Retail Drives Nvidia To Become World’s First $4 Trillion Market Cap Company
For the first time ever, a company has achieved a market capitalization of $4 trillion. And that company is none other than Nvidia…
Source: Bloomberg
After plunging by over $1 trillion during the Liberation Day chaos (and DeepSeek), NVDA has soared back by over $1.5 trillion from the May lows to reach a 4 handle for the first time, surging past MSFT.
If they can finish the day at or above $160.46, Nvidia would pass the record $3.915 trillion closing market capitalization that Apple reached in late December.
NVDA topped $1 trillion market cap for the first time in June 2023, and passed $2 trillion for the first time in Feb 2024.
The $3 trillion market cap level was first surpassed by NVDA in June 2024.
The biggest driver behind this resurgence is Retail investors…
Shares rose more than 170% in 2024, building on their 2023 gain of about 240%
The stock is up 22% this year, a rally that has added about $700 billion to its valuation.
After decades as the world’s unrivaled reserve currency, the U.S. dollar’s dominance is eroding in traditional financial systems. The U.S. dollar now accounts for 58% of foreign exchange reserves—its lowest share in decades.
Yet in the rapidly evolving digital economy, the dollar is staging a powerful resurgence.
In this infographic, part three of the Digital Dollar Series created in partnership with Plasma, Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross explores how digital finance may be bolstering the greenback’s influence.
The U.S. Dollar on a Global Scale
As a share of global totals, the U.S. dollar’s prominence across five major financial indicators varies.
In more traditional financial indicators, the greenback’s proportion is between 50% and 60% globally.
For instance, as a share of reserves, the dollar reached as high as 73% in 2001 before declining to the current 58%. According to the IMF, the dollar’s decline has been offset by increases in the shares of nontraditional reserve currencies. For instance, shares of the Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, and Chinese renminbi have increased. These currencies help reserve managers diversify and offer relatively attractive yields.
The Chinese renminbi has been climbing as the country moves away from American currency in cross-border payments and pilots its own central bank digital currency.
Digital Finance: The Dollar’s Next Chapter
Despite some signs of de-dollarization in traditional finance, the digital realm tells a different story. A striking 99% of all stablecoins are pegged to the U.S. dollar, underscoring its pivotal role in crypto-based finance.
As stablecoin supply surges, issuers need to back up their coins by buying Treasuries or other liquid assets. This drives significant demand for the dollar. Notably, stablecoin issuers collectively rank among the top 20 holders of U.S. government debt.
With financial systems evolving, stablecoins are positioned to reinforce the dollar’s global dominance.
Discover how Plasma is building the future of stablecoin transactions—making them cheaper and faster than ever before.
Stellantis agreed to build 1 million cars in Italy. It’s on a pace for 440,000…
Who Is Stellantis?
Stellantis, a global automotive group formed by the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and Groupe PSA. It encompasses several iconic American automotive brands like Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge, and Ram.
European counterparts include Citroën, Peugeot, Fiat, and Maserati.
The Italian Metalworkers union FIM CISL projects that Stellantis will produce around 440,000 vehicles in Italy in 2025. This is less than half the target of one million vehicles by 2030 that Stellantis had agreed upon with the Italian government. This projected annual production of 440,000 vehicles is a further decline from the already low 475,090 vehicles produced in Italy in 2024, which itself marked a 37% decrease from 2023. This situation signals a significant shortfall from the previously agreed upon production goal for Italy.
Car production in Italy is having a terrible time. Stellantis, by far the biggest car producer in the country, is producing volumes that are severely down year-on-year. According to the FIM-CISL trade union, it made 33.6% fewer cars in the first half of 2025 than in the same period in 2024. If you take van production into account, the year-on-year drop is 26.9%.
By the end of the year, the union estimates that Stellantis will have produced 440,000 vehicles a year. If this turns out to be true, it will be well below the 1m vehicle per year target that the firm agreed on with the Italian government.
There are lessons from this entire experience that the Italian government should learn, and other ones that it will probably learn. One is that industrial policy should focus on new technology, and providing incentives for it, rather than dragging the old along. Italy was slow to the mark in getting an incentive scheme together for electric cars. More work could also have taken place, especially at the European level, on the electric car supply chain. China, now the world’s dominant electric carmaker, has been doing this for decades. We are way behind the curve.
