Housing debt crept up $149B, mostly mortgages, while HELOCs added a measly $9B. Meanwhile, non-housing debt threw a party: credit cards +$27B, auto loans +$13B, student loans +$7B. New auto loans hit $188B, credit card limits +$78B, HELOC limits +$18B. Basically, Americans are maxing out everything except common sense.
Almost all debt types managed to behave… except student loans. With the government ending sleepy Joe’s payment freeze, delinquency rates skyrocketed. Serious delinquencies (90+ days past due) for student loans hit 12.9%—the highest in 21 years—while autos, credit cards, mortgages, and HELOCs barely twitched, albeit already elevated.
The spike in delinquencies—especially among student loans—signals growing financial strain for American households amid high rates and weak hiring. Consumer spending already fell in H1 2025, before tariffs pushed prices higher. Meanwhile, the bankruptcy pipeline is swelling: 131,000 consumers saw new bankruptcy notations in Q2. Expect this number to skyrocket as delinquent student loans roll into defaults, bringing the student debt crisis fully into view.
As the US staggers from its inflationary boom straight into an inflationary bust, Main Street braces for more poverty while Wall Street throws a party, raking in cash from endless banker-driven wars and tightening their chokehold on the Washington swamp.
Survival of the fittest, or at least the richest
Survival of the fittest, or at least the richest
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https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/brics-gold-glory-the-dawn-of-a-new-0ae
https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/brics-gold-glory-the-dawn-of-a-new-0ae
Substack
BRICS’ Gold Glory: The Dawn of a New Era - Podcast
Listen to a summary of The Macro Butler weekly newsletter via podcast on Substack; YouTube; Rumble & TikTok.
You don’t need a PhD in the CPI (Corruption Perceptions Index) to figure out that Ukraine is basically running a masterclass in corruption—not just in Eurasia, but on a global scale.
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024/index/ukr
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024/index/ukr
So it should shock absolutely no one that Ukraine’s illegitimate president—better known as a coke-addled heel-clicking performer turned NATO’s favorite marionette—has been busy wiring $50 million a month to the UAE.
Call it his little retirement nest egg, neatly laundered from the human meat-grinder he’s running, safely tucked away for the day he finally exits stage left, far from the battlefield.
https://x.com/RepLuna/status/1956813828639138250
Call it his little retirement nest egg, neatly laundered from the human meat-grinder he’s running, safely tucked away for the day he finally exits stage left, far from the battlefield.
https://x.com/RepLuna/status/1956813828639138250
Ukraine, like every other satellite state cheerleading for the Davos crowd and their grand depopulation fantasy, is destined to vanish from the map.
After all, there won’t be a single Malthusian left standing once the world finally wakes up to a new mercantilist era—one built on economic collaboration instead of the endless economic warfare they’ve been peddling.
After all, there won’t be a single Malthusian left standing once the world finally wakes up to a new mercantilist era—one built on economic collaboration instead of the endless economic warfare they’ve been peddling.
As the war cycle turns once more, Europe trains its young for the battles of tomorrow. In Lithuania, children as young as eight are now taught to fly and build drones—tools of a conflict that will be fought by screens and circuits rather than rifles and bayonets. The state calls it “civil resistance training,” but in truth it is the quiet conscription of childhood into the machinery of perpetual war.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/13/lithuania-children-drone-training-russia-threat
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/13/lithuania-children-drone-training-russia-threat
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In Russia, the same pattern unfolds under a different banner. Defence firms quietly scout teenagers whose video game reflexes can be weaponized for drone warfare.
A game called Berloga, launched in 2022, has drawn hundreds of thousands of children into its hive-like battles, where defending against swarms earns not only high scores but extra credit in school. From there, the most skilled are funneled into competitions where recruiters watch closely. Officially, it is all for “civilian applications,” yet insiders admit the truth: every child’s project must serve a dual purpose, every lesson a preparation for war.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/22/russia-using-children-design-test-military-drones-investigation-finds
A game called Berloga, launched in 2022, has drawn hundreds of thousands of children into its hive-like battles, where defending against swarms earns not only high scores but extra credit in school. From there, the most skilled are funneled into competitions where recruiters watch closely. Officially, it is all for “civilian applications,” yet insiders admit the truth: every child’s project must serve a dual purpose, every lesson a preparation for war.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/22/russia-using-children-design-test-military-drones-investigation-finds
Across Europe, the rulers prepare children not for peace, but for a war they know will outlast today’s soldiers. The youngest, still in primary school, are quietly molded into the next generation of fighters—evidence that those in power already accept a future where war is not an event, but a condition of life.
The WEF’s Malthusians, cloaked in green dogma, preach that real food poisons the planet. Their answer is the alchemy of synthetic flesh and carbon cuisine—lab-grown meat and now “carbon butter,” a fat conjured from gases, stripped of animals, oils, and plants.
What once read like dystopia is now policy: the sacrament of depopulation served at the altar of progress.
https://youtu.be/V6DdNjJQvVg
What once read like dystopia is now policy: the sacrament of depopulation served at the altar of progress.
https://youtu.be/V6DdNjJQvVg
YouTube
Butter made from carbon tastes like the real thing, gets backing from Bill Gates
A company in Batavia, Illinois is making butter in a way you've never seen before. No animals, no plants, no oils; this butter is made from carbon.
For video licensing inquiries, contact: licensing@veritone.com
For video licensing inquiries, contact: licensing@veritone.com
Savor, a startup in Batavia, Illinois, backed by Bill Gates, now seeks to transmute the very air you breathe into food. “You burn this gas to cook, but we want to make your food from it,” boasts CEO Kathleen Alexander. Their latest creation, “carbon butter,” is a facsimile of dairy—engineered fat mixed with water, lecithin, and artificial color, no agriculture required. As their food scientist declares, it looks, tastes, and feels like butter—while severing humanity’s last link to soil, animal, and seed.
https://www.gatesnotes.com/work/accelerate-energy-innovation/reader/alternative-fats-and-oils
https://www.gatesnotes.com/work/accelerate-energy-innovation/reader/alternative-fats-and-oils
What impact will these synthetic products have on human health? No one knows. No one cares. In the eyes of the Malthusian priesthood, agriculture itself is taboo—an ancient sin against their new green faith. Fields, animals, and farmers must vanish, replaced by laboratories, vats, and molecules stitched together from gas.
The nourishment of humanity is no longer to spring from earth, but from chemical alchemy devised by technocrats who see people not as souls, but as numbers to be managed.
The nourishment of humanity is no longer to spring from earth, but from chemical alchemy devised by technocrats who see people not as souls, but as numbers to be managed.