’s ex, Edwin Trejo Ramos alleged in a petition filed in… pic.twitter.com/2Vg1gTYGUf

— Jennie Taer 🎗️ (@JennieSTaer) April 29, 2025

 According to the NY Post;

Abrego Garcia and Sura — a US citizen — met in 2016, according to NBC News. The couple moved in together in 2018, and in June 2019, they got married while Abrego Garcia was being held in an immigration center, standing on opposite sides of a security glass wall. Sura gave birth to their son a few months later.

The timeline of Abrego Garcia and Sura’s relationship suggests the claim in the petition referred to Abrego Garcia.

Three years later, Vasquez Sura applied for a protective order against Abrego Garcia, claiming that he punched, scratched and grabbed her – leaving her with bruises and bleeding.

Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadorian national, was illegally residing in the United States when he was arrested and deported to El Salvador in March due to what US authorities claim was a “prominent role” in the MS-13 gang.

While an immigration judge had previously ruled that there was strong evidence the man was a member of MS-13, a different judge issued a withholding of removal – preventing his deportation to his home country over concerns that he would not be safe there.

The US government subsequently admitted that the deportation was due to an administrative error.

On April 10, the US Supreme Court ruled that the government must “facilitate” the release of Garcia from El Salvadorian custody, and make sure his case “is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”

Since then, we’ve learned that Abrego Garcia was suspected by a Tennessee state trooper of human trafficking in 2022 after he was pulled over for driving erratically in a black 2001 Chevrolet Suburban – owned by another individual, full of people – and that the SUV was owned by a man who was himself deported after pleading guilty to smuggling illegal aliens in 2020.

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

On April 23rd, I participated in a conference at the European Parliament on the future of nuclear energy with experts from all over Europe, where I warned that, with the current energy policies, blackouts will be the norm, not a coincidence.

The shortsighted and sectarian policy of the activists who populate the government has led us to the worst blackout in the history of Spain. We have been without communication or electricity for nearly eleven hours.

This blackout, with the immediate collapse of fifteen gigawatts of power in the system, is the consequence of a policy that penalizes base energy, key to providing stability to the system, and plunders the energy sector.

Governments have been dedicated to closing nuclear power plants, making them unviable with abusive and confiscatory taxation; penalizing investment in distribution with absurd regulations; imposing a volatile and intermittent energy mix; and burdening energy with elevated taxes and administrative delays. What could go wrong? Everything.

And it happened.

Renewable energies, while essential in a balanced energy mix, cannot provide safety and stability due to their volatility and intermittent nature. That’s why it is essential to have a balanced system with base-load energy that operates all the time, such as hydropower, nuclear, and natural gas as backup.

Destroying access to nuclear energy with unnecessary closures and confiscatory taxation has been part of the fundamental causes of the disaster and the blackout.

Last week, they had to close the remaining nuclear power plants because their taxes are so high that they cannot cover their fixed costs. They have destroyed nuclear plants’ economics by political design. Moreover, those plants would have provided stability to the grid if national and regional governments, which use nuclear and hydroelectric power as cash cows for their revenue-hungry policies, had prioritized supply security over energy sectarianism.

There is much more.

Spain and Portugal produce electricity with more than 60% solar and wind energy. Hydraulic, nuclear, and combined cycle gas plants must cover the shortfalls in solar and wind production, which is intermittent. There is no possibility of having a stable and secure system with a continuous supply if the electrical grid is not balanced to avoid a total blackout.
According to Euronews, France sometimes produces too much electricity, leading the network operator RTE to disconnect solar or wind sites. The consumer pays taxes to cover the operator’s losses. This procedure prevents a general blackout of the grid.”

In Spain, the president of Red Eléctrica, Beatriz Corredor, whose experience in energy is more than scarce, has never given a message or coordinated actions to prevent blackouts that were happening more frequently recently. We have been experiencing sporadic supply cuts to the industry for years, and just a week ago, the Chamartín station had a severe supply cut episode.

