President Donald Trump on Sunday announced that most Americans would receive a dividend payment of “at least” $2,000 – paid out of US tariff revenues.

“A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” Trump posted on Truth Social, adding that tariffs have brought in “trillions of dollars,” and that 401(k) accounts are the “Highest EVER.” He also claimed that the tariffs had caused “No inflation.”

“People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS!” he continued.

The Treasury Department said in September that it had collected more than $195 billion from tariffs in 2025, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says he expects the US to collect $500 billion or more in tariff revenue annually.

On Sunday morning, Bessent told ABC‘s “This Week” that the administration’s goal with the tariffs was to “rebalance trade” rather than simply take in revenue.

But wait!

Bessent also suggested that the $2,000 dividend could come in several forms – between tax decreases, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, or other deductions. 

Bessent: The $2,000 dividend could come in in lots of forms. It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing in the President’s agenda— no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security, deductibility of older loans— those are substantial deductions.

LOL!… pic.twitter.com/XRl5uTvzrn

— Ron Smith (@Ronxyz00) November 9, 2025

Trump floated the idea of a $1,000 to $2,000 “distribution to the people” during an October interview with One America News Network, and said they would bring in over a trillion dollars per year. 

Of course, $2,000 for most Americans would be difficult to claw back if the Supreme Court reverses them. 

Crypto markets immediately reacted (positively) to the potential helicopter drop of cash…

We would expected gold to jump once it opens also.

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

AI Earnings Not Strong Enough?

This past week, markets continued to digest earnings from key technology and AI-focused companies, as well as the lingering effects of the Federal Reserve’s recent policy shift. Despite a limited macroeconomic calendar due to the ongoing government shutdown, corporate results kept investors engaged. The market struggled with ongoing narrow breadth and growing sensitivity to forward guidance. Major earnings reports from AI-related and large-cap tech firms revealed continued strength in revenue and profit growth, but fell short of overly optimistic expectations.

According to FactSet, the blended year-over-year earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 in Q3 stands at 10.7%, up from 7.9% at the start of earnings season. Revenue growth has reached 4.9%, exceeding both the five-year and ten-year averages. The Information Technology sector is leading the pack with an earnings growth rate of 26.5%. Consumer Discretionary has also rebounded to positive territory, while Communication Services lagged, weighed down by weakness from companies such as Meta, which beat revenue and earnings estimates but was impacted by a one-time tax-related charge.

Many AI-driven firms beat expectations, but markets reacted cautiously to increased capex and tempered forward guidance. Investor response has been mixed. While earnings beats remain high, several strong reports led to muted or adverse price action. This suggests markets are pricing in not just current performance but also cautious sentiment around future growth, margins, and investment intensity, particularly in AI infrastructure.

FactSet reports the forward 12-month P/E for the S&P 500 is now approximately 22.9x, above the five-year average of 19.9x and the ten-year average of 18.6x. These elevated multiples reflect high investor expectations and confidence, raising the stakes for any missteps or negative surprises in guidance. With the macro calendar limited by the federal shutdown, investor focus is firmly on earnings, capital expenditures (capex) trends, and corporate guidance. In this environment, earnings calls and management commentary matter more than usual.

Speaking of earnings, the most notable factor is the elevated expectations of earnings growth projections heading into 2026. While there are a lot of hopes for next year, the vast majority of earnings growth next year is solely dependent on the “Magnificent 7.” Expectations are currently for negative growth from the bottom 493.

This brings to light a few things that investors should be aware of:

• Earnings growth remains strong but is increasingly priced in.

• A narrow group of large-cap tech and AI stocks is leading market gains.

• Valuations are elevated, and participation remains weak.

• Guidance and capital allocation are under heavy scrutiny, especially in AI-related names.

• With macro data limited, earnings and sentiment remain the dominant short-term drivers.

Investors should remain engaged but selective. The market’s technical structure remains bullish, but fragile beneath the surface. Any disappointment in earnings, guidance, or policy could quickly shift sentiment.

Breadth Tumbles

The S&P 500 closed the week at 6,728 after struggling all week to hold its ground. While the index remains in a defined uptrend and continues to trade above its 50-day and 200-day moving averages, both of which are still rising, the strength of the move is increasingly in question. Momentum remains constructive, with the MACD in a buy signal posture, and the 20-day moving average held as support. But the underlying structure of the market is weakening.

Breadth has notably deteriorated, with the number of stocks outperforming the benchmark index at levels typically associated with larger market corrective processes. Fewer stocks are participating in the upside, and internal momentum is fading. As of Friday, only 55.4% of S&P 500 components remained above their 200-day moving average, a meaningful decline from earlier levels this year. The number of stocks above their 50-day moving average has dropped even more sharply, down to just 40%, with participation narrowing in key sectors.

The market corrected about 3.5% from its all-time highs and remains above the 50-day moving average for now, keeping the bullish trend intact. However, money flow has deteriorated sharply, although we are seeing some buyers entering the market at the 50-day moving average on Friday, confirming support at that level. Relative strength has essentially reversed most of its previous overbought condition. Still, it remains in negative divergence overall, while momentum has triggered a short-term sell signal, which will keep a lid on advances for now.

