Let me give everyone some cautious advice. Save photos or magazine covers of Europe or what it used to be. Your kids and future grandchildren may need to see them to support those stories of the Europe that our ancestors came from. Honestly, we may be down to photos or memories if current trends continue in what we used to call the old country. It was through photos and memories that our parents told us about the pre-Castro Cuba they grew up in. All they had were those black-and-white photos and stories.
Maybe we will get lucky, and everyone will heed Secretary Rubio’s message about preserving our Western culture.
Maybe we will someday remember that speech as “tear down that woke”. I hope so but the recent events in France do not make you very optimistic.
Where is Europe going?
Well, not in a good direction as Douglas Murray pointed out via Hot Air:
Today, Britain and Europe still slumber. And worse than slumber, they are busily engaged in submitting to their enemies.
At the United Nations General Assembly last month, the UK’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, made sure to have a meeting with the highest representative from what remains of the terrorist government in Tehran. The UK’s domestic security service, MI5, said last year – in a highly unusual public statement – that the UK has foiled several Iranian terrorist plots in Britain in a short period of time. But Miliband mentioned none of this. As he shook hands with the Iranian terrorist representative, he condemned attacks and attempted attacks on British soil, but did not suggest that the UK would retaliate. Meanwhile, Miliband declared that preventing violence in the West Bank – only when directed against Palestinians by Israelis, and not the other way around – is a priority for the UK government. He later declared himself “humbled” by the presence of a Palestinian Authority representative in the UK.
It seems to be the attitude of the UK government that terror is caused by Israel and brought to the United Kingdom by the U.S. The reality is that terror has been repeatedly brought to the UK by Iran and its various terror proxies, and that they have been allowed to operate there effectively unpunished. They are allowed to enter the UK illegally. They are allowed to plan attacks that are thwarted at great expense of time and money, and they are not even berated by the UK government.
Surrender is the word, and then they wonder why their streets look like they do or why so-called “students” are burning Paris. Who would have believed not too many years ago that “students” with foreign flags and face masks would be burning a school named after Nelson Mandela? Wonder how many of those “students,” angry about too much homework, even know who Mandela was?
Or that more and more Europeans would be voting to save their country and culture from uncontrolled immigration? Or that governments were talking about paying couples to have babies because current birth rates mean that the home team will lose to the visitors reproducing the old-fashioned way?
Save those photos, or maybe a video, from a trip to Europe. It may be all we have soon.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.
How Would NATO Defeat A Russian Invasion? Top Commander Reveals Aspects Of Classified Plan
NATO’s top military commander, US Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, on Monday gave an important speech presenting a “theory of victory” in the scenario of a future Russian attack along the Western military alliance’s ‘eastern flank’.
He asserted that NATO forces would “block, blunt and break” any Russian attack on member territory, which would make any such assault “utterly futile”. But he also characterized the plan as one that would seek to avoid a wider, prolonged war from erupting. But he insisted the alliance is “ready to fight tonight” even though it does not seek escalation.
“Should the adversary choose to press the attack or commit his reserves, we will break the warfighting system engaged against us,” Grynkewich declared at the speech given at the Warsaw Security Forum on Monday. “This includes not just the attacking force itself, but anything and everything that supports, sustains or controls that force.” This would suggest missile attacks deep into Russian territory, including on command-and-control centers.
“I think our populations around the alliance are a bit nervous,” Grynkewich acknowledged while explaining why he is taking what was a classified plan established months ago into the public realm.
He said NATO leadership must seek to assure member populations that it will successfully defend them. “What I want to do is assure the 1 billion citizens of our alliance that we’ve got this,” he said. “We know what we need to do. We know how we would do it, and it’s going to take all of us working together.” However, looming large over all of this is the specter of nuclear war – something not focused on in his strategic talk.
Anadolu Agency: NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) General Alexus G. Grynkewich speaks during a panel on the first day of the Warsaw Security Forum, held Monday.
Below is a brief outline and blueprint of what he laid out in the speech…
He described the overall objective as to quickly neutralize a potential invasion force and its direct support systems, but crucially without seeking Russia’s wider strategic defeat. He presented that this would be according to multiple phases:
Phase 1(Containment & Supremacy): Ground troops stop initial territorial grabs while air, naval, space, and cyber assets secure battlefield control.
Phase 2(Disruption): Advanced sensors and drones stall enemy momentum if the assault persists.
Phase 3(Dismantling): Relentless multi-domain pressure (kinetic and non-kinetic) destroys enemy logistics, communications, and command structures, cutting off supplies and isolating commanders.
From there Grynkewich emphasized deterrence, describing that NATO’s ability to match any enemy escalation will only solidify alliance unity and gradually weaken Moscow’s overall force posture and will to keep going.
Bloomberg summarized the talk according to the following key notes:
Does not believe a conflict is imminent or inevitable.
NATO will respond to attacks by blockading, degrading and striking adversary forces.
If necessary NATO will neutralize systems targeting its combat systems.
The alliance will pair high-end precision-guided munitions with large-scale, low-cost, scalable systems.
