THE IMPOSSIBLE JUST HAPPENED

   In 2008, the monetary authorities were taken by surprise and didn't have time time to adjust. They had to improvise over a long weekend and decided to flood the market with liquidities.

   Not so this time. They have been thinking for almost 20 years about what to do and consequently, we are about to see the result of all this "thinking" soon. 

  What I think it will end up being, is everybody being distributed worthless CBDC backed up by even more worthless government bonds and they (and the people in the known) having in the meantime bought all the tangibles assets; gold, metals, resources, shares and land with QE money offered liberally. Think about it: It cost "nothing" literally since you buy "stuff" of value with money you know will be inflated away and you have no intention whatsoever to pay back. Need more money to buy real assets? Just double the money supply, buy everything you want, sell all the worthless crap you do not want to pensions, funds, insurances, banks and clueless individuals stupid enough to buy, and you're done. Now you own the assets and "they" own the debt. Instead of reducing the debt to zero with inflation, the good people may express they concern violently at being robbed so brazenly, you just let the real assets inflate away out of reach to the majority of the population.   

   You have some gold or silver put aside? Great for you. But 99.9% of the people are not gonna get paid in gold anytime soon. In Japan, net salaries haven't changed in over 40 years which means that real salaries have dropped almost 50% during that time. No wonder the Japanese do not fell as rich as they used to be. Soon, the Europeans and Americans will join them. Then everybody with a few rare exceptions. Welcome to a world with no inflation except for everything you truly need! 

   In the end, that's the solution they found: Instead of inflation as in the good old days, we'll get mild inflation (deflation is not good at all as we learned in the 1930s), and a huge repricing of real assets so that in the end, they achieve what was needed: Shrink the debt relative to the total value of assets.      

Post by No Limit

The probability of what is happening is near zero.

Three 6-sigma events occurred in one week.

– Bonds
– Silver
– Gold

We are currently living through a statistical impossibility.

Let me explain:

Last Tuesday, Japanese 30-year debt recorded what’s called a “6-sigma” session.

2 days ago, silver did even better: it was at 5-sigma on the rally, then reached 6-sigma on the drop. IN A SINGLE SESSION.

Gold right now? It’s up 23% in less than a month. We’re getting very close to a 6-sigma event.

That’s three 6-sigma events in ONE WEEK.

To explain quickly: in finance, we measure price moves around an average using the standard deviation, which we call sigma.

1-sigma: mundane
2-sigma: common
3-sigma: becomes rare
4-sigma: exceptional
5-sigma: extremely rare
6-sigma: supposed to occur once in 500 million

Here are the 6-sigma-type episodes we saw previously:

– The october 1987 crash, 22% drop in 1 session
– March 2020 covid crash
– The swiss franc’s surge in january 2015
– WTI oil turning negative in april 2020

But we’ve never had 3 events occur in one week.

Do you see the point?

A 6-sigma event is almost NEVER triggered by a simple macro headline.

It almost always comes from the market’s structure: leverage, positions that are too concentrated, margin calls, collateral problems, and forced selling or buying.

That’s important to understand because we’re talking about internal strains in the system’s mechanics.

As you know, the Japanese bond market sits at the heart of the global financial system, and I won’t go back over the whole topic, but a 6-sigma move in a market that enormous doesn’t go unnoticed.

Seeing a 6-sigma move in silver a few days later gives one a lot to think about.

And now gold?? That’s absolutely insane.

Why are we seeing extreme statistical events, only days apart, in such different markets?

When a pillar of global funding becomes unstable, leverage tends to contract, and two things happen at the same time: forced selling in certain assets and forced buying of protection in others.

Historically, precious metals are often among the beneficiaries.

Long-term rates say something about the credibility of states: that is, their ability to honor future debts without resorting massively to inflation.

Precious metals say something about the credibility of the currency itself, and when both become unstable at the same time, we’re looking at a challenge to the monetary framework.

I won’t go on, because I want to share the rest in another tweet tomorrow, but generally when a regime starts to crack, the adjustments are BRUTAL.

It’s exactly in those moments that several high-sigma events appear across different asset classes.

I’ll repeat it: seeing three 6-sigma events back to back is not normal.

Gold and silver are telling you, explicitly, that we’re living through a real paradigm shift.

Japan's Debt Bomb Is About To Explode And Hit The US (Video - 14mn)

  We have reached the end of the financial road. Will the Japan debt bomb explode first? Possible? Likely? Does it even matter at this stage? When a house of card crumbles, do you really focus on which card fell first? 

  Interest rates rising unwind the carry trade and the artificial profits which kept zombie banks afloat. Now the tide is going down. We will soon see who was swimming naked. It is quite possible that it was in fact everybody!  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3cZhzItZe0

What Broke Trade Was The Fiat Dollar

   A great overview of how we got there money wise: 80 years in the making.  

by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

The postwar trading order is taking on an entirely new shape.

We can put brackets around the old one, like a tombstone: 1944–2025.

Having known some of the economists and statesmen who put together the old order, I’m in a position to explain what they had in mind and also what went wrong with it. What will replace it is still very much in flux but the outlines are being drawn daily.

Let’s go back in time to Oct. 29, 1929 when the stock market crashed. There was panic in the air and great confusion about what to do and what not to do. However, absent any serious action by government, the financial markets began to recover over six months, even as downward price pressure on commodities began to show.

Congress responded with a very large increase in tariffs. The reason was partially a holdover from what had happened two decades earlier. The income tax had replaced reliance on tariff revenue, and many members of Congress had their doubts about this change. Indeed, resentment against the income tax was growing. Reverting to tariffs and away from a drive to free trade seemed like a possibility.

Many economists at the time warned about this tariff act. The concern was that this would shatter relationships with foreign markets when they were most fragile. The entire financial and industrial world at the time, including many small farmers, were concerned that this action was ill-advised. There was no love for the income tax but bringing back the tariff was deeply unpopular within professional circles.

The day that President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was June 17, 1930. That very day, the stock market stopped its trajectory toward recovery and reversed. Over the course of the several weeks surrounding this act, financial markets fell fully 20 percent. Lacking another explanation, all eyes turned toward the tariff bill as the cause. A few years later, those tariffs started to fall.

This prompted two huge commitments on the part of the upper echelon of opinion makers, economists, and statesmen. They blamed the decline on the tariff, deploying the crude analytical tool “After this, therefore, because of this.” Therefore, first, they committed themselves to a long-term plan to restore the downward trajectory of tariffs. Second, they decided to remove discretion over tariffs from Congress and put it entirely in the hands of the executive.

That’s where matters stood as the Depression went on and on and economic conditions continued to decay. The New Deal did not work to end the economic crisis, despite what they say. Even as the nation marched forward to yet another war, the economic problems persisted.

After the war, the forces for freer trade and against tariffs got their chance. The Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 was all-encompassing: finance, monetary rules, and trade. The trade piece of this was to be the International Trade Organization but it was never ratified. Instead, we got the much milder General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. As a separate agreement, a new version of the gold standard was revived. In the new iterations, nations would stop promising domestic convertibility of money. Rather, accounts between nations would be settled by physical shipments of gold.

