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Fri, 13 Nov 2026 15:25:00 +0000 Quality Over Quantity: The Missing Signal In Jobs Data That Explains The Vibecession
Quality Over Quantity: The Missing Signal In Jobs Data That Explains The Vibecession
Quality Over Quantity: The Missing Signal In Jobs Data That Explains The Vibecession
Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,
Recession Indicators Turned Green. Job Quality Hasn’t. October’s jobs report pushed the headline recession indicators back to green, but “labor hoarding” explains why the earnings boom still isn’t reaching full-time workers.
Key Takeaways S&P 500 earnings are on track to grow 31.4% in the third quarter, yet fewer Americans work full-time today than in September 2025. October payrolls beat every forecast at 165,000, but full-time employment, at 49.0% of the working-age population, remains well below its 2019 level of 50.6%. Companies are “hoarding” labor: output rose 3.7% last quarter while hours worked rose 0.1%, so productivity, not hiring, is carrying profits. Involuntary part-time work jumped 339,000 to 4.8 million in October, and pay growth of 3.1% still trails 3.7% inflation. The recession indicators flashing green – claims and layoffs – are the ones labor hoarding suppresses the longest. Here is the puzzle investors face right now. S&P 500 companies are on track to report 31.4% earnings growth for the third quarter, the eighth straight quarter of double-digit gains. Last Friday, the October jobs report beat every forecast, with payrolls up 165,000 and unemployment back down to 4.1%. On the surface, the recession indicators have turned green. Beneath the surface, the quality of the jobs tells a different story. Such is the question worth answering: is the labor market healing, or are companies still “hoarding ” labor while profits do the heavy lifting?
Why The Recession Indicators Disagree Let’s start with the economic indicators that say all is well. In the most recent reports:
Initial jobless claims fell to 189,000 in the week ended October 31, the lowest reading since 1969 . The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), which printed a layoff rate of 1.0% in September, near the floor of its 25-year history The October payrolls rose 165,000 against a consensus near 65,000, and revisions added 84,000 jobs to August and September. In other words, if your only recession indicators are layoffs, claims, and the headline payroll count, there is no recession anywhere in sight.
Now look at the other half of the labor data. The JOLTS hiring rate sits at 3.4%, in line with its 2013 average and well below the 3.9% pace of 2019. The number of people working part-time because they can’t find full-time work jumped by 339,000 in October to 4.8 million. Workers unemployed for six months or longer now make up 27.6% of the unemployed. Average hourly earnings grew 3.1% from a year earlier, still short of the 3.7% inflation rate.
Employers are not firing anyone, and they are hiring far more cautiously than the headline suggests. That is the “low hire, low fire” economy, and the chart below shows how unusual the combination is. In 2009, hiring collapsed as layoffs surged and companies shed workers as quickly as they could process paperwork. Today, hiring has slowed to 2013 levels with layoffs near record lows. The two lines usually move together. This time they are not.
Labor Hoarding: I’ve Seen This Movie Before In early 2014, I wrote a piece arguing that the headline jobs data was missing the point. My view was that the only employment chart that mattered was full-time employment relative to the working-age population. The reason was simple. Full-time jobs pay the wages that support household formation, consumption and tax receipts. Part-time work and headline payroll counts don’t.
The argument centered on a behavior I called “labor hoarding.” Businesses had cut costs to the bone after the financial crisis and could cut no further. To wit:
“At this point businesses have to begin to ‘hoard’ what labor they have, maximize that labor force’s productivity (increase output with minimal increases in labor costs) and hire additional labor, primarily temporary, only when demand forces expansion.”Lance Roberts, ” – The Only Employment Chart That Matters, 2014
Swap the 2014 headwinds for today’s tariffs and energy costs, and that description fits almost word for word. So let’s update the chart. Full-time employment as a share of the civilian population age 16 and over peaked at 54.0% in April 2000. It stood at 47.6% when I wrote that piece and recovered to 50.6% by the end of 2019. As of October, it’s 49.0%, roughly where it was in 2016 and still below September 2025’s 49.3%.
Let’s dig into the BLS’s household survey for October. That report showed a jump of 714,000 full-time workers, a welcome sign. However, the household survey swings widely from month to month, and one month doesn’t make a trend.
What was important in that data was that there are still 67,000 fewer people working full-time than in September 2025. However, the working-age population has grown by nearly 1.5 million over the same period. Since November 2023, full-time employment has increased by just 271,000, even though there are 7.9 million more working-age Americans. Companies are protecting the workers they have and adding very few new full-time positions. Calling that a “healing” labor market is generous.
4.4 Million Additional full-time workers the U.S. would have today if the full-time employment ratio were back at its 2019 level.
