The Northern Sea Route offers a safer, faster, and more geopolitically convenient path—bypassing seas patrolled by the imperialistic American armada while trimming both fuel bills and freight times.

In short, it’s the trade route for those who prefer profits over politics.

In the Middle Kingdom, prices continue their quiet descent—September marked the 36th straight month of factory-gate deflation, a streak not seen since Deng’s reform days. Consumer prices slipped 0.3%, thanks to cheaper dumplings and pork, while the core CPI quietly climbed to a 19-month high. As Confucius might say, “When noodles fall but wages do not rise, wisdom lies not in printing more yuan, but in finding who’s still eating well.”

Despite Beijing’s best efforts to end the factory price wars, deflation keeps marching on like a disciplined PLA parade—nine straight quarters of falling prices, the longest stretch since records began in 1992. The GDP deflator sits around -1.3%, signaling too much supply, too little demand, and too few profits for everyone from shopkeepers to the state. Even with the inflation target trimmed to 2%—the lowest in over twenty years—prices remain as flat as a Beijing pancake. As Confucius might quip, “When prices fall for too long, even the emperor must learn to bargain.”

The silver lining in China’s deflation saga is that the strongest companies are quietly winning the price war. For 37 consecutive months, the spread between core CPI and PPI has stayed positive, allowing sector leaders to benefit from falling input costs while maintaining pricing power. In true Darwinian fashion, only the fittest firms will survive this deflationary battlefield—emerging stronger, more efficient, and ready to fuel the next “deflationary boom” of the Middle Kingdom. When prices fall, wise merchants rise.

In a nutshell, in the Middle Kingdom, deflation marches on like a disciplined parade, rewarding only the fittest firms—proving that when prices fall, wise merchants rise.

While visiting the “Holy Land” to spread what looks less like Pax Americana and more like Pax Judaica, Donald Copperfield delivered a Knesset performance worthy of Orwell’s Animal Farm meets Las Vegas.
With his trademark humility, he reminisced about his favorite donors, the late Sheldon and his wife Miriam —patrons of the temple of gaming and geopolitics.

When asked whether she loved Israel or the U.S. more, Miriam “refused to answer”—Trump-speak for “Israel wins by a landslide.” Grinning before the Knesset, he joked, “She’s got $60 billion in the bank and loves Israel.” He reminisced about Sheldon’s White House drop-ins: “He’d call—‘Can I come over?’ I’d say, ‘Sheldon, I’m the President.’ He came anyway—and somehow, the Golan Heights got annexed.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/10/13/trump_i_asked_megadonor_miriam_adelson_if_she_loves_us_or_israel_more_and_she_didnt_answer_that_means.html

One irony of the Peace Maker in Chief’s strong insinuation today about Miriam A. — that she loves Israel more than the U.S. — is that such a statement is actually forbidden and punishable as “anti-Semitism” under the expanded IHRA hate speech rules that he himself forced Americans to adopt.


https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-13899-combating-anti-semitism

In today’s empire of illusions, even foreign policy seems to run on casino credit and campaign donations.

The eternal dance of dragons and tulips continues. Act Two in the China-West boardroom saga: China bars Nexperia from exporting chips from its sprawling 80,000 m² Guangdong factory—not just to the Netherlands, but all of Europe. The Dutch claim heroically to protect sensitive tech, yet the wisdom of Confucius whispers: “He who blocks the river finds the flood redirected.” Guangdong can now finish its chips at home, sidestepping the Dutch entirely, while Europe risks jobs and shortages as demand surges with technological leaps. Meanwhile, China quietly prepares to test and expand on its own soil—proving that in the grand game of chips, patience and scale often outwit pomp and decree.

https://nltimes.nl/2025/10/14/china-imposes-export-ban-dutch-intervention-chipmaker-nexperia

Newly surfaced documents reveal that the U.S. leaned hard on the Dutch to replace Nexperia’s CEO—or face the dreaded entity list. With the Commerce Department now treating all Chinese-owned subsidiaries as extensions of the parent, the pressure was unmistakable: “The CEO remains Chinese—problematic,” the meeting notes sniff. Dutch courts nodded along, approving the seizure, balancing both U.S. influence and their own wariness of Beijing. Europe frets over Russia and suspects China of fuelling Putin’s ambitions, turning economic policy into a battlefield.

