The European Commission has opened a new formal investigation into Elon Musk’s X under the Digital Services Act (DSA) and expanded a separate probe launched in December 2023.

“The new investigation will assess whether the company properly assessed and mitigated risks associated with the deployment of Grok’s functionalities into X in the EU,” the European Commission wrote in a press release, adding, “This includes risks related to the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, such as manipulated sexually explicit images, including content that may amount to child sexual abuse material.”

The Commission is examining whether X:

• Diligently assess and mitigate systemic risks, including of the dissemination of illegal content, negative effects in relation to gender-based violence, and serious negative consequences to physical and mental well-being stemming from deployments of Grok’s functionalities into its platform.

• Conduct and transmit to the Commission an ad hoc risk assessment report for Grok’s functionalities in the X service with a critical impact on X’s risk profile prior to their deployment.

“Non-consensual sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation,” EU tech commissioner Henna Virkkunen said, who was quoted by Bloomberg. This case falls under the DSA, which places strict guardrails on harmful and illegal material on the web. And it’s up to Brussels to define what is illegal material…

X, a subsidiary of xAI, pointed Bloomberg to a previous statement that it actively removes illegal content where necessary: “We remain committed to making X a safe platform for everyone and continue to have zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content.”

The EU’s Grok investigation comes shortly after a separate 120 million euro fine imposed on X under the DSA.

In that earlier case, EU regulators found that X’s paid blue check system misled users, the company obstructed researchers’ access to platform data, and it failed to properly establish an advertising transparency repository.

Vice President JD Vance criticized Brussels in an X post last month, saying, “The EU should be supporting free speech, not attacking American companies over garbage.”

Our assessment is that the EU’s move against Grok has little to do with safety. If it did, regulators would be scrutinizing every major social media platform and chatbot operating on the continent. Instead, Brussels appears unwilling to tolerate free speech or anything associated with Elon Musk.

Forcing xAI out of the EU would only confirm that the DSA functions less as a safety framework and more as a censorship weapon designed to crush free speech. If Europe chooses stagnation over freedom, the outcome here is very clear: the US becomes an even more attractive space for innovation and freedom.

We must note that the EU’s Grok investigation comes shortly after Europe plans to launch its own X-like social media platform called “W,” a subsidiary of Swedish climate media firm We Don’t Have Time.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The European Union has increasingly fallen on the defensive in foreign policy. Domestically, the Green Deal has significantly damaged the economic foundation. Together with its main pillars Berlin and Paris, the Brussels-based EU Commission is pushing forward the systematic construction of a censorship apparatus to suppress its own failures from public debate.

The heated discussion in recent days over the censorship of unpopular platforms like Nius is far more than just a warning sign. Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister-President Daniel Günther offered a deep insight into the strategic toolbox of current politics during Markus Lanz’s ZDF show. The politician’s subsequent, at times desperate, attempts—alongside the host and state-affiliated media—to retract his openly stated censorship demands toward critical platforms and media such as Nius illustrate the seriousness of the situation: Germany is slowly but steadily sliding toward a surveillance state.

The Vulgar Side of Censorship

The debate over controlling public opinion, particularly in the digital space, also has a vulgar, unrestrained side—as Apollo News experienced a few months ago. At that time, the local branch of the Left Party openly called for, if necessary, violent action against the newsroom to drive it out of its neighborhood. The statement was phrased as: one should “kick the journalists on their keys.” This is far more than a verbal lapse by radicalized ideologues. It marks a rupture in the political culture of the Federal Republic, in which repressive elements, faced with a simmering economic crisis and growing criticism of the political course, emerge plainly and unapologetically.

We are witnessing an attempt to delegitimize what is visible: the democratic right to freedom of speech and open discourse. The very nature of new digital media—their ability to create fragmented opinion clusters—makes them dangerous for a political system increasingly focused on control. Media like Apollo News contribute to genuine public discourse and thereby evade the interpretive authority of established apparatuses, making them a threat to the censor.

A Pattern at the EU Level

On the EU level, a media-tactical pattern emerges. Representatives in Brussels and their national proponents pursue a clear goal: when externally pressured—such as in the Greenland conflict with the United States—they present themselves in public discourse as victims. Domestically, however, they adopt precisely the position they accuse U.S. President Donald Trump of: acting with elbows, showing no regard for fair negotiation.

The narrative created in this mode is largely carried by a media apparatus closely aligned with Brussels’ political lines. We have seen this in climate policy (Apollo News reported): first, the narrative of existential emergency is established, the story of a burning planet woven into public discourse over years. This is followed by the construction of a centrally planned, strictly regulated transformation economy. Criticism of this strategy has so far been marginalized through a form of soft censorship, placing critics near conspiracy theories in public media. The critic is ridiculed, publicly humiliated.

