Re:PPCC: Pisitófilos Creditófagos. Otoño 2025

[traspotin]

https://x.com/burrytracker/status/1988241876638466398?t=Ud6jYpBoOr8_g9Ryrli-2g&s=19

https://x.com/michaeljburry/status/1987918650104283372?t=xZmwzWWm34dHtDdmF5r8gQ&s=19

Te invoco @cadavere!

[Rota Fortunae]

Porca miseria.

Sí, los Bin Ladens

Porca miseria.

[tomasjos]

Martín Seco pone a caldo el mercherismo del falsoliberal Rivera. Eso sí, Martín Seco  peca de popular capitalismo en su visión de la vivienda como inversión además de bien básico.

https://theobjective.com/elsubjetivo/opinion/2025-11-11/todos-autonomos-iguales-articulo-martin-seco/

[breades]

Martín Seco pone a caldo el mercherismo del falsoliberal Rivera. Eso sí, Martín Seco  peca de popular capitalismo en su visión de la vivienda como inversión además de bien básico.

https://theobjective.com/elsubjetivo/opinion/2025-11-11/todos-autonomos-iguales-articulo-martin-seco/

Lo gracioso es que esté de acuerdo en que Sánchez vende a su madre por el Poder, amén de escribir para ese pseudomedio.

¿Qué persona que se mete en política no anhela el Poder? La Política no es otra cosa que la lucha por el Poder.

Es tan absurdo el argumento que es normal que haya tenido tanto éxito. Somos así de estúpidos. La derecha sociológica sigue haciendo caso al verdadero dictador cuando le decía a la peñita que hicieran como él y no se metieran en Política.

[newclo]

.../...
Que se metan por donde les quepa su sindicalismo de clase, sus ladrillos, su oro y sus criptos, con el pañuelo cuatro nudos —moco, sudor y lágrimas— calado hasta las orejas, mondadientes en ristre, a lomos de sus langostinos podridos, cagaditos de miedo y, en sus filas, El Confeso.

Tarde o temprano, habrá un diluvio de obra nueva provista por el sector público de acuerdo con un plan central de salvación del capitalismo-como-sistema. Vamos a ganar este rastrero 'tour de force'. Hemos aguantado hasta aquí el regodeo de estos inferiores socioeconómicos y nos quedan solo 90 días para las 12 campanadas de la Era Cero, tras este histórico 2025 de Suelta & Desamparo.]

Buenas tardes

Estoy muy ausente del foro porque me deprime la derrota inmobiliaria que padezco.
Me encantan la selección de noticias y el debate de nivel de todos ustedes... pero no me da la vida y ya no llego a leer todo.
Sigo sintiendo esto como mi casa pero espero algún evento que me devuelva la moral, la verdad.

Quería comentar 2 cosas:
Veo mucho interés en las noticias nacionales, PP-PSOE, Ayuso, Sánchez y tal, que me da bastante repelús, aunque entiendo que vivimos en España y que también ha quedado claro que es una parte de esa guerra global que hay, Milei, Trump y tal y tal.... pero la derrota que siento me quita las ganas de seguir esos temas hasta que vea un poco más de luz al final del túnel.

La otra cosa que quería comentar es la aparente inquina hacia el oro (sea dinero o no) y hacia las criptos (sean lo que sean). Como herramienta especulativa pura las criptos no sé qué daño hacen... mejor que especular con ladrillo, no ? mucho mejor invertir en empresa o mucho mejor crear empresas por su puesto, no lo niego. Pero no alcanzo a entender porqué son tan malas para los transicionistas como nosotros.
El oro, lo mismo... ha sido mi mejor inversión desde el año 2005... cuando sólo buscaba un seguro, ni si quiera una inversión ni mucho menso especular... porqué se le ataca ?

Ah.. con respecto a Bitcoin hay un argumento que se utiliza que tampoco me convence, el de que "los bros predican que es finito y por tanto no deflacionario, pero que sí puede ser deflacionario porque hay satoshis y 12 decimales y tal" ... no he oído a nadie que no sea un cantamañanas decir eso de que no pueda ser deflacionario; la cosa está en que es un "activo" respaldado por los participantes mediante una encriptación que requiere energía para resolverlo y que actúa como alternativa al FIAT.
¿ eso es estar vacío y no tener nada detrás? a mí eso de que tenga valor únicamente porque la gente confía en ello me suena de algo (ya sea un país, con o sin portaaviones, que ha hecho impagos varias veces o una legión de creyentes)

También quiero compartir este interesante artículo que está dando que hablar:

https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/americas-self-defeating-china-strategy

FOREIGN
AFFAIRS

America’s Self-Defeating China Strategy
A Policy That Confuses Strength and Weakness
Lael Brainard
November 10, 2025

The landmark meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in October brought a respite to the trade war and led to some reciprocal deals. But it did not suggest any breakthrough in addressing the problems that have fueled tensions between the two countries in recent years. Instead, the meeting confirmed the curious direction of U.S. China policy in Trump’s second term. The president has not only broken with the policy of the Biden administration but also seems to have forsaken the strategic direction of his own first term.

