Treasury doubles debt buybacks as Bessent moves to steady bond market

PUBLISHED WED, AUG 19 20268:50 AM EDTUPDATED

KEY POINTS

• The Treasury Department said Wednesday it will at least double the level of government debt buybacks in the next few months, targeting the sensitive longer-duration segment of the market.

• Yields tumbled following the announcement and stock market futures surged.

The Treasury Department on Wednesday said it will more than double the size of its government debt repurchases, sending yields sharply lower at a time of substantial market stress.

With fixed income markets under pressure and yields surging to levels not seen in nearly 20 years, the announcement targets the sensitive longer-duration part of the Treasury market.

The Treasury Department on Wednesday said it will more than double the size of its government debt repurchases, sending yields sharply lower at a time of substantial market stress.

With fixed income markets under pressure and yields surging to levels not seen in nearly 20 years, the announcement targets the sensitive longer-duration part of the Treasury market.

The change will start Sept. 9 and stay in effect through Nov. 4.

“This increase in buyback operation sizes reflects Treasury’s desire to provide greater liquidity support in longer-dated nominal sectors where there is consistent strong sponsorship from market participants, as evidenced by the significant volume of high-quality offers Treasury routinely receives in longer-dated buyback operations,” the department said in a statement.

At its core, the move means that Treasury will be a larger buyer of older, longer-duration debt, providing liquidity to a part of the market that historically has shown strong demand.

In the most recent run-up in yields, market experts have pointed to various factors, including a higher term premium for holding government debt — essentially the extra yield that investors demand — as well as a changing profile of the Treasury buyer base. In addition, they cited increased supply of corporate debt, specifically related to artificial intelligence.

Wednesday’s announcement signals that Treasury is attentive to the liquidity issues at the longer end and is willing to be a more active participant.

“This is NOT a debt paydown, it is just a rearrangement of the maturity schedule of Treasuries,” wrote Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at One Point BFG Wealth Partners.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/19/treasury-announces-upscaled-buyback-operation-for-longer-term-debt-sending-yields-lower.html

HEALTH AND SCIENCE

Moderna, Merck cancer vaccine shows promise in late-stage trial; Moderna stock soars 90%

PUBLISHED WED, AUG 19 20266:46 AM EDTUPDATED

Annika Kim Constantino

@ANNIKAKIM

KEY POINTS

•An experimental personalized cancer vaccinefrom Merck and Moderna showed positive initial results in its first-ever late-stage trial.

•The combination regimen met the main study goal of significantly extending the time patients lived without their melanoma returning, compared with Keytruda alone, and also reduced the risk of the cancer spreading to distant parts of the body.

• The initial data suggests that the combo could serve as a new treatment option for the deadliest form of skin cancer, and validate a new personalized treatment approach.

An experimental personalized cancer vaccine from Merck

and Moderna

showed positive initial results in its first-ever late-stage trial, the companies announced Wednesday, bringing them one step closer to filing for approval of the treatment option.

The mRNA-based shot in combination with Merck’s immunotherapy Keytruda met key goals in the Phase 3 trial in more than 1,100 patients with higher-risk or advanced melanoma whose detectable cancer had been completely removed through surgery.

Merck shares climbed more than 9% in morning trading, while Moderna’s stock soared over 90%. The size of those moves reflect the companies’ relative size entering Wednesday: Merck’s market cap was around $333 billion, while Moderna’s sat near $25 billion.

The combination regimen met the main study goal of significantly extending the time patients lived without their melanoma returning, compared with Keytruda alone. The treatment also reduced the risk of the cancer spreading to distant parts of the body. Those results build on positive Phase 2 trial data on the same regimen earlier this year.

“It’s a big moment for medicine, a big moment for patients,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

The Phase 3 study will continue to assess other outcomes, including the overall survival benefit of the regimen. The drugmakers plan to present the data at an upcoming international medical meeting, but it’s unclear when they plan to submit applications for approval in the U.S.

The drugmakers will likely start talking to regulatory agencies about the treatment and its safety “in the next few months,” Dr. Dean Li, president of Merck Research Laboratories, told “Squawk Box.”

