From ammonia to plastics, there can be no modern economy without a functioning chemicals industry, and Britain's is in peril, writes Sharon Todd The recent announcement of a £350m Critical Chemicals Resilience Fund from Chancellor Rachel Re
By Ahmad Ghaddar and Olesya Astakhova LONDON, June 7 (Reuters) – OPEC+ is set to agree on Sunday a fourth increase in oil output targets in as many months, three OPEC+ sources said, even...
7 June 2026 Investors have cut their position in Brent again to the lowest for eighteen weeks amid increasing confidence at least some oil exports will resume through the Strait of Hormuz despite an increasingly fragile ceasefire. The Unite
By Sarina Yoo and Denny Thomas Jun 6, 2026 (Bloomberg) –North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the navy must become part of the country’s nuclear war deterrent, using a ship...
June 6 (Reuters) – Russian forces have attacked two civilian search and rescue vessels in Ukrainian waters, causing injuries, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said on Saturday. “The enemy launched strikes on two boats of the..
In December 2015 I slipped off a stage onto my forehead, causing a concussion that kept me on medical leave for a year (and wrote about it here). Also in December 2015, Conor McGregor threw a counter left cross to knock out José Aldo in 13
We argued recently that official support for renminbi internationalisation has increased over the past few years. But top-level rhetoric does not tell us much about what has motivated the shift. It might also be a lagging reflection of the
Thank you for your support of Chartbook. Your generosity keeps this show on the road.Caroline Walker, Theatre (2021) Source: National Galleries Alibaba and Bytedance are the only major non-US AI players that are present across all five laye
A 26 billion‑parameter mixture-of-experts LLM loses its mind, burning three War & Peace’s of tokens uselessly as it searches for memories it never formed…As I continue to cosplay as a SysAdmin, we have:⏺ Bash(python3 -c “ import json…) ⎿ {“
Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has collapsed by 90% to 95% compared to pre-war levels, analysts concur. Some oil cargoes continue to trickle through the critical chokepoint, but under increasingly opaque operating conditions, c
By Brendan Murray Jun 6, 2026 (Bloomberg) —Container shipping rates jumped over the past week amid higher fuel costs, congestion at some Asian ports and a pickup in demand heading into...
TAIPEI, June 6 (Reuters) – Taiwan said on Saturday that a Chinese coast guard ship and a survey ship had carried out the first coordinated operation to “provoke” Taiwan, in waters around strategically located...
Despite the Trump administration’s pivot away from renewable energies, solar continues to dominate new energy additions in the United States. Newly released data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) shows that at the close o
The Trump administration is set to channel nearly $700 million in federal funds into the U.S. coal industry Thursday, invoking a Korean War-era statute to prop up existing power plants, finance new construction, and push open a California e
China’s electric-vehicle industry has become one of the most contested stories in the global economy. To some, it is a textbook case of successful industrial policy. To others, it is a story of subsidies, overcapacity, brutal price wars, an
The Strait of Hormuz is closed, oil is climbing, and both sides insist the other will blink first. Iran’s leaders think they have found a structural advantage over Washington: they can outlast a US administration that fears swing‑state vote
When most people think of China's export controls, they think of dual-use controls – the dramatic, headline-grabbing restrictions on critical mineral products like gallium, graphite, and most famously, rare earths. Beijing has famously depl
Israel’s Strategic Problem June 2, 2026 Question: What accommodation does a country seek with those who want to destroy it? I’m not being rhetorical. Response: The first step in this answer is to ask whether they are capable of doing so. In
In Berlin last week, it was a panel with good, sensible people, making proposals that I largely agree with. And, yet - as happens quite frequently at the moment - I felt like the mad uncle in the attic, crying fire! Whence my dysphoria?If t
Thank you for your support of Chartbook. Your generosity keeps this show on the road.Nguyễn Thanh Châu, April 1975, outside Saigon (appears to be the northwest of Saigon due to the nature of the vegetation in the background). Source: Vietna
Photo by Rohan Dixit on UnsplashAs regular readers of this blog know, I’m pretty ambivalent about trade barriers as an economic policy. On one hand I think targeted tariffs and other trade barriers can be used to protect strategic industrie
TODAY IN HISTORYJune 5, 1963: In what’s become known as the 15 Khordad Movement (because it took place on the 15th day of the Iranian month of Khordad), protests and riots break out in cities across Iran after the arrest of Ayatollah Ruholl
Jason’s subheadline: “The exploit shows the extreme risk of offloading technical support to AI”. Yes indeedee, it does. The Vergecast <https://www.theverge.com/podcast/944058/ai-laptop-nvidia-build-gemini-spark-vergecast>—the Flagship Podca
The artificial intelligence boom has created unprecedented pressure and anxiety in the energy industry. The public and private sector alike are expending enormous amounts of effort trying to quantify the amount of electricity that will be n
American forces have counted nearly 1,000 commercial vessel transits in and out of the Strait of Hormuz in the last two months, according to an official familiar with US Central Command operations, a figure that’s higher than private sector
Friedrich Engels saw socialized production clearly—but missed the ethnonational maps that would colonize the workers’ heads. Ernst Gellner’s theory of nationalism and Charlie Maier’s theory of applied-science economy zero-sum interest-group
The Trump administration on Friday imposed a new round of sanctions targeting an international network accused of smuggling Iranian liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and laundering revenue through shadow banking channels,...