NATO’s SACEUR General Alexus Grynkewich: We know how we will fight if a fight comes to us. And we know we will win. And together we will ensure that any adversary who considers attacking our alliance reaches the only conclusion that matters: Today is not the day. https://t.co/tt1NfjeaX7
The Wall Street Journal has further issued a detailed report going into more detail on the Ukraine war-inspired ‘autonomous zone’ on the eastern flank:
The approach was devised to block a Russian adversary whose geographic advantages and outsize defense industry could enable it to mass forces against Baltic states, Poland and other NATO allies before the alliance could marshal a robust response. Under its strategy, an extensive “autonomous zone” would be established so that drones and ground robots could blunt a Russian attack without extensive allied casualties.
At the same time, long-range missiles would strike Russian command posts and air defenses in the exclave of Kaliningrad, near St. Petersburg and in Belarus. That would puncture Russia’s efforts to control the skies and enable the U.S. Army’s V Corps and other NATO ground forces to counterattack.
NATO air forces would move swiftly to strike Russian reinforcements as they streamed toward the battlefield and to attack other targets in the rear.
The NATO attacks would be enabled by a “data backbone,” a system for instantaneously sharing classified targeting data through the cloud among allied forces. Elements of that network have been tested in the Middle East during the U.S. fight with Iran.
The approach has been dubbed the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative and its overall objective, U.S. military officials said, is to force Putin to look at NATO’s defenses and conclude “not today” if he considers attacking. To reinforce that, alliance forces constantly drill to both test and demonstrate their readiness.
Meanwhile European officials are still strongly hyping and warning about what they call a continuing sabotage campaign which has made heavy use of drones and other tactics that violate European airspace and security.
NATO’s SACEUR General Alexus Grynkewich: The risk of a major attack on NATO territory right now is actually relatively low. The reason is Vladimir Putin’s war is ongoing in Ukraine, and his military is unfortunately engaged in that conflict. That force is not available to threaten NATO territory. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t do something smaller, and obviously we do see the sabotage activity and everything else that’s ongoing.
French authorities have recorded 90 cases involving kidnapping, abduction, extortion, threats, and violent theft related to cryptocurrencies in just over seven months.
The figures, provided to Cointelegraph by the French Interior Ministry, are from Jan. 1 to mid-August 2026. Authorities also recorded 223 arrests, and 126 people were imprisoned from January to July.
The figures equate to a new case every two and a half days, although there is no official year-on-year comparison to understand if the problem has become suddenly worse: “We do not have the statistics on these items for 2025, as the recording of events began on Jan. 1, 2026,” the ministry says.
What makes the new numbers even more striking is they are much higher than other public trackers of meatspace attacks.
Chainalysis counted 30 publicly known violent crypto incidents in France through mid-2026, but noted that the scale was “almost certainly larger.” Security firm Gart.io has tracked 73 attacks in France in the year to date, which puts France in the number one spot ahead of the USA on 66 real world attacks, and the UK on 27.
The rise in physical attacks – known as “wrench attacks” – on crypto holders in France points to something bigger than a rash of isolated incidents. Leaked personal data may be the culprit.
So, why France?
Wrench attacks are far from a new phenomenon. Bitcoin security advocate Jameson Lopp’s long-running directory of known physical attacks has documented 365 cases across 60 countries between 2014 and 2026, with France topping the leaderboard.
What seems to be new, however, is the speed at which violent crypto crimes are spreading throughout the country. Attacks have gone beyond Paris to places including Strasbourg, Marseille, Grenoble, Toulouse and Nantes, according to Chainalysis.
Violent attacks above the historical baseline. Source: Chainalysis.
Criminals aren’t targeting crypto rich tourists, and of the victims with known residency, 93% were French.
Chainalysis head researcher Eric Jardine tells Cointelegraph the surge is “very likely” due to a “significant data breach.”
“These sort of breaches expose more than financial information; they reveal who holds crypto, where they live, and how to find them.”
That makes physical attacks against crypto holders particularly insidious because they can begin long before a thug shows up with a wrench demanding your seed phrase or a crypto transfer. The assailants first need to know who has something worth stealing, where they live and how to reach them.
Jardine says the French tax authority compromise in 2024, where a tax official in the Paris area “leaked PII, financial and crypto holding information on French taxpayers,” may have been the accelerant. Chainalysis records show attacks surged from late November of the same year.
Chainalysis also points to a further incident in January 2026, with crypto tax reporting firm Waltio disclosing a breach affecting some 50,000 users, creating yet more useful data for attackers to mark their targets.
Francis Pouliot, founder of Canadian Bitcoin exchange Bull Bitcoin, has repeatedly challenged Europe’s DAC8 crypto reporting rules in France, which expand tax reporting and information-sharing requirements for crypto users across the European Union.
“DAC8 has transformed the concept of Know Your Customer into Kill Your Customer,” he said, along with describing France as the “crypto kidnapping capital of the world.”
