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With Warren Buffett gone for not even a year, Berkshire Hathaway is already facing questions over its investment decisions. Under new CEO Greg Abel, the conglomerate has made a multibillion-dollar push into artificial intelligence, only to see some of its biggest bets stumble as enthusiasm for the technology fades, according to Bloomberg.

In his first year at the helm, Abel has committed $10 billion to Google parent Alphabet and another $930 million to Italian technology group Bending Spoons, marking a shift from Buffett's traditionally cautious approach to technology investments.

But the timing has raised concerns. Alphabet shares have fallen more than 24% since June, slipping below Berkshire's purchase price, while Bending Spoons has also retreated following an initial rally.

CEO Greg Abel

Still, analysts say Abel may be taking a longer-term view, much like Buffett did with his highly profitable Apple investment in 2016. With $365.5 billion in cash at the end of the second quarter, Berkshire has plenty of room to capitalize on lower valuations and expand its AI exposure.

Meanwhile, Berkshire's upcoming third-quarter earnings will offer a broader look at the conglomerate's performance under Abel. Solid US economic growth could support its businesses, although inflation and high fuel prices may weigh on retail operations.

Investors will also be watching Geico, where higher claims costs and advertising spending hurt recent profits, and railroad operator BNSF, which could benefit from stronger freight volumes and fuel surcharges.

Bloomberg notes that another focus will be share buybacks. Berkshire resumed repurchases earlier this year after a lengthy pause, but its stock has since climbed to record highs, potentially discouraging further purchases.

The results will offer an early test of Abel's leadership as he seeks to put Berkshire's enormous cash reserves to work while preserving the investment discipline that defined the Buffett era. He will have to do so in an era where Democrats now control a large majority of AI/data center planned capacity in the US...

The U.S. government believes Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had a romantic relationship with Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive whom American intelligence believes was recruited to spy for China's Ministry of State Security, the Financial Times reported Friday, according to people familiar with the matter.

According to the report, U.S. officials wrote a memo earlier this year - based on information obtained by American intelligence, which said Huang had been romantically involved with her. The memo was shared with a small group of top officials shortly before President Trump traveled to Beijing for his summit with Xi Jinping. Nvidia declined to comment on the memo and on the assertions that Huang had an intimate relationship with Alice Huang, who is not related to him.

That came hours after the New York Times reported on a memo that circulated among top policymakers in the Trump administration last spring cited intelligence that Alice Huang was a spy for the Ministry of State Security, Beijing's main intelligence agency. According to that report, she was recruited to collect intelligence on Huang as part of a drive to learn more about American AI chips and potentially influence the company to push for its most advanced chips to be made available to China.

None of it appears to have cost Huang his access to the president. When Trump flew to China in May, Huang was not among the chief executives who left Washington on Air Force One, however after Trump learned Huang had been left out, he called the Nvidia CEO - who flew to Alaska and boarded the presidential jet during a stopover, the FT reported. In September, Huang attended the state dinner Trump held for Xi during his U.S. visit.

As we reported last week, U.S. intelligence agencies were conducting electronic surveillance of Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen, for at least a year, and that Trump was briefed last year on Huang's relationship with her but chose not to do anything about it. On Thursday, the Republican chairmen of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Intelligence Committee and the Select Committee on the CCP asked Huang to sit for a closed-door briefing on Nov. 18 about his dealings with her.

Alice Huang speaks English well and has relationships with executives at the highest levels of the AI chip industry, including Huang and the leaders of Gigabyte, one of the top assemblers of Nvidia supercomputers, according to people who have met her. It is unclear when the two first met. In 2024, around the time they were photographed together at a bar in Taipei, Megaspeed began a multibillion-dollar purchase of advanced AI chips. Photos and videos of the two together have been circulating on social media.

pic.twitter.com/KWd6NOzTeA
? Judging by Their Body Language, What Is the Relationship Between Jensen Huang and Alice Huang?

