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Mon, 20 Jul 2026 17:25:00 +0000 Oh My F**king God, They're Doing It Again
Oh My F**king God, They're Doing It Again
Oh My F**king God, They're Doing It Again
Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance
Assholes who wear Vineyard Vines all summer on Wall Street have once again put those Wharton PhD’s to good use by again “discovering” that assets so toxic and illiquid they make drinking cement taste like Fiji water apparently become safe when you rearrange them, rename them, and place an insurance company between the losses and the people buying them. Sound familiar?
According to Bloomberg , UBS and other firms have been exploring structures that package stakes in private-credit funds into bonds. Because perpetual private-credit vehicles do not fit neatly into conventional ratings models, bankers are looking to add insurance “wrappers” that allow portions of the deals to inherit the insurer’s stronger credit profile. The resulting paper can then be marketed as investment grade, even though the assets underneath remain opaque, illiquid private-market investments.
This is apparently considered innovation. I just hear Anthony Bourdain explaining CDOs during The Big Short over and over again.
An insurer guarantees a tranche against losses, the tranche receives a better rating, and other insurers can buy it while setting aside dramatically less capital. In the example described, an A2-rated tranche could require less than 1% in regulatory capital, compared with a charge that could reach 30% for a direct investment in a private-credit fund.
Nothing says “rock-solid asset” quite like needing several lawyers, a ratings agency, an insurance guarantee and a regulatory-capital loophole to explain why it is safe.
The comparison with 2008 is not merely rhetorical. Before the financial crisis, Wall Street packaged mortgages into residential mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. Those securities were divided into tranches, and ratings agencies assigned extremely high grades to senior portions based on assumptions that nationwide housing losses would remain limited and geographically dispersed.
Then Wall Street added another layer of genius: credit-default swaps.
Insurer AIG’s Financial Products division sold enormous amounts of CDS protection on mortgage-related securities. These contracts operated much like insurance, promising payment if the protected securities suffered specified credit losses. AIG collected fees up front and initially posted little collateral because everyone treated the company’s high credit rating as a substitute for cash.
The crucial clarification is that AIG’s traditional state-regulated insurance subsidiaries were not simply writing ordinary homeowners policies and accidentally destroying civilization. The catastrophe grew largely inside AIG Financial Products, an inadequately regulated derivatives business that used the broader AIG organization’s pristine rating to guarantee complex financial bets.
But that rating was the magic wand.
As mortgage values deteriorated and AIG was downgraded, its counterparties demanded tens of billions of dollars in collateral. AIG did not have enough readily available cash to meet those calls. Suddenly, the institution that had promised to insure everyone else’s balance sheet needed the federal government to insure its own. The same rating that had made the contracts appear safe became the trigger for the liquidity crisis once it disappeared.
On September 16, 2008, the Federal Reserve authorized an initial loan of up to $85 billion to keep AIG from collapsing. The government received a 79.9% equity interest in exchange. The support was later expanded and restructured through Treasury investments, additional facilities and special vehicles created to remove mortgage securities and CDO exposures from AIG’s balance sheet.
Total commitments commonly associated with the rescue eventually reached roughly $180 billion. The CFTC later described the intervention as about $600 for every American alive at the time.
AIG had more than $1 trillion in consolidated assets in mid-2008 and sat at the center of a sprawling network involving major banks, retirement plans, commercial-paper markets, municipalities and other insurers. Federal Reserve officials concluded that a disorderly failure could have caused severe losses across financial institutions and further reduced the availability of credit to households and businesses.
In other words, AIG did not merely make bad investments. It sold protection so broadly that its own failure threatened to detonate the institutions that believed they were protected. The insurer had become the bomb.
And now, less than two decades later, Wall Street is again using insurance guarantees to turn difficult-to-rate credit exposure into highly rated securities.
What could possibly go wrong besides the exact thing that already went wrong?
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The modern structures are not identical to AIG’s CDS book. Today’s private-credit wrappers may be smaller, more collateralized and subject to different contractual and regulatory safeguards. There is no evidence that the current market has already created an AIG-sized hole.
But the rhyme is deafening. The underlying private credit assets are dogshit , as I’ve written about on this blog non-stop . The engineering is complicated. Ratings play a central role. Capital requirements become lighter after the transaction is rearranged. Risk migrates from the original lender to insurers, annuity providers, pensions and other institutions promising money to ordinary people decades from now.
The fund-finance market is estimated at somewhere between $1 trillion and $1.75 trillion, up from only a few hundred billion roughly a decade ago. That puts its expansion in the same broad neighborhood as the pre-2008 boom in structured subprime finance.
Private-credit managers need liquidity because exits have slowed, old investments remain stuck, and some borrowers are repaying existing loans with still more debt. Meanwhile, insurers and annuity companies are hungry for yield and attracted to structures that turn higher-risk fund exposure into favorably treated investment-grade paper.
