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By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

China has paused approvals for new battery storage factories amid a review of existing and planned capacity, Chinese financial news outlet Cailianshe reported this weekend, citing industry sources.

The temporary suspension of approvals of plants that have not started construction yet comes amid growing concerns about overcapacity in the sector in the world’s biggest manufacturer of batteries for energy storage.

China is the world’s biggest market for electric vehicles and a top player in battery storage as well. But just like electric vehicles (EVs) and solar panels, these energy transition-linked industries have enjoyed years of generous subsidies that have allowed them to grow without any consideration of overcapacity and its consequences. The Chinese government has already had to clamp down on EVs and solar panels, and now, it seems, it’s the turn of batteries.

In addition, Chinese solar equipment manufacturers have diversified into battery storage to tackle a chronic oversupply in the panel and equipment market that has crashed many sector players’ bottom lines.

The surge in EVs and solar and wind power installations has resulted in excessive manufacturing capacity in these key non-hydrocarbon energy industries, igniting price wars that have hurt most companies in the sector, including the biggest solar panel manufacturers. Chinese authorities realized last year that cutthroat competition, overcapacity, and low-quality manufacturing are hurting enterprises.

The battery storage boom in China is now threatening this industry, too, and China’s authorities have started to take measures to curb unrestrained growth.

In July, China’s Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Customs, and the State Taxation Administration announced that China would launch consumption taxes on batteries effective September 1, 2026.

Mercury-free primary batteries, nickel-metal hydride batteries, lithium primary batteries, lithium-ion batteries, and all-vanadium redox flow batteries will be taxed at 2% from September 2026 and at 4% from September 2027. Photovoltaic cells will face a 2% tax from April 2027 and 4% from April 2028.

China exempted new-technology batteries from the tax until December 2028. These include sodium-ion batteries, solid-state batteries, fuel cells, and advanced photovoltaic types such as perovskite, tandem and gallium arsenide cells.

Summary

• US Strikes Iran: US forces reportedly hit Iranian oil tankers near Kharg Island and Jask.
• Iran Targets US Ships & Jordan: Iran reportedly launched another attack on US naval assets, though no American ships were hit, say US officials. Ballistic missiles raining down on Jordan overnight. 
• Oil Near $100: Brent crude surged as tensions threaten Iranian exports and the Strait of Hormuz.
• Houthis Hit Saudi Arabia: Ballistic missiles and drones struck Saudi energy and military targets, causing fires and operational disruptions.
• Yemen War Escalates: Saudi airstrikes resumed as Saudi-backed forces vowed to retake Sanaa, raising fears of wider regional spillover.

Iranian Missiles Raining Down on US Bases in Jordan: Reports

State Tasnim reports: Iran has launched missiles at targets in response to US strikes, while unofficial sources cited by Tasnim noted that explosions were heard in Jordan following Iranian missile attacks.

The below brief recap shows this new flare-up and tit-for-tat came in rapid succession... Senior US officials to FOX:

US military has struck targets near Kharg Island and Jask. The targets include Iranian oil tankers. This is part of a larger effort to squeeze Iran economically. The strategy includes sinking and disabling Iranian crude oil tankers. -FOX

Looks like a significant number of Ballistic missiles launched by Iran pic.twitter.com/yDSMvEPjb3

— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) September 8, 2026

How many Patriot interceptor missiles are being plowed through this time?

Interceptions of #Iran’s regime’s ballistic missile attack begin in #Jordan. https://t.co/VGlEWThsOS

— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) September 8, 2026

More unverified but widely circulating images out of the region overnight:

Insane footage shows the massive Iranian ballistic missile attack against U.S. bases in Jordan.

At least 30 missiles have been launched, and many of them also released cluster munitions while falling from the sky. pic.twitter.com/RM8XqcHBRw

— MoloMonitor ???? (@MoloWarMonitor) September 8, 2026

Iranian leaders have lately vowed to hit US bases and assets harder in all forthcoming rounds of fighting...

