Moore: Time For Jerome Powell To Go Home

Authored by Stephen Moore via RealClearPolitics.com,

The man just won't leave the stage.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell announced last week that he's going to remain on the Federal Reserve Board until 2028 even as he by law surrenders his chairmanship. The announcement came even after President Donald Trump agreed to drop his unwise lawsuit against Powell for funding a $2 billion new Taj Mahal building down the street from the White House.

Powell will be the first Fed chair to stay on the Fed's Board of Directors in 50 years. This isn't the way it's done. It's bad form.

Only once did he come within spitting distance of his inflation target. February 2021 was the only month in his whole tenure when inflation hit the range of 1.8% to 2.2%. He's retiring with a batting average of .011.

Powell, in my opinion as a close Fed watcher, was one of Trump's worst appointments, as his record proves. Trump agrees with me.

Two-thirds of the time, inflation was well above the target. Would you keep someone with that lousy record in your starting lineup?

He almost rammed the economy into recession with inexcusably high rates in 2018, and then during COVID-19's aftermath he flooded the economy with cheap money.

The inflation rate skyrocketed to 9% -- its highest level since the late 1970s. We're all still paying high grocery prices because of that monetary blunder. The Fed promised "transitory" inflation, but it was very high for two years.

He's used interest rate policy seemingly as a weapon to bludgeon his enemy Trump.

He slammed Trump's tariffs publicly but refused to acknowledge the disinflationary effects of Trump's tax cuts, energy policies and deregulation. He rarely, if ever, spoke out in opposition to the Biden post-COVID-19 $4 trillion debt-financed spending spree.

He finally relented in lowering rates in 2024, but that timing was suspicious coming a few months before the presidential election.

Was he pushing his thumb on the scale to help former Vice President Kamala Harris win the election? You decide.

Powell never learned the supply-side truism that faster growth doesn't cause inflation, it cures it. When the Fed gets that truism wrong, bad things follow. The Trump tax cuts and "drill, baby, drill" polices expanded economic output. More production means lower, not higher, prices. So why was he squeezing the money supply?

Powell has been emboldened and knighted by the media because of his public spats with Trump. He says he wants to be independent of politics, but no one has played their political cards against Trump more expertly and covertly than Powell.

His announcement to stay on the board can only be explained as pure political retaliation against Trump. It puts Kevin Warsh, Trump's nominee to replace Powell, in an awkward position as he tries to drive the Fed back in the stable dollar direction. To stay and sit on the bench pouting is what sore losers do.

A CEO doesn't stick around after they've been tossed out as chairman of the board -- unless the successor pleads with them to stay. Warsh isn't doing that. He has Powell's mess to clean up.

Incidentally, with the news this weeks that the publicly traded debt now exceeds the annual GDP of the nation, perhaps Warsh should, in his inaugural address as Fed chairman, pledge to recommend that Congress live within its means, and that as a first step, he will cut the Fed budget and bureaucratic bloat by 10% to 15%.

What a great way to set a good example for the rest of Washington. We don't need 300 Ph.D. economists at the Fed to screw things up.

Jerome can and should go home and write his memoir about how he attempted to undermine Trump every step of the way. It's bound to be a bestseller.

Tyler Durden Thu, 05/07/2026 - 14:45
https://ift.tt/7kcy5rq
from ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/7kcy5rq
via IFTTT

Moore: Time For Jerome Powell To Go Home

'We Need People To Come Back': Dubai's Tourism Industry Reels As Foreigners Flee

Via Middle East Eye

Dubai is facing an existential crisis with the US and Israeli war on Iran forcing tourism numbers to fall sharply, with widespread hotel closures and job losses decimating the global tourism hotspots' hospitality sector.

On Monday, Dubai Airports reported that first-quarter passenger traffic was down by at least 2.5 million from the same period in 2025, with March seeing a 66 percent drop in passenger numbers as travelers chose to steer clear of the Gulf. 

Empty beds are pictured before high-rise buildings along a beach at Jumeirah Beach Residence (JBR) in Dubai on March 11, 2026. via AFP

The company did not specify forecasts for this year but on Saturday, in a bid to kickstart tourism, the UAE announced that all air travel restrictions that were put in place after Iran launched retaliatory strikes on all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries that house or cooperate closely with US forces had been lifted. 

In a post on their official X account, the Civil Aviation Authority wrote: "Our decision came following a comprehensive assessment of operational and security conditions, in coordination with the relevant authorities". The statement was clearly meant to relay confidence to international travelers, especially after several European airlines announced that they would be suspending flights to the Middle East. 

Workers and business owners in Dubai, who spoke to the Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity due GCC-wide restrictions on public statements about the effects of Tehran’s attacks, say it will still take some time to see if the announcement will restore confidence among travelers and investors.