It is a beautiful ecosystem. Private funds need money. Insurers need yield. Banks need fees. Ratings agencies need business. Regulators need to remain comatose. Everyone gets exactly what they want until the whole thing winds up bending over the average taxpayer, saver or retail investor somehow.
One particularly obvious danger is concentration. When an insurer wraps multiple securities, every buyer begins relying on the same corporate balance sheet. A downgrade of that insurer could cause many wrapped tranches to be downgraded simultaneously, potentially triggering forced selling across portfolios at precisely the moment markets are least able to absorb it. It’s like a high school test where everyone copies off of the same person who fails the test, causing the rest of the class to.
The structures also make it increasingly difficult for regulators to trace where the final losses reside. Researchers have warned that repackaging risk adds “structural complexity and opacity” and can amplify contagion when one link fails, as the Bloomberg report notes.
Once again, Wall Street is not eliminating risk. It is relocating it, obscuring it and reducing the amount of capital held against it. And once again, the entire arrangement is encouraged by the understanding that the Federal Reserve will respond to a sufficiently large accident with emergency lending, asset purchases, liquidity facilities and whatever alphabet soup is necessary to keep asset prices from discovering consequences.
This is the lesson Wall Street learned from 2008: not that leverage and opacity are dangerous, but that they should be spread widely enough to qualify for federal protection.
Make a reckless bet by yourself and you go bankrupt. Make the same bet through enough banks, insurers, pensions and retirement accounts and you become systemically important.
The Fed has spent years turning moral hazard from an embarrassing side effect into a rational business model. Every rescue lowers the perceived cost of the next gamble. Every emergency facility teaches markets that liquidity risk is temporary. Every rapid intervention tells executives that the real objective is not avoiding catastrophe, but making sure a catastrophe would be too politically expensive to tolerate.
So the structures get larger. The collateral gets murkier. The ratings get friendlier. The capital cushions get thinner. The chains of counterparties get longer.
Then everyone acts stunned when one downgrade causes twelve institutions to discover they were all holding the same risk.
We are not preventing the next crash. We are steadily assembling the mother of all crashes while congratulating ourselves for distributing the explosives more efficiently. And when it finally happens, the people who designed it will explain that nobody could possibly have seen it coming.
Except, of course, anyone who remembers 2008…or who is unlucky enough to sit next to me at an airport bar when I have 3 hours to kill and feel talkative.
--
QTR’s Disclaimer : Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here . This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.
This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions.
As of May 20, 2026 I am attempting to no longer actively trade (read my story here ). My investing/saving is mostly done by recurring contributions mostly to sector ETFs and a few select equities, trusted third parties who oversee my accounts, and advisors . Such advisors or funds, through individual equities, options, index funds, mutual funds, ETFs, or other securities, may have positions in, exposure to, or holdings of names mentioned herein that I know nothing about. Basically, via index funds, ETFs and individual equities it is possible I could own, have exposure to, or not own anything at any point. As of the same date, May 20, 2026, in an attempt to lead a healthier lifestyle , I’ve also excluded myself from fantasy sports, sports betting, online and in-person casinos and prediction markets.
And all positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. If you see numbers and calculations of any sort, assume they are wrong and double check them. I failed Algebra in 8th grade and topped off my high school math accolades by getting a D- in remedial Calculus my senior year, before becoming an English major in college so I could bullshit my way through things easier.
The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/20/2026 - 13:25 Close Mon, 20 Jul 2026 17:10:00 +0000 Judge Slaps A 14-Day Timeout On Paramount-Warner Bros. Mega-Merger
Judge Slaps A 14-Day Timeout On Paramount-Warner Bros. Mega-Merger
A federal judge just threw a wrench into one of the biggest media shake-ups in years. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin (Biden)
Read more.....
Judge Slaps A 14-Day Timeout On Paramount-Warner Bros. Mega-Merger
A federal judge just threw a wrench into one of the biggest media shake-ups in years. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin (Biden) temporarily blocked Paramount Skydance's $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery , giving a coalition of 12 state attorneys general a short-term win in their fight to kill the deal.
The temporary restraining order lasts 14 days - half the 28 days the states had requested - and prevents Paramount from closing the transaction that would combine two historic Hollywood studios, two major streaming services (Paramount+ and Max), and significant news assets under David Ellison, son of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, leading the charge, argues the merger would "extinguish competition" in key areas: wide theatrical film releases, big blockbuster distribution, and the market for basic cable channels. The states put numbers on it, alleging the combined company would control 27 percent of wide-release theatrical distribution, 30 percent of anticipated blockbusters, and 27 percent of the basic cable bundle. In plain terms, they say it would mean higher prices, lower quality, and less choice for theaters, cable providers, and viewers everywhere. The states claim it violates Section 7 of the Clayton Antitrust Act, the classic law aimed at stopping deals that substantially lessen competition. All 12 attorneys general are Democrats.