But the lesson the government probably will learn is that it is risky to let big businesses fall out of Italian hands. Stellantis came about in 2021, after a merger between Fiat-Chrysler and the French Peugeot. The Italian Fiat, and its founding family, the Agnellis, were the dominant players in the Fiat-Chrysler relationship. Their influence has been diluted in the subsequent merger with Peugeot to create Stellantis.
The Italian government is likely to view it as not coincidental that the big drop-off in car production happened soon after the merger. It has already had various spats with Stellantis, which has tried to placate the government on several occasions. If car production in Italy continues to prove underwhelming, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the government double down on trying to keep the country’s largest firms in Italy.
Obvious Questions
Eurointelligence seldom misses the boat this badly.
Why should government be telling companies how many cars to make?
This has little to do with the merger other than a stupid decision to ramp up EVs that few want.
Under former CEO Carlos Tavares’ leadership, Stellantis laid off American factory workers, shuffled its C-suite, and forced its U.S. brands to push products that American customers didn’t like.
Stellantis and Tavares separated in December, leaving the conglomerate rudderless for about six months before the company made a late May announcement.
Stellantis is considering the possible sale of its luxury Maserati unit, among other options, Reuters reported.
McKinsey, which is advising Stellantis on the matter, has also said divestment of its only luxury brand is a viable option. Stellantis responded bluntly to the reports: “Respectfully, Maserati is not for sale,” a company spokesperson said.
But low sales in North America was one of the reasons Tavares is no longer head of Stellantis. So is the fact that Maserati saw sales decline by more than half in 2024 to 11,300 units, while posting an operating loss of 260 million euros ($298 million) last year.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Stellantis would idle its minivan plant in Windsor, Canada, for two weeks and shutter its Jeep facility in Toluca, Mexico, for the rest of the month.
Government Meddling Is the Problem
The US under Biden, and the EU nannycrats in general set untenable goals for EVs. Companies ramped up production for cars that few wanted.
The automakers are not profitable or barely profitable without energy tax credits.
Trump put an end to that but created his own distortions. Making cars in the US like he wants is guaranteed to do one thing, and that’s raise prices.
We cannot build cars here as cheaply as we can in Mexico. Consumers, not Mexico will pay the price.
Berlin Summons Chinese Ambassador After Warship Targeted German Plane With Laser
Germany is blistering angry, and has summoned the Chinese ambassador, after its military alleged that a China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) vessel targeted a German aircraft with a laser during a European Union joint operation.
“Endangering German personnel & disrupting the operation is entirely unacceptable,” Germany’s foreign office said in a Tuesday past on X. “The Chinese ambassador was summoned to the Federal Foreign Office today.”
The incident reportedly happened in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea areas, amid the EU’s Operation ASPIDES, which seeks to secure international shipping from piracy and other attacks.
Der Spiegel has described that “Possible damage is still unclear and is still being investigated” – in reference to a German reconnaissance plane of unspecified type which was apparently operating over waters off Yemen’s coast.
German media reports indicate that the aircraft was approaching a Chinese frigate at the time, thus the laser deployment may have been a defensive response, which is not uncommon among military vessels approached by unknown or foreign aircraft.
A German defense ministry spokesperson said the aircraft involved in the incident earlier this month was a multi-sensor platform plane. Known as a “flying eye” for its wide-range surveillance capabilities over the sea, it is piloted by civilians with military personnel on board.
The aircraft was conducting a “routine operation flight over the Red Sea” when it was “targeted by a laser without reason or prior contact by a Chinese warship that had already been encountered several times in the sea area”, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “By using the laser, the warship accepted risk to people and property.”
And Newsweek has separately reviewed, “In 2018, the Pentagon accused Chinese nationals of shining military-grade laser pointers at US pilots operating out of the US base in Djibouti, which is used for counter-terrorism operations in east Africa and Yemen.”
“In one case, two pilots on a C-130 cargo plane reportedly suffered minor eye injuries as they came in to land at the base,” the report noted.
The EU mission in these waters has been active since February 2024, which has been touted as a necessary defensive maritime security operation to safeguard Red Sea navigation.
The Chinese military employed a laser targeting a German aircraft in the EU operation #ASPIDES. Endangering German personnel & disrupting the operation is entirely unacceptable. The Chinese ambassador was summoned to the Federal Foreign Office today.
