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Sunday, November 23, 2025

2025-11-23

**** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Economic and Market Fare:


I’m simply doing this to ‘vent’ and keep my own ‘head in the game’ — for all that are stumbling on this, well, god bless you … I certainly hope you find whatever it is you are lookin’ for.

Personally, I’m always and forever about the ‘adults’ of Global Wall — the bond market — and what they have to say about the direction of … well … everything. ....................


Policy Reset: How Fiscal, Monetary and Trade Frameworks Shape 2026

Executive Summary
• We look for U.S. real GDP growth of 2.3% (annual average) in 2026. The improved outlook reflects a more supportive fiscal policy environment, a less restrictive monetary policy setting and a tariff regime that is not characterized by near-constant escalation as it was this year.
• The resilient consumer continues to help shore up economic activity, though consumer spending is not poised to be an outperforming driver of growth in 2026. Tax policy changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) offer some relief in the year ahead, particularly for lower- and middle income households, where help is needed most.
• Business fixed investment has been, and will continue to be, sustained by the splurge on all things tech- and AI-related. Investment-friendly tax policy changes help on the margin, and so will lower rates and an anticipated decline in policy uncertainty next year. These factors should help support investment growth in more traditional capex categories, which have struggled of late.
• Tariff rates are not going back to 2024 levels anytime soon, but we think 2026 will show that 2025 was the peak for the U.S. average effective tariff rate. This in turn bodes well for U.S. economic growth in 2026 as trade policy becomes directionally less restrictive.
• Inflation has been stuck around 3% amid a tug-of-war between slowing services prices but a tariff-induced pickup in goods prices. We expect inflation to still be above 2% by the end of next year. That said, our base case forecast for core PCE inflation to be 2.6% on a Q4/Q4 basis in 2026 would mark a directional improvement, with the softer labor market, well-anchored inflation expectations and the prospect for some tariff relief next year helping lead inflation lower.
• Amid the blackout of government data due to the shutdown, alternative indicators paint a mixed picture of the jobs market: not clearly improving, but not falling apart either. Sturdier economic growth and reduced uncertainty should generate some improvement in hiring next year and keep the unemployment rate from climbing above 4.5%.
• Our base case remains for the FOMC to reduce the fed funds rate by 25 bps at its December meeting, although recent Fed speak makes it a close call as we go to print. For 2026, we look for two additional 25 bps rate cuts by mid-year, which would put the terminal rate at 3.00%-3.25%.
• While the global economy can continue to demonstrate resilience, the pace of global growth in 2026 is unlikely to match the rate of expansion achieved in 2025. Easier central bank monetary and fiscal support from select countries can put a floor under global growth; however, protectionist trade policies may restrain global activity.
• Select foreign central banks can lower interest rates, but rate reductions similar to 2025 are unlikely to be repeated. A monetary policy divergence theme should build in early 2026 that weighs on the dollar; however, once Fed easing ends, the dollar can rebound and discussions about the greenback losing its reserve FX status should diminish








.................................................................. The labor market stands at an important crossroads. Labor reports released through the end of summer revealed three key trends — none supportive of sustained payroll growth. First, cyclical sector employment is slowing, and the pressures weighing on the construction industry suggest that weakness in this key sector could persist. Second, payrolls in AI-related industries are also contracting — and because these sectors together are larger in size than traditional cyclical ones, their slowdown carries implications for the broader economy. Third, government employment may not provide the stabilizing offset it typically has during past recessions. There are already a handful of labor market characteristics that are typically only seen around recessions. None, taken individually, is reliable enough to be confident that the U.S. economy faces a recession. But they will be important to monitor as new payroll data is released. In the event the economy does slip into contraction, today’s elevated stock valuations could leave markets especially vulnerable to the kind of prolonged, volatile declines that have characterized previous recession-adjacent downturns.


Underneath the AI sheen, US unemployment is rising and households are burdened with debt

Lax risk management, an incurious Federal Reserve, credit rating agency shopping, greed and garden-variety stupidity. Welcome to what could be the next great financial crisis.

Perhaps the quote that will define the next Great Financial Crisis will be this one from an executive at a former lender to the $10 billion fraud known as First Brands.
“You’re not paid to do due diligence in this market.”
There have been three high-profile Private Credit (PC) blowups in the past month. All were due to fraud, and all had telltale signs of problems ahead if anyone bothered to look under the hood. However, in the mad rush to get the deals done and put investor funds to work to earn those sweet management fees, as the First Brands lender said, “You’re not paid to do due diligence in this market.”

The same was true leading up to the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. No one was looking under the hood of either the borrowers or the lenders. The game plan was to make your money, move on to the next deal, feign ignorance when it all blows up, get a bailout, and let others pay the price. ..................

We reported in July that Private Equity firms such as Apollo, Blackstone, KKR, and Brookfield were snapping up life insurance companies to get at their steady premium income and annuity businesses. They refer to their insurance company holdings as “permanent capital.” Life insurers have also been engaging in pension risk transfers, taking corporate pensions over, another rich vein of permanent capital. A good deal of this permanent capital goes into their PC funds. The insurance companies rely on rating firms to manage their risk, or perhaps more importantly, their regulators rely on the ratings to judge the creditworthiness of insurance companies. This is the “rating agency arbitrage” Colm Kelleher referred to. .......................

................. Large insurers have blown up before on bad financial product investments. Executive Life went under in 1991 after gorging itself on junk bonds. I have to imagine that a major blowup in the life insurance, annuity provider sector could snowball into something quite systemic.

Blunders followed by blowups followed by financial crisis, potentially followed by bailouts? I wouldn’t bet against it.



At this late stage of the earnings season, the (blended) revenue growth rate for the S&P 500 for Q3 is 8.4%. If 8.4% is the actual growth rate for the quarter, it will mark the highest revenue growth rate reported by the index since Q3 2022 (11.0%). At the sector level, all eleven sectors are reporting (or have reported) year-over-year revenue growth. Three sectors are reporting (or have reported) double-digit revenue growth for the quarter: Information Technology, Health Care, and Communication Services.

However, the Q3 revenue growth rate for the S&P 500 has been increasing over a longer timeframe. On June 30, the estimated revenue growth rate for Q3 was 4.8%. On September 30, the estimated revenue growth rate for Q3 was 6.3%. Today, the (blended) revenue growth rate is 8.4% ..................



Bubble Fare:


......... Once promoted as a high-growth play, an inflation hedge, and a portfolio diversifier, the world’s largest cryptocurrency now faces the prospect of ending the year in the red — without fulfilling any of those roles.

Gold — often dismissed by Bitcoin believers as outdated — is easily outperforming the token, which the crypto faithful have dubbed digital gold. So are long-term bonds and the Nasdaq, in a year defined by falling interest rates and shrinking risk appetite. ........................



................................. The question now is whether the slide to $81,569 was the full flush, or if more panic selling lies ahead as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday week.


First Victim of the Liquidity Squeeze

.............. Bitcoin trades like a speculative instrument. It rises when liquidity is abundant, credit is plentiful, and risk appetite is high. It collapses when financial conditions tighten, and liquidity evaporates. The behaviour is indistinguishable from high-beta tech stocks or leveraged risk trades. There is no anchor, no intrinsic value, no connection to the real economy, no link to any cash flow or asset base, and certainly no monetary function.

Gold, by contrast, continues to behave exactly as a store of value should even when liquidity tightens. It responds to real interest rates, fiscal dominance, geopolitical uncertainty, and long-term stability of the currency system. It is held by central banks, integrated into the global monetary architecture, and protected by thousands of years of history. Gold is an asset. Bitcoin is not. 

If the correlation breaks, if the regression shows no relationship, if the R² is zero, and if the coefficient is negative, then the conclusion is simple. Bitcoin is not a store of value. Bitcoin is not money. Bitcoin is a speculative, high-volatility instrument that depends entirely on liquidity cycles and investor sentiment. It is based on nothing and anchored to nothing. 