The crisis was not only a disaster due to the shortsighted energy policy of the current and previous governments. It was a disaster due to the inaction of the Ministry of Defence. Similar to the recent floods, our security forces exhibited astonishment at their lack of mobilization. Trains and elevators blocked thousands of travelers for hours, while the army stood by, waiting for orders.

Six days ago, the government, left-wing parties, and many media outlets celebrated that Spain’s power grid ran entirely on renewable energy for a weekday for the first time. Bravo. A week later, a massive blackout in Spain, Portugal, and parts of France. France quickly restored electricity because it has the largest nuclear fleet in Europe. In Spain, the government maintained a confiscatory taxation system that prevented nuclear plants from operating, resulting in nearly eleven hours of darkness and no communication.

Red Eléctrica reported that the cause was a “strong oscillation in the electrical grid” that “forced the Iberian Peninsula to disconnect from the European system”. The collapse was immediate and long-lasting. It was the longest power outage in the history of Spain. The recovery efforts were in vain as they attempted to restore frequency control and stability with a system dependent on volatile and intermittent renewables.

A system without physical inertia, provided by baseload energies that operate all the time—nuclear and hydroelectric—makes it impossible to stabilise the grid in the face of supply disruptions.

When the collapse occurred, the Spanish electrical grid had almost 80% renewable generation, 11% nuclear, and only 3% natural gas. There was practically no base generation or physical inertia to absorb the shock that was generated.

For years, experts have issued warnings. Experts from around the world have been accused of being mouthpieces for invented lobbies when they warned of the risk to the system from overloading with renewables and eliminating or limiting base-load energies. In 2017, the European Network of Transmission System Operators warned that the increase in renewables would raise the risk of cascading failures if urgent investment was not made in synthetic inertia and storage technologies. Moreover, even if investment is made in storage, hundreds of experts warned about the additional burden with the electrification of the mobile fleet. Despite the warnings from energy companies and operators, the European Commission maintained its bet on renewable development that was poorly planned and worse executed. This included a New Green Deal that ignored the importance of networks and backup and seemed designed by school activists.

The Spanish government wanted to present itself as the top student of that so-called ecological sectarianism, which ignores copper and lithium mining, the importance of backup, and system stability. What have they achieved? They have created a disaster that has the potential to repeat itself.

Blackouts, which should have been something obsolete and forgotten, have become the norm since politicians have ideologised energy. Other countries have suffered similar problems: Australia (2016), Germany (2017), and the United Kingdom (2019) experienced blackouts or near-blackouts due to insufficient energy reserves or grid stability measures. However, none of these incidents have been as dramatic or scandalous as the one in Spain.

The governments of Spain have decided that the closure of all our nuclear power plants will be effective in 2035, despite all the technicians reminding us that they work perfectly and their lifespan could be extended by at least ten years. This action is going to increase dependence on renewables and Russian natural gas. In other words, Spain’s shortsighted policy is going to make the country more dependent on China and Russia for energy and face constant blackouts and supply cuts to the industry as if it were a third-world dictatorship.

Propaganda told us that renewables would bring competitiveness and stability to the grid, but the reality shows that an over-reliance on certain renewables and a shortage of base-load energy sources indicate that the electrical grid increasingly depends on the few nuclear and natural gas plants that operate to maintain supply stability.

The blackout in Spain was not caused by a cyberattack but by the worst possible attack, that of politicians against their citizens.

It is urgent that Spain radically changes its energy strategy, that we maintain and expand the nuclear and base energy park, or we will depend more on Russia and China and, moreover, with blackouts.

Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

Last year, central banks purchased approximately 34 million ounces of gold, marking the third consecutive year of near-record buying.

We’re witnessing the acceleration of a long-term trend that began around the 2008 financial crisis, when central banks shifted from net sellers to net buyers of gold. That trend has exploded in recent years, with gold purchases surging to record-breaking levels, as shown in the chart below.

All signs indicate that 2025 will be another massive year for central bank gold buying.

Central banks and governments are the largest single holders of gold in the world. Together, they officially own over 1.2 billion troy ounces—out of the 6.9 billion ounces humans have mined throughout history.

However, these are just the official numbers that governments report. The actual gold holdings could be much higher, as governments tend to be secretive about their reserves, treating gold as a strategic financial asset.

