We had to do a double take when the BLS reported today’s JOLTS job openings: with consensus expecting no change from last month’s print of 6.866MM, and near the lowest in two years, moments ago a flashing red headline revealed that in April the US added a stunning 731K jobs to 7.618 million, up from an upward revised 6.887 million, and up 520K from a year ago.

For context, this was a 9 sigma beat to expectations, the biggest beat in history.

WTF!?…  and how is this possible at a time when companies are mass laying off thanks to AI? Well, according to the BLS,the number of job openings increased in professional and business services (+668,000), and also rose in manufacturing, manufacturing, and – alas – government. Jobs stumbled in finance and insurance (-135,000). 

This was the biggest monthly increase in professional and business services by a huge margin. It wasn’t clear what exactly job category prompted this surge.

Meanwhile, the draining of the swamp appears to be officially over with government jobs jumping by 47K to 777K, the biggest monthly increase this year.

The historic surge in April job openings, coupled with the modest increase in unemployed workers means that after 9 months of labor surplus, there were 245K more job openings than unemployed workers in April, a reversal to the “deficit” regime observed since last July.

The surge in openings also means that after falling back to 0.9x in March, in April the ratio of job openings rose back to 1.0x and was the highest since January 2025.

But while the job openings number was a shock, this month we saw a reversal of last month’s surge in hires and quits, and in April both the number of Quits and Hires, tumbled once more. Specifically, hires plunged by 419K to 4.899 million, while quits – or the “take his job and shove it” indicator – plunged by 183K, or 5.8%, to 2.977 million, the lowest since 2020 and the biggest percentage drop since April 2025, as Americans are suddenly allergic to leaving their jobs on their own.

It goes without saying that a surge in job openings even as nobody is leaving their jobs, leads one to scratch their head just what is going on here, besides data massaging of course.

In any case, since this hires number feeds directly into the payrolls calculations (after netting out separations) this explains why the April payrolls report slumped to 115K from 185K in March. 

Overall, this was a shockingly strong JOLTS report – so strong in fact one wonders who at the BLS had a fat finger incident when calculating the professional and business services job openings, and shows that after some significant weakness in late 2025, US labor market has continued to stabilize in early 2026. Of course, the report also lags the payrolls report by a month, which is why it gives us little insight into what Friday’s jobs report will be. 

The Kremlin spent much of the last week warning foreign diplomats and bystanders to evacuate Ukraine’s capital, warning that an escalation in airstrikes is imminent, in response to Ukraine’s own drone swarms sent against Moscow and other Russian sites last month – especially the Starobelsk dormitory attack.

“In response to terrorist attacks by the Kyiv regime, the Russian Armed Forces launched a large-scale strike using long-range, high-precision air, land and sea-based weapons — including hypersonic aero-ballistic missiles and attack drones,” the Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) said in a statement. “The objectives of the strike were achieved. All designated targets were hit,” it added.

In the wake of these devastating overnight attacks, Ukraine is reporting that at least 18 people were killed and over 100 more wounded. The hours-long assault was clearly one of the biggest and deadliest of the last year or more.

Ukraine’s air force tallied that over 640 drones were sent and 73 missiles were fired on various cities, including Kyiv, and Dnipro, as well as several eastern cities, including Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine claims it intercepted the majority of these, but still dozens of projectiles made it through to impact.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko later confirmed that six people were killed in the Ukrainian capital and that at least 66 others, including two children, were wounded.

There was mayhem as people fled to shelters during the nighttime “mass enemy attack”. The mayor had warned while it unfolded: “Explosions in the city. Air defense forces are working! Stay in shelters!”

Central Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region also saw high casualties, with at least 12 people killed and 36 others wounded. The regional governor reported that children were among the injured.

Moscow has not owned up to inflicting civilian casualties in the fresh overnight assault, but has instead framed this as part of its previewed “systematic and consistent strikes” on Ukraine’s military infrastructure.

President Putin and top military brass had last month said strikes would be initiated against “decision-making centers” in response to the dorm attack in the Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic on May 22, which killed 21 people – mostly teenage girls – and injured 70 others.

Kremlin officials now say that Russian forces have “a right to dismantle any infrastructure that supports terrorism.”

Russian drones and missiles struck the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and other cities, killing at least 18 people and wounding more than 100, authorities said, following days of warnings about ‌Moscow’s plans for a major assault https://t.co/RZjbJYupmp pic.twitter.com/UY6FOwNne7

— Reuters (@Reuters) June 2, 2026

Despite this clear escalation, peace talks are nowhere on the horizon, also as the White House’s attention is currently fixated on the Iran war and Hormuz Strait crisis. Russia has in the meantime benefited from the Iran crisis, with sanctions relief on its oil exports from Washington, and elevated crude prices. 

President Trump is on a daily basis dealing with now largely stalemated back-and-forth diplomatic messaging with Tehran, and so the persistent Ukraine war seems to have taken a far back seat in terms of administration priorities.