For much of this century, U.S. policy toward China rested on a calculated bet that the country’s integration into the global trading system would drive its political and economic liberalization—in alignment with U.S. interests. That bet did not pay off. China developed not into an economic partner but into a disruptive competitor bent on shaping the global order in its favor. Washington waited too long to counter Beijing, which allowed it to grow strong enough to edge out American industry in many areas.

Under the first Trump administration and then the Biden administration, the United States finally built a coherent strategy to confront China’s growing economic power—one grounded in painful lessons from the past. But the second Trump administration is reversing that progress and offering a transactional, contradictory approach to replace it. The White House is imposing sweeping tariffs based on fiscal rather than strategic goals, alienating allies, weakening American innovation, placing national security on the bargaining table, and eroding the U.S. dollar’s preeminence.

Trump’s surprising pivot regarding China will not help make America great or put America first. It will only set Washington back relative to its chief rival. A better policy would double down on the United States’ core strengths, not actively undermine them.

RUDE AWAKENING
In 1995, China accounted for less than five percent of global manufacturing output. By 2010, that number had jumped to around a quarter, and today it stands at nearly a third. Those gains came on the back of the evaporation of manufacturing jobs elsewhere. China’s share of U.S. imports climbed from eight percent in 2000 to 22 percent by 2018, all while American factory towns were hollowed out. Geopolitics compounded the domestic toll of economic dislocation: China was both a rising economic powerhouse and a strategic rival to the United States.

Instead of embracing liberalizing reform (as so many in the West assumed was inevitable), the Chinese Community Party tightened its grip, strengthened state capitalism, and maintained significant controls on foreign inflows of investment, trade, and information. Its massive trade imbalances were the result not of market forces but of a dense web of nonmarket interventions—industrial subsidies, discriminatory rules, currency management, intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, and cyber-intrusions—which imposed immense costs on U.S. workers and businesses.

It took a while for Washington to push back. Given the greater than threefold surge in Chinese imports between 2001 and 2008, the Bush administration could have invoked Section 421 of the Trade Act of 1974—the “China safeguard,” negotiated specifically to protect U.S. industries from threats or disruptions caused by increased imports of Chinese goods—but it never did. The Obama administration used the safeguard once, on tires, but declined to apply it in sectors such as auto parts and solar panels, where state-supported Chinese manufacturers were undercutting Western innovators. U.S. policy neither protected American workers, companies, and technologies nor promoted investments to compensate for China’s nonmarket interventions and level the playing field. Private-sector financing could not match the forbearance or patience of Chinese state financing in sectors that required tremendous capital.

Beijing also kept its currency artificially weak. Between 2001 and 2012, China’s foreign exchange reserves soared from $212 billion to $3.3 trillion, and in 2007 its current account surplus swelled to more than ten percent of GDP, which contributed to the United States’ lopsided deficit and the 2008 global financial crisis. Only in the wake of the crisis did the Obama administration finally negotiate a corrective: a 16 percent appreciation of the Chinese currency against the dollar and a reduction of China’s current account surplus to two percent of GDP.

China developed into a disruptive competitor bent on shaping the global order in its favor.
In recent years, China has also begun to challenge the dollar-based order—that is, the U.S. dollar’s centrality in the global trading system—after being a major beneficiary of that order for several decades. What began as an effort to internationalize the renminbi morphed into a de-dollarization campaign, which picked up speed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the ensuing Western sanctions. Those sanctions underscored the leverage conferred by the dollar’s dominance.

U.S. officials began to more firmly revise their approach to China by the mid-2010s. The first Trump administration marked a sharp break from the previous course. In 2018, it imposed tariffs on nearly half of U.S. imports from China. Although this sweeping approach led to higher prices on many products and greater imports from third countries, it started to loosen the codependence of the two economies. The pandemic accelerated this decoupling.

The Biden administration built on that foundation. Rather than imposing duties across the board, it raised tariffs steeply on select Chinese imports in sectors vital to national security, clean energy, and technological leadership, in which China appeared determined to dominate global supply, and removed tariffs on inputs imported from other countries. The administration combined these defensive measures with offensive investment incentives for the domestic production of semiconductors, batteries, and clean energy technologies, secured through legislation. For the first time in decades, Washington married trade protection with industrial renewal and supply chain diversification.

This strategy also recognized that maintaining the U.S. lead over China would require coordination with allies. Both the Trump and the Biden administrations applied restrictions on select semiconductor exports to China; the Biden administration also enlisted Japan and the Netherlands to jointly implement export controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Washington understood that it could not grapple with Chinese practices on its own. By 2024, bipartisan support had coalesced around a strategy of selective protection and controls, strategic investment, and allied cooperation to counter the national security and economic risks of dependence on China.

