Almost all of September’s increase in 10-year yields came from real yields, while inflation expectations remained relatively stable, Nohshad Shah, Citadel’s head of EMEA fixed-income sales, wrote in a Monday client note. Higher real — or inflation-adjusted — yields reflect an economy supported by fiscal easing, loose financial conditions and heavy investment in artificial intelligence.
The market is “repricing the strength and persistence of growth… and the real rates required to accommodate it,” he wrote. “Investors are essentially demanding a higher return after inflation, not simply more protection against it.”
Stronger prospective returns encourage AI investment, but financing that spending — alongside persistent government deficits — increases competition for capital, requiring more savings or higher real returns to attract them, he noted.
That dynamic makes Shah reluctant to call a top in yields simply because inflation eases. At the same time, he cautioned, a further increase in yields would require “fresh repricing of growth, policy, or term premia.”....
Sixteen arrested as student protests in Liège turn violent Monday, 5 October 2026 By The Brussels Times with Belga
Police arrested 16 people in Liège on Monday after student protests against education reforms and budget cuts turned violent, according to local police.
The unrest followed demonstrations outside several schools in Liège earlier on Monday, where students blocked entrances and gathered to protest changes to the education system.
The protests in French-speaking Belgium have been ongoing for months, following a series of reforms and budget cuts introduced by the French Community Government as it seeks to address serious financial difficulties...
Each year, the MIT Technology Review team puts together a list of some of the most promising climate tech companies in the world. Whether early-stage startup or multinational corporation, the businesses we’ve chosen are working on technologies to help us address climate change or adapt to our warming world.
There’s an urgent need for these innovators: We must begin to drastically reduce emissions to avoid the deadliest impacts of climate change, while also contending with its harmful effects.
We hope that this list highlights the progress the world is making to tackle the climate crisis, as well as the breadth of solutions required. From energy storage powered by carbon dioxide to cleaner ways to make cement and refine critical minerals, these companies are building technologies to address the acute challenges we face.
WaveSave and its portable rubber dam The Dutch company has deployed its mobile barrier during floods on three continents to protect farms, hospitals, and water treatment plants.
Industry: Flood barriers
Year the company was founded: 2017
City and country of headquarters: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Notable fact: WaveSave is demoing its SlamDam product on New York City’s Governors Island as one of seven winners in a competition for urban climate adaptations. The barrier is installed at a site where high tides and waves from passing ferries often wash ashore.
Last week when Nvidia finally got around to exceeding the May 14, 2026 all-time-high I was reluctant to post on the new ATH. Mainly because of First Solar.
This reminded me that I should note First Solar surpassed its $317.00 May 2008 all-time-high* yesterday, June 3, by trading up to $320.95 and closing at $318.25. The stock also had a $320 handle this morning ($320.64) before reversing to close down $3.30 at $314.95. Fingers, toes and other body parts crossed that we didn't just see a double top.
$177.78 last, up $1.62 (+0.92%) in late pre-market trade.
But, Nvidia set the ATH on Friday and another on Monday the 5th and looks to open higher today so the double top concern is not in play and the action looks like a legitimate breakout so Here's Bloomberg, October 6:
Nvidia Corp. is on the verge of becoming the first company with a $6 trillion market capitalization as investors rotate back into the artificial-intelligence chipmaker.
The stock is once more at a record high after the company gave a robust revenue outlook and announced the biggest buyback in history, which takes advantage of a valuation that's near multi-year lows. Those twin pillars — strong growth and a cheap multiple — stand out, especially as investors grapple with high interest rates and tepid economic data.
"Nvidia is attractive on both a growth basis and a value basis, and it looks like a haven from any damage higher rates could do to the economy," said Jim Awad, senior managing director at Clearstead Advisors, which owns Nvidia shares. "All of which makes it such an attractive proposition here and a place people should continue to gravitate to if they have concerns."
The shares are up 28% this year in a rally that has added $1.2 trillion to Nvidia's market capitalization, bringing it to just shy of $5.8 trillion. The company also is by far the biggest contributor to the S&P 500 Index's 14% gain in 2026.
The move is particularly striking considering the stock was down 11% for the year on March 30 as investors questioned the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on AI infrastructure. Since then, sentiment around the AI landscape has flipped, with more existential questions about the potential threats it poses to humanity now leading the conversation. Meanwhile, inflation risks and the likelihood of interest-rate hikes by the Federal Reserve have made megacap technology companies like Nvidia look relatively safe to investors.
"As rate hike fears have materialized money starts to move into these megacap tech stocks because they're a little bit more resistant to rate hikes," said Larry Tentarelli of Blue Chip Daily, adding that the semiconductor sector has also seen a rebound spurred by Meta Platforms Inc.'s Muse AI agent. There's "big rotation back into semis, a big rotation back into the megacaps and both of those play out well for Nvidia."
The lure for investors was underlined by Nvidia's authorization of an additional $150 billion under its existing share-repurchase program, which Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said "reflects our confidence in the long-term opportunity ahead." Prior to that, he called Nvidia "the world's first and only growth value stock."....
The US dollar is mixed today, the general tone in the capital markets is constructive. Success by the Saudi-back Yemen forces have recapture strategic territory from the Houthis, which has held drive oil prices lower. Bond yields in Europe have tumbled and the wide peripheral premiums over Germany have narrowed. Equities are higher.
Five Fed officials speak today but barring a surprise, expectations for this month’s FOMC meeting are unlikely to change significantly until next week’s CPI report, where early projections point to a small increase in price pressures. The futures market has about 83 bp of tightening between now and the end of next year, which is down from around 95 bp peak seen in the past two weeks....
It used to be Desmarais and Power Corporation of Canada and Maurice Strong and that whole crowd.
Now I think it's Brookfield that's in charge....
The Prime Minister was Chairman of the (very) large asset manager prior to his current gig.