The initial data suggests that the combo could serve as a new treatment option for melanoma, which accounts for only about 1% of skin cancers but causes the large majority of deaths among them. Most recurrences of melanoma develop in the first two to three years after initial treatment and removal.

Melanoma patients are “stuck having to deal with the new gravity of that diagnosis and then undergo uncomfortable treatments like surgery, and after that, they’re worried about their cancer coming back,” Dr. Jane Healy, Merck’s head of oncology early development, said in an interview.

She called it “very exciting” that the therapy led to a “clinically meaningful improvement” over Keytruda – the standard of care for melanoma – and was well tolerated by patients. Side effects were similar to other vaccines that people typically get for other diseases, Healy noted.

The results also validate a personalized treatment approach that Merck and Moderna have been developing for decades, she added.

Every tumor has a unique set of mutations, even among patients with the same type of cancer, Healy said. Merck and Moderna’s personalized vaccine is designed to target the specific mutations in each patient’s tumor rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach. The idea is to train the immune system to recognize and kill those unique cancer markers and then pair that response with Keytruda, which helps the body attack the cancer more effectively.

“We think [the results are] very meaningful for patients with this disease and really the potential of what it can mean for other patients for cancer in future trials with this particular new class of therapy,” she said.

In a June note ahead of the results, Leerink Partners analyst Mani Foroohar said the Phase 3 results are a make-or-break event for Moderna’s stock.

Analysts said the company’s valuation already reflected expectations that the personalized cancer vaccine could eventually work across multiple types of cancers – not just melanoma — before Wednesday’s stock move.

Merck and Moderna are studying the vaccine in several trials across other tumors, such as non-small cell lung cancer, bladder cancer and renal cell carcinoma.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/19/moderna-merck-cancer-vaccine-shows-initial-late-stage-melanoma-data.html

Revealed: the new radicalism among young women - New Statesman. 1/2

Merlin Strategy’s exclusive polling reveals a growing gender divide among under-30s

By Scarlett Maguire

The prevailing narrative is that young men, under the influence of the manosphere and enchanted by men’s rights activists and misogynists such as Andrew Tate, are being politically radicalised faster and in greater numbers than young women. The result is a gulf in political sensibility between young British women and men, who are now dramatically inclined to the populist right compared with other parts of the population.

It’s a compelling story, but it isn’t completely accurate. Instead, it is young women moving to the radical left that is widening the political gender gap among the under-30s. Merlin Strategy has surveyed, exclusively for the New Statesman, 2,000 British 18- to 30-year-olds to explore this phenomenon in more detail.

Unrequited love

Do you have a positive or negative view of the opposite gender?

Source: Merlin Strategy

As expected, we found that there are significant divides between young men and young women – but they are not just confined to political views. Gen Z women are more left wing than their male peers when it comes to politics and economics. This generation of women is also much more pessimistic about the country and their own lives than men, and substantially more negative towards men than the men are towards women. Seventy-two per cent of men under 30 say they have a positive view of the opposite gender, compared with just 50 per cent of women of the same age. Thirty-eight per cent of men say they feel “very positively” towards women, while only 18 per cent of women say the same about men.This trend is particularly pronounced among women under 25, of whom just 35 per cent feel positively towards men.

Men of this generation overwhelmingly think that they are understood by women and can trust members of the opposite gender, whereas women report much lower scores on both questions. The gap is much more pronounced when it comes to safety and consent. More than four in ten of the women surveyed said men did not have the same understanding of consent in sexual relationships that they did (25 per cent of men thought the same).

While much debate about declining birth rates focuses on prohibitive economic conditions alone, there is less focus on how younger generations of women feel towards the idea of motherhood. Young women are twice as likely as young men to say they would not like to have children (15 per cent compared with 8 per cent), and among white women under 30, this increases to one in five.

One in four young women say that their partner having different political views to them would be a red flag in a relationship. However, on particular political issues, women’s stance is more hard-line. Six in ten say they would find it difficult to date someone who disagreed with them on the Palestine/Israel conflict, or who did not share their views on Donald Trump. Seventy-four per cent say they’d find it difficult to be in a relationship with someone who did not share their views about social justice. Young women are also more likely than young men to say that they would not have a relationship with someone who disagreed with them over immigration.