Tencent shares jumped the most since late 2022 after an FT report that the Chinese company was testing a prototype AI agent for WeChat, China’s most widely used app for everything from messaging and social media to ride-hailing and payments, fueled optimism about the company’s artificial intelligence efforts. 

The Chinese internet giant plans to begin a compliance process for a public launch of the agent as soon as this month, the Financial Times reported, citing sources. After that, Tencent plans to test the agent on a small group of outside users before initiating a phased rollout, the newspaper said.

Shares of Tencent closed up 10.5%, its biggest jump since November 2022, with turnover at the highest in more than a year. The stock gave a boost to the Hang Seng Tech Index, which rose 4.7%.

Users will be able to access the chat box for the AI agent by swiping right on the main WeChat screen, according to a person who has seen an early demonstration. They can then enter instructions for the agent to automatically tap into WeChat’s millions of mini-apps, the bedrock of the app’s broad functionality, and complete tasks such as finding a café and ordering a drink based on certain flavor and price requirements.

A successful introduction of an AI agent for the popular WeChat service would mark a step forward for Tencent’s bid to catch up to rivals in the rapidly emerging technology. While Tencent has vowed to at least double investments in the field to more than 36 billion yuan ($5.3 billion) this year, it trails peers like ByteDance and Alibaba in both user adoption and advances in developing state-of-the-art large language models.

“Tencent has been a huge underperformer this year because market perceives it as an AI laggard,” said Vey-Sern Ling, managing director at Union Bancaire Privee. “The AI agent, if successful, could change such a perception. Even though there’s very little detail right now, we know Tencent has a huge ecosystem to make it work.”

According to Citigroup, while the adoption of an AI agent in WeChat had been anticipated by the market, its earlier-than-expected timing likely prompted the positive share price reaction. 

Goldman’s Graham Ambrose cautions that it’s still not clear how this will evolve and the market is so far unconvinced on Tencent management’s explanation of their strategy to confront the challenge. 

• The infrastructure was upgraded in March
• The Hunyuan 3.0 foundation model powering the agent was launched in April
• A Developer Beta recently started
• The pilot launch is planned for June for Weixin users
• The broad roll-out is expected to be in Q3 (not confirmed by management yet) with full integration across the domestic Weixin app, including deep “AI Search” and “Agentic Pay” features.

The news sparked a major move higher in Chinese stocks: in addition to Tencent developments, a slew of positive drivers including Meituan’s earnings and upbeat delivery figures by electric vehicle makers supported the Hang Seng Tech Index. Other internet and e-commerce heavyweights such as Alibaba  and JD.com Inc. rose more than 6% as sentiment improved.

The rebound comes after the gauge, with its reliance on Chinese internet giants, has trailed the blistering surge in tech hardware-heavy benchmarks such as South Korea’s Kospi and Taiwan’s Taiex this year. 

Prosus NV, Tencent’s biggest shareholder, jumped as much as 11% on Tuesday in Amsterdam. Its parent company Naspers rose at a similar pace in Johannesburg trading. 

“Tencent’s move potentially shifts the China AI story from model development to real consumer distribution,” said Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at Saxo Markets in Singapore. “It’s still too early to say, but if WeChat can integrate an AI agent into a platform with around 1.4 billion users, that gives investors a clearer path to usage, engagement and eventually monetization.” 

Bloomberg notes that even with Tuesday’s rebound, Tencent remains down about 20% for the year. Options suggest some investors are making bets on a further recovery after Tuesday’s rally, as China is about to get its own gamma squeeze. Trading of bullish options on Tencent surged to a record high, with more than 430,000 calls changing hands against 177,000 puts.

The four most-active contracts in Hong Kong were Tencent calls, and those with an exercise price 10% above Tuesday’s closing price led the pack. Meanwhile, the cost of hedging against declines in the next three months plunged to its lowest level in almost a year.

Summary:

• Washington has seen the Lebanon partial truce as opportunity enough to press forward on broader talks, with Trump saying he expects a broader Iran deal “over the next week”.
• But Fars denies this Tuesday: “exchange of messages between Iran & the US has been stopped for at least a few days” on MOU.
• In Lebanon, “While the ceasefire appears to be largely holding, there was further violence overnight,” reports BBC, with more dead & wounded on both sides.

*  *  *

Iran Denies Progress, Halt in Talks Still in Effect

State media has belatedly responded to Trump’s Monday claim that talks between the US and Iran are back on. Trump has even said Tuesday that he expects an agreement for an extended ceasefire to take place “over the next week” – along with the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. 

“An informed source says that the exchange of messages between Iran and the US has been stopped for at least a few days for what is called the initial memorandum of understanding between Tehran and Washington,” Fars reports. So this is Iran in effect saying ‘not so fast’ – as it seeks to ‘hold the cards’ and maintain some leverage. Trump has not indicated a willingness to resume bombing the Islamic Republic, but his patience has seemed to be wearing thin over the last several days, as the White House is boxed in to only choosing among several ‘bad options’ in the wake of launching a war of choice 95 days ago.