WALK IT BACK
Trump returned to office in 2025 after a campaign that repeated his familiar rhetoric about China. But his second administration has not simply picked up where it left off. Instead, it has been reversing U.S. strategy on almost every front.

Take, for instance, Trump’s use of tariffs. The administration’s tariff policy is driven by fiscal arithmetic rather than strategic calculus. It is imposing steep rates on all trade partners—not just China—in order to raise between $300 billion and $400 billion in annual revenue to offset the shortfall produced by new tax cuts. These tariffs, designed to fill budget gaps, in fact amount to a tax on American manufacturers and consumers. The majority of U.S. imports are industrial inputs, so U.S. manufacturers will face higher input costs than their foreign competitors as a result of the tariffs. General Motors and Ford are projecting several billion dollars in additional tariff costs this year, even after winning some initial relief.

In addition, at the very moment when Washington needs allies and partners more than ever, these sweeping unilateral tariffs are alienating U.S. partners. The administration has imposed duties on close allies with whom it has a trade surplus, such as Australia and the United Kingdom. Between the Trump administration’s focus on maximizing revenues and China’s retaliatory power, tariffs on some friendly countries are now higher than those on China. Following the understanding reached between Trump and Xi in their recent meeting, tariffs on India and Vietnam exceed those on China, and Switzerland’s and Brazil’s rates are only slightly lower. Even Canada, a North American ally that joined Washington in setting 100 percent tariffs on Chinese auto imports in 2024, is facing high tariffs on many goods as a result of petty irritants, such as an ad about tariffs aired by the government of Ontario. Imports from China now face a smaller penalty, relative to imports from elsewhere, than they did before Trump began his second term—a puzzling reversal. While Beijing is bolstering production networks and investing in infrastructure in countries in Southeast Asia, Washington is penalizing those countries with punitive tariffs. It is hardly surprising, then, that many U.S. allies and partners are considering trade arrangements that would exclude the United States.

Maintaining the U.S. lead over China requires coordination with allies.
Alongside raising costs and alienating allies, current policy is weakening the American innovation ecosystem. The administration has slashed funding for federal and university research and severely restricted visas for foreign scientists and technologists. The administration’s termination of incentives for innovation and investment in clean energy is a strategic setback in the race to dominate advanced AI, in which low-cost energy from multiple sources will be crucial to powering the expansion of AI data centers. Similarly, domestic investment incentives for electric vehicles, batteries, and alternative energy were designed to give U.S. auto companies a better chance to compete with China’s surging EV producers. But the administration has suspended many of those incentives, jeopardizing key business investments and the high-paying jobs they were poised to create in factory towns. Ceding dominance of the EV industry to China also means ceding ground on advancements in autonomous vehicles and drones, as well as in battery technology, which is critical for grid storage and electronics.

The Biden administration understood the important role that government could play in spurring innovation in the private sector. Under the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law in August 2022, the United States was on track to restore domestic manufacturing of advanced semiconductors—with its global share of production projected to reach nearly 30 percent by 2032, up from zero in 2022—and had attracted the world’s leading advanced semiconductor manufacturer, TSMC, to fabricate chips in the United States. But the Trump administration has converted final CHIPS grants that provided for “upside sharing”—that is, when companies receiving $150 million or more in federal funding shared a portion of their profits with the U.S. government when returns materially exceeded projections—into a government equity stake that no longer requires companies to meet advanced manufacturing benchmarks. This move is uncomfortably reminiscent of China’s state capitalism, not to mention the attendant risks of cronyism.

The second Trump administration also appears to be backing away from a settled bipartisan strategy of implementing technology export controls at a time when advanced AI accelerators are one of the core advantages sustaining the U.S. lead in the AI race. The first Trump administration initiated the use of semiconductor export controls on some Chinese entities, and the Biden administration expanded these in collaboration with foreign partners. So it came as a surprise when the Trump administration rescinded some restrictions in July after Beijing threatened to curtail rare-earth magnet supplies. Beijing has systematically strengthened its own export controls since the first Trump administration. Partly as a result, the second Trump administration has seemed willing to negotiate over certain key U.S. controls. In an August press conference, the president confirmed a deal under which American producers could obtain licenses to export chips to China by sharing 15 percent of the revenues with the government—another triumph of fiscal considerations over strategy.

An emboldened Beijing tested American resolve again in October by expanding its restrictions on rare-earths exports. In the deal that emerged from the bilateral meeting later that month, the United States committed to a one-year delay on extending its list of restricted entities to majority affiliates in return for a one-year delay on China’s rare-earths restrictions. This deal with Beijing crossed a decades-old redline maintained by U.S. administrations of both parties that national security technology controls are not on the table in trade negotiations. Moreover, if the president’s public musings give any indication of future policy, it may be only a matter of time before he decides to put Nvidia’s Blackwell chips on the negotiating table, which would be a serious own goal, ceding to China a key U.S. advantage in the AI race.