Where The Earnings Boom Actually Comes From If companies aren’t adding full-time workers, how are earnings growing 31%? Part of the answer arrived last week. Nonfarm productivity rose at a 3.6% annualized rate in the third quarter as output grew 3.7% and hours worked rose just 0.1%. Unit labor costs fell 0.7%. In other words, companies produced more without paying for more hours, and the difference dropped straight to the bottom line.
Pay attention to this data. It is the textbook payoff from “labor hoarding.”
Hold headcount steady, Squeeze more output from the existing workforce, and Let margins expand. This is completely rational behavior for any single company. However, when it spans the entire economy, it means the profit boom is not reaching paychecks.
The other piece is concentration. Energy and Information Technology have delivered the biggest upside earnings surprises this season, and as of mid-October, Micron and NVIDIA were the two largest contributors to S&P 500 earnings growth. Elevated oil prices fattened energy profits, while AI spending fattened chip profits.
Neither industry employs many people relative to what it earns. As I discussed in “Capex Spending On AI Is Masking Economic Weakness,” a narrow capex boom can mask economic weakness while the broader economy stalls. Some of those profits are also flattered by accounting timing, a point I made in “AI Capex Depreciation Risk Is The Catch To Record Earnings.”
Is A Recession Coming? The Case Against My View The other side of this debate has merit, and October’s jobs report handed it more ammunition. Payrolls beat every forecast, and unemployment fell back to 4.1%. Job openings rose by 333,000 in September, lifting the openings rate to 4.5%. Quits hit an 18-month high the same month, which usually means workers feel confident enough to leave. Claims at a 57-year low are hard to argue with. Here’s how one strategist read Friday’s numbers:
“[The report] is a strong rebuttal to fears that the economy is heading into a meaningful slowdown.” – Seema Shah, Chief Global Strategist, Principal Asset Management
Productivity growth is also good news in its own right. If the AI buildout is lifting output per hour, the economy can grow faster without adding workers or adding inflation.
“You made this same argument in 2014, and the economy kept growing for six more years.” Yes, that is true. However, the process of “labor hoarding” doesn’t cause a recession on its own. It changes HOW the next one unfolds. In 2014, the Fed held rates at zero and ran QE, which bought companies years to grow their workforces. On October 28, the Fed held rates at 3.75%-4.00%, and two members dissented in favor of a rate hike. After Friday’s report, investors now lean toward a December hike. There is no zero-rate cushion this time to buy companies that kind of patience.
What These Recession Indicators Mean For Investors For investors, let’s go back to the beginning. Pay attention to which recession indicators are flashing green. They’re the layoff numbers and the headline counts. Crucially, the payroll survey doesn’t distinguish between full-time and part-time jobs. That distinction matters in a month when involuntary part-time work jumped by 339,000. Furthermore, both claims and layoffs are precisely the signals labor hoarding suppresses, because a company that hoards workers doesn’t let anyone go until it has to. Then it lets a lot of people go at once. When hoarding ends, claims don’t drift higher. They jump.
So, what will eventually force corporate hands is falling profit margins. For now, productivity gains and falling unit labor costs are protecting profits. But wage growth of 3.1% still trails inflation at 3.7%. As I laid out in “Real Wages 2026: Why Consumer Stocks Feel It First,”
Therein lies the risk. When demand softens enough that output stops growing, and there’s no more productivity to squeeze, then headcount becomes the only lever left. As is always the case, a “low fire” economy turns into a “high fire” one almost overnight.
“Labor hoarding doesn’t prevent a recession. It delays the layoffs, and then it delivers them all at once.”
For investors, the practical point is that the earnings estimates underpinning today’s valuations assume this setup will persist. Analysts expect 28.4% growth in the fourth quarter and 33.3% for all of 2026. Those numbers depend on a narrow group of sectors and on margins built by not hiring. That makes this a good time to review how concentrated a portfolio is in the handful of companies producing those earnings. It’s also worth knowing in advance which signal would change your mind. For me, it’s a sustained break higher in weekly claims, particularly continuing claims, which recently ticked up to 1.718 million. Claims are the recession indicator that hoards the longest, which makes them the ones that matter most when they finally move.
Bottom Line The labor data tells you how long the earnings boom can last, and the answer is only as long as companies can keep avoiding the need to hire.
October’s jobs report bought the bulls another month. Watch the claims data anyway. The quietest layoff market in 57 years is also the one with the least room for error.
Tyler Durden Fri, 11/13/2026 - 10:25
Close Fri, 13 Nov 2026 15:10:00 +0000 Back To The Fax Machine: Microsoft's Meltdown Exposes The Agentic Economy's Weakest Link
Back To The Fax Machine: Microsoft's Meltdown Exposes The Agentic Economy's Weakest Link
Traders reached for fax machines, Japan's finance ministry pinned paper notices to the wall, and the AI assistants meant to automate th
Read more.....