From Observer, September 29:
From Westinghouse nuclear reactors to a $100 billion A.I. infrastructure program, Flatt and 38-year-old CEO Connor Teskey are pushing Brookfield into every layer of the buildout as Blackstone, KKR and BlackRock race to compete.
“It took us 25 years to be in the right spot,” Bruce Flatt, chairman of Brookfield Asset Management, told investors at the firm’s New York investor day on Sept. 17. He was talking about artificial intelligence. Long before ChatGPT triggered a mad dash for raw compute, Brookfield spent decades building up what has become the physical backbone of today’s A.I. race, from power plants and renewable-energy projects to utilities, industrial businesses and even the nuclear reactor maker Westinghouse.
The A.I. boom isn’t running on algorithms alone, but needs land, data centers and staggering amounts of electricity. That puts Brookfield, the Wall Street investment giant managing more than $1 trillion, in an unusually advantageous position. Now the firm is pushing into nearly every layer of the A.I. buildout, financing computing equipment, developing sprawling data center campuses and striking multibillion-dollar power deals from France to South Korea.
Connor Teskey, who succeeded Flatt as CEO of the asset management arm in February, was even more direct: “A.I. infrastructure and A.I. is undoubtedly the biggest theme at Brookfield today,” he said. At 38, Teskey is one of the youngest executives to run a firm of Brookfield’s size. Flatt stayed on as chair of the asset manager, a seat previously held by Mark Carney before he entered politics and became Canada’s prime minister.
By Teskey’s estimate, between 25 percent and 40 percent of Brookfield’s global activity now touches digital infrastructure growth in some fashion. The opportunity is also reshaping assets the firm already controls. Land once earmarked for solar or battery projects is, in some cases, being reevaluated as a data center site, where surging demand for computing capacity can produce more attractive economics.
Brookfield’s pitch rests on a simple premise: Much of what A.I. needs looks remarkably similar to the long-lived infrastructure and cash-generating businesses it has been buying up for decades.
Flatt, a Winnipeg-born accountant who joined Brookfield’s predecessor, Brascan, in 1990, built his career around infrastructure, real estate and businesses capable of generating steady cash flows over long periods. That approach helped transform Brookfield into one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers. Flatt also serves as CEO of Toronto-based Brookfield Corporation, the broader investment company from which Brookfield Asset Management was spun out in 2022. The New York-headquartered asset manager trades on both the New York and Toronto stock exchanges.
The philosophy helps explain the firm’s enthusiasm for what private equity chief Anuj Ranjan described at investor day as “boring businesses”: companies that are easily overlooked while investors chase flashier technology bets.
“People are chasing the toy, the A.I. toy, and they are forgetting about industrial businesses,” Flatt said at investor day. Brookfield is not the only investment giant angling for a piece of A.I.’s physical backbone. Rivals are assembling war chests of their own.
In May, Blackstone committed an initial $5 billion to a venture with Google that will offer customers computing capacity built around Google’s custom A.I. chips. The following month, KKR and partners unveiled Helix Digital Infrastructure with more than $10 billion in committed capital to finance and build data centers, power infrastructure and networks. KKR tapped former AWS chief Adam Selipsky to lead the effort.
BlackRock, meanwhile, teamed up with Microsoft and Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX in 2024 to pursue $30 billion in equity for A.I. data centers and supporting energy infrastructure. With debt financing added to the mix, the group says the initiative could eventually mobilize up to $100 billion in total investment....
India's economy is growing at an enviable rate of over 7% despite global energy shocks, rising interest rates, tariff uncertainties and weather-related disruptions.
But the world's fastest growing major economy also has one of the worst performing major equity markets in 2026. The correction in Indian stocks has, in fact, only intensified in recent weeks.
The benchmark Sensex and Nifty indices, which represent the country's largest companies, have inched up slightly since Monday after posting losses for eight straight weeks - the longest losing streak in 25 years, according to Reuters.
Indian mom-and-pop investors who put their money into the Nifty have seen their wealth erode by about 15% this year. In comparison, they would have made 62% returns on Korea's Kospi index since January or 170% in the last two years.
On aggregate, the money foreign investors have put into Indian markets in the past decade - after subtracting what they sold or withdrew - is nearing zero. In the past two years alone, foreign institutional investors have withdrawn a staggering $40bn, according to data from Bernstein Research.
It is the large pool of domestic institutional and retail money, flowing into instruments like mutual funds, that have helped the markets avoid a sharper fall.
Domestic assets under management of mutual funds have grown from about $125bn in 2016 to some $900bn this year, with the number of Indians parking money in stocks and mutual funds more than tripling to 150 million individuals.
This makes the recent fall in the markets more worrying - since households, already struggling from a weak job market, high inflation and faltering consumption, are now seeing their equity savings take a beating too.
So, what's gone wrong?
Here are five reasons India's booming economy isn't lifting its stock market....
Here is the BSE (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange) SENSEX Index over the last five years via TradingView:
Total gain in the last half-decade: 21.62%. To quote Warren Buffett on a different index “Now I’m known as a long-term investor and a patient guy, but that is not my idea of a big move.”
Indian equities enter the session after a sharp turnaround from a prolonged period of weakness, with the previous day's gains offering some relief following the market's longest weekly losing streak in 25 years. The recovery came as concerns around oil supplies ease
Quebec appears poised to elect a separatist government for the first time in more than a decade, even though most of the province has little interest in a promised vote on independence.
The Parti Québécois, polls show, will likely take the reins of power from the governing Coalition Avenir Québec on Monday after a lacklustre campaign in which voters expressed a desire for change but little enthusiasm for any of their options.
A victory for the PQ would give new life to a decades-old debate over sovereignty that took a back seat during the CAQ’s eight years in power. Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has promised to hold a referendum on independence within a first mandate, though not before U.S. President Donald Trump leaves the White House in 2029.