This retaliation reflects what Ghalibaf stated a few days ago: that in #Iran's regime's mind, the era of proportional responses is over. https://t.co/VxSVmwJZdh

— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) September 8, 2026

US Attacks Iran Tankers, After American Navy Ships Targeted

Oil climbed on reports of explosions on Iran's Kharg Island:

IRIB reports that US forces attacked a commercial vessel in the coastal waters of Jask City

MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS HEARD NEAR KHARG ISLAND ANCHORAGE, A KEY IRANIAN OIL EXPORT HUB; CAUSE, ORIGIN & ANY POTENTIAL DAMAGE REMAIN UNCONFIRMED. - MEHR NEWS AGENCY

US is currently attacking Iranian oil tankers, i24 news reports, citing a US source

A small Iranian tanker was targeted by a missile attack from the US army 4 miles from Kharg Island, Tasnim reports
Via Tasnim

IRAN LAUNCHED UNDISCLOSED SECOND ATTACK ON US SHIPS ON MONDAY: WSJ

NO AMERICAN SHIPS WERE STRUCK IN THE ATTACKS: WSJ

Fox correspondent confirms Iranian oil tankers (plural) and “targets” (plural) were struck by the United States in recent minutes. This does nothing to “squeeze” Iran, just to be clear. The tankers are inside the US blockade line and the Tanker for Tanker policy is just a… https://t.co/bwLrw9QO7v

— Brett Erickson (@BrettErickson28) September 8, 2026

Oil Climbs, Brent Near $100

Nothing official has yet to emerge, also amid unconfirmed reporting that Iran’s IRGC Navy has launched anti-ship cruise missiles from Jask toward the Strait of Hormuz. According to breaking Al Jazeera News:

Several explosions have been heard on Iran’s Kharg Island, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency. No official information has been released on the cause or origin of the explosions.

More from WSJ on the prior Monday attack incident: "No American ships were struck in the attacks, but Iran's recent attempts to hit American naval assets are raising alarms that the regime is using more sophisticated weapons and could be getting assistance from China or Russia."

But Trump claims the US is in 'control' of Hormuz and that the war is over. 

Heavy Yemen-Saudi Fighting Breaks Out

The heaviest fighting since the Iran war began is taking place in Yemen currently, also involving significant overnight attacks on Saudi energy and military sites by the Houthis.

The Houthis have since unveiled new operations, in a Tuesday statement saying the Iran-aligned group is targeting critical Saudi oil and military infrastructure. Widely circulating local videos suggest the attacks on multiple sites were in some case simultaneous and overwhelming.

"In response to this brutal aggression and in confronting comprehensive escalation with comprehensive escalation, the YAF carried out a large-scale … operation, targeting Aramco facilities in Abha and Najran, the Economic City, Aramco in Jizan, and Khamis Mushait Air Base, using dozens of ballistic missiles and drones," said the Houthi statement.

"The strikes, by God's grace, were accurate and direct and caused significant damage to those facilities," it added. 

The kingdom's Energy Ministry has indeed acknowledged fires and operations stoppages at several sites as a result, as well as damage and injured personnel.

Houthis Attacked Four Saudi Cities, Energy Installations

"Several energy sector facilities and installations in the southern region of the kingdom were targeted this morning," the energy ministry stated.

"The attacks caused fires at several locations, leading to a temporary halt in some operations. Specialized field teams have begun containing the fires, securing the sites, and assessing the damage," the statement said. Aramco sites have been targeted on multiple occasions this summer, resulting in operations halts, particularly at key sites near the Yemeni border. Damage is still being assessed at the Aramco Jisan oil facilities, which were targeted yet again.

Also military and supply missions were hit, with the Houthi statement also indicating the destruction of Saudi military equipment and convoys of Saudi-backed forces of the internationally-recognized government.

For anyone putting a lot of faith in those pipelines that bypass Hormuz...

??BREAKING: Houthis have released footage of Striking Saudi Arabia's Supply Lines to Pro-Saudi Forces in Yemen with Ballistic Missiles pic.twitter.com/b3JQ78LQrK

— Iran Observer (@IranObserver0) September 7, 2026

"Arms trucks coming from Saudi Arabia were targeted and caught fire at the Al-Wadiah military camp," the Houthis stated.

In response later on Tuesday, Saudi airstrikes have reportedly resumed on Yemen in the governorates of Al-Jawf, Al-Bayda, Ma'rib, Taiz, and Al-Hudaydah. Already the death toll is mounting from these renewed strikes:

Houthi rebels in Yemen accused Saudi Arabia of striking a prison on Monday in the country’s north, killing seven, including a child, as tensions escalate between the Iran-backed group and Saudi-backed Yemeni forces.