Charity, a Kenyan hotel worker said the mid-priced hotel she works at was definitely affected by the 1.4 million people who travelled through the UAE over the first two weeks of March. During the Muslim month of Ramadan, when Iranian missile and drone attacks were at their worst, the hotel, part of a US-based chain, was full of stranded passengers who would meet with Emirates Airlines representatives in the lobby. 

During the month, the hotel's pool was closed to guests and by the final days, guests staying in the higher floors of the 20-floor building were moved to the lower floors as a precautionary measure. After that, though, she said "things really slowed down for a few weeks".

She said she hoped the announcement would provide some assurance to travelers. "We'll see over the next week if people really start to come back," she said while helping a long-time American traveler. "We need your people [foreign tourists] to come back," she added.

So far, even longtime passengers say there has been a noticeable shift in the mood at Dubai International, which has been the world’s busiest airport for international passenger traffic for 12 consecutive years.

Samina, a South Asian NGO worker who travels between South Asia, the Gulf and North America, said the change was particularly noticeable in her most recent trips over the two months.

"Coming in, it's empty," she said of Terminal 3, home of Emirates Airlines. "Terminal 1 and 2 are ghost towns," she said of the buildings that are home to other international carriers and FlyDubai, the UAE's budget airline.

She said international airlines suspending flights to the region have definitely taken a toll on traffic, "Every time you get in, it's all the same transit passengers."

According to Dubai Airports, only 51 out of 90 airlines have resumed their operations at the airport, with European and US airlines facing difficulties securing insurance cover due to government travel advisories

'Ethos of Dubai was shaken'

For its part, Dubai is working hard to support and reassure its residents. Travelling around the city, there is an abundance of UAE flags outside homes and businesses and on digital signs and billboards along the highways.

At the City Walk shopping center there are massive electronic signs thanking UAE residents in Arabic and English. Pictures of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan are emblazoned along major roads with the statement: May our nation remain in God’s protection". Other signs show Emirati families saluting the flag with the same words.

However, longtime residents and business owners say the impact of the intercepted missiles and drones was felt almost immediate.

Tatiana, a Russian national who runs a logistics company for businesses looking to setup shop in the Gulf, and she said even she was shocked at how quickly the mood shifted for existing and prospective businesses. "Within the first two weeks people [said] it's no longer worth [living here]. They weren't scared per se, they just felt like it's no longer worth it". 

"Businesses were suddenly liquidating their assets." She said her family was now looking at options in Europe to gradually shift to.

Antoine, an editor who helps train amateur writers said one of his clients who works at an advertising agency was left with the burden of those liquidations. "She was in charge of finding 1,000 workers in the UAE to let go of," he said. Antoine was particularly struck by the fact that even an advertising firm would be so immediately impacted.

"You'd think advertising would be a war-proof industry," he said. Tatiana said her work has been particularly affected by the attacks.  "Our whole business is predicated on assuring people that the UAE is a safe, convenient place to do business," she said.

Her statement is almost identical to what Arjun, one of the 3.5 to 4.3 million Indian residents of the UAE, said outside a late evening screening of the Michael Jackson biopic. Arjun said he was happy to see the screening at near capacity, hoping it was a sign of a gradual return to normal. "The entire ethos of Dubai as this place free from conflict was shaken," he said.

Tyler Durden Wed, 05/06/2026 - 15:00
https://ift.tt/iVvYxgz
from ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/iVvYxgz
via IFTTT

'We Need People To Come Back': Dubai's Tourism Industry Reels As Foreigners Flee

Iraq Offers Huge Discounts Up To $33 Per Barrel For Oil Shipments Via Hormuz

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

OPEC’s second-largest producer, Iraq, is offering huge discounts of up to $33.40 per barrel off the official selling prices for its crude that has to move through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iraq’s oil production and exports have been severely crippled due to the hostilities in the Middle East and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which is the only way to move Iraqi Basrah crude grades.

Iraq was one of the first Gulf producers to slash upstream production and now exports a small part of its crude via a pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean coast. But its key export port at Basrah, which handled the bulk of exports prior to the war, is constrained due to the unpassable Strait of Hormuz. Iraq has shipped some cargoes eastward out of the Strait thanks to bilateral agreements with Iran’s forces, but tankers now have to move empty westward of the Strait and travel deep into the Persian Gulf to load from Basrah.

Port of Basra

The inbound movement at the Strait of Hormuz is at a standstill, and renewed tensions, blockades, the U.S. Project Freedom to guide ships, the Iranian threats to said project, and Iranian expansion of the area of control at Hormuz are further complicating tanker movement west into the Persian Gulf.

Iraq is now offering a discount of $33.40 per barrel off the official selling price of its flagship Basrah Medium crude loading from Basrah on the Gulf in May, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing a May 3 notice by Iraqi state oil marketing company SOMO.