The separatist party could claim a majority of the 127 seats in the province’s National Assembly despite the fact that support for the PQ – and for sovereignty – has not climbed above 30 per cent during the campaign. The CAQ, meanwhile, is lagging in polling, with forecasters suggesting the party could find itself with few, if any seats.
After a six-week campaign in which none of the five viable parties managed to capture the imagination of voters, the Parti Québécois stands to win because the alternatives appeared to be even less inspiring....
ADEN, Yemen (AP) — Forces of Yemen’s internationally recognized government began a major offensive Monday against the Iranian-backed Houthis rebels on the country’s Red Sea coast, under an intensified air campaign by the Saudi-led coalition.
The offensive came just after the rebels said they had captured more territory in the southwestern part of Yemen, taking a key town in a blow to the Saudi-backed forces as they advanced toward a strategic provincial capital in the region.
The Saudi-led coalition spokesman, Maj. Gen. Turki al-Malki, said 100 fighter jets were providing support to the forces of Yemen’s internationally recognized government fighting against the Houthis. He said the coalition has secured “air protection” of the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait and destroyed hundreds of Houthi targets as part of the ongoing campaign.
The campaign and its details could not be immediately independently verified.
The air campaign follows the fall of a key town in Yemen The Houthi rebels seized the town of Turbah on Sunday, shortly before the internationally recognized government announced a major military operation against them...
The US dollar is mostly narrowly mixed today. The political woes in Europe weighed on the euro, which was driven to nearly $1.1160, a 17-month low. The market does not like the developments in France and the 10-year premium over Germany is nearly 150 bp today. The two leading parties in next year’s presidential contest scare investors. The far-right wants to lower the age to qualify for pensions and the far-left has advocated for the central bank to forgive the government’s debt it holds. Meanwhile, Spain’s minority socialist government, lost a key vote on housing reform last week, and called for an election next month. Tomorrow, the local parliament of Germany’s Saxony Anhalt convenes tomorrow and Afd won a plurality of votes and could sit in a state government for the first time.
The combination of forward guidance by the Fed’s leadership, though not Chair Warsh, and softer data have prompted the market to re-consider the likelihood of a rate hike later this month. A week ago, the futures market had about a 70% chance of a hike. Now, it is slightly less than 20%. Data this week may not change that much. Still, the early call on the September CPI (due October 14) is for a rise in the year-over-year headline and core rate....
Strikes, riots and civil commotion – a test of business resilience In an unstable world, how and why are tensions likely to flare up, and what does this mean for business?
Strikes, Riots and Civil Commotion: Exploring solutions to proactively manage heightening risk
Undoubtedly, the impacts of Strikes, Riots and Civil Commotion (SRCC) are at a historical high.
It wasn’t long ago that no single SRCC event had exceeded USD 1 billion in losses, with the most significant instance on record having been the Los Angeles riot in 1992. In more recent times though, large scale SRCC events have accumulated to the extent that SRCC has become a prominent risk topic for (re)insurance industry CXOs and Board of Directors (see table)....
Strikes, Riots, and Civil Commotion (SRCC) Risk Model
Discover the industry’s first probabilistic Strikes, Riots, and Civil Commotion (SRCC) predictive model for the United States—an award-winning new benchmark for political violence risk modeling.
Discover the first SRCC catastrophe model to quantify risk The Verisk SRCC Model for the U.S. supports pricing, underwriting, capital, and risk decisions while identifying growth opportunities. It’s built on Verisk’s global expertise in SRCC, spanning political science, data science, and machine learning to assess risk, and through our probabilistic modeling frameworks, quantify metrics such as average annual loss (AAL) and exceedance probabilities....
A one-stop source for following crucial trends in the most significant antigovernment protests worldwide since 2017. Last updated on September 9, 2026.
The move comes after his series of measures to tackle the housing crisis was defeated in parliament on Friday
Those measures were drafted after nationwide protests, triggered by the eviction of an 87-year-old woman from her home for failing to pay a sharp rent increase
The woman's rent was raised from €500 (£428; $572) to €2,650. It was later lowered to €1,650 - still €300 more than her monthly pension
Sanchez has been prime minister since 2018 - Spain was not due to hold a general election until summer 2027
Most polls suggest the conservatives are likely to emerge as the largest party in the next election, which will take place on 29 November
Sanchez clearly wants to take the initiative - but it's going to be very tough for him to remain in power, writes Guy Hedgecoe in Madrid
Some background at the Associated Press, October 2:
Spain’s government dealt blow after parliament rejects housing measures. Early election speculated
Spain’s progressive government was dealt a costly legislative defeat on Friday when lawmakers rejected a package of emergency measures aimed at tackling the nation’s housing affordability crisis, as protesters gathered outside Parliament demanding help for renters.
The setback sparked speculation in Spanish media that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez could consider bringing forward elections from next year. His office did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press regarding a possible snap election.
Sánchez spoke at the end of a five-hour parliamentary debate, making a last-gasp appeal to lawmakers to vote for the measures that he called “necessary.”
“What is behind these decrees is the desire to instill order and a sense of humanity in a market that if we do not rein it in will destroy our society,” Sánchez told the other 349 members....
From the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Macroblog, August 4:
It is widely recognized that demographics can have broad and consequential implications for factors including the neutral rate of interest, potential output growth, and transmission of monetary policy (see, for example, here, here, and here) by affecting households' decisions about consumption and savings over their life cycle (see here and here). As the size and the composition of the age distribution change slowly, demographic projections are readily available (see here) and can be used to elicit valuable information about the low-frequency dynamics of key latent variables that guide monetary policy as well as asset valuations (see here and here) and inflation (see here).