A similar pattern is evident in the EU’s treatment of countries like Hungary. Because Budapest has resisted open borders and mass migration for years, it is sanctioned in the style of a known bully: sometimes through funding cuts, sometimes via openly threatened penalties. It is always about money. The EU sanctions rather than negotiates. In essence, the EU applies Trump’s “dealmaker” strategy with precision domestically, against its own citizens.

Romania experienced similar treatment last year. During the presidential election, significant pressure was applied to the judicial apparatus to annul the unwanted election of a right-wing conservative president. The aim was not political competition over the country’s future, but institutional and legal intervention to control the outcome.

The explicit goal of EU policy is to centralize power within the Brussels Commission apparatus permanently. This can only succeed if dissenting forces—such as the strengthening right-wing opposition in Eastern Europe—are kept in check and growing criticism of the disastrous economic course of the Green Deal is systematically excluded from public debate.

The Decline of Germany

Since 2018, Germans have witnessed the gradual decline of their industry—and with it the erosion of the foundation of their prosperity. The idea of “Net Zero,” the forced restructuring of the economy toward a fully CO₂-free order, has so far led to a roughly 14% decline in industrial production in Germany, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. The German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) reports that over 400,000 industrial jobs were lost in this period.

While industrial value creation and productivity shrink, the state apparatus expands. Bureaucracy and administration boom, creating hundreds of thousands of new positions where no market value is generated. At the same time, a stagnating or shrinking GDP—exacerbated by ongoing mass migration—is spread across a growing population. The result is a large-scale poverty program, which the government prefers not to discuss openly.

The Digital Services Act as a Censorship Tool

The debate over this process increasingly shifts to digital platforms. Leading the way are Elon Musk’s company X, as well as secondary arenas like Telegram or Reddit, offering forums for exchange, research, and counter-speech—places where information circulates that Brussels or Berlin will not accept unchallenged. This is exactly where the problem lies from the policymakers’ perspective: they want to buy time, convinced of the success of their social and economic transformation strategy, while reversal would mean a loss of power.

With the Digital Services Act (DSA), a comprehensive regulatory framework has come into force EU-wide. In simple terms, it obliges large online platforms to remove, restrict, or flag content classified under EU law as illegal, hateful, or socially harmful, including disinformation. Companies must also report on these actions in detail.

In practice, the DSA forces corporations like Meta, X, or TikTok—under threat of heavy fines—to systematically act against content deemed problematic, for example on climate policy, pandemic consequences, migration, or the Ukraine war. Measures include deletions, shadowbanning, warning labels, and deep interventions in recommendation algorithms.

Critics argue that the underlying criteria are often vague, placing political speech under preventive moderation pressure—even before open societal debate can occur.

The Perfidy of the DSA

The DSA’s perfidy lies in creating deliberately vague pseudo-legal grounds under terms like hate, incitement, and disinformation. Platform operators are pushed by economic incentives into preemptive censorship. Legal clarity is not the controlling factor; economic pressure via threat of fines is.

Combined with a growing network of so-called “trusted flaggers”—NGOs and private actors reporting potentially critical content to national authorities—a more constrained public discourse emerges. Brussels’ compliance rules are thus effectively enforced without formally naming a censorship regime.

In this context, it is understandable why a politician like Daniel Günther casually offers a glimpse behind the scenes in the safe space of public broadcasting. Where one believes oneself unobserved, one speaks what elsewhere is carefully concealed: unable or unwilling to make substantive course corrections in economic, climate, or migration policy—or in dealings with Moscow—critics are removed via the censorship stick.

The deliberately provoked dispute with the United States over the future of freedom of speech in Europe, and the threats toward American tech companies, are accepted. Political costs are externalized. Ultimately, the citizen pays the price—both as taxpayer, user, and censored participant in an increasingly narrow public discourse.

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Authored by Matthew Mitchell via TheDailyEconomy.org,

President Trump has accepted the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado.

Unlike Machado, however, he does not accept the central lessons that can be gleaned from five decades of Venezuelan misrule.

There are three. 

Lesson 1: Past prosperity is no guarantee of future prosperity. 

In 1970, Venezuela was the wealthiest country in Latin America. Sitting atop the world’s largest proven oil reserve, it churned out more than 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. Using GDP per person as a metric, its citizens earned 2.7 times as much as the rest of Latin America — about the same as the average Finnish, Japanese, and Italian citizen. 

This prosperity bought Venezuelans better health, longer life, and more creature comforts — especially fancy foreign cars that poured into the country as oil poured out. And it wasn’t just the wealthy that benefited. Venezuela’s poverty rate was about a third of what it was in the rest of Latin America. 