This was called the gold-exchange standard. It established dollar supremacy for the main parts of the world economy. There was always a problem with the plan, one known from the start. Nations using the same monetary standard also need to coordinate fiscal and monetary policies, a scheme that was impossible to deploy among all sovereign nations. A second problem is that without such settlements, wages and business costs across nations could remain permanently divergent, giving exporting nations an advantage over importing ones. With the dollar as the world standard, the United States stood to lose all manufacturing advantages should the agreement ever break down.

By the late 1960s, with huge pressures from war and welfare piling up in all nations, the Bretton Woods agreement did indeed break down. The United States became a net importer of goods, meaning that its outward gold shipments would only increase, depleting stockpiles that secured the soundness of the currency. Financial managers, bankers, and economic planners were powerless to stop this simply because the international agreement required that international accounts be settled in gold.

President Richard Nixon (2nd-L) poses at the White House in Washington, with four government officials he named as his economic "Quadriad" on Jan. 23, 1969. (L-R) Chairman William M. Chesney Martin Jr., of the Federal Reserve Board; Nixon; Secretary of the Treasury David M. Kennedy; Budget Director Robert Mayor and Chairman Paul McCracken of the Council of Economic Advisers. AP Photo/ Harvey Georges

Richard Nixon was the president who had to deal with the crisis once the gold outflows became near terminal. On Aug. 15, 1971, Nixon broke the whole international monetary order by suspending gold convertibility. The United States would no longer ship its gold in exchange for goods. This move shocked the world. Improvising, a new agreement was reached 18 months later. With the Smithsonian Agreement, a new global system of fiat money was born. There would be a market for currencies to trade against each other but with absolutely no tether to gold.

The dollar retained its global supremacy. Any economist schooled in both trade theory and monetary theory (fewer and fewer are) could have predicted what would happen. The U.S. industrial base would be gradually dismantled as nations discovered how their lesser-valued currencies gave them an advantage as exporters. The United States would retain its exporter status on natural resources but manufacturing was surely doomed.

It was also easily predictable that the United States would begin running trade deficits with essentially everyone because the market for dollars was international and settlement was no longer a necessary feature of the system. Japan and then China figured out the new metrics of international trade, and policymakers sat by and watched with astonishment how one American industry after another evaporated: pianos, watches, household electronics, apparel, textiles, steel, cars, tools, ships, and on it goes.

The math of the situation made this inevitable. International trade in the days of the gold standard tended to yield what David Ricardo called the Law of One Price. Gold settlement equilibrated prices and wages internationally in the same way they did domestically. With the Smithsonian Agreement, the disequilibration would be permanent and further worsening to the disadvantage of the country hosting the world’s most valuable and most-used currency.

It should have been obvious that such a situation was not sustainable. It was Donald Trump who called it out alongside his suggested remedy of old-world tariffs. The theory was that by adding an import tax, the manufacturing disadvantage of the dominant nation would be remedied—a prescription that had never been deployed before simply because these conditions have never before prevailed.

The architects of the Bretton Woods system are today likely rolling in their graves to see the global system of trading revert to walled gardens of tariffs, zones, and regional supply lines, alongside the inevitable tensions that such a system produces. But keep in mind: the system they set up could result in no other. By attempting to gamify a gold standard without the discipline that comes from domestic convertibility, they made the present world inevitable. That it took 70 years to get here makes it no less part of the logical and political trajectory any intelligent observer could have foreseen.

The fiat money system was the shepherd of the breakdown of world trade, in addition to fueling astonishing levels of leverage, debt, inflation, and financial irresponsibility all around. This sad story points to an eternal truth. You cannot ever trust governments with the production and management of money. When they are not abusing the system to serve themselves, they are mismanaging it to make it untrustworthy for everyone else to use.

“Scientists Use AI to Create a Virus Never Seen Before”

   This is an "atom" like paradigm: The bad side are about as important as the good Expect the best but prepare for the worst!

Via: Daily Mail:

Lab–grown life has taken a major leap forward as scientists use AI to create a new virus that has never been seen before.

The virus, dubbed Evo–?2147, was created by scientists from scratch using new technologies that could revolutionise the course of evolution.

With just 11 genes, compared to the 200,000 in the human genome, this virus is among the simplest forms of life.

However, scientists believe that the same tools could one day create entire living organisms or resurrect long–extinct species.

This artificial virus was specifically created to kill infectious and potentially deadly E. Coli bacteria.

Based on a wild virus known to infect bacteria, scientists used an AI tool called Evo2 to create 285 entirely new viruses from scratch.

While only 16 were able to attack the E. Coli, the most successful were 25 per cent quicker at killing bacteria than the wild variants.

However, previous research has raised concerns that AI–designed pathogens could themselves become a deadly threat to humanity.

We're f*cked! - From Vibrancy To Vacancy: America's Going, Going Gone!

  This morning the market broke in Tokyo.

  The Yen opened at 154 per dollar which means the end of the carry trade. 

  Gold was at 5,120 due to the fact that absolutely everyone in the world is dumping USD (Good job Donald!) and silver reached 110 per once as the metal is flowing to Shanghai which offers a much better price. This presents a conundrum to the COMEX market in London which will not be able to close its future trades at the end of the month and an even bigger one to JP Morgan which seemingly is the unhappy counterpart of many of these trades at an average price of 54 dollar. This must represent a potential loss of 3 to 400 million dollars, making a huge dent in their tier one capital and therefore rendering the bank insolvent and consequently in need of urgent help from the Central Bank or a market event... 

  No wonder the horsemen of the apocalypse are riding towards Iran!      

  The article below is completely unrelated but a stark reminder that the current debacle did not happen yesterday. It was 50 years in the making since the 1971 floating of the dollar and the reason why the chickens have come home to roost today. 

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

I hate shopping. I hate crowds. I hate malls. I don’t believe I had entered a mall in over a decade, until Monday. My visit to the once vibrant Montgomery Mall in Montgomeryville, PA was a shocking confirmation of what I had been predicting about retail stores since 2008.

Next to the term Dead Mall in the dictionary should be a picture of the current version of the Montgomery Mall. If you need visual proof, here is brief video showing how it is deader than ever.

We didn’t go to the mall to shop. My wife bought me a watch from Macy’s (online purchase) for Christmas. I haven’t worn a watch in over a decade and now that I’m retired, have no need for a watch. So we were going to get a refund and then walk around the mall for some exercise, because the weather outside is bitterly cold. The Mall had three anchor stores: Macy’s, JC Penney, and Sears. The Sears closed in 2020. JC Penney declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2021, but still operates as a zombie like entity on the opposite end of the mall from Macy’s. Macy’s hasn’t declared bankruptcy yet, but their business plan appears to be closing 50 to 100 stores per year, until there are none left.

We arrived at the Macy’s at about 11:00 am on MLK day. Ghost town USA. The few employees we saw outnumbered the customers. A store filled with jewelry, clothes, shoes, and other useless crap had no customers.

