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USA Today
21-07-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Trump sharpens the axe for the Education Department. Swing away, Mr. President.
Despite the Department of Education's massive budget, students in the U.S. far too often lag behind peers in other industrialized countries. The largest employer in the United States isn't a Fortune 100 company like Alphabet, Amazon or Apple. It's the federal government − and that's a problem. Thankfully, President Donald Trump continues to slash bureaucratic bloat. On July 11, the administration sent layoff notices to more than 1,300 State Department workers, and three days later, the Supreme Court allowed Trump to move forward with plans to gut the Department of Education. That's bad news for government employees, but great for taxpayers, especially given the Education Department's expense − $268 billion in the last fiscal year − and its lack of effectiveness. Despite the department's massive budget, students in the U.S. far too often lag behind peers in other industrialized countries. In 2022, for example, American high school students scored behind teens from 25 other countries on an international math test. And we're losing ground. Math and reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress continue to decline. Part of the drop can be attributed to pandemic-related learning loss, but reading scores in the U.S. began to decline in 2019 − before Americans had even heard of COVID-19. But how will pulling the federal government out of K-12 education help? It's important to note that more than 90% of public school funding comes from state and local governments along with foundations and other private sources. Much of the federal education budget is used to feed the bureaucracy, which generates rules and regulations that local administrators and teachers must obey. If all of that bureaucratic oversight consistently produced better results, there might be a case for keeping it. But the data clearly shows it doesn't. Removing federal bureaucrats from our schools should give states and local school districts more flexibility to set education policy, and that should improve choices for parents like me. Returning more control to the states also should improve efficiency and enable schools to better meet students' needs. Opinion: Our schools are struggling because teachers unions don't put kids first Government efficiency is vital for the American people Trump isn't cutting jobs only at the Education Department, of course. The State Department layoffs follow reductions at other federal agencies this spring. The cuts are driven by necessity: our national debt is now more than $37 trillion and the annual budget deficit will top $1 trillion again this year. So, I was surprised to see news reports paint the laid off State Department workers as heroic. Cameras caught teary goodbyes and applause for well-liked employees. I don't recall the same concern when President Joe Biden halted construction of the Keystone Pipeline, which cost 1,500 workers their jobs and eliminated plans to create thousands more. Opinion: PBS, NPR push liberal propaganda. Trump is right to cut their funding. Companies often restructure. So should the federal government. While job loss is certainly scary, and I don't wish it on anyone, federal job cuts should be put in the context of the overall jobs market. Microsoft announced this month it would eliminate 9,000 jobs, not because the company is failing but because it's retooling as the market changes. Other companies, including Intel and Meta, have announced plans to restructure this year as the emergence of artificial intelligence and other technology changes how Americans work. The federal government should be as flexible as our top companies in adapting to a changing world. Yet, progressives have criticized the Trump administration's efforts to restructure the federal bureaucracy as cruel. The president's job, however, isn't to employ as many bureaucrats as possible. It's to deliver effective services as efficiently as possible to taxpayers. Dismantling ineffective and inefficient bureaucracies like the Education Department is a long overdue step toward achieving that goal. Nicole Russell is a columnist at USA TODAY and a mother of four who lives in Texas. Contact her at nrussell@ and follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @russell_nm. Sign up for her weekly newsletter, The Right Track, here.