The zenith was around 1977. Thanks to the global oil crisis of a few years earlier, crude prices had quadrupled. Amidst the boom, President Carlos Andrés Pérez made the fateful decision to nationalize the country’s oil industry, hoping to use its wealth to fund economic development and poverty relief. Instead, by combining public and private interests, the decision proved a boon for corruption, eventually turning the country into a petrostate. 

Almost immediately, incomes began to fall. By 1999, average Venezuelans were earning less than 90 percent of what they had three decades earlier. But the worst was yet to come. 

Which brings us to the second lesson. 

Lesson 2: Policy matters. 

Oil was not the only explanation for Venezuela’s 1970s prosperity. The government spent and taxed modestly. It left most industry in private hands. Inflation was low. And international trade was almost entirely free of tariffs and regulatory barriers to trade. 

In 1970, Venezuela scored a little less than 7 on the Fraser Institute’s 10-point Economic Freedom of the World index, making it the 13th most economically free country in the world, just ahead of Japan. 

But as the rest of the world liberalized in the 1980s and 1990s, Venezuela went in the opposite direction. The government ramped up transfers and subsidies and began to acquire more assets. Property rights grew less secure. Inflation reached 26 percent in 1980 and over 50 percent in 1995. By 2000, Venezuela had slipped to 116th in economic freedom. 

In 1999, as the economy faltered, a frustrated electorate turned to an outsider, Hugo Chávez. Chávez had risen to fame seven years earlier when he led an unsuccessful coup d’état against the democratically elected government (ironically led by Andrés Pérez, who had returned as president in 1989). 

Though left-of-center, he did not begin as a radical. Instead, he positioned himself as a populist reformer who could steer a “Third Way” between socialism and capitalism. But he grew more radical after a failed coup attempt against him in 2002. By 2005 he had fully embraced the socialist label, recasting his movement as “Socialism of the 21st Century.” 

It wasn’t just branding. He nearly doubled transfers and subsidies and more than doubled government investment. He tightened control over the government-owned oil company and nationalized other industries, including steel, iron, mining, cement, farming, food distribution, grocery chains, hotels, telecommunications, and banking. The government stopped respecting and protecting private property. Annual inflation bounced around from 20 to 60 per cent. At the time of his death in 2013, Venezuela’s overall economic freedom was close to 3 on the 10-point scale, making it the least economically free country in the world. 

But as the government took, nature gave. The country’s massive Orinoco Oil Belt continued to churn out about 2.5 million barrels of oil every day. As a result, GDP per person recovered. 

Many Western observers, from Senator Bernie Sanders to director Oliver Stone, saw this as a sign that socialism works. But the reality is that Venezuela’s oil-fueled boom had only managed to bring incomes back to 1970s levels. Moreover, careful econometric analyses comparing Venezuela’s performance to that of other similarly situated countries, found that Venezuela consistently under-performed. 

Chávez died in 2013, leaving the country in the hands of his Vice President, Nicolás Maduro. Maduro clung fast to Chávez’s policies, but as global oil prices plummeted, Socialism of the 21st Century began to look a lot like socialism in the 20th century: incomes collapsed, poverty exploded, and inflation became hyper (reaching over one million percent in 2018). 

Maduro responded predictably, imposing price controls that produced massive shortages of household necessities. About a quarter of the population fled the country. 

But the cost was not merely economic. Which brings us to the final lesson. 

Lesson 3: Economic and Personal Freedom are Deeply Intertwined. 

Socialism is typically imposed at the point of a gun. But notwithstanding his attempted 1992 coup, Chávez had come to power through free and mostly fair elections. This seems to have been one reason why Western observers were so taken in by the regime. Writing in her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein claimed that Venezuelan “citizens had renewed their faith in the power of democracy to improve their lives.”   

But if she had looked closer, she would have seen the early signs of Venezuela’s anti-democratic turn. The Human Freedom Index, co-published by the Fraser Institute and the Cato Institute, builds on the Economic Freedom of the World index by adding 7 additional areas of personal freedom. As the figure below shows, the regime cracked down on personal freedoms just as it limited economic freedoms. By the time Klein wrote her book, Venezuela had already severely restricted freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of movement, and the rule of law. 

This, unfortunately, is common. As we see in the final figure, most regimes that restrict economic freedom also tend to restrict personal freedom. It is easy to imagine why. People value their economic liberties, so regimes that seek to severely repress these liberties often cling to power by suppressing dissent. And because socialist regimes own the means of production — including media production like radio, print, and TV outlets — they have a handy tool at their disposal for suppression. 

What now? 

As the Cato Institute’s Marcos Falcone recently explained, one Venezuelan who seems to have internalized these lessons is María Corina Machado. As a decades-long leader of the opposition, she has consistently championed both personal and economic liberty. She traces much of the country’s corruption, mismanagement, and stagnation to its 1976 nationalization of the oil industry. 