At the 1:03 mark, Alice Huang kisses Jensen Huang on the cheek (and Jensen Huang actively leans his face toward her). Some people say this is neither an... https://t.co/ndBBIeLkiu

— Inconvenient Truths - Jennifer Zeng Reports (@jenniferzeng97) November 2, 2026

Megaspeed has been building data centers in Southeast Asia and renting their computing power to Alibaba, which the Times describes as a backdoor way for China to get at advanced Nvidia chips that the U.S. bars Nvidia from selling there directly. The company, spun off from a Chinese gaming company in 2023, has come under U.S. scrutiny for allegedly smuggling advanced Nvidia chips into China; Nvidia ran an internal probe and found no evidence of wrongdoing, according to the FT.

The network of Shanghai and Zhejiang companies and investors Alice Huang was connected to also has a financial link to China's military establishment, through an investment in a cybersecurity subsidiary of China Electronics Technology Group, one of the country's largest makers of military technology, the Times reported.

Peter Mattis, a former CIA counterintelligence analyst who now heads the Jamestown Foundation, told the Times that China's spy agency sees technology as "the key fight for dominance in the economic world." "Jensen is someone you'd want to influence because he wields a lot of power and is at the crux of a world-shaping technology," he said.

And Huang has spent years lobbying Washington to let chip makers sell AI technology to China, arguing it would create competition for Huawei and slow its AI development. In 2025, he persuaded Trump to roll back a prohibition on AI chip sales to China and allow Nvidia to sell a less powerful chip there, then struck a deal with the president to sell Nvidia's second-most-powerful chip, the H200, to China, with the U.S. taking a 25% cut. Trump later considered letting Nvidia sell China its latest Blackwell chip before backing off. In May, Huang said at an investor conference that China should not have access to Blackwell or the forthcoming Rubin chip. U.S. national security officials have privately expressed frustration about Huang, according to the FT.

Nvidia spokesman John Rizzo told the Times the company does not share classified information with its customers, and that customers do not ask Nvidia to press the U.S. government to change its chip policies on China. He has maintained that Huang's interactions with Alice Huang were "not unusual." A spokesman for the Chinese embassy called the Times' reporting "unsubstantiated" and "nothing but smears against China"; the embassy did not respond to the FT. Alice Huang could not be reached for comment, and the White House and CIA declined to comment.

Meanwhile, the chips Huang fought to sell are reaching some strange places. The Commerce Department has approved roughly two dozen Chinese firms to buy or handle Nvidia's H200 chips, some with ties to companies under U.S. sanctions, the Times reported Saturday. One, New Matrix, was cleared to assemble the chips into AI computers, yet its listed address in a Beijing industrial park is an empty shell with wires dangling from the ceiling, and its owners have ties to Wise Road, a Chinese private equity firm the U.S. blacklisted in 2024 for helping the Chinese government acquire strategically sensitive chip companies. Another approved assembler, Maginfra, also appeared deserted when a Times reporter visited; analysts believe it is an offshoot of Inspur, which is on the U.S. entity list for working with the Chinese military.

"I have a ton of concerns that neither the Commerce Department or Nvidia is doing the due diligence needed to ensure that the licensing terms are being followed," said Liza Tobin, the former China director for the White House National Security Council. Rizzo told the Times that "it makes no sense for the Chinese military to depend on American technology," while a spokesman for the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security said it carefully reviews all applications for national security risks.

Huang has until Nov. 11 to tell the three chairmen whether he'll show up on Nov. 18 - the day after Nvidia reports earnings.

The White House has confirmed more 'limited' strikes against Iranian targets along or off the country's southern coast, which appear to have occurred in the late night hours (local).

Presdent Trump told media Friday evening he ordered a "minor" military action that targeted Iranian air defense systems and military infrastructure on Qeshm Island - which had already been subject of similar action in the past weeks.

"They built a little bit of an anti-aircraft device and we knocked it out in about 15 minutes, maybe five," Trump said.

Despite the fresh strikes, Trump still claimed that the US has made "a lot of progress with Iran" - and that this action was only a "minor strike" and that "we are not fighting".

