(June 2, 2026)
The ministry said Europe accounted for 36 percent of the defence deals, followed by the Asia Pacific at 32 percent, the Middle East and North Africa at 15 percent, and North America at 13 percent.
(June 2, 2026)
The ministry said Europe accounted for 36 percent of the defence deals, followed by the Asia Pacific at 32 percent, the Middle East and North Africa at 15 percent, and North America at 13 percent.
Oil futures have seen their biggest weekly drop in nearly two months as news swirled of a potential US-Iran deal that could see the Strait of Hormuz reopened and a ceasefire extended between Washington and Tehran.
Brent oil crude futures fell to $92.69 a barrel, a weekly drop of more than 10 percent.
(Sept 13, 2023)
At the Private and Public Sector Entity Levels. (In trillions of U.S. dollars)
PRIVATE SECTOR:
Households 121.9
Nonprofits 8.6
Noncorporate businesses 17.2
Total U.S. Private Sector 147.7
PUBLIC SECTOR:
Federal government – 21.3
State and local government 11.5
Total U.S. Public Sector – 9.8
Instrument discrepancies – 1.1
TOTAL U.S. WEALTH 136.8
(May 26, 2026)
A California ballot initiative that will be put to voters in November would tax just 5 percent of billionaires’ fortunes over five years. This trailblazing wealth tax would be a small (for the ultrawealthy) but important (for everyone else) step toward raising needed tax revenue and curbing the state’s runaway inequality.
The billionaire class in California includes roughly 250 households, a mere 0.001 percent of the state’s families. Yet its wealth now amounts to more than half of California’s entire annual economic output.
This means that if these billionaires spent all of their wealth, they could buy more than half of the goods and services produced in a year in the entire state.
(May 26, 2026)
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen IEs [or independent expenditures] have this kind of an impact on a governor’s race,” said veteran GOP strategist Martin Wilson, who has worked on every California gubernatorial contest since 1978 and worked on an outside effort backing San José Mayor Matt Mahan’s 2026 bid for governor. “It’s totally unprecedented.”
Gasoline accounts for a shrinking share of household budgets, but its political power can still make or break a presidency.
U.S. President Donald Trump left China on Friday with no major breakthroughs on trade or tangible help from Beijing to end the Iran war, despite two days spent heaping praise on his host, Xi Jinping.
Xi Jinping told President Trump their countries should be “partners rather than opponents” as they began a high-stakes summit in Beijing. Over two days of meetings, they are expected to discuss a range of thorny issues, including tech, trade and Taiwan.
The delegation’s collective wealth exceeds US$1.07 trillion, according to data from Forbes and United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings compiled by Quiver Quantitative, and each member holds a significant commercial stake in the bilateral relationship.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk leads the group with a personal net worth of US$827 billion, representing over 77 per cent of the delegation’s total wealth.
As US credibility crumbles across the Gulf, China’s petroyuan fast emerging as the currency of Asia’s post-war energy order
Angesichts der gestiegenen Ölpreise wegen des Kriegs im Nahen Osten hat der britische Energieriese BP seinen Gewinn kräftig gesteigert. Das bereinigte Ergebnis lag von Januar bis März bei 3,2 Milliarden Dollar – nach 1,4 Milliarden im Vorjahreszeitraum.
TotalEnergies announced in its first-quarter earnings report that it would increase returns to shareholders through a higher dividend and stock buybacks after seeing $5.8 billion in profits and $8.6 billion in cash flow during the first three months of 2026.
(April 22, 2026)
The manifesto published by Palantir Technologies is neither a technical document nor an economic vision. It is an explicit political document announcing a new phase in the trajectory of digital capitalism, a phase in which it has abandoned its claim to neutrality and decided to unmask itself, revealing its full ideological face. Palantir is not an isolated case in the global technological landscape. It is one of several major technology companies that sell their technologies to systems of repression and human rights violations, and has been condemned by international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, for its role in enabling forced deportations, mass surveillance, and the persecution of dissidents.