This Macroblog post highlights some recent evidence on demographics as a low-frequency driver of trend inflation. This evidence suggests that—in addition to the overall aging of the population—the demographic effect on inflation depends crucially on the composition of the age distribution—that is, whether the effect is disinflationary or inflationary depends on how saving behavior varies across age cohorts as the population ages. To quantify these effects, I revisit and extend the empirical framework of Juselius and Takáts (2015, 2018) (and for more comprehensive analysis, see Goodhart and Pradhan, 2020). I consider annual data for 22 advanced economies (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States) for the period 1960–2024. The data are obtained from the OECD database for demographic variables and CPI (year-over-year) inflation rates, with complementary data for real GDP per capita and missing observations for inflation from the World Bank's World Development Indicators.
I start by examining how a commonly used summary statistic of the age distribution—the dependency ratio, defined as (100 times) the number of people aged 19 and less and people aged 65 or older, relative to the number of people of working age (20 to 64 years old)—co-moves with the inflation rate. Figure 1 plots these two variables for Sweden—for which this co-movement is particularly pronounced—as well as their cross-sectional averages across the 22 countries. Although the inflation rate is volatile, the dependency ratio is very smooth and persistent. Note, however, that the dependency ratio is essentially serving as a low-frequency filter for inflation and is tightly correlated with the corresponding low-frequency component of inflation. But the graph with averaged data (the right plot in figure 1) also suggests that for the majority of countries, including the United States, the dependency ratio tends to lead inflation. It is important to emphasize, at this point, that the potential effect of demographic structure on inflation reflects secular forces that may only amplify or dampen the prevalent sources of (dis)inflationary pressure such as monetary and fiscal policy, as well as commodity or geopolitical shocks, among others....
From Iran's semi-official Tasnim News Agency, September 29:
IRGC Presents Iran’s Logic in Letter to US People
(IRGC) spokesman said Iran’s letter to the American people is intended to go beyond media publicity and provide a direct and genuine explanation of Iran’s positions and reasoning.
In comments at a press conference on Tuesday, Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi explained the purpose behind sending the letter to the people of the United States.
“Our goal in sending the letter to the American people goes beyond media publicity and is aimed at creating familiarity with Iran’s logic,” Mohebbi said.
He stressed that the initiative is not a short-term publicity campaign, saying that if the purpose had merely been a media operation, Iran could have created a temporary appearance of impact through several posts on social media or other media activities.
“Instead, we decided to speak to the American people in an honest, logical and genuine manner,” the IRGC spokesman said.
Iran believes that many Americans might not be sufficiently familiar with Iran’s logic and positions, and therefore the letter is intended to provide a platform for greater understanding, he added.
The spokesman noted that, unlike the US, which has hundreds of television and radio networks enabling it to communicate with other nations around the clock, Iran faces limitations in terms of having extensive media outlets operating inside US territory.
“For this reason, choosing a letter as a tool to convey our message directly and clearly is a solution that was selected based on the realities that exist,” he said.
Mohebbi said Iran has asked the American people to read the letter at least once and expresses readiness to correspond with those who wish to respond, offer criticism or request further explanations. He added that an official address for such correspondence would also be provided to the media....
Iran's Guards urge Americans to vote out their leaders in 26-page letter
A designated terrorist organization has written to American voters. Iran's Revolutionary Guards sent a 26-page letter to US scholars, students and media describing a government in decline and telling Americans they have the power to change it at the ballot box in November.
The letter, published by Iranian media on Tuesday in English and Persian, presents the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a force for the people, portrays Iran as victorious and the United States as a power in decline, and returns repeatedly to a single instruction: that Americans turn against the politicians they elected.
The Guards and their Basij volunteer force led the suppression of nationwide protests in January, in which security forces killed tens of thousands of people in two days. A UN fact-finding mission said this month that the crackdown involved crimes against humanity.
Signs of 'decline'
"Tyranny, an excessive tendency to behave violently and murderously, relying on and promoting falsehoods, giving precedence to the vulgar elements of society over the wiser elements in occupying positions of power, and an inordinate preoccupation with inessential matters at the expense of society's essential affairs" are the signs of a state in decline, the letter says.
"The United States government today exemplifies all of these flaws."....
...The letter also explains the slogan "Death to America." "The true meaning of 'Death to America' is 'Death to the crimes perpetrated by the American elite,'" it says. "It is, in a word, not an expression of ill will toward the American people."
The slogan is chanted at state-organized rallies and Friday prayers across Iran and appears on murals maintained by the state in central Tehran, including on the walls of the former US embassy....
The Cuban Commander-in-Chief is renowned for his oratory. A Google search for: Fidel, lengthy, speeches; gives you 120K hits. Even in translation it can be mesmerizing.
Important meetings take place at such a frantic pace and Bush flies around and speaks at such speed that it is almost impossible to keep track. En route to Sydney, he stopped over for a few hours in Iraq, no less. I can’t say whether this happened two or three days ago, because when it's Thursday in Sydney and the sun is almost at high noon over the land, it’s still Wednesday in Havana with its fresh night air. The globalized planet Earth changes and transforms our concepts. Only one reality remains unchanged: the Empire’s network of air, sea, land and space military bases, increasingly more powerful and at the same time more vulnerable.
We don’t need to go into any special efforts of persuasion. Let us allow the U.S. news agency to speak for itlself.
... However, this is not the only news coming from the unstoppable deluge of Bush’s words. ... This reflection is getting very long and I have to conclude.
Some people, usually men of the left, react as if bitten by a snake if you even raise the question in their presence. However, the similarities between the two forms of rule as practiced, not as promoted, pimped and pitched but as practiced are noteworthy. More on that after the jump.
From the legal eagles at the Volokh Conspiracy, hosted at Reason Magazine, September 29 (the author of this piece is Professor [law] Ilya Somin):
The Nazis were similar to socialists supporting economic statism, but different in other key aspects of their ideology.
Periodically, debate rages over the question of whether the Nazis were socialists. As a general rule, conservatives (and some libertarians) make this accusation, while left-wingers indignantly deny it. This question has returned to prominence in recent months, and it remains worth addressing. The right answer is that the Nazis were similar to socialists in backing sweeping government control over the economy, yet different from them in rejecting racial and ethnic equality. But the difference is greater in theory than in practice.When socialists come to power, they often engage in persecution of minority groups, even though this is inimical to their ideology. There are systematic reasons for this pattern, which go beyond the idiosyncracies of individual leaders.
