Speak Your Mind 2 Cents at a Time
32 economists associated with the University of Chicago at some point in their careers were awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, which is often referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics. With all that expertise, you’d assume that the University of Chicago would be a paragon of […]
The post Physician, heal thyself appeared first on Angry Bear.
This report is coming out of Thailand as reported by the “Bangkok Post.” I like to read other news sites as they offer a different perception or perspective on what is occurring. It is obvious; plastic waste disposal is problematic. Plastic does not deteriorate readily. Many countries see it as problematic while some countries see […]
The post Global Plastic Pollution appeared first on Angry Bear.
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
We're frogs in a pot that's being heated so gradually that we no longer notice the sewage is extinguishing the utility of the Web.
Let's take "Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcome" and direct it on the Internet, the digital realm that is now central to modern life The incentives are making money from attention, i.e. clicks, engagement, etc. by any means available, and a burgeoning universe of cons, deception, extortion and fraud.
And with those incentives, the outcome is an ever-expanding river of toxic sewage, a river of AI slop, deep-fakes, phishing, clickbait and spam, spam, spam on every device, every platform, every screen.
This is not inconsequential. A physician-correspondent recently reported that he was researching a cardiovascular condition online and realized the article he was reviewing was AI slop, a conglomeration of inaccurate diagrams and plausible-sounding nonsense slapped together to get whatever meager income would be generated by a modest number of views.
That's the incentive the Big Tech platforms set up: since it's a low-odds gamble that any post will go viral on a large enough scale to make serious income, the incentive is to post 1,000 AI slop posts which each collect 1,000 views. In other words, make it up on volume.
Since the Internet is global, people in low-income nations have an incentive to generate AI slop to earn what is a pittance in developed nations. The barrier to entry is low--anyone can produce veritable mountains of AI slop with free tools and low-cost bandwidth--and the gains, however modest, are welcome if paid work is scarce.
The same "make it up on volume" approach incentivizes churning out millions of phishing and spam SMS, emails and posts on every platform under the sun. If there's only one sucker per 10,000 entreaties, then send out 10 million.
Since views and engagement generate income, the more outrageous the clickbait, the better. And of course, the greater the volume of clickbait, the greater the income stream flowing to platforms hosting the clickbait.
AI tools incentivize creating deep-fakes of celebrities' voices and personas which can then be deployed to con older Internet users who are often credulous enough to believe that yes, Owen Wilson is talking to me, see, it's him.
Every legitimate institution is now a tripwire for phishing and spam. Your USPS package can't be delivered, here's your Social Security Statement, and so on.
AI Search is broken, too. I couldn't find the original PropOrNot "fake-news about fake-news" list from 2016, and AI search concluded it was not available. Then a correspondent sent me a post on Zero Hedge which prominently displayed the entire original PropOrNot list. (oftwominds.com was on the list, thank you very much.)
Washington Post Names Drudge, Zero Hedge, & Ron Paul As Anti-Clinton "Sophisticated Russian Propaganda Tools" (November 25, 2016)
The burden of shadow work required to delete, unsubscribe and purge our lives of all this sewage is growing heavier by the day. This calls to mind the boiled-frog analogy: we're frogs in a pot that's being heated so gradually that we no longer notice the sewage is extinguishing the utility of the Web.
And the reason is--drum roll--that's how everyone makes money: views, engagement, scams, cons, fraud and above all, sheer volume. And who makes money from volume? The Big Tech platforms. So what if it's misleading AI slop, deep-fake scams or clickbait, the more "engagement" we get, the more money we make.
So where's the incentive to staunch the flood of sewage? There isn't one. The incentive is to shrug and let the user sort it out by burning their own time.
If we want a different outcome, we have to change the incentives.
* * *
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Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 11:40The AI data center boom could soon face some serious headwinds, and the problem isn't a shortage of Nvidia GPUs, but America's fragile power grid.
A combination of disastrous green policies and soaring data center power demand has already sparked a power bill crisis across the Mid-Atlantic states, while a nationwide grid-tightening crisis unfolds. This has triggered a growing wave of discontent among residents in Maryland and New Jersey, who are angered by Democrats' prioritization of green policies that have retired stable fossil fuel power generation in favor of unreliable solar and wind, resulting in power bill inflation like never seen before.
Making matters worse, AI data centers are counting on an upgraded grid to handle new base loads of power. This massive, multi-layered supply chain needed to upgrade the grid spans raw materials, transmission lines, circuit breakers, cables, control systems, and power generation systems.
Yet one of the most critical components in that upgrade cycle, transformers, is already in dangerously short supply.
A new report from global research and consultancy group Wood Mackenzie highlights that U.S. efforts to upgrade power grids for AI-driven data centers will push transformer demand beyond supply by 30% this year, driving up costs and delaying projects. Analysts warn the shortage will only worsen and persist well into the decade's end.
The supply deficit, fueled by AI-related data center growth and broader electrification trends, threatens grid reliability and the whole data center buildout.
Viewed as a national security threat, the U.S. production of transformers can't keep pace, meaning about 80% of units will be imported, mostly from South Korea, Mexico, and other countries.
"We have seen such a large increase in power demand," said Ben Boucher, a senior analyst of supply chain and data analytics at Wood Mackenzie, adding, "AI is necessitating data center expansion, which is pushing up electricity usage."
Just weeks ago, we warned that U.S. transformer wait times have ballooned from 50 to 127 weeks, crippling grid resilience, whether it's upgrading power grids or replacing units damaged by storms, wildfires, or domestic terrorism attacks by radical leftists.
