Baltic Dry Index. 2043 +24 Brent Crude 71.76
Spot
Gold 5130 Spot Silver 84.57
U
S 2 Year Yield 3.48 +0. 01
US Federal Debt. 38.713 trillion
US GDP 31.173 trillion
“I've heard that hard work never killed anyone, but I say why
take the chance?”
Ronald Reagan
A
US GDP miss. A rising US inflation number. The US Supremes declaring illegal
most of President Trump’s tariffs!
The
US stock casinos loved it, but I’m not so sure.
The
US tort bar will love it though, filing class action after class action on
behalf of US consumers who were charged, in whole or part, the illegal tariffs.
Supreme
Court strikes down most of Trump's tariffs in a major blow to the president
The
decision does not affect all of Trump's tariffs but invalidates those
implemented using an emergency law.
Feb.
20, 2026, 3:03 PM GMT / Updated Feb. 21, 2026, 4:12 AM GMT
WASHINGTON
— The Supreme Court delivered a major blow to President Donald Trump, ruling
Friday that he exceeded his authority when imposing sweeping tariffs using a
law reserved for a national emergency.
The
justices, divided 6-3, held that Trump's aggressive approach to tariffs on
products entering the United States from across the world was not permitted
under a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act
(IEEPA).
The
ruling invalidates many, but not all, of Trump’s tariffs.
Speaking
at the White House, Trump harshly criticized the Supreme Court majority,
describing the decision as a "disgrace to our" nation and the
justices in the majority as "very unpatriotic and disloyal to the
Constitution," while suggesting they were "swayed by foreign
interests."
Trump's
ability to impose tariffs using other laws is not affected by the ruling, and
Trump said he plans to use those authorities to impose new duties on a global
basis.
On
Friday evening, Trump said on social media that he signed a global 10%
tariff, which would be a reduction for nearly all foreign nations. The White
House outlined the new temporary tariff as being under
Trump's authority in section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, and will begin
Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. ET.
Despite
Trump's rhetoric about the tariffs benefiting the economy, stocks rallied on news of the ruling.
The ruling was authored by Chief Justice John Roberts,
who was joined by three liberal justices and two fellow conservatives, Justices
Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, in the majority.
It
is a rare setback for the administration at the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3
conservative majority, since Trump began his second term in January 2025.
Business
owners who had to pay the tariffs and challenged them in court expressed relief
at the ruling.
"These
new tariffs were arbitrary, unpredictable, and bad business," Victor
Schwartz, who runs New York-based wine and spirits importer VOS Selections,
said in a statement.
"Thankfully,
courts at every level recognized these duties for what they were:
unconstitutional government overreach," he added.
The
decision does not affect all of Trump's tariffs, leaving in place ones he
imposed on steel and aluminum using different laws, for example. But it upends
his tariffs in two categories. One is country-by-country or “reciprocal”
tariffs, which range from 34% for China to a 10% baseline for the rest of the
world. The other is a 25% tariff Trump imposed on some goods from Canada, China
and Mexico for what the administration said was their failure to curb the flow
of fentanyl.
Companies
that had to pay the tariffs may be able to seek a refund from the Treasury
Department. Hundreds have already sued.
The
court did not directly address that issue, but Kavanaugh, in dissent, said the
effect on the U.S. Treasury could be significant.
"The
Court says nothing today about whether, and if so how, the Government should go
about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from
importers," he wrote.
----We
Pay the Tariffs, a group of small businesses that oppose Trump's tariffs,
immediately called for a "full, fast and automatic" refund process.
"Small
businesses cannot afford to wait months or years while bureaucratic delays play
out, nor can they afford expensive litigation just to recover money that was
unlawfully collected from them in the first place," Dan Anthony, the
group's executive director, said in a statement.
The
Constitution says the power to set tariffs is assigned to Congress. But Trump
used IEEPA, which does not specifically mention tariffs but allows the
president to “regulate” imports and exports when he deems there to be an
emergency due to an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the nation.
Before
Trump, no president had ever used that law to tariff imports. Lower courts
ruled against the Trump administration in two related cases that were
consolidated, with both sides asking the Supreme Court to issue a definitive
ruling.