Paramount is firing back hard. The company calls the lawsuit one of the weakest merger challenges in modern antitrust history , notes it already has DOJ clearance plus approvals from places like Australia and China, and vows to fight vigorously. They argue the states are ignoring the brutal competitive realities of today's media landscape , where streaming giants, tech platforms, and cord-cutting have upended everything.
The DOJ signoff came after its antitrust division closed an eight-month review that examined more than two million documents - concluding the deal could strengthen competition across streaming, traditional television, and theatrical distribution. State attorneys general retain independent authority to sue regardless.
There's real urgency for Paramount: they're on the hook for a "ticking fee" of 25 cents per Warner Bros. share every quarter if the deal doesn't close by September 30. That works out to roughly $7 million a day, or more than $600 million per quarter - serious money.
Paramount side : 114-year-old studio, Paramount+, CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, and more.Warner side : 116-year-old studio, HBO, CNN, plus iconic franchises like Batman and Superman.If it goes through, David Ellison would control an entertainment behemoth spanning film, TV, streaming, and news.
This state lawsuit is the biggest threat so far, but it's not the only one. The EU is reviewing it , the UK culture secretary is considering intervention over media concentration worries, the Writers Guild has its own antitrust suit over wages and jobs, and consumers have challenged the streaming combination (though that effort was denied an injunction).
There's also a political undercurrent. Larry Ellison has been an ally of President Trump , who has publicly pushed for new ownership of CNN and recently praised the family. David Ellison has already started shaking things up at CBS News, bringing in Bari Weiss to revamp "60 Minutes" and the evening broadcast.
For now, the merger is in limbo. Expect intense legal wrangling over the next couple of weeks as Paramount pushes to get it back on track and the states try to build their case for a longer block. In an industry already disrupted by streaming wars and cord-cutting, this battle is about who gets to dominate the next era of Hollywood and media.
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/20/2026 - 13:10 Close Mon, 20 Jul 2026 17:00:00 +0000 RNC Sues To Stop Non-Residents From Voting In Six States
RNC Sues To Stop Non-Residents From Voting In Six States
While it seems like common sense that living in a state should be a prerequisite to voting there, the Republican National Committee is suing six states to stop them fr
Read more.....
RNC Sues To Stop Non-Residents From Voting In Six States
While it seems like common sense that living in a state should be a prerequisite to voting there, the Republican National Committee is suing six states to stop them from doing so.
Fresh off a court win in North Carolina, the RNC has filed lawsuits against Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Jersey, Virginia, and Nebraska, each targeting a version of the same loophole. In these states, a person who has never set foot as a resident within their borders can still cast an absentee ballot there, often because a parent or legal guardian once lived in the state decades ago.
"If you've never lived in a state, you shouldn't be voting in its elections," told the Daily Signal.
"The RNC already put a stop to this unconstitutional loophole in North Carolina, and we're taking Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada, and New Jersey to court to do the same," Gruters added,
"We'll keep fighting to ensure elections are only decided by legal residents."
The mechanism behind this quirk traces back to federal guidance for overseas voting. According to the Federal Voting Assistance Program website, "In some states, U.S. citizens who were born abroad—and have never resided in the United States—are eligible to vote absentee." Several states extended that logic further than Congress likely intended, allowing people who were born overseas and never lived stateside at all to vote based on a parent's old address.
The RNC is not coming after military voters or diplomats. The committee says it firmly supports the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), the decades-old law that lets service members and foreign service officers vote from wherever the government has stationed them. To secure legal standing in each state, the RNC is partnering with the relevant state party, a candidate, or both.
The North Carolina case set the template. In June, the Wake County Superior Court struck down a state law permitting people born overseas who had never lived in North Carolina to vote there anyway, handing the RNC a win over the state elections board and establishing that these arrangements are vulnerable to a straightforward constitutional challenge.
Nevada is shaping up as the marquee fight of the current round. The RNC has joined the state Republican Party and Republican secretary of state nominee Jim Marchant in challenging a law that allows people who never lived in Nevada, and in some cases never lived in the United States at all, to vote there based solely on a parent's or guardian's past residency. The plaintiffs argue the arrangement violates Nevada's constitution, which requires voters to have "actually, as opposed to constructively" resided in the state. Constructive residency is a fittingly bureaucratic term for a system built on the honor of an ancestor's zip code.
Despite the commonsense nature of the lawsuit, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, a Democrat, called it "an attack on the voting rights of eligible U.S. citizens living abroad" and warned that unwinding the law could hurt military families, even though the RNC made it clear that’s not who their lawsuit is about. "They risk everything to defend our freedoms, including the fundamental right to vote, and Nevada has a responsibility to protect their access to the ballot and the rights of the families who serve alongside them,” he added.
"Children born overseas should not be punished because their parents served, worked, or were stationed outside the United States," Aguilar continued, saying, "Nevada will not turn its back on military families simply because their service took them away from home."
Despite Aguilar’s claims, the lawsuits actually target civilians with no service record and no residency claim beyond a relative's former mailing address, not the men and women stationed abroad under UOCAVA.