And she is wildly popular. In the unified opposition primary of 2024, she ran on a platform of complete oil privatization and won 90 percent of the vote. Maduro refused to let her run in the general election, so she backed Edmundo González Urrutia and he is estimated to have won 70 percent of the vote. But Maduro refused to recognize the result and clung to power. 

Now, apparently, President Trump is in charge. But like Maduro before him, Trump refuses to recognize the results of the last election. He claims that Machado lacks the “respect” and “support” to lead. Polls, meanwhile, indicate that she is favored by more than 70 percent of the country. While accepting her re-gifted Nobel Prize, Mr. Trump has decided to give the reins to Maduro’s Vice President, the socialist Delcy Rodriguez, calling her a “terrific person” and predicting a great Venezuelan renaissance. 

As for privatization, Trump instead says “we’re going to keep the oil.” He claims that Rodriquez will be “turning over” up to 50 million barrels to the US, the proceeds of which will be “controlled by me, as President of the United States of America.” 

Meanwhile, he is strong-arming US oil companies to invest in the country, telling them that if they want to recover their property that was seized by President Andrés Pérez in 1976, they’d better cooperate in rebuilding Venezuela’s infrastructure. For their part, the companies have been reluctant to do so, citing the country’s poor track record of protecting private property. 

Like Andrés Pérez, Chávez, and Maduro, Trump seems to imagine that the right central plan will unlock the country’s vast oil wealth. But history teaches a different lesson.

By Haley Zaremba of Oilprice.com

The global clean energy transition has passed a tipping point as renewable energies have simply become too cheap to fail. Worldwide, nations both rich and poor are rushing to install more and more wind and solar capacity to keep up with rising energy demand rates driven by global economic development and the age of AI. But while countries have been investing heavily into increased production capacity, investments in critical grid infrastructure have not kept pace, leading to a major energy transition bottleneck and a potential threat to energy security for an increasing number of countries.

The United States and Europe are both facing critical transformer shortages and aging and inadequate grid infrastructure, and the threat that this shortage poses to energy security is already being felt through historic blackouts such as last year’s cascading grid failure in Spain and Portugal. While these setbacks have raised the profile of infrastructure investing in European policy spheres, “ambition is not yet being matched by action from governments, policy-makers, investors and businesses,” according to a recent report from the World Economic Forum. 

In the United States, specialists foresee a yearslong transformer crunch, with little to no relief forthcoming. While companies have rushed to ramp up production of power transformers and distribution transformers, keeping up with skyrocketing demand is an impossibly tall order. Wood Mackenzie estimates that, since 2019, U.S. demand for power transformers has jumped by 116 percent, while demand for distribution transformers has shot up 41 percent. 

“This surging transformer demand has created a significant supply deficit, with domestic manufacturing capacity unable to keep pace,” Wood Mackenzie Senior Analyst Ben Boucher. “Utilities are routinely turning to the import market to meet project timelines. In 2025, imports will account for an estimated 80% of US power transformer supply and 50% of the distribution transformer supply. This market imbalance is escalating costs and lead times and is delaying our ability to bring generating plants online in pace with the surging energy demand.”

However, some experts disagree with this takeaway, arguing that the transformer “shortage” is overblown if not fabricated, and the issue lies in self-inflicted procurement problems. There’s room for debate because the issue is a complex one stretching over many different economic sectors and supply chains. Whether the problem is one of supply or one of procurement, however, the impact is the same – major bottlenecks for new electricity with potential pitfalls for national energy security. 

“Over the past few years, what started as a squeeze has gradually morphed into a crisis,” Power Magazine recently reported. The Power article contends that this growing crisis has been “furnished by years of underinvestment in domestic manufacturing, a sudden surge in post-pandemic construction and electrification, and volatility in grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) and copper markets, which steadily pushed lead times for large power and generator step-up (GSU) transformers beyond historical norms.”

And those driving factors are showing little signs of changing, indicating that delay times for transformer delivery are going to continue to stretch on. Even though demand for these products is now growing exponentially, this spike is coming in the wake of years of lackluster demand, and would-be investors are still warming up to the idea that they’ll get a return on their investment in the sector. 

Hitachi, one major producer of such transformers, for example, has strategically only invested in transformer development when the purchase of those components is already guaranteed and buyer-backed.  “Nobody wants to overinvest” in new production facilities, according to Hitachi Energy CEO Andreas Schierenbeck.

Through these kinds of up-front deals, Hitachi has planned $1 billion in new manufacturing capacity across the United States. However, Schierenbeck told news outlet Semafor this week that these deals are “probably not enough to close the gap between supply and demand… There are still customers who are just in the old world with transactional behavior, and they’ll have to be lucky to get a slot.”

