The carry trade — borrowing where interest rates are low and investing where they’re high — was already thriving as the war sparked a surge in oil prices that boosted commodity currencies such as Brazil’s real and Colombia’s peso.
Play foolish socialist games, and watch New York City crumble.
That may be the lesson far-left NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is about to learn, as Citadel's Ken Griffin appears to be losing patience with the mayor's latest political stunt.
Recall that, in a video posted last week by the NYC Mayor's Office, Mamdani unveiled the city's first-ever pied-à-terre tax: an annual fee on luxury properties whose owners do not live in NYC full-time. The video was filmed outside 220 Central Park South, the building where Griffin owns a four-floor penthouse he purchased in 2019 for $238 million.
Happy Tax Day, New York. We’re taxing the rich. pic.twitter.com/Wky2LFXC9W
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) April 15, 2026
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday afternoon that an internal memo from Citadel's COO said its massive redevelopment of 350 Park Avenue, a $6 billion project that would produce 6,000 construction jobs and more than 15,000 permanent jobs, might be halted.
"We are about to commence the redevelopment of 350 Park Avenue, creating 6,000 highly paid construction jobs and supporting the creation of more than 15,000 permanent jobs in mid-town New York," wrote Gerald Beeson. "The project -- if we move forward -- will entail more than $6 billion dollars of spending."
Beeson sent the letter to employees of Citadel, Citadel Securities, and Griffin's other businesses. Let's not forget that Griffin relocated his company from crime-ridden Chicago to Miami. Beeson said the mayor's video suggested that the mayor doesn't appreciate how people like Griffin contribute to the greater good.
"It is shameful that he used Ken's name as the example of those who supposedly aren't carrying their fair share of the burdens associated with New York City's often costly and wasteful spending," Beeson continued. "In doing so, the mayor has once again manifested the ignorance and disdain of the elite political class towards those who have been consistently committed to building one of the greatest cities in the world."
"We have nearly 2,500 colleagues who have chosen to build their careers here," he said. "We understand that our hard work and success will, on occasion, make us targets for political rhetoric. But it should not diminish the pride we take in building firms that will continue to help New York City thrive for decades ahead."
In all seriousness, Griffin has little reason to waste time dealing with mounting political hostility from the far-left mayor when that same redevelopment capital could be deployed in a more business-friendly state where capitalism, property rights, and law and order are still upheld. Mamdani is bad for business - part of a broader unhinged class of socialist politicians, from Baltimore to New York City, who seem more interested in abusing taxpayers than properly governing. Why take the abuse?
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan for a city-owned grocery market in East Harlem’s La Marqueta has a deeper problem than the absurdity of spending $30 million to launch a mere 9,000-square-foot store that won’t open until 2029.
His claim that the neighborhood lacks cheaper food than the citywide average — the whole basis for dipping into tax revenue at everyone else’s expense — is 100% baloney.
If he took time off from grinning at gullible journalists, he’d find the blocks around the planned grocery site under the MetroNorth Park Avenue trestle at East 116th Street are already chock-full of bodegas and larger stores where prices for basics such as eggs, milk and soda are not only lower than at Gristedes, Morton Williams and Trader Joe’s – they’re far below.
Mamdani, who declined to say how much a cucumber at his brainstorm might cost, claimed at a press conference, “When New Yorkers come to city-run grocery stores, they will see a clear price differential” for staples such as bread and eggs.
But the “clear price differential” already exists in the proposed market’s front- and backyards.
Despite woke claims that merchants gouge lower-income residents, prices at the spacious, 24-hour, well-stocked City Fresh Market at 125 E. 116th St. — a half-block from Mamdani’s site, one of 15 in the chain in the city and New Jersey — were comfortably below what we found in more prosperous neighborhoods.
Milk cost $1.99 a quart, compared with $2.29 at Gristedes. A 48-oz. jug of Trop Lite orange beverage was $5.29, compared with $5.49 at Morton Williams and $7.99 at Gristedes.
City Fresh Market sells 2-liter bottles of Coca-Cola, Sprite and other popular brands at two bottles for $6; they were more than $4 each at just about every other supermarket we checked.
And those eggs Mamdani mentioned? Grade-A Sunshine Farms medium eggs were available for just $5 for two dozen at City Fresh Market, versus nearly as much for a single dozen elsewhere.
Like other nearby merchants, City Fresh Market manager Manuel Betamcef feared the impact of the city grocery store on his establishment’s profitability. He said the plan was “very very, bad, not fair. It’s definitely going to affect us. We can’t go lower [to compete with it] because we have to pay rent and taxes.”
The question, though, might not be whether established stores can compete with Mamdani’s folly — but whether the city can compete with them.
For example, prices at Meat Market at 87 E. 116th St. between Park and Madison avenues were remarkably reasonable, even for East Harlem. The neighborhood’s median household income of $46,950 in 2023 was around 41% less than the citywide median, according to the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.
