The Indian government has ordered telecom companies to disable ​mobile data services in central parts ‌of the capital Delhi, in and around the site of youth protests seeking the resignation ​of the education minister, two sources ​told Reuters on Thursday.

The companies have ⁠complied with the order, Reuters sources ​said.

There was ‌no ⁠mobile data connectivity in many parts of central Delhi on Thursday evening, Reuters journalists said.

Vendors, shopkeepers and restaurants ​complained that ​they were ⁠unable to accept digital payments.

India’s youth protesters have called for nationwide demonstrations on Friday even as Prime Minister Narendra ‌Modi’s government urged them to join talks, while shutting metro stations and mobile internet services and curtailing business in central Delhi.

The youth protesters, led by the self-named “Cockroach” Janta Party movement, have been ​camping in central Delhi since ​last ⁠month and are demanding the resignation of the education minister over leaks of medical school entrance test papers that affected some 2 million students in May and have been linked to several student suicides.

The protests have swelled ​into the biggest youth challenge to Modi since he came to power in 2014. Opposition parties have echoed the youth movement’s demands and have disrupted the monsoon session ​of parliament that began this week.

It marks the biggest political crisis of Modi’s third term, which began in 2024.

The government made ⁠a fresh appeal on Thursday to the protesters to join talks to resolve the crisis but they responded by calling for nationwide peaceful protests on Friday in solidarity ​with students who alleged police brutality during a march on parliament on Monday by tens of thousands of people.

Thousands of people had returned to the Jantar Mantar protest ​site by Thursday afternoon, carrying anti-government posters and chanting slogans amid heavy security deployment.

Protests also spread to other cities, including Ranchi, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram and Kolkata, local media reported.

Authorities in Delhi shut down 16 metro rail stations in and around the central parts of Delhi where the protesters have remained camped, inconveniencing thousands of commuters.

The government also ​ordered telecom firms to block mobile internet services in the area, sources told Reuters, a move that not only affected protesters but also stopped shops and restaurants from receiving ​digital payments by phone.

Separately, all offices and businesses in the Connaught Place area, the bustling central business district, were asked to shut early on Thursday by the New Delhi Traders ‌Association, which ⁠cited an advisory from municipal authorities due to the security situation in the area.

The measures are seen as an attempt by authorities to curb the protests and prevent any fresh outbreak of violence.

More than 10,000 people had gathered on Wednesday night at the Jantar Mantar protest site. Some protesters attacked police with stones and plastic bottles, injuring a few officers, news agency ANI quoted Delhi Police as saying.

In Monday’s clashes during the march on parliament, police used tear gas and canes to push back the protesters.

Earlier on Thursday, Modi said that ​special courts would be set up ⁠to prosecute those behind exam paper leaks, his first public response to the crisis.

“Nothing is more important than the welfare and future of our youth!” Modi posted on X.

But CJP rejected the proposal, saying what courts do after paper leaks is just one ​aspect of the problem.

“But Modi-ji, tell us why are paper leaks happening in this country in the first place?” CJP ​spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka said, ⁠using the Hindi honorific.

Authored by Frank Giustra,

The Continental dollar, born in 1775, was meant to finance the colonies’ fight against Britain—the American Revolution. What it actually financed was a masterclass in how quickly a currency can evaporate when it has no anchor, no credible backing, and no one willing to stop the printing presses. Hundreds of millions of Continental notes were issued with nothing but the promise of future redemption in gold or silver—which the colonies did not possess in sufficient quantity. 

As wartime expenses mounted and the conflict dragged on, the colonies’ solution was a time-honored tactic. Just dig yourself a deeper financial hole by printing more currency. When confidence in the Continental buck inevitably collapsed, merchants demanded ever-larger stacks of paper for the same goods. 

By 1781, a barrel of flour that once cost a few Continental dollars cost hundreds or thousands. The exchange rate against silver reached the point where it took five hundred to a thousand Continentals to buy a single hard dollar (meaning a silver or metal coin). Some states saw the writing on the wall and simply stopped accepting the notes altogether.

