Remember when trade wars were about steel and soybeans? Cute times. Now we’ve leveled up. The new battleground isn’t factories or farmland — it’s what’s buried under them. Rare-earth minerals. The stuff that makes everything from your phone’s battery to fighter jets to the chips that let AI pretend it has a soul. And here we go again. President Trump, never one for subtlety, just threatened a “massive increase” in tariffs on Chinese goods and canceled his planned meeting with Xi Jinping. His reason? China’s getting cheeky about cutting off access to those rare-earth elements. In plain English: Beijing’s hinting ...Continue reading

AI is everywhere right now. And by “everywhere,” I don’t mean just in your phone. I mean in your inbox, your ads, and probably in your toaster if you look closely enough. Everyone’s suddenly an AI “expert.” Remember the dot-com mania, when adding “.com” to a company name made investors throw cash like it was confetti? Flower shops, bookstores, even dog food delivery outfits suddenly became “tech darlings.” Spoiler: most of them disappeared faster than your New Year’s resolutions. Fast-forward to today, and companies are doing the same thing—only with “AI.” Want to sell more blenders? Slap “AI-powered” on the ...Continue reading

You ever notice how everyone suddenly wants gold, but nobody wants to part with it? It’s like trying to get someone to give up their Netflix password. Not happening. Gold is creeping past $4,000 an ounce, and people are acting like it’s the last bottle of water in the desert. Central banks, those lovely chaps who usually pretend they know what they’re doing, have been hoarding the stuff like it’s the apocalypse. Meanwhile, U.S. Treasuries? They’ve become about as fashionable as Crocs at a black-tie dinner. Why’s Everyone Obsessed With Gold? Because it doesn’t die, mate. Literally. Gold’s basically immortal. ...Continue reading

You ever notice how the headlines are all “soft landing, nothing to see here,” while the spreadsheets are quietly packing a go-bag? Unemployment “low,” inflation “behaving,” stocks “resilient”—it’s like watching a magician saw a lady in half and then realizing the screams aren’t part of the act. The data keeps tapping us on the shoulder. New hiring? Hit a wall. Private payroll trackers flashing job losses. And those glorious job gains we celebrated last year? Revised away like a teenager’s excuse—turns out they didn’t vanish; they never showed up. If the economy’s a group chat, the numbers are the mate ...Continue reading