Happy Friday, Oil Watchers!Every week, I summarize and analyze developments in flat crude prices, calendar spreads, high-frequency inventories, refined products, and positioning data, as well as a taste of the themes I’ve been thinking abou
At nearly 40 years old, Lars Jensen’s Volkswagen camper van appeals to him mostly for its lack of modern features. The vehicle he calls “Sally” is just the right rig to drive around Africa over the next 18 months to explore the world’s most
China’s local governments have spent the past four years grappling with the fallout from the property market collapse. Land sales have dried up, fiscal pressures remain intense, and officials across the country are still searching for susta
Top level officials from Central and South Asia convened in Tashkent on June 4 to discuss regional trade and connectivity under a format known as the Termez Dialogue. Participants were unanimous in seeing a strategic need to weave Afghanist
The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve has taken a beating during the Iran war, but Energy Secretary Chris Wright says the government's emergency oil stash is headed for a surprisingly lucrative refill. Companies that borrowed crude from the SP
Container freight rates are rising sharply across major east-west trades as the conflict in the Middle East, disruption at key Asian transshipment hubs, and growing fears of an energy crisis...
The total number of active drilling rigs for oil and gas in the United States rose this week, according to new data that Baker Hughes published on Friday, bringing the total rig count in the US to 563, up 4 from this same time last year. Th
The Bank of England may know where inflation is headed, but it has a much harder time knowing where oil—and interest rates—are headed. That was the message from Bank of England policymaker Swati Dhingra on Friday, as the ongoing Middle East
U.S. forces boarded a sanctioned tanker in the Indian Ocean overnight, the latest in a series of interdictions targeting vessels linked to Iran’s shadow fleet as Washington expands maritime enforcement...
Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. has moved oil through the Strait of Hormuz through government-brokered deals, according to legal filings that shine a rare light on how commodity traders are navigating the closely watched waterway during the Iran
U.S. maritime labor leaders used the 106th anniversary of the Jones Act on Friday to renew calls for the Trump administration to end its emergency waiver program, arguing the policy...
Earlier today, in our forensic analysis of the SpaceX IPO, we said that according to BNP estimates, the company's inclusion into the S&P 500 some 6 months after the offering would unlock $13.4 billion worth of inflows. It turns out that tha
“We are definitely in a moment where there is more greed than there is fear… Base advice over 42 years of doing this: When capital is available – if you’re capital consumptive and it’s available – take the capital if you know that you’re go
India is launching on Friday a new fuel blend with an 85% ethanol component as part of the fuel flex mobility program of the world's third-largest crude importer to reduce dependence on imported oil. The E85 fuel was officially launched at
Fresh strikes on Kuwait and Oman undermine hopes of a U.S.-Iran de-escalation, keeping oil markets on edge and traders skeptical of diplomatic progress. Friday, June 05, 2026 This week’s strikes on Kuwait and the Friday morning attack on Om
Taking a page out of the central government playbook, provincial authorities are planning to increase the proportion of profits extracted from state-owned enterprises (SOE). Per provincial Five-Year Plans (FYP) (2026-2030) (Yicai): Guangdon
Beijing is increasingly confident in its approach to weathering the Strait of Hormuz oil shock. The macro planner (NDRC) cut domestic refined fuel price ceilings in its June 4 update. Gasoline price caps were cut by RMB 525 to RMB 9,640 per
The Trump Administration is holding its latest lease sale in Alaska on Friday in a test for investors and environmentalists as the auction comprises tracts in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Bureau of Land Mana
Next step. The Lebanese army will begin deploying to “pilot zones” in the country’s south as part of a ceasefire agreement with Israel reached earlier this week, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam announced. Under the deal, both countries
US President Donald Trump said the United States will win the conflict with Iran either "militarily or on paper," referring to the fitful negotiations with Tehran, and he suggested he could meet with Iran's reclusive supreme leader "if it w
Your offer for the first month of The Wire China for one dollar will close soon. More details below!For years, the United States has tried to stop China from getting its most advanced chips out of concern the technology could bolster the Pe
After years of delays, Australia's largest undeveloped oil project could progress to a final investment decision in 2027 as the energy crisis amid the Iran war has heightened the need of homegrown resources. Carnarvon Energy Ltd, a junior e
The current UK government's policy of not allowing new drilling in the UK North Sea is “utter madness” as billions of barrels of untapped oil could benefit the UK industry and reduce Britain’s reliance on imports, Kemi Badenoch, the leader