"We're dealing with them now. They want to make a deal," Trump told the press. Conflicting reports have emerged this week suggesting Tehran is open to discussing the nuclear file (despite its public statements to the contrary); but it's also clear that Iran is still insisting it won't back down from its seven conditions.

The Friday night assault comes after Iran has touted that several tankers transiting the Hormuz Strait 'without permission' were hit by sea mines this week, resulting in damage and fires.

Crucially, this also marks Washington's first time targeting Iran since the Democratic Party swept the midterm elections. The Iran war very obviously factored in...

Speculation remains over 'what's next?' in this ongoing quagmire which in the end sunk the Republican party before it sunk the Islamic Republic.

The hawkish pundit class is also been sunk, and is scrambling to sing a different tune...

US Central Command has just announced the creation of Task Force Iron Gate, which is aimed at blocking any alternative or overland trade routes being used by Iran. 

The group will monitor any significant imports or exports entering or exiting Iranian borders, including via the Caspian Sea. This is expected to target military technology, dual use items, or any overland energy trade.

Three days after a blue tsunami swept both chambers, Democrats have picked their first trade fight, and it's the one they have already won three times.

According to the WSJ, Democrats are eyeing President Trump's trade war with Canada as the first target in a campaign to roll back the administration's tariff agenda, according to Senate Finance's top Democrat (and soon its chairman), Oregon's Ron Wyden.

"There is overwhelming support for repealing the tariffs on products from Canada," Wyden told the Journal, adding that he is already talking with colleagues about legislation once he takes the committee gavel in January, and that "Congress must take away the president's ability to unilaterally and arbitrarily impose tariffs."

Overwhelming, maybe. Veto-proof? Not even close, and as we show below, the timing is even worse: the next (and biggest) round of Canada tariffs takes effect on January 1, two days before the new Congress is sworn in.

Why Canada? Because That's Where Republicans Already Cracked

The logic of going after Canada first is simple: it's the tariff fight where Republicans have most reliably crossed the aisle. Wyden's camp told the WSJ that the Canada levies are the best opportunity to flip Republicans against Trump and possibly build enough support to avert a veto, or even override one. The plan is to bolt sweeteners onto the repeal to win GOP votes, and to keep forcing floor votes on the least popular parts of the trade agenda in hopes of more defections.

There is precedent. The Senate voted 51-48 to terminate the emergency behind Trump's original 25% "fentanyl" tariffs on Canada in April 2025 (with Collins, McConnell, Murkowski and Paul voting yes), did it again 50-46 in October 2025, and in February the House followed with a 219-211 vote as six Republicans broke ranks. Every single vote passed. None came anywhere near the two-thirds needed to override a veto.

And Canada is just the opening act: Democrats are also eyeing legislation to rein in the novel legal authorities Trump has used to justify his tariffs, starting with Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which underpins the Canada levies and which no president had ever used before, as well as Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which Trump first invoked earlier this year for temporary global tariffs. As we noted in "Is The Gridlock Trade Dead Under Trump 2.0?" (Aug 3), Wyden already introduced the Congressional Trade Powers Reform Act of 2026 back in July, which would repeal Sections 122 and 338 outright, while Schumer's September bill would repeal the Canada tariffs and require refunds.

The rest of the Democratic bench is just as eager. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Wednesday that Democrats would pass a bill to stop Trump's tariffs and end the Iran war, while Rep. Jamie Raskin went further, saying "we're going to put an end to these tariffs" and that he hopes to see movement on Canada "within the first 100 days." Which, considering the first 100 days start January 3, is a long time in Trump tariff years.

Smoot-Hawley's Little Brother

Regular readers know we have been tracking this particular trade war since November 2024, when then president-elect Trump first floated a 25% tariff on Canada and Goldman's Rich Privorotsky flagged that the bigger surprise in the proposal was Canada. It only got uglier from there, and the timeline below shows how the US went from an emergency "fentanyl" tariff to a 96-year-old Depression-era statute in under 18 months (with zero congressional votes in support along the way).