Technically, the setup remains bullish based on price action alone, but structurally, it is not robust. Breadth weakness, momentum divergence, and declining volume on rallies are red flags. The rally is vulnerable to sharp reversals if broader participation does not materialize soon. A strong trend built on a narrowing foundation is inherently unstable.

Support and Resistance Levels

• Primary Resistance: ~6,850–6,900 (top of the rising trend channel and previous highs)

• Initial Resistance: ~6,767 (approximate 20‑day moving average)

• Initial Support: ~6,674 (approximate 50‑day moving average)

• Primary Support: ~6,497 (100-day moving average)

• Critical Support: ~6,134 (200-day moving average)

In this environment, investors should remain disciplined. The trend is intact, but fragility is growing. Participation in the rally is permissible, but positions should be hedged or trimmed where appropriate. Stops should be tightened on extended names. Without confirmation from broader market internals or macro data, the path forward could become more volatile.

Repo Ripples Turning Into Waves?

In September 2019, a critical but obscure part of the financial system broke. Overnight borrowing rates in the repo market suddenly spiked from around 2% to over 10% in a matter of hours. Banks and dealers couldn’t get the short-term funding they needed to finance Treasury holdings or settle trades. Liquidity froze. Wall Street was caught off guard. The Federal Reserve quickly intervened, launching emergency repo operations to inject cash into the system. Within days, funding markets stabilized. Over the next few months, the Fed expanded its balance sheet again, but not for QE, they insisted, but to keep repo markets functioning. That quiet intervention helped fuel the final leg of the market’s rally into early 2020.

Currently, we are seeing cracks reemerge in this previously unknown part of the financial system. In today’s commentary, we will discuss what it is and why it matters.

The “repo” market, short for “repurchase agreement,” sits at the heart of the financial system. Critically, and why it matters to the financial markets, is that it allows banks, hedge funds, and dealers to borrow cash by using high-quality securities, typically U.S. Treasuries, as collateral. (This is also how money winds up in the financial markets when the Federal Reserve is doing “Quantitative Easing.”)

The transaction is straightforward and is an OVERNIGHT transaction. During this process, one party sells a security with a commitment to repurchase it the next day at a slightly higher price. That price difference represents the cost of borrowing. Typically, the difference between the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) and the Interest Rate on Reserves (IOR) is slightly negative. Currently, that is not the case. Notably, this is not some niche corner of finance. It’s the lifeblood of overnight funding.

Why is this so important? Because TRILLIONS flow through this market every day, and most people have never heard about it.

However, without it, Wall Street doesn’t open.

• Dealers need it to fund their balance sheets.

• Hedge funds rely on it for leverage.

• Money market funds use it to park cash overnight.

• It’s also how the Federal Reserve transmits monetary policy.

When the repo market functions smoothly, short-term interest rates stay in line with the Fed’s targets. When it breaks, liquidity dries up fast. That creates ripple effects in credit, equities, and even Treasury markets.

If repo transactions grind to a halt, it’s not because there’s a lack of collateral or cash, but because of fear. When institutions stop trusting each other, they stop lending to one another. That’s when the financial plumbing clogs, and the consequence of that “clogged plumbing” is rising volatility, strained liquidity, and falling asset prices. The repo market isn’t just important. It’s foundational.

A Redux of 2019? What Does It Mean for the Markets?

Currently, cracks are reappearing. The overnight repo rate is climbing as the use of the Fed’s Standing Repo Facility is increasing, and treasury bill issuance is ballooning.

Most notably, what the Fed once deemed “abundant liquidity” has now fallen below the levels it considers “ample.” The chart shows that the Fed Reserve’s plus Reverse Repos (which, for the past three years, have served as an excess liquidity storage facility used primarily to fund purchases of T-Bills) is now at the lowest level since late 2020.

Sound familiar? It should. The current environment bears a striking resemblance to the lead-up to the September 2019 repo crisis. Back then, the repo rate suddenly spiked from around 2% to over 10% in a single day as Wall Street’s funding machine seized up. Here is an example of what happened.

You have a brand new, fully paid-for Mercedes. You go to your neighbor and ask for an overnight loan of just $10,000, offering him the title to your car as collateral. Your interest rate should be close to the Federal Reserve’s overnight rate, but instead, your neighbor says he wants 10%. That difference is a “risk premium” that is undeserved because the loan is backed by guaranteed collateral, in this case, the car.

But that is what happened in 2019, and the Fed had to intervene with emergency liquidity operations to restore stability.

Why did it happen? In 2019, a combination of tax payments and Treasury auctions drained reserves from the banking system. At the same time, dealers were loaded with collateral they couldn’t finance. Cash lenders didn’t want to step in, even at higher rates, because they were either constrained by regulation or unwilling to take the risk. The repo market, which had always been taken for granted, suddenly became the problem no one was watching.

Today, we’re seeing many of the same ingredients. Heavy Treasury issuance is forcing dealers to take on more collateral, and liquidity is being withdrawn from the system due to the Fed’s quantitative tightening. The problem with the repo market is why the Fed announced it would end the shrinkage of its balance sheet at the end of November. Meanwhile, bank reserve levels have dropped sharply, adding to concerns about overall liquidity.

When stress rises in the repo market, it’s not a technical glitch, but rather a signal that the financial system is under pressure. If this stress deepens, it could lead to a broad tightening of financial conditions that will spill over into the equity and credit markets. Given the Fed’s concern about the “wealth effect” the financial markets provide to economic growth, this has become the third, and unspoken, mandate of Fed policy.