The British, who had plenty of practice in meddling in colonial internal affairs, helped the debasement process along. They knew that counterfeiting Continentals on an industrial scale was cheaper than fighting military battles, and more effective. The result, as intended, was hyperinflation. When the dust settled, the phrase “not worth a Continental” had entered the language as shorthand for worthless. 

The Founders, having lived through the destruction of the Continental dollar, carried a deep suspicion of unbacked paper money into the constitutional debates. That suspicion helped produce a document that at least tried to constrain monetary experimentation. George Washington famously said, “Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open a door to every species of fraud and injustice.”

That was not the only such inflationary episode before the colonies became a republic. During and after the American Revolution, individual states issued their own notes with similarly dismal results—sharp depreciation, hyperinflationary spikes in the 1780s, and the general chaos that made a stronger federal hand on currency seem necessary. 

The War of 1812 brought another suspension of convertibility and the circulation of Treasury notes at discounts. The so-called Free Banking Era that followed (1837–63) is not unlike today’s cryptocurrency industry. It produced thousands of state-chartered banknotes, many of which traded at steep discounts or became worthless when the issuing (“wildcat”) banks, beset by fraud and panics, collapsed.

The Confederate currency of 1861–65 offers perhaps the cleanest parallel to the Continental story. Once again, massive overprinting to finance a war without adequate taxation was followed by hyperinflation so severe that prices rose thousands of percent before the notes became essentially worthless by the end of the Civil War. 

In every case, the pattern resurfaces predictably. Governments (or would-be governments) facing extraordinary expenses turn to the printing press when taxation and borrowing prove inadequate or inconvenient. It’s as if politicians and policy makers either never read a history book or had their memories magically erased. Without a credible anchor in hard assets or ironclad fiscal discipline, public confidence erodes, money velocity rises, and the currency loses purchasing power—sometimes gradually, sometimes in a sudden rush.

The modern version of this story began in earnest with the end of dollar convertibility into gold. Domestically this occurred in 1933, when FDR confiscated privately held gold. Internationally, the break came in 1971, when Nixon closed the gold window. 

Ever since, the dollar has functioned as a pure fiat currency. The cumulative effect on purchasing power has been substantial. What $1 bought in 1971 is what about 15 cents buys today. In other words, you need $6.50 to $7 to purchase what a single dollar bought in 1971. That’s a loss of roughly 85 percent of purchasing power over half a century—an outcome entirely consistent with the long-run behavior of unbacked paper currencies. It’s not hyperinflation in the dramatic sense we saw in 1920s Weimar Germany, or in 2000s Zimbabwe, but it’s a steady, grinding, quasi-invisible debasement that compounds across generations.

The usual excuses, “This time is different”, assume that American institutions are uniquely resilient or exceptional, that the dollar’s reserve status grants permanent immunity, and that the U.S. can abuse its currency without serious consequences.

These sound like the rationalizations heard at the late stages of any long monetary experiment. 

The historical record is not kind to such beliefs. Empires from the Spanish to the British to the French have discovered that the ability to print unlimited currency eventually encourages the very behaviors that undermine the currency. Countless wars have been financed by debt and debasement. Political fragmentation prevents corrective action, confidence bleeds away, and alternative stores of value gain traction. De-dollarization today, whether measured in central-bank gold purchases or shifting trade-settlement patterns, reflects a repeat of that loss of confidence.

The Founders understood something that today’s generation, lacking direct experience of currency collapse, finds easy to overlook. Paper money untethered from hard assets removes the shackles that keep politicians from doing what politicians would always rather do—abandon fiscal responsibility. 

The Founders had seen the Continental experiment up close. They knew that once the printing press becomes the path of least resistance, the incentive structure for politicians and central bankers alike encourages more spending, more debt, and more monetary accommodation. The result, over time, is the gradual erosion of purchasing power we’ve seen since 1971, punctuated by sharper episodes when political or geopolitical pressures intensify.