— GermanForeignOffice (@GermanyDiplo) July 8, 2025
The United States recently withdrew from its conflict with the Houthis, and there’s been an uneasy maritime ceasefire involving the US Navy, but other ships have just this week come under attack.
Washington had long urged for Europe to step up its defenses of these regional waterways, something which does appear to be happening at least on a limited basis.
New German federal government statistics indicate that young foreigners are disproportionately represented as suspects in numerous crimes, with particularly significant differences in street crime and shoplifting.
The suspect burden figure (TVBZ) has been compiled by the Federal Criminal Police (BKA) and published in the Police Crime Statistics (PKS) starting this year. This ratio shows the total number of identified suspects over the age of eight, and is calculated per 100,000 inhabitants per population group. It examines all crimes except for immigration law violations, and the data presents a concerning trend.
For German suspects across all age groups, the TVBZ is 1,878.
In contrast, Syrian suspects have a TVBZ of 8,236, and Afghan suspects are at 8,753 — more than four times higher.
🇩🇪🚨German classroom nightmare
Teachers mocked, lessons disrupted, and even physical assaults.
“I am no longer in control of the situation. I feel like a failure. The children here are just 12 years old.”
However, when the data is compared among young people, the disparity is even more pronounced. Syrians between 14 and 18 years old are five times more likely to commit a crime than Germans in the same age bracket.
However, in regard to other groups of young people from North Africa, the difference is even more astronomical. Algerian youth feature a TVBZ rate that is a tremendous 56 times higher than Germans.
For Moroccans, it is 19 times higher.
Differences are also notable across specific offense categories. In street crime, which includes offenses like bodily harm, robbery, sexual harassment, and pickpocketing, the TVBZ for German suspects is 168. For Syrians, this figure jumps to 1,291, and for Afghans, it’s 1,218—nearly eight times as high.
The data was released after a parliamentary inquiry from AfD domestic policy spokesperson Martin Hess, who criticized the findings, stating, “This is the predictable result of a migration policy that has been completely failed for decades and has given up all control since 2015 at the latest.”
Hess had previously requested detailed data on crime rates among foreigners, broken down by nationality and age group, in a small inquiry in June.
This data also needs to be considered from another perspective. Many of these German citizen suspects have a foreign background; however, there is often no way of knowing how many of these suspects have a foreign background because Germany does not record this information.
A top Berlin prosecutor has indicated that up to three out of four clan members have German citizenship.
Any time any of these suspects commit a crime, it is recorded as a German suspect. If Germany kept data on the crime rate of German citizens with a foreign background, as Denmark does, it would likely reveal an incredibly high crime rate among this group of German citizens. This policy has been promoted by the AfD, also to help measure the integration rates of foreigners even after generations have resided in Germany.
The new TVBZ data will also pop a myth from the left, which is that foreigners are committing such high rates of violence because they are mostly young men. However, as the data shows, German suspects, when compared to foreign suspects from the same exact age group, often feature dramatically lower crime rates. Germany also has an extremely strong welfare state, which means these foreign youths have access to food, shelter, and consumer goods.
A principal has sent out a letter to the parents of 1,200 German schoolchildren telling them to ensure their daughters “only use well-lit paths and streets” when walking to school.
Vestas Wind Power CEO Urges EU To Sharpen Its “Fragmented” Energy Policy
Henrik Andersen, CEO of Danish wind turbine giant Vestas Wind Systems A/S, has issued a stark warning to European policymakers: without stronger and more cohesive industrial strategies, Europe may lose its edge in renewable energy manufacturing to the U.S. and other regions.
“Wind is largely a European creation — born in our universities, tested on our sites,” Andersen told Bloomberg News. “If we don’t protect and support what we’ve built, companies like ours will eventually move out of Europe. It’s that simple.”
Andersen’s remarks come amid growing concerns over Europe’s competitiveness, weak economic growth, and its ability to meet carbon reduction goals. These challenges were spotlighted in a 2023 report by former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi. Geopolitical tensions — such as Iran’s recent threat to block the Strait of Hormuz, and ongoing instability from the war in Ukraine — have also underscored the urgency of achieving energy independence.