Most damning of all, documented reports have revealed a direct partnership between this company, alongside other Western technology companies such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, and the Israeli military, providing data and targeting systems that were used in military operations on Gaza, making it an actual partner in documented war crimes against Palestinian civilians.
One of the strongest indicators of whether people or businesses are actually fleeing from a city is the housing and real estate market. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when many residents really did leave New York for the surrounding suburbs and other states, the city’s vacancy rates soared and rents dropped with demand, leading to “COVID discounts” at the height of the pandemic. This trend was even more extreme for the city’s commercial real estate, where vacancy rates doubled as more companies adopted remote work and shed office space.
Today nearly every indicator points to the opposite problem: demand is running hot and supply is lagging badly, especially when it comes to housing.
(May 2, 2017)
Beispiel 3:
Präsident A will sein „Einflussgebiet“ („Area of Influence“) vergrößern. Er hat sich zum Sturz der Hierarchie des nicht kontrollierten Staates bzw Gebietes Evil entschieden. Warum, wie, auf wessen Drängen auch immer spielt keine Rolle mehr, sobald die Entscheidung gefallen ist. Denn dann steht nicht nur seine Macht über die gesamte eigene Hierarchie, sowie aller eingegliederten und untergeordneten Hierarchien auf dem Spiel, sondern wiederum deren Macht, letztlich diese selbst. Daher muss Evil im Zweifel auch erobert werden, wenn der Sturz von dessen Hierarchie nicht gelingt.
(…)
Bleibt die Eroberung von Evil stecken bzw reicht die Zahl der organisierten und geführten Söldner und Milizen nicht aus, werden neue aufgestellt und alles beginnt von vorne. Die Hierarchie aller eingesetzten Proxy-Truppen endet dabei immer bei A, bzw dessen Untergebenen bei X1 und Z1. Die Proxy-Truppen können wahlweise kombiniert werden, untereinander überlaufen, sich neue Namen geben, eigene Territorien mit blumigen Namen gründen, etc, solange alle der Eroberung von Evil, oder alternativen Planmodellen dienen, wie der Zerschlagung von Evil, und / oder übergeordneten längerfristigen strategischen Zielen, wie der Zersetzung oder Zerschlagung noch vorhandener demokratischer Strukturen oder ganzer Staaten im eigenen Einflussbereich, z.B. durch die Erzeugung gewaltig-heiliger Intelligenz- und Erleuchtungswellen durch „mehr Atlantik“.
Eventuelle geostrategisch vermeintlich oder tatsächlich konkurrierende Hierarchien werden gekauft und ruhiggestellt, z.B. indem man ihnen das eigene Konzept zur Transformation des Herrschaftsbereiches andreht. Man versteht sich. Man will doch nicht streiten. Wo doch alle profitieren, von der Lage.
Eine Verschwörung hat nicht stattgefunden. Es sind einfach alle vernünftig.
Thomas Fazi: Die wahre Funktion der NATO wurde von ihrem ersten Generalsekretär, Lord Ismay, perfekt auf den Punkt gebracht, der sie damit beschrieb, „die Russen draußen, die Amerikaner drinnen und die Deutschen unten“ zu halten. Das sagt eigentlich schon alles.
In comments first reported by state media, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told EU Council president António Costa that Iran has „the necessary will to end this war“ but expects certain guarantees in exchange.
Pezeshkian also said on Monday that any end to the war in the Middle East must „guarantee the security and interests of the Iranian people,“ according to comments first published by the state news agency IRNA and reported by regional media.
Speaking on Sunday, Trump told the newspaper that his “preference would be to take the oil,” as he weighs whether to seize Iran’s key fuel export hub at Kharg Island. He likened the potential move to the US ambitions to control Venezuela’s oil industry following the capture of its leader Nicolás Maduro in January.