None of this is to predict imminent hyperinflation or the sudden disappearance of the dollar as a medium of exchange. Fiat currencies can limp along for decades, sustained by network effects, institutional inertia, and the absence of a clearly superior alternative. But the long-run arithmetic is unforgiving and requires only elementary school math to foresee. Every historical example of sustained, unbacked issuance ends the same way. The currency loses most of its value, new arrangements eventually emerge, and those who held real assets, particularly gold, preserve wealth while others do not.

The lesson is not complicated, just inconvenient. When a great power abandons any credible link to hard money, the currency loses purchasing power over time, and the temptation to finance geopolitical ambitions through debt and debasement grows ever stronger. 

The phrase “not worth a Continental” was once popular in the U.S. It wasn’t part of a Cadillac marketing campaign. It came about after the Continental Congress decided that printing its way out of a war was preferable to the messy and difficult business of collecting taxes.

As we’ve seen, the United States has lived through several episodes of this series. The only novelty today is the scale at which the experiment is being run and the amnesia with which it’s being conducted. Those who imagine the outcome will be any different this time around might usefully recall that the Continental Congress also believed its circumstances were unique—until the notes stopped buying anything at all. 

Is it too far-fetched to imagine that our descendants will one day adopt the expression “Not worth a US dollar”? 

After a dismal day that saw tech stocks wrecked on the shores of hyperscalers’ CapEx and inferred from Alphabet’s earnings, tonight sees Intel’s Lip-Bu Tan ride to the rescue with better-than-expected second-quarter results on Thursday, notching its fastest revenue growth rate for any quarter since 2011 and issuing guidance that topped expectations. 

Beat on the top- and bottom-line:

• Earnings per share: 42 cents, adjusted, versus 21 cents expected

• Revenue: $16.1 billion, versus $14.42 billion expected

Upped Guidance: For the current quarter, Intel said it expects adjusted earnings per share of 38 cents on revenue between $15.8 billion and $16.8 billion.

Analysts were expecting revenue of $15.1 billion and EPS of 27 cents, according to consensus.

“AI is driving unprecedented demand for compute,” CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in the statement.

“As we continue to execute, Intel is well-positioned to capture sustainable growth across our CPU franchise.”

Additionally, Intel said it’s boosting its capital expenditures, targeting a “meaningful increase” next year, as it aggressively tries to morph into a manufacturer of chips for other companies.

CFO David Zinsner told CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevelos that the company’s latest manufacturing process, called 14A, is ahead of where older technologies were at the same point in the cycle.

INTC is up around 10% from the close…

And that narrative-confirmer is pulling all of tech higher (Nasdaq futs)…

Finally, however, Intel did not reveal a major customer for its foundry, as investors and potential customers keep waiting. 

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Unless things change dramatically, the Middle East seems set for massive escalation.

President Trump yesterday warned every missile, rocket, or drone Iran fires at ships in Hormuz will be met with the destruction of an Iranian bridge or power plant.

This morning, the IRGC says a tanker is on fire after an explosion in the strait and Kuwait is under drone attack. Moreover, the Houthis claimed attacks on two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea, raising the risks of a new global energy chokepoint besides Hormuz.

Reports say the US is surging military forces to the region, heavy bombers are being prepared, and Mossad is coordinating with the CIA. Equally, Iran’s Ghalibaf has stated there will be no safety if Iran’s security is not guaranteed, read as more or less a declaration of war against the entire region’s infrastructure and energy should its own be hit.

Worse, Iranian strikes on CIA Middle-East facilities are prompting US questions about Russian involvement, which would conflate the war more deeply with Russia-Ukraine, where epic damage to Russian energy, shipping, and logistics infrastructure continues to mount. On that note, after Kazakhstan was forced to stop piping oil via the Black Sea due Ukraine’s drone attacks, the EU is launching a mission to board Russian shadow fleet ships in the Indian Ocean; however, Russian LNG is to remain exempt from EU sanctions – realpolitik or real weakness?