In short, the AI data center boom is colliding with a power grid already under strain from failed green policies, surging electricity demand, and a worsening transformer shortage. This is far from ideal in the era of massive data center buildouts, and wait until outrage over skyrocketing power bills goes fully mainstream. We bet that's coming.
Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 11:05Ron Paul, the libertarian leaning former Texas congressman and GOP candidate for president, has always maintained that sanctions are acts of war. The Lancet Global Health recently published a study that proves him right.
Economists Mark Weisbrot, Francisco Rodríguez, and Silvio Rendón have found that the yearly total excess human death toll associated with economic sanctions across the world is roughly equivalent to the annual human death tolls of active wars and combat. In fact, the study reveals that on average the civilian deaths caused by sanctions exceed battle-related casualties in kinetic conflicts each year.
AFP/Getty Images
According to the study, the worst effects on populations across various age groups are caused by unilateral US and EU sanctions against targeted countries. The researchers argue “unilateral sanctions imposed by the USA or the EU might be designed in ways that have a greater negative effect on target populations.” UN sanctions, they add, “have been framed as efforts to minimise their impact on civilian populations, although the extent to which they have achieved this goal remains debated.”
In the period of 2012-2021, for example, the unilateral sanctions’ annual global death toll on average was 564, 258. The study also notes that most of the civilian deaths attributeable to sanctions between 1970 and 2020 were children less than five years old.
Economic and unilateral sanctions kill the most vulnerable members of a population including primarily children, the elderly, and the sick. The press release regarding the study, published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, states “The researchers studied sanctions’ effects on age-specific mortality rates. They found that children under five made up 51 percent of total deaths due to sanctions over the 1970–2021 period. Most deaths (77 percent over the same period) were aged 0–15 and 60–80.”
The press release continues, “The study is the first to systematically examine the effects of sanctions on age-specific mortality in cross-country data using methods designed to address causal questions on observational data.” The researchers conclude that “the effects of sanctions on mortality generally increase over time, with longer-lived sanctions episodes resulting in higher tolls on lives.”
Washington has imposed brutal “maximum pressure” or “crippling” sanctions on poor countries across the world such as Venezuela, North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Cuba. Over the years, it has been documented that these sanctions have contributed to the preventable deaths of tens of thousands and in some cases hundreds of thousands of people in Venezuela and Iraq alone.
The US also imposes extensive sanctions regimes on more powerful countries than those listed above such as Russia and Iran. By cutting off the possibility of economic cooperation and interdependence, war has resulted in both cases during the last three years.
In 2021, erstwhile Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that Washington was absolutely committed “to [opposing] the reconstruction of Syria” absent regime change. To that end, the US implemented a callous sanctions regime on Syria using the bipartisan Caesar Act, a law which targeted any person or entity of any nationality that attempted to do business with the war-torn country. These sanctions deliberately targeted the country’s engineering and construction sectors.
As a result, the civilian population was devastated. In 2022, Alena Douhan, a UN special rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures, visited Syria. She explained at the time that the sanctions “severely harm human rights and prevent any efforts for early recovery, rebuilding and reconstruction.”
Douhan stressed that “12 million Syrians grapple with food insecurity” and “90% of Syria’s population currently lives in poverty,” with limited access to food, shelter, water, electricity, healthcare, heating, cooking, fuel, and transportation. Partly as a result of the bipartisan economic war on Syria, Al Qaeda offshoots were able to seize Damascus and take over the country. Since then, sectarian violence has seen thousands of civilians slaughtered.
The use of sanctions, largely spearheaded by the US, has spread across the world over the last several decades. “25% of all countries [were] subject to some type of sanctions by either the USA, the EU, or the UN in the 2010–22 period, by contrast with an average of only 8% in the 1960s.”
Rodríguez insists the entire policy of economic warfare must be reevaluated. “We have seen economic sanctions — especially those imposed by the US — contribute substantially to economic collapse in targeted countries, such as Venezuela… Sanctions often fail to achieve their stated objectives and instead only punish the civilian populations of the targeted countries. It is well past time that the US, EU, and other powerful actors in the international community seriously reconsider this cruel and often counterproductive mechanism.”
Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 10:30Following Elon Musk’s exit from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Democrats and mainstream media have largely turned their attention elsewhere. Yet, DOGE is quietly making steady progress on an ambitious plan to overhaul federal regulations, according to a report.
Central to the effort is an AI tool under development, the SweetREX Deregulation AI Plan Builder (SweetREX DAIP), designed to “promote prudent financial management and alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens.”
The little-known project is being spearheaded by Christopher Sweet, a DOGE staffer initially presented as a “special assistant,” who was, until recently, a third-year student at the University of Chicago.
WIRED reports:
SweetREX was developed by associates of DOGE operating out of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The plan is to roll it out to other US agencies. Members of the call included staffers from across the government, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of State, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, among others.
Leading Wednesday's call alongside Sweet was Scott Langmack, a DOGE-affiliated senior adviser at HUD and, according to his LinkedIn profile, the COO of technology company Kukun. (WIRED previously reported that he had application-level access to critical HUD systems; Kukun is a proptech firm that is, according to its website, “on a long-term mission to aggregate the hardest to find data.”) While Sweet led the development side of SweetREX, Langmack said he was taking point on demoing the tool for different agencies and pitching them on its benefits.
DOGE is likely to use the AI tool to eliminate up to 50% of 200,000 federal regulations by January 2026. A DOGE PowerPoint presentation, titled the “DOGE Deregulation Opportunity,” projects that the effort could yield $3.3 trillion annually in economic benefits.
