EU Capital Markets Union: Germany's Merz Calls For A "Wall Street" For Europe

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

In the German Bundestag, Friedrich Merz appealed to the EU to integrate the fragmented European capital market more deeply and reduce bureaucratic hurdles. His vision for the next step: a kind of Wall Street for Europe.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz used his government statement on Thursday to take a strategic look at what he called the “fragmented and over-bureaucratized” European stock and capital market landscape. His stated goal: the completion of the Capital Markets Union.

“We need a kind of European Stock Exchange, so that successful companies like BionTech from Germany don’t have to go to the New York Stock Exchange,” Merz said. “Our companies need a sufficiently broad and deep capital market to fund themselves faster and more efficiently.”

Keeping Value Creation in Europe 

The Chancellor linked this call to a strong appeal to the European Commission for consistent de-bureaucratization of the fragmented European capital market. Only in this way, he stressed, will the value created from German and European research truly remain in Europe. Only then can societal wealth grow via the capital market, Merz argued.

The debate is fueled by the growing trend of European innovative companies raising capital on U.S. exchanges. Recent examples include Linde, Birkenstock Holding, and BioNTech – firms that chose Wall Street listings over domestic options.

This discussion fits into a broader financial context: the integration of European financial and capital markets. A far-reaching harmonization of financial hubs and access to capital would not be a mistake. Currently, there are around 15 securities exchanges in the Eurozone. The two largest operators – Euronext N.V. and Deutsche Börse AG – together handle about 80 percent of the annual €8 trillion equity trading volume.

Ending Capital Flight 

Merz’ initiative stands not only for institutional reform but also as an attempt to free Europe’s financial markets from self-imposed regulatory constraints.

The Chancellor emphasized the importance of better financing for innovative startups in high-tech future industries. Experience shows, however, that these companies tend to rely on venture capital – and they have no difficulty listing on international exchanges like Frankfurt or London.

The real question for Brussels and Berlin is whether focusing on a new financial hub alone is enough to prevent visible capital flows from Europe to the United States.

Germany alone lost around €64.5 billion last year due to capital flight – a symptom of deeper issues: an overbearing regulatory framework from Brussels and EU capitals, excessive fiscal burdens, and an escalating energy cost crisis.

The Real Target 

These are fundamental economic imbalances that cannot be resolved simply by creating a European mega-exchange. They are homegrown design flaws – at the heart of today’s economic crisis.

In reality, the debate over the Capital Markets Union is about something else entirely: the European Commission’s strategic goal to consolidate member state debt under its roof. This would give Brussels greater financial clout through regular EU bond issuances. More centralization in Brussels, less national oversight – the dream of the Brussels power center.

The EU is gradually moving toward a paradigm shift in debt financing. Originally, the Commission was strictly prohibited from financing itself via market issuances. That red line has long been crossed.

The COVID lockdowns provided a lever to launch NextGenerationEU, an unprecedented €800 billion debt program. This money largely financed national deficits, with the Commission acting as a market borrower, backed by the European Central Bank.

Brussels Is Already Active in the Market 

It is no secret that Brussels wants to expand this model. The Ukraine conflict serves as a convenient pretext to issue new joint debt under the media-amplified threat of Russian aggression. Chancellor Merz has already indicated this spring that EU-wide borrowing for defense purposes is not off the table – but only for “absolute exceptional cases.”

Merz deliberately avoided the term “Eurobonds,” just like Ursula von der Leyen, who in her State of the Union speech on September 10 circumnavigated the term, instead proposing a common European budget for “European goods.”

The signal is clear: we are in a transitional phase where old debt rules are being gradually loosened, and the centralization of debt issuance in Brussels is systematically advanced.

Euroclear as an Anchor 

This aligns seamlessly with thinking about a shared European exchange – potentially hosted by Euroclear in Brussels, the central player in the safekeeping and settlement of Eurozone securities. A serious move would also consider relocating the European Central Bank to Brussels for fast debt issuance.

The EU’s response to the looming debt crisis is obvious: a much higher degree of centralization. Activating capital that can be leveraged to expand debt becomes strategic; the exchange consolidation is just a secondary concern.

This also ties into the debate over using frozen Russian assets at Euroclear. The goal: collateralize a portfolio worth around €200 billion, largely expired European sovereign bonds, to finance reparations loans to Ukraine. Brussels is searching for credit collateral, regardless of origin.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/20/2025 - 05:20

EU Capital Markets Union: Germany's Merz Calls For A "Wall Street" For Europe

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

In the German Bundestag, Friedrich Merz appealed to the EU to integrate the fragmented European capital market more deeply and reduce bureaucratic hurdles. His vision for the next step: a kind of Wall Street for Europe.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz used his government statement on Thursday to take a strategic look at what he called the “fragmented and over-bureaucratized” European stock and capital market landscape. His stated goal: the completion of the Capital Markets Union.

“We need a kind of European Stock Exchange, so that successful companies like BionTech from Germany don’t have to go to the New York Stock Exchange,” Merz said. “Our companies need a sufficiently broad and deep capital market to fund themselves faster and more efficiently.”

Keeping Value Creation in Europe 

The Chancellor linked this call to a strong appeal to the European Commission for consistent de-bureaucratization of the fragmented European capital market. Only in this way, he stressed, will the value created from German and European research truly remain in Europe. Only then can societal wealth grow via the capital market, Merz argued.

The debate is fueled by the growing trend of European innovative companies raising capital on U.S. exchanges. Recent examples include Linde, Birkenstock Holding, and BioNTech – firms that chose Wall Street listings over domestic options.

This discussion fits into a broader financial context: the integration of European financial and capital markets. A far-reaching harmonization of financial hubs and access to capital would not be a mistake. Currently, there are around 15 securities exchanges in the Eurozone. The two largest operators – Euronext N.V. and Deutsche Börse AG – together handle about 80 percent of the annual €8 trillion equity trading volume.

Ending Capital Flight 

Merz’ initiative stands not only for institutional reform but also as an attempt to free Europe’s financial markets from self-imposed regulatory constraints.

The Chancellor emphasized the importance of better financing for innovative startups in high-tech future industries. Experience shows, however, that these companies tend to rely on venture capital – and they have no difficulty listing on international exchanges like Frankfurt or London.

The real question for Brussels and Berlin is whether focusing on a new financial hub alone is enough to prevent visible capital flows from Europe to the United States.

Germany alone lost around €64.5 billion last year due to capital flight – a symptom of deeper issues: an overbearing regulatory framework from Brussels and EU capitals, excessive fiscal burdens, and an escalating energy cost crisis.

The Real Target 

These are fundamental economic imbalances that cannot be resolved simply by creating a European mega-exchange. They are homegrown design flaws – at the heart of today’s economic crisis.

In reality, the debate over the Capital Markets Union is about something else entirely: the European Commission’s strategic goal to consolidate member state debt under its roof. This would give Brussels greater financial clout through regular EU bond issuances. More centralization in Brussels, less national oversight – the dream of the Brussels power center.

The EU is gradually moving toward a paradigm shift in debt financing. Originally, the Commission was strictly prohibited from financing itself via market issuances. That red line has long been crossed.

The COVID lockdowns provided a lever to launch NextGenerationEU, an unprecedented €800 billion debt program. This money largely financed national deficits, with the Commission acting as a market borrower, backed by the European Central Bank.

Brussels Is Already Active in the Market 

It is no secret that Brussels wants to expand this model. The Ukraine conflict serves as a convenient pretext to issue new joint debt under the media-amplified threat of Russian aggression. Chancellor Merz has already indicated this spring that EU-wide borrowing for defense purposes is not off the table – but only for “absolute exceptional cases.”

Merz deliberately avoided the term “Eurobonds,” just like Ursula von der Leyen, who in her State of the Union speech on September 10 circumnavigated the term, instead proposing a common European budget for “European goods.”

The signal is clear: we are in a transitional phase where old debt rules are being gradually loosened, and the centralization of debt issuance in Brussels is systematically advanced.

Euroclear as an Anchor 

This aligns seamlessly with thinking about a shared European exchange – potentially hosted by Euroclear in Brussels, the central player in the safekeeping and settlement of Eurozone securities. A serious move would also consider relocating the European Central Bank to Brussels for fast debt issuance.

The EU’s response to the looming debt crisis is obvious: a much higher degree of centralization. Activating capital that can be leveraged to expand debt becomes strategic; the exchange consolidation is just a secondary concern.

This also ties into the debate over using frozen Russian assets at Euroclear. The goal: collateralize a portfolio worth around €200 billion, largely expired European sovereign bonds, to finance reparations loans to Ukraine. Brussels is searching for credit collateral, regardless of origin.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/20/2025 - 05:20

Shell's Fuel Shortage In Indonesia Proves The Next Era Is Electric

Around 200 Shell outlets in Indonesia have run out of gasoline after domestic supply disruptions tied to state oil giant PT Pertamina and a sweeping corruption probe, according to Bloomberg.

Rivals such as BP AKR and Vitol’s Vivo have also been empty for weeks. Lines now snake through Pertamina’s own stations, the only ones still reliably selling fuel — though “neither drivers, nor private competitors, trust the quality of the product it offers.” Shell decided in May to leave the retail market altogether.

A century ago, Indonesia was among the world’s great petroleum producers. A deal between a London trader and a Dutch oilfield operator in Sumatra led to the founding of what became Shell in 1907. But the nationalization of its Indonesian arm in 1957 created Pertamina, which soon became a symbol of both wealth and graft. Under General Ibnu Sutowo, who ran the company until 1976, Pertamina collapsed under billions in debt and became shorthand for elite excess.

Bloomberg writes that since those glory days, output has fallen by two-thirds while the population has doubled to 283 million. Indonesia now imports much of its refined fuel, consumes more gasoline than Germany, and boasts one of the world’s largest vehicle fleets — mostly scooters. As ever, the profits have flowed toward insiders. Suharto-era cronies dominated oil trading in the 1980s, and protests over fuel prices helped bring down his regime in 1998.

Promises of reform have repeatedly failed. President Joko Widodo once vowed to dismantle the “oil-and-gas mafia,” but corruption endured. This February, President Prabowo Subianto’s government launched an investigation into allegations that $11.9 billion was siphoned from Pertamina between 2018 and 2023 — largely by diluting premium gasoline with lower-grade fuel, damaging countless engines in the process.

Distrust has driven consumers to private retailers such as Shell, BP, and Vivo. Yet import restrictions prevented these firms from meeting surging demand. They were forced to seek extra supplies from Pertamina — and, wary of contamination, often refused delivery. The result: a nationwide fuel drought.

The chaos is accelerating Indonesia’s quiet electric revolution. Battery-powered vehicles already command more than 14% of the market, thanks to cheap electricity and falling prices. The top-selling electric scooter, the Polytron Fox R, costs roughly two-thirds as much as its gas rival, Honda’s BeAT. Even with limited public charging, private swap stations and home outlets are filling the gap.

This could be a story of renewal: a vast, resource-rich nation pivoting toward clean, affordable energy. But that future depends on loosening the grip of a fossil-fueled elite that’s profited from dysfunction for decades. As long as Pertamina’s monopoly endures, innovation will struggle to breathe.