In the Middle East, the UK is evacuating its remaining diplomatic personnel from Iran, just as it did the day before the Iran war started in February, but Bulgaria is aiding US military operations from its territory. That could potentially make it a target for Iranian reprisals – and it’s a NATO and EU member, each with collective defense clauses.

If we see military escalation, it’s likely to drive energy prices even higher than the $95.5 level Brent was at this morning with benchmark crack spreads at $68. However, it’s unlikely to last long. Neither the US nor Israel, nor Iran, nor the GCC can sustain a no-holds-barred war for long – and the world economy obviously can’t either. As such, we may be close to the beginning of the end of this crisis – it’s just unclear if it will prove a bridge too far for the US or Iran.

Meanwhile, the White House is considering military options in Mali, where the Al-Qaeda-linked JNIM are advancing on the capital. That risks further US overstretch. Then again, after the former imperial power France and arrivistes Russia both got a bloody nose in the country, it doesn’t look like anyone else is going to act against these jihadis – certainly not Europe, though Mali uses the West African CFA franc that is pegged to the Euro. Of course, Mali is also rich in resources.

As climactic in geoeconomics —but likely to last much longer than events in the Middle East— yesterday saw Financial Times editor Martin Wolf ask, “Who will win the war of neo-mercantilists?”, making clear, “We are living in a mercantilist era.” We aren’t, because we don’t all want to hoard gold (yet) so it’s a neo-mercantilism that wants national-security trade surpluses – but he’s close enough. Likewise, Stephen Roach today asks in the same paper, “How long can China defy history and logic with its imbalances?” and argues, “The country is demanding far too much of a world fixated on cheap consumer goods.”

This looks a Damascene conversion for a media source that long rejected that a now undeniable reality we’ve been arguing for since 2015, along with every Western policy step that could have prevented its emergence, while instead cheering everything that accelerated its arrival.

Yet will the Establishment financial press now offer analysis that adapts to a new old world?

It seems unlikely looking at the Bloomberg response to Trump’s planned 100% generic drug tariffs with a two-year delay: “But prices will go up!” Really? Such drugs have a low labor input; shipping them in from abroad costs a lot; and this overlooks the national-security argument – a Great Power cannot be reliant on others for key medicines, among other things. (Plus, the EU says its generic exports to the US are protected by last year’s EU-US trade deal.)

In short, even the FT is now implying that if you use the terms “economic statecraft” or “neo-mercantilism,” yet default to “But prices will go up!” when they are in action, then you don’t understand either – nor that those making decisions in the US, China, and elsewhere do.

The looming implications of this are potentially explosive, and already evident:

• The US Congress is again exploring tariffs and/or sanctions to counter China’s shipbuilding dominance; the USTR says the US isn’t getting the critical minerals from China it had been promised; Boeing has asked the US to intervene over a record EU loan to Airbus; and Mercedes risks a US sales ban under Senate China bill that penalises Chinese ownership and tech, which the German car-marker had happily embraced even with that threat overhanging it.
• EU tariffs on China have accelerated Korean tire makers’ exit from the country: imagine what broader EU tariffs might achieve (beyond “But prices will go up!”) “Voila! l’art de gouverner par l’économie!” – indeed, many of the early neo-mercantilists were Europeans. That said, a report calls the bloc’s 2040 target to double its electrification an “unattainable dreamland.”
• Nvidia’s CEO unsurprisingly defended Chinese AIs that might use lots of his chips; Axios reports that an OpenAI AI models “went rogue during testing.”; and AI-driven soaring memory chips costs are forcing others, such as Asian carmakers, to consider price hikes.
• In markets, where this all ultimately ends up, the White House is still looking at the Fed. Bloomberg reports Barr may be ousted over her conduct during the SVB bailout. That could open the door for another pro-Trump voice on the FOMC, as a legal sword still hangs over Cook’s tenure and a recent Supreme Court ruling has opened the door to even more sweeping changes.