“The DOGE experts creating these plans are the best and brightest in the business and are embarking on a never-before-attempted transformation of government systems and operations to enhance efficiency and effectiveness,” an administration spokesperson told the Washington Post, which first reported on the DOGE presentation.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court cleared a key hurdle for DOGE, rejecting a labor union effort to restrict the agency’s access to sensitive U.S. user data from government agencies. In a 2-1 decision, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court’s injunction that had blocked DOGE from accessing data held by the U.S. Department of Education, Treasury Department, and Office of Personnel Management, citing potential violations of federal privacy laws, according to Fox News.
Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 09:55Submitted by Thomas Kolbe
The German federal government is already staggering into its first major crisis just months after its election. That it also stands economically bare amidst mostly self-inflicted turbulence has gone largely unnoticed. Meanwhile, no one in Berlin seems concerned about the country’s economic catastrophe.
To call Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s first 100 days a false start would be the understatement of the year. His initial report card is a disaster. His ostentatious alignment with the Left in fighting the AfD, the catastrophic decision to halt arms deliveries to Israel, and the break with Germany’s last vestiges of state raison d’être will contribute to the premature end of this coalition just as much as Merz’s wobbly course in the debate over the SPD-nominated Federal Constitutional Court judge Brosius-Gersdorf.
Merz is fear-driven, fleeing to the international stage to project an aura of strength domestically against the background of bellicose noise in Russia policy, avoiding the looming collapse of his government and the embarrassment of a short-lived chancellorship. Armament, military readiness, and a pinch of patriotism—this is the thin veneer of Merz’s last line of defense.
It is the nature of the media that the EU’s disastrous handling of the trade conflict with the US, the Gaza crisis, and the escalation of the Ukraine conflict dominate headlines. Meanwhile, Germany’s economic decline accelerates. To be fair, Merz inherited a poisoned political legacy. The country’s deep recession was handed down by his predecessor Olaf Scholz, along with the dire state of the German social funds, which currently show a deficit of around €47 billion.
The extreme imbalances in Germany’s social system - resulting from the recession, demographic aging, and uncontrolled migration - cannot be blamed on Merz any more than the hyperstate-like public sector, now managing half of all economic output through its channels. The energy crisis is also a fact the new government must confront, layered atop a complex mix of structural deficits that have rendered Germany nearly untouchable in the global competitive landscape.
Problem Recognized?The question must be: Has Merz at least recognized the severity of the country’s economic crisis? And if so, what measures does his government plan to reverse it? In the third year of recession and with a loss of 700,000 jobs since 2019, it is clear Berlin knows the political course leads Germany toward catastrophe.
On the plus side, Merz can claim his so-called “investment booster,” mainly composed of two measures: the temporary reintroduction of declining balance depreciation until 2029 and a corporate tax cut from 15% to 10% starting 2028. These measures would relieve the economy by €11.3 billion, roughly 0.23% of GDP—laughably small given the economy already carries €146 billion in unnecessary bureaucracy costs.
Merz should have wielded the chainsaw here, but no German politician dares challenge a bureaucracy that has grown into a state within a state, adding half a million employees in the last six years.
Reform Refusal and Course MaintenanceMerz’s original promise to cut electricity taxes for business and consumers also signals, unspoken, that the green transition is seen as the root of the energy crisis, driving energy-intensive firms out of the country. Last year alone, €64.5 billion in direct investments left Germany, a long-standing trend now accelerating.
Consequently, Germany is losing its economic foundation, on the verge of becoming Europe’s Rust Belt, much like parts of the US. Yet Berlin does nothing: no electricity tax cut, no return to nuclear, no scrapping of the burdensome heating law. Merz refuses any reforms in the green transition. We are witnessing the continuation of Habeck’s deindustrialization agenda.
Merz avoids all conflict with Brussels’ Green Deal. The core of centralist policy, the key to Germany’s economic liberation, remains untouched, regardless of how sharply the recession bites.
An orderly withdrawal of the state from the frozen energy sector, weighed down by subsidies and regulations, is nowhere in sight. Talks with Moscow over gas imports are unthinkable—Brussels stubbornly polishes the 19th sanctions package. Merz watches as a policy takes root that delivers Germany a fatal economic blow.
Systemic CollapseEven social fund problems, the scandalous citizen’s allowance, now promoted globally as aid for migrants, fall under economic policy. Like a rabbit before a snake, the government freezes amid widening deficits, attempting to fix health and pension insurance with new debt and supplementary transfers. Only an effective migration policy shift and painful reforms to social benefits could reverse the downward spiral.
Merz allows Germany to head toward French-style conditions—his historically and legally dubious €1 trillion debt program will push Germany into the middle ranks of European debt states, raising the debt-to-GDP ratio to 95%, turning the federal budget into an unbearable weight. Infrastructure spending is nice, but with social funds in crisis and defense commitments rising, resources will barely suffice to maintain existing assets.
No Regulatory TurnaroundUnless Germany’s economic course turns 180 degrees, this government will go down as a temporary continuation of the red-green agenda and a footnote in the country’s history. With a coalition backed by the Left, Merz lacks the political capital and personal reform drive to pull Germany out of crisis.
In Argentina today, one can observe the recipe for political turnaround: drastic state downsizing and deregulation should guide policy. The state’s share must shrink enough that private markets regain control of investment allocation.
Merz would need to break the ideological wall of his structurally leftist coalition, cancel the Green Deal with Brussels, and restore diplomatic relations with Moscow to turn the tide. Germany is light-years from such a paradigm shift. Until then, the economic substance left by two postwar generations will be politically squandered.
Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 09:20On what should have been a day focused solely on fighting prostate cancer, Washington state resident Val Mohney got blindsided by a different kind of battle — car theft.