Indonesia’s gasoline crisis mirrors the public anger spilling into its streets — both driven by a collapse of trust in the state. If President Prabowo wants to get ahead of that, he should use the EV boom to open the market and curb Pertamina’s dominance, “acting as ruthlessly as his predecessor Widodo did in liquidating its scandal-plagued trading arm back in 2015.”

The kleptocratic habits of the Suharto years have no place in a modern democracy. The well has run dry; the future, unmistakably, is electric.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/20/2025 - 04:15

Shell's Fuel Shortage In Indonesia Proves The Next Era Is Electric

Around 200 Shell outlets in Indonesia have run out of gasoline after domestic supply disruptions tied to state oil giant PT Pertamina and a sweeping corruption probe, according to Bloomberg.

Rivals such as BP AKR and Vitol’s Vivo have also been empty for weeks. Lines now snake through Pertamina’s own stations, the only ones still reliably selling fuel — though “neither drivers, nor private competitors, trust the quality of the product it offers.” Shell decided in May to leave the retail market altogether.

A century ago, Indonesia was among the world’s great petroleum producers. A deal between a London trader and a Dutch oilfield operator in Sumatra led to the founding of what became Shell in 1907. But the nationalization of its Indonesian arm in 1957 created Pertamina, which soon became a symbol of both wealth and graft. Under General Ibnu Sutowo, who ran the company until 1976, Pertamina collapsed under billions in debt and became shorthand for elite excess.

Bloomberg writes that since those glory days, output has fallen by two-thirds while the population has doubled to 283 million. Indonesia now imports much of its refined fuel, consumes more gasoline than Germany, and boasts one of the world’s largest vehicle fleets — mostly scooters. As ever, the profits have flowed toward insiders. Suharto-era cronies dominated oil trading in the 1980s, and protests over fuel prices helped bring down his regime in 1998.

Promises of reform have repeatedly failed. President Joko Widodo once vowed to dismantle the “oil-and-gas mafia,” but corruption endured. This February, President Prabowo Subianto’s government launched an investigation into allegations that $11.9 billion was siphoned from Pertamina between 2018 and 2023 — largely by diluting premium gasoline with lower-grade fuel, damaging countless engines in the process.

Distrust has driven consumers to private retailers such as Shell, BP, and Vivo. Yet import restrictions prevented these firms from meeting surging demand. They were forced to seek extra supplies from Pertamina — and, wary of contamination, often refused delivery. The result: a nationwide fuel drought.

The chaos is accelerating Indonesia’s quiet electric revolution. Battery-powered vehicles already command more than 14% of the market, thanks to cheap electricity and falling prices. The top-selling electric scooter, the Polytron Fox R, costs roughly two-thirds as much as its gas rival, Honda’s BeAT. Even with limited public charging, private swap stations and home outlets are filling the gap.

This could be a story of renewal: a vast, resource-rich nation pivoting toward clean, affordable energy. But that future depends on loosening the grip of a fossil-fueled elite that’s profited from dysfunction for decades. As long as Pertamina’s monopoly endures, innovation will struggle to breathe.

Indonesia’s gasoline crisis mirrors the public anger spilling into its streets — both driven by a collapse of trust in the state. If President Prabowo wants to get ahead of that, he should use the EV boom to open the market and curb Pertamina’s dominance, “acting as ruthlessly as his predecessor Widodo did in liquidating its scandal-plagued trading arm back in 2015.”

The kleptocratic habits of the Suharto years have no place in a modern democracy. The well has run dry; the future, unmistakably, is electric.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/20/2025 - 04:15

The Rise & Rise Of AfD: Exploring The Unprecedented Political Dumbassery Afoot In The Federal Republic

Authored by 'eugyppius' via A Plague Chronicle,

The firewall is making AfD the strongest party in Germany, artificially empowering the left and destroying the centre-right, who alone can lift it

There’s a subtle, little-discussed but very bizarre political phenomenon that has interested me ever since I started blogging and paying serious attention to politics.

I first noticed it during Covid. Back in those dark days, virus understanders sold measures like lockdowns and masking to the public first as a means of keeping hospitals at capacity by slowing virus infections, then as a means of slowing virus infections just because, and finally as rituals that we had to do more of whenever infections rose, regardless of what effect they had on anything. Mass vaccination followed a nearly identical arc. At first the vaccinators said everyone had to be vaccinated to stop the virus, but by late Autumn 2021 they wanted to vaccinate everybody as much as possible because reasons. In both cases you could see, in real time, the ends towards which we were striving regressing, until finally the means became unquestionable ends in themselves.

I propose to call this phenomenon endification, and I think it is very significant.

It seems to happen whenever you mobilise large, complex systems towards goals that sooner or later prove unattainable. As these goals pass out of reach but the system remains mobilised, basic understandings of what we are even trying to do shift. The erstwhile means become almost sacred, worthy of pursuing in themselves, often for moral reasons. This can go on for a very long time even though it makes no sense and is painfully retarded.

Germany seems especially prone to endification, probably for cultural reasons stemming from our pathological commitment to thoroughness.

We have to do things longer and harder than everybody else, always with an aura of breathless moral urgency and self-importance. Imagine shades of Covid idiocy happening in many different political domains all the time. Our climate policies have long since become endified, the nuclear phaseout was endified and many aspects of mass migration have been endified.

The brings me to the crazy and ridiculous firewall against the AfD – the unending Antifa-enforced political tabu upon achieving anything with AfD votes at the state or federal level. AfD support is held to be contaminating, regardless of whatever it is the AfD happen to be supporting. It can turn even the most ordinary routine legislation into dark evil malicious fascism.

The firewall against the AfD splits the right and so it is a great gift to the left.

For example, it’s the only reason the SPD has a say in the federal government after their disastrous showing in the traffic light coalition. It’s the only reason the left is still a force in East Germany outside Brandenburg at all. Should we get new elections, the firewall will probably bring the Greens into government too. If it didn’t exist, the left would have to invent it, that is how well the firewall is working out for them.

The AfD also benefits enormously from the firewall, even though it’s not of their making. The last ten years of German politics have been one unending nightmarish festival of failure and stupidity.

All the establishment parties have taken turns implicating themselves in this amazing shitshow, while religiously sparing the AfD any association with their unprecedented failures. The firewall lends truth to the AfD’s name; it has allowed Alternative für Deutschland to become the only conceivable political alternative in Germany. As things get worse and voters grow more desperate for alternatives, the AfD just becomes stronger. The firewall is an AfD-maximising machine.

The firewall is only really bad for the people who invented it and who alone have the power to end it. I speak here of the centre-right Union parties, the CDU and the CSU. They maintain the firewall not because it helps them or because it is a good idea or even because the AfD are evil fascists, but because the firewall has been endified.

In 2018, when the CDU first set up the firewall, it had a coherent purpose. It was supposed to be a means of keeping the AfD small by dissuading CDU supporters from defecting to their upstart rival. CDU leadership had seen how the rising Green Party ate into the support of the SPD after reunification, and they thought they could prevent the same thing from happening to them. They would have been better off doing nothing at all, because after seven years of firewall the AfD are stronger than the Greens ever were. The whole thing has become a lesson in why you should avoid heavy-handed interventions in complex systems and just govern pragmatically with whatever majorities are at hand.

Let us survey the damage: The firewall has helped the AfD supplant the CDU as the standard right-of-centre party across the entire East. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Sachsen-Anhalt, the Evil Hitler Fascists are within striking distance of outright majorities. Ballooning AfD popularity is fuelled by the failures of Merz’s federal government, where the firewall has locked the Union into a doomed coalition with the radicalised and hostile Social Democrats. The SPD have so far obstructed all major federal initiatives, probably for the purpose of hurting the CDU still further and driving them into the arms of the AfD. It is a strategy the left first tried during the federal election campaign, and one they have so far refused to abandon.

Various preeminent Union personalities, eager to stop the destruction of their party, have demanded a change in course. These firewall-rethinkers include former CDU General Secretary Peter Tauber – the very man who played a leading role in devising the firewall strategy in the first place. Shortly after Stern published Tauber’s mild and very careful dissent, a series of CDU politicians from East Germany lined up to say that they, too, would desperately like to see a new approach to the AfD. As I type this, CDU leadership have withdrawn for a highly secret meeting to discuss this dilemma and how they will deal with the AfD in the future.

Alas, endification is a powerful force. You can’t just turn it off. Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose political instincts rival those of most earthworms, has used the days and hours ahead of this meeting to sing the praises of the firewall. In response to a journalist’s question last Tuesday, Merz intoned absurdly and for no reason at all that “We are the firewall!” And yesterday, at some political event in Sauerland, he ruled out cooperation with the AfD in any form – “at least not under me as party leader of the CDU.” Merz further claimed that “there is no common ground between the CDU and the AfD” and complained that AfD opposition to the European Union, NATO and the European Monetary Union means that the party “is against everything that has made the Federal Republic of Germany great and strong over the past eight decades.”

An inability to articulate why we have to keep doing a senseless thing, and the proliferation of obviously fake reasons for said senseless thing, are among the most telltale symptoms of endification. Thus I invite you to appreciate how dumb Merz’s arguments are:

Whatever they got us in the past, EU initiatives and NATO-driven foreign policy are killing German industry. EU rules are presently blocking our attempts to increase natural gas power generation, without which our electricity grid will become totally unstable. The EU’s expanded Emissions Trading System (ETS2) from 2027 is set to make heating and transportation wildly more expensive than they have to be for zero reason. None of this is making Germany strong, but that’s not even the half of it. Lest you hope too hard that the AfD can fix any of this, you must remember that they can only govern federally with the CDU, and the Union will never go along with dropping the Euro, withdrawing from the EU or leaving NATO, even if the AfD were clearly demanding these things (which they’re mostly not). Merz’s objections are entirely moot.

The firewall has caused an enormous amount of potential energy to accumulate in the German political system. Only three resolutions are conceivable:

1) The CDU convinces the SPD or other partners on the left to implement some bare minimum of the reforms necessary to slow or even stop deindustrialisation, rein in the runaway costs of the social welfare state and do something about mass migration. This would reduce AfD support, particularly in the West, and ease pressure on the party system more generally.

2) The left parties goad the Union into successfully requesting that the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe ban the AfD. In an instant, the SPD, the Greens and Die Linke would have de facto majorities not only in the Bundestag but across the state parliaments. After this judicial revolution, we would probably find ourselves in a second DDR-style regime, ruled by an unpopular, threatened and highly repressive left.

3) The firewall breaks down and after a substantial internal struggle, the CDU pursues some form of cooperation with the AfD federally. The left parties would turn on the Union across Germany, and the CDU would have to seek outright coalitions or toleration arrangements with the AfD in many state parliaments too. The political realignment would happen suddenly, in less than a few months.

Of these three possibilities, 1) seems stupid and inconceivable. If the left were committed to governing with the Union, they would already be doing that. The nightmare disaster of 2) can only happen if the Union are dumb enough to let it, which indeed is possible, but I still favour 3) as the most likely outcome. At some point, in a way that is as yet unimaginable to us, the firewall will probably come down. The sooner this happens, the better it will be for the CDU. As the Union dithers, they are losing ground they may never regain and all the while more explosive energy is accumulating in the party system.