It took us ten minutes to find someone who could process a return.

Both Macy’s and JC Penney are clearly in an extend and pretend phase. The entire pitiful mall is pretending to be viable, when it is clearly deceased. What a far cry from its heyday – 1977 until approximately 2007. With three rambunctious boys, my wife spent many days at this mall trying to wear them out. When they were teenagers, I would drop them off on Friday nights so they could cruise around the mall with their friends. Those days are long gone.

The two story Montgomery Mall, with 1.1 million square feet of retail space, was built in 1977 by Kravco. Before smart phones, social media and online ordering, malls were the place to go for shopping mothers and teenagers escaping from their parents clutches. Malls were swarming with people, because they were convenient and accessible. They were the mecca of consumerism, enabled by the all powerful credit card. I have lived in Montgomery County since 1990, with three malls encircling me: The Plymouth Meeting Mall, where my employer’s first store in the U.S. (IKEA) and their headquarters were located; The Montgomery Mall; and the king of all malls in King of Prussia.

At its peak, the Montgomery Mall had over 90 stores/eateries. Major tenants, excluding their anchors, included: H&M, Disney Store, Uniqlo, Boscovs, Tweeter, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Strawbridge’s, and dozens of the usual smaller mall outlets. The bustling food court consisting of Chick-fil-a, McDonalds, Sbarro, Subway, and a Chinese place met all the healthy eating requirements. Yesterday, the number of occupied outlets totaled less than 15. It was a pitiful mixture of dynamite retail juggernauts like Cell Phone Care, Dilshal Halal Cuisine, Montgomery Dental, a pop-up Spirit Halloween store, and a mixture of wireless and jewelry repair stores. I think a store selling Vacancy signs would best suit this nearly dead mall.

The death of this now obsolete mecca of consumerism can be blamed on clueless corporate executives, devious developers, feckless bankers, and technology. The beginning of the downfall can be traced to the acquisition of the mall by Simon Property Group in 2003. These corporate raiders use the legal system to organize their holdings in such a way that they can take on massive leverage, pillage the asset, not repay the debt, and walk away virtually unscathed, like they did in 2021 when the mall was foreclosed upon with a $119 judgment against Simon. Simon Property Group is still a thriving entity, with their stock near an all-time high of $184 per share, because they gate off each of their mall entities so they can go bankrupt and not affect the parent company. Ain’t America great?

The bank sold the stinking, rotting carcass of this beached 1.1 million square foot retail whale to Kohan Retail Investment Group for $55 million in 2021. When you buy a mall for $50 per square foot and still can’t make a profit, you got yourself a dead mall. Kohan has been referred to as “the last owner a mall sees”, investing little in the malls it purchases and allowing mall facilities to deteriorate while trying to sell off out parcels to restaurants and grocery stores. Dead and deteriorating is the correct description of the Montgomery Mall. As we walked around this dank, depressing hulk of cement and glass, my “glass half full” wife suggested they only needed to get a few good tenants to start reviving the mall. I reacted like the clown in Seinfeld when George couldn’t believe he had never heard of Bozo. Malls are either dead or dying. There is no coming back.

I guess I should feel vindicated as I had written dozens of articles about the downfall of retailers and malls since I began writing in 2008, including: Ghost Malls: Coming to Your Town (2008), Extend and Pretend Coming to an End (2012), Available (2013),  Retail Death Rattle Grows Louder (2014), Will Sears Survive Until Christmas (2016). The Covid scamdemic put the final nail in the coffin of the Montgomery Mall, and the rise of Amazon and all online retailing put the coffin in the ground.

By purposely killing malls, they forced more retail online, with only electronic payment as an option. Wait until they institute their CBDCs and then can control your ability to purchase based upon your social credit score. Just observe what is happening in Davos to see your dystopian future. AI will tell you what to buy. Hell, it will buy it for you without asking whether you wanted it at all. No need to think, freedom to choose, or ability to say no.

I see the death of the Montgomery Mall and hundreds of other malls across this land of plenty (of debt) as a metaphor for the imminent death of this American Empire of Debt. The bigger things get, the worse they get. With or without physical malls, credit card debt has risen from $600 billion in 2000 to almost $1.3 trillion today. Meanwhile, the national debt grew from $5.6 trillion in 2000 to $38.5 trillion today. The average American goes deeper into debt each day, as the American empire adds $5 billion of debt each day.

Our cities and infrastructure deteriorate and decay (just like these dead malls), while financial wizards think up new ways to rape and pillage what remains of the national treasury. It’s all a Potemkin facade, propped up by never ending issuance of debt, ceaseless propaganda, increasing surveillance state authoritarianism, and no way out. Mall owners (with their bank partners) have been extending and pretending for over two decades. Our country has been doing the same since 2008. But, eventually the jig is up. The current faux foreign conflicts are designed by the powers that be to distract from the intractable domestic financial disaster coming down the track.

When Dick’s closed up shop in the Montgomery Mall last year, they replaced themselves with a perfectly named outlet which describes the mall and our country.

 

The AI Factor Behind Trump's Power Play On China's Oil Suppliers

   As we have discussed many times in the past, war with Venezuela and Iran are not just about oil but about the control of resources and the more global "war with China". 

   The control of the oil market has always been at the top of the list for the US which understands that it can only stay a global empire as long as it controls oil. This was already the case for Iraq, which had clearly nothing to do with 9/11, so they invented "weapons of mass destruction" about which later Bush the second, laughed looking at his pocket: "Not here!" They perfectly knew there were none! And it was also the case with Libya which was partitioned soon after. 

   The only difference with the current tensions is that the Trump Administration is more brazen and that Europe has completely lost its voice while wasting its weapons in Ukraine and its energy on the war against climate change. The most imbecile policy since the war against witches in the Middle Ages. Amazingly they truly believed their own rhetoric about "The end of history" and the advent of Globalization. 

   So where do we go from here? Clearly, the US cannot be appeased. They aim for dominance so you either abdicate all pretense to independence and bend the knee like Europe or you fight back although fighting back will of course not be an easy or riskless option.     

   Venezuela was too far but Iran is vital for China. Even if it wasn't, it is obvious that soon after, first Iraq, then Saudi Arabia would be likewise prevented to deal with China, peacefully or not. This is why, unavoidably tensions will rise in the coming months. The US will try to find a pretext to attack and if it doesn't work will probably fall back to the well oiled method of "false flag! They have proved in Venezuela that they have incapacitating weapons which will most certainly be used again against Iran when needed. 

   Since the goal is now unambiguously to contain China, the stakes will rise until the pressure becomes unbearable. Let's not forget that this was the method used in 1940 and 1941 against the Empire of Japan which by strangling the country precipitated Pearl Harbor and World War 2 in the Pacific. 

   Trump says that he doesn't want war, but the recent past proves that he cannot resist the pressure of his "donors" nor does he control the apparatus of the state so that the deep state and the Neo-cons can do as they please and in the end, he will gladly endorse whatever they decide.