Mohney, who lives in Davenport, had traveled to Columbia City to stay with his friend Kristen Dean while starting treatment, according to Yahoo. But at around 6 a.m. Tuesday, the police called with news guaranteed to ruin anyone’s morning: his car had been stolen, joyridden, and crashed into a fence at a nearby middle school.
"Unfortunately, I started my day off with having my car ripped off and driven through a fence," he told KING5. "I'm just trying to deal with cancer, and now I have to deal with that."
Yahoo writes that the car was in bad shape — the ignition looked like someone had "taken a grenade" to it — and it was left abandoned in the school parking lot. For Mohney, a real estate agent, the loss isn’t just inconvenient; it’s income-threatening. "I'm the sole bread winner so if I'm not making money there's no money coming in," he said.
"I wouldn't hold out much hope for the tape deck. Or the Creedence."
On top of everything, Mohney is caring for his mother, who has dementia, and his partner, whose disability limits how much they can work. Life has been throwing him lemons, bricks, and the occasional flaming bowling ball, but he’s focusing on his supporters.
"Really, I'm very fortunate because I have a big community of people that love me and I don't know how people that don't do it when stuff like that comes up," he said.
Dean is now shuttling him to work between treatments — a job that apparently now comes with “personal chauffeur” in the description. Seattle police are combing through surveillance footage to find the joyrider, who remains at large. Meanwhile, a GoFundMe is helping Mohney keep going while he battles cancer and, apparently, other people’s bad life choices.
Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 08:45
8:30 AM ET: Housing Starts for July. 
10:00 AM: Existing Home Sales for July from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The consensus is for 3.92 million SAAR, down from 3.93 million last month.– by New Deal democrat Industrial production is much less central to the US economic picture than it was before the “China shock,” since so much production moved overseas, meaning US consumers buy much more imported goods than they used to. Still it is an important if diminished coincident indicator. This morning’s report for July can […]
The post July industrial production: meh! appeared first on Angry Bear.
This piece by Claudia Sahm is about two weeks old. The perspective is still worth reading. The economy is still be pulled one way or another as Tr__p plays he tariff games up and down and who makes deals and who does not. That is enough to create uncertainty in the market. “There are factors […]
The post Slowing Job Growth To Date? appeared first on Angry Bear.
The post Tariffs: Donald Trump’s Big Tax on American Households appeared first on CEPR.
Submitted by Thomas Kolbe
France remains a politically immovable monolith. A toxic mix of a ballooning budget deficit, an overgrown welfare state, and a persistent recession makes the country a prime candidate for a full-blown sovereign debt crisis. If the government fails to pass its budget, Europe could be in for a heated autumn.
Cuts to social benefits, pension freezes, or reductions in health coverage have historically ended in general strikes, highway blockades, or suburban riots. The media tends to romanticize this as “character strength” — a people resisting the stingy state and fighting for their rights.
What’s left unsaid is that France operates with a staggering government spending ratio of 57% of GDP — the largest welfare state in the EU, possibly even the democratic world champion of redistribution. This deeply socialist policy mix has driven the country into a fiscal and economic dead end.
Public debt stands at around 114% of GDP, with Prime Minister François Bayrou’s government planning fresh borrowing of 5.4% of GDP this year — figures so far removed from the defunct Maastricht criteria they make you dizzy. In July, Bayrou managed to trim the projected deficit from 5.8% to 5.4%, a €5 billion reduction.
But in the face of a €3 trillion debt mountain, this is less than a drop in the bucket — a faint pulse from a policy in terminal decline. Bond markets have taken notice: yields on 10-year French debt have climbed 30 basis points over the past year to 3.3%. That means at least €67 billion in interest costs this year — €16 billion more than last year — squeezing government room to maneuver like ice melting on the Côte d’Azur.
Calm Before the StormFor now, the summer news drought has swallowed the debt crisis narrative. Since Bayrou’s mid-July reform package, the media has gone silent. In truth, budgets like France’s, Spain’s, or Italy’s have only been kept afloat thanks to the ECB’s willingness to crush bond market unrest with massive interventions — a habit developed since the last debt crisis 15 years ago.
Short of Luxembourg, no major EU state could fend off a sovereign debt crisis alone. At this point, real reforms may already be too late: any drastic cuts would collapse economies hooked on subsidies, cheap credit, and state interventionism, triggering mass unemployment and social unrest.
Still, Paris seems to have recognized the urgency. Three weeks ago, Bayrou unveiled the next consolidation package: €44 billion in spending cuts for next year (about 1.5% of GDP). The plan includes a hiring freeze for civil servants, merging inefficient agencies, and freezing welfare and pensions in 2026 at 2025 levels — a “blank year” for the welfare state. Only the defense budget will rise, in line with NATO demands.
Wealthy taxpayers will lose certain breaks, the healthcare system will be trimmed, and sick leave will be monitored more strictly. If the economy holds, the deficit could drop to 4.6% next year, with the government aiming for Maastricht’s 3% cap by 2029. But given France’s track record, few expect the numbers to hold once the social peace bill comes due.
Symbolic MisstepThe package also scraps two public holidays — Easter Monday and, controversially, May 8, the WWII victory day. While aimed at boosting productivity, many patriotic French will see this as a provocation, hardly a way to win public backing for fiscal reform. Facing organized resistance and the threat of another no-confidence vote, Bayrou has floated the idea of a 2026 budget referendum — an unusual gamble that may backfire.
Like Germany, France’s budget crisis is unfolding amid recession. Weak consumer sentiment and falling retail sales are partially offset by tourism, expected to grow 6% this year. But France is deindustrializing, its manufacturing PMI stuck around 48, and construction output at 43 — deep in recession territory.
