In a nutshell, the Fed’s latest “not-QE” stunt is just QE in a fake mustache—$40B in bill buys, more to come, and likely a quiet slide into longer maturities once markets squeal.

The great AI round-tripping circus rolls on, and now Mickey Mouse has waddled into the ring. Disney and OpenAI have patched up their video-rights spat and inked a three-year deal that lets Sora churn out fan-prompted clips starring 200+ Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars characters—basically the entire childhood IP vault. In return, Disney will shovel $1 billion into OpenAI and snag some equity warrants, because nothing says “innovation” like paying a fortune to license back your own characters.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/openai-disney-sora-ai-videos-rcna248617

In short: Uncle Scrooge hands OpenAI a billion dollars so he can hopefully make back… a billion dollars. The AI bubble’s round-tripping game lives on.

This isn’t some forgotten outpost in the Sahel or one of the “third countries” the Educated Yet Idiots in charge of Europe love to lecture.
No—this is Brussels: the proud capital of Eurostan’s bureaucratic Keynesian empire and the home base of the North Atlantic Terror Organization, better known as NATO.

Europe’s downfall isn’t a mystery; it’s the predictable result of letting incompetent Keynesian visionaries run the show while waving in waves of unchecked immigration that have turned the EU’s capital—and much of its periphery—into sprawling shantytowns where the rule of law died quietly, unreported.

To anyone still residing in Eurostan: the hourglass is nearly empty… time to leave before the gate slams shut.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX16UxlT0fU

🤵 The Macro Butler Weekly Digest 🤵

🌐 AI isn't disruption; it's a civilizational hack, with a shockwave felt globally. 🌐

Read more here: https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/ais-civilizational-shockwave

On a scale from mildly confused to fully committed ‘Covidiot’, where did you land?

https://youtu.be/oYb8VvXfTeQ

Listen to a summary of The Macro Butler weekly newsletter via podcast on Substack; YouTube; Rumble & TikTok.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/ais-civilizational-shockwave-podcast

As the Jubilee year nears its close, China finds itself practicing restraint not by choice but by circumstance. Retail sales barely stirred, rising a modest 1.3%—their weakest showing outside the plague years—while investment continued its silent retreat and property crumbled without ceremony. Factories worked, though with less vigour, unemployment stood still, and policymakers nodded solemnly that “challenges remain,” as sages always do.

In a nutshell, China is discovering that patience is a virtue—especially when consumers refuse to spend and the world is no longer eager to buy.

Without warning, hundreds of Porsche vehicles across Russia were remotely rendered useless, their engines silenced by a “malfunction” in a satellite tracking system—an event that quietly revealed a far larger truth: modern cars are no longer owned, they are permitted.

With a flicker of connectivity loss, mobility was revoked ‘en masse’, proving that manufacturers—and by extension states—can switch off transportation at will.

Porsche denies intent, hackers are absent, and coincidence is the official line, but the message is unmistakable: in the age of digital war, compliance is enforced not with tanks, but with kill-switches, and freedom now runs on software that can be withdrawn overnight.

https://www.autoblog.com/news/all-of-russias-porsches-were-bricked-by-a-mysterious-satellite-outage

While the West debates digital promises, India is doing something refreshingly old-school—and strategically brilliant. By allowing gold and silver to be treated as mainstream investment assets, New Delhi is quietly reinforcing what its citizens have known for centuries: real money matters.

https://www.fxstreet.com/analysis/india-to-allow-gold-and-silver-investment-in-pension-funds-202512151930

This isn’t about shiny trinkets or cultural nostalgia. It’s about channeling household savings into assets that preserve purchasing power, reduce reliance on fragile financial products, and strengthen the country’s monetary resilience. In a world drowning in debt, deficits, and debasement, India is choosing gold and silver over faith-based finance.

The message is clear: when currencies wobble, trust migrates back to tangible stores of value. India isn’t chasing the future—it’s anchoring it.

Everyone with a basic grip on reality knows this wasn’t a sudden outbreak of neighbourly intolerance. It is a proxy war, dressed up as a border dispute, with the usual sponsors lurking just offstage. In 2025, Washington helpfully clarified matters by deepening its “peace-and-security” partnership with Cambodia—peace defined as military meetings, training exchanges, and influence management. General Clark flew to Phnom Penh, hands were shaken, words like stability were repeated, and the Indo-Pacific was declared safer. As always, war was peace, alignment was sovereignty, and puppetry was rebranded as partnership.

https://thediplomat.com/2025/12/us-steps-up-defense-cooperation-in-southeast-asia/

A further step toward “peace” came when Cambodia reviving the Angkor Sentinel joint military exercises, conveniently mothballed in 2017 during its flirtation with China.
By November 12, 2025, Washington rewarded this renewed enthusiasm by lifting its four-year arms embargo, praising Cambodia’s “diligent pursuit of peace and security.” The decision was sealed at the ASEAN Summit by Donald Copperfield and the Casino mogul turned prime minister Hun Manet, proving once again that obedience is sovereignty, exercises are diplomacy, and embargoes are temporary misunderstandings.

https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2025/11/12/us-lifts-cambodian-arms-embargo-after-resuming-military-exercises/

Harmony follows those who understand the direction of the current. ASEAN’s future will be shaped by its proximity to China and Russia, whose gravity is steadily increasing. States that choose dependency over balance, mistaking obedience for virtue, risk the fate of those who ignore the seasons: they find themselves isolated as the world moves on.

History teaches that nations which fail to adapt to shifting power alignments do not merely lose influence—they fade from relevance, and from memory itself.

In Eurostan, the Educated Yet Idiots have refined freedom into a spreadsheet. In Greece, citizens must now spend 30% of their income electronically to prove they are honest, modern, and suitably observable. Wages, pensions, businesses—everything counts, up to a merciful €20,000 cap.

The measure, we are assured, fights tax evasion. Translation: swipe enough or be fined. Miss the target, and a 22% penalty is imposed on your lack of digital enthusiasm. Spend too much cash, and you are guilty—not of hiding income, but of insufficient obedience.

https://minfin.gov.gr/en/tax-policy/tax-guide/income-taxation/

In Orwell’s Europe, spending is liberty, surveillance is trust, and punishment is care.

Sanctions were supposed to erase Huawei. Instead, they erased the script.

Post–Donald Copperfield 1.0 trade war: Huawei sells better phones than Apple for less, leads in tech, launches the Avita 12 with ADS 3.3.2 that drives itself better than an F1 driver—and does it without Nvidia chips.

Turns out sanctions don’t kill innovation, they just make it angry. 🍿🚗💨

https://x.com/XueJia24682/status/2000528171641557439

After the longest U.S. government shutdown on record, the BLS is finally emptying the data closet: November payrolls rose a modest 64k after October’s revised faceplant of –105k, while unemployment politely climbed to 4.6%. October’s collapse was “explained” by 162k federal workers vanishing from payrolls after deferred resignations—proof that jobs can be lost by spreadsheet. November’s rebound came from healthcare, social assistance, and construction, while transportation, leisure, and hospitality quietly exited stage left. In short: the labour market isn’t broken, just heavily edited.