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Unlocking 24/7 commodity markets with onchain efficiency
Unlocking 24/7 commodity markets with onchain efficiency originally appeared on TheStreet. Commodity derivatives are central to global markets, but the systems that support them are still built for yesterday's world. Exchanges like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) dominate a $20T global commodity derivatives market. Despite their scale, both continue to operate around fixed trading hours, rely on T+1 or T+2 settlement cycles, and silo margin across asset classes. These structural constraints slow down capital movement, limit responsiveness, and increase costs, particularly during periods of volatility. When the Keystone Pipeline in the US ruptured in April 2025, crude markets moved immediately. Most desks couldn't. Locked into legacy infrastructure, traders were forced to wait for markets to reopen, missing critical hedging windows. The problem isn't just timing, it's structural. High-frequency strategies face compounded drag: clearing fees as high as $24 per million notional, capital fragmented across asset classes, and multi-day clearing cycles that delay liquidity reuse. Traditional exchanges are still designed around intermediaries, rollovers, and batch processing, even with electronic access. Sphinx addresses this directly. It's a new infrastructure layer built for commodity traders who need continuous access, real-time clearing, unified margining, and lower execution costs, all within a regulated environment. The technology matters, but only because it enables something traders haven't had: a faster, cheaper, always-on venue. For firms trading across energy, metals, and agriculture, speed and capital efficiency matter more than protocol semantics. Sphinx is designed to deliver both. Built to support high-frequency execution and cross-asset risk management, the system offers the kind of infrastructure performance usually reserved for tier-one financial venues. Sphinx supports sub-100-ms latency and throughput exceeding 10,000 transactions per second. It integrates directly with FIX and OEMS pipelines, ensuring compatibility with existing trading infrastructure. No custom middleware. No fragmented interfaces. It also eliminates rollover costs by replacing expiring futures with perpetual swap instruments, contracts that mirror spot markets and adjust continuously via dynamic funding rates. This allows traders to maintain uninterrupted exposure without rebalancing every quarter. The architecture is modular and interoperable by design. It's built on the Cosmos SDK with IBC support to allow future cross-chain connectivity, but those are backend details. What matters is the outcome: trades clear faster, margin moves dynamically, and strategy deployment isn't bottlenecked by system constraints. Sphinx isn't the venue, it's the base layer. GCX, the first exchange built on Sphinx, runs as a regulated execution platform, inheriting the infrastructure benefits while operating under its compliance framework. Sphinx is optimized for how modern commodity markets move. Price dislocations don't wait for New York or London to open, and neither should the systems traders rely on to manage them. Sphinx introduces several key innovations that directly address capital velocity, execution latency, and collateral efficiency. Legacy exchanges operate on fixed schedules. Sphinx enables continuous access to global markets, with no session windows, no rollover gaps. Whether the move happens overnight or midweek in Asia, traders can execute and adjust exposure immediately. Traditional clearinghouses settle on T+1 or T+2 cycles, delaying liquidity reuse. Sphinx uses smart contracts to finalize trades in under 60 seconds, reducing counterparty risk and unlocking margin faster. For active desks, this shortens the capital cycle significantly. Most venues require separate collateral pools for each asset class. Sphinx introduces a single-margin framework across commodities. Positions in oil, metals, and grains are netted dynamically. Internal benchmarks show 30–50% less capital required to hold equivalent risk. Sphinx's matching engine supports institutional order flow, with latency under 100ms and throughput exceeding 10,000 TPS. Combined with FIX/OEMS integration, traders can route orders directly without custom adapters or bridges. Exchange, clearinghouse, and brokerage fees add up, especially at volume. Sphinx removes intermediaries by automating settlement at the protocol layer. The estimated total cost reduction for high-frequency or large-volume users ranges between 70–90%, depending on strategy and turnover. None of these are bolt-on upgrades. They're embedded in how the system is architected, removing the constraints of legacy infrastructure and replacing them with programmable, capital-efficient alternatives. Regulatory clarity isn't a value-add; it's a prerequisite for institutional participation. Sphinx is built with this in mind. Every layer of the system, from user onboarding to settlement, is designed to align with the standards expected by banks, asset managers, and corporates operating under strict internal controls. KYC and AML are not retrofitted at the exchange level; they're enforced directly at the protocol level. Every participant is verified. Every transaction is audit-ready. The system also supports data localization and jurisdiction-specific compliance logic, enabling venues to meet local regulatory obligations without compromising global interoperability. GCX, the first exchange running on Sphinx, operates under a license from the Bermuda Monetary Authority and is in the process of securing FCA registration in the UK. This provides the foundation required for institutions to