While that may sound frightening, there is a twist. If the Fed steps in to relieve repo pressure, like it did in 2019, it might trigger the opposite of a crash. In other words, the Fed’s actions to stabilize the repo market may lead to a “melt-up” in equities, where risk assets surge, not because fundamentals improve, but because liquidity returns in force. Such a conclusion is not far-fetched, as the Government shutdown has drained over $700 billion from the market, as shown by the sharp increase in the Treasury General Account.

Stealth QE on the Horizon

However, once the Government is reopened, that $700 billion increase in the Treasury General Account will flow back into the economy. That reopening will create a flood of effective stimulus as furloughed workers receive back pay, departments are reopened, and Government contract work resumes. Those dollars wind up deposited into the banking system, increasing bank liquidity. In effect, it is a “stealth QE” that could create a massive scramble for risk assets.

As such, both the end of the Government shutdown and a stabilization of the repo market could have an immediate impact on risk assets. Once dealers can fund collateral without paying punitive rates, liquidity will return, which “greases the wheels” of the entire financial system. Trading flows improve as Hedge funds can effectively re-leverage their portfolios, and credit spreads are expected to tighten.

You will notice in the chart below that this is precisely what happened after the 2019 repo scare. Once the Fed began daily operations to supply liquidity, the S&P 500 rallied to new highs. Then, of course, that liquidity went into overdrive following the onset of the pandemic. While it has since reversed somewhat, there remains, as noted above, “ample” liquidity in the financial system currently.

Just as it was in 2019, the move was not about fundamental improvements; it was simply about “too much money chasing too few assets.”

It is important to note that fixing the repo market isn’t about bailing out Wall Street. It’s about restoring the basic mechanics of financial intermediation. When overnight funding is cheap and available, institutions are willing to trade, lend, and invest. That confidence feeds through to markets. Although most investors don’t track repo rates daily, they feel the effects, as more liquidity means less volatility, tighter spreads, and rising asset prices. At least that is what we should expect in the short term.

However, the resolution needs to be more than a temporary patch. If the Fed signals it’s ready to backstop the market, investors will likely view that as a green light to increase equity risk and change the risk calculus to some degree. The problem is that stocks are already grossly detached from underlying fundamentals, and a resolution to either the Government shutdown or resolving the current repo stress will likely see investors pushing asset prices further away from those fundamentals. But that is how liquidity drives markets, especially when fundamentals look stretched.

For investors, it is worth noting that if the Fed steps in again, the upside could come quickly and substantially. For now, the repo market is the canary in the coal mine. What comes next depends on whether policymakers decide to move soon or wait until stress forces their hand.

Key Catalysts Next Week

The U.S. government shutdown persists, continuing to stall many federal economic data releases. In this environment, the market’s focus shifts sharply to those reports still expected and to key central‑bank commentary. Investors will monitor what limited data is available, along with speeches from Federal Reserve officials and corporate earnings, for directional signals.

In sum, next week offers a sparse macro calendar, making every publication and speech disproportionately important. The NFIB index will serve as one of the few viable high‑frequency signals of business sentiment. The Fed remarks by Cook and Jefferson will be scrutinised for hints of policy shift given the data blackout. With earnings still unfolding, investor attention remains on how companies navigate cost pressures, demand trends, and AI‑driven investment in a constrained economic backdrop. In such an environment, absence of negative surprises may support risk assets, but the lack of fresh data increases vulnerability to unexpected developments.

Trade accordingly.

Via Remix News,

The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is officially ending funding for the Hungarian Language Service at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), “Szabad Europa.”

In a letter from USAGM CEO Kari Lake to Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart (FL-26), chairman of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, Lake directly references Hungary as a strong ally of the United States and notes how USAGM funding for Szabad Europa served to “undermine” its prime minister, Viktor Orbán. 

“It is the position of the Trump Administration that the original justification for adding Szabad Europa to RFE/RL’s programming lineup in 2019 is not aligned with U.S. national interests. This programming has undermined President Trump’s foreign policy by opposing the duly elected Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán. As you know, Prime Minister Orban was (and is) the leader of Hungary, which is both a strong U.S. ally and a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).”

Viktor Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán, posted on X to celebrate the news, along with a photo of the letter.

“Originally created to deliver free, uncensored news behind the Iron Curtain, Radio Free Europe once played a key role in promoting liberty during the Cold War,” he posted. 

“Over time, however, the outlet lost its original mission, turning into an ideologically driven platform promoting liberal activism, including LGBTQ and gender campaigns, across Central and Eastern Europe. Under the Biden administration, this shift deepened further, as the service increasingly engaged in politically motivated narratives aimed at undermining Hungary’s democratically elected government.

“The Trump administration’s decision marks a return to sober, ally-based cooperation built on mutual respect and balanced partnership,” Orbán’s political director wrote.

Lake further stated in her letter that taxpayer money would only be used for content and activities that “serve the American people,” adding that “undermining staunch allies does not serve the American people.”

Read more here…

At Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas, on Thursday evening, more than 75% of investors approved Elon Musk’s $1 trillion CEO Performance Award. The package is tied to ambitious milestones, including nationwide robotaxi deployment, large-scale production of the Optimus humanoid robot, and market-capitalization thresholds designed to align long-term value creation with Musk’s strategic vision to dominate the 2030s by controlling the most advanced technologies.