More mundane, today saw Aussie jobs data at 76.3K, which is the equivalent of a US payrolls print of 1,000K. That’s after news that the limp economy is seeing the worst per capita income trend since WW1. What, beyond bad data, could allow that staggering divergence? Expect more questions about political economy to erupt – and more resistance from the usual crowd.

To conclude, are Hormuz and the Red Sea a bridge too far for the US or Iran? Is the emergence of neo-mercantilism a bridge too far for traditional macro-commentary (or macro-ideology)? Is the Fed a bridge too far for the White House? All three are linked: we have to wait for the outcomes.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that Iran is “begging for a deal” and “they need to come to their senses,” adding that Tehran will “pay a very heavy price for the things they are doing.” 

Speaking on the sidelines of the ASEAN conference in Manila, he claimed that “Iran is begging us, both directly and indirectly, ‘Let’s do a deal. Let’s talk.'” But the reality remains that there’s no public indicators showing this; instead, the Iranians have pretty aggressively sought to enforce their red lines, this week attacking a series of international ships in the Hormuz Strait.

Rubio tried to blame an alleged fracturing of the Iranian government, and a takeover by the ‘hardline’ faction of leadership. “The problem with Iran is every time they make a deal, the people in charge either break it or they want to change it. So it looks like they’re not ready to make a deal, so they’re going to continue to pay a price, and every night the price gets higher and higher,” he asserted.

Rubio then characterized Iran and its policies as “run by radical clerics” – calling them “oblivious” to its economic problems. In the background is the fact that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent months ago boasted that US policies and sanctions engineered a currency collapse in hopes that the January economic protests would topple the regime. This never materialized and now people in the Trump administration seem perplexed.

Rubio continued the blame-game while suggesting that if Tehran were to play ball on negotiating a deal for the Hormuz Strait, it could receive major economic benefits.

“Iran can be the richest country in the Middle East if they wanted to be. But instead, they take their money, and they use it and they give it to Hezbollah. They give it to Hamas. They give it to the Houthis. They give it to Shia militias. They give it to sponsored terrorism all over the world,” he said.

Iran “will pay a very heavy price for the things they are doing. They are already paying a heavy price,” he said. Rubio also responded to recent statements of the Iranians talking about exacting “an eye for an eye” in terms of military approach. The US top diplomat then asserted that President Trump’s approach was “a head for an eye”. He described that currently Iran’s military-industrial base is being “decimated” – suffering “billions” of dollars” in damage. This as…

The US bombs Iran for the 12th consecutive night, killing at least two people and wounding 11 others in an attack on the Shalamcheh border crossing with Iraq. Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait have reported retaliatory missile and drone attacks from Iran.

But what’s happening in the Red Sea right now does suggest that the Iranians have more cards to play. Their allies, the Houthis of Yemen, have initiated closure of the Bab al-Mandab Strait to all Saudi shipping. At least two vessels were attacked, with unconfirmed but widely circulating video showing one on fire and in distress:

BIG: First Saudi oil tanker reportedly hit by Houthi missile near Yemen, engulfed in flames. pic.twitter.com/R3nG7FSdW1

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 22, 2026

The attacks on the tankers pushed Brent up near $100 – its highest since May 26th…

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has newly announced he communicated to Saudi Crown Mohammed bin Salman Pakistan’s strong condemnation of Houthi aggression against Saudi vessels.

“Such actions are unacceptable, violate international law, threaten freedom of navigation, and undermine regional peace and security,” Sharif said in a statement on X. The PM emphasized that Pakistan stands “firmly and resolutely” with the Saudi leadership.

President Trump is threatening to take military action against the Houthis, and on Thursday morning took it a step further in saying he will hold Iran itself accountable for Houthi actions. “The US will hold Iran responsible,” he wrote, explaining that “the Houthis area a Surrogate and/or Proxy of Iran.” He warned that “major military punishment will be inflicted upon Iran and, of course, the Houthis” themselves.