Russia and China—the US’s top geopolitical rivals—have been the biggest gold buyers over the last two decades.

It’s no secret that China has been stashing away as much gold as possible for many years.

China is the world’s largest producer and buyer of gold. Russia is number two. Most of that gold enters the Chinese and Russian government’s vaults.

The trend of central bank gold accumulation is gaining momentum. If the rest of the world is moving back toward gold, the US will not want to be left behind.

Yet, officially, the US has not added a single ounce to its 261 million ounces of gold reserves in decades.

Unofficially? That may be a different story.

Since Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election last November, a sudden flood of physical gold has flowed into the US from major gold hubs like London, Switzerland, and elsewhere.

The gold market is typically dominated by paper trading, with large-scale physical deliveries being rare. However, CNBC and the World Gold Council report that more than 19 million ounces—possibly much more—of physical gold has entered the US since November.

That’s roughly 13% of the total alleged gold holdings in Fort Knox flowing into the US in less than six months.

This is not normal market action.

This strongly suggests that a non-market entity—most likely the US government—is behind this massive gold movement.

That’s why Trump’s recent comments about Fort Knox are so interesting.

Trump recently brought Fort Knox into the national conversation, something no US president has done in decades.

Would he have even mentioned the possibility of auditing Fort Knox if the vaults were empty? I doubt it.

Instead, there’s a good chance that the enormous inflow of physical gold into the US is happening in anticipation of an audit.

Connecting the Dots—Something Big Is Coming

So, here’s what we know:

1. Trump has put Fort Knox’s gold holdings back in the national spotlight for the first time in decades.

2. Central bank gold purchases are accelerating at record-breaking levels.

3. An unusually large influx of physical gold is flowing into the US, far beyond regular market activity.

Follow the Gold. It Always Leads to the Truth

Central banks are hoarding gold at record levels. The US government is likely pulling in millions of ounces. And Trump is talking about Fort Knox.

This isn’t coincidence.

Find out what they’re preparing for and how you can be ready in our urgent dispatch:

The Most Dangerous Economic Crisis in 100 Years… the Top 3 Strategies You Need Right Now

Click here see it now.

In our preview of today’s quarterly refunding announcement we said to focus on three things: i) when will Treasury hike coupon sizes again, ii) if there will be any change to the language holding auction sizes steady for “at least” the next several quarters, and iii) will Bessent change the Treasury buyback program to a more activist exercise (similar to what Yellen did with her Activist Treasury Issuance strategy which boosted markets for 2 years as reverse repo drained).  In retrospect, there were no big surprises, and in line with our forecast for $370BN in May gross offering, and $125BN in 3/10/30 quarterly refunding auctions…

… the Treasury announced just that, revealing a $125BN refunding calendar, made up of the following:

• $58 billion of 3-year notes on May 5
• $42 billion of 10-year notes on May 6
• $25 billion of 30-year bonds on May 8

The refunding will raise new cash of about $30.8 billion. The balance of Treasury financing requirements over the quarter will be met with regular weekly bill auctions, cash management bills (CMBs), and monthly note, bond, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), and 2-year Floating Rate Note (FRN) auctions, or visually:

The table above is a carbon copy of the one we laid out on Monday, so again, no surprises here at all.

With regard to TIPS, Treasury detailed the following adjustments for the February to April period:

• To increase the June 5-year TIPS reopening by $1 billion
• Boost the July 10-year TIPS new issue by $1 billion

More importantly there were no surprises in the Treasury’s forward guidance put in place iin January of 2024, as it kepts is language unchanged saying the “Treasury believes its current auction sizes leave it well positioned to address potential changes to the fiscal outlook and to the pace and duration of future SOMA redemptions. Based on current projected borrowing needs, Treasury anticipates maintaining nominal coupon and FRN auction sizes for at least the next several quarters.“

Dealers had expected that the Treasury would avoid ramping up longer-dated securities sales for now, in the face of a raft of uncertainties along with the constraint of the debt limit. Since the start of this year, the debt ceiling has left debt managers unable to boost the overall net supply of Treasuries, forcing them to deploy cash reserves and so-called special accounting measures to make good on payment obligations.