More
Supreme Court strikes down
most of Trump's tariffs in a major blow to the president
S&P
500 rises, Dow gains 200 points after Supreme Court strikes down Trump
emergency tariffs: Live updates
Updated
Fri, Feb 20 2026 4:18 PM EST
Stocks
rose on Friday after the Supreme Court ruled
against President Donald Trump’s tariffs, potentially providing relief for
companies burdened by higher costs from the duties and easing concern about
sticky inflation still plaguing the U.S. economy.
The S&P 500 advanced 0.69%
and closed at 6,909.51, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.9%
and settled at 22,886.07. The Dow
Jones Industrial Average added 230.81 points, or 0.47%, and ended at
49,625.97. The 30-stock index recovered from a 200-point loss earlier in the
session on disappointing economic data.
The
Supreme Court struck down most of Trump’s sweeping tariff policy under the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act, with the majority ruling that that
law “does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” In response, Trump
announced he will impose a new
10% “global tariff.”
“Now
I’m going to go in a different direction, probably the direction that I should
have gone the first time,” the president said during a press briefing at the
White House after the high court’s decision. “I’ll go the way I could have gone
originally, which is even stronger than our original choice.”
Shares
of “Magnificent Seven” member Amazon —
a company that sources up
to 70% of its goods from China, per Wedbush Securities, and that has
already begun to see tariffs
impact the price of certain items — jumped more than 2% following the
ruling. Others believed to benefit from the outcome were higher as well, such
as Home Depot and Five Below.
“In
the case of Amazon specifically, a lot of their stuff is imported from China,
so tariffs are going to make the prices on Amazon go up for customers, and when
prices go up, people buy fewer of those things,” said Jed Ellerbroek, portfolio
manager at Argent Capital Management. “No longer facing that problem is the
source of excitement, I think.”
While
the Supreme Court’s rebuke was largely expected by Wall Street, some questions
remain, however, including whether tariffs that have been paid under the
steeper rates will need to be given back. The Supreme Court ruling was silent
on the matter.
“Now
lower courts are going to have to figure out what’s going to happen to people
who paid the tariffs and the government paying out big refunds,” said FBB
Capital Partners senior research analyst and asset allocation strategist
Michael Brenner. “If that’s out there, that would be effectively a form of
economic stimulus.”
Earlier
in the day, traders received a downbeat view on growth of the U.S. economy, as
gross domestic product increased
1.4% for the fourth quarter. That was far below the 2.5% gain that
economists polled by Dow Jones had anticipated. The 4.4% advance in the third
quarter sharply surpassed estimates.
More
Stock
market news for Feb. 20, 2026
Fourth-quarter
U.S. GDP up just 1.4%, badly missing estimate
Published
Fri, Feb 20 2026 8:31 AM EST
Economic
growth cooled near the end of 2025 while inflation held firm, according to data
released Friday that could complicate the Federal Reserve’s interest rate path.
Gross
domestic produce rose at an annualized rate of just 1.4%, according to Commerce
Department numbers released Friday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been
looking for a 2.5% gain.
For
the full year in 2025, the U.S. economy grew at a 2.2% pace, down from the 2.8%
increase in 2024.
At
the same time, inflation held firm in December, according to the gauge most
closely watched by Fed officials.
The
core personal consumption expenditures price index, which excludes food and
energy, rose 3% in December, according to a separate release. That matched the
consensus forecast but kept the pivotal inflation measure well above the Fed’s
2% target.
On
a headline basis, the PCE index accelerated 2.9%, or 0.1 percentage point
higher than expected.
Both
indexes rose 0.4% for the month, compared to the respective forecasts for 0.3%.
Just
prior to the data release, President Donald Trump warned that the GDP number
would be soft, blaming it on the government shutdown that ended in November.
“The
Democrat Shutdown cost the U.S.A. at least two points in GDP. That’s why they
are doing it, in mini form, again. No Shutdowns!” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “Also, LOWER
INTEREST RATES. “Two Late” Powell is the WORST!!!”
The
latter part of the post was a reference to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who Trump
has consistently hectored to lower interest rates. The Fed cut its benchmark
rate by three-quarters of a percentage point in the latter part of 2025, but
officials have since expressed a reluctance to lower further as they gauge the
progress in bringing down inflation against threats of a labor market slowdown.
