Zerohedge

Large swaths of Spain and Portugal plunged into darkness on Monday. 

Spanish power grid operator Red Electrica wrote on X:

• Plans activated to restore electricity supply in collaboration with sector companies following the blackout that occurred in the peninsular system.

• The causes are being analyzed, and all resources are being dedicated to resolving it.

“Parts of France also appear to be affected, according to Spanish media reports, which said Seville, Barcelona and Valencia were hit by the outage,” SKY News reported.

Bloomberg’s Javier Blas called the power outage “Massive — really, massive.” 

“Massive — really, massive — electricity outage hits Spain, which large part of the country suffering blackouts (including Madrid and Barcelona). Data from Spain’s national grid shows a lost of >10 GW of demand, from ~26GW to ~12GW in a few seconds. Reason unknonw.”

BREAKING: Massive — really, massive — electricity outage hits Spain, which large part of the country suffering blackouts (including Madrid and Barcelona).

Data from Spain’s national grid shows a lost of >10 GW of demand, from ~26GW to ~12GW in a few seconds. Reason unknonw. pic.twitter.com/KwvDxOOLQJ

— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) April 28, 2025

Cloudflare reported that internet connectivity dropped “by as much as 30% in Portugal and 37% in Spain” due to the power outages. 

Ongoing nationwide power outages in Portugal and Spain are impacting Internet traffic. Traffic dropped by as much as 30% in Portugal and 37% in Spain at 10:30 UTC. We are continuing to monitor the situation. pic.twitter.com/7yD2V48Ybj

— Cloudflare Radar (@CloudflareRadar) April 28, 2025

Outages have begun to affect air travel. 

Diversions have begun #power #spain #portugal #electricity #bcn pic.twitter.com/csIg2WIqYQ

— Alex Krstanovic (@acabgd) April 28, 2025

Footage:

Major power outage across parts of France, Spain and Portugal.

Causing some chaos at the Madrid Open.

Fans streaming for the practice courts (which have now hit capacity), food stalls operating with torches and cash, portions of the venue in complete darkness. pic.twitter.com/4B1NAPX13A

— Connor Joyce (@connorjoyceb) April 28, 2025

Total power outage across Spain and Portugal. Currently waiting for a train and all trains suspended. pic.twitter.com/tF9Feo1lRr

— Crypto Trader Simon (@cryptotrader_si) April 28, 2025

is this what caused the spain and portugal power outage? #spain #Portugal #power #poweroutage pic.twitter.com/IVXiZfX1NS

— Josh2809 (@Josh28091) April 28, 2025

Red Electrica provided no details about the cause of the nationwide blackout. 

* Developing

About a month after Elon Musk’s xAI Holdings acquired the X platform in an all-stock deal valuing the social media company at $33 billion, whispers have emerged that xAI is in talks with investors to raise $20 billion — a move that could push the startup’s valuation north of $120 billion. 

Citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg News reported Friday that xAI is in talks with investors to raise $20 billion. According to PitchBook data, the deal would mark the second-largest startup funding round on record, behind only OpenAI’s $40 billion raise earlier this year. The funding would push xAI’s valuation north of $120 billion if successful. 

Last week, sources told CNBC’s David Faber that Musk was seeking to place a “proper value” on xAI.

Here’s more color on Faber’s conversation with sources:

The comments came during a call with xAI investors last week, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. While the Tesla CEO didn’t explicitly address an upcoming funding round, the sources interpreted the comments as a sign that xAI is getting set up for a significant capital raise in the near future.

. . .

The sources also said the company discussed revenue at a potential run rate of $1 billion or more on the call.

Back to the Bloomberg report, Musk and xAI executives have been probing investors about their appetite for a $20 billion funding round. One source said the funding round could be much higher. 

The latest Bloomberg data shows Musk’s net worth at around $335 billion. Year-to-date, his net worth has declined by about $100 billion, with Tesla’s market capitalization halving due to gloomy sales figures and Democrats’ war on the company.

Late last year, Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, became the most valuable startup after a private transaction valued the company at $350 billion. 

Musk’s companies include many of the technologies that will dominate 2030 and may even determine the fate of the US empire as the great power fight with China rages on. 

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), publisher of “The Solari Report,” is back to update us about the “Fast-Approaching Digital Control Grid.”  (CAF) told us last time here on USAW, “There is no bigger ongoing battle for lovers of freedom than the battle taking place over the freedom killing idea of digital ID.”  

But it’s more that just ID, it’s an entire control grid that is being quietly built that is like a frog being put into pot and the water being brought to a boil.  

CAF explains, “You know our goal at Solari is each person has a free and inspired life.  So, we have been working for several years to stop financial transaction control.“

”  If you get the ability to track each person and control their transactions, so if they don’t do what you say, they can turn off your money.  That is game over for the Constitution and for human liberty.  If you look at how the control grid is coming together, there are many different pieces.  There is digital ID, all digital currency or transaction system to a social credit system to the management to certain kinds of data and back-up energy.  There are many different pieces.  We look at the pieces, and we look at them as one-off things such as, oh, I don’t mind having a ‘Real ID’ because I can see why they might want a federal ID, or a passport or whatever.  Each one of these things looks nonthreatening and even convenient, but when they snap together, they are in a control grid, and it’s completely something else.  When Trump was elected, I was shocked to see, almost immediately, the President announce the Stargate AI initiative with the mRNA vaccines, which to me is the internet of bodies.”

