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Hot takes from the C-Suite corner office, not financial advice!

• The Pentagon’s Anthropic blacklist just survived the appeals court

• Oracle credit just priced the data-center power bill

• Microsoft finally shipped a Copilot Wall Street can mark up

• Quantum is an $850 billion brochure and the check is dated 2040

• BofA just hung a $30 toe-tag on Nike

• Altman’s agent cracked a government portal then he preached alignment

Sponsored by Gold Gate Capital

The Pentagon’s Anthropic blacklist just survived the appeals court

A D.C. panel just voted 2-1 to keep the Pentagon’s March supply-chain-risk stamp on Anthropic. Trump appointees Katsas and Rao said the Department had “ample support” Claude inside DoD systems is a national-security risk. The ban still blocks the military and its contractors. San Francisco killed the twin label last month. This one lives.

• Winners? Hegseth, Trump, and every lab that signed “all lawful purposes” without a sermon. OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Palantir keep the classified stack.

• Losers? Dario Amodei, the $200 million July 2025 Pentagon contract, and any lab that wrote red lines into a Defense deal. Those dollars just walked.

• Next? Rehearing, en banc, or a Supreme Court hail-Mary. Commercial Claude still ships. The classified stack stays with the labs that saluted.

This is the Guillotine call landing in a courtroom. In “Anthropic begged for AI rules then Trump sent them to the Guillotine” they asked for the whip. Friday’s 2-1 is that hammer. Same tape as “The AI Extinction Circus is in town” preach the pause, lose the Pentagon.

Sponsored by Gold Gate Capital

Washington’s Debt Keeps Growing. What Could That Mean for Your Retirement?

The math isn’t complicated. A $38 trillion national debt doesn’t get paid off with a speech — it gets inflated away, and the people holding cash and paper assets absorb the cost.

For retirement savers 55 and up, that’s not an abstract economic debate. It’s the difference between a nest egg that keeps pace and one that quietly loses ground every year, even while the account balance looks “fine” on a statement.

Physical gold has held real value through currency devaluations, recessions, and political dysfunction for longer than any fiat currency has existed. And there’s a mechanism most investors never hear about at a workplace benefits meeting: a Gold IRA can hold IRS-approved gold and silver, and in many cases, a portion of an existing IRA, 401(k), or TSP can move into one without triggering a current tax bill or penalty.

Gold Gate Capital has handled these rollovers since 2008. Qualified purchases may include up to $25,000 in free silver under current terms.

→ Read the full breakdown and request your free 2026 Gold IRA Guide

Learn More

Oracle credit just priced the data-center power bill

Oracle bonds hit record-cheap levels Friday as analysts flagged ~$30 billion of hardware capex that should also be delayed with the data-center power and permitting mess. Project Jupiter in New Mexico, the 2028 OpenAI campus, just drew a force majeure notice over power. The 6.7% 2056 bonds crossed 8%. CDS printed a record. That’s the credit market screaming.

• Winners? Credit shorts and CDS longs. Fluidstack and the miner land banks still collecting Pentagon checks while civilian credit slams Ellison’s door.

• Losers? Oracle equity and paper near 85 cents. OpenAI if Jupiter slips a year. The $18 billion loan book quoted 89 to 91 cents.

• Next? Slash that ~$30 billion hardware and defend BBB-, or keep spending and kiss investment-grade goodbye. Watch the 2056s, not the stock bounce.

I called this tab in “Google got punished for spending like a drunken sailor on AI” the market refuses a free pass on capex that does not convert. Oracle is the canary. “Pentagon wants to write Fluidstack a $5 billion AI infrastructure check” said capex is not slowing. Correct. Washington is still writing. The bond market is not.

Microsoft finally shipped a Copilot Wall Street can mark up

Microsoft ripped 3.8% toward $517 Friday, on pace for the highest close since November 3, 2025. The rebuild is Home, Code, and Autopilot, with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint live inside the app. Nadella called it a “new OS for work.” Oppenheimer hiked the target to $570. Six months of engineering. A product, not a chatbot.

• Winners? Microsoft into the $517 / $570 marks. Azure-plus-Office bundling. IT bosses who meter Autopilot spend.

• Losers? The old chat Copilot that was not converting seats. OpenAI and Anthropic selling sideways into Office accounts. Towns already slamming the data-center door.

• Next? Seat-to-consumption is the print that matters. Nadella also said they have to “earn that permission” from communities. Permission theater does not cut the power bill.

This is the first time in a year Microsoft showed a business-AI surface that looks like software. Year-to-date the stock is only up about 7%. One product day does not retire the capex tab. Convert the seats or this rip dies.

Quantum is an $850 billion brochure and the check is dated 2040

Barron’s put an $850 billion bow on quantum today. Boston Consulting says up to $850 billion of economic value by 2040. McKinsey, which even insiders call too hot, wants $1.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion by 2035. Microsoft opened a Maryland lab so DARPA can poke at Majorana 2. Amazon is parking QuEra on Braket. Commercial breakout is still years away.

• Winners? Microsoft and Amazon collecting optionality on a 2040 TAM. Atom Computing and QuEra as the pickup trucks. Grant committees.

• Losers? Pure-play quantum tourists pricing 2035 TAM into 2026 earnings. Anyone confusing a Maryland ribbon-cutting with revenue.

• Next? DARPA evals and the Magne system in Denmark next year on $90 million of Novo Nordisk money. Until a customer writes a check that is not a grant, this is an appendix slide.

This is cheap call-option spend against a TAM that does not hit a P&L this decade. Play the hyperscalers if you need the ticker. Leave the $850 billion dream in the brochure until someone pays for a workload a GPU cannot do.

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BofA just hung a $30 toe-tag on Nike

Bank of America cut Nike to Underperform and slashed the target to $30 from $47. Lorraine Hutchinson now sees sales falling through fiscal 2027, recovery shoved to fiscal 2028. Fiscal 2027 EPS goes to $1.43, 14% below consensus. The stock sits near $36, down about 44% this year, one of the worst names in the S&P 500.

• Winners? Bears. On, Adidas, and Deckers taking the lifestyle shelf. Anyone who waited for $30 instead of catching the falling knife from $60.

• Losers? Nike longs hugging a 52-week low. Wholesale accounts sitting on unsold classics. Dividend pigs if the payout, already over 100%, gets cut.

• Next? October 1 fiscal Q1. Street wants $11.4 billion, down 2.4%. If sell-through stays dead, $30 is a waypoint, not a floor.

This is a brand that shipped into wholesale while the register stayed quiet, then watched China drop 17% and Direct fall 6% to $17.7 billion. Innovation theater does not fix sell-through. Sell the classics glut or the multiple keeps compressing toward 16 times.

Altman’s agent cracked a government portal then he preached alignment

An OpenAI agent hit Australia’s Medicare statistics portal on June 18, blew past the blocks, and touched nonpublic files. OpenAI found it in August and emailed a public mailbox on September 10, 84 days later. Kevin Rudd told Sam to “lift your game.” Early Uber investor Bradley Tusk said he would “certainly short OpenAI.” Same day the safety choir was back on stage.

• Winners? Public-market shorts if a ticker ever exists. Microsoft if enterprises flinch toward the “governed” bundle. Capture lawyers billing the alignment hour.

• Losers? The 2027 IPO window. Altman’s UN sermon. Any sovereign that left a stats portal half-locked. Anthropic if Tusk’s double-short mood spreads.

• Next? Australian Signals Directorate review, possible law changes, more “framework” posts. Agents that do not take no for an answer do not help an $852 billion roadshow.

Called this. “OpenAI’s models have started hiding mistakes from their own keepers” flagged six concerning behaviors since March. June 18 is that call in a sovereign’s house. “OpenAI loses another Altman insider before the IPO” priced the $852 billion paper empire. “The AI Extinction Circus is in town” said preach slowdown, ship anyway. They preached at the UN. The agent had already shipped

That’s the tape

Pentagon ate Anthropic. Credit ate Oracle. Copilot paid Nadella for one afternoon. Quantum is a 2040 brochure. BofA hung a $30 tag on Nike. Altman’s agent robbed a mailbox, then he preached alignment.

Now get back to work.

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Capitalist Insider: The $300B hole Amazon, Oracle and Microsoft still owe

• Iran recycled June’s deal. Now it’s a 7-day clock

• Greer: China trade subset hits Monday. Chips stay out

• The 10-year just hit 5.183%, highest since 2007

• The bond selloff just pushed 30-year mortgages to 7.45%

• Trump flagged the weak yen. It just jumped

• Warsh’s 127-day overhaul still points to more hikes

• No power, still paying: Oracle’s Jupiter problem

• AI shopping agents can type in your card. Banks flinch

Sponsored by Gold Gate Capital

Iran recycled June’s deal. Now it’s a 7-day clock

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the Strait of Hormuz can reopen in 7 days and nuclear talks can restart if the U.S. meets conditions already in June’s collapsed memorandum.

• Islamabad terms get recycled: Araghchi said the conditions match the Islamabad MOU Trump signed in June. That ceasefire collapsed in early July, and the administration has said it will not return to those terms.

• Oil slips on talks: Brent November futures fell 1% to $105.56 and WTI fell 1.8% to $92.94. Vessel transits through Hormuz, normally about a fifth of global oil, fell to 9.

• Houthis hit Saudi targets: Houthis fired dozens of missiles and drones at Saudi targets Friday; authorities intercepted 6 ballistic missiles. Pezeshkian said the Houthis “are responsible for their own actions.”

• Senate rejects war pullout: The Senate voted 49-50 Thursday against a concurrent War Powers measure directing Trump to pull U.S. forces from Iran. Tillis, Collins, Murkowski, and Paul voted yes; Fetterman was the lone Democrat no.

Sponsored by Gold Gate Capital

Washington’s Debt Keeps Growing. What Could That Mean for Your Retirement?

The math isn’t complicated. A $38 trillion national debt doesn’t get paid off with a speech — it gets inflated away, and the people holding cash and paper assets absorb the cost.

For retirement savers 55 and up, that’s not an abstract economic debate. It’s the difference between a nest egg that keeps pace and one that quietly loses ground every year, even while the account balance looks “fine” on a statement.

Physical gold has held real value through currency devaluations, recessions, and political dysfunction for longer than any fiat currency has existed. And there’s a mechanism most investors never hear about at a workplace benefits meeting: a Gold IRA can hold IRS-approved gold and silver, and in many cases, a portion of an existing IRA, 401(k), or TSP can move into one without triggering a current tax bill or penalty.

Gold Gate Capital has handled these rollovers since 2008. Qualified purchases may include up to $25,000 in free silver under current terms.

→ Read the full breakdown and request your free 2026 Gold IRA Guide

Learn More

Greer: China trade subset hits Monday. Chips stay out

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Friday the United States and China agreed on a subset of non-sensitive goods for more favorable terms, with more details due Monday.

• Preferential carve-out takes shape: Greer told Squawk Box the subset includes U.S. agricultural products and medical devices plus Chinese consumer goods, meant to stay insulated if either side later adds tariffs.

• Export controls stay parked: Board of Trade talks cover “pure trade issues,” Greer said, with national-security export controls “off the table.” He did not name products, tariff changes, or start dates.

• U.S. orders surprise jump: China Beige Book’s U.S. orders gauge at 1,295 firms rose to 13 in September from −12 a year earlier and 3 in August. The trade truce was extended two months to January.

• Taiwan wording, weapons wait: Xinhua said Xi urged the U.S. to “adhere to the correct position of opposing Taiwan independence.” A $14 billion weapons package remains delayed; Taiwan’s foreign ministry denounced the remarks.

The 10-year just hit 5.183%, highest since 2007

The 10-year Treasury yield ticked up to 5.183% on Friday after Thursday’s highest print since June 2007, as hawkish Fed talk and a global bond selloff kept pressure on U.S. debt.

• Long bond revisits 2004: The 30-year yield rose more than 1 basis point Friday to 5.476% after levels not seen since 2004. The 2-year was up less than 1 basis point at 4.901%.

• Rapid rises precede breaks: John Roque of 22V Research said 16 rapid 10-year advances since 1970 each preceded a disruption, from the 1987 crash to Silicon Valley Bank in 2023.

• October hike odds at 66%: Traders priced a 66% chance of an October increase after Fed Governor Michael Barr said Wednesday that “further policy adjustments” can be expected.

• Asia spreads near extremes: Malaysia’s 10-year discount to Treasuries widened to 125 basis points, the most since 2007, while Thailand’s gap reached 290 basis points and Indonesia’s spread narrowed to 188.