Current policy is raising costs, alienating allies, and weakening American innovation.
Finally, the second Trump administration is undermining confidence in the foundations of dollar dominance, just as China accelerates efforts to challenge it. Dollar dominance is not merely symbolic: it underpins global demand for U.S. Treasuries and enables the selective use of sanctions to advance national security goals. It also allows the United States to borrow in its own currency at lower rates and save an estimated $100 billion to $200 billion a year in interest, which translates to lower rates on mortgages and car loans for Americans.

These benefits reflect investor faith that the United States will remain highly creditworthy, inflation will be low, and the dollar will hold its value. Yet the administration’s fiscal and institutional carelessness has begun to test investor faith. It signed into law a $4 trillion expansion of federal debt, despite a U.S. credit downgrade that weakened the dollar and raised the yields on 30-year U.S. Treasuries to more than five percent.

The White House has mounted an unprecedented attack on the independence of the Federal Reserve—threatening to fire its chair, attempting to remove a Senate-confirmed governor without due process, and appointing a governor who remains on the president’s staff. Trump has called on the Fed to lower interest rates to reduce payments on the federal debt, even though investors would demand higher interest rates on long-term Treasuries if they expected the Federal Reserve to prioritize reducing debt payments over controlling inflation. Congress has been surprisingly acquiescent, considering that it originally delegated its own constitutional power over currency to the Federal Reserve and legislated a for-cause removal safeguard to protect the Fed from political interference.

These actions jeopardize confidence in U.S. creditworthiness and institutional independence—key pillars of the dollar’s global role. Although renminbi-denominated capital markets lack the liquidity and depth to replace the dollar outright, Beijing’s de-dollarization campaign could progressively erode the network benefits that sustain U.S. financial primacy. The fact that there is currently no single alternative to the dollar should be cold comfort at a time when foreign central banks are increasing the share of gold in their reserves to rival the share of U.S. Treasuries, and foreigners are hedging more of their exposure to dollar assets. As I have noted in Foreign Affairs, Americans will pay the price if the dollar loses its preeminence.

A WINNING STRATEGY
Trump’s economic strategy toward China is effectively unwinding the progress made not just by the Biden administration but also by Trump’s first administration. Sweeping tariffs designed to maximize revenue are hurting American manufacturers and straining consumers. They are alienating U.S. allies and partners and fracturing the coalitions needed to sustain U.S. technological leadership. By weakening the country’s world-class innovation ecosystem, eliminating advanced manufacturing and clean energy investment incentives, and reversing technology export controls, current policy is undermining key U.S. industries. Fiscal profligacy and political meddling in monetary policy are eroding the foundations of dollar dominance. China stands to gain from all these measures.

The core objective of U.S. China economic policy should be to sustain American preeminence in vital sectors into the future. A winning strategy for Washington—one that is truly “America first”—would impose targeted tariffs on Chinese imports so that Beijing does not have a chokehold on any node of the supply chain in strategic sectors. At the same time, the United States should strive to attract, rather than attack, allies and partners, using preferential access; investment partnerships, including in critical minerals and rare earths; and regulatory alignment to place the United States at the center of the world’s leading technology ecosystem.

Maintaining U.S. tech leadership relative to China requires incentivizing private-sector investments in advanced manufacturing, clean energy, and rare earths. Supporting partnerships between universities, federal research, and businesses and attracting and developing the world’s best talent will spur greater innovation and sustain U.S. leadership in advanced AI and other industries. A smart U.S. economic strategy would also buttress, not bargain away, targeted export controls on advanced semiconductor technology to sustain the U.S. lead in frontier AI models for as long as possible.

Washington should also safeguard dollar dominance at a time when China is working with other countries to erode the dollar’s central role. The United States should maintain the dollar’s incumbency advantage by demonstrating its commitment to the international financial system, fiscal sustainability, and the institutional independence of the Federal Reserve.

The competition with China will hinge not on mimicking Beijing’s methods but on buttressing the core strengths of the United States. To sustain preeminence, Washington must reinforce its institutions, alliances, and incumbency advantages—not erode them.

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Ah !
Y la frase que cito en marrón.... pues me da vueltas en la cabeza.... si hay que esperar a inundar con obra nueva... pues otra temporadita de espera, que en tiempo de humano es una eternidad.
No sé si contará la cantidad de obra en marcha que llevamos en los 2 últimos años y la que está en marcha para entregar en el próximo 1-1.5 años.... pero nos vamos a 2027 y luego hasta 2030 reforma energética pues ya otra patada... y 2032 ya si eso, lo celebramos (en tu casa o en la mía)

Salud !

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/d2bf6c25-fb42-4f13-b81c-a72883632f50

Investor angst over Big Tech’s AI spending spills into bond market

Debt issued by groups building data centres has been hit in recent weeks


The scale of investment in AI infrastructure has raised concerns about overcapacity, long-term profitability and energy demands © Simon Carter/Getty Images

Investors have been selling off the debt of US tech heavyweights, showing how jitters over Silicon Valley’s boom in spending on artificial intelligence have spilled into the bond market.