Oil spikes on the negative news from Tehran, extends:

And more confirmation via newswires:

An Iranian source says there is currently no message exchange with the U.S., contradicting claims of ongoing progress. The source reports talks on an initial understanding have stalled for several days. It also noted Iran’s last communication with Washington concerned Lebanon and drew international attention, despite President Trump stating negotiations are advancing rapidly.

Latest on the Lebanon front:

“American sources for AI Hadath: Proposal for a 60-day plan during which Israel withdraws gradually from southern Lebanon”: AI Hadath reports.

• “Negotiations propose the deployment of the Lebanese army and UNIFIL in southern Lebanon after Israel’s withdrawal.”
• “Lebanon seeks to resolve Hezbollah’s weapons file politically, but after Israel’s complete withdrawal.”

Lebanon Fighting Persists Amid Nominal Ceasefire

Various regional and international reports have documented serious ongoing fighting in Lebanon, despite President Trump the day prior having declared that the shooting will cease and that Hezbollah and Israel were forging a limited ceasefire. Trump had said of both sides that “they agreed that all shooting will stop” – after Iran announcing it had suspended peace talks with the US over Israeli military action in Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did affirm he would adhere to the agreement, and reports say that planned new airstrikes on Beirut were called off, but he also warned the attacks on the capital would go ahead “if Hezbollah does not stop attacking our cities and civilians” – and that forces in the south would continue operating.

BBC has freshly written that “While the ceasefire appears to be largely holding, there was further violence overnight.” The same report details:

Hezbollah said its fighters had targeted Israeli tanks in the southern Lebanese towns of Haddatha and Bayada with missiles and shells. The Israeli military said it had intercepted two projectiles that had been fired from Lebanon in the early hours of Tuesday. No injuries have been reported.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Israeli strikes on several southern areas and said a “very violent” explosion from a large-scale demolition rocked the town of Debbine.

Tuesday has witnessed some ongoing attacks on south Lebanon, as well as Hezbollah drone attacks on Israeli troop positions, wounding some. According to some of the latest from Al Jazeera:

Israeli forces have carried out multiple air raids on the city of Nabatieh, one of the largest in southern Lebanon, our colleagues on the ground report. The city, a strategic hub for Hezbollah, has been encircled by Israeli forces in recent days as troops continue pushing north.

Israeli attacks were also reported across the wider Nabatieh district as Israel deepens its occupation of surrounding areas. Drones hit the towns of Kafr Sir and Aabba, while a strike targeted the road leading to Houmine al-Fawqa. The outskirts of Yahmour al-Shaqif were also hit.

There’s also been a lot of explosions in the southern city of Tyre, with Israeli jets active in the airspace above on Tuesday. And rescuers have recovered six bodies from another town, with Lebanese civil defense agency having said in a statement: “Since yesterday evening and continuing until this morning … personnel have been carrying out search and rescue operations in a residential building that was targeted in the town of Marwaniyah – Sidon district.”

#WATCH: Israel conducts strikes over south Lebanon, Hezbollah fires into northern Israel after US @POTUS @realDonaldTrump announces agreement to halt attacks that neither side has publicly accepted https://t.co/vgbtbZ2sm8 pic.twitter.com/jx5O69Knfo

— Arab News (@arabnews) June 2, 2026

Hezbollah’s fiber-optic drone attacks have at the same time not ceased: “Two Israeli soldiers have been wounded in a Hezbollah drone attack in southern Lebanon, the military says, describing their injuries as minor,” Al Jazeera reports Tuesday. This is after “Two other Israeli soldiers were killed over the weekend, also in drone attacks, bringing to 26 the number of soldiers killed since fighting escalated three months ago. Four Israeli civilians have also been killed.”

Impact of Trump’s ‘Steamrolling’ Netanyahu in Monday Call

President Trump’s angry dressing down of Netanyahu may have had very limited effect, it appears. To review, per Axios during a Monday call Trump was reportedly heard cussing at the Israeli leader and essentially ‘steamrolled’ him – angry over breaking the Lebanon truce and demanding that Israel’s military not attack Beirut.

Trump is said to have told Netanyahu “you’re fucking crazy’” while demanding Lebanon truce: “I’m saving your ass,” he also reportedly said. Iran early Monday said it halted talks with Washington because of Israel’s escalation in Lebanon. 

There’s been some reaction from Iran to the Axios report, with Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi having remarked, “In this regard, the US president’s claim of having dissuaded Netanyahu from launching a major attack on Beirut is more than a sign of Washington’s peace-seeking, it’s confirmation of America’s direct role in managing the Zionist regime’s aggressions.”