If Union leadership were minimally rational, they would stop making public statements about how bad the AfD are and begin preparing this strategic shift behind the scenes, with all the bullying, bribing, threatening and coaxing that will require. Ten years of AfD demonisation have made this a mammoth task. But they are not doing that, because endification has made them stupid. They have to make things much, much worse for themselves first, only to end up in the same place two or three years later than they would’ve otherwise – poorer, weaker and worse off.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/20/2025 - 03:30

The Rise & Rise Of AfD: Exploring The Unprecedented Political Dumbassery Afoot In The Federal Republic

Authored by 'eugyppius' via A Plague Chronicle,

The firewall is making AfD the strongest party in Germany, artificially empowering the left and destroying the centre-right, who alone can lift it

There’s a subtle, little-discussed but very bizarre political phenomenon that has interested me ever since I started blogging and paying serious attention to politics.

I first noticed it during Covid. Back in those dark days, virus understanders sold measures like lockdowns and masking to the public first as a means of keeping hospitals at capacity by slowing virus infections, then as a means of slowing virus infections just because, and finally as rituals that we had to do more of whenever infections rose, regardless of what effect they had on anything. Mass vaccination followed a nearly identical arc. At first the vaccinators said everyone had to be vaccinated to stop the virus, but by late Autumn 2021 they wanted to vaccinate everybody as much as possible because reasons. In both cases you could see, in real time, the ends towards which we were striving regressing, until finally the means became unquestionable ends in themselves.

I propose to call this phenomenon endification, and I think it is very significant.

It seems to happen whenever you mobilise large, complex systems towards goals that sooner or later prove unattainable. As these goals pass out of reach but the system remains mobilised, basic understandings of what we are even trying to do shift. The erstwhile means become almost sacred, worthy of pursuing in themselves, often for moral reasons. This can go on for a very long time even though it makes no sense and is painfully retarded.

Germany seems especially prone to endification, probably for cultural reasons stemming from our pathological commitment to thoroughness.

We have to do things longer and harder than everybody else, always with an aura of breathless moral urgency and self-importance. Imagine shades of Covid idiocy happening in many different political domains all the time. Our climate policies have long since become endified, the nuclear phaseout was endified and many aspects of mass migration have been endified.

The brings me to the crazy and ridiculous firewall against the AfD – the unending Antifa-enforced political tabu upon achieving anything with AfD votes at the state or federal level. AfD support is held to be contaminating, regardless of whatever it is the AfD happen to be supporting. It can turn even the most ordinary routine legislation into dark evil malicious fascism.

The firewall against the AfD splits the right and so it is a great gift to the left.

For example, it’s the only reason the SPD has a say in the federal government after their disastrous showing in the traffic light coalition. It’s the only reason the left is still a force in East Germany outside Brandenburg at all. Should we get new elections, the firewall will probably bring the Greens into government too. If it didn’t exist, the left would have to invent it, that is how well the firewall is working out for them.

The AfD also benefits enormously from the firewall, even though it’s not of their making. The last ten years of German politics have been one unending nightmarish festival of failure and stupidity.

All the establishment parties have taken turns implicating themselves in this amazing shitshow, while religiously sparing the AfD any association with their unprecedented failures. The firewall lends truth to the AfD’s name; it has allowed Alternative für Deutschland to become the only conceivable political alternative in Germany. As things get worse and voters grow more desperate for alternatives, the AfD just becomes stronger. The firewall is an AfD-maximising machine.

The firewall is only really bad for the people who invented it and who alone have the power to end it. I speak here of the centre-right Union parties, the CDU and the CSU. They maintain the firewall not because it helps them or because it is a good idea or even because the AfD are evil fascists, but because the firewall has been endified.

In 2018, when the CDU first set up the firewall, it had a coherent purpose. It was supposed to be a means of keeping the AfD small by dissuading CDU supporters from defecting to their upstart rival. CDU leadership had seen how the rising Green Party ate into the support of the SPD after reunification, and they thought they could prevent the same thing from happening to them. They would have been better off doing nothing at all, because after seven years of firewall the AfD are stronger than the Greens ever were. The whole thing has become a lesson in why you should avoid heavy-handed interventions in complex systems and just govern pragmatically with whatever majorities are at hand.

Let us survey the damage: The firewall has helped the AfD supplant the CDU as the standard right-of-centre party across the entire East. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Sachsen-Anhalt, the Evil Hitler Fascists are within striking distance of outright majorities. Ballooning AfD popularity is fuelled by the failures of Merz’s federal government, where the firewall has locked the Union into a doomed coalition with the radicalised and hostile Social Democrats. The SPD have so far obstructed all major federal initiatives, probably for the purpose of hurting the CDU still further and driving them into the arms of the AfD. It is a strategy the left first tried during the federal election campaign, and one they have so far refused to abandon.

Various preeminent Union personalities, eager to stop the destruction of their party, have demanded a change in course. These firewall-rethinkers include former CDU General Secretary Peter Tauber – the very man who played a leading role in devising the firewall strategy in the first place. Shortly after Stern published Tauber’s mild and very careful dissent, a series of CDU politicians from East Germany lined up to say that they, too, would desperately like to see a new approach to the AfD. As I type this, CDU leadership have withdrawn for a highly secret meeting to discuss this dilemma and how they will deal with the AfD in the future.

Alas, endification is a powerful force. You can’t just turn it off. Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose political instincts rival those of most earthworms, has used the days and hours ahead of this meeting to sing the praises of the firewall. In response to a journalist’s question last Tuesday, Merz intoned absurdly and for no reason at all that “We are the firewall!” And yesterday, at some political event in Sauerland, he ruled out cooperation with the AfD in any form – “at least not under me as party leader of the CDU.” Merz further claimed that “there is no common ground between the CDU and the AfD” and complained that AfD opposition to the European Union, NATO and the European Monetary Union means that the party “is against everything that has made the Federal Republic of Germany great and strong over the past eight decades.”

An inability to articulate why we have to keep doing a senseless thing, and the proliferation of obviously fake reasons for said senseless thing, are among the most telltale symptoms of endification. Thus I invite you to appreciate how dumb Merz’s arguments are:

Whatever they got us in the past, EU initiatives and NATO-driven foreign policy are killing German industry. EU rules are presently blocking our attempts to increase natural gas power generation, without which our electricity grid will become totally unstable. The EU’s expanded Emissions Trading System (ETS2) from 2027 is set to make heating and transportation wildly more expensive than they have to be for zero reason. None of this is making Germany strong, but that’s not even the half of it. Lest you hope too hard that the AfD can fix any of this, you must remember that they can only govern federally with the CDU, and the Union will never go along with dropping the Euro, withdrawing from the EU or leaving NATO, even if the AfD were clearly demanding these things (which they’re mostly not). Merz’s objections are entirely moot.

The firewall has caused an enormous amount of potential energy to accumulate in the German political system. Only three resolutions are conceivable:

1) The CDU convinces the SPD or other partners on the left to implement some bare minimum of the reforms necessary to slow or even stop deindustrialisation, rein in the runaway costs of the social welfare state and do something about mass migration. This would reduce AfD support, particularly in the West, and ease pressure on the party system more generally.

2) The left parties goad the Union into successfully requesting that the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe ban the AfD. In an instant, the SPD, the Greens and Die Linke would have de facto majorities not only in the Bundestag but across the state parliaments. After this judicial revolution, we would probably find ourselves in a second DDR-style regime, ruled by an unpopular, threatened and highly repressive left.

3) The firewall breaks down and after a substantial internal struggle, the CDU pursues some form of cooperation with the AfD federally. The left parties would turn on the Union across Germany, and the CDU would have to seek outright coalitions or toleration arrangements with the AfD in many state parliaments too. The political realignment would happen suddenly, in less than a few months.

Of these three possibilities, 1) seems stupid and inconceivable. If the left were committed to governing with the Union, they would already be doing that. The nightmare disaster of 2) can only happen if the Union are dumb enough to let it, which indeed is possible, but I still favour 3) as the most likely outcome. At some point, in a way that is as yet unimaginable to us, the firewall will probably come down. The sooner this happens, the better it will be for the CDU. As the Union dithers, they are losing ground they may never regain and all the while more explosive energy is accumulating in the party system.

If Union leadership were minimally rational, they would stop making public statements about how bad the AfD are and begin preparing this strategic shift behind the scenes, with all the bullying, bribing, threatening and coaxing that will require. Ten years of AfD demonisation have made this a mammoth task. But they are not doing that, because endification has made them stupid. They have to make things much, much worse for themselves first, only to end up in the same place two or three years later than they would’ve otherwise – poorer, weaker and worse off.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/20/2025 - 03:30

Europe Generates The Most Electronic Waste

Every person in the world generates on average around 8 kilograms of electronic waste per year worldwide.

However, there are significant regional differences.

As Statista's Valentina Fourreau shows in the chart below, using data from the latest E-Waste Monitor, Europe leads the way with around 17 kilograms of electronic waste per inhabitant, while each person in Africa generates only 2.5 kilograms.

You will find more infographics at Statista

At the same time, Europe has the highest recycling rate at 43 per cent.

Asia and Africa have the most catching up to do, with e-waste recycling rates of 12 and 1 per cent respectively.

Only just under a fifth of the electronic waste generated worldwide is currently officially collected and recycled.

The remaining quantities of electronic waste were collected unofficially, partially recycled or disposed of as residual waste and sent to landfill.

This gap between official and unofficial collection and recycling statistics varies greatly between different regions.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/20/2025 - 02:45

Europe Generates The Most Electronic Waste

Every person in the world generates on average around 8 kilograms of electronic waste per year worldwide.

However, there are significant regional differences.

As Statista's Valentina Fourreau shows in the chart below, using data from the latest E-Waste Monitor, Europe leads the way with around 17 kilograms of electronic waste per inhabitant, while each person in Africa generates only 2.5 kilograms.

You will find more infographics at Statista

At the same time, Europe has the highest recycling rate at 43 per cent.

Asia and Africa have the most catching up to do, with e-waste recycling rates of 12 and 1 per cent respectively.

Only just under a fifth of the electronic waste generated worldwide is currently officially collected and recycled.

The remaining quantities of electronic waste were collected unofficially, partially recycled or disposed of as residual waste and sent to landfill.

This gap between official and unofficial collection and recycling statistics varies greatly between different regions.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/20/2025 - 02:45

Merz, EU Bureaucracy, And Germany's Illusion Of Reform

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

In his government statement on October 16, Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticized European overregulation. He cited his own program for cutting bureaucracy in Germany. In reality, however, new layers of bureaucracy are being created domestically. Once again, Merz engaged in political shadow-boxing with his party colleague Ursula von der Leyen.

Chancellor Merz is proving to be a master of shadow-boxing and diversionary tactics. In his Thursday address, he used the EU Commission as a rhetorical punching bag, airing his frustration amid growing criticism of his government’s course.

He stated explicitly, referring to Ursula von der Leyen’s regulatory agenda: “Enough of the regulatory frenzy, faster procedures, open markets, more innovation, more competition. These are the goals we must achieve.” He added: “We don’t need more rules; we need fewer rules, better rules.”

The EU as Punching Bag 

And there it was again: the EU Commission as the punching bag for domestic failures. Merz is certainly correct in substance. Brussels is a regulatory leviathan, a bureaucratic mold suffocating economic processes across the European Union and stifling any hope for growth and innovation.

Yet it would be facile to blame Germany’s economic malaise solely on Ursula von der Leyen. Bureaucracy champion Germany has, through the adoption of grotesque EU regulations and on its own initiative, built a bloated administrative apparatus that costs the economy roughly €60 billion annually in direct costs. Including lost profits and other opportunity costs, the ifo Institute calculates a staggering €146 billion per year – a catastrophe.