“The Treasury is in wait-and-see mode when it comes to debt management,” Santander economist Stephen Stanley wrote in a note ahead of the announcement. “The fiscal outlook is highly uncertain, with a huge tax-and-spending package making its way through Congress over the next few months,” and it’s not yet clear whether federal revenue will ramp up off the back of tariff hikes, or get hurt by an economic downturn, he said.

Stanley, along with many dealers, estimated that the Treasury wouldn’t need to resume boosting the size of note and bond auctions again until early 2026; of course, as a result of outsized fiscal deficits – which everyone agrees have to be slashed but everyone refuses to start doing it now – which are running at $2 trillion a year, mean most analysts see an increase as inevitable at some point.

Separately, some dealers had been on the lookout for any hints that Bessent may be leaning towards boosting the share of bills over time – setting aside past criticism of Yellen for doing just that. In response, the Treasury clarified that “until the debt limit is suspended or increased, debt limit-related constraints will lead to greater-than-normal variability in benchmark bill issuance and significant usage of CMBs” which was also expected. That question is what happens after the debt ceiling deal is reached some time in the late summer.

Turning to the big wildcard in today’s announcement, the expectations that Treasury Buybacks may be used more actively while the dormant Fed wakes up to stabilize the bond market, the Treasury advised that it’s “evaluating potential enhancements to its buyback program to better achieve its liquidity support and cash management goals.” As we noted previously, the surprising change comes after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent earlier this month flagged that “we could up the buybacks” in case needed to address any tumult in the Treasuries market.

Specifically, this is what the Treasury said as it evaluates supplanting the Fed’s missing QT with treasury buybacks:

Given the success of the buyback program since its launch last year, Treasury believes it is an appropriate time to consider ways to improve its efficacy.  Accordingly, Treasury will evaluate a broad range of possible enhancements such as: changes to maximum purchase amounts, buyback operation scheduling and frequency, security eligibility, maturity bucket composition, execution process, and counterparty eligibility.  In considering these options, Treasury will be guided by the objective of financing the government at the lowest cost over time.  Treasury is committed to engaging with a wide range of market participants, including the primary dealers and Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, to assess these potential enhancements to the buyback program.

US debt managers will be looking at potential changes to the maximum purchase amounts of their buybacks, along with the frequency of the operations and other details. The current buyback program kicked off last year, and is aimed at improving the liquidity of older securities along with helping smooth out the Treasury’s management of cash.

The Treasury also released its latest buyback schedule for the upcoming refunding quarter.  As the schedule indicates, Treasury plans to conduct weekly liquidity support buybacks of up to $4 billion per operation in nominal coupon securities.  In longer-maturity buckets, Treasury plans to conduct two operations, each up to $2 billion, over the refunding quarter.  Treasury also plans to conduct two operations, each up to $500 million, in each of the TIPS buckets.

Turning to the next potential political scandal, namely the debt limit, the Treasury said that it has been using extraordinary measures to finance the government on a temporary basis.  “The period of time that cash and extraordinary measures may last is subject to considerable uncertainty due to a variety of factors, including the unpredictability of tax receipts and the normal challenges of forecasting the payments and receipts of the U.S. government months into the future. Given this unavoidable uncertainty, Treasury is not able at this time to provide an estimate of how long its cash and extraordinary measures may last. We expect to provide an update during the first half of May after the majority of receipts from the April income tax filing season have been received.”

Perhaps the most stunning development is that the department has questioned dealers on the potential bill demand from stablecoins, in one possible indication officials are contemplating a structural change in the market. The minutes of a meeting of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, a panel of the most important bond market participants in the US, said that “dealers agreed that the digital asset space was important to monitor on an ongoing basis as a potential source of Treasury demand.”  Here is the section at hand:

With the growth of the cryptocurrency and digital asset economy has come the expansion of the “stablecoin” market in the United States and abroad. As this asset class continues to grow, the distinctions between money funds and payment stablecoins has continued to converge. Some stablecoins are moving towards paying interest, money market funds are exploring tokenization, and Congress is considering explicitly defining what constitutes a collateralized dollar-backed payment stablecoin. Please articulate the terminal effects of interest-bearing stablecoins from a perspective of Treasury demand, USD hegemony, the expansion of dollar-backed payment stablecoins, and potential effects for insured depository institutions. Further, do tokenized money funds present a risk should they be allowed to compete with other payment or settlement instruments?