CAF put together a long list of Trump Administration actions that are speeding up what looks like a control grid.  It’s called “The Fast-Approaching Digital Control Grid.”  It lists things such as crypto friendly currency actions, private Central Bank Digital Currency, shrinking banking sector, DOGE, undisclosed Epstein files and many more red flag items that could be used to allow crime to continue and build a digital prison for “We the People.”  While the Trump Administration brings change at a record pace, not a single thing has been done to find out about the “$21 Trillion Missing Money” that has been well documented by CAF and Michigan State Professor Dr. Mark Skidmore.  The money has been stolen from America, and the silence about this is deafening.  CAF says,

“We know there has been tremendous fraud in the financials of the US government.  We know that has happened.  If you look at all the things that you or I would do to figure out what had happened, where the money went and how do we get it back, that’s not what they are doing. . . . If you look at how we would do a successful operation to reengineer government and identify the real fraud and stop it, I don’t see any indication that they are doing that.  I do see some selected efforts that are probably sincere. . . . They are shutting things down lots of us would like to see shut down. . . . We know how to stop the death and disabilities that come from the Covid 19 vax injection, but you go the CDC website, and they are still recommending the Covid injections.”

The massive crime going on with government accounting makes it necessary for the control grid.  CAF explains, “What happened in the last Trump Administration is they adopted FASAB 56.  FASAB 56 basically said they could take the books of the US government dark.“

“A secret group of people, by a secret process, could remove operations from the financial statement, and they don’t have to tell people what they removed.  

So, we have no idea what is in the financials. . . . This includes the big banks and contractors who do business with the government.  

So, looking at the US stock market and bond market, I have no idea what is true or not. . . . We are flying blind.”

CAF still likes gold for an investment.  She is also very bullish on silver as it takes about 100 ounces of silver to buy a single ounce of gold.  The gold/silver ratio is at record spreads.  CAF says, “At some point, the gold/silver ratio will revert to something more sensible.”

In closing, CAF says, “Everyone tell your Senator and Congressman and President Trump on X or Truth Social stop the control grid.  Stop with the control grid, and we can do this. . . . If we can face it, God can fix it all.”

There is much more in the 44-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with the Publisher of The Solari Report, Catherine Austin Fitts, as she looks ahead for what’s coming in 2025 for 4.26.25.

*  *  *

To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

There is a lot of free information on Solari.com.

President Trump’s tariff war on China has forced Singapore-based Shein Group Ltd. — whose supply chain is heavily concentrated in Guangzhou, China, with over 3,000 suppliers — to raise prices on low-cost Chinese goods for American consumers. The era of China flooding the U.S. market with cheap, low-quality goods may soon come to an end. 

Bloomberg reports that Shein raised the prices of all goods for the U.S. market, with markups much higher in some categories than others.

Data showed the average prices for the top 100 products in the beauty and health category jumped 51% at the end of last week. For home and kitchen products and toys, prices rose by 30%, led by a massive 377% increase for a 10-piece set of kitchen towels. Women’s clothing grew by 8%.

Keep in mind these are the same cheap Chinese goods that have flooded the U.S. market over the past decade, crippling American manufacturers. The quality is often subpar, fueling America’s plastic throwaway culture — not exactly the “green” future cheerleaded by climate radicals in the Democratic Party. 

Shein’s price hike…

In a separate report, CBS News found that nearly 1,000 products sold on Amazon — mainly sourced from China — experienced price increases in the second half of April, with the average hike around 30%, according to data from SmartScout.

Trump’s 145% tariff on Chinese goods forced China-based Anker Innovations to increase the prices of mobile charging devices by over 25% in recent weeks. 

The Trump administration’s goal is to break America’s dependence on cheap Chinese goods that have flooded U.S. markets through e-commerce platforms like Temu, Shein, and Amazon. The aim is to shift production out of China to friendlier countries (friend-shoring) — or, if the supply chain is critical (such as these), to re-shore it entirely. Fifteen years ago, there weren’t hundreds of different options for Bluetooth speakers on Amazon. It’s time to break America’s addiction to Chinese junk.

Here’s the late George Carlin on “American consumption”… 

Avoid the tariffs, buy American. Very simple. Already beginning: Americans Are Searching “USA Products” Like Never Before …

Authored by Anders Corr via The Epoch Times,

On April 14, a local government administrator in the United States sent my relative a letter that she suspected of including artificial intelligence (AI) content. Sure enough, an AI detector found 83 percent generated by AI GPT.

She said it was the best letter she had ever received from a politician—and she writes to her representatives frequently. She praised the letter for responding to every single point she raised in her own letter, something no unaided politician had ever done.

We toyed with the idea of confronting the administrator publicly. If AI wrote a better letter than the administrator himself, perhaps he could be replaced with the technology, and his salary redeployed for more substantive taxpayer benefits. It was a tongue-in-cheek idea. But the logic is nevertheless disturbing.

If artificial intelligence is now better than one politician for one task, according to one constituent, is it plausible that in 10 or 20 years, AI could be better than all politicians for all their tasks, according to most constituents?

At that point, voters might just vote for an AI politician rather than a human one. Human politicians are, after all, time-constrained by their need to sleep, eat, and hobnob with their elite donors and other benefactors.

My relative decided not to confront the politician at his next public meeting. She wants to influence his decisions in the future, and public shaming is probably not the best way to do this. So he gets a pass to continue using AI on unsuspecting constituents. Even his tiny hold on power at the local level protected him from the truth.