In pursuit of revolutionary advances in AI, tech companies are plowing billions of dollars into massive new facilities. The projects are straining power grids, environmental resources and, potentially, financial markets



Washington’s policy toward AI is currently in the hands of accelerationists—people who believe faster technological progress is just about always better, so government regulation is just about always bad. That’s why President Trump, having already shut down the minimal federal AI regulation installed by his predecessor, is now considering an executive order that would punish states that pass their own AI regulations. Trump’s billionaire Silicon Valley backers want this done, so Trump may well do it.

Given the stakes—given the many fronts along which AI will bring abrupt and possibly destabilizing change, and the various dystopian AI futures that various analysts see—it’s worth asking: Do these accelerationists deserve our trust? Are they smart people with sound judgment? Are they intellectually honest?

Let’s take a look. ..............

............. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a mere 1,000x increase meeting my personal energy needs, so I breathed a sigh of relief when Andreessen went on to add: “We should place intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop, and drive them both to infinity.”

If there’s one thing all accelerationists agree on (aside from accelerationism) it’s that boosting productivity is a good thing—boosting productivity in the economy as a whole and boosting their own personal productivity. Among Andreessen’s personal productivity boosters, it seems, is authoritatively dismissing concerns about technology without wasting precious seconds coming to understand those concerns in the first place. .......................

............ I don’t think Andreessen is dumb. And I doubt he’s consciously dishonest. But I do think Upton Sinclair was onto something when he said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”





It's disgusting how much OpenAI ignores Gross Profit. GP was the bedrock of Economics as I was taught it, but Technomics hits the crack rock of ignoring it. On the street, if coke costs 9 and cutting it costs 1, you need to sell crack for 10 or else you're done. If you lose money on each rock, you're not a dealer, you're a crackhead, or a narc. On Wall Street, however, if compute costs $5 billion and you sell it for $4.3, that's somehow a galaxy brain idea. Those are actualish OpenAI numbers, check the FT, and they're actually retarded.

OpenAI is just a money laundry for Microsoft and NVIDIA and other evil there. The business never even beings to break even, according to their own projections, and yet they're writing promissory notes worth trillions for decades into the future, as if they're building pyramids. They're pyramid scheming. As the FT says in their reporting, this is not a serious chart and these are not, as Logan Roy said, serious people.

To put it in street poetry, OpenAI is violating the 4th Crack Commandment as laid down by the Notorious BIG in '97. Never get high on your own supply. The supply chains of the US of AI are disgustingly incestuous. Microsoft is OpenAI's client for AI and their supplier for compute. OpenAI gives 20% to Microsoft, and Microsoft gives 20% of some Azure and Bing revenue to OpenAI. Is it really a business if you're moving promissory notes from one pocket to another? What are we even talking about? These guys are smoking their own supply and it doesn't just violate economics, it violates Crackanomics.

Early techlords like Google could violate Crackanomics because they still respected basic economics. But OpenAI is not Google. Google's marginal cost of serving you a webpage was marginal, while OpenAI's costs on inference alone are astronomical. Every instance of ChatGPT has to reincarnate fully, which is really expensive folly. It's comically and karmically expensive. It's like rubbing a genie bottle to do the dishes. At some point, just you run out of wishes. And I, for one, am here for it. The crash of OpenAI will be delicious, and if we're lucky, it takes the whole US economy with it.

Now that AI has to ravage a rainforest to return a brainfart, Capitalism has reached terminal velocity, straight down. It cannot get stupider than this. The business model accounting for 99.9% of American growth is 99.9% a pyramid scheme. ....................


What do you get when you combine Anthropic, Microsoft, and Nvidia? A bubble that blows itself

It wouldn't be a week of tech news without more circular exchanges of billions of dollars between AI firms. This time around, it's a $45 billion back-scratching session involving Microsoft, Anthropic, and Nvidia, announced during Redmond's Ignite conference. ............



....... Three years after ChatGPT's debut, investors are increasingly uneasy that the AI boom has outrun fundamentals. Some business leaders have noted that circular deals - where one partner props up another's revenue - add to the bubble risk.



.............. Nvidia’s earnings beat didn’t just meet expectations; it crushed them on nearly every metric. ............

Importantly, Nvidia’s numbers were more than a sentiment boost. They were confirmation that capital expenditures in AI, particularly by the largest tech platforms, remain robust. Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are all spending aggressively on AI buildouts, and Nvidia sits at the center of that spend. That’s why the stock’s move matters: it’s not just about one company, it’s a read-through on the entire AI supply chain. ..................


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MMT Fare:


Yves here. This Richard Murphy recap of Stephanie Kelton’s The Deficit Myth is an opportunity to introduce friends and colleagues to Modern Monetary Theory, or alternatively, to try to put a dent into hysteria about federal deficits. ......

Having said that, perhaps as a result of framing his series around questions posted by important economic thinkers, he skips over why deficit paranoia has been so widely embraced. Again, we urge you to read the seminal 1943 Mikhail Kalecki essay on the barriers to achieving full employment for an answers. ...................

Stephanie Kelton has done something very rare in modern economic debate: she has taken a basic accounting fact, that sovereign governments create the currency they spend, and shown how its denial has warped our politics, our public services, and our imagination. In The Deficit Myth, she does not offer ideology but clarity: governments that issue their own currency are not like households; public deficits are someone else’s income; and the true limits to public spending are not financial, but real.

Kelton’s argument is as simple as it is destabilising. If the government cannot “run out of money,” then the entire narrative of scarcity that has justified austerity, privatisation, wage suppression, and the abandonment of public purpose begins to collapse. The question she poses is therefore profound, not technical.

Hence, the Stephanie Kelton Question: If a monetarily sovereign government can always afford to mobilise the resources it actually has, why do we continue to run societies around the fiction that public spending is financially constrained? ...........................



(not just) for the ESG crowd:


.......... I feel like explaining something. Long ago, there was a debate about climate sensitivity: When the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles, how much does the Earth warm? There have always been widely varying estimates, but the scientific consensus eventually settled at 3 degree Celsius, with a large uncertainty bar.

Since then, it’s been starting to look like the field of climatology in general has been stuck on an erroneously low estimate of climate sensitivity. Sabine Hossenfelder explains it in this video: ..............

The Earth’s real sensitivity, is likely well above 4 degree Celsius. James Hansen estimates it at 4.5, or 4.8 based on paleoclimatology. He wrote at the beginning of this year, that 2025 will tell us what the answer really is: Are the lower estimates of 3 degree Celsius correct, or are we looking at something much higher? .................

It’s increasingly looking like global warming has accelerated. ................

It’s hard to say what the real climate sensitivity number is, because we don’t really know how much warming is currently being hidden by toxic air pollution. If a lot of warming is currently being hidden, then sensitivity is high. Nobody quite knows for sure how much the air pollution contributes to the formation of clouds that block sunlight thereby keep the Earth cool.

Yes, that’s basically what determines what our future looks like. ................




........................ The only way humanity has a chance of avoiding a climate disaster will be through a global plan based on common ownership of resources and technology that replaces the capitalist market system. Meanwhile, the cop-out continues.


*** Berman: The Long Twilight of Growth

The International Energy Agency made headlines last week by admitting that oil demand isn’t peaking. That got everyone’s attention but the agency’s outlook was nearly identical to last year’s version: fossil fuels have and will continue to dominate energy consumption.

According to the IEA’s own data in Figure 1, wind and solar make up less than 3% of global energy consumption. Every year, the IEA shows that the renewable rocket is about to launch—next year. Somehow it never does.

This is a symptom of Renewable Derangement Syndrome: the belief that an “energy transition” is well underway, despite clear evidence to the contrary. It’s the conviction that solar panels and wind turbines are replacing fossil fuels at scale when, in fact, renewables remain a rounding error in global energy supply.  ...............

........ It sounds precise, but it’s mostly fiction. ....................

The implications are profound. We’re approaching structural, economic, or physical limits to demand. This isn’t caused by war or pandemic—it’s business-as-usual. As Ray Dalio points out, we’re in the late stage of a long-term global cycle marked by debt, disorder, and institutional decay. History offers clues about what follows, but the outcome depends on whether societies choose cooperation or confrontation. Right now, it looks like the latter. ......................