And the most notable highlight from the presentation: “Rapid growth in stablecoins, as well as market volatility, could lead to a materially heightened demand for or supply in USTs, with an implied incremental demand of ~$900bn for T-Bills.”

Some more slides from the stablecoin presentation:

The full stablecoin presentation is below (pdf link)

Much more in the full Refunding statement.

Oil prices extended their recent plunge this morning as traders expect Saudi Arabia to steer OPEC+ to agree on another supply surge next week as the kingdom continues its campaign to discipline the cartel’s errant members.

“History shows that when OPEC+ leadership decides to encourage compliance by supply pressure, it does not stop until it achieves its goal,” said Bob McNally, president and founder of Rapidan Energy Advisers LLC and a former White House energy official.

Overnight we saw a mixed bag from API (big crude build and bid product draws). Now let’s see what the official data has to show…

API

• Crude +3.8mm

• Cushing +674k

• Gasoline -3.1mm

• Distillates -2.5mm

DOE

• Crude -2.696mm

• Cushing +682k

• Gasoline -4.003mm

• Distillates +937k

The official data was just as mixed but showed a sizable draw in crude inventories and gasoline stocks (fell for the ninth week in a row)…

Source: Bloomberg

Even including a large 1.065mm barrel addition to the SPR, total US Crude stocks fell last week…

Source: Bloomberg

US crude production remains near record highs but ‘drill baby drill’ is not so obvious in the rig count data…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI is ‘off the lows’ after the official data…

Finally, while the price rout does offer relief for consumers and central banks still feeling the effects of inflation, it spells financial pain for oil producers.

Texas oilman Bryan Sheffield has urged companies to scale back drilling to avert an industry “blood bath,” while consultant Rystad Energy slashed its estimates for US onshore crude growth by more than half. The Saudis themselves aren’t immune, requiring an oil price near $90 a barrel to cover government spending, according to the International Monetary Fund.

“Increasing supply to maximize revenue might be the optimal strategy” for producers, said Natasha Kaneva, head of global commodities research at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last decade being involved with capital markets, it’s that psychologically, market participants don’t change their tune or their optimistic outlook easily.

More than once, I’ve seen situations where it appeared blindingly obvious to me that both markets and the economy were heading for a crash landing, but the market did not budge in the slightest, nor did its investors.

The most recent example of this was Covid. While I sat by and watched the case count grow, and government officials and analysts pretend as though nothing was happening and nothing would change, all the stock market did was go straight up—even as late as February 2020.

I’ve learned that the market’s default setting is somewhere between blindingly optimistic and extremely irrational hubris and euphoric exuberance. We can thank years of 0% interest rates for this. The new reality is that it takes a tidal wave of bad news to break the psychological backs of market participants. And even then, the market appears to be resilient in its default setting of ignoring valuations and reality in general, so that computers can continue to bid up stocks and retail can continue to goose the markets higher, weaponizing call option gamma as fuel.

We are another living, breathing case study of this as we speak.

Markets tanked over the last couple of weeks because of a reality they couldn’t ignore—namely, astronomical tariffs applied willy-nilly to every country on the face of the Earth—presented to them in a way even the most lobotomized market participants couldn’t ignore: President Trump stood there with a big f*cking chart with the numbers on it and waved it in front of their blank faces while assuring them it was going to happen.

Despite months of TariffTalk™, the market finally had no choice but to swallow and digest this pill because it was presented in such a way that they could no longer ignore.

With Covid, we saw a similar quick sell-off in the markets, along with a spike in volatility, only when the reality of the pandemic was also presented to us in a way we couldn’t ignore: people were beating the sh*t out of each other in the aisles of Costco over toilet paper.