   And then more ominously, let's not forget that the financial clock is ticking and approaching midnight when suddenly all the trillions of fiat money will revert to their intrinsic value which is that of paper. To say that the clouds are gathering for a mighty storm may be an understatement.   

The AI Factor Behind Trump's Power Play On China's Oil Suppliers

by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,

Why is it so important to the Trump administration to take control of Venezuela and encourage the people of Iran to overthrow the Islamic regime?

The link between the two is obviously oil.

Of course, the strategy in Venezuela involves oil, but also includes restricting China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere, undermining the BRICS currency, and shutting down Venezuelan drug trafficking, illegal immigration, and other nastiness.

Same for Iran regarding oil. Both are important energy suppliers to China, but especially Iran.

But it’s not the whole picture. President Donald Trump’s broader strategy is about restricting China’s access to cheap, reliable oil at the exact moment it needs that energy to compete with the United States in artificial intelligence (AI).

Venezuela Was a Great Deal—For China

Looking back, Venezuela was as an unbelievable good deal for China. Sanctioned by the United States and shunned by much of the West, Caracas sold heavily discounted crude to Chinese refiners willing to tolerate risk. It wasn’t glamorous oil—but it was dependable and cheap. Venezuela provided about five percent of China’s annual oil needs; not a huge figure, but enough to matter.

Trump’s decision to blockade Venezuelan oil exports and assert control over the country’s oil infrastructure effectively ends that dream deal. With U.S. control, China loses a meaningful slice of supply, about four percent, that helped buffer it from global price swings.

That matters more than it sounds.

As the world’s largest oil importer, even small disruptions force Beijing to scramble for alternatives—often at higher prices, longer shipping distances, or greater political cost.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) speaks during a meeting with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza (L) at the Diaoyutai State Guest House in Beijing on Jan. 16, 2020. Ng Han Guan-Pool/Getty Images

Iran: The Bigger Pressure Point

But the Venezuelan oil flow to China is small potatoes compared to that of Iran.

China is Iran’s largest oil customer, buying the vast majority of Tehran’s exported crude, up to 80 percent, often at steep discounts, and is the life blood to China’s independent refineries, its petrochemical sector, and its power-hungry industrial base. In other words, Iranian oil is critical to China’s continued economic and technological growth.

That fact puts Trump’s renewed pressure on the ruling Islamic regime in Iran in a different light. The tariffs, sanctions enforcement, secondary penalties, and encouraging rebellion by the Iranian people is more than just punishment for Tehran. It puts China in an energy bind.

Should Beijing keep buying Iranian oil and risk broader economic retaliation, or comply and lose one of the cheapest energy sources available?

Either way, Beijing pays more for less reliable oil supplies.

Why Oil Still Matters in the AI Age

There’s a popular myth that AI runs on “clean” digital infrastructure—clouds, algorithms, and software. In reality, AI runs on electricity, and electricity is still largely generated through nuclear power and fossil fuels, i.e., oil, natural gas, and coal. Training large AI models requires staggering amounts of energy, and a single hyperscale data center can consume as much electricity as a mid-sized city. Multiply that by hundreds of facilities, and energy, not chips, becomes the real bottleneck in the AI race.

Beijing understands this. That’s why it continues to approve a record number of new coal plants, expand its gas infrastructure, and secure long-term oil contracts—even while leading the world in renewables.

What’s more, China knows that oil and gas help stabilize power grids that support data centers. Intermittent renewables alone can’t guarantee the always-on power that AI systems require. Plus, AI hardware depends on petroleum-based products—plastics, resins, coolants, lubricants, and advanced composites used in chips, servers, and cooling systems. Oil is a non-negotiable industrial input.

Finally, oil is relatively inexpensive, lowering the cost of training models, which compounds quickly, because whichever nation can train more models faster and cheaper leads the AI race.

Cutting China off from discounted oil doesn’t just raise fuel prices, it raises the cost of intelligence itself.

A worker rides bicycle at an oil refinery of China’s Sinopec in Wuhan, a city in China’s Hubei Province on May 10, 2011. STR/AFP/Getty Images

Energy as a Hidden AI Weapon

This is where Trump’s strategy becomes clearer.

The United States doesn’t need to out-build China in data centers if it can out-price and out-power them. America has abundant domestic oil and gas, expanding LNG exports, and deep capital markets to finance new, energy-hungry infrastructure.

China, by contrast, is vulnerable. It imports over 70 percent of its oil. Much of that comes from politically unstable or sanctioned states. Disrupt those flows, and China’s AI ambitions become more expensive, more fragile, and more dependent on geopolitical goodwill.

In that sense, oil becomes a second-order AI weapon, in that it is not something that directly attacks technology, but something that quietly determines who can afford to scale it.

What This Means for the Global Balance

Yes, Russia still matters in this equation—but more as a background variable than the main event. Lower oil prices and tighter markets can squeeze Moscow’s revenues and complicate its war financing. China’s increased reliance on Russian crude also deepens a partnership that carries long-term risks for Beijing.

But the real target of Trump’s energy denial strategy isn’t Russia. It’s China’s momentum.

Trump’s energy foreign policy is about slowing China’s rise without firing a shot—forcing it to spend more, plan more cautiously, and accept structural disadvantages in the most important technological competition of the century.

The Bigger Picture

AI dominance won’t be decided by who writes the best code. It will be decided by who can power the most machines, the longest, at the lowest cost.

By squeezing Venezuela, pressuring Iran, and reshaping global oil flows, Trump is betting that energy strategy, not algorithms, will decide the winner in the AI-driven economy.

And if that bet is right, the future of AI may be decided not in Silicon Valley or Shenzhen, but in oil fields, shipping lanes, and sanctions that most people aren’t paying attention to.

"Onward ho!" to World War 3!

  The article below is behind a paywall but the omen are bad.

  Silver at 100 dollars per once and gold near 5,000 are telling us that the future markets are broken. It is whispered that a "whale" may go belly up in the silver market. As for the dollar, beware the sinking feeling....   

  The last time the repo market broke in November 2019, we ended up with Covid-19 and trillions of dollars to reflate the economy. 

  What is obvious to anyone paying attention, is that the Chinese have started flexing their financial muscle and that consequently, with silver topping 112 dollars per once is Shanghai, London's Comex is being squeezed out and starved of metal. Stealth but nothing short of a declaration of war. 

  Consequently, the Empire is striking back with Venezuela first and now Iran in its mire. The common denominator of these two countries being oil and exports to China, it should not be very difficult to link the dots! 

  We are consequently entering a high stake "game".   

  It was obvious from the beginning that the US was not going to give up its "exorbitant Privilege" i.e. the US dollar hegemony without a fight. 

  The outline of the "conflict" is slowly being drawn. The US knows that by 2028, China will be ready and the multi-polar world will be a fact.  

  The next few months will be dangerous to put it mildly.     

Chaotic Week Ends With Stocks Down, Crashing Dollar, Precious Metals At Record Highs

Ukraine Is Defending Itself With Money Europe Doesn't Have

   What happens when you lose a war? Europe is about to learn the lesson the hard way. Even to the least acute observers at the EU, it must now be obvious that the US is distancing itself from the war in Ukraine and that without support, Europe simply cannot sustain such a major war in the long term.