“When you’re self-sufficient, energy prices fall. So if Europe wants any of this, then energy and industrial policy need to be very closely linked,” Andersen emphasized. “We need an industrial policy that allows European companies to be both global and big.”
Bloomberg writes that despite its leadership in wind technology, Europe’s fragmented regulatory landscape, high inflation, rising interest rates, and supply chain issues have created headwinds for companies like Vestas. Competition from Chinese turbine manufacturers — including recent deals in Germany — has added to the pressure, although some of these arrangements face scrutiny on national security grounds.
Andersen criticized the EU’s long-standing aversion to industrial consolidation, arguing it has left European companies at a disadvantage globally. “For decades, we’ve said no to mergers and consolidation in the name of competition,” he said. “Now it’s that very fragmentation that’s making Europe uncompetitive.”
He pointed to U.S. policy as a model for Europe, citing the American approach to energy independence and industrial scale. Even with political threats to renewable subsidies, Andersen acknowledged the U.S. has followed through on consistent long-term strategy.
“I’m going to be a little bold and say it: Europe should look at what the US has done,” he said. “Over the past decades, America has built a level of energy independence that now allows them to export energy to Europe. That didn’t happen overnight. It took two or three decades of consistent policy, but it shows that it can be done.”
Vestas, headquartered in Aarhus, Denmark, has installed over 56,000 turbines in 71 countries since its founding in 1979. Recently, the company has significantly expanded in the U.S., doubling its American workforce to over 5,000 in the past three years. Its U.S. factories are currently running at full capacity to meet demand.
“We’re not afraid to invest in the US,” Andersen said. “And we don’t expect any administration — current or future — to de-prioritize energy. In fact, we’re confident they’ll keep pushing forward.”
The Rio Declaration that followed the latest BRICS Summit in that coastal Brazilian city saw all members, including China, condemn late April’s Pahalgam terrorist attack in paragraph 34:
“We condemn in the strongest terms the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir on 22 April 2025”.
This sharply contrasts with the draft SCO Defense Ministers’ joint statement in late June, which included no condemnation of that attack, hence why India’s Defense Minister refused to sign it.
It was assessed that this was a deliberate provocation by this year’s Chinese chair.
The triple purpose was to do a favor for its Pakistani ally, craft the optics for lending false credence to the perception that India is the “weak link” in the SCO, and thus strengthen the influence of Russia’s pro-BRI policymaking faction. China was able to pull this off due to its chairmanship giving it extra influence over the group’s workings. No joint declaration was agreed to because China refused to amend the text to satisfy India.
China ironically found itself in the same position during the latest BRICS Summit as the one into which it had just placed India, however, except Beijing decided to condemn Pahalgam this time around in order to avoid the optics of a BRICS founder torpedoing this year’s declaration. Brazilian President Lula da Silva just hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a state visit, which was analyzed here to be part of his new balancing act, so he wasn’t going to disrespect him by not including Pahalgam in the declaration.
The aforesaid analysis also argues that it was this state visit and associated state dinner which influenced Xi’s unprecedented decision to decline participating in this year’s summit for the first time ever (implausibly citing scheduling conflicts) since he didn’t want to play second fiddle to Modi there. In light of the declaration condemning Pahalgam, which was predictable in retrospect given Lula’s hosting of Modi on a state visit, Xi couldn’t oppose it without discrediting himself personally and rupturing BRICS.
Another reason behind his unprecedented absence could have therefore been to “save face” after tasking his Prime Minister to agree to the declaration despite its condemnation of Pahalgam for the reasons explained above. Having his Defense Minister refuse to amend the joint statement from the SCO meeting that he just chaired two weeks ago so that it condemns Pahalgam to having his Prime Minister inexplicably agree to condemn Pahalgam in the Rio Declaration is a textbook example of flip-flopping.
Even worse, it tacitly draws attention to how China politicized the SCO during its last meeting as touched upon in the analysis that was cited at the end of the introduction, which goes against the spirit of the group. The favor that it did for Pakistan thus backfired since the optics have now been inadvertently crafted for lending credence to Indian suspicions that China has ulterior motives within the SCO and Russia’s pro-BRI policymaking faction might now be discredited by association.