How many times have they sold and resold this same story about Biden and now Trump being secretly VERY VERY mad at Netanyahu https://t.co/uGpSULbhhM

— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) June 1, 2026

The Iranian official continued to offer Tehran’s vew: “If the decision to attack the capital of an independent state can be changed with a single phone call the main question is: why did months of ceasefire violations, aggression against Lebanon, the displacement of its people, and threats to this country’s sovereignty – backed by Western political and military support – continue unabated?” he remarked.

Mark Levin rages over White House leaks of Trump-Netanyahu call…

Mark R. Levin, a close ally of both U.S. President Donald J. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, appears to confirm the veracity of the report earlier by Axios on today’s heated call between Trump and Netanyahu regarding peace negations with Iran as well as… pic.twitter.com/46qmYBJsJZ

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) June 2, 2026

Trump Returns to Optimism: Agreement ‘Over the Next Week’

But Washington has seen the Lebanon partial truce as opportunity enough to press forward on broader talks. While there’s hasn’t been full confirmation from Tehran’s side, Trump has declared the talks as back on:

US President Trump told ABC News he thinks he will have an agreement with Iran to extend the ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz over the next week, while he also stated that a peace agreement with Iran could be better than a military victory. Trump also stated that it’s not simple for both sides, but they’re getting what they need to get and that he still has to get a few more points.

The very same network points on Tuesday morning:

Israeli and Hezbollah forces continued their attacks on Tuesday despite President Donald Trump’s claim that the warring sides had “stopped shooting each other” after his intervention to prevent escalation on Monday.

Lebanon’s state-run news agency, NNA, reported three Israeli strikes in separate areas in southern Lebanon. One person was killed, NNA reported. ABC News has contacted the Israel Defense Forces to request comment.

So, once again Trump touting the likelihood of a deal to reopen Hormuz by next week seems extremely wishful and ambitious, to say the least. And we’ve heard all this before, and been here many times over the past 95 days of war.

President Trump said Tuesday that he is appointing Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to serve as acting director of national intelligence after Tulsi Gabbard leaves the post.

Gabbard announced her resignation on May 22, citing her husband Abraham Williams’ recent diagnosis with a rare form of bone cancer. Her resignation is effective June 30, meaning Pulte’s appointment would mark a change from Trump’s earlier statement that Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Aaron Lukas would serve as acting intelligence chief after Gabbard’s departure.

Pulte is expected to continue leading the FHFA while serving as chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage companies that play a central role in the U.S. housing finance system. The arrangement would place a close Trump ally simultaneously near the center of federal housing finance and atop the U.S. Intelligence Community, which is made up of 18 organizations.

Pulte, 38, is the grandson of William J. Pulte, founder of PulteGroup, which describes itself as the nation’s third-largest homebuilder. Before entering government, the younger Pulte was known for private-equity work tied to housing and building products, as well as high-profile online philanthropy. He was sworn in as FHFA director on March 14, 2025, after Senate confirmation.

Since taking office, Pulte has turned the FHFA, historically a low-profile housing regulator, into a far more visible political force. His tenure has included board and leadership changes at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and public mortgage-fraud referrals involving several Trump critics, moves that have drawn scrutiny from Democrats and watchdogs.

The director of national intelligence position was created after the Sept. 11 attacks to improve coordination across the Intelligence Community. The DNI serves as the head of the U.S. Intelligence Community and as the principal intelligence adviser to the president, the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council. The community includes the CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI intelligence branch and other military and civilian intelligence elements.

Unlike most past confirmed DNIs, Pulte is not known for a career in intelligence, diplomacy, military command or national-security policy. His selection on an acting basis would put a housing-finance official in charge of coordinating U.S. intelligence agencies during a period of personnel upheaval inside Trump’s national-security team.

Developing…

The Trump administration appears to be trying to inject new optimism across the nation’s farm belt following the China meeting last month, during which Beijing committed to making billions of dollars of new purchases of U.S. agricultural goods. The White House’s latest move is to reduce tariffs on tractors and combines, a policy shift aimed at easing cost pressures on farmers already squeezed by diesel, fertilizer, and machinery costs.

Late Monday, President Trump signed a proclamation slashing tariffs on imported agricultural equipment, including combines and harvesters, from 25% to 15% to lower costs for US farmers and manufacturers.

More color from the White House:

• The Proclamation adjusts the tariffs on agricultural equipment, like combines and harvesters, as well as certain other equipment, from 25% to 15%.  

• The Proclamation also expands the existing category of industrial equipment subject to a 15% tariff to include mobile industrial equipment, like bulldozers and forklifts, when imported from trade deal countries that are entitled to such treatment.

• The Proclamation encourages foreign companies to use more U.S. steel and aluminum by allowing them to qualify for a 10% duty rate, if their capital equipment include at least 85% U.S. melted and poured or smelted and cast steel or aluminum by weight.