For this reason, Merz announced a bureaucracy-cutting program: 25% of direct costs, or roughly €16 billion annually, should be saved, and 8% of public service staff reduced. In theory.

Theory vs. Reality 

In practice, the picture is different. One of the first acts of the new chancellor was creating a Ministry for Digital Affairs – an additional layer of superfluous ministerial bureaucracy. At the same time, the government is rolling out its mammoth debt package: a €500 billion special fund to be distributed over the next ten years.

These processes are not only costly but extremely personnel-intensive. Past state interventions illustrate the trajectory: the energy price brake – the infamous “double whammy” program under Chancellor Olaf Scholz – consumed around €200 billion and required more than 5,000 new administrative posts. The Climate and Transformation Fund, totaling €212 billion, added about 8,000 full-time positions across ministries, development banks, and partner institutions.

From these experiences, we know: every new state subsidy billion generates up to 25 new bureaucratic posts. With growing complexity, that number rises further. Accordingly, the government’s new debt initiative will likely create between 12,000 and 15,000 additional full-time public service positions. So much for bureaucracy reduction.

The Brussels Teflon Layer 

Of course, the chancellor’s critique of Brussels’ over-bureaucracy will simply slide off, like a Teflon coating. Brussels remains steadfast, defending its eco-socialist regulatory agenda and marching toward further centralization.

The explicit goal: concentrate political power in the hands of the EU Commission – at any cost. The EU has trapped itself in a centrally planned eco-socialism, losing the path toward a market-driven, decentralized allocation of power and economic processes.

In recent years, Brussels’ regulatory frenzy has only intensified, following a clear pattern. Laws like the Supply Chain Act exemplify how the sprawling Euro-bureaucracy permeates every level of economic activity with brute force and self-assuredness.

Only a bureaucrat could conceive forcing internationally competitive companies to meticulously document and align all processes with politically defined social and environmental mandates – irrespective of market competition or their limited pricing power.

Bureaucracy has taken on a life of its own, driven by power expansion. Bigger budgets, more subsidies – a self-reinforcing redistribution apparatus without political oversight, growing ever larger.

Continuing the Rhythm 

One recent example of grotesque, ideologically twisted EU regulation lies, unsurprisingly, in energy policy. Brussels has crafted, with a mix of hubris and detachment from reality, rules that are pushing the European gas market toward a geopolitical self-blockade.

At the center: new methane limits and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), passed in May 2024. What sounds like climate protection on paper could, in practice, destabilize Europe’s most vital energy source. “The worst, most irresponsible piece of legislation I've ever seen passed anywhere in the world,” said ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods at the Energy Intelligence Forum 2025 in London.

The methane regulation will require all producers, exporters, and importers supplying gas to Europe to report annual methane emissions – even if the producing countries are outside the EU. By 2030, importers must prove compliance with as-yet undefined methane limits, or face hefty fines. The CSDDD simultaneously obliges companies to conduct comprehensive sustainability reporting – even if their exposure to the EU market is indirect.

Nothing New Under the Euro Sun 

For the U.S., currently Europe’s largest LNG supplier with 56% import share, this grotesque regulation feels like a de facto attack amid the ongoing trade frictions with the EU. Industry insiders openly admit the new rules are practically impossible to meet. The EU could see a sharp LNG import decline by 2026 – at a time when energy security, amid the chaos of renewables, has become a strategic survival issue.

In this context, we must conclude: the chancellor’s criticism of the EU and his bureaucracy-cutting program are nothing more than media smokescreens. In reality, Friedrich Merz shares the principle of central planning and state control of economic processes. Merz is, at heart, a supporter of the Brussels line. His supposed power struggle with Ursula von der Leyen is carefully choreographed theater.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/20/2025 - 02:00

Has Xi Jinping Lost Control Of China's Military... And China Itself?

Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

On October 17, China's Ministry of National Defense announced that the Communist Party's Central Committee and Central Military Commission had, after investigations, removed nine senior officers from their posts in the People's Liberation Army.

Pictured: General He attends the opening ceremony of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing on March 4, 2025.

The stunning announcement occurred on the eve of the long-delayed Fourth Plenum of the Party's 20th Central Committee, scheduled to start tomorrow, October 20, and continue for four days. On the agenda are crucial economic matters, including the country's 15th Five-Year Plan, which covers the rest of the decade, 2026-2030.

Analysts are also looking for hints whether the Party, at the plenum, will announce changes in its leadership.

If Xi Jinping, the Party's general secretary and chairman of its Central Military Commission, was responsible for the just-announced removals of the flag officers, he will undoubtedly emerge from the plenum as strong as ever, perhaps even stronger.

If, as is more likely, Xi's enemies arranged the removals, China will almost certainly have a new leader soon. Xi's position would be untenable.

Who, then, was responsible for the announced changes?

Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported that Xi was the one who removed the nine officers.

That conclusion, at least at first glance, seems logical. After all, Xi has been powerful for a long time, so it is natural that journalists ascribe every significant action in China to him. In fact, at one time he had almost complete control over the People's Liberation Army, which reports not to the Chinese state but to the Communist Party. Xi's major reorganization of the PLA, conducted in the middle of last decade, and his periodic "corruption" purges gave him the opportunity to install loyalists.

"In most systems, repeated purges of senior military leaders would trigger crisis or resistance," Craig Singleton of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told the Times.

"Xi's ability to churn and burn through top generals without sparking significant institutional pushback reveals the strength, not fragility, of his rule."

Xi may be purging his own people, but that is not the most likely explanation. Beginning July 9, 2024, PLA Daily, the Chinese military's main propaganda organ, ran a series of articles praising "collective leadership," a clear criticism of Xi's demand for complete obedience.

These articles were written by those aligned with the No. 1-ranked uniformed officer, Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Gen. Zhang Youxia, and could not have appeared if Xi were in complete control of the military. Zhang is known to be a political enemy of Xi.

Tellingly, the most senior of the nine officers axed on the 17th was General He Weidong, the second-ranked vice chairman of the Commission and Xi Jinping's No. 1 loyalist in the PLA. The general had gained prominence as Xi's top enforcer in the military.

Gen. He was last seen in public on March 11. On Friday, the Defense Ministry reported that he had been expelled from the Party pending ratification at a plenary session of the Central Committee, and his case had been transferred to a military procuratorate "for review and prosecution."

On October 18, PLA Daily issued an editorial stating Gen. He and the eight others had been "disloyal." The publication indirectly referred to them as "hidden tumors."

Gen. He was not the only officer who backed Xi and has now been taken out of the military's leadership ranks. Moreover, it is difficult to identify any Xi adversary who was purged in the last 18 months.

"The continuation of the purges is hard to explain if Xi dominates the political system because his supporters are now being purged," Charles Burton of the Prague-based Sinopsis think tank told this author in July, after a previous round of firings.

"Sometimes the simplest explanations are the most credible. The simplest explanation is that Xi's enemies—not Xi himself—removed Xi's loyalists."

The People's Liberation Army is the most important faction in the Party. "Mao Zedong famously said, 'political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,' a principle that may now be turned against Xi Jinping," Burton, also a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing, remarked on Friday.

"In the armed forces, dissent is growing amid his regime's economic and social failures," Burton continued, referring to Xi.

"The Fourth Plenum poses a direct threat to his leadership. Even if he survives this meeting, the internal pressures suggest his grip on power is more fragile than ever."

Throughout this year, there have also been reports of continuing struggles in Communist Party civilian circles.

It is unlikely, at a time Xi Jinping appears to be fighting for political survival, that he would remove his most important supporter in the military. It is far more probable that Xi has lost control of the People's Liberation Army, especially because the removals strengthen Gen. Zhang, Xi's adversary.

"Party elders believe they cannot allow the leadership struggle to continue beyond the Fourth Plenum," Blaine Holt, a retired U.S. Air Force general who follows Chinese politics, told Gatestone after the Defense Ministry's announcement.

China, by Thursday, could have a new leader. Or a new round of purges.

Either way, there will be blood on the floor, at least figuratively.

*  *  *

Gordon G. Chang is the author of Plan Red: China's Project to Destroy America, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.

Tyler Durden Sun, 10/19/2025 - 23:55

Disputed Thai-Cambodian Border Still Tense Despite Ceasefire

Fighting between Thailand and Cambodia stopped after five days of clashes in July that left dozens dead, according to Nikkei Asia.

ASEAN hopes to formalize a broader ceasefire at its Oct. 26 summit in Kuala Lumpur, to be witnessed by U.S. President Donald Trump. But tensions along the border remain unresolved.

In Thailand’s Sa Kaeo province, hundreds of Cambodians ignored an order to leave Ban Nong Ya Kaeo and Ban Nong Chan — two contested villages where Thai forces demolished Cambodian checkpoints in July. The sites are now fenced with razor wire and monitored by floodlights and CCTV, but the Thai military has not enforced the eviction. “That is the governor’s deadline, but we have our own,” a senior Thai army officer told Nikkei Asia.

The border dispute traces back more than a century. The “Siamese-Cambodian border was [partly] demarcated based on the watershed as indicated in a map sketched in 1904 by the supposed ‘joint committee’ consisting of Siamese and French surveyors,” Thai historian Charnvit Kasetsiri wrote in Preah Vihear. The authors noted that “Siam did not protest the map. In fact, during King Vajiravudh's reign (1910–1926), a French map was even reproduced as the official map of Siam.”

Cambodia later brought the matter before the International Court of Justice in the 1960s over the temple known as Khao Phra Viharn in Thailand and Prasat Preah Vihear in Cambodia. The ruling favored Phnom Penh, leaving Bangkok wary of international arbitration ever since.

The 817-kilometer border remains only partly defined. Of 73 French-era markers, several are missing or contested. In Ta Phraya district, only the locations of markers 32 and 37 are agreed upon; 33 to 36 are still disputed, and one is missing entirely.

Nikkei writes that mapping discrepancies continue to complicate demarcation. Thailand uses a 1:50,000-scale chart, while Cambodia relies on a 1:200,000 version. “A millimeter could mean three to four kilometers,” said historian Thongchai Winichakul, author of Siam Mapped. “And the two maps are not compatible because [of] their methodology.”

Maj. Gen. Winthai Suwaree, spokesperson for the Royal Thai Army, defended Thailand’s map as “more accurate than the 1:200,000 map. We can see it from aerial photos,” he told Nikkei. “Originally there were no inhabitants. More people have gradually moved in every year, and so we must get serious about it.”

The main trade gate between Aranyaprathet and Cambodia’s Poipet, closed in July, is not expected to reopen this year.

Former Thai foreign minister Tej Bunnag wrote in a 2020 memoir that “our border must be scientifically demarcated from the Gulf [of Thailand] to Ubon Ratchathani,” adding that locating markers in Trat province would allow both countries to “negotiate how to share the natural gas off the Thai-Cambodian coast — as we did with Malaysia.”

Progress has stalled amid political caution and rising nationalism. “Right now, as long as both sides like to claim so much unrealistically, and don’t observe scientific facts, the best solution is just to sit tight and do nothing,” Thongchai said. “Many border demarcation committees around Thailand use that tactic [...] because scientifically you can solve it, but politically you cannot. The crazy thing is that I think that’s smart.”