In hindsight, China should have included a condemnation of Pahalgam in the draft SCO Defense Ministers’ joint statement during the group’s latest meeting that it chaired since it wasn’t realistically going to oppose this predictable inclusion in the then-upcoming BRICS Rio Declaration.
The fact that it didn’t do so suggests that it either clumsily overlooked this or took for granted that it could convince Brazil not to include it.
In any case, China’s reputation just took a hit, and it was entirely avoidable.
Israel Defense Minister Unveils Plan For ‘Concentration Camp’ In Gaza
With Gaza ceasefire negotiations under way and President Trump raising hopes of a deal being reached by week’s end, Defense Minister Israel Katz on Monday revealed that the IDF will create what it calls a “humanitarian city” in the wasteland that is Rafah, and then forcibly concentrate Gaza’s entire population of nearly 2 million people inside it.
concentration camp (noun) a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard
In the first phase, the IDF plans to round up 600,000 displaced Palestinians who are living in the coastal Mawasi area and move them to Rafah, a city in southernmost Gaza that borders Egypt and Israel. Eventually, every Gaza resident will be moved. After security screening, Palestinians will be ushered inside the camp, with IDF guards ensuring that none are able to leave, Katz said.
While the Israeli military will secure the perimeter, the Netanyahu government is looking for some type of international organization(s) to take charge of the interior, to include overseeing the distribution of aid, an enterprise currently managed by the shadowy Gaza Humanitarian Foundation with the IDF dishing out mass killings of Palestinians approaching the aid points; more than 600 are reported dead around the aid stations since late May. Whistleblowing soldiers have told reporters that lethal weapons are being used against unarmed people as brute-force crowd control.
Katz’s announcement contradicts what the IDF Chief of Staff’s office told Israel’s High Court on the very same day. In response to a petition filed by IDF reserve soldiers asking the court to determine if Israel was violating international law by forcibly displacing Palestinians with perhaps the ultimate goal of expelling them, the Chief of Staff’s office said there was no plan to move masses of Gaza residents or to concentrate them somewhere in the territory. However, that assurance is itself seemingly contradicted by the operations order for “Gideon’s Chariots,” the IDF’s latest operation launched in May, which says one objective is “managing and mobilizing the civilian population,” Haaretz reports.
On Monday, Katz also reiterated Israel’s intention to subsequently facilitate Palestinians’ departures to other countries, telling reporters that Israel will implement “the emigration plan, which will happen.” Separately, however, an official told Haaretz that Israel’s overtures to various countries have all been refused. While Israel’s champions commonly claim such refusals prove that Palestinians are dangerously undesirable people, Middle East governments are intensely wary of being perceived by their own populations as facilitating ethnic cleansing by Israel, for fear of domestic backlash up to and including insurrections.
— International Defence Analysis (@Defence_IDA) July 3, 2025
For somewhat similar reasons, Israel is likely to struggle to find what Katz called “international partners” to run the interior of the Rafah concentration camp. Human-rights-oriented groups and foreign governments will recoil at an invitation to serve as a key component of a scheme that most objective observers would characterize as a war crime. Given that, we could see the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation fill the void, which would only compound the controversy.
Meeting with President Trump at the White House on Monday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck an optimistic tone about the prospect of mass Palestinian emigration, and characterized the idea as voluntary in nature:
“If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave. We’re working with the United States very closely about finding countries that will seek to realize what they always say, that they wanted to give the Palestinians a better future. I think we’re getting close to finding several countries.“
Trump echoed Netanyahu’s optimism, saying, “We’ve had great cooperation from … surrounding countries, great cooperation from every single one of them. So something good will happen.”
Though the implementation phase is apparently now imminent, the idea of corralling all of Gaza’s population into Rafah and then moving them out has been circulating since the very beginning of Israel’s response to the Hamas invasion of Oct 7 2023. A Ministry of Intelligence policy paper dated Oct 10 2023 and obtained by +972 Magazine that same month recommended herding Gaza’s entire 2.2 million residents south and then forcing them into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
More recently, as Dave DeCamp notes at Antiwar.com, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich outlined a forcible displacement scheme in candid and grim terms that belie Netanyahu’s characterization of coming emigration as “voluntary.” In May, he boasted to attendees of a West Bank settlement conference that Palestinians will have no choice but to abandon a land rendered uninhabitable by the IDF:
“Within a few months…Gaza will be totally destroyed. The Gazan citizens will be concentrated in the south. They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”
Oh, the delicious irony. For many years I’ve been writing about the southern US border and the many ways in which Mexico has used it as a “steam valve” to get rid of people in perpetual poverty, as well as malcontents, violent criminals and political revolutionaries. Who could have foreseen a time when the conundrum would be reversed and Mexico would be crushed by an avalanche of its own unwanted citizens?