‘Canary
in the coal mine’: Blue Owl liquidity curbs fuel fears about private credit
bubble
Published
Fri, Feb 20 2026 12:34 AM EST
The
private credit boom is facing a new test after Blue Owl Capital permanently
restricted withdrawals from one of its retail-focused debt funds.
Shares
in Blue Owl Capital fell nearly
6% on Thursday after the private market and alternative assets manager sold $1.4 billion
of loan assets held in three of its private debt funds.
The
biggest portion of the sale came from a semi-liquid private credit fund
marketed to U.S. retail investors called the Blue Owl Capital Corporation II,
which will stop offering quarterly redemption options to investors,
reigniting debate over whether stress was beginning to resurface in one of Wall
Street’s fastest-growing corners.
“This
is a canary in the coal mine,” Dan Rasmussen, founder and adviser at Verdad
Capital told CNBC. “The private markets bubble is finally starting to burst.”
The
broader concern is that years of ultra-low interest rates and thin yield
spreads encouraged lenders to make riskier moves, financing smaller, more
leveraged companies at yields that appeared attractive compared with public
markets, market watchers said.
“Years
of ultra-low rates and ultra-low spreads and very few bankruptcies led
investors to go further and further out the risk spectrum in credit,” Rasmussen
said. “This is a classic case of ‘fool’s yield,’ high yield that doesn’t
translate into high returns because the borrowers were too risky.”
Private
credit, which are generally direct loans made by non-bank lenders to companies,
have ballooned into a roughly $3 trillion market globally.
Publicly
traded business development companies, or BDCs, which are investment vehicles
that lend to small and mid-sized private companies and are a major part of the
private credit market, are increasingly funded by retail investors rather than
institutions, according to Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
The
Fuqua research, which was published last September, showed that institutional
ownership of BDC shares has steadily declined over time, falling to about 25%
on average by 2023.
“This
trend indicates that retail investors are playing an increasingly large role in
supplying equity capital to publicly traded BDC,” the researchers pointed out.
In
2025, the eight largest members of the S&P
BDC Index offered
dividend yields which can go up to 16%, with Blue Owl’s at over 11%. For
comparison, the S&P Global’s U.S. high yield corporate bond index 1-year,
3-year and 5-year returns stand at around 7.7%, 9% and 4%, respectively.
“The
majority of loans in private credit funds that individual investors tend to
own, they’re high yield loans. They are, by their nature, somewhat risky,” said
Guy LeBas, chief fixed income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott.
“Over
the course of the cycle, you can anticipate some material defaults across these
funds,” he added.
More
'Canary in the
coal mine': Blue Owl liquidity curbs fuel fears private credit bubble
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession
Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians,
inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Fed’s
Preferred Gauge Shows Accelerating December Inflation Trends
The
personal-consumption expenditures price index increased by 0.4% in December
Feb.
20, 2026 9:01 am ET
Key
inflation metrics tracked by the Federal Reserve accelerated at the end of last
year, underscoring why many Fed officials have turned cautious about supporting further
interest-rate cuts.
The
personal-consumption expenditures price index increased by 0.4% in December,
after rising by 0.2% in November, the Commerce Department said Friday.
That
lifted the 12-month PCE inflation rate to 2.9%, up from 2.8% in November. Core
PCE inflation—which excludes volatile food and energy prices—ticked up to 3% in
the 12 months through December, from 2.8% a month earlier.
The
numbers are roughly aligned with forecasts from analysts, who can use other
inflation metrics to forecast PCE inflation with great accuracy. The report
also is more lagged than usual, because last fall’s government shutdown has
caused cascading delays in the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s publication
calendar.
But
the figures point to one reason many Fed officials have turned hesitant about
easing their policy stance further despite January’s decline in the consumer-price index, now at 2.4%. PCE
inflation, not the CPI, is the metric against which the Fed gauges progress
toward its 2% inflation target, and it has consistently hovered above that
target for most of half a decade.