A limited internal production of Optimus has already begun at Tesla’s Fremont, California factory. The goal next year is to ramp up series production with an eventual goal of a million humanoid robots per year.  

“So we’re going to launch on the fastest production ramp of any product of any large complex manufactured product ever, starting with building a one million unit production line in Fremont. And that’s Line One. And then a 10-million-unit-per-year production line here (at Giga Texas). I don’t know where we’re going to put the one hundred million unit production line, maybe on Mars. But I think it’s going to literally get to one hundred million a year, maybe even a billion a year,” Musk told investors at the annual shareholder meeting yesterday

Elon Musk on Optimus:

“The robots are just walking around the office, 24/7 with no one minding them & then they go charge themselves. It’s going to be the biggest product of all time, bigger than cell phones, bigger than anything. There could be 10s of billions of robots.” pic.twitter.com/BnrvJLBqIk

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) November 6, 2025

In October, we cited Chinese media that said Tesla placed a $685 million order for linear actuators from Sanhua Intelligent Controls, with deliveries expected to start early next year. 

Tesla is the leader and one of the few U.S. companies that can scale humanoid robot production ahead of the 2030s. 

We shift our attention to China, where rare-earth minerals and high-tech factories are plentiful, and find that a number of robot companies are gearing up for mass production. 

Goldman Sachs analyst Jacqueline Du spoke with a handful of Chinese companies embedded within the humanoid robot supply chain, including Sanhua, Tuopu, Rongtai, Shuanghuan, Minth, Joyson, Zhaowei, Best Precision, and Shuanglin. 

Du found that most of these companies are ramping up series production in China, Thailand, and to a lesser extent, Mexico. 

Here are Du’s key takeaways after her meeting with these companies that provide clients with a snapshot of the humanoid robot space in China:

• Most suppliers are actively planning capacity both in China and overseas (primarily in Thailand, and less in Mexico), to support potential humanoid robot mass production, though no company has yet confirmed sizable orders or definitive production timelines. Current capacity planning ranges from ~100k to 1mn robot equivalent units per year (which looks bullish on industry growth outlook vs GSe of 1.38mn units of global humanoid robot shipment by 2035E). Most firms intend to scale up gradually upon actual order placement and therefore not necessarily indicating an imminent oversupply risk but most supply chain companies have an optimistic forward-looking view on industry outlook;

• Across the ecosystem, suppliers are broadening their product portfolios, evolving from single components to integrated modules, expanding product categories from actuators to sensors and structural parts, each targeting ambitious market share gains. It is quite evident that all of these companies that are more or less levered to the automobile industry appear eager to expand into robotics components in search of new growth engines and at the same time to better utilize their existing capacities with certain production synergies;

• Many companies are aggressively showcasing their technical capabilities and scalable production readiness, emphasizing their rapid design-to-product turnaround, agile service as key comparative edge to secure and expand market share in the supply chain. We note mentions of robotics customers such as Tesla Optimus, Agibot, Leju, Xpeng, etc. which could suggest these companies are more likely the earlier ones which rely more on outside suppliers to kick start volume production of robots with timing commonly expected in 2H26E;

• We remain constructive on long run humanoid robot technology trend but will need to monitor the key robot products performance and concrete end-applications to assess whether a technology inflection point will be near in sight. Key checkpoints afterwards are: 1) Tesla Optimus Gen 3 launch by Feb/Mar 2026; 2) Public disclosure of China/global humanoid robot companies’ 2026E order/shipment targets by end-2025/early-2026. We are Buy rated on Sanhua H, Inovance and Shuanghuan; Neutral rated on Sanhua A, Leaderdrive, Best Precision and Moon’s Electric under our coverage which are related to the humanoid robot space.

Our coverage has focused on the rise of humanoid and robodogs:

• Goldman’s Chat With Top Robotics Firm Reveals Skynet Humanoid Timeline

• Goldman’s Investing Guide To Skynet

• “Here Come Humanoids”: Morgan Stanley Braces For The Looming Phase Shift in AI

• There’s An iPhone Moment Happening With Humanoids

• “iPhone Moment” Nears For Humanoid Robots

• China Warns of Rogue Robot Troops Unleashing Terminator-Style “Indiscriminate Killings”

• China Humanoid Robotics Index Jumps After Unitree Debuts “Stellar Hunter”

• Vacuuming, Mopping, Mowing: The Household Robots Are Coming

• Meta Plans For New AI Humanoid Robot For “Household Chores”; Headline Fuels Stock Rally

• A New Fear Unlocked.

• Goldman Finds “Inflection Point” With Humanoid Robots; We Tested Unitree’s Robodog

Give it until the 2030s before these bots start entering the average household.

ZeroHedge Pro subscribers can access the full note in the usual spot, including the analyst’s top bullish picks and detailed company breakdowns.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The roadmap is already set: in the coming years, the EU and its member states will make both businesses and consumers pay even more for CO₂ emissions. BASF CEO Markus Kamieth warns of the enormous destructive potential of this policy.

Truth comes on pigeon feet – Friedrich Nietzsche already knew that. And apparently, the same applies to European climate policy: slowly, but inevitably, the reality of the true costs of the green transformation and its impact on Germany’s industrial foundation is emerging.