But weren’t we told that migrants are an “economic boon” to any country lucky enough to have them?
The argument among progressives and open border activists has always been that migrants are average law abiding people (just like us) who slip across the border simply to integrate into our society and live the American dream. They claim that Mexican leaders are not in control of the situation and that people are desperate to escape crime and social decline.
In reality, government officials have long encouraged migrant caravans to traverse their territories and they have allowed illegal immigration into the US as a means to divert their failures into the laps of American taxpayers. Migrants aren’t trying to escape problems in Mexico, they ARE the problem in Mexico. The more of these caravans the Mexican authorities can get rid of, the better their economic situation appears.
I wrote about this dynamic in detail in my recent article ‘Illegal Alien Economy: How Foreign Nations Exploit U.S. Borders For Profit’. Specifically, I examined threats made by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum over the possible taxation of remittances (US dollars) sent by migrants from the US into the coffers of Mexican banks and households.
She asserted that her government would “mobilize” against the US should conservative politicians continue their campaign to stop illegals from transferring money back home. Remittances are the single largest source of revenue Mexico receives from foreign countries. Their economy loses significantly without this cash flow.
Beyond the issue of easy money, though, is a singular reality which I have reiterated for a long time: Central and South American nations cannot survive the influx of returning migrants. They will be suffocated by the very same illegals they originally foisted upon the US.
The purging of millions of undesirables reduces Mexico’s poverty stats, homeless stats, unemployment stats and crime stats. I have to laugh every time I hear smug Europeans criticize the US for our violent crime rates – Only now are they beginning to understand what happens when you overwhelm a western nation with a third world demographic and a third world mentality. We certainly have our own home brewed fatigue-ers, but taking on millions of fatigue-ers from other nations does not help.
It’s difficult to keep crime low when other countries offload their problem children onto your front lawn.
Furthermore, labor data proves that illegals have been stealing American jobs and driving down American wages. It’s no coincidence that employment numbers for native born Americans have spiked in recent months as migrant jobs have decreased in tandem with deportations.
There’s a lot more proof in the pudding when we examine what is currently happening in Mexico, though.
Riots in Mexico city are breaking out and they are growing more violent by the day. Residents blame “gringo immigrants” and “digital nomads” for moving into the country and driving up food and housing costs. They also complain that white visitors are allowed to stay on their visas for far too long and that they refuse to “learn their language or respect Mexican culture”. Gee, that sure sounds familiar. Has Mexico gone MAGA?
The irony is, of course, that conservative Americans have been warning about the same issues caused by migrants from Mexico and we have been called “racists” and “fascists” for doing so.
There are approximately 700,000 US citizens residing in Mexico today, a tiny number compared to the tens of millions of Mexican migrants in the US illegally. But somehow, gringos are to blame for rising prices?
Realty experts in the Mexican market say that the cause of the shortages is a slowdown in housing development (Didn’t they tell us we needed illegals to help build more houses to counter the housing shortage in the US? Why don’t they put all these returning construction supermen to work in Mexico?). This explanation doesn’t account for inflation in other areas of the economy such as food and energy. So, are white tourists and ex-pats making things more expensive south of the border?
No, this is nonsense. Perhaps in a handful of resort towns the case might be made, but the truth is that Mexicans are being propagandized into thinking US migrants are the cause of their woes when it is actually the mass return of their OWN CITIZENS from the US.
Some of these people have been deported by force, but armies of them are self deporting and the Mexican economy simply can’t handle the strain. The surge started in 2024, even before Trump took office, with many illegals leaving the US because of inflation as well as the expectation of a conservative election win.
The riots, though, are probably starting now because of the mass deportations. Mexico City in particular has been inundated with migrants, many of them from other countries in Central and South America, as they look for a new place to settle outside the US.
I’ll say it again – I believe the Mexican population is being agitated into violence against American visitors by false claims that they are driving up prices when it is returning illegals that are the real cause. Mexican leaders are trying to distract their population from the bigger picture.