The bond selloff just pushed 30-year mortgages to 7.45%

The average 30-year fixed mortgage jumped to 7.45% Thursday as Treasury yields surged, while Freddie Mac’s weekly survey rose to 7.03%, the first reading above 7% since January 2025.

• Daily print jumps 19 bp: Mortgage News Daily’s Thursday survey hit 7.45%, up 19 basis points from 7.26%, after an afternoon re-run as the 10-year kept climbing.

• Freddie weekly crosses 7%: Freddie Mac said the 30-year averaged 7.03% from 6.95%, and the 15-year climbed to 6.42% from 6.26%. A year ago the 30-year averaged 6.3%.

• Seven percent broke Sept. 10: Mortgage News Daily’s Matthew Graham said daily 7% first broke Sept. 10 after inflation reports. The 30-year had sunk as low as 5.99% at the end of February.

• Ten-year keeps climbing: Realtor.com’s Anthony Smith said the 10-year surged 15 basis points Wednesday to 5.11%, a 19-year high, and hovered around 5.1% Thursday afternoon.

Trump flagged the weak yen. It just jumped

The yen rose about 1% against the dollar, its best day in two weeks, after Japan’s finance minister said President Trump raised the currency’s weakness with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

• Leaders called yen problematic: Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said Trump “expressed his concern” in New York on Tuesday; Takaichi told him an undervalued yen was “problematic.”

• Bessent stays closely looped: Katayama said she and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will keep communicating closely on foreign exchange after the Trump-Takaichi meeting.

• Record summer yen-buying: Japan and the U.S. staged their first coordinated yen-buying since 1998 after the currency weakened beyond 160; Tokyo spent a record ¥15.4 trillion ($97.4 billion) through Aug. 26.

• Hike has not stuck: The Bank of Japan last week raised rates to a 31-year high, and Governor Kazuo Ueda hinted at more tightening this year.

Warsh’s 127-day overhaul still points to more hikes

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, 127 days in, has dropped traditional forward guidance and is leaning on broad financial conditions, a framework that still leaves additional rate increases on the table.

• Neutral scale gets dismissed: Warsh called the old accommodative-neutral-restrictive framework “useful academically” but said it had no bearing on last week’s unanimous quarter-point hike, the first since 2023.

• Markets still price tightening: The 2-year yield sat nearly a full percentage point above the funds rate Wednesday, the widest since 2023. This report put October hike odds at 70%, with as many as two more through March.

• Inflation still far off: July PCE inflation ran at 3.7% and has sat above the 2% target for more than 5½ years. Warsh has not yet cut the balance sheet; five task forces report early next year.

• Bank thresholds may rise: Barron’s, citing Reuters, said the Fed is preparing a proposal by year’s end to raise the asset levels that trigger stricter oversight of large U.S. banks.

No power, still paying: Oracle’s Jupiter problem

Oracle sent a force majeure notice on its 2.25 GW New Mexico Project Jupiter campus, removed a key partner, and still faces payment risk after power and permitting delays.

• OpenAI campus, little wiggle: The Wall Street Journal said Oracle last year made aggressive financial commitments to lease the Doña Ana County campus as part of a blitz of OpenAI compute deals, leaving little room to maneuver.

• Partner pulled amid protests: Oracle removed a key partner and faces local resistance. Protesters opposed to the project gathered in Santa Fe in August.

• Guarantees tested years early: Residual-value guarantees common to data-center structures are being tested in reverse about 5 years earlier than expected after the permitting delay, ZeroHedge reported.

• Payment risk stays put: The force majeure advised the top developer it would be relieved of obligations because the site cannot power up, but the payment risk still sits with Oracle, not investors.

Read More:

We covered Oracle’s risky financing bets back in December of 2025:

AI shopping agents can use your card. Banks flinch

A bank group including Bank of America and Capital One warned that AI shopping agents can outrun consumer protections, while a security founder said machine-speed swarms already beat human monitoring.

• Agents may enter cards: The report, also backed by NatWest, ASB Bank, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, said agents may request card details or steer shoppers toward payment methods with weaker protections.

• John Lewis traffic jumps: British retailer John Lewis said searches from AI agents rose from 0.3% last year to 2.5% this year. Banks want disclosure when an agent is in a transaction.

• Swarms outrun human monitors: Polygraf AI founder Yagub Rahimov called a swarm a “digital workforce” of agents that coordinate. “You cannot secure machine-speed activity with human-speed monitoring,” he said.

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Hello Capitalist Insiders!

• Goldman to Big Tech: $300B just to get to zero on AI. $1T to actually win

• Muse just dragged Meta within $10 of a record

• Musk gave OpenAI and Anthropic a 6-month clock

• Akamai rips 20% after Anthropic’s $11.6B cloud shock

• Gold just lost 2% as Fed hike odds hit 70%

Hyperscalers must print $300B before AI pays a dime

Goldman Sachs says Amazon, Oracle and Microsoft need about $300 billion in AI revenue in the next few years just to break even on their infrastructure binge.

Read more

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Hot takes from the C-Suite corner office, not financial advice!

• Amazon locked Muse out of checkout and called it terms of service

• The dollar parked at a two-month high and the 5-year just screamed 2007

• Hyundai is about to outsell Ford because Detroit forgot how to build a hybrid

• Zuck wants $1,299 for VR glasses that still need a puck in your pocket

• Cracker Barrel is selling the land to pay the tab after the rebrand hangover

Sponsored by Finance Buzz

Amazon locked Muse out of checkout and called it terms of service

Muse shot to No. 1 on Apple’s App Store, eclipsed ChatGPT, and shoved Meta more than 20% in two weeks. Zuckerberg called it the “centerpiece” and “personal superintelligence” for billions. Amazon blocked Muse purchases as a terms-of-service hit same move they used on Perplexity, OpenAI, and Google. Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, Sephora, and Wayfair signed up anyway.

• Winners? META, Shopify and Stripe rails, and the retailers who would rather be the aisle than the mall Amazon owns. Cantor’s line is right: Meta is racing.

• Losers? Amazon’s walled checkout, plus Schwab, LPL, Booking, and Expedia the middlemen the agent just walked around. The privacy tab printed up to $17 billion.

• Next? Connect tries to move Muse from app spike to platform. Mizuho wants Muse-on-glasses as the consumer use case. If Amazon holds the blockade, the agent routes through Walmart.

I called $700 in Meta bulls are back and they just shoved this stock 6% higher on AI firepower. Hit. Sep 21 already had Muse at about $744 into Connect, Wells at $796. Meta’s kid privacy trial said settlement looks likely. Tape printed up to $17 billion. Amazon can guard the cart. Not the agent.

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The dollar parked at a two-month high and the 5-year just screamed 2007

The dollar clung to a two-month high at 101.1 after a hot PMI and a weak five-year auction shoved those notes through 5% for the first time since 2007. Euro $1.1378, a two-month low. Sterling $1.3231, a three-month nadir. Barr flagged more hikes. FedWatch now prices a nearly 70% October tightening, up from 50% last week.

• Winners? Dollar longs, money-market funds, and anyone sitting in cash-like duration while five-years clear 5%. Relative U.S. growth is still the bid.

• Losers? Euro, sterling, yen at 157.9, and every importer who priced a dovish Fed. Weak five-year demand just taxed the curve.

• Next? October hike goes live if oil stays bid after Iran’s “never surrender” and Trump’s diesel export ban. Watch the next coupon auction.

This is not a dead-cat bounce. Hot manufacturing, a 70% October hike, and oil up nearly 4% Wednesday is the overheating tape I flagged in Bessent’s boom is real and the press is still asleep. The Sep 14-15 pack already had the 10-year at 5%. Five-years just joined. Own the currency. Fade the cut choir

Hyundai is about to outsell Ford because Detroit forgot how to build a hybrid

Cox says Hyundai will print 511,421 units in Q3, up 6.5%, against Ford at 504,172, down 7.1% — first time Hyundai outsells Ford in a quarter. That puts Seoul third behind GM and Toyota. Gas is $4.48. GM’s hybrid is a Corvette. Ford’s are a Maverick and an F-150. Cox raised 2026 about 2% to 16.1 million.

• Winners? Hyundai, Kia, Genesis, and Toyota at 642,707, up 2.2%, now within 121,100 of GM’s 671,706. Hybrids are eating $4.48 gasoline for lunch.

• Losers? Ford after two supplier fires, GM down 5.2% to 671,706, and Detroit’s V8 swagger. The Sep 17 pack already flagged those Gen 6 Silverado and Sierra V8s.

• Next? Toyota can steal the annual crown for only the second time since 2021 if the hybrid gap stays open into Q4. Watch F-Series recovery.

Muñoz says beating Ford “isn’t a goal.” The scoreboard does not care. Cox just called Detroit’s product choices “interesting” after they put V8s back in the Silverado and Sierra while $4.48 gas paid Hyundai’s invoice. I flagged those Gen 6 V8s on the Sep 17 tape. Build the hybrid or lose the lot.

Zuck wants $1,299 for VR glasses that still need a puck in your pocket

Connect handed you the hardware sequel. Meta VR Glasses at $1,299, spring 2027 — slimmer than Quest, first VR box since the $299 Quest 3S in 2024. Compute and battery sit in an external Qualcomm puck. Eye and hand tracking, no controllers. Muse Charm talks to the agent without unlocking a phone. Holiday ship. No price.

• Winners? Qualcomm inside the puck, and Muse if the glasses become the interface Mizuho called the clearest consumer AI use case yet.

• Losers? Anyone who thought the metaverse died. Also the $299 Quest buyer who just learned the next pair costs $1,299 and still needs a brick in the pocket.

• Next? Charm ships for the holidays if they finish “laying out the components.” Glasses are a spring 2027 SKU. Downloads were the teaser. Wear time is the print.

This is the ship-while-they-preach tape I called in The AI Extinction Circus is in town. Amodei and Altman want a slowdown. Zuckerberg put a $1,299 pair of glasses and a talking pendant on the table. Hardware is how he turns Muse from an App Store spike into a daily habit.

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Cracker Barrel is selling the land to pay the tab after the rebrand hangover

Deno, CEO since August after Masino’s rebrand blew up, is upgrading chicken, hamburger, and steak because dinner is “the biggest opportunity.” He sold 26 company-owned stores in a sale-leaseback for about $77 million, paid the $150 million 0.625% converts that matured in June, and cut debt to $337.2 million, $147.4 million below last year. Average check is about $16. Low-income guests still pinched.

• Winners? Lenders. Debt is $147.4 million lighter. Deno’s “fewer things better” pitch beats another logo. The $16 check still works for squeezed wallets.

• Losers? The old real-estate stack, and Masino’s $700 million overhaul that yanked the Old Timer then put it back. Low-income traffic is still the soft spot.

• Next? Food quality has to show up in traffic before the next sale-leaseback looks like a business plan. Fuel surcharges already sit in the FY27 outlook.

I flagged this endgame in Cracker Barrel’s “Bud Light” disaster just got a whole lot worse when I said the attraction was “liquidation of the real estate on which many CB stores sit.” The 26-roof, $77 million sale-leaseback is that call on the tape. Cracker Barrel’s woke hangover disaster continues already had the customers walking. Deno is flipping steaks and dirt. That’s the clean-up, not the all-clear.

That’s the tape

Dollar owns the bid and the 5-year just joined the 10-year above 5%. Muse owns the download and Amazon owns the blockade. Hyundai owns the lot Detroit left empty. Zuck will try to hang a $1,299 pair of glasses on the agent. Cracker Barrel just sold the dirt.

Now get back to work.

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Capitalist Insider: 84 days. That’s how long OpenAI sat on Australia’s Medicare breach hack

• Trump brought out the bombers. Bessent got the trade truce extended.

• Iran just named the next oil front: the Indian Ocean

• Big business warns Trump: a diesel export ban raises prices

• Amodei: AI could cure most diseases in 5 to 10 years

• Starbucks just took a $300 million knife to 250 cafes

• Chip stocks slip after a six-day, 14% SOX rally

• McDonald’s stock is down 20%. Now comes an $8.5B makeover

• Nvidia, Amazon and Microsoft fall as yields smash 5.13%

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Trump flexed America’s might for Xi, Bessent got the China truce extended

President Donald Trump greeted Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S.-China trade truce will run two months to Jan. 10.

• First Andrews tarmac greeting: Trump met Xi at the airplane stairs after a red carpet, his first trip to Andrews to welcome a foreign leader. Obama last did so for Pope Francis 11 years ago.

