1/ FT report today that gas demand has fallen. But in reality this is just the beginning of Europe’s coming deindustrialisation. Short 🧵.
2/ The paper notes that most of the decline in use is due to industry paring back. With prices so high, gas usage is disincentivised.
3/ This is reflected in the PMI which started to go negative (>50) in the summer months, at the same time as the FT chart shows gas usage falling below normal levels. With high gas prices, producing goods in Europe stopped making economic sense.
4/ And the paper notes what many of us have been saying for some time: this isn’t a single year crisis. If something doesn’t change, this will be ongoing for years and European industry will cease to exist. The continent will be impoverished.
5/ Recently Russia has confirmed it will not sell oil to countries engaged in the price cap. Russian oil makes up 20-30% of European supply. Unless something changes layer oil shortages on top of deindustrialisation. This will mean major supply chain breakdowns and shortages.
6/ British business groups are already warning of a ‘lost decade’. Unless something changes on the energy front what that really means is a sharp fall in living standards and possibly a depression.
7/ For those who think that Europe can rearm with its industry shut down, inflation and shortages, runaway inflation and falling living standards: please take an intro level economics course and figure out how armies etc are paid for.
8/ The recent decline in the European PMI is just the beginning. It’s this next six months that we’ll start seeing a serious collapse of European manufacturing.
9/ Looks like it’ll be primary products that’ll be hit worst. Expect shortages of metals, chemicals (including fertiliser), plastic and food. Food and fertiliser shortages will at least create serious food inflation, at worst serious food shortages and malnutrition.
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1/ You may have seen press coverage of big anti-government rallies in Hungary where it is claimed that the opposition is now ahead in the polls. When you look into the polls, however, there is something very strange going on. Strong evidence of manipulation. 🧵
2/ The main source that you see cited for the status of polling around the Hungarian 2026 election is Wikipedia. Everyone is snobby about Wiki, but the reality is that it's a go-to for journalists and researchers.
3/ The Wiki poll shows the opposition pulling ahead of the ruling party in Hungary around the start of 2025. Yet when you dig into the numbers there are some serious anomalies that suggest manipulation.
1/ Short thread on why $NVDA is way overvalued and why the stock looks set to fall hard these next few weeks - including some very rough estimates that show a 75% price decline. 📉🧵
2/ $NVDA has been soaring on rapidly growing data centre revenue. Companies are buying up GPUs to gear up for the AI revolution.
3/ Hard to overstate how reliant $NVDA is on these revenues. In Q3 2024 they made around 83% of total revenues!
1/ What is actually happening in Argentina? Has Milei fixed the country? Or do the deep structural problems remain - and are they getting worse? 🇦🇷🧵
2/ The main positive headline is that the Milei government’s cuts have created a government surplus. They have, but this is a distraction as the government deficit was never causing the inflation.
3/ In 2023 the deficit was less than 3% of GDP which is quite modest. For context, Argentina’s neighbour Brazil had a deficit of nearly 9% in 2023 and inflation is below 5%. Milei’s obsession with the deficit is not serious economic analysis.
1/ The media isn’t reporting it but the Biden administration appears to be going into full Hitler-in-the-bunker mode and trying to destroy global energy markets to crush the EU economy and lower American living standards through more inflation to hurt Trump. 🧵
2/ It started with a new sanctions package quietly rolled out on Nov 21st a few weeks after the election. Most didn’t pay attention as the Russian sanctions have been seen as redundant by smart people for over a year now.
3/ But these sanctions were different. They used sanctions on Gazprombank - which the EU buys gas through - to try to interfere with EU energy supplies.
1/ EXCLUSIVE. After extensive investigation and months of on-the-ground reporting I am now able to provide a deep anthropological exposé of the Turboamerica Ecosystem. Join me as I explore this strange and exotic phenomenon. 🚀🇺🇸🧵
2/ The ecosystem is populated with two broad species of creatures. At the top of the hierarchy we have the ‘slopbloggers’ and at the bottom we have the ‘chudpoasters’.
3/ Chudpoasters derive their name from the slur popularised by dirtbag leftist writers some years ago. This characterisation of the right-wing was inaccurate as the right is remarkably intellectually interesting right now but it was correct in that chuds do exist.
1/ With China beefing up its gold reserves and largely opting out of the market for foreign holdings of US Treasuries - which is already causing liquidity problems - it’s useful to get a sense of what the Chinese are saying about this internally. 🧵
2/ Here we turn to the latest issue of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations’ journal. CICIR is an important government-affiliated think tank that has been around since 1965. So borderline official doctrine coming from this shop.
3/ In the Contents section we see not one, but two articles on the US dollar. ‘The Exorbitant Privilege of US Treasuries and China’s Choice in the New Era’ and ‘Impact of Financial Sanctions on the Dollar’s International Status’.