route real capital through a new infrastructure layer with full regulatory accountability. Sphinx's distinction isn't that it integrates compliance. It's that compliance is part of the base design, structured, verifiable, and built to hold up under scrutiny. Derivatives markets continue to expand, but the systems supporting them haven't kept up. In the first half of 2024, BIS reported an 18% year-over-year increase in notional volumes for commodity-linked derivatives, driven largely by derivatives also rose, while interest rate contracts held steady. Yet, nearly all of this volume still clears through legacy platforms like the CME, ICE, and Eurex, venues designed decades ago around fixed trading windows, siloed margin systems, and batch-based settlement. CME and ICE together handle over 50% of global commodity derivatives volume. Yet despite their scale, these systems introduce friction at every layer: trades settle on T+1 or T+2 cycles, margin is siloed by asset class, and true 24/7 execution remains out of reach. These limitations weren't critical when volatility followed a regional clock. But that's no longer the case. Today's traders face overnight geopolitical shocks, unpredictable supply chain events, and macro shifts that happen across time zones. Waiting for New York or London to open isn't viable risk management. Nor is locking up excess capital across five separate clearing silos to hedge a cross-commodity portfolio. Cost pressures compound the issue. Exchange fees, brokerage spreads, and capital inefficiency add up, especially for desks executing at scale. A trading firm holding diversified commodity exposures on traditional venues can spend 3–4x more on margin and clearing than on a system that supports cross-asset netting and real-time settlement. Institutional behavior is already adjusting. Crypto-native trading firms and funds like Brevan Howard Digital, Jump, and GSR are exploring programmable infrastructure, not as a speculative bet, but as a way to trade faster, cheaper, and more globally. What they're pursuing isn't decentralization, it's an edge. Sphinx enters this moment with infrastructure that speaks directly to that need. Faster clearing. Unified margin. Execution that doesn't wait for a session to open. Greg Perrin, Co-Founder and CEO, is a distributed systems engineer with a background in energy, blockchain, and industrial IoT. Before Sphinx, he was CTO at TypeX, where he built flared-gas-powered mining infrastructure and led on-grid expansion to over 250MW. Shevaan Jayasinghe, Co-Founder and product lead, brings a decade of experience across institutional finance and digital asset infrastructure. At Goldman Sachs in London, he worked across analytics, equity financing, and business development. He later joined where he helped develop institutional-grade custody and prime brokerage tools for digital assets. Austin Durgee, Co-Founder and CMO, has led funding campaigns for crypto and startup projects, securing over $16M while building strong developer and investor relationships. He later joined TypeX, focusing on strategic marketing and sales in the Bitcoin mining and energy space. Now at Sphinx, Austin drives the go-to-market strategy and ecosystem growth, helping shape the next generation of decentralized infrastructure for energy and commodities trading. Most trading infrastructure wasn't built for the speed or complexity of today's commodity markets. Execution still follows outdated clearing windows, and capital is too often locked behind static margin requirements. Sphinx approaches this differently and you can review their infrastructure in detail here. Sphinx rethinks the mechanics of clearing, collateral, and access, not to make them digital, but to make them work in real-time. For desks managing cross-commodity exposure, the result is faster settlement, better capital deployment, and fewer operational bottlenecks, all within a regulatory framework that institutions can use. Unlocking 24/7 commodity markets with onchain efficiency first appeared on TheStreet on Jul 15, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jul 15, 2025, where it first appeared. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Boston Globe
08-04-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Keystone oil pipeline shut down after a rupture in rural North Dakota
No people or structures were affected by the spill, he said. A nearby stream that only flows during part of the year was not impacted but was blocked off and isolated as a precaution, he said. Advertisement It's unclear at what rate the 30-inch (0.8-meter) pipeline was flowing, but even at two minutes 'it's going to have a fairly good volume,' Suess said. 'But ... we've had much, much bigger spills,' including one involving the same pipeline a few years ago in Walsh County, North Dakota, he said. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'I don't think it's going to be that huge,' Suess said. The $5.2 billion pipeline constructed in 2011 Keystone Pipeline carries crude oil across Saskatchewan and Manitoba through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri to refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma. Though the pipeline was constructed by TC Energy, it is now managed by a liquid pipelines business South Bow as of 2024. The Associated Press has reached out to South Bow for comment. Advertisement A proposed extension to the pipeline called Keystone XL would have transported crude oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast, but it was ultimately abandoned by the company in 2021 after years of protests from environmental activists and Indigenous communities over environmental concerns.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Can Donald Trump Resurrect Keystone XL?