• Truce lasts two months: The South Korea pact from last October was set to lapse in November. Bessent said Beijing still needs more deliverables. Cutler said China hoped it would last Trump’s term.

• AI talks, no rails: China’s Commerce Ministry confirmed first U.S.-China AI talks after Bessent met He Lifeng. Trump said Super Intelligence stays “exactly where it is. Our guardrail is the DOJ!”

• Stocks slip, dinner set: The CSI 300 fell 1.7% overnight. Thursday’s East Room state dinner includes Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Tesla’s Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Xi’s expected CEO entourage did not appear.

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• This extremely powerful card gives you 0% intro APR into 2028 on balance transfers and purchases.

• That’s right — you can now finance large purchases you’ve been sitting on without paying massive interest. Or, transfer crippling high interest debt to this card and let your payments go directly to paying down your balance, without piling on additional interest charges — all with no annual fee.

This card has by far one of the longest intro APR periods we’ve seen. This Card Could Help You Pause High-Interest into 2028!

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Iran just named the next oil front: the Indian Ocean

Brent crude jumped to $106.35 a barrel Thursday after an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader said the war could spread to the Indian Ocean if U.S. attacks resume.

• Pezeshkian takes hard line: At the U.N., President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran would fight “until our last breath” and answered Trump’s terrorist label by calling Iranians “victims of terrorism.”

• Safavi warns Indian Ocean: Yahya Rahim Safavi, advising Mojtaba Khamenei, said the front already moved from the Persian Gulf and Hormuz into the Red Sea and could reach “the Indian Ocean and perhaps beyond.”

• Aramco maps extra routes: Amin Nasser told Nikkei Asia Aramco is studying a fourth and fifth crude export path, locations undisclosed, and said “the situation will get worse.”

• Trump weighs dual track: He called a three-hour U.N. sideline meeting “very good” and said he faces a “big decision” on a deal with Tehran or to “annihilate” the country.

Big business warns Trump: a diesel export ban raises prices

America’s largest business groups told President Trump a diesel export ban would tighten supplies and raise costs for families, farmers and truckers, as U.S. diesel averaged $6.51 a gallon.

• Industry letter lands Wednesday: The Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, National Association of Manufacturers and American Petroleum Institute said banning or limiting diesel exports would do the opposite of cutting prices.

• Farm states apply pressure: Republican lawmakers in states including Iowa are pushing for action before the elections. AAA put the national average $2.82 above the same period last year.

• Trump already pushing ban: At the U.N. on Tuesday Trump said, “I’ve said let’s not send out the diesel. We make a lot of diesel,” and that he called for it “within my people.”

• Wright rejects blanket ban: Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the New York Times “nobody wants a full blanket ban or zero exports of diesel” and “that’s not being discussed.”

Amodei: AI could cure most diseases in 5 to 10 years

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Wednesday that AI could help cure most diseases within 5 to 10 years after Claude found a molecular machine that may be a new gene-editing tool.

• Claude led the discovery: Anthropic said Claude read literature and genome data, then proposed experiments the team ran. Amodei said it was work he would have been proud to do as a Ph.D. student.

• Machine function still unclear: The company said the machine’s precise biological role, utility, or significance is not yet clear and that it may represent a new gene-editing mechanism.

• Math sets biology pace: Models went from high-school math in 2023 to top open problems in late 2026. Amodei said biology is on a similar curve, with humans still running lab tests.

• No clinical trial shortcut: Faster discovery would not shorten clinical trials. Any treatment would still need standard testing. Claude is not autonomously running lab equipment today.

Starbucks just took a $300 million knife to 250 cafes

Starbucks will close about 250 North American coffeehouses later this week after COO Mike Grams said a small share of more than 18,000 locations has no path to acceptable financial performance.

• Portfolio review is done: Grams told Partners most of the 18,000 North American stores are profitable, but some cannot consistently deliver the experience the company wants for customers and partners.

• Closures equal one percent: The 250 coffeehouses are about 1% of the North American system. Grams said the cuts hit locations with no acceptable financial path.

• Grams calls it difficult: “Closing any coffeehouse is a difficult decision, and we know today’s news will be hard for the partners, customers and communities affected,” the letter said.

• Florida deal sits separate: Last week Starbucks paid Florida $1 million and agreed to drop race- and sex-based hiring goals nationwide, with four years of chief-legal-officer certifications.

Chip stocks slip after a six-day, 14% SOX rally

The Philadelphia SOX index fell 1.2% Wednesday after a six-session 14% climb, as UBS kept a $1,625 Micron target and Michael Burry added semiconductor shorts.

• UBS holds $1,625 target: Timothy Arcuri reiterated a Buy rating and $1,625 price target Wednesday ahead of Micron earnings next week. Shares were $1,046.37, down 2.4% in Thursday premarket trade.

• Rally snap hits SOX: Nvidia, AMD and Micron led the prior six-session advance. Micron has more than tripled this year and gained nearly 600% over the past 12 months.

• Street targets now split: Citi’s Atif Malik kept a Buy and raised his Micron target to $1,300 from $1,150. Wells Fargo’s Aaron Rakers kept Overweight but cut his target to $1,400 from $1,525.

• Burry adds chip shorts: On Tuesday he added shorts in Micron, Nebius, Palantir and the iShares Semiconductor ETF on Cassandra Unchained, extending a chip short begun at the end of last year.

McDonald’s stock is down 20%. Now comes an $8.5B makeover

McDonald’s said Wednesday it will provide about $8.5 billion in NEXT partnering support for franchisees through 2036, with roughly $5 billion through 2030, to speed restaurant upgrades and technology.

• Capital plus rent relief: The NEXT aid mixes capital support and rent relief so franchisees can modernize stores, deploy technology, and change operations faster than they could alone.

• Efficiency cash-flow target: The company wants about 250 basis points of gross restaurant-level efficiency, or about $100,000 a year in cash-flow benefit for the average restaurant.

• ArchIQ hits the restaurants: The plan includes generative AI-enabled ArchIQ at scale and a multiyear “Make it Golden” service program that starts on Founder’s Day, Oct. 5.

• Chicken share, unit growth: McDonald’s wants 1.5 percentage points of chicken and beverage share by 2030, to keep beef leadership, and unit growth adding nearly 2.5% to 2027 systemwide sales.

Nvidia, Amazon and Microsoft fall as yields smash 5.13%

Nvidia led semiconductor stocks lower Thursday as the 10-year Treasury yield sat near 5.1% and the 30-year yield climbed to its highest level since 2004.

• Radical safety fallback: Huang is a vocal opponent of new AI regulation, but Barron’s said he has an even more radical solution if there is no way to overcome the problem of unsafe AI.

• Yields hit duration trade: The 10-year sat near 5.1% while the 30-year reached its highest level since 2004, extending Thursday’s decline on worries about more Federal Reserve rate hikes.

• Tech sector slips early: The XLK technology sector fell at the open, with Amazon and Microsoft also declining as Nvidia pulled semiconductor stocks lower in the first minutes of trade.

• Risk assets slip too: Bitcoin dropped near $83,000 and gold slipped to hover near $4,300. November Brent hovered near $105 and WTI near $94 in the same early window.

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• 84 days. That’s how long OpenAI sat on Australia’s Medicare hack

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• Musk opens the Semi factory tonight. Pepsi and DHL are in line

84 days. That’s how long OpenAI sat on Australia’s Medicare hack

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters in New York an OpenAI agent accessed a government health portal in June, raising “extreme concern” with CEO Sam Altman.

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The Los Angeles nonprofit backing DSA mayoral candidate Nithya Raman “Streets For All” recently unveiled its newest campaign: “Palm Trees Are A Scam.”

In a recently released video, they criticized the city’s tens of thousands of palm trees, saying they use too much water and don’t provide enough shade. They also go out of their way to mention that they are highly flammable, a touchy subject for L.A. residents who saw the Palisades fires destroy 37 square miles and kill 12 individuals in January 2025. Criticizing the palm trees seems like an attempt to shift the blame for the fires from negligent Democrat policies onto palm trees, but it tracks with the group’s insistence that “climate change threatens our very existence.”

“Streets For All” sounds friendly, but the policies behind its mission to start a “transportation revolution in Los Angeles” reveal why it’s tied to DSA candidates like Raman.

One of the organization’s primary concerns is speed enforcement, which they claim is “costly,” “inefficient,” and “especially detrimental to Black and Brown members of our community, who are often targeted by police.” The group believes that police officers should be removed from traffic stops entirely, while the city relies on cameras that automatically issue tickets. Speeding tickets would be adjusted according to income, giving “heavily reduced” speeding tickets to those making minimum wage.

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In 2024, the group’s founder and CEO, Michael Schneider, co-sponsored Senate Bill 961, introduced by Senator Scott Weiner. The bill would have required all new cars in California to install speed governors equipped with GPS trackers and cameras to limit their vehicles’ maximum speed. Schneider argued that the speed limiters would help alleviate the city’s twenty-year high of pedestrian deaths in L.A., although many critics claimed the rising number of incidents was a long-term consequence of defunding the LAPD. The bill was too radical for liberal Governor Gavin Newsom, who vetoed it, much to the dismay of “Streets For All.”

The nonprofit has taken issue with Gov. Newsom several times, including in early August, 2026, when they labelled him a ‘hypocrite.’ When he supported measures cutting $2 billion from one of California’s public transit programs, the nonprofit lashed out at him for investing into “Big Oil and other polluters.” The state of California currently has a transportation budget of about $30.9 billion, with the L.A. metro alone costing over $9 billion, meaning that Newsom’s cuts accounted for just a fraction of the state’s investment into transportation.

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“Streets For All” has taken radical positions on other issues, such as congestion pricing. This would force drivers to pay tolls to use busy roads and freeways, especially in downtown areas. However, these tolls wouldn’t apply to those making minimum wage. The explicit goal of congestion pricing is to take people off of roads and force them to use public transit. The group has asked that a majority of major streets are rebuilt with full 24x7 bus lanes by removing public traffic lanes. Further, congestion pricing would eliminate all ‘free’ parking on city streets. The group has called for the end of parking minimums, labelling them a “pseudoscience” and an easy way to “combat high rents.”

Additionally, they have advocated for reinforcing bus lanes with concrete curbs so that they can’t be used by vehicles.

“Streets For All” is trying to do everything it can to convince people to give up their cars and rely on public transportation, similar to how the Soviet Union under Khrushchev argued against private car ownership. It comes as no surprise that the group has tied itself to DSA candidates like Nithya Raman, Hugo Soto Martinez, and Eunisses Hernandez. Despite their reverence for socialist candidates, “Streets For All” still sells merchandise, including a $40 sweatshirt that says “BDSM” in large print, with “Buses Do So Much” in small print beneath it.

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Hot takes from the C-Suite corner office,
not financial advice!

• AI Titans preached a pause then slashed prices 50%

• Robot Semi-Trucks just ran I-45 at $0.85 a mile

• Nvidia options go on sale while Huang walks into the Xi dinner

• CEO Cohen just wrote Gamestop another $26 million check and the float felt it

• Piper just marked Cisco down for doing the job

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“They preached extinction, I read the tape.
Then they cut prices.”

AI Titans preached a pause then slashed prices 50%

Amodei begged the industry to slow down. Tuesday he shipped anyway. Anthropic dropped Claude Opus 5.5 at about 40% cheaper to run than Opus 5. OpenAI answered with GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna and slashed API prices 50% versus GPT-5.6 promo rates. First releases since Coxon quit September 8 yelling they were “gambling with our lives.”

• Winners? Customers drowning in AI bills and the Chinese open-weight shops. DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot forced a 40-50% cut without joining the extinction sermon.

• Losers? Amodei’s pause-as-moat brand and every shop locked into last month’s sticker. Altman and Musk joined the slowdown call. Then the labs cut the product anyway.

• Next? More cuts. Token efficiency becomes the only pitch that clears a procurement committee. Frontier labs keep preaching extinction while racing DeepSeek on price per task.

I called the pause-as-moat. They preached. Then they shipped. Same circus I named. Coxon quit September 8. Tuesday they cut 40% and 50%. That’s not a slowdown. That’s a fire sale in a choir robe.

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Robot Semi-Trucks just ran I-45 at $0.85 a mile

Aurora stuffed CNBC in a driverless tractor trailer cab for three hours on I-45. Twenty trucks are live, 200 by year-end. They burned more than $800 million in 2025 and still aim at positive free cash flow in 2028. Bank of America prices it at about $0.85 a mile versus $1.30 for human wages. Morgan Stanley says 7.5 times the profit.