All of this has significant implications for current political debates, at a time when "democratic socialism" is a growing movement and much of the right has embraced statist nationalist economics.
It is difficult to deny that the Nazis (and other similar right-wing nationalist movements) embraced sweeping economic statism, including socialist-style central planning. The movement wasn't called the National Socialist Party for nothing. I summarized some of the evidence in a 2007 post, relying on then-recent academic research (later research has not changed these conclusions):
The idea that Nazism was an extreme form of "capitalism" and Hitler primarily a tool serving the interests of "big business" is a longstanding myth that even now retains a measure of popularity in some quarters. This, despite the fact that the full name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and that Nazi political strategy was explicitly based on combining the appeal of socialism with that of nationalism (thus the choice of name). Once in power, the Nazis even went so far as to institute a Four Year Plan for running the German economy, modeled in large part on the Soviet Union's Five Year Plans….
Two recent books further explain the socialist elements of Nazi economic policy, and will hopefully put the final nails in the coffin of the myth that the Nazis were "capitalists" or free marketeers. In The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, historian Adam Tooze describes the statist nature of Nazi economic policy in great detail, and concludes that the Nazis imposed greater government control over the economy than any other noncommunist regime in modern history. (pp. 658-60). Tooze notes that, even before the outbreak of World War II, government military spending accounted for some 20% of the GDP, while much of the rest of the economy came under government control as a result of the Four Year Plan and other similar measures.
In Hitler's Beneficiaries: : Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State, Gotz Aly argues on the basis of extensive evidence, that German support for Nazi rule was maintained by the creation of a massive welfare state funded in large part by plunder captured in Hitler's foreign conquests, but also partly by means of "soak the rich" taxation within Germany itself.
Some nonetheless persist in viewing the Nazi economic system as "capitalist" because 1) some big businessmen (such as the Krupps) supported the Nazi regime, and 2) most of the means of production remained under private rather than state ownership. It is certainly true that much industrial capital remained formally under private ownership under the Nazis. However, under the Four Year Plan and other similar policies, it was primarily the government that determined what goods would be produced, what prices would be charged, and (in many cases) who would be the consumers. "Capitalist" private firms in Nazi Germany played a role far more similar to that of socialist managers of enterprises in the Soviet Union than that of actual capitalists in a market system. The Krupps and others certainly profited greatly under the Nazis, but so too did high-ranking Communist Party enterprise managers in the Soviet Union. Neither, however, detracted from the state's ultimate control over economic production…..
More recently, economist Bryan Caplan has surveyed the data on Nazi economic policy, indicating extensive and rapidly growing government control of the economy.
But government control of the economy was not the only element of Nazi ideology. Another key facet was racial and ethnic hierarchy. The Nazis believed the state should serve the interest of "Aryan" Germans. Other groups were at best second-class citizens, and at worst slated for slavery (as in the case of Slavic peoples), or outright extermination (as in the case of the Jews).
By contrast, socialist ideology is egalitarian. The slogan "Workers of the World Unite" urges proletarians of all ethnic and national backgrounds to come together. Marx famously regarded nationalism as a form of "false consciousness." Not all socialists reject nationalism so completely. But, as a general rule, they support racial and ethnic equality and condemn discrimination. In part for this reason, historically oppressed racial and ethnic minorities have often played a role in nascent socialist movements.
The anti-Semitic trope that communism was a Jewish conspiracy is false. Most Russian Jews were not communists, and most communists were not Jews. But it is true that Jews (and a number of other ethnic minorities) were disproportionately represented among pre-1917 Russian communists. That was in part because the communists promised ethnic equality and an end to the Russian Empire's egregious anti-Semitic discrimination. Jews were similarly overrepresented in other movements promoting ethnic equality at that time, including the Constitutional Democratic Party, which sought to make Russia a liberal democracy.
Left-wingers who argue that the Nazis were not socialist like to emphasize this egalitarian dimension of socialist ideology. They have a point. But, sadly, socialist governments often fail to live up to these principles....
Back to comparisons. Both systems belittle the individual. In Fascism the state is more important than the individual. In Socialism the collective is more important than the individual.
Both systems, because they are contrary to human nature, require total control of the ruled, by their very form and function they are totalitarian.
Because of that, both systems very quickly become authoritarian and subject to strong-man rule.
As a side note, the experiences of Eastern Germany and neighboring Poland under Nazism and then Communism are instructive. East Germany made the transition from one to the other to the point they out-Commied the Soviets whereas the Poles under Nazism practiced a passive (to the point of surliness) resistance. Of course resistance any more overt than that would likely get you tortured and/or murdered. Regarding Moscow's rules, Stalin got so frustrated that he said trying to impose communism on Poland was like putting a saddle on a cow [NYT August 1989, some have him saying the same thing about Germany but I know of no ref.] Similar sentiments in Brussels, I'm sure.
Two trailers belonging to PlusAI, a self-driving trucking company, were stolen late Wednesday from a Fremont warehouse. The trailers, emblazoned with PlusAI and Nvidia logos, contained 20 tons of sand used for research and development.
PlusAI spokesperson Lauren Kwan believes the joint branding with Nvidia made the trailers a target for thieves who assumed they contained valuable equipment. The trailers held 40,000 pounds of sand instead.
A friend of PlusAI's vice president of legal spotted the trailers in Newark and texted a photo, writing, "Just saw two of your trucks near my work place!:)" The company alerted authorities, who recovered both trailers.
By Thursday afternoon, Newark authorities and Fremont Police Department officers returned both trailers to PlusAI. No suspects have been arrested, and Fremont Police Department spokesperson Amy Gee said the investigation remains open....
Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton has been picked to serve as AI czar, leading a task force to address growing concerns about artificial intelligence, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The new “Super Intelligence Force” will make recommendations on the role the federal government should play in overseeing the technology, the Journal said.
AI industry leaders have called for a slowdown in development after a series of high-profile rogue AI agent hacks and warnings about how quickly AI is improving.
Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton has been chosen as the Trump administration’s new AI czar, leading its response to artificial intelligence amid growing concerns about the risks of this rapidly evolving technology, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
Clayton told the Journal he will lead a new White House task force, which will have 120 days to research and report on AI’s risks and opportunities, and offer recommendations on the federal government’s responsibilities regarding the new technology....
For the second time in five years, Britain is experiencing an energy crisis. The political debate has coalesced around two proposed solutions. The first, advocated by the ‘Drill, baby, drill’ contingent, favours fast-tracking new oil and gas licences and reducing taxes on fossil fuel companies. Its proponents point to the Norwegian energy system as a model, but don’t suggest setting up a majority state-owned company like Equinor or bringing in export controls on oil and gas. That the UK’s remaining fossil fuel reserves in the North Sea are inadequate to demand is often ignored.
Supporters of the second solution believe that Britain should focus on scaling up renewable forms of electricity generation, such as wind and solar power. This overlooks the fact that electricity and total energy use are not the same thing. Even if Britain were to produce all its electricity from renewables, the country won’t be able to escape the influence of fossil fuels as long as 85 per cent of UK homes continue to rely on gas central heating. This camp, with a quixotic commitment to globalised energy capitalism, also claims that any new domestic production won’t affect our energy prices because oil and gas are traded on a global market. But many countries do control exports and prices. Renewables boosters want to see increased subsidies to private sector electricity generators (especially wind and solar farms), but have no enthusiasm for public ownership. Britain’s political class remains unified in its belief that energy infrastructure must be owned by the private sector. Since privatisation in the 1980s, successive leaders have rejected any suggestion of nationalisation, despite the scale of the crisis facing the British energy industry. The Burnham government may mark a turning point. It has promised to set out plans for ‘stronger public control’ of essential services, though the relationship between control and ownership has yet to be defined.
In January 2009, a border dispute between Ukraine and Russia led to a rapid rise in European gas prices. Ed Miliband, then energy secretary under Gordon Brown, went on the Today programme to reassure listeners that Britain had a ‘diverse range of sources where our gas comes from, which is the most important thing this dispute teaches us’. By this he meant gas entered Britain from the North Sea fields and on tankers carrying liquefied natural gas, mostly from Qatar and Algeria. A few months later, Miliband approved a National Strategy for Climate and Energy, which pitched renewables as a way to ‘improve the security of Britain’s energy supplies’ and claimed that the ‘diversity of our gas supplies helped the UK to remain largely unaffected by the Russia-Ukraine dispute’.
Others were concerned about the potential impact on prices of future shocks. In 2010, the energy industry regulator, Ofgem, concluded a major study into the resilience of the system. One of the scenarios it tested was a Russia-Ukraine conflict. The resulting report, Project Discovery, warned that ‘consumer bills rise in all scenarios due to the levels of new investment required... and especially so if oil and gas... prices spike sharply.’ Project Discovery was swept under the carpet then and is almost never mentioned today. To remember it is to admit that the British state lacked the capacity to do anything about the crisis it correctly predicted would happen.
The energy crisis of 2021-23 was much more serious than that of 2009, although in its early stages politicians were keen to tell the public that there was nothing to be worried about. In September 2021, the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, dismissed concerns as ‘alarmist, unhelpful and completely misguided’, assuring Parliament that Britain had ‘a diverse range of gas supply sources’. As the scale of price hikes became clear, the government desperately tried to pull every lever, even contemplating buying gas itself. This proved too complex an undertaking; the civil service had no experience of buying gas in bulk. As Britain’s privately-owned gas system operator put it: ‘The underlying market arrangements in the UK are predicated on the basis that the market will provide.’ Trying to get financial support to the households that needed it most was particularly difficult, because the IT systems holding data on welfare beneficiaries weren’t linked to those of the energy companies.
In the end, the government threw money at the problem. Energy suppliers were told to pay whatever was necessary, all consumer bills were capped and the state picked up the bill – at least £40 billion. In the aftermath there were recriminations and calls for reform. But most of these initiatives failed, scuppered by the complexity of the task and lobbying by energy companies. The IT systems still aren’t linked up. The way electricity and gas markets operate remains the same.
Britain has some of the highest electricity prices in the world. It is convenient for the industry to blame this on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but electricity prices have been rising above the rate of inflation since 2003. Between 2000 and 2019, prices for residential customers increased by 80 per cent. Only a handful of countries had greater price increases than the UK in this period. The energy industry and political commentators debate the reasons for this ad nauseam. Some blame it on renewables, claiming that even if wind farms are cheaper to run than gas-fired power stations, they require lots of electricity network in remote places and lots of battery storage. Others blame fossil fuels, claiming that the real issue is Britain’s reliance on gas. According to the rules of the wholesale market, the price of electricity is set by the most expensive source needed to meet demand. In Britain that source is gas around 60 per cent of the time, down from around 90 per cent five years ago. Many other countries have the same approach to electricity pricing. What differs is the kind of power that sets the price. In France it is usually nuclear, and in Norway, hydro. Britain scrapped its coal-fired power stations and has little flexible hydro or nuclear, so the last power station called on is almost always gas.
There are elements of truth to both positions. A third of the increase in the average electricity bill between 2016 and 2026 was due to the increase in gas prices. But another third was due to increased subsidies for generators (resulting in part from higher interest rates and the growing cost of equipment and labour). A further 20 per cent was due to rising electricity network charges following a wave of construction after decades of underinvestment. Whatever the reasons for rising bills, the bigger problem for renewables is trust. For at least a decade, the British public has been told that renewables are cheap and will bring down bills. Between 2000 and 2025, the share of electricity generated by renewable and clean sources (wind, solar, hydroelectric, nuclear) rose from 24 per cent to 50 per cent. But this has failed to translate into stable or reduced electricity prices.