Back To The Fax Machine: Microsoft's Meltdown Exposes The Agentic Economy's Weakest Link
Traders reached for fax machines, Japan's finance ministry pinned paper notices to the wall, and the AI assistants meant to automate the office went dark right along with the inbox.
Hang in there clippy...
For more than 18 hours, the AI agents Silicon Valley says will soon do your job couldn't read your email, because nobody could. A Microsoft 365 failure that began Thursday knocked out Outlook for businesses and governments in more than 70 countries and took Microsoft's own Copilot down with it , along with the Microsoft connectors that Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT use to reach users' mail and calendars.
Every one of those failures has one thing in common: Exchange Online, Microsoft's cloud email and calendar backend. In its status notice Friday morning, Microsoft said features across its 365 services "that interact with Exchange Online and email services are impacted," while "elements of those services that do not depend on interaction with Exchange Online remain functional." Teams calls and group chats mostly kept working. Anything that had to touch a mailbox did not.
What Went Down With Exchange Online Service What broke Outlook / Exchange Online Mailbox access through Outlook on the web, desktop and mobile sync; delayed email delivery Microsoft 365 Copilot Copilot Chat failed to load; Copilot cut off from email, calendar and files Teams Calendar, invites and meeting edits failed, along with Copilot answers about Outlook and files Microsoft Graph API Requests for mail, calendar and contacts timing out Claude (Anthropic) Microsoft 365 connector's mail, calendar and search tools failing for most requests; Claude for Outlook add-in wouldn't open for some ChatGPT (OpenAI) Errors in its Microsoft 365 connectors Defender for Office 365 / Purview Delays or failures in data-protection and policy enforcement Planner, To Do, Intune Task failures; device enrollment and compliance checks hit Still standing Teams calls and chats; files stored directly in SharePoint
Source: Microsoft service status updates of November 13, Anthropic status , FinanceX
As we reported Thursday , Microsoft first blamed elevated load on part of its infrastructure and said it was reviewing "an unexpected increase in a specific type of service traffic" to see whether it was contributing. It then ruled that out, saying the load "isn't driven by an increase in traffic" but by a large number of servers dropping out after failing automated health checks "can become unresponsive again once they receive traffic," and several did . It paused all deployments, patched an authentication and routing component and stretched its email timeout window to 48 hours so delayed messages wouldn't be lost.
By 9 a.m. ET Friday, Microsoft said email queues were "significantly reduced and approaching normal levels," though some users could still hit intermittent access problems or delayed mail. It says it has seen no evidence of malicious activity and has promised a full post-incident report with "root cause and defense-in-depth actions" once mitigation is complete. Microsoft executive Charles Lamanna said as much early Friday:
The Agents Went Down With The Inbox "Copilot experiences may be unable to access work data such as email, calendar, and files," Microsoft's status notice said Friday of its own AI assistant, and some users couldn't load Copilot Chat at all. Inside Teams, Copilot answers about Outlook, calendars and documents failed.
The same notice says requests to Microsoft Graph that touch Exchange Online data, "such as mail, calendar, and contacts, may time out." Graph is the API outside software uses to read and act on a company's Microsoft 365 data, the usual on-ramp for third-party AI assistants wired into a corporate inbox. Even some Google Workspace customers who read their mail through Outlook's desktop and mobile apps reported trouble .
Image via windowslatest.com
Anthropic users were hosed too - opening an incident titled "Elevated errors affecting the Microsoft 365 connector" at 12:52 p.m. ET Thursday, around the time Microsoft posted its first public alert. By evening, its status page said the connector's mail, calendar and search tools were "still failing for most requests," that some users "may not be able to open" the Claude for Outlook add-in, and that the cause was "a Microsoft 365 service incident." OpenAI also reported errors affecting its Microsoft 365 connectors , FinanceX reported , and Calcalist said both companies had trouble reaching Microsoft services.
Microsoft opens its Ignite conference in San Francisco next week with a program built around Agent 365 , its system for managing fleets of AI agents across a company's apps and data. As we reported in February, Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman told the Financial Times that "most of the tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months." Nine months later, Japanese firms were trading by fax.
Japan's Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama speaks to media in Tokyo, Japan, April 21, 2026. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
Phones, Fax Machines And Paper Notices Desks fell back on phones, WhatsApp and fax machines, Bloomberg reported : Deutsche Bank's email access was patchy , traders in Singapore said some banks couldn't close financing deals, and Euronext and Nasdaq both reported email problems. The outage halted at least one bond repurchase in Europe , according to Reuters , while bankers at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong told CNN they couldn't reach email or Teams from the moment they signed on.