• These tariff changes are temporary, lasting until December 31, 2027, to spur near–term investments that will rebuild the Nation’s industrial base.

The move is a clear attempt by the Trump administration to spur optimism across the nation’s farm belt following China’s commitments last month to purchase $17 billion annually in additional U.S. agricultural goods.

The latest reading of the US ag economy via the Purdue University/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer has been fading from a summer 2025 peak as trade wars and, now, the Gulf-related energy shock hurt farmers’ incomes.

Trump’s directive sent shares of the Japanese agricultural and industrial machinery company Kubota up 5% in Tokyo trading.

Efforts to boost farmer sentiment come ahead of the midterm election cycle, which is gearing up and is only 154 days away.

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

Governments are terrible at picking winners and even worse at choosing losers. Net zero and interventionist “Keynesian” policies in Canada and the UK have proven that government intervention has created a worse outcome than anyone would have expected. The result is higher costs, distorted incentives, and weakened productivity growth, with increased dependency on fossil fuels to attend to peak demand, exactly what Austrian economists predicted.

What has been sold as a recipe for prosperity and “green growth” has in practice eroded affordability while failing to deliver stronger, sustainable expansion.

It is not surprising to see that the world’s examples of green interventionism, the UK and Canada, have become economic failures. Years ago, some argued that these policies needed time to prove their success. Now, it is not even debatable that the stagnation and recession in the UK and Canada are self-inflicted.

Net zero in Canada and the UK is not a single policy but an entire regime of targets, regulations, limits, subsidies, and new bureaucratic requirements.

The Canadian federal plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 combines rising carbon taxes, prescriptive regulations, technology mandates, and public investment schemes intended to steer capital away from fossil fuels and into politically selected “green” projects.

In the UK, the government’s “Net Zero Growth Plan” is also built on regulatory limits, spending commitments, and industrial policy designed to phase out conventional energy and reshape entire sectors through top-down planning.

This is a classic example of interventionism. The state attempts to override market price signals and entrepreneurial judgment to engineer a politically preferred energy and industrial structure and achieves the opposite of what it wants to deliver. Rather than relying on decentralized knowledge, competition, technology, and creative destruction, dispersed among millions of consumers and firms, net zero regimes assume that politicians and regulators know exactly which technologies should win, what the “right” energy mix ought to be, and how fast the transition should occur.

In an open market, prices and profits coordinate production across time, and entrepreneurs interpret prices as signals about real scarcities and consumer preferences. However, net-zero policies deliberately tamper with these signals. Carbon taxes, subsidies, and regulatory mandates change relative prices not because underlying preferences or scarcities changed but because policymakers decided that certain activities should be penalized and others subsidized. All this is justified by a completely ideological and unreliable assumption of externality costs, where governments present themselves as the ones that know precisely what those alleged externality costs are and try to push a pricing signal imposed through ideology, creating enormous distortions that, ultimately, end benefiting the “old” and “loser” industries.

Governments are not worried about the failure of these policies. Bureaucrats always believe that interventionism did not work because there was not enough of it. Therefore, they impose additional burdens and regulations while portraying themselves as the solution to the inflation and stagnation problems they have caused.

In both Canada and the UK, this has pushed vast amounts of capital into projects that are unprofitable and can only subsist due to policy support rather than genuine market demand. “Green industrial strategies” crowd out investment in other sectors, especially in traditional energy and manufacturing, even when those sectors still deliver higher value at lower cost to consumers. Austrian theory predicts that politicized credit and subsidies will generate malinvestment: projects that look viable under distorted interest rates and prices but which fail to cover their costs once the policy support is withdrawn or the fiscal burden becomes unsustainable.

Canadian long-run productivity growth has fallen from annual rates above 3% in the postwar decades to less than 1% since 2000, despite repeated waves of policy activism and “pro-productivity” rhetoric. Chronic underinvestment in business capital and weak technological progress as key drivers of this decline, suggesting that the policy mix has not created an environment for genuine, bottom-up innovation. The more that investment decisions depend on regulatory favor and subsidy access, the less they depend on entrepreneurial assessment of consumer wants and long-term profitability.

Net zero has also harmed affordability in exactly the way Austrian economists would expect when governments interfere with relative prices. Carbon pricing, renewable mandates, and restrictions on fossil-fuel projects increase energy costs directly by making reliable sources of power more expensive or scarce. These higher input costs then cascade through the economy to transport, food, housing, and manufactured goods, eroding real wages and living standards.

In both Canada and the UK, affordability has become a central political issue. Households face higher utility bills, fuel costs, and housing expenses, while governments insist that the transition is “pro-growth” and “pro-jobs.” From an Austrian viewpoint, this contradiction is unsurprising: when the state deliberately raises the cost of dominant energy sources and limits investment in efficient, market-chosen technologies, the outcome is necessarily higher prices and reduced real income for consumers, especially for low- and middle-income households.

