USA - There has been a lot of talk about “peace” this year, but meanwhile global leaders just continue to push us toward more war. Negotiations between the US and Russia have broken down, President Trump just threatened Hamas with military action again, Venezuela is bracing for a potential invasion by the US military, the president of Colombia wants to “take out Trump”, and the Iranians have announced that there will be no restrictions as they rebuild their nuclear program. 2025 has certainly been a year of war, but I have a feeling that global conflict is going to escalate to an entirely new level during the months ahead.

MIDDLE EAST - Barrack Threatens ‘Major’ Israeli War If Lebanon Fails to Disarm Hezbollah. US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack is once again threatening Lebanon with war, this time from Israel, if they fail to meet US demands to fully disarm Hezbollah. He suggested that even hesitation would “inevitably” lead to a major war with Israel, and dire consequences. Israel is already actively attacking Lebanon on a virtually daily basis, and indeed has been since the ceasefire was signed in November of last year. At least three strikes were reported Monday.

CHINA - China’s state-run Global Times on Monday reported that 25 provincial authorities are set to begin distributing “maternity allowances” to women on November 1. In other words, having exhausted every other strategy to combat demographic decline, China will start paying women to have babies. “Since September, provinces such as Jiangxi, Anhui and Shaanxi have successively rolled out direct payments of maternity allowances to individuals province-wide,” the Global Times noted.

JAPAN - Conservative Sanae Takaichi is Japan’s first female prime minister after the 64-year-old triumphed Tuesday in an historic vote to clear the way for her ascendancy. Takaichi is also the first woman to lead the dominant Liberal Democratic Party that has forged Japan’s postwar politics. The former TV presenter leads a new ruling coalition and is expected to discuss an increase in defense spending, potential tax cuts and consider a push to restart Japan’s suspended nuclear power plants, the Financial Times reports. She also stands with the imperial family’s male-only succession and opposes same-sex marriage and allowing separate surnames for married couples.

UK - A quiet monetary pilot began on the day that Keir Starmer stole the headlines. The announcement of tokenized sterling deposits marks a key turning point for the UK’s already shady monetary history. The initiative is backed by the Bank for International Settlements and the Bank of England and involves the top UK banks. While it’s framed as a cautious step towards the digitization of money and faster payments, this narrative conceals something far, far larger: the reality is that it represents the construction of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) infrastructure, disguised in softer language and without any direct public scrutiny.

UK - The fall of First Brands and Tricolor may be a warning of much bigger woes in the financial system, says the Bank of England governor. The Bank of England must take the sudden collapse of two American firms “very seriously” amid worries that signs of fragility in the US private credit market echo the beginnings of the 2008 financial crisis, Andrew Bailey has warned. The Bank governor told the House of Lords that global financial regulators must monitor the risks to the banking system from its linkages with private credit, after last month’s bankruptcies of First Brands, a car parts dealer, and Tricolor, a car dealership. “Are these cases idiosyncratic or are they ‘the canary in the coal mine?’ In other words, are they telling us something more fundamental about the private finance, private asset, private credit, private equity sector?” Bailey asked the Lords financial regulation committee on Tuesday.

USA - The Federal Reserve will come to the rescue. One of the Wall Street giants will step in at the last minute. And if necessary, the money will be printed to protect deposits. As the markets grow more nervous over America’s regional banks they can at least reassure themselves on one point: that the US government will bail them out if it has to – as it always has in the past. Don’t be too sure. With Donald Trump at war with the Fed and the government shut down, we can hardly take that for granted – and that is a terrifying prospect for investors. It was not hard to work out why global stock markets were falling on Friday. There is growing nervousness about the exposure of many of the regional banks in the US to loans that could soon turn sour. President Trump is never predictable. He makes decisions on the hoof, has no fixed ideology and often seems to enjoy unleashing chaos. He is a wild card. Does he have much sympathy for bankers who have run into trouble? Does he think it is time that a bank was finally allowed to go bust, in the same way as any other business?

GERMANY - The AfD benefits enormously from the firewall, even though it’s not of their making. The last ten years of German politics have been one unending nightmarish festival of failure and stupidity. All the establishment parties have taken turns implicating themselves in this amazing ****show, while religiously sparing the AfD any association with their unprecedented failures. The firewall lends truth to the AfD’s name; it has allowed Alternative für Deutschland to become the only conceivable political alternative in Germany. As things get worse and voters grow more desperate for alternatives, the AfD just becomes stronger. The firewall is an AfD-maximising machine. At some point, in a way that is as yet unimaginable to us, the firewall will probably come down. The political realignment would happen suddenly, in less than a few months.

USA - For hundreds of years, men dominated the major institutions in western society, but over the past several decades there has been an unprecedented shift. Today, leftist women either dominate or are on their way to dominating most of our major institutions. As a result, the way that things get done has been totally turned upside down. Even our largest corporations are now making consensus-driven decisions that are based on emotion rather than on facts. If you insist on disagreeing with the consensus, you may find yourself being “canceled”. Defending the narratives that the group has established and protecting the feelings of favored individuals have become far more important goals than getting to the truth. The feminization of our society and the rise of “wokeness”… Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition.

ISRAEL - Israel’s Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli condemned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday, highlighting a March 30, 2025 prayer in which Erdogan asked that “Zionist Israel” be “destroyed and devastated,” and accusing the Turkish leader of consistently seeking to undermine the Jewish people’s historic bond to Jerusalem. In a post on X/Twitter, Chikli wrote that the line, “May Allah, for the sake of His name… destroy and devastate Zionist Israel,” was not uttered by Hamas or Hezbollah, but by Erdogan himself during a public prayer. Israeli and international outlets reported at the time that Erdogan, speaking at Istanbul’s Camlica Mosque at the close of Ramadan, used language translated as a call for Israel’s destruction. Israel condemned the remarks.