Women under 30 are much more inclined to be on the left economically than men their own age, although both favour increasing government intervention and believe that it is more important to reduce inequality than it is to grow the economy. While young women are relatively evenly divided over whether they believe “it is unfair some people have more than others and we should redistribute wealth” (43 per cent) or that “people deserve to keep what is theirs, even if that means that others have less” (40 per cent), men are more decisively split: 37 per cent are inclined towards redistribution whereas 51 per cent are not.

https://archive.ph/uZD1a

>>24951869

2/2

Men of this generation are substantially more positive about capitalism (net +28), whereas women view it (+2) substantially less favourably than communism (+11). This is, in part, a consequence of how young men believe that “the economy works well for people like me” (48 per cent to 37 per cent), while women believe it works against them (43 per cent to 34 per cent).

The new economic split

Do you think the economy works well for, or works against, people like you?

Source: Merlin Strategy

We often hear about a lost generation of young men. However, Merlin Strategy’s research reveals that young women are more pessimistic across the board. They are less likely to say they feel “happy”, “ambitious”, “excited” and “fulfilled”, and are more pessimistic about the prospects of “being happy” for their “life generally”.

It is not surprising that young Brits, who face insurmountable levels of student debt, unaffordable housing and a higher youth unemployment rate than the European Union average, feel locked out of the British economy. The system is not working for them. What is striking is that women under 30 are much less hopeful about their own financial future and goals than men of the same age. They are net 21 points less likely than men to say they are optimistic they will earn more than their parents, and 19 points less likely to say they will be able to buy the house they want.

But this financial pessimism among young women does not necessarily reflect the reality of their position relative to young men. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, there are more women in full-time work than their male counterparts, with the average woman in that age group earning 9 per cent more than the average man. The rate of unemployment for young men is 6.3 per cent higher than for young women.

There are stark differences when it comes to questions of identity and national pride. Gen Z women are significantly less likely to say they are proud to call themselves British than Gen Z men (53 per cent compared with 68 per cent). Perhaps this is because young men in Britain strongly do not think the country is racist (29 per cent to 57 per cent), while women (43 per cent to 38 per cent) think it is. The divide is similar on the question of whether the UK is sexist.

(The NWO is destroying the youth and their future.)

https://archive.ph/uZD1a

12h ago / 10:17 PM EDT

Nancy Mace toasts fellow Republican Cory Mills' primary loss

Avatar

Raquel Coronell UribeRaquel Coronell Uribe is a politics reporter for NBC News.

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., toasted Rep. Cory Mills’ loss in his Florida primary tonight.

“Cheers,” Mace wrote on X, adding an emoji of clinking champagne flutes.

There’s no love lost between Mace and Mills. Mace introduced a resolution in April to expel Mills from Congress over sexual misconduct and other accusations, which Mills has denied.

Mills, who was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, said at the time that he had no plans to resign from Congress or end his re-election campaign. He called the expulsion resolution “political fundraising theatrics by Mace” and went after her over her own ethics investigation. (The Ethics Committee is investigating Mace after it received complaints that she overcharged Congress for housing costs. Her office has told Politico she is “not taking seriously” the complaint.)

Mace, like Mills, will not be returning to Congress next year. She is not seeking re-election, and she lost the GOP primary for South Carolina governor in June, failing to advance to a runoff.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/live-blog/elections-florida-governor-house-senate-alaska-primaries-live-updates-rcna593016#rcrd119009

MARKETS

U.S. retreat from global order ‘eroding’ European competitiveness, central bank boss warns

PUBLISHED WED, AUG 19 20267:

Chloe Taylor

KEY POINTS

• ECB chief Christine Lagarde called for better integration across the region if Europe wants to compete in the age of AI.

• A shift in a “rules-based global order underpinned by a U.S. security umbrella” was complicating Europe’s growth trajectory, she said.