The world of physical attacks. Source: Gart.io
When the target isn’t the Bitcoiner
According to Chainalysis, one of the most revealing changes may be who is being attacked. Globally, relatives and acquaintances accounted for around 25% to 30% of violent crypto incidents by early 2026, and in France, the proportion was more than 40%.
In May 2026, six men allegedly tried to abduct the wife of The Sandbox co-founder Sébastien Borget from the couple’s home in Villenoy, France, with one attacker posing as a delivery driver to get her to open the gate.
In August, a couple in rural France reportedly endured three separate attempts to break into their home after buying a property previously occupied by crypto millionaires, after the previous owners’ tax information and address were leaked onto the dark web.
A similar tactic was used in 2025, when the father of a crypto entrepreneur was abducted in Paris and held for two days, with the kidnappers reportedly cutting off part of his finger and sending it to his son while demanding $5.6 million in cryptocurrency.
Jardine says the targeting of relatives and associates “suggests criminals are doing reconnaissance before they act,” whether by “monitoring social media, analyzing blockchain data, using leaked information, or receiving tips from insiders.”
That turns the usual idea of a crypto target on its head, since the person with the wallet may not be the person standing in front of the attacker.
French authorities are responding by treating the attacks as organized crime, coordinating investigations through JUNALCO, the country’s specialized organized crime jurisdiction.
The $5 wrench conundrum
Most crypto holders have learned how to protect their seed phrases, set up hardware wallets, test their environments and avoid clicking on phishing links.
While those things are still important, none of them will help if a bad actor already knows who they are, where they live and that they have something worth stealing in the first place.
Cryptography can protect a wallet, but it can’t stop an attacker with a $5 wrench.
German Coalition Turmoil Deepens As SPD Co-Leader Bas Quits, Blames CDU “Public Attacks”
Just when Friedrich Merz gathered his party’s top brass to “regroup,” the government lost another load-bearing wall.
On Monday, labor minister Bärbel Bas, who was also co-chair of the junior coalition partner SPD, abruptly resigned from both posts. The 58-year-old said she needs time to grieve after the sudden death of her stepdaughter, but she also pointed a finger at “public attacks,” including from within the ranks of Merz’s own CDU/CSU bloc, which she said continued throughout her mourning period, and which according to Reuters had made her situation unbearable. She keeps her Bundestag seat.
Bärbel Bas at SPD headquarters the day after the Saxony-Anhalt vote, Sept 7, 2026 (Reuters/Maryam Majd)
The resignation landed on the second day of a CDU retreat meant to steady the party after a September that went from bad to historically catastrophic. Regular readers will recall that the AfD took 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt, where Merz’s CDU slumped to 17.2%, and two weeks later the chancellor admitted a “disaster” as the CDU scored just 4.9% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and failed to enter a state parliament for the first time in its history.
MERZ’S CDU PARTY POSTS WORST RESULT EVER IN A GERMAN STATE VOTE AFD AHEAD OF SOCIAL DEMOCRATS IN NORTHEASTERN STATE VOTE ANTI-CAPITALIST LEFT PARTY LEADING IN BERLIN ELECTION
Nationally, the picture is no prettier: the AfD hit 30% in the GMS poll, 10 points ahead of the CDU/CSU, enough to leave the “black-red” coalition without a majority, while an Insa survey found 78% of Germans say Merz is not the right chancellor. Meanwhile, the vaunted “firewall” is visibly crumbling: four CDU lawmakers in Saxony-Anhalt helped elect an AfD speaker last week and have reportedly agreed to back AfD’s Ulrich Siegmund for state premier in December.
Bas also leaves a hole in the middle of the reform agenda. Her ministry runs large parts of Germany’s welfare system and was handling the pension and working-time legislation at the center of the coalition’s reform push, with Berlin aiming to pass the broader pension overhaul by year-end. CDU politicians had accused her ministry of dragging its feet on measures coalition leaders agreed back on July 1, which is a polite way of describing the “attacks” she referenced on her way out.
Her replacement: Alexander Schweitzer, the former premier of Rhineland-Palatinate, nominated by Finance Minister and fellow SPD co-chair Lars Klingbeil. Readers may recall Schweitzer is “former” because the CDU beat the SPD in his state in March, so the SPD’s answer to an electoral crisis is to promote a politician who just lost an election. Business groups, for their part, welcomed the appointment as a chance for a “new start.”
Klingbeil also proposed an extraordinary SPD party congress in December or January to re-elect the entire leadership. People familiar told Bloomberg the next co-chair must be a woman from the party’s left wing, though not Manuela Schwesig, who is busy with coalition talks in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Klingbeil, who scrapped a trip to India to deal with the vacuum (his attendance at this week’s IMF/World Bank and G20 meetings in Bangkok is now uncertain), called the attacks on Bas “indecent” and said they were “poisoning our political culture.”
Happier times: Merz signs the coalition agreement with the SPD, May 5, 2025 (Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Merz said Bas’s decision demands “respect,” while his spokesman Stefan Kornelius denied a media report that the chancellor himself had grumbled off the record about her absence despite knowing her personal situation, the kind of denial that tends to precede further reports, or even more denials.