On October 29, BASF’s CEO Markus Kamieth faced the press during the quarterly results presentation. What he announced was another cold shower for anyone still hoping for a new economic miracle.

Weak Results in a Stable Environment

The world’s largest chemical company reported a 3% decline in revenue in Q3 2025 compared to last year, while EBITDA fell by 5%. BASF is under massive pressure and has already cut 1,400 jobs to meet growing cost pressures.

BASF’s numbers have to be seen against the backdrop of a slowly recovering global economic cycle. Especially the U.S. economy, growing nearly 4%, is driving strong demand. Economies in China and India continue to expand dynamically, particularly in sectors critical to the chemical industry.

While the global economy gains momentum, BASF – like much of Germany’s chemical sector and the broader industry – continues to lose ground.

The company’s main site in Ludwigshafen is hit hardest, leaving its 33,000 employees facing an uncertain future.

Criticism of the Climate Course

Kamieth was unexpectedly outspoken during the presentation. In addition to criticizing EU trade policy and rising energy costs in Germany, he struck at a rarely openly discussed wound: the EU’s climate policy.

Kamieth didn’t mince words, calling the European CO₂ emissions trading system (EU ETS 2) what it is: an attack on Europe’s industrial foundation.

For BASF alone, if the current climate course within CO₂ trading remains unchanged, annual additional costs of around €1 billion will arise from 2027 onward, when exemptions are removed – costs borne exclusively by European industry, while the rest of the world simply does not participate.

Kamieth hit a sore spot. EU industry is being financially squeezed by an ideologized CO₂ policy. Deindustrialization is – whether unspoken or suppressed – the result of Brussels’ policies and their national enforcers, whose only response to their self-inflicted disaster is ever-new subsidies.

Rare Criticism

Criticism of this centrally planned climate disaster for industry is rare. All the more remarkable are the unmistakable words of the BASF CEO – just two weeks after the sharp critique from Evonik CEO Christian Kullmann. Both direct their warnings to the same address: European isolationism in climate policy.

Kullmann also called for a comprehensive reform of CO₂ emissions trading – or even the complete abolition of the system. He openly called it “economic madness.”

Both CEOs understand global competition. And they know: nobody will follow the Brussels line.

Climate Club Increasingly Isolated

The global climate club is becoming increasingly isolated. At COP30 in Brazil, the U.S. exit from the Paris Agreement confirmed that even leading industrial nations no longer follow Europe’s push for CO₂ dominance.

This development exposes cracks in the belief in a solely CO₂-driven climate change – a signal European climate policy cannot conceal.

Both COP30 and the increasingly frequent EU climate summits reveal the lengths to which authorities go to prevent these doubts from taking root in public consciousness.

Too much is at stake: the gigantic CO₂ tax machine, which in the coming years is designed to funnel massive funds primarily to Brussels’ central EU apparatus.

Ironclad Media Curtain

The situation is similar to nuclear power. Behind an ironclad media curtain spun by the political-media complex around this energy source, the German public remains unaware that nuclear power is making a global comeback – aiming to nearly double capacity in the next three decades.

The silence in climate policy has been bought at a high price – through the climate redistribution machine, which increasingly restrains large parts of the economy.

The annual volume of CO₂ trading is set to nearly triple to around €100 billion in the coming years, plus CO₂ taxes and other climate levies that also hit consumers.

Consider, for instance, the flight levies that are literally wiping Germany off the map as a location for air travel.

Enormous Economic Losses

The actual capital misallocation forced by climate policy and lawmakers is difficult to quantify. We are dealing with a tangle of taxes, subsidies, fiscal advantages, hidden support, and price guarantees.

Yet, it is realistic to estimate that around 4–5% of GDP is being burned outside market mechanisms.

With the expansion of the trading system and the massive increase in climate subsidies, Germany will lose €150–200 billion in productive capital annually. It is therefore no exaggeration to call Brussels’ climate policy a poverty engine – one that is systematically draining Europe’s industrial base in global competition.

The EU has established a Climate Social Fund (CSF), initially equipped with around €10 billion per year, to support households and small businesses in the so-called green transformation. This shows Brussels is fully aware of the consequences – making this policy ethically all the more reprehensible.

We are witnessing increasing centralization of political power in Brussels – justified by the moral imperative of carbon dioxide – a civilizational bow to the climate cult.

* * * 

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.

In a hugely significant, though not totally unexpected development, President Trump has exempted Hungary from sanctions over its continued purchases of Russian oil and gas for a period one year, according to a BBC report, citing a White House official.

The news follows Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Friday trip to the Washington where he was hosted for a state visit in the Oval Office. After being received very warmly by the US president, Trump conceded “it’s very difficult for him [Orban] to get the oil and gas from other areas”.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó soon followed with a message on X declaring the US had given Budapest “a full and unlimited exemption from sanctions on oil and gas.”

But that’s when a White House official told press agencies that it would not be unlimited as Budapest was claiming, but was issued for a one-year period.

Late last month the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed its latest sanctions on Russia’s largest oil producers, Rosneft and Lukoil – after Trump had for months delayed this move amid hopes of finding a speedy ceasefire in Ukraine – but has expressed frustration and essentially given up on this, it appears.