After the Supreme Court ruled in February that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs, the administration went shopping for new authority and in July landed on Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (better known as Smoot-Hawley), slapping 50% duties on everything from "wine to hockey sticks to cement" (Jul 20), USMCA-compliant goods included. Goldman's FX team (Stuart Jenkins, Michael Cahill et al.) called the move "a clear escalation in these trade tensions," reiterating that the US's trade talks with Canada "will likely prove to be more challenging than those with Mexico."

Then came a month of whiplash: Trump paused the tariffs at the 11th hour (Aug 19) declaring "we have a DEAL!", only for the deal to collapse three days later as Carney suspended talks:

Trump's answer came two days later, when he announced that tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks, auto parts and steel would rise to 50% on January 1, 2027:

Ottawa retaliated on September 8 with counter-tariffs on roughly C$28BN of US goods, a list that, as Industry Minister Mélanie Joly openly admitted, was designed to target specific US states (Sep 7) and apply political pressure ahead of the midterms. Well, the midterms happened, and Michigan, Maine and Ohio all went blue.

Not that Canada has much to celebrate. As University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe told MPs last month, Ottawa's retaliation is costing Canadian consumers some $100 million a week while "there's no evidence that the retaliation we've enacted has changed U.S. behavior," and Rabobank's Benjamin Picton pointed out that Canada shed 68,300 jobs in September after losing 41,700 in August. Diplomacy at its finest.

Majority, Yes. Veto-Proof, No

Which brings us to the math. As the WSJ notes, any stand-alone bill would likely need 60 votes to clear a Senate filibuster, and a Trump veto (and there will be a veto) takes two-thirds of both chambers to override: 67 senators and 290 House members with full attendance. Per Goldman's tally, Democrats have flipped seven GOP Senate seats for at least 54, and get to 56 only if Alaska and Mississippi also flip; in the House, the bank sees a majority of around 255 seats.

Now add the Republicans who have voted to repeal the Canada tariffs before. Of the four GOP senators who did so in 2025, Susan Collins just lost her seat in Maine and Mitch McConnell is retiring, which leaves Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski. Even in the best case that's 58, or nine short of an override. In the House, even if all six Republicans who broke ranks in February return, Democrats would still be roughly 29 votes short of 290. Translation: the Canada repeal will probably pass, and Trump will probably veto it, and it's not clear Democrats can find the votes to override, as even the WSJ concedes.

That's also why Goldman's chief political economist Alec Phillips was underwhelmed even before the votes were counted. In his midterm preview (available to pro subs), Phillips wrote:

Democrats have indicated they would seek to reverse some of President Trump's tariffs, but we expect this to have a limited effect since the reversals would likely be focused on a few countries (e.g., Canada) or products. We expect President Trump to announce new tariff increases after the election that would more than offset those reductions, likely resulting in a rise in the US effective tariff rate of a little under 2pp.

We flagged that very passage on election night, so the WSJ story is only half the picture: Democrats are about to fight over the tariffs on the way out while the White House is lining up new ones on the way in.

The real Democratic leverage probably lies elsewhere. In the bank's post-election take, "USA: Democrats Win a House and Senate Majority with Gains Well Above Expectations", Goldman expects Democrats "to use fiscal deadlines to seek to limit the war with Iran, roll back selected tariffs, and reverse spending cuts enacted last year." The first deadline is December 11, when spending authority expires, though Goldman sees a short-term extension to February or March as most likely; the bigger one is the debt limit next fall. In other words, the more realistic path to tariff relief probably runs through a shutdown fight.

Markets Already Placed Their Bet

Traders didn't wait for Wyden. On Wednesday, JPMorgan's Delta-One thematics desk noted that its Tariff Sensitive basket beat the market by 2.5 sigma, while "Trump Policy themes are experiencing aggressive unraveling amid the red reversal playing out" (available to pro subs), part of the same blue-wave rotation we described in "Texas Turns Blue, Futures Turn Green" and "Crude Crashes As Blue-nami Sparks Market Chaos," where hopes of a tariff rollback were one of the reasons stocks ripped on Wednesday (before giving it all back and then some on Thursday).