Africa is the literal center of the world’s map and increasingly the center of gravity for ISIS, the manpower source for Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the contested geopolitical ground where China builds bases and drops off free weapons. Our
Thank you for your support of Chartbook. Your generosity keeps this show on the road.Benedicto Reyes Cabrera, Yellow Confetti, 1984Financially conflicted “We’re, like, ‘Oh, my God, what if we have an emergency?’” he said. “Are we going to b
[MUST READ] Hormuz crisis and oil and gas (Oxford Energy) U.S. economy now less vulnerable to oil shocks (Boston Fed) Dangote plans to double oil refining capacity (Bloomberg) Iran permits nuclear inspection of Bushehr (Bloomberg) India tes
Brussels and Beijing are going to give dialogue another chance. On June 4, EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič met with China’s top trade negotiator Li Chenggang in Paris. Some context: Beijing and Brussels are on the cusp of an honest-to-
Beijing wants workers’ dormant health-account savings to do more for families. On June 5, the healthcare administration (NHSA) and finance ministry issued trial procedures for cross-provincial "mutual aid" using employee medical-insurance p
Parliamentary elections will be held in Armenia on June 7. The Civil Contract party, led by current Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who has been in power since 2018, is leading in the polls. His rivals include two opposition blocs: Armenia
As a paid subscriber, you now have access to The Oil Report Discord. If you have been part of BETA testing, please go re-join on this link below. Come in now and say Hi! I’m here all day.Join here: https://discord.gg/jTzQsHNfsYHere’s what’s
Adversaries do not need to breach the Pentagon’s systems: They only need to harvest the logic of the publicly released frontier AI models that underpin them. This is a defining risk as the Department of Defense pivots to an “AI-first” warfi
In August 2024, scholars at a Xiamen-based think tank published a paper urging Beijing to immediately establish a shadow Taiwan government on the Chinese mainland in preparation for a full takeover of the island. “It is imperative to prepar
Last week I stood in front of three tapestries at The Met, each more than fifteen feet tall, and woven from Raphael’s original designs decades after his death. It got me thinking about how AI fundamentally inverts the economic problem copyr
It is Friday, 5 June and only six days to go until the FIFA World Cup starts again. I don’t know about you, but after the first five months of 2026, I am really in need of five weeks of distraction.Of course, if you ask the people who live
A platform built for writer–reader relationships now has to survive venture capital, discovery algorithms, and AI intermediaries in a world of frictionless payments, neo-Nazi edge cases, TikTok brain-melt and ad-driven outrage brain-hacking
For years, Beijing has searched for a vocabulary that might steady China–U.S. relations. Some of its preferred formulas—a “new model of major-country relations,” “no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation,” or t
You’re reading the web version of Foreign Exchanges. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, sign up today:Subscribe nowTODAY IN HISTORYJune 4, 1615: The army of the Tokugawa Shogunate captures Osaka, ending a siege that h
It is another quiet day, and Xi is now out of sight for nine days. The Lao General Secretary is now in Beijing so I assume they will meet Friday. Rumors that Xi is going to North Korea continue, but now I am hearing his trip may have been d
Source: Google at https://tinyurl.com/yyenaembKey Points:With food prices up 44% from 2012, they now take 29% of the household budget, up from 23% in 2012As a result, real consumption of food and non-food items both decreasedIf not for spen
What happened: On June 1, humanoid robotics champ Unitree passed its STAR Market IPO review, just 73 days after the Shanghai Stock Exchange accepted its application. This will mark the second deal under the STAR Market's new "pre-review" fa
Does Donald Trump’s tirade to Benjamin Netanyahu signal the fracture of the historic alliance between the United States and Israel? On this episode of Talking Geopolitics, GPF Chairman George Friedman joins host Christian Smith to discuss t
Reading, arguing, & prompting as different ways of making absent minds speak, from Machiavelli’s study to the fan‑whir of an M5 Max., for it is a fact that black squiggles on the page and linear algebra behind the screen both become voices
What happened: On June 3, the CAC's legal bureau published an official explainer laying out the rationale behind the recently-finalized rules on human-like AI services. What caught our eye: The piece underscores yet again that China must ta
In the latest issue of CAC's official magazine, China Cyberspace, Zhou Bowen, director of the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, argued that China needs to stop treating AI safety as an afterthought. The problem, as Zhou sees it:
Does Trump’s tirade to Netanyahu signal the fracture of the historic alliance between the United States and Israel? On this episode of Talking Geopolitics, GPF Chairman George Friedman joins host Christian Smith to discuss the evolution of
Thank you to all the subscribers who turned out live for our third Context Call Q&A and contributed so many good questions.Like last time, we’re posting a recording of the call for oil watchers who weren’t able to make it live.There’s a ~3:
When is the risk of war the highest? And what should the United States be doing about it? One of the most important but underappreciated questions in international politics is how states think about the future balance of power. Countries th
SAIC – China’s second-largest automaker – is building a EUR 200 million auto plant in Galicia, Spain (Reuters). The plant – which will primarily manufacture EVs – is expected to produce up to 120,000 vehicles annually under the MG brand whe
People are freaking out about AI. That’s never a good starting point for sensible policy. So we get weird ideas.One idea is to tax computer processing capabilities, sometimes called a “compute tax.” Andrew Yang is pushing it, so you know it
Oil prices have surged as disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz impact global crude flows and tighten near-term supply conditions.While many investors expect the situation to normalize once the Strait reopens, that assumption may overlook a m
Hello, Commodity Context subscribers!Our latest contribution to the Dispatch Energy newsletter, A Beginner’s Guide to Reopening the Strait, is reprinted in full below. You can also listen to the story via the recorded voiceover.If you enjoy
Thank you for your support of Chartbook. Your generosity keeps this show on the road.Antipas Delotavo, Hatol ng Panahon, 2018Anthropic adoption overtaking OpenAI adoption Read more
[MUST READ] India’s airconditioning and nighttime peak load (IEA) U.S. petroleum inventories deplete to multi-decade lows (FT) China’s slower oil imports cushion Hormuz supply shock (FT) Gulf oil exporters explore pipelines to bypass Hormuz
This episode of Sharp China is outside the paywall. Show Notes: On today's show Andrew and Bill begin with Xi Jinping's call to seize the commanding heights of science, technology, and industry across six industries of the future, as well a
China’s plan to become a world leader in AI by 2030 is a fixture of practically every Congressional briefing and expert commentary on Beijing’s AI ambitions. The plan’s logic — introduced in 2017 — was simple and alarming: Beijing would dir
The Battle of Midway has assumed a place in American naval lore that has put it on par with other great battles in world naval history. What Salamis was for the Greeks, Trafalgar for the British Royal Navy, and Tsushima for the Japanese, th
When President Donald Trump repeatedly pressed regional leaders on Abraham Accords expansion late last month — framing Arab-Israeli normalization as a debt owed and a condition for a settlement to end the Iran war — he apparently commented
European gas prices have spent the Hormuz crisis pressing against an invisible cap. Each escalation lifted the market, but not far enough. Dutch TTF, the European benchmark, kept returning to the same awkward line around €50/MWh.The cap was
Last year, I wrote a post showing that hedge fund managers have an inkling when they are going to underperform, and it can be measured with their SEC Form PF filings. Unfortunately, that information is not public, but I am glad to see that
For many years, I was a big proponent of the idea that increased market power was harming the U.S. economy in various ways. In the 2010s, in the economics world, circumstantial evidence began piling up that implicated increased industrial c
Before we get into today's report for paid subscribers, a quick note: you can find all of my livestream recordings here. If you are new, I would encourage you to binge through them at 2x speed to get the full macro context. We will continue
GiveDirectly is raising funds to help families affected by the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. If you’re able to contribute, please do so!TODAY IN HISTORYJune 3, 1940: World War II’s Battle of Dunkirk ends with the l
Soaring semiconductor orders are supposed to signal a bright future for investment and jobs; but I cannot help but suspect the AI unicorns and those donning AI-unicorn clothing sprinting to IPOs are sending a very different message…We have
June 28, 2026Subscribe nowIN DETAIL Read more
It is a quiet day so today’s newsletter is a bit thin. Xi is on another of his long absences from official media, with his last appearance on May 26 with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić. The General Secretary of Laos is in China and shou
Week ending May 29, 2026 Released: Wed, Jun 3The NumberThe US drew another 7.99 MMbbl from the SPR this week, with commercial crude matching at 7.97 MMbbl and Cushing pulling another 0.58 on top. That is 16 MMbbl of crude leaving the system
In 2024, Michael Swaine wrote, “How to Stop the United States and China from Sliding into War,” where he identified areas that could increase the possibility of an armed conflict between the United States and China. Two years later, after r
This 47-page June 2026 edition of my monthly data-dense, visualization-heavy North American Oil Data Deck is exclusive to paid Commodity Context subscribers (attached PDF below paywall). The deck contains detailed and decomposed accounting
Everyone has been talking about datacenters in space. Interviews given by Elon Musk in the past few months have spent lots of time on orbital compute:“Five years from now, my prediction is we will launch and be operating every year more AI
Thank you for your support of Chartbook. Your generosity keeps this show on the road.Avigdor Arikha, self-portrait in a rain coatNvidia really isn’t a second Cisco. Read more