A basket of bonds issued by so-called hyperscalers — companies that are building vast data centres, including Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle — has sustained a hit in recent weeks.

The spread, or premium in yield that investors demand to buy the debt over Treasuries, has climbed to 0.78 percentage points, the highest level since US President Donald Trump sent markets reeling in April with his tariff plans, and up from 0.5 points in September, according to Bank of America data.

The widening spread highlights how investors are increasingly concerned with the way tech groups are turning to debt markets to finance their investments in AI infrastructure.

“The important thing the market woke up to in the past two weeks is that it’s the public markets that are going to need to finance this AI boom,” said Brij Khurana, a fixed income portfolio manager at Wellington Management. 

JPMorgan on Monday said building AI infrastructure would cost more than $5tn and “will likely require participation from every public capital market as well as private credit, alternative capital providers and even government involvement”.

The mammoth scale of investment in AI infrastructure has raised concerns about overcapacity, long-term profitability and energy demands.

Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta will spend more than $400bn on data centres in 2026, on top of more than $350bn this year.

Tech groups are issuing debt at a quick rate to fund their AI expansion efforts despite having large cash hoards, which is something some investors worry could signal a shift to higher levels of leverage.

“The hyperscalers collectively hold [about] $350bn in liquid cash and investments and are expected to generate [roughly] $725bn of operating cash flow in 2026,” JPMorgan said.

“Even so, substantial new debt supply is coming to the credit markets from these high-quality issuers.”

In recent weeks, Meta, Alphabet and Oracle have hit markets with blockbuster debt packages, some with maturities as long as 40 years.

Meta last month forged a $27bn private debt deal with investors, including Pimco and Blue Owl Capital, to fund development of its “Hyperion” data centre in Louisiana. It raised an additional $30bn in bonds at the end of October, the biggest corporate bond deal since 2023.

Meanwhile, Alphabet sold $25bn of bonds in early November, $17.5bn of which were raised in the US and $7.5bn in Europe.

Oracle sold $18bn of bonds in September to fund infrastructure leases such as OpenAI’s “Stargate” data centre in Abilene, Texas.

Analysts noted Oracle’s debt has been hit particularly hard in recent months. An index compiled by the Financial Times tracking its debt that has been trading since before the latest bond sale has fallen almost 5 per cent since mid-September, compared with a price fall of about 1 per cent for a broad Ice Data Services basket tracking US high-grade tech debt.

Oracle has about $96bn of long-term debt, according to Bloomberg data. It has rapidly grown its debt balances as part of a series of deals to lease computing power to ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which the US software group said would generate $300bn in revenue over the next five years.

But credit rating agency Moody’s has flagged significant risks from Oracle relying on large commitments from a small number of AI companies to fund its growth.

Smaller companies at the heart of the AI boom have also been hit.

Data centre operator CoreWeave’s stock has fallen more than 20 per cent over the past two weeks, alongside the drop in bigger names. On Tuesday, the company’s shares were down a further 14 per cent after it lowered its forecast for annual revenue as a result of expected data centre delays.

The cost to protect against a default on CoreWeave’s debt has jumped as the equity price has fallen, with the group’s five-year credit default swaps trading at 505 basis points, from below 350bp at the start of October, according to LSEG data.



Some analysts argue that the decline in hyperscalers’ bonds in the wake of such large issuance is healthy. “As long as we are still pricing incremental risk, it’s a good sign. The thing I worry about is a rally on more supply rather than a sell-off,” said George Pearkes, a macro strategist at Bespoke Investment Group.

“We’re still in early innings in this debt cycle for AI,” he said.

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/b1f2c189-809f-4054-bf73-0eba674f4e13

Can a fragmented Europe continue to prosper? Martin Wolf

What once made its sovereign states powerful and rich could now be a barrier to their remaining so


© James Ferguson

What have the Romans ever done for us? In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the answers included aqueducts, baths and peace. But what if the right answer is: “their empire fell”? In short, western Europe’s transformative role in world history is due to the absence of a Europe-wide empire. That created what the ancient historian Walter Scheidel calls the “competitive fragmentation” of western Europe. Competition drove the commercial, intellectual, technological, legal and political changes that led in the end to the industrial revolution. Thereupon, everything changed.

The benefit of fragmentation is the central idea of Scheidel’s Escape from Rome, published in 2019. The idea was not new. But Scheidel brought it to life, by rooting the progress of western Europe in the inability of any later power to repeat what Rome did. Unlike in China, the Middle East or India, encompassing empire never returned.

For 1,500 years, European states competed with one another. Think of this as “the scorpions in a bottle” theory of European history. The scorpions needed to develop venomous stings to survive and prosper in this ferocious environment. They did so — so much so, in fact, that a small European island conquered much of the world and began the industrial revolution. Some states dropped out of the competition. But innovations and ideas repressed in some places just moved elsewhere.