If he can get away with it, perhaps many other politicians are doing the same. This empowers AI-using politicians at the expense of the old-fashioned types who simply do not have enough time to respond to every point of every letter of every constituent, but try anyway. AI politicians then gain an advantage in the next election, and over time, due to natural selection, all politicians will use AI, as those who don’t get voted out.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), a small autocratic country in the Middle East, is already way “ahead” of this slow “democratic” transition to AI. In a world first, the UAE is using AI to both track the effects of existing legislation and write drafts of new legislation. Presumably, the president of the UAE will review the legislation prior to enacting it. Let’s hope so, as there would then be at least one human in the loop.

The UAE considers using AI to write legislation to be 70 percent more efficient than relying on human legislators to write laws. How that remarkably round number was arrived at is unclear. But as UAE citizens cannot vote, they could essentially become forced laborers working not only for the president of the UAE but also for AI, given that nobody understands exactly how AI comes up with its recommendations.

Now, consider expanding this to everything. A new startup in Silicon Valley, called Mechanize, audaciously wants to use AI to automate all jobs. The startup, launched on April 17, expects to start replacing white-collar jobs, such as those of accountants, lawyers, and authors (full disclosure: this author is an author, so may be biased in favor of humans).

But the company also envisions pairing AI with robots to mechanize other jobs, for example, in agriculture, construction, and manufacturing. Companies like Waymo, Zoox, Tesla, and Lyft are already well on their way to populating our streets with robotaxis that could eventually lead most of us to dump our cars, perhaps in compliance with a government fiat written by AI.

That the military could also be automated, despite the promises of AI companies to do no such thing, is obvious given the rise of armed drones on the battlefields of Ukraine, and the interest of the U.S. and Chinese militaries in matching AI with drone warfare. One reason the United States denies the fastest AI semiconductors to China is that they are needed for the small AI devices onboard military drones that must learn from the adversary’s strategies mid-flight. The drone that learns the fastest and adapts its tactics to enemy drones before returning to base will survive.

The Israel Defense Forces reportedly used AI to target as many as 37,000 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) suspects with a 90 percent accuracy rate. This was paired with some “acceptable” level of civilian casualties per target to arrive at those approved for aerial bombing, with not-too-accurate dumb bombs. AI saved a lot of time for the targeters, though.

Communists have long promoted the idea of full mechanization to “free” humans of the need to labor. In their “utopian” schemes, full mechanization would allow humans the free time to pursue whatever they want, including leisure, art, and family. With the rise of mechanization, automation, robots, and AI, a new utopianism is coming that will appeal to the “Silicon Valley proletariat” of coders, programmers, and other tech workers.

With AI, this coming “tech vanguard” can seek an AI communism, in which humans frolic in nature while being watched over by the machine. It sounds dystopian and easily manipulable by Leninists if not Stalinists. But its rosy-glassed adherents will see it the other way around. They have likely read Richard Brautigan’s 1967 poem envisioning a “cybernetic ecology”:

where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.

Brautigan was not specifically communist, though he was counter-culture.

In the mid-2000s, a British movement developed a concept similar to being “watched over by machines of loving grace” that would become known as “fully automated luxury communism.” It was described by The Guardian in 2015 as “an opportunity to realise a post-work society, where machines do the heavy lifting and employment as we know it is a thing of the past.” This was before AI became popular. With AI, even the white collar workers will be “free.”

AI is being touted, by even those who know its dangers more than others, as a carrot and stick, a necessary evil, like nuclear weapons, in the competition with China. This could be considered an “anti-communist” or “anti-authoritarian” use of AI. The idea is that, if the United States does not deploy the most sophisticated AI to both entice Beijing to reform, and deter Beijing from attack, market democracy could be at a disadvantage.

In any conflict that occurs, Beijing will certainly deploy all technologies at its disposal. This puts those who would prefer to go slowly and carefully, or avoid any future of AI, in a bind. Use AI fire to fight fire, or not? And what if the fire blows back on the freedom of the individual in a market democracy, after burning the authoritarian adversary?

Handing over so much power, up to and including “AI communism,” whether in the form of political power to legislate or industrial power that replaces trillions of dollars worth of human labor, is an immense concentration of power in the hands of whoever controls AI. That could be a dictator, an oligarchy, an elected official who accrues too much power, or a hacker. It could even be AI itself, if it goes rogue or is irretrievably granted that power at some point in the future.

The advent of AI is likely a disaster for human agency, especially if it later develops malign rather than benign attitudes toward humanity. A benign AI is in no way guaranteed if we relinquish power to an immensely powerful technology that even its creators do not fully understand, and are not confident they can control.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Russian as well as independent regional media sources have revealed that a high-ranking CIA official’s son was killed while fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine last year. 

The news and story of the young man’s death is highly unusual, given his mother is a US intelligence information warfare and ‘disinfo’ expert: the CIA’s Deputy Director for Digital Innovation Juliane Gallina Gloss.

The New York Post among other US media outlets described the CIA official’s son, a longtime global traveler and activist, as having been ‘radicalized’ against the US and its foreign policy.

Michael Alexander Gloss, 21, died on April 4, 2024 – based on a family obituary posted by a funeral home in Fairfax, Virginia – but on Friday investigative outlet IStories reported that Russian authorities only informed his family of his death in October. His official obituary only related that he was “tragically killed in Eastern Europe.”

IStories apparently had access to his phone records, given that it published a live recording of Gloss informing his parents that he traveled to Russia, along with many photos including showing life in a Russian barracks with fellow soldier friends who appear to be foreign fighters.

Juliane Gallina Gloss has been the CIA’s deputy director for digital innovation since being appointed in February 2024, and is a career CIA and US Naval intelligence officer.