Hungary’s Foreign Ministry had at the time immediately proclaimed in the wake of that US action, “We are working on how to circumvent this sanction.“ 

Still, Orban and Trump have long seen eye to eye on blasting ‘warmongers’ in the EU. Trump alluded to this Friday in stating, “He [Orban] understands Putin and knows him very well… I think that Viktor feels we’re going to get that war ended in the not-too-distant future.”

Orban for his part claimed Hungary is the only US ally in Europe which truly wants lasting peace in Ukraine, and with Russia. “All the other governments prefer to continue the war because many of them think that Ukraine can win on the front line, which is a misunderstanding of the situation,” Orban said Friday.

Trump at one point asked him: “So you would say that Ukraine cannot win that war?” To which Orban replied: “You know, a miracle can happen.”

Below: Another interesting moment of shared vision on immigration problems…

Hungary’s Viktor Orban: “We are the only gov in Europe that considers itself a modern Christian gov. All other govs are, in fact, liberal, left-wing governments”

Trump later warned Europe: “There will be no Europe if they don’t stop illegal migration.”

pic.twitter.com/FOQOuQVh5a

— Ben Leo (@benleo444) November 7, 2025

This new one-year exemption for Budapest comes after during the Biden administration Washington and Brussels for years sought to cut off Europe from Russian oil and gas. This meant Hungary would likely be forced to buy more expensive US-produced liquefied natural gas (LNG) – as much of the rest of Europe has done.

But Orban’s consistent position has been that as a logistically-challenged, landlocked country it has little choice but to stick with its traditional dependencies in terms of energy sourcing, and that it can’t just immediately diversify without tanking the entire national economy.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

On Thursday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz hosted top executives from the German steel industry at a summit in the the Chancellery to discuss solutions to the deepening crisis. Since the peak year of 2018, German steel production has fallen by around 25 percent.

Germany’s economic crisis is accelerating. Sky-high energy costs, relentless competition from China and India, and the EU’s absurd push for “green steel”—a climate-neutral variant no one demands on the world market—are pushing companies either into insolvency or out of the country.

Thursday’s meeting will bring together industry representatives, unions, and policymakers to chart the next steps for a sector facing its most severe turbulence in decades.

This is just the latest in a string of crisis summits orchestrated by the federal government for media effect. Awareness is demonstrated—solutions? Not so much. For Germany’s economy, political “solutions” increasingly mean one standard instrument: more subsidies.

A One-Issue Summit

Aside from the expected push for protective tariffs, the summit can be reduced to a single dispute: the so-called industrial electricity price. While many energy-intensive companies already receive partial relief, it is far from enough to remain internationally competitive.

Industrial electricity prices have hovered around 16–17 ct/kWh for months. German industry still pays up to 70 percent more than U.S. or French competitors, who benefit from nuclear power as their energy base.

This is the cost of the green transition.

And with it come job losses, shrinking value creation, and, for the first time, sharply declining municipal tax revenues.

Unsurprisingly, the federal government is ready to approve this subsidy. We are deep in a spiral of interventionism.

Costs Unclear

Economics Minister Katerina Reiche did not provide a specific budget but indicated that state electricity subsidies for energy-intensive industries—from chemicals to steel to paper—could start on January 1, 2026.

The German Economic Institute (IW) estimates the scaled-back industrial power scheme at around €4 billion per year. Two years ago, a parliamentary expert hearing even mentioned €50 billion. Realistically, the final cost will likely land in the low double-digit billions.

As always, taxpayers will foot the bill—either directly through higher levies or indirectly via debt-financed programs, whose costs are offset by inflation.

In truth, the summit is all about subsidies. Were it not for the European Commission, which—surprisingly—is still blocking the plan, insisting on strict state-aid limits: no more than 50 percent of energy consumption and only for three years. Why the Commission blocks here is unclear. But it is the biggest hurdle for this new multibillion-euro subsidy.

Green Deal Fails

The frequency of summits is telling. Germany’s transition to a climate-neutral economy has already failed. Reality refuses to bend to Brussels’ Green Deal diktat.

Meanwhile, thousands of self-appointed climate ideologues gather at COP30 in Brazil, as criticism of Brussels’ climate and regulatory policies grows loud.

German industry sees laws like the so-called Supply Chain Act—as a gateway to full regulatory control along entire value chains—as a major obstacle. Even agreeing on a seemingly competitive industrial power price cannot hide the Kafkaesque bureaucracy from Berlin and Brussels.

In the past three years alone, German companies had to create 325,000 additional positions—not for production, innovation, or export, but solely to meet ever-growing bureaucratic demands. Absurd. Anti-economic. Destructive.

Harbinger of Failure

Now the state intervenes again in a derailed economy. A subsidized industrial electricity price is an unmistakable sign—indeed, a warning—that Germany’s energy transition has failed.

What industry knows and the political-media climate complex denies: under the state-directed green energy market, competitive production of energy-intensive goods is impossible. With cheap Russian gas cut off and nuclear plants being decommissioned, other countries—especially the U.S.—will seize industrial production, leveraging lower energy costs. Deregulation in the U.S. energy sector under Donald Trump’s administration adds to this shift.

Political ethics would demand a candid debate about decades of wasted subsidies, misallocated resources, and collapsing industrial structures. But that is absent.