The shift to renewable electricity generation won’t reduce electricity prices in the short term. When Labour was elected in 2024, one of its top priorities was to reach ‘clean power by 2030’. This means the electricity industry has to build a huge amount of infrastructure very quickly. Privatisation in the 1980s established the principle that all costs must be recovered from the consumer. Until very recently, even the subsidies given to generators of renewable energy came entirely from consumers rather than from the Treasury (the 2025 budget moved roughly a fifth of total renewable subsidies onto general taxation for the next three years, but the rest still falls on bills). In other countries, including France, Norway and China, the state picks up more of the tab – energy infrastructure is publicly owned and subsidies are paid from general taxation.
Britain’s energy strategy over the last two decades has been predicated on the assumption that generating electricity from renewables is cheaper than generating it from fossil fuels. ‘Decarbonisation’ was supposed to drive down prices and encourage consumers to switch from using fossil fuels for driving and heating. This hasn’t happened. One important metric is the share of final energy demand serviced by electricity: it has barely increased over the last two decades, going from 19 per cent in 2000 to 21 per cent in 2023. Between 2000 and 2019 electricity consumption per capita actually fell by 22 per cent. Only Yemen, Zimbabwe, Jamaica, Tajikistan and Syria have had greater drops.
Rising electricity prices have undermined electrification. Electricity is harder to deliver than gas and thus more expensive, but how much more expensive – what is known as the ‘spark gap’ – is an important factor when households or companies decide whether or not to electrify. The UK has one of the widest spark gaps in Europe. In the three years after the last energy crisis, the gap grew so the incentive for consumers to switch to heat pumps weakened....
The premiums are juicy, but the financial stakes are hard to digest
EARLIER THIS month Monte Carlo hosted the annual get-together of the world’s insurance firms, including the reinsurers who insure them. The “Rendez-Vous de Septembre” is a swanky affair. Rooms at the main venue can cost over $2,000 per night. Attendees can choose to arrive via helicopter. The organisers discourage any side-events that might compete with the “Official Cocktail”. Yet at this month’s gathering the gin drinkers’ thoughts drifted to less glamorous locales: the dusty deserts, flat farms and desolate shrublands where data centres are being built.
Despite their downmarket locations, such centres are worth vast sums of money. Their owners are thus keen to insure them against natural catastrophes, cyber-hacks and a host of other dangers. Premiums tied to such projects are set to rise from $11bn today to $24bn by 2030, reckons Swiss Re, a reinsurance giant. That makes data centres a welcome source of growth in an industry that is anxious about a looming downturn. But like a good cocktail, the rush can also induce some headaches.
For a start, data centres are big undertakings, physically as well as financially. Although some have been in use—and insured—since the dot-com boom, the greater scale required by artificial intelligence can scramble conventional risk models. The larger the data centre, the greater the chance that a tornado might rip through it. Some 40% of America’s data-centre capacity sits in zones often exposed to such dangers, Swiss Re notes. More than a quarter are at risk of being pelted by large chunks of hail multiple times each year. Many centres are clustered together in spots like Virginia and Texas. If a natural disaster affects one, it will probably affect others.
Inside the big boxes, the layouts of many centres also worry underwriters. Operators are eager to place power storage, including lithium batteries, as close as possible to the AI chips. Builders reckon this cheek-by-jowl arrangement helps ensure a consistent power supply. But proximity also increases the chances that a battery fire will engulf semiconductors and other ultra-pricey kit. The concentration of expensive assets, especially chips, in a single building means a single event could inflict eye-watering losses.
The internet has always been vulnerable to power failure, cyber-attacks and other mishaps that can sever connections and disrupt business. These business interruptions are often covered by cyber-insurance policies. But in the case of data centres, such interruptions may be unusually costly, says Alexis Dyschkant of Covington & Burling, a law firm, because of the sheer scale of economic activity that could be tied to a single centre. Given bottlenecks in many parts of the AI supply chain, replacing damaged kit could take a while. The precise terms of coverage will therefore matter a great deal. Some policies may only begin payments after the first 12 or 24 hours of disruption—plenty of time for millions of dollars of losses to occur.
Assuming they can iron out the details of mega-policies, insurers then face a second hurdle: how to fund them. The largest insurance bundles today typically cover up to $8.5bn of value for projects worth up to $25bn in total. Policy writers then cover their own exposure through reinsurance, says Jimmy Keime of Swiss Re. Even if today’s coverage limits increase in the coming years, many large projects will be insured to less than half their value.
Projects seeking additional cover will have to get creative. One option is to add on “surety bonds”, which already play a role in the industry. They are sometimes issued by insurance companies on behalf of builders at the insistence of the builder’s clients. The client can then get compensated even if the builder falls down on their obligations....
The former Google China chief and longtime AI investor on Beijing’s open-model advantage, the future of work and why CEOs still underestimate AI.
Chinese AI companies are rapidly closing the gap with US rivals, even after years of restrictions on their access to advanced chips. But the race between the world’s two AI superpowers is only one part of a much bigger transformation — of companies, jobs and even how people think about work. Few have watched it unfold from as many vantage points as AI pioneer and investor Kai-Fu Lee, who has worked at Apple and led Microsoft and Google teams in China. His backing of dozens of tech startups has helped create billion-dollar Chinese companies, while his own AI company is 01.ai.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You can listen to an extended version on The Mishal Husain Show podcast.
We’ve turned to you because there are so many headlines on AI in the US and China. You know both these countries. You have seen the development of this technology over 40 years. What do you think is still underappreciated?