Much
of the time, PCE inflation tends to run cooler than CPI inflation, but for now,
the pattern has reversed. That is in large part because housing inflation,
which has cooled steadily, plays a bigger part in the CPI calculation than in
the PCE calculation, UBS economist Alan Detmeister has observed.
Minutes
from the Fed’s January meeting published Wednesday showed that a contingent of
Fed officials thinks that at 3.5% to 3.75%, the Fed’s current rate target is
near a neutral level that is no longer working to restrain economic growth and
rising prices. At last month’s Fed meeting, the minutes showed, one set of
officials urged the group to consider communicating that going forward, rate
increases may be as much a possibility as further cuts.
More
PCE
Inflation Rose in December, Fueling Federal Reserve Rate Caution - WSJ
The Multipolar Delusion
And the Unilateral Temptation
C. Raja Mohan March/April 2026 Published on February 17, 2026
From Washington to Beijing and Moscow to New Delhi,
a consensus is emerging that the world has entered a multipolar era. Political
leaders, diplomats, and analysts routinely declare that unrivaled American
dominance has ended and global power is now dispersed across multiple centers.
The assertion has become so commonplace that it is often treated as a
self-evident fact rather than a proposition to be examined. Even officials in
the United States, long the principal beneficiary of the unipolar post–Cold War
order, have adopted this language. At the start of President Donald Trump’s
second term, Secretary of State Marco Rubio observed that Washington’s moment
as the sole superpower was historically “not normal” and that the international
system would inevitably tend toward multipolarity. Rubio’s statement appeared
to echo the growing belief in China, Russia, and much of the developing world
that the United States’ power is declining and its long-standing global primacy
is unsustainable.
This seeming convergence obscures a difference in
how the various players define “multipolarity.” For the Trump administration, acknowledging
multipolarity doesn’t mean accepting limits on American power. Instead, it
serves as a justification for abandoning the traditional U.S. conception of
global leadership and the responsibilities that come with it. The idea of
multipolarity allows Washington to pursue a narrower, more transactional
foreign policy—one focused on extracting advantage rather than underwriting
order, unconcerned with the maintenance of institutions or norms that do not
serve immediate American interests. For China, Russia, and many developing
countries, by contrast, multipolarity is not merely descriptive but
aspirational. It is a political project aimed at constraining American
dominance, eroding Western-led institutions, and constructing alternative
models of governance, development, and security in which the United States is
not the only country in charge.
The idea of multipolarity has been popular since
the United States emerged as the sole
dominant power at the end of the Cold War. After the 1990–91 Gulf War, which
revealed the scale of American military superiority, French leaders warned of
the dangers posed by the American “hyperpower.” China and Russia later transformed
this critique into a strategy, seeking to organize resistance to U.S. primacy.
They established what they declared to be a “strategic partnership” in the late
1990s and formed the multilateral BRICS alliance along with Brazil, India, and
South Africa to coordinate among non-Western powers. They believed that such
efforts could accelerate the transition away from American hegemony.
Trump’s return to office made the arrival of a
multipolar moment seem inevitable. The United States was internally divided,
economically unsettled, and weary of global commitments. China’s economy had
grown to nearly the same size as that of the European Union, and the country
had become a formidable technological leader in its own right. Russia’s war in
Ukraine had demonstrated Moscow’s willingness to use force to revise borders in
Europe. And BRICS had expanded to include new members in Asia, Africa, and the
Middle East, reinforcing the impression of a rising alternative system to
counter American dominance. Many observers concluded that the multipolar world
had arrived and that American unipolarity was living on borrowed time.
A year later, however, this conviction appears
misplaced. The Trump administration has embarked on a forceful reassertion of
American power by imposing onerous tariffs, intervening in other countries, and
brokering peace negotiations and commercial dealmaking across the world. China and Russia have resisted Washington on select issues, but they
have been unable to mount a comprehensive challenge to the United States’
effort to restructure global rules. Washington’s European allies have proved
even less able to stand up to the United States. Facing Trump’s insults and
pressure, they have wilted and caved.
The reality is that the world is still unipolar.
More
The Multipolar Delusion | Foreign Affairs
Technology
Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
This weekend,
something different. With all of the UK’s and Europe’s great rains this autumn
and winter, it’s nothing new. No man-made global warming, whatever lies the BBC
spreads.