(March 26, 2026)
The image of a rifle in the hands of a singer-songwriter is strange, but not when the one wielding it is Silvio Rodríguez, 79. The Cuban singer-songwriter has spent his entire life singing, directly or indirectly, about the Revolution, its leaders and its ideals; about the martyrs and the guerrillas. “There are politics in my songs, but not propaganda,” says the musician, who receives EL PAÍS on Wednesday at the Ojalá studios in Havana. He speaks of the government’s “orthodox and closed” vision in the economic sphere, and of his commitment to a less “rigid” socialism. “Socialism by the book is very idealistic,” he concludes. He doesn’t budge an inch on his opinion of the United States government: “The world is run by an authoritarian, warmongering, thieving regime. And it’s not Cuba.”
Is Trump a freak of history or its fulfillment, an aberration or a culmination? The answer, surely, is both. But in the course of his presidency, Trump has revealed a much older malady: America’s unshakable faith in its ability to shape the world to its liking, indifferent to what others might want and supremely confident that its plan is the right one. Beyond Trump, it’s this disfiguring mentality we Americans must face.
(March 24, 2026)
The world saves in dollars in large part because it pays in dollars. The dollar‘s dominance in cross-border trade is arguably built on the petrodollar: globally traded oil is priced and invoiced in USD. This arrangement can be traced to a deal struck in 1974 where Saudi Arabia agreed to price oil in USD and invest surpluses in USD assets, in exchange for US security guarantees. Because oil is a core input to global manufacturing and transport, there is a natural incentive for global value chains to dollarize, and global surpluses to accumulate in USD.
The foundations of the petrodollar regime have been under pressure even before this conflict. Most Middle East oil is now sold to Asia not the US; sanctioned oil from Russia and Iran has already been trading off dollar rails; Saudi Arabia has been localizing defence, and experimenting with forms of non-dollar payment infrastructure such as Project mBridge.
The current conflict may expose further fault lines, by challenging the US security umbrella for Gulf infrastructure and the maritime security for global trade in oil. Damage to Gulf economies could encourage an unwind in their foreign asset savings held largely in dollars. In this context, reports that the passage for ships through the Strait of Hormuz may be granted in exchange for oil payments in yuan should be closely followed. The conflict could be remembered as a key catalyst for erosion in petrodollar dominance, and the beginnings of the petroyuan.
The petrodollar helps keep borrowing costs down for US consumers and Washington, giving them big advantages over peers
(…)
Traders reportedly placed $580 million in oil bets minutes before Donald Trump‘s post on Iran talks, triggering sharp moves in crude and stocks and raising questions over the timing of the trades
(March 11, 2026)
When Cuban-American billionaire Jorge Mas Santos (henceforth, Mas) visited the White House last week, the meeting was less focused on Inter Miami’s MLS Cup victory and more on the evergreen influence of Miami’s business elite over Washington’s Cuba policy.
Mas, the chairman of a powerful family business empire and longtime political player in South Florida, has spent decades advocating for tightening U.S. sanctions on Cuba until the island’s political system changes. He inherited the position from his father, Jorge Mas Canosa, who formed the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) with the help of the Reagan administration as part of Washington’s effort to counter leftist governments in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Oil prices spiked to nearly $120 per barrel this week, their highest level since the pandemic. At the opening of the Asian markets on Friday, the price stayed above $100 per barrel, despite Trump bending the knee to the Kremlin dictator.
The Financial Times reported Thursday that Russia was already the biggest winner from Trump’s war, raking in as much as $150 million per day in extra budget revenues from oil sales.
But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, after announcing the move to release the sanctioned oil, said it “will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government.”
March 10, 2026)
Russian media was awash Monday and Tuesday with headlines and analysis about how the soaring oil prices will affect the country, but also its adversaries in the West. “Eastern Strike: Oil Price Could Surpass $150” read the headline in Russia’s pro-government Izvestia newspaper.
Elsewhere, firebrand pro-Kremlin TV host Olga Skabeyeva quipped Tuesday about people in the neighboring NATO nation of Estonia having to walk because public transport was already running out of fuel.
After Putin‘s meeting Monday, President Donald Trump appeared to hand him another gift as he suggested his administration was lifting sanctions on “some countries” to stabilize the oil market.