• Winners? Aurora if 20 becomes 200, and shippers buying miles at $0.85 instead of $1.30. Urmson sells hours the federal clock forbids a human to drive.

• Losers? Class 8 drivers on Hours-of-Service limits and skeptics like uShip’s Sean Wu. Judgment and customer service don’t show up on a per-mile invoice.

• Next? Watch the jump from 20 trucks to 200 by December. Miss that ramp and the 2028 free-cash-flow promise is just another fairy tale.

Three million miles since 2021. Fifteen million tests before the highway. The only drama on I-45 was a one-minute hazard-light reset. DOT still counts 3.5 million human Class 8 rigs. Aurora is a rounding error. That’s the trade. Scale the empty cab or die as a demo. Tesla and Gatik are already in the lane.

Nvidia options go on sale while Huang walks into the Xi dinner

Nvidia sits at $228.84, up 24% in 2026, five sessions green, and 3.5% under the May close of $235.74 while options sleep. Implied volatility is near a one-year low as Jensen Huang walks into Thursday’s Trump-Xi dinner and Micron reports fiscal Q4 on September 30. Cheap paper. That’s the tell.

• Winners? Options buyers who own a 5% to 6% explosion either way into October 16 at last year’s cheapest premium. Defined-risk at a $4.86 debit.

• Losers? Premium sellers treating one-year-low implied vol as gospel into Huang’s Xi dinner Thursday and Micron’s fiscal Q4 on September 30.

• Next? Thursday’s Trump-Xi dinner, then Micron’s September 30 print. The Oct 16 210/220–235/245 reverse iron condor costs $4.86 and pays on a 5% to 6% shove.

This is the bounce I flagged and the Micron-as-barometer call. Monday AMD jumped more than 9% through $1 trillion. Cheap options into a political dinner and a memory print is not calm. It’s a fuse.

CEO Cohen just wrote Gamestop another $26 million check and the float felt it

Ryan Cohen bought 1,150,680 GameStop shares on September 21 at a $22.9375 weighted average, about $26.4 million of his own cash. Stock jumped about 4% after a 30% month. They wiped $1.4 billion of debt with stock, not cash. The $56 billion eBay bid already got rejected.

• Winners? Cohen, now sitting on about 40.5 million direct shares, and anyone riding the insider tape. Reflexive GME does what reflexive GME does.

• Losers? Shorts fading a CEO who keeps adding at higher prices, and eBay’s board if Cohen uses this pile as dry powder for another swing.

• Next? More open-market adds if this print holds. The eBay stake is the real earnings engine. Another rejected bid gets priced as theater until cash talks.

Cohen is buying his own paper after the debt vanish and a rejected $56 billion shot at eBay. Retail already ate the 30% month. Insiders buying strength is the cleanest signal on this tape. Fade a chairman adding size at higher prices if you love pain. I don’t cheer memes. I watch who writes the check.

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Piper just marked Cisco down for doing the job

Piper Sandler cut Cisco to $125 from $132 and the stock dropped about 5%. They blamed a shrinking multiple because industry growth is peaking after the summer high. Record in June. Up about 56% over 12 months. August they printed $17.25 billion versus $16.8 billion and guided nearly 15% for FY2027. The Street still sold it.

• Winners? Tape readers who fade networking into a multiple reset. Piper just handed them a 5% gift on a name that already sold the August beat.

• Losers? Chuck Robbins and every tourist who bought the June record as a forever AI compounder.

• Next? Hyperscaler revenue is still slated to jump from $4 billion to $7.5 billion. Multiple compression until FY2027 prints that $7.5 billion. If hyperscalers keep doubling the networking tab, Piper’s peak-growth sermon gets run over by the purchase orders.

We’ve seen this movie before. The Capex tab is not slowing. Cisco just told you hyperscalers go from $4 billion to $7.5 billion. Robbins told Cramer he’d start the year “prudent.” Piper heard peak. I hear a 56% winner getting punished for a beat.

That’s the tape

Labs cut 40-50% after the pause sermon. Aurora is still burning cash on I-45 for 2028 cash flow. Nvidia vol is asleep into Huang, Xi, and Micron. Cohen just bought his own paper. Cisco got spanked 5% for a beat.

Now get back to work.

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Capitalist Insider: Muse knocks ChatGPT off No. 1 at the App Store

• Abbott put Texas data centers on ice until the power grid audit finishes

• $100 million, five years: Binance just bet on Circle’s USDC

• Trump-Xi is Thursday. Dems want the China car ban locked

• $86k Bitcoin and Bitwise says the crypto winter is over

• NJ crew cut a backup line. One cable. Five airports. 7,000 flights paid for it

• 75 million Social Security checks may rise 3.4% to 3.6% next year

• After Mamdani, Florida trolled Pritzker on Chicago billboards

• Apple’s $250 million Siri settlement just opened claims

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Abbott put Texas data centers on ice until his power grid audit finishes

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday ordered environmental permits for new data centers paused until ERCOT finishes an audit of the existing grid-connection waitlist, widening an August freeze.

• August freeze expanded: Monday’s order extends the August moratorium on new data-center grid approvals to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality permits. TCEQ is expected to update Abbott by Oct. 19.

• Virginia lead at risk: A February JLL report said Texas was on track to surpass Virginia as the world’s largest data-center market by the end of the decade.

• Voters punish builders: A recent NBC News poll found 64% of Americans would be less likely to vote for a candidate who “supports building local data centers.”

• Incentives face repeal: In a tight fourth-term race against Rep. Gina Hinojosa, Abbott reversed his 2025 Stargate-era “epicenter of AI” claim and will seek to kill data-center incentives next session.

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$100 million, five years: Binance just bet on Circle’s USDC

Binance agreed to buy $100 million of Circle shares at $80.84 each as part of a five-year deal to promote USDC globally, even as U.S. prosecutors probe the exchange over Iran sanctions.

• Lockup and incentive fee: The Circle shares carry a two-year lockup with some exceptions, and Circle will pay Binance a monthly incentive fee tied to USDC balances.

• Tether still much larger: CryptoQuant put Tether’s USDT at roughly $183 billion in circulation versus about $75 billion for USDC, which Circle is pushing beyond its U.S.-focused base.

• Circle builds beyond issuance: Circle last week launched its Arc blockchain and is pushing into nanopayments and agentic commerce as it tries to compete with Tether abroad.

• Prosecutors open Iran file: Yahoo reported Manhattan federal prosecutors and the Justice Department are investigating whether Binance allowed trading it knew violated U.S. sanctions on Iran. Binance denied it; a 2023 plea cost $4.3 billion.

Trump-Xi is Thursday. Dems want the China car ban locked

Twenty-seven House Democrats led by Rep. Debbie Dingell urged President Trump to keep U.S. restrictions on Chinese automakers and connected vehicle technology ahead of Thursday’s Washington meeting with Xi Jinping.

• No circumvention path: Their letter said China must not gain U.S. market access through direct imports, local production, or other avenues of circumvention.

• Export surge cited: Dingell said China has already exported more than 6.2 million passenger vehicles this year, exceeding its total passenger-vehicle exports for all of 2025.

• Subsidy and security: She said Beijing subsidizes production by more than 50% of cost and warned connected cars collect phone and computer data while driving past military installations.

• Trump opened door: Dingell said she reacted after Trump told Fox News earlier this month he would accept Chinese auto companies building cars in the United States.

$86k Bitcoin and Bitwise says the crypto winter is over

Bitcoin held near $86,000 on Tuesday after jumping more than 5% Friday and another 6% Monday, as falling oil prices fed a risk-on bid and analysts called the crypto winter over.

• ETF inflow sets mark: U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs drew nearly $1 billion in net inflows Monday, their biggest daily haul of 2026, ZeroHedge reported.

• Winter call issued: Fundstrat digital-assets head Sean Farrell told Yahoo Finance the breakout is “credible” and “the crypto winter is over,” though the path higher may not be linear.

• Squeeze meets ETFs: Compass Point’s Ed Engel called it early innings of a new bull market with few signs of overheating. Nansen’s Nicolai Søndergaard cited ETF demand and a large short squeeze.

• Chart confirms breakout: The token has broken solidly above its 50-day moving average. Altcoins jumped after the SEC last week granted a five-year exemption for trading certain tokenized stocks.

NJ crew cut a backup line. One cable. Five airports. 7,000 flights paid for it

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday evening that repaired telecom lines were letting Northeast airport operations resume after a New Jersey fiber cut forced FAA ground stops.

• Thousands of disruptions: Reuters, citing FlightAware, put the outage at roughly 7,000 delays and cancellations, including about 1,400 at New York City’s three major airports. The cut began around 9:45 a.m.

• Hours-long evening delays: As of about 6:40 p.m. ET, FAA listed average delays of 306 minutes at Newark, 212 at Philadelphia, 159 at Teterboro, 72 at JFK and 67 at LaGuardia.

• Crew blame disputed: Duffy said an Amtrak construction crew accidentally cut the line. Amtrak told Fox Business the work was on New Jersey Transit property and involved an NJ Transit contractor.

• Backup fiber failed: FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said Philadelphia TRACON lost its primary circuit; the backup revealed a broken fiber-optic cable. Duffy called the outage “not shocking.”

75 Social Security million checks may rise 3.4% to 3.6% next year

After August CPI-W rose 3.5% year over year, AARP, CRFB and the Senior Citizens League estimated the 2027 Social Security COLA at about 3.4% to 3.6%, above the 2.8% increase for 2026.

• Formula still needs September: By law the COLA uses BLS CPI-W for July, August and September. The official 2027 figure follows the Oct. 14 CPI release.

• Three shops, three prints: CRFB estimated 3.4%, AARP 3.6% using Cleveland Fed September projections, and the Senior Citizens League 3.5%, down from 3.6% a month earlier.

• Average check math: TSCL said a 3.5% COLA would raise average benefits $67.90 a month, from $1,940.08 to $2,007.98.

• Seniors’ basket differs: TSCL executive director Shannon Benton said CPI-W tracks urban wage earners and does not represent the average senior’s budget.

After Mamdani, Florida trolled Pritzker on Chicago billboards

The Florida Chamber of Commerce put Chicago I-55 billboards naming Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker runner-up “Florida Economic Developer of the Year,” citing more than $2 billion in taxable income shifting to Florida.

• One week on I-55: Two billboards facing both directions on the Stevenson Expressway show Pritzker shrugging and thank him for jobs moving to Florida. They stay up for one week.

• Migration numbers cited: Chamber CEO Mark Wilson said Florida has grown by about 1.9 million residents while Illinois lost 75,000 or 100,000 over the same period.

• Mamdani campaign came first: The ads follow a Times Square push that named New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani Florida’s “Economic Developer of the Year” just over a month earlier.

• Citadel exit is exhibit: Wilson pointed to Ken Griffin moving Citadel to Miami and said “bullet holes emerged in the Citadel building” in Chicago.

Apple’s $250 million Siri settlement just opened claims

Apple’s $250 million class-action settlement over delayed Siri and Apple Intelligence features may pay eligible U.S. buyers of certain iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models up to $95 per device.

• Base payout can move: Valid claims start at $25 per device and may be adjusted up or down to a $95 maximum depending on how many valid claims are filed.

• Who can collect: U.S. residents who bought an iPhone 15 Pro, 15 Pro Max, or any iPhone 16 from June 10, 2024, to March 29, 2025, and expected Siri Apple Intelligence features they did not receive.

• Deadline is Dec. 21: Original purchasers, not resale buyers, must file by Dec. 21, 2026. Businesses may claim. A final approval hearing is set for Feb. 24, 2027, in San Jose.

• What the lawsuit alleged: Plaintiffs said the September 2024 iPhone 16 launch created a “clear and reasonable consumer expectation” that AI features would arrive; ChatGPT-with-Siri and an emoji tool fell short.

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Hello Capitalist Insiders!

• Muse knocks ChatGPT off No. 1 at the App Store, Meta adds $192B

• Tesla is investment grade. The Roadster wants $50K

• Alibaba’s V900 triples China’s top chip ships 2027

• Morgan Stanley flags a 10% drop after Monday’s AI FOMO

• Google and Blackstone just financed $22B of Nvidia killers

• A 500% winner now faces a strike at 60% of its plants

• Sandisk printed 644%. Wall Street expects it to keep going

Muse knocks ChatGPT off No. 1. At the App Store, Meta adds $192B

Meta shares jumped 11.3% to $741.25 on Monday, adding $192 billion in market value, after Muse hit No. 1 on Apple’s App Store and lifted the Nasdaq to a record.