The point of working1 is to produce enough value for the rest of society to be able to consume as many goods and services as we want for at least as long as we are alive.2 “Progress” is when people can buy more/better goods and services for
United States tries to unblock strait quietly (Bloomberg) Iraq plan to boost northern pipeline exports (Bloomberg) UAE could add fuel pipeline to bypass strait (Bloomberg) Dangote plans to double oil refining capacity (Reuters) Rosatom’s gr
In our previous article, we highlighted key signals indicating that the destructive, heavy-subsidy food delivery wars among China’s internet platforms were finally drawing to a close (see Is the Delivery War Drawing to an End?). However, as
In 2023, the NATO Baltic Defense College in Tartu, Estonia devoted its entire annual conference to the Interwar Period (1919 to 1939), a theme repeated at subsequent conferences sponsored by national militaries and academic societies throug
Source: Tank News International, 2020.Nothing sends a chill through oil market veterans quite like a chart showing a dramatic plunge in global oil inventories — especially with the Hormuz crisis showing no signs of resolution and peak summe
Runaway housing costs are such a big issue that even in the notoriously divided US Senate, 89 out of the 100 senators recently voted to pass the most ambitious legislation in decades to bring down housing costs. And there are many reasons f
Hi folks,In today’s edition, since I found little interesting in the paper, I am offering breakdowns of interesting articles in the latest edition of the Qiushi journal. I am covering four articles below:The first one is by the journal’s ed
At the end of the Second World War, George Orwell recorded several times in letters and in articles his feeling that the British people had seemed curiously happier during the War, than in the immediate past. Now of course Orwell did not me
You’re reading the web version of Foreign Exchanges. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, sign up today:Subscribe nowGiveDirectly is raising funds to help families affected by the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republ
Today’s top items:1. 15th Five-Year Plan for Accelerating Agricultural and Rural Modernization - The State Council issued the “15th Five-Year Plan for Accelerating Agricultural and Rural Modernization,” the latest of the sectoral plans of t
Brussels’ Gas Market Task Force says algorithmic and AI-driven trading now dominates natural gas benchmarks. The EU Commission wants regulators to watch it more closely, without reining it in.The Gas Market Task Force (GMTF), created by the
On May 26, India hosted a formal meeting of the foreign ministers of the Quad — comprising the United States, Australia, India, and Japan. Since its initial creation in 2007 and revival in 2017, foreign policy analysts have debated the usef
“Not much of the kinds that we are used to”, says Noah Smith. His subhead: probably a lot, but not necessarily the kinds people have made money on so far. It is not that scaling laws are nearly exhausted for the machines. It is that the sca
This weeks report Don’t fight the SPRSenior Iranian official says renewed war with US ‘inevitable’, Arab News reports citing state TVVia Arab News Read more
Today’s digest is published in collaboration with Bill Bishop’s one-and-only Sinocism.The burst of “positive energy” among analysts following May’s Xi-Trump summit cooled somewhat towards the end of the month. On the significance of Trump’s
This monthly report is prepared for Sinocism by the excellent Sinification, an invaluable resource for understanding how domestic and international affairs are debated within the Chinese establishment. — BillThe burst of “positive energy” a
Oman struggles to stay neutral in Gulf conflict (WSJ) Greek-owned tankers prepare for strait to open (FT) LNG tankers go dark to transit the strait (Bloomberg) U.S. data centres hit by power price storm (Woodmac) China’s new energy storage
Thank you for your support of Chartbook. Your generosity keeps this show on the road.Beyond The Time, 2008 Truong TanAccording to Bank of America’s Michael Harnett, the US stock market in the spring of 2026 was at near-peak levels of “bubbl
Dear Baiguan Pro readers,Each month, we pair macro data and BigOne Lab’s proprietary indices with a structured, directional read on where Chinese assets stand and what we’re doing about it.If you haven’t upgraded yet, we’re offering a free
Habemus the Pope’s AI takes! To dive in, ChinaTalk’s chips analyst and resident Catholic explains what is going on below. In the second half of the newsletter, you can find the transcript of the podcast (that you should really just listen t
So, Anthropic is going to IPO! The company is valued at almost $1 trillion, so this is going to be one of the biggest IPOs in history — the only other competitor being SpaceX, which is also set to go public soon. It’ll be one of the largest
On May 8, Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan broke a grueling six-month stalemate by passing a landmark $25 billion defense budget, catching many observers off guard. The vote brought sudden end to an agonizing legislative deadlock that had pushed U
In late February 2026, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz to foreign shipping. What began as a chaotic wartime closure has, in the past few days, hardened into something more consequential: an official sovereign toll regime, codified in Irani