The controversial Keystone XL pipeline to bring more US and Canadian oil to Gulf Coast refineries is back in the news. US President Donald Trump is pitching the company behind the project, TC Energy, to return to the US and 'get it built – NOW!' 'I know they were treated very badly by Sleepy Joe Biden, but the Trump Administration is very different — easy approvals, almost immediate start!' Trump wrote on his platform Truth Social Monday night. The rationale for Keystone was a way to bring together booming US oil production, and to a lesser extent, production from the oil sands in Northern Alberta, to Gulf Coast refineries that were facing declining imports from Mexico and Venezuela. The project was first proposed in 2008 and was supposed to begin carrying 830,000 barrels a day in 2012. But the Obama administration struck it down on environmental grounds. Trump then revived it during his first term, before Democratic President Joe Biden killed it again by revoking the pipeline's permit on his first day in the White House in 2021. A network of pipelines called the Keystone Pipeline already exists and moves oil within the United States. The pipeline expansion would allow more oilsands crude to flow to the US Gulf Coast, cutting through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska before heading south. Trump on Monday pledged easy regulatory approvals for the project, saying in the Truth Social post, 'We want the Keystone XL Pipeline built.'The idea received a warm reception from Canadian Premiers Danielle Smith of Alberta and Scott Moe of Saskatchewan. 'That project should have never been cancelled. Lower fuel costs for American families is a big win,' Smith posted on X, Tuesday. 'The path to continental energy dominance is to increase non-tariff North American trade,' Moe chimed in. 'This includes the construction of new pipelines like Keystone XL.' If the idea of a new Canada-US pipeline seems incongruous in the face of pending 25 percent tariffs on all Canadian imports, and 10 percent duties on Canadian energy, that's because it is. BNN Bloomberg quoted Richard Masson, executive fellow with the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy, who said the interest in resuscitating Keystone XL doesn't jibe with Trump's plans to ramp up domestic oil production while slapping US neighbors with tariffs. 'It seems inconsistent to say we're going to tariff the existing oil that's coming in and still try and get somebody to build a pipeline,' he said. 'It just doesn't make a lot of sense.' Rafi Tahmazian, a retired energy manager with Canoe Financial, suggested that Trump might be reacting to the recently floated idea that Canada revisit plans for an Energy East pipeline. 'He's worried that if we build a pipeline east, we start to look at sending our oil to other places and diminishing our dependency on the U.S.,' said Tahmazian via CBC News. 'And that is a very big problem for his refiners and the products that they produce for the U.S.' The Canadian government hasn't ruled out the possibility of a renewed Keystone XL. A spokesperson for Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said the government is 'open to having a productive conversation' about advancing the project. Joanne Sivasankaran added the project in its current form has all the Canadian permits it needs and the infrastructure north of the border remains in the ground. However, she said a private sector proponent would need to step forward to advance the project and there is not currently one expressing any interest. Several oil producers would also have to sign up to ship significant volumes on the line for decades, 'and there just isn't that much oil planned to be produced in Canada these days,' said Masson. TC Energy spun the oil pipeline component of its business out to South Bow Corp. last fall to concentrate on natural gas and power. South Bow currently owns the existing Keystone Pipeline. But according to a company spokesperson, South Bow is no longer interested in advancing Keystone XL, saying it has 'moved on'. 'We continue to engage with customers to develop options to increase Canadian oil supplies to meet growing demand,' Katie Stavinoha said in an email to Bloomberg Tuesday. By Andrew Topf for More Top Reads From this article on