The strike on the Central Corrective Facility in the strategic city of Hazm in Jawf province also wounded at least seven people, including a woman, said Anees al-Asbahi, a spokesman for the Houthi-run health ministry.

The prison’s warden told the Houthi al-Masirah news channel 35 prisoners and a woman who was visiting her husband were trapped under the rubble.

The Saudi side has meanwhile said that dozens were injured in the Houthi attacks. Major General Turki Al-Maliki, spokesman for the Saudi-led Coalition Forces, blasted the new Houthi aggression as "dangerous" and "senseless" - and announced that at lest 73 people have been wounded, including women and children.

??BREAKING: Yemeni Drone Strike Impacts Near Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid Airbase

Stunned lookers in Khamis Mushait film the attack.

This is part of the largest ongoing missile & drone attack on Saudi Arabia from Yemen in years. A retaliatory campaign after strikes on Yemen. pic.twitter.com/SO1YVgl92K

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) September 8, 2026

Yemen Escalation

Both sides are now vowing escalation:

Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree accused Saudi Arabia of launching airstrikes and “committing massacres” in Jawf, as well as deploying a reconnaissance drone and supplying mercenaries with various weaponry.

“The ongoing Saudi aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered or unpunished,” he said.

The aerial war is additionally heating up: "Saree said later Monday that Houthi forces downed a total of four reconnaissance drones belonging to Saudi Arabia over the past 24 hours, including one that was spotted Monday morning in Bayda province," as cited in The Associated Press.

Another test of the Mecca Agreement, which says an armed attack on any one of the three states will be regarded as an attack on all three. https://t.co/4V6lbh9LMN

— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) September 7, 2026

Oil prices on world markets continue to steadily inch higher, rising more than 1% as a result of Tuesday's Saudi-Yemen escalation.

The Saudi coalition says it aims to liberate the country's capital of Sanaa from the Iran-backed rebels. "The decision has been made to retake Sana’a. There are surprises we will not reveal now," the Deputy Defense Minister Major General Samir Al-Sabri told state-run Yemen TV.

The Yemeni army further released a statement saying that "From today, we declare that our goal is clear and unequivocal: to liberate Yemen from the grip of the terrorist Houthi militias and restore Sana’a as a capital for all Yemenis."

This appears a return to the kind of bull-blown war in Yemen which marked the latter half of the last decade. But this time it's more complicated and dangerous in terms of regional spillover, given it comes in the context of the Iran conflict, the Strait of Hormuz crisis, and Houthi efforts to close Red Sea shipping to the Saudis, Israelis, and their allies.

Trump acknowledges 1) oil prices are high, 2) it's because of the war with Iran, 3) the war has not ended, 4) the US has not won, yet. pic.twitter.com/gcsfqYmu0E

— Gregory Brew (@gbrew24) September 7, 2026

Below are more developments via Al Jazeera:

• Saudi Arabia has carried out new attacks in Yemen against al-Jubah district in Marib, in the Houthi-controlled part of the country, according to a news report in Houthi-run media.
• Forces loyal to Yemen’s internationally recognised government have launched a counteroffensive against the Houthi rebels, with officials saying they aim to recapture the capital Sanaa from the Iran-backed group.
• The Houthis say they repelled an offensive in al-Jawf, and at least seven people were killed in an air strike on a prison in the town of al-Hazm, pledging that the “aggression will not go unpunished”.
• Saudi Foreign Minister Prince ?Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud has described Yemen’s Houthi rebels as “selfish” for putting their own interests above the welfare of the country’s people. “The Houthis choose to prioritise their narrow interests over the interests of Yemen and resort to violence,” he said at a news conference in the Russian capital.
• Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told his ?Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, in Moscow that Russia is ready to help resolve the spiralling situation in the Middle ?East.