The C.D. Howe Institute has calculated the costs of justifying public “stimulus” projects based on their benefits, showing that a typical public-services stimulus in Canada needs to create at least 73 cents in benefits for every dollar spent, while many infrastructure projects must improve productivity by at least 61 cents per dollar just to be socially acceptable. This illustrates how difficult it is for discretionary fiscal programs to deliver genuine, net productivity gains, especially when they are designed around political objectives like net zero rather than around consumer demand.

Loose money, loose budgets, weak growth

Energy policy is just one aspect of the overall narrative. Canada and the UK have also pursued aggressively expansionary fiscal and monetary policies recently, justified in the language of Keynesian stabilization and “stimulus.” Central banks slashed interest rates and expanded their balance sheets, while governments ran large deficits to finance transfer programs, public investment packages, and targeted subsidies.

Such policies create an artificial boom by pushing interest rates below their market level, encouraging borrowing and investment that are not backed by genuine savings. When combined with interventionist climate and industrial policies, the result is a double distortion: not only is the cost of capital suppressed by central banks, but its allocation is further skewed by political targets and bureaucratic criteria.

The persistent weakness of productivity growth in both countries reflects the outcome. Despite waves of stimulus and intervention, neither Canada nor the UK has returned to the trend growth rates of earlier decades. Research on why productivity is stuck in advanced economies shows that slow business investment, poor use of resources, and uncertain policies are major problems—exactly what Austrian theory warns about when governments try to control demand and manage entire industries.

At the same time, the loose monetary and fiscal stance has fueled asset inflation and housing booms, worsening affordability while doing little to raise real wages in line with living expenses. For Austrians, this pattern is predictable: credit expansion inflates asset prices and encourages leverage, while deficit spending diverts resources from productive private activity toward politically selected uses, without solving underlying structural obstacles to innovation and entrepreneurship.

The “dynamics of interventionism” described by Austrian scholars such as Frank Shostak and Huerta de Soto captures what is now playing out in Canada and the UK. Initial interventions—carbon pricing, subsidies, ultra-loose money—create side effects such as higher energy costs, misallocated capital, and inflationary pressures. Rather than rolling back the original policies, governments respond with further interventions: price caps, windfall taxes, rent controls, targeted transfers, and new stimulus packages.

More layers mean more complexity, uncertainty, and lobbying, which sucks talent and capital out of productive activity and into regulatory arbitrage and rent-seeking. In the end, the private sector becomes less about serving consumers and more about navigating the policy maze, bidding for subsidies, and changing business models based on political risk, not market signals.

This process tends to push mixed economies toward either more radical intervention and taxation, because the accumulating distortions and contradictions become unsustainable. Rising public debt, chronic productivity stagnation, and growing discontent over affordability are all signs that the current policy mix in Canada and the UK is reaching such a breaking point.

An Austrian approach to the problems of growth, productivity, and affordability in Canada and the UK would start from the opposite principle: radically reduce the role of the state in credit allocation, industrial planning, and energy choices. The goal would be to restore genuine price discovery in interest rates, energy markets, and capital allocation, rather than using central banks and fiscal policy to engineer demand and support politically favored sectors.

That would require ending the “permanent emergency” stance in monetary policy and allowing interest rates to reflect real-time preferences and savings, rather than central-bank discretion; rolling back net zero mandates, technology bans, and targeted subsidies allow entrepreneurs and consumers to decide which energy sources and technologies best serve their needs at the lowest cost; and moving from government spending based on political choices to a system with clear rules and less government involvement that safeguards property rights, upholds contracts, and maintains low and steady taxes and regulations.

Under such a regime, capital would no longer be herded into fashionable, subsidy-dependent projects. Instead, entrepreneurs would once again be guided by undistorted profit and loss, discovering the production structures that genuinely align with consumer preferences and technological realities. Over time, such an approach is the only path consistent with higher productivity, faster real wage growth, and true improvements in affordability.

In short, the disappointing growth and deteriorating affordability in Canada and the UK are not market failures; they are the predictable result of layering net zero interventionism on top of already inflationary, deficit-driven macro policy. The solution is not more of the same but a decisive shift back toward sound money, fiscal restraint, and genuine economic freedom.

Tesla showed signs of regaining momentum in Europe during May, posting strong registration growth across several major markets, according to Reuters. New registrations climbed to 1,750 vehicles in Denmark (+136%), 1,690 in Spain (+113%), and 858 in Sweden (+71%), based on data released by local industry groups.

Reuters writes that the trend extended across the region. Norway recorded 3,345 Tesla registrations, up 29% from a year earlier, while France saw registrations rise to 5,446 vehicles—more than seven times last year’s level.

The gains come as demand for electrified vehicles continues to strengthen across Europe. Battery-electric, plug-in hybrid, and hybrid vehicles represented more than two-thirds of all new registrations in April, with total electrified vehicle registrations increasing roughly 21%, according to ACEA.