Three years ago, the United Nations Environment Assembly adopted a resolution to negotiate a legally-binding treaty to regulate plastics pollution. Representatives from 184 countries were tasked with participating in a series of five rounds of negotiation to advance towards a binding agreement. When the delegates failed to arrive at an agreement during the fifth and final round, which took place in November 2024 in Busan, an overtime session was scheduled for the following summer. In August of this year, delegates met once again, this time in Geneva, and once more failed to secure an agreement. Another meeting is scheduled for early 2026, but will be restricted to administrative matters; there are currently no plans for how and when negotiations on regulation will resume. ..................




U.S. B.S.:


.................... But we’ve also had plenty of attractive evil. Reagan. Bill Clinton (not his wife, she has the charisma of dead flounder). Obama, the purveyor of hopium. Clinton and Obama were energetic, smart and charismatic. Reagan was stupid, but charismatic, with a folksy charm that made people think he cared about them, when all he wanted to do (other than an admirable hatred of nukes) was hurt everyone who wasn’t rich


............................ Havenstein recommends (among other excellent pieces) this 2010 Charles Ferguson take down of Summers from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Some highlights:

…rarely has one individual embodied so much of what is wrong with economics, with academe, and indeed with the American economy.

.................. Summers didn’t just lay the groundwork for the economic crash of the 2000s, he actively mocked those who warned it was coming:

.................. But the punchline came when Summers was put in charge of the Obama administration’s response to the very crash his policies created:

.................... Could it be any clearer that the Democratic party and all its policy apparatchiks are enemies of the people and must be completely purged from the party for it to have any chance on delivering positive results for the American people? .............



Geopolitical Fare:


Ninety-five-year-old Richard Falk—world renowned scholar of international law and former UN special rapporteur focused on Palestinian rights—was detained and interrogated for several hours along with his wife, legal scholar Hilal Elver, as the pair entered Canada for a conference focused on that nation’s complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“A security person came and said, ‘We’ve detained you both because we’re concerned that you pose a national security threat to Canada,’” Falk explained to Al-Jazeera in a Saturday interview from Ottawa in the wake of the incident that happened at the international airport in Toronto ahead of the scheduled event. ...............

Falk, who is American, has been an outspoken critic of the foreign policy of Canada, the United States, and other Western nations on the subject of Israel-Palestine as well as other issues. He told media outlets that he and his wife, also an American, were held for over four hours after their arrival in Toronto. They were in the country to speak and participate at the Palestine Tribunal on Canadian Responsibility, an event scheduled for Friday and Saturday in Ottawa, the nation’s capital.

The event, according to the program notes on the website, was designed to “document the multiple ways that Canadian entities – including government bodies, corporations, universities, charities, media, and other cultural institutions–have enabled and continue to enable the settler colonization and genocide of Palestinians, and to articulate what justice and reparations would require.” ......................


.................................. As we show below, Johnson and other Russia-sympathetic commentators have described in detail this proposal will be unacceptable to the Russian side. Even before getting to the outline, the elephant in the room is that it is now obvious that Russia will win and can decide how far to go in territorial acquisition. So why should they concede anything, particularly since Europe is just about guaranteed to behave as badly as it is no matter how the war concludes

......................... Oliver Boyd-Barrett adopts a suitably dismissive stance:

As I worried yesterday, none of this is serious. There is no reason whatsoever why Russia, winning on the battlefield, with Putin’s June 2024 terms long outdated by battefield advances, amidst a forever stream of evidence that confirms that the US is agreement-incapable, would want to pick up on this insane mishmash, let alone why Ukraine or Europe would sign it either. Note that it is only “expected” that NATO will not expand. Yes, Ukraine would have to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO and NATO would agree a statute prohibiting acceptance of NATO as a member, but Ukraine would retain the right to EU membership.

Once again, after four miserable years of comparable US stupidity, the whole thing is being framed as Mr. Nice USA sorting out a playground scruffle between two equally pugnacious little boys. The Washington mindset, in other words, is a fantasy of benign hegemony. ................


............... A rich land indeed.

Or rather those who own the land are rich and it (mostlly) aint Ukrainians.

40% of Ukrainian arable land is controlled by three corporations: Cargill, Dupont, Cargill, ADM, Oaktree Capital Management and Bunge Limited Bayer (through its acquisition of Monsanto in 2018) . And , of course, BlackRock.

....................... Years of corruption have undermined the title to huge swathes of land held by Ukrainian investors tied to the present Kiev Regime, including many, if not most, oligarchs. They chose the wrong side.

One consequence of winning a war is that you don’t have pay much attention to those who financed the war against you when you win. No Blackrock— you won’t get your money back.


Europe bays for blood. The future of Zelensky. Another '12-15 years' of war?
“Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”
— President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1939, supposedly referring to US-aligned dictator of Nicaragua Anastasio Somoza Garcia
How goes things for our son of a bitch in the east? ..................

.............. But what are the forces standing behind this show? What are the stakes of this theatre?

First, there’s one thing that isn’t at stake — corruption. ......................

............... It isn’t corruption in question. More important matters are at play — war and peace. ..................

Strategically, Zelensky is largely preoccupied with survival. He knows that any peace deal signed now would be horrific ...................

Peace isn’t an option, but the war is also going worse than ever. ......................

.......................... If there’s anyone more bloodthirsty than European elites, it’s their allies in Ukraine. The glorious ‘liberal opposition’.


Analyzing the 28 points of the joint US-Russian draft framework peace proposal

The war in Ukraine has now lasted as long as the massive one between the USSR and Germany in WW2. This fact shocks no one today, but if you predicted in 2022 that it would have lasted this long you would have been laughed out of any room where you said this out loud.

Punditry is one of the casualties of this brutal war. Who could have predicted that Russia would launch an invasion with a relatively light touch in terms of force? Who could have envisioned the war lasting as long as it has already? Who would have thought that the Russian economy would hold on this long in the face of a very punishing sanctions regime? There’s no shame in admitting that you made bad calls, and I certainly concede that I did not see the ‘light touch’ coming.

One prediction that I made only moments after the Russians attacked on February 24, 2022 still holds up…at least in my opinion. I think the facts as they exist now support the following:

Big Winner: USA

Small Winner: Russia

Small Loser: EU

Big Loser: Ukraine

There are two wars being fought simultaneously. In the war of attrition between Russia and Ukraine, the Russians clearly have the upper hand, and the tempo of their advances is noticeably increasing month over month. In the larger war between the USA and Russia, the Americans won on the first day of the invasion because Moscow finally opted to choose one of the only two possible routes to counter US/NATO designs in Ukraine. The Russians could have not invaded and permitted NATO to set up shop in their neighbour to the southwest and accept a strategic defeat, but instead they chose to invade to forestall such an outcome and have been forced to accept a bloody war, a divorce from Europe, and sanctions package after sanctions package.

The net effect of this ongoing conflict will be the agreement as to where the new border between Russia and the Transatlantic alliance (read: US Empire) will be. What we can be certain of is that whatever remains of Ukraine will definitely be in the western orbit, meaning that Russia will lose an important piece of real estate. Compensation for this loss will be some Ukrainian territory and possibly an agreement that Kiev will never be permitted to join NATO. Barring a complete collapse of Ukraine’s defense that permits Russians to stroll into Kiev and points further west, this is about as good an outcome as Moscow could hope for. For Ukraine, it’s a disaster.

For the Americans, it’s a victory. They clearly knew that Ukraine could not win this war, as even Obama conceded that Russia has “escalation dominance” and that for Moscow this conflict is an existential matter, unlike for the USA. Russia has been bled out to a fairly significant degree, it has been separated from Europe for the time being, and Europe’s entire economy has been reoriented to service the USA. The only problem that the Americans have is how to wrap this conflict up (so that they can move their primary focus to containing and strangling a surging China) without losing face. The Ukrainians have done a remarkable job in defending their country, something that the Americans have strategically benefited from. But at what cost to Ukraine? .................