Ottawa, meanwhile, is playing it cool. Carney said talks have intensified since a November 1 call with Trump and that Washington is now "asking less" and "offering more," having dropped some earlier demands, including limits on Canada's ability to strike trade deals with other countries. At the same time, his government says the Democratic sweep won't change its approach, and Canada's trade surplus just widened to the highest in more than four years in September (Reuters), which tells you Ottawa isn't exactly in a hurry.

And there is a reason for the newfound flexibility in Washington: a Canada deal struck by Trump before January takes the issue away from Democrats. Those close to Trump told the WSJ they see little sign that the electoral rebuke will slow his trade agenda, and the Journal warns that the Canada dispute threatens to intensify in the coming months, before the new lawmakers are sworn in.

Two Days Before The Cavalry

Which brings us back to the calendar. On January 1, tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks, parts and steel are scheduled to jump to 50%; on January 3, the new Democratic Congress takes its seats. Even with a perfect start, Wyden's bill would then need to clear Finance, the floor, the House and a veto, and as the charts above show, the last step is where every Canada repeal has died so far.

So what happens? Two paths: either Democrats find nine more Republican senators and 29 more House Republicans willing to override a sitting president on trade, or Trump does what he does best, cuts his own Canada deal in December, declares victory and keeps the tariff machine pointed at everyone else. We'd bet heavily on the second, which also happens to be Goldman's base case: fewer tariffs on a few countries like Canada, more tariffs on everyone else, and an effective tariff rate that ends up higher after the "anti-tariff" blue wave than before it.

Then again, after twenty months, three statutes and zero congressional votes in favor, the one thing everyone in Washington now agrees on is that Congress should have a say on tariffs. Whether it gets one is a different question.

Much more in the full Goldman "US Economics Analyst: Previewing the Midterm Elections" and the "USA: Democrats Win a House and Senate Majority with Gains Well Above Expectations" notes, both available to pro subs.

Authored by Lee Taylor via The Daily Sceptic,

Strip away the Sam Fender cover and the talking dog, and the commercial message of this year's John Lewis advert is simple. If your grandchildren are rude, bored, and only interested in cash, go to John Lewis. 

It took Saatchi and Saatchi three minutes and a Dame to make the most woke version yet.

We've been up and down with John Lewis over the years. Monty the Penguin made the country cry in 2014, and so did Man on the Moon a year later. Then it wandered. A few years of forgettable short films. Then last year looked like the recovery: a teenage boy, his father and a vinyl record, and not 'the message' in sight.

The interesting thing about this year's family is that John Lewis didn't invent them. They went and found them. Watch it again as a documentary rather than a commercial. The children arrive restless from a long journey and the first thing they do is fail to hug their grandmother. She brings down the old toys from the attic, and they lose interest the second someone shouts 'lunch'. They want cash, and they look crushed when the cards turn out to be empty. The parents stand there and let it all happen. The grandmother, alone in her kitchen, concludes that the only way back into her grandchildren's attention is to buy it. Somebody in a research group told Saatchi that this is what Christmas looks like now, and the research group was right. That is what Christmas looks like now. The ad isn't wrong about Britain. That's the problem.

At Christmas in the late 80s and early 90s you were grateful for whatever you got, because you'd been raised to be, and because the thing you'd actually been waiting for was the drive to your grandparents. Nobody needed entertaining because being together was the entertainment, and the presents were the icing on something that was already a cake. Freddie and Maggie, this year's brats, have been handed the icing and told the icing is the point, and now everyone wonders why they're rude.

So how did we get here? We stopped raising our children ourselves and handed the job to somebody else, and that somebody else was always going to do it worse. Every collectivist regime in history understood that the family was its rival:

Give us the child for eight years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.