The speed of improvement and reduction of costs. Most people do not realize that AI is solving tasks 10 times longer than it was a year ago. If AI solved a four-minute task [then], now it can solve a 40-minute task. The acceleration is going to drive adoption like no technology ever has before. More than the steam engine, the internet [and] Moore’s Law.
AI improving that fast means our companies, enterprises, society [and] governments will need to consider the drastic changes it will bring about. In my view, the CEO is currently one of the least aware of how important this technology is. 1
1This is quite a statement on CEOs, given how many make a point of publicizing their use of AI, and their penchant for hiring $25,000-a-day “AI gurus.” In a preview of Lee’s new book, AI Native: The Mandate to Transform Your Company, he dismisses most AI programs in use as “theater.” Note-takers and departmental chatbots are useful, he writes, but “irrelevant to the real value at stake … if your AI program hasn’t moved a single number on your earnings call, you didn’t transform anything.”
Jobs are going to change. In five years, the typical company’s organizational chart will be different; people who occupy the most important places will look different. AI workers are becoming better, cheaper [and] faster. In order to make that work effectively in an organization, it cannot be retrofitted into a hierarchy intended to manage people. AI workers don’t need hierarchies. What they need is people who know how to design the right problem to solve, organize AI to solve it, and — importantly — be accountable if anything goes wrong. AI can’t be accountable.
What are the qualifications that would put people in these positions? What should people study?
I suggest they study how to solve problems, come up with new problems, and command armies of AI to parallel-solve complex problems — show your mastery of AI. This is not coding. This does not require any engineering background; a humanities student can easily do this. Hard requirements can be learned, even [by] an older, non-tech-background person; that’s the good thing.
Good to know. [Laughs] Can I put a real-world example to you? We are a small team — myself and a handful of producers. I would hate to think of a future where it’s me and essentially an AI team.
I am not saying the [team] is one person and all AI. It’s as many as needed to ensure that the people connection part is worked out.
I don’t know enough about your business so using my business as an example: maybe a unit of 20 people and 100 AI to begin with. Over time, if the business is flat, then probably fewer people and more AI. If the business is growing, there may be more people and more AI.
Look at the protests that have just happened in India, the frustrations of so many young people that entry-level jobs aren’t there anymore. There are very serious social implications. Unless you’re saying there will be enough jobs in other fields for those people. 2
2India’s Gen Z movement, which forced the resignation of a cabinet minister, has tapped into widespread unhappiness at the limited availability of jobs for recent graduates. India’s economy remains fast-growing, but hiring in the customer support and tech-services industry has dropped in recent years.
Graduates Rise, Jobs Lag in India
The number of young graduates has increased 13 times since 1983 to 63 million, while those unable to find work have grown 16-fold to 11 million as of 2023.
Source: State of Working India 2026, Azim Premji University
There will be jobs in certain new industries.
Our whole society needs to rethink how much we depend on jobs. AI will generate a lot of wealth, and I think we can find ways of redistribution so people can work fewer hours and be paid for activities that were not economically important. But I think this is very hard to communicate to someone who couldn’t find a job, or lost [their] job.
You were at the forefront of Microsoft and Google’s foundations in China. How much of a challenge do Chinese AI companies like DeepSeek and Moonshot represent to US companies like OpenAI and Anthropic?
They represent a significant challenge, especially if they continue to keep up at recent levels. OpenAI and Anthropic always stayed at number one or two by most metrics on AI quality, but their models are closed. The Chinese models have been largely open source.
If you are OpenAI or Anthropic, you have a product you sell for a very high price, with an open-source version equivalent to your best model six months ago. Would you pay $50,000 for a [new] Tesla, or $15,000 [for a] Tesla that’s six months old? Obviously, the second is a strong value proposition. 3
3What Lee refers to as “open source” is described by most analysts as “open weight,” meaning that the AI model can be downloaded and potentially modified or redistributed; unlike in open-source software, the code used to train the model is typically not released. While US labs have mostly maintained closed-weight models, Nvidia, Microsoft and Meta were among firms recently warning US policymakers against “premature” restrictions on open-weight models, saying that they “expand access to the AI economy.” Anthropic and OpenAI were not among the signatories.
In the long run, are the Chinese companies more likely to make a profit?
No, the American companies will make more money.
Anthropic and OpenAI have built the iPhone. The Chinese companies are more like the way Google felt. Okay, you got the best product; we’ll build something that’s almost as good, sell it cheaply and win the larger share.
Like Android, the open-source models will have more share, more footprint, more usage. But people will pay very little. In some cases, they just copy the model, pay for the servers on which it’s run [and] don’t pay the Chinese companies anything.
Anthropic and OpenAI have the American system — selling enterprise products that are very highly priced....
Back
in May we thumbnailed Lee Kai-fu as "Sometimes the competition is just
plain intimidating/scary/resistance-is-futile, smart." Followed by his mini-bio from Edge.org:
"KAI-FU LEE, the founder of the Beijing-based Sinovation Ventures, is ranked #1 in technology in China by Forbes.
Educated as a computer scientist at Columbia and Carnegie Mellon, his
distinguished career includes working as a research scientist at
Apple; Vice President of the Web Products Division at Silicon Graphics;
Corporate Vice President at Microsoft and founder of Microsoft Research
Asia in Beijing, one of the world’s top research labs; and then Google
Corporate President and President of Google Greater China. As an
Internet celebrity, he has fifty million+ followers on the Chinese
micro-blogging website Weibo. As
an author, among his seven bestsellers in the Chinese language, two
have sold more than one million copies each. His first book in English
is AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (forthcoming, September)
Yes,
yes, in the headline I am mixing-and-matching two ancient Asian
cultures but, despite his having been born on Taiwan Dr. Lee really is a
sensei in the Japanese meaning of being both master and teacher....
That seems a lofty target but it also seems the whole country is mobilized to extract value out of the entire AI ecosystem, from chips to software to use cases so maybe 1/3 of the pie isn't so lofty.
