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• The US stock market could face collapse by 2050, according to new research by a Finnish economist.
• That’s because US stock growth is unsustainable, and a crash is bound to happen in the coming decades. 
• The findings of the study mirror recent commentary from Wall Street legends, who are warning of an epic wipeout.

The next few decades could bring on an epic stock market collapse, according to a Finnish economics professor and researcher from the University of Vaasa who’s sounding the alarm over an “armageddon” financial crisis.

In a recent paper titled “Armageddon of Financial Markets: Is the US equity market eventually going to collapse?”, Klaus Grosby pointed to extraordinary events that have rattled markets over the past decade, including the 2008 financial crisis, the pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine war, which rocked global financial markets since last year. 

Those stressors have all had “dramatic” impacts on the world economy, Grosby said, disrupting supply chains and spawning high inflation that central bankers are still trying to control. So far in the US, the Fed has hiked rates 450 basis-points to fight inflation. But when combined with ballooning levels of US debt, central bankers could be forced to choose between relieving debt burdens or stamping out high prices, economists warn, meaning a severe recession and stock market crash could be on the horizon.

Grosby’s paper re-examined past studies of stock market crashes to determine if another cataclysm was headed for the US market. Specifically, he referred to a 2001 paper that concluded that the US stock market was growing at such a rate it was headed for “finite-time singularity” – meaning growth is unsustainable, and will eventually lead to an “apocalyptic collapse” in stocks.

The 2001 paper pulled 1790-1999 data from the Dow Jones 30 Index. Using a model that detects faster-than-exponential growth to identify stock market bubbles, the researchers concluded that the US equity market was headed for a collapse in 2052.

Grosby tinkered with the same model using stock market data from the S&P 500 over the past twenty years, which would account for the dot-com bust, the 2008 crisis, as well as the 2020 pandemic-induced recession, which all led to a steep drop in the stock market. He also re-calibrated the model, as other analyses show it could be overestimating the time it takes for a stock market crash to occur. That could be due to the “extreme monetary policies” of the central bank in previous years, which Grosby speculates could accelerate the onset of a financial crisis. He compared the coming crash to the events of 1987 and 1929. 

“The stock market crashes of October 1987 and October 1929 which were investigated in the current research as robustness checks might serve as a guide of how such a collapse could evolve: For both events, market participants observed extreme reductions in market capitalization in a very short time,” Grosby warned.

His findings echo warnings from prominent Wall Street commentators, who say disaster looms over the stock market. Legendary investor Jeremy Grantham warned investors last week of a “stomach-churning” crash that could wipe away 50% from the S&P 500. Ex-Bridgewater CEO Ray Dalio has warned repeatedly that financial markets are headed into a new world order – and after the Fed’s latest rate hike, interest rates this high could easily spark a severe recession and a 20% plunge in stocks.

A fire broke out at an overloaded electrical substation in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa on Saturday, leaving nearly 500,000 people without power in a new blow to the country’s ailing energy grid that has been hammered by Russian strikes for months.

Officials warned that repairs could take weeks. The government said it would appeal to Turkey for help and ordered the energy ministry’s stocks of high-power generators to be sent to the city.

The CEO of the state grid operator, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, said critical equipment that had already been damaged several times by Russian missile strikes burst into flames when it could no longer “withstand the load”.

“(The equipment) has been struck so many times that its state leaves much to be desired,” Kudrytskyi told a briefing in Odesa, a city on the Black Sea.

He any further Russian missile or drone attacks could make the situation even worse.

“We will do everything we can for the improvement of the power supply situation to take days rather than weeks,” he said.

Since October, Moscow has waged a campaign of massive missile attacks on energy infrastructure. Moscow says the strikes aim to reduce Ukraine’s ability to fight; Kyiv says they have no military purpose and are intended to hurt civilians.

“The situation is difficult, the scale of the accident is significant, it is impossible to quickly restore power supply,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal wrote on Telegram.

Odesa regional governor Maksym Marchenko said practically all of the city had lost power after the incident, and that as of Saturday afternoon about 500,000 people faced outages.

That figure represents about half of Odesa’s pre-war population of one million, when it was Ukraine’s third largest city.