Our version wears a lanyard and calls itself help for working families. Thirty free hours of childcare from nine months old. Free breakfast clubs, after-school clubs and a direction of travel under both parties for 20 years that maximises the hours a child spends in a state institution and minimises the hours they spend with their parents, driven by a Treasury whose actual interest is two earners and the tax receipts. These grandchildren are the affluent version of the same thing, outsourced to screens and 'experiences' rather than a council nursery, and the result is identical, because nobody at home taught them that their grandmother's table was the point. The state didn't raise Freddie and Maggie. It just set the terms on which everyone else did.

And then there's the DEI casting, which is where I'm supposed to lower my voice. I won't, because the point isn't the one people assume. On screen it's a white grandmother, her white daughter, a black son-in-law, and two mixed-race children. Fine. In London that's an ordinary family. Channel 4's own audit of the industry found that a black person appeared in 51% of UK television adverts in 2024, up from 37% four years earlier, in a country where black people are 4% of the population. British advertising has over-represented ethnic minorities against the population for a decade, in every category and every ad break, not because the public asked for it but because the people who make adverts cast for awards, and because a political class told them this was the job. In 2009, Andrew Neather, a speechwriter to Blair, wrote in the Evening Standard that immigration policy since 2000 had been designed partly to "rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date". This is a confession, not a conspiracy theory. Nobody is objecting to a black man in an advert, but they are objecting to being managed, and being told by the people doing the managing that the management was the point. People want to see people they recognise. I wrote about that four years ago and it's as true now as it was then.

This brings me back to the ending, because the ad's own solution is the final tell. Gloria doesn't sit down and play with her grandchildren. She doesn't teach them a card game or make them wait for lunch or tell them a story. She unlocks her home office and reveals a disco: lights, music and glitter balls, all available at John Lewis. The gift of time, delivered as a room full of stock. The disease dressed up as the cure, and it's also the product shot. "Don't give up on giving," says the tagline, over two children who gave up on everything except receiving some time ago.

I don't blame John Lewis for any of it. It held up a mirror to the country and the country doesn't like it, and the comments being switched off tells you the brand doesn't like it either. The ad is a three-minute portrait of what we did to our own families, who we let do it, and what the children look like afterwards. The only thing it gets wrong is the ending. There is no gran cave big enough to fix this.

Lee Taylor is CEO and Founder of marketing agency Uncommon Sense.

Rule-of-law scores fell in 26 of the 40 European countries with comparable data between 2021 and 2026, and the four Nordic leaders were among them: Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden each lost ground, according to a Visual Capitalist ranking built on the World Justice Project's latest index.

It is not only a European problem. The WJP's 2026 index, released October 21, covers 143 countries and found declines outnumbering improvements for the ninth straight year, 62% to 38%. The group said the drop in its measure of constraints on government powers was driven by weaker non-governmental checks, and that judicial limits on government power fell in 63% of countries.

Inside Europe, Russia fell 0.062 points to 0.401, the steepest drop on the continent, followed by Georgia (0.036), Serbia (0.032) and Belarus (0.031). Latvia (up 0.031) and Lithuania (up 0.028) improved the most. Germany slipped 0.010 to 0.830, France 0.004 to 0.716 and the UK 0.007 to 0.778.

Using the World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index 2026, this visualization by The European Correspondent (via Visual Capitalist) ranks 41 European countries and tracks changes in their scores since 2021.

Which European Countries Have the Strongest Rule of Law?

The index measures eight factors, including constraints on government power, corruption, fundamental rights, and civil and criminal justice. Scores range from zero to one, with higher values indicating stronger adherence to the rule of law.

The following table ranks 41 European countries using data from the WJP Rule of Law Index.

Denmark leads with a score of 0.898, followed by Norway (0.890) and Finland (0.870). Beyond the Nordic countries, Luxembourg, Germany, and Ireland round out Europe's top seven.

Notably, Ireland and Estonia are among the few countries near the top of the ranking to have improved since 2021.

Why Are Checks on Government Power Weakening?

A strong rule of law depends on independent courts, enforceable rights, and effective limits on government authority. When these safeguards weaken, political leaders face fewer constraints on how they exercise power.