Industry observers note that Tesla is benefiting from the overall expansion of the EV market, particularly in Scandinavia, while countries such as Spain are beginning to catch up in adoption. Consumer incentives, emissions-focused policies, and elevated fuel prices are also helping accelerate the shift toward electric mobility.

The recent improvement follows a difficult period for Tesla in Europe. The company lost a significant share of the regional market in 2025 as competition intensified—especially from Chinese manufacturers—while a limited refresh cycle and controversy surrounding CEO Elon Musk also weighed on demand. Registration figures from Germany and the UK, Europe’s largest auto markets, are still to come.

Update: Vickrum Singh Digwa, 23, received a life sentence with a 21-year minimum on Monday for the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak.

Judge William Mousley describes Nowak as a “much-loved, kind, hard-working and ambitious young man, devoted to his family and with a bright future.”

Mousley includes agonizing testimony from Nowak’s family: Nowak’s death has caused his sister’s world to “fall apart,” she said; Nowak’s father describes his son’s death as a “life sentence” for the family.

The judge then details the extensive lies he believes Digwa told to evade responsibility for the murder.

‘His murderer was afforded decency. He was believed’

Henry Nowak’s father says the ‘contrast’ in the police’s treatment of his son and his murderer is ‘unbearable’ in a statement after Nowak’s killer was sentenced to 21 years in prison. pic.twitter.com/9w8A35hpMp

— GB News (@GBNEWS) June 1, 2026

As Daily Caller noted, Mousley more or less excused the actions of the responding police officers, writing they “honestly believed that there were reasonable grounds for suspecting Henry had committed an offence and arrested him.”

*  *  *

As Bruce Oliver Newsome detailed earlier via American Greatness, this had all the ingredients (except inverted) to become Britain’s white ‘George Floyd’ moment.

If police see racism before they see a man bleeding out, something has gone profoundly wrong with justice.

Police handcuffed and arrested an 18-year-old while he was bleeding out from multiple stabbings because the stabber, a Sikh, accused the victim, a white man, of racism.

The stabber showed no signs of being the victim of violence. He said the man lying in his own blood on the ground had knocked off his turban in a drunken racist attack. And for that, the police arrested and handcuffed the victim.

The victim had been stabbed once in the face, twice in the legs while trying to escape over a fence, and once in the lung. But somehow the police claim not to have been aware of his wounds.

Vickrum Digwa, the 23-year-old stabber, was carrying two blades: an 8-inch “shastar” openly, and a smaller “kirpan” around his neck and under his clothing. During the trial, the prosecutor said that Digwa had “been training with weapons since the age of 12,” slept with weapons, and used “loving terms” when speaking about the murder weapon.

Digwa’s defense barrister claimed religious allowance for openly carrying knives that are illegal for the rest of us to carry. And the judge instructed the jury to consider whether the stabber had a good reason, such as self-defense or religion, to carry his weapons. The national government says that courts should decide what is legal to carry. The police federation says there is no limit on the size of the blade that can be carried with religious allowance.

Police initially arrested and handcuffed the victim without treating his wounds and without detaining the stabber.

On Thursday, May 28, the stabber was convicted of murder. The court found that the stabber had certainly not told the whole truth. He had told arriving officers of racist provocation but denied stabbing anyone.

There is no evidence for any racism other than the retrospective verbal claims of the stabber and his brother, who arrived after the stabbings and who made a call to emergency services claiming his brother was a victim of racism. He too did not mention any stabbing.

The perp’s father and mother also showed up at the scene. The mother helped to conceal the weapons.

The victim did not know his murderer. The victim was walking home around 11:30 p.m. on December 3, 2025, from a night out with his university soccer team in Southampton. He was well-dressed and well-groomed. He had drunk less alcohol than would have put him over the driving limit. But Digwa claimed to be attacked by a racist drunk. And the police believed him.

What will the consequences for the police entail?

The police force (Hampshire) referred itself for independent investigation but is also making excuses.

They claim that the stabbings were not obvious to officers, despite a trail of blood, and despite the victim repeatedly saying he had been stabbed and couldn’t breathe.

The police force maintains that officers could not have known the victim was suffering from internal bleeding. Yet the victim had been stabbed five times, of which one stabbing went 8 cm (more than 3 inches) into his lung. The blade itself is 21 centimeters (8 inches) long.

The police force isn’t publicly pondering whether the police officers should have examined rather than arrested the victim.

The police force says the victim couldn’t have been saved, but the victim didn’t die for another hour.

The police force says it is the victim of the stabber’s lies and that its officers were obliged to act on the stabber’s false accusations of racial provocation. But aren’t officers trained in judgment, to use their freaking eyes, to not make hasty judgments, and to care for even the perps? Wasn’t the victim’s plight obvious and the other party’s rude behavior equally obvious?