Basrah Medium that would be loaded between May 1 and 10 would be priced at a discount of $33.40 a barrel below the OSP, and at a $26-per-barrel discount between May 11 and 31, according to the notice seen by Bloomberg.

Basrah Heavy for loading in May is being offered to buyers at $30 below the OSP.

If a buyer agrees to some of the offers, SOMO’s notice says that “force majeure shall not be applicable to this offer, given that it has been issued under existing exceptional conditions already known to all parties.”

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 15:00
https://ift.tt/kDrbfPG
from ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/kDrbfPG
via IFTTT

Iraq Offers Huge Discounts Up To $33 Per Barrel For Oil Shipments Via Hormuz

All's Not So Quiet On Any Front

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

Project Freedom. Cute move! Notice that it’s not Operation Freedom. That would frame it as a military move.

The President is tactically framing this as a humanitarian action. Mr. Trump has advised Congress as of May 1 that hostilities with Iran (Operation Epic Fury) are terminated, at the 60-day limit of the War Powers Resolution. Commercial ships from countries not involved in the Iran / US dispute will now get escorted safely through the Strait of Hormuz by US naval vessels.

(Later amended by CENTCOM, around 9a.m. Monday as being protected by US Navy vessels “in the vicinity.”)

Any attack on these ships by Iran would prompt a forceful response and trigger a re-wind of the clock on the War Powers Resolution (WPR), meaning, another sixty days to conduct military operations, such as the destruction of key bridges and electric power plants promised earlier. Iran’s leadership — whoever that is — thought it could juke Mr. Trump on the 60-day deadline by stalling negotiations while it reorganized its remaining missile launchers. Tactical fail. Incidentally, the Supreme Court has never directly ruled on the WPR’s constitutionality or enforced the 60-day limit.

Also, by the way, the “neutral and innocent bystanders” designation means that oil tankers from Kuwait, the Emirate states, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia will be given safe escorts out of the Persian Gulf. That will have two effects: 1) avert the “shutting-in” of their productive oil wells (and the prospective geological damage to the oil fields); and 2) alleviate the price pressure on oil generally with new supply reentering the global oil market.

You can conclude that this “project” will bring new pressure on the “whoevers” running Iran to stop shucking and jiving about how this thing ends — which is them surrendering the 1000-pounds of 60-percent enriched uranium stashed somewhere on their premises. Of course, coming to terms on the nuclear bomb-making issue would allow Iran the possibility of becoming, once more, a normal advanced industrial modern nation, should it also decide to eschew the rule of the mullahs and their psychotic minions in the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC). But that remains to be seen.

The other major project underway is on the domestic US scene: the much-needed severe beat-down of the so-called Democratic Party that has become captive to seditionists, overt communists, racketeers, and jihadis.

DOJ prosecutions of color revolutionaries accelerate under Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. James Comey finally has to account for his “86 / 47” seashell prank in a Carolina federal court while a long-dormant case was revived in the Eastern District of Virginia of Comey having used Columbia prof Daniel Richman as a cut-out to leak classified information to the press at the inception of RussiaGate, 2017.

Nobody knows exactly what’s going down in the Southern District of Florida these days (no leaks) where a grand Jury was convened in January to hear evidence in the RussiaGate matter including the years’ long train of organized seditions aimed at bum-rushing Mr. Trump out of the Oval Office in his first term, plus the mounting of various other operations (2020 election-rigging, the J-6 “Fedsurrection,” and maliciously fake serial prosecutions) aimed at stuffing him in prison at the end of that term.

All this is being treated as a “grand conspiracy” involving scores of agency officials and lawfare ninjas operating in the penumbra at the edge of government.

Do not be surprised when rafts of indictments come out of the Fort Pierce, Florida, grand jury, probably in bunches, each bunch dedicated to a particular phase or operation.

Characters such as former President Barack Obama, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Senator Adam Schiff (D-CS), CIA-agent Eric Ciaramella, legal tacticians Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, and Mary McCord, Andrew Weissmann, crooked member of the Senate Intel Committee Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), and former CIA Directors Brennan with former DNI James Clapper, were involved in multiple seditions and possible treasons. Supporting actors such as the tag-team of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, former Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, former AG Merrick Garland, former Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, former Sec’y of State Hillary Clinton, “Joe Biden” autopen operators Jake Sullivan, Mike Donlon, Steve Richetti, Anita Dunn, Neera Tanden, former Sec’y of State Antony Blinken, and Domestic Policy Advisor Susan Rice, are probably in the mix somewhere, too.

The trials that come out of all this action will be mighty interesting shows. What they will show is what an absolutely criminal organization the Democratic Party became sometime during Barack Obama’s second term, and how each criminal act since then has provoked further criminal acts in the attempt to cover-up the train of crime.