At Goldman itself, TMT specialist Sean Johnstone opened his Friday morning note with "Paraskevidekatriaphobia meets its modern upgrade," a nod to the fear of Friday the 13th, before describing the floor: "MSFT here is still down and most operating off backup email so reading email has never felt more mythological... or more dependent on tech that clearly didn't get the memo about not being the unlucky guest."
Cartier owner Richemont delayed its first-half results , due at 0600 GMT Friday, before publishing later in the morning. Electric truck maker Workhorse pushed its results to Nov. 16 , British insurer Aviva set up backup arrangements for its earnings calls, and Maersk warned customers that email updates could be delayed.
In Tokyo, the finance ministry couldn't receive email for most of the day, and ministries pinned up paper notices to give journalists the day's schedule. Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara confirmed that communications between ministries were disrupted. In Australia, the spy agency ASIO and the Australian Federal Police were among those hit, Service NSW centres in regional New South Wales closed and the state's online bail court was disrupted. Tony Burke, Australia's home affairs and cyber security minister, said Microsoft itself likened the disruption to the 2024 CrowdStrike outage.
Singapore's government email went down, the Philippines' Supreme Court said some operations were affected, and New York City Emergency Management warned that email to city agencies could be delayed. In Toronto, the Unity Health hospital network declared a code grey, its signal for an infrastructure failure, while saying patient care was not affected. Police forces, hospitals, GP surgeries and councils across southern England posted workarounds , and Air India rerouted its email while Alaska Airlines and IndiGo said their email-based customer service channels were hit.
Outage reports peaked at 19,650 a minute across five Microsoft services on Downdetector, against fewer than 15 on a typical Thursday. Meanwhile, Iran war hawk fossil Mark Levin is still using AOL.
The Scam Window The failure also took out part of the security layer around the inbox. Standard Chartered and ING Australia warned customers about scammers posing as tech support , noting that the email security filters that normally catch such messages were disrupted too. Microsoft's notice says some Defender for Office 365 features that rely on Purview data-protection signals face "delays or failures in policy evaluation and governance action enforcement."
Organizations that run Microsoft services on their own servers rather than in Microsoft's cloud came through better : Reuters reported they were "somewhat spared."
The outage follows a Microsoft 365 failure of nearly 10 hours on Jan. 22. "The bigger worry is that this is not the first Microsoft 365 outage this year," eToro analyst Josh Gilbert told Reuters .
Sorry Clippy...
Tyler Durden Fri, 11/13/2026 - 10:10
Close Fri, 13 Nov 2026 14:55:00 +0000 ICE Sets All-Time Records: 483,200 Deported, Arrests Nearly Double
ICE Sets All-Time Records: 483,200 Deported, Arrests Nearly Double
ICE Sets All-Time Records: 483,200 Deported, Arrests Nearly Double
Authored by AG News Staff via American Greatness ,
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested and deported more people over the last year than at any point in its 23-year history , the agency announced Thursday, according to an Associated Press report published by ABC News .
ICE deported 483,200 people in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. That was 9% more than the previous record of 442,640 set a year earlier, and 78 percent more than the 271,480 deported in 2024, the final year of Joe Biden's presidency.
Arrests rose even faster. ICE made 474,850 arrests in the most recent 12-month period, roughly double the 239,890 from the year before and more than four times the 113,430 recorded in 2024.
"Thanks to President Trump's leadership, ICE has been unleashed to target and remove illegal aliens so that we can save American lives," said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
The agency made more than 48,000 arrests in September, following two straight months of record highs that peaked at 50,925 in August.
It is the first time ICE has released such precise figures since Trump returned to the White House, including for 2025. The press release did not break down how many of those arrested or deported had criminal records, something previous administrations had reported.
The numbers mark a dramatic turnaround from the Biden years, when millions crossed the southern border and interior enforcement was sharply scaled back. Trump campaigned on carrying out the largest deportation operation in American history, and the latest figures show the administration is following through.
Supporters say the results speak for themselves. Removing people who entered or stayed in the country illegally restores the rule of law, protects American workers and communities, and discourages others from attempting to cross the border illegally in the first place.
The administration has faced heavy resistance along the way. Democratic governors and mayors in sanctuary jurisdictions have refused to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, and activist judges have repeatedly tried to slow enforcement through lawsuits and injunctions. ICE officers have also faced protests and threats while carrying out their duties.
Tyler Durden Fri, 11/13/2026 - 09:55
Close Fri, 13 Nov 2026 14:40:00 +0000 "Commerce Has The Pen": Bessent Throws Lutnick Under The Bus Amid Agreement To Testify In Nvidia Spy Scandal
"Commerce Has The Pen": Bessent Throws Lutnick Under The Bus Amid Agreement To Testify In Nvidia Spy Scandal
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday publicly pinned the failure to blacklist Megaspeed on Howard Lutnick's C
Read more.....