“Today’s power supply (availability) allows to supply the city and the district about 40 or 45%, but if we factor in critical infrastructure, then of course very little is left for ordinary citizens,” Kudrytskyi said.

The temperature in Odesa stood at two degrees Celsius (35.6°Fahrenheit) on Saturday and is due to dip below freezing for much of next week.

Prime Minister Shmyhal said he had ordered Ukraine’s energy ministry to scramble every available high-power generator in its nationwide inventory and deliver it to Odesa within a day.

He also ordered Ukraine’s foreign ministry to appeal to Turkey to send powerships – vessels that carry power plants – to come to the city’s aid.

At the briefing, Kudrytskyi said the city’s critical infrastructure facilities were now being supplied with power.

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(NewsNation) — President Joe Biden said Saturday that officials are “going to take care” of a suspected Chinese “spy” balloon that’s been floating above the U.S. for days now, according to Reuters.

Reuters reports that the president did not elaborate on what was planned, though.

U.S. defense officials are continuing to track the balloon, which drifted over the Aleutian Islands off Alaska’s mainland, then over Canada, before going back over the United States again.

As the U.S. tracks this first high-altitude balloon spotted over U.S. airspace, another is “transiting Latin America,” according to the Pentagon.

“We now assess it is another Chinese surveillance balloon,” Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told NewsNation, adding Friday that he had no further information to provide on the other balloon at this time.

On Friday, the first balloon was spotted above Montana. Local news reports said on Saturday it had come to North Carolina. According to WSOC, the balloon flew over the Charlotte area just after 10 a.m.

China claims the balloon was just a weather research “airship” that was blown off course — but the Pentagon has rejected that. Defense officials say the balloon is, indeed, for surveillance.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was originally supposed to go to Beijing on Sunday for talks aimed at reducing tensions between the United States and China. This was abruptly canceled, though, in light of the balloon.

China downplayed this cancellation in a statement Saturday morning.

“In actuality, the U.S. and China have never announced any visit, the U.S. making any such announcement is their own business, and we respect that,” China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

A defense official told the Associated Press that the balloon is the size of three buses. The federal government has not said where it is heading, or how it plans to bring the balloon down.

Some conservatives, including former President Donald Trump, have suggest shooting it down. However, President Joe Biden, on the advice of his defense team, chose not to do so because of the danger falling debris could pose to residents on the ground.

“Currently, we assess that this balloon has limited additive value from an intelligence collective collection perspective,” an official from the Department of Defense said in a statement. “But we are taking steps, nevertheless, to protect against foreign intelligence collection of sensitive information.” 

However, retired Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, director of research for the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, made the case to NewsNation’s Leland Vittert that the alleged Chinese spy balloon is so close to land, it’s capturing much clearer images than a satellite ever could.

“There was a statement out of the Pentagon about, ‘Hey, the Chinese could get all this by satellite.’ Well, no. The satellites are up about 350 miles,” he said. “This thing’s around 12 miles, and so you can see cat whiskers from that balloon if it’s instrumented correctly.”

This story is developing. Refresh for updates.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Russian troops are regrouping in certain instructions.

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Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Olena Kondratiuk and President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Joëlle Garriaud-Maylam visited Borodianka, Kyiv location, on February 4.

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Dozens of wildfires blazing though Chile caused the government to extend an emergency order to another region on Saturday, as a scorching summer heatwave complicates efforts to control fires that have claimed at least 22 lives so far.

The emergency order declared by the interior ministry now covers the region of La Araucania, just south of the previously declared regions of Biobio and neighboring Nuble, located near the center of the South American country’s long Pacific coastline. The three regions are home to many farms and forest land.

On Friday, an emergency-support helicopter in La Araucania crashed, killing its pilot and a mechanic, according to officials.

Authorities reported that 11 of the victims, or half of the casualties reported so far, died in the town of Santa Juana in Biobio, located some 310 miles (500 km) south of capital Santiago.

Since late last week, helicopters have dropped fire retardant over raging fires amid billowing clouds of smoke that obstructed roads, while firefighters and local residents alike sought to contain the flames against the backdrop of a hazy, orange-tinted sky.

