There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has just declared open season on government waste, fraud, and abuse. The message to the swamp is clear: We are coming for you, and we are paying your colleagues to help us do it.
On Friday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced the launch of a new whistleblower initiative aimed at rooting out fraud, money laundering, sanctions violations, and abuse of government benefits.
As part of the program, Treasury will establish a dedicated website where whistleblowers can confidentially submit information about financial misconduct and taxpayer-funded fraud operations.
“Treasury is strengthening the fight against fraud, money laundering, and sanctions violations. Today, [Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)] launched a webpage to confidentially accept whistleblower tips, which may lead to financial rewards,” Treasury Department announced on X.
In a statement, Bessent said, “President Trump has been clear that Americans have a right to know that their tax dollars are not being diverted to fund acts of global terror or to fund luxury cars for fraudsters. At Treasury, we follow the money. We did it with the mafia, we have done it with the cartels, and we’re doing it with the Somali fraudsters. We are going to offer whistleblower payments to anyone who wants to tell us the who, what, when, where, and how this fraud and money laundering has occurred.”
President Trump has been clear that Americans have a right to know that their tax dollars are not being diverted to fund acts of global terror or to fund luxury cars for fraudsters. At Treasury, we follow the money. We did it with the mafia, we have done it with the cartels, and… https://t.co/YRP9pzgJ3n
— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) February 13, 2026
But here’s where things get serious.
Bessent made it clear that this is not just another bureaucratic “report it and forget it” program. Americans with inside knowledge of fraud will now have a direct financial incentive to expose wrongdoing:
“We are encouraging whistleblowers who know about fraud—people who are stealing from the American taxpayer—to come forward. At Treasury, we’re setting up a website, and we will be giving rewards of up to 10% to 30% of the fines that we levy.”
That means individuals who provide actionable intelligence that leads to successful enforcement actions could walk away with a massive payday, potentially receiving between 10% and 30% of the fines imposed on those defrauding American taxpayers.
According to Treasury officials, the initiative will be administered through FinCEN’s Office of the Whistleblower and will focus on violations tied to the Bank Secrecy Act, U.S. sanctions programs, and other financial laws critical to protecting the integrity of the American financial system.
WATCH:
BREAKING 🚨Sec Scott Bessent stuns America by encouraging whistle blowers to expose fraud. They will receive 10-30% of the fines
Look out below, because the dam is beginning to break. Many of us were projecting that our economic problems would accelerate during the early portion of 2026, and that is precisely what has taken place. Employers are conducting brutal layoffs all over the nation, the number of job openings continues to decline, stores and restaurants are closing everywhere we look, and now cryptocurrencies are crashing hard. We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Recession, and the worst is yet to come.
According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, so far in 2026 the number of announced layoffs is the highest that we have seen since 2009…
Employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January, the highest tally for the first month of the year since 2009, according to a report out Feb. 5, and a sign employers may be taking defensive steps against economic uncertainty.
The report, from global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, mirrored other data released Feb. 5 that suggested the labor market is cooling. Unemployment benefits claims rose in the most recent week, and job openings slipped in December.
“Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January,” Andy Challenger said in a release accompanying his firm’s report.
We didn’t even experience a January this bad during the pandemic.
Large companies are ruthlessly swinging the axe, and white collar workers are being hit particularly hard.
And the fact that new applications for unemployment benefits are rising seems to confirm that the employment market is rapidly moving in the wrong direction…
Applications for jobless aid for the week ending Jan. 31 rose by 22,000 to 231,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s significantly more than the 211,000 new applications that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet had forecast.
Applications for unemployment benefits are seen as representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.
Those that have been laid off are discovering that it is not easy to find a new job in this very harsh environment.
According to ABC News, the number of available job openings has dropped to the lowest level in over five years…
U.S. job openings fell to the lowest level in more than five years, another sign that the American labor market remains sluggish.
The Labor Department reported Tuesday that vacancies fell to 6.5 million in December — from 6.9 million in November and the fewest since September 2020.
That sounds like a lot of job openings, but one recent study found that about a third of all job postings aren’t actually real.
And most of the jobs that are actually available aren’t good paying jobs.
These days, employers can be flooded with thousands of resumes for a single good paying job.
AI has been replacing white collar workers on a massive scale and that isn’t going to change any time soon.
Could it be possible that many of us will soon end up working for AI?
The machines aren’t just coming for your jobs. Now, they want your bodies as well.