No Sustainable Solution in Sight

A subsidized industrial electricity price is just another patch in a quilt of subsidies and exemptions. It admits the failure of the green transition and the impossibility of planning complex economic processes on a drawing board.

Returning to cheap Russian gas as a stopgap to ease energy costs is politically impossible under current EU policy. The solution resembles a shell game: money is taken from one group (via taxes or debt, inflation delayed) and given to another—energy-intensive companies.

Europeans must accept importing overpriced U.S. LNG and continuing to fund a failed green subsidy economy. It is time to relearn the basics of economics.

* * * 

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 Gerry Bowler via The Epoch Times,

On the stroke of 11 a.m. on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, fighting ceased on the Western Front, bringing an end to what contemporaries were calling the Great War—the most destructive conflict in world history up to that point. Rejoicing and relief were the order of the day, at least on the Allied side.

The headlines of the Ottawa Citizen read: “PEACE! World War Ends; Armistice Signed; Kaiser Is Out; Revolution Grows.” In Montreal, Le Devoir reported: “Workers … arrived at their factories with their hearts light, liberated from a great burden. In the animated streets, pedestrians were brandishing newspapers with large smiles, their eyes brimming with fire.” The Winnipeg Free Press reported, “Winnipeg Goes Wild With Joy of Peace.”

Church bells rang across Canada, spontaneous processions broke out, liquor flowed, bands played, and tens of thousands of women and children wondered when their fathers, husbands, and sons would be demobilized and ready to come home.

Among the cities of the defeated Central Powers, the reaction was less jubilant.

In Berlin, the news was, “Berlin Seized By Revolutionists: New Chancellor Begs For Order; Ousted Kaiser Flees To Holland.” The Neue Freie Presse in Vienna read, “The Empire Collapses.”

Front-page stories across Germany and Austro-Hungary covered food shortages, public protests, and the turmoil that followed the proclamation of peace.

In the ranks of the Canadian Corps on the front lines in Belgium there was naturally jubilation, but that feeling was also mixed with anger—anger that their commander, Lt.-Gen. Sir Arthur Currie, had ordered continued attacks on the German-held city of Mons right up until the last moment, even though he knew an end to the war would soon be declared.

Currie’s decision had particular significance for Pte. George Price of Port Williams, Nova Scotia.

Price and his fellow soldiers of the 28th Battalion were advancing against enemy positions in Ville-sur-Haine on the morning of Nov. 11 when he was shot by a German sniper.

He died two minutes before the armistice, the last Canadian soldier and, indeed, the last British Commonwealth soldier, to perish in the war.

A photo of Canadian soldier Pte. George Price is shown in the Belgian village of Ville-sur-Haine on Aug. 3, 2014, the day before a ceremony to commemorate 100 years since the start of World War I. AP Photo/Virginia Mayo

The 28th Battalion was a Western Canadian outfit, with troops drawn largely from Saskatchewan and Manitoba. It had fought with distinction in many of the great battles on the Western Front, including the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Hill 70, and the final assault on Mons in 1918.

Price had been working in Moose Jaw for the Canadian Pacific Railway when he was conscripted in 1917; he trained in Regina before being shipped to Europe, arriving with his unit in June 1918. He was wounded in a poison gas attack but rejoined his battalion in time for more fighting at Canal du Nord and Cambrai, before dying on Armistice Day. He is buried in St. Symphorien Military Cemetery in Belgium.

Today, Sir Arthur Currie is remembered as a brilliant military leader, an innovator, an opponent of the “war of attrition,” and an architect of the great Canadian victory at Vimy Ridge.

Immediately after the war, however, he came in for intense criticism.

The nickname “Butcher” was attached to him; some called for his court-martial, and many decried him for needlessly sacrificing lives for what was a symbolic victory.

In 1928, he sued the Port Hope Evening Guide newspaper for accusing him of wasting lives. During the trial, he argued that to cease fighting early would have been disobedience and treason, and that his orders for the last day of the war stressed caution and minimizing casualties. The jury found in his favour but awarded him only a token sum in damages. The trial seems to have broken Currie’s spirit and he died five years later, having never fully recovered his health.

War is cruel, and the worse the conflict and higher the casualty count, the less individual deaths appear to matter.

World War I claimed 20 million lives, a number of dead too vast to imagine – but that figure comprises 20 million individual stories, 20 million tragedies that preceded George Price.

Among those who died in the last minutes of the war were Augustin Trébuchon, a shepherd from Lozère who was the last Frenchman to be killed, a mere 13 minutes before Price died, and Henry Gunther of Baltimore, the last American to die. Gunther was shot in the very last minute of the war, charging a machine gun nest manned by Germans who, knowing of the impending ceasefire, begged him to stop.

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

Authored by Chris Morrison via DailySceptic.org,

The next two weeks of COP30 will see three favourite climate scares relentlessly broadcast to promote the fast-fading hard-Left Net Zero fantasy.

They are:

1. breaching a 1.5°C global ‘threshold’ leading to runaway temperatures;

2. human-caused tipping points producing unimaginable natural disasters;

3. and attribution of single-event bad weather to the use of natural hydrocarbons.

The 1.5°C figure is a meaningless number invented by politicians and activists to concentrate Net Zero minds; tipping points are climate model codswallop; and ditto attribution crystal ball-gazing.

None of them are backed up by credible scientific evidence and observation.