• “Europe largely missed out on the first digital revolution,” she added, warning that Europe cannot afford to repeat that experience.

Europe is facing an erosion of the conditions that historically drove the continent’s growth, its top central banker warned Wednesday, as she called on leaders not to repeat mistakes made during the dotcom boom in the age of AI.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum’s International Business Council in Geneva, Switzerland, on Wednesday, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde warned that the continent’s post-war growth model is “eroding” and “unlikely to return to the form we once knew.”

This economic growth, Lagarde told an audience, rested on three pillars: expanding global trade, manufacturing supported by access to cheap energy, and “a stable, rules-based global order, underpinned by a U.S. security umbrella.”

All three of those pillars are weakening today, Lagarde said.

Last year alone, she said,more than 2,500 trade restrictions were implemented globally.

Shortly after his return to the White House,President Donald Trump unveiled a raft of targeted tariffs, including a 20% baseline levy on goods imported to the U.S. from the European Union. That tariff rate was later reduced to 15% when the two sides agreed on a trade deal,but uncertainty remains about the stability of that agreement and how imports of certain European goods, such as steel, will be taxed by Washington.

U.S. retreat from the post-war world order

More broadly, Lagarde said in Wednesday’s speech, America’s pullback from leading Western security was adding further pressures to the European economy.

“That [past] environment allowed European supply chains to deepen, and enabled firms to organize investment around efficiency rather than resilience,” she said.

“Today, that global order is under pressure. Geopolitical tensions are bringing critical dependencies and chokepoints into sharper focus,while Europe faces growing security threats on its doorstep.”

Trump has long rebuked America’s European allies for not spending enough on defense, with his administration issuing threats to withdraw from the military alliance and even bring NATO territory under Washington’s control by force. Meanwhile, Russian aircraft have increasingly encroached on European airspace, and the U.S.-Iran war has weighed on the continent’s economy and raised new security threats for the region.

As the world has become less secure, Lagarde said on Wednesday, capital flows into Europe have been put at risk.

“When economic dependencies can be weaponized or when perceptions of deterrence weaken, concerns about resilience enter economic decisions directly. Firms invest less when capital is seen as less safe, weighing on output and consumption,” she said.

“Taken together, these shifts suggest that Europe’s post-war growth model is eroding. And it is unlikely to return to the form we once knew.”

(https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/19/lagarde-ecb-europe-economy-trump.html

WATCH beaming Israeli security minister unveil execution facility for Palestinians

The facility will be used to hang convicted “terrorists” under a controversial new law and will include viewing booths, according to Itamar Ben-Gvir

Published 19 Aug, 2026 13:16 | U

Israel is building an execution facility for Palestinian prisoners sentenced to death on terrorism charges, ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has announced. Apart from an execution chamber, the facility will house viewing booths where “crime victims” and their families can witness hangings – an option “customary in many countries,” Ben-Gvir mentioned while presenting the facility on Tuesday.

The complex will be used to hang convicted “terrorists” under the recently approved Death Penalty for Terrorists Law. The Knesset passed the legislation, championed by Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, in March. It mandates death penalty for those convicted of deadly terrorist attacks aimed at “ending Israel’s existence” – a provision critics say effectively exempts Jewish Israelis, making the law applicable almost exclusively to Palestinians. Executions must be carried out within 90 days of sentencing, with no right of appeal.

The execution facility’s exact location has not been disclosed beyond that it is housed in a newly built death-row wing at a prison in central Israel. In partly blurred video footage filmed at the site, a beaming Ben-Gvir proudly showcases the construction site, framing it as the fulfillment of promises to his supporters.

“We are making history. Terrorists deserve only one thing – death by hanging,” the minister stated. “I took office promising to stop the ‘summer camps’ in the Prison Service. This has been fully implemented. I promised to legislate a death penalty law for terrorists. This has been carried out. And now the death row and hanging facility are also starting to take shape.”

Ben Gvir is known for inflammatory rhetoric toward Palestinians and has been sanctioned by multiple countries for repeatedly inciting violence against them.