Russia’s predicament is even more complex: Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has described the USA as “agreement non-capable”, but at the end of the day it too needs to end this war, and to accomplish this it must come to a deal with the Americans. Not only that, but any deal requires iron-clad guarantees that cannot be undone by a future US administration. How does one agree on such an important matter with an opposing party they perceive as 100% untrustworthy? The Kremlin looks at any peace offering from the USA with justified suspicion, a fact that makes any real peace deal all the more difficult.

All of the points mentioned above must be factored into the equation when looking at the joint US-Russian framework peace deal proposal that US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll presented to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday. This is a 28 point plan to end the war and keep it from breaking out again in the future. It merits a closer inspection not just because of its content, but especially because it is a joint draft. This means that there is buy-in from the two major belligerents (Russia, USA) even if it is not a “take it or leave it” document. ..................


Trump officials are said to be preparing to justify strikes on Venezuela by invoking the “Cartel of the Suns." History shows that the same network once operated inside a CIA-run anti-drug program.

.................... We’ve been here before. In 1989, U.S. forces invaded Panama to remove Manuel Noriega, a former CIA collaborator who had become a drug-running dictator and, in the words of a Senate investigation, built “the hemisphere’s first narcokleptocracy.”

But the origins of Venezuela’s Cartel of the Suns tell a different story, one the U.S. government would rather not revisit.  ........ The same institutional framework the CIA helped build, the same military networks it empowered, now form the basis for a cartel the United States may be preparing to go to war against. ..........................


In the information age, it is difficult to make sense of events. Endless amounts of information do not necessarily coalesce into a coherent narrative with explanatory meaning. The breakdown of the international order is precipitating the emergence of different narratives that engender competing truths.

The German writer Goethe said: “When eras are on the decline, all tendencies are subjective; but, on the other hand, when matters are ripening for a new epoch, all tendencies are objective. Each worthy effort turns its force from the inward to the outward world.”

If we look at our present time through the lens of this statement, we could say that we are in the midst of a changing epoch. ................

...................... There was a shared reality created by a narrative which offered, to those who bought into it, a common objective truth.

This narrative included statements such as: democracy is the fairest political system, capitalism the best economic organization, science the arbiter of truth, morality an individual choice, and human rights an international truth. Reigning above and looking after them was the State, with a capital S. These were non-negotiable truths.

Now they are not. The hegemonic state that enforced them – every right requires a sovereign – has lost its power and is itself undergoing a narrative change. Other sociopolitical narratives, ones that were competing for space before, no longer feel the need to mutate, even if just linguistically, to appear acceptable to an international consensus.

The discourse now is of multipolarity, of civilizational states with different values. It could be said that nations are becoming subjective, that each nation is forming its own narrative and its own truth. This, according to Goethe, would indicate an epochal change.

We have multiple examples of this. Ukraine is one, Palestine another, Venezuela and Taiwan others. In all these cases there are competing narratives wanting to shape information into truth. Not only are conflicts being shaped by different narratives, but so too are social values and political organizations.

To be clear, I am not passing a value judgement on either tendency, only trying to point out a dynamic of change. The U.S. power structure is morphing on the back of national conservative movements that are impacting the social fabric and rewriting social values. The Western world is following.

The collective West is where this inertia is more prevalent because it was the leading order and therefore the most affected by the disorder. But other nations are also ditching Western values and institutions, favouring indigenous ones. China, Russia, India and Türkiye are clear examples.

Media, both mainstream and alternative, has become a field of battle. What before was a conspiracy now is mainstream. ....................

However, under all this apparent narrative change, one thing seems to remain unquestioned: the monetary system. Not the economic distribution – this too is open to modification – but the very basis of our financial organization: fiat currencies and the banking system. This appears to be the only thing upon which almost everyone agrees.

Out of this narrative collapse, another world will emerge. The question is whether, as Tancredi put it, everything is changing in order to stay the same.



Other Fare:

Aurelien: Living Backwards
We've been here before. Unfortunately.

Take a random sample of a hundred western pundits writing about the western political system today, and you’ll find a fairly wide consensus that things are not going well. Depending on where the individual situates themselves politically, this could be because Our Liberal Democracy is threatened by “authoritarianism” or “populism” (sometimes curiously presented as the same thing), it could be because the system has been bought by the “globalist elite,” it could be because politicians are out of touch with the wishes and aspirations of ordinary people. Traditional political parties are collapsing and the political divisions between them are now hard to make out. Frightening echoes of the 1930s are everywhere. Et cetera. Given the very different diagnoses, it’s unsurprising that the potential solutions—where they are even offered—are very different. Yet almost nobody except those currently in power (and not even all of them) are actually prepared to defend the way the current system is working.

Is all this actually a surprise, though? Should it not have been anticipated at least a generation ago? Where does the pervasive sense of disappointment, anger and helplessness originate? Why do fringe parties and leaders rise, sometimes threaten to take power, sometimes even succeed, and then fade away? Is this a bug in the system or is it, as I will suggest, a feature, even if one that for decades people have refused to acknowledge? Several years ago, the right-wing theorist Patrick Deneen argued that Liberalism, which is the motor of our current political system, was a victim not of its failure, but of its success. Once Liberalism was allowed to become fully itself, it began to produce the social, economic and political wasteland we see around us. I think the same criticism could be made from the Left, not least because the lazy identity between Liberals and the Left assumed in some quarters ignores the fact that the Left has always been about the collective good, whereas Liberalism is at bottom nothing more than rationalised individual selfishness. Indeed, the Left has always argued that individuals cannot flourish anyway except in a properly organised and fairly managed society. So nothing that we see now should be a surprise. But how did we get here?

Let’s dispose first of the idea that the current situation was “planned,” or that it suits the ultra-rich who in some mysterious sense brought it about. (Yes, there were a certain number who wanted this situation, but wanting something doesn’t simply make it happen, as many children learn around Christmas.) The tremendous concentration of wealth in a tiny number of hands does not, in the end, benefit anyone very much. The rich have more money than they can spend, but they are generally loathed and detested, and they are not even very skilful at parlaying that wealth into political power, assuming that is what they want. A society collapsing around them can no longer provide them with the mundane requirements of everyday life: it’s hard to get cleaners and gardeners and chauffeurs and even helicopter pilots when they can’t afford to live nearby, and in most big cities restaurants close early, or don’t open every day because they can’t get staff, or because security is getting worse with unemployment and poverty increasing and reductions in local and national government services. In a deeply unequal society everybody, including the rich, suffers from worse health and lower life-expectancy. ............

But if the current situation wasn’t simply “planned,” but rather the result of a series of actions, variously stupid, ill-informed, greedy and ideologically-driven, sometimes at cross-purposes with each other, then that makes it both harder to get a grip on, and much harder to imagine a way out of. But can we first of all set out, quite simply, what is wrong with the political system today, and make some assessment about where the problems came from? It depends, obviously, what you think the purpose of politics actually is, or even if it has one, a subject I’ve touched on before. It’s traditional to invoke Aristotle at this point, who certainly thought that “politics” (the management of the community) had the purpose of maximising that community’s happiness and general good. The managers, or rulers, were like craftsmen designing laws and constitutions to make these outcomes possible, and modifying them when the need arose. And the important decisions were taken directly by citizens, in a way which would seem unnervingly radical and populist if it were practiced today. Oh, and speaking of today, the Chinese Communist Party certainly expresses its priorities in terms of the well-being of the population: it promises to do things, and it generally delivers. .......................................................

.......................... As in so many areas, the triumph of Liberalism has not produced Progress, but Regress. For the last thirty years, at least, our western political systems have been moving backwards to the pre-democratic era, to a type of entrepreneurial political behaviour common before the age of universal suffrage and mass political parties. Liberalism, which eats away at everything from the inside, has hollowed out the political system, such that it is no more now than a sordid game played between unscrupulous and not very bright careerists. ........



For a long time after the Industrial Revolution, many thinkers believed that automation would lead to us living lives of leisure. Twenty hour work weeks, or even less, and many people wouldn’t need to work at all, but would still live good lives.

It never happened.