To be sure, there is obviously the NGO issue to consider. Central and South American leaders have not been acting unilaterally as they push for open US borders. Globalist organizations have been expediting matters by feeding cash into programs that guide illegals into the US. They do this to further their vision of a borderless multicultural world, but also to destabilize western societies and displace groups of people they see as likely threats in the future (namely white Christian conservatives).
However, globalist non-profits only smooth the way; its governments like the variety in Mexico that have been providing the human bodies for the NGOs to work with.
Now that Mexico is witnessing the pure Karma of their actions, what is likely to happen? First, the Mexican economy is going to go into a tailspin in a very short period of time. Prices will skyrocket due to crushing demand as illegals come home (just as they helped to trigger rising prices in the US during the Biden border bonanza).
Second, unemployment will rise exponentially along with a saturated labor market. High competition for limited jobs will force government intervention. But in Mexico the government has far less means at its disposal to adapt to the chaos of mass immigration. They will seek to establish social programs to gloss over the damage, but this will fail. Not only are they taking on millions of citizens that they tried to get rid of, they are losing access to the billions of US dollars those migrants were injecting into the Mexican economy. It’s a double whammy.
Third, Mexican officials will demonize the US for the deportations, as if it’s our fault they sent so many foreigners into our country without our permission. As we have seen, this is already leading to animosity across the border and Americans will remain at risk when they travel.
Fourth, if the current trend continues, Mexico will face economic collapse. They simply won’t be able to mitigate the instability caused by the sudden surge in inflation, housing shortages and the unemployed feeding on their social welfare programs.
What would this means for the US? Riots and violence in Mexico could bleed over into border states. Near zero infrastructure on the Mexican side of the border and even less restrictions on migrant movements, which means even tighter controls will be needed on the US side to keep illegals in check. Cartels may end up being the least of our worries when it comes to threats from Central America.
Keep in mind that a large contingent of Central Americans believe that the southern US belongs to them by historical right. The “La Raza” movement has long called for the retaking of large swaths of US territory in the name of “decolonization” (even though they are also descended from Spanish colonists). I believe they will once again assume that they can solve most of their problems of incompetent governance and economic decline by blaming the US and pressing citizens to invade.
They will double down on the same actions that got them in trouble in the first place. When Claudia Sheinbaum talks about “mobilizing” Mexico against the US, this is most likely what she means – A renewed march on the US border in the hopes that Mexico can reopen the steam valve and alleviate their economic troubles.
The result will not be peaceful as she seems to suppose; it could even mean war. It would be a disaster for the Mexicans, but they’ve been relying on the US for so long that they simply don’t understand any other way. That is to say, they are about to get what they deserve; a taste of their own medicine. The destabilization they tried to export to us is now on its way to blow up their own country.
MUNICH —An artificial intelligence system can now predict your next move before you make it. We’re not just talking about whether you’ll click “buy now” on that Amazon cart, but rather how you’ll navigate complex decisions, learn new skills, or explore uncharted territory.
Researchers have developed an AI called Centaur that accurately predicts human behavior across virtually any psychological experiment. It even outperforms the specialized computer models scientists have been using for decades. Trained on data from more than 60,000 people making over 10 million decisions, Centaur captures the underlying patterns of how we think, learn, and make choices.
“The human mind is remarkably general,” the researchers write in their paper, published in Nature. “Not only do we routinely make mundane decisions, such as choosing a breakfast cereal or selecting an outfit, but we also tackle complex challenges, such as figuring out how to cure cancer or explore outer space.”
An AI that truly understands human cognition could revolutionize marketing, education, mental health treatment, and product design. But it also raises uncomfortable questions about privacy and manipulation when our digital footprints reveal more about us than ever before.
How Scientists Built a Digital Mind Reader AI
The research team started with an ambitious goal: create a single AI model that could predict human behavior in any psychological experiment. Their approach was surprisingly straightforward but required massive scale.
Scientists assembled a dataset called Psych-101 containing 160 experiments covering memory tests, learning games, risk-taking scenarios, and moral dilemmas. Each experiment was converted into plain English descriptions that an AI could understand.