Reuters notes that the departure of one minister is not expected to bring down the government, and coalition leaders issued a statement last week vowing to carry on through the “historic test” facing German democracy. But the calendar is brutal: an SPD leadership contest, a possible first-ever AfD state premier in Saxony-Anhalt in December, a pension overhaul with a year-end deadline and five more regional elections next year that will shape Merz’s control of the Bundesrat.
As Nomura’s Andrzej Szczepaniak warned last month, Europe has entered an 18-month election cycle in which politics is lurching toward populism, and Germany is the main event. All of this while the economy the reforms are supposed to rescue keeps getting outcompeted:
Beijing’s trade template: China overtook Germany in exports of industrial machinery and equipment, in exports of specialized industrial machinery and will any minute overtake it in share of road vehicle exports. Coming to a Data Center near you next. https://t.co/eoHrZ2i6iV
And so, the German coalition limps on (for now), but the year-end pension deadline just became the first casualty. A government that can’t keep its own labor minister is unlikely to sell voters on working longer.
A video clip of a Black male student at ongoing protests in Belgium showed him saying he does not know why he is protesting, and that his message is to “smash everything.”
The clip is being used as another piece of evidence that the protests are not really about reforms or improving education standards, but instead serve as a pretext for ethnic minorities to riot, destroy, and attack police.
After he calls for protesters to “smash everything,” the crowd of Black youths and other ethnic minorities, many heavily masked, began hooting and screaming in response. The video further shows burning shared bicycles and electric scooters, the same products many on the left promote as an alternative to CO2-producing cars and trucks.
In a post from Belgian political activist Dries Van Langenhove, he writes about the video: “European people can’t comprehend this because we’re simply not the same. They destroy. It’s what they do. It’s who they are. Politicians now come up with all sorts of fake ‘solutions’: more money for education, more youth detention centres, military conscription, … but it’s all nonsense. There is only one real solution: they have to go back.”
Our ‘Belgian students’ when asked what they’re protesting against: “we don’t know, we’re here to destroy everything”. European people can’t comprehend this because we’re simply not the same. They destroy. It’s what they do. It’s who they are. Politicians now come up with all sorts of fake ‘solutions’: more money for education, more youth detention centres, military conscription, … but it’s all nonsense. There is only one real solution: they have to go back.
The footage has circulated amid student protests in French-speaking Belgium, particularly in Liège and Brussels. The media reports that the protests are fueled by rising education costs, overcrowded classrooms and reforms in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. However, just as with the student protests in France, many of the participants cannot articulate any clear demand.
🇫🇷🚨 BREAKING: Rioters set fire to the entrance of Vauquelin High School in Paris and blocked the exits when staff tried to put the fire out. A film crew recorded the terrifying attempted murder. “The school staff was unable to put out the fire. The rioters blocked them just as the extinguisher nozzle came out; they blocked the exit.” “The fire continues. You see all the silhouettes moving behind it; they continue to feed this fire, making it stronger and stronger. The school staff is not even going to try to put it out anymore; they can’t manage it. We can hear the principal here asking the hundred confined students to step back and move up to the first floor.” The building was full of staff, students, and journalists, but these rioters appear ready to kill anyone still inside the vocational chemistry school. Follow: @RMXnews
In Belgium, authorities have also reported property damage, arson and clashes with police. Local media and police cited more than 100 arrests in Liège in recent days alone, many involving minors, with overall detentions since early October approaching or exceeding 200 in some counts.
Shop windows were smashed, fires set and objects thrown at officers; one video game retailer reported about €30,000 in stolen goods.
One brave man tried to put out the fires in Liège, Belgium. He was brutally attacked by a frenzied crowd. The “student protests” are devolving into large-scale rioting, arson, and attacks on innocents. Follow: @RMXnews https://t.co/PEElkGrtL8
The student actions overlapped with a national strike Friday organized by Belgium’s major unions against government austerity measures aimed at reducing the deficit under Prime Minister Bart De Wever. Police estimated about 30,000 participants in the Brussels march, which was largely peaceful, though smaller groups of masked youths threw bottles, bricks, stones and fireworks, set fires and damaged property near the central station. Officers used water cannons and tear gas; authorities reported 21 detentions or arrests, including 13 minors.
De Wever has argued that painful budget measures are needed to avoid a debt spiral that would burden future generations.
Hock Tan Warns AI Investors Are Gambling In A Casino… Whose Chips His Own Credit Is Paying For
Usually it’s the chip CEOs who are the cheerleaders and the bond market that plays the skeptic. On Monday, the CEO of the second-most important AI chipmaker on the planet decided to play both roles.
Speaking on a panel at a DBS conference in Singapore, Broadcom boss Hock Tan said that many of the investors piling into AI behave more like gamblers than investors, setting extreme expectations only to discover they are effectively sitting at a casino table. In his own words, “a lot of investors have no clue what they are investing in.”