The Great Flood and Great
Famine of 1314
Published: 24th March 2015
During the winter and spring of 2013/2014,
Britain suffered a prolonged period of destructive winter storms, resulting in
widespread flooding and damage. However this was not the first time that the
country had been devastated by heavy periods of rain and bad weather.
It rained almost constantly throughout the
summer and autumn of 1314 and then through most of 1315 and 1316. Crops rotted
in the ground, harvests failed and livestock drowned or starved. Food stocks
depleted and the price of food soared. The result was the Great Famine, which
over the next few years is thought to have claimed over 5% of the British
population. It was the same or even worse in mainland Europe.
The shortage of crops pushed up prices of
everyday necessities such as vegetables, wheat, barley and oats. Bread was
therefore also expensive and because the grain had to be dried before it could
be used, of very poor quality. Salt, the only way at that time to cure and
preserve meat, was difficult to obtain because it was much harder to extract
through evaporation in wet weather; its price rose dramatically.
In the spring of 1315 Edward II decreed
that the price of basic foodstuffs be limited. This did not however do much to
mitigate the crisis: the traders simply refused to sell their goods at these
low prices. In the end the act was abolished at the Lincoln parliament in 1316.
The situation got worse and worse as the
rain continued to fall. It was reported that there was even no bread in St
Albans for the king and his court when they stopped off there on 10th – 12th
August 1315.
Things were particularly bad in the north
of England and especially in Northumbria, where the people were already
struggling due to looting by Scottish raiders. The population
here resorted to eating dogs and horses.
Everyone was affected, from nobles to
peasants. Things got so bad in the winter of 1315/1316 that the peasants ate
the seed grain they had stored for planting in the spring.
By 1316 there were even rumours of
cannibalism. In their misery and starvation, many people begged, stole and
murdered for what little food they could find. Even law-abiding people resorted
to criminality in order to feed themselves.
Parents who could no longer feed their
families abandoned their children to fend for themselves. Indeed, the fairytale
of Hansel and Gretel may have originated at this time. In the story, Hansel and
Gretel have been abandoned in the woods by their parents during a time of
famine. They are taken in by an old woman living in a cottage. The old woman
starts to heat the oven, and the children realise she is planning to roast and
eat them. Gretel manages to trick the old woman into opening the oven, and then
pushes her in.
As the cold, wet weather continued, the
famine reached its height in spring 1317. Finally in the summer of that year
the weather patterns returned to normal, but it was 1322 before the food supply
recovered completely.
So what caused year after year of severe
winters and cold, rainy summers? The onset of the Great Famine coincided with
the end of the Medieval Warm Period and the beginning of a Little Ice Age. The
European climate was changing, with cooler and wetter summers and earlier
autumn storms. These were far from ideal conditions for agriculture and with a
large population to feed, it only took one failed harvest for things to get
very bad very quickly.
Some historians think that this terrible
weather may have been caused by a volcanic eruption, perhaps that of Mount
Tarawera in New Zealand which is known to have erupted around 1314.
Unfortunately the Great Famine was only
the first of a series of severe crises to hit Europe in the 14th century; the
Black Death was just around the corner…
The Great Flood
and Great Famine of 1314
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks
(usdebtclock.org)
Exponent
Calculator
Enter
values into any two of the input fields to solve for the third.
This
weekend’s music diversion. Another long forgotten composer. Approx. 16 minutes.
Jan
Křtitel Jiří Neruda (c.1711-1776) - Concerto per il Clarino (1772)
Jan Křtitel Jiří
Neruda (c.1711-1776) - Concerto per il Clarino (1772)
Next,
when Citibank architecture had a problem. Approx. 33 minutes.
How
a student’s question exposed a fatal flaw in a New York skyscraper
How a student’s
question exposed a fatal flaw in a New York skyscraper | Watch
Finally, the castles of Wales. Approx. 8 minutes.
Top 10 Castles in Wales | Snowdonia,
Anglesey, Cardiff & More
Top 10 Castles in
Wales | Snowdonia, Anglesey, Cardiff & More - YouTube
“I have left orders to be awakened at any time during national
emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.”
Ronald Reagan