  Europe will also discover, that countries have no "friends" and that consequently, everybody will pounce on the weakened continent when the opportunity arise. It should therefore say goodbye to Greenland, but also to all the remaining colonies splattered around the world as well as the pretense of "grandeur", such as the G7 and other old uni-polar leftover of the 20th Century. The last but most important subject is of course the Euro...   

  This happened in almost exactly the same terms 2,000 years ago when Rome replaced Greece as the main power around the Mediterranean Sea. Greece was slowly getting weaker and then suddenly it was no more. Are we approaching such a denouement at Davos?   

Ukraine Is Defending Itself With Money Europe Doesn't Have

The ugly truth is that an end of the Ukraine war may have as devastating economic and political consequences for Europe as its continuance...

Ukraine already faces a $63 billion U.S. dollar funding shortfall in 2026 and I would be surprised if this figure doesn’t increase if the war continues. Ukraine’s massive fiscal splurge is driven by two factors

• The enormous cost of maintaining a standing army of almost one million people;

• The vast expense of importing weapons from the west to fight the war.

Weapon purchases are not sources of productive investment as they are literally burned in the heat of battle.

The same, of course, is true for Russia.

Both countries saw reducing economic growth in 2025, with Ukraine’s at 2.1% and 1.5%.

And, western pundits would point to this as evidence that Ukraine’s economy is performing better.

But the opposite is true.

Russia’s economy is around twelve times larger than Ukraine’s nominally and just over ten times larger when you look at GDP using purchasing power parity.

You can see this in the defense spending numbers.

Russia spent a record $143 billion on defense in 2025 compared to around $60 billion for Ukraine, so around 2.3 times higher. Yet, Russian defense spending amounted to just 6.3% of its GDP whereas for Ukraine it was 31.7%. So, massive spending on defense is a much less pivotal issue for Russia in terms of its economic fortunes.

Defense spending represents a far smaller proportion of total economic activity than it does for Ukraine. And Russia can afford to pay for its defense needs with its own finances, while Ukraine is entirely dependent on money from western donors to keep the war going.

Despite the massive cost of war, Russia ran a fiscal deficit of just 1.7% of GDP in 2025.

That is still well below the EU fiscal rule of 3% of GDP with some countries like France and Poland having deficits at or more than double that figure.

Ukraine’s fiscal deficit on the other hand was around 20% of GDP.

That gap had to be filled by foreign funding as it has debt of 107% of GDP and is cut off from foreign lending.

So, hence the EU stepping up with a loan of 90 billion Euros, two thirds of which is earmarked for defense.

Russia on the other hand has debt of around 15% of GDP and doesn’t really need to borrow heavily to keep its war effort afloat. By the way, 15% of GDP is far lower than the U.S. or any European nation, many of which, like Ukraine, have debt levels of over 100% of GDP.

Ukraine is defending itself with money Europe doesn’t have.

Despite the shock of sanctions, Russia doesn’t have to break the bank nor boost its lending significantly.

This also means that when the war eventually ends, Russia will be able to make the economic transition back to peace in a less painless way.

Russia will be under no pressure to impose massive cuts to defense spending to live within its means and can instead do so gradually.

Ukraine on the other hand faces a massive financial cliff edge when the war ends.

Ukrainian economic growth according to the OECD is set to fall further to 1.7% in 2027 if the war continues.

And that assumes continued large injections of capital from outside countries. In 2025, Ukrainian defence spending made up 31.1% of Ukrainian GDP, and two thirds of state budgetary expenditure. None of that spending goes into improving Ukraine’s weak economy.

With all of the support that it receives, Ukraine’s GDP in 2025 amounted to just under $210 billion according to the IMF.

Bear in mind here that Ukraine received $52.4 billion in external financing in 2025, or around one quarter of its GDP at the end of the year.

Take away foreign funding and Ukraine suddenly sees its economy shrink by over 20%.

Or, put it another way, take away the war and Ukraine sees its economy shrink by over 20%.

Russia simply does not face the same problem.

Rather, an end to the war may help Russia to get inflation – perhaps its biggest economic challenge – under control as economic activity returns to its normal rhythm.

But still the question arises, how come Ukraine has grown so little when it received so much foreign funding?

One big reason is that Ukraine recorded a trade deficit of $30 billion over the same period, a record according to the National Bank of Ukraine.

So, $52 billion in foreign money came into Ukraine during the year and $30 billion went straight back out again.

Because Ukraine’s massive trade deficit is fuelled by two things.

• First, a huge increase in the import of weapons from western suppliers which have doubled since 2022, not least as they are no longer being provided free of charge.

• Second, Ukraine has increased its imports of natural resources, in particular a massive increase in gas imports, because domestic production has been hit hard by the war. Coal is another area, as Russia has swallowed up important coal mines in the Donbas.

Not all of that deficit in trade will be recoverable even after the war ends, even if Ukraine was able to reduce the overall size of its trade deficit.

By comparison, Russia’s surplus of trade in goods was already at over $100 billion by October 2025, although the overall trade picture is narrower, at around $36 billion because of a significant deficit in services trade, including from large numbers of Russians who have moved overseas since the war started.

An end to the war, if anything, may allow Russia’s trade surpluses to grow further. A future relaxation on the import of natural resources into Europe could mean that Russia benefited from already increased trade with Asia and renewed trade with Europe.

In any case, the consistent surpluses that Russia pulls in both help shore up economic growth and foreign exchange reserves, which in 2025 grew by over $135 billion to a whopping $734 billion.

And just to be clear, Russia put their reserve funds almost completely into gold which now stand at over $310 billion.

One big reason for Russia storing its reserves in gold is to keep them clear of the stealing hands of western bureaucrats, who froze around $300 billion in reserves at the start of the war.

This means that Russia has a surplus of $434 billion in foreign exchange reserves which is almost completely insulated from western expropriation. The $10 billion rise in foreign currency reserves in 2025 was undoubtedly caused by an accumulation of reserves in non-dollar, Euro and sterling currencies, suggesting the move to greater trade in Chinese Yuan and Indian rupees.

An end to the war may at some point lead to the unfreezing of immobilised Russian assets in the U.S., Europe and Japan.

Ukraine’s reserve position is also comparatively strong, at $57.3 billion at the start of 2026, a record figure. However, that rise is completely down to inflows of foreign capital to fund the war effort. An end to the war would likely shrink Ukraine’s reserves as its stubborn trade deficit was not being offset by foreign inflows of funds as they had been during war.

But it’s the sudden and shocking loss of foreign funding that accompanies an end to the war which will cause Ukraine’s economy to shrink dramatically.

But fear not, Europe is determined that Ukraine maintain an army of 800,000 personnel when the war ends. However, this seems more about economic survival than about security.

Ukraine would not be able to pay for such as large army with its own money, as it doesn’t have any money. So, once again, Europe will be forced to step in to meet Ukraine’s financing needs to pay the salaries of soldiers who are no longer in war fighting mode.