“People should have full faith and confidence in the system,”
Gruters added, “And that's why they're allowing tens of millions of illegals into the country, they want them to be able to eventually have voting rights, and so we've stopped, you know, non-citizens from voting. Some of our biggest wins is knocking them off the voting rules. But the work never ends.”
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/20/2026 - 13:00 Close Mon, 20 Jul 2026 16:20:00 +0000 A 28 Item Grocery Order From Target That Cost $64.50 In 2020 Now Costs $158.30
A 28 Item Grocery Order From Target That Cost $64.50 In 2020 Now Costs $158.30
A 28 Item Grocery Order From Target That Cost $64.50 In 2020 Now Costs $158.30
Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
The cost of living has become absolutely suffocating for millions of Americans. For years, the bureaucrats in Washington have been feeding us numbers that show that the rate of inflation is low, but it is obvious to everyone that what they are telling us is simply not true. Many of the items that I regularly purchase at the grocery store have more than doubled in price over the past decade. Some have more than tripled in price. When I get to the register to check out, I feel like asking the cashier which organ I should donate to pay for my groceries.
We have reached a stage where grocery prices are causing extreme financial stress for families all over America. One man recently caused quite a stir on social media when he revealed that a grocery order from Target that cost $64.50 in 2020 is now $158.30 in 2026 …
This post has already been viewed a million times.
The reason why it is so popular is because it instantly resonates with people.
Everyone knows that grocery prices have risen to absurd levels, and yet the statisticians in Washington keep assuring us that everything is fine.
I don’t believe them.
Do you?
The Washington Post just conducted a poll that found that 66 percent of Americans consider the cost of groceries to be unaffordable.
That figure has risen by 21 percent just since February…
Americans are feeling worse about the price of groceries than they were before the war with Iran began, a Washington Post-Ipsos poll finds.
About two-thirds, or 66 percent, of Americans say they would describe the cost of groceries as unaffordable, up sharply from the 45 percent who said the same thing in February before the conflict started.
Partisanship continues to play a big role in perceptions, with half of Republicans saying groceries are affordable in the latest poll, compared with about one-quarter of independents and Democrats.
Housing is even worse.
The median price of an existing home in the United States has now surpassed the $440,000 mark …
With a landmark housing affordability bill in political limbo, U.S. home prices have hit an all-time high.
The median price of existing homes in June was $440,660, up 1.8% from $432,700 a year ago, according to new data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Home prices have risen for 36 straight months.
“Housing affordability remains low under slowing wage growth and stronger home price growth,” Ershang Liang, an economist with PNC Economics Research, said in a report.
Who can afford to pay that much for a house?
Rental prices have also gone through the roof.
If you can believe it, the average rent on a one bedroom apartment in Manhattan is now a whopping $5,408 a month …
The city’s housing crisis has hit “DefCon 1” — with average rents for a one-bedroom in Manhattan hitting an all-time high of nearly $5,500 last month, and Brooklyn following suit, according to new data and critics.
“We need bold action. This is a crisis,’’ New York City Comptroller Mark Levine posted on X over the weekend, along with a link to the latest figures from the inhabit blog by real-estate giant Corcoran Group.
The dismal June stats reveal that renters paid an average of $5,408 for a one-bedroom in Manhattan, with studio prices not far behind at $4,014.
It isn’t a mystery why most Americans are struggling in this sort of an environment.
Many are turning to debt in a desperate attempt to make ends meet …
Many American families are struggling to make ends meet on their incomes alone and have resorted to credit cards, payday loans, and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) options for groceries, according to nonprofit research center Urban Institute.
The findings are based on a survey of 18-to 64-year-old working-age adults conducted in December 2025. About 8.7 percent of adults said they used a credit card for groceries and were unable to make the minimum payment, up from 7.1 percent in 2023, the Urban Institute said in a July 13 report. This suggests “worsening financial distress” among families.
Almost one in 10 used BNPL to pay for groceries, out of which more than a third missed a timely repayment last year.
Unfortunately, when you keep piling up debt a day of reckoning eventually arrives.
Coming into this year, alarmingly large numbers of Americans were getting behind on their credit cards …
And the number of foreclosures in the U.S. is way above the highly elevated pace that we witnessed last year…
Foreclosures across the U.S. ballooned in the first half of the year, a sign of the increasing financial strain facing the nation’s homeowners.
Foreclosure filings reached nearly 228,000 from January to June, up 21% from a year ago and 28% from two years ago, according to data released Thursday from real estate data company ATTOM.
Rising foreclosure rates indicate that more homeowners are in financial distress, Rob Barber, CEO of ATTOM, said in a statement. Homes go into foreclosure when the owner falls behind on mortgage payments, often due to extenuating life circumstances such as a job loss. ATTOM defines foreclosures as default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions.
This reminds me so much of the conditions that we experienced just before the financial crisis of 2008.
Unfortunately, the cost of living is only going to go higher.