Analysts (and strategists and economists) are trying to bring order into the chaos of financial markets. But not all analysts are truly adding value. Some of them just reinforce the existing consensus, while others are shifting the consensu
In today’s edition of the newsletter, I am offering a breakdown and my takeaways of the new regulation on outbound investment, which will take effect from July 1, 2026. The full text of the regulations is available on Xinhua. I am going to
Digital Gods, real costs: why a rational world would see the doom of the foundation‑model-builder IPO, because the AI labs are highly unlikely to ever get profits, let alone hyperprofits. Inference never becomes sufficiently cheap, AI-entit
TODAY IN HISTORYJune 1, 1215: After a lengthy siege during which a substantial portion of its population is believed to have starved to death and after which many more were massacred (actual figures are hard to come by), the city of Zhongdu
Today, Jaymes and I broke down the gamma squeeze setup developing in PURR and why call buying volume into Friday’s close was the highest we have seen to date in the name. When new information comes to light and positioning escalates, the th
On logs, Latin, and linear algebra: learning from a stochastic parrot; somewhat awkward questions about agency and pedagogy arising from working through one ridiculously knotty sentence of In Catilinam with an LLM…OpenClaw (now powered by o
There was no publicized May Politburo meeting, or any sign of Xi visiting North Korea last week. Today’s top items:1. New regulations on outbound investment - The State Council released the State Council Regulations on Outbound Investment (
Ah. Now I remember this! Mike Beggs rejecting the arguments of those jeering leftist morons who claimed Keynesian policies would not work in 2008-2010 but keeping the jeer. Still, I do want to have a few passages from this to hand should th
How a bad book, a bogus formula, and a hunger for favor led Kevin Hassett to discover that he could lie his way up the ladder as a career, and it would pay. Republican politicians and journalists call it “economic advising”. But that really
We have built an economic régime where GDP climbs, markets soar, and the typical worker stands still unless the labor market is white‑hot. And if inflation fears keep us from ever running the economy hot again, real median wages may be stuc
Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offeri
Hello and welcome to “Ask Derek Anything,” Foreign Exchanges’ weekly AMA/discussion thread for paid subscribers! Here’s how this works: I’m here to answer your questions (briefly; please don’t ask anything that would require 800 words to pr
Marx stuck to his guns on the theoretical adequacy of the labor theory of value. Plus he recognized the role of competition in equalizing profit rates. This contradiction was not because he was unaware of the “transformation problem”: he wa
Oil tanker transits via strait aided by U.S. navy (Bloomberg) China data centres power consumption and forecasts (NEA) Global jet fuel trade re-routed by closure of Strait (Reuters) Russia fuel supplies hit by refinery attacks (Bloomberg) R
Thank you for your support of Chartbook. Your generosity keeps this show on the road.Santiago Bose, Untitled, UndatedSantiago Bose was a mixed-media artist, educator, and community organizer from the Philippines. He co-founded the Baguio Ar
One of the most effective counter-drone systems in the largest drone war in history between Ukraine and Russia is a German anti-aircraft gun designed during the Cold War. The Gepard — a self-propelled 35 mm cannon that first entered service
What would happen if you woke up one morning and the internet was gone — not from a software glitch, but because someone had simply cut the wire?Threats to critical undersea infrastructure are rapidly escalating. In 2023, the Balticonnector
If you followed the China-US rhetoric tracker that I had shared prior to Donald Trump’s visit to China, you would have seen my remark that we should expect positive voices from Beijing on China-US ties after the visit. Today’s paper is an e
We all know the studies that examine the returns of politicians in the US. For some reason, US politicians are insiders on key regulatory and legal changes but somehow not exempt from trading individual stocks. But there is another group of
I explained my entire thesis for PURR and the escalating probability of a gamma squeeze in this report. You should definately read it. In order to further explain these factors, I will be covering them in depth during the livestream tomorro
Good evening. Thirty-seven years ago this week, dreams of a freer China died on the streets of Beijing when the Chinese Communist Party sent in the army to crush the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. By the turn of the century there were rene
You’re reading the web version of Foreign Exchanges. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, sign up today:Subscribe nowPROGRAMMING NOTE: I have a family commitment this evening and so I need to publish today’s newsletter
Ethan Wu cites me in an Economist essay arguing that, despite rosy headlines, these three countries are “suffering from industrial rot.” He makes the following points:Northeast Asia’s export industries increasingly operate on two tracks. On
In this report: Why Brent fell 12% this week, when the OECD release tapers off, and the political escalation the market is missing. The calendar trade for what comes after.Last week Brent: -11.86% (-$12.36). Open $97.50 High $97.81 Low $89.