"Commerce Has The Pen": Bessent Throws Lutnick Under The Bus Amid Agreement To Testify In Nvidia Spy Scandal
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday publicly pinned the failure to blacklist Megaspeed on Howard Lutnick's Commerce Department , as Lutnick agreed to testify before the Senate Banking Committee over the Nvidia spy scandal.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick
Asked on CNBC's "Squawk Box" about reported tension between the two over why the Singapore-based Nvidia customer still isn't on the Entity List, and whether only Commerce could have put it there, Bessent said: "I can tell you there was coordination. Treasury, War, USTR, and State were in favor of putting Megaspeed on the entity list for months."
"But Commerce has the pen. Commerce BIS has the pen. And you will have to ask them about their internal processes."
BIS is Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, the export-control arm run by Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler. Axios reported this week that Kessler was repeatedly warned about Megaspeed in deputy meetings, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, said Thursday that Lutnick and Kessler "must explain why they have not closed export control loopholes and act today to ensure our advanced technology is not fueling China's military."
Bessent also turned on Nvidia itself. Asked whether higher-end chips had made it to China through Megaspeed, he said "there is a lot of leakage in the system and we are constantly working to close that down."
"The story has been thus far on Jensen Huang's personal foibles," he said. "The real story here should be, did Nvidia know their client? And was there a robust effort at Nvidia to make sure that there was no leakage and that they were selling to what were obviously pass-through shell companies?"
"And I think it's important that anyone at the company there be held accountable for that," he added.
Lutnick, meanwhile, has "proactively agreed to appear voluntarily" before Senate Banking , Commerce spokesperson Kristen Eichamer said in a statement. Chairman Tim Scott (R-S.C.) asked Lutnick and former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Thursday to appear before the committee in early December.
"Given the Department of Commerce's central role in issuing and enforcing export control regulations, your testimony before the Committee will be essential to our oversight of these efforts," Scott wrote.
It's the same wording House Oversight Chairman James Comer used in March, when Lutnick "proactively agreed to appear voluntarily" for questions about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein on the eve of a threatened subpoena. He sat for that closed-door interview in May.
As we reported Thursday, Bessent asked Lutnick in the White House Situation Room on Nov. 5 why Megaspeed wasn't on the Entity List, and Lutnick reportedly answered, "I don't know. I'll look into it." Commerce denied the conversation took place. Axios also reported that Trump approved action against suspected chip diversion three times this year, and that Lutnick held it up each time over fears of a trade war with China.
Commerce's own investigation of Megaspeed was halted after Nvidia's general counsel contacted the agents running it, and the case reportedly moved to the Justice Department. Commerce hasn't added a single company to the Entity List in more than a year.
Tyler Durden Fri, 11/13/2026 - 09:40
Close Fri, 13 Nov 2026 14:35:00 +0000 Soaring Electricity Costs Force Britain To Rethink Its Green Agenda
Soaring Electricity Costs Force Britain To Rethink Its Green Agenda
Soaring Electricity Costs Force Britain To Rethink Its Green Agenda
Via City A.M.,
Labour is making affordable energy a central priority as high electricity prices undermine British industrial competitiveness. Decisions on North Sea drilling and electric vehicle targets are testing the government's commitment to net zero. Ministers face pressure to reform electricity levies while balancing economic growth against long-term climate goals. While it didn't make the headlines, Chancellor John Healey's Budget speech signaled a huge shift in positioning from previous governments over net zero .
"Today I'm setting a new course on energy: to get UK energy costs down in line with Europe," Healey said. "From this point, our government priority is first and foremost cheaper energy, with clean power key to achieving this."
The lines raised eyebrows in Westminster. The test of that new commitment came when the energy secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, approved the gas field project at Jackdaw - apparently against her instincts - and will once again come into focus this week as Andy Burnham takes a double trip on Thursday to the COP 31 climate summit in Turkey before looking to clinch an energy market deal with European leaders in Dublin.
While higher international energy prices caused by the Iran war have raised the stakes of diplomacy across government, policy researchers working under the new Prime Minister are tasked with finding effective ways of easing the cost of living for both households and businesses.
In particular, Healey and Fahnbulleh may struggle to align Labour manifesto commitments on net zero with a renewed push to get costs down - in what could divide the party between environmental zealots and centrists conscious of economic trade-offs.
The crunch energy decisions facing ministers The energy giant Equinor is awaiting a decision on whether Rosebank's oil field will get the go-ahead for an opening, with ministers including Fahnbulleh and Healey reportedly sparring over the coherence of a policy to allow more drilling for fossil fuels with a manifesto promise not to offer new licenses for oil and gas fields. Labour backbenchers are lining up to publicly condemn Rosebank.