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

Ursula von der Leyen survived her fourth vote of no confidence in the European Parliament on Thursday. In the process, the EPP Group has increasingly resorted to drastic measures to enforce internal discipline and ensure a uniform voting outcome within its ranks.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen once again survived a no-confidence vote in the European Parliament on Thursday at noon. In Strasbourg, 165 members voted in favor of the motion, 390 voted against it, and 10 abstained.

The latest initiative from within the Parliament was introduced by Patriots for Europe (PfE), the right-conservative parliamentary group. The main point of criticism that led to the motion of no confidence was the free trade agreement between the EU and the Mercosur states of South America. More broadly, the group expressed dissatisfaction with the Commission’s trade policy, which it claims systematically ignores national interests—particularly those of European agriculture.

This marks the fourth no-confidence motion against von der Leyen within six months. The initiators have alternated between the right-wing groups Patriots for Europe and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), as well as the left-wing parliamentary group “The Left.”

Von der Leyen continues to face accusations of a lack of transparency during the COVID period. She has also repeatedly been criticized for the absence of democratic legitimacy in conducting trade negotiations with the United States on behalf of EU member states, as well as for her strong focus on supporting Ukraine—an emphasis that critics argue comes at the expense of the interests of EU member countries.

Parliamentary Discipline in the European Parliament

In light of the steadily growing conservative right in Parliament, von der Leyen has increasingly become a projection surface for criticism of the centralization of political power in Brussels. The core factions supporting the Commission President—primarily the EPP (European People’s Party) under the leadership of CSU politician Manfred Weber, along with the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), Renew Europe, and parts of the liberal and Green groups—are finding it increasingly difficult to shield her from public criticism.

With each publicly staged no-confidence motion, another piece of Ursula von der Leyen’s political substance erodes. She has been weakened since the scandal surrounding her deleted text messages in the Pfizer affair.

For this reason, EPP Group leader Manfred Weber resorted in advance of the no-confidence vote to “disciplinary” measures, significantly restricting the rights of members of his parliamentary group in the event of dissenting votes (as previously reported by Tichy’s Einblick).

In addition to explicit threats of sanctions against dissenters, reports from Brussels indicate that an internal communications strategy was deployed to reinforce group discipline. Weber repeatedly made clear that he expects “closed majorities” and branded dissenting votes as “destructive to the political center.”

Weber also once again emphasized that dissenters were doing the business of Vladimir Putin—a familiar political talking point that has by now largely lost its effectiveness.

With his leadership style, the Union politician has positioned himself as one of the standard-bearers of an increasingly unrestrained party bloc, one that appears unable to counter the growing competition from the national-conservative camp with substantive arguments. Whether in the case of Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister President Daniel Günther and the associated threats of censorship, or—as now with Weber—in the Union’s handling of a political credibility crisis and economic recession, opposition voices are increasingly suppressed. Step by step, the party is conforming to a repressive system of political control.

The catalogue of sanctions established by Weber to enforce group discipline included, among other measures, the withdrawal of rapporteur positions. In addition, members were internally threatened with disadvantages such as the loss of group support in committee work and reduced influence over delegation decisions, in order to eliminate any incentive for dissenting votes.

Absence from votes—or even support for the no-confidence motion against von der Leyen—was also set to result in exclusion from delegation trips and internal working groups. Absenteeism was viewed as particularly critical by the EPP leadership, as it can be interpreted as a political statement—an implicit rejection of the group leadership and its strategic line.

Ostracizing Freedom of Conscience

Through this approach, Weber promotes the political ostracization of dissenters—freely elected representatives who vote according to their conscience. Critics see this practice not merely as an instrumental push toward party conformity, but as a structural undermining of the principle of the free mandate in the European Parliament, especially given that Parliament already possesses few independent legislative initiative rights.

Formally, the mandate remains free; in practice, however, Weber’s actions significantly devalue it. Members deemed “undesirable” risk not only political isolation, but also the loss of real opportunities to shape policy within the EU legislature. This weakens their mandate far beyond symbolic sanctions.

This approach follows a pattern that Weber has progressively intensified in past votes. Even during earlier no-confidence motions, he threatened dissenters with post-hoc sanctions in a disciplinary tone. Previous votes—such as those in October or July—already showed that EPP members who adopted more cautious or critical positions toward key Commission decisions were placed under scrutiny. In line with his strategy, Weber moved aggressively against any deviation in order to preserve a unified political image of the EPP.

This behavior is not only unethical and, from a parliamentary perspective, dishonest; it also inflicts significant damage on the European Parliament itself. The Parliament—already a representative body without its own right of legislative initiative—loses further prestige as a result of Weber’s measures. It increasingly appears as a democratic fig leaf for a technocratically operating Commission, drifting ever further away from democratic principles under the banner of internal party discipline.

