Money & Markets Report: August 6, 2026

Justin Woods
August 6, 2026

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Money & Markets

Reaching for the Scars

August 6, 2026

Money & Markets - August 6, 2026 Shorty
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Money & Markets – August 6, 2026 Shorty

Money & Markets

Reaching for the Scars

“Reaching for the scars” is John’s theme this week — most people reach for the stars; the powers that be are reaching for our scars and inflicting fresh ones. Catherine and John walk the week’s stories: Iran setting the pace of the war while the U.S. draws down in Iraq, Bahrain, and Kuwait; the Selective Service war-gaming a draft; the summer Arctic route opening; Capital One closing the Trump Organization’s accounts; Marco Rubio’s visa threat and his AIPAC money; Karl Denninger’s hyperscaler bankruptcy warning; what the National School Lunch Program actually serves; nurse advocates from Remnant Healthcare; and Solari’s new Programmable Money PDF.


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69 Comments

  1. Catherine, Michael Burry has been all over the hyperscalers financial scams. Here’s a link to an academic paper he recommended.

    https://michaeljburry.substack.com/api/v1/file/a8d8814f-3f17-45ff-a9b0-4ed1ff295e98.pdf

    My worry is the big 4 mutual life insurers may have stupidly fellen for the private credit scams. Rumor is mass mutual has. Will 1 or more of them go belly up along with private credit? Or will the USG deem them all too big to fail and use our money to bail them out?

  2. Hello Catherine and John, a great pushback story to cover is Festus’ fight against a hyperscale data center to be built by CRG, to be operated by one of the big tech firms (unknown which one).

    The small town of Festus 35 miles to the south of St. Louis is putting up an amazing fight on several fronts against the planned and approved data center:

    1. Residents sue (via a one person LLC) the city council and the city for approving the data center against the will of the population

    2. Residents also sue for the refusal of the town to hold a recall election for the mayor and remaining councilmen (who weren’t voted out already): the county clerk had approved the recall election.

    And, thirdly, and hilariously, the city council is now suing the county clerk and Jefferson County for having given the green light for the recall elections.

    One of the driving forces behind the resistance (if not THE driving force) in Festus is Lori Merriman.

    She founded the LLC to be able to sue the city council. She told me that she and others spent 30 hours on the phone to find a lawyer willing to take their case. They ended up finding an excellent environmental lawyer, his name is Stephen Jeffery (look him up on Linkedin). The Festus case was his first data center case – now he has 12 such cases!

    There is a lot to this fight in Festus. Many, many lessons to be learnt from Lori Merriman and her co-warriors.

    They also have proof via FOIA’d docs that the orders are coming from the very top: Missouri governor Mike Kehoe told someone that he’d be willing to “nudge” councilmen in Festus in case they needed some encouragement to vote in favor of annexation, rezoning, and approval of this six billion dollar data center on 272 acres right next to the little town of Festus.

    I think it’s a great story to highlight because there’s much to learn from these amazing guys like Lori. And they also need financial help: they are collecting money (goal is $30,000) to pay for their legal fees. Their one lawyer is locked against 5 lawyers on the other side. Thirty-thousand won’t do it but that’s the goal for now and they are pretty close to reaching that one I think.

    I interviewed Lori and published the first interview recently. There is much more to the story, all the corruption they discovered. So please listen to this interview. She has done interviews with only two people as far as I know: with a German guy from independent media and with me. But Politico and others have written articles about the situation in Festus.

    Here is the link to my interview with Lori: https://flashlightsproductions.substack.com/p/inside-the-fierce-battle-over-a-6

    It got little traction on Substack, totally suppressed on X and YT of course.

    Thank you, Catherine and John!

    Cornelia Mrose
    ***
    cornelia222@protonmail.com
    914-262-74-3

    1. The whole AI Data Center thing is very strange. I thought the main purpose was a digital prison. When they proposed a Hyperscale one where I live, I did a search for 15 minutes cities. Bingo, a whole line of them are planned along our tri-rail system, East of the proposed data center. When you look at the numbers, even that doesn’t seem to explain it. China has mass surveillance on over a billion people and they only have 3 or 400 data centers. We have 4 to 5,000 and 1/3rd of the population.

      We can no longer get landlines, because, I believe, they are using the fiber optics for the AI infrastructure. I found a map showing the AI infrastructure on the internet, but when I went back to it, it had been taken down. So the factory theory doesn’t ring true. Why would they need the country wide fiber optic grid for manufacturing? The factory theory sounds like a Q thing. That being said, we live in very strange times, so anything is possible.

    1. My understanding is they are moving to be able to get more land. Yes, will be so sad not to have them in Shelbyville. Intend to follow them whereever they go!

    1. Alexandra,
      IMHO the City of London has been on a decline for decades, but always had America to be it’s muscle for any conflicts that was needed to generate revenues for the their banks. However the current American administration has informed the Empire that “Blaster” of “Master Blaster” (Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome) has retired and will no longer carry around “Master”.
      In other words the centuries old British Free Trade system that kept countries as a jungle while making The Empire a garden is being replaced by a sovereign model.

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