Meanwhile, Louise Haigh, who enforces Burnham's agenda in government, is expected to dial down electric vehicle sales targets to help carmakers despite the risk of derailing Labour's decarbonization agenda.
And most emphatically of all, Fahnbulleh has suggested that the party's ambition to eliminate almost all fossil fuels from the power supply by 2030 would be thrown out if the UK's "affordability challenge" was not solved first . That affordability crisis facing households, firms have argued, stems from sky-high energy costs facing manufacturers up and down the country.
Getting industry on electricity The Labour government has talked up its policy to give about 10,000 energy-intensive businesses a discount of up to 25 percent from April on electricity bills, costing taxpayers billions by 2030. Additional funding will come from aligning UK and EU carbon markets and exempting businesses from existing levies, according to the government.
But the UK falls short, on some metrics, to fully "electrify" industry, which remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
Sky-high costs Even for manufacturers using greener power, British industry has struggled to keep up with both European and significant international counterparts in keeping costs low.
Data taken from government analysis and international agencies suggests British firms pay four times as much on electricity as American companies, and about twice as much as European counterparts .
How to apply taxes The consensus among energy market observers is for the government to strip levies from bills and use general taxation to fund subsidies. A cross-party group of MPs on the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, led by Labour's Bill Esterson, said all net zero costs should be stripped off the price of electricity as a "critical means for substantially bringing down bills".
Research by the Institute for Fiscal Policy showed that taxes and policy costs, such as the climate change levy, made up over a third of industrial electricity costs for businesses that are not energy-intensive. The think tank suggested that the government could spread the cost of decarbonization across the entire economy or take all fixed costs off the unit price.
Climate change damage But even as the Conservatives and Reform UK have pledged to scrap net zero legislation and take out levies in order to bring electricity costs down, opposition parties face questions over measuring the long-term costs of climate change for the UK economy .
Research by Transira Energy and Onward, backed by the Tories, suggested abandoning net zero regulations and taxes could save households as much as £540 a year between 2030 and 2050 . But the report concedes that the UK economy could be left more exposed to international gas price shocks by slowing the race for electrification.
In its 2025 fiscal risks report, the Office for Budget Responsibility warned in one scenario for global temperatures rising by three degrees Celsius that climate change damage could contribute to around three-fifths of the addition to public sector debt by 2074.
It's in the context of the sky-high costs for British industry today that Burnham and Healey appear to be taking Labour down a "new course on energy". In negotiations with EU chiefs and international representatives in Turkey this week, the Prime Minister faces a tussle in balancing advocacy for long-term net zero policy with a reality that Britain is unattractive for manufacturers - complicating his effort for "re-industrialization".
Tyler Durden Fri, 11/13/2026 - 09:35
Close Fri, 13 Nov 2026 14:20:00 +0000 Something Big Brewing: Mossad Chief Meets With CIA Director In DC, Oil Spikes
Something Big Brewing: Mossad Chief Meets With CIA Director In DC, Oil Spikes
President Trump has since the Republicans' midterm thrashing played down the prospect of renewed major war on Iran .
But he al
Read more.....
Something Big Brewing: Mossad Chief Meets With CIA Director In DC, Oil Spikes
President Trump has since the Republicans' midterm thrashing played down the prospect of renewed major war on Iran .
But he also on Thursday stated the United States does not need a deal with Tehran, which suggests an abondment of stalemented indirect peace talks.
"We don’t need a deal with Iran . Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!" he had posted on Truth Social , referring to the Strait of Hormuz.
So in a return to square one, things could really go either way on this, and in the blink of an eye .
Mossad Director Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman
Is something big brewing? Clearly, Israel's Netanyahu has not given up on efforts to lobby Washington into "finishing the job" in Iran.
Axios reports Friday, "The director of the Israeli spy agency Mossad is in Washington Friday for talks with senior Trump administration officials about the war in Iran , according to three sources with knowledge of the matter."
"The visit by Roman Gofman, one of Benjamin Netanyahu's closest confidants, comes as the Israeli prime minister is pressing President Trump to resume the war against Iran ," the report adds. And more:
Mossad Director Gofman is meeting CIA Director Ratcliffe and is expected to travel to Miami to meet White House envoy Witkoff.
Oil prices have spiked on the headline...
The same outlet had reported just in the run-up to the midterm elections, that Netanyahu had been pressing Trump to strike Iran immediately after the vote.
But that never materialized, other than some smaller coastal strikes on defense installations, with Trump having signaled that he wants to let negotiations run their course first. Will Bibi's renewed lobbying efforts pay off for Tel Aviv?