For now, the summer lull allows Paris to bury its own fiscal mess beneath coverage of America’s debt drama. But Brussels fears that a French bond market panic could bring down the EU’s entire debt edifice. With a deepening U.S. trade war and a worsening recession, France’s crisis could be back in the headlines within weeks — possibly ushering in a hot autumn in Paris and a new European debt drama.
* * *
About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a Germany graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.
Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 07:00Submitted by Thomas Kolbe
France remains a politically immovable monolith. A toxic mix of a ballooning budget deficit, an overgrown welfare state, and a persistent recession makes the country a prime candidate for a full-blown sovereign debt crisis. If the government fails to pass its budget, Europe could be in for a heated autumn.
Cuts to social benefits, pension freezes, or reductions in health coverage have historically ended in general strikes, highway blockades, or suburban riots. The media tends to romanticize this as “character strength” — a people resisting the stingy state and fighting for their rights.
What’s left unsaid is that France operates with a staggering government spending ratio of 57% of GDP — the largest welfare state in the EU, possibly even the democratic world champion of redistribution. This deeply socialist policy mix has driven the country into a fiscal and economic dead end.
Public debt stands at around 114% of GDP, with Prime Minister François Bayrou’s government planning fresh borrowing of 5.4% of GDP this year — figures so far removed from the defunct Maastricht criteria they make you dizzy. In July, Bayrou managed to trim the projected deficit from 5.8% to 5.4%, a €5 billion reduction.
But in the face of a €3 trillion debt mountain, this is less than a drop in the bucket — a faint pulse from a policy in terminal decline. Bond markets have taken notice: yields on 10-year French debt have climbed 30 basis points over the past year to 3.3%. That means at least €67 billion in interest costs this year — €16 billion more than last year — squeezing government room to maneuver like ice melting on the Côte d’Azur.
Calm Before the StormFor now, the summer news drought has swallowed the debt crisis narrative. Since Bayrou’s mid-July reform package, the media has gone silent. In truth, budgets like France’s, Spain’s, or Italy’s have only been kept afloat thanks to the ECB’s willingness to crush bond market unrest with massive interventions — a habit developed since the last debt crisis 15 years ago.
Short of Luxembourg, no major EU state could fend off a sovereign debt crisis alone. At this point, real reforms may already be too late: any drastic cuts would collapse economies hooked on subsidies, cheap credit, and state interventionism, triggering mass unemployment and social unrest.
Still, Paris seems to have recognized the urgency. Three weeks ago, Bayrou unveiled the next consolidation package: €44 billion in spending cuts for next year (about 1.5% of GDP). The plan includes a hiring freeze for civil servants, merging inefficient agencies, and freezing welfare and pensions in 2026 at 2025 levels — a “blank year” for the welfare state. Only the defense budget will rise, in line with NATO demands.
Wealthy taxpayers will lose certain breaks, the healthcare system will be trimmed, and sick leave will be monitored more strictly. If the economy holds, the deficit could drop to 4.6% next year, with the government aiming for Maastricht’s 3% cap by 2029. But given France’s track record, few expect the numbers to hold once the social peace bill comes due.
Symbolic MisstepThe package also scraps two public holidays — Easter Monday and, controversially, May 8, the WWII victory day. While aimed at boosting productivity, many patriotic French will see this as a provocation, hardly a way to win public backing for fiscal reform. Facing organized resistance and the threat of another no-confidence vote, Bayrou has floated the idea of a 2026 budget referendum — an unusual gamble that may backfire.
Like Germany, France’s budget crisis is unfolding amid recession. Weak consumer sentiment and falling retail sales are partially offset by tourism, expected to grow 6% this year. But France is deindustrializing, its manufacturing PMI stuck around 48, and construction output at 43 — deep in recession territory.
For now, the summer lull allows Paris to bury its own fiscal mess beneath coverage of America’s debt drama. But Brussels fears that a French bond market panic could bring down the EU’s entire debt edifice. With a deepening U.S. trade war and a worsening recession, France’s crisis could be back in the headlines within weeks — possibly ushering in a hot autumn in Paris and a new European debt drama.
* * *
About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a Germany graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.
Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 07:00The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Colombia Tolima Los Brasiles Peaberry Organic coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• Behind Wall Street’s Abrupt Flip on Crypto: The reversal risks declawing a century of consumer financial protections and replacing the backbone of bank accounts. (New York Times)
• 21 Ways People Are Using A.I. at Work: “I can give it tasks and just walk away.” “It captures details I would have otherwise forgotten.” “There’s so much low-hanging fruit.” “The important thing is to maintain a reserve of skepticism.” (Upshot)
• Capitalists Love This Podcast. So Do Their Critics. “Odd Lots” goes deep on lentils in Saskatchewan, the global tractor supply and trucking markets. Is it the skeleton key to understanding this strange economic moment? (New York Times)
• So You Bought a Fancy Vintage Car. Now Who’s Going to Restore it? The restoration industry faces years-long waiting lists and a disappearing labor force. (Bloomberg)
• The private sector can’t replace official statistics—but could be a great partner: Private sector data offer speed and specificity that official statistics cannot match, despite not being representative or comprehensive. At the online real estate platform Trulia during the foreclosure crisis in the late 2000s and early 2010s, my team built a list-price index showing home-value trends months ahead of leading sales-price indexes. (Peterson Institute for International Economics)
• She was one of the first influencers. It nearly ruined her life. Lee Tilghman’s new memoir delves into the dark, dehumanizing side of the influencer industry, where people become brands and clout can mean cancellation. (Washington Post)
• Facebook is Dead; Long Live Meta: Another strong quarter with more than 3.4 billion people using at least one of Meta’s apps each day, and strong engagement across the board. The wild card? Heavy investment in AI efforts. (Stratechery)
• Canada Is Killing Itself: In 2016, Canada gave its citizens the right to die, @elainaplott writes. Now doctors are struggling to keep up with demand. How did the country become the world’s euthanasia capital? (The Atlantic)
• Armies Tormented by Drones Innovate Ways to Spot, Jam and Zap on the Cheap: U.S. forces test technology including computerized rifle sights and backpack-portable jammers. (Wall Street Journal)
• ‘Fleetwood Mac’ at 50: A Marvel of Serendipity and Perfectionism: The album that turned the band into superstars is getting an anniversary rerelease that shows why it still gleams. (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Deven Parekh, Managing Director, Insight Partners, a global venture capital and private equity firm. He has made 140 investments in enterprise software, data &, consumer internet businesses in N. America, EU, India, Southeast Asia, Israel, Africa, Latin America, and Australia. He was named to CB Insights’ Top 100 Venture Capitalist.
