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/ Central bank independence is probably coming to an end. In the short-term, this is due to radical and somewhat political moves made by the Trump administration. But in the long-term it is a failure of the ideas that were used to justify independence in the first place. 🧵
2/ Central bank independence is a technocratic competency that came out of the new model of "stakeholder democracy" especially associated with Clintonism and Blairism. Basically this is a euphemism for "rule by experts".
3/ More specifically central bank independence became popular because policymakers became convinced that central banks had used technocratic wizardry to solve the inflationary problems of the 1970s and early-1980s.
1/ WESTERN POWERS HAVE PLUNGED INTO THE BAUDRILLARDIAN SINGULARITY
Consumed by the simulation, they’ve abandoned reality. Western officials have replaced diplomatic rituals with a symbolic autism—unable to understand the actions of their foreign counterparts. @hu_conservative 🧵
2/ The West is currently experiencing crisis at multiple levels in its governance structures—but critically in the communications space.
In a few short years the West has gone from a highly coherent, professional and effective information to one marked by complete chaos. Ironically, this breakdown is generated by the West’s addiction to that same information space – and has completely destroyed its capacity to engage in rational communications or problem solving.
3/ Domestically this phenomenon is recognised in the oft-heard public pronouncement that “everything is fake.” Internationally, this can be seen in the breakdown in the capacity of the West to engage in normal diplomacy due to Western politicians and diplomats seemingly forgetting about the importance of the symbolic rituals associated with diplomacy.
1/ Everything is NOT going according to plan in Milei’s Argentina. The trade deficit is reopening, the peso is once more starting to collapse and is being propped up with an IMF loan. This was obviously going to happen to anyone familiar with the Argentinean economy. 🇦🇷🧵
2/ When Milei was first elected he promised to dollarise the Argentinean economy. Like most of his schemes this was unrealistic and so it never happened.
3/ So instead he massively devalued the peso and said allowing a “free market” in the currency would solve Argentina’s problems.
1/ The @Harvard foreign student ban is the clearest indication that America is in the midst of a serious revolution right now - easily comparable to the end of USSR. But our preconceptions - political and intellectual - prevent us from seeing this reality. 🧵
2/ Let’s start with @Harvard. It is the keystone on the entire US elite class. The American system is a “credential aristocracy”. Harvard is the top of the credentialising pyramid. Without Harvard the rest of the system - populated with Harvard grads - starts to fail.
3/ This system encompasses the Global Liberal Empire the US sustains. Harvard graduates - or those trained at the feet of Harvard graduates - are the American liberal vassals that are placed in positions of power globally.
1/ 🇨🇦🍁What we see in Canada is the collapse of global liberalism cranking into high gear. The collapse is now leading to the proliferation of ethnic tensions that are tearing the Anglo-liberal world to pieces.🧵
2/ For many years, the British made extensive efforts to maintain the Commonwealth identity of Canada. It was one of the final bastions of British soft power after Suez.
3/ In Quebec the French identity was more deeply ingrained and didn’t have to be “forced” because of the language. Although in recent times this identify has descended into a LARP.
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.