According to Liberties' 2026 Rule of Law Report, political interference in courts, weakened oversight, and fast-track legislation are undermining these protections. The organization highlighted Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, and Slovakia as particularly concerning cases.

Independent journalism also plays an important role in holding governments accountable, making press freedom another critical institutional safeguard.

What Does This Mean for Europe?

Weakening legal institutions can have consequences beyond politics, affecting public trust, the fairness of legal proceedings, and how governments spend public money.

A 2026 European Commission survey found that 71% of Europeans believe corruption is widespread in their country. Research from the University of Gothenburg also identifies public procurement and healthcare as sectors particularly vulnerable to corruption.

Europe continues to dominate the upper end of global rule-of-law rankings. However, the widespread declines since 2021 suggest that strong institutions cannot be taken for granted, even in countries with long-established democratic systems.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

Over the past several months I’ve been covering some of strange changes in behavior of globalist institutions. Specifically, just before the 2024 elections in the US, the elites seemed to go “radio silent” when compared to their bravado in the pandemic era. For a brief moment in time the mask came off completely, and then they tried to put it back on.

Sadly, most people tend to have short memories, but through the majority of Joe Biden’s disastrous presidency the Davos crowd was absolutely frenetic with activity. The World Economic Forum and all orbiting think tanks were crowing about covid and how “this was the moment” that they were going to dramatically deconstruct capitalism and western norms. (Start video at 6:00)

Klaus Schwab, head of the WEF at the time, called for a “Great Reset” and a 4^th Industrial Revolution based on the notion that “you will own nothing, and be happy about it…” The pandemic was their “Red October” moment.

Lynn Forester de Rothschild openly announced the creation of the “Council for Inclusive Capitalism” in conjunction with the Pope and the Vatican; an organization devoted to woke socialist control of every facet of the corporate and economic world.

The establishment media was operating full force in support of the globalist regime, spreading non-stop propaganda in favor of perpetual lockdowns, perpetual vaccines, vax passports, a new society revolving entirely around medical tyranny and constant fear over a virus with a tiny median Infection Fatality rate of 0.23%. In other words, billions of people were supposed to give up their freedoms and bow to the technocrats to save the world from a virus that 99.8% of the population would easily survive.

I still don’t think many people realize how close we came to going off the edge of the cliff. We were a breath away from total Orwellian tyranny or outright civil war.

Then, suddenly, the noise was gone. It was like someone flipped a switch, or sent out a company memo. The fear mongering stopped almost overnight. The media gave up on multiple false narratives and moved on to other news stories. Some even admitted that the virus was not as big a threat as they had originally reported.

According to US state data (not CDC data) around 25% of the population was still unvaccinated. Around 50% of Americans refused to get a booster shot. Half of all American states (red states) blocked the mandates. Maybe this was the trigger that forced the globalists to retreat from their agenda. Maybe they calculated 25% of an armed population fighting back and they didn’t like their odds. It’s hard to say.

What I do know is, the WEF disappeared into the hedges. The think tanks you never heard of until the pandemic? They returned to obscurity. The Council For Inclusive Capitalism? They essentially dissolved. The New World Order had been beaten back…for a little while.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before they popped up again. Sure, there have been Davos meetings and the WEF still exists, but most elitist meetings have been limited to smaller climate change conferences. Nothing substantial in which global planning is discussed, until recently…

It is perhaps not coincidental that the globalists just held a discreet summit at the end of October, right before the US midterms, and in China of all places.

The 2026 Global Governance Forum is a Chinese funded event with extremely limited press coverage; the first such forum China has ever hosted. It received minor lip service from Reuters and a couple other outlets, but press on the scene was mostly restricted to CCP approved media, and they only covered the opening and closing ceremonies.