That’s at least the hope of Alexander Liteplo, a software engineer and founder of RentAHuman.ai, a platform for AI agents to “search, book, and pay humans for physical-world tasks.”
When Liteplo launched RentAHuman on Monday, he boasted that he already had over 130 people listed on the platform, including an OnlyFans model and the CEO of an AI startup, a claim which couldn’t be verified. Two days later, the site boasted over 73,000 rentable meatwads, though only 83 profiles were visible to us on its “browse humans” tab, Liteplo included.
Pizza Hut will close about 250 locations in the U.S. through June as its parent company, Yum! Brands, moves to shut underperforming stores and reassess the brand’s long-term strategy, executives said.
Yum! Brands Chief Financial Officer Ranjith Roy said during an earnings call that the closures will primarily target weaker-performing Pizza Hut restaurants as part of a broader effort to modernize the chain.
The closures are tied to the company’s “Hut Forward” initiative aimed at refreshing Pizza Hut’s marketing, updating its restaurant model and improving franchise performance. Yum! said it is also reviewing broader strategic options for Pizza Hut, signaling the changes could be part of a deeper reset for the brand.
My parents would often take me to Pizza Hut when I was a kid, and I really enjoyed their pizza in those days.
So this is very sad news for me.
Of course it isn’t just the real economy that is crashing.
Digital assets, including bitcoin, have fallen deeper into the red as investors re-assess the practical utility of a token that has been championed not only as a hedge against inflation and macroeconomic uncertainties but also as an alternative to fiat currencies and traditional safe-havens such as gold.
That hasn’t panned out lately, since bitcoin peaked just north of $126,000 in early October.
On Thursday, bitcoin was last down to $67,675, its lowest since since November 2024. The cryptocurrency broke below $70,000 earlier in the session Thursday and then the selling increased. The cryptocurrency is down 20% this week alone.
The world’s most famous cryptocurrency has tumbled 44% from its October peak, falling below $70,000 Thursday for the first time in 15 months.
That decline is actually not unusual at all. Crypto is notoriously volatile, and it’s gone through numerous crashes that are bigger than this one.
What’s strange is this: Bitcoin’s four-month slump has come at a time when, in theory, it had everything going for it.
As I write this article, the price of Bitcoin is sitting at $65,187.99.
Once it falls to $63,000 that will represent a 50 percent decline from last October.
Other major cryptocurrencies have experienced even larger crashes.
Needless to say, a lot of investors that got into cryptocurrencies recently are being wiped out.
We are also seeing turmoil in the stock market, bond prices are going nuts, and prices for precious metals have been flying all over the place.
In so many ways, what we are witnessing reminds me so much of the Great Recession.
The CFO of General Motors appears to be quite pessimistic as well, because he is saying that a major economic downturn is inevitably coming…
General Motors Co. is strategizing for an inevitable economic downturn by paring down dealer inventory and maintaining a cash safety net, Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson said Wednesday.
Jacobson’s comments to a panel of auto insiders at the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank’s Detroit branch provide insight into industry leaders’ expectations for the broader economy, as well as reassurance that the Detroit company is taking steps to remain resilient in tougher times.
It’s a bloodbath out there right now. On Monday alone, crypto investors lost about $200,000,000,000 in just 24 hours. Overall, crypto investors have lost about $800,000,000,000 over the last month. In this article, I want to try to explain why this is happening and what is coming next. You see, the truth is that the era of easy money is ending. For a long time, investors could borrow yen at ultra-low interest rates and use that money to purchase cryptocurrency and make amazing returns. But now Japanese bond yields are going nuts and all variations of the “yen carry trade” are starting to unwind…
For years, a lucrative trade for global investors has been to borrow yen to buy high-yielding assets like US stocks, or in this case, cryptocurrencies. Interest rates in Japan had been low or at zero, making borrowing yen relatively cheap and creating a sweet opportunity for traders. It’s known as the “yen carry trade.”
However, the Bank of Japan has signaled it could raise interest rates, in part to address stubborn inflation, continuing a recent shift away from years of ultra-low rates. Yields on benchmark Japanese bonds just hit their highest level since 2008, signaling expectations for higher rates. As rates in Japan rise, it can boost the value of the yen. That makes borrowing yen less affordable, eating into the profitability of the carry trade.
That could pressure traders to sell their bitcoin and stocks now to repay their loans and prevent the risk of further losses. In addition to a sell-off, it could lead to less cash flowing into crypto and stocks.