The orders allow for the deployment of soldiers and additional resources to deal with the natural disaster.

Some 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) have been torched by the fires, according to official data released late Friday, an area larger than the U.S. city of Philadelphia.

National forestry agency CONAF reported on Saturday that 80 of 231 total wildfires are being actively battled, while 151 of them are under control.

About a couple dozen fires have been designated at the red alert level.

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Residents wait in line to vote at a shuttered Sears store in the Janesville Mall on November 03, 2020 in Janesville, Wisconsin.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

• The Associated Press obtained audio of Donald Trump’s aides discussing the aftermath of the 2020 election.
• The Wisconsin aides planned to “fan the flame” about baseless election fraud claims, despite admitting Trump lost.
• “Just be on standby in case there’s any stunts we need to pull,” one aide says in the recording.

In a newly released audio recording, former Donald Trump campaign staff can be heard planning to “fan the flame” by promoting election fraud claims in Wisconsin following the 2020 presidential election, despite acknowledging defeat.

In the audio from November 5, 2020, obtained by the Associated Press, Andrew Iverson, the head of Trump’s campaign in the state, can be heard speaking to other GOP operatives in a meeting.

“Here’s the drill: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need our help with. Just be on standby in case there’s any stunts we need to pull,” Iverson says in the recording.

Iverson talks about promoting baseless election fraud conspiracy theories despite admitting in another part of the recording that Trump had lost the key battleground state.

“At the end of the day, this operation received more votes than any other Republican in Wisconsin history. And it wasn’t even close,” Iverson says.

“Say what you want, our operation turned out Republican or DJT supporters. Democrats just got 20,000 more than us, out of Dane County and other shenanigans in Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Dane. There’s a lot that people can learn from this campaign.”

Trump won Wisconsin in 2016, but Joe Biden beat him in 2020 by nearly 21,000 votes. Nonpartisan audits and reviews have since confirmed the results.

The audio provides insight into the inner workings of the Trump campaign and the disconnect between their private conversations about the election and public allegations about election fraud.

The audio was given to AP by a former campaign official and GOP operative who attended the meeting and recorded it. They have remained anonymous out of fear of retaliation but said they had chosen to share it because of Trump’s third presidential run.

When asked by AP about the recording, Iverson, now the Midwest regional director for the Republican National Committee, referred the outlet to RNC spokesperson Keith Schipper. Schipper declined to comment, claiming he had not listened to the clip.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung responded to AP: “The 2024 campaign is focused on competing in every state and winning in a dominating fashion. That is why President Trump is leading by wide margins in poll after poll.”

At another point in the recorded meeting, the group discusses and laughs about GOP outreach efforts to Black voters in the state and needing “more Black voices for Trump.”

“We ever talk to Black people before? I don’t think so,” Iverson says, sparking laughter from others, according to AP.

Meanwhile, GOP operative Clayton Henson praises the Democratic campaign for high voter turnout in Dane County,  a liberal stronghold in the state.

“Hats off to them for what they did in Dane County. You gotta respect that,” Henson says, per AP. “There’s going to be another election in a couple years. So remember the lessons you learned and be ready to punch back.”

Henson also declined to comment on the meeting to AP.

A balloon over Billings, Montana, on February 1.

Chase Doak/via REUTERS

• The US has said a Chinese intelligence-gathering balloon is currently floating over the US.
• China has said that it is a weather balloon that has gone off-course.
• It wouldn’t be the first time that a spy balloon has been described as a weather balloon.

The Chinese “weather balloon” that Beijing claims was “blown off course” over one of the United States’ most important intercontinental ballistic missile sites isn’t the first time what would seem to be a secret spy mission went off script.

It’s also not the first time a government had to find an explanation for one of those adventures. China is probably just taking a page out of the US government 1960s-era cover-up playbook that we’ll call: The ol’ “Weather Balloon Dodge.”

According to Project Blue Book, the US Air Force‘s review of Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) reports between 1952 and 1969, most UFO sightings are either astronomical phenomena, satellites, aircraft or balloons. But Blue Book was not entirely truthful about its answers, says The New York Times.