Meat Market offers 17 variety “plans” starting at a mere $41.99 for 10 pounds of meat — two pounds each of chicken cutlets, chicken legs, beef ribs, chuck steak and ground beef. Like all of the butcher shop’s meat plans, it came with a bonus — in this case, a bottle of soda.
Plan No. 6 includes 20 pounds of beef, chicken and pork for all of $73 — and comes with a bonus of a dozen eggs.
Yet, the “democratic socialist” mayor’s echo chamber includes Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who harrumphed, “In East Harlem, we see the health consequences of limited access every day — from higher rates of diabetes to heart disease — and the selection of La Marqueta builds on its historic role as a vital neighborhood food hub.”
He didn’t mention that the once-thriving La Marqueta turned into a flop over the past few decades when better food products became more widely available.
Local resident Destiny Louissant told Gothamist she didn’t see the point of a city-run food market when “there’s literally one up the block, there’s a lot in the area.”
And food economist Stephen Zagor, an adjunct associate professor at Columbia Business School, told The Post that while Mamdani’s plan was “a noble idea to help solve food insecurity, it seems to have more holes than a slice of subsidized Swiss cheese.”
He added, “The fact that Mandani’s team chose a first location within an apple throw of numerous existing neighborly-priced supermarkets makes me even more concerned that we may be seeing the birth of a food Titanic — costly to open and operationally unsound.”
To prepare for the possibility of running out of oil storage space at Kharg Island, Iran has brought NASHA (9079107) out of retirement. She's a 30yo VLCC that's been anchored empty for the past few years; currently spending 4 days on a trip that should take 1.5–2 days. #OOTT pic.twitter.com/jFhq2xP0mU
— TankerTrackers.com, Inc. (@TankerTrackers) April 23, 2026
by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,
The Department of Justice told the U.S. Supreme Court on April 22 that it has settled a lawsuit filed by former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page over alleged surveillance abuses.
Page had served as a foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
He sued several top federal law enforcement officials, alleging his constitutional rights were violated through illegal surveillance carried out under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as part of an investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The settlement moots, or makes legally irrelevant, Page’s lawsuit against the federal government, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in a new brief filed with the nation’s highest court.
Page had filed a petition with the Supreme Court in December 2025 to appeal a U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruling that affirmed dismissal of the lawsuit by a lower court.
The appeals court ruled that he had waited too long to initiate his lawsuit.
Page is a longtime contributor to the United States’ national security efforts as an “operational contact” of the Central Intelligence Agency. Despite his years of service, he was a target in the FBI’s investigation known as Operation Crossfire Hurricane that probed suspected Russian influence on Trump’s 2016 campaign. He has denied having any improper ties to Russia and was not charged with wrongdoing, according to the petition.
“Through deliberate lies and incomplete factual assertions, the FBI convinced the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that there was probable cause to believe that Dr. Page was an intermediary between Russia and Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign’s chair,” he said in the petition.
The FBI filed for four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to surveil Page and the court granted all four. Before the final renewal application was filed, two members of the operation conspired to leak information from the secret FBI surveillance of Page to the media to damage his public image and the Trump campaign. Anonymously sourced media reports falsely insinuated that Page was an agent of Russia, according to the petition.
Because Page knew he wasn’t a Russian agent, he inferred from the media reports that he had been unlawfully surveilled and shared his belief with Congress and the public, according to his petition. However, foreign intelligence investigations are carried out in secret, so his suspicions could not be verified no matter what steps he took.
In late 2019, the Office of the Inspector General published a report spelling out “the FBI’s repeated and thorough surveillance abuses against Dr. Page,” stating that the first warrant application contained “seven significant inaccuracies and omissions.” The FBI also excluded information exonerating Page from warrant applications, including statements by Page “that were inconsistent with its theory” that “Page was an agent of Russia.” The office also “identified 10 additional significant errors in the renewal applications,” the petition said.
A Justice Department spokesperson commented on the settlement.
“No American should ever face covert and unlawful surveillance based on their political views,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times.
“The investigation into Carter Page—a man never charged with a single crime—relied on inherently flawed and uncorroborated information, proving it was a political sham from the get-go. The targeting of American citizens for political purposes constitutes a severe violation of civil liberties,” the spokesperson continued.
“This Department of Justice is committed to dismantling the weaponization of government and today’s settlement represents one of many initiatives to provide justice to those abused by rogue actors.”
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Page’s attorney, Gene Schaerr of Schaerr Jaffe in Washington. No reply was received by publication time.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday Iran is not barred from entering the United States for the FIFA World Cup, but added that individuals linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) cannot “pretend they’re journalists and athletic trainers” in order to gain entry.
.@SecRubio: "Nothing from the U.S. has told [Iran] they can't come... What they can't bring is a bunch of IRGC terrorists into our country and pretend that they're journalists and athletic trainers." https://t.co/KAWAE45WbJ pic.twitter.com/xghqfvjR2Z
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 23, 2026