Tyler Durden Sun, 10/19/2025 - 22:45

Boeing 747 Cargo Jet Veers Off Hong Kong Runway, Breaks Apart In Water

Flight-tracking website Flightradar24 reports that an Air ACT (ACT Airlines) Boeing 747-481 BDSF (a variant of the Boeing 747 cargo aircraft) veered off the runway at Hong Kong International Airport at 03:53 local time (19:53 UTC) and broke apart after hitting water at a ground speed of 49 knots.

According the ADS-B data AirACT flight #EK9788 went off the runway on landing in Hong Kong at 03:53 local time (19:53 UTC). pic.twitter.com/1w2hl86eGW

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) October 19, 2025

“According to ADS-B data, flight #EK9788 had a ground speed of about 49 knots when it hit the water,” Flightradar24 wrote on X.

According to ADS-B data, flight #EK9788 had a ground speed of about 49 knots when it hit the water. pic.twitter.com/pqFyMOCw38

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) October 19, 2025

Local outlet The Standard reported:

"A cargo plane arriving from Dubai ran off the runway and tumbled into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early Monday, crashing into a ground-service vehicle and leaving two workers missing. Sources said the freighter struck a ground-service vehicle, shearing off one of its wheels, before coming to rest with its nose over the seawall. The four crew members on board escaped unhurt, but two ground staff inside the vehicle remain missing."

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Tyler Durden Sun, 10/19/2025 - 19:20

Upper West Side Runs Out Of New Homes Despite Sky-High Prices And Incoming Communist Mayor

Even as housing prices look stretched and a divisive new mayor prepares to take office, Manhattan’s Upper West Side is running short on new homes, according to Bloomberg.

Only 51 new condo units are expected to be completed in the neighborhood through 2028, according to Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group — a 94% drop from the 869 units added between 2016 and 2019. It’s the steepest decline among Manhattan neighborhoods tracked by the firm.

The shortage comes as demand for new construction surges. “There’s been more demand on new stuff than ever before,” said Lisa Lippman, a broker at Brown Harris Stevens. “We saw people turn away from prewars for new development with central air and instant gratification.”

Buyers have been favoring move-in-ready condos over older co-ops, deterred by renovation costs and strict board rules. In the third quarter, sales at new developments jumped 41% from a year earlier, while resales were largely flat, Corcoran data show. The neighborhood’s median price rose 8%, and homes spent a median of just 76 days on the market — the fastest in Manhattan, according to StreetEasy.

Developers have reaped the benefits. The Henry, a 45-unit project on West 84th Street by Naftali Group, is 70% sold since its September 2024 launch. Toll Brothers’ 81-unit Rockwell on West 103rd Street is 86% sold, according to Marketproof. Overall, new Upper West Side projects have sold 66% of their units, outpacing Manhattan’s 55% average.

But prices remain steep. The lowest sale at Extell Development’s 50 W. 66th St. came in at $3.6 million, while resale condos averaged $1.6 million in the third quarter. “Just like with anything, when there’s demand and little inventory, the price of Upper West Side apartments will go up,” said Miki Naftali, chief executive officer of Naftali Group.

Bloomberg writes that the pipeline is drying up for structural reasons as well. The Upper West Side has few conversion-ready office buildings and is heavily constrained by historic-district rules. Local resistance to taller towers has intensified, with lawsuits targeting Extell’s 69-story 50 W. 66th St. project, where a penthouse is listed for $85 million. Extell’s next plan — a 1,200-foot tower at the former ABC headquarters — would be the neighborhood’s tallest. The developer said it “is prepared to collaborate with community leaders” and has “voluntarily proposed” adding affordable units.

A 2019 law effectively shut down another source of new supply: rental-to-condo conversions. “Rental-to-condo conversions were one of the faster ways to add for-sale inventory and were a significant contributor to supply in the past,” said John Tashjian of Centurion Real Estate Partners. “That opportunity is closed.”

High borrowing costs and expensive land have made entry-level projects “almost impossible,” said Kelly Mack, president of Corcoran Sunshine. “It’s almost impossible to bring to market a building where they can sell at the entry-level price point.”

For longtime residents, the result is a neighborhood that feels increasingly out of reach. “These days, you have to be really rich to live here,” said Marcia Kaufman, 70, a retired teacher who recently bought an apartment at 212 W. 72nd St. “For families, it’s very, very difficult. There’s not enough space — and what you’re getting for what you’re paying isn’t much.”

We'll see how long this condo shortage lasts once Mayor Mamdani gets his hands on the city...

Tyler Durden Sun, 10/19/2025 - 19:15

"I've Never Seen Anything Like This": One Bullion Dealer Sees A Rupture In Gold And Silver Markets

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

When silver surged to multi-year highs, veteran bullion dealer Andy Schectman didn’t see just another price move—he saw a rupture in the foundation of the global metals market.

In a wide-ranging interview last week, Schectman argued that what’s happening now represents the physical market finally “calling the bluff” of decades of paper manipulation.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he began, emphasizing that this was not mere volatility. “Backwardation… shows extreme delivery stress… It’s the market exposing the shortages of physical silver, the frailty of the paper promises.”

For Schectman, “backwardation”—when spot prices exceed futures prices—isn’t just a technical quirk. It’s the alarm bell that the supply of real metal is running thin. He believes the era when investors could comfortably rely on “paper silver” derivatives is ending.

“People have accepted paper promises for a very long time and I think that’s coming to an end,” he said. “This is decisively bullish for silver and other precious metals.”

When asked what’s actually driving this rupture, Schectman pointed to signs of stress that only appear when market structures break down. Spot prices are now higher than future delivery prices—something, he said, “very rare” in silver and “a signal of desperate demand.” Lease rates in London, normally a fraction of a percent, “jumped up over 39%.” The picture he painted was one of panic beneath the surface.

“In London they have a 140 million ounce float, yet they’re trading 600 million ounces a day… There’s over two billion ounces in paper claims out there on a float of 140 million.”

In Schectman’s view, London is the epicenter of a quiet crisis, where years of “rehypothecation”—multiple claims on the same bars—are being exposed. “It’s being called under the carpet,” he warned.

Pressed on what happens when this paper structure breaks, he compared it to a run on a bank. When short sellers can’t find metal to deliver, and borrowing costs soar, margin calls start hitting.

“You’re beginning to see margin calls… they’re not able to get the silver to cover their position,” he said. “That’s when things begin to get very, very, very interesting.”

In the short term, he acknowledged, the chaos could create sharp swings—“liquidations and survival-driven selling”—but he sees that as temporary. “Once forced selling ends, the physical scarcity starts to dominate and silver sustains its higher prices $50 plus.” In the long run, he sees this as a system reset: “If confidence in this paper system collapses, a structural repricing of silver begins.”

Schectman doesn’t just lean on sentiment. He draws on chart analysis to argue that the market structure itself supports much higher prices. Describing a multi-decade “double cup and handle” formation stretching back to the 1980s, he claimed that silver’s breakout above $50 could technically project prices as high as $96.

“You take the distance from the bottom… from 50 to 4… and you add it to the top… the next target… is $96,” he explained.

Still, he conceded that nothing moves in a straight line. “There will be volatility,” he said, but he believes that each pullback will merely reset the stage for a higher base.

When the conversation turned macro, Schectman zoomed out. To him, this isn’t just about silver—it’s about the U.S. dollar and a global shift away from Western financial dominance.

“It’s not gold and silver going higher. It is the dollar losing ground and losing value,” he said, describing the currency as “a melting ice cube.”

He linked that decline to what he sees as an intentional policy effort to devalue the dollar in order to bring back U.S. manufacturing. Referencing former Trump adviser Judy Shelton and market analyst Luke Gromen, he speculated that policymakers may even be planning to quietly peg long-term U.S. Treasury debt to gold.

“If they back the back end of the Treasury market with gold and let gold slowly… go higher… you’re doing it to let the dollar devalue,” he said. “The biggest money in the world… the institutional traders who are standing for delivery left and right… they know what’s coming.”

Schectman’s thesis, then, is that the metals rally is not a speculative mania but a symptom of a global monetary adjustment. “This is the dollar devaluation trade,” he said flatly.

When asked how these stresses are playing out in his business, Schectman’s answer was direct: premiums are exploding and spreads are widening. He pointed to the backwardation gap as evidence of dealers’ exposure.

“We were about a $3 spread between the futures price and the spot price,” he said. “For dealers who have to buy metal at X, they can’t hedge it anywhere near X… So you’re exposed.”

That exposure is showing up in retail pricing. “Every major dealer in America right now is north of six, seven, eight an ounce over spot… just like that,” he said of Silver Eagle coins. On gold, he added, “Our cost on Gold Buffaloes is north of $200 over spot before we make a penny.”

He blames much of this on bottlenecks at the U.S. Mint, which he calls “the model of inefficiency,” unable to produce enough supply when demand spikes. But he also says premiums reflect a deeper issue—the public’s growing insistence on physical metal rather than paper exposure.

Schectman was even harsher when asked about exchange-traded funds like SLV and GLD.

“SLV and GLD… read pages 6 through 12 titled risk factors,” he warned, calling them “a scam” in essence. “I wouldn’t put my money in to save my life.”

[QTR: Pay attention here. I would also not use SLV or GLD to get long-term exposure to gold and silver. I would own the Sprott funds instead, if I needed to own something other than physical.]

He drew a bright line between paper and physical ownership.

“You can own physical metal within your IRA… you can say send me my metal… you can’t ever take possession of GLD and SLV.”

That distinction—between real custody and paper claims—runs through his entire worldview. “If you don’t hold it, you don’t really have it,” he repeated.

Schectman also noted a dramatic shift in customer behavior.

“We’re seeing nothing in the way of selling,” he said. “The big money has been doing this now for the last six months.”

Institutional investors, he claims, have been aggressively buying gold and silver, while wholesalers and refiners, lulled by a year of low demand, are now scrambling to catch up. “It will go from an environment of high prices… to people saying, ‘I can’t get it easily. It’s disappearing.’ And just like that, it will disappear.”

When asked about supply constraints, he pointed to both natural and industrial limits. Silver, he said, is being mined less each year, and only a fraction comes from dedicated silver mines. At the same time, industrial demand—from solar panels to electric vehicles—is surging.

“On top of an expansion in demand, you have a decrease,” he said. “It’s disappearing in nature.”

That dual squeeze makes silver, in his words, “a once-in-a-generation… shift into an asset that has been controlled by the West forever on leverage futures contracts.”

When asked if it was “too late” for new buyers, Schectman was pragmatic. He doesn’t dismiss the possibility of a pullback, but he argues that waiting for the perfect entry is risky.

“Cost average. Cost average is the only way to smooth out the uncertainty curve,” he said.

He recommends investors “build a core position first, then keep averaging,” suggesting pre-1965 U.S. coins—so-called “constitutional silver”—as “the best value by far… not even close really.” For buyers who prefer one-ounce coins, he notes that Maples, Britannias, Kangaroos, Philharmonics, and Krugerrands currently offer better value than Silver Eagles, though the Eagles have stronger liquidity.

He also cautioned against rotating out of silver into gold just yet.

“It’s not time to trade your silver for gold yet,”

he said, though he added that “gold’s going to go higher than anyone thinks possible.”