Which of course is why political elites have trashed the scientific process of inquiry, banned and cancelled any dissenting discussion and declared the matter ‘settled’.

The foundation scam is temperature. The world is said to be warming dramatically, leading to tipping points and worsening extreme weather. Changes are said to be occurring at unprecedented rates and are caused primarily by humans increasing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. In fact the temperature rise is small, about 1°C over 200 years (making allowance for all the fake temperature estimates and urban heat-ravaged measurements) and similar rises are commonplace in both the historical and paleo record. The recent ‘hottest evah’ rises have been seen in the past – sudden changes in temperature are caused by sudden local events such as volcano eruptions. As it happens, the underwater Hunga Tonga volcano released vast quantity of water vapour into the upper atmosphere in 2022, a ‘greenhouse’ warming event that would have been helped along by a recent strong El Niño oscillation. Recent accurate satellite measurements show the overall global temperature has been falling during 2025.

Don’t take my word for all this natural movement. Professor Mark Maslin is a Professor of something termed Earth Systems Science at UCL and one of the authors of a recent tipping point report timed for COP30. This particular computer model-based bilge suggested that warm water corals may already be crossing their “thermal tipping points”, despite the fact that coral has been around for hundreds of millions of years and survives in waters between 24-32°C. This would appear to be the same Mark Maslin who as a humble geography lecturer in 1999 wrote a paper that said possibly most of the large climate changes involving movements of several degrees occurred at most on a timescale of a few centuries, sometimes decades, “and perhaps even a few years”. These days he whines that “Earth is already becoming unliveable”, while climate change politics helps build “a new political and socio-economic system”. In 2018, he was one of a number of eco-activists who signed a letter to the Guardian saying they would no longer “lend their credibility” by debating climate science scepticism.

No wonder people like Maslin – needless to say a BBC regular on all learned climate Armageddon matters – walked away from climate science debate.

Tying CO2 levels to rising temperatures to make Left-wing political capital relies on observations from just a few recent years. Widen the observations out to hundreds and then hundreds of millions of years gives a different picture. Sometimes temperatures rise and fall at the same time as CO2, sometimes not. Sometimes even CO2 levels rise before the following temperatures, more often than not they don’t. The simple explanation that warming gases such as CO2 become ‘saturated’ once they pass certain concentrations, with heating falling off a logarithmic cliff, is a scientific hypothesis or opinion, but it has much to offer when past observational evidence is considered.

Let us consider some of these observations starting with the long term record over 600 million years. The graph below shows wide temperature-CO2 divergence.

Over 600 million years it is difficult to observe any general lockstep connection between temperature and gas. It might, however, be noted that over 600 million years, CO2 has generally been declining in the atmosphere to the near denuded levels seen today. As we have seen over the last 40 years even small rises in CO2 lead to significant planet-wide biomass growth. All that CO2 was good for the dinosaurs who roamed the Earth until 66 million years ago, with levels more than three times higher than today. The little extra has also been good for humans since recent crop yields have soared and helped to alleviate naturally-occurring world famine.

These records of course are very long term and are compiled from proxies with accuracy only to a few thousand years. In the more immediate record we find additional and conclusive proof that CO2 is not the main climate thermostat. Temperatures in medieval times were similar to today, possibly slightly higher in the Roman period and often 3-4°C higher in the Holocene thermal maximum around 8,000 to 5,000 years ago. During these periods, CO2 was remarkably stable around 260 parts per million, a mark that is in fact dangerously low to sustain life on Earth. The notorious Michael-Mann-1,000-year temperature ‘hockey stick’ removed the linking problem by abolishing the medieval warming period and the subsequent little ice age that ran up to around 1800.

Remarkable recent scientific evidence has emerged to suggest that abrupt rises in temperature have been a feature of the global climate going back to the iceless Jurassic period over 150 million years ago. Dramatic temperature changes based on 1,500-year cycles, as the younger Maslin can testify, have been known to have occurred in Greenland and the North Atlantic. But a group of French scientists led by Slah Boulila from the Sorbonne found large temperature hikes going back millions of years across the globe. The scientists noted warming up to 15°C within a few decades, “pointing to abrupt and severe changes in Earth’s past climate”. The 1,500 year cycles are often called Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events after the scientists who discovered them. Some scientists have downplayed the initial DO findings and suggested the short term temperatures rises of around 1.5°C were caused by specific northern hemisphere oscillations of ice sheets and surrounding waters.

However, the French scientists note: “The 1,500-year cycle is documented in both hemispheres, in other oceans and in continents.” Their work is said to support the global nature of DO-like events, and in particular that their potential primary cause is independent of ice sheet dynamics. Meanwhile, scientific evidence continues to grow indicating much higher temperatures a few thousand years ago. One recent paper found the plant Ceratopteris had grown 8,000 years ago at 40°N in northern China, suggesting winter temperatures 7.7°C higher than today. Another found types of molluscs surviving in the Arctic Svalbard 9,000 years ago that indicated temperatures were 6°C warmer.

The current Net Zero fantasy rests on catastrophising tiny temperature rises that frankly are not even measured properly, demonising CO2 boosts that are helping Earth return to a more healthy biosphere and atmospheric balance, inventing ‘tipping points’ using junk computer models and insulting the intelligence with untestable tales claiming humans are making the weather worse.

And they call us sceptics the ‘deniers’.