It is reported that the son of CIA deputy director Julianne Gallina Gloss, 21-year-old Michael Gloss died in Ukraine as a Russian soldier. He signed a contract with Russia’s MoD. His father, Iraq vet Larry Gloss, develops secure software for U.S. and NATO forces pic.twitter.com/HmMyAnym5N

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) April 25, 2025

Among the more interesting parts of the story is how the young man wanted to “defeat the military-industrial complex”:

In the same message, Michael vaguely described his future in which he would “defeat mortality and the military-industrial complex:” “I find myself more and more alive by the minute. Hungry for blood and glory. And basking in the pleasure of knowing that it all is still to be done… But as of now. I might have just incarnated in time to defeat mortality AND the military industrial complex.”

When asked exactly how he plans to defeat the military-industrial complex, Michael replied: “If I told you my real plan you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

Read the full detailed report here.

Authored by Felicity Bradstock via OilPrice.com,

• Workers at the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant construction site in the UK have reported a significant rat infestation, raising health and safety concerns.

• The rat problem is causing disruption to the major energy project and prompting calls for immediate action from trade unions to address the issue.

• Despite assurances about the safety of nuclear power plants, this incident highlights challenges and public perception issues related to nuclear facilities.

The U.K. has ambitious nuclear power plans and is developing several small- and large-scale projects. While opposition, high costs, and other factors have slowed development in the past, EDF has been facing another problem at its Hinkley Point C construction – a rat infestation. 

In early April, the Unite and GMB trade unions for workers at Hinkley Point C in Somerset, in the south of England, informed the developer, French energy giant EDF, that the facility was overrun with rats. The unions said that immediate action was needed as the rodents were “everywhere” and the rapidly expanding rat population prompted health and safety concerns for the workforce. 

One source reported, “They’re all over. You see them just sat there, looking at you. It is worse near the canteens, where I guess it started. But they are everywhere now.” Another source said, “The more men working on the site, the more rubbish on the site – and the canteens are not clean either. It has just become worse over time.” 

The development of Hinkley Point C is expected to support the creation of 15,000 jobs. Once complete, the plant is expected to power around 6 million U.K. homes and contribute 7 percent of the country’s electricity needs. It is planned to launch in the early 2030s, following several years of delays and spiralling costs. However, many believe this is an unrealistic aim. In recent months, workers have complained about poor working conditions and low pay, potentially because of EDF’s financial pressures. Hundreds of project staff also went on strike in November over the inadequate security access to the site. 

A Hinkley Point C spokesperson said, “As is common across all large construction sites, there will be occasions when the presence of vermin is noted. A specialist company has carried out a survey and measures are in place to address the issue. We are committed to working alongside our trades union partners to provide the best environment for all of our workers.”

Even though the U.S. government has previously assured the public that the TV show The Simpsons was wrong about potential rat infestations, this is not the first time the problem has been seen in recent years. The U.S. Department of Energy published an article in 2018 aiming to debunk several nuclear myths. It stated:

“Nuclear power plants are well-maintained.

The Springfield plant is notorious on the show for its safety violations. They range from rat infestations and cracked cooling towers (held together with chewing gum) to leaky pipes that spill out radioactive waste.

This simply does not happen. The nuclear industry is one of the safest to work in and to live near.” 

However, rat problems have been seen in the past, such as during the Fukushima 2013 power cut. In March 2013, the Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) suspected that rats may have caused a short circuit in a switchboard, triggering the power cut. Tepco announced that it had found burn marks on a makeshift power switchboard and a 15 cm dead rodent nearby. The outage shut down cooling systems for four spent fuel ponds at reactors 1, 3 and 4, however cooling to the reactors was not affected. Following the incident, engineers spent around 30 hours repairing the damage. This came just two years after a giant earthquake-triggered tsunami caused meltdowns at the plant, which was in the decommissioning stage during the rodent incident. 

Despite the rodent infestation in the construction phase of Hinkley Point C and during the decommissioning period of Fukushima, rats are, indeed, not a common sight in nuclear power plants thanks to the enforcement of strict safety regulations. For decades the public perception of nuclear power has been negative, due to three separate nuclear disasters – Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. However, nuclear experts have repeatedly tried to reassure the public that nuclear power is one of the safest forms of energy. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency says nuclear power plants are among “the safest and most secure facilities in the world”, as they are subject to strict international safety standards. The World Nuclear Organisation reminds us, “In the 60-year history of civil nuclear power generation, with over 18,500 cumulative reactor-years across 36 countries, there have been only three significant accidents at nuclear power plants.” While these incidents stuck in the minds of people worldwide, this ratio is extremely low when compared to other forms of energy. 

Rigorous international standards and regulations, as well as significant improvements to nuclear technology, have helped make nuclear power one of the safest forms of clean energy production. As the public perception of nuclear energy begins to shift to more positive, and countries worldwide look for ways to support a transition away from fossil fuels to green alternatives, we can expect to see a massive nuclear renaissance in the coming years. 

Air pollution remains one of the deadliest environmental threats, contributing to millions of premature deaths each year.

In 2024, only 17% of cities worldwide met the World Health Organization’s annual PM2.5 guideline of less than 5 µg/m3, indicating that the vast majority of urban populations are exposed to unhealthy air.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Kayla Zhu, visualizes the 20 most air-polluted cities in 2024, based on fine particulate matter (PM2.5) data from IQAir.

Which Cities Have the Worst Air Pollution?

Below, we show the top 20 cities with the worst PM2.5 levels in 2024.