Rather than building from scratch, researchers took Meta’s Llama 3.1 language model (the same type powering ChatGPT) and gave it specialized training on human behavior. They used a technique that allows them to modify only a tiny fraction of the AI’s programming while keeping most of it unchanged. The entire training process took only five days on a high-end computer processor.
When tested, Centaur completely crushed the competition. In head-to-head comparisons with specialized cognitive models that scientists spent decades perfecting, Centaur won in almost every single experiment.
The real breakthrough came when researchers tested Centaur on completely new scenarios. The AI successfully predicted human behavior even when the experiment’s story changed (turning a space treasure hunt into a magic carpet adventure), when the structure was modified (adding a third option to a two-choice task), and when entirely new domains were introduced (logical reasoning tests that weren’t in its training data).
Centaur could also generate realistic human-like behavior when running simulations. In one test involving exploration strategies, the AI achieved performance comparable to actual human participants and showed the same type of uncertainty-guided decision-making that characterizes how people behave.
Neural Alignment: Centaur Mimics Human Brain Activity
In a surprising discovery, Centaur’s internal workings had become more aligned with human brain activity, even though it was never explicitly trained to match neural data. When researchers compared the AI’s internal states to brain scans of people performing the same tasks, they found stronger correlations than with the original, untrained model.
Learning to predict human behavior apparently forced the AI to develop internal representations that mirror how our brains actually process information. The AI essentially reverse-engineered aspects of human cognition just by studying our choices.
The team also demonstrated how Centaur could accelerate scientific discovery. They used the AI to analyze human behavior patterns, leading to the discovery of a new decision-making strategy that outperformed existing psychological theories.
“We’ve created a tool that allows us to predict human behavior in any situation described in natural language – like a virtual laboratory,” says lead author Marcel Binz in a statement.
What’s Next for Human Behavior AI?
While impressive, this research represents just the beginning. The current version focuses primarily on learning and decision-making, with limited coverage of areas like social psychology or cross-cultural differences. The dataset also skews toward Western, educated populations, a common limitation in psychological research.
The team plans to expand their dataset to include more diverse domains and populations, envisioning a comprehensive model that could serve as a unified theory of human cognition. They’ve made both their dataset and AI model publicly available for other researchers to build upon.
“We combine AI research with psychological theory – and with a clear ethical commitment,” adds Binz. “In a public research environment, we have the freedom to pursue fundamental cognitive questions that are often not the focus in industry.”
For the first time, we have an artificial system that can predict human behavior across the full spectrum of psychological research with unprecedented accuracy. Whether that development excites or concerns you may depend on how confidently we can ensure such tools are used responsibly.
Paper Summary
Methodology
The researchers created Centaur by fine-tuning Meta’s Llama 3.1 70B language model on a dataset called Psych-101, which contains trial-by-trial behavioral data from 160 psychological experiments involving over 60,000 participants making more than 10 million choices. They converted all experiments into natural language format and used a parameter-efficient training technique called QLoRA that modified only 0.15% of the model’s parameters. The training focused specifically on predicting human responses while masking out other parts of the experimental instructions.
Results
Centaur outperformed existing domain-specific cognitive models in almost every experiment when predicting behavior of held-out participants. The AI also successfully generalized to modified cover stories, structural task changes, and entirely new domains like logical reasoning. In open-loop simulations, Centaur generated realistic human-like behavior patterns and achieved comparable performance to actual humans in exploration tasks. Additionally, the model’s internal representations became more aligned with human neural activity compared to the base model.
Limitations
The current dataset focuses primarily on learning and decision-making domains, with limited coverage of social psychology, cross-cultural studies, and individual differences. The participant pool skews toward Western, educated populations typical of psychological research. The natural language format also introduces selection bias against experiments that cannot be easily expressed in text, and the researchers note the need for eventual expansion to multimodal data formats.
Funding and Disclosures
Research was supported by the Max Planck Society, the Humboldt Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation, and the NOMIS Foundation. One author has consulting relationships and ownership interests in several biotech companies. The researchers have made their dataset and model publicly available for scientific use.
Publication Information
“A foundation model to predict and capture human cognition” was published in Nature on July 2, 2025. The study was led by Marcel Binz at the Institute for Human-Centered AI, Helmholtz Center Munich, with collaborators from institutions including Princeton University, University of Tübingen, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, and others.