The cost of energy directly affects the cost of everything else, and it appears that the Strait of Hormuz is going to be closed for an extended period of time.
The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. has nearly reached four dollars again, and the average price of a gallon of diesel has already risen above the five dollar mark …
US gas prices have rocketed higher during the on-again, off-again war with Iran.
After a brief respite, the average price for gas has surged 15 cents in a week to $3.94 a gallon and appears headed north of $4 again. Diesel, which shows up in customers’ shipping costs, topped $5 a gallon again Thursday for the first time in 3 weeks, according to AAA.
It serves as a painful reminder of how the military conflict in the Persian Gulf has a direct effect on your wallet.
Of even greater importance is what the closure of the Strait of Hormuz means for the global fertilizer market.
As Mike Adams has pointed out , without sufficient quantities of nitrogen fertilizer we won’t even come close to producing enough food for everyone…
Admittedly, I have failed to explain the stakes clearly enough. For months, I have written about fertilizer supply chains, the Haber-Bosch process, and the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz. But the gravity of this crisis has not sunk in for most people. Let me put it as plainly as I can: The global population of more than 8 billion people depends on a fragile web of natural gas, oil, and downstream chemistry that took 60+ years to build on this planet. If we lose 25 percent of these critical substances, we lose 25 percent of the population. That is 2 billion people. Here is why that math is inescapable.
As I documented in my article “The Haber-Bosch House of Cards,” the single chemical reaction that fixes nitrogen from the air into fertilizer is responsible for feeding roughly half of humanity [1]. That process requires vast quantities of natural gas. The Persian Gulf region, especially Qatar and Iran, supplies much of that gas. When the Trump administration launched its war on Iran in February 2026 and the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed, the global fertilizer supply chain began to collapse. This is not a prediction of future famine. The famine is already baked in. But it could still get a whole lot worse depending on how things go from here.
We could be facing multiple years when global food production is at depressed levels.
That means that food prices will go even higher in wealthy countries, and in poor countries there will be shortages.
Famine is one of the major trends that I am tracking , and what we are already witnessing in some parts of Africa is absolutely heartbreaking .
There is no magic button that we can press that is going to make these problems go away.
A crisis of historic proportions is now upon us, and we are still only in the very early stages of it.
Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com .
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/20/2026 - 12:20 Close Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:40:00 +0000 Buyers Trading In Vehicles With Negative Equity Face Record Monthly Payments: Edmunds
Buyers Trading In Vehicles With Negative Equity Face Record Monthly Payments: Edmunds
Buyers Trading In Vehicles With Negative Equity Face Record Monthly Payments: Edmunds
Authored by Rob Sabo via The Epoch Times,
The number of automobile owners trading in vehicles with negative equity continues to rise, with 29.6 percent of trade-ins in the second quarter showing more money owed on existing auto loans than the vehicles were worth, according to automotive insights platform Edmunds’s July 16 vehicle transaction report.
Negative equity also pushed average monthly payments on “underwater” trade-ins to $944 in the quarter, the highest figure on record, the report said.
That’s $167 more per month than trade-ins without negative equity considerations, and those higher loans are expected to account for an additional $16,270 in interest paid over the loan term—another record high that’s nearly $6,500 more than the average new-vehicle loan issued during the quarter.
“Consumers are incurring more debt than ever when trading in vehicles that are underwater,” said Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at Edmunds.
“Buyers who financed at 2022’s peak prices are starting to come back to trade in, and they’re bringing thousands of dollars in old debt with them. With interest rates still elevated, this is creating a costly snowball effect for consumers.”
It’s the highest number of underwater trade-ins recorded in the second quarter since 2020, Edmunds researchers noted. Trade-ins with negative equity eased slightly from the first quarter, when they tallied 30.9 percent, but they were up 3 percent from the second quarter of 2025.
The average amount of negative equity—$6,884—was a record high for the second quarter of any year, though it pulled back from the $7,183 notched in the first quarter, Edmunds researchers noted.
As buyers roll over negative equity into new auto loans, the principal amount owed on their new vehicles swells, Caldwell added. Buyers often rely on longer-term loans to lower their monthly payments, but that coping mechanism only results in a larger total interest paid over the life of the loan.
Paying down negative equity also lengthens the time it takes for automobile owners to reach positive equity in their vehicles, or the financial position where their car is worth more than the principal amount owed, the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) consumer advice portal noted.
It’s important for consumers to know their equity position in a vehicle before trading it in, the FTC added. Equally important, the FTC said, is to closely examine new automobile contracts for the amount of negative equity that may be rolled into new loans before signing documents at dealerships.
Negative equity positions have been on the rise since 2022, Edmunds said, when high used-vehicle prices caused by a global shortage of computer chips buffered consumers from rolling over debt from one vehicle to the next.
However, as vehicle prices normalized, more vehicle owners found themselves underwater on their loans as they attempted to upgrade their cars through new-vehicle purchases.