Europeans created empires in the rest of the world, but not in Europe. That, argues Scheidel, is what mattered. He contrasts European competition with imperial stagnation elsewhere. Chinese and Roman empires had in common, he writes, “some degree of market integration and unevenly distributed . . . growth . . . constrained by low state capacity, pervasive elite encroachment and secular lack of innovation, human capital formation, and Schumpeterian [innovation-led] growth”. Empires provided peace, for a time, but they were rent-extraction machines. In Europe, such regimes were defeated by the ones that successfully promoted innovation.

Why did Europe remain fragmented? The answer seems to be geography — mountains and seas. Fertile areas that can support large populations and so pay high taxes were not too big and not too close. The relative military efficiency of Rome was not replicated.



In the 19th and 20th centuries, the economies of western Europe grew dramatically: in 2022, western Europe’s real GDP per head was 19 times that of 200 years before. Life expectancy also rose, from 36 in 1820 to 82 in 2020. The revolution spread from Europe across the world. The US has been the world’s leading economy since the second half of the 19th century. More recently, China’s prosperity has soared. The world has transformed. It is far richer.

Technological advances have also opened up possibilities for intense global competition. That has huge implications. Until recently, the only technologically advanced, continental-scale economy was that of the US. The Soviet Union tried to become one, but failed, except in the military domain. Today, however, China is such a power. India might become one, too. Today, then, the “bottle” is the world, not Europe, and the most dangerous scorpions are of the same size as the old empires: indeed, one of them, China, is the paradigmatic example of an ancient empire.



Where does this leave Europe, the origin of this revolution? The EU’s population is 450mn, far smaller than China’s, let alone India’s, but substantially bigger than that of the US. At PPP, its economy is smaller than those of the US and China, yet still very large. But, as noted in the Draghi report and also in “The Constitution of Innovation”*, a recent paper by Luis Garicano, Bengt Holmström and Nicolas Petit, the EU and Eurozone are falling behind in productivity. It also finds it hard to mobilise its economic and demographic resources, far greater than Russia’s though they are, to guarantee its own security without the protection of the US defence umbrella.



Maybe, the EU can do what it has to do even though its history of fragmentation will always make it more of a squabbling league of sovereigns than a sovereign state. That, as the paper noted above argues, has been the promise of the “single market”: it must just try harder. One can also argue that this is true for the challenge of security, too.

Yet this is not altogether convincing. Sovereignty, national identity, politics and taxation (an expression of the others) remain firmly national. This is why completing the single market has been so hard. It is even truer of defence, where the lack of co-ordination makes freeriding inevitable.



Furthermore, economies of scale, scope and, above all, agglomeration play a huge role in the most advanced modern technologies. It is surely no accident, as Paul Krugman notes, that the digital revolution has been concentrated in Silicon Valley. Would Europeans accept (or be able to engineer) such a supercluster? One has to doubt it.

If so and if, too, this bears not just on productivity, but also on the ability to defend its security, then the conclusion might be that Europe now suffers from a paradox of its history: the fragmentation that made its states powerful and rich is, in the new world, a barrier to their remaining so. In an age of continental-scale superpowers, European fragmentation may be an insuperable handicap.

Yet a happier possibility also exists. Imperial ossification remains a threat to huge states. We see this in the over-centralisation of Chinese power and the attempted creation of a corrupt autocracy in the US. Maybe, Europeans should remain delighted that Rome fell, and despite many efforts, has never returned.

*https://www.siliconcontinent.com/p/the-constitution-of-innovation

[CHOSEN]

la cosa está en que es un "activo" respaldado por los participantes

No exactamente.
Está respaldado por los participantes NORTEAMERICANOS, que es muy distinto.
Sostenido por deuda y montado sobre un dólar infinito.
Un poco de historia:
En esencia, un Credit Default Swaps es un seguro que cubre a su tenedor del riesgo de impago de un préstamo o de la compra de otro producto financiero. El mercado de los CDS forma parte de una clase de mercados denominados mercados de derivados OTC (acrónimo de over-the-counter) los cuales son mercados no regulados.

Es fácil ver las analogías.
Tan fácil que asusta. No hay nada donde agarrar. La crisis de los CDS arrastró a entidades financieras y aseguradoras confiables, reguladas, miles de empleados, con cien años de historia... Las cripto está sostenidas por John Doe.

No es casualidad que los BRICS aspiren a crear una alternativa monetaria.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://x.com/burrytracker/status/1988241876638466398?t=Ud6jYpBoOr8_g9Ryrli-2g&s=19

https://x.com/michaeljburry/status/1987918650104283372?t=xZmwzWWm34dHtDdmF5r8gQ&s=19

Te invoco @cadavere!

https://x.com/burrytracker/status/1988241876638466398

https://x.com/michaeljburry/status/1987918650104283372

Saludos.