Schectman also drew a line between what the public is doing and what the insiders are doing. Retail investors, he noted, are still heavily exposed to stocks and options, while “the big money” is quietly moving into hard assets. “The public is all loaded into the equity market,” he said, “and the big money is leaving… standing for delivery on physical metal.”

In his mind, that divergence tells the story. The institutions aren’t chasing speculation—they’re moving to safety. And individuals, he argues, should follow. The goal isn’t short-term profit, it’s preservation.

“Buying gold and silver right now is not—you’re not buying it to get wealthy. You’re buying it because it is wealth.”

That line captures the ethos behind his warnings. Schectman sees backwardation, soaring lease rates, and a widening gap between physical and paper prices as signs that a generational shift is underway. He believes policy winds are turning toward deliberate dollar devaluation and that the market, quietly but surely, is repricing real assets accordingly. Whether one agrees with his interpretation or not, the conditions he describes—spot over futures, spiking premiums, and delivery stress—fit the profile of a market where confidence in paper promises is giving way to the demand for something tangible.

“The rush for gold and silver is real,” he concluded. “It’s intensifying.”

Watch Andy’s full interview hourlong interview here. And read my 10 areas of the market I'd be avoiding at all costs here. 

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.

This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions. All positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. If you see numbers and calculations of any sort, assume they are wrong and double check them. I failed Algebra in 8th grade and topped off my high school math accolades by getting a D- in remedial Calculus my senior year, before becoming an English major in college so I could bullshit my way through things easier.

The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

Tyler Durden Sun, 10/19/2025 - 15:10

Watch: US Military Strikes "Very Large" Drug-Carrying Submarine In Caribbean

President Trump confirmed that U.S. forces "destroyed a very large drug-carrying submarine" off the coast of Venezuela - the sixth such strike on narco-vessels in recent weeks. The operation highlights a broader military reposturing toward hemispheric defense after three decades of endless wars in the Middle East, a strategic and urgent realignment we've told readers would unfold at the start of the year. In essence, Trump's move to clean up the Western Hemisphere (Monroe Doctrine 2.0), dismantle the command-and-control structures of transnational cartels and narco-terror groups, and purge these criminals from the financial system comes as the U.S. reasserts security across the Americas. 

Late Saturday afternoon, Trump wrote on Truth Social:

It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route. U.S. Intelligence confirmed this vessel was loaded up with mostly Fentanyl, and other illegal narcotics. There were four known narcoterrorists on board the vessel. Two of the terrorists were killed. At least 25,000 Americans would die if I allowed this submarine to come ashore. The two surviving terrorists are being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution. No U.S. Forces were harmed in this strike. Under my watch, the United States of America will not tolerate narcoterrorists trafficking illegal drugs, by land or by sea. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

President Donald Trump and the Pentagon's public affairs team both shared a video showing U.S. air assets destroying the "drug-carrying submarine." However, no details were provided regarding the type of aircraft or weapons used in the strike.

. @POTUS “It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route. U.S. Intelligence confirmed this vessel was loaded up with mostly Fentanyl, and other illegal narcotics.… pic.twitter.com/0j3sOLNygp

— DOW Rapid Response (@DOWResponse) October 18, 2025

Our explanation above about the U.S. military reposturing to fulfill Trump's Monroe Doctrine 2.0 also includes breaking the death loop of subsidized Chinese fentanyl precursor chemicals shipped to the Americas, and then cooked by drug cartels, that have in return flooded the nation during Biden-Harris regime's globalist aligned nation-killing open orders (borders have since been shut) that contirubted to the worst drug-death overdose crisis this nation has ever seen - over 100,000 men and women died each year. 

China's irregular warfare campaign - death by 1,000 paper cuts - has been an aggressive, multifaceted "total war" against the U.S. that leverages next-generation weapons (view weapons here), including synthetic narcotics (e.g., fentanyl and cannabinoids), bioweapons (e.g., Covid-19), psychological manipulation and influence (e.g., TikTok), and a broad arsenal of irregular warfare tools, according to CCP BioThreats Initiative and authored by Dr. Ryan Clarke, LJ Eads, Dr. Robert McCreight, and Dr. Xiaoxu Sean Lin, outlined in their book China's Total War Strategy: Next-Generation Weapons of Mass Destruction. 

In short, viewing Trump's military reposturing through the lens of Monroe Doctrine 2.0 helps make sense of the seemingly chaotic events unfolding in the Caribbean area. The U.S. is reasserting its influence, countering transnational gang threats and preparing to stabilize the hemisphere by pushing China out.

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Tyler Durden Sun, 10/19/2025 - 10:15

The Final Crisis: This Is Our Future

Authored by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,

Turn out the lights, the party's over
They say that all good things must end
Call it a night, the party's over
And tomorrow starts the same old thing again

     - Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson is not, to my knowledge, a proponent of any economic cycle theories – though now at 92, he’s seen more cycles than most of us. But he was singing back in the 1950s how good things eventually end… and then we quickly start them again.

Debt-driven growth definitely feels good. We all enjoy it immensely as long as it lasts.

Then the lights go out and the party’s over. Yes, it starts again, but not until we all stumble around in the dark for a while.

Unfortunately, The Debt Super Cycle is typically at least 80 years so nobody remembers the pain and why we should avoid it. Perhaps in this coming crisis we can do better. We can’t avoid it, but we can think about how to deal with it in advance rather than making decisions on the fly like we did during The Great Recession.

I’ve been reviewing Ray Dalio’s latest book, How Countries Go Broke. He shows in exhaustive detail how our current party is quickly approaching its lights-out moment. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. If you missed Part 1 and Part 2 of my review series, read them and then read the whole book. The quotes I’m sharing only scratch the surface.

Today we’re going to zoom in on that light switch.

Ray’s historical research found a specific sequence of events usually defined the cycle-ending crisis. Given where we are now, it may be a good preview of our next few years.

Broken Promises

Before we talk about the final crisis, I want to review a critical distinction Ray found in his research. Debt crises unfold differently depending whether the monetary system is based on hard money or fiat money.

Note that a “hard” currency in this sense doesn’t have to be gold, silver, etc. It can be a government-issued currency that’s pegged to some other currency the issuing government can’t control. This lack of control is the key. Here’s Ray:  

“In brief, the way the hard currency cases work is that the governments have made promises to deliver money that they can’t print (e.g., gold, silver, or another currency that the parties view as relatively hard, like the dollar). Throughout history, when coming up with these hard currencies that they can’t print to pay debts becomes tough, the governments almost always renege on their promises to pay in the currency that they can’t print, and the value of their money and the debt payments denominated in it tumble at the moment the promise is broken.

“After governments break their promise by not going back to having a hard currency, they have what is called a fiat monetary system. In these cases, the currency’s value is based on the faith and incentives that the central banks provide. The most recent shift of most currencies from being hard to being fiat started on August 15, 1971. I remember it well because I was clerking on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the time and was surprised by it; then I studied history and found that the exact same thing happened in April 1933, and I learned how they worked.

“In fiat monetary systems, central banks primarily use interest rates, their ability to monetize debt, and the tightness of money to provide the incentives for lender-creditors to lend and hold debt assets. And throughout history they, like central governments and central bankers operating in hard currency regimes, have created too much debt (which are claims that people believe they can turn in to get money, which they expect they can use to buy things), so there are the same types of debt/credit dynamics at work…

“Big Debt Cycles through history have typically included currency regimes going back and forth between being hard and fiat because they each led to extreme consequences and required movements to the opposite—the hard currency regimes broke down with big devaluations because the governments couldn’t maintain debt growth in line with their monetary constraints, and the fiat monetary systems broke down because of the loss of faith in the debt/money being a safe storehold him of wealth.”

One critical point here: debt cycles happen even if you have a hard currency. They look somewhat different but still occur. This is because both regimes consist of humans who demand and extend unwise amounts of credit. 

Coincident Cycles

The Big Debt Cycles Ray Dalio describes generally last around 80 years. They are composed of smaller cycles which average around six years. The US has seen 12 of these short-term cycles since 1945 (80 years ago). We are presently almost six years into the short-term cycle that began in 2020. These timespans can vary a bit, but it certainly appears we are approaching the end of a short-term cycle which will likely also conclude a Big Debt Cycle.

In my view, it is not coincidence other cycles are similarly approaching critical phases: Neil Howe’s Fourth Turning, George Friedman’s institutional and social cycles, and Peter Turchin’s “elite overproduction” theory. We should pay attention when great minds independently agree on something like this. Especially when significantly different theoretical foundations all point to the same end result.

So where is this last phase going? Ray Dalio says the current short-term debt cycle revolves around the monetization of government deficits. The shortfalls were already giant before the pandemic. The policies governments developed to handle that problem made the debt problem far worse. Here’s how Ray describes it.

“The 2020-21 debt monetization was the fourth and the largest big debt monetization since the original big debt monetization/QE in 2008 (which was the first since 1933). From the start of the easing cycle of 2008, the nominal Treasury bond yield was pushed down from 3.7% to only 0.5%, the real Treasury bond yield was pushed from 1.4% to -1%, and the non-government nominal and real bond yields fell a lot more (because credit spreads narrowed). Money and credit became essentially free and plentiful, so the environment became great for borrower-debtors and terrible for lender-creditors and led to an orgy of borrowing and new bubbles forming.

“That debt/credit/money surge in 2020 produced a big increase in inflation, which was exacerbated by supply chain problems and external conflicts (the third of the five major forces that I will touch on at the end of this chapter). That big increase in inflation led to the short-term debt cycle tightening by the Fed and the contraction in the balance sheet by having maturing debt roll off rather than buying more of it. As a result of the Fed (and other central banks) changing their short-term debt cycle mode from easing to tightening, nominal and real interest rates went from levels that were overwhelmingly favorable to borrower-debtors and detrimental to lender-creditors to levels that were more normal (e.g., a 2% real bond yield).”

That last point is important. The Fed’s 2022-2023 rates hikes seemed aggressive mainly because they followed (belatedly) a period of unprecedented debt stimulus. It didn’t so much “tighten” policy as simply bring it back closer to normal. But it didn’t feel that way those who had been feasting on debt.

Chief among those debtors was (and is) the US government, of course. Which is why the Final Crisis is drawing near.

The Final Crisis: This Is Our Future 

In How Countries Go Broke, Ray Dalio both describes individual cases and develops what he calls the “archetype” Big Debt Cycle. The archetype is a baseline that generally describes how the process goes, though individual cases all have their own twists.

Dalio’s archetypical “Final Crisis” has nine stages. He notes there can be big variations in what happens and when it happens. The nine stages are more like a list of the negative things that produce the crisis, and the steps that are usually taken to try and get out of it.

Here’s how Dalio describes the Final Crisis which, as I said above, is very near, if not already upon us. These are the unhealthy conditions that typify the last stages of the Big Debt Cycle. Note that Ray is describing what he (and to a great deal I) believes is going to happen. This is our future:

“1. The private sector and government get deep in debt.

“2. The private sector suffers a debt crisis, and the central government gets deeper in debt to help the private sector.

“3. The central government experiences a debt squeeze in which the free-market demand for its debt falls short of the supply of it. That creates a debt problem. At that time, there is either a) a shift in monetary and fiscal policy that brings the supply and demand for money and credit back into balance or b) a self-reinforcing net selling of the debt, which creates a severe debt liquidation crisis that runs its course and reduces the size of debt and debt service levels relative to incomes. Big net selling of the debt is the big red flag.