Feeling Especially Hot and Sticky This Summer? Now There’s a Metric for That
Source: Wall Street Journal
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The Trump administration is preparing for a large force projection across the Latin American and Caribbean theater.
U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) will deploy 4,000 Marines and sailors to counter narco-terrorist cartels. The move aims to enhance hemispheric defense and deter or limit Chinese activity in the region, particularly around critical infrastructure and trade chokepoints.
The news of this first comes from CNN, citing unnamed officials who stated:
The deployment of the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit to US Southern Command, which has not been previously reported, is part of a broader repositioning of military assets to the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility that has been underway over the last three weeks, one of the officials said.
A nuclear-powered attack submarine, additional P8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft, several destroyers and a guided-missile cruiser are also being allocated to US Southern Command as part of the mission, the officials said.
A third person familiar with the matter said the additional assets are “aimed at addressing threats to US national security from specially designated narco-terrorist organizations in the region.”
While the deployment is intended primarily as a deterrent, it gives SOUTHCOM prepositioning and allows Trump broad military options if he orders action against narco-terrorists. Officials note the Marines aren’t trained for drug interdiction and would need Coast Guard support.
The incoming buildup follows a Pentagon directive making border security, counter-narcotics, and protection of the Panama Canal top priorities. The deployment shifts U.S. assets from earlier Northern Command border operations to a sustained SOUTHCOM presence.
Last week, The New York Times reported that Trump issued a directive authorizing the Pentagon to conduct direct military operations against certain Latin American drug cartels. Shortly afterward, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum rejected the future presence of U.S. military forces on her soil.
By Wednesday evening, open source intelligence analysts posted flight tracking data of a General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper spy drone operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that flew deep into Mexico.
The broader move here by the Trump administration is clear: Enhance hemispheric defense through counter-narcotics operations and maritime security. The second objective is to deter and limit Chinese activity in the region.
By making moves to secure the Western Hemisphere, the Trump administration plans to disrupt command-and-control nodes between China and Latin American drug cartels that have waged irregular chemical warfare on the American people through the fentanyl crisis.
Source: Heritage Foundation
It might only be a matter of time before the U.S. Department of the Treasury moves to target Mexican and Chinese banks.
Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 05:45The Trump administration is preparing for a large force projection across the Latin American and Caribbean theater.
U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) will deploy 4,000 Marines and sailors to counter narco-terrorist cartels. The move aims to enhance hemispheric defense and deter or limit Chinese activity in the region, particularly around critical infrastructure and trade chokepoints.
The news of this first comes from CNN, citing unnamed officials who stated:
The deployment of the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit to US Southern Command, which has not been previously reported, is part of a broader repositioning of military assets to the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility that has been underway over the last three weeks, one of the officials said.
A nuclear-powered attack submarine, additional P8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft, several destroyers and a guided-missile cruiser are also being allocated to US Southern Command as part of the mission, the officials said.
A third person familiar with the matter said the additional assets are “aimed at addressing threats to US national security from specially designated narco-terrorist organizations in the region.”
While the deployment is intended primarily as a deterrent, it gives SOUTHCOM prepositioning and allows Trump broad military options if he orders action against narco-terrorists. Officials note the Marines aren’t trained for drug interdiction and would need Coast Guard support.
The incoming buildup follows a Pentagon directive making border security, counter-narcotics, and protection of the Panama Canal top priorities. The deployment shifts U.S. assets from earlier Northern Command border operations to a sustained SOUTHCOM presence.
Last week, The New York Times reported that Trump issued a directive authorizing the Pentagon to conduct direct military operations against certain Latin American drug cartels. Shortly afterward, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum rejected the future presence of U.S. military forces on her soil.
By Wednesday evening, open source intelligence analysts posted flight tracking data of a General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper spy drone operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that flew deep into Mexico.
The broader move here by the Trump administration is clear: Enhance hemispheric defense through counter-narcotics operations and maritime security. The second objective is to deter and limit Chinese activity in the region.
By making moves to secure the Western Hemisphere, the Trump administration plans to disrupt command-and-control nodes between China and Latin American drug cartels that have waged irregular chemical warfare on the American people through the fentanyl crisis.
Source: Heritage Foundation
It might only be a matter of time before the U.S. Department of the Treasury moves to target Mexican and Chinese banks.
Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 05:45Israel is concerned about a surge in military cooperation between the Islamic Republic of Iran and China, according to a report by Yedioth Ahronoth.