He didn’t stop there. Tan also questioned the long-term economics of the money-losing frontier labs, and, most importantly for markets, warned that insufficient capital could become the next constraint on the AI industry’s growth. As if to make his point for him, Intel’s Lip-Bu Tan, who shared the panel, said hardware will stay in short supply for another two to three years. Translation: the chips will be scarce, and so will the money to pay for them.
Semis did not take it well. The SOXX slumped 2.6% and JPMorgan’s AI memory basket tumbled 4.3% on a day when more than 60% of S&P members actually rose. Asked to explain the selling, JPMorgan tech specialist Joshua Meyers wrote in the bank’s afternoon Market Intel briefing (available to pro subs) that “the most proximate reason seems to be Hock Tan’s participation in a panel at a DBS conference in Singapore, where he warned financing could become a bigger bottleneck than component shortages (in addition to questioning frontier lab business models, and comparing ‘many investors’ to casino gamblers).”
Below we look at why Tan is right about the bottleneck, and why the people he called gamblers are the ones keeping his stock afloat while his own bondholders head for the exits.
The evidence has been piling up. Last Thursday, Nvidia-backed Australian data center operator Firmus first slashed the price of its IPO by 25% and then pulled its $5.5 billion listing altogether, opting to raise money in private markets instead (good luck with finding someone dumb enough there). Our reaction at the time:
*FIRMUS DECIDED TO WITHDRAW APPLICATION TO LIST ON ASX *FIRMUS NOW PURSUE CAPITAL FROM PRIVATE MARKETS Bring on the Apollo life insurance policies
And Tan wasn’t the only one at the DBS event flagging it: just before he took the stage, DBS CEO Tan Su Shan said the market is now repricing the risks around AI financing after the heavy investment of the past two years. When the bank hosting the conference and the chipmaker on the panel agree that the money is the problem, it’s probably the money.
The Customer Is Losing Money… And Broadcom Is Lending It
Then there is the swipe at the frontier labs. Tan said OpenAI’s $50 billion annualized revenue as of September suggests there is a viable business, but that the company is still losing money because it spends so much on training and compute, so for now the number tells you little about long-term profitability.
Fair enough. Except that OpenAI is Broadcom’s customer, and on top of it, courtesy of SPV structures that would make Jeff Skilling blush, Broadcom is the one arranging the money for OpenAI to buy Broadcom’s chips (you may get a little nauseous after reading that).
As we detailed last Thursday, Broadcom is in talks on a $50 billion+ chip financing for OpenAI (Bloomberg puts the next leg at closer to $30 billion), on top of the $60 billion it is syndicating for Anthropic and the $35 billion “Big Sky” platform it set up with Apollo and Blackstone in June. That’s roughly $145 billion of chip debt with Broadcom’s name on it, or as we put it when we tweeted this chart, “$300BN in chip-collateralized SPVs, so far”:
In other words, the CEO questioning the labs’ business models is also the biggest single lender to those business models! Over the weekend, Jefferies went even further, warning of “massive capital destruction” since just two cash-burning labs account for half of a $2.3 trillion backlog.
Which brings us to the irony. Tan may sneer at the “casino” crowd, but the casino is the only thing propping up AVGO. Per Goldman’s derivatives desk, Mag7 is now ~22% of total US prime exposure (the most since early 2022), semis exposure has doubled to ~12% from ~6% at the start of the year, and roughly $115 billion sits in levered semis ETFs. JPMorgan’s factor team adds that semiconductor sentiment is back above the 99th percentile. Those are the real gamblers.
Broadcom’s creditors, meanwhile, are folding. The moment Broadcom’s Anthropic financing hit the tape, we said what would happen next:
*BROADCOM AMASSING $60 BILLION TO FUND CHIPS FOR ANTHROPIC CDS gonna fly tomorrow
It took about 12 hours for Broadcom bonds to hit all-time lows. And it has been one-way traffic since August, when Broadcom’s CDS exploded after it emerged that the company was seeking up to $100 billion in an off-balance sheet SPV.
Back then, 5Y CDS hit a record 122bp. After a brief September reprieve, the Anthropic and OpenAI financings sent it right back up: according to Goldman’s TMT specialist sales desk (available to pro subs), Broadcom’s 5Y CDS printed a record 136bp last Thursday, alongside Oracle at a record 261bp, as nearly $500 billion of 2026 AI borrowing gets repriced. Goldman flagged both spreads as key gauges of concern over debt-funded AI capex. At 133bp, Broadcom’s CDS is a few basis points from that record, and more than triple where it was in May, while Nvidia, its own $500 billion “compute financing platform” notwithstanding, sits at 86bp:
Put differently, the stock is held by the people Tan just called gamblers, and the bonds are priced by the people who agree with him.
Tan Had Some Help
To be fair, JPMorgan’s Meyers also pointed to a weekend sell-side note re-igniting power worries (a shortage of “powered shell” of as much as 19GW next year, and more in 2028), plus Middle East headlines and nervousness ahead of a private frontier lab investor meeting on Wednesday. Memory got an extra kick from China’s CXMT progress on next-gen DRAM, which we covered this morning in “Memory Remains The Epicenter”. And with bond markets shut for the holiday, Goldman’s cash desk said it was the lowest-volume session of the year, which tends to amplify every move.