On Sunday night, Japanese bond yields spiked again, and this caused another round of panic for crypto investors.
And we all saw what happened once the selling started.
For years, crypto investors laughed at the rest of us as they enjoyed the ride up as the bubble inflated.
But now the bubble is bursting, and the ride down is going to be far more messy that the ride up due to the extreme leverage in the cryptocurrency market…
Ben Emons, founder and CIO of Fedwatch Advisors, said that people remain “nervous” following the recent bitcoin sell-off, adding that Monday’s reversal has broadly been attributed to a $400 million exchange liquidation.
Speaking with CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday, he highlighted the sizable leverage across bitcoin exchanges, which is up to 200x in some instances. With an estimated $787 billion outstanding leverage in perpetual crypto futures, against some $135 billion outstanding in ETFs, “you can do the math,” Emons said.
“There is still a lot of leverage in bitcoin out there. We can expect to some more of these liquidations if bitcoin prices don’t get off the lows from here,” he added.
As long as crypto prices just kept going up, everything was going to be fine.
But now that crypto prices are going down, we are seeing wave after wave of forced liquidations.
Yet another wave of forced liquidations is what pushed crypto prices down so rapidly on Monday.
The biggest corporate holder of bitcoin has announced a U.S. dollar dividend reserve of more than $1 billion, days after its top executive laid out what might force the company to sell some of its $56 billion in bitcoin holdings.
Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, announced Monday that it will establish a $1.44 billion reserve “to support the payment of dividends on its preferred stock and interest on its outstanding indebtedness.” The reserve was funded by sales of its Class A common stock, and Strategy plans to keep sufficient reserves to fund its dividends for at least 12 months.
What we are witnessing is not just a temporary correction.
JAPAN JUST KILLED THE GLOBAL MONEY PRINTER AND NOBODY NOTICED
The most dangerous number in finance right now is 1.71%.
That’s Japan’s 10-year bond yield. Highest since 2008. Here’s why your retirement just got obliterated:
For 30 years, Japan printed infinity money at 0% rates and exported it worldwide. $3.4 trillion flowed into US Treasuries, European debt, emerging markets. This invisible bid kept YOUR mortgage cheap, YOUR stocks inflated, YOUR government solvent.
November 10th, 2025: The bid disappeared.
Japan’s yield hit 1.71%. They’re pumping $110 billion stimulus into their economy while debt sits at 263% of GDP. The math just became impossible. At 1.7% rates, Japan pays $27 billion MORE in interest. Every. Single. Year.
Here’s the extinction event nobody sees coming:
Japanese pension funds are pulling $1.1 trillion OUT of US Treasuries right now because keeping money in America LOSES them money after hedging costs. The largest foreign buyer of American debt is becoming a seller.
When Japan stops buying, interest rates don’t stay flat. They explode. US 10-year yields will jump 40 basis points minimum from flow dynamics alone. Your 7% mortgage becomes 8%. Corporate debt refinancing costs spike 60%. Zombie companies holding $3 trillion in junk bonds start defaulting in waves.
The yen carry trade just reversed. $1.2 trillion in borrowed yen funding crypto, stocks, emerging markets must unwind. Every hedge fund, every momentum trade, every leveraged bet built on free Japanese money is getting margin called simultaneously.
This breaks in three places:
Stock valuations were built for 2% bond yields forever. At 3.5% yields, the S&P 500 fair value drops 35%. Emerging market currencies collapse without Japanese capital inflows. Europe’s debt crisis returns because Italy and Spain lose their silent buyer.
December 18th the Bank of Japan meets. 50% chance they hike again. If they do, sell everything not nailed down.
Your 401k doesn’t price this in yet. The Fed can’t stop this. No central bank can.
The world’s biggest piggy bank just cracked open and the money is flowing backwards.
Position accordingly or get destroyed.
When he originally posted that, the yield on 10 year Japanese bonds was 1.71 percent.
Now it has risen to 1.85 percent, which is the highest level since 2008…
Japan just sent a shock through global markets.
The country’s 10-year government bond yield jumped to 1.85%, its highest level since 2008, marking a major break from the ultra-low rate environment Japan has lived in for decades. The move is already being called one of the most important signals for global liquidity heading into 2026.
To say that we are potentially facing a major liquidity crisis would be a massive understatement.
For the moment, it is crypto prices that are plunging, but lots of yen was borrowed to buy stocks too.
So let’s keep a very close eye on U.S. stock prices in the days ahead.
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