Saudi-led forces in Yemen bombed Al-Jawf Central Prison:

#BREAKING

Saudi-led forces in Yemen bombed Al-Jawf Central Prison, causing death and injuries to at least 35 people. Terrible scenes#houthis #yemen #saudiarabia pic.twitter.com/sNBhWOZdaI

— METRONIDAZOLE (@METRO_NIDAZOLE) September 7, 2026

More Overnight News

via Newsquawk

• US President Trump posted, "Oil prices will drop precipitously, like everything else is dropping (but more!), when we WIN the war with Iran. Three Dollars a gallon, but ultimately, below Two Dollars a gallon. It will all happen quickly, and Iran will never have a Nuclear Weapon. MAGA!"
• Iranian President Pezeshkian said Iran has always opposed war but will continue to resist aggression with full force until the aggressors are made to regret their actions.
• Iran's top national security official Rezaei said Washington has received a clear warning from Iran’s new missiles and that economic warfare will be met with a maritime exclusion zone across the Persian Gulf to the blockade perimeter, while he added that the operational posture toward US warships and bases has been fundamentally recalibrated.
• Tasnim analysis suggests that commentary from Iranian official Rezaei signals that Iran is considering expanding the geographic scope of its maritime confrontation into the northern Indian Ocean.
• Saudi Energy Minister said a number of energy facilities and utilities were hit and that some operations have been temporarily halted. This was later confirmed by the Houthis, in which they added that they struck the Khamis Mushait Air Base in retaliation to recent Saudi airstrikes. The group warned that further attacks on Yemen will be met with broader strikes on Saudi.

Right now, Chinese open-weight AI models are on the cusp of dominating closed-weight US frontier models in both price and performance. All ten of the top open-weight models on Artificial Analysis’s spring Intelligence Index came from China-based labs, and the best sat just six points behind the leading closed model; Chinese models also passed American ones in token share on OpenRouter in early June. All of this - despite asymmetrical lack of access to bleeding-edge hardware vs. their US competition, which Washington has been engineering since October 2022.

The first round of export controls went after Nvidia’s best AI chips and the tools that make advanced chips; later rounds added high-bandwidth memory and more of the chip-printing machines made by ASML, the Dutch company with a near-monopoly on them. This year the White House loosened on chips, licensing H200 sales that Beijing then capped on its own, while Congress moved on the tools: a bill that cleared House Foreign Affairs in April would bar ASML from selling its most advanced remaining machines anywhere in China and require a license for every service call on the ones already installed.

So - since China still can't build the machines that make the chips, they've stockpiled three years' worth of critical machinery - buying time for one company to spearhead a domestic drive for AI independence.

On Monday the Financial Times reported that Huawei has taken the coordinating role in China’s drive to build those machines itself, investing across the supply chain and pushing domestic tools into chip plants such as SMIC, China’s largest chipmaker. At the center of the effort is a scanner built by Shanghai startup Yuliangsheng, the same class of machine the bill targets. It is being tested at SMIC and on Huawei’s own production lines, and one source told the paper that output will reach 12 units by the end of the year.

China’s two major memory-chip makers, CXMT and YMTC, have already bought enough ASML machines to cover their expansion plans for the next three years. Meanwhile, Yuliangsheng’s would-be domestic replacement prints wafers through projection lenses made by Germany’s Zeiss, which says it sells lithography optics to exactly one customer: ASML.

China’s memory makers have banked three years of Dutch machines, and the domestic replacement runs on German glass.

What's a Lithography Scanner?

A chip is a pattern printed onto silicon with light. The machine that performs that printing is a lithography scanner. For the chips that matter to China’s AI buildout, the relevant machine is an immersion deep-ultraviolet scanner (DUV), which passes light through a thin film of water to print finer features. ASML makes nearly all of them; Japan’s Nikon is the only other major player.

ASML’s newer extreme-ultraviolet machines have never shipped to China. Immersion DUV tools have, by the hundreds. ASML’s China president said in late 2023 that nearly 1,400 ASML machines were already installed in the country, and that number has risen since. China bought $49.6 billion of chip equipment in 2024, or 42% of the world total, much of it purchased ahead of another round of export controls.

SMIC uses those DUV scanners with multi-patterning, a technique that prints the same layer in several passes, to produce 7nm-class chips without EUV. That is how Huawei’s Ascend accelerators are made, including the 160,000 Ascend 950DTs that DeepSeek is ordering for its Inner Mongolia data center, covered here last week.

Every Ascend still traces back to a Dutch scanner. The machine Huawei is project-managing is meant to replace it.