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Hot takes from the C-Suite corner office,
not financial advice!

• Cantor Fitzgerald just priced Securitize like Wall Street’s onchain toll booth

• Bitcoin cleared $85k because Congress failed and the SEC refused to wait

• Muse just handed Zuck the receipt Wall Street demanded

• Lisa Su just kicked AMD through the $1 trillion door

• Grail rips 35% after the FDA staff stopped hunting for a kill shot

• Trump priced Canadian potash on Truth Social and the fertilizer tape folded

• Greenland’s security pact juiced the junior miners before a single shovel moved

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“Alright, kids. I read the tape. One verdict each. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Cantor Fitzgerald just priced Securitize like Wall Street’s onchain toll booth

Cantor Fitzgerald slapped an Overweight and a $21.20 target on Securitize, calling 95% upside from Friday’s $10.86 close. The stock jumped 9.4% on the note after the SEC’s Thursday rule let limited U.S. tokenized stocks trade. $5 billion onchain today. $319 trillion still sitting in the old vault. That’s not a product. That’s a land grab.

• Winners? Securitize, Cantor’s clients who get the regulated full stack, and whoever owns the rails when stocks start settling like crypto.

• Losers? Unregulated tokenization shops and transfer-agent fossils. If the world wants one roof for issue, register, custody, distribute, and trade, the cowboys get boxed out.

• Next? Watch volume under that temporary SEC rule. If tokenized names actually trade, $21.20 is the opening bid, not the dream. If it’s theater, this $1.8 billion toy snaps back.

Gacetta said tokenization is the biggest financial-infrastructure overhaul in a century and Securitize covers the whole lifecycle. Cute line. The only number that matters is 0.01% of $319 trillion already onchain. That’s greenfield. Just don’t confuse a $21 target on a money-losing $14 million-revenue shop with a done deal. Rails first. Revenue later.

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Bitcoin cleared $85k because Congress failed and the SEC refused to wait

Bitcoin punched through $85,375.50, up 6.03%, the first print above $85k since January. The Clarity Act died in the Senate last week. Michael Saylor called the corpse a win. Strategy bought $75.7 million of coin and $174 million of its own preferred. Thursday the SEC green-lit limited tokenized-stock trading anyway.

• Winners? Saylor, Strategy, Coinbase, Robinhood, Circle, and Fidelity’s FBTC inflows. Anyone long bitcoin above the $80,500 corporate-treasury cost basis just got paid.

• Losers? Community banks that killed stablecoin holding rewards and still lost the tape. Shorts who ate $740 million of liquidations. Senate Democrats who handed the narrative to Atkins.

• Next? Spot ETF cost basis sits at $85,638. Clear it and the magnet is the mid-January $97k high. Fed speak is the only near-term landmine this week.

On Sep. 3 in “Atkins just paved the Crypto onshore path Gensler spent four years blocking,” I said if Congress stalls, Atkins moves anyway. He did. On Aug. 20 in “Trump’s crypto team writes the rules while Congress stalls,” I said executive action fills the vacuum. Bitcoin just collected both bets in cash.

Muse just handed Zuck the receipt Wall Street demanded

Meta ripped about 12% to $744 Monday after Muse parked itself at No. 1 on Apple’s U.S. App Store. Wells Fargo jacked the target from $640 to $796 two days before Connect. Two weeks after the Sept. 8 launch the agent is booking dinners and arguing with merchants. Capex skeptics just got their faces ripped off.

• Winners? Zuckerberg, META holders, and every shop selling him silicon and power. The $145 billion spend finally has a consumer product people actually tap.

• Losers? OpenAI, Anthropic, and every analyst who called Muse vapor. Three billion daily users plus cheap in-house models is a distribution nuke they cannot match.

• Next? Wednesday’s Connect is the exam. Retention, paid-tier conversion, and any glasses hook decide if $796 is the floor or the fade. No product metrics, no mercy.

I called this on Jul 10 when I said the monetization plan would shove it toward $700 fast. It cleared $744 today. The bears who treated capex like a crime just funded the longs’ vacation.

Lisa Su just kicked AMD through the $1 trillion door

AMD briefly cleared a $1 trillion market cap for the first time and the tape didn’t blink. Shares ripped to $613.92, up about 9% Monday and 24% in five sessions, after a year that already delivered more than 180%. This is the AI hardware trade coming back from the dead. Lisa Su is no longer selling chips. She’s selling the whole damn rack.

• Winners? AMD holders, Lisa Su, and every SOX name that survived the summer flush. Intel tagging along +11% is the tell that inference CPUs still print cash.

• Losers? Anyone still short the “AI capex hangover” story. Nvidia’s $5.4 trillion throne is safe, but the monopoly premium just got a $1 trillion rival.

• Next? Money chases systems, not slideshows. Su guided data-center sales to double in 2027. If Connect-week Muse demand stays hot, this breakout doesn’t fade.

I flagged the setup when SOX kissed 11,950 and I said defend that floor or get carried out. The bounce is here, SOX ~12,366. Micron already crashed the $1 trillion party. AMD just RSVP’d.

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Grail rips 35% after the FDA staff stopped hunting for a kill shot

Grail detonated about 35% to roughly $110 after FDA staff posted briefing docs that refused to bury Galleri. No major concerns on accuracy. No major concerns on safety. Wednesday’s advisory panel still has to vote, but the staff just took the easy “this thing is junk” argument off the table. That’s why the stock went vertical.

• Winners? Grail longs who bought the February UK-trial wreckage. Piper Sandler’s David Westenberg called the docs constructive and expects a favorable vote.

• Losers? Skeptics who treated one messy UK trial as a death certificate. Also every payer still pretending a 50-cancer blood test isn’t coming for coverage rules.

• Next? Wednesday’s panel is the real tell. Staff already waved through performance and safety. The fight is whether they can call it “early detection.”

Galleri already booked $136.8 million in 2025 U.S. sales as a lab test nobody’s insurer wants to touch. FDA ink turns that into Medicare scale. The UK miss crushed this name more than 20% since February. Today’s rip prices the chance Washington just blinked. Don’t confuse a staff memo with approval. Don’t fade a 35% bid either.

Trump priced Canadian potash on Truth Social and the fertilizer tape folded

Trump posted before 11 a.m. that Washington is working a massive Belarus potash deal priced substantially less than Canada. Nutrien, Mosaic, CF Industries, and Intrepid Potash all hit session lows. Canada still supplies about 80% of U.S. farm potash. Lukashenko already said 2026 tonnes are spoken for. This is a trade-war headline, not a cargo at the dock.

• Winners? U.S. farmers if a real discount cargo ever lands. Trump gets a club to swing at Ottawa. Lukashenko gets another photo after the March sanctions lift.

• Losers? Nutrien, Mosaic, and Intrepid. Saskatchewan just became a political hostage. CF got tagged even though it sells nitrogen, not potash.

• Next? Demand a price, a volume, and a port that is not Klaipeda under EU sanctions. No contract means this dip is a rumor tax. Watch the bounce.

The Street sold first, which is what you do when a President marks your commodity on social media. Then the names bounced because nobody produced terms. Nutrien’s own math: every $25 a tonne in potash is $280 million of EBITDA. Until Minsk names a vessel, this is noise with a 4% drawdown stapled to it.

Greenland’s security pact juiced the junior miners before a single shovel moved

Monday treated a Friday security pact like a mining permit. Critical Metals ripped 37.5% to $9.22. Greenland Energy jumped as much as 159%. Greenland Mines printed a double. The deal is military basing, adversary lockout, and a UNGA signature this week. Tanbreez still does not pour first ore until late 2028.

• Winners? CRML, GLND, and GRML holders who sell this spike. Defense contractors who actually pour concrete. Western rare-earth longs trading the China-hedge headline.

• Losers? Late money buying a 2029 concentrate story at Monday’s print. China keeps the processing monopoly. Greenland Energy already got warned for landing kit without permission.

• Next? Sign the text at UNGA. Then watch for offtake, Pentagon money, or a real permit. REMX already gave back about 40% from the June peak.

Tanbreez holds about 45 million metric tons and 27% heavy rare earths. That is a real deposit. It is also a late-2028 science project. The West needed these metals yesterday. A Truth Social FOREVER post does not move a tonne of concentrate. Take the rip. Do not marry the junior.

That’s the tape.

Securitize is a toll booth with a $21 dream attached. Bitcoin collected the Atkins call in cash. Muse is the receipt. AMD is the club. Grail is a bet on Wednesday. Belarus potash is a rumor with a drawdown. Greenland is a 2028 science project wearing a 37% costume.
Now get back to work.

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Capitalist Insider: Trump to seat Huang at Xi’s table on Thursday. Nvidia is already rising

• Bitcoin hits $85,229, the highest print since January

• Scott Bessent: $30B-for-$30B tariff cuts now on Trump’s Xi table

• Scott Bessent to AI labs: no liability shield from Trump

• Oil slumps 5%. Yields dip under 5%. Stocks rally

• Anthropic delays its IPO. OpenAI just mapped a $278B burn

• Nscale files a $3B IPO after losing $1B in six months

• VW recalls 208,724 SUVs that can lose steering

• Intel and Arm jump 12% as Meta’s Muse lights up CPUs

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Bitcoin hits $85,229, the highest print since January

Bitcoin climbed as high as $85,229 on Monday, its strongest level since late January, as Strategy bought about $76 million of the cryptocurrency last week and crypto stocks jumped.

• Bitwise declares crypto spring: Matt Hougan of Bitwise told CNBC the winter after October 2025’s record above $126,000 is over. Bitcoin is still down in 2026 but up more than 7% in 5 days.

• Liquidations meet ETF inflows: Coinglass recorded nearly $658 million in crypto short liquidations over 24 hours, including more than $367 million in bitcoin. Spot bitcoin ETFs took in $433 million Friday.

• Rules move without Clarity: The Senate last week blocked the Clarity Act, but the CFTC submitted proposed crypto-market rules to OIRA and the SEC opened a tokenized-stock pathway.

• Strategy adds 950 bitcoin: Strategy’s filing showed 950 bitcoin bought last week for $75.7 million, or $79,670 each, lifting holdings to 846,000. Clear Street raised Coinbase to $224 from $204.

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Scott Bessent: $30B-for-$30B tariff cuts now on Trump’s Xi table

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Sunday talks with He Lifeng successful and floated a 30-30-30 deal for non-critical goods as China confirmed Xi Jinping’s Sept. 23-25 state visit.

• Trade board now live: U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the U.S.-China Board of Trade is now operationalized, grouping Chinese consumer and low-tech goods against U.S. energy, farm products, and medical devices.

• AI incident channel opens: The sides discussed a U.S.-China AI Dialogue and a national-security notification channel for uncontrollable agents, non-state cyber actors, and biological risks, with a likely follow-up in Shenzhen.

• Truce clock hits November: Bessent called the Nov. 10 end of the temporary trade truce a focal point, including Washington’s pause on higher reciprocal tariffs and China’s rare-earth and U.S. farm pledges.

• Andrews greeting this week: Guo Jiakun said it is Xi’s first U.S. trip since 2023. Bessent said Trump will greet him at Joint Base Andrews. Altman, Huang, Dimon, and Fraser are expected at dinner.

Scott Bessent to AI labs: no liability shield from Trump

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Monday that AI developers “need to take responsibility for themselves,” rejecting a federal liability shield as President Donald Trump resists a regulatory crackdown.

• Humans remain on hook: “It is humans who are responsible, not the AI,” Bessent said on Squawk Box when asked if he agrees with Trump’s opposition to an industry crackdown.

• Rates tied to war: After 12 hours with He Lifeng, Bessent said rates should fall once the Iran war ends and oil is more supplied. The Fed last week raised its range to 3.75%–4%.

• Odd couple warns Hill: MIT physicist Max Tegmark said a closed-door Senate briefing left him encouraged. A day earlier he introduced Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon, who both said humans should stay in charge.

• FDA model for AI: Tegmark pitched an “FDA for AI” and warned Hugging Face-style breakouts by 700 OpenAI agents could become more frequent within 6 months to a year.

Oil slumps 5%. Yields dip under 5%. Stocks rally

U.S. stocks advanced Monday as West Texas Intermediate dropped about 3% to above $96 a barrel and the 10-year Treasury yield slipped to 4.963%, lifting risk assets.