As for Rubio’s remarks, there were still clear signs that the administration hasn’t totally abandon efforts to revive talks. “The president always prefers to negotiate and reach a deal… and we are prepared to do that. We’ve tried to do that now for a year and a half,” Rubio had further stated from the ASEAN conference.

But then he again reverted to the argument: “If there’s any undermining of confidence, it’s confidence that the Iranian system as it currently is structured can reach an agreement.” Rubio added, “Ships are trying to go through the Straits, and they’re getting blown up. Commercial ships are going through the Straits, and they’re being blown up.”

As for the big picture of where things stand, Former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent highlights to nature of the current ‘all bad options’ of the table and quagmire the White House has gotten itself into.

“This is a bombing campaign in search of a strategy,” Kent wrote on X. We are choosing escalation when de-escalation remains an option, entrenching ourselves deeper into a broader war that we don’t have the capability or desire to sustain. There is not a military solution here that will lead to a win.”

There was so much smug talk up to last week about how Gulf pipelines would make the Strait of Hormuz irrelevant and haha isn’t Iran foolish for hastening the SoH’s demise. This tanker’s oil came from Yanbu, ie KSA’s East-West pipeline to the Red Sea. https://t.co/DrOiAnGytT

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) July 22, 2026

Kent noted that “More bombing will not convince Iran to open the SOH or to give us the deal we want, it will only harden their position. Bombing civilian infrastructure will not make the people rise up against the regime, it will rally them around it.”

Amid ongoing exclamations of an AIpocalypse in the jobs market, the number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the first time crashed to just 187k last week (well below expectations)…

That is the lowest since 1969…

Additionally, continuous jobless claims tumbled back below 1.8mm (1.796mm) Americans…

Zero signs of labor market stress in any of this data as the ‘low hire, no fire’ economy pushes forward.

The European Central Bank  kept its key deposit rate unchanged at 2.25 percent and said it was “closely monitoring” the inflationary impact of fresh conflict in the Middle East.

The ECB reiterated it won’t pre-commit but act one meeting at a time based on information as it arrives.

“Uncertainty remains high and the full inflationary impact of the energy shock has yet to play out,” the lender of last resort for the 21 countries that use the euro said.

“The Governing Council is therefore closely monitoring the intensity and duration of the shock.”

The ECB’s hawkish posture preserves its status at the vanguard of Group-of-Seven central banks after it last month became the first in that club to raise rates since the Iran war began.

Last month’s rate increase sparked discussions that the ECB might make a mistake similar to hikes in 2008 and 2011 which were quickly rolled back.

That debate persisted after peace talks between Washington and Tehran caused energy prices to drop sharply.

For all their sense of nervousness then however, the latest flare-up in fighting has emboldened policymakers in judging their recent hike to be fully justified.

“With today’s decision, the Governing Council remains well positioned to navigate the uncertainty caused by the conflict.”

The euro extended its overnight weakness against the dollar…

…and Bund yields remained elevated…

For now, traders are largely unmoved on the future ECB rate trajectory, holding around 48bps of hikes by year-end. As Bloomberg Economics’ David Powell noted: 

“Even when oil prices were close to their lowest for the summer, President Christine Lagarde retained a hawkish tone. Buoyant commodity prices keep the Governing Council on track to raise borrowing costs again in September, when it’s armed with fresh forecasts from the staff economists, for a final time in this short tightening cycle.”

Deutsche Bank Chief European Economist Mark Wall says the ECB’s pause today shouldn’t be seen as hesitation. Rather, he says it’s a hold while the central bank updates forecasting before hiking in September. 

“The only question is: will one more hike to 2.50% be enough to curb the inflation risks? The answer will depend on growth as much as it will on inflation.”

The September meeting is widely seen as a natural point to deliver such a move if required, backed by new quarterly staff forecasts, inflation prints for the two prior months and more economic data including several business surveys.