This picture of a Ukrainian president in front of a Swedish fighter jet may be a sign of a significant change in the wind: if opinion, industry, and force structure align, a northern VIking Ráðagerð could become the mid‑continent super‑regi
Thank you for your support of Chartbook. Your generosity keeps this show on the road.May Chandavong, known as the first generation of contemporary artists in Laos, is a former vice president of the university of Lao National Institute of Fi
Photo by Humane Society via Wikimedia CommonsI consider myself a pretty good and decent guy, overall. I don’t commit crimes. I’m nice to the people I meet. I help out my friends. I take good care of my pet rabbit, and I donate lots of money
I strongly believe we are seeing a convergence in the flows of capital across every level of markets with an even greater concentration than I originally anticipated. The net result is a very high probability of having a gamma squeeze in my
In the last two weeks the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over an Ebola outbreak stemming from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Bolivia’s government failed to placate anti-austerity demonstrators. The Israeli m
Aghion, Bergeaud, & Garicano claim America’s tech productivity-growth lead is materially widening a US vs. EU real wage and standard-of-living gap. Product wage yes. User wage no. This is—or ought to be—elementary. And I at least, am horrif
The Trumpists say “victory”; Tehran calls it “reconstruction payments”; the meter on the Strait of Hormuz is running either way; from “maximum pressure” to war indemnities and investment funds, Trump’s Iran adventure is ending in a very exp
Thank you for your support of Chartbook. Your generosity keeps this show on the road.Source: KooperThe European carbon trading system (ETS) is holding its price level. Read more
IT IS WELL documented that Bank of England Governor Bailey is a historian by training. As such, Bailey might be expected to lean on his background from time to time, such as in his recent speech on AI.But being a historian does not give Bai
The following “Report on the Military Activities of Non-US Extra-Regional Countries in the Western Pacific in 2025” was released by the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI) in Beijing on May 25, 2026PrefaceIn recen
TODAY IN HISTORYMay 29, 1453: The city of Constantinople falls to the besieging Ottomans, marking the end of the Byzantine Empire and, if you prefer the longer view, the Roman Empire.Greek painter Theophilos Hatzimihail’s 1932 painting depi
Happy Friday, Oil Watchers!Every week, I summarize and analyze developments in flat crude prices, calendar spreads, high-frequency inventories, refined products, and positioning data, as well as a taste of the themes I’ve been thinking abou
During the 1980s and 90s, macroeconomic data could not detect the contribution of the emerging computer revolution. Famously, Robert Solow quipped “You can see the computer age everywhere, but in the productivity statistics.” And yet, despi
We scaled “attention is all you need” into an industrial‑scale stochastic parrot farm, then bolted on agents and tools until it started to look somewhat more like thought. Now the engineering reality—fabs, power, and eye‑watering token bill
It’s been a big couple of weeks at Net Interest. After posting on LinkedIn that we reached 100,000 subscribers, social proof kicked up a notch and we quickly added another 1,000. It’s nice too when pieces you write grab the attention of the
Dan’s subhead: These are not very bright people and things got out of hand. My take: when your grand strategy is based on hoping the other side lets you pretend you’ve won, things do indeed easily get out of hand when you confront an advers
We’re offering your first month of The Wire China for just one dollar. More details below!The world is facing a global memory chip shortage, with companies scrambling to buy what they can. The crunch puts desperate U.S. firms in a bind: wil
Can AI replace policy work today? I picked a few ChinaTalk-adjacent questions around immigration, biotech, and Chinese EV imports, and put the models to work, identifying policy levers and building microsites to advocate for ideas.This stup
Thank you for your support of Chartbook. Your generosity keeps this show on the road.Vann Nath February 1978: “That same day in February 1978 I am allowed to wash. I’ve found a piece of mirror about half the size of a hand. I take a look at
My latest piece for Reuters is online. I follow in the footsteps of my earlier comments on why I think the business model of AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI is fundamentally flawed and why hyperscalers face impossible math. In this o
Back when I started blogging in 2011, I saw my main function as technocratic — I would discuss policy ideas with other intellectual econ types, and wise policymakers at the Fed, in Congress, or in the Obama administration might put those id
On April 1, we officially launched Baiguan Pro, our professional-tier subscription designed for investors seeking deeper, more specific coverage of Chinese equities. Baiguan Pro delivers the Baiguan team’s monthly outlook on overall Chinese
On April 15, technology podcaster Dwarkesh Patel published a two-hour interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. For roughly forty minutes, Patel asked one question six different ways. The question was this: If American-made compute trains AI
Among some nuclear strategists, military officers, and lawmakers, a belief bordering on the canonical has taken root that the United States is on the short end of a “deterrence gap” with Russia and China. Both countries, and especially Russ
A pair of children’s shoes is an odd place to look for the changing dynamics of American power. But stick with me because, after the past year, it is one of the clearest places to see them.Long before those shoes reach a store shelf, tariff
It is the time of year when high school students pay their first visits to US college campuses and decide where to apply. During my time, we didn’t typically visit campuses because in Germany and much of Europe, university was tuition-free
Here are the key reports and articles from the People’s Daily’s edition on Friday, May 29, 2026.Page 1: There are three reports of letters and exchanges by Xi Jinping. First, Xi replied to a letter from Chinese and American students partici