He famously boasted that he would ensure “the terrorists [in prison] receive the minimum of the minimum” in food and argued last year that “there is no such thing as ‘Palestinian people.’” A leading advocate of the execution law, the minister and his party members wore noose-shaped lapel pins for months, while his 50th birthday cake in May also featured a noose.

‘Deeply discriminatory’ law

The death penalty law has drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups and legal campaigners, including in Israel, over discrimination, due process, and potential violations of international and Israeli law. UN human rights experts have warned that hanging in particular is incompatible with the absolute prohibition on torture, while Israeli rights group B’Tselem argued that the highly visual method contributes to the “dehumanization”of Palestinians.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has called it “deeply discriminatory” and an egregious violation of international law. Israeli lawmakers and rights groups, including Adalah –The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel – recently petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the law as unconstitutional.

Israel previously permitted capital punishment only in exceptional cases, including treason and Nazi-era war crimes. Only two people have been executed since the state’s creation: an Israeli army officer for treason in 1948 and Nazi Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann in 1962. No Palestinian prisoners have been sentenced to death since the new law was approved.

Israel currently holds around 9,400 Palestinian prisoners, including nearly 100 women and more than 370 minors,according to media reports citing the Palestinian Prisoner Society. Rights groups have repeatedly reported mistreatment of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, with former detainees and advocacy organizations alleging abuse, torture, starvation, physical and psychological harm, sexual violence, and denial of medical treatment. Israel is also reportedly holding the bodies of more than 100 Palestinians who died in its custody.

Meanwhile, reports state the Israeli military continues near-daily raids and arrests across the occupied West Bank and Gaza, ostensibly targeting Hamas militants and their supporters. Meanwhile, as Israeli settler violence against Palestinians and demolitions of homes belonging to relatives of Palestinians accused of attacks against Israelis continue, the UN warned last week that the humanitarian and security situation in the region had reached a critical “breaking point.”

https://www.rt.com/news/644392-israel-execution-facility-palestinians/

US targets ICC chief in push to ‘dismantle’ court

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has sanctioned Tomoko Akane and a senior trial lawyer amid a dispute over the Netanyahu arrest warrant

Published 19 Aug, 2026 12:43 |

The US has imposed sanctions on two senior International Criminal Court (ICC) officials,accusing The Hague-based institution of overstepping its authority.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday designated ICC President Tomoko Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, describing the court as a “corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.”

The designations are a part of a campaign announced by Rubio last month to “systematically dismantle the threat posed”by the ICC to US sovereignty.

Rubio has accused the court of targeting nationals of countries that have neither consented to its jurisdiction nor ratified the Rome Statute. The ICC previously investigated alleged crimes by US military and intelligence personnel in Afghanistan despite Washington not being a member.

Israel likewise rejects the court’s jurisdiction. Nevertheless, in 2024 the ICC issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. A February 2025 executive order signed by US President Donald Trump condemned the warrants.

Seye worked on the prosecution team involved in the Netanyahu case. Israeli outlet Ynet reported in May that he was also overseeing an ICC investigation into funding for West Bank settlements and the supply of weapons to settlers. Netanyahu welcomed the latest US sanctions, denouncing the ICC as a “kangaroo court.”

The ICC said on Wednesday it “strongly rejects” the new designations, calling them “a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution.”

The court has also faced criticism elsewhere. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have initiated withdrawals this summer, while Chad followed in July, accusing the ICC of disproportionately focusing on Africa.

The Philippines withdrew in 2019, but the ICC maintained jurisdiction over crimes allegedly committed while the country was a member. Former President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested under an ICC warrant in March 2025 over alleged crimes against humanity linked to killings during his anti-drug campaign and transferred to The Hague.

Russia has likewise rejected the court’s authority. The ICC issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova in March 2023 over the alleged unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia. Moscow dismissed the warrants as legally null and void and rejected the allegations, saying it evacuated unaccompanied children from the war zone and is ready to return them to their legal guardians upon request.

https://www.rt.com/news/644398-icc-sanctions-us-sovereignty/

>>24951938. KEK

>>24951301

Thank you anon, I needed that today and for the last month