Tyler Durden Fri, 11/13/2026 - 09:20
Close Fri, 13 Nov 2026 14:05:00 +0000 Helsinki Warns Ukraine Against Expanding War Into Gulf Of Finland After Russian Warship Struck
Helsinki Warns Ukraine Against Expanding War Into Gulf Of Finland After Russian Warship Struck
In a rare moment of the Ukraine war spilling far outside its boundaries into the north, Finland's military on Thursday alerted the world
Read more.....
Helsinki Warns Ukraine Against Expanding War Into Gulf Of Finland After Russian Warship Struck
In a rare moment of the Ukraine war spilling far outside its boundaries into the north, Finland's military on Thursday alerted the world that its military detected a rare strike on a Russian navy vessel in the Baltic Sea.
A spokesperson for the Finnish armed forces told Reuters they "detected… a strike on a Russian warship in the Gulf of Finland area and has monitored the development of the situation ," but also noted somewhat ominously that Finland is not under "any immediate military threat."
Illustrative, Reuters
No other information was given to the mysterious alert, such as precise strike location and from where it originated, or exactly when it happeneed. Also, there's no information on casualties or damage.
Reuters has, however, noted that there's been an uptick in drone activity over the Baltic Sea region :
Estonia, ?Latvia and Lithuania early on Wednesday issued warnings to citizens to take shelter due to drones in their airspace, and NATO scrambled warplanes ?in ?response.
The Gulf of Finland is a narrow ?arm of the Baltic Sea between Finland and Estonia that extends eastwards to St ?Petersburg .
While there's been a ratcheting Black Sea war involving tit-for-tat attacks on both Russian and Ukrainian vessels, such a crisis has yet to come to Baltic Sea waters, which would mean northern Europe.
The Gulf of Finland remains a vital export outlet for Russian oil and grain - which could explain why it might be targeted in long-range Ukrainian drones strikes.
Al Jazeera fills in another detail as follows: "Estonian media reported that the vessel was a small Russian navy ship that later returned to St Petersburg," it writes Thursday.
via Nations Online
Finland’s Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen has confirmed that Helsinki raised the issue of the provocative and dangerous new strike with the Zelensky government.
"We have told the Ukrainians this time, and a little earlier too, how sensitive this narrow stretch of the Gulf of Finland , right between us and Estonia, is in terms of environmental safety and the safety of civilian shipping ," he said as cited in Finnish broadcaster Yle .
He said it is urgently important that things don't escalate in the narrow waterway, as for now "You can still cruise with peace of mind."
Tyler Durden Fri, 11/13/2026 - 09:05
Close Fri, 13 Nov 2026 13:50:00 +0000 Blanche Says DOJ Has Not Confirmed If Ex-Nvidia CEO's Affair Partner Was A Spy
Blanche Says DOJ Has Not Confirmed If Ex-Nvidia CEO's Affair Partner Was A Spy
Blanche Says DOJ Has Not Confirmed If Ex-Nvidia CEO's Affair Partner Was A Spy
Authored by Jacki Thrapp via The Epoch Times ,
Attorney General Todd Blanche said neither the Department of Justice (DOJ) nor the FBI has confirmed whether a woman associated with ex-Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was a Chinese spy .
Blanche made the remarks at a press conference on Nov. 12 after a reporter asked when the DOJ learned that Alice Huang - not a relative of the CEO - was a suspected asset of the Chinese Ministry of State Security.
"Well, your first question assumes something that I have never said and that I don't know to be true," Blanche said. "So you assume that DOJ learns that she is in fact a spy. I'm not - nobody said that. I certainly haven't said that."
National security concerns were raised after the tech billionaire allegedly had an affair with the alleged spy, who was a top executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center company that's one of Nvidia's biggest customers in Southeast Asia.
"Of course DOJ is investigating or looking at it," Blanche said. "So there's no conclusions reached by the Department of Justice, or by me, or by [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel, around who she is or is not."
Chinese intelligence had allegedly recruited her to potentially influence Nvidia to make more advanced AI chips available to Chinese customers. Certain chips are restricted from being exported from the United States.
"The DOJ has a role in investigating if there are chips that shouldn't be sold," Blanche said.
"It could potentially be a violation of our export laws, and that could be civil, regulatory, it could also be criminal, depending on the case, and that investigation is ongoing ."
Huang apologized for being unfaithful to his wife and letting his co-workers down in a message to Nvidia employees obtained by The Epoch Times.
"I owe my family and all of you an apology," Huang wrote. "I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. Throughout my life, my family has given me love and support. I am deeply sorry.
"To my wife and family: I love you. I know an apology cannot undo what I have done. I hope our family will heal and that, over time, I can earn back your trust."
