Peace President’ Breaks Record for Attacking the Most Countries DNYUZ

Tobacco - Australian crime syndicates using fake tobacco packaging to flood legal market

This is kind of amazing: World Monitor is a real-time global intelligence dashboard. Includes military activity, climate anomalies, live webcam feeds in warzones, internet outages, active fires, and even the Pentagon Pizza Index.

“It’s a little bit like asking, when the Archduke Ferdinand got killed, what the macroeconomic consequences would be, and having no idea what was next,” Mr. Rogoff said. “When World War I started, everyone thought it would end in a month.”

Global Economy Is Facing the Prospect of Another Profound Shock

A protracted conflict in the Middle East risks a spike in energy prices and broader inflation.

In the most hopeful scenario for the global economy, the latest war in the Middle East ends within a few weeks. The region continues to produce oil and gas. Shipping resumes in the Strait of Hormuz, preventing a shock to the world’s energy supplies. Fear of inflation subsides.

But experts cautioned against any hasty sense of reassurance. The American and Israeli bombing of Iran, and Iranian reprisals throughout the region, set dangers in motion that pose a substantial threat to global economic fortunes.

The most alarming fears centered on the possibility that the Iranian government — pushed to the brink of elimination — might unleash more aggressive retaliation, accepting the near-certainty of the intensified bombing of its own territory as the cost of fighting another day. The Iranians would presumably seek to damage the capacity to produce oil and gas in regional powers like Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Any event that extends the conflict or threatens sources of oil and gas is likely to lift energy prices to levels that would sow inflation. That could prompt central banks worldwide to raise interest rates, pushing up the costs of mortgages, car loans and other borrowing. And that would choke off consumer spending and business investment — a classic pathway to a downturn.

“We’re in a very precarious period,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and a professor at Harvard.

A chess grandmaster and a student of history, Mr. Rogoff was skeptical of the consensus that the conflict will be short-lived. He cited the assassination of the presumptive heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire more than a century ago — an episode that set off a global conflagration.

“It’s a little bit like asking, when the Archduke Ferdinand got killed, what the macroeconomic consequences would be, and having no idea what was next,” Mr. Rogoff said. “When World War I started, everyone thought it would end in a month.”

At the center of concern for the moment is the fate of energy produced in the Middle East, source of 30 percent of the world’s oil and 17 percent of its natural gas. Any disruption to that flow would almost certainly trigger trouble in the world’s largest importing nations — major economies in East Asia and Europe.

Donald Trump Is Setting Us Up for Another Financial Crisis

Medias: Private Credit and the Shadow Banking Crisis – “In this week’s State of the Union address, President Donald Trump played the hits. He demonized immigrants, he lied about the state of the economy, chastised the Supreme Court over tariffs and called Democrats “crazy.” As evidence of his magnificence he of course touted the stock market, not once but three times – But there is one word that was completely absent from his economic picture. 

One concept that should be front and center in any honest accounting of where the risks to this economy actually live. Deregulation. Because while Trump was taking victory laps about the Dow, his administration has been dismantling the guardrails that were put in place after the last time Wall Street blew up the economy…In the wake of 2008, we put regulations in place to prevent a repeat performance — capitalization requirements, stress tests, transparency rules. 

Then we sent an ungodly sum of money into the financial system, bought back troubled assets from the big banks, and lowered rates dramatically to allow them to deleverage. Economically speaking, it was a masterclass in crisis management. The financial system survived. But Main Street got left out in the cold. Foreclosures kept coming. Wages stagnated. The people who caused the crisis were made whole, and the people who suffered from it were told to be patient. 

That profound political and moral failure is arguably why Donald Trump won in 2016, and why he won again in 2024. We failed to learn the lesson. So here we are. And the new thing that financial titans, Wall Street observers, and the more astute economic commentators have been whispering about is something called private credit. 

It hit the mainstream last year with some very public bankruptcies that revealed shaky lending practices, massive over-leverage, and some genuinely shady dealings. You may remember Jamie Dimon — CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States — making his infamous ‘cockroaches’ comment. Where you see one, there’s probably more. That sentiment refuses to die and kind of haunts Wall Street to this day…”

Review of State Bar Complaints and Allegations Against Department of Justice Attorneys

Escalating attacks by Pam Bondi against DOJ attorneys along with protection for loyalists – See Federal Register – DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE Office of the Attorney General 28 CFR Part 77 [Docket No. OAG199, AG Order No. 6653-2026-A] RIN 1105-AB82
Review of State Bar Complaints and Allegations Against Department of Justice Attorneys. Notice of proposed rulemaking.
SUMMARY: The Department of Justice (“Department”) proposes to establish a process for reviewing bar complaints and allegations against its attorneys.

 Under the proposed rule, before a current or former Department lawyer may participate in any investigative steps initiated by the bar disciplinary authority of a State, Territory, or the District of Columbia in response to allegations that a current or former Department attorney violated an ethics rule while engaging in that attorney’s federal duties, the Department will have the right to review the allegations in the first instance and shall request that the bar disciplinary authority suspend any parallel investigations until the completion of the Department’s review.
DATES: Comments are due on or before April 6, 2026