Tellingly, Goldman’s derivatives desk saw clients reach for HYG downside, buying 50k Jan 77/73 put spreads, with the bond market closed. Even the gamblers, it seems, are hedging the credit.
Bottom Line
JPMorgan’s Market Intel team is sticking with its “Tactically Bullish” call into earnings, arguing semis can climb this latest wall of worry. Maybe. But when the CEO whose company is financing its own customers’ chip purchases says money, not silicon, is the next bottleneck, while his own CDS prints records, we’d side with the credit market.
After all, in a casino the house always wins. The question is who the house is when the house is also lending the chips.
The Democratic Socialists of America exploit young people’s longing for community, but socialism’s coercive collectivism destroys the voluntary relationships that sustain it.
Whether reflecting on the impersonal essence of “virtual reality” and the incessant stream of demands and anxieties it imposes upon our diurnal, increasingly alienated existence, or listening to the concerns of one’s fellow citizens, one hears a persistent leitmotif: the longing for true community, especially among the youth.
One aspect of this longing has been well bruited: people’s gnawing sense that the myth of “virtual community” is an alienating illusion that increasingly leaves them numb and pining for personal engagements – the flesh-and-blood amities, intimacies, and sundry other encounters of true community.
Exacerbating this sense of loss, especially among the young, people are very concerned about “affordability” – such as the inability to purchase a new home, rent an apartment, find an entry-level job, or keep the one they already have – due to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and inflation. But too often overlooked is how the diminishment of these opportunities has reduced people’s personal interaction and the sense of community it brings.
Indeed, when people, notably youth, talk about wanting to “shop locally,” support small businesses, or even reject “corporate” entities and their culture, it is not a complete rejection of capitalism. Indeed, one can clearly recognize young people’s embrace of free markets and small businesses. Yet, it is a practical complaint regarding its failures – one of which is its eclipse of community beneath an impersonal corporatism. (One can make the argument that today’s youth are essentially the political descendants of Jeffersonian Republicans, but I digress.)
Naturally, one group that has not overlooked young people’s yearning for a greater sense of community is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). They exacerbate youth’s disaffection with the economy by equating corporatism and capitalism and proffer socialism as a virtuous panacea for economic ailments. And, for alienated people yearning for community, the DSA conflates and substitutes the collective for community.
But the truth is the collective is the enemy of community.
Marxism, like all other totalitarian movements in our century, must be seen as kind of secular pattern of redemption, designed to bring hope and fulfillment to those who have come to feel alienated, frustrated, and excluded from what they regard as their rightful place in a community. In its promise of unity and belonging lies much of the magic of totalitarian mystery, miracle, and authority.
It is a false promise.
Under socialism, the “warm embrace” of the collective is created by an omnipotent, centralized government. It relies upon coercion, not consent. In addition to crushing an individual’s agency and ability to dissent, it destroys the voluntary intermediate institutions that form a community and insulate and protect the individual from the domination of the centralized government.
As Nisbet explained, the destruction of these intermediate institutions is imperative for would-be authoritarians:
We may regard totalitarianism as a process of the annihilation of individuality, but, in more fundamental terms, it is the annihilation, first, of those social relationships within which individuality develops. It is not the extermination of individuals that is ultimately desired by totalitarian rulers, for individuals in the largest number are needed by the new order. What is desired is the extermination of those social relationships which, by their autonomous existence, must always constitute a barrier to the achievement of the absolute political community. The individual alone is powerless. Individual will and memory, apart from the reinforcement of associative tradition, are weak and ephemeral. How well the totalitarian rulers know it. (…) To destroy or diminish the reality of the smaller areas of society, to abolish or restrict the range of cultural alternatives offered individuals by economic endeavor, religion, and kinship, is to destroy in time the roots of the will to resist despotism in its large forms.
The antithesis and antidote to the collective is community.
Community requires individual consent, agency, voluntary associations, and governmental subsidiarity. This is decidedly different from the strawman argument proffered by socialists that the choice is between the collective and a calloused “rugged individualism.” While deceptive, such an argument makes a cynical sense, because subscribing to the DSA’s agenda would leave someone just a coerced cog in the collective, not a consensual member of a true community.
There must be in any stable culture, in any civilization that prizes its integrity, functionally significant and psychologically meaningful groups and associations lying intermediate to the individual and the larger values and purposes of his society. For these are the small areas of association within which alone such values and purposes can take on clear meaning in personal life and become the vital roots of the large culture.
And is it not the aim of all radicals, including the DSA, to destroy root and branch the foundations of an established civilization?
Is it not to fundamentally eradicate all individual agency and consensual, intermediate communal relationships to impose their radical ideological dictates to perfect humanity and create Utopia?