This will lead to debt and taxes rising in Europe, according to a recent Kiel Institute study. But it will also lead to a loss of business for European defense firms. Because peace time will inevitably mean a sharp drop in the munitions and military material being burned on a daily basis in the fog of war.

Two thirds of the EU’s recently 90 billion Euro loan to Ukraine will be spent on military support, including weaponry. That has sparked an argument between Germany and France over a proposed ‘buy European’ clause, with France wanting to prevent Ukrainian purchases of U.S. equipment. Perhaps with one eye on the future, the French in typical fashion, are trying to ensure that their firms get a decent share of what could amount to dwindling Ukrainian orders for weapons.

A bit like the French army, Europe is reversing itself inevitably into economic defeat when the war ends.

Obligated to keep an economically failed Ukraine on life support.

Having to increase its debt and taxes to support bad foreign policy decisions it has been taking since 2014.

Trying to boost its defense industrial complex but losing business with the end of war.

For the mainstream political parties in Europe, this adds to the trend of them heading towards electoral Armageddon when they start putting themselves to the polls from 2027 onward.

Until then, they are stuck, knowing that continuing the war will kill them electorally, and knowing that ending the war will too.

To quote my old British soldier dad, they are like the mythical oozlum bird, continually going round in circles until they disappear up their own backsides.

FAKE IT UNTIL YOU MAKE IT

  Just as the author of the article below, "I’m befuddled by the insanity swirling around and want no part in this shitshow". 

  Over the last few years, I have tried to add interesting insight to current issues, trying as much as possible to remain objective but eventually realized that in a polarized environment this has become impossible. Criticize one side and you lose half your readers, criticize the other side and the other half is gone. Eventually, you must align yourself with one side or the other. I won't. 

  Worse, news or rather their interpretation have not only become more polarized but far more difficult to approach objectively. AI is introducing bias, false narrative and pictures everywhere. So much so that curation is becoming more and more time consuming.  

  So, now is the time to reorient once again this blog and move away from the current insanity. I will consequently publish articles related to more profound and philosophical subjects. I expect far fewer readers but so be it. The wilder the short term becomes, the broader our focus shall be. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_tHqXt44sU&list=TLPQMTkwMTIwMjbVbsSmUr9liQ&index=4

FAKE IT UNTIL YOU MAKE IT

“My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me.” — George Carlin

The government reported CPI of “only” 2.7% and the financial pundits and Trump toadies celebrated the “lowest inflation in 5 years”. This is after last week’s “surprisingly good” unemployment report where the country added 50,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 4.4%. Of course, they also revealed every month in 2025 had been revised downward. EVERY freaking month was a lie when originally reported. December will eventually be revised to a negative number, when no one is paying attention.  The lie did its job of sending the stock market to new all-time highs, because they need to fake it until they make it.

It’s embarrassing living under the rule of a quasi-fascist corporate governmental bureaucracy built on a funeral pyre of lies, growing ever larger by the minute, anticipating a spark igniting a conflagration never before seen in history. The average “forgotten man” knows their cost of living increases are nowhere near 2.7%, as they pay 30% more for utilities, 20% more for a steak, 10% more for chicken, 20% more for car insurance, 10% more for homeowners insurance, 10% more for property taxes, 10% more for rent, 35% more for new and used cars  since 2020, and the list goes on. The CPI is a LIE.

They massage the employment numbers so hard, the BLS bureaucrats must achieve a happy ending every month. It’s laughable when common folk give up looking for a job because there are none to be had, they are no longer counted as unemployed. If you believe there are only 7.5 million Americans unemployed out of the 275 million adult population, while 103 million are Not in the Labor Force, then you are a clueless non-critical thinking dupe who deserves to get it good and hard. The American empire has devolved into a dying lying replica of the degenerate Soviet empire described so well by Solzhenitsyn.

“We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 

If GDP is growing at 5%, unemployment is low, inflation is low, and stocks are hitting all-time highs, why would the Fed need to cut interest rates and begin another massive round of quantitative easing? It sure smells like the desperation exhibited in September 2019 when the repo market revealed major problems under the hood. This was followed by the plandemic, unleashing trillions into the grubby little hands of the banking cabal to enrich themselves while throwing a few crumbs to the plebs as they were locked in solitary confinement for 18 months.

The global financial system is choking on debt and the only solution central bankers, politicians, and their billionaire puppet masters have is to print trillions more fiat, while trying to create a Potemkin facade of normalcy and stability for the ignorant masses. Making up fake statistics, using the newly printed fiat to prop up financial markets, and having their legacy media propaganda outlets spew comforting lies has been their plan. But, it appears gold and silver are calling their bluff. They have lost control of their paper derivative price suppression mechanisms. Gold and silver do not go up 5% per day when all is well. The system is broken and the shit is going to hit the fan, soon.

There were a couple charts posted by the Kobeissi Report which I think explain why the average working stiff is mad as hell and getting close to not taking it anymore. The percentage of GDP which goes to workers in the form of compensation just reached an all-time low of 53.8%. It is clear from the chart, this has not been the century of the worker, but the century of bankers and corporations. From 1947 through 2000, workers received approximately 64% of GDP in compensation. It seems that giant sucking sound described by Ross Perot in 1992 was accurate, as millions of good paying jobs were outsourced to 3rd world shitholes, and now robots and AI are completing the task of gutting the middle class to benefit billionaires, bankers and politicians.

With current U.S. GDP of $31 trillion, workers would be receiving over $3 trillion more in annual compensation if our overlords had not financialized the world and treated workers as nothing more than replaceable cogs in their finance machine. Corporate profit margins reached 10.9% in the 3rd quarter, the 2nd highest in history. Basically, the American worker has been screwed over for the sake of corporate profits. Now you know why the stock market is at record highs, while senior citizens living on a fixed income have to choose between paying the electric bill or filling their prescriptions. Show me Ross Perot was not wrong after analyzing this chart.

“We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It’s pretty simple: If you’re paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, … have no health care—that’s the most expensive single element in making a car— have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don’t care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south. When [Mexico’s] jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it’s leveled again. But in the meantime, you’ve wrecked the country with these kinds of deals.” – Ross Perot – 1992 Presidential Debate

If the economy is doing so well, as I’m scolded to acknowledge by a multitude of Trump lackeys in the government and his social media influencer acolytes, why are all consumer related measures showing extreme stress? Auto loan delinquencies have soared to Great Recession levels, with over 2 million autos repossessed in 2025. Student loan delinquencies at over 30% have reached a 21 year high. Mortgage delinquencies have been ticking up as home prices have flattened and the boom is turning into a bust. Why would consumer confidence be near covid lows and 35% lower than 2019 if the economy was really booming?