Economists will tell you this is because there’s always more work to be done, but economists are the priesthood of capitalism, not scientists, not even social scientists.

Most of us are well aware that many jobs are, in David Graeber’s memorable phrase, bullshit jobs. They either don’t really need to be done or are actively harmful. Everyone working in private equity. All the engineers optimizing ads. Almost everyone who works on Wall Street or in shadow banking. Most bankers, for that matter. The jobs which are actually necessary, “essential workers”, are badly paid and treated, but if they don’t show up, as we find out in a garbage, nurse, transit or teamster strike, disaster ensues.

If the janitors don’t show up, everyone’s in shit. If the CEO doesn’t show up, life continues and most people don’t care ..................

................ Capitalism might (or might not) have been necessary for industrialization. But it is a set of leg irons weighing all of us down now, and threatening to destroy the very conditions required for life to continue on Earth.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, and the task of the next generation of leadership is to figure out how to run modern societies without it, without wasteful over-consumption and without destroying the environment, while making sure everyone has what they need and can live fulfilling lives: lives they choose, where most of their time is their own to do with as they would, not as some boss desires.

May it be so. The other options are far, far worse, likely catastrophically so.


This is deranged.


The tyranny of online life

We live in an age of hive minds: social media, yes, of course, but so too is an LLM a kind of hive mind, a “blurry jpeg” of all human culture.

The existence of these hive minds is what distinguishes the phenomenology of the 21st century from the 20th. It is the knowledge inside your consciousness that there is a thing much bigger than you, and much more destructive, and you are entertained by it, and love it, and yet you must live to appease it, and so hate it.

.............. But what if our fractious hive mind were… nice? What if it didn’t try to destroy you all the time, but make you happy? Endlessly, ceaselessly, forever happy. This is the driving question of Pluribus, the new sci-fi show by Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad. .................




Pics of the Week:






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Sunday, November 16, 2025

2025-11-16

***** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Economic and Market Fare:

Trend indicators suggest the bull market persists, breadth argues otherwise


If the AI bubble bursts, an unusual recession could follow
 
IF AMERICA’S stockmarket crashes, it will be one of the most predicted financial implosions in history. Everyone from bank bosses to the IMF has warned about the stratospheric valuations of America’s tech companies. Central bankers are bracing for financial trouble; investors who made their names betting against subprime mortgage bonds in 2007-09 have resurfaced for another “big short”. At any sign of a wobble, such as a recent slight weekly fall in the NASDAQ index of tech stocks, speculation mounts that the market is on the precipice.

And no wonder. The cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio of the S&P 500 index of stocks, propelled by the “magnificent seven” tech giants, has reached levels last seen during the dotcom boom. Investors are betting that the vast spending on artificial intelligence (ai) will pay off. Yet the numbers are daunting. For companies to achieve a 10% return on the AI capex projected by 2030, they will collectively need $650bn of annual AI revenues—equivalent to over $400 per year from every iPhone user, reckons JPMorgan Chase, a bank. History shows such lofty expectations are often disappointed, at first, by new technologies, even if they go on to change the world. 

Yet although a market crash would surprise almost nobody, few have thought about its consequences. That is partly because the chances of a big fall in stockmarkets bringing about a broad financial crisis are, for now, slim. Unlike in the late 2000s, when widespread leverage and complex financial engineering helped cause a debt-fuelled bubble in subprime housing, today’s AI euphoria has been mostly equity-financed. What is more, the real economy has shown in recent years that it can weather shocks, from Europe’s energy crisis to American tariffs, remarkably well. Recessions are increasingly rare events. ........


Buffett's final letter: BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC. NEWS RELEASE 





QOTW:

Wintersberger: Good news first. Democrats and Republicans finally struck a deal to end the government shutdown—one of the longest in history. The bad news for market watchers is that October CPI and NFPs may share the Epstein files’ fate: they’ll probably never see the light of day.

.................. The main point I’d make is that it doesn’t matter if you look at the 90s, the 70s, or today. What seems reasonable for the Fed to do in the moment will likely turn out to be either wrong or dead wrong. And it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, because the central planning agency of monetary policy, the central banks, might collect thousands of data points. However, despite the vast amount of data being readily available these days, it doesn’t necessarily lead to the correct conclusions.



Bubble Fare:


Let’s lay out the big picture for LLM style AI.

It is is statistical prediction of what should be the next word or symbol. That is why it required so much data to train and why, even if we had the tech, we couldn’t have created it 20 years ago: not enough data in digital format. It is not intelligent. It is not conscious. It is just an algo trained with a TON of data and which used massive amounts of processing power (and thus electricity) to produce results. Hallucinations are part of the tech, they cannot be eliminated, which means that LLM “AI” will always make mistakes and many will almost certainly be the sort of mistakes trained humans rarely make.

The current build-out in the US involves only a few companies, all in a huge circle jerk, and they make up 40% of the entire public stock market’s value. Neither Open AI nor Anthropic actually make a profit, and it costs more to do a query than is made even from paying customers, let alone all the free ones. There is absolutely no question in my mind that they are in a bubble. ..............

So here’s the thing: no matter whether AI is a real tech or not, it’s in a bubble. (The internet was real, it had a bubble.) No one actually knows who’s going to make money from AI. The big internet winners (Amazon, Facebook, Google) came after the dot-com bust. The Feds may backstop and/or bailout, if they do, it will hurt everyone not involved.

If I am wrong about AI and the maximalist claims are true then what will happen is a massive replacement of tens of millions of workers. Since those people will now have almost no income, that will lead to a classic demand depression. A great depression like the one in the 1930s. The only way out would be a massive guaranteed annual income. Given our rulers and ideology, we’d probably have food riots long before they realized they were risking their own throats.

If it is a real tech, but not that big a deal, it will lead to a shittier economy where even more mistakes are made, and it’s even harder to find a human being to fix anything. Which is what tech wants: they want everything automated and certainly they don’t want to have real customer service.

And, if it is a real tech, as I have noted before, China is actually going to win. .................


AI is now so clearly a money burn pit that efforts are already underway to fob the losses off on taxpayers. Is there any way to head it off?

................................................................... The larger problem with AI is that it appears to have several limitations in its current form that will prevent it from taking over much of the work already done by humans and preclude it from being incorporated into critical systems (because it makes too many mistakes). All the grandiose claims made by AI boosters are dispatched with actual facts in this very long piece by AI critic Ed Zitron.

I am increasingly thinking of AI as a boondoggle. A boondoggle, according to Dictionary.com, is “a wasteful and worthless project undertaken for political, corporate, or personal gain.” So far, the AI industry mostly fits this definition. But there is a more expansive definition which I borrow from Dmitri Orlov, author of Reinventing Collapse: A contemporary boondoggle must not only be wasteful, it should, if possible, also create additional problems that can only be addressed by yet more boondoggles—such as the need for vast new electric generation capacity that will be unnecessary if AI turns out to be far less useful than advertised. AI boosters say that AI is going to have a big impact on society. I couldn’t agree more, except not quite in the way these boosters think.



Ed Zitron has been relentlessly pursuing the questionable economics of AI and has tentatively identified a bombshell in his latest post, Exclusive: Here’s How Much OpenAI Spends On Inference and Its Revenue Share With Microsoft. If his finding is valid, large language models like ChapGPT are much further from ever becoming economically viable than even optimists imagine. No wonder OpenAI chief Sam Altman has been talking up a bailout.

By way of background, over a series of typically very long and relentlessly documented articles, Zitron has demonstrated (among many other things) the absolutely enormous capital expenditures of the major AI incumbents versus comparatively thin revenues, let alone profits. Zitron’s articles on the enormous cash burn and massive capital misallocation that AI represents have the work of Gary Marcus on fundamental performance shortcomings as de facto companion pieces. A sampling of Marcus’ badly needed sobriety:
  • 5 recent, ominous signs for Generative AI
  • Five signs that Generative AI is losing traction
  • Could China devastate the US without firing a shot?
For a quick verification of how unsustainable OpenAI’s economics are, see the opening paragraph from Marcus’ November 4 article, OpenAI probably can’t make ends meet. That’s where you come in:
A few days ago, Sam Altman got seriously pissed off when Brad Gerstner had the temerity to ask how OpenAI was going to pay the $1.4 trillion in obligations he was taking on, given a mere $13 billion in revenue.
By way of reference, most estimates of the size of the subprime mortgage market centered on $1.3 trillion. And the AAA tranches of the bonds on mortgage pools of AAA bonds were money good in the end, although they did fall in value during the crisis when that was in doubt. And in foreclosures, the homes nearly always had some liquidation value.