Is it not, as Nisbet avers, to make sure “man’s alienation from man must lead in time to man’s alienation from God,” and from community into the chill grip of the iron fist of the collective?
Luxury Condos Seized In Singapore’s Massive Money-Laundering Case Go Unsold
Singapore has no shortage of people curious about the spoils from its massive money-laundering crackdown. Getting them to actually buy the confiscated real estate has been another matter.
The government is gradually disposing of assets tied to the S$3 billion laundering scandal that erupted in 2023, according to Bloomberg. More than 80 homes are being sold alongside watches, jewelry, handbags and other expensive possessions seized from the operation.
The luxury goods have been hot. The luxury real estate decidedly has not.
Of more than two dozen high-end properties recently put through auctions, only four apartments have found buyers that way. At one sale, more than 60 people showed up for seven properties carrying over S$43 million ($33.6 million) in combined opening prices. Not one sold.
One Gramercy Park apartment near Orchard Road failed to attract a single bid. Another large marble-finished unit with its own elevator was offered at S$7.55 million. Eventually someone tried S$4 million, prompting laughter before the offer was dismissed.
The scene captured an uncomfortable reality for sellers: plenty of people want to see what happens when convicted money launderers’ assets hit the auction block, but curiosity isn’t translating into aggressive offers.
“There has been a lot of hype generated,” said Tan Tee Khoon, Knight Frank Singapore’s head of auction and sales. Some attendees, he added, openly admit: “I just want to come and see.”
The weak results also arrive at a difficult moment for the most expensive slice of Singapore’s housing market.
Bloomberg writes that government measures intended to restrain property speculation have dramatically narrowed the pool of potential purchasers. Most foreigners buying residential property face an additional 60% stamp duty, while relatively few locals are prepared to spend eight figures on a home.
Two confiscated apartments at Martin Modern recently changed hands for S$2.12 million and S$2.08 million, roughly around their previous transaction levels. Two others at Wallich Residence sold for S$6.6 million and S$5.48 million, below their initial auction prices.
The broader Singapore property market remains relatively firm, but the top end has developed weak spots. Private-home prices recently posted their fastest quarterly increase since 2024 even as transaction volume fell about 30% from the previous quarter.
Sentosa, where members of the laundering operation accumulated expensive property, illustrates the disconnect. Villa prices on the resort island fell roughly 11% over the decade through 2025.
Some seized homes are now being marketed for considerably less than their former owners paid. Convicted launderer Lin Baoying spent almost S$29 million on two detached Sentosa houses in 2021. Their current combined guide price is more than S$6 million below that purchase price.
Deloitte’s Singapore unit is overseeing the liquidation and plans to release assets in stages through mid-2027. If properties repeatedly fail to sell, prospective buyers have an obvious incentive to wait for further reductions. Sellers, meanwhile, don’t want to cut prices so aggressively that the portfolio begins looking like distressed inventory.
The assets stem from an enormous 2023 police operation involving more than 400 officers and over 200 properties, many in expensive areas including Orchard Road and Sentosa. Ten China-born defendants were convicted, and the group became widely known as the “Fujian Gang.”
The fallout eventually reached Singapore’s financial sector. Nine firms, including Credit Suisse, Citibank and United Overseas Bank, were hit with a combined S$27.45 million in penalties over anti-money-laundering shortcomings connected to the case.
Yet while multimillion-dollar apartments sit without bids, the former owners’ handbags and jewelry have been flying out the door. At an auction conducted by Hotlotz, every luxury-goods lot sold. One limited-edition Louis Vuitton pumpkin bag created with Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama was expected to fetch S$12,000 to S$16,000. Instead, 81 bids pushed the final price to S$87,000.
The difference is partly psychological. Someone chasing a rare handbag, watch or piece of jewelry may worry another opportunity won’t appear. Property buyers can compare an apartment against alternatives, determine fair value and walk away when the numbers don’t work.
Another 14 Hotlotz auctions are planned, including Hermès handbags and watches from Rolex, Patek Philippe and Richard Mille. Dozens of homes also remain in the liquidation pipeline. The government has already recovered substantial sums. By the end of March, approximately S$1.4 billion in cash and proceeds from disposed assets had entered Singapore’s Consolidated Fund.
For now, Singapore’s most infamous criminal asset sale has produced a strange split: people will fight over the handbags, but they won’t fight over the homes. And with buyers increasingly convinced that patience could produce lower prices, the remaining condos may prove considerably harder to move than the watches, diamonds and designer bags sitting inside them.
At Least 10 Supertankers Approaching Port Of Fujairah Reverse Course Amid Iran’s Attacks
A growing number of empty supertankers have been turning away from the Persian Gulf as escalating Iranian attacks threaten a critical transfer hub for wartime oil shipments, Bloomberg reports.
At least 10 very large crude carriers and several Suezmax vessels approaching the port of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates have stopped or reversed course in recent days, according to tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
While other vessels are still continuing on their journeys into the region, the retreat of these tankers amid near-daily attacks around the Strait of Hormuz – some near Fujairah itself – raises fresh concerns over the sustainability of oil flows through the waterway.