“4. The selling of government debt leads to a simultaneous a) free-market-driven tightening of money and credit, which leads to b) a weakening of the economy, c) declining reserves, and d) downward pressure on the currency. Because this tightening is too harmful for the economy, the central bank typically also eases credit and experiences a devaluation of the currency. That stage is easy to see in the market action via interest rates rising, led by long-term rates (bond yields) rising faster than short rates and the currency weakening simultaneously.

“5. When there is a debt crisis and interest rates can’t be lowered (e.g., they hit 0% or long rates limit the decline of short rates), the central bank “prints” (creates) money and buys bonds to try to keep long rates down and to ease credit to make it easier to service debt. It doesn’t literally print money; it essentially borrows reserves from commercial banks that it pays a very short-term interest rate on. This creates problems for the central bank if this debt selling and rising interest rates continue.

“6. If the selling continues and interest rates continue to rise, the central bank loses money because the interest rate that it has to pay on its liabilities is greater than the interest rate it receives on the debt assets it bought. When that happens, that is notable but not a big red flag until the central bank has a significant negative net worth and is forced to print more money to cover the negative cash flow that it experiences due to less money coming in on its assets than it has to go out to service its debt liabilities. That is a big red flag because it signals the central bank’s death spiral (i.e., the dynamic in which the rising interest rates cause problems that creditors see, which lead them not to hold the debt assets, which leads to higher interest rates or the need to print more money, which devalues the money, which leads to more selling of the debt assets and the currency, and so on). That is what I mean when I say the central bank goes broke. I call this “going broke” because the central bank can’t make its debt service payments, though it doesn’t default on its debts because it prints money. When done in large amounts, that devalues the money and creates inflationary recessions or depressions.

“7. Debts are restructured and devalued. When managed in the best possible way, the government controllers of fiscal and monetary policy execute what I call a “beautiful deleveraging,” in which the deflationary ways of reducing debt burdens (e.g., through debt restructurings) are balanced with the inflationary ways of reducing debt burdens (e.g., by monetizing them) so that the deleveraging occurs without having unacceptable amounts of either deflation or inflation.

“8. At such times, extraordinary policies like extraordinary taxes and capital controls are commonly imposed. (Read this twice! - JM)

“9. The deleveraging process inevitably reduces the debt burdens and creates the return to equilibrium. One way or another, the debt and debt service levels are brought back in line with the incomes that exist to service the debts. Quite often, there are inflationary depressions, so the debt is devalued at the end of the cycle, government reserves are raised through asset sales, and a strictly enforced transition from a rapidly declining currency to a relatively stable currency is simultaneously achieved by the central bank linking the currency to a hard currency or a hard asset (e.g., gold) and central government and private sector finances being brought back in line to a sustainable level.

“At the early stage of this phase, it is imperative that the rewards of holding the currency and the debt denominated in it, and the penalties of owing money, are great in order to re-establish the creditability of the money and credit by rewarding the lender-creditors and penalizing the borrower-debtors. In this phase of the cycle, there is very tight money and a very high real interest rate, which is very painful but required for a while. If it persists, the supply and demand for money, credit, debt, spending, and savings will inevitably fall back into line.

“How exactly this happens largely depends on whether the debt is denominated in a currency that the central bank can create and whether the debtors and creditors are primarily domestic so that the central government and the central bank have more flexibility and control over the process. If so, that makes the process less painful, and, if not, it is inevitably much more painful. Also, whether the currency is a widely used reserve currency matters a lot because when it is there will be greater marginal inclinations to buy it and the debt that it is stored in.”

Our current situation, as I see it:

• Stages 1, 2, 3 and 4 have already happened.

• Stage 5 is underway as the Fed tries to see how low it can push rates without raising inflation, while Congress and the President seek ways to salvage politically popular spending programs and tax policies.

• Stage 7 may be starting as some of the riskiest private borrowers (First Brands, Tricolor) start hitting the wall.

• Stages 6, 8 and 9 are still over the horizon.

If I’m right, we still have some time to prepare, but it’s running out. Dalio holds out hope this could end in one of his “Beautiful Deleveraging” scenarios I described last week. I have a hard time thinking we will be so lucky. We’re definitely not doing the things needed to keep that possibility open.

What we know is that the economy will be deleveraged, beautifully or not. Nothing about the process will be fun. But we know it’s coming. Prepare while you can.

Tyler Durden Sun, 10/19/2025 - 09:20

Mamdani Poses With WTC-Linked Imam Whose Son Ran 'Decomposing Child' Terrorist Compound

New York City Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani posted a picture of himself posing with a Brooklyn Imam known as being an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing whose son ran a terrorist camp for children. 

In a post to X, Mamdani can be seen posing with Imam Siraj Wahhaj and City Councilmember Yusef Abdus Salaam in Wahhaj's Bed-Stuy mosque in celebration of the weekly Muslim prayer. 

Today at Masjid At-Taqwa, I had the pleasure of meeting with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community for nearly half a century. I was also joined by CM @dr_yusefsalaam of Harlem. A beautiful Jummah. pic.twitter.com/4kcN4CGlUk

— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) October 18, 2025

"Today at Masjid At-Taqwa, I had the pleasure of meeting with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community for nearly half a century," Mamdani wrote on Friday. 

About that camp...

In August 2018, not one. Not two. But three of Wahhaj's children were charged with terrorism and felony child abuse for running a 'terrorist training camp' in the New Mexico desert that was allegedly meant to train child school shooters, and where the remains of Wahhaj's abducted three-year-old son were found by police. 

The younger Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 40 (at the time), had stuffed 11 children into an RV with five adults on the compound, which could be accessed via underground tunnel. 

The couple and three other adults – Wahhaj’s sisters, Hujrah Wahhaj and Subhannah Wahhaj; and Lucas Morten – were charged with 11 felony counts of child abuse. 

The surviving children from the compound told police that Jany Leveille, 35 Wahhaj's partner, "intended to confront 'corrupt' institutions or individuals, such as the military, big businesses, CIA, teachers/schools and reveal the 'truth' to these corrupt institutions or individuals." 

In particular, the Jihadis were targeting Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta - after Leveille in a journal "expressed her displeasure with Grady Hospital ... due to the treatment she and her mother received there," according to the document. 

A handwritten document titled "Phases of a Terrorist Attack" was found at the encampment where authorities found the decomposing remains of Siraj Ibn Wahhaj's three-year-old son and trained several children to commit acts of terrorism, CNN reported at the time. 

The handwritten document contained "instructions for 'The one-time terrorist,' instructions on the use of a 'choke point,' a location 'called the ideal attack site,' the 'ability to defend the safe haven,' the 'ability to escape-perimeter rings,' and 'sniper position detection procedure,'" according to the court filing.

Some of the children at the compound told police that Morten allegedly "stated he wished to die in Jihad, as a martyr," prosecutors said in the motion.

"At times, Jany Leveille would laugh and joke about dying in Jihad as would Subhanna Wahhaj," according to the court document. -CNN

And of course, the case was botched and the judge was shady. For starters, Judge Sarah Backus let the suspects out on $20,000 signature bond - meaning they didn't have to come up with any cash. 

Judge Sarah Backus,  Siraj Wahhaj

Then, all charges were dropped against three of the five suspects after Backus recused herself from the case because the state failed to indict them within a 10-day window.

Then, the compound was mysteriously bulldozed. 

Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said that during the initial serving of the search warrant, their tactical team came upon children holding boxes of ammo, and at least one child was armed when he was found. The defendants' attorney tried to downplay the "heavily armed" portion of the case.  

While cross-examining of Hogrefe, the suspects' defense attorneys each took their chance to try and distance the suspects as far from the weapons as possible, and the connotations of violence they imply. One defense attorney suggested it's "prudent" that children learn how to use firearms safely, which Hogrefe agreed to.

The sheriff also confirmed that Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is investigating the legalities surrounding the occupants' possession of firearms. 

Another defense attorney pointed out, and Hogrefe confirmed, that the compound's occupants did not shoot at the tactical team as they raided the compound. He did say, however, that Morton was "struggling" and "resisting" while being arrested by deputies. -KOB.com

THREAD: This week we were given rare access inside the NM compound where authorities think children were getting weapons training to carry out school shootings. This is part of the tunnel that extends out from the property. @NBCNews pic.twitter.com/1tuGlkeHzX

— Gadi Schwartz (@GadiNBC) August 11, 2018

Anyway, Mamdani's hanging with the guy who raised these pieces of shit. The elder Wahhaj claims he helped authorities find the compound and distanced himself from his three terrorist children, but you know what they say about apples and trees - much less three apples.

*  *  *

Astaxanthin // Peak Focus // Mushroom 10x

Tyler Durden Sun, 10/19/2025 - 09:00

Digital ID Black Pill Moment?

Authored by Patti Johnson via The Burning Platform blog,

For those unclear on what a Black Pill Moment means, I’ll share my take on the definition:

Black Pill Moment: A “Black Pill Moment” is when someone grasps a harsh, pessimistic truth about the world, leading to despair or hopelessness if they let it sink in. It’s a grim realization that things may be beyond repair, hitting like a gut punch.

Red Pill Moment: A “Red Pill Moment” is when someone sees a tough truth about the world, shattering old beliefs but leaving hope that change is possible if enough people act. It’s like waking up to a challenging reality with resolve to fight for better.

Blue Pill Moment: A “blue pill moment” is when someone avoids a harsh truth, choosing the comfort of denial or ignorance, like believing “ignorance is bliss.” Some psychiatrists call SSRIs like Prozac “blue pills” for creating an “I don’t care” mindset, numbing people to reality.

In the 1999 movie, The Matrix, Neo is offered a red pill or a blue pill by Morpheus. The red pill means waking up to the harsh truth of reality, rejecting illusions (like the Matrix’s simulated world), while the blue pill means staying in comfortable ignorance, unaware of the truth.

I usually see myself as red-pilled, believing in tough truths/reality, but holding onto hope for change.

If we are not careful a black pill can can be so earth shattering that it may lead to taking a blue pill!

After reading editorials about Texas’s mandated digital ID for apps, supposedly to protect children, I researched how many states and countries have mandatory or voluntary digital ID systems. (Voluntary is the trojan horse for future mandatory)  What I found opened my eyes to what could be labelled a “black pill moment”—the global push for digital IDs is far advanced, likely past the point of no return, aligning with the UN’s 2030 goal of universal legal identity and enabling a globalist digital currency system that could control access to everything.

In September 2015, all 193 UN Member States adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.9  aims to provide legal identity, including birth registration, for everyone by 2030. This goal supports a global push for universal digital identity. The World Bank’s Identification for Development (ID4D) Initiative, a key partner, consolidates civil registries and promotes digital ID services. ID2020, tasked with implementing SDG 16.9, works to ensure everyone has a digital identity by 2030. The World Bank, World Economic Forum, and companies like Palantir, have created a global partnership to build a unified digital identity system.

Currently there are approximately 8,300,000,000 people in the world.  According to the World Bank’s ID4D initiative the number of actual people without any “official” proof of identity is only 850 million.  Only 10% of the world’s population do not have a personal digital ID.