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

In 2026, U.S. inflation is projected to decline to 2.4%, ultimately remaining above the Fed’s target. Many European and Asian countries, meanwhile, are expected to see sub-2% increases in prices. Countries facing instability, like Venezuela and Sudan, will brace for significantly higher price pressures.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows the 2026 inflation forecast for global economies, based on data from the International Monetary Fund.

Ranked: The 2026 Inflation Forecast

Below, we show inflation projections for 2026 across 190 economies:

Venezuela continues to face the highest inflation worldwide by a huge margin, with inflation set to increase 682.1% in 2026. (Note these forecasts were released before President Nicolas Maduro’s capture and U.S. plans to take over Venezuelan oil production).

Moreover, conflict-ridden countries including Sudan, Iran, and Myanmar, face inflation rates exceeding 25%.

In the U.S., inflation is expected to trend lower, though several risks could influence the outlook. While tariff front-loading muted inflationary effects in 2025, pass-through effects could meaningfully affect consumer prices in 2026.

Meanwhile, several economies, from Italy and Spain to Senegal and Saudi Arabia are expected to see inflation reach a 2% target.

In contrast, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are projected to see the lowest inflation globally, at 0.6%. For Switzerland, a strong Swiss franc has led import prices to drop, mirroring a trend seen in the past two years.

Additionally, consumer prices in Thailand and China are set to rise just 0.7% amid deflationary pressures.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on interest rate projections across advanced economies.

Authored by Amin Haqshanas via CoinTelegraph.com,

The Ethereum Foundation has made post-quantum security a central focus of the network’s long-term roadmap, announcing the formation of a dedicated Post Quantum (PQ) team.

The new team will be led by Thomas Coratger, a cryptographic engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, with support from Emile, a cryptographer closely associated with leanVM, according to crypto researcher Justin Drake.

“After years of quiet R&D, EF management has officially declared PQ security a top strategic priority,” Drake said in a Saturday post on X. “It’s now 2026, timelines are accelerating. Time to go full PQ.”

The researcher described leanVM, a specialized, minimalist zero-knowledge proof virtual machine (zkVM), as a potential building block of Ethereum’s post-quantum strategy.

EF backs post-quantum push with developer sessions, funding

Drake outlined several near-term steps aimed at preparing the ecosystem. A biweekly developer session focused on post-quantum transactions is set to begin next month, led by Ethereum researcher Antonio Sanso. The sessions will concentrate on user-facing protections, including protocol-level cryptographic tools, account abstraction pathways and longer-term work on aggregating transaction signatures using leanVM.

The Ethereum Foundation is also backing its push with new funding. Drake announced a $1 million Poseidon Prize to strengthen the Poseidon hash function, alongside another $1 million initiative known as the Proximity Prize, both aimed at advancing post-quantum cryptography.

Ethereum prepares for quantum era. Source: Justin Drake

On the engineering front, Drake said multi-client post-quantum consensus development networks are already live, with multiple teams participating and coordinating through weekly interoperability calls.

Furthermore, the foundation will host a dedicated post-quantum event in October, followed by a post-quantum day in late March ahead of EthCC. Educational efforts, including video content and materials aimed at enterprises, are also underway.

Coinbase forms board to assess quantum risks

The announcement comes amid growing sensitivity in crypto markets to quantum risk. On Wednesday, Coinbase revealed that it has established an independent advisory board to evaluate how advances in quantum computing could impact the cryptography securing major blockchain networks, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The board brings together experts from academia and industry in quantum computing, cryptography, and blockchain security, and will publish public research and guidance for developers, organizations, and users. Its first position paper is expected in early 2027.

Despite living in the world’s largest economy, Americans have shorter life expectancies than residents of many other wealthy nations.

People in Japan – the world’s fourth-largest economy – live about five years longer on average.

Meanwhile, residents in countries like France and Italy outlive Americans by roughly four years.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows life expectancy by country across the world’s 30 largest economies, based on data from the United Nations.

GDP data was drawn from the International Monetary Fund.

A Closer Look at Life Expectancy by Country

Below, we rank countries based on GDP in 2025, including their life expectancies at birth:

With an average life expectancy of 80 years, Americans live shorter lives than those in many other major economies. This gap is driven by several factors, including limited access to healthcare, high obesity rates, and elevated homicide rates.

Notably, the U.S. is the only G10 country without universal healthcare. It also has some of the highest healthcare costs among wealthy nations, at $14,885 per person, roughly double the OECD average.

China, the world’s second-largest economy, has an average life expectancy of 79 years, up from 68 in 1990. In recent years, national policies have focused on improving disease prevention and expanding medical insurance coverage.