Fujairah is commonly signaled as an interim destination by vessels ultimately sailing to the Gulf of Oman, where they can collect cargoes via ship-to-ship transfer, or onward into the Persian Gulf. That makes the number of ships heading toward the port a broader indicator of tanker operators’ appetite for approaching the waterway.
The shift threatens a key workaround that has helped Persian Gulf oil exports recover to near prewar levels. Large crude carriers can wait off Fujairah and in Omani waters outside Hormuz while shuttle tankers make the riskier transit through the strait, bringing out crude and transferring it for onward shipment to buyers.
The system depends on a steady supply of receiving tankers, so a significant retreat from the region by empty VLCCs could slow the flow of crude, tying up the shuttle vessels for longer when tanker availability is already tight.
The pullback is particularly striking given the financial rewards on offer. A global tanker shortage has pushed shipping costs to extraordinary levels.
For example, hiring a vessel to haul oil from the US to China now costs more than launching a rocket into space.
“My Guy, I Can Code”: After Deconstructing Adobe, Dev Uses Claude To Clone Microsoft Office For Free
Days after unveiling free, open-source stand-ins for seven Adobe applications, Atlanta engineer Brandon Thomas has turned to Microsoft Office. This week he posted WordCraft, GridCraft and DeckCraft – replicas of Word, Excel and PowerPoint – to GitHub, Tom’s Hardware reported. Thomas says he used Anthropic’s Claude to help build the software and is giving the results away.
The Adobe set came first. Gizmodo’s Mike Pearl reported on Oct. 7 that Thomas had used Claude Opus 5.5 and the Rust programming language to recreate Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and four other Adobe applications. Thomas wrote on Hacker News that they were in early alpha and “not anywhere close to ready,” while Pearl called the Photoshop stand-in “glitchy, but real.” Adobe, Pearl noted, agreed to a $150 million settlement after federal prosecutors sued it in 2024, alleging it was “trapping” people in subscription plans.
The Office clones followed within days. Paul Thurrott reported on Oct. 9 that WordCraft reads and writes DOCX files, and that ArtCraft, Thomas’s company, calls it 87 percent complete for ribbon commands and about 62 percent complete for real feature parity. For GridCraft, a pre-alpha Excel stand-in, ArtCraft claims 93 percent of Excel’s worksheet functions. DeckCraft, the PowerPoint stand-in, is said to cover about 79 percent of the feature set and to be 80 percent of the way to a first alpha.
Thurrott also reported that ArtCraft has removed the download links from its website, leaving GitHub as the way to get the code.
Gadget Pilipinas took a closer look at the project’s documentation and found some important caveats. WordCraft’s roadmap says charts, SmartArt and embedded OLE objects are lost when a DOCX file is loaded and saved, and validation against real business documents had not yet begun. The site also noted that counting ribbon commands measures whether a feature can be invoked, not whether it actually behaves the way Word does. It listed the licenses as Apache-2.0 or MIT. Release numbers differ between the two outlets: Thurrott reported version 0.3.0, while Gadget Pilipinas cited 0.5.0.
The larger target is the subscription model itself. When Microsoft added Copilot to its consumer plans in January 2025, PCWorld reported, Microsoft 365 Personal rose from about $7 a month to $10 and Family from about $10 to $13, with 60 AI credits a month included. Existing subscribers could remain at the old price on a “Classic” plan.
And the customer base is enormous. Microsoft last reported 89 million consumer Microsoft 365 subscribers in July 2025 and then stopped publishing the metric, according to Office-Watch, which estimates the total is now about 95 million. It also reported that consumer cloud revenue rose 24 percent in the quarter ended June 30.
Tom’s Hardware called Thomas’s project “a targeted protest” against subscription software and said ArtCraft’s Discord community is already asking for more, with a CAD clone among the most frequent requests. But it also cautioned that most of the apps are “still far from what they intend to replace.”
After the Adobe release, critics dismissed the software as vibecoded “AI slop.” Thomas answered on X:
My guy, I can code
In college I was building laser games on skyscrapers and cloning the luciferase-luciferin system into plants via agrobacterium-mediated transfection
The revenue-per-employee comparison is Thomas’s own claim, and none of the coverage cited here independently checked it.
The project’s “clean-room” description also remains untested. ArtCraft says the apps are clean-room reimplementations written from public specifications and observed behavior. Besthub summarized the view of lawyer Neil Brown, who it said notes that the legal position depends on the jurisdiction and argues that an independent reimplementation made without access to the original source code may not infringe. None of the coverage cited here reports a legal challenge from Microsoft or Adobe.
None of this means Office has been replaced. By ArtCraft’s own figure, WordCraft remains about 38 percent short of real feature parity, and the documentation makes clear that important functionality is still missing.
What has changed is the cost and speed of producing a plausible competitor. One engineer working with a coding model has released rough but working versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint only days after doing the same for Adobe’s creative suite – and he is aiming directly at a market where the incumbents have spent years moving customers toward recurring subscriptions.