Rank	City	Country	2024 PM2.5 (µg/m³)
1	Byrnihat	🇮🇳 India	128.2
2	Delhi	🇮🇳 India	108.3
3	Karaganda	🇰🇿 Kazakhstan	104.8
4	Mullanpur	🇮🇳 India	102.3
5	Lahore	🇵🇰 Pakistan	102.1
6	Faridabad	🇮🇳 India	101.2
7	Dera Ismail Khan	🇵🇰 Pakistan	93.0
8	N’Djamena	🇹🇩 Chad	91.8
9	Loni	🇮🇳 India	91.7
10	New Delhi	🇮🇳 India	91.6
11	Multan	🇵🇰 Pakistan	91.4
12	Peshawar	🇵🇰 Pakistan	91.0
13	Faisalabad	🇵🇰 Pakistan	88.8
14	Sialkot	🇵🇰 Pakistan	88.8
15	Gurugram	🇮🇳 India	87.4
16	Ganganagar	🇮🇳 India	86.6
17	Hotan	🇨🇳 China	84.5
18	Greater Noida	🇮🇳 India	83.5
19	Bhiwadi	🇮🇳 India	83.1
20	Muzaffarnagar	🇮🇳 India	83.1

India is home to some of the world’s most air-polluted cities, accounting for 11 of the top 20 in 2024.

Byrnihat, a city in northeastern India, recorded the worst air pollution globally last year, with a PM2.5 concentration of 128.2 micrograms per cubic meter—over 25 times higher than the World Health Organization’s recommended limit.

Delhi, a metropolis of over 30 million people and the capital territory of India, recorded the second-worst air pollution levels in 2024.

The city experiences the worst winter air pollution of any major city, driven by crop burning in nearby states, stagnant cold air, and weak wind patterns that trap and concentrate smog over the capital.

Many Indian cities struggle with severe air pollution due to a mix of industrial emissions, vehicle exhaust, and reliance on fossil fuels, all worsened by weak regulation and seasonal weather patterns.

Most of the cities with the worst air pollution in 2024 are located in India, Pakistan, or other parts of Asia. N’Djamena, Chad, was the only non-Asian city to rank among the top 20.

To see which countries have the worst air pollution, check out this graphic that visualizes the world’s most polluted countries by their annual average PM2.5 concentration.

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

The scandal over the alleged corruption of the founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos would be just an anecdote were it not another example of what has happened recently with many international institutions. The Financial Times reveals that the WEF founder faces accusations of manipulating the organization’s analysis to gain favour with governments.

For years, many of us have watched with sadness as an important forum like Davos shifted from being a centre for debate and confrontation of ideas in defence of free enterprise to becoming a loudspeaker for the most interventionist ideas, the most damaging statism, and a whitewasher of authoritarian governments, spreading the destructive ideas of inflationism, socialism, and wokeism— which, in reality, are all the same.

Davos went from being a forum for debate to a congregation for repeating interventionist dogmas and whitewashing a single, extractive mindset; those who defended economic freedom, attractive taxes, and control over public spending were gradually ostracised. We have heard enthusiastic applause for those demanding more taxes and greater assaults on job creators, and one-sided debates in which all participants repeated clichés and words like “resilience” and “sustainability” as Trojan horses for predatory statism, where the idea of creating value and wealth was repudiated.

Do you remember the aberration of “you will own nothing and be happy”, abandoning profit generation as a goal, or the suggestion that coffee cultivation should be banned because it contributes to climate change? With phrases like “equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, and natural resources”, the most absurd and obsolete collectivism was being sold.

It hasn’t just happened in Davos. This week, Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, confronted the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, exposing their complicity in selling the flawed products of socialist interventionism.

“The IMF and the World Bank have enduring value, but their mission has drifted off course.”

It was very frustrating to see how these institutions whitewashed the constant increase in the weight of governments in the economy, confiscatory taxes, and inflationism through fiscal and monetary excess. They have forgotten their role as guarantors of economic logic, defenders of wealth creators, enforcers of fiscal responsibility, and enforcers of tax prudence. Instead, they became increasingly permissive with authoritarian, exploitative, and wasteful governments.

Bessent stated:

“The IMF has suffered from mission creep. The IMF was once unwavering in its mission of promoting global monetary cooperation and financial stability. Now it devotes disproportionate time and resources to work on climate change, gender, and social issues.”

Just like other institutions, such as the European Central Bank, which also set climate change as a goal while abandoning its true aim of price stability, they focus on cosmetic and ideological issues unrelated to monetary policy, financial stability, and fiscal responsibility, as these are matters for government social policy. Moreover, many of these supposed social concerns only serve to hide the whitewashing of a constant increase in government excesses, uncontrolled spending, debt, and rising taxes.

Bessent added:

“The International Monetary Fund should be a brutal revealer of the truth. Instead, it is ‘whistling past the graveyard.’”

This statement from Bessent mirrors the perception of any freedom defender in many of the IMF’s reports: it acquiesces as governments push their countries, companies, and self-employed workers towards financial ruin.

Do you remember the IMF’s 2020 call to “do whatever it takes and keep the receipts”? Governments happily rushed to spend without control, printing money recklessly, leaving poverty, inflation, runaway debt, and suffocating taxes in their wake. However, in 2024, when over seventy countries were spending uncontrollably due to elections and the public debt was rapidly increasing, the IMF declared a strategy of “safe but slow growth: resilience with divergence”. Incredible.

Regarding the World Bank, Bessent stated:

“The bank should no longer expect blank cheques for vapid, buzzword-centric marketing accompanied by half-hearted commitments to reform.”

If the institutions that should guarantee financial stability, economic logic, fiscal responsibility, and business growth focus on disguising fiscal and monetary imbalances or ignoring attacks on private property, financial and monetary stability, or free enterprise in countries with totalitarian regimes and interventionist governments, they cease to fulfil their functions and become the orchestra on the Titanic.