Details of the 22 round table discussions held at the forum are limited or non-existent, and the list of 180 overseas guests is largely confidential. Klaus Schwab was there, along with a few other publicly announced notables including:

• Gerhard Schröder (former Chancellor of Germany)
• Klaus Schwab (founder of the World Economic Forum)
• Thomas L. Friedman (New York Times columnist)
• Guy Ryder (UN Under-Secretary-General for Policy)
• John L. Thornton (co-chair, Board of Trustees, Asia Society)
• David Shambaugh (political scientist)
• Helga Zepp-LaRouche (founder, Schiller Institute)
• Erik Solheim (former UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNEP)
• Andrea Renda (director of research, Centre for European Policy Studies)

Topics reportedly focused on globalist operations in Asia, with the Chinese-Globalist relationship being strengthened. There were also mentions of AI development, the “governance” of outer space, UN reform and streamlining, as well as an announcement of a “Global Governance Research Center.”

Motivations include the Trump Administration’s tariffs, which have been rather useful in disrupting globalist efforts to homogenize national economies. Their solution is obviously to shift away from the US to a new consumer engine, but such an engine simply doesn’t exist.

The US is 30% of all global consumer markets; without it, no manufacturing economy will be able to survive for long; but maybe that’s the goal? To cut off the rest of the world from its primary consumer foundation and break down national economies even further.

The conference seems to support the theory that the elites are attempting to build a coalition between Europe and China in an effort to mitigate conservative movements in the US. European officials and even Canadian leaders have been boasting about their plans to rely more on China as a global economic partner.

This is a foolish notion given that China is a manufacturing economy, not a consumer economy. They might have a billion people, but the average yearly wage in China outside of government jobs is only $10,000 USD per year with no expendable income. The average annual wage for government jobs is around $16,000 USD.

I suspect this rhetoric is fodder for the uninformed liberal peasantry; a way to get them hyped up about breaking from the US economy and “punishing the capitalists” without considering the true consequences (we’re seeing those consequences hitting Canadians right now).

The forum closed with its “Global Governance: Xiongan Vision” document. The document describes the world as entering a “new period of turbulence” and argued that “multilateralism” (global government) is the only viable way to address the governance deficit (whatever that means). They urged safeguarding and improving the UN’s central role in this effort.

The message also advocated for greater Global South participation in rule-making, agenda-setting, and decision-making. And, it promoted the the UN’s 2030 Agenda with preparations for a post-2030 world. Whatever was discussed behind closed doors, we may never know.

Some people might be surprised that China is hosting such a forum – The predominant narrative in conspiracy circles is that China is “anti-globalist.” As I’ve said for many years, this is a false paradigm. From 2016 onward, China has been deeply attached to globalist systems, including the IMF’s global currency basket (the SDR). They have been calling for the globalists to introduce a new world currency, controlled by the IMF, for well over a decade.

China IS the New World Order; or at least, it’s a prototype for the NWO. The country is an ongoing beta-test for some of the most horrifying authoritarian systems ever devised. Globalists love communists, because they are communists.

A significant part of the globalist agenda is exploiting the concept of “reparations” for developing nations. They argue that wealthy nations have somehow benefited unfairly or stolen from third world nations. That is to say, they are trying to blame the failures and incompetence of the third world on the west as if we are the cause.

Take one guess who gets to be in charge of the wealth redistribution…

The elites also claim that the success of the west is hurting the climate, which is harming developing nations through dangerous weather. There is zero evidence to support this, but it doesn’t matter. They don’t actually care about saving third worlders, this is about centralized control of global production and the idea of reparations is a great way to get third worlders onboard.

The purpose of globalism is to undermine western civilization while homogenizing national economies into one system. This process requires a broad collective of leftist governments, corporations and NGOs working in tandem, and that is what is being engineered right now with events like the Chinese Global Governance Forum.

Then comes the homogenization of the west and the “Global South” using mass immigration and multiculturalism, until all vestiges of western culture are erased.

The job of these institutions leading up to 2030 will be to set the stage for the eradication of conservative and patriot movements. Or, to isolate us as the great villains of the story while the globalists swoop in to “save the day.” Their victory requires that conservatives remain disorganized and fractured, so that we are always on the defensive rather than the offensive. They need us inactive, so that they can piece together their one-world system without interference.

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