Note that the police force didn’t refer itself for investigation until the day of the conviction, almost six months after the murder.

And the police force still hasn’t released bodycam footage, even though one justification for introducing bodycams was to reassure the public of impartiality in racially sensitive cases, following the BLM explosion in 2020. The trial has concluded, so there can be no concerns around contempt of court by releasing footage.

[ZH: police just released the bodycam – its not embeddable]

Note that in other cases, such as the stabbings of girls at Southport in 2024 and the rape of a child in Nuneaton in 2025, local police, courts, and national government fell over each other to cover up the non-white race of the perpetrators, to warn against white racist misinformation, and even to prosecute some of the supposed misinformers for supposedly promoting hate.

I bet the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) won’t be investigating what journalists and opposition politicians have already identified: the racism of anti-racism.

Matt Goodwin, an academic and candidate for Parliament representing Reform UK, writes that “Henry Nowak now joins a growing list of people that most people in Westminster have probably never heard of—Terence Carney, Thomas Roberts, Victoria Agoglia, Lucy Lowe, Charlene Downes, Wayne Broadhurst, Rhiannon Whyte, among countless more—all of whom happen to belong to the wrong identity group to be considered worthy of serious discussion and attention,” after being murdered or raped by immigrants or the progeny of immigrants.

The Critic’s Tom Jones tweeted that “were the races reversed, this could be a story from the Jim Crow South that became a cause célèbre of the Civil Rights movement.”

The Spectator’s David Shipley wonders whether the police are so primed to posture as anti-racist (that is: anti-white racist) that they were blind to the evidence on and from the victim because he is white and gullible towards the stabber because he is not white.

Ed West, author of the classic The Diversity Illusion, reports that even the prosecutor went out of his way to avoid accusing the perpetrator of racism. “This is not a case about Sikhism. This is not a case about racism. This is a case about murder.” But as Ed West notes, the same defender made this a case of anti-racism.

This is a case with a false accusation of racism and a false justification of anti-racism for homicide, including labeling the victim as racist partly because of his different color.

So isn’t that racist?

You won’t find such questions in the mainstream media. The Guardian does not report the police’s actions at all and was at pains to specify the justifications for carrying a kirpan.

Worst of all, where the BBC reports on the police force’s decision to refer itself for investigation, the BBC goes out of its way to claim that “Digwa . . . had used a blade he said he carried because of his Sikh faith.” In fact, the jury had not formally agreed with that claim from the defense.

Anti-racism is racism, and British police are racist.

The name of the victim is Henry Nowak. Say his name.

And remember his last words: “I can’t breathe.”

But protesters aren’t blockading the streets. Keir Starmer isn’t taking the knee. Politicians aren’t calling on the public to chant his name or his last words, unlike in the case of the career criminal George Floyd, who almost certainly died of a fentanyl overdose.

Asian rice prices logged their biggest monthly gain in nearly two decades in May, as a Gulf energy shock collides with an expected El Niño event later this year. The spike adds to the mounting risks of a broader food price shock that could emerge as soon as six months from now.

Any time rice prices spike, it is a major concern because the grain feeds more than half the world’s population, estimated at 3.5 to 4 billion people.

Thailand white rice, a regional Asian benchmark, surged 20% in May, the largest monthly increase in data going back to 2008, according to Bloomberg. Chicago rice futures rose 15% last month.

Seasonality:

BMI analyst Bin Hui Ong warned that an expected El Niño event later this year will unleash adverse weather conditions across major rice-growing belts in Asia, including hotter, drier conditions. She noted this adds further upside to rice prices in the months ahead.

It is not just the threat of a severe El Niño event on analysts’ radars. There are also continued elevated diesel and fertilizer costs tied to disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz. This will further weigh on rice production yields across import-reliant Asia.

Rice farming is already highly fertilizer-intensive, while irrigation systems often depend on diesel-powered pumps.

In Vietnam’s Vinh Long province, a farmer told Bloomberg that he plans to skip one of his usual three annual crops due to rising input costs and extreme heat.

Fertilizer prices in Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines have soared by nearly 50% since late February, according to the International Rice Research Institute.

The Philippines has warned that a strong El Niño could cut rice production by up to 700,000 tons, or 3.5% of its annual production target.

Already, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of a basket of globally traded food commodities, is trending upward and risks a further leg higher.

Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, warned in mid-March that disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz would spark shortages of energy and fertilizers, translating into higher food prices in “six to nine months from now.”

Related:

• We Are 6 Months From Global Food Shortages Because Farmers Are Facing A Quadruple Whammy Crisis

• Everyone Talks About The Cost Of Gasoline… Soon Everyone Will Be Talking About The Cost Of Food

Last month, ZeroHedge Debates held a roundtable to ask: How bad will the food inflation mess get?

View here:

Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld outlined where food inflation is expected to hit the hardest, on a country-by-country level, this year (see report)