India’s life expectancy stands at 73 years, among the lowest of the top 30 economies by GDP. Life expectancy also varies significantly by caste, with lower-caste individuals shown to live about four years fewer on average than those in higher castes.

However, India has recorded some of the largest gains in life expectancy globally over the past six decades. Since 1965, the average lifespan has increased by 27 years. In particular, this reflects growing advancements in healthcare, child mortality, and enhanced nutrition, further aided by strong economic growth.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on the countries with the longest life expectancies.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

Brussels and Berlin are increasing regulatory pressure on European industry. With the tightening of the EU Industrial Emissions Directive, agriculture is now moving even further into the crosshairs of climate regulation. That the EU is increasingly isolating itself on the international stage seems to concern no one.

If this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos delivered one clear message, it was this: the U.S. delegation led by President Donald Trump gave Europe’s climate-socialist economic transformation a red card. In stark terms, the U.S. President made it clear that the European path—the regulatory attempt at a net-zero economy with zero CO₂ emissions—has already failed in American eyes, and they have hit the brakes.

Now that the German cabinet is transposing the EU-mandated tightening of the Industrial Emissions Directive into national law, extending it to agricultural operations after parliamentary approval (Apollo News reported), the impression solidifies: the politically induced crisis of European industry—the slow deindustrialization of Europe’s key industrial hubs—is still treated in the political leadership’s economic models as a minor issue, a collateral damage on the road to the green utopia.

Artificial state demand is now being used to try to refill freed industrial capacities—whether through military production or subsidized eco-projects, which fail under cost pressures or simply go unrequested.

Regulatory Pressure by Design

Specifically, the new EU directive will place roughly 30 percent of poultry and pig farms under industrial emissions regulation. As if the sector were not already on the brink of collapse under existing regulatory pressure, the next attack on these operations is now being orchestrated.

Across the EU, about 50,000 operations will be required to implement binding environmental management systems, audited on cycles of one to three years. In Germany alone, 13,000 facilities are subject to EU compliance. Farms with at least 1,200 fattening pigs or 700 breeding sows, as well as poultry operations with around 40,000 broilers or 21,400 laying hens, will now be direct targets of the tightened rules.

Under the threat of heavy fines of at least three percent of EU-generated annual revenue for violations, the European Union is attempting to enforce the Green Deal by brute force. The goal is to ensure the reduction of harmful emissions in air, water, and soil, while promoting resource efficiency and a decarbonized circular economy by 2050.

For German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider (SPD), the directive’s tightening is a cause for celebration. He cited the policy’s successes over the past decade, which have already led to significant CO₂ reductions and fostered greener production in Europe. That technological progress primarily arises from competition and market-driven dynamics hardly factors into today’s political central planning.

High ideological fortresses have been erected, completely obscuring the view of economic reality.

For affected farms, the implementation means one thing above all: a massive increase in documentation, approval, and compliance obligations. They will now be subject to regular emission measurements and detailed reporting, which will be submitted to state environmental authorities and fed into EU-wide registers and public portals—suddenly, transparency matters. This transparency requirement creates intense public pressure on farms to comply swiftly and fully, regardless of how the additional costs will be financed.

Industry experts estimate compliance costs—for example, ammonia emission reductions—between €100,000 and €500,000 per barn, depending on size and technology. If BAT requirements (“Best Available Techniques”) must be retrofitted annually, these burdens can quickly escalate into millions.

Previously, the EU directive applied mainly to sectors such as chemicals, steel, cement, refineries, and energy facilities, targeting primarily large installations with high emissions and throughput. Government officials repeatedly stress that the tightened regulatory pressure applies only to large operations. In reality, both the Supply Chain Act and the new directive create significant pressure along entire supply chains. Large companies are forced to pass their environmental obligations onto smaller suppliers, extending inspection and compliance mechanisms across the entire value chain.

Political Paralysis

Remarkably, European politics remains unfazed by the ongoing deindustrialization of its economic base, stubbornly defending its course. As the industrial foundation erodes, so too does the EU’s geopolitical influence. Every industrial operation that succumbs to regulatory pressure and rising energy costs and relocates takes valuable know-how with it. Value chains destabilize, high factor incomes vanish, and the state faces growing fiscal pressure.

The response to this visible disaster—which led to around 24,000 corporate insolvencies last year—remains predictable: a transparent media performance delivered by government representatives. The Chancellor’s well-meaning calls for bureaucracy reduction are repeated with increasing emphasis, not least in view of five upcoming state elections this year. Bureaucracy reduction has become a standard political phrase with no real consequences.

The underlying strategy becomes clear: publicly, the government positions itself as problem-solver, buying time while steadfastly pursuing the set goal of green transformation.