Vehicles with model years 2020 or newer showing the most negative equity include Toyota Tundra (-$8,929), GMC Sierra 1500 (-$8,566), Chevrolet Silverado 1500 (-$8,516), and Ram 1500 (-$,8347). However, Edmunds also lists a handful of sedans and sport utility vehicles with negative equity of $5,000 or more, including the Kia Sportage, Honda Accord, Toyota RAV4, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Nissan Rogue, and many others.
Often, negative equity is more about onerous financing structures than vehicle depreciation, said Ivan Drury, director of insights at Edmunds.
“Some of the biggest dollar losses we’re seeing are on trucks and sedans that traditionally hold their value better than most,” Drury said.
“When historically safe residual value bets are showing up underwater, it’s clear this is a financing problem, not always a vehicle choice problem. These examples are a harsh reminder that a great vehicle choice can still be completely undermined by a punishing loan structure.”
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/20/2026 - 11:40 Close Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:20:00 +0000 US Gas Prices Cross Politically Sensitive $4 Level Closely Watched By Trump
US Gas Prices Cross Politically Sensitive $4 Level Closely Watched By Trump
The U.S. national average for a gallon of regular 87-octane gasoline has climbed back above the politically sensitive $4 threshold as U.S. military forces
Read more.....
US Gas Prices Cross Politically Sensitive $4 Level Closely Watched By Trump
The U.S. national average for a gallon of regular 87-octane gasoline has climbed back above the politically sensitive $4 threshold as U.S. military forces and Tehran enter a ninth day of tit-for-tat strikes. This level is significant because it is where fuel costs begin to alter spending and driving behavior among working-poor households, while also weighing more broadly on consumer sentiment, making it a key pressure point closely watched by the Trump administration ahead of the midterm election cycle.
Regular unleaded gasoline climbed above $4 a gallon on Monday, according to new data from the American Automobile Association, ending roughly one month below the politically sensitive threshold after the interim peace deal that temporarily eased Gulf area tensions.
With the U.S.-Iran conflict now caught in an escalation spiral and domestic retail fuel prices rising sharply, pressure on the Trump administration to pursue a diplomatic off-ramp is likely to intensify.
Brent crude futures jumped above $90 a barrel earlier - the highest since early June - but faded in European trading. There were reports earlier that Iran targeted tankers in the Hormuz chokepoint and a Kuwaiti oil facility was attacked.
Let's not forget: last week, the writing was on the wall.
Readers may recall that we detailed extensively how consumer behavior shifted when gas prices were above $4:
We suggest readers revisit Daan Struyven, Goldman's leading commodity expert, on why gas prices are likely to remain elevated (read the note here ).
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/20/2026 - 11:20 Close Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:00:00 +0000 400+ Ukrainian Drones Launched On Moscow In One Of Biggest Attack Waves To Date
400+ Ukrainian Drones Launched On Moscow In One Of Biggest Attack Waves To Date
The Russian capital has been hit with a massive drone wave from Ukraine, which injured at least ten people - including three Chinese citizens Read more.....
400+ Ukrainian Drones Launched On Moscow In One Of Biggest Attack Waves To Date
The Russian capital has been hit with a massive drone wave from Ukraine, which injured at least ten people - including three Chinese citizens - local authorities say.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has stated that more than 400 UAVs were launched toward Moscow and its suburbs overnight in one of the largest single raids since the war's start.
Reuters: Smoke billows after Ukrainian drone attacks in Podolsk, Moscow Region. He described that most of the inbound drones were intercepted far from the capital , and that another 85 were downed as they got closer, but emerging images suggest there were some big strikes that landed.
Russia's RT provided the following details, noting that the biggest impact was felt in the Moscow suburbs :
Two women were injured in Podolsk, while an 11-year-old girl in the Odintsovo district was diagnosed with an acute stress reaction but did not require hospitalization.
The main consequences of the raid were recorded in Podolsk, Domodedovo, and the Odintsovo urban district, Vorobyov said. Falling drones damaged several private homes and civilian infrastructure facilities and sparked multiple fires , he added.
In Odintsovo, a car and a private home were damaged, although no injuries were reported. In Podolsk, fires broke out and several civilian infrastructure sites were damaged, along with a private home in the village of Maloye Tolbino.
Regions bordering Ukraine also came under heavy overnight attack from Ukraine, including Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk. These oblasts have frequently been targeted throughout the years-long war. Nationwide, at least four people were killed and dozens more injured in the large-scale drone assault .
Ukraine's President Zelensky has long touted the effectiveness of the drone war on Russian oil depots and energy facilities, but by all appearances this fresh drone attack targeted civilian areas as well as general manufacturing centers. According to more from Russian media :
The same wave of strikes hit two logistics centers operated by the Russian online retailer Wildberries in Kotovsk, Tambov Region, and Elektrostal, near Moscow. The attacks killed eight people and injured dozens more, according to regional officials.
Wildberries, often called the Russian version of Amazon, is one of the country’s most popular online retailers. Kiev confirmed that it had deliberately targeted the warehouses , claiming they stored components used in drone and navigation equipment.