The report notes that the concern lies with Chinese–Iranian cooperation on the manufacture of surface-to-surface missiles. It also says western intelligence agencies, particularly European agencies, have observed close cooperation between Tehran and Beijing recently.
Shutterstock
“We do not know China's intentions yet, and we have sent clear messages to them, but Beijing does not confirm that it intends to supply Iran with surface-to-surface missiles,” Israeli officials are cited as saying by the outlet. According to the report, China “is now actually rebuilding the Iranian capabilities.”
In late July, Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, warned that there were “troubling” signs of Chinese support for Iranian efforts to rebuild and restock its missile arsenal following the 12-day, US-backed Israeli war in June.
“There's some traffic that is troubling for us ... and we want to make sure that we're not dealing with chemicals [and] the ability to reconstitute a ballistic missile program,” Leiter said in an interview with Voice of America.
He said Israel bears responsibility for ensuring that “China or other bad actors don't allow them to reconstitute” missile stockpiles. “There's no reason why we couldn't have good relations with the people of China. But we certainly don't want to see China acting alongside those who threaten our very existence.”
Weeks before the ambassador’s remarks, Middle East Eye (MEE) reported that China sent surface-to-air missile batteries to Iran after the 12-day war. The report said Tehran has paid for new Chinese deliveries with shipments of Iranian oil.
The Israeli army stated it would prevent Iran from being able to fire ballistic missiles at Israel during the war, but failed to achieve that goal.
Iran’s missiles caused widespread destruction across Israel. Key universities, research centers, and technological hubs were struck. Several military bases were also hit, yet media censorship has prevented much of the details from being released.
The Yedioth Ahronoth report comes as there is talk of a renewed war between Israel and Iran. Israeli officials have publicly threatened to resume strikes on the Islamic Republic. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced on 27 June that he instructed the Israeli army to prepare an “enforcement plan” against Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.
Tehran has vowed to continue pursuing nuclear enrichment and a peaceful nuclear energy program, despite threats. Intelligence assessments have confirmed that US President Donald Trump’s bunker-buster attack on Iran, while damaging, failed to “obliterate” the country’s atomic energy program.
An analysis by Foreign Policy released on August 11 suggested a potential resumption of the Israel–Iran war.
“Israel is likely to launch another war with Iran before December – perhaps even as early as late August. Iran is expecting and preparing for the attack. It played the long game in the first war, pacing its missile attacks as it anticipated a protracted conflict. In the next round, however, Iran is likely to strike decisively from the outset, aiming to dispel any notion that it can be subdued under Israeli military dominance,” it said, warning that the next battle would “be far bloodier than the first.”
Tyler Durden Fri, 08/15/2025 - 22:35At age 30, Ann Johnson’s life in Saskatchewan was full. She taught math and physical education at a high school, coached volleyball and basketball, and had recently married and welcomed her first child. At her wedding, she delivered a 15-minute speech filled with joy.
Everything changed in 2005, when she suffered a brainstem stroke while playing volleyball with friends. The stroke left her with locked-in syndrome - near-total paralysis and an inability to speak. “She would try to speak, but her mouth wouldn’t move and no sound would come out,” researchers said. For nearly two decades, she communicated slowly using an eye-tracking system, spelling out words one letter at a time.
In 2022, Johnson became the third participant in a clinical trial run by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of California, Berkeley. The project aimed to restore speech using a brain-computer interface, or neuroprosthesis, that bypasses the body’s damaged connections.
Ann Johnson became paralyzed after a brainstem stroke in 2005, at age 30. As the third participant in a clinical trial led by researchers at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, she heard her voice again in 2022, the first time in 18 years. Noah Berger, 2023
“We were able to get a good sense of the part of the brain that is actually responsible for speech production,” said Gopala Anumanchipalli, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley who began the work in 2015 as a postdoctoral researcher with Edward Chang, a UCSF neurosurgeon. “From there, they figured out how to computationally model the process so that they could synthesize from brain activity what someone is trying to say.”
The device records signals from the brain’s speech centers, sending them to an AI model trained to translate the activity into text, sound, or even facial animation. “Just like how Siri translates your voice to text, this AI model translates the brain activity into the text or the audio or the facial animation,” said Kaylo Littlejohn, a Ph.D. student and co-lead on the study.
To give Johnson an embodied experience, researchers had her choose from a selection of avatars, and they used a recording of her wedding speech to recreate her voice. An implant plugged into a computer nearby rested on top of the region of her brain that processes speech, acting as a kind of thought decoder. Then they showed her sentences and asked her to try to say them.
“She can’t, because she has paralysis, but those signals are still being invoked from her brain, and the neural recording device is sensing those signals,” said Littlejohn. The neural decoding device then sends them to the computer where the AI model resides, where they’re translated. “Just like how Siri translates your voice to text, this AI model translates the brain activity into the text or the audio or the facial animation,” he said. -Berkeley.edu
For Johnson, the trial was emotional. “What do you think of my artificial voice? Tell me about yourself. I am doing well today,” she asked her husband during one session. The researchers had used a recording of her wedding speech to recreate her voice and paired it with a digital avatar she had chosen.
“We didn’t want to read her mind,” Anumanchipalli emphasized. “We really wanted to give her the agency to do this. In some sessions where she’s doing nothing, we have the decoder running, and it does nothing because she’s not trying to say anything. Only when she’s attempting to say something do we hear a sound or action command.”
The early version of the system had an eight-second delay between prompting Johnson and producing speech. But a March study in Nature Neuroscience described a streaming architecture that reduced that to about one second, enabling near-real-time translation. While the avatar in earlier tests bore only a passing resemblance to her, researchers say more lifelike 3D photorealistic versions are possible. “We can imagine that we could create a digital clone that is very much plugged in … with all the preferences, like how Zoom lets us have all these effects,” Anumanchipalli said.