Huawei As Project Manager

Yuliangsheng was founded in 2022 and spun out of SiCarrier, a Shenzhen equipment maker that FT has previously reported has close technical and business ties to Huawei. Huawei denies any affiliation. Yuliangsheng’s immersion scanner has been in testing at SMIC since September 2025, targeting 28nm in a single pass and 7nm with multi-patterning. For now, it is being used on simpler chips while engineers refine it. AI accelerators are the stated destination.

Bernstein’s Lin Qingyuan told the FT that “Huawei is playing a project management role in China’s DUV push.” A prototype, he added, is of limited value without the thousands of vendors, fabs and customers needed to make it reliable at industrial scale. Huawei is trying to assemble that system.

Its corporate venture arm Habo and another Huawei-backed fund, Shenzhen Yuanzhi Xinghuo, have invested in suppliers working on the two components China still cannot make at the required level: projection lenses and light sources. Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment, the country’s older state lithography house, is supporting Yuliangsheng with multiple prototypes, some built with foreign components and others used to test domestic substitutes.

The startup also sits inside a much larger state-backed effort. In late July, The Information reported that a Shanghai firm had begun mass-producing domestic immersion DUV tools, sending ASML down more than 8% intraday. Reuters identified the company as Shanghai Aishengna Electronic Technology Group. Founded in August 2023 with Rmb7 billion, or about $1 billion, in registered capital, Aishengna is backed by Shanghai Electric Holding and a Shanghai International Trust subsidiary and has absorbed teams from Yuliangsheng and SMEE. Corporate and recruitment records show that Aishengna and Yuliangsheng share a Shanghai address. Reuters had reported in December that China had also built an EUV prototype, though production remains years away.

German Glass?

A DUV scanner contains tens of thousands of parts spread across roughly a dozen major component groups. According to the FT’s sources, Chinese suppliers remain behind in two of the hardest: the projection lens and the light source.

• The Lens: Yuliangsheng’s projection lenses come from Zeiss - which told FT that it sells lithography optics only to ASML, which owns 24.9% of the unit - a stake it bought for €1 billion in 2017, and ASML’s filings describe Zeiss SMT as its single supplier of optical columns.

Huawei is now backing a would-be replacement. Fujian Zhiqi Photonics was spun out of optical-materials maker Castech in 2022. Yuanzhi Xinghuo paid Rmb100 million for 37% of the company in 2023, implying a valuation of roughly Rmb270 million, or about $40 million. Castech, which grew out of a Chinese Academy of Sciences institute, has disclosed both ASML and Huawei as customers.

• The Light Source: Japan’s Gigaphoton and ASML subsidiary Cymer dominate that market. Beijing RSLaser, also backed by Habo, has supplied light sources for SMEE’s older machines and is developing one for the 28nm tool. Lin’s assessment to the FT: building a light source is easy, building one that runs stably at high power is not.

The Fabs Vote With Dutch Inventory

While SMIC has bought Yuliangsheng’s machines and is testing them, it still uses ASML tools for production. Meanwhile CXMT and YMTC have stocked enough ASML DUV equipment to cover three years of expansion.

ASML’s CFO Roger Dassen said in July that China would remain at roughly 20% of 2026 sales, down from 33% in 2025 but on a larger base. ASML raised full-year guidance to €43-45 billion the same day. Its servicing and upgrade business, Installed Base Management, generated €2.76 billion in the second quarter alone.

Lin’s read is that Chinese DUV has improved substantially but still lacks the full backing of domestic fabs, much as ASML’s own rise depended on years of work alongside TSMC. The stockpile gives SMIC, CXMT and YMTC three years of expansion without running an unproven domestic scanner in production. It also delays, by the same three years, the production-line learning Lin says the prototypes need.

The MATCH Act

On April 2, a bipartisan House group introduced the Multilateral Alignment of Technology Controls on Hardware (MATCH) Act, H.R. 8170, a bill built to close the remaining gaps in US restrictions on chipmaking equipment sold to China and to make the Netherlands and Japan, home to ASML and Nikon, match them on a deadline. The original version was broader. A substitute offered later that month stripped out several controls but, according to Reuters, kept a countrywide restriction on sales of ASML immersion DUV machines to China. It also kept restrictions on foreign equipment sales to CXMT, YMTC and SMIC facilities already barred from using US tools.