You’re reading the web version of Foreign Exchanges. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, sign up today:Subscribe nowTODAY IN HISTORYMay 28, 621: With only around 10,000 soldiers at his disposal, prince Li Shimin of the
May 28, 2026Subscribe nowIN DETAILUS crude oil inventories decreased by 3.327 mb to 441.686 mb last week, per the EIA.Cushing inventories fell by 2.794 mb to 23.024 mb.The SPR decreased by 9.063 mb/d to 365.112 mb.Gasoline inventories decli
In which a frontier LLM model tells me to configure a new chatbot to use model “/anthropic/claude-sonint-4-6”; yes, this only means that somewhere in the training data some poor SOB mistyped “sonint” for “sonnet”; but nothing with even spar
Week ending 22nd May 2026THE PRINTThe US pulled a whopping 9.92 MMbbl from the SPR last week, an all-time weekly record and the second set in as many weeks. Add the 7.86 MMbbl commercial crude draw and the country emptied close to 17.8 MMbb
Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below.***IranThere has been increasing chatter that Washingto
Rose Gottemoeller joined Ryan in Washington. They discussed how the West might think about relations with Russia once the war with Ukraine ends, as well as nuclear diplomacy and other critical issues. Gottemoeller was the deputy secretary g
This week’s report ‘Rapid Draining’ Read more
How did Arizona lock in billion-dollar investments from TSMC, Intel, and LG Energy?Ian O’Grady, Senior Policy Advisor to Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, joins ChinaTalk to share war stories from the state that’s successfully reshoring semicon
To the naked eye it is obvious that China’s spectacular growth surge from the late 1970s onward is the largest single transformation in world economic history. But how best to express and quantify this stark fact? I’ve been spending a lot o
Thank you for your support of Chartbook. Your generosity keeps this show on the road.Semsar Siahaan, Racism, 2001Medical sovereignty: Brazil is making the wise decision to invest heavily in local vaccine development and production. IN RECEN
This week, I’d like to discuss two very different topics: state firework policies and university parking. Although the topics themselves seem to have nothing to do with one another, I think that the price theoretic aspects of these topics h
I am taking a day of leave tomorrow to sail across the North Sea to the Netherlands. Best in Energy will resume on Monday June 1. Global energy investment focuses on security (IEA) U.S. auto firms focus on high-priced vehicles (WSJ) Califor
Show Notes: On today's show Andrew and Bill begin with the news that Beijing moved to further ease hukou restrictions, including why this is a welcome change for millions of Chinese citizens, as well as a look at questions and challenges as
In 2024, when Jiangsu Delong, the world’s second-largest stainless-steel producer, filed for bankruptcy, several Chinese firms and state-owned enterprises quietly absorbed its Indonesian assets. Among them was China First Heavy Industries,
Sea control has changed. In recent years, there has been a quiet revolution in maritime strategy that has seen navies increasingly expected to exert greater levels of control over more of the world’s oceans, more of the time. Whether it is
When news broke that North Korea had revised its constitution, analysts in the West and across the Korean Peninsula rushed to declare it the formal death of Korean reunification as a policy objective. The changes were hard to ignore. Pyongy
Businesses everywhere are currently trying to figure out if and how to use AI to improve business processes. But because it is such a new technology, everybody seems to make things up as they go along. Some businesses are trying to be early
Eid Mubarak to those who are celebrating!GiveDirectly is raising funds to help families affected by the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. If you’re able to contribute, please do so!TODAY IN HISTORYMay 27, 1644: A Qing
Update June 1: The day after we published, Anthropic released Opus 4.8 and “ultracode” mode in Claude Code. Our preliminary experiments indicate that together these are significantly better at filtering out low-severity bugs, and that the c
The 11th Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) concluded on May 22. Held every five years, the conference offers an opportunity to evaluate the treaty’s implementation, respond to technological and geopolitical dev
In 2025, Nazmelis Zengin wrote, “The Fragility of U.S. Space Power in a Multipolar World,” where she argued Washington’s space superiority could be challenged if the United States doesn’t rethink its course, taking lessons from mid-tier spa
While other CSPs have seen declining-to-flat operating margins over the last several quarters, Amazon’s AWS margins inflected this past quarter driven primarily by customer spending growth on Claude through Bedrock. AWS’ higher share of 3P
Democracy, we read these days, is under threat from people like you and me. Or at least something labelled “Democracy;” whether it’s defined as an ideology, a series of procedures, or just not really defined at all, is under threat from peo
This 71-page May 2026 edition of my monthly data-dense and visualization-heavy Global Oil Data Deck series (attached PDF below) is exclusive to paid Commodity Context subscribers.Become a paid subscriber today to view the full Global Oil Da
When we talk about US-China competition, we often tend to focus on the obvious: trade, technology and Taiwan. But there’s a deeper question that doesn’t get enough attention. How does China actually think about fighting a war against a far
Thank you for your support of Chartbook. Your generosity keeps this show on the road.John Walker, Labyrinth III, 1979–80Bond market jitters One inflation spike in the 2020s might be an accident, the world’s biggest bond markets seem to have
Beijing’s regulatory decision against online brokers last week, which we just wrote a note about, once again put the policy risk of investing in China in sharp focus. On days like this, we think this is the perfect time to share with you a
China’s crude imports and Hormuz options (Oxford Energy) Pakistan plans oil storage and strategic reserves (Reuters) Europe’s wind turbine makers call for trade protection (FT) UAE/India LNG tanker transits Strait of Hormuz (Bloomberg) GLOB
ChinaTalk analyst yearns for the mines. He’s on a mission to visit rare earths and other critical minerals mining sites, refineries, and permanent magnet facilities around the world. If you or anyone you know can help him fulfill this missi