Now to Zitron’s latest.

Many, particularly AI advocates in the business press, contend that even if the AI behemoths go bankrupt or are otherwise duds, they will still leave something of considerable value, as the building of the railroads (which spawned many bankruptcies) or the dot-com bubble did.

But those assumptions seem to be often based on a naive view of AI economics, that having made a huge expenditure on training, the ongoing costs of running queries is not high and will drop to bupkis. This was the case with railroads, which had high fixed costs and negligible variable costs. The network effects of Internet businesses produce similar results, with scale increases producing both considerable user benefits and lowering per-customer costs.

That is not the case with AI. Not only are there very large training costs, there are also “inference” costs. And they aren’t just considerable; they have vastly exceeded training cost. The viability of AI depends on inference costs dropping to a comparatively low level.

Zitron’s potentially devastating find is breadcrumbs that suggest that OpenAI’s inference costs are considerably higher than they pretend. Zitron further posits that the user prices for ChatGPT greatly subsidize the inference expenditures. Because the reporting on AI economics by all the big players is so abjectly awful, Zitron’s allegations may well pan out.

First, a detour to explain more about inference.

................................ So this is quite a gauntlet to have thrown down. Not only is he saying that OpenAI may still have business-potential-wrecking compute costs., but his evidence indicates that OpenAI has also been making serious misrepresentations about costs and revenues. Because OpenAI is not public, OpenAI has not necessarily engaged in fraud; one presumes it have accurate with those to whom it has financial reporting obligations about money matters. But if Zitron has this right,  OpenAI has been telling howlers to other important stakeholders.

The Financial Times, with whom Zitron reviewed his data before publishing, is amplifying them. From How high are OpenAI’s compute costs? Possibly a lot higher than we thought: ......................

................... Let us see if and when some shoes drop after this report. The bare minimum ought to be sharper questions at analyst calls.



We’re approaching the most ridiculous part of the AI bubble, with each day bringing us a new, disgraceful and weird headline. ...............

The very same day I ran that piece, somebody posted a clip of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella saying, who had this to say when asked about recent revenue projections from AI labs: 
"What do you expect an independent lab that is trying to raise money to do? They have to put some numbers out there such that they can actually go raise money so that they can pay their bills for compute."
I don’t know Satya, not fucking make shit up? Not embellishing? Is it too much to ask that these companies make projections that adhere to reality, rather than whatever an investor would want to hear? ............

........................ I’m not trying to dunk on The Wall Street Journal or The Information, as both are reporting what is in front of them, I just kind of wish somebody there would say “huh, is this true?” or “will they actually do that?” a little more loudly, perhaps using previously-written reporting.  ................

............... 
I’ll put it a little more simply: it appears that much of the AI bubble is inflated on vibes, and I’m a little worried that the media is being too helpful. These companies are yet to prove themselves in any tangible way, and it’s time for somebody to give a frank evaluation of where we stand.

if I’m honest, a lot of this piece will be venting, because I am frustrated.

When all of this collapses there will, I guarantee, be multiple startups that have outright lied to the media, and done so, in some cases, in ways that are equal parts obvious and brazen. My own work has received significantly more skepticism than OpenAI or Anthropic, two companies worth alleged billions of dollars that appear to change their story with an aloof confidence borne of the knowledge that nobody read or thought too deeply about what it is that their CEOs have to say, other than “wow, Anthropic said a new number!”  ....................


GPUs: The Newest Asset Class
“In the marketplace there’s all kinds of incentives right now, and rightfully so. What do you expect an independent lab that is sort of trying to raise money to do? They have to put some numbers out there such that they can actually go raise money so that they can pay their bills for compute and what have you.” — Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft, November 2025
A few weeks ago, we harked back to 1907 to hunt down a blueprint for what is going on in markets today. The following week, we looked at 2000. This week, we turn our attention to 2008.

This isn’t something I set out to do. As much as there are clear differences between the current environment and that of 1999/2000, the differences with 2007/2008 are even more stark. Yet over the past few months, I’ve watched as a new asset class has emerged. Back in 2023, neocloud company CoreWeave raised a $2.3 billion debt facility collateralized by Nvidia AI chips. It has since gone public, raising a further $14 billion in debt and equity this year alone. Alongside it, other companies have issued debt similarly backed by AI chips (GPUs) and data center infrastructure. AI-related companies have collectively issued around $170 billion of US-dollar denominated credit so far this year according to Goldman Sachs – more than the prior three years combined and, based on their diminishing cash ratios, will continue to tap debt markets for capital.

But just as the financing model of 2007 hinged on a standardised set of assumptions around home price inflation, the current model rests on assumptions around the useful life of those chips – assumptions that are currently being challenged. CoreWeave estimates a six-year useful life for its computing equipment; other borrowers project less. The difference between six years and four years on a depreciation schedule underpinning a piece of GPU collateral is not far off the difference between +2% and zero home price inflation on a piece of housing collateral.

And just as the launch of the ABX subprime index in January 2006 put a spotlight on a previously opaque part of the market – and was in many ways the coordination point for the unwind that then unfolded – the Silicon Data H100 Rental Index, launched in May 2025, adds transparency to the compute market by tracking the hourly cost of renting a GPU.  ....................


A forensic investigation into the depreciation gap that threatens to unwind the largest capital deployment in corporate history

In the pantheon of corporate accounting decisions that later defined market epochs, few footnote changes have carried the seismic potential of what occurred quietly across Silicon Valley’s earnings reports between 2022 and 2024. While the world fixated on ChatGPT’s capabilities and the artificial intelligence revolution’s breathless promises, five of America’s largest technology companies executed a synchronized accounting maneuver that will, by conservative forensic estimates, inflate their collective reported earnings by $170 billion through 2028.

This is not allegation. This is arithmetic based on publicly disclosed SEC filings, cross-referenced against semiconductor product cycles, energy infrastructure constraints, and the immutable mathematics of asset depreciation. What emerges is a portrait of an industry that has learned to use accounting standards as a shock absorber for the most capital-intensive gamble in technology history, one whose true costs are being systematically deferred into a future that may arrive far sooner than balance sheets suggest. 

The Footnote That Changed Everything

The changes began in fiscal 2022. Microsoft, in its annual 10-K filing, disclosed an extension of server and network equipment useful lives from four years to six years. The stated justification: “improvements in reliability and maintenance.” The immediate effect: billions in depreciation expense transformed into reported earnings.

Google followed within months. Then Oracle in 2023, extending certain data center assets to six years. Amazon moved to six years before partially reversing course in late 2024, shortening a subset of assets to five years, a reversal that passed almost unnoticed in financial media. Meta Platforms made perhaps the most dramatic move, extending useful lives to 5.5 years for assets placed in service during 2025, booking an immediate $2.9 billion reduction in depreciation expense.

Each adjustment was footnoted. Each was audited by major accounting firms. Each complied with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, which permit management discretion in estimating useful lives based on expected usage patterns, technological obsolescence, and physical wear. None constituted fraud. Yet together, they constitute something potentially more destabilizing: a collective decision to account for the fastest-depreciating assets in modern computing as if they possess the longevity of bridges and power plants.

The Collision of Accounting and Reality

The technical reality provides stark contrast. Nvidia, which supplies the overwhelming majority of AI training chips, operates on a 12 to 24-month major architecture refresh cycle. The progression is documented and accelerating: Ampere architecture in 2020, Hopper in 2022, Blackwell shipping now in late 2024, with Rubin architecture publicly roadmapped for 2026.

Each generation doesn’t merely improve incrementally. Each renders prior generations economically obsolete for frontier artificial intelligence workloads. ......................