The MATCH Act would also require licenses to service equipment in covered facilities, including calibration, spare parts, software updates and field support, although the revised draft dropped the original policy of denying those applications. The introduced text gave allied supplier countries 150 days to match US controls; Reuters reported that the substitute retained a deadline for allied negotiations before unilateral US controls would follow. House Foreign Affairs approved the substitute 36-8 on April 22. A Senate version, S.4281, remains in Banking. Neither has had a floor vote.

Immersion tools need specialized maintenance roughly every six months, often performed by ASML engineers on site in China. A three-year stockpile covers a sales ban. It does not cover a servicing restriction, which would put every six-month service visit inside a covered facility behind a Commerce license.

Lin’s closing point to the FT is that US restrictions could actually speed up China’s progress by forcing local fabs to work with local suppliers. Huawei can coordinate the suppliers, fund the missing components and put prototypes in front of SMIC. What it cannot easily do is make a fab abandon a proven ASML scanner while Dutch inventory is still available. The one party that could is Congress, and its bill has not had a floor vote.

The remaining constraint is the machinery underneath China’s models. DeepSeek’s chip order runs into Huawei’s memory shortage. Huawei’s Ascend chips run through SMIC’s ASML scanners. The domestic scanner intended to replace them still relies on a Zeiss lens acquired on China’s secondary market. And CXMT, the memory maker at the top of Aishengna’s delivery list, has just bought enough ASML equipment for three more years. Three years is the time Huawei has to make the domestic scanner work.

Last year, lefty corporate media outlets pushed the narrative that President Trump's trade war with the world could trigger a 1929-style economic collapse. However, a new UBS report presents a markedly different picture: global trade growth is running at historically high levels, supported by AI-related demand and rising export prices. 

Let's take a trip in the "wayback machine" and look at Bloomberg's headlines when Trump was ratcheting up the trade war with China in early 2025. The outlet pumped out an ungodly number of headlines about "recession" and impending economic doom. 

MSM's 'Doom-Maxxing' Headlines:

Roughly 1.5 years later, UBS's latest data show continued growth in global trade, despite the recession risks economists highlighted when the tariff war broke out in the first half of 2025.

UBS chief economist Arend Kapteyn wrote Tuesday morning that global export values are rising about 19% from a year earlier, placing growth in the 84th percentile of the past 25 years. Higher volumes account for roughly 8.8 percentage points of that increase, while rising prices contribute another 10.3 percentage points.

Asia accounts for 71% of global export growth. The region, with China particularly prominent, generates about 95% of the technology-related contribution, highlighting its major role in the AI supply chain. 

Separately, Emmanuel Sharef, who oversees Pacific Investment Management Co.'s flagship Balanced Income and Growth Fund, told Bloomberg last week that he was seeking opportunities among Asian suppliers benefiting from the AI boom.

The report suggests that global trade remains resilient, but its core strength is concentrated in technology and Asia. That leaves the expansion heavily sensitive to the AI and power grid investment boom. It seems that all the doom-maxxing forecasts lefty corporate media outlets made last summer have fallen flat on their faces.

The relevering of the US consumer continues: one month after the June consumer credit number came higher than estimates (and followed the unexpected May contreaction in US credit), in July consumer credit came in even higher than expected, with the Fed reporting in its latest G.19 report that in July, US consumer credit rose by a whopping $18.1BN - more than the $14.6 billion in June - and far above the $11.7 billion estimate. 

The rebound was driven by a modestly increase in revolving credit (i.e., credit card debt), as consumers added $2.8 billion to their credit card total...

... pushing it to new record high of $1.357 trillion.

The bulk of July's spike in consumer credit was in "non-revolving": student and auto loans rose by a whopping $15.3 billion, the biggest one month increase in over three years, and pushing total nonrevolving credit to $5.186 trillion, also a new all time high.

What is interesting, is that while auto loans have barely budged since late 2023, staying around 1.6 trillion for nearly three years, and hitting a record $1.571 trillion at the end of June, student loans have resumed their ascent, and after a modest decline in late 2023, student loans are once again at all time highs although in June we saw a tiny decline of $4.5 billion.

Finally for those keeping tabs, after a modest decline in the previous two quarter, the average interest rate on credit card accounts assessed interest rose again to 22.15%...

... a level last seen three years ago, when the Fed rates was almost 2% higher, which confirms our long-running observation that credit card rates go up but they never go down.