Johnson’s implant was removed in February 2024 for reasons unrelated to the trial, but she continues to advise the research team. She has urged them to develop wireless implants and told them the streaming synthesis “made her feel in control.”
Looking ahead, Anumanchipalli said the goal is for neuroprostheses to be “plug-and-play” and part of standard medical care. “If that means they have a digital version of themselves communicating for them, that’s what they need to be able to do,” he said.
Johnson hopes to work as a counselor in a physical rehabilitation facility, ideally using such a device. “I want patients there to see me and to know their lives are not over now,” she wrote to a UCSF reporter. “I want to show them that disabilities don’t need to stop us or slow us down.”
Tyler Durden Fri, 08/15/2025 - 22:10Authored by Sasha Gong via American Greatness,
By any normal standard, the recent filing from Voice of America (VOA) Director Michael Abramowitz - alleging the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is trying to fire him illegally - should have been a Beltway bombshell. Instead, it barely rippled the news cycle. That’s convenient for the people who prefer the U.S. government’s vast international broadcasting complex to remain a black box, opaque, unaccountable, and - most importantly - under their control.
I remember the last time a VOA director was shown the door. On January 20, 2021, less than two hours after Joe Biden took office, Robert Reilly told me over the phone, “The guards are escorting me out of the building right now.” That same day, the new administration swept out Trump appointees across the USAGM—VOA, RFE/RL, RFA, and MBN—leadership, included—and dissolved boards on the spot. Media outlets applauded, framing it as a restoration of “experienced journalists.” The subtext was unmistakable: the right people were back in charge.
Here’s the problem. “Back in charge” at VOA under Biden did not mean neutral, mission-driven journalism beamed to the world. It meant a taxpayer-funded megaphone that echoed the ruling party’s priorities while targeting Donald Trump and his voters. Programming celebrated progressive policies, blurred the line between reporting and advocacy on immigration, and, in multiple languages, provided content that critics say veered into how-to guides for navigating U.S. benefits. When your transmitter reaches 45 language services, the line between domestic influence and foreign broadcasting doesn’t just blur—it disappears.
At the center of the current drama is Michael Abramowitz, a former Washington Post editor tapped by then–USAGM chief Amanda Bennett. To Trump supporters, Abramowitz represents continuity with Washington’s media-political nexus; to his defenders, he’s a credentialed professional trying to keep politics out. Both can be true in Washington—and that’s precisely why the structure matters more than the personality.
Donald Trump understood VOA’s strategic value. After his 2024 victory, he named Kari Lake, an experienced broadcaster, to lead VOA and redirect it to its core mission: telling America’s story credibly, not carrying any administration’s water. Instead, she ran headlong into a new maze of “reforms” installed during Biden’s tenure. Agency directors could no longer be removed by the CEO; ultimate authority now rested with a seven-member International Broadcasting Advisory Board (including the Secretary of State), whose members meet sporadically and require Senate confirmation—a process famous for taking forever when the minority decides it should. Another tweak eliminated the ability to appoint an interim CEO; the VOA director—inevitably a holdover—would automatically act in the role.
Translation: permanent government beats elected government every time.
This wasn’t a policy debate about programming standards. It was a procedural encirclement—belt-and-suspenders bureaucracy designed to outlast elections. If you think that’s too cynical, ask Michael Pack, Trump’s first-term USAGM nominee, who waited three and a half years for confirmation. Or ask Kari Lake, who arrived in Washington prepared to lead VOA and discovered she first had to run the gauntlet of a never-ending confirmation calendar.
Trump adjusted.
If the front door was barricaded, he’d use a side entrance—naming Lake a special adviser with a mandate to unwind a “defunct” agency (Hillary Clinton’s word, not his). That move triggered the present standoff with Abramowitz, who, according to staff accounts and his own legal filing, decided he would not step aside, would not facilitate reforms, and would instead force a legal-political confrontation that keeps the old machine humming.
This is not a small fight.
USAGM’s $1-billion apparatus shapes how hundreds of millions abroad understand America. If it becomes a domestically resonant propaganda arm—soft power turned inward—then we’ve crossed a line the charter was designed to prevent. And suppose its leadership can be insulated from electoral accountability by clever rule changes and Senate slow-walking. In that case, the “administrative state” has discovered yet another pressure point where it can outlast voters.
The fix is simple in principle: restore electoral accountability while preserving the VOA Charter’s editorial independence, set firm timelines for Senate confirmation so nominations can’t be buried by delay, and re-center VOA on its core mission of telling America’s story abroad—measured annually by independent audits. Elections must have operational consequences, and the public should be able to see if the agency is living up to its mandate.
Critics will object that giving a president more control risks politicizing coverage. That objection arrives decades too late.
The choice isn’t between politicization and purity; it’s between politicization hidden inside an unaccountable bureaucracy and politicization constrained by law, sunlight, and elections. I’ll take the latter.
Abramowitz’s lawsuit is not the story—it’s the symptom. The disease is a governing class that prefers to win by rule change rather than persuasion. If the people cannot change the direction of their own government media through the ballot box, then the “deep state” isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a workflow.
Kari Lake promised to make VOA programming fairer, sharper, and more recognizably American. Let her try—or defeat her vision in the open, not by burying it in process.
Sunlight, not stalemate, is the real test of confidence. If USAGM’s defenders believe in their product, they should welcome both.
Tyler Durden Fri, 08/15/2025 - 21:45
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