And, the most important debt to everyday Americans, credit card debt, is seeing delinquency rates surge to levels last seen in 2011. Household debt rocketed by $197 billion in the 3rd quarter, reaching an astronomical $18.6 trillion. Nothing like a record amount of debt, a weakening frozen jobs market, and now Trump’s 10% interest rate cap PR stunt to  create a consumer debt crisis. It has already begun. US consumers now see a 15.3% chance of missing a minimum debt payment over the next 3 months, the highest since April 2020. This is also the 2nd-highest reading since the 2013 peak.

When you give workers a smaller and smaller slice of the pie for a quarter of a century, while doubling the cost of everything they need to live, and propagandizing these victims into a mass consumption mania, you’ve manipulated millions of Americans into inescapable debt servitude. And that is exactly what the ruling class wanted – hamsters running on a never ending wheel of debt. Of course, the highest delinquency risk, at 22.5%, was reported by households earning below $50,000, those doing all the hard work that keeps this country running. The sharpest increases were among respondents over the age of 60, seniors living on fixed incomes (declining due to lowering of interest rates) who can no longer make ends meet.

Things are falling apart. The country adds $5 billion to the national debt every day. The $200 trillion of unfunded welfare/pension liabilities are mathematically impossible to honor. Our “peace president” has kidnapped another world leader, about to bomb Iran for a second time, about to conquer Greenland, hijacks Russian oil tankers, appears to have been aware of the attempt to assassinate Putin with drones, threatens to bomb Mexico, Columbia,and any other country that irritates him, and saber rattles towards China regarding Taiwan.

Personally, I’m befuddled by the insanity swirling around me. I want no part in this shitshow, as what passes for leaders plunge the world towards WW3 and nuclear Armageddon. I can’t tell whether this international strife is being used to distract from the intractable imminent financial disaster awaiting the western world, or whether these psychopaths in suits are just following the orders of the globalist billionaires who are running the show and need chaos, strife, fear, and mass casualties to implement their New World Order. The center cannot hold. We are ruled by the worst, and they passionately want to blow up the world. Welcome to 2026.

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is lost
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.”
― W.B. Yeats

Why Young Women Moved Left While Young Men Stayed put

   The social analysis below is fascinating and to my opinion essential to understand what's going on at the social level in our modern, which in this case means connected, societies. Social Media and mobile phones explain to some extent why young women have turned left while their male counterparts stayed put. 

  But there is also at the macro level a feminization of society which is undeniable, especially in Europe, when you see who is at the top, and unfortunately not only toxic but ultimately dangerous as demonstrated when very recently we saw a minister in Denmark crying after a rough meeting with the Trump Administration. 

  The micro level characteristics of women, as risk adverse and consensus seekers scale extremely poorly and in fact do become liabilities when applied at the global level. There are many situations when consensus becomes a weakness and risk avoidance leads to paralysis. 

  History shows that matriarchal societies, the Etruscan come to mind, are often (always?) dominated by their more aggressive patriarchal neighbors and more ominously, that societies in decline often display more "feminine" traits. The Greeks first and the Romans later.   

Authored by vittorio on X,

Bill Ackman quote-tweeted a graph showing the partisan gap between young men and women almost doubled in 25 years.

Women moved radically left. Men stayed roughly where they were.

Good question. Most answers I've seen are either tribal ("women are emotional") or surface-level ("social media bad"). Neither traces the actual mechanism.

Let me try.

First, notice what Wanye pointed out:

We've been told for a decade that men are "radicalizing to the right" and that this is dangerous. The actual data shows the opposite. Men barely moved. Women moved 20+ points leftward.

The story we are told is exactly inverted from reality. And when female leftward movement does get discussed, it's framed as progress: "women becoming more educated, more independent, more enlightened."

They'll tell you the graph shows enlightenment and progress.

Wrong.

What the graph shows is capture.

This Isn't Just America

Before getting into the mechanism, something important: this pattern isn't only American. It's global.

The Financial Times documented last year that the gender ideology gap is widening across dozens of countries simultaneously. UK, Germany, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Poland, Brazil, Tunisia. Young women moving left on social issues, young men either stable or drifting right.

This matters because it rules out explanations specific to American politics. It's not Title IX policy. It's not #MeToo. It's not the specific culture war of US campuses. Something bigger is happening, something that rolled out globally at roughly the same time.

South Korea is the extreme case. Young Korean men are now overwhelmingly conservative. Young Korean women are overwhelmingly progressive. The gap there is even wider than the US. Contributing factors include mandatory military service for men (18 months of your life the state takes, while women are exempt) and brutal economic competition. But the timing of divergence still tracks with smartphone adoption.

Whatever is causing this, it's not American. The machine is global.

The Substrate

Start with the biological hardware.

Women evolved in environments where social exclusion carried enormous survival costs. You can't hunt pregnant. You can't fight nursing. Survival required the tribe's acceptance: their protection, their food sharing, their tolerance of your temporary vulnerability. Millions of years of this and you get hardware that treats social rejection as a serious threat.

Men faced different pressures. Hunting parties gone for days. Exploration. Combat. You had to tolerate being alone, disliked, outside the group for extended periods. Men who could handle temporary exclusion without falling apart had more options. More risk-taking, more independence, more ability to leave bad situations.

(Male status still mattered enormously for reproduction, low-status men had it rough. But men could recover from temporary exclusion in ways that were harder for pregnant or nursing women.)

This shows up in personality research. David Schmitt's work across 55 cultures found the same pattern everywhere: women average higher agreeableness, higher neuroticism (sensitivity to negative stimuli, including social rejection cues). Men average higher tolerance for disagreement and social conflict. The differences aren't huge, but they're consistent across every culture studied.

Not better or worse. Different selection pressures, different adaptations.

But it means the same environment affects them differently. Consensus pressure hits harder for one group than the other.

The Machine

Now look at what we built.

Social media is a consensus engine. You can see what everyone believes in real time. Disagreement is visible, measurable, and punishable at scale. The tribe used to be 150 people. Now it's everyone you've ever met, plus a world of strangers watching.

And look at the timeline. Facebook launched in 2004 but was college-only until 2006. The iPhone was launched in June 2007. Instagram in 2010. Suddenly, social media was in your pocket and in your face, all day, every day.

Look at the graph again. Women were roughly stable through the early 2000s. The acceleration starts around 2007-2008.

The curve steepens through the 2010s as smartphones became universal and platforms became more sophisticated.

Women are by nature more liberal, but the radicalization coincides with the rise in smartphone adoption.

The machine turned on and the capture began.

The mental health collapse among teenage girls tracks almost perfectly with smartphone adoption, with stronger effects for girls than boys. The same vulnerability that made social exclusion more costly in ancestral environments made the new consensus engines more capturing.

This machine wasn't designed to capture women specifically. It was designed to capture attention. But it captures people more susceptible to consensus pressure more effectively. Women are more susceptible on average. So it captured them more.

Add a feedback loop: women complain more than men. Scroll any platform and it looks like women are suffering more. Institutions respond to this because visible distress creates liability, PR risk and regulatory pressure. In addition, women are weaker and inevitably seen as the victim in most scenarios. The institutional response is to make environments "safer". Which means removing conflict. Which means censoring disagreement. Which means the consensus strengthens.