And while China’s balloon is definitely a balloon — there’s no doubt about that — there were times where the “balloon” in question was definitely an aircraft.

1. U-2 Dragon Lady

A US Air Force U-2.

US Air Force

The U-2 Dragon Lady took its first flight with the CIA and the US Air Force in 1955, the result of years of work developing an aircraft that could not only fly out of reach of the Soviet Union’s anti-air defenses, but also most of its interceptor aircraft.

For nearly a decade, the U-2’s ceiling of more than 70,000 feet was out of range of Soviet radar.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t entirely invisible from the ground. The scope of Project Blue Book would include the development timeline of the U-2, but the existence of the spy plane wasn’t fully revealed until May 1960 when pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down during an overflight of the Soviet Union.

2. SR-71 Blackbird

An SR-71 Blackbird.

DVIDS

If high altitude wasn’t enough to keep the Soviets from shooting down top-secret spy aircraft, the Air Force, CIA and Lockheed’s Advanced Development Program (also known as Skunk Works) reasoned that extremely high speed should do the trick.

The SR-71 was designed to fly at a ceiling of 85,000 feet at Mach 3.3. If a surface-to-air missile happened to track it, the plane would simply outrun the missile.

From 1957, Lockheed developed a series of airframes that would eventually culminate in a titanium aircraft (with titanium deceptively acquired from the USSR) that would meet all its needs.

The CIA says the Air Force knew that many of the UFO reports from its development were actually SR-71 test flights. President Lyndon B. Johnson declassified the plane as a campaign strategy during the 1964 presidential election.

3. Actual Balloons. No Joke.

A US Army Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Sensor System at a test range in Utah in February 2014.

Thomson Reuters

There’s a reason the Department of Defense believes China’s weather balloon is actually a reconnaissance balloon: The DoD is developing reconnaissance balloons of its own.

The Pentagon plans to spend $27.1 million in fiscal year 2023 on balloon-related projects to get its own recon balloons into the stratosphere.

It may seem like an idea from the 1960s, but high-altitude balloons 60,000-90,000 feet above the Earth’s surface, equipped with machine-learning algorithms and solar panels, are a cheap, effective way to watch hypersonic missile testing from America’s geopolitical rivals. They can also loiter for much, much longer than any drone.

If any of the massive balloons get forced down, they’d just be another weather balloon, which the National Weather Service still uses. Please do not try to shoot down an NWS weather balloon.

— Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

According to the founders, the idea for Plufl was born out of a desire to make napping even cozier.

Plufl

• Plufl was invented by two recent college graduates who love napping.
• Since going viral on social media, the company has generated over $1 million in revenue, according to ABC7.
• The duo responsible for Plufl appeared on “Shark Tank” in October 2022. 

Less than a year after graduating college, two entrepreneurs are finding success in taking napping to the next level. 

Noah Silverman and Yuki Kinoshita, both 22, created what they call the world’s first “human dog bed” just one month before graduating from the University of British Columbia in May 2022, according to ABC7. Now their company, Plufl, has reportedly generated over $1 million in revenue thanks largely to social media.

Videos on Plufl’s official TikTok account have garnered several million views and comments from users who are intrigued by the human-sized dog bed.

The duo told ABC  the idea for their giant portable bed was born out of jealousy after witnessing a napping Great Dane in its large bed.

“I would always get so jealous of how cozy and relaxed it looked while I was working,” Silverman said

While some nappers appreciated the idea of finally being able to sleep comfortably in the dog bed-like Plufl, others were turned off by the $499 price. 

“400 dollars? I’ll just get an actual dog bed,” one user wrote.

“My queen mattress was cheaper. $500 is a bit much,” another comment read.

Plufl met the skepticism with their reasons for the pricing, noting the product is more than just a large dog bed.

According to the official website, Plufl features “supportive orthopaedic and gel infused memory foam,” pillow bolsters along the edges for coziness, and handles to aid with transportation. Plus, the creators said, it can comfortably fit a six-foot-one adult man.

Amid the online success, Silverman and Kinoshita appeared on “Shark Tank” in October 2022 where they secured a $200,000 deal from Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner. The first Plufl customers received their orders in December, according to the ABC7 report.