Huang gave no indication he planned to step aside after news emerged of the first affair with the alleged spy, but the company announced he resigned as CEO on Thursday after The New York Times reported that five people who worked at Nvidia claimed he was engaged in a separate affair with Kimberly Powell , Nvidia's vice president of healthcare.
His resignation was effective immediately, according to the company's board of directors.
Executive vice president and chief financial officer of Nvidia, Colette Kress, will serve as interim chief executive officer in addition to her other duties until the company selects a permanent successor.
"Colette has helped lead Nvidia through a period of extraordinary growth and has a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations and financial position," said Harvey Jones, chair of the Nvidia Board of Directors.
"She is supported by an experienced leadership team that has been instrumental in executing Nvidia's strategy and advancing its technology roadmap.
"The board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team, and we expect the company's operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption."
[ZH: Spy or not, she is clearly deeply involved in the acquisition of Nvidia chips for Chinese companies]
***
Tyler Durden Fri, 11/13/2026 - 08:50
Close Fri, 13 Nov 2026 13:40:00 +0000 Rate-Hike Odds Steady As Food & AI Lift Producer Price Inflation To 4 Year High
Rate-Hike Odds Steady As Food & AI Lift Producer Price Inflation To 4 Year High
Rate-Hike Odds Steady As Food & AI Lift Producer Price Inflation To 4 Year High
After the hotter-than-expected CPI earlier in the week , wholesale inflation was expected to accelerate at a slower pace in October (relative to the +1.3% MoM surge in September).
Headline Producer Prices printed just slightly cooler than expected (+0.3% MoM vs +0.4% MoM exp), lifting PPI up 6.5% YoY (from 6.3% YoY in September). That is the highest YoY print since Nov 2022
On a MoM basis Energy actually deflated (but is accelerating YoY)...
With Fuel inflation absolutely dominant...
...but arguably that is 'peaking' this month , given the rapid decline in crude prices in the last month...
Food prices are soaring though...
Core PPI (Ex-Food and Energy) rose 0.3% MoM as expected and up 5.0% YoY...
Goods prices rose at a faster pace than Services costs but both rose in October (for the 3rd straight month)...
And AI is also having a sizable effect with the recent rapid surge in memory prices has stabilized (but is not dropping)...
We warned you...
And the pipeline for further inflationary pressure remains with Intermediate Demand soaring...
As we noted here, the PPP-CPI spread continues to signal margin pressure is coming for American companies...
Finally, and most importantly, rate-hike expectations remain high with December still pricing in a 15% chance of a 50bps hike...
And stocks definitely don't feel priced for that.
Tyler Durden Fri, 11/13/2026 - 08:40
Close Fri, 13 Nov 2026 13:30:00 +0000 Democratic Senator Says 'Beauty' Of Ukraine War Is Paying Ukrainians To Kill Russians
Democratic Senator Says 'Beauty' Of Ukraine War Is Paying Ukrainians To Kill Russians
Democratic Senator Says 'Beauty' Of Ukraine War Is Paying Ukrainians To Kill Russians
Authored by Dave DeCamp via Antiwar.com ,
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) said on Monday that the "beauty" of the nearly five-year-old Russia-Ukraine war is the fact that the US is "paying Ukrainians to kill Russians."
Graves of Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war with Russia at a cemetery in Kharkiv, Ukraine, November 27, 2025. (IMAGO/Andreas Stroh via Reuters Connect)
Gallego, who joined the Senate last after serving in the House for about 10 years, made the comment on X , where he insisted that Ukraine could win the war if its forces killed enough Russians.
"But Ukraine can win. Thats why I back them. It's a Russian talking point that Ukraine can't win, cause Russia big blah,blah. If Ukraine kills enough Russians they will quit," Gellego, an Iraq war veteran, wrote.
A user replied, telling the Senator to join the Ukrainian foreign legion, to which he replied, "No, that's the beauty of this; we can pay the Ukrainians to kill the Russians."
In another post a few days earlier, Gallego called for Elon Musk to testify before Congress about Ukraine's recent Starlink restrictions. A user asked if he was pushing the Ukraine war for "financial gain," and Gallego replied, "No just hate the fuckin Russians."
The idea that the US is benefiting from the Ukraine war since Russians are being killed without US troops dying has been a common argument of supporters of the proxy war over the years, a talking point that shows disregard for the Ukrainian lives being lost.
The late Sen. Lindsey Graham said at the start of the conflict that as long as the US provides "Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person." He later described the war as a "great deal for America" because it was hurting Russia and no US troops have been killed.
Gallego's comments highlight strong support for the proxy war among Democrats, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has recently said he may get more support after the Democratic victory in the US midterm elections. Russia-Ukraine peace talks are ongoing in Abu Dhabi, but so far there has been no sign of a breakthrough.
***
Tyler Durden Fri, 11/13/2026 - 08:30
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