[Derby]

https://www.cityam.com/uk-investors-withdraw-from-equities-at-record-pace-amid-bubble-and-budget-fears/

UK investors withdraw from equities at record pace amid bubble and Budget fears


https://www.cityam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/GettyImages-2216912014-e1762871711757.jpg?w=742

UK investors have withdrawn from equities at a record pace amid investor nerves over soaring stock prices and a flurry of forthcoming tax hikes at the Budget.

As much as £7.3bn was pulled from equity funds in the four months to the end of October, according to figures from Calastone, representing the largest outflow ever recorded.

Some £3.6bn of those net outflows were withdrawn in the month of October alone, representing the fifth consecutive month of outflows following a period of net inflows in the first half of the year.

UK-focused funds accounted for one third of the net selling, with investors withdrawing £1.2bn from the sector, while global funds saw a record £911m leave the sector and North American funds shed £649m, their third worst month on record.(...)

[puede ser]

https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/13638658/11/25/el-congreso-rechaza-crear-un-impuesto-a-partir-de-la-tercera-vivienda.html

El Congreso rechaza crear un impuesto a partir de la tercera vivienda

ERC ha presentado una proposición de ley para luchar contra especulación inmobiliaria

El PP, Vox, PNV y Junts se han mostrado contrarios a la toma en consideración de la proposición de ley mientras el PSOE ha puesto en valor el trabajo del Gobierno en materia de vivienda y ha remarcado que algunas de las propuestas impulsadas en el hemiciclo, como la ley de ERC, están en línea con la política del Ejecutivo.
(...)
Por su parte, la diputada de Junts Marta Madrena ha argumentado que la iniciativa supondría "sobrecargar" la vivienda con impuestos particulares a cualquier propietario, lo que en su opinión se traducirá en un castigo para la ampliación de la oferta de vivienda. La portavoz económica del PNV en la Cámara Baja, Idoia Sagastizabal, ha mostrado reticencias al impuesto por querer gravar de manera generalizada a partir de la tercera de vivienda: "Puede tener efectos perversos y provocar una nueva retirada de viviendas del mercado", ha explicado.
(...)
En el turno de los socios de izquierda, tanto Bildu, como BNG, Podemos y la diputada de Compromís integrada en el Grupo Mixto, Águeda Micó, se han mostrado a favor de la admisión a trámite de la proposición de ley. El portavoz de Vivienda de Sumar y diputado de Compromís, Alberto Ibáñez, ha ensalzado que la propuesta va en la dirección correcta porque con el panorama actual que hay en la vivienda lo que hay que hacer es "achicharrar" impuestos a los "rentistas".

-------------------

Respecto al "diluvio de obra nueva"... Yo creo que más bien va a ser un diluvio de casas viejas y herederos buscando liquidez. Por ahora están pidiendo la luna por unas casas a las que todavía no les dio tiempo a quitar la labor de ganchillo de encima de la mesa y la caja de medicinas de la cocina...

[Derby]

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/11/sonder-to-file-for-bankruptcy-travelers-told-to-leave-hotels-next-day.html

Sonder announces bankruptcy plans; tells guests to vacate hotel rooms: ‘People were scrambling'


Sonder, a company once valued at $1.9 billion, says it’s winding down operations.
Photoalto/frederic Cirou | Photoalto Agency Rf Collections | Getty Images

Key Points
*Short-term rentals firm Sonder on Monday announced plans to file for bankruptcy.
*The news came a day after Marriott said a licensing agreement between the two companies had abruptly ended.
*Some Sonder guests said they were told to vacate their hotel rooms in less than 24 hours.

Short-term rentals company Sonder on Monday said it plans to file for bankruptcy, a day after Marriott International said a licensing agreement between the two companies had ended.

The deal, signed in August 2024, allowed Sonder hotels to be booked via Marriott’s Bonvoy website and was widely considered a lifeline for the San Francisco-based company, which struggled financially through the Covid-19 pandemic, and after going public via a SPAC merger in 2022. 

In a statement published Sunday, Marriott said the 20-year licensing agreement was “no longer in effect,” citing Sonder’s “default” as the reason.

In its own statement on Monday, Sonder said it made “comprehensive efforts” to improve the company’s finances following Marriott’s announcement, to no avail.

“In light of these unsuccessful efforts and [Sonder’s] financial condition, the Board of Directors made the difficult decision to wind-down operations and pursue a court-supervised liquidation of the U.S. business immediately,” the statement read.

Janice Sears, Sonder’s interim chief executive officer, said technical integration problems with Marriott’s Bonvoy website caused “significant, unanticipated integration costs, as well as a sharp decline in revenue”.

“We are devastated to reach a point where a liquidation is the only viable path forward,” Sears added.

The one-time unicorn, which was valued at $1.9 billion at its IPO, said it plans to file insolvency proceedings abroad too.