The counterarguments get removed or deplatformed and the loop closes.

The Institutions

Universities flipped to 60% female while simultaneously becoming progressive monoculture. The institution young women trust most, during the years their worldview forms, feeds them a single ideology with no serious opposition.

FIRE's campus speech surveys show the pattern clearly: students self-censor, report fear of expressing views, cluster toward acceptable opinions. This isn't unique to women, but women are more embedded in higher education than men now, and the fields they dominate (humanities, social sciences, education, HR) are the most ideologically uniform.

Four years surrounded by peers who all believe the same thing. Professors who all believe the same thing. Reading lists pointing one direction. Disagreement is not even rare, it's socially punished. You learn to pattern-match the acceptable opinions and perform them.

Then they graduate into female-dominated fields: HR, media, education, healthcare, non-profits, where the monoculture continues. From 18 to 35, many women never encounter sustained disagreement from people they respect. The feedback loop never breaks.

Men took different paths. Trades. Engineering. Finance. Military. Fields where results matter more than consensus. Fields where disagreement is tolerated or even rewarded. The monoculture didn't capture them because they weren't in the institutions being captured. (mostly because they were kicked out of them, but that's a different piece)

The Economics

Marriage collapsed. This probably matters more than people think.

Single women vote more left than married women. This is consistent across decades of exit polls. Part of this is likely economic: single women interact with government more as provider of services, married women interact with government more as taker of taxes. The incentives point different directions.

The marriage gap in voting is one of the most consistent predictors. And marriage rates have collapsed precisely during the period of divergence.

Men saw marriage collapse differently. Family courts. Child support. Alimony. The rational response was skepticism of expanding state power.

Same phenomenon, different positions in it, different political responses.

The Algorithms

Algorithms optimize for engagement. Engagement means emotional response. Time on platform. Clicks. Shares. Comments.

Women respond more strongly to emotional content on average, they are more empathetic, they can be more easily manipulated with sad stories. That higher neuroticism again, higher sensitivity to negative stimuli. The machine learned this. It fed them content calibrated to their response patterns. Fear. Outrage. Moral panic. Stories about danger and injustice and threat and wars and "victims".

Men got different feeds because they responded to different triggers. The algorithm doesn't really have a gender agenda. It has an engagement agenda. But engagement looks different by demographic, so the feeds diverged.

Women ended up in information environments optimized for emotional activation. Men found alternatives: podcasts, forums, cars, wars, manosphere etc.

The Ideology

Feminism told women their instincts and biology were oppression and wrong. Wanting children was brainwashing. Wanting a provider husband was internalized misogyny. Their natural desires were false consciousness installed by patriarchy.

Many believed it. Built lives around it. Career first. Independence. Freedom from traditional constraints.

Now they're 35, unmarried, measuring declining fertility against career achievements. And here's the trap: the sunk cost of admitting the ideology failed is enormous. You'd have to admit you wasted your fertile years on a lie. That the women who ignored the ideology and married young were right. That your mother was right.

I think this is why you see so little defection. Not because the ideology is true, but because the psychological cost of leaving is higher than the cost of staying. Easier to double down. Easier to believe the problem is that society hasn't changed enough yet.

The Other Capture

I should be honest about something: men weren't immune to capture. They were captured differently.

Women got ideological conformity. Men got withdrawal. Porn. Video games. Gambling apps. Outrage content. The male capture wasn't "believe this or face social death." It was "here's an endless supply of dopamine so you never have to build anything real."

Different machines, different failure modes. Women got compliance. Men got passivity.

The male line on that graph staying flat through 2020 isn't necessarily health. It might just be a different kind of sickness, men checking out instead of being pulled in. Or it may be that everyone and everything moved more left and women moved lefter.

The Line Is Moving Now

Here's the update: the male line isn't flat anymore.

Post-2024 data shows young men shifting right. Recent surveys all show the same thing. Young men are now actively moving more conservatively.

My read: women got captured first because they were more susceptible to consensus pressure. The capture was fast (2007-2020). Men resisted longer because they were less susceptible and less embedded in captured institutions. But as the gap became visible and culturally salient, as "men are the problem" became explicit mainstream messaging, as men started being excluded from society because of lies, as masculinity, or the very thing that makes men men became toxic, men had to start counter-aligning.

The passivity is converting into opposition. The withdrawal is becoming active rejection.

This doesn't mean men are now "correct" or "free". It might just mean they're being captured by a different machine, one optimized for male grievance instead of female consensus. Andrew Tate didn't emerge from nowhere. Neither did the manosphere. Those are capture systems too, just targeting different psychological vulnerabilities.

The graph is now two lines diverging in opposite directions. Two different machines pulling two different demographics toward two different failure modes.

Some people will say this is just education: women go to college more, college makes you liberal, simple as that. There's something to this. But it doesn't explain why the gap widened so sharply post-2007, or why it's happening in countries with very different education systems.

Some will say it's economic: young men are struggling, resentment makes you conservative. Also partially true. But male economic struggles predate the recent rightward shift, and the female leftward move happened during a period of rising female economic success.

Some will point to cultural figures: Tate for men, Taylor Swift for women. But these are symptoms, not causes. They filled niches the machines created. They didn't create the machines.

The multi-causal model fits better: biological substrate (differential sensitivity to consensus) + technological trigger (smartphones, algorithmic feeds) + institutional amplification (captured universities, female-dominated fields) + economic incentives (marriage collapse, state dependency) + ideological lock-in (sunk costs, social punishment for defection).

No single cause. A system of interlocking causes that happened to affect one gender faster and harder than the other.

So What

If this model is right, some predictions follow.

The gap should be smaller in countries with later smartphone adoption or lower social media penetration. (This seems true: the divergence is less extreme in parts of Eastern Europe and much of Africa, though South Korea is a major exception due to other factors.)

The gap should narrow among women who have children, since parenthood breaks the institutional feedback loop and introduces competing priorities. (Exit polls consistently show this: mothers vote more conservative than childless women.)

The gap should continue widening until the machines are disrupted or the generations age out of them.

Here's the part I don't know how to solve: these systems are self-reinforcing. The institutions aren't going to reform themselves. The algorithms aren't going to stop optimizing. The ideology isn't going to admit failure. The male counter-capture isn't going to produce healthy outcomes either.

Some women will escape.

The ones who have children often do since reality is a powerful solvent for ideology. The ones who build lives outside institutional capture sometimes do.

Some men will stop withdrawing or stop rage-scrolling.

The ones who find something worth building. The ones who get tired of the simulation.

But the systems will keep running on everyone else.

The Question

Bill asked why.

The answer isn't "women are emotional" and it isn't "social media bad." The answer is that we built global-scale consensus engines and deployed them on a species with sexually dimorphic psychology. The machines captured the half more susceptible to consensus pressure. Then they started capturing the other half through different mechanisms.

We're watching the results in real time. Two failure modes. One graph. Both lines are moving away from each other and away from anything healthy.

I don't know how this ends. I don't think anyone does. I don't think it will.

Both machines are still running.