As we’ve seen over the last week or two, markets have rebounded under the guise that tariff and trade deals are being put in place, and that the adults in the room have it all under control somewhere in the background. I don’t know whether or not this is the truth, but it goes to show you that the market is an pornographically optimistic forward-looking indicator because, in the absence of any solidified deals, stocks are trading as though all of the tariff problems created less than a month ago have been solved. They haven’t been.

This leads me to my next point: we may soon be in for another one of those blindingly obvious pills of reality to swallow and digest.

They say history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. And I’m no senior vice president at Goldman Sachs, nor am I some PhD opining on macroeconomics, but it is not lost on me that reports of China shipping fewer goods to the United States will eventually hit shelves.

Cargo shipments from China to the U.S. have plummeted since Washington hiked tariffs to 145% in April, with some estimates pointing to a drop as steep as 60%. The sharp decline is being blamed on businesses scrapping orders and postponing deliveries in a bid to sidestep the steep cost increases triggered by the tariff spike.

Just as we saw during Covid, there is a lag between supply chains shutting down and the effects of the shutdown hitting store shelves. As we did back in 2020, stores are going to have to run through all of their current inventory before shelves start to turn up empty. But they eventually do turn up empty.

Out of all the trade deals we’re likely going to strike, China is probably going to come last. They are the crown jewel of trade deals due to the amount we consume from them, but they’re also likely going to be the toughest negotiators with President Trump. We’re talking about a country that welded its people into apartment buildings during Covid—which is to say more about the grit of the common citizen in the country than it is about the authoritarian government. But regardless, both the government and its citizens are far grittier than the United States and will not be the first to fold globally in our trade war against them.

I’m optimistic about the United States working things out with other major trading partners like Japan and India. But for China, the posturing of their government makes it clear that they are not going to be the ones to back down from the standoff they are currently in. In fact, my prediction is that President Trump or someone in his cabinet will float a made-up, fabricated concession by China and then use that as the impetus to be the first to lower our restrictions against them, in an attempt to put a PR spin on the fact that we are reluctantly going to have to be the first to give ground.

And to be frank, I don’t really care too much about that. There’s not going to be such a focus on keeping up appearances if the United States can successfully renegotiate a number of its trade deals, which I believe it is going to.

But again, the deal with China is likely going to be the last one hashed out.

In the interim, you have once again an overvalued stock market operating on top of an economy that, at least in the short- to mid-term, has had its best days behind it, in my opinion. Personal savings continues to dwindle, credit card delinquencies continue to rise, the American consumer continues to be tapped out, and tariffs and supply chain issues are going to act as great excuses for companies that want to make job cuts and need to put a public relations spin on it. The job numbers — lagging indicators of their own — will eventually reflect this.

And while I think the market is in the midst of a bear market rally, and that valuations will indeed wind up having to contract further, the catalyst of the economy and the consumer crumbling might take months or quarters more to play out. What won’t take that long to play out, in my opinion, is the average American citizen walking into their local Target and once again finding the shelves are empty, akin to the way they were during Covid.

You’ve heard the saying “Everybody has a plan till they get punched in the mouth”? It means that people start to panic once they are confronted with a reality that they can no longer avoid. For people like me and my readers, we try to look ahead at least a couple of weeks or months to try and figure out what the economy or markets will be doing. For the average retail investor and everyday American, they’re only watching what happens on a day-to-day basis.

For those of us that looked ahead during Covid, the shortages weren’t an issue at all. I had a basement full of toilet paper and hand sanitizer (and lots and lots of whiskey). For everybody else who woke up one morning too late and decided they wanted to stock up on toilet paper, it became like storming the Costco beaches at Normandy.

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The same thing can happen now. I don’t know a lot of ways to jar the average, barely-conscious, brainless, thoughtless American consumer automaton out of their hypnotized stroll down the primrose path, but making their iPhone 16, preferred brand of lip filler or cheap wooden “Live, Laugh, Love” signs unavailable is a great start.

Any day now, people are going to start turning up at their favorite shops to buy the everyday garbage hat they need think they need and they’ll once again be reminded that the cheap consumer crap feedbag doesn’t just magically replenish and re-appear overnight thanks to the fairy godmother. And then, the only thought the average dolt is going to have—other than “My favorite cat food is unavailable, and so this must be the end of all life as we know it on Earth”—is the thought that “Things are bad. Stocks might go down.”