Crimea was also once again heavily targeted, with the Russian Defense Ministry saying it intercepted many drones over the peninsula between Sunday night and Monday.
Reuters: damage recorded in Podolsk & other areas of Moscow region...
It seems this was Zelensky's 'answer' to the massive Russian ballistic missile attacks on Kiev of the last days .
While the Kremlin over the weekend boasted of new ground advances along the front lines, the war has been focused in the air of late. As for the Ukrainian capital, emergency crews have been scrambling on an almost nightly basis.
Concerning a weekend attack, "The Kyiv government said firefighters were responding to blazes in five different districts after the attack, one of the biggest in recent weeks, hit residential buildings, office and industrial sites, a dormitory and vehicles," The Independent
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/20/2026 - 11:00 Close Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:25:00 +0000 Houthis Announce Blockade On Saudi Shipping, Threaten Drone & Missile Attacks On Kingdom
Houthis Announce Blockade On Saudi Shipping, Threaten Drone & Missile Attacks On Kingdom
Yemen's Houthi rebels have announced they are imposing a new maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia in response for a recent attack on Sanaa Air
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Houthis Announce Blockade On Saudi Shipping, Threaten Drone & Missile Attacks On Kingdom
Yemen's Houthi rebels have announced they are imposing a new maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia in response for a recent attack on Sanaa Airport, and after years of the kingdom leading a blockade of Houthi-controlled Yemeni ports.
A military statement by Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree said the maritime ban on all Saudi shipping will be effective immediately in what he declared as an "equation of 'an eye for an eye.'"
via Middle East Eye However, details of what this 'embargo' will look like, in terms of where or what chokepoints the Houthis might seek to blockade were not given.
Last week the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen attacked the Houthi-controlled Sanaa International Airport, threatening a fragile truce that has been in place since 2022. Saudi jets had prevented an Iranian passenger plane from landing there , after the US-Saudi recognized Yemeni government warned against any Iranian planes entering the divided country's airspace.
Within days of that incident, the Houthis reportedly sent missiles on Saudi Arabia - which was a first after years of relative peace. In addition to unveiling the anti-Saudi embargo, the Houthis spokesman warned that if the Saudi siege on Yemen is not lifted, then Houthi armed forces will move towards a full-scale war.
Saree declared, "if Saudi Arabia turns to all-out aggression against Yemen, all of Saudi Arabia's energy facilities and its vital facilities will be targets for missiles and drones ."
He described that the blockade of Sanaa airport "is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated" - following the Iran airline incident. Saree vowed to retaliate "to the blockade with a blockade and to respond to all escalation with escalation ."
July 13: Yemen's internationally recognized, Saudi-backed government says its forces targeted Sanaa Airport, under Houthi control, to prevent an Iranian aircraft from landing there...
"The Yemeni Armed Forces affirm their complete readiness for all options and any foolish act committed by the reckless Saudi enemy," the statement continued.
"We call upon the people of our great nation to continue the general mobilization and general call to arms , and to be fully prepared for all scenarios and developments, and to support the fronts with fighters."
The "internationally recognized" Yemeni government has long been propped up by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the US, after a lengthy half-decade long UAE/Saudi/US coalition air war failed to dislodge Houthi power. The pro-Saudi government operates out of Aden in southern Yemen, after the country's president fled there a decade ago.
Earlier this month there had been an initial attempted Saudi warplane intercept of an Iranian civilian airliner, which was reportedly carrying Yemenis who had been stranded in Iran back to their home country.
The Houthis at the time of the prior incident said it was "breaking the Saudi-American siege on our people and expelling the occupiers."
As we featured previously , since 2015 Saudi Arabia has imposed a blockade on Yemen's land, sea, and air ports , severely restricting vital commercial and humanitarian imports, including fuel and food.
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/20/2026 - 10:25 Close Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:10:00 +0000 Texas PUC Approves "Ride-Through" Rules For Data Centers
Texas PUC Approves "Ride-Through" Rules For Data Centers
Texas PUC Approves "Ride-Through" Rules For Data Centers
By Diana DiGangi of UtilityDive ,
The Texas Public Utility Commission on Thursday unanimously approved rules that will require large computational loads , like data centers and crypto-mining facilities , within the Electric Reliability Council of Texas footprint to stay stable and connected to the grid through disruptions.
Modern computational loads, Kenteel Engineering said in a June blog, are “engineered to protect extremely sensitive and expensive equipment ,” and during a voltage dip are programmed to disconnect or enter momentary cessation.
However, this presents a reliability problem, Kenteel Engineering said, as when “several hundred — or several thousand — megawatts of computational load all detect the same sag and drop simultaneously, the grid experiences a sudden, large loss of demand.”
“As LCLs increase on the ERCOT System, similar events would be expected to increase in magnitude and frequency, leading to frequency instability and other reliability problems absent frequency and voltage ride-through requirements,” the Texas PUC rules state.