When the depreciation cycle collapses to 24 months while balance sheets assume 72, the resulting $200 billion correction won’t just pop a bubble—it will redefine how we value technological infrastructure in an age of exponential change.

There exists, buried in the footnotes of hundreds of corporate financial statements filed over the past 18 months, a mathematical contradiction so profound that its resolution will determine whether the artificial intelligence boom represents genuine wealth creation or the largest accounting-enabled bubble in modern financial history.

The contradiction is elegant in its simplicity: technology companies are depreciating AI infrastructure over periods three to four times longer than the useful economic life of the underlying assets. This temporal mismatch is not speculation. It is observable fact, quantifiable through public disclosures, and it has manufactured between $150 billion and $200 billion in earnings that will evaporate the moment market participants collectively acknowledge what semiconductor engineers have known all along.

Silicon depreciates like fruit, not like factories. And the entire AI valuation edifice is built on pretending otherwise. ..................

........................... For context, Enron’s total accounting fraud—the scandal that destroyed Arthur Andersen and led to Sarbanes-Oxley—involved $74 billion in misrepresented assets. The AI depreciation mismatch is approaching three times that magnitude, and it is unfolding in full view of auditors, regulators, and investors. ........................

.......................... The trigger does not need to be dramatic. It requires only that enough market participants simultaneously recognize that current accounting assumptions are untenable. Once depreciation cuts begin, they cascade. Lenders tighten covenants. Equity analysts downgrade. Secondary markets freeze. And the $200 billion correction that was spread over three years on paper happens over three quarters in reality. ..........................




Vid Fare:

interesting listen:
20 Charts with JC Parets



Charts:
1: 
2: 
3: 
4:



(not just) for the ESG crowd:

Ed Miliband is the latest energy secretary to focus on a net zero policy that doesn’t add up. Leaders gathering in Brazil must start asking the right questions

It’s time for some climate realism. Despite all the policies, lots and lots of subsidies and 29 Conferences of the Parties (Cops), global warming is getting worse. The greenhouse is getting ever hotter as the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere keeps going up — at a rate of 2 parts per million (ppm) every year since 1990 and last year at 3ppm. Now it is 425ppm, up from 275ppm before the Industrial Revolution and on course for over 500ppm. The next generation is going to be appalled by what we have done.

The concentration of carbon in the atmosphere — emissions minus sequestrations — is the only number that matters. It is what the targets should be all about. On the emissions side, it is going very badly. We are burning more and more fossil fuels. Oil, gas and coal supply over 84 per cent of global energy (global electricity generation is 60 per cent fossil fuels). All three are still rising in absolute terms. And demand for energy is rising sharply due to AI, data centres, air conditioning and desalination.

On the sequestration side, we are destroying the key ecosystems — burning the rainforests, so bits of the Amazon are now net emitters of carbon. Agricultural intensification is turning sequestering potential into net emissions.
 
All of this is on display in the run-up to the Cop30 in Brazil. ...............


"Our current trajectory will heat Earth by 3-5°C this century. "


............................. These events will occur within the lifetimes of many people alive now.

Some greenhouse gases, such as methane or sulphur hexafluoride, linger only weeks to decades in the atmosphere. Others, such as carbon dioxide and water vapor, last for centuries. Hansen says a third of the heating and weather weirding effect of past emissions will be experienced between now and 2050. A second third will reveal its impact over centuries. The final third will only play out over the course of millennia. If all that legacy greenhouse pollution could be miraculously scrubbed by the end of this century—more than three trillon tons CO2 equivalent (and growing by 50 billion tons per year)—there is no guarantee that the latent effects on climate would quickly reverse. Some estimates place the time needed to restore equilibrium at six thousand years. .........


We need a climate moonshot. That sure as hell won’t come from the UN.

The yearly Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—COP, to habitués—has morphed, over the years, into a kind of travelling circus grotesquely mismatched to the problem it’s meant to address.

There’s a soul-deadening regularity to the proceedings. Tens of thousands of politicians, negotiators, activists, NGO-types, journalists, and hangers-on of every description declare themselves shocked that global carbon emissions are even higher now than they were when they met a year earlier. Looking solemn, they make heartfelt pledges to do better, to really change this time. A year later, they do it all again.

Having gone through this rigamarole thirty times now, you’d think the world would have caught on that the COP process doesn’t work, and doing it harder won’t help.

But why doesn’t it work? ..............


Opinion: China’s green manufacturing capacity could be aligned with the West’s technological and capital strengths and the Global South’s development needs

............ A new consensus is urgently needed that moves beyond zero-sum competition and towards collaborative solutions. The path to decarbonisation creates a trilemma of competing interests that threatens progress for all. .......................



In the West, ecological modernization as a model for addressing environmental problems has long been the subject of critique by ecosocialists and by radical ecologists in general. In contrast, in China, ecological modernism as a way of redressing environmental problems has the strong backing of ecological Marxists. The primary reason for these differing approaches should be obvious. In the West, the notion of ecological modernization, while unobjectionable in itself as part of a comprehensive process of environmental change, has come to stand ideologically for the restrictive model of capitalist ecological modernization. Here it is suggested that environmental problems can be addressed by technological means alone within the established social relations of capitalism in a purely reformist context. Distinct from this, socialist ecological modernization, as envisioned in China and in a few other postrevolutionary states, is substantively different. It requires a break with the social relations of capital accumulation, facilitating changes in the human relation to nature that are of a revolutionary character, aimed at the creation of an ecological civilization geared to sustainable human development. ...........

In the ruling capitalist ideology of the West/Global North, the issue of the impact of the capital accumulation process on the environment, including the Earth System crisis itself, is either avoided altogether or is seen as subject to pure technological solutions, with no need to alter class, property, capital, and consumption relations. Ecological modernization as a theory and a practice has thus come to stand principally for an anti-ecological stance in that it puts capitalist social relations before issues of humanity and nature, insisting that nothing needs to change but the machines, while the accumulation of capital remains the supreme object of the system. It is ecological modernization in this narrow ecotechnic sense that is meant when mention is made of the “greening of capitalism.” In its absolute rejection of ecological limits to unrestrained accumulation, capitalist ecological modernization is a manifestation of a fatal incapacity to address the needs of humanity and nature.

Within Chinese ecological Marxism, in contrast, ecological modernization is not about preserving capitalism and opposing environmentalism. Instead, it is conceived as socialist ecological modernization, part of the process of creating a new ecological civilization. This does not mean that the ecological contradictions of development and modernity magically disappear. But the task here is viewed differently, aimed at explicitly building a more environmental consciousness and reality. As Xi Jinping says, “clear waters and green mountains” are worth as much or more than “mountains of gold,” and ultimately this means that choices have to be made to sustain the former, even at the expense of the latter. ....................


Only a democratic and planned socialist economy can put an end to structural racism and imperialist violence

........................................ In all these cases, the key elements of a revolutionary situation, as described by Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, are either at play or coming into play. The ruling classes are increasingly unable to rule in the old way and the exploited classes are unable to live in the old way.

But Lenin also pointed out that not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution. If a conscious revolutionary force has not developed its own organisation and earned enough political authority among working people, then revolts will be defeated or at best result in a change of elites. 

All classes that are conscious of their interests are now making moves to protect them in this period of intensifying crisis. Today, the ruling capitalist class is most conscious of its situation; the lower working classes remain in a state of uncertainty, division and confusion.

The political responses from growing sections of the billionaire class makes it clear that they are increasingly unable to rule in the old way and therefore lurching to right populism. We see this all around the world. ...............................


As the microchips behind artificial intelligence grow in complexity, each generation requires more energy, minerals and water than the last, driving a ruinous cycle with no end in sight.



Sci Fare:

A maturing technosphere can achieve balance with the biosphere

In the next century, human civilization will likely look back from its singular planetary awareness upon today’s nationalist revivals and Great Power rivalries as the last hurrah of a lingering past still foolishly fragmented by its tribal origins.