And then, we may have a repeat of what happened during Covid. Except this won’t be a one-time dip that eventually gets bid back without QE like we had during Covid. Instead, until such time, it has more of a chance of being a second jolt of reality that wakes the average investor up to the fact that U.S. stocks are overvalued and global stocks are extremely undervalued.

From there, it’s going to be difficult to ignore the fact that things aren’t exactly the way they were prior to the trade war. My guess is this puts markets on rocky enough footing that the economy will have enough time to crumble at the same time, and stocks may continue what started weeks ago—in my opinion, a long-term contraction in valuations and recalibration versus other global markets.

Then it’s only a matter of time before pesky things like math rear their heads. Remember that Treasury basis trade blowup we’re all pretending didn’t happen? The Yen carry trade? The CRE market? Subprime auto? And private credit markets? These are just some of the economic hemorrhoids set to burst during the next bout of “the tide going out”.

If I had to guess whether or not this rally is going to bring things back to “the way they were” before the trade war, I’d say that over the medium to longer term, those expecting another euphoric, random jam higher in stocks for no reason at all are going to be extremely disappointed.

As for me, I’ll be paying attention to my store shelves.

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.

This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions. All positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

The Fed’s favorite inflation indicator – Core PCE – printed cooler than expected in March, unchanged MoM (vs +0.1% exp), bring prices up 2.6% YoY – the lowest since March 2021…

Source: Bloomberg

…with non-durable goods deflating MoM

…but, but, but we were told tariffs would spark hyper-super-scary-inflation?

The headline PCE was -0.045% MoM – the biggest MoM drop since COVID lockdowns…

…dragging headline PCE YoY down to +2.3%…

SuperCore PCE also saw the YoY pace slow significantly…

Spending outpaced incomes significantly in March…

Source: Bloomberg

Which means that the savings rate fell to 3.9% from 4.1% in February, which was revised lower from 4.6%…

…and there goes the stagflation scenario.

We want to congratulate Portugal and Spain for achieving net zero earlier this week, well ahead of the 2050 target.

Europe’s dangerous and radical shift to unreliable net zero energy has been nothing short of a disaster and an embarrassment for the far-left liberals high in their castles in Brussels. 

The progressives ramming green ideology down our throats seem completely divorced from reality, having steered the West toward a bleak future built on unreliable green energy—much of it sourced from China.

Ask Spain 🇪🇸 and Portugal 🇵🇹 how ‘Net Zero’ is going for them:

Zero Emissions
Zero Electricity
Zero Answers

Carney is a fool…doubling down on the instant replay. Canada 🇨🇦 is doomed. pic.twitter.com/lhdZzD88cZ

— 🇺🇸 Kyle Bass 🇹🇼 (@Jkylebass) April 29, 2025

Meanwhile, China is rapidly expanding its reliable coal and nuclear power generation. One can’t help but wonder whether leftist politicians are inadvertently sabotaging the very foundations of the West. 

The inconvenient truth for Western liberals is that fossil fuel power generation is what restarted Spain’s power grid after the worst power blackout in a generation. 

“SPAIN’s black start after the cascading power failure relied heavily on gas-fired and hydro generators to re-energise the grid and establish synchronism,” commodities analyst John Kemp wrote on X. 

SPAIN’s black start after the cascading power failure relied heavily on gas-fired and hydro generators to re-energise the grid and establish synchronism: pic.twitter.com/cyx6IzDiLs

— John Kemp (@JKempEnergy) April 30, 2025

Reform UK Party’s Nigel Farage warned about the UK’s risk of power blackouts because of insane liberals and their net-zero lunacy.

If we carry on with net zero lunacy, the lights will go out just like in Spain! pic.twitter.com/NN5XI671df

— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) April 29, 2025

Leftists are insane. 

Back to Kemp’s X post, showing how natural gas power generation saved Spain’s grid and provided the needed power for a restart, signifies the urgent need for all power grids across the West to boost fossil fuel power generation to avert blackouts.