In this modern Confucian parable: the free market becomes cannon fodder, while geopolitical manoeuvres masquerade as corporate governance.

https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2025:2752&showbutton=true&keyword=nexperia&idx=1

As the U.S. government stumbles into week three of its shutdown, the swamp’s latest drama centers on whether to keep juicing Obamacare subsidies past 2025 or let the GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” boot 10 million Americans off insurance. But behind the curtain, it’s less about healthcare—and more about who gets to play doctor with the national budget.

https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/10/02/what-are-democrats-demanding-to-reopen-the-government

The Blue, who ran the U.S. Empire into the ground between 2020 and 2024, are now begging the White House to undo the “pocket rescission” Donald Copperfield pulled off in August 2025—one of the few executive tricks that actually deserved a standing ovation.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/08/historic-pocket-rescission-package-eliminates-woke-weaponized-and-wasteful-spending/

The Blue crew refuses to reopen the government unless $5 billion in taxpayer “aid” gets shipped abroad—because apparently, Washington can’t function without funding the world’s problems first. $1.8 billion should flow through USAID and its favorite NGOs (also known as retirement plans for politicians), $900 million should go to global health bureaucrats, and $850 million funds “disaster relief” in war zones no one can find on a map. Add $700 million for failed peacekeeping missions, $600 million to teach others about corruption (from the masters themselves), and $440 million for the usual UN alphabet soup. The fine print? $25 million for Honduras’ “climate resiliency,” $5 million for Balkan LGBTQ grants, and $2 million for feminist programs in Africa. Apparently, the U.S. government can’t reopen until everyone else gets paid first.

https://youtu.be/Bn6r9K9FzI0

The Blue can’t seem to grasp why the Red won’t sign off on another $1.5 trillion spending spree—just a casual 25% boost to an already bloated budget.

Yet they parade around the cameras, pretending the GOP is crushing the “middle-class dream.” In reality, these same politicians already buried the middle class years ago and are now digging up what’s left of the U.S. economy—all while padding their own pockets.

With the government still snoozing through what’s shaping up to be the longest shutdown in U.S. history, Wall Street turned its lonely eyes to the Beige Book — the Fed’s equivalent of watching paint dry, and the paint’s still wet. Economic activity was “little changed,” with a mix of districts reporting either slight growth, no change, or mild softening — thrilling stuff. Consumer spending dipped, manufacturing yawned, and AI is quietly taking people’s jobs while everyone pretends it’s fine. Prices rose “modestly” (translation: not great, but we’ll survive), and the Fed politely noted that wages are ticking up now that illegal labour has thinned out — a rare win for actual workers.

In short, despite the doom merchants screaming “recession,” the Beige Book reads more like a half-empty latte: tepid, overpriced, but still standing.

The Macro Butler was back at Piggo’s Trading Desk for another round of financial mischief — dissecting the chaos brewing in U.S. regional banks and how the Fed might reach for the liquidity firehose (again).

We also uncorked why Oil Is Well, and why the smart money is rotating from energy consumers to producers — all while gold polishes its throne on the road to $6,000 by the end of 2026.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-piggos-trading-desk-1b8

In a rare plot twist of competence, Donald Copperfield did something useful: he sent the National Guard to clean up the Democrat-run “sanctuary cities,” where chaos had become a form of governance. The result? Crime rates nosedived faster than Sleepy Joe’s approval ratings — D.C. saw violent crime drop 50%, burglaries 48%, homicides 57%, and auto thefts 36%. Citizens finally feel safe walking their own streets again. Naturally, the media is howling about “military dictatorship,” but Orwell would note — it’s only tyranny when chaos replaces order.

https://www.wisn.com/article/washington-dc-crime-national-guard-numbers/66041799

Funny how history plays tricks — ‘The Barack’, the self-styled humanitarian, deported more people than Donald Copperfield ever did, back when borders still meant something. The Democrats’ sudden concern for “freedom” isn’t about liberty at all — it’s about control over a restless crowd they themselves destabilized.

They now insist the police are enough, conveniently forgetting their own party led the “defund the police” crusade and sparked nationwide chaos.

Meanwhile, Americans are simply relieved to see their streets safe again. There’s something chilling about how “folks” like The Barack seem to prefer America in ruins — as long as they’re the ones ruling the ashes.

🤵 The Macro Butler Weekly Digest 🤵

🌐 Bitcoin, hailed as “digital gold,” is in reality the ‘Block Chain’ designed to trap investors in a digital gulag. 🌐

Read more here: https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/bitcoin-the-gold-of-digital-fools

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