German policymakers could easily reverse this destructive course. Germany is the EU’s largest net contributor, and key levers of power are held by Christian Democrats in Berlin, Brussels, and the European Parliament.

The only way out of this self-imposed trap would be a return to a fully deregulated free market economy—combined with a political rapprochement with Russian energy flows. Yet the spirit of central planning and presumed industrial control continues to dominate.

Ever-Increasing Bureaucracy

Growing regulation inevitably demands an expanding administrative apparatus. Over the past five years, public sector employment has risen by about two percent annually—roughly 100,000 additional positions. Against this backdrop, the Chancellor’s repeated calls for bureaucracy reduction appear a media tactic farce.

Documentation, proof, and auditing obligations in German industry have taken on Kafkaesque dimensions. In the past three years alone, some 325,000 additional positions had to be created in companies to handle the growing administrative burden flowing from Brussels and Berlin. In effect, the state is outsourcing its own bureaucracy to the private sector.

These political decisions exert tangible pressure on companies. Berlin and Brussels are responding to international competition and U.S. deregulation with policies that intensify existing industrial challenges rather than solving them.

* * *

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Authored by Jack Bergman via RealClearPolitics.com,

If the past few years taught us anything, it’s that national security no longer stops at the water’s edge or the factory gate. It runs through the mines, mills, refineries, and logistics networks that supply the metals inside our jets, ships, satellites, power grid, and the next generation of energy technologies.

Copper, nickel, cobalt, and other critical minerals aren’t just components of consumer gadgets; they are the sinews of American strength. And yet, for far too long, we have treated domestic mineral production like an afterthought, outsourcing supply to geopolitical rivals and fragile supply chains while hoping global markets will behave.

That is a strategic gamble we cannot afford.

Consider copper and nickel. Copper is the metal of electrification, essential to everything from radar systems to transformers to the wiring that hardens our bases and powers missile-defense sites. Nickel strengthens steel and is vital for advanced batteries and armor. Demand is climbing as our military modernizes and our economy electrifies. Meanwhile, a handful of countries dominate key stages of mining and processing, creating single points of failure that adversaries can exploit and crises can choke. We wouldn’t outsource fighter jet production to a rival power; why would we outsource the metals that make those jets possible?

A national strategy to close that vulnerability must include responsible American mining. Fortunately, this administration understands the importance of a reliable supply chain and domestic mineral production. In just a few days, Congress is expected to consider legislation to reverse a ban on exploration and mining in an area of northeastern Minnesota rich in natural resources, including copper and nickel. This region contains 95% of our nation’s nickel resources, nearly 90% of our cobalt, and about a third of our copper. Bottom line: This bill is key to unlocking the power of American domestic production to secure our national security.

To be clear, this bill doesn’t greenlight any mine. It simply lifts an unnecessary and harmful ban and allows projects in the area to pursue federal and state permitting once they have the proper permissions to even pursue that path. Due to the many safeguards in place to ensure that mining is done safely and securely, the process is appropriately complicated.

Minnesota’s Iron Range has helped arm and build America for more than 140 years. The region sits atop the world’s largest known undeveloped deposits of copper-nickel resources, which are fundamental to bolstering our nation’s security into the future. If we don’t develop them responsibly here, we will end up buying the same metals from places with weaker protections for workers, communities, and the environment – and with far less regard for U.S. security.

From a security standpoint, domestic mining does three critical things at once.

1. It reduces exposure to geopolitical blackmail. When access to a critical input can be throttled by one chokepoint abroad, you don’t have a market; you have a vulnerability. Bringing supplies home or to trusted allies closes those gaps.

2. It also shortens and hardens supply chains. Fewer ocean crossings and fewer handoffs mean fewer opportunities for disruption, whether from war, piracy, sanctions, or natural disasters.

3. And lastly, it improves traceability. Our military and manufacturers need to know where materials come from and under what conditions. U.S. standards deliver that confidence. Domestic production lets us audit, certify, and, if necessary, intervene.

None of this dismisses local concerns from some. Residents in northern Minnesota cherish clean water and public lands, and so do miners and manufacturers who live there. The answer is not to walk away; it is to show, with data and enforcement, that projects will protect watersheds, honor community input, and deliver transparent, measurable results.

At stake is more than the price of copper or nickel. It’s whether the United States can control the foundations of its own power in an era when control matters again.

We can either keep betting that global supply chains will always bend to our needs, or we can do the work of securing them here at home. Projects in northeastern Minnesota are not just economic opportunities; they are strategic assets.

Let’s treat them that way by permitting responsibility, producing cleanly, and building an American metals base worthy of the nation it defends.

Congressman Jack Bergman represents the First District of Michigan and is a retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant general.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.