Even as so many nations appear to be going their own way, embroiled in historically familiar trade wars and military conflicts, the simultaneous emergence of AI-driven planetary-scale computation is disclosing the imperative of forging a common future.

The material basis of this evolving consciousness is the technological exoskeleton of satellites, sensors and cloud computation, which is expanding the heretofore limited scope of human understanding of the world and repositioning our place in the natural order. The climate crisis this apparatus has unveiled is a window into the realization that we are neither above nor apart from nature, but part and parcel of one interdependent organism comprised of multiple intelligences striving for sustainable equilibrium. 

The unprecedented capacity for insight into the interface with Earth systems, made possible by frontier technologies, promises to enable our species and others not only to survive, but also to flourish on the only planet we know of with a livable biosphere. In the near term, it will also empower us to predict threats resulting from Anthropocene overreach and design adaptive responses. ....................

............... As we have written often in Noema, this conceptual reorientation will, in turn, entail a redefinition of what realism means in geopolitics as we have known it. The new condition calls not for the exhausted “realpolitik” that seeks to secure the interests of nations or blocs against each other, but for a new planetary realism, or “Gaiapolitik,” aimed at securing a livable biosphere for all.

It is a paradox of the long trajectory of human endeavor that technological progress will, in the end, not have distanced us from natural systems but further embedded and entangled us in them.



U.S. B.S.:

Ahmed al–Sharaa ’r’ us.

I never thought I would see the day, but the day came Monday, when Ahmed al–Sharaa arrived at the White House for a sit-down with President Trump and the usual gaggle of misfits who must be there to make sure the Trumpster understands at least a little of what is under discussion.

A freak-show terrorist amid all that retro Oval Office elegance: Who could have imagined so offensive a tableau?

Al–Sharaa, alert readers will know, is one of those dripping-with-blood Sunni jihadists who, during the West’s extended covert operation against the Assad regime in Syria, had the habit of changing their names and the names of their murderous militias whenever the world figured out who they were and the extent of their savagery.

Al–Sharaa was known back then as Abu Muhammad al–Jolani, the surname translating as “He of the Golan.” Past beneficiary of C.I.A.–M.I.6 profligacy during those years American and British intel financed, armed, and trained primitive killers of al–Sharaa’s kind, he is now the self-proclaimed president of Syria—the result of a final Anglo–British push that put him in Damascus a year ago next month. ...............

............................ Let us take this occasion to come to terms with our purported leaders’ preference for all manner of mass-murderers, tyrants, genocidists and dictators, and equally our policy cliques’ abhorrence of democracy and its processes and anyone—beyond the perimeter of the West and sometimes within it—who stands for them.

These people are not aberrations or wrong turns. They are the dramatis personae of post–1945 American foreign policy. America created some of them, if not many or most. Certainly it created the man who now names himself Syria’s president.

No, Ahmed al–Sharaa ’r’ us, and we ought finally to come to terms with the reality of which he is merely the latest manifestation.



Geopolitical Fare:


......................... Once again, Moscow reiterates that this is not a war about seizing territory… It is a war to eliminate the threat that NATO poses to Russia. While Moscow is keeping the door open for diplomatic negotiations, it has intensified its strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and is systematically turning off the lights and the heat across central and western Ukraine. .............


The long history behind the Netanyahu–Trump ‘peace plan.’

Like most others in the West’s paying-attention minority, we thought from the first the 20–point “peace plan” Bibi Netanyahu and President Trump announced with fanfare at the White House on 29 September had nothing to do with peace. Palesintians were not consulted or given any part in the drafting process. Hamas, a legitimate liberation movement fighting an occupying power as international law gives it the right to do, is to disarm and have no future role in Gaza. There is but a brief, flimsy reference to Palestinian independence and sovereignty—when “conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.” Israeli aggression in the West Bank goes unmentioned.

Eva Bartlett put it as well as anyone in her In Gaza newsletter the other day, when she called this plan “the usual Israeli ultimatum: surrender or be murdered.” Indeed, the genocide in Gaza and the Zionist regime’s increasing aggression in the West Bank are fairly read as the grotesquely logical result of the cynical abuse of the peace process on the part of Israel and its Western supporters over many decades.

Guy Mettan, our distinguished Geneva contributor, does us all a great service by putting this latest betrayal masquerading as a peace plan in its proper historical context. This story begins seventy-eight Novembers ago, when the U.N. General Assembly voted to divide the British Mandate into Jewish and Arab states. At least two dozen Zionist deceptions have followed, always with the indulgence of Israel’s Western enablers. ...................



The difference between people who supported the British Empire and people who support the US empire is that those who supported the British Empire knew they were supporting an empire.

Someone who supported the British Empire’s acts of mass military slaughter around the world did so because they supported the Crown and wanted His Majesty to civilize the godless savages and turn the whole world into his royal subjects. Someone who supports the US empire’s warmongering thinks they are doing so because ...........

......... Supporters of the US empire think the US and its allies are always attacking Evil Bad Guys in the name of spreading Freedom and Democracy, and if this happens to advance pre-existing geostrategic agendas and/or resource interests then it is purely by coincidence. ................


These attacks are terrorizing and murdering people in our hemisphere.



Just as things cool down a bit in the middle east, the US has relocated the USS Gerald Ford from the Mediterranean Sea to the Caribbean while the Trump administration discusses plans to bomb Venezuela.

The violence of the empire remains constant. Peace is never the goal. You get happy they’re pulling the world’s largest aircraft carrier away from Iran, then it turns out they’re only doing it so they can move it to Venezuela. You get happy they’re pulling out of Afghanistan, then suddenly they’re waging a proxy war in Ukraine. ............



There are no easy fights in the struggle against the empire. Lots of losses and no clean wins.

You spend years protesting the genocide in Gaza, and you get a fake, shitty “ceasefire” deal that’s just designed to shut you up while Israel continues creating hell for the Palestinians and carving off more pieces of their territory.

Humanity manages to avoid nuclear conflict at the most dangerous points of the Ukraine war, but the country continues getting torn apart for years in an idiotic bloodbath that could have been easily avoided with a little diplomacy and common sense.

Assange gets free, but only after he agrees to plead guilty to doing journalism, and only after years of cruel treatment have made an example of him for all the world to see.

Public trust in the mainstream media finally gets obliterated, only for the imperial perception managers to come up with Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation and plutocrat-owned AI chatbots to retain control of the narrative.

The capitalists get everything they want, and succeed in advancing any ecocidal, dystopian agenda of their choosing so long as it generates profits or bolsters the imperial power structure.

Republicans win and they still act like underdog victims. Democrats win and they act like Republicans. Meanwhile any real political opposition which starts getting its legs underneath it gets stomped into the dirt in its infancy.  ...........

But you fight on anyway.

Not because you enjoy it. Not because you’re good at it. Not because you feel like you’re going to win. You keep biting down on your mouthguard and throwing hands for no other reason than because that’s all you can do.

These freaks are killing our planet. They’re committing genocide. They’re waving armageddon weapons around like cocks and playing chicken with the lives of every terrestrial organism. They’re driving us further and further into a tyrannical mind-controlled dystopia while doing everything they can to choke off our artistic brilliance and poison all the best things about our species.

You fight them because what the hell else are you going to do? Even if the treads of the machine are going to roll over us all in the end, at least you’ll go down knowing you left it all in the ring. .................



Vid Fare:




RIP Fare:



He co-discovered DNA’s structure but later engaged in rank racism and sexism



Other Fare:

Complexity scientists Dave Snowden explains why good intentions never leave the conference centre.

The best intentions of mice and men... aft never leave the conference centre, according to this week's guest, Dave Snowden.

Founder of The Cynefin Company, Dave is a management consultant and complexity scientist who has worked for governments and institutions around the world to help them better understand what populations need, and how to deliver it to them. He joins me today to explain why solutions fail, why populism is on the rise, and why the middle class' penchant for what he calls "talking therapy" will never deliver real change—because it ignores the stories on the street.

This is a conversation which explores geo-engineering, putting oil companies to good use, The Troubles and even Obama's first term, with Dave insisting that it is impossible to change people's minds—we can only facilitate different interactions with the world.

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