On top of that, you see the first glimmers of action against the villains behind the Covid-19 operation, which was used as an additional instrument of sedition to eject President Trump from office with mail-in ballot fraud.

That was the eventual outcome anyway, though it appears that Anthony Fauci’s NIAID agency was subcontracting out the development of this disease at least a decade earlier. And now, Dr. Fauci’s chief advisor, David Morens, is indicted on extremely serious charges including conspiracy against the United States, destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations (multiple counts), and concealment, removal, or mutilation of records (multiple counts).

This is serious business. It is likely to lead to Dr. Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and other public health officials who ran a dastardly number on the citizens of this land. Be advised: the autopen pardons of “Joe Biden” will be tested in court.

While all this goes on in the months ahead, don’t underestimate what is liable to emerge from the ongoing FBI investigations into massive social service and health service fraud by the Democratic Party in its Blue State strongholds.

It is going to get very ugly. A governor or two (or three, or more) could be slammed with indictments for colluding to conceal vast episodes of organized grift.

All that. . . and then the SCOTUS decision striking down Congressional redistricting along racial lines — probably leading to the loss of up to ten Democratic seats in the House later this year.

Ouch! That one is really going to sting.

So, if you happen to believe that the concluding scenes of Operation Epic Fury in Iran will somehow work to advantage the Democratic party to sweep the midterm elections, better rethink your strategery (as George W. Bush liked to style the art of political warfare).

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/04/2026 - 16:20
https://ift.tt/QROG06t
from ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/QROG06t
via IFTTT

All's Not So Quiet On Any Front

Jane Street Paid Employees $9.4 Billion, Twice What It Paid Last Year, After Record 2025 Results

Jane Street Group has evolved from a niche trading shop into one of Wall Street’s most profitable firms and employees are reaping the rewards. The firm paid roughly $9.4 billion in compensation last year, more than twice what it distributed a year earlier, according to Bloomberg.

On average, that translated to about $2.7 million per employee, far ahead of traditional banks like Goldman Sachs. The massive payouts followed a record year in which Jane Street generated nearly $40 billion in trading revenue, outpacing major banks and rivals in the market-making business.

Bloomberg writes that the firm started in 2000 trading American depositary receipts before expanding into ETFs and other electronically traded assets. As more markets became automated, Jane Street scaled aggressively and now handles trading across equities, bonds, ETFs, and other products.

Its financial resources have grown just as dramatically. The firm’s internal capital base has climbed to roughly $45 billion, up nearly twentyfold over the past decade, giving it significant flexibility to capitalize on market swings without relying heavily on outside funding. It has also raised additional cash through debt markets.

That war chest has allowed Jane Street to move beyond day-to-day trading. The firm has built positions in high-growth tech companies, including Anthropic, and has also backed CoreWeave while exploring deals involving Fluidstack.

Jane Street also operates differently from most major financial firms. It doesn’t have a traditional CEO hierarchy and is instead overseen by a group of partners. The firm is well known for recruiting mathematicians, engineers, and problem-solvers to sharpen its trading systems.

Despite regulatory and legal challenges — including scrutiny in India and litigation tied to the collapse of Terraform Labs — Jane Street continues to widen its lead. It outperformed Citadel Securities last year and is continuing to expand, including plans for a larger office in London.

Recall, we wrote just days ago that Jane Street reeled in a Wall Street record $39.6 billion of trading revenue last year, more than any Wall Street bank. According to the report, the firm beat out all global investment banks after reaping $15.5 billion in the year’s final quarter, and with only 3,500 employees, it beat nearest rival JPMorgan by 11% during the year. The company's adjusted ETBIDA for the full year was a stunning $31.2 billion. 

While Jane Street’s profits were lifted by surging valuations of its stakes in privately held companies, the firm’s main business matching buyers and sellers across assets thrived on bouts of market volatility. The new annual record - which includes gains on long-term investments - shows "how the balance of power has shifted in one of the most lucrative arenas of global finance."

While it has kept a remarkable low profile, its recent public appearances have been less than laudatory: The company's record haul is confirmation that Jane Street, long known for its secrecy, was able to keep growing after getting thrust into the spotlight in mid-2025 when authorities in India accused of manipulating markets while running what had once been one of the firm’s most lucrative trading strategies.

Jane Street has denied those allegations and is fighting them in court. In February, Jane Street was sued by the bankrupt Terraform Labs estate, accusing it of engaging in insider trading that precipitated the $40 billion crash of cryptocurrencies associated with Terraform; this week the HFT firm also urged a judge to throw out that lawsuit.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/03/2026 - 19:15
https://ift.tt/ZwE7tVk
from ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/ZwE7tVk
via IFTTT

Jane Street Paid Employees $9.4 Billion, Twice What It Paid Last Year, After Record 2025 Results