Based on the latest global reports, only 12 countries (out of 198 worldwide) still lack any foundational national digital ID system – such as electronic credentials, biometric verification, or programs that could eventually link to the World Bank’s ID4D framework for universal legal identity. In stark contrast, 186 countries already have at least basic digital ID elements in place, paving the way for interoperability with global systems.

I began my research by manually checking each country’s government website, but after the first 30 – all of which had ID4D digital ID systems – I realized the scale of adoption was overwhelming. Not wanting to waste time on the remaining 168, I did something I never imagined- I enlisted Grok to handle the nitty-gritty and time consuming work of scanning those government websites country by  country. Grok confirmed the relentless global march toward total coverage revealing that 186 countries out of 198 have digital ID systems already in place.

The holdouts are often in regions with limited infrastructure or political instability. For example, North Korea is one of the holdouts because they have their own internal digital tracking system that is not set up to be “linked” (“interoperability”) to the ID4D digital ID Globalist World Bank system.

The countries not yet set up with digital ID’s that can be linked to the digital ID World Bank system in the future are: Somalia, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Chad, Eritrea, Tuvalu, Nauru and Oceania. [2] According to the World Bank ID4D website, adoption is accelerating and they expect this list to shrink by 2026.

But what about the United States, “land of the free and home of the brave?” Are we protected against the digital ID world beast system? In three of my prior Burning Platform guest opinions:

The Digital Noose to Track, Trace and Database Every Citizen of the United States is Accelerating with Breakneck Speed 

The Digital Noose Extends Across the Pond and Around the World, and

Dining with the Devils  

I cover in more detail how the very same globalist technocrats who are developing and implementing digital ID systems and AI data banks in the United States are also developing digital ID systems and AI data banks around the world. Built into all these massive data collection systems is “interoperability” to eventually connect to the World Bank beast tracking ID system

 Peter Thiel’s company Palantir is among the technology companies involved with digital ID initiatives linked to international development efforts, including those supported by the World Bank and aligned with UN SDG 16.9. Peter Thiel is a technology advisor to President Trump.

Another illustration of the close connections between U.S. systems and global ID initiatives is Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI and a key AI advisor to President Trump. Altman has called for “international partnerships” on AI regulation, proposing a global body comparable to the International Atomic Energy Agency (AP News, June 6, 2023,). This aligns with Agenda 2030 Goal 17 which emphasizes global partnerships. Why should the system that is supposed to protect our country be regulated by an international organization as Altman suggests? In 2023 Sam Altman started “World Coin” to give people a digital ID by scanning their eyes.

The recent legislation in Texas is just one part of the massive system being put in place here in the “land of the free.”  Even though the United States does not have a national identity card, we have state-issued driver’s licenses which are quickly being transformed to biometric digital ID’s.  As of October 17, 2025, at least 18 U.S. states have fully implemented or are actively issuing biometric-enabled digital driver’s licenses (also known as mobile driver’s licenses or mDLs), where biometrics (such as facial recognition or fingerprint scanning) are used for secure access and authentication on mobile devices.

This app for biometric digital ID was advertised next to an article about Texas mandating digital identity for age verification.

Even if all 50 states do not go biometric on their licenses, multiple systems of womb-to-tomb data collection on every citizen are in the works through several of President Trump’s initiatives. One of those is an electronic health tracking system called “Making Health Technology Great Again.” Apple, Google, Samsung, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, Epic, Oracle, Athena Health and Noom are a few of the big tech companies that will be involved in setting up a centralized national health record database in the United States. Making Health technology Great Again/MHTGA will make medical record sharing possible nationwide. If leadership changes in the future this very system can be linked to the World Bank digital ID beast system.

Is there a way to stop this “Black Pill” train wreck?

Has it gone to the point of no return? Can we pull the plug?  That is for you to decide.

Will you take the Red, Blue or Black pill?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sun, 10/19/2025 - 08:10

G20 Inflation Tracker: Argentina And Türkiye Remain Inflation Outliers

Inflation remains one of the most pressing global economic issues, and this monthly G20 inflation tracker, via Visual Capitalist's Aneesh Anand, highlights the wide disparities in price growth across the world’s largest economies.

Data comes from the national statistics offices of G20 countries. This August 2025 snapshot captures a continued divergence, with some countries still facing surging consumer prices while others battle deflation.

Here’s the full data set comparing annual inflation rates (CPI, YoY %) in each G20 nation:

At a glance, Argentina (33.6%) and Türkiye (33%) remain the top two inflation hotspots, while China is the only G20 member in deflationary territory at -0.4%.

Argentina: High Inflation Persists, But Shows Signs of Easing

Despite topping the G20 list, Argentina’s inflation trajectory may be turning a corner. Monthly inflation in August came in flat at 1.9%, a notable slowdown compared to earlier in the year. This is the lowest monthly increase since 2022.

However, years of economic mismanagement, currency controls, and a weakening peso have left a lasting impact. Recent U.S. financial support could stabilize Argentina’s economy temporarily—but may introduce new structural challenges if reforms don’t follow.

Türkiye: Interest Rate Policy and Lira Depreciation Fuel Price Growth

Türkiye continues to experience elevated inflation at 33%, with food, energy, and housing costs soaring. The central bank’s decision to cut interest rates despite ongoing inflation has drawn criticism. Consumer prices rose more than expected in August, testing the credibility of monetary policy.

The weak Turkish lira has further exacerbated inflation by raising the cost of imports. Without a decisive shift in economic policy, inflationary pressures are likely to persist.

China’s Slide into Deflation Signals Deeper Economic Concerns

While many nations are still battling inflation, China stands out for the opposite reason: deflation. Consumer prices declined by 0.4% year-over-year in August, suggesting weakening domestic demand.

This trend is part of broader economic issues facing China, including a shrinking working-age population, falling birth rates, and a rapidly aging society. These demographic shifts are expected to reduce productivity and consumer spending over the long term. Meanwhile, the country’s once-booming real estate sector, estimated to account for up to 30% of GDP, continues to face a protracted slowdown, with falling home prices and developer defaults contributing to weak investor and household confidence.

China’s deflation may be symptomatic of deeper structural changes. These include an overreliance on investment-led growth, rising local government debt, and the challenges of transitioning to a more consumption-driven economy. Without robust domestic demand or significant policy shifts, deflationary pressures could linger, posing risks to both China’s long-term growth and global trade dynamics.

Global Inflation Outlook Remains Uneven

Inflation in the U.S. reached 2.9% (its highest since January), while countries like Japan (2.7%) and the Euro Zone (2.0%) hovered near central bank targets. Canada (1.9%) and South Korea (1.7%) remain among the lowest.

For a longer-term perspective, explore our previous coverage on global inflation projections through 2026.

Tyler Durden Sun, 10/19/2025 - 07:35

12 Years Of Data Prove China's Belt & Road Initiative Is A Debt Trap

Authored by Antonio Graceffo via The Epoch Times,

After 12 years, Beijing’s four major defenses against the Belt and Road “debt trap” argument are dispelled.

The 12th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (also called One Belt, One Road) was last month. Amid ongoing accusations that it is a debt trap, the Lowy Institute think tank reported that 75 developing nations now face severe debt crises driven by massive repayments to China. Developing countries are expected to pay Beijing a record $35 billion this year, $22 billion of which will come from the world’s poorest nations, forcing deep cuts to health, education, and essential services.

Launched in 2013, the BRI financed large-scale infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, and Latin America through state-backed loans, making China the world’s largest bilateral creditor. Over the program’s first decade, roughly 80 percent of lending from the Chinese regime went to nations already in or near default. As these debts mature, repayment pressures are straining public finances and reinforcing the charge that Beijing deliberately created a global debt trap.

In its defense, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) advances four flawed arguments to deny that the BRI is a debt trap: first, that many developing countries owe more to Western lenders; second, that U.S. interest rate hikes caused their debt problems; third, that currency depreciation and a slowing global economy are to blame; and fourth, that China rarely seizes assets from countries unable to repay. Each of these claims collapses under scrutiny.

The CCP’s first defense—that many Belt and Road countries owe more to Western or international lenders than to China—is mathematically true in some cases but deeply misleading. While Chinese loans may represent less than half of a country’s total debt, these nations already had extremely low credit ratings and were considered too risky for traditional lenders. Western institutions stopped lending to avoid pushing them into default. China, however, stepped in and issued the very loans that tipped them over the edge. In many cases, Beijing became the lender of last resort because responsible lenders had walked away.

The second argument—that rising U.S. interest rates caused the debt crisis—is equally flawed. Fluctuating rates are a well-known risk built into every sovereign credit assessment. Countries that continue to borrow heavily despite poor ratings do so knowing refinancing will become more expensive when global rates rise. Responsible lenders account for that risk and withdraw when borrowers approach unsustainable levels of debt. China ignores those warnings, continuing to lend, ensuring that default becomes inevitable.

The third claim—blaming the crisis on currency depreciation and a slowing global economy—also collapses under scrutiny. Economic downturns and exchange-rate fluctuations are foreseeable risks that must be weighed before taking on debt. Many Belt and Road countries have weak, partially convertible currencies, but must repay their loans in U.S. dollars. As the dollar strengthens, debt service costs rise, draining national reserves and deepening economic distress. This is not the fault of the West, nor the result of U.S. monetary policy designed to harm others. The CCP’s reasoning is illogical, especially since most Belt and Road loans are themselves denominated in dollars.

The fourth argument used by the CCP against the “debt trap” accusation is that it rarely seizes assets from countries that cannot repay; instead, it claims to provide “debt relief” through refinancing or extending loans. In practice, this approach only deepens dependency. Beijing typically grants short-term restructuring, such as maturity extensions or grace periods, to low-income nations without reducing principal or easing interest rates.

It also relies on “rescue lending” mechanisms, including bridge loans from state banks, currency swap drawdowns through the People’s Bank of China, and commodity prepayment arrangements. These measures do not solve underlying solvency problems but merely postpone default, keeping borrowers afloat long enough to protect China’s own financial system.

A major study by AidData, the World Bank, Harvard Kennedy School, and the Kiel Institute found that by the end of 2021, China had carried out 128 bailout operations totaling $240 billion across 22 countries, marking a clear shift from infrastructure financing to emergency rescue loans. In 2010, less than 5 percent of China’s overseas lending went to distressed borrowers; by 2022, that figure had soared to 60 percent.

These bailouts also expose Beijing’s hypocrisy: while the CCP accuses the West of predatory interest rates, the average Chinese rescue loan carries an interest rate of about 5 percent, more than double the IMF’s standard 2 percent. As of Oct. 1, 2025, despite higher U.S. interest rates, the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights lending rate stands at only 3.41 percent, still significantly lower than what China charges struggling nations for so-called relief.

The true scale of Belt and Road debt may be far worse than official data suggest. To shield its own banking system, the Chinese regime increasingly uses the People’s Bank of China’s global swap-line network, which has provided more than $170 billion in short-term liquidity to foreign central banks. These loans, often labeled as “temporary,” are routinely rolled over for years, allowing governments to conceal their true debt exposure since international reporting rules exclude short-term liabilities.

This practice has created vast “hidden debts,” estimated at roughly $385 billion by AidData in 2021, and the figure is likely far higher today, as more loans come due and few have been repaid in the intervening years.

The CCP’s opaque bailout strategy—designed to protect its lenders rather than assist struggling nations—ensures that the full weight of Belt and Road debt remains concealed from public view.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/18/2025 - 23:20