Net zero has put many Western countries on a collision course for disaster. Thank the climate activist liberals.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal judge in California has barred U.S. Border Patrol agents from arresting suspected illegal immigrants within parts of the state without a warrant or specific evidence that the individual poses a flight risk—while delivering a rebuke to tactics used during a controversial January enforcement sweep.

In an April 29 order, U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Thurston issued a preliminary injunction against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Border Patrol, siding with the United Farm Workers and five Kern County residents who sued after the raid, dubbed “Operation Return to Sender,” unfolded across the Bakersfield area earlier this year.

The plaintiffs, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), alleged in their Feb. 26 complaint that the sweep violated their Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, along with federal immigration statutes governing warrantless arrests and due process.

Under Thurston’s order, Border Patrol agents operating in California’s Eastern District are now prohibited from making detentions or arrests without first establishing reasonable suspicion of unlawful presence in the country and, for arrests, probable cause that the individual is likely to flee before a warrant can be obtained.

“The evidence before the Court is that Border Patrol agents under DHS authority engaged in conduct that violated well-established constitutional rights,” Thurston wrote in the ruling.

The court also restricted the agency’s use of “voluntary departure,” a process by which illegal immigrants agree to leave the United States without a hearing before an immigration judge. Going forward, agents must clearly inform individuals of their rights and obtain genuine, informed consent before initiating such removals.

The judge further ordered DHS to submit regular reports documenting any warrantless stops or arrests, along with justifications, for the duration of litigation. She also instructed DHS to issue written guidelines clarifying the legal threshold for initiating stops.

“This guidance shall include, among other things, that refusal to answer questions does not, without more, constitute a basis for reasonable suspicion to justify a detentive stop,” she wrote.

The case stems from allegations that, beginning in early January 2025, dozens of Border Patrol agents traveled more than 300 miles inland from the U.S.–Mexico border to Bakersfield, targeting predominantly Latino neighborhoods and day laborer gathering spots without individualized suspicion.

The plaintiffs described “Operation Return to Sender” as a sweeping dragnet based on racial and occupational profiling, claiming agents pulled over vehicles, blocked parked cars, conducted warrantless searches, and detained people without evidence of unlawful presence.

Once in custody, detainees were allegedly transported to a facility near the border, denied access to attorneys, and pressured into signing “voluntary departure” forms without understanding the consequences—a process plaintiffs described as “summary expulsion” that can carry long-term reentry bans.

Once in custody, detainees claimed they were transported to a Border Patrol facility near the border, where they were denied access to lawyers and coerced into signing “voluntary departure” forms under misleading pretenses, which they described as a “form of summary expulsion.”

Attorneys for the Justice Department argued the case should be dismissed, claiming the plaintiffs lacked standing and that no official policy mandated unlawful stops or arrests. They further contended that any potential violations were isolated incidents, not part of a broader pattern, and that the lawsuit had become moot after DHS issued revised internal guidance.

But the court rejected those arguments, finding that the plaintiffs demonstrated a credible threat of repeated harm. Thurston wrote that the new DHS policy did not eliminate the risk of future violations and “could be withdrawn or altered in the future” without constraint.

The Epoch Times contacted the Justice Department and the ACLU with requests for comment on the ruling.

US equity futures are tumbling in the pre-market following a weak ADP employment report and Q1 GDP contraction (driven by a tariff-front-running surge in imports).

In the last month or two, we have been told that President Trump is not focused on the stock market, rejecting the idea of a ‘Trump Put’ (especially when it came to the decision to ‘pause’ reciprocal tariffs this month).

However this morning, following the bad data and ugly equity drop, Trump posted on TruthSocial that “This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s.”

I didn’t take over until January 20th. 

Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. 

Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden “Overhang.” 

This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other.

BE PATIENT!!!

The surge in imports – which dragged down GDP – is due to the tariff decisions, there is no question.

But also bear in mind that this is not a ‘classic recessionary slowdown’ in the economy, it is a front-running surge in imports ‘ahead’ of the tariffs and shrinking government spending.

The former is a temporary impact, the latter is what America voted for!!