It is time to abandon propaganda, excuses, and cosmetics. It is time to stop whitewashing interventionism and recover the essential role these institutions play in preserving and strengthening growth. It is time to stop justifying wasteful governments and return to defending businesses and wealth creators.

We cannot forget the importance of the IMF, World Bank, ECB, or WEF as guarantors of economic and financial stability and monetary soundness.

Their work is essential. Do not forget it. They must return to defending what creates wealth, reduces poverty, and improves the lives of citizens: business growth, the free market, economic freedom, and fiscal and monetary prudence. Their association with predatory authoritarian governments has led to a significant loss of their former prestige.

If Davos, the IMF and mainstream economists had been half as blunt about China and other nations’ tariffs and trade barriers in the past decade as they are today about US trade policy, we would not need forced negotiations to level the playing field.

Dear institutions: It is time to remind the world that progress comes from saving, economic freedom, and prudent investment, not from political spending, debt, and monetary inflationism. The great institutions have much to contribute, but they must know they face two alternatives: recover their mission as defenders of fiscal and monetary responsibility and economic freedom or disappear.

Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

The world economy is at a major turning point, which is why we should brace for rapid changes in the economy. The world is moving from having enough goods and services to go around, to not having enough to go around. The dynamics of the economy are very different with not enough to go around. The hoped-for solution of higher prices doesn’t fix the situation; after a point, adding more buying-power mostly produces inflation. Other solutions are needed. The world economy is reaching what has been called “Limits to Growth.”

Figure 1. Chart made by Gail Tverberg showing the general pattern of secular cycles based on information given in the book Secular Cycles.

Economies throughout the ages have grown until their populations grew too large for resource availability. Researcher Peter Turchin has studied the general pattern of overshoot and collapse scenarios. The chart shown in Figure 1 is based on analyzing eight such cycles in the book Secular Cycles. The fossil fuel age began over 200 years ago, and it now seems to be reaching its end.

I doubt that President Trump thinks in terms such as secular cycles or overshoot and collapse. But tariffs and government cutbacks engineered by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seem like they might be approaches that will allow the world economy to contract in a way that could be helpful in keeping the collapse from taking place excessively fast.

In this post, I will try to explain the situation further. The issue we are facing is really a physics problem. Governments can print money, but they cannot print resources, especially energy resources. Our bodies are accustomed to having a certain amount of cooked foods in our diets. This, by itself, encourages population growth and eventual overshoot of the resource base. The self-organizing system somehow chooses its own downward path, not falling further or more quickly than necessary, under the Maximum Power Principle. This is what we are encountering now.

[1] In physics terms, the economy is a dissipative structure. Dissipative structures are self-organizing structures that require energy to grow but are only temporary.

The universe is filled with dissipative structures. Humans are dissipative structures, as are all plants and animals. Hurricanes are dissipative structures, as are star systems. Ecosystems are dissipative structures. All these things are temporary. Even economies are temporary, but no one tells us this detail.

The kind of energy that is required varies with the dissipative structure. Green plants use sunshine. Animals require plant or animal food. Humans have evolved to eat a mixture of cooked food and raw food. While a few raw food enthusiasts can get along using a blender to break up food into small particles, the general pattern is that our modern brains require the nourishment that cooked food can provide. Thus, humans need both food and some type of fuel for cooking at least a portion of the food. Fuel is also helpful for heating homes, ridding water of pathogens, and providing transportation.

Many things that we think of as man-made are dissipative structures. Governments are dissipative structures. Governments grow and often become too expensive for their citizens to support. The energy governments use is indirectly obtained through the use of taxes. A little of the energy used by the governments is purchased directly by governments to power their vehicles, and to heat and light their buildings.

Much more of the energy required by governments is indirectly consumed. For example, a portion of the taxes collected goes to pay public officials. This pay is used for things the public officials use, such as food, transportation, and housing. All three of these things require energy at many places in their “lives.”

• Food – Sunshine to grow; oil to cultivate and transport it to the store; electricity for refrigeration; natural gas or electricity for cooking; human labor for many tasks.

• Transportation – Fuel to make the metal and other materials used in making the vehicle; human labor to construct the vehicle; fuel to operate the vehicle.

• Housing – Diesel to prepare the lot where the house is built; energy of many kinds to create and transport materials such as lumber and wiring; human energy to put the pieces together; electricity for lights after it is built; natural gas or electricity to heat the home after it is built.

In fact, every part of GDP requires energy. In some cases, this is “only” human energy. Of course, human energy requires food, some of it cooked (or broken into tiny pieces with an electric blender).

Businesses in general are dissipative structures. So are international organizations of any kind. Cities seem to be dissipative structures. Religious organizations are dissipative structures. Any organization that seems to grow, pretty much on its own, is a dissipative structure.

[2] If the energy sources needed by a dissipative structure become scarce, this can badly disrupt the dissipative structure.

Hurricanes that pass over warm water tend to maintain their strength, but if they go over land, they quickly dissipate. If an animal is deprived of food, it will become weak and eventually die. If a government is deprived of revenue (and the energy sources that this revenue indirectly buys), it will no longer be able to provide the services it has promised. It may default on its debt or collapse.

[3] Many dissipative structures seem to be programmed to eventually go downhill and collapse, even when plenty of energy seems to be available.

Obviously, running out of energy isn’t the only way a dissipative structure comes to an end. Most humans don’t starve to death. Instead, when humans get to be 70 or 80 or so years old, they lose some of their strength. They more easily succumb to illnesses. Other animals are similar. Tomato plants in our gardens seem to be more prone to infestation by pests after a month or two of bearing fruit.