The rules don’t immediately penalize facilities that fail to ride through a qualifying event, Kenteel Engineering noted, but instead put them “on the clock” to investigate and report the root cause within 90 days of ERCOT’s request, “develop a corrective plan within 90 days of completing that investigation, and implement the approved plan within 180 days unless ERCOT grants more time.”
“Overriding all of that, if ERCOT judges that continued operation poses an imminent risk to local or system reliability, it can order the [large electric load] — and keep it disconnected — until the Customer demonstrates compliance to ERCOT’s satisfaction,” Kenteel Engineering said.
In comments, the Data Center Coalition argued that the PUC lacks the statutory authority to “impose the binding and ongoing operational requirements contained in [the rules] directly on retail customers — a category of entity that the Legislature deliberately excluded from ERCOT’s authority.”
Texas Industrial Energy Consumers made similar comments , writing, “Unlike Market Participants who must agree to comply with and be bound by all ERCOT Protocols as a condition of participating in the wholesale market, pure retail loads have made no such commitment and have no such obligation.”
TIEC also argued that ERCOT lacks the expertise to “develop reasonable operational requirements for complex, costly manufacturing equipment. It is completely inappropriate to give ERCOT the ability to directly regulate businesses who are not participating in the wholesale market and are not otherwise regulated entities.”
In a staff memo from the PUC’s R. Floyd Walker, senior counsel with the commission’s market analysis division, Walker dismissed concerns over the PUC’s authority . Those commenters “seem to be working under the assumption that explicitly statutory authority is required,” he wrote. “Staff respectfully submits that delegated authority is sufficient.”
“There is no debate that voltage and frequency excursions on the transmission network create reliability concerns, which increase with the interconnection of each new large computational load,” Walker said. “Accordingly, if approved by the Commission, the provisions of [the rules] would be within ERCOT’s authority by virtue of that approval.”
Comments from the Texas Blockchain Council argued that proposed mitigation approaches for LCLs, such as the installation of dedicated battery storage, “are neither practical nor economical at scale.”
“While battery solutions have been suggested, we are not aware of any that have been successfully tested or deployed at the scale required for [LCLs],” the group wrote. “Even if pursued, mandating dedicated batteries for each facility would be unlikely to fully resolve the underlying technical challenges and would impose substantial costs, currently estimated at more than $1.6 million per MW, making such an approach economically prohibitive for most operations.”
ERCOT staff approved of the rules, writing in a market impact statement that they provide “necessary requirements to reduce the reliability risk posed by LCLs unexpectedly tripping or transferring to backup generation when frequency and voltage excursions within a specified range occur.”
In official comments, ERCOT wrote that LCL loss wasn’t a hypothetical, and ERCOT “has experienced 28 events involving LCL trips of at least 100 MW due to voltage and frequency excursions since the beginning of 2023 . This risk will increase exponentially with the significant growth of LCLs expected in the ERCOT Region.”
Developers have requested studies for more than 438 GW of large load projects within ERCOT’s footprint, and “even if only a small fraction of these projects materialize, this will significantly increase the risk that cascading outages could occur due to LCL failures to ride through typical voltage or frequency disturbances,” ERCOT said.
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/20/2026 - 10:10 Close Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000 Suspect Detonates Incendiary Device Outside Manhattan Federal Building
Suspect Detonates Incendiary Device Outside Manhattan Federal Building
Summary:
Suspect Arrested FBI New York Joint Terrorism Task Force is inve
Read more.....
Suspect Detonates Incendiary Device Outside Manhattan Federal Building
Summary:
Suspect Arrested FBI New York Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating the incident FBI Tells Fox News "individual deployed an incendiary device " Immigration agents and FBI rushed out, guns drawn, and FPS apprehended the suspectExplosion Hits Outside 26 Federal Plaza in Lower ManhattanSuspect Arrested
FBI New York Joint Terrorism Task Force Investigating The FBI tells Fox News' Bill Melugin:
"This morning an individual deployed an incendiary device outside of 26 Federal Plaza. The individual has been taken into custody and the FBI New York Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating the incident."
Melugin continued:
NYPD tells FOX there was a "found firearm" in relation to this event, but couldn't confirm if it was found on the suspect.
The attack at 26 Federal Plaza, which houses offices for agencies including DHS, ICE, USCIS, the FBI, and the Social Security Administration, comes days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned of far-left terrorism across the West.
Another view:
Explosion Reported Outside 26 Federal Plaza In Lower Manhattan
New footage shows what appears to be a fire and a person being arrested outside 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan.
"Moment of EXPLOSION that went off outside of the 26 Federal Plaza in NYC around 8:30am this morning, with Immigration agents and FBI Rushing out guns drawn and FPS apprehending the suspect. Sidewalk has been shut down and building evacuated ," FreedomNews wrote on X.
Notably, the building houses several federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, the Social Security Administration, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
There is no additional information at this time.
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/20/2026 - 10:00 Close
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