All told, this was the ugliest 7Y auction since 2021 — and the worst of the week — as investors increasingly shrug off Wall Street fairy tales, fully aware that in a Trump stagflation fueled by wars, the “once risk-free” Treasury is anything but.

Donald Copperfield, still convinced he’s an expert in economics and geopolitics after skimming the Cliff Notes, now wants to hand out tariff cash to farmers hurt by his own trade wars — promising they’ll be “making a fortune” eventually. Meanwhile, American farmers are drowning in low prices and a soy embargo from China, and GOP lawmakers are begging for a rerun of Trump’s $23 billion farmer bailout show from last season.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aJB1OkKm2-c

Donald Copperfield’s tariff magic didn’t just backfire — it torched $27 billion in farm income, with soybeans losing $9.7 billion a year for the privilege of “winning” the trade war. Now Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is launching an antitrust probe into seed and fertilizer suppliers, while farmers cough up record prices for the very inputs made more expensive by tariffs. Nothing screams “America First” like bankrupting your own farmers so you can save them later with taxpayer bailouts.

In a nutshell, tariff magic turned $27B of farm income into smoke, left soybeans in the red, and now promises farmers a bailout encore — all in the name of “winning” the trade war.

As reliably as Monday follows Sunday, August’s PCE popped 0.3% (up from July’s 0.2%), pushing YoY inflation to 2.7%. Core PCE rose 0.2% — just enough to keep the Fed sweating at 2.9%.

Once again, “Supercore” was driven by financial services (thank you, stock market), plus pricier food and transport — definitely not tariffs, no sir.

Prices may be behaving, but incomes (+0.4% MoM) and spending (+0.6% MoM) came in just hot enough to remind the Fed that the consumer still hasn’t gotten the memo about cooling down.

In a nutshell, August’s PCE says inflation is still simmering, with hot incomes and spending keeping the Fed’s “cooling” narrative on ice.

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🌐 From samurai swords to zombie firms, Japan’s meteoric rise meets its match as Keynesian follies push the nation toward a sovereign debt cliff. 🌐

Read more here: https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/sayonara-kabuki-economics

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Wall Street never misses a chance to inflate a bubble, and now Nvidia — led by its rockstar CEO — is teaming up with the “nonprofit” OpenAI for the latest magic trick: a chip-leasing scheme. OpenAI gets to dodge capex and depreciation, Nvidia keeps the GPUs (and the collateral), and everyone gets to pretend this is innovation rather than financial engineering straight out of the dot-com bubble playbook.

Call it cynical, but we all have seen this movie before — and it doesn’t end well.

https://sherwood.news/tech/report-nvidia-may-lease-its-chips-to-openai-as-part-of-deal/

This isn’t Nvidia’s first rodeo in circular economics. Remember CoreWeave? Nvidia invested in a startup that relied on its chips — which then used those very same chips as collateral to borrow money… to buy more Nvidia chips. Brilliant.

Now fast forward to this week’s leasing story with OpenAI, and it feels like the same playbook: an elegant loop of money and hardware dressed up as innovation. First CoreWeave, now OpenAI — Nvidia keeps finding ways to turn its chips into their own growth engine to implement the ‘Money AI-st’.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/money-aist

OpenAI’s motive? Easy — it’s burning cash and still needs Microsoft to keep the lights on. Nvidia’s motive? Even easier — keep the AI hype train running at all costs. When “innovation” morphs from new chips to new financing tricks, that’s not progress — that’s end-of-cycle kabuki.

Nvidia isn’t just selling GPUs, it’s sprinkling cash everywhere — six major deals in 2025 alone: Gretel, Lepton AI, CentML, plus stakes in Intel, OpenAI, and ElevenLabs. The pace is dizzying — like they’re trying to headline every news cycle just to remind you they exist.

But this isn’t a scrappy startup. Nvidia is a market pillar, stuffed into every ETF and retirement account. If the magic fades, it won’t just be Nvidia that tanks — it’ll shake the whole market.
Leasing GPUs? Sure, because fast-depreciating, soon-obsolete hardware totally belongs on a subscription model. It’s a treadmill — customers run, Nvidia collects rent.

At the end of the day, when chip execs sign chests like rockstars, you’re not in a golden age — you’re at the top, waiting for gravity.

https://disconnect.blog/roundup-is-this-peak-ai-hype/

The Eurocrats — those Davos-bred, Keynesian Malthusians — are back at it, cooking up another “legally creative” scheme. This time, they want to funnel billions in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine by swapping the cash with EU-backed IOUs.
It’s classic Brussels: can’t touch the principal (too legally messy), so they’ll just securitize the interest and call it innovation. Think of it as the latest episode of How to Move Money Without Technically Stealing It.

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-frozen-russian-assets-war-in-ukraine/

Nearly €200 billion in Russian assets have sat frozen since 2022, mostly parked at Brussels-based Euroclear, but now Ukraine’s €8 billion budget hole has the EU scrambling for “innovative” solutions.

The latest brainwave: swap the interest income sitting at the ECB for zero-coupon EU bonds, call it a “Reparations Loan,” and promise Kyiv it won’t owe a cent until Russia pays up. Ursula, The Corrupt European Commissioner In Chief, pitched it as free money in her State of the Union speech, though the fine print involves unanimous national guarantees and plenty of legal gymnastics. Belgium and Euroclear keep warning that touching the principal is a lawsuit waiting to happen, but Brussels seems happy to dress up accounting tricks as geopolitical strategy.

https://www.euroclear.com/newsandinsights/en/press/2025/mr-05-euroclear-delivers-strong-results-in-2024.html

In a nutshell, Brussels is turning frozen Russian interest into EU-backed IOUs, calling it a “Reparations Loan” — the latest episode of How to Move Money Without Technically Stealing It.

As Britain rolls out its shiny new digital ID under the watchful eye of Prime Minister ‘Keith Starmer’, Loyal Servant of Davos, the EU is not to be outdone — it’s launching its own high-tech “digital gulag.” The Schengen Entry/Exit System (EES) will dutifully log every third-country traveler’s fingerprints, facial scans, and travel history, replacing quaint passport stamps with a permanent entry in the great continental ledger. Starting October 12 2025 and fully operational by April 2026, this system promises faster border crossings — once you’ve handed over your biometric soul — and will keep track of every 90-day stay like a dutiful panopticon. All in the name of “security,” of course, because nothing says freedom quite like automated surveillance at all 29 Schengen borders.



https://travel-europe.europa.eu/ees

Liberty can be chained, but never killed — she always rises again. Even Jefferson knew it: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” History is our guide because power always serves itself, and human nature hasn’t evolved a bit.

Post-2032, we’ll get the chance to rewrite the rulebook — and this time, let’s be honest with ourselves: no Republics.

Listen to The Month That It Was in September 2025 from The Macro Butler.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-month-that-it-was-september-2025

China’s September PMIs show the economy’s still slowing — just not tripping over its shoelaces as badly as in August. Manufacturing and construction got a small lift after factories paused for a military parade, while services cooled as holiday crowds vanished. The official PMI crept to 49.8 (still contraction), and non-manufacturing just squeaked in at 50.0 — the bare minimum for ‘not terrible’.