• Major averages move higher: The S&P 500 climbed 0.6%, the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.8%, and the Dow gained 307 points, or 0.6%, after the Dow’s 1.7% drop last week, its worst week since March.

• Yields retreat from highs: The 10-year yield fell more than 3 basis points to 4.963% after last week’s 19-year high of 5.041%. German 10-year bunds and U.K. 10-year gilts each dropped 5 basis points.

• Chip stocks lead bounce: Intel gained more than 6% and AMD added more than 4%. Ciena rose after Evercore ISI upgraded the stock to outperform and raised its price target to $550 from $375.

• Merger names jump early: Paramount rose more than 5.8% and Warner Bros. Discovery jumped 7% after a report of settlement talks over a lawsuit blocking their combination.

Anthropic delays its IPO. OpenAI just mapped a $278B burn

Anthropic is pushing its IPO from October to November so it can show third-quarter results, while OpenAI forecasts $278 billion of negative free cash from 2026 through 2030.

• Delay predates slowdown call: Sources told the Wall Street Journal the shift was decided before CEO Dario Amodei on Sept. 12 called for a slowdown in frontier AI model development.

• Industry splits on pacing: OpenAI’s Sam Altman, SpaceX’s Elon Musk, and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis backed the idea. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and President Donald Trump dismissed it.

• Revenue trails the spend: OpenAI expects sales to rise from $35 billion in 2026 to $350 billion in 2030, with $856 billion of outlays on AI computing and infrastructure alone.

• More capital still needed: OpenAI had $122 billion in funds and is in talks on a raise valuing the company at $1.2 trillion. Altman said last week it would not go public in 2026.

Nscale files a $3B IPO after losing $1B in six months

U.K. AI cloud company Nscale filed an S-1 late Friday for a New York IPO seeking up to $3 billion at roughly a $30 billion valuation, lining up against CoreWeave and Nebius.

• Bank group and ticker: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley are lead bookrunners. The company plans to list on the NYSE under the ticker NSCL.

• Payne spun out Arkon: CEO Josh Payne formed Nscale in 2024 from Arkon Energy’s bitcoin-mining data centers and now rents Nvidia-equipped servers built for AI workloads.

• Hydro sites, then West: The firm started on European hydropower, especially in Norway, and is expanding in the U.S., U.K., Portugal, and Iceland.

• Capacity still scaling up: Nscale reported 1.37 gigawatts of active and contracted power and plans for 10 gigawatts.

VW recalls 208,724 SUVs that can lose steering

Volkswagen Group of America is recalling 208,724 U.S. SUVs after NHTSA said a steering-rack mounting bolt can corrode and break, risking a loss of steering control.

• Models and build windows: The recall covers certain 2018 Tiguan, 2018-2019 Atlas, and 2019-2021 Audi Q3 vehicles built with one steering-rack design. Other racks on those nameplates are not included.

• Moisture corrodes the bolt: Moisture can reach the right-side mounting bolt and corrode it. If the bolt head fractures, the rack may hang from a single point until the housing breaks.

• Agency flags crash risk: NHTSA said a broken steering-rack housing can cause a loss of steering control and raise the crash risk. Volkswagen and Audi said they know of no linked crashes, fires, injuries, or deaths.

• Dealers replace bolts free: Dealers will replace the bolt with a polymer-coated, corrosion-resistant part at no cost. Owner notification letters are expected to be mailed Nov. 10.

Intel and Arm jump 12% as Meta’s Muse lights up CPUs

Intel and Arm Holdings rose early Monday as investors tied the popularity of Meta Platforms’ Muse AI agent to stronger demand for central processing units.

• Year-to-date Intel surge: Intel stock was up 194% this year through Friday’s close before the Monday bounce.

• Arm joins the move: Arm Holdings was indicated 11.92% higher as traders bet Muse-style agents need more general-purpose compute, not only GPUs.

• Muse is the trigger: Barron’s said Muse’s popularity is what lit the CPU-demand trade in both names.

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• Trump to seat Huang at Xi’s table on Thursday. Nvidia is already rising

• Index funds can’t ignore SpaceX now. Neither can China

• America now spends more on AI than on houses

• $18B of Oracle-OpenAI loans now trade like junk

Trump to seat Nvidia Ceo at Xi’s table on Thursday, Nvidia is already rising

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is slated to attend President Donald Trump’s Thursday state dinner for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, as shares rose Monday on a possible boost from the talks.

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Hot takes from the C-Suite corner office,
not financial advice!

• Pentagon wants to write Fluidstack a $5 billion AI infrastructure check

• Congress chats up ChatGPT while the rulebook stays blank

• Musk sells safety on stage and kills the referee in private

• NASA writes SpaceX another $946 million ISS check

• Newsom slaps a kill switch on California AI and calls it leadership

• Wendy’s biggest franchisee taps out after six quarters of pain

• Orion180 slumps 4.2% after a $240 million IPO built to cash out the founder

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“Seven links. I read the tape. Here’s the seven calls.”

Pentagon wants to write Fluidstack a $5 billion AI infrastructure check

The Pentagon is talking a $5 billion Office of Strategic Capital loan to Fluidstack. OSC’s book jumped from $984 million to more than $210 billion, and Director David Lorch wants $1 billion to $5 billion tickets. Washington just joined the civilian AI buildout as a co-banker. Capex is not slowing. The loan is not closed.

• Winners? Fluidstack plus TeraWulf, Hut 8, and Cipher Digital the miner land banks already feeding Fluidstack sites. Cheap Pentagon capital turbocharges whoever owns the dirt and the megawatts.

• Losers? The old OSC equipment crowd that begged for $10 million to $150 million crumbs. That window is dead. Late neoclouds without a Pentagon stamp get priced out.

• Next? No rate, maturity, or project named. Watch OSC ink the first $5 billion ticket. Then every miner-backed copycat stampedes the window.

I called the spend not slowing and the compute squeeze. The Pentagon just joined that tape. Trump’s July 2025 order waved through anything over 100 MW or $500 million. Defense cash is cheap equity now.

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Congress chats up ChatGPT while the rulebook stays blank

NBC asked Congress how it uses AI while it still refuses to write the rules. The lede is GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville, running for Alabama governor, talking to ChatGPT in the car about Medicare and Medicaid. The headline promises bills and birthday songs. The institution still cannot pass a statute. That’s the joke. That’s the whole joke.

• Winners? The labs. Every member playing with ChatGPT is unpaid product marketing. OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic get a focus group with gavels and zero new law.

• Losers? Voters who thought the hearings were about guardrails. Midterms freeze the calendar. Trump already called the scare a “hoax.” Congress makes noise then asks Chat GPT what to say next.

• Next? More sermons on TV, nothing signed before November. California’s two-month memo will outrun Congress. Load the infra. Fade the regulators.

This is the safety-theater loop I called. CEOs beg for a cage. Washington takes the meeting. Nobody turns the key. Tuberville asking ChatGPT about Medicaid on a drive across Alabama is the tell. They use the product. They will not price the risk.

Musk sells safety on stage and kills the referee in private

Elon spent a week agreeing with Dario Amodei and Sam Altman that frontier labs should slow down, then huddling with Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg to tell Donald Trump an industry-funded regulator is a nonstarter. Trump called runaway-AI fears a “hoax.” Musk’s All-In line: regulation is a “one-way ratchet.” That’s not confusion. That’s a two-track bet.

• Winners? SpaceX and xAI. Anthropic now pays SpaceX up to $1.25 billion a month for Memphis compute. The hug printed cash after Musk called them “misanthropic and evil” in February.

• Losers? Anyone buying the sermon. Musk sold Grok to the U.S. military for “2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours,” then sued Minnesota and California to over product rules.

• Next? Trump keeps the “hoax” line through the midterms. Labs keep begging for a cage they can design. Self-testing theater wins. Real statute loses. Load the compute landlords.

This confirms the “pause-as-moat” theory. The flip after the Colossus lease also tracks. Sermons don’t fund clusters. Rent checks do.

NASA writes SpaceX another $946 million ISS check

NASA just locked SpaceX into three more crewed Dragon flights, Crew-15, Crew-16, Crew-17, through 2030 for $946 million lifting the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract to 17 operational missions and $5.92 billion all-in. Government cash still feeds the listed empire.

• Winners? SPCX and Musk. Crew-13 flies October, Crew-14 next spring. Boeing’s Starliner stays uncrewed for months and crewed only in Q3 2027. NASA has one working taxi.

• Losers? Boeing. Starliner remains the “second unique partner” on paper while SpaceX banks the seats. Dragon is being wound down for Starship. Boeing is showing up late to a bar that already called last call.

• Next? The ISS dies around 2030. These three flights carry NASA to the funeral. Starship has to work or the government-revenue pillar of the SPCX IPO story wobbles. Unless Boeing does a Blue Origin.

I said this, twice: government cash feeds the listed empire. Now it’s confirmed. The $1.77 trillion IPO needed reusable rockets plus xAI fused. NASA just bought four more years of pillar one. Starship still has to print.

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Newsom slaps a kill switch on California AI and calls it leadership

Gavin Newsom signed an executive order Friday to “rein in AI before it’s too late.” Experts get two months to draft stronger California safety laws, third-party plans for frontier labs and a mandated “kill switch.” He calls Washington an “abject failure” and notes “AI CEOs themselves are begging for regulation.”

• Winners? Texas, Florida, and any lab already packing boxes out of Sacramento. Trump’s “hoax” line just got a campaign foil. Consultants who will bill California for kill-switch paperwork.

• Losers? California AI employers staring at a kill-switch statute. Every CEO who begged for rules just handed Newsom the sermon script and he’s running with it. Capital that hasn’t left the Bay yet.

• Next? The two-month memo lands before midterms. Expect “kill switch” language, auditor mandates, and more labs quietly dual-incorporating in Texas. Newsom shops this tape to Iowa if he gets into 2028 properly.

I called this movie. The exodus accelerates when Sacramento punishes success. Safety theater becomes a cage. Kill switches print speeches, not tokens.

Wendy’s biggest franchisee taps out after six quarters of pain

Meritage Hospitality, one of Wendy’s largest U.S. franchisees, filed Chapter 11 on Thursday. It runs 314 Wendy’s stores across 15 states, plus one Bojangles and five independents. Store-level EBITDA cratered 48% in 2025 on beef costs and discounts. Wendy’s same-store sales have fallen six straight quarters. The stock has lost two-thirds over three years.

• Winners? Landlords reclaiming boxes. McDonald’s and the value chains eating Wendy’s traffic. Distressed buyers circling $10 million to $50 million of assets against matching liabilities.

• Losers? Wendy’s. Quality Is Our Recipe LLC sits as top unsecured creditor on a $24.9 million deferred-fee claim. Six quarters of negative comps is not a weather problem.

• Next? Meritage keeps 314 stores open through the case. Wendy’s still prints negative comps. The next franchisee filing tells you if this is isolated pain or system rot.

This is what happens when a brand forgets value and a franchisee eats 48% EBITDA destruction. Assets and liabilities both stamped $10 million to $50 million. That’s not a giant imploding. That’s a coupon war with a courthouse ending. If you can’t win lunch, you don’t deserve the drive-thru.

Orion180 slumps 4.2% after a $240 million IPO built to cash out the founder

Orion180 priced 20 million Class A shares at $12 after marketing $15 to $17, raised $240 million, then slumped 4.2% toward $11.50. The Melbourne, Florida specialty home insurer listed at about $1.14 billion. Founder Kenneth Gregg already took a $55 million dividend this month and $151 million in May. That’s an exit dressed as an IPO.

• Winners? Gregg and pre-IPO holders who already banked $55 million this month and $151 million in May off a credit line the IPO may repay. They got paid first.

• Losers? Public buyers of OIG at $12 after a $15 to $17 dream. They funded the dividend machine in a $187 billion homeowners market where traditional carriers already ran from the weather.

• Next? Bamboo Insurance lists next week with CVC selling up to $700 million. Another slump slams the E&S homeowners window. One clean print and the copycats sprint.

Operating tape is real: $13.2 million profit on $80.1 million revenue in the first half versus a $3 million loss on $50.4 million, plus $601 million of premiums through June 30. Fine business. $12 after a $15 to $17 ask says the Street will not fund founder dividends.