The company, which operates in 40 cities worldwide, was billed as a blend between Airbnb and hotels, offering long-term stays in tech-enabled properties popular with remote workers. The company operated many hotels via long-term leases, resulting in an “asset-heavy” strategy that many in the hospitality space now avoid.

‘People were scrambling’

Sonder hotel guests that CNBC spoke to said they were caught off-guard by the news, with some saying they were ordered to vacate their hotel rooms with less than 24 hours’ notice.

One traveler, Connie Yang, told CNBC that she pre-paid for a stay at Sonder Battery Park in New York from Nov. 7 to Nov. 17.

On Sunday, Nov. 9, she received an email saying she had to vacate the hotel by 9 a.m. the next day, she said.

“The reason stated was the end of a licensing agreement between Sonder and Marriott,” she said. “The entire building was asked to vacate.”

“My neighbor is helping her husband through cancer therapy, and they have paid for the month,” she added. “It is beyond comprehension.”

She also recounted finding some of Sonder’s onsite staff in tears as “they knew nothing.”

On Monday morning, “people were scrambling to leave before they locked down the building,” she said.

Other travelers have posted stories on social media about Sonder’s shuttering, including attempts to get assistance from Marriott’s customer service.

Yang said she also contacted Marriott. “I called Marriott and spoke with [a] supervisor who said they were not allowed to give us better rates… nor were they going to find us rooms,” she said. “We were all left to scramble.”

Marriott did not immediately return CNBC’s request for comment.

A company statement on Sunday said Marriott’s “immediate priority is supporting guests currently staying at Sonder properties and those with upcoming reservations,” adding that Marriott will reach out to guests “who booked directly through Marriott channels.”

Yang, who booked her stay through Booking.com, said that a representative at the platform “assured me I would get a refund.”

In the end, she said she found an alternative accommodation on her own — at a “Hilton.”

[Rota Fortunae]

https://x.com/burrytracker/status/1988241876638466398?t=Ud6jYpBoOr8_g9Ryrli-2g&s=19

https://x.com/michaeljburry/status/1987918650104283372?t=xZmwzWWm34dHtDdmF5r8gQ&s=19

Te invoco @cadavere!

https://x.com/burrytracker/status/1988241876638466398

https://x.com/michaeljburry/status/1987918650104283372

Saludos.

Está palmando pasta ....

[Derby]

https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/11/10/wendys-closing-stores/

Wendy’s to close hundreds of US stores in bid to halt falling profit

Fast food chains have been struggling to attract lower-income consumers as inflation has raised prices.

Wendy’s plans to close hundreds U.S. restaurants over the next few months in an effort to boost its profit and make its remaining stores more appealing.

The Dublin, Ohio-based chain said during a conference call with investors Friday that it planned to begin closing restaurants in the fourth quarter of this year. The company said it expected a “mid-single-digit percentage” of its U.S. stores to be affected, but it didn’t give any more details.

Wendy’s ended the third quarter with 6,011 U.S. restaurants. If 5% of those locations were impacted, it would mean 300 store closures.

The new round of closures comes on top of the closure of 240 U.S. Wendy’s locations in 2024. At the time, Wendy’s said that many of the 55-year-old chain’s restaurants are simply out of date.

Ken Cook, Wendy’s interim CEO, said Friday the company believes closing locations that are underperforming – whether it’s from a financial or customer service perspective – will help improve traffic and profitability at its remaining U.S. restaurants.

Cook became Wendy’s CEO in July after the company’s previous CEO, Kirk Tanner, left to become the president and CEO of Hershey Co.

“When we look at the system today, we have some restaurants that do not elevate the brand and are a drag from a franchisee financial performance perspective. The goal is to address and fix those restaurants,” Cook said during a conference call with investors.

Cook said in some cases, Wendy’s will make improvements to struggling stores, including adding technology or equipment. In other cases, it will transfer ownership to a different operator or close the restaurant altogether.

U.S. fast food chains have been struggling to attract lower-income consumers in the past few years as inflation has raised prices. Cook said he expects lower-income consumers to remain pressured for the rest of this year.

In the first nine months of this year, Wendy’s said its U.S. same-store sales, or sales at locations open at least a year, fell 4% compared to the same period last year. Wendy’s revenue fell 2% to $1.63 billion in the same period, while its net income fell 6% to $138.6 million.

Cook said $5 and $8 meal deals — which have been matched by McDonald’s — have helped bring some traffic back to its U.S. stores. But Wendy’s isn’t doing a good job of bringing in new customers, Cook said, so the company plans to shift its marketing to emphasize its value and the freshness of its ingredients.

Wendy’s shares dropped 7% Friday. On Monday, they were down 5% in afternoon trading.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://cincodias.elpais.com/opinion/2025-11-11/el-reto-de-la-pobreza-energetica.html

https://elpais.com/economia/2025-11-11/un-30-de-los-hogares-vulnerables-quedan-fuera-de-los-indices-de-pobreza-energetica-hasta-un-millon.html

Saludos.