[4] Even economies seem to be programmed to go downhill and collapse.

Economies have a problem with their populations becoming too large for available resources. For many years, it appears that added debt (money supply) can be used to temporarily work around a resource problem. For example, a dam purchased with debt may allow irrigation so more food can be produced for a given population.

The problem with this approach is that the benefits of added debt reach diminishing returns. At some point, an economy discovers that adding debt doesn’t add much energy supply; instead, it simply leads to inflation (and, indirectly, higher interest rates to compensate for this inflation). Also, for governments, the interest on debt becomes a greater and greater burden.

The US government seems to have reached the point of having too much debt. The US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently published this chart related to US debt:

Figure 2. Figure from page 10 of The Long-Term Budget Outlook 2025 to 2055, published in March 2025 by the CBO.

US taxes need to keep rising, as a percentage of GDP, just to repay US government debt with interest. This is a path that can lead to hyperinflation. This seems to be the underlying reason for DOGE and the tariffs.

Adding infrastructure such as roads, pipelines, and railroads can be helpful in the beginning. The additional infrastructure enables new businesses to be built that make use of this infrastructure. Initially, the tax revenue from new businesses makes it easy to repay the debt with interest.

But additional roads, pipelines, railroads and other infrastructure are not nearly as helpful. They may add capacity, but they don’t materially change the transportation options. The tax revenue added is less.

At some point, simply maintaining and replacing all the infrastructure becomes burdensome. Adding debt for the replacement of infrastructure becomes burdensome because the new replacement infrastructure adds no new functionality. It just maintains the old functionality. The interest on the debt must come from somewhere, but it is not built into the system the way it was when totally new infrastructure was built. Today’s approach is simply to increase the debt level and hope that the revenue will come from somewhere else.

A related issue is that old factories tend to be less productive than newly built ones that benefited from the latest advances. This allows new factories (perhaps in another part of the world) to make goods in a more cost-efficient way. An older factory is likely to lose out in price competition against a newer, more productive factory elsewhere.

[5] The analysis of Turchin and Nefedov in Secular Cycles suggests that economies often go through the pattern shown in Figure 1.

Economies discover a new resource. Perhaps they have conquered a new land, and they have eliminated the old inhabitants. Or they have cut down trees, allowing more area for farming. At a given level of technology (and fuel for the technology), a given area of arable land can support a particular number of inhabitants. If the population gets too high, the size of farms tends to fall too low to support the farmers and their families. This pattern happens if families allow multiple sons to each inherit a share of the family farm.

Alternatively (and more likely), if the population gets too high, the younger sons don’t inherit any farmland. They start working in services and or on crafts of various kinds. But these alternatives to farming generally don’t pay very well. The many workers with low wages become less able to pay taxes, creating a problem for government funding.

As the population rises, wages of these lower-paid workers become increasingly less adequate to cover the necessities of life. With inadequate nutrition, populations become more subject to epidemics.

According to Secular Cycles, as these problems arise, debt is increasingly used to work around the problems. Slow population growth and increasing debt are characteristics of the Stagflation period shown in Figure 1.

Eventually, economies fail. Governments can fail due to a lack of adequate tax revenue or by being overthrown by unhappy citizens. Alternatively, they may lose a war against another country with better weapons (made with energy supplies). All governments, as dissipative structures, can be expected to eventually fail, one way or another.

[6] The world economy now seems to be headed on a path similar to that shown in Figure 1.

The world economy now seems to be reaching the end of the age of fossil fuels. I believe that the world first entered the stagflation era in 1973, when oil prices first rose dramatically. At that time, it became clear that oil must be used more sparingly. To help economize on oil, smaller, more fuel-efficient cars began to be imported from Japan and Europe. In some places, oil was being burned to generate electricity; this electricity could sometimes be replaced by electricity from nuclear power plants.

In the 1980s, added debt became more important. Companies were told to use “leverage” to become more competitive with producers around the world. Instead of fearing credit, it should be embraced. Computers were increasingly used, and world trade was expanded. World trade very much facilitated the production of complex goods, such as automobiles and computers, because it allowed a very wide array of raw materials to be used in manufacturing.

Figure 3. World trade based on World Bank data. Amount shown are the average of (worldwide imports/world GDP) and (worldwide exports/world GDP). Amounts shown are through 2023.

Figure 3 suggests that world trade stalled in 2008. There has been a slight downward trend since that date. With tariffs, world trade will likely fall more quickly in the future.

Figure 4. Energy consumption per capita, separately, for oil, coal, and nuclear based on data of the 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute.

One of the underlying problems facing the world economy is the fact that major types of energy supply have been falling relative to world population for a long time. The high points seem to have been in 2004-2007 for oil, in 2011 for coal, and in 2001 for nuclear (Figure 4).

Figure 5. World middle distillates consumption per capita, based on data of the 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute. Middle distillates are diesel oil and jet fuel.

Middle distillates (diesel oil and jet fuel) are particularly important in world trade. Middle distillates are plentiful in heavy oil, such as that found in Russia, the oil sands of Canada, and Venezuela. Diesel is important for operating farm equipment, large trucks and ships, and construction equipment.

Middle distillates are in short supply because it is hard to get the price up high enough, for long enough, to compensate for the high cost of extraction, distillation, and transport. If the price of diesel rises much, the price of food tends to rise. Voters don’t like high food prices. This seems to be a major reason that both Russia’s oil exports and Venezuela’s oil exports are subject to sanctions.