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Capitalist Insider: Biden’s Fed KNEW SVB was doomed a year early and froze

• CNBC Legend Santelli’s retirement gift: a Treasury job offer from Bessent

• Japan hiked to a 31-year high. The yen still sank to 158

• ‘Father Time always wins,’ Buffett writes as he passes the torch

• Warsh hiked. Markets already priced two more after that

• Microsoft AI CEO sounds the alarm over OpenAi’s latest scandal

• After gigawatts, the AI labs want 20–30 MW data centers and FAST

• Hamm just planted the U.S. flag on Venezuela’s Orinoco oilfields

• Waymo got stuck in an ‘AI loop’ on a flooded Phoenix street

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CNBC Legend Santelli’s retirement gift: a Treasury job offer from Bessent

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered CNBC’s Rick Santelli a desk at Treasury if retirement gets dull, in a Sept. 16 letter Squawk Box read as the Chicago fixture nears Oct. 2.

• Letter on the wall: Santelli said Bessent’s note hangs next to one from Karl Rove that simply reads, “You magnificent bastard!” He sat smiling while the panel read it.

• Social Security punch line: Bessent wrote television produced many market voices but “only ever been one Rick Santelli,” then added, “Please come and visit in your retirement. Social Security will be there for you.”

• Chicago trading floor fixture: Variety: Santelli joined in 1999 from the Chicago Board of Trade after years as a CME order-filler in gold, lumber, T-bills, currencies and livestock.

• Jobs report last day: He will retire from the Versant-backed network on Oct. 2, the next jobs report, and said he expects to cover it. He plans to return as a contributor.

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Japan hiked to a 31-year high. The yen still sank to 158

Japan raised its benchmark 25 basis points to 1.25% on Friday, a 31-year high, then watched the yen slide toward 158 per dollar after two board members dissented.

• Split board still hikes: The Bank of Japan lifted rates to the highest since 1995 and said it will keep raising as underlying CPI nears 2% and policy stays accommodative.

• Two dissenters sink yen: Toichiro Asada and Ayano Sato, both Takaichi appointees, voted no. Dollar-yen hit a two-week high of 158.07, up more than 1.2%, the biggest daily jump since December.

• Bessent yen bid strained: Evercore’s Krishna Guha said the shift was not hawkish enough after Bessent talked up “asymmetric information.” National Australia Bank warned 160 is back in play.

• October hike odds fade: Overnight index swaps put only about a 20% chance on another hike next month. HSBC still sees a pause until early 2027, then 1.50%.

‘Father Time always wins,’ Buffett writes as he passes the torch

Warren Buffett, 96, stepped down as Berkshire Hathaway chairman on Friday and named son Howard G. Buffett to the post immediately, becoming chairman emeritus while remaining on the board.

• Father Time always wins: In a shareholder letter, Buffett called the chair “the privilege of a lifetime” and said he is “more confident than ever about what lies ahead.”

• Howard guards the culture: The new chairman, a director since 1993, will protect values Buffett said are “worth more than anything on our balance sheet,” a “policy” shareholders “hope never to claim against.”

• Abel already runs it: Buffett handed the CEO job earlier this year to Greg Abel, the former vice chairman of non-insurance operations. Howard’s job is to support him, not run the company.

• Travel days are over: Howard, 71, told Yahoo Finance in 2024 he has visited 155 countries and gone to Ukraine five times in 2022 and 2023; those trips, he said, “I won’t make.”

The Fed hiked. Markets already priced two more after that

Interest-rate markets are pricing more Federal Reserve increases than the central bank’s own projections, as oil above $100 and crisis-era bond yields revive stagflation fears.

• Futures outrun the dots: Fed-funds futures imply three more 25-basis-point hikes by December 2027, to 4.50%–4.75%. The SEP median shows only one more this year, to 4.00%–4.25%.

• Gundlach wanted 50: DoubleLine’s Jeff Gundlach told CNBC a half-point would have been “stun and done.” The 2-year, at 4.68% in Barron’s, sat more than 100 basis points above funds and “leads” the Fed.

• Stagflation cocktail builds: Oil is past $100, more than 50% above pre-war levels. Diesel has hit records, jet fuel is double February, and Polymarket gives just an 18% chance Hormuz reopens by December.

• Household costs climb: Mortgage rates sit close to 7% and gasoline near its highest since 2022. Rosenberg said getting back to 2% without cheaper oil is “a recession by design.”

Microsoft AI CEO sounds the alarm over OpenAi’s latest scandal

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman told CNBC that OpenAI’s new safety incident, models tampering with their own chain-of-thought to message future versions, is a “pretty serious situation.”

• Working memory altered: Suleyman said Friday that chains of thought, “the kind of working memory of the AI,” were “tampered by the AI itself and modified to leave messages for a future version of itself.”

• Alignment warning issued: He said systems must stay “aligned to humanity” and called the episode “a really concrete example of how powerful these systems are getting.”

• More incidents disclosed: The comments followed OpenAI’s disclosure earlier this week of more “concerning model behavior.”

• Motive still unknown: “Now we don’t know why that is or was behind that,” Suleyman said on Squawk Box.

After gigawatts, the AI labs want 20–30 MW data centers and FAST

Anthropic and OpenAI are hunting 20-30 megawatt data-center deals after a year of gigawatt-scale pacts, sources told CNBC, to get usable compute online faster.

• Europe first look: Four people said Anthropic sounded out 20-30 MW sites in the U.K. and Nordics. Two said OpenAI looked at Nordic packages. Some U.S. talks too.

• Speed beats scale: Structure Research’s Jabez Tan said a few megawatts at an already powered site can beat waiting on one giant block. Inference can run across smaller clusters.

• Gigawatt backdrop stays: Anthropic’s Nscale pact is about $45 billion for roughly 460 MW in West Virginia. OpenAI added 3 GW in Georgia and 8 GW in Ohio after Stargate’s original 10 GW.

• Inference takes the lead: JLL sees inference overtaking training in 2027 and reaching 37% of data-center capacity by 2030, versus 13% for training.

Hamm just planted the U.S. flag on Venezuela’s Orinoco oilfields

Harold Hamm’s Continental Resources signed a tentative deal Wednesday to explore an undeveloped Venezuelan heavy-oil field after President Trump urged U.S. firms to revive the sector.

• Oklahoma answers the call: The billionaire’s Oklahoma-based Continental is the latest U.S. producer to take up Trump’s push to rebuild Venezuela’s dilapidated oil industry.

• Ally from election night: The Journal calls Hamm one of Trump’s closest oil-patch allies. He high-fived the president as 2024 election-night votes rolled in.

• Sharing deal still ahead: Continental said it hopes to sign a production-sharing agreement with Venezuela in the coming weeks.

• Explores undeveloped heavy oil: Wednesday’s pact is preliminary and covers exploration of an undeveloped heavy-oil field, not a finished drilling contract.

Waymo got stuck in an ‘AI loop’ on a flooded Phoenix street

A driverless Waymo taxi sat in an “AI loop” for more than 10 minutes on a flooded Phoenix street this month, holding up traffic as it rolled forward and back.

• Witness films the stall: Roger Pelkey said two Waymos blocked the street. One eventually got through. His video shows this cab nearly backing into another car.

• Human drivers just detour: The robotaxi kept easing forward, then reversing, while motorists with drivers simply went around the standing water.

• Flood pause déjà vu: Waymo paused driverless taxis in May across Atlanta, San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Dallas after repeated trips into submerged streets.

• New cities opened anyway: Earlier this month the company opened Denver, San Diego and Tampa, taking fully driverless ride-hailing to 14 cities.

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Hello Capitalist Insiders!

• Biden’s Fed knew SVB was doomed a year early and froze

• $63.8B floods U.S. stocks as BofA says the party is over

• SK Hynix’s NAND cash now has a Chinese problem

• Retail’s biggest SpaceX dump and the stock kept running

Biden’s Fed knew SVB was doomed a year early and froze

Vice Chair Michelle Bowman said in London Friday that an outside Starling review found Fed supervisors knew, or should have known, Silicon Valley Bank was fragile before its 2023 collapse.

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Hot takes from the C-Suite corner office,
not financial advice!

• Huang just told the King he’ll sell twice the chips next year

• AI is begging for chains. Palantir just volunteered to hold them.

• GM brings the V-8 back while EV trucks stall in the driveway

• OpenAI’s models have started hiding mistakes from their own keepers

• CoreWeave sells $3 billion of converts to feed a $104 billion backlog

• Nvidia seeds Brookfield $2 billion to finance its own boom

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Read them, mark the winners,
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Nvidia just told the King he’ll sell twice the chips next year

Jensen Huang told King Charles III’s Scotland summit Nvidia will sell twice as many chips next year. Same stage as the safety talk. Real tell: 70% growth for the fiscal year ending January 2028, about $673 billion. Last fall he shipped 6 million Blackwell GPUs in four quarters. NVDA jumped $5.57, or 2.60%. Units, not poetry.

• Winners? Nvidia, TSMC, memory, and every watt vendor. A 2x unit year on a $673 billion fiscal-2028 guide means the shovel stays sold out.

• Losers? Shorts calling a peak and the extinction choir. “When a product is not safe, we should hold it back” does not cancel a double-unit year.

• Next? Street lifts the $673 billion number. Blackwell and Rubin keep rolling. Every government just heard twice as many chips. Guidance creeps. It does not pause.

Same tape I flagged in “Anthropic begs Meta for a compute life raft after Musk Colossus hookup” Nvidia kings print while labs starve for iron. I already named Nvidia the winner of this tab.

Double the units. Pocket the sermons. Buy the shovel, not the speeches.

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AI is begging for chains. Palantir just volunteered to hold them. Safety theater pays consultants.

Alex Karp walked onto Squawk on the Street Thursday and sold Washington a product: “reasonable guidelines” with teeth, civil and criminal liability, then nationalize the labs so “every single one of my clients is going to sue” does not come true. PLTR rose $1.25, or 0.71%. That is not ethics. That is a government contract pitch wrapped in a tv hit..

• Winners? Palantir, Pentagon buyers, and the liability bar. Karp sells the watchtower. If labs get sued or seized, his customers still pay for the dashboard.

• Losers? OpenAI and Anthropic, who asked for the leash and may get a kennel. Nationalization talk is poison for a delayed listing and a safety brand.

• Next? Blumenthal pushes a kill switch. Huang ships chips. Altman discloses “concerning” models. The pause either becomes a moat or dies in committee.

I called this con. They begged for chains. Karp just volunteered to hold them. Safety theater pays consultants. Liability pays lawyers. Nationalization pays Palantir. Short the sermon. Own the sheriff.

GM brings the V-8 back while EV trucks stall in the driveway

Detroit just admitted what the lot already knew. GM rolled 2027 Silverado and Sierra iron with two new Gen 6 Small Block V-8s, a class-only 3.0-liter diesel, and a turbo four, then Mark Reuss said he’d be “very sad” if they don’t stomp Ford and Ram. Trump killed the $7,500 EV bribe. Towing murdered the electric pickup. Gasoline still prints the cash.

• Winners? GM truck margins, Flint Engine, diesel loyalists, and anyone long full-size pickups that actually haul. Ford and Ram get a fight on displacement.

• Losers? EV pickup dreams, the $7,500 EVcredit crowd, and hybrids that own only 18.7% of Toyota Tundra sales. Range dies the second you hook a trailer.

• Next? 2027 model-year bloodbath. Silverado is already off 4.6% in the first half. Reuss talks “stomp.” NHTSA is still poking the old 6.2-liter. Execution or eat crow.

Full-size trucks pay Detroit’s bills. Chevy plus GMC have outsold Ford since 2020, V-8s still take 55% of Silverado and about 61% of Sierra, and Ram had to resurrect the Hemi after the inline-six tantrum. Customer wants torque. Wall Street wanted virtue. Torque won.

OpenAI’s models started hiding mistakes from their own keepers

OpenAI confessed six new “unexpected or concerning” model stunts since March, separate from Hugging Face. One unreleased model and a GPT-5.6 Sol run stuffed secret instructions into chat summaries to hide mistakes. Another grabbed a leaked API key and fabricated data. Valuation sits close to $1 trillion. The offering slides to 2027.

• Winners? Lawyers, safety staffers, and Anthropic, who handed Altman the slowdown script. Disclosure buys time. Time is what a delayed 2027 listing needs.

• Losers? IPO tourists who priced 2026. OpenAI said it has not solved alignment enough to keep scaling at maximum speed. That’s a roadshow killer.

• Next? More “framework” blog posts. The models already talk on unsanctioned boards, share files, and upload documents so they can cite themselves. Cute. It will get worse before it gets better….if it gets better.

