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https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/bitcoin-the-gold-of-digital-fools-638

After Fitch’s slap, France got another love letter from S&P Global — a downgrade from AA– to A+, because apparently “budget uncertainty remains elevated.” Translation: Paris can’t stop spending. Investors are now watching the political farce of yet another “Le-Corniaud” government, where socialists flirt with power just long enough to keep the lights on until the next episode of French Politics: The Comedy Continues.

With two downgrades in barely a month, France has now joined Spain and Portugal in the A+ club — six steps above junk, but sinking fast. The government survives by handing out deficits like candy, shelving pension reform, and praying Moody’s doesn’t show up on October 24 with more bad news.

France’s 39-year-old twice lamed duck prime minister has nobly decided to give up Article 49.3 — the constitutional cheat code every government used to push budgets through without a vote. Admirable, perhaps, but it now leaves him trying to herd a parliament that can’t agree on lunch, let alone spending cuts. The goal is to trim the deficit to 4.7% of GDP next year from 5.4%, though lawmakers have plenty of “latitude” to negotiate it wider — because nothing says fiscal discipline like flexibility on deficits. S&P, ever the realist, expects the shortfall to barely budge to 5.3% and warns that France is going through its worst political chaos since 1958. Even fresh elections wouldn’t guarantee anything but more noise and no credible reform plan. Finance Minister insists the downgrade is simply “a call to be serious” — which, in Parisian fiscal terms, means debating austerity over croissants until year-end and hoping the bond market doesn’t lose its patience first.

In a nutshell, France just got another downgrade love letter as Paris keeps spending like a socialist on vacation, proving once again that fiscal discipline in France is mostly a theoretical concept discussed over croissants.

As the CCP rolls out its annual plenum red carpet, China’s consumer engine keeps sputtering along. Retail sales tiptoe around 4 trillion yuan a month—up slightly from 4.2 trillion-yuan last month, setting a record for September… if you squint hard enough.

Growth? Barely keeping pace with a toddler on a tricycle, far below pre-pandemic highs or the economy’s own lofty ambitions.

The tale of China’s two-speed economy rolls on: consumer spending slows while industrial output keeps chugging. The shocker? Fixed-asset investment tumbled 0.5% through the first nine months of the year—the worst performance since 2020—highlighting that even the industrial engine can’t fully offset flagging investment.

In a nutshell, China’s economy slams the brakes on consumers and investment, leaving only industrial output to keep the two-speed engine sputtering toward “Make China Great Again.”

While Donald Copperfield miraculously keeps his promises—blocking illegal crossings and deploying ICE and the National Guard to curb chaos unleashed under Sleepy Joe—the UK and France, guided by Malthusian Keynesian wisdom, roll out their grand pilot scheme: the pompously named “One In, One Out.”
For every asylum seeker sent back from the UK to France, one “deserving” newcomer from France may enter—assuming they obey the rules and have a credible claim.

Kabuki immigration at its finest.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwywv34w00ro

How does this “solve” the migrant crisis? It doesn’t. France will process all returned migrants, then send back a few “vetted” ones to the UK—so long as they pass a flimsy security check and haven’t tried to cross illegally before.
Target: single males, the usual “asylum seeker” demographic. UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood hails it as a “breakthrough,” while digital IDs are needed to sort the chaos. By comparison, the previous Rwanda plan spent £700 million and deported… four people. Progress, British style.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/migrants-rwanda-cost-hotels-taxpayer-small-boats-channel-gangs-yvette-cooper-b1172158.html

The Labour Government proudly keeps “Asylum Hotel California” open. Under the so-called “One In, One Out” scheme, migrants are returned to France, funded by UK taxpayers.

Meanwhile, 49,341 intruders crossed in just six months, a 27% rise, 88% arriving by small boat, outsmarting the once-feared British Navy via canoe.

While invoking the ever-looming Russian threat to justify their Malthusian dreams, Europe’s Davos-backed, lame-duck rulers keep cozying up to Russian oil and gas.

In a bold act of forward-looking logic, the EU has decreed that all Russian energy imports must vanish by 2028—after signing new contracts through 2026 and enjoying the old ones until 2028. Peace, prosperity, and coherence, all on schedule—pending the Brussels Bureaucrat’s rubber stamp.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/eu-agrees-gradually-end-russian-gas-imports-by-january-1-2028-2025-10-20/

Cutting Russian gas imports is apparently Europe’s masterstroke of energy strategy—rerouting billions, building infrastructure, and signing deals with barely a plan B. Volatility? Who cares, these bureaucrats are too busy patting themselves on the back. Europe dithers over relying on the U.S., where energy policy flips with every election. Meanwhile, Norway moonlights as the bloc’s top gas supplier, Qatar and Africa sign new LNG deals, and the Trans Adriatic Pipeline quietly creeps.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=EU_imports_of_energy_products_-_latest_developments

Energy is power. Power drives capital. And Europe, in its infinite wisdom, has successfully sent capital packing—thanks to its heroic crusade against Russian energy and its zeal for net-zero fantasies.

The Macro Butler sat down for a no-holds-barred conversation with Mario ZNA to uncover how the Malthusian masterminds of Davos are diligently scripting Europe’s slow descent into demographic decline—one regulation at a time—while the bureaucrats of Brussels, ever faithful to their technocratic creed, prepare the continent for its grand debut in the Digital Gulag, where freedom comes with a QR code and dissent requires two-factor authentication.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-mario-zna-17102025

While hosting the Malthusian “Gouda” from the North Atlantic Terror Organization for what feels like the hundredth episode of their Oval Office soap opera, Donald Copperfield—ever the illusionist—decided to wave his magic wand of sanctions once more at Russia. These “new measures,” we are told, will finally squeeze Moscow into submission, because apparently the last two dozen rounds just needed more belief. Anyone with a faint pulse of historical awareness knows sanctions work about as well as peace talks at a weapons expo. Still, Washington applauds Europe’s zeal in looting frozen Russian assets—so long as the proceeds go toward buying American-made weapons for Kyiv. Nothing says “defending democracy” quite like billing your allies for the ammo.

Donald Copperfield also let slip—courtesy of a hot mic in the Oval Office—that his grand “peace summit” with his Russian counterpart in Budapest has been quietly shelved. The meeting, trumpeted days ago with all the pomp of a royal decree, has now vanished into the same diplomatic fog where truth and strategy go to die.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LReg8dSmmpY

In a nutshell, Donald Copperfield’s latest act of diplomacy saw him conjure yet another round of Russian sanctions while quietly cancelling his grand Budapest “peace summit”—proving once again that illusion, not resolution, is Washington’s true foreign policy.

While Washington’s shutdown circus drags on, the U.S. Treasury quietly slipped out $66 million in a 19-year, 10-month note (CUSIP UN6). The auction’s high yield of 4.506%—up from 3.953% last month—managed to stop through the When-Issued rate by 1.2 bps, marking its first clean win since July after two lackluster, tailing auctions.

The bid-to-cover ratio jumped to 63.6% from 56.4%, though it still trailed the six-auction average of 67.3%. Direct bidders took 26.3%—a touch above their 23.1% norm—while Dealers ended up with 10.0%, roughly matching the 9.6% average.

Overall, this was a surprising auction, as most investors seem unaware that in the coming Trump stagflation—fueled by wars and shortages—the “risk-free” asset is no longer free of risk.