Without an adequate supply of middle distillates, world trade needs to be scaled back. I believe that this shortfall is the physics reason underlying the push for increased tariffs. The fact that these tariffs are particularly high against China means that long distance transport across the Pacific Ocean will be scaled back. Shelves in US stores will increasingly lack goods made with Chinese inputs.

[7] Modeling of the overshoot and collapse problem has been done since the 1950s. A recent model suggests that world industrial output is likely to fall quickly, about now.

In 1957, US Navy Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover gave a speech explaining the importance of fossil fuels to the economy and to the military. He then explained that we could not expect fossil fuel extraction to last very long:

 It is an unpleasant fact that according to our best estimates, total fossil fuel reserves recoverable at not over twice today’s unit cost are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050, if present standards of living and population growth rates are taken into account.

Much modeling has been done since that time. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology did a series of analyses which they published in 1972 in the book, The Limits to Growth. The most recent update to this analysis shows the following summary exhibit.

Figure 6. Output of the recalibrated Limits to Growth model by Arjuna Nebel and others, published in 2023, with Gail Tverberg’s labels showing which lines are “Industrial Output” and which are “Population.” Source.

The 1972 model and its update both look at the world economy from an engineering point of view. The analyses ignore the roles of governments, debt, and many other things important to the economy. The original authors of the 1972 Limits to Growth analysis said that they didn’t have much confidence in the accuracy of their forecasts after the decline had begun because of the many omitted factors.

The disturbing thing from the 2023 analysis is that it shows industrial output dropping about now. This is what I would expect to happen if there is a big drop in world trade.

[8] The world economy is self-organizing. It doesn’t seem to depend on the actions of any one person or group.

The Universe keeps growing and expanding. Many people believe that the Universe spontaneously sprang out of nothing and began to grow. I believe that there was a Creator.

An intricate system of evolution is taking place, with new dissipative structures arising and old dissipative structures coming to an end. The dissipative structures that last are the ones best adapted to the Earth’s ever-changing environment at that time.

Somehow, the world economy (and other ecosystems) maximize the total output of each part of the system, under the Maximum Power Principle. This isn’t dependent on any one system being more efficient or working better than another. Instead, the world economy tends to maximize the total output of the system, given the energy supplies (and other resources, such as water) available. Thus, the world output of goods and services is unlikely to fall so catastrophically that it quickly wipes out most of the world’s human population. For example, if industrial output is limited, it may be concentrated especially on replacement parts for current machinery and on machines needed for food production.

The intricate nature of evolution and the many dissipative structures formed, together with the Maximum Power Principle, leads me to believe that the Creator is still active today.

It seems to me that the self-organizing economy utilizes whatever leaders are available. They don’t need to have good motives for their actions. It isn’t that Donald Trump is a better leader than others, or that his ideas, as promulgated, will take a hold. The system works through many leaders of various political parties. Each leader is somewhat replaceable by other leaders. The underlying physics of the system is what leads to the changes that take place.

Religions seem all to be created by the same Creator. They seem to have many functions, including binding groups together, teaching “best practices” regarding getting along within a group here on earth, and (when resources are short), fighting against other religious groups. Religious organizations seem to be part of the self-organizing economy, as well.

[9] What I see ahead.

(a) Recession seems likely, starting out as being barely perceptible, but getting worse and worse over time.

(b) World output of physical goods and services will begin to decline almost immediately. In particular, products manufactured in the US using inputs from China will become difficult to obtain, as will goods imported into the US from China.

(c) I expect that commodity prices will fall. Deflation seems more likely than inflation. If inflation does take place, I expect that it will take the form of hyperinflation, with central banks issuing huge amounts of money, but there not being very many goods and services to purchase with this money.

(d) I expect that many banks, insurance companies, and pension plans will fail. I expect that governments will not be able to bail them all out. If governments do try to bail out all these failing institutions, the result is likely to be hyperinflation, with not much to buy.

(e) Many governments have plans for digital currencies to replace the currencies we have today. I am doubtful that these plans will work. For one thing, intermittent electricity is likely to become an increasing problem. For another, government organizations, such as the European Union, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the United Nations are likely to start falling apart. Even the United States is likely to become less “united,” or it may comprise fewer states.

(f) I do not see gold as being very helpful for the long term. It seems like small silver coins will be much more tradable in the future. What we will really need is food, water, and shelter. I expect that these will go mostly to workers producing these essentials, rather than to hangers-on to the system.

(g) A few businesses may do well. Figuring out how to produce food in quantity, locally, may be helpful. Converting unused buildings to shelters for poor people may also be helpful. Private “protection” services may also do well.

(h) The stock market provided great returns for US investors in the 2008 to 2024 period, but this cannot be expected to continue. A likely result is that returns will fall very low or will turn negative.

(i) Borrowing is likely to remain challenging, or get worse. Lenders will increasingly recognize the default risk. Some lenders may go out of business.

(j) Over a period of years, trade will change to be more local. The US will lose its status as the holder of the reserve currency. It will no longer try to be the policeman of the world.

[10] There are a lot of things we really don’t know.

The Creator may be creating a religious ending that we are not aware of. In fact, such an ending could come very soon.

Otherwise, dissipative structures are very often replaced by other dissipative structures. New economies may gradually grow up in different parts of the world. Perhaps the new economies will figure out new energy sources that we are not aware of, or make better use of declining energy types. According to Physicist Eric Chaisson, the long-term trend is toward more complex, energy-intense dissipative structures being formed.

Figure 7. Image similar to ones shown in Eric Chaisson’s 2001 book, Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature.

“Societies” in Figure 7 seem to be similar to today’s economy.