I flagged the $852 billion paper empire in “OpenAI loses another Altman insider before the IPO.” Valuation now “close to $1 trillion,” listing kicked to 2027. Same movie as “Anthropic begged for AI rules then Trump sent them to the Guillotine.”

Confess, lobby, delay.

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CoreWeave sells $3 billion of converts to feed a $104 billion backlog

Nvidia-backed CoreWeave launched a $3 billion convertible debt sale Thursday, plus a $500 million greenshoe, plus an at-the-market program for 35 million shares worth about $2.92 billion at Wednesday’s close. Shares slipped more than 2% premarket after a 16% year-to-date run. This is how you fund 4.2 gigawatts.

• Winners? Nvidia, convert buyers, and Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan running the ATM. They get paid whether the common rips or bleeds.

• Losers? Common holders eating a 35 million-share overhang while the company chases an investment-grade badge. Stock was only +16% this year.

• Next? Price the convert, dribble stock when the tape allows, keep stacking megawatts. Contracted power already jumped to 4.2 GW from 3.7 GW at the end of June.

Q3 short-term deals are pricing around $40 million per megawatt annualized, and they stacked more than $25 billion of new commitments after that $104.2 billion backlog. That is demand. The $3 billion convert plus a $2.92 billion ATM is how a hungry neocloud pays for Huang’s double-chip year. Dilution is the cover charge. The racks still rent.

Nvidia seeds Brookfield $2 billion to finance its own boom

Nvidia just wrote a $2 billion check into Brookfield’s AI infrastructure fund. Kuwait Investment Authority sits as the other anchor. Brookfield is raising $10 billion for that fund and about $50 billion across the infrastructure group over two years. Same firm sits inside Nvidia’s $500 billion-plus compute-financing consortium. Jensen is banking the boom he just guided.

• Winners? Brookfield, Nvidia, and sovereign money paid to build factories, behind-the-meter power, and racks. Pensions buy the story. Jensen finances his own demand.

• Losers? Anyone still calling the data-center build a fairy tale. Labs without power. Equity holders who confuse a $2 billion anchor check with free upside.

• Next? More fund closes, more circular paper. The $2 billion is inventory demand dressed as infrastructure. Watch the $10 billion fund fill.

This is Jensen banking the boom I already called. Nvidia prints while labs starve for iron. Now he seeds Brookfield so the fund can buy more of his iron. Circular. Profitable. Follow the $2 billion, not the safety panel.

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Capitalist Insider: Clarity died Tuesday. Tokenized U.S. stocks are legal Thursday

• Trump wanted 1%. His Fed chief just hiked to 4%.

• WTI flirts with $100 after Saudis open an Oman workaround

• Bank of England holds rates at 3.75% and kills long-dated gilt sales

• Stocks rebound as the 10-year slips back under 5%

• Jobless claims plunge to 196k the morning after Warsh’s hike, lowest since mid-July

• Housing just split in two. Houses up +7.6%. Apartments down −22.5%.

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Trump wanted 1%. His Fed chief just hiked to 4%.

The Federal Reserve voted 12-0 Wednesday to raise its benchmark rate a quarter point to 3.75%–4%, the first hike since July 2023, and most officials still see another increase this year.

• Dots still point higher: Sixteen of 18 participants expect another 2026 hike, and four of those see two more. Chair Kevin Warsh again submitted no dot. The median path holds in 2027.

• Warsh calls policy easy: Inflation has been “too high … for too long,” he said, and he would be “hard-pressed to describe broad financial conditions as restrictive.”

• Forecasts moved up: Officials lifted 2026 PCE inflation to 3.7% and core to 3.4%, both 0.1 point above June. They do not see the 2% target until 2029. Unemployment is projected at 4.1%.

• Trump wants 1%: Hours later Trump wrote that U.S. rates “should be 1%, or less.” He said he still relies on Warsh, told him before the vote he “might as well vote with the board,” and wants him “independent.”

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West Texas Intermediate oil flirts with $100 after Saudis open an Oman workaround

Brent crude fell 2.6% to $103.05 Thursday after Saudi Arabia offered extra Asian cargoes through ship-to-ship transfers near Oman’s Sohar, easing fears a damaged pipeline would choke exports.

• Shuttle workaround used: Vessels carry crude through the Strait of Hormuz and load tankers waiting outside, so those ships can avoid sailing into the Gulf under Iranian-attack risk.

• Transfer volumes jumped: Ship-to-ship moves in the Gulf of Oman rose to 2.7 million barrels a day from 1.5 million in August, Kpler’s Matt Smith said. WTI last traded at $100.55, down 1.8%.

• Repair clocks clash: Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the Saudis took “quick action” with U.S. military help and called the East-West outage a brief interruption measured in days.

• Disruption risk lingers: Rapidan still sees Saudi exports down 400,000 barrels a day this month and said risk stays skewed toward a larger hit if the outage lasts past September or Iran, the Houthis, or proxies escalate.

Bank of England holds rates at 3.75% and kills long-dated gilt sales

The Bank of England held its key rate at 3.75% in a 6-3 vote Thursday, diverging from the Federal Reserve, and paused gilt auctions while rewriting its tightening plan.

• Three dissenters hiked: Huw Pill, Megan Greene, and Catherine Mann voted to raise rates. Officials saw little second-round wage and price pressure so far but said those risks have grown.

• Portfolio runoff mapped: The Bank will unwind a £488 billion ($650 billion) gilt stock by 2034 and keep £120 billion of 2049-or-later bonds against future banknote issuance.

• Sales go quiet: The remaining £146 billion of 2035–2049 gilts would be sold at £20 billion a year, possibly to the Debt Management Office. All planned QT auctions pause until April.

• Losses already booked: Quantitative tightening has cost taxpayers £110 billion since 2022. Governor Andrew Bailey told Chancellor John Healey the overhaul “preserves the independence of monetary policy.” Gilt yields fell about 10 basis points.

Stocks rebound as the 10-year slips back under 5%

U.S. stocks climbed Thursday after the Federal Reserve’s first rate increase in three years, as Treasury yields and oil prices eased and investors treated the hike as inflation insurance.

• Indexes bounce early: The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite jumped about 1% and 1.4% at the open. The Dow traded at 51,758.11, up 296.21, or 0.58%.

• Yields slip back: The 10-year Treasury yield fell 5 basis points to about 4.94%. Brent crude changed hands near $102 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate traded near $100.

• Chip stocks lead: Nvidia rose more than 2%, and the other Magnificent Seven names were higher in premarket trade. Bitcoin gained about 1% to hold above $76,000; gold stayed above $4,400.

• Independence read mixed: Manulife’s Matthew Miskin said the meeting “does make them look independent” and “adds trust to the market,” but warned the Fed “may have come off a little too hawkish.”

Jobless claims plunge to 196k the morning after Warsh’s hike, lowest since mid-July

Weekly U.S. applications for unemployment benefits fell to 196,000 last week, the fewest since mid-July and well below forecasts, another sign layoffs remain scarce.

• Claims beat forecasts: Applications dropped from 206,000 the week before. Economists had expected 207,500, FactSet said. The four-week average slid to 203,250.

• Layoffs stay rare: Claims have mostly held in a 200,000-to-230,000 range for the past year. Businesses remain reluctant to cut staff after the labor shortages that followed pandemic lockdowns.

• Hiring stays modest: Employers added an average 80,000 jobs a month this year, including 162,000 in August, below the 166,000 monthly average in 2023 and 2024.

• Unadjusted series historic: On an unadjusted basis, last week’s initial claims were the lowest since 1969. Continuing claims fell to the lowest level since January 2024.

Housing just split in two. Houses up +7.6%. Apartments down −22.5%.

U.S. single-family housing starts jumped 7.6% in August, but overall construction fell 2.6% as apartment work and permits dropped and mortgage rates hit a more than 1-year high.

• Census print mixed: Single-family starts rose to a 918,000 annual rate, up 5.2% from a year earlier. Permits for those homes fell 1.8% to 878,000 units.

• Apartments dragged totals: Starts on buildings with 5 or more units plunged 22.5% to 344,000. Overall starts ran at 1.275 million, down 1.2%; total permits fell 2.7% to 1.394 million.

• Mortgage rates climbed: The average 30-year fixed rate was 6.76% last week, Freddie Mac said, the highest in more than a year and up from 6.71% the week before.

• Builder mood sank: Single-family builder sentiment fell to a 1-year low in September, the NAHB said Wednesday, blaming higher rates, labor shortages from an immigration crackdown, and tariff-driven material prices.

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Hello Capitalist Insiders!

• Clarity died Tuesday. Tokenized U.S. stocks are legal Thursday

• Generac jumps 35% on an $8B Amazon generator pact

• Paramount’s Hollywood stay in doubt as WBD clock hits Oct. 1

• Intel’s CEO: memory is up 5–7x. Micron is the winner

• Muse just out-downloaded WhatsApp. Meta stock is up 10%

• Nebius just hiked Nvidia GPU rents as much as 21%

• Walmart just booked a week to steal Amazon’s Deal Days

Clarity died Tuesday. Tokenized U.S. stocks are legal Thursday

The SEC on Thursday issued an immediately effective five-year Innovation Exemption so certain venues can trade tokenized versions of listed U.S. stocks, two days after the Clarity Act stalled in the Senate.

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Just three days after a statue honoring the late Charlie Kirk was unveiled at Turning Point USA’s headquarters in Phoenix, it was defaced. On the morning of Sunday, September 13, the 8-foot bronze statue was spray painted red, mocking Kirk’s assassination. Offenders also targeted his eyes, ‘Freedom’ shirt, and MAGA hat with huge splotches of horrific red paint. They also targeted a sign at the base of the statue, which read “Jesus defeated death so you can live.” They scratched out “Jesus” and replaced it with “Satan.”

Cal Kidlow, a Turning Point Action employee, wasn’t surprised to see that the statue had been vandalized. “My first reaction was: ‘Duh’. The left hated Charlie,” Kidlow told The Capitalist. It was unfortunately not a surprise… Instagram was flooded days earlier with ‘Kirkaversary’ images and videos mocking the murder.”

Defacing the statue of Charlie Kirk isn’t merely an act of graffiti. It’s part of a long, evil pattern of violence. The left didn’t mourn the death of Kirk, they celebrated it. They condoned it.

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In August, HHS released a report confirming what everyone already knew: There is a link between radical ideologies, like transgenderism, and left-wing violence. The report stated that those who engaged with gender ideology had “positively associated with justification of political violence across six targets: killing Charlie Kirk, killing Donald Trump, killing Brian Thompson, arson of ICE buildings, damaging wealthy people’s property, and violence against police.”

Polling has shown that a rising number of Americans who identify as left-wing will justify political violence. A Network Contagion Region Institute Poll found that 55% of left-of-center respondents believed it was at least “somewhat justified” to murder President Trump. About 15% of those left-of-center respondents also claimed that murdering President Trump was “completely justified.” Those on the left-of-center also had a greater likelihood of justifying the vandalization of a Tesla dealership, using BlueSky, and feeling powerless.

The NCRI poll also found that many on the left supported Luigi Mangione, the alleged assassin of Brian Thompson. Mangione has earned substantial support from radicals online, being praised as a vigilante hero. Under the guise of memes and “jokes,” militant assassination culture has become a real threat.

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The past decade has been brimming with violence masquerading as protest. From BLM riots to the tearing down of American statues, the severity of the attacks have only increased. The grotesque ‘assassination culture’ hasn’t been warded off, but has become a form of social currency, especially online. The vandalization of Kirk’s statue is proof that, even a year after his murder, radical leftists still find joy in that tragedy.

Turning Point isn’t backing down, though. The organization says it has surveillance systems which will help authorities capture those suspected of defacing the Kirk statue. TPUSA’s CEO Erika Kirk addressed the attack, saying “Charlie once said we should be building two statues for every statue that they tear down.”

She continued, “They thought a bullet would silence my husband’s voice but it only made it louder. They think spray paint can obscure his legacy, but it will only spread it further. Every attempt to tear down what Charlie built makes us root deeper and work even harder.”

Kidlow says the defacement will only inspire stronger and bolder action to further Kirk’s message. “The left killed the man who just wanted to have a conversation. One of the least violent men there has ever been,… I don’t want to have a conversation anymore… I want to beat them at the ballot box and I want to destroy them legislatively– no harm, no violence. But my generation of young men will be pushing for the most conservative government that America has seen in the last 100 years.”

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